#stupid fucking bastard and his stupid fucking commodities
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It's so goddamn funny to me that other than Igor, the only character to be in all three of the modern mainline persona games is fucking Tanaka
#stupid fucking bastard and his stupid fucking commodities#it's great#persona 3#persona 4#persona 5#p3#p4#p5#president tanaka
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PART SIX: JUNE
Word count: 8.1k
Warnings: swearing, violence, breaking and entering, fuzzy science, scheming, flirting and more flirting, innuendo, a villain, more violence, blood, minor character death
shout out to @house-of-galathynius for beta reading this hot mess and to @backtobl4ck for encouraging frederick
I don't know if I should say this, but...enjoy!! 😁😈
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“Moon Moon!” Aelin clapped her hands twice as she strolled past Fenrys, who lounged against the Boss’s office door like it was the most natural place for him to be. “Thanks for showing up.”
The blonde man shrugged, a half-smirk curling his lips. “Like I had a choice.”
“You always do.” She threw him Celaena’s sweet little grin that usually made people either piss themselves, cry, or start babbling. “You can choose to show up, or you can choose to die.”
“Not much of a choice, Boss,” he drawled. He flopped into the chair across from her desk. “So tell me, who’s the mark?”
Aelin tapped on her computer for a few minutes before she slid a single sheet of paper across the desk. “Have a good long look, Moon Moon, because this is the only time you’ll see all of this info in one place.” As the Boss, she was many things, and stupid was decidedly not one of them.
Fen picked up the paper, his dark eyes scanning each line of text and small, grainy photo. He cocked one blonde brow. “Rourke Farran, eh?” Not looking up from the paper, he huffed out a breath. “The man’s whole fuckin’ house is a booby trap, Boss.”
“I’m aware.”
“So what’s this bastard done to…god damn.” Before he could even ask the full question, it was answered. “He’s got a front for a front.”
“I have never tolerated, nor will I ever tolerate, the treatment of human beings like commodities,” Aelin said softly, lethally. Celaena Sardothien’s notorious steel undercut her tone. “Farran thinks he can get away with it because I haven’t come for him. Yet.”
Fenrys whistled lowly and set down the paper. “What’s your timeline, Boss?”
Aelin liked this man more and more with each interaction. “I need Farran at the river warehouse by the 10th. You can use whatever means necessary, beat him up a little, get him nice and ready for his session with me, but don’t even fucking think about killing him.”
“Don’t worry, Boss.” A lazy, hungry grin unfurled across Fen’s handsome face, the dim lamplight reflecting off the scars on his cheeks. “Softening up bad boys is my specialty.”
“That’s why I hired you.” Aelin took back the paper and tossed it into the shredder next to her desk, which ate through the single sheet with a brief mechanical grinding of teeth. She burned the shreds at the end of each day, never one to take any chances with documents that could potentially be stitched back together. Fenrys stood up to leave, and she waited until he was almost out the door before speaking again. “One more thing, Moon Moon.”
“Yeah?” He paused, alert, his stance striking an oddly familiar chord in her mind.
“Farran isn’t dumb enough to put all of his guard dogs in one place.”
He nodded slowly, working over that little tidbit of information. “Noted. I’ll tell you when he’s ready for you.” With a wink that was far too flirtatious for anyone’s good, Fen left her office.
Aelin rolled her eyes as she returned to her computer. Her encoded list of targets was shrinking by the week; really, there was only one name left after Rourke Farran received his one-way ticket to her riverside warehouse, and it called to her every day. Some days, it took all of her willpower to stick to her typical Boss hours and Galathynius hours when she knew that if she spent just one more hour as Boss, she could solidify the plans that she’d been simmering for so fucking long. Just before she slit his throat, she’d once murmured to a criminal that she was cleansing the world of villains. In the months since then, that cleansing had nearly been completed.
She slid her gaze down to the end of the page, following the trail of crimson lines that struck out each name up through Farran’s, and stopped, musing on the last name left. Five letters. One name—the villainous criminal was possibly more elusive than Celaena Sardothien herself.
Maeve.
On the one hand, it made complete sense that Arobynn’s lover—ex-lover—would have taken over his business, diminished as it was when all of his cronies started fighting over their pieces of the trade after Arobynn died. On the other hand, Aelin had wondered just why the hell Maeve would have wanted to take over Arobynn’s drug- and gun-running business; surely the money couldn’t be the only reason. The more she dug into the grimy, seedy backchannels of truth, though, the more she came to understand why Maeve had done it.
The woman had been madly in love with Arobynn Hamel, and now she was madly out for blood.
~
In the prep room of the Gal Inc. labs, Aelin snapped on a fresh pair of sterile blue latex gloves, checked her badge where it was clipped to her lab coat, and nodded at her reflection. It had been seven weeks since Ren had come into the labs to have his SecondSkin changed—she and Nehemia had decided to extend the wearing period to seven weeks, as Ren’s use of SecondSkin was an experiment—and she was curious to see if anything was different.
“About time,” Nehemia said dryly as Aelin walked into the small, sterile lab, the one that Nehemia typically reserved for experiments that needed to be kept quiet. “I was just about to assume you were in a meeting and start the removal process without you.”
“Hello to you too, Dr. Ytger,” Aelin returned, just as dryly. “I just had to primp a little longer, you know how much effort it takes to look this good.”
Nehemia snorted. “Galathynius, if you spent that much time primping, I’d never let you in my lab.”
“Don’t I know it.” Aelin sat down on the second rolling stool and scooted over to Ren’s side. “Okay, Nemi. It’s your experiment.”
Quickly but clearly, Nehemia ran through her usual list of removal instructions, then dismissed Ren to go take his shower. He emerged about half an hour later, wearing his robe, his hair damp and his face…
“Aelin, come here.” Nehemia motioned for Ren to sit down and scooted her stool up close so she could examine his ruddy face. “This doesn’t look like a typical hot-shower flush.”
Aelin scanned the redness on Ren’s face and nodded in agreement. “Allsbrook, does it itch?”
“Not on my face, no,” he answered.
“Are you itchy anywhere else?”
“Yes.” He nodded. “Chest, elbows, upper arms, torso, knees, feet, most of my back, some other areas. It’s not bad, it’s more annoying, like when you have a mosquito bite that you want to scratch.”
“Would you please remove your robe so we can see if there’s anything visibly wrong with your skin?” Nehemia asked.
“One sec.” Ren hopped off the chair, went into the shower room, and came back out a moment later. “Just wanted to put my boxers on.” He took off his robe, hung it on the hook in the wall, and sat back down.
“Too much information, Allsbrook,” Aelin grumbled.
Nehemia ran her analytical gaze over Ren’s body, charting the red rash spread over the areas that he had said were itchy. It looked like an ordinary chafing rash, the skin irritated and slightly split in some places, and some of the redness faded, indicating that it was probably sensitive to the heat of the shower he had taken to remove the SecondSkin.
“Are you allergic to latex or any of its components?” Nehemia inquired.
“Not as far as I’m aware, no,” Ren said.
Nehemia hummed. “Ae, I have thoughts. What do you think?”
“Prolonged exposure?” Aelin asked. “It almost seems like what happens when you wear the same tightly fitting garment—like a leotard—for an extended period of time and it chafes.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking. It could also potentially be compounded by bacteria and dirt buildup under the material. It lays atop the skin, and as much as we want to claim that there’s no gap, we know there has to be a microscopic distance between the material and the wearer’s skin that could allow that to happen.” Nehemia gently touched two gloved fingers to the rash on Ren’s chest. “Does this hurt?”
“No.”
She pressed down. “Does it hurt when I do this?”
He shook his head. “No. Itches, but it doesn’t hurt.”
“That’s a good sign, at least.” Nehemia sighed. “Okay, Galathynius, we need to talk before we can decide how to move forward.” She beckoned Aelin towards the back of the room. “Should we go ahead with another application?” she asked, her voice lowered to a whisper.
Aelin pressed her lips together. “Well, we can’t exactly have him disappear while we try and work out the rash.”
“I don’t want it to spread or get any worse because it wasn’t treated, though,” Nehemia said. “I think we need to at least treat the rash.”
“Yes, I agree, but how will that work with another application?” Aelin’s brows furrowed. “And how should we treat the rash if we’re not fully certain of what it is and how it works?”
“We haven’t yet agreed to do another full application,” Nehemia reminded her, “and my instinct is saying to treat it like it’s a normal chafing rash—hydrocortisone cream, Benadryl, that kind of thing.”
Aelin nodded. “Okay, that sounds fine. How do you think we should apply the SecondSkin?”
“Hmm.” Nehemia tugged her lower lip between her teeth. “We could selectively apply it and avoid the rash areas. Theoretically, he’s not going to be stripping down in front of anyone for any reason, so he really only needs to have the right fingerprints and face, maybe footprints too. I vote we just apply the SecondSkin to his hands, face and neck, and feet.”
“I think we should apply it from hands up to elbows, just to be safe, but that sounds like a solid plan. Do we have hydrocortisone cream here?”
“Should be in the first aid bin.” Nehemia returned to Ren’s chair. “Okay, Allsbrook, here’s how we’re going to proceed. We’ll treat your rash and reapply the synthetic to your hands and lower arms, face and neck, and feet, which should hopefully give the rash time and breathing room to heal. You should apply this cream every day, as often as necessary, to the parts that are most itchy or inflamed.” She took the tube of hydrocortisone cream that Aelin handed her and applied it to Ren’s rash.
“Is this something I can find at the pharmacy?” he asked.
“Yes, it’s a common treatment,” Aelin replied. She walked over to the safe built into the far wall, keyed in the combination, opened the compartment, and retrieved a sleek steel canister from inside. She closed the compartment back up and brought the canister over to the prep table next to where Ren sat.
Nehemia took off her used gloves and replaced them with a fresh pair. “Ready?”
“Ready,” Ren confirmed.
Working in tandem, Aelin and Nehemia carefully laid the almost-invisible film of SecondSkin over Ren’s hands, forearms, face, and feet, carefully molding it to his skin. The pieces had all been prepped beforehand, since it took a significant amount of time to press fingerprints and other distinctive blemishes and markings into the synthetic material, and the SecondSkin molded to Ren’s skin flawlessly, leaving almost no evidence that it was there.
“Come back in two weeks,” Aelin instructed him as she disposed of her gloves. “We’ll want to see if your rash has improved, which will help us decide how to move forward.”
“Got it.” Ren went back into the bathroom, got dressed, and came back out as Chaol Westfall, contact lenses placed and bland grin on his face. “See you in two weeks, Dr. Ytger, Galathynius.” He left the lab.
“We should have seen this coming,” Nehemia groaned when Ren was gone, chucking her gloves into the trash bin. “Honestly, Ae, I feel like such an idiot.”
“Nemi, you are a genius,” Aelin reassured her. “You’ve been so busy with development and research, and we didn’t even know this could happen until we saw it today.”
“Yeah.” The chief engineer sighed. “I need to go chart all of this, and you probably have meetings or whatever shit you do in your big fancy office.” She smirked at Aelin.
Aelin rolled her eyes, nudging her friend in the shoulder. “I’d say something smartass, but I do have a meeting pretty soon. Let me know if anything comes up with Allsbrook, yeah?”
“Of course.” Nehemia waved and turned down a side hallway towards her office. Aelin headed back to the prep room, put her lab coat in the laundry basket, and collected her things before heading to her office and the inevitable day of meetings.
Two weeks later, Ren came back to the labs, his rash significantly improved. Nehemia removed and reapplied the SecondSkin in the same few areas and instructed him to keep treating the rash, as she didn’t want to move forward with full SecondSkin application until it had completely healed.
“It’s a good sign that the rash is healing,” she told Aelin over the phone later that day. “In theory, that means the SecondSkin could cause a rash from chafing, irritation, or prolonged use, but the rash can be treated like normal.”
“Definitely a good sign.” Aelin jotted down that note. “Hopefully, that means SecondSkin can be used for the wide audience we’ve been intending all along.”
“How much longer do you think this is going to be in development and testing?” Nehemia asked. “It’s been over two years, Ae. Shouldn’t this be about the time where we start to consider trial groups?”
“I’d say yes, but we’ve only just learned about the rash, and we’re not yet sure if the current formula won’t cause that rash.” Aelin was partially thinking out loud. “My gut says to wait until the Ren trial isn’t getting a rash, and then move into trial groups.” Which will give me more time to get rid of Maeve before she can make a move for the SecondSkin tech like Arobynn did, she added silently.
She was the only person who knew why Arobynn Hamel had died when he did—the former crime lord had taken one step too close to her highly guarded technology, and she’d had no choice but to retaliate. It was…not unexpected that Maeve would try to do the same.
~
Fenrys Moonbeam might very well be insane.
People had told him that frequently, ever since he was a reckless kid jumping off the playground structures at school, but he’d never had the thought himself until he was strolling into the Night Owl—a popular nightclub that was rumored to be the primary front of Maeve’s organization—in tight leather pants, a silver sequined jacket, and no shirt. Because rumor also had it that Maeve, the so-called Queen of the Night, had a…taste for handsome men, and he had it on good information that Rourke Farran was a frequent guest at the Night Owl.
He sauntered up to the bouncer with a lazy, easy grin sprawled across his face. “Hey.”
The bouncer, who could accurately be depicted as a concrete brick, stared flatly at him. “Invitation only, fancy boy.”
“I’m with Cadre,” Fen returned, sliding his hand into his jacket to retrieve a beautiful ivory card with purple script embossed across its fine surface. He waved the card at the bouncer. “And they’re expecting me in ten minutes, so it would be great if you’d let me get my pretty ass through the door.”
“Fuckin’ performers,” the bouncer muttered as he swung open the door.
“Thank you,” Fen crooned, blowing a kiss at the stone-faced man. The door slammed behind him, and he tucked the invitation—expertly forged by Celaena’s man Nox—back into his jacket and slipped into the crowd of dancing bodies. He winked and smirked his way through the crowd, letting the thumping beat of the music ease his rhythm, until he reached the bar.
Sure enough, Rourke Farran lounged on a barstool near the far end, one hand around a bottle of beer and the other around the waist of a blonde woman whose lipstick was littered all over his neck.
Fenrys muffled the snort he wanted to let out and waved over the bartender. “I’ll take a Sex on the Beach,” he purred, giving the guy, who was probably in his early twenties, a wink.
The bartender’s blush was faintly visible in the flashing strobe lights. “Want that extra strong?” His gaze flicked ever so quickly to Fen’s bare chest.
“Give it to me as-is, and then we’ll see.” Fen lowered his eyes to half-mast and watched the bartender make his drink. The other man threw the drink together effortlessly, sliding it across the bartop to Fenrys with a little smile of his own.
“I get off shift in an hour,” he said softly, dark blue eyes alight with hope and a little hesitancy.
“Good to know.” Fen took a long sip of his cocktail and nodded appreciatively. “Delicious.” In his periphery, he noticed Farran push the blonde out of his lap and stand up, swaying a little, and turn towards the dancefloor.
He brushed past Fen on his way over. “Get a fuckin’ room,” he slurred, his glassy-eyed gaze flicking once over Fen’s glittering jacket and tight pants. “Goddamn fancy boy.”
“I’ll be back.” Fen drained the rest of his drink, tossed a twenty on the bar, and rose, following Farran into the sea of dancing bodies. He kept a discreet distance from the man, far enough away to not be noticed but close enough to watch the man’s moves.
As he had suspected, Farran oozed sleaziness. What he was doing on the dancefloor barely passed for dancing; his gyrating hips and roaming hands were just barely short of outright having sex in public. He moved from girl to girl, changing partners as often as the music changed, leaving a good number of people giving him dirty looks for being too handsy. Fen snorted, knowing that the man probably deserved their scorn. Farran began to move towards the doors, and Fen slipped onto the dancefloor himself, moving fluidly through the crowd, keeping a constant eye on Farran’s steady, subtle escape route.
Time to move, Moonbeam.
Feeling a twinge of guilt for not staying to meet the cute bartender, Fenrys watched Farran leave the club and waited exactly a minute and a half before he headed out as well, putting enough unsteadiness in his step to indicate intoxication. Once he was out of the club, he glanced down the street in both directions and then went left. Even if he couldn’t track Farran, he knew where the bastard lived.
After a quick pit stop in an alley to swap out his flashy jacket for a closely fitted black knit turtleneck, Fenrys headed into the tidy grid of streets that made up western Orynth, taking a meandering route towards the tidy, wealthy neighborhood where Rourke Farran lived. The neighborhood was decked out with security cameras, as Celaena had warned him, so he looped around through the expansive back yards, slinking easily through the landscaped trees and plants until he came to the fence that marked the edge of Farran’s property. There weren’t cameras along the back fence, primarily because of the rotating patrol of guard dogs and security guards, so Fen swiftly scaled the fence and hopped into a tree.
He waited for the first round of patrols to pass before he carefully reached into the thigh pocket of his pants, withdrew a slim, vacuum-sealed package of meat, quietly cut open the plastic, and tossed the meat in a gentle arc directly onto the grass beside the paved walkway that wove around Farran’s house. A pair of guard dogs came barreling around the corner within sixty seconds, barking and growling and quickly discovering the meat. The second and third patrols weren’t far behind, and it was only a few minutes before all eight guard dogs were tearing apart the meat.
“The fuck is happening?” A security guard rounded the corner, breathless from sprinting. He saw the dogs calming down and settling back into their patrols after having finished the meat. “God. Which idiot dropped snacks everywhere?”
Another guard sprinted around the corner. “Everything okay?”
“One of you jackasses dropped the dogs’ snacks,” the first guard snapped.
The second one raised his hands in innocence. “I’m not the snack keeper tonight, dude.”
“Whatever. Just get your ass back to rounds.” The guards nudged the dogs back onto the path and headed away.
Mentally, Fenrys started counting minutes. He got to four, then five, then slowly and carefully slid down from the tree and darted across the lawn and onto the shadowed back porch. A moment later, he’d scaled the drainpipe leading up the side of the house and was perched on the balcony directly outside the master bedroom.
Wherein Rourke Farran was fully naked in front of his mirror, with his—
“Fucking hell,” Fen groaned to himself, shaking his head. “Disgusting.” But also enough of a distraction for him to slip down onto the balcony, pull a slender silver tube from his sleeve, raise it to his lips, and blow a tiny needle dart straight into the back of Farran’s neck.
Farran crumpled to the floor.
Good work, Moonbeam, Fenrys complimented himself. Now you just have to get the asshole out of his booby-trap house and over to the river warehouse.
Easy.
Right?
~
“He’s all yours, Boss,” Fenrys drawled as Aelin strolled past on the way out of the storage warehouse.
She glanced at her smart watch. “It’s only the eleventh, Moon Moon. That was quick.”
He shrugged, irreverent as always. “What can I say? I like to work fast.”
“Hopefully not all the time.” She smirked wickedly. “Your bartender boyfriend might be disappointed.”
Fenrys flushed a delightful shade of pink. “How the fuck—”
“Don’t ask questions you don’t want answered, Moon Moon.” She winked wickedly at him. “How’s our special guest doing? Is he adjusted to his new home?”
“It took him some time to get used to the room,” Fen returned, casually pulling a set of brass knuckles from a pocket of his cargo pants and spinning them over his fist.
Aelin chuckled, soft and lethal. “Not surprising. Thanks, Fen.” She paused just in front of the side door, her gloved knuckles resting on the doorknob. “Oh, Moon Moon?”
“Yeah?” He froze, his posture still as a…soldier’s.
“I’ll need you for cleanup on the twenty-seventh.”
He nodded. “Got it, Boss.”
Aelin keyed in the door code and left the warehouse, satisfied that she had set the wheels of her plan in motion. While she trusted Con’s assessment of his brother, she wasn’t fully convinced that she could completely trust anyone on her payroll, and Fen’s easy charm masked a cold, heartless willingness to carry out whatever depraved task she demanded of him. Furthermore, that stance of his—the utter stillness of his posture when someone ordered him to stop—had been pricking at her memory for days, and she’d only just realized why.
Fenrys stood like a soldier. More than that—he stood like one of her uncle’s men, one of the Terrasen Special Forces.
And Aelin knew the day one of Gav’s men got into Celaena Sardothien’s business would be the day her double identity began to crumble. Even if she wanted to trust Fenrys, she had to confirm for herself that she could, and that meant giving him a fake kill date in case he needed to report back to someone in the military.
If he did, if he turned out to be a spy, then the TSF would come sniffing around for Rourke Farran when it was already weeks too late.
~
Aelin laced her fingers with Rowan’s as they strolled through the fancy restaurant’s glass front doors, something settling deep in her chest at the simple, casual intimacy of holding his hand. Her mind had been running in overdrive for the last two weeks, and even now, with ten days left in the month, she hadn’t been able to slow the constant dizzying whirl of her thoughts.
Rowan was one of the only people who’d brought her a glimpse of peace recently, in the few scattered dates they’d been able to snatch between both of their busy schedules. He flicked her a tiny, secret smile, one that only she ever saw, before approaching the hostess stand with the same confidence that cloaked him when he was in his investigator clothes and badge. And dear god, the things that confidence did to her already throbbing pussy—she was half tempted to slip off her panties and sneak them to him under the table.
But she was a mature woman, so she wouldn’t.
