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love-and-monsters · 4 years

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Vampire Transformation

M monster X GN reader, 3045 words.

You’ve been experiencing some strange changes in your behavior recently. Can this strange man really make sense of it for you?

You opened your eyes and stared up at the ceiling. For the past few nights, you had been completely unable to sleep.

Nothing had worked. You’d never had any problems with insomnia before. If anything, you’d had the opposite problem; getting out of bed in the morning had been a nightmare. You’d blacked out almost the instant your head had hit the pillow and you’d stayed that way until your alarm went off in the morning.

But in the past week, you’d grown restless the instant the sun vanished from the sky. It was like the sun going down flipped a switch in your body and you were wired. Not only were you not tired, but you were borderline restless. Lying in bed was tantamount to torture- minutes ticked by with agonizing slowness and the energy buzzing inside you made it feel like your skin was crawling.

Every night, the restless feelings got worse until, driven by some odd instinct, you left the house and headed out into the night.

Luckily, you lived in a fairly large city, and in a decent part of it. People wandered the streets at all hours of the night and day, which mean that you were completely inconspicuous. Driven by some odd instinct, you just meandered through the streets, waiting until morning so you could actually collapse.

“Good hunting.” You whirled around. A man was standing uncomfortably close to you. How he’d gotten there without you noticing, you had no idea. But he was there and he fell into step next to you as if you’d invited him to do so. “Didn’t realize there were any others on this turf. You’ll want to stake your claim if you don’t want anyone encroaching.”

You stared at him. Was he in a gang? He was wearing a white button-down and black dress pants with a dark jacket slung over his shoulder, which wasn’t what you considered gang style. He was also incredibly pale, almost glowing in the dark, and quite slender. Nothing about him struck you as a gangbanger. But you couldn’t think about anything else he could be referring to.

“I think you have the wrong person,” you said as carefully as you could manage. The man lifted an eyebrow at you, clearly disbelieving. He seemed to be waiting for you to suddenly go ‘Just kidding!’ When you didn’t, and the silence stretched on, the faint smile he’d been sporting slipped from his face and he gave you a more piercing look.

“You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?” he said. His voice was softer, and there was a note in it that vacillated between amused and horrified.

“Uh. No,” you said. “Look, I think you have the wrong person. I-”

The man burst out into deep, chesty laughter, even throwing his head back. “I do not,” he said. “But I think I may be a little premature in my questioning. I’ll have to wait a little bit. Until I see you again.”

He didn’t so much vanish as he simply melted away into the night. One moment he was there, the next he’d just simply faded into the shadows and he was gone.

You blinked and swung your gaze back and forth, wondering if he would suddenly pop out of the shadows again. He didn’t return after a few minutes and the buzzing energy inside you prompted you to keep moving. You trotted along the streets.

The instant the sky started to lighten, the switch inside you that had been driving you to move an be outside flipped back the other way. You’d already wandered back to the area your apartment was in, but you still had to practically drag yourself up the stairs and into your bed. The instant your head struck the pillow, you were out.

You were out for nearly two hours before you managed to claw your way back to wakefulness. You only just managed to write out an email to your professor, telling her you weren’t going to be in class that day, before sleep sucked you back down.

You knew it was night when you woke up because your mind was sharp, no longer fogged with sleep. Not only were you focused, but you were hungry. Not a normal hunger, but something that was sharp and painful. It felt like there were shards of glass inside you cutting your stomach to shreds. It was the worst hunger pangs you’d ever experienced.

For a few minutes, you fumbled through your refrigerator, but there was nothing inside that appealed to you. You tried a few bites of your usual favorites, even digging up the pint of ice cream you’d been saving from your freezer. None of it was appealing. Your stomach, ravaged by hunger as it was, turned when you tried to eat a carrot.

The energy of the night was burning through you again and you staggered outside. The urgent need to move, to patrol, blazed in you almost stronger than your hunger.Something was wrong with your head. It was getting harder and harder to focus. It felt like the moments before you fell asleep- your consciousness blinking in and out. You weren’t going unconscious, but it was like your higher thinking was just fading away for a moment, so you were only a bundle of instincts.

You were so hungry. You were starving. Drool welled in your mouth. Food. Eat.

Something delicious wafted near you on the air. It was rich and savory and wonderful. Your conscious mind flickered for one moment, then blinked out. Instinct ruled your mind. You half vanished into the shadows of an alleyway and crouched.

The scent passed by you and you lunged. Your hands landed around his throat and closed with almost crushing strength. He couldn’t make a sound as you pulled him back, slammed him to the ground and plunged your teeth into him.

Thick, coppery liquid welled in your mouth. It was delicious, like biting into the best steak you’d ever had. It filled and soothed the awful pain in your stomach. Little whimpers welled in your throat as you drank and drank.

“I did think I’d find you here.” Someone tapped your shoulder with a foot. “Come on, let him go. You’ve terrified the poor man.”

You released him, spinning to snarl at the intruder. Some distant part of your mind recognized him as the person who had spoken to you the night before. The rest of you recognized him as an enemy. You bared your teeth and a terrible snarl rippled out through your chest.

The man chuckled. “Ooh, scary. Come on, get up.” He tapped you again with the toe of his shoe. You twisted back to look at the enemy and your prey scrambled out from underneath you. “Sorry about her. She’s a newbie, you know. Always hard training the new recruits, you know?”

The man made a motion to bolt out of the alley, managed to get to his feet, then swayed and collapsed. “Blood loss. Poor guy. He’ll be fine, probably. As for you…” The man rounded on you. You gave another deep snarl, making it as threatening as you could. “Look, you’re not as threatening as you’re trying to be by half. Chill.”

He crouched in front of you. His eyes roved over you for a moment. “You’re only about halfway through this, and it’ll get worse before it gets better. Calm down.”

There was a sensation like your mind was being turned inside out and you were suddenly very aware that you were crouched in an alleyway, human blood dribbling down your chin, the collapsed body of a human you’d tried to eat lying behind you.

“Oh my god.” Your voice was high and thin, almost on the edge of breaking. “Oh my god. What the fuck is happening to me?”

“There you go!” The man clapped a hand on your shoulder. “You’re back. Now let’s get the hell out of here. That guy’s gonna wake up and we’re not going to want to be around when he does.”

You were in such a state of shock that you simply allowed him to pull you to your feet and tug you down the street. Blood was still sticky on your chin, but the way he swept his arms around you and held a hand up close to your mouth made it look like he was trying to protect a bleeding cut. It at least seemed to quell any suspicions.

The man hauled you off to a small apartment tucked into a little alcove. It was shabby on the inside, full of the musty smell of dust and with moth-eaten furniture. The man seated you on a couch and fetched a damp cloth. “Wipe your face off. When you eat in the future, don’t dribble it all over your chin. It’s wasteful and really gross.”

You mopped at your face, wiping away the sticky trails of blood. You couldn’t stop shaking. “What is happening to me?”

The man grinned, revealing long, slightly curved fangs that nearly touched his lower lip. “You’ve becoming a vampire. Didn’t you guess that already?”

“I can’t be,” you said flatly. “I’ve never been attacked.”

“Misconception.” The man turned and started to rummage in his small refrigerator. “I mean, not a total misconception. It’s kind of right. Most humans that are turned are bitten. Just not all of them.” He emerged from the refrigerator holding a bottle, the sort people used at the gym for carrying protein shakes. It was full of a thick, pinkish liquid. He thrust it at you.

“What is that?” you asked. You took it cautiously and sniffed at it. It smelled sweet. “Is it blood?”

The man rolled his eyes. “No. It’s a smoothie.” You gave him a skeptical look. Was that sarcasm or something? “I’m not kidding. Just drink.”

You took a sip. It was incredibly thick and berry flavored, though you couldn’t make out any individual fruits. Something about the sugar cleared the remaining clouds in your head. “Vampires drink smoothies?”

The man gave a short, sharp bark of laughter. “No. Not exactly. You’re not really a vampire yet. I don’t know why, but fruit smoothies can soothe the edge of the bloodlust for a little bit. Something about the sugar content or something, I don’t know. Milkshakes are pretty good too.”

“I’m not a vampire? But you just said I was,” you said uncertainly. The man shrugged.

“I said you were turning into a vampire, not that you’re one right now. Name’s Marcus, by the way. I, if you haven’t already guessed, am a full vampire.”

You took another slurp of your smoothie. “But I didn’t get bit by anyone?”

“No. See, vampires don’t just reproduce by biting. We can also reproduce. And sometimes, we reproduce with humans. Usually, it’s not a big deal. Have a little half vampire, usually they grow into a big full vampire and join their parent as a creature of the night. But sometimes, little half vampire looses their vampire traits when they get older. Instead of going with their vampire parent, they grow up as a human. Probably marry a human and have a bunch of little human kids. And then those little human kids grow up and have more human kids, so on and so forth. But the vampire DNA keeps getting passed on and sometimes, if there’s enough of a push, the vampire traits can emerge.”

You pulled the pieces together. “I have a vampire in my family tree?”

“More than one, probably. It’s more common to have that side emerge if there’s a push from both sides of the family. It’s a genetic hiccup, or a throwback. For whatever reason, you have enough vampire in you for that bit to assert itself. By the end of the week, you’ll be a full vampire.”

You stared at him, swallowing hard. “In a week.”

“Yes. Roughly.” Marcus sat forward a little in his seat and gave you a smile. It was clearly intended to be friendly, but the enormous canines just didn’t allow it. “And I am going to help you.”

You weren’t entirely sure how it happened, but within two days, you were patrolling the city with Marcus. The smoothies were no longer taking the edge off your bloodlust and Marcus, after teaching you as much vampire lore as you could stand, decided that practical learning was also important.

“This is my territory,” he said, trotting down a street. “It covers five city blocks, which isn’t the biggest territory, but there’s a lot of competition in the city. But at least it has enough humans in it.”

You looked around. Marcus had kept insisting that all vampires could sense where their territory ended and another’s began, but you couldn’t sense anything. All you were really aware of was that everyone who passed you smelled really good and the electric lights were piercingly bright.

“All right?” Marcus asked. You squinted up at him. The streetlight behind him haloed his strong facial features in a shimmering light.

“It’s bright,” you complained.

“The lights? Your eyes will get a little more used to it when the changing settles down. For now, I have a pair of sunglasses somewhere.” He patted the pockets of his long coat. It swooshed around him when he moved and looked appropriately vampire-esque.

Your gums itched and prickled and mild aches suffused your body. You slumped against a wall, grimacing. There was an unsettling feeling in the pit of yours stomach, and you were pretty sure that wasn’t just nerves. Something in you was changing.

“Here you go!” Marcus slid the glasses onto your face, somehow managing not to poke you in the eye. You readjusted them carefully. They were easy to see through, even at night. “Are you okay?”

You realized that, over the last few minutes, you had been leaning more and more heavily on the wall for support. Your knees felt a little like jelly. “Um. I don’t feel very well.” Your gums were pulsing and waves of alternating hot and cold flooded your body.

Marcus took hold of your shoulder and gently pushed you into an alleyway. “Sit here for a minute. I’ll be right back.”

He bolted off and you placed your head between your knees. Things seemed to be squirming under your skin. You were flushed, but chills worked their way over your body. It felt like you’d come over with a sudden and terrible bout of the flu.

Something thumped to the ground in front of you. A delicious smell wafted up to you and the pulsing in your gums sharpened to a painful throbbing.

“Drink,” Marcus said. One of his hands slid down your back and he lifted the body he’d dropped in front of you to your mouth. You lunged forward, biting into the soft flesh and gulping the blood that spilled forth.

You were much neater this time, gulping down almost every drop. After only a few delicious mouthfuls, Marcus detached you. “You’re shivering,” he said. You were, and the squirming of your innards was only getting worse.

Marcus leaned you back against the wall. “Hey, I was slightly off in my timing,” he said. His voice was pitched oddly, like he was trying to be soothing, but he was barely suppressing panic himself. “You’re making the full shift to vampire now.”

Your eyes popped open and you stared wildly at him. “What?”

Marcus ignored your obvious panic and hauled you up into his arms. Carefully, he swung you around and onto his back. “Hold on tight,” he said.

It was not easy to hold onto the back of a vampire going at full speed. Motion sickness made your head spin and you squeezed your eyes shut and buried your face into the back of his neck. His smell was stronger than you’d ever smelled it before, sort of earthy and pleasant. You found yourself breathing deeply.

With a jerk, Marcus dug his feet into the ground and came to a stop. You clung to him, startled, until his hands worked your fingers loose from around his neck.

You in the middle of a sparsely forested area. Still in the city, from what you could hear. A park, then. Marcus offered you his coat and you slipped it on. “Wanted to get you away from people, somewhere relatively quiet. You’ll be disoriented for a moment when you wake up. It’s better to be somewhere like this.”

“Wake up?” Your voice was slurred.

“You’re going to pass out. But it’ll be all right. I’ll be right here.”

You felt like you were falling asleep rapidly. A tingling numbness crept up through your legs, then your arms, crawling toward your neck. Your eyes opened once, to see Marcus smiling gently down at you. Then they fell shut and you fell into darkness.

The first thing you were aware of was the smell. It invaded your senses, permeated your brain. There were unpleasant scents far away, some appealing ones that made your mouth water, and, close by, the earthy smell of dirt and wood and, closest of all, a pleasant, slightly earthy, slightly spiced scent.

You opened your eyes. It was bright. Really bright, almost daytime bright. But you could see, beyond the trees, that the moon was still out. You ran your tongue along your teeth. Your canines were extended and they itched a little.

“Feeling okay?” You turned your head. Marcus was leaning over you, a slight grin on his face. The moonlight seemed to make his skin glow and there was something mesmerizing in his eyes. “Woah,” you said. Marcus grinned.

“I could say something similar,” he said. “Hungry?”

Your stomach twisted and you nodded. “Starving.” Marcus tugged you to your feet.

As he led you out of the park, you became more aware of the territory boundaries. You could sense them, somehow, like glowing lines along the ground. It made you a little unsettled.

“You’re not kicking me out, are you?” you asked. Marcus grinned, canines glinting.

“No. I like you too much for that,” he said. “Now, let’s go. We’ve got some hunting to do.”

Together, you ran off into the night.

#exophilia #vampire #monsterxhuman #vampire lover #vampire boyfriend #monster lover #vampirexhuman

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show-choir-gal · 3 years

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Preference: How They React to You Having the Dark Mark (HP Boys)

Harry: harry would be in utter shock, not quite sure how to react. Your eyes were all red and puffy. You were forced to do this, you didn't have a choice. But you said that already and didn't want to keep repeating yourself in hopes this isn't reality, in hopes that this is just a very messed up dream. "I'm - I - I'm so sorry..." You kept quietly uttering Tears kept falling from your cheeks to the floor. Your head still hanging low, not wanting to look him in the eyes. You heard him about to say something, but then stop. There was a moment of silence, a moment that seemed to go on for years in your head. Suddenly, the door opens and slams shut. You roll down your sleeve as you fall to the floor, tears falling faster than ever as you silently sob in your room...alone.

Ron: You were sitting on Ron's bed, tears streaming down your face. Ron was angrily pacing the room back and forth, clearly wanting to say something, but not knowing what to say or how to phrase it. Your hand was clutching your arm, as you silently sobbed. "I don't- I- I..." Ron tried to mutter out. He grew frustrated and threw some books across the room. Once those books fell and left a thick silence, you pulled your sleeve down, wiped your tears and pushed right past Ron and left the room. You couldn't be around him like this. He needed time and both of you knew that.

Draco: Draco had just admitted to you that he had the Dark Mark. He was so scared that you were going to leave him but he couldn't hold it in anymore. This wasn't fair that you didn't know. For a while, there was silence where both of you had silent tears hitting the ground. You couldn't hold it in much longer. "Draco..." You uttered before holding your breath and lifting up your sleeve. He looked at you arm and then into your eyes in utter disbelief. He ran and embraced you and you let out the breath you were holding. "They made me do it, they held me down." You said in between sobs. Draco embraced you tighter, "They promised they wouldn't touch you if I complied... I'm so sorry my love." He said, also in between sobs.

George: As soon as you told George, he immediately left. You sunk to the ground by the edge of the Black Lake. You hated this but you weren't given the choice, you had no choice in this. You were sobbing for what seemed like hours, crying to the point where tears could no longer be produced. This hurt more, hurting George hurt more than anything you've ever experienced. You did this so he wouldn't be targeted more than he was. You had to tell him eventually, you knew that. You didn't expect this reaction, but you also didn't know how he would react. You were crying at the lake as long as you could still see the sun. Once the sun was setting, you got up and wiped your tears, and headed back to the castle.

Fred: You were standing by the window, looking out as tears streamed down your swollen face. Fred was sitting in his desk chair, a contemplative look on his face, folded hands, and his left leg bouncing. Neither of you knew what to do at this point. You hoped that whatever he was thinking, he knew you would never make that choice unless you were forced to. You heard the leg stop bouncing and him getting up. You were sure he was going to leave and your head fell down and you sobbed. Suddenly, you feel arms wrap around you from the side. He rested his forehead on your temple, "I know this wasn't your choice. We'll figure this out...I know we will...We always have." He said as he placed a kiss to your temple.

Neville: As soon as he saw your arm, his face dropped. You quickly put your sleeve back down and looked away, not wanting to see what Neville could be thinking. You know what they did to his parents, but you had no choice. If you didn't do this, they were going to target him and you couldn't let that happen. "Why?" Neville asked, starting to choke on that simple question, not wanting to cry. "I didn't have a choice. They wanted to kill you, they wanted you dead... They said if I went through with it... you wouldn't be a target..." You said as you finally let tears start to fall from your burning eyes. Silence was filled with a few tears hitting the ground every so often, not in any particular pattern. Neither of you knew what to do, so you two just stared and tried to figure out where to go from here in your own heads.

Oliver: "How could you do this to me..to us?!" Oliver screamed and he paced back and forth in the changing room. "This isn't about you Oliver! Well, it is, but not the way you think!" You screamed back. But this wasn't the same type of scream, this was a scream for understanding. "Then what was it for? Explain!" He screamed back. Tears fell, and started to fall harder and harder, "They wanted to kill you Oli. They wanted you dead. I did this so they wouldn't kill you...so I wouldn't lose you...that way!" You screamed back with so much emotion as you pointed to your mark, "I couldn't live with myself if I let that happen." You said has you just fell to the ground, sobbing. Olivers face went from anger, to pain. He wasn't expecting that answer. He sat on the bench, trying not to let tears fall. He couldn't even fathom the thought of you doing *that* for him. He was hurt, because he made the situation burst like this.

Cedric: You told him, you blurted it out. You couldn't hold it in any longer, you had to tell him. Cedric was already being targeted, your parents said that if you agreed he would no longer be targeted. Your father had no mercy, but your mother did. "If I didn't do this, they were going to kill you. I couldn't let that happen..." You said as you suddenly broke down in tears. Cedric took it all in as he rubbed your back, comforting you like he always had before. "I didn't want to do it..." "I didn't want to do it..." "I didn't want to do it..." You kept repeating through sobs. Cedric moved your head so he could look you in the eyes, "I know you wouldn't do this if you didn't have to. I don't love you any less. We'll get through this." He said as he wiped the tears off your cheeks. You threw yourself to him in the biggest embrace you've ever given him. You didn't think you deserved this unconditional love.

Seamus: He didn't say anything, but actions always speak louder than words. Seamus threw a few things around the room, he looked at you, wanted to say something but just left the room and slammed the door behind him. You lost it. You started to sob, you let it all out. After what seemed like hours, you decided that crying wouldn't solve anything else at this point. You dried your tears and headed towards Hogsmeade. You decided that you needed some alone time in a comforting spot to think wisely. You headed over to Madam Puddifoot's tea shop and ordered just a simple black Earl Grey. You sat by yourself, trying to think of what to do next but you were too distracted by all the happy couples going on dates.

Dean: He just stood there, in complete and utter silence. He didn't know how to react, how to feel...he just didn't know. You didn't blame him. You didn't wan this to happen, but it did and you couldn't run away from it anymore. You were on the couch of the common room, just staring, you didn't know what else to do. "I don't expect this..uhm...us to ever be normal. I just want you to know that this wasn't a choice, I was forced. It may not change how or what you're feeling... I understand that. I would understand if you didn't want to be with me, I would completely understand..." You said, still staring, not knowing what to do. Dean snapped out of his trance and sat next to you, he took your hands, "We'll figure this out...together. Being rash in a time like this won't do either of us any good." He said. You placed your head on his shoulder, he placed his head atop yours.

Marcus: He didn't how to feel, mainly because he couldn't tell how you felt. You blurted it out and just stared at the fireplace. "Uhmmm... Should I say congratulations? Or are you sad? I- I don't know what do. I don't know how you feel." He said as he sat right next to you. You turned to him and had tears streaming down your swollen cheeks, a little annoyed at his response. "I take it that this is not a good thing. Alright," He said as he brought you in for a big embrace, "We'll get through this baby. I swear we will. I promise." He said as he placed a kiss on the top of your head and rubbed your back as you held him tight, relieved that he still loves you unconditionally.

Percy: His reaction was your worst nightmare. What he said has been playing in your head for hours. "We're done." He said as he left the room. That scene played through you until you heard your stomach grumble. You wiped the tears off your face and walked to the dining hall to have dinner. As you walked in, all eyes went to you and you just walked with a heavy foot to your place at the Slytherin table next to Draco. You eyed Percy, who had had his eyes fixated on you. "How did he react?" Draco asked in a whisper. Your lips quivered and you clenched your jaw, "We're done. It's over." Draco's face got red and he stood up angrily, you pulled him down harshly, "No." You said sternly, still looking at Percy, who looked away.

Viktor: He embraced you, not caring that you were trying to push him away. "Why do you still want me? I'm disgusting, I'm-" You started saying before he cut you off, "You're not like this. I know you so well. This isn't you. I'm going to stay by your side while we et the old you back." He said as he embraced you tighter. If anyone was going to love you unconditionally, it was Viktor. He attended Durmstrang, this wasn't a surprise for him but he knew you much better and refused to let you go through this alone.

Charlie: You approached Charlie as he was reading notes for Care of Magical Creatures in the classroom, that was his favourite spot to study. "What is wrong my love?" He said as he put his notes away. You broke down and let it all out so fast you were out of breath by the end. You were panting and sobbing and Charlie ran over to catch you before you hit the ground. "I had no choice! I had no choice!" You kept screaming over and over again. You didn't want to lose him. Charlie meant everything to you. "Alright," He said "We'll figure this out. How about we go eat and then we can figure this out. But I assure you, you will not lose me." He finished as he pulled you up, dusted both of you off, and leading you to the dining hall. "Are you sure?" You asked. "I am more than sure my love." He replied, wiping the tears from your face.

Blaise: Even though you knew he wouldn't hate you, because Draco also has the mark after all, the thought still lingered. You went to his room to talk to him. Draco was in there but as soon as you walked in, he knew. He got up and left the room, but not before patting your shoulder as reassurance that you'll be okay no matter what. "What's up babe? Draco said you had something to tell me." He asked as he moved the chair Draco was just in closer to him. You sat and took a deep breath. A tear streamed down your face as you started to roll your sleeve up. He placed a hand on your arm, signalling you to stop. "You don't need to cry my love, it's okay. I still love you. This won't make me love you any less." He said as he touched where the mark was. "I had a feeling they would get to you sooner or later, I didn't want them too but as soon as Draco showed me his I knew you wouldn't be too far afterwards." He said as he pulled you onto his lap and he started to rub your back. "I was so scared you wouldn't want to be with me." You said through sniffles. He let out a chuckle, "There are only a few things that would make me even contemplate leaving you, and this is nowhere near any of those." He said as he kissed your cheek.

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margoshansons · 5 years

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Desperate Measures 3/?

Bellamy Blake x Reader

Summary: After helping a little girl get over her nightmares, Y/N gets caught in a nasty bout of acid fog with the one person she can’t stand.

Warnings: angst, nightmares, swearing, violence, gore, survivor’s guilt, depression.

Notes: This was a tough one to write, ngl. Based on 1x03 “Earth Kills”

When she slept she saw only nightmares. Visions of another life she must’ve had, despite her scientific background claiming it was all bullshit. There was no other way to describe it.

This last one had been particularly bad.

A woman burning at the Stake, claiming she could save hundreds of lives. It was the same voice that had plagued her dreams since she was five years old. The same voice that whispered too many people. The same voice that had driven her mother mad while she waited in her cell during the weeks leading to her floating.

She couldn’t fall back asleep.

That last nightmare had felt too real. As if she was the one burning up into the skies instead of the unknown woman she saw every night. Jasper’s moans drew her from her thoughts and she gathered her jacket, ready to help in any way possible. The dropship was too full of sleeping prisoners to work on Monty’s radio, so instead, she moved outside, sitting next to a grove of trees, watching the stars twinkle above her as she counted the constellations.

A twig snapped behind her, revealing the existence of the only twelve-year-old in camp.

“Hi” Y/N smiled softly, meeting the girl’s anxious gaze. “Charlotte right?”

She nodded. The older delinquent patted the patch of grass beside her. “Come on and join me.”

Charlotte sat next to the eighteen-year-old, scratching at her legs nervously as silence enveloped the two of them.

“I couldn’t sleep” Charlotte confessed after several minutes of silence, “So I went out on a walk, I didn’t--I didn’t realize I was outside the wall until it was too late. Please don’t tell Bellamy, please.”

Y/N stared at the younger girl, a wild smirk crossing her face as she leaned in close. “Your secret’s safe with me. Why can’t you sleep?”

“I uh, I have nightmares” Charlotte admitted, “My parents got floated and I--uh I just can’t sleep.”

Pain shot through Y/N’s heart. She had been younger than Charlotte when she lost her own mother, and those memories found a way into her dreams as well.

“I’m sorry that happened to you.” Y/N whispered, “But can I let you in on a little secret?”

Charlotte nodded, apprehension strewn across her face.

“I get nightmares too” She admitted, making Charlotte the third person to know about her terrors. “That’s why I’m out here tonight.”

Awe crossed the little girl’s face, “You get nightmares? But you’re so strong.”

Y/N laughed lightly at the compliment. “I’m not, I’m just good at getting over them.”

“How?”

She licked her lips, biting her cheek as she debated sharing her strategy with this little girl. Instead, she chose an easier route. “Easy, you find someone to talk to about them.”

“But…” Her face fell. “I don’t have anybody.”

Y/N brushed a strand of hair away from the girl’s forehead, “You have me, and Clarke, and Wells, and Octavia, and everyone in this camp on your side Charlotte. They all wanna help you.”

“Really?” Her bright blue eyes were still fearful as if she didn’t actually believe anything Y/N had been saying up to this point.

She nodded, and the two stayed there the rest of the night until Charlotte fell asleep in her arms. Y/N continued to stare up at the stars, wanting nothing more than a blissful sleep. But Jasper’s moans kept her awake, and Bellamy’s stare provided another distraction as he left the dropship that morning.

She wouldn’t deny that he was attractive, but that was where her admiration ended for him. To her, he was a nuisance, a problem getting in the way of her and Clarke from taking care of the rest of the camp. The sun began to peek over the trees, clouds joining the yellow orb, marking the second sunrise in a row she had seen on Earth.

It was gorgeous.

Marcus would appreciate this. He grew up on stories about the Earth, the same as she did. So why does it seem like they’ve lost hope? Her gaze hung on the last star glistening in the morning sky, sending a prayer up to the Ark, hoping her dad was listening.

Her eyes drifted closed, hoping the action would lull her back to sleep, curing the tiredness she felt.

“Hey,” Bellamy’s gruff voice interjected her sleeping time. “We’re going hunting.”

Y/N stretched, a yawn escaping her as she slowly removed her arm surrounding Charlotte. “Sure, what do you need?”

His smile looked out of place, “an extra weapon.” He tossed her a spear, the handle barely avoiding hitting the poor girl. She arched an eyebrow.

“You do know that I suck at combat right?” she double-checked, making sure she didn’t wake up in an alternate dimension where Bellamy Blake was actually being nice to her.

Instead, he laughed. Laughed. Yep, definitely alternate dimension.

“You handled yourself with the panther, I think you can handle a few rabbits and squirrels.”

She rolled her eyes, pushing herself off the ground with her hands. Bellamy turned to leave, Y/N sending one last look at the sleeping girl before joining him outside the wall.

“Why are you doing this?” She asked, creeping through the stalks of grass. “Being so nice to me?”

Bellamy paused before announcing his intentions, “Think of it as a thank you for saving my life kind of gift.”

Y/N smirked, hiding the chuckle behind her wall, which had become more glass than steel over the past few days.

“And as much as I hate to admit it” He began, gaze staring directly at her sunlit face, “You’re the smartest person in camp. We need your brain.”

She froze, throwing a playful look of victory at the older leader, “Was that a compliment I detected Bellamy Blake?”

“Shut up, I already want to take it back.” He threw back, their gaze meeting one more time before a scream launched them out of the moment. The two leaders looked at each other before running in the direction of the sound, boots stampeding against the ground.

Y/N tossed the spear downward when she saw who it was.

“Charlotte” She moved closer, raising her voice, “What are you doing here, we could’ve killed you!”

The girl trembled from the scolding. “I had--I had another nightmare, I woke up and you were gone so I went to find you and--”

Y/N pulled the girl close, hand running through the braids in her hair, soothing the girl until she was back to normal. “Shhh, it’s okay, I’m here.” She broke away momentarily, tilting her chin down to meet the girl’s frightened gaze, “Did you wanna talk about it?”

Charlotte’s gaze shot around, eyeing Bellamy and Atom before softly shaking her head. Y/N understood, whispering, “Alright, maybe later then.”

“She needs to get back to camp” Strict Bellamy was back, a far cry from the easygoing leader she had spent the last few hours with. Unfortunately, Y/N had to agree.

“No please,” Charlotte begged, not wanting to let go of Y/N at all.

“It’s not safe out here Charlotte” Bellamy warned, a glimpse of his softer side showing through.

Atom chimed in patronizingly, “Especially for little girls.”

“I’m not little” she shot back, grasping onto Y/N’s hand for strength.

Bellamy bit his lip, a ghost of a smile on his lips. His gaze flickered between the two of them, before handing Charlotte his makeshift knife, grabbing the spear Y/N had dropped earlier.

“You ever killed something Charlotte?” He asked, eyes flashing with worry.

She shook her head.

“Who knows,” Bellamy began to joke, shrugging his shoulders, “You may be good at it.”

Y/N rolled her eyes at his antics, encouraging a twelve-year-old to commit murder her first time on the ground. She brandished her knife, ready to continue on their trail until a bellowing sound tore them away from their goal.

“What was that?” Jones asked, fear crossing his face. Birds flew past them at light speed, almost as if they were running away. She could only stare behind her, a swirling cloud of yellow and orange smoke making its way toward them, insects crawling over her feet in a futile attempt to survive.

“Something’s wrong,” She whispered reverently, eyes widening as the fog grew closer, “Run! Run now!”

They wasted no time, crossing the plains as fast as their feet could carry them, Y/N dragging Charlotte behind her, refusing to let her grip up even for a moment. The fog grazed against her hand, a prickling sensation transitioning into excruciating burns.

Acid fog, she realized.

She sped up her pace, searching frantically for a place to take cover. At any time the fog could be upon them at any time they could be suffering from burns beyond their imagination.

She found refuge in a cave, Bellamy coming in close behind her, ready to jump out at the sound of Atom’s voice.

“Bellamy!” He moaned.

“Atom!” Bellamy called, ready to run into the fog at the sound of his friend’s cry.

Y/N caught his arm, pulling him back into the cave, “Bellamy no! There’s nothing we can do unless you want to die of chemical burns.”

His eyes were rimmed in red as they stared her down, turning his head back toward the acid covered forest where Atom lay dying.

His breathing grew shallow, sniffing until he nodded reluctantly, the three delinquents settling in for the night as they prepared to wait out the fog.

And then it suddenly dawned on her. She was stuck in a cave for god knows how long surrounded by killer fog on a planet that could kill them. And somehow that wasn’t the worst part. No, the worst part was that she was stuck with Bellamy Blake.

“Y/N?” Charlotte’s voice echoed in the cave as night fell. “I’d like to talk about my nightmare now if that’s okay.”

She settled in against the rocks, sending a glance at Bellamy’s sleeping figure before moving closer so Charlotte didn’t have to worry about being judged. “Sure, yeah, go ahead.”

The little girl inhaled before dropping what had been bothering her since day one. “I see--I see my parents dying.” Sobs threatened to escape, face contorting in pain, “And then I see his face, and--and he sends me down with them.”

Y/N pulled the girl closer, arms wrapping around her as Charlotte sobbed into her shoulder. “Hey, shhh, you’re gonna be okay. Everything’s gonna be alright.” She rubbed her hand up and down the poor girl’s shoulder, shutting her eyes. “I see my parents too.” She admitted, whispering the confession in her hair. She recalled Kane’s regretful face as he told Shumway to press the button. Didn’t even have the decency to do it himself.

“But it’ll all be over soon, I promise.” Charlotte nodded before floating to sleep in her arms, the girl stirring only during her dreams.

Y/N stood up, waiting to take watch. She couldn’t fall asleep. Not when that woman’s screams awaited her.

“You should get some rest” Bellamy’s rough voice murmured from the other side of the cave.

Flashes of her night terrors crossed her brain and she shook her head, “I’ll uh, I’ll rest when we get back to camp.”

“Sparky,” The nickname sounded unfamiliar in his mouth, “I can see the circles under your eyes, you’re practically asleep already.”

She shook her head, refusing to be that vulnerable with a man who had done nothing but torment her since she got to the ground. “You look just as bad as I do.” She shot back, eliciting a chuckle from the kid. “What do you know?” She whispered, a smile stretching across her face, “Looks like he has a heart after all.”

Bellamy met her gaze, half-smile across his face, brown eyes softening as the fog passed over them. “I always had a heart, I just don’t show it all the time.”

She nodded, recalling another phrase from her dreams, “Love is weakness. I guess that’s another thing we have in common.” She turned her gaze away toward the sleeping child, making sure Charlotte remained still.