“Whitethorn, party of two, seven-thirty reservation,” Rowan said to the hostess.
The young woman—probably a college student, if Aelin’s guess was correct—tapped a few things into her tablet. “Your table is ready, Mr. Whitethorn. Please, this way.” She led Rowan and Aelin through the low-lit restaurant towards the far wall of windows. Through the glass was a breathtaking view of Orynth, the city cast in shades of bronze as the sun began to drift downwards.
“Gorgeous,” Aelin murmured, captivated by the view.
Rowan’s thumb brushed across the back of her hand. “Not half as much as you.”
She blushed. “You’re quite the flirt, you—oh!” Unexpectedly, a man’s shoulder brushed hers as they wove through the restaurant floor. She looked up to find none other than Police Captain Chaol Westfall, wearing a nice suit and a mildly shocked expression.
“M–Miss Galathynius,” he finally managed, clearing his throat. “And, ah, Lieutenant Whitethorn. I…I apologize for running into you.”
“Westfall, what are you doing here?” Rowan inquired, polite on the surface but with narrowed, suspicious eyes.
“Considering we aren’t at work, it’s none of your business, White-horn, but I was at dinner with a friend of mine,” Chaol shot back. There was definite animosity underlying his words.
Rowan raised a brow. “You…have friends?”
“Ah, lighten up, darling,” Aelin interjected before either man could resort to fists. “We don’t all live at our workplace, as we seem to have discovered. And Ro, darling, we’ve left that poor hostess floundering.” She wrapped her hand around his arm and tugged him towards their table.
He shot Chaol one last suspicious look. Chaol returned the look, but broke the stare-off to nod respectfully at Aelin as she passed. “Ms. Galathynius.”
When they reached their table, Rowan pulled out Aelin’s chair before seating himself across from her. Questions brewed in the shifting of his eyes. “Question, Ae—do you know Westfall? How?”
“That was two questions,” she teased. “Yes, I’ve met Captain Westfall before. It’s all part of the business; I’ve met just about every notable figure in Orynth at some function or another. I probably met the police captain at some kind of gala.”
Rowan nodded slowly, digesting the information. “That makes sense. All those faces probably run together after long enough, yeah?”
“I try to keep them separate, but yeah.” She flashed him a sheepish grin. “There’s only so many names and faces you can memorize before they all start to appear the same.”
“Why, Miss Galathynius,” Rowan drawled, his face alight with mischief, “are you implying that there are too many men in suits in this fine city?”
She shrugged, meeting the gleam of his humor with her own dry wit. “I’m simply observing that if a few less of them were to bother me at every function I attend, my mind would be clearer.”
“I thought you had a mind like a steel trap, love.” Raising a brow, he sipped his water.
“It sometimes takes a moment to pull out a name from the file cabinet,” she returned. “And—oh look, here comes our server.” Their server, a sandy-blonde-haired man in his late twenties wearing the restaurant staff’s uniform of white shirt, black trousers, and maroon tie, wore a pleasant (if tired) smile as he pulled his notepad from his apron pocket.
“Good evening,” he said cheerfully. “My name is James, and I’ll be your server tonight. Would you like to hear about our specials this evening?”
Aelin glanced at Rowan, whose eyes had visibly narrowed as he scanned the server. The look was so blatantly male, she almost rolled her eyes, but her possessive buzzard relaxed when he saw the silver wedding band adorning the server’s left ring finger. “I actually think we’re ready to order, if that’s alright?”
James the server just about melted to the floor in relief. “Are you serious?” he asked, lowering his voice to an incredulous whisper. “I—I haven’t had a single easy table tonight, and it’s the last two hours of a double and—I’m so sorry, that was completely unprofessional of me.”
Aelin chuckled. “Don’t worry, James, was it? Customer service is a rough job.”
“Tell me about it,” the man grumbled.
Rowan shot Aelin a confused look. “Ae, love, I haven’t even looked at the menu.”
“Do you trust me, love?” she asked.
He pursed his lips, not quite used to letting someone else order his food. “All right.”
“Perfect.” She blew him a subtle kiss. “Okay, James, is it alright if I give you our order a few steps away?” She lowered her voice conspiratorially, keeping it still loud enough for Rowan to hear. “I want to surprise my boyfriend; I’ve been here more than once but he hasn’t ever been.”
“Of course.” James smiled, a genuine one this time. “I brought my wife here once when we were dating—took half my paycheck, but it was worth it.” He stepped aside a few paces and Aelin followed, quietly giving her and Rowan’s order. The server’s pen flew over his page.
“And say hi to Chef Emrys for me, would you?” she concluded.
“You…you know the head chef?”
“Bit of a long story, but yes. Tell him Aelin Galathynius says hi, please. Thanks!” She came back to the table and slipped into her seat, leaving the very nice but very shocked server to collect his wits after realizing just who he was talking to and go to place the order.
“Poor guy looks like he just got hit by a truck,” Rowan observed, smothering a laugh.
Aelin smirked. “I may or may not have given him my full name.”
“Ah, the name drop.” He nodded sagely. “Just what every famous CEO has to do to the poor server who got their table.”
“You’ve got quite a mouth for a soldier, you know,” Aelin mused, her words slowing to a near- seductive pace. “A respectable man would never insinuate that his date uses her job title for perks.”
“I never said I was respectable.” Lazily, his gaze roamed down her upper body, admiring the way her little black dress scooped beneath her collarbones, accentuating the gleam of the single small teardrop diamond pendant that nestled in the hollow of her throat.
James came by with two glasses of white wine and an appetizer platter with two sharing plates, breaking the dangerous haze of the moment, and Aelin thanked the server as he headed off, no doubt to take care of his other tables.
Rowan’s jaw slacked just a bit at the sight of the cured meat and prawns arranged on the plate. “Please tell me you didn’t order the most expensive things on the menu, Ae.”
“Of course not.” She reached across the table and linked her hands with his, the gesture as natural as breathing. “I got us an appetizer to share, a first course, a meat course, and a dessert, and I’m not the kind of person who orders expensive items just to flash her money around.”
He breathed out a deep, controlled exhale. “I know, love. It’s just…” His thumb rubbed across her knuckles. “I’m not used to any of this—the fancy restaurants, the fancy food, the way people don’t bat an eye at spending thirty dollars for some toast.”
She cracked a grin at that. “Let me introduce you to the fine, fine work of Chef Emrys, then. I actually used to work for him, way back when I was eighteen and my parents decided I needed to experience real-people jobs.”
“Way back when,” he drawled, teasing her.
“Hush, old man,” she teased right back, plating up a sampling of the appetizer plate and sliding it over to him. “I know I’m only twenty-seven, but my stint as a hostess feels like forever ago.”
“Kind of like how basic training feels like forever ago for me.” Rowan agreed. He bit into one of the cured prawns and nearly moaned, his eyes closing in joy. “God, this is incredible.”
She beamed. “Wait until you taste Chef Emrys’s filet mignon, Ro.”
The conversation flowed freely between them after that, only interrupted by the arrival of new food and wine. A mushroom and herb risotto accompanied by an aged Riesling. The promised filet mignon, which almost made Rowan cry with joy, and a spectacular six-year Merlot. And finally, individual blackberry cobblers, the berries ripe and fresh and perfectly sweet-tart, paired with the restaurant’s signature Cabernet.
“I don’t think I can move,” Rowan sighed as he set down his last empty wineglass. “But it was absolutely worth every bite.”
“I think I’m going to dream of this cobbler,” Aelin added, regretfully nudging her empty dish towards the end of the table. “Tell me when you’re ready to leave, yes?”
“Gonna need three to five business days,” he mumbled.
Her laughter rippled across their low-lit table. “I love when you let that humor of yours loose.”
A different kind of hunger flickered in his forest eyes. “And I love when I have you all to myself.”
“Possessive much?”
He just shrugged. “Call me whatever you want, love, but we both know you only come for me.”
Flames flickered through her blood at the deep, sinful timbre of his voice. “That’s only because I haven’t introduced you to my drawer full of battery-powered boyfriends.”
The banked embers simmering in his expression flared into a bonfire, and he sat upright and beckoned their server over. “Suddenly, I’m ready to go home.”
James was at their table within two minutes. “How was everything for you tonight? Can I get you anything else?”
“It was absolutely mind-blowing, as always,” Aelin said. “And no, I think we’ll just take the check.” Covertly, she slipped James her credit card, and he gave her a small nod as he went over to the server computer to process the payment.
“Don’t think I didn’t hear you,” Rowan murmured, the velvet caress of his voice stroking down her spine. “Mind-blowing, Ae?”
“Would you happen to know anything about that?” she asked, innocently.
In response, he trailed a brazen stare down her figure. “Seems like you need a refresher.” He stood up far too smoothly for someone who had just finished his fourth glass of wine, gave her his hand for stability as she rose, and then rested that hand against the small of her back, his touch burning through her dress.
Their server returned with a check folder in his hand and passed it over to Aelin, who glanced over the receipts, signed her name, and tucked her credit card and her copy of the receipt back into her small handbag. “Thanks, James.”
“Ah, thank you, Ms. Galathynius, Mr. Whitethorn. You might have been the best table I’ve had all day.” He tucked the folder into his apron pocket with a wry grin. “Have a good one!”
“If it’s good, it won’t be just one,” Rowan whispered into Aelin’s ear.
A shiver danced down her neck. “Is that a promise, Lieutenant?”
He held the door open for her as they left the restaurant. “Ask me again when you’re begging for my cock, love.”
~
Ren Allsbrook, alias Chaol Westfall, was expecting Whitethorn’s visit, but the man’s presence in his office still gave him an oddly unsettled feeling.
He pasted a bland, blasé expression onto his face. “Yes, Whitethorn?”
Rowan dropped into the chair opposite Ren’s, regarding him with a piercing look that almost seemed to pierce beneath the layer of SecondSkin cloaking his true identity. “How the hell do you know Aelin, Westfall?”
Ren shrugged. “We met at some city leader event a while back. Some big thing the mayor hosted so the big names of Orynth could pretend to be civil to each other.”
“Yeah? How long ago was that?”
Fucking think, Allsbrook. Chaol Westfall had been the police captain for about three years, Ren had taken over as Chaol six months ago in January, and the mayor’s Leaders Gala was always held in…the fall…“Last October, I believe. You’ll have to give me a little grace on the estimate, since I was damn busy with actual work.”
“Cute of you to think you can get away with sneering at me from your soapbox, Westfall,” Whitethorn said dryly. “Well, I checked the dates, and the mayor always holds his little party in October, so I’ll buy your story.”
“My story, huh? When did you get so desperate for leads that you started accusing coworkers, Whitethorn?”
“Shut up,” Rowan grunted. “I’m just making sure you haven’t been doing anything shady with my girlfriend, jackass.”
“Ooooooh, we’re using official terms now?” Ren couldn’t resist the urge to press Whitethorn’s buttons. “I thought you were allergic to that kind of commitment.”
“I wouldn’t get smart-mouthed with me, Westfailure,” Rowan grumbled. “I’ve seen you going to the Galathynius labs. What the hell are you doing there?”
Ren muffled a rather creative string of curses. “Whitethorn, I know you’re terse, but what the hell was that subject change? Give me some goddamn context, for shit’s sake.”
“Fine.” Rowan pulled up some security camera footage on his tablet. “This is a record of the feed from the Galathynius, Inc. lab complex’s security cameras, and before you open your mouth, I have clearance. Two and a half weeks ago, on June 4th, you went to the labs. You went again yesterday.” He tapped on the video, and the footage played, clearly showing Chaol walk into the labs and walk back out after a period of fast-forwarding through nothing.
“Well.” Think, you fucking idiot! “Since we are currently quietly investigating a connection between Galathynius, Incorporated, and the, uh, Shadow Killer—”
“Shadow Assassin,” Rowan corrected.
“Whatever. That person. You think there’s a connection, and I’m pursuing it. I happen to know a scientist who works in the Galathynius labs, and I set up a couple of meetings to speak with her.” Ren folded his arms across his chest. Buy the story, Whitethorn.
Whitethorn frowned. “Why didn’t I hear about these meetings?”
“Because I was being discreet, duh.” Ren poured a heavy dose of sarcasm into the last word.
Rowan grumbled something that sounded like a string of cussing. “I didn’t get sent to this investigation for the laugh track, Westfall.” He stood up and left the office, carelessly banging the door shut behind him.
“Jackass,” Ren grumbled. He turned back to the endless slog of paperwork and files he had to get through, because the job of police captain came with a lifetime supply of that shit. Against all beliefs, he’d actually come to enjoy this job, this role, and he was just as invested in the case as Whitethorn was.
He just happened to be on a different side.
~
This is fucking insane, this is fucking insane, this is fucking insane. Those were the words running through Fenrys’s head as he and his twin strolled down the secret back stars of the Night Owl. He was barely able to focus on the opulence of the hallway—plush velvet lining the walls, fine mahogany banisters, and black wall torches and overhead lights giving the whole space a deep purple glow—when his mind was so focused on what lay at the end of the walk.
“Relax,” Con muttered. “Don’t get us fucking killed before we’ve found out what she wants.”
“I’m trying,” Fen grumbled. He straightened the lapels of his jacket, the same sequined one he’d worn to the Night Owl three weeks ago. “But—”
“But nothing.” Con cut him off. “Remember why we’re here.”
“Right.” Because Celaena had trusted the two of them with infiltrating Maeve’s lair. Because they were the key to taking down the last obstacle in Boss Sardothien’s path, whatever the hell it was.
The masked guard in front of the twins stopped at a dark wooden door at the end of the hall. “Wait here,” he said, expressionless. He went into the room, closed the door behind him, and came out a few minutes later just as expressionless. “Maeve will see you now.” And he opened the door.
Fenrys took a quick, deep breath and strolled into the dark-paneled office, Con at his side, both of their gazes immediately locking onto the woman who sat behind the imposing black marble desk at the far end of the room. Her face was pale, nearly opalescent in the darkness, her lips were stained scarlet, and her unnervingly violet gaze was fixed on the twins.
“Thank you for being willing to meet on such short notice, boys,” Maeve said, her calm, cold voice slicing through the room like a blade.
“Our honor,” Fen replied. Maeve gestured at the pair of leather chairs opposite her desk, and the twins sat down.
She steepled her fingers under her chin. “I have a job for you.”
Con shared a loaded look with Fen. “Both of us, or just one?”
“Both of you. I need one of you for each side of the job.”
Slowly, Fen nodded. “Alright. What can we do for you?”
One corner of Maeve’s scarlet lips curled upwards. She retrieved a thin manila file from her desk and slid it across the desktop. “Fenrys, kill this man.” The order was as clearly and casually enunciated as if she was asking for a glass of water. “Connall, you will stay here to monitor Fenrys’s task.”
Beside Fenrys, Con’s posture stiffened. “How?”
“We have an advanced tech space that will provide all the equipment you need, as well as the chance to experiment with some of the devices we’re working on.” A gleam flickered briefly through the Queen of the Night’s unflinching stare. “And I require company.”
“Alright.” Con dipped his head in acquiescence, flatly refusing to meet the sharp, concerned gaze Fen shot towards him.
“Excellent.” Maeve smiled, and it sent a shiver down Fenrys’s spine. “You may go, Fenrys. I expect it won’t take you too long to get the job done.”
“I pride myself on efficiency,” he smirked, masking the oily chill in his blood with a lazy, half-wild grin. He rose, nodded at Maeve, and strolled out of the room and then out of the club, his steps sure and unfaltering until he was around the corner and out of sight.
Then, he ducked into a side alley and slumped against the wall, his veneer of easy confidence dropping to reveal his hidden terror. Fuck! He’d left his brother in that spider’s lair; gods only knew what could happen if either of them failed to do what Maeve commanded. Hands shaking, Fenrys reached into the hidden inner pockets of his jacket, his fingers closing around the comfortingly cold steel of his favorite twin flat knives and the envelope containing the thick piece of cardstock that had been in the file. The least he could do—for himself, for Connall, and for the man he had to kill—was carry out his task quickly, before the Queen of the Night could hurt his brother.
And so, heart heavy, Fenrys Moonbeam adjusted his jacket and the weapons contained within it and began his prowl towards Orynth Police headquarters.
~
Rowan arrived at Orynth PD unusually early on the morning of June 30. After a restless night—he’d tossed and turned far into the wee hours of the morning, snatched probably three solid hours of sleep, and had a muddled collection of dream snippets—he’d just decided to bite the bullet and drag his ass out of bed at five in the morning. Shortly before six, he keyed in his code at the door of the police station, let himself into the quiet, chilly building, and dragged himself to the locker room to dump his bag and splash some icy water on his face. With his vest strapped on and his badge around his arm, he grabbed his laptop bag and trudged up the stairs to the offices, ducking into his office to drop off his things and try to form a to-do list.
Fuck, he needed caffeine. He needed it badly enough that he’d even drink the bitter shit from the common-room carafe. So he pushed his chair in, left his office, and went down to the bullpen, following the faint scent of the first batch of coffee. Operating on autopilot, he was halfway to the break room before he smelled it.
Blood.
That coppery tang was unmistakable.
Fuck.
Coffee forgotten, Rowan whirled around and strode back to the bullpen, following his nose like some kind of hound. A bloodhound, whispered the traitorous part of his mind that sounded an awful lot like Aelin’s witty laugh. In any other context, he might have laughed along. But not this time. Head down, he tracked the metallic stench of blood across the bullpen, its tang growing heavier with each successive step he took. The blood, wherever it was, was still fresh enough to be that strong, but old enough to have spread its scent through a significant part of the floor. Both of those things worried him. A lot.
Hand straying to his holster, Rowan rounded the corner towards the cluster of desks where the detectives and Westfall worked whenever Westfall was in the bullpen. He inhaled, catching a lungful of blood-scent, so strong it nearly knocked him back. That part of the floor was still shadowed in the early-morning dimness, so he flicked on the nearest light for a better visual.
The flashlight in his hand clattered to the floor. His other hand clenched around the cold, smooth handle of his gun.
He’d found the source of the blood stench.
He blinked. Shook his head. He snapped his jaw shut, swore at himself a few times, imagined Gav yelling at him for losing his mind like a goddamn fucking green idiot, and took one step forwards.
He froze.
Sprawled facedown in a pool of his own blood, the back of his skull concave as if bashed in with a heavy, blunt object, with a bullet hole ripped through his temple and knives pinning his now-limp hands to the desk, was Chaol Westfall.
Rowan locked up the side of himself that immediately started screaming questions and approached Chaol’s…corpse…carefully, forcing the investigative side of himself to take the lead. He cautiously nudged Westfall with his baton, noting the lack of response. With that amount of blood loss, he’d be more shocked if the man was alive, but he still had to go through the steps. As much as he could, Rowan circled the body, clocking each new wound he found on the man’s body. It was…more brutal than he had initially noticed, slashes and cuts scattered over the body, as well as the knives stabbed through the hands and the obvious point-blank range of the bullet, marked by its entry and exit wounds.
As he came to the other side, Rowan stopped once again, because there was a goddamned note tacked to Westfall’s forehead. No—nailed to his forehead.
Fuck.
He pulled on the pair of latex gloves he kept tucked into his belt and gingerly reached for the note, lifting it up enough to read it. He didn’t remove it; he was too experienced to fuck with a crime scene like that. He did, however, lift up the paper, which was surprisingly thick and high-quality for a fucking assassin signoff. Three words were printed onto the note in dark ink. He tilted the paper slightly, and the black ink shimmered with a dark purple sheen, indicative both of its quality and probably of the signature colors of whoever the hell had written the message.
Tread carefully, Lieutenant.
There was no signature. There was, however, a symbol stamped beneath the short, threatening message. Rowan peered at the stamp, sharp gaze scanning it until the shape came into focus. It was an almost photographic image of an owl, the bird posed in eerie stillness, its inked eyes large and unblinking. And atop the owl’s head sat a crown, a perfect arc of five jeweled spikes.
It was the mark of the Queen of the Night.
~~~
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#my writing#until proven guilty#criminal/investigator au#rowaelin#aelin galathynius#rowan whitethorn#rowan x aelin#rowaelin fanfic#rowaelin fanfiction#rowaelin au#throne of glass#throne of glass fanfic#throne of glass au#throne of glass fanfiction#tw: big bad villain hehe#tw: violence#tw: fighting#tw: blood#tw: minor character death
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Puppy & Kitty (pt. 1)
CWs: pet whump, literal animal people, physical abuse, multiple whumpees, female whumpee(s), male whumper
Word Count: 1036
Abducted at a young age, Puppy couldn’t remember a time when she wasn’t Puppy.
Animal hybrids like her were a hot commodity among the world’s rich and famous. They had the intelligence and lifespan of a human, along with the desirable traits of whichever animal they were mixed with.
Puppy was a dog, if you couldn’t already guess. Floppy golden ears atop her similarly blonde hair, her entire lower body covered in fluffy golden fur, a long tail jutting out from her lower back.
Dogs couldn’t read, write, or speak, so neither could Puppy. She barked, whined, and growled, like a dog should. Though Master would get mad if she was too loud, so she tried to keep that to a minimum.
Puppy had a name, it was engraved into the gold tag dangling from her collar, and it was usually what Master’s friends called her, but Master himself just called her “Puppy” most of the time, so Puppy she was.