Love was death. Attachment was death.

Bellamy wrapped his arms around his knees, “Oh yeah? What’s the other thing?” His tone was playful, her answer anything but.

She met his gaze, uttering the words she had been dying to say to him since he had insulted her their first night on the ground, “We’re both orphans, aren’t we?”

Silence met her words, relief flooding from her shoulders as her stomach untwisted itself.

Tension coated the cave, encircling the two in a bubble as Bellamy fidgeted under her gaze. It had felt so good to finally say it aloud. To finally tell him what had hurt all those nights ago.

“Y/N I had no idea--”

“That Kane wasn’t my biological father?” She continued to shove his mistake in his face, unsure why she was unloading all this onto him. “That I’ve been parentless since age five? Both of them floated? Yeah, why would you?”

She turned away, her malicious tone hanging in the air as she drifted off to sleep, the hard rock more comfortable than any tent she had slept in so far.

***

Bellamy shook the older girl awake, guilt wracking his body as he did it. If he had known. If he had reached out before making stupid assumptions--

No. She said it herself. Emotion is weakness. Love is weakness.

It was better this way.

This way they both survived.

“Franco,” He used her last name, a sick feeling entering his stomach at the idea of using her given name after the fiasco last night. “Franco wake up!”

She jolted upright, as if someone had pushed her through to the other side. Her breathing was small, shallow, and her chest heaved as her eyes flitted between Charlotte and Bellamy’s locked gazes, fear flashing by so fast he swore he imagined it.

“Come on, the fog’s cleared up.” was all he said, holding out his hand. She grasped it and he pulled her up, quickly disappearing behind the cave exit, meeting with Jones.

“Where’s Atom?”

“We thought he was with you.”

No. Atom had to have made it. He had to. Confusion spread throughout his chest, his head turning quickly as a scream passed through the air.

“Charlotte!” Y/N called, sprinting past him, racing toward the scream. The two men followed after her, Monroe trailing behind as they reached the clearing where Atom lay, pus boiling all over his skin, blood vessels popping as Bellamy knelt beside him, cradling his friend’s head in his arms.

Y/N knelt across from him, horror circulating in her gaze as she placed a hand against his chest, gently listening to the wheezes, a soft plea barely reaching their ears.

“Kill… me...please.”

***

Y/N stared in horror, grasping the handle of her makeshift knife. “Charlotte, go back to camp.” She ordered, hand shaking as she handed it over to Bellamy.

“No, I want to help”

“Charlotte.” Y/N’s tone turned stern, a warning, “Now.”

She heard the faint shuffling of footsteps behind her until the sound disappeared, loneliness surrounding the couple as the wind whistled faintly through the woods.

Bellamy shook above the deteriorating delinquent, Y/N’s knife held firmly in his hands.

He couldn’t do it.

Y/N placed her hand on his, covering his hand to steady it before gingerly taking the knife back.

“Okay, hey Atom” her tone grew sweet, plastering a fake smile on her face as she stared at the helpless kid, “I’m gonna help you okay?”

Atom’s head nodded slightly, the pain only allowing him to move so much. Her hand shook, vocal cords humming a long-forgotten song to ease the pain, the blade slicing through the layers of skin, causing Atom to bleed out, staining the greenery crimson.

She raised her eyes forward meeting the horrified stares of Clarke, Finn, and Wells, pretending to be unaware of the intense gaze Bellamy was sending her way.

“Get Clarke whatever she needs,’ Bellamy called to his troops as they returned to camp, gaze flickering toward Y/N. She sat against the dropship, eyes blank as she stared out emotionless.

She killed someone today.

She was a killer now.

Maybe she should’ve stayed on the Ark after all.

A familiar figure slid down next to her, Monty offering her a silver cup. “Miller told me what happened, thought you might want some of this.”

She flashed a tight smile before gulping down the wretched batch of moonshine, an empty numbness snaking its way through her body, “Thanks Monty, I needed that.”

She stared above at the sky, eyes trained on the bright orbiting station above them. “Did you know it was my birthday when we came down?” She spoke forwardly, catching the kid by surprise. “It was either death by earth or death by space. You can guess which one I chose.”

Monty pressed his hand on hers, the contact barely registered as she swigged the rest of her moonshine. “You made the right choice.”

“No, I didn’t” She spoke hauntedly, “I should’ve floated myself.”

That night against the dropship, alcohol rewiring her brain, Y/N drifted away, and for the first time in eighteen years, a new terror joined the rest.

Yikes. So Y/N suffers from this thing known as depression and survivor’s guilt. As we all know there is no easy fix, this will be a constant throughout the series. I’ll put it in the warnings as we go forward.

If this isn’t something you’re comfortable with I won’t be offended if you stop reading, I promise.

Please like, comment, and reblog!

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yallreddieforthis · 5 years

Text

Impossible Things

Fandom: It Chapter Two, It (2017)

Pairing: Richie Tozier/Eddie Kaspbrak

Rating: Explicit (in later chapters)

Words: 1.9k

Also on AO3

“What the fuck,” he mutters, trying his key one more time. His therapist always says he’s too quick to jump right to the doom and gloom. Maybe he didn’t get evicted all of a sudden. Maybe he just put the key in upside down or… Nope. His key straight up does not work.

And then suddenly the door swings open and Richie whacks him in the shoulder with a frying pan.

August 7, 2013 was the worst day of Eddie Kaspbrak’s life. He got dumped on a breakfast date by this guy he was kind of very into at the time, he totaled his brand-new Dodge Dart...by hitting a cop car, spilling iced coffee all over himself in the process. And that was just before work.

When he got to work, he was informed by fucking Claudia of all people that his favorite patient who was supposed to make a full fucking recovery had died during the overnight shift. He spent the rest of the day completing paperwork for his now-deceased buddy over in 44G, and playing a super fun game ferreting information back and forth between one of the endocrinologists--who was on a cruise with almost no reception--and her crazy bitch of a patient who insisted that Dr. Google told her she could cure her diabetes with a combination of like six essential oils and lemon juice. And also fighting over the phone with Marcus from Geico. Fuck Marcus from Geico and his manager Suzanne.

Anyway, yeah, that day was fucking nothing compared to this Saturday, when he went back to his shitty ass hometown, watched the first guy he ever loved die in his arms and then wiggled out the back door of a collapsing house containing all his childhood friends.

He’s pretty sure he hasn’t completely processed the awfulness of the whole thing yet. He’s done a decent amount of crying, but like… God, where to even begin? There’s literally no one alive who he can talk to about what he went through. The idea of keeping all this shit to himself for the rest of his life makes him want to consider pulling a Stan. Not that he ever would, actually. Because he’s a stubborn bitch, and when life tells him to go fuck himself, he usually just yells it right back.

Also he got stabbed in the fucking face by Henry Goddamn Bowers. And like, Ben did a decent job patching it up with gauze and superglue, but Eddie hauled ass to Urgent Care and got some actual stitches once he realized there was nothing else he could do at Neibolt. He’d been a fucking mess...like, crying and shit, but even in that state he could tell that the standard of care at Derry Clinic was subpar at best and he kept having to correct the NP who was sewing him up until she finally snapped and asked if he’d rather just do it himself. Actually, he normally would have preferred to, but his hands had been shaking too badly. He definitely plans to have it looked at by Dr. Lim, who will for sure know the best way to keep scarring to a minimum, as soon as he’s back at work.

Also, he was hoping that all the weird shit that had been going down with Pennywise and stuff would have fucking stopped after they killed It, but when he got back to the Derry Townhouse and went to get his shit from his room, there were three goddamn suitcases in there and he couldn’t figure out why. The first one had enough crap in it for like a three week trip, although the clothes weren’t all his. Also, the second one was filled with a bunch of pill bottles with his name on them for prescriptions Eddie has never needed, and his actual medication, amitriptyline, was not among them. But to be totally honest, by that point, he was so fucking tired and upset that he just kind of went fuck it and hauled everything into the back of a cab and got the fuck out of there.

And now he’s standing on the curb at LAX waiting for an Uber to take him back to his apartment in West Hollywood, where he can cry in private and maybe eat a pint of frozen yogurt from Whole Foods. Greek yogurt, of course, for the probiotics.

The first thing that strikes him as amiss back in LA is when he gets up to his apartment and there is a mat that says WELCOME TO THE SHITSHOW on it that he definitely did not buy in front of his apartment and his list of instructions for delivery men has been taken off his door.

Then he tries to open the door and his key doesn’t fit, which makes no fucking sense at all, unless Ms. Slavkin changed the locks while he was gone, which would be super illegal and also mean. Like, they’re on good terms, he thinks, especially since she barely speaks English and he knows exactly no Russian. They’ve never had a problem, though. His rent is always paid up on time. She brought him vatrushka two weeks ago and he referred her grandson for a volunteer position at Cedars Sinai over the summer. They’re good.

And then suddenly the door swings open and Richie whacks him in the shoulder with a frying pan.

“Ow! What the hell?”

Literally everything about what just happened is impossible though, because Richie is:

Dead. He died in Eddie’s arms under the Neibolt house less than 48 hours ago after telling him he fucked his mom one last time for good measure. Like...even while he was bleeding out he couldn’t… God. Anyway…

A resident of Illinois, last time Eddie checked. He even said some shit the other day about security at O'Hare. That’s… that’s the one in Chicago, right? It’s not LAX, Eddie knows that for sure.

Richie looks about as dumbfounded as Eddie feels. He does not apologize for hitting Eddie with a frying pan, although it’s not exactly cast iron. At best, it’s aluminum.

Which is another weird thing. Eddie uses exclusively cast iron or enamel cookware in his apartment because he’s not some kind of idiot sauteing his veggies in perfluorinated chemicals. The frying pan Richie is holding right now is undoubtedly riddled with BPA that would seep into his food and cause thyroid problems.

And honestly the only reason he’s probably getting hung up on that is that he expects Richie to disappear as soon as he blinks, because what the fuck would he actually be doing here. It’s going to hurt a lot more than that frying pan did when he evaporates, and Eddie’s going to feel like he lost him a second time.

Any second now.

Nothing else happens though, except that Richie manages to squeak out, “Eddie?”

And it’s corny to think, but it’s his voice that leaves no doubt in Eddie’s mind that it’s really him. Because Richie Tozier can sound like almost anybody in the world, but there’s no one that can sound like Richie. Even Pennywise never tried to imitate him. Because no one can. That, Eddie is sure of.

Dead is… Eddie is a nurse, and he’s no stranger to death. Richie was dead. No one could survive that kind of blood loss. But that also doesn’t change the fact that Richie is standing in front of him, in his apartment somehow, alive and breathing and miraculously free of giant holes in his chest. Also, this past weekend has had Eddie really rethinking his personal beliefs on what is and isn’t possible.

“Oh god, Richie—” Eddie reaches out and places a hand on Richie’s chest. Richie doesn’t stop him, but he also doesn’t react other than staring at Eddie’s hand, like he’s still unconvinced that Eddie is really Eddie.

Also he’s apparently speechless for the first time in his life.

“What the fuck,” he breathes out. His heartbeat is pounding beneath Eddie’s fingers. “I… we had to leave you. God, I tried to—”

“What?” Eddie interrupts him. “You died. Right in my arms, like, right in front of my fucking face and then you all got sucked into that pit and I—”

“What? No. Wh--wait. Wait wait wait. How did you find my apartment?” Richie demands.

“Uh, excuse me, this is my—”

But Eddie doesn’t finish that sentence because at that moment he looks past Richie into the living room and his point dies on the tip of his tongue. This is not his apartment. The doormat wasn’t lying. This is some kind of bachelor pad nightmare. One sofa, no art on the walls, a TV that’s too big for the room. Eddie glances up at the number on the door. Seven. It’s the right number, the outside of the place looks right…

“What did you do to my house?!” Eddie cries, because of course he’s happy Richie is alive—too happy to even process it properly—but he’s not going to pretend he won’t be pissed if Richie donated all of his good Pottery Barn furniture.

“Your— I live here, dipshit,” says Richie, apparently kind of snapping out of it. “I’ve lived here for like ten years.”

“You told me you lived in Chicago and—”

“Yeah,” says Richie. “Well, like kind of. I have an apartment there, usually sublet it. Didn’t think I needed to get into my whole real estate history, cause it’s not like we had bigger things to worry about.”

“Just—”

“You know what?” says Richie. “Just fucking come in. Let’s...can you call Mike?”

“Mike isn’t dead either?!” Eddie cries. What--How--

“Of course not,” says Richie. “I mean he better not be, I’ve been texting him all day.”

Eddie takes his phone out of his pocket and goes to his recent call history. He taps on the Derry number that called him the other day, back in another fucking lifetime, while rolling his suitcase into this like sham of an apartment that apparently Richie lives in.

We’re sorry, your call cannot be completed as dialed…

“You try Mike,” Eddie says, shaking his head. “My phone says his number is disconnected.”

Richie is texting furiously. He sinks down into the couch.

“Does that thing have like bed bugs?” Eddie asks, because the couch looks kind of suspect if he’s being honest. Like the kind of thing Richie might have dragged in off the sidewalk.

Richie makes a face. “No, what the fuck, of course not.”

Eddie sits down next to him on the edge of his seat, still not entirely convinced about the bed bug situation.

“I’m gonna FaceTime Mike, cause…” Richie shakes his head. “Fuck, I don’t know. Mike’s the crazy bitch with all the answers, right?”

Richie then does something kind of un-Richie-ish. He turns to the side and drops his head on Eddie’s shoulder, inhaling shakily and deeply. It’s then that Eddie notices his coffee table is littered with tissues.

“What?” Eddie asks him. He gets the distinct impression that Richie is about to cry, maybe, which is terrifying. And that’s stupid because Eddie works in a goddamn hospital. He deals with crying people every day. But there’s something about being around Richie that just… He feels like they’ve fallen back into the dynamic they had when they were kids. And teenage Eddie wouldn’t have known how to deal with Richie crying and so adult Eddie is kind of panicking over the thought of trying to figure that shit out on the fly.

If Richie starts crying, Eddie probably will too. This situation is… Honestly, it’s super overwhelming. He doesn’t feel equipped to deal with this fuckery.

Just then though, Mike picks up. Like a flash, Richie lifts his head up off Eddie’s shoulder and shoots Mike a shit-eating grin.

“Explain this shit, Mikey,” he says, and turns the screen to face Eddie.

Mike immediately drops his phone.

#reddie #richie tozier #eddie kaspbrak #it chapter two #my fics #impossible things fic #fanfic #losers club #it chapter two spoilers

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emeraldbirdcollector · 4 years

Text

Alice’s Tale Part III

This is going to be longer than I thought. I haven’t even gotten them out of Lucien yet...

They found the Church before evening, with the Minister and several disciples busily setting out tables and simple meals for fleeing refugees. The Minister was a calm, capable woman, her salt-and-pepper hair neatly braided in tight little braids all over her head, her eyes sharp and friendly, as if she saw straight through people to their worst sins, but loved them anyway. She did not seem fazed by the sudden avalanche of evacuees, but kept her disciples moving with a steady stream of orders, as if directing a dance troupe through a chaotic dress rehearsal. She looked up at Remington and the children with appraising eyes, and nodded.

“Orphans, I suppose?” Her voice was firm, and tired, but not unkind.

“As of this morning, I'm afraid, ma'am.” Remington dismounted, and carefully helped first Jack down, then Alice. “These are Alice and Jack, and they have no place to go. Could they find refuge with the Church, and perhaps a family to stay with?”

She nodded. “We do not turn away anyone in need if we can help it. Things are...a bit overwhelming at the moment, but there's room enough in the Church for now, if you don't mind sleeping in a blanket on the floor. And then...well, we've missionary groups arriving and departing all the time. One of them will know of a family in need of two such fine children.”

She smiled at them, and reached out her hands. “I am Minister Paulina of the Church of the Light. Welcome, my dears. You may stay as long as you please, and we will find you someplace more permanent as soon as we can. Unless either of you feel a calling to Church service yourselves...”

“I don't know, ma'am. I've never thought about it.” Alice was honest, but took the Minister's hand courteously. Jack, suddenly shy, hid his face, but the Minister seemed not to take offense.

“An honest answer, good. You can explore that question for yourself later. For now, why don't you find a table and have something to eat? Will you join us as well, sir?”

“Thank you for your hospitality, ma'am, but I must get back before sunrise. Captain's orders. May I...have a moment with the children first, to say goodbye?”

Her eyes softened. “Yes, of course. Children, when you're finished, go find a table and get a meal from one of the Sisters or Brothers. And when you're done, come find me and I'll find you a place to stay for now.” She turned, and began the work of supervising and organizing anew.

He took the ration packs from the horse, and handed one to each. Then he knelt and held out his hands to both of them. “Take care of yourselves, and each other, you hear me? And if you ever make it to Portia...ask for Sam or Arlo, and tell them Remi sent you. Maybe we'll see each other again some day.”

Alice's eyes were suddenly full of tears, but she fought them back, lest her hero see her weakness. Jack was less reserved, and flung himself at Remington in a hug, which ended up enfolding Alice, too. “Thank you for saving our lives,” she got out, and felt ridiculous – surely that wasn't enough for such a momentous action.

“I'm just glad to know there was something I could do today that was right, that saved someone. That...means a lot to me.” She was startled to see him blink back tears himself. “Here.” He pulled from his pocket a pair of small dangling amulets, and gave one to each. “These are Peach amulets – they make 'em in Portia. It's traditional to give one to someone when you say goodbye for a long time, for luck. I've got a bunch that people gave me before I left – you two keep these for me, OK? Maybe they'll bring you good luck, too.”

“Thank you,” Alice got out, past the lump in her throat. “I wish I had something to give you in return.”

“You did. You gave me some hope on a dark day.” With that, he hugged them both one more time, mounted his horse, and rode back along the road.

Alice watched him until she couldn't see him anymore, holding on to the amulet like a lifeline. Finally, Jack tugged at her sleeve. “I'm hungry. Can we get something to eat?”

“Yes, of course,” she said, and they turned towards the tables.

In the next few days, Alice was careful to make herself as useful as possible. Jack, along with some of the smaller refugee children, was being given lessons during the day by a very patient Brother, and she hoped that if she did enough work for both of them, he would be allowed to continue his education. She had already learned to read and write and do basic math, and she knew she wasn't particularly gifted, not enough to be sent to university or trained as a Builder or an Architect or a Researcher. But she thought she could learn to run a shop as her parents had done, and make a living for herself and her brother. And Jack, at least, could stay in school for a while.

In the meantime, she busied herself helping with all the tasks the Sisters and Brothers deemed appropriate for a girl her age, chopping vegetables, stirring pots, serving meals, sweeping and dusting, and gathering laundry to be taken to the river for washing. Her favorite job, though, was helping Sister Elena and Brother Marcus in the gardens, weeding and watering, picking bugs off the plants (later to be used as bait for fishing, or to feed the ducks – the Church wasted nothing), and even spreading fertilizer (she got used to the smell after a bit). It was lovely to be out in the sunshine amidst fresh growing things, blooming and sweet. And the work, while hard, helped her block out the worst of her memories, and to sleep more soundly at night, with fewer nightmares.

Jack was not so lucky. They had been given a quiet cell normally used by visiting Sisters or Brothers, sparsely furnished with a chair, a desk, a trunk for their clothes and meager possessions, and two bedrolls which were rolled up and pushed against the wall during the day. Often, Alice woke during the night to find Jack shaking and thrashing, whimpering or crying out in his sleep. All she could do was to hug him close, stroke his hair, and murmur soothing words into his ear – he was impossible to wake in that state, and the best she usually managed was to soothe him into a quieter sleep after a while, when whatever frantic nightmare he was experiencing resolved itself. One particularly bad night, in desperation, she put the Peach amulet Remington had given him into his hand. Immediately his fist closed around it and he took one, two, three deep, rasping breaths and was calm again. From then on, he never slept without it.

Alice kept hers on a thin string around her neck, next to her heart. She would never have admitted to such a silly and childish fantasy, but sometimes when she was busy with particularly dull and repetitive work like dishwashing, she let her mind drift off, making up stories about brave knights and heroic rescues, pirate raids, daring chases on horseback, and fair maidens in dire circumstances. Her villains were moustache-twirling evil on two legs, her maidens strong-willed and pure of heart, and her knights – always, always, they were kind and humble, but noble and princely in their bearing, fiercely courageous yet the soul of courtesy and gentleness to the maidens they rescued. And always, though she would never have confessed it even under the most sacred seal of privacy, they had eyes the color of dark golden-amber.

#mtap #Mtap prompts.#mtap alice #mtap remington

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violet-makes-an-entrance · 4 years

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Better Together

Dodge, parry, block, strike, duck…

For weeks, Violet had been holding herself up in the augment room, training feverishly with the faceless training programs. Bare shield, spiked shield, hand to hand, even trying her hand with Marcus’s preferred weapon--the staff--just in case. If she wasn’t in the augment room, wailing away, she was hovering around Sango and Savannah. Making sure they felt safe and comfortable was her highest priority… that and doing her utmost to prepare for the inevitable.

It was the event from weeks ago that really set her on edge; her worst fears creeping up like an old children’s horror story come to life. In a way, this was her boogeyman, the thing that had truthfully plagued her nightmares for over a year now. Nothing was certain except one solitary fact: he was out there. They had no idea if he knew where they were, if he cared where they were, if he’d come for them, when he’d come for them, what he would do. So, Violet spent every waking moment preparing, and trying her best to hide her internal panic from her guests.

Block, parry, punch, kick, pause…

Pause?

The programs suddenly froze in place, throwing Violet off her steady rhythm. Having anticipated the movements of the program in front of her, she sent her shield careening a few inches in front of its featureless face instead of into its skull as intended. It slammed into the wall several meters behind and vanished into pixels. Confused, she scanned the room, and found Marcus standing in the doorway, a hand still lingering over the control panel hovering in front of the wall. Seeing as he had her attention, a smirk grew on his lips.

“Thought I’d find you in here,” he chided.

Breathing heavily, she straightened and strode over to him, “A safe assumption, what’s up? Sav and Sango alright?”

“They’re fine, it’s you I’m getting worried about.”

Her eyes rolled and an incredulous smile spread across her face, “I’m fiiine! Look at me! See! I’m fine~” she stepped back, arms out in a demonstrative manner, did a small turn around, and ended in a pose that sweetly accentuated her curves. “Aren’t I~” she said with a knowing look and a wink.

Marcus held up a finger, “Though I am NOT denying that, you know what I’m talking about.”

Violet sighed, “It’s fine! I’m doing fine! Heck! I’ve never gotten this far in the difficulty as I have this last week! So one could even argue, I’m doing better than okay, I’m doing absolutely fantastic.”

He looked her in the eye, tone suddenly turning somber, “Hun, you haven’t fully slept in five days. You haven’t taken Addison out yourself in just as many weeks. CJ has been almost completely independent of you for even longer, and not by her choice. I know you. I know when you’re tired and I know when you’re upset. You’re running yourself ragged, and I love you too much to stand by and watch.”

The defensive humor disappeared. More than a cursory glance into her eyes revealed truly just how tired Violet was. Everything he said was true. She had been neglecting far more than just herself in this process. But what choice was there when the threat was so high? If being able to protect the ones she cared about--the ones entrusted to her--meant a few sleepless nights, a few relationships to be mended later… then that was the price she would pay, right? At least being prepared meant she could handle it when the threat came. At least then she’d still be there to keep those relationships going afterward. Slacking meant… the worst case scenario. Everything she ever knew and loved decimated, destroyed, ripped from existence, and her along with it in all likelihood. No pressure.

Violet found it suddenly incredibly difficult to look Marcus in the eye, and elected to instead focus on a panel in the floor at their feet.

“I know…” she finally managed to choke out. “But I can’t stop now… not when he could come knocking at our door any time now… The girls need me, that’s why Garen sent them in the first place. He trusted me and I can’t let him down now.”

“Hey…” he lifted her chin to look at him again, gentle blue eyes conveying a kind of reassurance indescribable by words, “you haven’t let him down. You haven’t let anyone down. And I know you won’t let anyone down. Wanna know how I know?” He didn’t wait for a response.

“I know because all of this--the housing, the facilities, the care, the time--all of it, is more than ANYONE could have asked for!”

Violet laughed, trying in vain to hold back tears. Her face curled into a sad smile, touched by his words.

His tone lightened, “And don’t even get me STARTED on what you’ve done for me, Brandon, and Nova! Really came in clutch there when we needed it!”

She shook her head, laughing through the tears. Marcus pulled her into a tight embrace, which she returned in full. After a time, he felt some of the tension leave her shoulders and the shuddering stop, only then did he break the silence.

“When Garen trusted you to take care of the girls, I don’t think running yourself into the ground was quite what he had in mind… Just because he trusted you with the work, doesn’t mean you have to do it alone, yeah? You know you can delegate, right?”

Wiping her eyes, she finally let him go, “Alright, alright… I see your point… I just… I need to know that I’m strong enough, you know?”

He huffed a laugh and rolled his eyes, “Well… let’s see…”

Marcus turned to the panel and began fiddling with the program settings, “What… is your weapons combat record?”

“Uhm… four programs at level 13… but they kicked my ass in 46 seconds…”

Nodding along, he finished inputting the final data points and hit the finalization. Six translucent, faceless, glowing programs appeared at intervals in the floor holding featureless bars as weapons. Violet turned to look at them, curious.

“What’re these?”

“Six programs, level 13, win conditions: all eliminated.”

“You’re crazy, I’ll get my ass handed to me on a platter.”

He walked up beside her, staff already in hand. He looked down at her, “By yourself, maybe.”

She looked back at him, mood significantly more confident with him by her side. Her spiked shield appeared on her arm. Without breaking eye contact, she smirked and boldly spoke the command, “Training: Begin!”

The programs sprang to life, and the two dashed forward to meet them. What ensued was a chaotic string of blocks and blows from both sides. Marcus and Violet functioned like a well oiled machine--covering each other’s backs, calling arrant movements, offering encouragement, even deflecting what could have been potentially devastating blows from hitting the other. Like performers in a well-choreographed dance, the two moved fluidly amongst the chaos of the independent programs.

One fell, then another, then another.

A minute, minute and a half, three.

Two left, then one… then finally the augment room fell silent aside from Violet and Marcus’s heavy breathing.

The realization finally dawned on her, and she simply stood there, hands on her knees, panting.

She felt a hand on hers, and looked up to see Marcus stooped in front of her, staff still in his free hand poised like a hikers walking stick.

“Y’see?” he said between heavy breaths, “We’re stronger together… You can’t do this alone…”

Violet looked at him, and without words hugged him around the waist. He returned the gesture, and they simply stood there, recovering, for some time.

#plot #ish #yea i think it counts #long post

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soveryanon · 5 years

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Reviewing time for MAG146 /X_X/*

- Replacing things chronologically, what Jon was doing vs. what he was saying and telling the others throughout the season? (Not suuuure about the first having happened before MAG124, though, since. Yeah. We had squinted at that comment, back in MAG125. And it could take on A Very Special Meaning if that actually came just after Jon’s first victim.)

(MAG146) ARCHIVIST: … The first was a supermarket cleaner. Em, ended up lost for a week in an endless warehouse. I didn’t even…! I–I just went in for some shopping, and he was there, and I–I just… asked.

(MAG124) ARCHIVIST: It’s been a week and… Melanie’s attitude towards me hasn’t softened. And Basira, though she is very willing to talk, still doesn’t seem to trust me enough to let me in on whatever plans she might have.

(MAG125) ARCHIVIST: Regardless, I’ve hit another research dead end with this. It’s… frustrating, to be honest. I finally feel myself, I feel… focused, and ready – and I find myself basically alone.

(MAG146) ARCHIVIST: The second was, uh, it was after I got… stabbed by Melanie. MELANIE: You are not putting this on me! ARCHIVIST: No, that’s not what I meant! [SIGH] I was walking the streets, I–I thought I was trying to clear my head– DAISY: [DELIBERATE] But you were hunting. ARCHIVIST: … Apparently. I found a woman who… every year on her birthday, wakes up in a fresh grave. Just for her.

(MAG127) ARCHIVIST: I’m sorry Basira, I–I will try to keep anything I learn about you to myself. My priorities haven’t changed; I hope you can believe that. [SIGH] I’m still on your side. You can trust me.

(MAG128) ARCHIVIST: You can trust me, Basira– BASIRA: Stop saying that.

(MAG146) DAISY: And the third was after the coffin. ARCHIVIST: A man rejected by all who knew him, searching ever-darker places for love. When he told me his story, he started… weeping maggots.

(MAG133) ARCHIVIST: Look, I’ve… been where you are. BASIRA: Have you? ARCHIVIST: Yes, I have. Like you’re the only one responsible for everyone, the weight of all their lives on your shoulders: it leads to bad decisions. […] Fine. I don’t care if you trust me, but I think I’ve proven at the very least that I’m useful. So use me. Because if you go it alone, you are going to die. Even Gertrude worked with people. We make bad decisions when we don’t communicate…

(MAG146) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] Jess Tyrell, the woman on the tape… [SIGH] She was the fourth. I–I just tried to… I was weak, r–ravenous, I–I didn’t feel…

What Jon did would have warranted the others’ anger anyway; but I think what made it even worse is… that he spent the season taking the higher and stable ground, assuring them that he could be trusted, that they had to communicate and work together, and actively complained and presented himself as… a victim who was tragically cut out by the others? And in the end, Basira was right from the start, without knowing it: he was actually untrustworthy, and unreliable to us listeners.

And it’s not even a New Jon thing! He hid himself to the tapes back in season 1, covered up his true feelings and played pretend because he was afraid that acknowledging the supernatural and the feeling of being watched would only make it more real.

- So, personally? I felt so relieved by the girls’ reaction: yes, it’s irrational; yes, it’s confrontational; yes, it’s not constructive; yes, they’re probably making a series of mistake again. But after MAG142 (and the fact that Martin was partially refusing to believe it was Jon-Jon behind it, then presenting Jon as someone who needed to be protected rather than protected from, and Daisy who was also prompt to highlight how Jon had suffered himself), I… think I really needed characters to be horrified and disgusted by what he had done; to express something raw, leaking betrayal, hurt, disappointment and disgust.

The setting of The Intervention 2.0 is especially interesting since… it’s once again something that Martin, though reluctant, slowly planned or at least contributed to put into motion:

(MAG058) MARTIN: Look, look, you just got to let me work through this. Alright? I suggested therapy, but he just says no, so– TIM: Well, we need to do something! MARTIN: Yeah, maybe.

(MAG059) ARCHIVIST: Supplemental. Everyone is avoiding me. They’ve taken to working farther away from me than normal, and when I call them for any reason, they’re always keen to leave as soon as possible. They share furtive glances when they think I’m not looking. I don’t like it. I feel like they’re planning something.

(MAG060) ARCHIVIST: You don’t mind if I record this, I trust? ELIAS: Well, to be honest– TIM: –That’s kind of one of the things we wanted to talk about. MARTIN: This is an intervention. ARCHIVIST: Excuse me. [CHAIR] ELIAS: If you’d rather it was an official disciplinary hearing, Jon, we can arrange it. ARCHIVIST: … Fine. Say your piece. NOT!SASHA: We care about you, Jon. And you’ve been rather erratic since the Prentiss’s incident. MARTIN: And we’d really like– ELIAS: To not have to fire you. MARTIN: –to make sure that you’re doing okay.

(MAG142) MARTIN: [SIGH] Th–the worst part is I don’t even want to talk to him about it. I’m just… [SIGH] I suppose I’m just getting comfortable with the distance. […] I should probably try to get him this tape, let him know what happened, that someone came in to… But then, ahah, would that just come across as an accusation? Like, because I don’t wanna… And then, then I guess he’d… hear this bit as well, so… I… I… [LONG EXHALE] What do I do…?

(MAG145) BASIRA: Martin left a tape for us. [SHUFFLING NOISE] ARCHIVIST: And what exactly is on this t– … Oh… MELANIE: Yes.

(Martin had tried to partially lead the “intervention” back in MAG060: the way he had corrected Elias was especially impressive, given how Elias was “just” his boss at the time.)

But now, it’s an entirely different team confronting Jon about his actions than in MAG060 – from Martin, Tim, Not!Sasha and Elias, to Melanie, Basira and Daisy: back then, it was half composed of people who… were not being honest to the others about who they were (Elias was scolding Jon for his behaviour and paranoia induced by Gertrude’s murder, when he was the one responsible for it in the first place, and knew about Not!Sasha; Not!Sasha was gleefully pouring salt over the wounds while she had killed Sasha a few months ago, while the others didn’t know yet). Now, unless twist, the three new assistants have made mistakes of their own but are not “toying” with Jon, and are genuine about their feelings; and, more importantly, the three of them have been victims of Jon’s statement-induced nightmares. Daisy had deemed them bad enough to knowingly sign an employment contract, to get immunity from them even though it meant trapping herself in work for Beholding. They all know, from experience, how difficult to bear the dreams were, for victims.

(Not even counting the additional symptoms described by Jess in MAG142. And I can’t help but think that there is something a bit… stronger, for women, to hear about a woman who was terrorised by a man, who happened to be someone close to them. MAG142’s whole setting had made me viscerally uncomfortable more than horrified (“story about a woman being preyed upon while on a date, cornered once alone, pressured to do something painful, then receiving the thanks of her tormentor” was… Heavy) so, although it’s a sheer emotional&personal response, hearing characters-who-are-women unambiguously denouncing what happened without searching for excuses for the perpetrator, meeting him with nothing but coldness and anger… was reassuring. Yes, narratively and strategically, it’s probably not going to help the characters. But emotionally, if felt, to me, like a necessary reaction.)

(And it was even more significant, in the story, that amongst these three characters, Melanie has always been leaning a bit towards denouncing oppressive social structures (her rant about Elias in MAG117 was… yeah.), and the two others… used to be police officers. Basira, especially, led the intervention as an interrogation against Jon; being firm, pushing him to confess, not allowing him to dissimulate or minimise the hurt – though she also made herself partially a judge, in this case, by claiming what Jon was, and I think that was her emotions pouring out.)