At night, or simply whenever Master didn’t want her around the house, Puppy lived in the basement. It was cold down there, and Puppy’s fur didn’t cover her whole body, but she had her doggy bed to protect her from the freezing cement floor, so she made do.
One day, Master seemed unusually excited. Puppy stayed out of his way, curling up in a corner as small as she could get. If Master was excited, he probably didn’t want his stupid mutt getting in the way. Puppy’s stomach was still bruised from two days ago, and she didn’t want to risk throwing up on Master’s carpet and making him even angrier.
Around lunchtime, the doorbell rang. This seemed to be what Master had been anticipating, as he practically ran to answer it.
On the other side of the door stood a man holding a large pet crate. Puppy continued to stay low and out of Master's way, but she couldn't help being a little curious.
"Here you are, sir." The delivery man said, hefting the crate onto the ground, where it noticeably shook and hissed. "This one's a fresh catch, so it's not been trained properly. Hope you like the challenge."
Master seemed positively giddy. "I love a challenge."
Master signed a few papers, and then the delivery man left, leaving only Master, Puppy, and the crate.
"Now, now." He said. "Let's get a better look at you."
He opened the crate, and immediately a figure darted out, taking up an aggressive stance and hissing at him.
Puppy's nose twitched. Master's new pet was a cat hybrid, she could tell that almost immediately. She had the same physical makeup as Puppy, but was quite a bit smaller, and with feline features instead of Puppy's canine ones.
Master almost completely ignored the show of aggression, instead picking up and leisurely leafing through the file that was handed to him alongside the crate.
"Let's see - cat hybrid, female, age 18, impaired vision, fresh capture, and your name is…" He closed the file. "Interesting, interesting."
The cat hissed again, then opened her mouth and spoke.
"You're a sick bastard." She spat.
"Ah-ah-ah." Master tutted. He stepped closer to the cat, and then kicked her square in the ribs. "Pets don't talk." He scolded as she sputtered and gasped.
He knelt down to her level, roughly grabbing her hair and forcing her to look at him. "Whoever you were before means fuck all to me. You're Kitty now, and I expect you to act like it. Understand me?"
Kitty looked up at him for a moment before giving a single, fearful nod.
Master let go of her hair. "Great!" He stood up. "Now, you aren't my first or only pet. I'll leave you two to get acquainted now."
It was only then that Kitty seemed to notice Puppy, jumping back in surprise and raising her hackles.
Puppy, undaunted by the attempt at intimidation, trotted up to Kitty and nosed at her ears, pulling back when Kitty seemed to cringe away.
Puppy tilted her head from side to side, pondering, before leaning back in and licking Kitty's cheek, hoping to communicate friendliness.
Kitty didn't seem to be particularly pleased with the lick either, but at least she stopped being so tense. She took a tentative step towards Puppy, still a bit defensive, but seemingly recognizing that Puppy didn't mean her any harm.
Puppy wagged her tail, jerking her head forward to try and communicate to Kitty that she should follow her.
Kitty followed, but kept her head bowed and seemed to squint every time she did look up. Puppy led her through the house all the way down to the basement. Kitty winced at the cold stone floor against her paws, something Puppy could very much sympathize with.
The basement was dark, only lit by a single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, which Master turned off at night. In the left corner was Puppy's doggy bed, and in the right corner were her food and water bowls, sat atop a small rubber mat. Puppy assumed that Master would bring in a similar set for Kitty in the following days.
Seemingly worn out, Kitty flopped onto the doggy bed and curled up as small as she could get, shivering in the cold air.
It took Puppy a moment to realize Kitty was crying, shoulders shaking and heaving as she muffled her whimpers against the bed, tears flowing down her cheeks.
Puppy stepped forward and whined in distress, licking the tears off of Kitty's face until she pushed her away, using the side of her hand to wipe away both her tears and Puppy's saliva.
Taking note of Kitty's continued shivering, Puppy came up with a different idea.
As gently and carefully as she could, Puppy climbed into the bed behind Kitty, curling her larger body around her in the hopes that sharing body heat would help quell the trembling.
At first, Kitty went rigid, not daring to move a muscle. But as the moments passed and the warmth from Puppy's body started to seep into hers, she relaxed, burrowing further into the bed and letting Puppy snuggle her closer.
Exhausted, afraid, yet oddly comforted, Kitty drifted off into a restless sleep.
#puppy & kitty#whump#pet whump#kidnapping#abduction#hurt/comfort#cuddling#nonhuman whumpee#multiple whumpees#female whumpee#animal people#here we go. my jnnn pet indulgence LMFAO#i intentionally didn't mention their names#and the only physical descriptors i gave are that puppy is big and blonde and kitty is small and needs glasses#to make it vague enough for more people to enjoy#but yes this is intended to be jnnn bc they have consumed by brain recently#mine
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Hey Dean, I was wonderin'. Do you know when you guys are coming back? Money's running low again and the motel manager keeps giving me this sleazy side eye, I don't trust him at all. Do you think the next place we go, we can pick a Best Western or something? Somewhere where I don't feel like I'm gonna get kidnapped in the parking lot? Are we leaving when you come back? I kinda like it here but... I miss you De, please call me back soon.
Sam hung up the receiver, hoped wherever her family was they'd come home soon.
She was losing it, suck in a no name motel in a redneck town. The guy behind the desk already asked her if she was selling. It didn't matter that she was wearing her brothers hand-me-downs. The jeans that fell off her thighs awkwardly. The flannel four sizes too big. She was still a commodity. And she worried, because if her dad didn't drop her some money soon, she might have to sell herself. That or starve. And honestly, starving seemed the better option.
Sam sat back on the bed and closed her eyes. Silent prayers that the phone would ring.
It was three days later when John burst through the motel door, early evening while Sam was doing her homework.
Dean was trailing behind and bleeding. Red everywhere. So much that Sam couldn't see anything but. He flashed a feral grin at her, immediately winced, but he was there and smiling and safe. And-
"Samantha, get the first aid kit."
The way her father barked at her was humiliating. She wasn't a kid anymore, wasn't a dog acting out, or their goddamn scullery maid. But Sam grabbed the first aid kit. Looked over at her brother to see what was wrong. Gashes over shoulders and half made shirts. Stitches, Dean needed stiches. So she pulled out the dental floss and needle, some butterfly tape just in case her work was sloppy.
Her hands were shaking. Maybe it was because she was scared, but she hadn't eaten in a day and a half.
John sat back while Sam went to work, swallowing Tylenol chased by whiskey. It was like he didn't even care his only son was bleeding out on the bed. He probably didn't. But Sam bit back her chiding tongue, stitched up her brother without a sound. Dean let out soft grunts, pretended he wasn't hurting. Even when Sam wiped over open wounds with the antiseptic. Slow hisses between teeth, but always with a smile. And when Sam was done, or done enough, he thanked her with a one armed hug.
"Sam, sweetheart, grab me a beer," John asked, or commanded. And she picked up a bottle from beside a door, where they leftthe rest of their crap that Sam would have to clean up later. Fresh beer, receipt stuck to glass with condensation.
"Why didn't you stitch Dean up before coming back?"
"Cops were onto us," he grunted under his breath. "Stupid, donut eating bastards, trying to save their asses." And of course, Sam thought, that the cops stopped them from saving Dean but not buying beer. Never buying beer.
Sam sat back down beside Dean. The way he struggled to move with his fucked up arm made it look like he was swimming. He still gave Sam a hug and a breathy thanks. It didn't mean anything. Not when she knew it would happen again in a month’s time. Her hands still shook. She was starving and angry and scared and everything else.
When John passed out on the sofa, full of painkillers and booze, Sam let herself cry.
Dean hadn't fallen asleep, so used to laying on his left side. He watched as Sam frantically tidied the room. Clothes that needed to go to the laundromat. Dean's shirt that she could sew up like she had done with him. Muddy boot prints that she would have to scrub at to get their deposit back. She cried. She couldn't see the stains through her tears but she knew they were there. She cried. And she thew her dad's duffle across the room, bottles and guns clinking so loudly she was worried she'd set one of them off. There was no smell of fire, so she figured she was safe.
She wished she could break everything John owned.
"Hey, hey Sammy? Are you okay?"
No, no she wasn't but what could she say? That she wanted to leave forever. She was sick of being treated like a child and a mother at the same time. That she hadn't eaten because John didn't care enough to leave money. Or that she was sick of cleaning and scrubbing and bleaching 'til her hands bled.
"No."
"Sit," Dean said, and sounded so much like their dad that he left no room for argument. "What's wrong, Sammy? What's going on in that head of yours?"
Sam sobbed. Dean's blood was still on her hands, she smelled of sweat and gun powder and alcohol.
"Why didn't you call back?"
"Sammy-"
"No, Dean, I don't get it! I'm too young to hunt, but I'm old enough to look after everyone? Dad comes back and expects me to fix you up and clean his clothes, and then he'll set off again in a few days and I'll be alone again. I hate being alone. I hate- I hate doing all the chores when you guys are here. I hate Dad."
Dean paused. He paused because he didn't have anything to say. Sam didn't want him to say anything, not really, because none of it was Dean's fault. She turned away, cried and sobbed and blubbered because she was just tired of it all.
Something pressed into her palm. And when Sam looked up, she saw that Dean had placed $20 in her hand.
"Order some food, a pizza maybe? Grab me something too," Dean said. There were a hundred take out menus in the kitchenette drawer. And after a month of stretched out meals and leftovers, a pizza sounded so good. "I'm sorry I didn't call, kiddo, we got caught up and... and it doesn't matter now, okay?"
"What pizza do you want?"
"Whatever you want, Sammy, we can get a real big one and then breakfast is sorted too."
And Sam knew nothing was really sorted. Because John would wake up and give Sam just enough quarters for the laundromat. She'd probably have to skip school to fix everything, make John and Dean whole again. That's all Sam was good for, after all. Fixing things. She gave Dean a bittersweet smile, bit back tears that she didn't want to cry anymore.
She picked up the phone and flicked through some menus before coming across one she knew Dean would like.
for @fascra
#Supernatural#Sam Winchester#Girl!Sam#Girl Sam AU#Spn#Sam#Dean#John critical#He is a fucking ass in this lmao#What changed#My writing#My stuff#Okay so I half wrote this high on my antidepressants#So I hope it's okay#But I have so many feelings about this verse#Hope it is okay for y'all#I really need to get on with uni work now#But if you like it I'll write more in this verse
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Sleep of the Dead (part 1 / 2)
Genre: some humour, angst with a happy ending
Summary: Jaskier thinks he hit rock bottom when Geralt flushed twenty years of friendship down the drain, but then he finds himself suddenly translucent and rudely walked through by a traveller. Apparently he's dead - that's certainly a new low. He needs to find out what happened, and who better to help him than the man who's made more than clear he wants nothing to do with him.
ao3: Sleep of the Dead
Jaskier is reasonably certain that he is dead. The evidence is staggering: He’s got a killer headache, like from the worst kind of hangover. He’s tired and sleep of the dead sounds very appealing right now. And on top of that, a man just walked through him. So that can’t be good. And he is cold the way people get when nothing is touching them except for freezing air.
(He thought it would feel like relief. He had expected it to be a gorgeous, final, end-of-the-road sort of ending. But it’s only more – more pain, more emptiness, heavier limbs. Relief is further than a daydream away.)
How did this happen? All he remembers is going to sleep and then waking up in the forest. Only he didn’t wake up the way humans do. He blinked and then he was here, on his feet, amidst the tall-standing trees of the forest. He – appeared. Like by teleport. He would suspect it was some prank by a mage who (probably rightfully) has it out for him if it weren’t for being half translucent.
“Fucking great,” Jaskier roars at the vast forest, trying to make his voice big enough to fill the space so it can reach whatever deity is listening. “Yes, thank you! What more could we do to Jaskier after we fucked up his life and turned everything to horseshit? Oh, yes, I have the idea. Why don’t we just take it from him? He can’t have a bad life if he doesn’t have a life at all, is that what you were thinking? Hire another solution-maker, you bastards!”
So. So. So, so, so. All he needs to do is keep his cool, which should be easy, considering he’s bloody freezing. Step one after dying: Figure out your where-abouts. Should be useful to know whether he’s about to be ripped to shreds by hellhounds or worse (like running into that nincompoop from court who thought he could actually play the hurdy-gurdy better than Jaskier and died from slipping in the stables a month later).
Taking stock: Trees. Lots and lots of trees. How to categorize those? Trees more a sign of a friendly atmosphere or eternal damnation? Or are these the naughty trees, sent to be punished in the afterlife? (Can a tree commit a sin? Splurged on sunlight, now off to hell with the greedy thing?) He’ll mark it off as a maybe. What else? He’s standing on a path, which is where that rude wanderer just walked straight through him without even so much as an apology. Next to the path, a horse – woohoo, a clear score for eternal damnation. (What do you think is holding them upright? Their frail spindly legs? No! It’s undeniably the power of Satan.) And – might that lump by the road be a person? Jaskier steps a little closer, leaning over the lump.
Ah. Who else could it be but Geralt of Rivia, the Butcher of Blaviken and Jaskier’s fragile heart himself? There was never any question he would be in Jaskier’s afterlife. But which is it? Exquisite hell or torturous paradise? Right now, Geralt is sleeping, so it could be either option.
(Do you wish your last words to me had been different?)
Jaskier steps around Geralt and focuses on the horse.
“Roach!” he coos. “Oh, I’ve missed you. Sorry for what I just thought about horses. I meant it as a compliment, I swear! My mischievous lady.”
He lifts his hand to pet her head, but his hand glides right through her.
(You are careful with your wishes now.)
And she meekly turns her head, takes no note of him, as if he weren’t here at all. And he isn’t, is he? Maybe this is no illusion, no magic, no unknown adventure. Maybe this is the real Roach and the real Geralt and Jaskier is where he is not wanted once more. Forced to spend forever running after Geralt while he’s invisible to the Witcher. Ha! And Jaskier had thought the afterlife was supposed to be different.
(Those rare moments when you let me touch you, when I could find an adequate excuse.)
He stumbles and leans against the tree next to Geralt’s sleeping body, but he falls right through it. The ground can still hold him, but nothing else. He lets his heavy eyelids drop. Legs stuck in a tree. It’s all just a bad dream.
(Does a song still taste so sweet without the lute and with no ears but his own to hear it?)
Nothing has a presence. You can always tell when it’s close by. Years ago, Jaskier was stupid and starry-eyed. He thought he owned the world, he thought he had the future to fall for. At some point, all that hope and optimism had to make room for… nothing. When he starts to listen and stops believing, his chest hollows out.
(This is just the final step, yes? This is where he was headed. No sense in regrets.)
This is what Geralt always thought of him and his songs, all talk and no substance. Har, har, Geralt, bad bloody joke. He is no substance now, only cold air. Once Geralt wakes up, it will hurt so much more. Jaskier lets out a laboured breath that brings no relief. He liked being alive, he thinks. Even when he hated it.
(Marmalade sandwiches. Gosh, he will miss marmalade sandwiches.)
He can’t feel the ground beneath his back, but panic still readily comes to him. The tears don’t. Dreadfully sorry, no tears available at the moment. Why don’t you ask again in an eternity?
Jaskier stands up again and paces the floor around Geralt. Oh, nobody, I’m sorry, did I step on your feet? No one, may I ask for this dance? Here, have a glass of nothing. This is terrible. Jaskier won’t have anyone to talk to. He doesn’t know any ghosts, he doesn’t know the most popular ghost-social-spots, he doesn’t know ghost-etiquette. Although he could always talk to Geralt. This time, there will be no complaints. And Geralt’s responses have always been a rare commodity.
But the terrifying truth is, Jaskier has only himself for company now. No one to sigh at his antics, no one to suppress a laugh at one of his jokes. And he wants – yes, despite the tiredness weighing him down, he still wants. If he is still here, in a world he doesn’t belong in anymore, if the desperate longing is somehow strong enough to keep him here, then he won’t get to rest.
What a sensible man would do: accept it’s over. Accept his chances are up. Put those silly wants and needs into a clean box – place them there like something precious. And then bury them as deep as he can.
Jaskier has not, by any stretch of the imagination, ever been a sensible man.
He lies down next to Geralt, like in a dream, one of the good ones, and thinks about words.
He doesn’t have matter, but no matter, he doesn’t matter.
He lies and thinks about words that have content. Even nothing has meaning. But not Jaskier. He is just – gone.
is dead air now. Literally dead. A spot of nothing.
thinks about spirits. Don’t lose your spirit. (Don’t be one.)
is as tangible as the songs carried over the lands.
A hole in the world.
When wants, wants everything. wants too much. Of course, turns up empty, the way the greedy do, with their slippery hands.
The leaves rustle, and say: You have lost your grip. We have seen many fall. You are no different, helpless, unbalanced, immobilized. A nestless child.
The wild wind whispers: You are alone.
Lying in a dreamish nightmare, watches as the moon moves across the cloudy sky.
But the tiredness doesn’t leave. It clings to like oil, hanging at every strand of hair, gathering in eye sockets. It does not wash off. Tiredness, paradoxically, does not get tired.
And is tired of wondering. And is tired of regret.
When sleep will not come and stays away, turns on side and watches Geralt. At least has this. There were times when thought would never see Geralt again. But here he is. Still the same way he looked all those years ago when first became intrigued by him. Beautiful white hair, beautiful features, but tense lines on his forehead, even in his sleep. He is not restful either.
Finally, finally, after hours or minutes he rouses. gets up, elated.
“Rise and shine, Geralt! Don’t sleep your life away. Take it from me,” says lightly, and only because knows Geralt can’t hear . But Geralt jerks and rolls away in an instant, making a grab for his sword.
“Wait, can you see me?” asks.
It’s impossible. The man on the road couldn’t. Surely a random peasant won’t be so unfazed by the appearance of a ghost that he just casually strolls through .
“I can,” Geralt says. “And you know what that means?”
“Maybe I’m not quite as dead as previously estimated?”
“It means I’ll know where to aim.”
He presses the sword closer.
“Woah, woah,” Jaskier holds up his hands in a placating gesture. “Calm down. I know we didn’t part on the best of terms, but surely this is not necessary.”
“You’re not Jaskier.”
“Wha- why wouldn’t I be?”
“Because Jaskier isn’t dead. He wouldn’t dare. He knows I wouldn’t let him touch Roach for weeks if he died on me. You’re a doppler. An imposter. Something.”
Jaskier’s teeth gnash together. He is dead, all out of the blue. He didn’t expect this. He didn’t plan for this. He certainly didn’t choose to show up next to Geralt’s sleeping body. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say he’s had a really bad fucking day.
“Go on then!” Jaskier is seething. “Put your sword through me. The only thing you’ll hurt is my feelings.”
Geralt hesitates. How courteous indeed, at least to hesitate before impaling his only friend with a sword. Or. Well. His “we’re not friends”. His “if life could give me one blessing”. His never-friend.
“So prove it,” Geralt says.
“What do you want me to say? What haven’t I put into a song that half the country has heard?”
He was proud of those songs once. Now they’re only painful reminders.
“What was the last thing I said to you?”
“Really? That’s what you’re going with? Out of all things you could ask me?”
Geralt’s face twists again, in an agonizingly familiar way. He lowers his sword, but keeps it in his hand.
“Dammit, Jaskier.”
“Oh, yes, that’s what you started with. You want me to give you the whole speech? Because, believe me, I have it memorized word for word.”
Geralt looks conflicted, confused, but also like he is trying desperately to hide everything away again. He takes one step toward Jaskier, and Jaskier twitches, not sure if he wants to step backwards or forwards, so he just stays.
“It’s not the sort of thing you forget.” Jaskier shrugs. “There are very, very few things that could have ever made me even look at you again,” he lies, and spreads out his arms. “It’s your lucky day.”
Geralt is still looking at him like he’s seeing a ghost – oops. Jaskier keeps forgetting.
“But you can’t be,” Geralt says, completely stiff. “That would mean that Jaskier –“
He reaches out to grab Jaskier’s wrist, but his hand glides right through it.
“No. No, you’re not him,” Geralt is nearly shouting now. He is clenching his jaw and has to turn around. He has so much presence in the world. He would leave craters, if he were ever gone. Whole cliffs.
Jaskier gives Geralt one more glance. It’s not like he really expected anything. He’s not Geralt’s problem anymore. Jaskier only really stayed because he thought Geralt would never know.
“How about the last words I said to you, then?” Jaskier says, because he knows when he is defeated. Even when it takes him twenty years to realize. “See you around, Geralt.”
He turns around and doesn’t know where to go and goes anyway. It’s colder now. There is no body to drag around, but Jaskier feels heavy. He is walking down a mountain. He can hear something shuffling in the bushes. He is alone and he can never learn from his mistakes because he is addicted to this one, even though it leaves him bleeding every time.
With every step, he feels himself fading a little more. It would take so little to just –
“Wait!”
He should keep walking, but disaster smells so sweet.
Geralt is standing in the same spot, like he is frozen, but Jaskier comes back to him.
“What happened to you?” Geralt asks.
“Ah, I was just, you know, enjoying the afterlife and then I thought to myself, I’m gonna fucking haunt your ass.”
Geralt looks so unhappy and somehow, Jaskier regrets waiting for him to wake up even more now.