- I’ll try to cover the statement first: it was a very interesting case, time-wise, because it intertwined multiple lives and events. The doors had haunted Marcus McKenzie for most of his life, but his father ended up pursued by one and was the first to leave his statement, on August 24th 2003 (MAG027). Marcus left his statement a week later, on September 1st 2003 (MAG146), in reaction to his father’s. Jon stumbled upon Paul’s first, but already learned at the time, through the follow-up work, that Marcus had also given one:

(MAG027) ARCHIVIST: Martin made contact with the son, Marcus McKenzie, but he declined to talk to us, saying that he’d “already made his statement.” This leads me to believe that Marcus McKenzie may also have a statement lurking somewhere here in the archives, lost among the mess and misfiling.

(MAG146) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] … So it seems we did have Marcus McKenzie’s statement after all. I spent so long looking for it, back when I found his father’s, and… no luck.

And Paul had died “of a stroke” two months after leaving his statement (MAG027), which was confirmed by Helen (MAG146: “And technically, I didn’t eat the old man. He passed away from terror!, before I even had the chance to open properly.”)… while Marcus had been fine for almost fifteen years, given how Jon’s team had been able to contact him, back in (April or earlier) 2016, but this wasn’t the case anymore as of now (June-July 2018):

(MAG146) ARCHIVIST: And his son Marcus, he… he was fine, when I found his father’s statement two years ago – but now, suddenly, I can’t get through to him! HELEN: No… I imagine not~! I decided it was time to finish that game a few months ago.

So things kept going, Spooks kept on terrorising innocents, and this time it was one who is… closer to Jon. The first statement Jon had read at the Institute post-coma had already been about someone who got snatched while he was already in charge:

(MAG123) ARCHIVIST: […] I did do some light searching myself on Gregory Cox. … Vanished, unsurprisingly. Sometime in late July 2016, which is… [CHUCKLE] two years ago. … That doesn’t seem right. It doesn’t feel like… … There’s just this… great… gap of time, where I wasn’t. No notes or follow-up here that I can see, just… [SIGH] It looks like the statement came in just after Gertrude disappeared. Another gap. And whoever took it didn’t do any follow-up, just… filed it away. I may be the first person to actually read it, so… sorry Angie, I suppose.

Most of the events involving innocents have been taking place during Gertrude’s era: there were sometimes pleas of people knowing that they were losing someone, or on the verge of being eaten themselves (which was the case for Paul McKenzie in MAG027: “I guess that’s why I’m here. This is what you people do. You investigate these things. You know what to look for and can identify the signs of things that… aren’t right. You know, not of this world. I’m not saying it’s a ghost or anything like that, it’s just… that well, if it was a ghost, you’d be the ones to talk to, right? I just need it to stop. And I don’t want to be put in a home.”), and we were getting glimpses of their gruesome fates from a later point in time – Jon and his team digging through a distant or recent history, but overall covering events that were absolutely unrelated to them. They didn’t know anything while it was happening, and they couldn’t have done anything. But in the case of Gregory Cox, there had already been the fact that the statement had come in when Jon was (on the verge of, or just) beginning his work as the new Head Archivist, and that Gregory disappeared while he was already well-installed; now, with Marcus McKenzie, it’s someone who he had been in contact with, through Martin. It’s the slow dissolution of one of Jon’s own eras, too: because back in MAG027, the Archival Assistants were Sasha and Martin (who had worked on this peculiar case) and Tim, and now, only Martin is left alive, and Jon’s current Archival Assistants are three completely different people.

And indeed, it’s not Team Archives’s responsibility to save everyone; but it’s still someone they had interacted with, and who got consumed since then. It’s closer. It feels more personal, hence, probably… Jon’s franticness: because in the same episode, he acknowledged the fact that he has attacked five people himself, and is confronted to the fact that he hasn’t saved any statement-giver, either.

(- And… remember what Jon had said about Elias in MAG017? “I know he’ll just give me the old ‘record and study, not interfere or contain’ speech again”. The Archives have never been about helping or saving people, nor has the Institute in general, it’s been proven again and again – but it’s something else to be confronted with so directly. In this case, since it was someone Jon’s team had been able to contact, and who got snatched by Helen, who is present in the Institute and has helped Jon occasionally, telling him that she has decided to help him… and there was, obviously, a gigantic echo about deception/relying on (or trusting) someone close, who had repeatedly stated that they were on your side and ready to help you, before you learned about their crimes, with Jon learning what Helen had done, and the Assistants learning what Jon himself had done.)

(- This bit is more gratuitous and solely due to the wording, but I couldn’t help but think about Martin, too, because of the “I’m sorry he’s so lonely, truly I am; I try to see him as much as I can, but I have my own life, and I can’t be there all the time. And I don’t like being manipulated. I don’t like being lied to.” bit (Martin had told Peter word-for-word, in MAG126, “I don’t like being manipulated.”) + the boat painting. Peter Lukas has ruined me for those forever. The familial situation and dynamic was fairly different this time around (… MAG144 was much closer to Martin’s own), but hearing Jon read a statement about someone saying that x was “lonely” because the statement-giver was not around enough also reminded me, a bit, of the whole Jon-Martin deal.

+ obviously, the ~not liking to be manipulated~ is relevant to Jon as well given his hatred of spiders and his overall Web-related trauma.)

- It’s also amusing because, as much as I relistened to old episodes, I never labelled MAG027 a Spiral episode (and more specifically, a Distortion one) in my mind. Relistening to it, yeah, obviously, it was a Spiral episode, with the statement-giver being aware that others thought he was delusional or getting too old, but back then… there was the door, indeed, but I kind of remembered it as a Dark statement for some reason? The feeling of empty houses, the reflexion about noises and how you become aware of all the strange little things when you’re alone in it, and the fact that… something could come for you from within? I think it comes to the fact that, back then, Michael was not so strongly associated with “doors”, and also because MAG026 had already been about him – it’s rare to get two episodes in a row involving the same person/monster/manifestation unless Jon is actively researching the subject.

- … Jon’s… nostalgia of a simpler time? felt accidentally funny to me, though, because I did remember that I had found Jon especially savage with Paul McKenzie, back in MAG027:

(MAG146) ARCHIVIST: … I never thought I’d miss those days, when I could throw out some half-baked speculation about drug abuse or mental illness, and whoosh, away all the statements went. There is… nothing in the world more reassuring than ignorance which we can mistake for certainty. But no. Almost every one of those statements, those… people… that poor old man… [HUFF] Like I can talk…! Like I’m in any position to mourn the suffering of the innocent.

(MAG027) ARCHIVIST: I want to believe Mr. McKenzie, I really do. I am not entirely made of stone, and am apt to be moved by the plea of a scared old man as much as anybody. I mean, dementia is, of course, the most likely explanation, and he admits himself that he has no proof of any of it. Yet part of me still wants to believe him. Perhaps this job is making me sentimental.

And I knooow, Jon was lying and hiding because afraid, but. Still. It had been one of my biggest “OOOH, SHUT UP?!” moment in season 1. How low can you be, to be melancholic about a time when Jon Was Like That.

At the same time, it’s interesting how… Jon’s fake detachment, back in season 1, although absolutely biased and deliberately anti-supernatural, made him sound more… like how you could picture a neutral-uncaring-Archivist. Even in season 2, he was mostly obsessed with the threads going on, the mysteries of the Archives, of the monsters, of Gertrude’s murder. Compared to season 4 in which… with the exception of some recent statements, and although it was just revealed that he had been harming people all along, he was also shown to be softer, more philosophical, more emotional over the victims, sparing a thought for them – and acknowledging their status. More human, in a way, than he had been when he wasn’t this deep in…? (Although still self-centred, in a different way, but more on that later.)

- On the subject of echoes and the situation feeling closer: there was also the fact that… Marcus McKenzie had done absolutely nothing to earn what had happened to him, that his targeting was absolutely unwarranted and began when he was just a little kid (“… The first door I remember seeing that shouldn’t have been there must have been when I was five or six. […] So one night – it was in the Christmas holidays, so I must have been six… I wake up. There’s a noise in my room, like something being… dragged along the floor.”) – just… like Jon, who was only eight when he stumbled upon A Guest For Mr. Spider. And we had the proof that Marcus was pursued and toyed with (before eventually getting eaten) throughout his entire life; so what does it say about Jon’s own situation…?

(- And in the list of things just plainly sad: Marcus’s “and I watched my most treasured possession disappear forever, as the door closed behind it, and I ran back to bed.”, accompanying the end of his innocence – since the door kept popping up, more and more sneakily and/or threatening, starting with this incident.

In the list of “aouch” and conveying a lot in just a few words: “all that remained of my worldly possessions were packed up for yet another return to childhood.”)

- Smaller echoes: the way Marcus was, at first, trying to hide that he had seen another door fairly recently (“But they were just… specific, weird little hallucinations that have long since stopped! Haven’t had one in… Well, it’s not important.”) before finally telling about a last encounter that had taken place recently, after fifteen years of nothing – just like Jon had been hiding his current streak of victims (and even gave the lower number before admitting the actual one, when cornered).

- Slow build-up with Jon introducing the statement with a beautiful circumlocution… and finally calling a spade a spade:

(MAG146) ARCHIVIST: Statement of Marcus McKenzie, regarding a series of… unexplored entryways. […] But there is one thing I know an awful lot better now, than I did when I read his father’s statement: I know an awful lot more about doors…! [CLICK.]

And… more concerning:

(MAG146, Marcus McKenzie) “And as I passed that empty space of grass, there it was – a pale yellow door, stood all alone, like the entrance to a house that I just couldn’t see. It had no frame around it, but I was sure that if I grasped its handle and twisted… it would still swing open, silent, and inviting. […] The street was silent, but I could feel it screaming at me to open it. I just about managed to not do. I was… just about able to walk away. […] Sometimes, you just have to leave. Even if what’s on the other side scares you.”

And ooooh, do Jon does have his own “doors” – Mr. Spider’s, which he almost knocked on; Michael/Helen’s (and the fact that Elias had described how, in his dreams, Jon “knows the dream it used to lead to; he knows it well. But that’s not where it leads anymore. He does not know what is behind it anymore, and he is deathly afraid of finding out. The Archivist turns away.”); his own inner door of knowledge, with the danger of drowning…

- And Marcus’s case was big enough for Jon to… finally knock (bang.) on a door, which, I think, was the first time we ever heard him do? He was especially adamant about not knocking on this particular door?

(MAG131) ARCHIVIST: Oh. This, this door… It shouldn’t be here. MELANIE: Yes. ARCHIVIST: I, uh… I don’t want to open it. I’m not going to. [MELANIE SIGHS, KNOCKS ON THE DOOR]

(MAG139) ARCHIVIST: Haven’t seen Helen much. The door is… sometimes there, sometimes not. … I haven’t knocked. I’m never going to trust it. Trust… her. … Trust it. [DRY EXHALE] And I shouldn’t. Whatever its relationship to the person who was or is Helen… assuming that I can ever know its motivations is a mistake.

(MAG146) ARCHIVIST: [BREATHING HEAVILY, FRANTICALLY BANGING ON A DOOR] [A DOOR CREAKS OPEN] [DISTORTION SOUNDS, BRINGING CONSTANT STATIC] HELEN: You rang~?

I didn’t keep tabs in season 4 but I think it was still a Thing that nobody ever knocks on Jon’s door when they expect him to be inside (… Georgie did in MAG145, but she was pretending to not know), although the assistants did, between them. And of course, knocking on a door might have a special connotation for Jon! It’s what almost got him killed when he was a kid, and ~compelled~ to knock by a Web book!

(And I just realized with this episode that, doors-wise, Martin and Jon actually make the worst combination possible. Jon would have been snatched by Mr. Spider if he had knocked on its door; and on the other hand… Martin stayed holed up inside of his flat while harassed by Jane Prentiss’s constant regular knocking. Jon having a trauma related to being forced to knock to go inside; Martin having a trauma related to something knocking and threatening to come inside.)

- One of the themes mentioned by Arthur in the previous episode also poured into this one: the perception that we have of a person, and how “many” of that same person there is.

(MAG145) GERTRUDE: What was Agnes like? […] ARTHUR: I… [PAUSE] I don’t know. Not really. You got as many answers to that as… folks who met her. Never really knew what she felt ‘bout any of it! Not really. Not in her own words. […] At the end of it, you’re always just the… point of someone else’s story. Everyone clamouring to say what you were, what you meant, and… your thoughts on it… all don’t mean nothing.

We could see a glimpse of that idea throughout Marcus’s statement: in Marcus’s point of view, his father was obsessed with the idea of protecting him, and had made up the story about his own door to try and manipulate him into going back to living with him. That point of view… didn’t age well: Helen confirmed that The Distortion had gone after both father and son, so Paul’s words were likely genuine (and there was nothing about an obsession with his son in his statement). And the theme was, once again, present within both Jon and Helen deceiving people: Helen, who had been fairly benevolent towards the Archives (trapping Jared and neutralising him, allowing Jon to go inside and offer him freedom against what he needed, announcing that she would help the Archives, fetching Jon and Basira back from Ny-Ålesund, swallowing Manuela) was also revealed to have embraced the “feed what feeds you” lifestyle and to be killing innocents without any remorse. In the same way, Jon, whose “monsterhood” had mostly been existential and manifesting through his abilities in the first half of this season, was revealed to have attacked and condemned five innocent people to his nightmares since he woke up – and hid that from both the Assistants and the tapes.

- (“Jack… I was wrong… I was so wrong…………”) => I really wanted to believe in Helen, damniiiiiiiiiiiiit ;; I'd been hoping that Jon was wrong to not trust her, but he was right…

I had hope that Something Had Indeed Gone Wrong with Helen becoming the Distortion, since she had mentioned that Helen hadn’t been “ready” when she had supplanted Michael, and that eating a man had made her feel “wrong”… It looks like she’s not getting second-thoughts anymore about these kind of things. Was it deception, back then? Was it an unavoidable process? Or did it happen partially because Jon pushed her away that time? As far as monsterhood goes, does it have to do with the nature of the Distortion itself? The Distortion sounds like a very particular case, since Helen uses “I” to refer to itself/herself, but also identifies with Michael Shelley and Helen Richardson, while also being able to detach itself/herself from them and refer to them in third person. It… fits The Spiral, obviously, and the whole identity-is-hard, and there is the question of how much what happened to Helen Richardson (being eaten/fusing with/being consumed by The Distortion) can be relevant to Jon’s own experience of… ~becoming~ The Archivist. Back in season 3, Jon had already regarded The Distortion as a “mantle” and was fearing that the same might apply to him – but Jon… did keep his personality, when Helen indeed doesn’t sound much like Helen Richardson anymore/is becoming more and more like Michael and an overall function…?

Though what remained (… officially, unless misleading/lying) is that Helen wanted to help and talk with Jon because Helen Richardson liked him. So, is Helen genuinely trying to “help” Jon by encouraging him to embrace his need to feed, because it’s indeed making him feel bad right now?

(MAG146) ARCHIVIST: You… Why…? HELEN: Not sure. I suppose Helen didn’t have quite the same attachment to him as a project. I’m not quite as much for decades-long campaigns of subtle terror, these days. ARCHIVIST: [QUIET] … That’s horrible… HELEN: Is it? We do what we need to do when it comes to feeding, don’t we? … Don’t we, Archivist? ARCHIVIST: … Yes… HELEN: It would be better if you embraced it. ARCHIVIST: … It’s not… […] Were you controlled? HELEN: What a delightful thought! … I don’t believe so, no. But the Spider’s strings are subtle, so I suppose it’s not impossible. Why? ARCHIVIST: I–I want to know; can The Web control another avatar, one that serves a different power? HELEN: [HELEN LAUGHS AND LAUGHS, ECHOING] ARCHIVIST: Make them do things they don’t want to, make them… [BREATHING FASTER] find victims, feed? HELEN: [SLOWLY STOPS LAUGHING] Perhaps! Perhaps not. Would that make life easier for you? ARCHIVIST: [SHAKY EXHALE] HELEN: Are you so sure you didn’t want to? ARCHIVIST: [FRANTIC BREATHING] HELEN: [HELEN LAUGHS AND LAUGHS, ECHOING] [THE DOOR CREAKS CLOSED]

Or is Helen getting her kicks from tormenting him, because he’s confused, unsure of what is happening and of his own actions (=> food for Spiral)?

- Alright so: yeah, no, I don’t think it’s The Web, Jon. At most, She made him leave the Institute when he needed to feed and/or led him towards people with stories (possibly because She knew thanks to the Chelicerae?), through the lighter or something else. But then, Jon talking to them and getting their “stories”? Not, it’s The Eye, it’s The Archivist, it’s Jon, it’s his new status, it’s what his “choice” meant, and he’ll probably have to acknowledge it and come to terms with it (that he’s not only an “existential” monster with powers, but something who feeds from others’ pain). And it’s an influence, but Daisy had showed us that it’s not absolutely unavoidable… as long as you acknowledge the parts of you which are responsible for it.

- It’s not The Web, but we already had proof that She can manipulate avatars:

(MAG121) OLIVER: Honestly, I’m… still not exactly sure why I’m here. But… you know better than anyone how the spiders can get into your head. Easier to just do what She asks!