“I’ve known my share of vengeful spirits,” Geralt says warily.
“Melitele, Geralt, I was kidding. You’re so self-absorbed.” Kind words have grown tired, don’t find their way onto Jaskier’s lips any longer and sleep at the bottom of his stomach instead. “I know this is the last thing you want, but I need a favour.”
And he doesn’t mention that Geralt is possibly the only person who can see him and he doesn’t want to be alone.
Doesn’t mention he has dreamed of Geralt every night and thought of him every day.
Doesn’t mention he would do it all again, even with the heart ache. (He knew what he was signing up for from the start.)
“What do you want?” Geralt presses out.
Jaskier doesn’t want to be just another person who takes from Geralt, who doesn’t know how to stop giving. But he is not asking for protection or shelter or food. He is only a shadow now, in the corner of Geralt’s eye. And he doesn’t know what else to do.
“I want to know how I died. And why.”
Just let me keep you, he does not say. Just for a little bit.
Geralt sheathes his sword. “What do you remember?”
“I was headed home, I think. Maybe.”
Jaskier watches Geralt’s face carefully, trying to analyse his expressions, but not quite daring to come to a definitive conclusion, seeing how badly he misread the room – or, well, the open mountain plane - the last time.
He decides to skip the reaction.
“So? Come on. Avenge me or something.”
“Really?”
“It’s the least you could do. After what you said to me.”
Geralt grumbles, but he starts to pick up his bags, which Jaskier takes to assume they’re going. Which is good. Geralt will know what to do. Once they know more - (Once Geralt doesn’t feel guilty any longer -)
Roach neighs softly, and even though she might not be able to see him, Jaskier walks toward her, intending to say something.
“Get away from Roach,” Geralt calls immediately, although Jaskier was reasonably sure he hadn’t even been looking in their direction.
Jaskier starts pouting.
“You know what you did,” Geralt says.
“Can’t touch her anyway.”
Jaskier lifts his hands and backs away.
They start walking then, the Witcher and Viscount de Can’t-take-a-hint. Side by side. And it’s almost like it used to be. And it’s almost perfect – if he had a lute, if Geralt weren’t so unnaturally tense next to him, if it weren’t for the overwhelming tiredness seated deep in his bones. But all anyone would see is a lone Witcher wandering by himself. (And it’s true - Jaskier has long since been written out of that story.)
(When a humble bard
graced a ride along with
Geralt of Rivia)
Geralt can’t look. Looking makes real. The sound is bad enough, but can be written off as a memory, an earworm, a voice in a deranged head.
(Impossible to touch what he so often flinched away from.)
(Impossible to hold what has always flown and flickered.)
(All those sweet, tender things Geralt never wanted.)
Jaskier is safe. Jaskier is somewhere. Jaskier has a pulse and a breath and a fluttering heartbeat.
It’s just him and Roach and a faint hallucination to keep him company. Anything else. Any other option. There are no other options.
(So much to miss when you almost have it.)
(Such a distantly warm feeling in his chest where he was once happy.)
(His worst mistake cuts deeper now.)
Jaskier is at the coast. He is playing in taverns. He is safe from Geralt. Safe.
Geralt is doing what he does. He gets scowled at in the streets. He takes a room.
Lies in a lonely bed.
Safe. Warm. Breathing.
“Don’t tell me you’re going to sleep again. It’s simply rude at this point. After all, it’s not like I can join you.”
Closes his eyes, all by himself.
“Have you never heard of ‘no rest for the wicked’?”
Safe. Warm. Breathing.
“So how is the mourning going? Maybe you should start wearing black. Oh, wait.”
Sleep makes it go away, for a little bit. Guilt he doesn’t know how not to feel. Regret, his most cherished companion. His… (safe.)
(He must be.)
Waking to a nightmare. Geralt does what he does. He sharpens his sword.
“Am I just supposed to sit here and watch you make the same hand motion over and over? Not gonna lie, I’m a little starved for entertainment here in ghost-land.”
Geralt lays a book open on the table, for no particular reason at all. At random times, he turns the page.
(Still whole.)
(He must be.)
A monster to hunt, that’s what he does.
“Oh my, finally I can see one of your hunts from the premium seat.”
Geralt talks to himself sometimes.
“It’s a hunt, not a performance.”
“You really haven’t seen yourself, have you?”
A group of rotfiends. Looking dead, rotten flesh hanging off their bodies. Necrophage oil coats Geralt’s sword.
“Geralt! Watch out!”
He twirls around, takes off the head of one that was about to lurch at him. Geralt keeps moving, slicing his way through more, but they get up again, stubbornly hard to kill.
“Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck.”
A shriek, the rotfiend is about to miss him, but right behind him is… Geralt twists his body, ensures the rotfiend doesn’t miss. It manages to scratch his chest before he kills it too.
“Why, by the Gods, did you do that?”
Only one left now. He kills that one too. Does what he does.
“How is your furniture doing? Because I suspect very strongly that you have got more than one screw loose.”
He wipes the blood and oil off his sword and sheathes it.
“Are you a squirrel? No? Then how come you are behaving like such a nutter?”
Geralt starts walking, grits his teeth. He’ll have to tend to the wounds back at the tavern.
“I’m dead! I’m literally dead, gone, pushing daisies, bit the dust. It’s a little late for the sacrifice game, understood?”
He arrives alone, with a rotfiend head for proof. Gets disgusted looks in the tavern.
“What were you even thinking? Melitele forbid Jaskier gets stumbled through by a rotfiend? How will I ever live with myself knowing I let a rotfiend unknowingly touch the same air as my deceased friend? What is wrong with you?”
“I’ve done what you asked,” Geralt says.
The man who hired Geralt slides over a bag of coin. Geralt doesn’t count.
Safe. Warm. Breathing. Somewhere far away from monsters and witchers and a life not suited to humans who are far too fragile, who have lives far too short…
(He has never known a vengeful spirit like…)
On his own, he goes to his room. There is no one to tend to his wounds but himself.
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Sweet Creature
Posting this early because of my One Quote, One Shot posting on Thursday. Next week will resume the Wednesday weekly post! Thank you so, so much for the response to this fic. I’m not lying when I say it blows my mind!
chapter one - chapter two - chapter three - chapter four - chapter five
Chapter Six
Her puffy eyes didn’t want to open as Mary shook her. She slowly pried one eye open enough to see who was bothering her. Mary’s concerned face was close to hers, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. “Claire? Are you alright? What happened?”
“I don’t really want to talk about it,” Claire groaned, trying to sit up. Sleeping on the floor had not been her best idea. But at a certain point, she’d cried so much she had no energy to leave. The only option had been laying back down and giving in to the exhaustion. “What time is it?”
“It’s 5:00,” Mary informed her. Her hands fluttered in the air around Claire, never landing on her, but wanting to be helpful. “Is something wrong? Do you need me to call someone?” She grabbed Claire’s phone off the counter. “I can call Jamie.”
Claire’s head snapped towards Mary. “Do not call Jamie. Do you hear me?”
Mary stared at her, pure confusion and concern still clear on her face. “Yes, I hear you. But I need to call someone. You’re not in a good state and you need to go home.”
“No, I need to handle this order,” Claire argued, finally managing to sit up.
“I can handle the order. I’ll call in Beth and she’ll be able to help me if I need it, but I don’t think I will,” Mary assured her. “You’ve taught me well enough over the past five years. I’ll be fine. You, however, need to go home. You’re in no shape to be here right now. So how about I call Joe? Maybe Joe can get you home. Will that work?”
Claire didn’t want to go home. She wanted to be able to work and have that distract her from the gaping hole she felt in her heart. But Mary was right. She wasn’t fit to be working on an order, or anything right now. The look of her would certainly scare away any customers. Perhaps she could just go home and sleep it off. Maybe that’s what would be best. Mary took her phone and called Joe. He apparently agreed to pick her up, and in 20 minutes was ushering her into his car.
He pulled up outside her building. Claire tensed with the fear of seeing Jamie. Living in the same building had made so much sense at one point. But now she was dreading accidentally running into him. “Mary didn’t say what happened,” Joe said, breaking the silence.
Claire turned her eyes away from the building to look at her friend. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Maybe you need to,” he offered. “You know Jamie and I would always be here to listen.”
Claire felt a fresh batch of tears brimming in her eyes as she curled in on herself. “I’m not talking to Jamie about anything.”
Joe watched her for a moment. “Are you saying this had something to do with him?” Claire couldn’t speak past the lump in her throat. She simply nodded in reply. “What the hell,” Joe breathed. He met her stare. “Should I go beat him up?”
Claire choked out a laugh. “Don’t tempt me.”
“Did you tell him...about, you know?” he asked delicately.
“No,” she told him, “and thank god I never did.”
“Seriously, Lady Jane,” Joe pressed, “what happened?”
Her tears began to spill over as Claire recounted the events of the night before. By the time she’d gotten to the end, Joe’s face had fallen, looking truly miserable at the thought of what happened between them. “I’m sure he didn’t mean it that way.”
“You’re taking his side on this? You’re my friend!” Claire yelled.
“No, I’m not taking his side. I’m just trying to help you see a different angle on it. Jamie is your best friend. I know you don’t want to lose that,” Joe explained.
“Well if that’s the way he’s going to act, I don’t need him around anymore. I’ll be fine without him,” Claire grumbled.
“Are you sure? Because Mary said she found you in a pretty rough state.”
“Joe, do you know what it’s like to have the person you trust most say the one thing you never expected him to say? And then not even realize he said it?” She shook her head, tears spilling down her cheeks. “It fucking hurts. He’s the only one who could actually take credit for my bakery being a success. And then he did.” She wiped a few tears off her face. “For so long he’s said it was just me. That I was the successful one. He took no claim on it, until it would serve him well to claim it. Bastard.”
“So you’re not going to try and talk it out with him?” Joe asked, already knowing the answer.
“No,” Claire replied. “No, I don’t need to see him again. I don’t need his half-assed apologies or lame excuses.”
Joe sighed, nodding his head slowly. “Want me to help you in the building so we can make sure the coast is clear? You know there’s a chance he’s waiting outside your door.”
“Shit,” Claire whispered, “I hadn’t even thought of that.” She glanced over at Joe pleadingly. “Please, will you do that?”
He smiled kindly. “Of course.”
After Joe had gotten her safely inside without any Jamie sightings, Claire threw herself down on her bed. She didn’t even peel back the covers before she passed out again. Emotions could be exhausting. And the combination of devastation and betrayal seemed to be a lethal combination.
Claire woke up to twelve missed calls and twenty texts from Jamie. She rolled her eyes as she locked her phone again. “Leave me alone,” she said, leaving her phone in her bedroom as she walked out to the kitchen. She spent the day dodging calls and ignoring further texts from him. He didn’t seem to take her silence as a message.
That night, she was sitting on her couch, eating some ice cream when there was a knock at her door. Without even getting up, she knew who it would be. She would have had to buzz Joe in if he was coming to check in on her. Claire stayed where she was.
The knock became more insistent. “Sassenach! It’s me!” The confirmation didn’t make her move. If anything, it made her stay in her place. “Please open up. I ken ye’re in there. I stopped by the shop and Mary said ye’ve been home all day. Claire, please let me in. Please talk to me.”
His begging did nothing to sway her. She was set in her decision. If Jamie saw her as a commodity, he wasn’t someone she needed in her life. It would take time to not be heartbroken by it, but it would be better for her overall. He knocked a few more times, accompanied by further pleas. She never moved though. Eventually, he walked away and she was finally left alone.
The next day, though, the barrage of phone calls started anew.
* * *
Jamie sulked at work. Well, really, he sulked everywhere. His mind could focus on nothing but Claire. The worst part of it all was that he knew it was his fault. He’d spent the entire evening after she’d kicked him out beating himself up. The things he’d said had been out of line and wrong, to boot. He hadn’t even meant it. And he certainly hadn’t meant it the way she’d interpreted it.
He thought maybe the next day he’d call her and be able to explain himself. He pictured her dragging him across the coals for his statement before begrudgingly forgiving him. But that wasn’t what happened. She’d shut him out completely. It didn’t matter how he’d tried to get in contact with her, she wouldn’t answer. He couldn’t blame her for being pissed at him. There was just no end in sight.
Jamie decided he should dial back on how often he tried to reach out. It was around that time that Claire picked up a new tactic. She began intermittently answering his calls for a second or two, giving him a breath of hope, before hanging up. Then he couldn’t even leave a voicemail for her to ignore. It was driving him crazy. He wanted the opportunity to apologize and to prove to her that he didn’t mean what he’d said. The chance was never afforded to him though. He was constantly distracted at work and people were starting to notice.
“Jamie, can I ask you something?” John said one day.
“Ye just did,” Jamie replied, walking away from him. His tolerance for chatting had gone way down.
“Hey, hey,” John called, chasing after him. “Come on, it’s me.”
Jamie walked into his office and turned around, looking at John. “What?”
“You just seem...off lately. Is something up?”
Jamie threw himself down in his chair with a grand sigh. “Aye, ye could say that.”
John sat down in a chair across from his desk. “Well, talk to me. What is it?”
Jamie leaned forward, his elbows on the desk, his head in his hands. “Claire willna speak to me.”
A burst of laughter made Jamie look up. John saw his miserable expression and quickly stopped laughing. “Oh, I thought that was a joke.” He shook his head. “What do you mean she isn’t talking to you?”
“I mean she’s no’ talking to me. I’ve tried everything. I’ve texted her, called her. I dropped by her place but she willna answer. I went by the bakery and they kept saying she wasna there even if I saw her car in the carpark. I even messaged her on facebook once just to see. Nothing. We live in the same building and I havena seen her in two weeks,” Jamie told him, a broken look about him.
“Why?” John asked, looking confused. “You two are best friends. She comes to our parties and they’re notoriously the worst.”
Jamie nodded, wishing he had a better reason to give John than his own stupidity. “Twas my fault. I was trying to get her to do something for me and I offended her. I didna even realize what I said in the moment. But I canna explain myself or apologize or even try to make up for it. She’s just shut me out.” He shook his head, staring down at his desk. “We’ve been friends for ten years. In all that time, she’s been there. I dinna ken what to do wi’out her at this point.” He breathed out a sad laugh. “And I canna even tell her that.”
John was silent for a long time. “Just hang in there. I know it’s terrible advice, but there’s not much you can do if she doesn’t want contact. Maybe she just needs some space. I’m sure soon enough, she’ll want to talk to you again. It’s been the same ten years for her too. I bet this is just as hard for her.”
Jamie nodded, unsure how to reply. He knew he needed to give her space, it was just too hard. Jamie cleared his throat. “Thanks, John.”
He still wasn’t in better spirits, but he tried to take John’s advice. Each time he grabbed his phone to text Claire, he’d stare at it for a moment before putting it back down. She needed space. His need to apologize could take a backseat.
Jamie wandered into the employee lounge and poured himself a big cup of coffee. He was caught up in his thoughts, totally unaware of the person who came up next to him.
“Hello, Jamie,” she said in her thick French accent.
Jamie looked over and noticed Annalise standing incredibly close to him. That was when he realized he hadn’t thought of her, or really even spoken to her, in the last two weeks since Claire had stopped talking to him. He’d seen her at work, but hadn’t registered anything past that. His thoughts had only been with Claire.
“I noticed you’d seemed a bit down lately,” she continued before he could even reply to her. “You seemed a bit withdrawn. So I asked John what was going on. He said it had something to do with your friend.” She put a strong emphasis on the word friend.
Jamie huffed out a sigh, looking past her out toward where John was standing. He was ready to go punch him for sharing his problems with their coworkers so freely. “Don’t be mad at him. I insisted he tell me,” Annalise told him.
Jamie looked back at her, his brow furrowed. “Really? And why would ye do that?” he asked, taking a couple steps toward the door.
“Because you did not seem like yourself,” she explained with a wave of her hand. Jamie nodded, starting to walk away from her. He stopped as she continued talking. “I thought you needed some cheering up. Perhaps we could get dinner.”
* * *
Claire handed the white envelope to Joe. “Here, I need you to give this to Jamie.”
“And you really can’t just do this yourself?” Joe asked. He’d been trying to subtly and gently suggest she at least think about talking to him. Thus far, she’d been cold to each suggestion. “I mean even if you don’t see him, can’t you just slip the letter under his door?”
“It’s not a letter,” Claire told him.
Joe peeked inside the envelope, shocked at the contents. “You’re really doing this?” Claire nodded. “Are you guys going to be okay if you do this?”
“Jamie and I aren’t okay,” Claire reminded him.
“I didn’t mean you and Jamie. I meant you and your employees. Your business that you’ve worked so hard for,” Joe corrected.
Claire took a deep breath. Joe could see how the strain of the last two weeks had affected her. Circles under her eyes showed her exhaustion. She’d been working her ass off at the bakery, opening and closing every day while also running the damn place. Throwing herself into her work had been the way she’d chosen to ignore Jamie’s lack of presence in her life.
“I talked to my accountants and they think we’ll be fine. We’ve been drumming up a hell of a business lately and already have the interest stirred up in Edinburgh, so they think we’ll make up for it soon enough,” Claire reassured. “But I appreciate your concern. Now please, will you take that up to him?”
Joe nodded, holding the envelope tighter. “You live in the same building. How have you not seen him?”
“I found an exit on the side of the building. It’s not even an emergency exit. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know it’s there. So, I use that now,” Claire explained. “Thank you for doing this for me.”
Joe brought her in for a hug. “Anything for you, Lady Jane.”
He knew it would be hard to be somewhat in the middle of their fight, but when Jamie opened the door to his flat, Joe realized just how miserable a place he was in. The first thing he noticed on Jamie’s face was pain. It must just be a constant expression at this point. His pain turned to shock as he registered Joe standing in front of him. Shock turned to a mixture of happiness and sadness. It all happened in seconds, each emotion so plain on his usually masked face. “Joe, what are ye doing here? Tis good to see ye.”
Joe nodded to him. “Good to see you too, man. Uh, Claire actually sent me. She wanted me to give you something.”
“How is she?” Jamie asked, a desperate note to his voice. “Joe, she won’t talk to me and I know why but I canna take it. We live in the same building and I dinna even see her. I’m losing my mind. But I dinna care about me, I just want to know that she’s alright.”
If only Claire could see the state this man was in. He was pretty sure she would feel differently. The two of them were too stubborn for their own good. “She’s alright. She sent me up here to give you this,” he said, holding out the envelope.
Jamie looked confused as he took it. Confusion morphed into heartbreak as he opened the envelope and saw the check for his original amount sitting inside of it. “No,” he breathed. He looked up at Joe. “No, she canna do this. I dinna want this.” He tried to push it back at Joe. “Take it back, I dinna want it.”
Joe held up his hands, not letting Jamie give it back to him. “Look, this is between you and her. I’m just the courier.”
“What if I just tear it up?” Jamie asked, a wild look about him. “I dinna want this.”
“She thought you might say that. So she told me to tell you to please not do that. It’s yours and she wants you to have it back,” Joe said, trying to ignore the pain on Jamie’s face. Tears were forming in the other man’s eyes.
“I can’t do this, Joe. I can’t take it. I just want to talk to her, to tell her I didna mean any of it. I…” he broke off as tears started to fall down his cheeks. “I miss her so much.”
“I know, Jamie. But tearing up the check isn’t going to get her to talk to you. She’s just going to be more pissed. Just hang in there. Maybe soon she’ll get over it. I don’t know.”
Jamie nodded, tears still streaming down his cheeks. “Thanks, Joe.”
Despite himself, Joe brought Jamie in for a hug, patting him on the back. “It’ll be okay.”
“I’m no’ so sure,” Jamie replied. They broke apart with a nod to each other. Jamie walked back in his flat and closed the door. For a reason he couldn’t name, Joe waited for a minute. He wanted to make sure Jamie was going to be okay. This freeze out between the two of them seemed to be killing both of them. Joe was about to leave when he heard it. The sound of a sob coming from Jamie’s flat.
Next chapter
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Hybrid Rainbow
Joy has always been a rare and precious commodity. I would argue, though, that in the developed world (Wherever, exactly, that is), it has become somewhat less rare in recent times, as standards of living and education continue to go up. That’s an absurdly privileged thing to say, I realize, but I’m trying to start this thing as evenhandedly as I can. I understand about suffering and poverty; I’m reading A Tree Grows In Brooklyn right now, even! Okay, saying we’re closer now than ever to utopia is going to smack of ignorance no matter how you phrase it, but it also strikes me as undeniably true, in the grand scheme of things. I think most people--aside from the fascists--would refuse a one-way trip in a time machine to any previous era, or at the very least, would recognize that it wouldn’t improve much of anything for them. As unruly as our age is, it’s still probably the best one we’ve gotten thus far, and as the boot-heel of oppression starts to ever so slowly ease up its pressure on the necks of the long-suffering masses, the question has begun to enter into the collective consciousness: what is to be done with joy when it begins to fall, unbidden, into your life with something like abundance? What is to be done if moments of joy no longer must be pried with great effort and sacrifice from the rockface of life, but lie strewn liberally throughout our days, needing only the will and lack of embarrassment to seize them?
Thus far, the latter-day generations have faced up to this problem with decidedly mixed success. The idea that expecting anything other than the very worst leaves one vulnerable to the universe’s cruel whims has been stamped upon the human brain for centuries, and has left many sadly unable to recognize their own privilege (Which, by the way, is a big part of why a whole lotta white folks refuse to admit they have it better than anyone else and continue to dig their heels in against progress because to them it looks like cutting in line). It is still widely accepted that constantly finding joy and peace and purpose in one’s own life is the purview of children and children alone, that it is a naivete to be grown out of. We have the impulse always within us to be hard, to be warlike, to show the world that we’re not weak and frivolous but monsters to be feared, without emotions to be appealed to or ideals to be fallen short of.
Remedying this problem has turned out to be one of the primary functions of counterculture. If it is often unhelpful to simply look at the entire value system of one’s parents and say “Fuck that”, as it tends to foster a rather negative self-definition, still, if part of that value system is a deeply entrenched distrust of happiness, “Fuck that” may be exactly the response called for. The beauty of “Fuck that” is that it leaps past the slow loss of faith in something and arrives immediately at a flat rejection of it, and since much of the history of civilization has been bound up with blind faith in arbitrary and harmful things, the ability and the courage to flatly reject something, to give it no credit for however widely accepted it is but to dismiss it as bullshit from the ground up, is a step forward in human consciousness tantamount to the reinvention of the wheel.
The great irony of the end of the sixties is that all the hippies were miserable for no reason: they won. Rock n’ roll did change the world, it just didn’t immediately transform it on every level into an unrecognizable nirvana. For all the apparent emptiness of its utopian dreams, the basic thrust of the thing worked out just fine: that particular cat will never be put back into its bag, and those ideas are now out in the ether forever, always waiting for someone to find them and be inspired to change their own life and the lives of those around them for the better. The same goes for the punk rock revolution a few years later: they may not have brought the bastards down, but they did successfully bring personal liberation to a lot of people, and poured exactly as much gas on the fires of populism as they intended to. Culture, and in particular art and in particular music, cannot, unassisted, change the world, but it can change your world, and has been changing small worlds all over the frigging place at least since those mop-topped Brits set foot on American shores and probably since Johnny B. Goode learned to play guitar just like a-ringin’ a bell.
The thread can get lost, however. Culture is always a reflection of the people, and the people still spend a lot of their time bored, frustrated, and terrified of letting on that they have feelings about stuff. Young people especially, formerly the eternal pirate crew waving high the flags of “Liberty” and “Up Yours”, in recent times have often capitulated and resigned themselves to no more than a few stray moments of fun pilfered from the fortresses of the almighty Money Man-Kings, usually in the form of drugs, sex, and reckless self-endangerment. The cost of the hippies and the punks giving up their battles is that the counterculture lost its intellectual leadership, at least until the resurgence in political literacy in the 2010s. In the wasteland following the 70s, there were no John Lennons or Joe Strummers to look to for guidance; even the people who were elected to speak for their generation seemed adamant that there was fuck-all they could really say. Yeah, it’s nice to know that someone else feels stupid and contagious, but that’s not really a direction, is it? The generation-defining message Kurt Cobain and his peers sent out was “We’re all way too fucked up to do anything about anything”, and that introspective moodiness pervaded American underground rock music from the invention of hardcore at least all the way up to the moment Craig Finn watched The Last Waltz with Tad Kubler and said “Why aren’t there bands like this anymore?” and set out with rest of the Steadies in tow to remind everyone that music can save your immortal soul and that hey, that Springsteen guy was really onto something, headband and all, and together they all successfully ushered in the New Uncool and now we’ve got Patrick Stickles wailing that “If the weather’s as bad as the weatherman says, we’re in for a real mean storm!” and Brian Fallon admitting “I always kinda sorta wished I looked like Elvis” and everything’s great, except it’s not, everything’s fucked, but rock n’ roll is here to stay, come inside now it’s okay, and I’ll shake you, ooo-ooo-ooo.
The point of all this is my belief that even with the responsibility rock music has to provide cathartic outlets for dissatisfaction, is has an equal or greater responsibility to provide heroes. I think it’s time we all got over pretending that we’re better than the need for heroes, because we all insist on having them anyway, imperfect roses by any other name, and we’d do a hell of a lot better selecting them if we just admitted what we were after. We don’t just want particularly talented comrades, we want King Arthur, Robin Hood, Superman, Malcolm Reynolds. Damn it all, they don’t need to be perfect, they don’t even need to be all that great really, and yeah, Arthur dies, and Robin never gets Prince John, and Superman can’t save everyone, and the war’s over, we’re all just folk now, and John Lennon beat women and Van Morrison is a grumpy old fart and John Lydon’s a disgrace, but it’s the faith that counts. The faith that there’s something greater than ourselves that some people are more keyed into than others, and that whatever they can relay from that other side is what’ll see us through. All the best prophets are madmen, and madmen aren’t always romantic fools; sometimes they hurt people, or fail at crucial moments due to a compulsion they can’t control. Let he who is without sin etcetera, right? Why not cast aside realism and sincerely believe in something or someone, huh?
I believe in the Pillows. I don’t know hardly anything about them; my expertise of Japanese culture and history extends to the anime I’ve seen and that “History of Japan” YouTube video that made the rounds a while back. I can’t locate them within the Japanese music scene; all their western influences seem obvious to me, and the rest I know nothing about. They’re the only rock band from their country I’ve listened to any great amount of, I don’t speak the language they mostly sing in, I don’t even know their career very well. The particulars of any experiences they might have had that motivated them to make the art they make are not ones I could possibly share in, so, saying that I “Relate” to their work sounds a little preposterous. They ought to be a novelty to me, a band that clearly likes a lot of the same bands I do despite hailing from a foreign shore, marrying that shared music taste with a cultural identity I have nothing to do with, a small, nice upswing of globalism pleasing to my sense of universalism but not having any kind of quantifiable impact on me.
Yet I, like a good many other westerners, believe in the Pillows. I’m a little buster, and my eyes just watered as I wrote that. In fact, it’s likely because of the barriers of language and culture that exist between us that my belief in the Pillows is so strong. Pete Townshend, someone else I believe in, once opened a show by saying “You are very far away...but we will fucking reach you”, and though the Pillows are both geographically (At the moment) and culturally miles away from me, Lord strike me down if they don’t fucking reach me. They reach me in a way many of their American college rock peers, many of their biggest influences in fact, never have. Dinosaur Jr, Bob Mould, Sonic Youth, the Pixies, Nirvana--all these artists speak directly to the American adolescent experience, but though they have all moved me to one degree or another, none of them have produced a body of work I can so readily see myself in as that of the Pillows. Maybe it is the novelty of it, maybe I’m fooling myself and it is just my sense of universalism carrying me away, but there’s something I hear in the Pillows that I don’t hear in those bands, and though the obvious candidate for that thing would be the foreign tongue the majority of the lyrics are written in, when it comes down to it, I think that thing is joy.
Joy, to me, is the possibility glimpsed by rock n’ roll. Not hedonistic pleasure, not a sadistic glee over the outrage of authority figures, but real, true, open-hearted, “Freude, schöner Götterfunken/Tochter aus Elysium”--type joy. Buddy Holly had joy. The Beatles, The Who, the pre-fall Rod Stewart, they had joy. Springsteen’s got joy to spare. Those people have such profound love for their art and their audience that just the continual recognition of the fact that they have a guitar in their hands and they’re being allowed to play it is enough to make them ecstatic, and whenever they want to actually express something serious they have to get themselves under control to do it. Yet, whether it’s the unfashionability of those utopian dreams, or the simple fact that rock music has become accepted by mainstream culture and is now a commonplace, unremarkable thing, but half the people who have picked up an electric guitar for the past few decades don’t seem all that excited about it. From Kim Gordon snarling about how people go down to the store to buy some more and more and more and more, to Thom Yorke moaning about how he’s let down and hanging around, crushed like a bug in the ground, even up to Courtney Barnett asking how’s that for first impressions, this place seems depressing, it’s not really a given anymore, if it ever was, that people who make rock music are very joyful in what they do.
Of course, I’m not demanding that our artists be empty-headed fluff-factories; far from it. The Pillows write sad songs and angry songs same as everybody else. But the important thing is this: every song the Pillows play is played with an exuberance and abandon that is immediately striking, regardless of the emotional content of each song. Channelling that kind of revelry into rock music is both to my mind the initial purpose of the genre in the first place and something which has become so rare as to be remarkable. A veneer of detached cool, a howling ferocity, a whimpering woundedness--these have become the hallmarks of American rock music, and they are nowhere to be found in the Pillows.
At the same time, the Pillows are the very antithesis of artlessness. Joy of the caliber they deal in is more commonly found in folky rave-ups, a lack of musicianship giving way to trancelike festivity. But the Pillows are skilled song craftsmen like few others; their sound has evolved throughout the years, but they tend to settle in the neighborhood of power-pop, abounding in glorious hooks and surprising structures. A hundred unnecessary, perfect touches seem to exist in every song; a pause, a solo, a bassline, all deftly elevating the song into a perfect expression of something sublime, something that always--always--takes ahold of the musicians themselves and imbues their performances with power and purpose the likes of which most little busters can only dream of feeling. It should be testament enough to their brilliance that upon first listen to a song I never know what most of the lyrics mean, but whenever I look up a translation, they always turn out to be exactly what I felt they must be; their songs are so musically communicative that they all but lack the need for lyrics.
This dual nature is why I believe in the Pillows: by so utterly failing to neglect both the highest possibilities of musical composition as an unparalleled tool for capturing emotional nuance and the unrestrained id-like rush that is the province of rock n’ roll, they successfully attain the lofty realm that is--or ought to be--the goal of music in the first place. Never once is there a hint of straying into the realm of primitivism nor into overthought seriousness, and instead they locate themselves somehow exactly center on the scale between punk and prog, lacking the weaknesses and gaining the strengths of both. They make rock whole again by finally disproving the tenet initially laid out by their heroes, your heroes, and mine, The Beatles: the notion that growing up means having less fun. The viscerally exciting early work of The Beatles lacks any of the depth and vision displayed by their later records, but those records are so carefully and expertly crafted that they tend to lose spontaneity, and constantly second-guess themselves where the juvenilia they followed forged unselfconsciously ahead. That legendary career path has laid out a false dichotomy that every proceeding generation of kids with guitars has chosen between, save for the few who could see past it, the ones who heard the wildness in “Revolution” and the wisdom in “Twist and Shout” and realized that they were of a piece, were one and the same, not to be chosen between but embraced fully. Pete Townshend. Bruce Springsteen. Joe Strummer. David Byrne. Paul Westerberg. The Pillows. The real heroes are not those who champion one side or another but fight all their lives for peace between them, knowing that we have not yet begun to imagine what could be accomplished if that were made possible.
Just as they bypass the divide between what Patrick Stickles termed the Apollonian and Dionysian tendencies of rock (I prefer to think of the usual battle as being between the Dionysians and the Athenians, with the true devotees of Apollo being most of those heroes I keep referring to, except Dylan, who might be a Hermesian), so too do the Pillows bypass the Pacific frigging ocean. And the Atlantic, to boot. Their music quotes the Pixies and The Beatles directly, and obviously owes much to Nirvana and all their college rock predecessors who spent the entire 80s desperately stacking themselves until the doomed power trio could finally vault over the wall. Their first record is practically a tribute to XTC. They do speak a lot of English, too. I’m informed that much of western culture is seen as the epitome of coolness in Japan, which might explain their obsession with Baseball, and apparently sprinkling a bit of the Saxon tongue into the mix is far from uncommon in the music scene(s). Regardless, there is something ineffably touching to a distant fan in a foreign land about hearing Sawao Yamanaka spit “No surrender!” or exclaim “Just runner’s high!” It looks from here like a show of mutual effort to understand me as much as I’m trying to understand them. They’re generous enough to have already walked to the middle where they’re asking me to meet them, a middle where it doesn’t matter that I don’t have a suffix attached to my name or that they don’t wear shoes in houses. The invisible continent that all forward-thinking and sensitive people come to long for is where the Pillows are broadcasting from, because they’ve realized that its golden shores and spiraling cities are attainable. They’re attainable with joy, with the fundamentally rebellious act of refusing to let the fascists bring down even your globdamn day, because who the hell gave them that power other than us? I know enough about Japan and America to know that either one accusing the other of being imperialist and socially conservative to a fault is a fucking joke, and to know that we’ve done a lot more wrong to them than they’ll ever do to us and the presence of the Pillows amounts to a “We forgive you”, not an “I’m sorry”. Having watched a decent amount of anime, which is basically the result of Japan’s mind being blown by western media and then proceeding to show their love by often almost inadvertently surpassing their inspirations, I know that the only way to save our respective national souls and everybody else’s too is to put our knuckles down, have Jesus and Buddha shake hands like Kerouac tried to explain that they would anyway, and embrace each other’s dreams and passions and adopt them into our own.
It takes better people to inhabit that better world, and in case that sounds like fascist talk, I mean we’ve got to do better, not be better. It’s no physical imperfection that holds us back, nor a mental imperfection exactly, as we all have our own neuroses and if we expunge those then we’ll be kissing art and lot of other vital stuff goodbye. No, it’s our discomfort with ourselves, our world, our neighbors, our aliens, that keep us from seeing that crazy sunshine. If we can’t even acknowledge the greatness around us, that surplus of joy I mentioned a while back that we just seem to have no idea what to do with, then we have no hope of ever achieving further greatness, of ever quelling man’s inhumanity to man down to an inevitable fringe rather than the basic order of the world.
There was always more to do
Than just eat and work and screw
But now that there’s time at last to do those things, we’re still afraid to, afraid that we’ll come up empty, that the search for fulfillment leads only to disappointment, better to hang back and play it safe, better not to risk becoming one of those people I shake my head at and pity and will secretly envy until I die. It’s a new world, and we must learn to be new people. I believe in the Pillows because I believe they make excellent models for that new kind of person. The way they behave in the studio and on the stage is the way people behave when they’re truly free, and we’ve all been set free already or will be soon, so if we’re going to try and learn what the fuck is next from anyone, I think we might as well learn from the Pillows. At least, that’s one of the places we could get that insight. There’s a lot of art and a lot of philosophy and political theory to sift through to in order to put together a workable 21st century identity, and the Pillows are hardly the only people to have begun making the leap. But because of a silly thing like the size of the earth, the infinitesimal size of the earth even compared to the distance between us and the next rock we’re gonna try and get to, not everybody is getting their particular brand of free thought and action, and I happen to think that’s regrettable, and it’s my will as a free individual to rectify it as much as I can.
Writing about music really is worthless, isn’t it? I haven’t said jackshit about what the Pillows actually do other than to vaguely qualify their genre and temperament, and the only more useless thing I could do than not describing their songs would be to describe their songs. If you don’t hear the bracing weightlessness in “Blues Drive Monster”, or the aching nostalgia in “Patricia”, or the soul-bearing cry in “Hybrid Rainbow” then nothing I could write about those would be more effective than “Little Busters is a really good album.” The better primer might be Happy Bivouac, from a few years later; it has the melancholic rush of “Last Dinosaur”, the ascended teenybopper “Whoa, whoa, yeah” chorus in “Backseat Dog”, and the intro that should make it obvious immediately that you’re listening to one of the best songs ever recorded which opens “Funny Bunny”. Those two, Runners High, and Please, Mr. Lostman are the classic era, selections from the former three immortalized in their biggest claim to western fame, the FLCL soundtrack, a brilliant use of their music that could warrant an equally long piece. Before and after those four are periods of experimentation and discovery equally worth your time, not all of which I’m familiar with yet. See, now I’m just an incomplete Wikipedia article; it’d be equally worthless to expound upon the individual bandmates, on the pure yawp of Yamanaka’s vocals, on the passionate drumming of Yoshiaki Manabe and the supernaturally faultless lead guitar of Shinichiro Sato, or the contribution of founding bassist Kenji Ueda, which was so valued by the others that when he left he was never officially replaced (They’re so sweet). I’m not here to write an advertisement or a press-release, I don’t really even know why I’m here writing this, but I know that I believe in the Pillows, that they’re important, and that people should write about them. I’m being the change I want to see in the world, get it? That’s all we can be asked to do.
It occurs to me that people believed in Harvey Dent too, and that didn’t turn out so well. Hell, let’s leave the comic book pages behind, people believe in Donald Trump, they think he’s a hero, and that’s all going down in flames as I write this. Having heroes can be dangerous, but I still believe it’s not as dangerous as not having heroes. “Lesser of two evils” sounds an awful lot like one of those false dichotomies between fun and intelligence or between misery and foolishness I mentioned earlier, so, let’s call it a qualified good. I’m not much of a responsible world-citizen if my only effort towards bringing the planet together is spinning some sweet Japanese alt-rock tunes and bragging about how open-minded I am, but if I do ever end up doing anyone any good, then I’d consider it paying forward the good done to me by the Pillows, among others. They helped me form my identity as an artist (Read: functional human being) and they made my adolescence a lot easier. Actually, that’s a lie: my adolescence was (And continues to be) pretty easy already, and the Pillows reassured me that I wasn’t avoiding reality by feeling that. While American bands sang about the downsides of being a mallrat or a non-mallrat, the Pillows offered a vision of teenagedome much like my own, one that was grandly romantic, in which suffering wasn’t a cosmic stupidity but a trial with pathos and merit, and joy was not an occasional indulgence but a constant presence, whether it was lived in or lost and needing recovery.
That’s the old idea of youth, the youth of John Keats, the youth that makes the old miss it, makes it required that we explain to them that it’s still there, it never left, it’s a dream, a momentary affirmation, an attitude, a muttered curse word. So many of my peers, now no longer engaged in a constant race to stay out of the grave as their ancestors were, seemed intent on beating each other into their tombs, as if reaching walking death before their parents was the only way to outgrow them. There’s so much life just lying around and it’s just plain wasteful to let it lie in the sun and rust in the rain. There’s space enough to stretch, to not keep who you are awkwardly curled up inside yourself, to breathe the air and taste the wine and dig the brains of your fellow travelers in this loosely-defined circus. I found that space in the Pillows, having often suspected it was there, and while everyone is going to find that space in their own way--or not, still, tragically not--I have to think that experience was due in part to some innate and unique quality of the music itself, not just a complimentary sensibility contained within myself. The Pillows are free, and that makes them freeing, it’s easy as that. Their liberation is plain as day; it rings in every chord, every snare-hit, every harmony; it’s up to us ascertain what we can do in our own limited capacity to hoist ourselves up to their level and give some other folks a boost along the way and a hand to grab afterwards. It’s the gift that art gives us, and the Pillows just give it more freely than most is all, which is why I think the suggestion to listen to them is more than just a solid recommendation. Like the insistence on listening to The Beatles, or The Clash, or any of the others, it’s a plea to save your soul, to learn the language of tomorrow and drink the lifeblood of peace and love and piss and vinegar, or else you’ll be lost, lost, lost.
Can you feel? Can you feel that hybrid rainbow?
#music#rock#rock music#undeground#alternative#alternative rock#alt rock#indie#indie rock#jrock#japanese rock#flcl#flcl anime#little busters#hybrid rainbow#pillows#the pillows#pixies#the pixies#beatles#the beatles#rock and roll#rock n' roll#joe strummer#pete townshend#the who#bruce springsteen#springsteen#the hold steady#hold steady
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Gob’s Dialogue
Greeting
Hey smoothskin, do you need something? A drink, maybe? Anything? Anything at all?
<sigh>What'll it be?
Oh, it's you. Would you like to slap me around before you drink? I'm told that it's a lot of fun.
Oh good. If it isn't my favorite smoothskin.
Hey, pal. What do you need?
Good to see you again! Need a drink?
Oh, man... I'm glad to see you. Moriarty's been especially nasty lately and I need a friendly face.
First Meeting
“Gah! Fuck! What are you?” I guess they don't have a lot of Ghouls in the Vault. Haven't you ever seen a Ghoul before?
“No. What's a ghoul?” Well, not all of us got the chance to hole up in a nice cushy Vault when the bombs fell. A bunch of us got stuck out here in the world, and got a full on blast of heat and radiation turned us into a pack of walking corpses. Near as I can tell, we age slower than you. A lot slower. There are even a few Ghouls that were alive during the war.Of course, with a face like ground Brahmin meat, you can imagine that folks don't take too kindly to us.
“You know, it's not so bad.” Nice of you to say so. If you can't be nice, at least pretend, right? Fake it 'till you make it, and all that. Still though, a fake compliment is better than the usual spit in the face that I get. You're not half bad... for a smoothskin.
“That's disgusting.” Yeah, fuck you too. Whatever, man. I'm used to being treated like shit around here.
“I know what a Ghoul is. Now get away from me, zombie.” Yeah... great. What do you need? ... asshole ...
“I've got nothing against you people.” Well now. That's a surprise! I'm used to every asshole smoothskin in this town giving me shit just because I look like a corpse. I'm glad to see that there are a few worthwhile people around here. Listen... Moriarty'd have my head if he caught me selling at a discount, but for you, I'll risk it.
“Stuff it, Ghoul. And stop looking at me.” I see how it is... <sigh> What do you need?“
“Let me think about it for a moment, my good man.” Wait... you're not going to hit me? Yell at me? Not even berate me a little bit?