But not for Jon’s particular case, most likely. (And it’s… really the ideal culprit, for Jon, who hates spiders, who has been traumatised by them when he was just a little boy. But… probably not The Web here, and most likely having to do with himself. I don’t even think that Jon is actually fearing that he is controlled: as Helen highlighted, it would be more of a relief. Would that fear feed The Web although The Web did nothing? And what is the fear of learning that it was you all along, not something else making you do atrocious things?)

- Elias had told Jon he knew that Jon “had problems with moderation” (MAG092), there was the talk about Jon relentlessly seeking knowledge (MAG092, “In a hundred ways, at a hundred thresholds, you pressed on. You sought knowledge relentlessly, and you always chose to see.”), even Georgie reminded Jon that he tended to be the one asking dangerous questions (MAG093, “You were always the one who pushed too far, and asked smart-arse, awkward questions.”)… so yes, he was a recipe for disaster re:spooky influence and addiction dealing a god of knowledge.

But the biggest question is HOW did Jon manage to stop smoking, around the time he joined the Institute? (MAG080 “I’m going to have a cigarette. […] Sorry, I’ve been quit for five years now”.) He began smoking again at an unknown time (Elias’s “He’s not smoking again, is he?” in MAG039, Jon had cigarettes on him in MAG080, MAG091 and MAG111…) but. He had stopped, once upon a time. Disaster who affirms that he Cannot Stop at every turn had managed to stop, a few years ago. How.

(Or was it “Ahaha, I’ve quit!” while he was still smoking five cigarettes a day, and in denial about that too.)

- Jon’s way of “defending” himself also tied in with bits that we had already seen previously, and which are In True Jon Fashion: rejecting responsibility when confronted, minimising, etc. It’s… a bit like what he did with Tim in MAG065? He tends to be fiercely defensive when called out about things that he did directly (while more easily accepting blame when things happened due to his inaction, or peripherical to him)…?

(He. Tends to really react like a kid, sometime, and. It’s really Jon. It’s the same Jon, reacting in Jon’s fashion.)

- Fun Thing: we began the season with “zombies” and here we are.

(MAG122) ARCHIVIST: [EXHALE, INHALE] Statement of… er… Lorell St John, regarding… zombies. […] Right… Well, I guess we should probably… let one of the nurses know I’m awake. I’m sure they have all sorts of… tests to do. Make sure I’m not a… zombie, or…

(MAG146) BASIRA: I’ll tell you all what I find. Don’t let him eat anyone’s brain while I’m gone. ARCHIVIST: That’s not what I do.

(And, well. Basira had seen what he had done to Breekon, live.)

- I… am not 100% convinced yet that Martin indeed sent the tape to the Assistants, himself and deliberately. Because true, he was hesitating about finding a way for the tape to reach Jon:

(MAG142) MARTIN: I should probably try to get him this tape, let him know what happened, that someone came in to… But then, ahah, would that just come across as an accusation? Like, because I don’t wanna… And then, then I guess he’d… hear this bit as well, so… I… I… [LONG EXHALE] What do I do…?

(MAG146) ARCHIVIST: Been a while since you’ve all come to see me together. I assume it’s… not good news. DAISY: No. MELANIE: What the hell have you been doing, Jon? BASIRA: Martin left a tape for us. [SHUFFLING NOISE] ARCHIVIST: And what exactly is on this t– … Oh… MELANIE: Yes.

… but on the other hand… we know that Martin can begin letters without sending them (MAG042 and Jon finding “an unfinished letter, addressed to his mother in Devon”), so… the most likely is that Martin indeed chose to send it, but I’m not shutting off other options: even if there was a message with it or something, it doesn’t mean that he had indeed sent it, and either Peter either The Web could have arranged for it to reach the Assistants’ hands given the… consequences of hearing the tape.

In any case, it’s probably Not What Martin Wanted, given how he had ranted about Jon jumping into danger at every opportunity, back in MAG142. (I’m curious about how he will react to this one.)

(- I’m glad that “Jess Tyrell” has a name! I was super-uncomfy with the “Bystander” back in MAG142 – and it’s… quite significant that Jon was able to tell her name, while Helen hadn’t been able to identify her victims with theirs. Though: how did Jon understand what the tape was about, in this episode…? Was there a label? Was it accompanied with the complaint? Martin himself didn’t know her name, so he wouldn’t have been able to write it on the paper, but then, Jon could immediately tell what it was about. How…?)

- Basira’s dryness, coldness and harshness towards Jon make… a lot of sense. Jon repeated time and time again that she could trust him, although she was extremely wary of him when he woke up. Her reactions in MAG143 (telling Jon that he didn’t have to face the Dark Sun) hinted that she had either warmed up to him since then, or had been forcing herself to be cautious all this time – at the very least, she wasn’t ready to see him sacrifice himself, she wasn’t ready to “use” him. And now, it turns out that… she had been partially right, when she was berating Jon for being a monster or not being what he seemed.

She snapped at him for taking Floyd’s statement in MAG141 but still allowed it to happen; The Dark’s ritual turned out to have been a bust, encouraged by Elias; and previously, Elias had sent her around on wild goose chases, explicitly acknowledging that he just wanted her to leave Jon alone to allow him to go inside of the coffin (… and Jon coming out of it was followed by a third victim). She’s been played by Elias; she accepted Jon’s actions; and turns out she didn’t manage to accomplish anything since Jon woke up. I’m not that surprised that she decided to rush it to Hill Top Road – Daisy had told Martin that she was prone to improvising, and in this case, it’s probably reinforced by her own personal frustrations? I don’t think that she believes that The Web is behind Jon’s actions – maybe she’s hoping, maybe she’s not; or it could be sheer anger at Jon and the desire to put him face-to-face with the fact that he did it all, that there was no Hidden Spider Forcing Him To Do Things. Or maybe a mix of everything. I don’t know.

- Now that Jon’s activities are known, I wonder how long it will be before the others learn that Basira’s intel had been Elias… I’m not sure that Jon hasn’t picked up on that (since we now have confirmation that he had been hiding things from the tapes for months). Daisy didn’t know about Floyd (which means that Basira had hidden this one from her, already), but making it known that she had been in contact with and listening to Elias all along… won’t go down easily with either Daisy (who had been coerced into working for him, with Basira as blackmail, after her own blackmail when Elias told her “statement never given”) or Melanie (the fact that Elias trapped her, and MAG106… ;;). They… still haven’t picked up on the fact that trying to keep Big Secrets in Beholding’s temple, while Elias is able to spy on them, is an ESPECIALLY bad idea, uh.

(;; And now, I’m afraid that Melanie and Daisy also have their list of Dirty Secrets accomplished during this season…)

(- I HATE HOW THIS SEASON BASICALLY FEELS LIKE ELIAS WINNING AT EVERYTHING, AAAAAARGGGG.

Because Bastard most likely knew and witnessed Jon feeding from people and extorting their statements?! And he mostly used Basira to cultivate Jon into using his powers: isolating him and extending the status quo until Jon would go inside of the coffin, playing on Jon’s uncertainty about The Dark’s activities to get him to meet the remnant of the cult.)

- About Hidden Activities: I’m really not sure that Melanie knows that Helen has been eating innocent people? She disliked Jon, but I doubt she would have been so casual with Helen in MAG131 if she had known?

- Meanwhile, yes, Basira is utterly biased about Daisy, but… she kinda… had a point…

(MAG146) MELANIE: [EXHALE] So. What do we do, now? ARCHIVIST: I don’t know. BASIRA: You’re a danger, Jon. A monster. You’re hurting innocent people. ARCHIVIST: So did Daisy…! BASIRA: Shut up! It’s not the same thing at all. DAISY: Basira… [EXHALE] He has a point. BASIRA: You didn’t know what you were doing! DAISY: [SIGH] BASIRA: And since you did, you’ve spent every waking hour resisting. He knows exactly what he’s doing. ARCHIVIST: I don’t–! Uh, it’s not that simple, it–it feels… [BREATHING QUICKENING] … I don’t know if I can control it, I don’t know if it’s even me doing it…!

Because unlike Daisy, Jon had the knowledge about monsters: Elias excluded, he was the person in the Institute who knew the most about them and what they did. And he kept telling the others to trust him, while hiding the harm he was causing from them. Since she came back, Daisy took responsibility, insisting that it was her, although she wasn’t proud of it and was regretting it; Jon… is currently trying to shift the blame on something else. Daisy made sacrifices since she came back (not going with them to fight The Dark, avoiding thinking too much about Elias…); Jon… didn’t even try at all…? And I really think that it wouldn’t hurt the others as much if Jon hadn’t shown some understanding of their situations, encouraging them to get better, while he (Jon “One thing I’ve learned, Daisy, is that we all get a choice. Even if it doesn’t feel like one.” Sims) himself apparently didn’t try. Even for unspooky things: while Melanie went to therapy, Jon only passive-aggressively confirmed that Georgie wouldn’t accompany him, when she brought it up. Even Jess… had recalled how she had fought to heal and get better:

(MAG142) JESS: So. It… It took a long time to get over that. I mean… That’s not weird, right? I mean, it was a bad time. You know? It–it stays with you. I was signed off for, what, probably about six months, with the injuries? I had pretty bad, uh, nightmares, claustrophobia, I mean… Obviously, right? But, uh, but–but I did my physio, and, you know, talked wi–with the counsellor they gave me? Look, I did everything I was supposed to, and–and yeah, I… I guess I was fine. You know, once the bruises were gone, I… Well, it’s easy to blame memory, right? You know, ha–hallucination, coincidence, all the… classic shite you tell yourself. Look, life went back to… normal, I… I was fine. Until… [CHOKING] about two weeks ago. MARTIN: And that was when you met J– … Er, one of our employees. JESS: … That’s when he showed up.

And both Daisy and Melanie, who had been under influence, acknowledged their feelings and actions as their own:

(MAG131) MELANIE: And then, one day, I suddenly have this thing that takes all that rage, and it holds it. Tells me it’s right. That it’s me. It didn’t stay in my leg because of some Ghostly Masterplan; it stayed… because I wanted it.

(MAG142) MARTIN: Oh, that can’t– that can’t… I mean, it’s not him, is it? Not, not really? It’s, what, addiction, instinct, maybe mind control, something like that? I… can’t believe he’d choose to do something like that. … No, no, I, I can’t think like that, though, I, I can’t let myself, ‘cause I mean, if, if he’s already gone, then all of this is just…

(MAG142) MARTIN: It’s alright. Wasn’t you. [INHALE] Not really. DAISY: No, it was. I hate… a lot of what I did back then; doesn’t mean I’m not… responsible for it, doesn’t mean it… wasn’t me.

Of course, Jon has his issues. Daisy was right about him having PTSD, being self-destructive, being plagued by survivor’s guilt. He’s probably depressed, hence the aimlessness and his whole sinking (the fact that Martin cut all ties was stated multiple times to make him brood). And he’s still acknowledging that what is happening to innocent people is wrong (and it is genuine, and not only a reaction to match the Assistants’ outrage: he was upset, before, both on his own and in front of Helen).

But Jon is not “only” a victim anymore, like he was in season 3: now, he actively causes harm, he hurts people. The way Jess described her life in MAG142, it got utterly ruined and there is likely no fixing (she was in obvious distress, she couldn’t work anymore, couldn’t function; even if she’s supposed to live like this for the rest of her life, we just got Helen mentioning that one of her victims had died of “natural” causes due to his terror – with the amount of stress Jess is put under, she probably won’t live long, and if it’s manifesting like this for the four others… neither will they?).

- That said, I DON’T WANT TIM TO HAVE BEEN RIGHT ABOUT IT, GDI…

(MAG114) TIM: So, why don’t you “Archivist” me, then? Just pull it straight out. ARCHIVIST: Because I don’t want to! I am not your enemy, Tim. TIM: [DISMISSIVELY] Like that matters! These things aren’t human. It’s… instinct. You can’t not. ARCHIVIST: [SOFTLY] I’m still me, Tim. [TIM HUFFS] I’m still… me.

And getting confirmation that no, it’s nooot The Web making him feed, could act as a wake-up call? Or… actually listening to Jess’s tape could, maybe. Because the portrayal she made of Jon was especially upsetting:

(MAG142) JESS: But he just starts talking. Slowly. But real intense. He says he works here, at the–the Magnus Institution and I say what even is that, and he says he wants my story. He says he needs to hear what happened to me. And I… I wanted to tell him to–to–to to go away, I–I wanted to–to to kick him, and run. But… I… [SHAKY DUMBFOUNDED EXHALE] I sit down. […] It felt like… like I was throwing up all those feelings again, and I wanted to, to scream, but instead I just… sat, and calmly told him my life story, and he just watched me. His eyes, like… his eyes, like, we–were… drinking in every fragment of my misery. I can’t… It… [PAUSE] And then it was over. And he looked… he looked at me like he’d just eaten… like, a perfectly cooked steak. You know what he said? He said: “Thank you.” “Thank you,” just like that. Like… like reliving the worst parts of my whole life were just a bit of a… a favour, that I’d done him. And then he left, and, and I… I just sat there, and cried for a while.

(MAG146) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] Jess Tyrell, the woman on the tape… [SIGH] She was the fourth. I–I just tried to… I was weak, r–ravenous, I–I didn’t feel… […] I don’t–! Uh, it’s not that simple, it–it feels… [BREATHING QUICKENING] … I don’t know if I can control it, I don’t know if it’s even me doing it…!

And the Whole Thing came up now, not at the end of the season. Which raises the question: why should Jon be kept alive…? The fact that the assistants directly confronted him is a proof that they didn’t totally antagonise him (they would have plotted and thought about a way to get rid of him if they genuinely thought he was… over and done with. There is still the coffin in Artefact Storage.) but… if Jon isn’t even trying to be kept in check, if he’s fated to target innocent people, if he’s not trying to find a way to control it (nor tried to warn the others about it, to be contained or monitored)… there is absolutely nothing differentiating him from the monsters we previously saw? And there is the added looming threat of The Watcher’s Crown? I don’t think the overall conclusion will be that yes, he would have been better off dying, and that Tim actively trying to die was The Only Respectable Way Out. I think there is probably still ways to do something meaningful in their current situation? But there is the fact that, right now, Jon isn’t paying the price of his powers anymore (his victims are) and that, as far as they know, there is nothing else than The Eye’s ritual in front of them.

- It feels like what’s currently happening also had to do with Jon’s overall passivity regarding his powers. He had told Georgie, in season 3, that he couldn’t stop his research. He had realised, in America, that he was indeed dependant of statements, and had decided, at that moment, to just accept it since he didn’t have the time to interrogate it (since there was The Unknowing coming closer – but after he woke up, Jon didn’t have… much to do, and it would have been the moment to ponder about it). It was highlighted with Jon’s passivity around the tape recorders, contrasting with how Basira had chosen to… woosh them away:

(MAG123) ARCHIVIST: And we’ve got an audience. Perfect. I thought you said you decided to throw them all out. BASIRA: Yup. And I did. And here’s another one. ARCHIVIST: Maybe it’s hungry. BASIRA: Seriously? ARCHIVIST: I mean, I did have a statement I was planning to record. BASIRA: Great. Perfect. You can get on with that, and I’ll just leave, then.

(MAG126) ARCHIVIST: [DRY EXALE] There was a tape recorder waiting for me when I sat down. They’re not even hiding it anymore. There weren’t any tapes from when I was… away – I checked. Whatever they are, they are here for me. I suppose I should be worried, but I have so much to keep watch over. So I’ve decided to let the tapes run. They’ve… proved useful before, so… [TINY CHUCKLE]

(MAG146) MELANIE: [EXHALE] Why didn’t you record them? BASIRA: Why do you think? Because he was ashamed. ARCHIVIST: No! I don’t– … I–I mean, I don’t record anything anymore, not… not really, I just… sort of assume they’ll… turn on, if it’s important. BASIRA: Well, they didn’t. ARCHIVIST: … No, I suppose not.

(Also: eff you, tape recorders, for not thinking that these people’s stories were Important :<)

And it was also shown in the way Jon… kept saying that he couldn’t control his Knowing:

(MAG127) ARCHIVIST: [STATIC] Look, I don’t know, Basira. I hope I’m still human, but it… but it’s seeming more and more unlikely. BASIRA: … I didn��t ask. ARCHIVIST: No, I suppose you didn’t. BASIRA: Don’t snoop in my head. ARCHIVIST: I’m not “snooping”, I’m not looking. That’s not… how this works.

(MAG128) BASIRA: You heard me. Don’t ask about them, and don’t know about them either. ARCHIVIST: I can’t exactly control that! BASIRA: Learn.

(MAG133) DAISY: [BREATHING HEAVILY] Basira said you could just… “know” all this now anyway. ARCHIVIST: Yeah, it’s… I–I can’t really… control it.

(And unless he lied to us about it too, he kinda managed to keep in check for Martin’s and Basira’s activities, in the end, when they pressed him to stop? So… maybe, sadly, being firm and cutting Jon on his bullshit is the only way to get him to actively try to hold on.)