“Are you kidding? Me? Shut the hell up, Ghoul. I'll beat you if I feel like it.” <sighs> I suppose I was wrong... should have known better.
“I hadn't planned on it.” Well now. That's a surprise! I'm used to every asshole smoothskin in this town giving me shit just because I look like a corpse. I'm glad to see that there are a few worthwhile people around here. Listen... Moriarty'd have my head if he caught me selling at a discount, but for you, I'll risk it.
Questions
“Where did you come from?” A place called Underworld. It's a Ghoul city down in D.C. I set off up here to find adventure and fortune. And... well... I found this place. I'm sort of stuck here. Colin says that I can't leave until I pay off my debt to him. Of course, he charges me room and board too. If you ever get to Underworld, tell Carol that I said hi.
“What's all this about Galaxy News Radio?” Mister Moriarty says we can keep it on. It's a good radio station. I like hearing the DJ, Three Dog and how he's helping to fight the Good Fight. Sigh. If only I was a part of that instead of being stuck in this dive.
Main Quest
“I talked to Moriarty already and he's trying to charge me for the info.” Sigh. That's his way. Always putting caps before people's lives. I wish someone would stand up to him one day. Oh my.... I shouldn't be saying all of this! I'm sorry, I really must get back to work. I can't get involved. I'm so sorry.
“Gob, please. If you know anything about my father, you need to tell me.” I was like you once. I wandered into town looking for an escape from this stupid joke of a body I'm trapped in. Now look at me.Very well. Moriarty keeps a computer terminal in the back. On it, he keeps all of the goings on in Megaton.If you can get onto that terminal, I bet he has information on your Dad.Now, get away from me, smoothskin. If Moriarty even suspects I told you this, I'm a dead Ghoul.
“Look, you rotting piece of shit! Tell me what you know or it's splatter time!” All right! I'll tell you! Please, just don't hurt me! Moriarty keeps a computer terminal in the back. On it, he keeps all of the dirty secrets of Megaton. If you can get onto that terminal, I bet he has information on your Dad. Now, get away from me, smoothskin. If Moriarty even suspects I told you this, I'm a dead Ghoul.
“Look, if you know something, you'd better tell me!” Look, smoothskin. I've told you all I dare. Moriarty doesn't like me chatting with the customers like this. If he even thought I was talking to you, he'd tan my hide! Let me get back to work now before he sees us.
”If you know anyone else that can help, I'd appreciate it.” Moriarty is your best bet. I wish you luck. Now, I have to get back to work, or I'll be answering to him too.
“What can you tell me about Moriarty's terminal?” I hate that fucking thing. It's all he cares about. "Information is a commodity" he keeps saying. I'd stay away from that thing if I were you.
What can you tell me about Moriarty's terminal? “I can tell you to shove it up your ass, how's that, Mister Tough Guy!”
“I really need to get into that terminal.” Oh, Mister Moriarty never lets me back there. If you need to get into the terminal, you should talk to Nova. She'll help you... but it may be expensive if you catch my meaning.
“I'm sick of this shit. Help me get into the terminal so I can find what I need!” No! Please! Don't hit me! I swear! I don't know anything about the terminal! Ask Nova. She's all over Moriarty all the time.
“I'm looking for my father. Middle-aged guy. Maybe you've seen him?”
Even if I knew, I wouldn't tell you.
Oh, yeah! I do remember a guy like that.
Honestly, I usually keep my head down. I tend to get smacked around if I look customers in the eyes. But talk to Moriarty, he'll know more.
I can't talk about that anymore. Moriarty will beat me again if I do.
Simms Murdered
I know, I know. I'll get a mop. It's just... blood is so hard to get out of the floor.
About the Radio
Aw, forget it. I guess we're stuck with this Enclave crap.
Aggh! Come on, you piece of junk! Every day, it's the same damn thing...
Come on!
Stupid radio!
Wait... is that...? Dammit!
Work! Come on. Work!
Why... won't... you... work?
Goddamn radio!
Son of a bitch!
Talking
I... I think we're running low on Nuka-Cola, sir. I... I just thought you'd want to know...
Colin... Mister Moriarty, sir... I just wanted to... to say... well... you're looking quite dapper today, sir...
I set that special wine aside for you. The one you said makes you really... uninhibited.
You look beautiful today, Nova. Just like always.
Please, sir! I'm sorry! I... I'm just stupid, you know that! A stupid, rotting corpse, right? I'll take care of it, I swear!
Mister Moriarty! Sir! I... I'm sorry! You're right, of course... It won't be a problem! I promise you!
Sure thing! ... you miserable drunken asshole ... {The second line is said quietly and under his breath. He's hoping that Jericho is too drunk to notice.}
One more drink, coming up! ... shitbird ... {The second line is said quietly and under his breath. He's hoping that Jericho is too drunk to notice.}
You're always so nice to me, you know that, Nova? I don't know what I'd do without you, I swear.
Aww, Nova. I can always count on you to look out for me, huh? You're, well... You're just about the sweetest person I've ever met.
Aw, Nova. I'd do anything for you. Well... I don't want to keep you. You're always so busy and...
Anything for you, Nova. Anytime.
Player Attacks
Colin! Colin, help!
Someone get the Sheriff!
I knew you were no good!
Wasteland bastard!
I'm just a bartender!
This Ghoul hits back, smoothskin.
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BS D&D to your pure manipulation of the Jamie x Brienne fandom. It was stunning.
BS to your undoing of Jamie’s character...not so much in his return to Cersei but in his backsliding to his indifference to anyone else but her. As if how you were born, who you were, dictates who you must always be. Nothing you learn along the way matters.
BS to your continued hatchet job on Tyrion who somehow lost all his good sense the moment he set foot back on Westeros and now looks like the most stupid man in the show’s history, not so much for his continued failing of advising Dany...but for his continued belief that Cersei could be talked out of anything.
BS to turning Cersei...hateful but intensely fiercely defiant Cersei into a wailing weak woman whining “I don’t want to die”. The same woman who sat on the throne ready to poison herself *and* her children during the Battle of the fucking Blackwater.
BS to Varys travelling all the way to Essos having learned about Dany and what she was doing. *Seeing* what she was doing there for himself. Only to do feck all of use for her in Westeros (where was his spy network for troop movements, like at *any* time?!) see her put her army, her dragons and herself in service to humanity ahead of her own ends in Winterfell, suffering massive losses...and then turn around at the first news of a male heir...to say she’s too strong willed, lets put the man who can’t ‘control’ her on the throne, yes *he’s* better. Yes his judgement is so good. He put fucking Joffrey on the throne despite knowing he had no blood claim.
BS to basically not letting Jon learn *anything*. A feature of this season in particular it seems. Not only does he still know nothing, but he is now so moronically dense and blind about people that it is stunning. He’s not only now (after the Battle of the Bastards & The Battle of Winterfell) the worlds worst general, dependent on others and blind luck to save his arse...but after everything he still expects the world and those around him to fall into his way of thinking! Meaning he’s learned nothing from either Ned or his own experiences. A man like that...who can be so incredibly easily manipulated because he will NOT see how others might react or view things, will make an awful King. But hey he’s a dude, therefore can act as he wants without being called out on it, and is not in anyway subject to the Targaryean madness gene cuz Stark/dick.
Oh and on that note BS to your favourite ‘subverting expectations’. Because you haven’t. You’ve just fed into people’s expectations of you. The biggest trope in all of fantasy is the “outsider boy who comes from nothing to be Hero King”...it’s been so done and done and done again it’s number 1 on the list of Fantasy Tropes. Nice one for absolutely maintaining the status quo in a rare big screen display of the Genre. And no, I don’t mean it had to be a woman....right now I’d give my eye teeth for Ser Davos to end up on the throne. Onion Kings have layers.
And finally a huge BS to your expecting us to accept Dany’s sudden inexplicable murderous rampage against innocents as a properly written culmination of an arc of gradual madness leading to that moment...and yes it was inexplicable *because* it was beyond shite in how *you* wrote it. Extra BS and a bit old fuck you as well to you suggesting her ‘cool’ reaction to the death of a brother who had used, abused and threatened her with physical and sexual violence, treating her as a commodity, her entire life as some kind of indication of madness in a woman. That one is up there, with last weeks ‘Rape and abuse’ made me stronger, Sansa moment....and right alongside with the oh she didn’t smile/cry do what *we* think women should do so there must be something wrong with her shit that affects how women in the public eye are viewed.
Had it been written properly...I would have gone with it. 100 percent. But it was not. Flipping a switch is not how madness works. Madness real madness is a gradual descent into detachment, paranoia and fear...and she was not detached but reasoned, and neither afraid, nor paranoid as they actually *were* out to get her!
And no grieving the death of a ‘child’ and beloved friend, being furious about it...and tired of the actions of those around her who have given her nothing but bad advice, does *not* indicate a descent into madness. It indicates being purely pissed off!
Missandei’s death was awful. Both for the loss of her, herself...but the expectation that somehow her loss (in chains again no less!) would make Dany lose sight of the damage to innocents, of what she had always been trying to do. Missandei ceased to be a person in herself, and became just a god awful cypher to ‘unhinge’ Dany.
I will defend this to the death...and I reiterate again here...any and all deaths Dany participated up to yesterday were justified. Just as much as any of the male characters executions were. And yes including the fucking Tarly’s who were not some innocent pair but men who betrayed *another* woman, and their vows as Bannermen, for their own power hungry ends, to cause Olenna Tyrell’s death and to take Cersei’s deal. A pair who avowedly would have fought on to kill those loyal to Olenna and to Dany, despite being offered a pardon. Men just like the Karstarks who Robb also executed after *their* betrayal of their House for personal gain, to no one’s weeping and wailing.
After years and years of freeing slaves, protecting innocents (even when she had little power), understanding what it was to be on the OTHER side of that power imbalance, her wholesale slaughter of them was just bizarre.
In the end this was a stunningly OOC act, purely a way to back up the bizarre assertions of men worried by a strong woman and people who didn’t know her who had nothing but her GENES and gifts to back up their thoughts on the matter. Purely a way to put a (fucking stupid) man on the throne.
Bullshit guys...bullshit.
#Danerys Targaryen#Jaime Lannister#Game Of Thrones spoilers#Tyrion Lannister#Cersei Lannister#Bullshittery
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Ghosts in Our Past
Author: @sstwins
For: @almostsane-things
Pairings/Characters: Mello, Matt is mentioned
Rating/Warnings: This is like… high PG-13. I don’t think any of it is self-harm but there is definitely self-hatred, some cursing, and mentions of prostitution.
Prompt: Mello w the prompt ‘Ghosts in our past’ (feel free to incorporate personal headcanons)
Author’s notes: I entirely could not communicate the depths of my Mello headcanons into my fanart, so that’s why this happened ahaha. I have a lot of very complex Mello feelings.
Mello’s eyes slowly blinked open, and the immediate wave of pain that hit him, threatening to leave him breathless, made him wish that he could fall back into the blissful oblivion of sleep. He’d been having some sort of dream, but the disorienting aching coming from where the left side of his head lay on the pillow had jarred him roughly back into reality, with whatever dreams he’d had quickly fleeing. He must have gotten fucked up last night, the bleary thought drifted across his mind, in order to have a headache this bad. But with his new awakened state came the uncomfortably scratchy feeling of something digging into his skin below just his temples, snaking down his neck onto his shoulders until Mello sat up with a gasp, clawing at the bandages that he was sure were the source of the pain.
Oh. His breathing took a second to calm as he took in his surroundings. The rancid smell coming up from pizza boxes tossed into the corners and forgotten. Halfway hanging-on curtains dangled over the window frame, diffusing the light that came into the hovel and turning day into night. This wasn’t some crummy hotel after a one-night stand to get some quick cash, and the pain wasn’t just a bad hangover. He was in Matt’s apartment. He was in Matt’s apartment when a week ago he’d expected to be dead, after the explosions didn’t go off as planned and the building threatened to take him down along with it. Then Matt had swooped in, always the knight in shining goggles, and had whisked him away to this shitty apartment. The way he told the story, Mello had been frantic with joy and gratuitous thank you’s upon being rescued, but all that Mello remembered was waking up a day or so after the explosion, head pounding like he’d gotten concussed, and rolling over to see Matt lying next to him in bed as if they’d never been apart.
As if triggered by the memory of the event, Mello’s left side gave a powerful twitch, causing him to clench his teeth. A mirror. He had to get to a mirror. Fumbling his way out of bed, Mello staggered across the floor, nearly tripping over several discarded game consoles. Fuck, Matt was messy. He was worse than Mello was, and that was saying a lot.
The door to the bathroom was right next to the pocket-sized kitchen. The entire space was hardly livable even for one person, Mello noted as he slammed himself into the tiny square washroom, clicking the door firmly shut behind him before he even dared to think about turning towards the mirror. Matt had done some googling, told him it would heal, but he was far from being a certified doctor. Taking in a deep breath to stop his staggering gasps, Mello steeled his nerve and turned towards the glass, his heart sinking at the sight.
Matt’s shitty gauze wrapping had done little to cover up the absolute mess of charred flesh spread from Mello’s cheekbone to shoulder. Angry red inflammation bubbled around the edges of the fabric wrapping him up tight. In some places, blood had soaked through the wrappings, marring the perfect cream color with a sickening shade of salmon. Mello let his gaze travel down his body almost peacefully, holding everything back while he tried to take in a calming breath. But instead of oxygen flowing in, he felt the all-too-familiar sense of rage flaming up and burning though him. His hands acted on their own, scrabbling at his bandages and tearing them off, wishing that he could tear off the skin that lay underneath. When the final shreds of gauze were fluttering to the floor like feathers, Mello collapsed onto the toilet seat and, not for the first time that week, let out a choked sob that he couldn’t quite keep in.
He didn’t deserve this, did he? After all the shit he’d put up with for years, first with Near and then out on his own, without a penny from Wammy’s. Oh no, they’d poured the inheritance into their precious little prodigy, but Mello was smart and resourceful and girlish enough with his slender frame and wispy blonde hair. Prostituting himself back then had been an easy way to gain money, secrets, and from that, power. All he had to do was bat his eyes and act coy, and they would give him whatever he wanted. Members of the mafia, members of the government. Mello had grabbed onto all of their dirty little secrets and used that to climb to the top. And along with that, he’d learned to value himself not just for his brilliant mind, but also for his pretty face. After all, no one was paying for a hotel to hear him debate them about Plato. His intelligence was what allowed him to plan his rise to glory, but his beauty was the commodity that let him get there.
And all of that was gone now. He’d blown up the only place where he had any influence beyond being a good fuck. But that second bit wasn’t true now either, no. No one wanted a scarred-up whore, especially not one who looked as bad as Mello. This wasn’t just a cute little scratch or beauty mark. It was the kind where one look at his face made his stomach plummet until he felt like retching. It was horrific. Ugly.
And burning, still. Mello pulled himself out of his stupor to drop to his knees and dig around in Matt’s cabinets, looking for ointment, burn cream… anything to stop the pain. There were little bottles and tubes down there, but with his eyes blurred with tears he couldn’t read them to see which was what Matt usually put on. Bitterly, Mello swiped his arm across his eyes, frustrated as the tears didn’t stop from his application of force. Was this what his life was going to be now? Sprawled naked across the floor of Matt’s hovel’s tiny bathroom, not even able to take care of himself much less do anything to stop Kira. L would think he was pathetic. L would be ashamed of him. Not that he hadn’t always been. Mello had always been the bastard successor. Not the one who was the most desirable. He knew that, because if Near had threatened to strike out on his own, they never would have let him go. You keep precious things close to your chest, but Mello was a breakable commodity, not even really needed. He was the backup. Always number two, and now the only things he had managed to scrape up on his own were gone.
Eyes still completely glassed over, Mello fought against the stinging tears with another wracking fit of anger. His fingers twisted and scratched at his burned skin, striking out against himself, delighting momentarily in the way that the fragile regrowth of his flesh tore easily, causing blood to drain down his arm. But then the pain set in a hundredfold and he slammed his head back into the unforgiving wood of the bathroom door, reveling in the way that it made him see stars and momentarily took his other pain away. If it wasn’t for Matt, he didn’t think he could stand any of it. He wanted to drown himself in the bathtub or overdose on the pain pills that were so temptingly only a few inches away, but he couldn’t. Matt had come for him, saved him. Left him alone all day while he got cash under the impression that Mello wouldn’t do anything stupid.
Mello let his head rest against the door as he took in deep breaths until the hot tears subsided, replaced with an unsettling sense of forced calm. He was thinking and feeling too much. If he let it all out, it would destroy him entirely. Mello knew better than anyone about the explosive power of anger. Better to bottle it up and release it in small doses, a bit for every time he looked in the mirror until maybe one day he could handle the image in the glass without heaving.
Next to the painkillers in the cabinet was a fresh roll of gauze. Mello took a glance down at his bloody arm, reached for the bandages, and numbly started wrapping his skin back up. Maybe there was something to be said about the devil you couldn’t see. You could pretend it just didn’t exist.
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they write happy endings, don’t they?
(Varric, In Hushed Whispers.)
Varric had always been damn good at denial.
It had served him well over the years, hadn’t it? It helped when he spent half his twenties taking care of his mother and she died anyway. It’d been there for him and Bianca when they sent their futile letters back and forth, when they kept their secrets and lost the reason for keeping them. Denial had kept him from dealing with Bartrand for as long as possible. Denial had helped him ignore the Qunari, the mages, the templars until the city came crashing down around his ears.
Denial. It worked. So what made this any different? This musty, shitty cell underneath Redcliffe Castle was a piece of cake, even if they’d stripped him of Bianca, his backup daggers, his lockpicking kit, his emergency fountain pen and journal. He’d been in worse scrapes.
All he had to do was find something, anything, that would let him pick the lock, and he’d be on his way. Even if the Herald had vanished and all hope seemed lost, well, maybe it would work itself out. Some of his stories had happy endings, after all.
***
It wasn’t working out so well.
He managed to pick the lock the first night with a bit of metal sheared off his boot. They caught him one floor up and kicked him in the ribs until he coughed up blood.
He picked the lock the second night with the pin of his belt buckle, even though it was hard to breathe; every expansion of his chest seared. They caught him on the stairs. His nose streamed from a hit to the face.
He picked the lock the third night with a button he’d ripped off his jacket and sharpened against the edge of one of the bars. They caught him in the hall, his breathing too noisy. His ears rang where they boxed him in the head.
After that they cut out his buttons and buckles from his clothes, traded out the locks, and kept a guard on him constantly. His head swam and his hands itched, aching to do more.
He’d been too eager, too rushed to get out of this place. Was it his imagination, or were the walls closing in? He’d never liked tight spaces. He’d have been a terrible Orzammar dwarf.
***
He was so fucking bored.
He wondered idly where they’d put Blackwall. He wondered how the Herald and the Tevinter mage had disappeared in a flash. He wondered who the guards were, what Alexius was up to, why they’d chosen Redcliffe and not someplace warmer. Everything was cold and damp and moldering. And even though the Tevinters had no interest in Mabari, the place still smelled, overwhelmingly, of dog.
He tried chatting up the guards; pulled out all the stops. Friendly banter. Insults. Meandering stories. Nothing got a response. Sometimes he asked for a pen and paper. “Ever heard of me?” he asked more than once, with a winning grin and a cock of his head. “Hard in Hightown? C’mon. I know for a fact Maevaris Tilani called it ‘trash, but enjoyable trash.’ You can’t get better than that in Tevinter.” They just looked at him with flat eyes in blank faces. Whatever. They were probably all weird on blood magic.
He tried listening instead. Sometimes they did talk amongst themselves. Usually stupid things, what was for dinner, who was punished for trying to run away, who Alexius had chewed out most recently. Sometimes there were interesting tidbits about a prisoner upstairs, a woman whose capture had apparently been quite the coup. Sometimes there were rumors of an Elder One, information that was disquieting enough that he had to stop listening and start pacing. He knew he should pay attention, so that if – no, when – he escaped he’d have useful intel, but the information seemed less like a commodity and more like a death sentence here on the inside. So he paced sometimes and shut his ears and told himself he’d done his part.
Pacing lost its fun, though, when he discovered something new in the left corner of his cell. The ground didn’t look right. He thought at first he was imagining it, even though he could feel it pressing against his eardrums like a mosquito’s whine.
He tried to ignore it for a few days. Paced and paced around it, refusing to examine the corner where the ground looked wrong.
Eventually, though, he couldn’t stand it any longer. He brushed away the dirt on top, revealing red lyrium crystals creeping out of the ground, glittering in the dim torchlight. His hand froze over the red specks, trembling.
He stared at the red for a moment. A single frozen moment, his heart a jagged stutter in his chest, his mind a howling blank. Then the mosquito whine was sheer and sharp in his ears, and he remembered the song in Bartrand’s home, remembered the shimmering hum that Hawke and Merrill and Anders could not hear.
“Fuck,” he muttered. A ragged breath, and then a shout tore itself from his lungs. “Fuck this shit!”
***
Varric scratched at his chin. Too much beard. You’d have to put an arrow in him before he braided the mess that kept trying to grow; he might be losing it, but not enough to go full Orzammar. His fingernails were jagged against his skin like a pen nib tearing through thin paper. If only they’d let him shave.