- Daisy seemed to have picked up on a pattern regarding Jon’s feeding, though, which is that they happened after he used his powers in new ways and/or experienced another Fear and/or got hurt by spooks:

(MAG146) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] Jess Tyrell, the woman on the tape… [SIGH] She was the fourth. I–I just tried to… I was weak, r–ravenous, I–I didn’t feel… … The first was a supermarket cleaner. Em, ended up lost for a week in an endless warehouse. I didn’t even…! I–I just went in for some shopping, and he was there, and I–I just… asked. The second was, uh, it was after I got… stabbed by Melanie. MELANIE: You are not putting this on me! ARCHIVIST: No, that’s not what I meant! [SIGH] I was walking the streets, I–I thought I was trying to clear my head– DAISY: [DELIBERATE] But you were hunting. ARCHIVIST: … Apparently. I found a woman who… every year on her birthday, wakes up in a fresh grave. Just for her. DAISY: And the third was after the coffin. ARCHIVIST: A man rejected by all who knew him, searching ever-darker places for love. When he told me his story, he started… weeping maggots.

So: first one after waking up from the “coma”, second after using his powers to see and remove Melanie’s bullet (and getting stabbed), third after coming out of the coffin, Jess Tyrell… after trying to peer through the Lonely (at the end of MAG139). There is still Floyd: why was he recorded? Is it because he had been involved with someone we already knew (Salesa)? And how come there was nothing after The Dark – is it because Floyd worked as a power up/healing by anticipation?

- I’m sad for Daisy!! ;; Daisy, who had spent time around Jon, who had shared things (The Archers!!) with Jon, and who was giving the impression that she was pulling him off… She sounded like she could understand the mechanism, but at the same time, Jon… didn’t tell her. Too ashamed? Not trusting her enough? So deep in denial…?

- DAISY CALLED MELANIE “MEL”!!! FRIENDS!!!

(MAG112) DAISY: Couldn’t find Tim, but he’s gone with Martin and… the other one. BASIRA: Melanie. DAISY: Sure.

(MAG146) ARCHIVIST: … So we’re going with her. DAISY: [SIGH] Come on, Mel. I’ll see if I’ve got a stab vest in your size. MELANIE: … Yeah. Sure.

Daisy came so far, with her ;w;

- On the one hand, it’s hilarious, indeed, that Melanie acts like a voice of reason.

(MAG146) MELANIE: Uh, okay, seriously. [CHAIR SQUEAKING] I–I’m going to have to be the one to point out that this is a terrible idea? BASIRA: Daisy? DAISY: … Be better if we could prepare. MELANIE: I–I just think that… we shouldn’t be exposing ourselves like this until we have a little bit more than a hunch…!

… On the other hand, we still don’t know if her therapist is a Regular Therapist or a potentially Web-y spook, so the fact that she was inciting the others to not go to Hill Top Road… could be due to an influence. … Or not, and it’s just regular therapy putting some common sense into her.

- The Annabelle mentions were interesting because:

(MAG146) BASIRA: … So you say you’re being controlled. ARCHIVIST: I–I don’t know. Maybe? Th–The Web, it– BASIRA: What, what was the name you said before? Annabelle Cane? ARCHIVIST: … Yes, uh, she’s… she’s been watching us, I–I’m pretty sure of it… DAISY: Jon… I’m not sure there’s actually the– BASIRA: No. No, if he is being controlled, we need to know. And we need to know now. Do you know where she is? ARCHIVIST: H… Not… not properly, I, I think she has some connection to Hill Top Road.

1°) … we have no connection between Annabelle and Hill Top Road as of now, except that both are Web-business. (Not all Spiders, Jon.)

2°) When Jon discussed about Annabelle Cane in MAG136, it was actually with Daisy! So either Jon has been sharing some thoughts about her with Basira, either Daisy told Basira (which would match with Daisy communicating overall!).

- On the one hand, Jon hypothesising that The Web could be behind the fact that he has been attacking people sounds like something he might have thought about because he just heard Gertrude (another Archivist) mentioning how she had been manipulated into doing what She wanted, in her own youth:

(MAG145) ARTHUR: Alright. Agnes: how’d you do it? Never did understand it, not really. GERTRUDE: Ah. That’s a fair enough question. [PAUSE] It was… The Web. I didn’t know it at the time, of course, and I would call it an accident – but it never is, with them. It’s only after the fact that you can see all the subtle manipulations. I was very new to it all, of course. I mean, I was, what? Can’t have been older than… twenty-five. […] Like I said, mm, I was young. Naïve. I somehow found just the right books, made just the right connections, and even got what I thought was a piece of blind good luck, when I found a tin box in the ashes of Hilltop Road, containing some perfectly preserved cuttings of her hair. Of course, what I thought was a “banishment ritual” turned out… not to be. The circle I constructed was more of a… an invitation. It let the Mother of Puppets bind me to Agnes, interweave our existences at some… metaphysical level, as it had with Fielding and the house. … It was the most painful experience of my life.

On the other hand, Jon… researched quite a bit about the notion of “control” this season, and thinking all along that he might be puppeteered could have been the reason behind that?

(MAG123) ARCHIVIST: The Web does seem to have a preference for those who prefer not to assert themselves. […] Perhaps a coincidence, just… people… shopping their traumatic event around… but I have to wonder… how much their actions were their own.

(MAG125) ARCHIVIST: In many ways, The Slaughter fascinates me. There seems to be, in all cases, a question at its heart about… control. Is it a mindless dance, dragging participants along by the beat of a drum or… is there a kernel of will in there, a lucidity and deliberateness to the random fury and violence? I suppose that’s the question with so much of “violence”, “war”: how much are you really in command of yourself or of others? I’m not sure what scares me more: the idea that deep down, everyone is in complete control of their actions, that everything is, on some level, intentional; or that ultimately, we don’t have any control of ourselves at all, and the rest is just… rationalisation.

(MAG129) ARCHIVIST: I don’t like this. I don’t like… not being sure what’s going to be in my mind. What thoughts are mine and what are from… elsewhere.

(MAG136) DAISY: You think I’m weak, just… [SIGH] ‘cause I’m not already chasing the next kill? You think I’m less me? ARCHIVIST: I… [SIGH] I don’t feel like I’m exactly in the best place to judge the… intersection [CHUCKLE] between free will and humanity. Still trying to figure that out myself. [SILENCE] DAISY: Jon… when you went into the coffin. Was it you choosing to do that? Did you actually think you could save me, or was… that something telling you to do it? [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: It was me. I was… drawn to it, I’ll admit, but it was my decision.

Though it was, once again, a consideration which was also relevant to his Beholding powers (the fact that he knew things unprompted).

- Since Peter mentioned his belief that The Extinction could have been born from The End, although taking an active form, I still wonder if that could have been the case originally between The Eye and The Web, or if they aren’t currently merging due to the information&control-related fears being especially overlapping with our era’s development of the means of communication…

There have been so many moments, this season, in which I wondered “is it the Web, or Beholding?”, and especially in the way Jon got dragged towards x or y statement. Trying to get an overview of season 4 regarding the nature of statements and how Jon stumbled upon them (when he was the one reading or listening), there are… recurring threads? (ha.)

* MAG121: Oliver’s statement, about choices; Web interested in Jon.

* MAG122: (Statement brought by Basira; feeling like the only person left in the world)

* MAG123: Web & Annabelle, link with the Institute

* MAG124: (Simon Fairchild casually feeding)

* MAG125: Slaughter statement, notion of “control”, led to Melanie’s surgery

* MAG126: Pre-Spiral ritual

(MAG126) ARCHIVIST: … I remembered Gertrude’s notebook […]. I’ve been staring at it for hours, in the hope something from it would just… come to me. And it worked well enough to point me towards this statement, which is… useful background, and perhaps gives some insight into how Gertrude formulated her counter-rituals, but… not much more.

* MAG127: Jonah Magnus & Beholding (Albrecht)

(MAG127) BASIRA: And what was that you were doing yesterday? ARCHIVIST: … When…? BASIRA: You were sat on the floor for like four hours. ARCHIVIST: … Oh! Er, n–n–no, I was, er, I was… listening. Y’know, it’s, trying to see if any of the statements… called to me. BASIRA: And? ARCHIVIST: [FLIPS PAPER]

* MAG128: Breekon’s visit, Jon “extracting” his statement; going towards Daisy’s rescue

* MAG129: Buried statement, notion of “anchor”, going towards Daisy’s rescue

(MAG129) ARCHIVIST: I don’t like this. I don’t like… not being sure what’s going to be in my mind. What thoughts are mine and what are from… elsewhere. Why I just know some statements are what I should be reading. I assume this one is related to the coffin. To Daisy.

* MAG130: Flesh ritual (Lucia Wright surviving it), nudging towards Flesh-as-anchor or Jared (kept in Helen’s corridors), towards Daisy’s rescue. Tape explicitly sent by The Web.

(MAG130) ARCHIVIST: I found this tape tucked in the corner of my desk drawer. [AGGRAVATED SIGH] Covered in cobwebs. I suppose subtlety is gone out the window a bit. And the question is now simply … how much I trust the Spider to have my… best interests at heart. … Hm. I suspect my assuming it has a heart might be a clue I’m looking at this the wrong way. […] what is it trying to tell me with this? Is it about… rituals? About getting Daisy back? About… about an anchor. What was it she said, “the siren call of Flesh”… Hm. It’s possible, I suppose.

* MAG131: Jared’s story (bit of Flesh ritual), notion of “anchor” through Jon’s ribs, going towards Daisy’s rescue

* MAG132: Coffin trip, Daisy’s rescue

* MAG133: Hunt ritual (Percy Fawcett surviving it)

(* MAG134: Martin reading Adelard Dekker’s letter about The Extinction)

* MAG135: Pre-Dark ritual

* MAG136: Web & Annabelle, link with the Institute

* MAG137: Slaughter ritual (Wallis Turner surviving it)

(MAG137) ARCHIVIST: There’s a box of tapes and statements in the corner. Obviously those Elias either didn’t feel he could trust me with yet, or maybe just the ones he was checking himself. […] So I just took the first one that called to me, and it’s… [DRY NASAL EXHALE] It’s good. I suppose.

(* MAG138: Martin reading Robert Smirke’s letter to Jonah Magnus, warning him about The Watcher’s Crown/Beholding)

* MAG139: Desolation, Agnes, Hill Top Road

* MAG140: (Statement brought by Basira; about The Dark’s ritual attempts)

* MAG141: Jon feeding on Floyd, statement regarding Salesa’s activities and (presumed) death. The tape recorder activated on its own.

(* MAG142: Martin taking Jess Tyrell’s complaint, about how Jon had attacked her two weeks ago.)

* MAG143: (Jon making Manuela give her statement about the failure of The Dark’s ritual)

(* MAG144: Martin reading an Extinction statement)

* MAG145: Desolation, Agnes, Hill Top Road, “anchor”, The Web manipulating an Archivist and tying them to another avatar in order to neutralise Agnes (/Gertrude too?).

(MAG145) ARCHIVIST: And here? I reached out, I took another tape, eh!, hoping for a bit of guidance, but… [HUFF] To be honest, this hasn’t helped.

* MAG146: Spiral-statement, Hill Top Road.

(MAG146) ARCHIVIST: So it seems we did have Marcus McKenzie’s statement after all. I spent so long looking for it, back when I found his father’s, and… no luck. But now, I decide to start looking properly into Hill Top Road, and all of a sudden… I’m drawn to rearrange a filing cabinet – and what do I find behind it?

When Jon “knows” something, it’s clearly Beholding, no problem. But when he feels the “call” of a statement, is it Beholding/the Archives, or is it The Web making him take one, and Jon rationalising that he had felt something? Most statements, this season, have involved Web and/or getting the means to save his assistants (/getting involved with other Fears), and/or learning about rituals – and now, about Hill Top Road. A lot of them seem possibly… pointed?

- Same old questions: we can guess that The Web has plans for Jon, hence the lighter, hence sending Handsome mlm Death Prophet Oliver to convince him to choose avatardom, hence the cobwebs following him around (Jon mentioned them in MAG123), hence revealing itself when sending him MAG130’s tape (and encouraging him to go inside of the coffin, and possibly helping him come out of it, if it was indeed The Web which made Martin set up the tape recorders around it?). But ~what does the Spider want~? Is Jon supposed to fix the “scar in reality” left by Agnes&Fielding’s fight, somehow, since he managed to do things that had never been accomplished before (getting out of the coffin) and has proven that he could “kill” powerful phenomenon (seeing the Dark Sun)? And what is Her stance on The Watcher’s Crown, amongst other things…? Is She just there to enjoy the show, is She worried about something (The Extinction?) or has She decided to jump on The Watcher’s Crown’s bandwagon, or does She want to make sure it doesn’t happen?

Georgie had been the one to recommend that Jon find “anchors”, back in season 3, but season 4 expanded the meaning of the word: “anchors” as a way to escape the clutch of a Fear, an “anchor” as a way to neutralise a Chosen One – and Jon likened his own situation to Agnes (MAG139), before learning that she had been bound to an Archivist to put the Desolation’s activities on hold (MAG145), by The Web itself. If The Web was indeed behind a majority of Jon’s readings and researches lately (after all, Gertrude highlighted how The Web had manipulated her through her researches, by orientating her towards specific books and materials!), everything could sound like it’s supposed to slowly introduce Jon to the concept of being, himself, bound to something/someone…?

(- We’ve been putting so much excitement on the prospect of seeing Annabelle, of thinking that Annabelle is currently pulling all the strings, though… that I can’t help but wonder. What if she is actually… dead. Because that would strike quite the blow on a lot of things re: who is currently in control.)

- Practical questions regarding the Hill Top Road trip, from London to Oxford

* Are they going by train? Or by car, and if by car, who’s driving (Basira and Daisy both can drive, it has been mentioned), and does that mean Melanie will get stuck with Jon in the back seats?

* Will they actually reach Hill Top Road, or will something happen before. (Web preventing them from doing so, or even… lonely endless road, courtesy of Peter, if Martin hears about the Expedition and threatens to stop doing his spreadsheets?)

* Will the tree still be there…? Anya had seen it in April 2009 (MAG114) although Ivo Lensik had uprooted it in November 2006, the night of Agnes’s death (MAG008)… (And there was the tree burning in MAG127, that Albrecht/~the master~ had wanted “dead”…)

* What or who will they find, if they manage to reach Hill Top Road? They certainly won’t take The Web by surprise, so if they meet some of Her agents, it will be because She consented to it. Annabelle herself? Another Web avatar? Melanie’s therapist, if she isn’t Annabelle herself? Oliver, once again as a messenger? Adelard Dekker? Weird ghosts from the past haunting the place (Agnes or Raymond)? A Giant Big Spider? Or nobody, and only an item? A message? A Guest For Mr. Spider, for Jon to have a breakdown? Elias and Peter’s 9th marriage certificate from the last four years? A tape or a statement giving them a clue?

Alriiiiiiiiiiight alright alright, unless we’re being dramatically misled, title for MAG147 promises ~Web stuff~. Part of me is a bit sad, because the… exact title had been used for a while by the fandom to refer to something/someone Very Specifically, and it probably means that past that episode, it will be entirely jossed and we won’t be able to use it the same way – but eh, that’s the deal with Speculation overall. Other part of me is “YIIIIIIIIIIIIH” because. Yep. That’s it. Something Is Coming.

Forms of the title have been roughly used by Martin in MAG117 and Elias in MAG106 (and other times, but those two uses stuck with me), but it’s probably going to be about… Annabelle? Although it doesn’t match her official title of ~the Story Spinner~ used in MAG123. It could be something else Web-related, though – we… don’t know much about Raymond Fielding except for how he was getting Babies in the house, technically? Or something else entirely?

As for Events… Martin meeting Peter’s friend (who is a “he”) is still pending, so it could be that, just to make us even more impatient about the Hill Top Road trip. Or it could also be Annabelle or another spider visiting him while the others are off. Or it could be the group at Hill Top Road, so soon. Any of these cases would mean: DREAD. /o/

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #tma liveblog #mag146 #tma season 4 #the magnus archives #long post/#tma spoilers/

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alindakb · 4 years

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Letters to my Parents - Saturday 30 April 1994 - by Alinda

Saturday 30 April 1994

Dear mom and dad,

The Easter holiday didn’t feel like a holiday at all. We had so much homework we spend most of our time in the library studying. And when we weren’t studying, Draco and I had Quidditch practise. Hermione seemed to live in the library. She was always already there when Draco and I would finally get out of bed. And she never left before us. I think she was close to tears most of the time. I tried talking to her about her workload, but she just snapped at me and told me to leave her alone.

Draco took over all the responsibility for Buckbeak’s appeal. He’s always faster with his homework than me, and once he was done he would pore over enormously thick volumes with names like ‘the handbook of Hippogriff psychology’ and ‘Fowl or Foul? A study of Hippogriff Brutality’. And he did all this next to helping me with my homework. I think I’m really dating the smartest boy in this school.

Quidditch practise was every day during the holidays. Marcus wanted us to be ready for the match on the 23rd. We’d have endless discussions about tactics and Marcus kept drilling into me that I was only allowed to catch the snitch if we were more than 50 points ahead of Gryffindor. They had a lead of 200 points, so we needed more than that to win the cup this year. Draco would hide his laughter against my shoulders every time Marcus brought it up again.