His guards were too busy with other things, though. Apparently Empress Celene was dead and the world was overrun with demons. You know, normal shit.
He had his own issues. He didn’t feel so good, these days. Kind of dizzy. Kind of sick. His bones hummed on the inside, trying to match the song of the red lyrium growing in his cell. It was growing larger every day and was now several inches tall. He stayed as far away from it as he could, but it still messed with his head, its song inescapable.
He tried to drown it out. He didn’t like to sing; he’d told Hawke that more than once. “I don’t sing, Hawke.” His voice cracked when he asked it to carry a tune, even more than it did normally. He’d always had only whiskey and broken glass to work with when it came to that. But he liked to hum, liked the little dwarven tune he’d repurposed for Bianca’s song, and it thrummed in his throat like a talisman, the words mixing and sliding around in his head but the melody strong in his mouth.
Sometimes he tried talking over the sound, when humming was too hard. It worked, a little, but it made him feel like a madman. At first he simply narrated what he was thinking.
“Day two hundred and seventy. I think. I’m guessing. My captors have still somehow failed to provide me with a comfy bed, good ale, and paper and pen. I’m getting pretty pissed off, and so are my publishers and adoring fans.”
But the days were flimsy things, and it was lonely talking to himself, so at times he talked to others. It wasn’t crazy if you knew they weren’t really there, right?
“So, Bianca. If things had been different – where do you think we’d be? I’d like to think of us kicking ass and pissing off the Ancestors. You’d be the first surfacer Paragon and I’d be your loyal paramour, and it’d be just great, Bianca, you listen to me.” But thinking of Bianca and what might have been was a surefire way to get him melancholy. Funny how that worked. He tried again.
“Bartrand. I hate the way this shit sings. Is this a dwarf thing, that we can hear it more than other people? Because if so, that’s damn unfair. I don’t know what that idol told you to do, or why it hit you so hard.” He stared at his hands. Remembered a bloodied blade. “How’d we get here, Bartrand? Brothers are supposed to look out for each other, right? You tried to kill me, but I did you one better. Did I do it because I hated you, or because I cared about you, you idiot? I’m… still not sure which is worse, and which it was.” No, no, that wasn’t helping, wasn’t helping at all –
“Hawke. Shit, it’s good to see you. Where are you? You probably noticed I stopped sending letters. That’s because these bastards won’t give me any paper. I’d write on my leather coat if I had to, Hawke, you of all people deserve ruining a good piece of tailoring. You deserved so much more than what Kirkwall gave you; you were too damn good for the place. I wish I could have –”
But that was too painful to say, so he fell back against the wall of his cell, staring at the baleful red lyrium, and wondering, wondering, what it was doing to him.
***
The red was in his throat, his eyes, his hands, belly bones skin tongue teeth. He was drowning slowly, even with his head above the water. The song pounded in his ears. When he tried to hum Bianca’s tune, the red whined in his throat, twining a weird, high weave through his gruff voice.
His hands hurt. Fingers stiffened, didn’t want to work. He wasn’t sure how well he could hold a pen now. It scared him less than it should have.
The song of the red lyrium wasn’t such a bad thing, really. It had a complexity to it, a beauty that Varric almost thought he could read if he turned his head and listened hard. “All right, Bartrand,” he muttered. “I’ll grant you that. It’s pretty, I guess.” His hands curled and uncurled into fists, pulsing with the rhythm of the red. It was all around him. It was him.
He kept listening, and it sounded like a song he knew once upon a time and then forgot.
It sounded like a story.
#varric#varric tethras#dragon age: inquisition#da:i#in hushed whispers#red lyrium#angst#dragon age#varric x bianca#(implied)
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Congratulations, JENN! You’ve been accepted for the role of CRESSIDA Admin Rosey: I had never expected Cressida to give me a reckoning. I expected her to be soft, malleable, somewhat broken by what her father has done to her. But you have given me all of that, Jenn, but ten thousand times more. You’ve given me her brokenness and made it iron, her kindness and made it gold. This was not at all what I was expecting when I thought of Cressida, but it’s much, much better than that. I am on the edge of my seat when it comes to the wild card that is this Madam Duval. I know I won’t be disappointed. Please read over the checklist and send in your blog within 24 hours.
WELCOME TO THE MOB.
Out of Character
Alias | Jenn
Age | 21+
Preferred Pronouns | She/her
Activity Level | With work, I’ll probably get around to writing a couple replies at lunch and in the evenings when I’m home. So, that’s a few hours each day which is like a solid 6/10 for me :)
Timezone | GMT+8
Current/Past RP Accounts | Both are inactive @lcarian & @littleflvme
In Character
Character | Cressida // Celeste Duval
You look in the mirror. Your bloodied mouth twists into a frown, and your eyes shine with disdain. What a damn waste of space. Yet again, you disappoint. “What wrong have I done? How much better would I be if I had been born a son?” It is unjust, unwarranted that your sex is deemed inferior all because you can make babies and not be the one who held a cock. “They are fucking wrong.”
You seethe at the sight of your name written in tasteless, serif font on the header of your journal. You strike it out, wanting to be rid of your family’s dictation and those dull letters, C. DUVAL. Instead, in the center of the page you put down these words in pink marker—permanence above all else. Your script is bold—vertical strokes, both straight and rounded, penned thickly in the cursive hand of not a child but a budding woman who, underneath it all, radiates conviction.
I AM CELESTE DUVAL
AND I WILL RULE THE
DAMN WORLD.
What drew you to this character? | We’d love to hear what about this character’s bio caught your attention! Make this as long or as short as you desire!
Celeste is a law unto herself. What she is made out of is nothing short of sheer will power—a storm with skin, a sun capable of razing whole kingdoms. She breathes the lethal combination of initiative and annihilation and perhaps that’s what her parents were too stupid to realise before branding her useless. She is, in fact, malleable and they lacked the faculty and interest in moulding her due to superficial beliefs. But blessed by the Fates, she had the propensity to be great and she knew that. She knew it in her very bones. I can’t help but find that she is an independent character with a complex engineering capable of masochistic deeds which she alone has accomplished. Because like Cressida, Celeste is painfully aware that in this very masculine world her sexuality is her advantage and power and acts on the fact.
But for all her cunning and edge, her fetters come in the form of family and a nauseating amount of obligation. In that sense, I feel that she’s very relatable—that gnawing feeling that compels you to make your parents proud. She doesn’t care for anyone’s feelings or reputation but her family’s, and even then it’s not out of love but necessity despite how contradicting it might come across. Take into account that she’s been born and bred in an environment that constantly exhorts her to seek the validation of her parents. Celeste is a commodity, a subject of the machinations of her father and she knows it well but she’ll be damned before she repeats the tragedies of Cressida (or her own father, for the matter). She won’t be dragged into the gutter the same way.
In short, I choose Celeste because she is a growing mastermind. I choose her because she is a woman capable of pushing past her boundaries, her liabilities—of brandishing her arsenal of wiles and manipulation at the most opportune moments,—of brilliant intellect and drive. I choose her because her family underestimates her, that she’s merely a chess piece to be moved then tossed aside, yet she protects them and I find that very admirable. I choose Celeste Duval because she bore the bitter cost of being sold into a loveless bargain—because she has long lost her rose-coloured glasses and has in its place adopted a more cynical view of the world, a world in which she is determined to be a wolf among dogs.
What is a future plot idea you have in mind for the character? | Where do you see this character developing, and what kind of actions would you have them take to get there? 3 future plot ideas would be preferable.
FAREWELL, BASTARD // The biggest thorn in her side now is a slippery one. Easton. Craven. Deplorable Capulet scum. It’s a dynamic I am much too excited to explore. The angst will be one to speak of for centuries. Celeste wants to make him eat his words. He never much concerned her before but he made things personal, so she’s out for blood. A Duval isn’t offended without meeting out consequences. While I am pretty much open to anything regarding this unfortunate duo, I would love to write about the challenges Celeste will face in overcoming this villian in her story. Whether she fails or succeeds…I imagine it’s just a matter of moving the right pieces at the right time. “My turn.”
FOR TO BE WISE AND LOVE EXCEEDS MAN’S MIGHT // “Do you take Tomas Sabello to be your lawfully wedded husband?” The gods must have spared Celeste no mercy shackling her to Tomas. She is nothing if not fiery but with Tomas she feels…well, that’s the problem. She doesn’t feel anything for him that she wouldn’t feel for a mosquito. “I do.” At this point, she isn’t sure if he’s in love with her (perhaps, more the idea of her) or in love with love itself. If Tomas is smart, he’ll figure out that Celeste won’t be falling for him anytime soon. But when life gives you lemons…you make the best out of Tomas Sabello. To me, this connection is rather intriguing because I can see Celeste exploiting Tomas the way she has been exploited, to steer him to gain whatever it is she wants given his connections to the mob and his industry. But I can also see him threatening her happiness more than he already does. He unknowingly wields a double-edged sword—destroy her happiness and save her reputation, or destroy her name and let her grapple at whatever contentment she can seize. Cressida’s only odds stacked in her favour is that Troilus is ill informed on the subtleties of war.
THOU LAY'ST EVERY GASH THAT LOVE HATH GIVEN ME // And take those gashes she will, willingly. I want to say their love is the type that moves mountains, that swallows whole oceans, that transcends all time and space. “Alas, I cannot. Not yet, mia bella.” Isabella Gagliano—she’s smart, she’s beautiful, resourceful and most importantly, she’s honest. She brings out the best in Celeste (when they’re alone). Being together in Verona is a challenge Celeste did not see coming. On one side, a Capulet maw is waiting to devour her. On the other, Cupid’s bow struck true. And around her, the world watches. To be in love with Isabella is to be caught between a rock and a hard place. It’s only a matter of time before Isabella becomes tired of hiding. The truth will out and when the time comes, then there lies their final test—will love triumph over all? Or will power and respectability?
DO TO THIS BODY WHAT EXTREMITY YOU CAN // Wolves are known to trick guard dogs by sending out a female wolf. In the same manner, Celeste’s sexuality can be put to good use when brokering deals or negotiating an accord. I can see this being more than the stereotypical plot where a woman uses her allure to get what she wants. This touches on sexual extortion/exploitation in a very real way. There is so much space for flexibility with this plot and subplots where I can see her forging alliances, making enemies, making more promises she doesn’t intend to keep, etc. But overall, I see this as a very developmental plot for her character in that she will have no choice but to finally see herself for who she is and decide if she likes what she sees.
ONE TOUCH OF NATURE MAKES THE WHOLE WORLD KIN // I’m pretty sure she isn’t the only one in the mob to have been coerced (or “gently pushed”) into the position she’s in right now. This plot is not just about making friends—it’s about making friends in the right places be it Montague or Capulet. Celeste is ironically very much like her father. She’s ambitious. “And ambition can take you to very dangerous places. Better you cease your nonsense than fail.” Thanks, dad. But obviously, it takes more than words to deter her. Celeste is set on climbing out of her father’s shadow and making a name for herself but she can’t do it alone. I’m talking bribes, underhand dealings, secret arrangements It’ll be a nice bonus if they take out a few people on their hit list on their way up. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, right?
MEN PRIZE THE THING UNGAINED MORE THAN IT IS // Is the grass greener on the other side? Cressida’s whole story revolves around her being traded to the enemy. If shit does go down, this will be an extremely, 100% intense story driven plot device that can be used to spin a new tale for Celeste where she, like Cressida, is forced to or willingly betrays the Montagues to save herself. However, like all the plots I’ve listed so far, I’d love for this to be an organic progression for Celeste’s character especially in the choice she makes if she chooses to stay loyal to or double-cross the Montagues. Her sense of loyalty and obligation is an integral part of her identity and while I can see her evolving as a person, I wouldn’t want to force or distort it.
Are you comfortable with killing off your character? | I am, yes! Though Celeste promises she won’t go down alone, if at all.
In Depth
In-Character Interview: The following questions must be answered in-character, and in para form (quotations, actions written out if applicable, etc). There is no minimum or maximum limit for your response - simply answer as you would if you were playing the character.
(tw: death mention)
There are two ways to end this interview—one where she spares a man, and another where she damns him. Won’t you stay to find out which you want more?
***
What is your favorite place in Verona?
Anywhere but home, if that’s what you can even call it, Celeste wants to say. The words were already poised on the tip of her tongue but the hearsay that will plague her hence promises too much displeasure especially if word were to come back of her less than picture perfect life. Nevertheless, she lets her lips part as if secrets were to be spilled that instance but the words were different from her thoughts.
“Oh, you know what? I’m thrilled that you asked,” she says, an answer already taking form, waiting to be divulged. “My bath,” the tilting of her lips and closing of eyes as she inhales paint a picture of scented candles and a soaked body. “It’s very relaxing in the water. We’ve just had our house renovated. Tomas has such an excellent eye for design, you know. It’s never looked better.” The lies drip like sugar—sticky like a spider’s web and she at the center of it, a black widow waiting to strike. “You should come have a look one day.”
What does your typical day look like?
Now that was a question worthy of the likes of Lawrence Vernon—borderline prying, equal parts intrusive and dubious. But the limelight demands blood and that was the only currency that really matters. So, she bares her teeth with a grin, sweet as the devil and even slicker still. She, a darling of Verona, has more to say with a smile than with talking when she employs her perfect blend of truth and deception.
“Well, as you know I’m rarely on vacation here. Work takes up most of my time. Actually, we just did the photo shoot in the heart of the city—it’s for my next fall collection. So, it’s mostly just replying emails and finalizing edits with the photographer before the big showcase. A business cannot run itself, no?” she laughs, pausing to ascertain his satisfaction with her answer. He laughs with her. “But I find that taking a walk around the city after lunch helps with inspiration.” And allows time for a detour certainly. Emissary work always came first even in the middle of a work day. “We’re planning on launching in August. I can’t tell you much more than that I’m afraid. Or else my publicist will have my head!”
What has been your biggest mistake thus far?
Allowing mediocrity to run through my veins. The fear of failing is so ingrained in her that it only takes two seconds before she registers her heart beating harder ever so slightly. It was a disgusting flaw, one she finds nearly impossible from which to separate. But she does. She stops, her mouth pouts in ponderance as if she isn’t waiting to end the interview already. “I love my fashion line. I love it, I do. My only regret is that I hadn’t started it sooner.”
What has been the most difficult task asked of you?
Her whole life has been a task but one that takes the cake has to be pretending she wasn’t in love with Isabella, especially now when she was so close. The woman is life itself and without her, Celeste finds it hard to breathe. No, impossible. But pretences must be upheld lest the Fates be too tempted to lay waste to her even further. “Two things. One, building this business from scratch. Two, outgrowing my father’s shadow,” she laughs again though this time it doesn’t reach her eyes. As intended, the man fails to notice having been distracted by the way she folds her bare legs one over the other, the slit of her skirt riding up a small degree. “You know how it is. A woman with her own business is rather a challenge in itself, isn’t it? Thankfully, I’ve got all the support I need.”
The night went on as most interviews would go—a meeting at a nice restaurant, dinner, a drink, maybe two and that was it. But when they were the last two to leave, Celeste couldn’t help but feel something amiss. “What are your thoughts on the war between the Capulets and the Montagues?” she asks the man instead. Sharp eyes turned up at the question—a final question. It was what she had been waiting for. The perfect opportunity. “Ah,” she finally realises what was wrong, “We’ve run out of wine.”
She reaches up for the bottle and begins to pour. “Are we friends, Signor Henri? You know friends don’t lie. Let’s pretend we are. So, I’ll be honest for the first time tonight.” The glass is almost full by then and the bottle all but vertical like the hand of a clock at midnight—his time was nearly up. She answers her for him. “The Capulets are the dirt beneath the gold, a most unwelcome stain on this city. And you, dear friend, have been propagating their agenda despite our…propositions that you don’t.” The war will forever be a pissing contest, she cannot deny, but what does it matter if she plays for the winning side? “You should have done your work better. Damiano isn’t happy with what you’ve been publishing about us.” She says the words with pride. Us. The Montagues.
The glass brims with wine—scarlet overflows, crimson spreads and stains the white cloth beneath. His time was up and black clad men entered the room, the harbingers of his end drew near. All she had to do now is tell them whether to spare him or doom him. Celeste holds the bottle in her hand like the life she now holds between her fingers, tenderly, eagerly. Was this not what she wanted? Power. She sets the bottle down, signalling the men.
“Lucky for you, you won’t need to do any more damage control. We’ll say your last piece for you.”
The devil take thee, indeed.
Extras: If you have anything else you’d like to include (further headcanons, an inspo tag, a mock blog, etc), feel free to share it here! This is OPTIONAL.
PLAYLIST // a measure of ascendance
MOCKBLOG // ttitaness
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The sound of chains rattle the tent.
The young judge paces from side to side, lips curled upward before he drops on four and moves to the other end of tent, looking for something, anything, to little avail as he finds the makeshift furnishes empty as his bowels. And he lets a frustrated growl, great.
Just. Fan-Fucking-tastic.
he moves to the exit, only to find himself cut short of the movement by the neck, body following fowards but soon enough loosing balance, forcing him to far as his head and neck remain in place. He shakes his head stubbornly and snorts as he turns his head then.
Claw-less hands grip sorely to the magic construct made from his own magic, taken away in prototype spells to buildn a more resilient binding. Who the fuck did that? he doesn’t know, but likely it was one of the cooks that slipped in to leave food while they were away hunting, sneaky bastards. They were lucky to catch him with the guard low. He was willing to take a lot of things, go through several unpleasant experiences, but this? This was both ridiculous and...
And...
“ Ah, judge Rhowën, good to see you awake. “
Ears snap to the source of the voice, before his head jerks slowly to his direction, fur rising in anger as he quickly snaps forward, only to be stopped again by the chains, earning a choked bark on his behalf, the man sighs to the sight, only stepping lightly away from the mage’s reach. merely staring with sad as the other snarls, growls and barks while trying to reach the guy.
“ Sir, I am going to listen, but you need to calm down. “
Like hell he would.
“ Sir, this is both for your and our well beings, nothing was wearing them down, weren’t they? They needed to be cut, if not they would not only hurt people, but yourself too eventually, ever seen a dog with overgrown nails? Nasty shit. “
And that would matter to him because?
“ Sir, at the pace you seven are going, they will end up curling and piercing your fingers, and they were just getting sharper, not shorter, that is a big hazard with you guys as you are. “
...
“ Look, I know it was done poorly, but otherwise you wouldn’t have liked it. “
And who would?
They had literally chosen to declaw him, and likely the rest if their equally agitated responses were anything to go by, pacing around the place and throwing everything around. Did they know what it felt like? he could feel the lack of the claws as his fingers bleed subtly, paws humid and fur wet as his flesh screamed the wrongness of cauterized wounds inflicted by removing what once were nails. All because someone just couldn’t wait a little more...
And on top of it, they stole their papers, their research on figuring how to wield their magic without killing themselves over it. wasting them over what? A muzzle? like if they were dogs? It was insulting. It was Humiliating. And it Hurt.
Was this how things were going to be? Humiliation before death? Anything but some sense of compassion from even their own people? Even as they may be killing themselves for them? What would it take for them? How low would the put them, what was next? a collar and being treated like some pet? demeaning nicknames? a dog’s bowl instead of a place and some messy scraps?
“ Calm down, sir, or I’ll be force to do it. “
Calm, he wants him to be calm. He stops, lips curling towards a mocking smile, dangerously on edge. As his throat lets some wheezing laughs leave him, or a similar noise warped in the struggling body. Somewhere between processing what he has been asked, and trying to figure out a way to react to being told to be just fine with it.
Like hell he would.
They have been tolerant, patient, fair and the best they could try to be. They had given them, criminals and civilians alike, the chances. Everything. And this was how it was their treatment. It was disappointing, frustrating, insulting, It was quite despair inducing... but it wasn’t just that, oh, there were many things he felt, but above all of the things he was feeling?
HE FELT ANGRY.
And he knew it was ANGER what he felt, even if he hadn’t felt it for a while now, thanks to Kairos’ spell or drugs. He knew the telltale boiling feeling crawling through his chest, clawing at his veins onto every inch of his being. Intoxicating his mind with a terrifying ease. And how could it not? He was right to feel so. It was perfectly justified to feel that, his condition be damned, he had every right to be angry, no... he had every right to be pissed to hell, heaven and back.
And he had every right to want to tear this man apart, leave naught but rendered shreds of meat, and minced flesh as he mutilated his corpse. He had every right to be homicidal over it, wrong or not. He was their superior, and he had been more than fair and his treatment was shat upon, then spit on and buried in endless waste. It was only NATURAL, it was only RIGHT to be so. He and the rest had been far too coddling of others, far too easy on them. Perhaps it was time to put them on their places, right? This one would be the first, but this time? Living would be a commodity.
He wanted to demean things in such a way, then it was fine, he would give him a reason for them to decide putting muzzles on them, he would give them a reason to knock him out. And he would make sure they knew if they crossed any more lines, they would just up, and leave everyone to rot with the consequences of their own damn stupidity, himself included. Either way he wouldn’t feel them for long, would he? No, he wouldn’t, he would lose himself soon enough.
Just like he was going to do now.
Was it pety? yes, but it mattered to him no more, and he actually felt thrilled at the idea of the expression on the mans face. The scents of a prey realising its mistake only for it to be far to late to change a single thing. He could forgive many things, he had done it many times, but right now? Right now he didn’t felt like forgiving, no. He felt like punishing their foolishness. He was done coddling the fearfull foolish actions of theirs, they feared they would act a certain way and betrayed their trust? Fine, for every action, an equal opposite reaction.
Something his magic seemed to agree with, even as it struggled. It even cheered at the willingness to act on it, egging him further and pleading to be used, even if it was weak. Who was he to question hat truly, he was chained and with a muzzle, without reach towards the man.
The sight was enough to alarm the man, he knew, as eyes narrowed and he pulled out the object. Earning a vicious snarl as lips curl towards sadistic anticipation, stance dropping as he slowly circles closer tot he furniture, an action the man is not ignorant to. And quickly responds with professional reflexes as he lauches himself to the other side, twisting fast enough to shield himself as he grabs the wooden object, narrowly missing the needle meant to pacify him. Before shattering the item and throwing the remains at him.
It was enough to piece a hole, as the tent was unprotected, and kill the two guards outside along a few other soldiers, did he care? not really, it was just some collateral damage now. And quite a good reminder to not cross them ever again, something he and the others would let clear once the found the ones who both suggested this and did it.
But right now he was going to focus first on this nuisance, this pest that have been bold to think, just because he’s in his situation, he was raise his ass and think himself above everything, and above the law. All he needed was just some seconds more, just a little more, his magic was already fighting the fading medicines put in his bloodstream. Just a little more and he would test his own spell’s fragility. After all, they were just the prototypes.
If he was honest, it was surprising how much control he still had, despite giving up self restrain. Perhaps that was one of their issues? Perhaps if they gave up control on their own volition and at their own pace it wouldn’t be so hard on their bodies, it was a curious thought. One he could see his man didn’t appreciate it, but oh well, it wasn’t like he was going to complain for much longer.
Ah, there it was.
He can already feel the poison burning ar his arms as he lets amused pants leave his throat, not unlike the rasped breath bordering another snarl. And hands pull at his heck, clawing at the collar formed as he focuses on the feeling of his absent claws, every detail and sensation once given from them. So his magic was quick to oblige, following his memories as it coils and compresses within his fingers, searing the flesh further before closing his wounds.
It doesn’t take long before the spell buckles, too rigid to fight back something it wasn’t built to take head on. Perhaps if it had been more malleable in its inner workings. But unfortunately for the young soldier, it snapped away as he cried out for more guards. And soon enough Rhowën was clawing in a similar manner to his muzzle, before tearing it apart and letting his jaws open with a wilder, more vicious growl. As inhuman as his visage as canines and sharp teeth were exposed in his rabid maws, drool already falling as the corner of his lips curl upwards.
He should’ve left him alone to calm down, instead of corner and press him further against his wounds. But alas, like any fool that didn’t know anything about all things wild, he and the others pressed them... Well, it wasn’t going to be his fault if they prompted him to bite, literally. He probably wouldn’t enjoy himself for long, and some fail-safe would kick in soon, but he would make the best of it whilst he was conscious, and sure that the mess was discouraging enough for any future ruse of their own men, or any thought close to such.
It was fine, really, he’s been accumulating too much. He needed to let go some of it you know? How much harm would it do him biting a few idiots?
Kairos forgive is lack of self care, but honestly he was done for tonight.
#|mention| cosmosfated#|ic|#|just as the sentinel?| Rhowën#|carpe fatum| event#|event|#|carpe fatum|#[don't mind my soso writting#I is tired and stuff#anyways have also an angry Rho]
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A Hot Button Commodity
There’s a button that stands in the center of the city.
It’s always been there- from the moment the high corkscrew shapes of apartments were built around it and from the moment when it was surrounded by little skyscrapers as cheap as children’s toys and from the littlest microscopic huts that dotted the surface. It’s been there- slowly rising a little every day, slowly gaining a little height, slowly going. Like the rest of us, I suppose. We’re all slowly going.
That’s just how it is- how its always been, really, though we pretend it hasn’t because we dream of fast cars and fast dreams and fast recovery. I slowly make my way around the house, sometimes less slow when the moment strikes, sometimes even slower when everything pulls my brain in a few new directions it shouldn’t be going. I slowly do school work, slowly pick my way into people’s brains through their mouths and slowly draw connected red lines from our slow history to our equally slow reality.
Slow going on games, making and playing them. Slow going on writing, reading, living, honestly. It’s all a blessing, how slow it is, with my folks and my brother.
That’s my sister in the corner. We don’t talk about her anymore.
My brother’s been getting good at drawing lately. Still slow going, but he’s good. His fingers still shake when he picks up a pencil, and he keeps looking over his shoulder. Sometimes he cries so hard he slows down more. Tears sluggishly making their way down his face, hands continually dropping the pencil, and he still draws fun cartoons. Flat little curves and lines, frozen in an emotion and slowly going to change it so they can make their own little faces. It’s nice.
Sometimes I watch, but most times I end up wandering off. I wander off a lot. My brain’s a little twisted inside my skull, you know? All of our brains are twisted in this house. Have been for a long time- festering and twisting, melting bit by bit and freezing in place. My brother’s brain’s been twisting around a lot, but sometimes my pop’s brain twists even more. My mom’s brain is the strangest- it twists itself, and then she acts like it isn’t twisted in the slightest. It’s almost like a party trick.
Well, it’s not as great a party trick as her other one. The one where she says she’s doing things fast, living in the fast lane, when really, she’s sitting perfectly still. It’s funny to watch her hair sweep past, long grey curls splattering against the wall as if there was a wind there to pick it up. Even when she just sits and watches television, her hair is always flying out, wild as a storm cloud as it catches the artificial light of modern gladiatorial combat. My mother may actually be onto something there, and it’s really admirable- but my pop says no one in this house is moving at all, and he throws a tantrum sometimes over it. Slow going for him and his talk, too slow for his liking.
That’s fine though. I like slow going just as is. It’s easier to see the change in our brains when I catch glimpses of my pop’s hippocampus dribbling down his chin, or the inside of my mom’s mouth glowing with red-hot embers the moment something brushes past. Or my own brain, twisted in a strange way in directions I can vaguely remember feeling knot up, but can never really remember even as I stare in the mirror.
No, our brains aren’t twisting because of my sister. They’ve always been like this- they didn’t twist up any when it happened.
Oh, but I wandered off again. Sorry. That happens a lot, so you’re going to have to get used to that. Let me start over…
There’s a button in the center of the city. There used to be a lot of stairs leading up to it, but then they dismantled some of them. They’ve been adding an elevator lately, though- quite a few of those, done up in pretty white stuff that could be marble (but where did they get that? marble’s been out for a good couple of centuries, titanium and coal are in and here to stay) with gorgeous coils of gold running along the entire exterior.
Sometimes I like to walk to the city square just to look at it, and think about what sort of slow going it must have taken to fill its veins with gushing gold. It’s all gold and gleaming, and there are no workers for it.
A lot of people in the city like the button on the pedestal, so that’s strange. Or maybe it’s strange that people like the button at all. But, that’s not my business to think like that- it’s everyone’s right to have the button there in the city, rising on its pretty pedestal up towards the clouds, and I don’t really know much about that sort of thing. The red lines from history sometimes dig into my skin, trying to thread directly to my veins, but that’s only when I think too hard about something that’s always been, so I just ignore it and snip the lines away.
What do you mean, what does my sister think of the button? What the fuck does it matter?
It hurts my head too much…
I know you didn’t mean that though, so let’s keep going. You have some empathy, don’t you? We all have empathy. We all do. Really. We just don’t let it interfere, because emotions make you stupid, like pop sometimes is when he lets his emotions get the best of him and his brain twists and makes him want to graft his skin into the bed and never have to leave. But that’s much too slow going- even for me. He’s fine eventually anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.
The corkscrew apartments keep getting loftier. It’s really a sight, you know- all gleaming titanium with coal smoke signals all on the top, adding this really mysterious air to the city as you go on through. It covers the sun, sometimes, leaving the only real light source the enormous glass fibers that float in strange shapes around the button. It’s a circle of multicolored light then, dazzling as it bounces off the charcoal sky and the steely buildings. It’s almost like a beacon, up there- and absolutely anyone can just walk up to that button, especially on those days, just for a little pressing.
The button itself? I think I like it a lot. It’s gleaming. It’s been a part of the city since forever, since the founders used it. It’s gotten loftier too, gotten higher than the clouds themselves. It’s part of our identity, here. It’s carved a place in our brains and inserted itself.
People like what it can do. One minute. Forty-five people, most randomly selected, unless the button presser has a list of names. Then, the forty-five have their bodies twist up and shake around, and there’s some screaming. Then silence. Their skulls dissolve like candy floss and it’s just there, their brains- maybe some teeth or an eyeball, if you’re lucky- melded and kept in that twisted shape forever. There isn’t really a challenge if their brains are outside, though- so I don’t like that aftermath very much.
Then again… my sister’s brains didn’t twist until they were outside of her head.
So I guess I’m happy I get to see that. I was getting tired of her stupidly static, vibrating brain anyway. It never changed. Don’t get me wrong, I like slow going- slow and steady wins the race and whatever sort of idiom you want to insert there. But her brains never moved an inch. History’s blood red lines etch strange words like ‘innocent’ into my forearm, but that can’t be right, because there’s no such thing as an innocent.
Even those brats in my sister’s class watching her brains twist outside her head weren’t innocent. They screamed and cried, sure, and it must have been unpleasant to watch- we have empathy, see, we see their plight- but when they walked out and begged us to do something about the button, that’s just their guilty emotions coming out. They didn’t try to do anything to stop whoever pushed the button. The police did that, took his strange, ugly pale form in, and on tv, it was easy to see where his brains are twisting and slowly writhing in his mouth. The police did everything. Sure, I’m sorry to those kids, but they didn’t do jack shit. They don’t know anything about the world.
You can’t live your entire life fearing one little button. In fact… I’ve been thinking of embracing the idea of it lately.
There are people who use the button for fun. They choose forty-five inhuman things, like deer or moose or whatever they want, and they do that to make the brains more fun to eat. There are people who do it to things without brains, though I don’t really understand the point in that. If I were to use it, though, I think I’d want to see human brains. Not that I ever would! Or. I mean. I won’t lie, I probably would.
We’ve all had those fantasies, right? You’ve had them. You, in your prime, wrestling the button away and pressing it, saving the ones you love. You, taking the button and killing off all those inglorious bastards doing crimes and wrongs. Sure, we’re all flimsy and weak here, and sure we can’t really do much if someone uses the button on us- but. It’s nice to pretend that we’re all still running around in the military, almost dying in the line of duty, or gallivanting around poor neighborhoods where they might have someone about to use the button because they don’t agree.
Nothing wrong with a little power fantasy, in my opinion. So what if forty-five people have their brains on the outside? It’s not like they do anything after that anyway…
What do you mean, my sister is trying to say something? She doesn’t have vocal chords.
(We took them out because she wouldn’t stop sobbing, not for months and months and months and months and months and months and)
And yes, I’m very sorry about what happened to her- she was my sister after all, and I loved her very much, like I love the rest of my family. I adore my family to pieces. But now she stays in her little corner and gets to be nice and quiet and still, like her brain was when it was inside.
I’m talking about my sister too much. I don’t know why. It’s not like I really let my emotions overtake me like it did that day with mom and pop. Pop, saying he’d press the button on every son of a bitch in this city, mom, begging everyone who could listen to her whining tears that the button needed to be blocked off, that it cost her her baby’s life.
We all believe that everyone should have the right to the button, though, so don’t worry. After they sat down and calmed down, they were back to their old selves. It was slow going again.
The elevator’s been finished. It’s functional. I guess I didn’t realize it at first since I wandered off to talk with you.
You know… my brother’s brain’s been twisting a lot less lately. It’s sad- he used to have a brain that twisted the most out of all of us. But now he’s slowing down too much. He’s going to become still. Sure, I have my folks, but pop’s headed into a mood where he’s slowing down too, and mom’s hair doesn’t fly as nice as it used to. They’re slowing down too much.
Well. That’s fine. I still love them- but I’m afraid they’re going to be getting a little dull. If I run down the stairs fast enough, the police won’t find me rushing back to the house so I can see what shapes their brains freeze into.
Forty-five people. One minute.
I board the elevator. You don’t need to worry about this- you won’t be seeing me after this.
No need to fear if you’re one of the forty-two.
After all, it’s just a button.
What’s the worst it can do?
#original content#original fiction#my writing#sci-fi#science fiction#death mention#brain#first person point of view#man i dont know what possessed me to write this piece but#here you go
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“say please.” (@prideanddiscipline)
from that soft nsfw meme but without the context! | @prideanddiscipline
Just because she was small didn’t mean that she wasn’t just as much of a threat as someone twice her size. She might not have looked like much, but Mercy was capable of inflicting pain and suffering on her fellow man, perhaps more so than anyone else. That was why it infuriated her when stupid shit like this happened.
“Seifer, I swear... just gimme that back and I won’t cut your face off. I’ll just walk away and act like nothin’ happened. I’m offering you this chance because, yo, even though you’re a horrible bastard and have been nothing but a dick to me, I do actually kind of like your face. It would be a real shame to fuck with it.”
And yet he persisted. He held her snack above his head at ransom, smirking at her and taunting her with that ‘say please,’ bullshit. He was such an insufferable prick sometimes. He knew what a commodity having anything like the glorious wrapped sponge cake in his hand was like for them both, having spent so much time in D-District together. But as it turned out she’d even have to fight to get her hands on a godsdamned Twinkie here.
She couldn’t wait to get out of this place.
But until then... she’d have to work this situation out to her favor. And she was done dicking around.
Without warning Mercy pulled her fist back and socked Seifer in the gut. It wasn’t all that hard, but enough that she hoped it would at least make him hunch over enough that she could grab her snack and be done with him.
“Are you for fuckin’ real, though. ‘Say please?’ Bitch, you stole that from me. I’m not sayin’ please to get my stuff back. You dick.”
#prideanddiscipline#meme#ayyy#I hope this is okay bc it’s all I could think of#I imagined their relationship to be all antagonistic but maybe a little light hearted too#🤷🏼♀️ lemme know if you want me to change it
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random dalish headcanons
halla are not raised for slaughter like goats or sheep, but when they die of illness or age or accident, every part of their body is used, to honour their life. usually a funeral is performed first. things like halla leather and halla horns are very expensive because of this; it’s rare the dalish will sell either to non-dalish, but the high price those goods fetch when sold to shems is a pretty good source of income if they get really desperate.
halla milk is definitely a staple of their diet though. halla milk isn’t as sweet as cow or goat milk but it is HUGELY superiour in terms of fat and protein content and makes really tart, tasty cheeses. you milk a halla for the same reason you milk a cow, it’s good for them.
all dalish can understand halla, who do not talk but make themselves understood to elves. it’s not just reading their body language like you would a mabari or a cat, but neither is it verbal words nor telepathic thought. the process is impossible to explain to shems. “you just /know/ what they mean,” lavellan says to cullen after trying to explain it to him for like an hour.
dalish spirits are strong as fuck, but their wines are typically shit, and mostly used ceremonially. that varies by clan, location, year, and luck, though. sometimes you forage some good shit.
lavellan was BLOWN AWAY by the ABUNDANCE of readily available sugar in haven and skyhold. sugar would have been an expensive luxury to his clan. that and the idea that shem are used to food just being like… delivered to them is like ????????? to him. most shem have never even butchered a chicken in their lives????????
like city elves, dalish marriages (they dont call it marriage, but lbr it’s marriage) are mostly arranged. dalish clans that we’ve seen are mostly small, and after a while everyone in it would be related to everyone else in some way, and i hc that they’re you know, intelligent enough to recognise incest = bad. there’s no stigma against a love match, it’s just kinda rare bc most of the people in your clan who you spend 99.99% of your time with are like, your first cousin. so chances are once you’re an adult your keeper eventually arranges a match, and it’s not like YOU MUST MARRY THIS PERSON OR BE CAST OUT FOREVER it’s like hey i found this girl from another clan who i think would be perfect for you, you should spend some time together and see if you’re into it.
for them, it’s about tracking bloodlines for the purpose of knowing who everyone’s parents are; “pedigree” is a non-issue, unlike human nobility. you’re not matchmaking for pedigree kids, you’re matchmaking to create healthy, long-lasting, loving relationships that produce happy, healthy, supported children.
family lines are tracked through the mother. they have no word for “bastard”
the attitude about homosexuality varies wildly both by clan and individual, but nowhere is it forbidden, no one sees it as inherently wrong or sinful, it would be refusing to reproduce that would be the problem. at WORST, the attitude would be that it’s a selfish individual choice.
like the qunari, the dalish see transgender individuals as just being the gender they say they are, because surely they’d know best, right? nonbinary individuals are not unknown to them, and elvish has always had gender-neutral singular pronouns, and gender-neutral forms of gendered words, like lethallin (masculine), lethallan (feminine), lethallen (gender-neutral).
trans and nonbinary individuals are widely viewed as special and important. shem don’t understand but fuck ‘em.
kicking out mage children to die in the woods is stupid. if i HAVE to acknowledge it as canon because apparently it is now, i hc that was that an extreme minority view. one or two specific clans’ stupid decision is NOT a common, widespread practice. if a clan already has a lot of mages and is worried about templars, they make contact with another clan to harbour the mage child until a more permanent placement can be found. elves do not fear magic like humans do. magic is a precious commodity, and a USEFUL and RARE skill. it is a gift to them, not a curse.
dalish religious ceremonies involve a lot of song and dance, especially call-and-response type of songs. a lot of their song uses sounds that aren’t explicitly words, necessarily, but which are loaded with meaning anyway; this is a result of them substituting what they’ve lost of elvish.
they don’t really have the space to be hauling books around. they have an oral tradition, and most dalish are functionally illiterate in terms of the common tongue. they don’t really need to read. that said, some choose specifically to learn, and keepers/firsts usually make the effort to learn, since they’re usually the ones preserving and studying ancient elven artifacts which does include some books and scrolls.
their history being mostly oral, they also use song as a teaching tool. it’s much easier to teach a bunch of six-year-olds history lessons if it’s presented as catchy songs.
dalish dancing is way more expressive and interpretive than ballroom dancing. it’s meant to tell a story, not follow a set of rules, and how good you are at it is determined not by how well you follow predetermined steps but how good you are at getting your point across and how creative you are. your dance should make your audience *feel* something.
it’s also how the Youths flirt with each other, you gotta really practice ya moves for the next arlathvhen cuz what if neria from clan whatever thinks ur a scrub... ya gotta Bust A Move...
they craft elaborate costumes for their dances. everything on those costumes is symbolic in some way, meant to express something.
generally speaking storytelling is SUPER important to their culture. much of their values are taught by fables. elvish is an inherently metaphorical language, this has always been the case.
all dalish are taught to track and hunt with bow and arrow. obviously some are better at it than others, but everyone learns the basics just in case. everyone learns to provide for themselves just as everyone learns to defend themselves. children, men, women, elderly, everyone learns.
dalish courting involves a LOT of gift-giving on both sides. usually one party initiates it with a gift, and if the other party is interested, they return with a gift, and so on and so forth, the purpose being to show mutual commitment to providing for each other. it’s not regulated by gender roles.
the vallaslin ritual involves taking just enough lyrium and felandaris to trip balls and go into the woods and have a spiritual experience. used to be elves would take lyrium and meditate and receive a message from their chosen god, and that’s how you picked your patron, but the gods aren’t listening anymore, so you just kind of have to have your own epiphany about life and culture and yourself and stuff. it’s meant to purify your mind and clear any lingering fears or doubts away. then you purify your body and the keeper mixes your blood, their blood, and the keeper’s magic into an ink they embed under your skin.
vallaslin is applied when you are ready, not at a certain age. some get it as young as fourteen or fifteen, others have to wait until well into their twenties. it’s about maturity and being ready for adulthood.
nobody has ever failed the ritual. that is, sometimes people can’t do it on the first or second etc attempt, but nobody has ever PERMANENTLY failed to complete it. a keeper who senses that a young adult is sensitive and might not do well at it is likely to encourage them to get a small design. it’s a keeper’s job to see their whole clan safely through the ritual. if someone fails, it’s as much the keeper’s failure as theirs.
everyone in the clan has a “job,” but if you’re not up to speed or where you should be, the keeper intervenes, finds out why, and fixes it – whether that’s through counseling, or assigning extra training, or figuring the individual just isn’t suited to the task and finding them something else that brings them pride to do instead.
they bathe a LOT, cleanliness is super important to them. shem stereotype them as being stinky wood savages but nah, once or twice daily bathing is widespread practise, and they’re super careful about keeping their water sources clean.
nomadic life is hard as shit. most clans lose a couple members every year from age, illness, accident, starvation, or shem interference. some years are harder than others. babies and the elderly are especially at risk.
there’s a dalish saying of “two keepers, three opinions.” the arlathvhen can get… heated… with debate, but nobody takes being argued with personally, because if you can’t defend your position then it’s a bad position. debate is a bonding activity. it’s the keeper’s job, also, to make sure everyone’s opinion is heard.
you will pry shoeless elves from my cold dead fucking hands
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