The final was a big deal this year. Slytherin had lost the cup against Gryffindor in my first year and last year the cup had been cancelled. And with me and Draco on the team, the entire house was convinced we could win. Tensions in the school were at a breaking point. Ron, Neville, Seamus and Dean stopped interacting with us because it ended up in heated words about which team was better every time. And other students also had scuffles in the corridors. A fourth-year Gryffindor and a sixth year Slytherin even ended up in the hospital wing with leeks sprouting out of their ears.

It was worst between Marcus and Wood, the captain of the Gryffindor team. They throw hexes at each other every time they saw each other. At one moment Wood treated to hurt me or Draco and ever since then Marcus made sure there were always people protection us. It made it hard to show up to classes on time.

I was more worried about my Firebolt. When I wasn’t flying on it I locked it into my trunk to make sure no Gryffindor would be able to sabotage it. Draco was worried that Nott or Crabbe might do something with it, but they wanted our house to win just as much as everyone else, so I believed they would not do anything to jeopardise our chances.

Hermione complained the day before the match that she didn’t know who she should support. She is a Gryffindor and all, but her two best friends are in Slytherin and on their team. She kept going back and forth with arguments why she wanted to support Gryffindor or Slytherin. It all seemed so unfair to her that she had to choose a side.

When we got back to the Slytherin common room that evening everyone was nervous. Marcus kept walking up and down the room muttering to himself. Derrick and Bole were polishing their beater bats and Adrian and Miles kept going over the tactics we all agreed on for the match. I just sat down next to Draco on a sofa. I didn’t want to talk because every time I opened my mouth I felt like making a run for the toilets.

Draco took me to bed that night. He kissed me and told me everything would be alright. He kept petting my hair until I fell asleep. Not that I had a good night of sleep. No, first I had a nightmare in which I had overslept and that they had to use Crabbe instead. And then I dreamed that the entire Gryffindor team showed up on flying lions that could spit fire. I tried to get away from them but I had seemed to have forgotten my Firebolt and I fell to the ground at rapid speed.

And that is when Draco woke me up. It took me some time to realise it was still the middle of the night. Draco handed me some water and then I curled back against his chest and let his sweet words dose me off to sleep.

The next day I spent a lot of time on braiding Draco’s hair. I was so nervous that the hair kept slipping through my shaking fingers. When it was finally done we went down to the Great Hall as a team. The Slytherin table applauded us on our entrance. It was nice to see how the entire house was supporting us, especially because the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs had cheered for the Gryffindor team when they walked in. Only Luna had touched up her outfit with the Slytherin colours. She smiled at us when we left the Great Hall.

None of us spoke when we changed into our robes. I was glad when Draco sat down next to me on one of the benches and grabbed my hand. He looked paler than usual. And when Marcus told us it was time, Draco gave me a soft kiss before we left the locker rooms.

And before I knew it the game had started. All my nerves vanished as soon as I was up in the air. I glanced around and saw that McLaggen was on my tail, so I sped off in search of the Snitch. I listened to the commentary of Jordan who was a typical Gryffindor and made it sound like every goal Draco made was a lucky mistake. He couldn’t have it that our star player was better than all three Gryffindor girls. Spinnet, Johnson and Bell had trouble taking the Quaffle from Draco. And even Fred and George their well-aimed Bludgers didn’t slow down Draco.

I think it was a good thing that Wood was a keeper because he looked like he wanted to hurt one of our team. Points went back and forth for some time, but Slytherin stayed in the lead. If was just never enough to win the cup. So even though I spotted the snitch a couple of times, I didn’t chase it. Every time I spotted it I faked a look of concentration and pulled my Firebolt around toward the other side of the field. McLaggen kept following me, not spotting the snitch but being stupid enough to think I would lead him to it. Like he could outfly me if I would spot it first.

And then the moment came that we were sixty points ahead. I soared around the field, high above the rest of the game, with McLaggen speeding behind me. And then I saw it. The snitch was sparkling twenty feet above me. I put on a huge burst of speed, I stretched out my hand, and then suddenly, the Firebolt slowed down. I looked around and saw that McLaggen grabbed onto the Firebolt’s tail and was pulling it back. Madam Hooch saw and gave a penalty to Slytherin, which Adrian scored easily, making our lead even greater. Only the snitch had disappeared and McLaggen was still hovering beside me. I was sure he was going to try to stop me again if I saw the snitch now.

The game went on and the Gryffindor’s scored another twenty points. We needed ten more points for me to go after the snitch again. I watched as Draco and Marcus passed the Quaffle between them, trying to pass the Gryffindors, but they all blocked their way. So I raced down and made them all scatter so that Flint could score. We were again sixty points in the lead. I smiled until I saw McLaggen dive with a triumph on his face. A few feet above the grass was a tiny, golden glimmer and McLaggen was closing in on it. I urged my Firebolt downward but McLaggen was miles ahead. I flatten myself to go even faster. Slowly I got closer to McLaggen. I think a Bludger almost hit me, but I was only looking at the snitch. I passed McLaggen, reached out my arms and grabbed hold of the snitch. I pulled out of my dive and held up the golden ball tight in my fist.

The Slytherin side of the stadium exploded. Marcus sped towards me and seized me around the neck, sobbing unrestrainedly into my shoulder. And then I got hugged by Adrian, Miles, Draco and even Derrick and Bole. We were all shouting that we’d won the cup. We moved as one back to the ground and were greeted by our housemates. They lifted us onto their shoulders and walked us to the stands, where headmaster Dumbledore stood waiting with the enormous Quidditch Cup. Marcus took the cup and kissed it before he handed it to me. I lifted it into the air while Draco wrapped his arms around my waist. We both couldn’t stop smiling. I handed the cup back to Marcus and Draco spun me around in his arms. His lips were on mine in seconds. We devoured each other until Professor Snape told us that we were ruining his good day.

That evening we had a massive party in the dungeon. There were Butterbeers and so many snacks. We celebrated until I couldn’t stand on my legs anymore. Draco carried me to our dormitory and Blaise shouted at us to remember to use silencing charms. We both laughed and once in bed, Draco took his time undressing me. He kissed me everywhere and I came inside his mouth. I thought getting jerked off by him was amazing, well I can tell you, having him suck me off is even better.

We both stayed in bed the entire Sunday, just enjoying the afterglow of winning the cup. Blaise and Gregory also couldn’t stop talking about it. We had a really fun afternoon. And then Monday started and we had to concentrate on our schoolwork again. Draco has me studying every night because exams are only two weeks away. So I probably won’t be writing to you until they’re done.

Love you both.

Harry James Potter.

#letters to my parents #drarry #Harry Potter #Draco Malfoy #quidditch #harry in slytherin #quidditch final #hermione granger #AlindasStories

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electricbluebutterflies · 3 years

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Fevered forehead kiss + kabby

Post-s2 grayspace is a beautiful thing. PG-ish and also on ao3.

She’s been sidelined for two days, and apparently two days without her is what it takes for him to completely fall apart.

Marcus has made a very strong point of not needing anyone. Ever. After the tragedy he grew up around… most boys who swear at age thirteen that they’ll never fall in love eventually change their minds. He didn’t. Casual physical entanglements did not count. Otherwise… nothing. No one he would describe as a friend. No one he let close.

Except her. Except the deceptively tiny woman currently recovering in his bed because in the haze of two days ago he couldn’t remember where she was sleeping before all chaos broke loose and he doesn’t trust her unsupervised and-

Two days. Two days since he held her hand for the whole eight-hour walk home, two days since he ignored his own pain long enough to find extra blankets to make a nest for her, two days of neither of them doing anything because he is useless without her.

There are easy distance markers in their story. Them as small children – Abby has always been fierce, unstoppable, hair braided and coloring more suited to regulation gray than most people were – playfighting as if they both knew their fates. Them at whatever point in their late teens she started seeing one of the closest things he had to a friend – Jake was outgoing and one of those people you just had to like no matter what, never had an enemy until the day he went too far – and by that point Marcus was well committed to his space-monk principles and they got into it in public and he’d thought that would be the last time that ever happened. But it wasn’t, because he made captain of the guard at thirty-four and that came with an automatic council seat, and then she got elected the next year, and then…

Wanting to protect her is, after nearly a decade of constant sparring, a strange new instinct.

But they are not who they were then, he reminds himself. He has lived half a lifetime in the past few weeks, had his precious rules stripped away and all that is left is her light. And she has been right there, offering forgiveness he does not deserve, kindness beneath her thorns and-

She wakes up suddenly from a nightmare, poking her head out from the layers of blankets, breathless and wide-eyed in the worst way.

This is all he has left. Taking care of someone else, for the first time in his life, because if he leaves her for more than five minutes he will fall apart.

“Shh. You’re safe.”

He puts his hand on her shoulder, not sure which of them he is trying to steady. Every time she’s woken up has been a different experience, and the apparently likelihood that she’ll be here another week worries both of them. A whole week more before she can move on her own, before both of them can resume their roles attempting to rebuild some kind of civilization. As it is, he’s delegated everything possible on a temporary basis, and there are a few possible disasters on the horizon but not just yet, hopefully not until he can let her handle them, hopefully-

He has failed. She has not. This is all he is sure of.

He feels her calm beneath his touch, feels her body relax. Strange how they have both changed. She leans up into it now, big soft wet eyes staring up at him like some kind of cute baby animal. This is not even close to the woman he’s used to planning his entire life around, and he suspects that routine will hold but now… not to avoid or outsmart but to protect and work alongside.

He’s put her through so much over the years. He can at least try to make up for it now.

“Too warm,” she murmurs. This too is frustrating. He’s used to being yelled at by her, not whispered to.

“You need…”

“I think this is hell.”

“Oh?”

“My leg hurts, I’m trapped in a furnace, you’re here…”

And here he’d really thought they were making progress. Then again, she’s not exactly mentally present right now, she may not mean-

“I could try to give you a cold bath?”

She rolls her eyes, and for a moment he sees flickers of the old routine. She’s wounded now, yes, but she is still her and will be back to her version of normal soon enough. “Don’t even think about it.”

Still, she’s made no move to push him away. He is trying for her and some of it’s working and that is progress and-

On an impulse, never mind that’s never ended well between the two of them, he leans down and kisses her forehead for a heartbeat. Terribly forward, and he hasn’t shaved since before the events he does not have a name for yet and he regrets that now and-

He’s not sure how to describe her expression, but it’s annoyingly cute.

“Go back to sleep,” he murmurs, backing away. “You need to rest.”

“I have never rested this much in my life.”

“Exactly my point.”

#pixievixen #kabby #ebf writes fic

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discoveriesofbishmont · 5 years

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restless (bishmont, 1x04 fic)

@kuningatarmirka prompted matthew helping diana through a nightmare.

set during 1x04. i added in scenes where matthew calls miriam and hamish because i love them. will probably write a series of fics with diana and matthew comforting each other in the future. one post 1x06 where diana has a panic attack is already in the works, and also one where matthew has a PTSD episode for @begins-with-an-absence-of-desire

AO3 Link Here or you can just read the tumblr post...

Matthew waited until Diana’s heart rate had slowed enough to indicate she was deeply asleep in the upstairs room of his tower before exiting his study, traipsing down the staircase out back into the main keep of Sept-Tours. The vampire had work to do and phone calls to make, and he didn’t want to risk Diana waking up and overhearing. He still had his senses tuned to her so he could be able to hear her even on the other side of the castle.

The witch was napping after their morning ride together, still exhausted and weary after the events in Oxford over the last couple of days; she was especially worn out after the revelation that her parents had been killed by witches, not humans. Although she’d run off at first, understandably upset, he’d returned to the tower to find her there and nearly dead on her feet.

He headed towards his father’s office. The study would provide a quiet, calm space with stronger vampiric scents that would hopefully get the alluring smell of Diana out of his nose. Despite feeding only at the weekend, being around the witch was making his blood thirst much harder to control. Matthew would take whatever break he could when it come to getting away from Diana’s scent. While he loved spending time with her, he didn’t want his craving for her to overshadow his feelings - even though he was still in denial.

Matthew opened up the office and stepped inside. It had barely changed over the centuries - bookcase cabinets lined the walls, filled with de Clermont memoires, with old hunting scene paintings decorating the cobblestone walls. The mahogany desk and its accompanying chair had piles of old account papers on top of them and the candle stubs had been burnt down. The air was stale but Matthew could detect both his mother’s and Marthe’s scents within the room. His father’s scent was no longer detectable.

Clearing the chair, he brushed off the gathered dust before sitting down and pulling out his phone. After some debating, he chose who to call.

“Matthew,” Miriam greeted him shortly down the line.

“Miriam,” he acknowledged. “How’s Oxford?”

She began answering questions he hadn’t even asked yet. “Knox isn’t aware Diana is out of the country, although we think he is searching for her. Marcus and I moved into the Old Lodge and made sure a trail with Diana’s scent was left behind from New College to Woodstock. There don’t seem to be any creatures suspecting you took Diana to France - at least, not yet. Everything seems to have quietened down for now. How’s Sept-Tours?”

“Fine. It’s going to take a while for my mother and Marthe to get used to a witch living within the castle walls.”

“I can imagine it must be quite a change. For Ysabeau, Marthe, and Diana, to be living in a house full of vampires.”

“Diana is adapting well,” he relayed.

“So Ysabeau hasn’t ripped her head off yet?”

“Nor do I think she plans to.”

“Marcus owes me twenty pounds then,” Miriam said, satisfied.

“You had a bet about whether or not my mother would attempt to kill Diana?” he asked disbelievingly, some anger seeping through into his voice.

Miriam switched the subject tactfully. “Marcus has been acting as my lab assistant since you left, mostly due to the fact that he wants his own blood analyzed quickly so can find out why his siring attempt with James failed.”

“Any news with that?” he asked.

“I ran his bloods and have the results. Marcus has some of the markers we’ve seen before in cases of failed sirings,” the female vampire sighed. “I’ve emailed you copies of the gel x-rays. When you have the time, can you look at them for me?”

“Of course.” He paused. “You want me to tell him?”

“I think he’ll take it better from his father.”

Matthew nodded. “That might be better.”

Miriam went quiet on the other end of the line again. “Are you scared?”

“Of?”

“Diana.”

“Of Diana - no. But for her? Yes.” Matthew ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “I don’t even want to imagine what Knox and the Congregation might do to Diana if they get their hands on her. Accidental elemental magic, witchwind… her parents’ bloodlines obviously carry power that the witches were jealous of, which is probably why they were killed. Then there’s the entire situation with Ashmole 782…”

“Marcus thinks you’re being stupid taking Diana to Sept-Tours,” Miriam said. “I think you’re being smart. If Diana is powerful, but has no control, and there are witches after her because of the manuscript or her magic, maybe both… there’s no place safer for her than with you and your mother in France.”

Matthew exhaled. “Thank you, Miriam,” he answered sincerely.

“Tell Diana to give me a call anytime if she wants somebody else to talk to,” was the last thing the female vampire informed him, before hanging up.

Before Matthew could put place his phone down on the desk, it pinged with a text.

From: Marcus - So… you might want to call Hamish :/

“Merde,” Matthew muttered.

What exactly had Marcus told Hamish about Diana and their trip to Sept-Tours? Spinning around in the chair, the vampire swiped up his phone and thumbed through it for a moment, wondering whether or not it would be a good idea to call his best friend when he knew it was likely he was just going to get lectured.

In the end, he just sighed and placed the call. Hamish picked up in under two seconds.

“I tell you to take a step back from Diana Bishop and what do you do? The exact opposite.” Hamish said sharply. “And then I have to hear from your son that you’ve partially mated to this witch and you’ve taken her home to France?!”

“Diana and I are not mating,” he countered immediately. “And I’m sorry, Hamish - things took a turn for the worst concerning the manuscript and Diana was being threatened by other witches. I had to act fast. I would have called you if I’d had the time. I’m sorry. You were right - I care about Diana and I can’t let her get hurt. I’m in too deep now and I’m not sure if I want to get out of it.”

“Dammit, Matthew,” the daemon bristled. “You make it so fucking hard to be mad at you, you know that?”

The vampire smiled. “I would let you punch me if you were here.”

“And you’d deserve it.” There was a pregnant pause and then Hamish commented, “Marcus told me he had to talk you down from directly attacking the Congregation.”

Matthew sighed. Of course, his son would have snitched on him to Hamish about that. “I wasn’t going to attack the Congregation - I was going to hunt down Knox. He’s made it clear that he’s willing to do whatever it takes to get his hands on Diana and the Book of Life, even if that means threatening and manipulating her. Diana can no longer trust her own people to protect her, which is why she needs me.”

“From what I’ve heard, it sounds like she can protect herself,” Hamish said dryly. “Witchwind?”

“Marcus really needs to learn to keep his mouth shut,” the vampire growled.

“It’s good that she can defend herself, Matthew. That means she’ll be able to fend off Ysabeau when she eventually strikes.”

“Why does everybody think my mother is going to attack Diana?” He hand tightened around the phone. “She’s not. She promised me. She won’t go back on her word.”

Hamish hummed thoughtfully. “If she swore, then she’ll keep to it. Ysabeau de Clermont might be many things, but dishonorable is not one of them. Now, tell me more about the manuscript. Marcus mentioned that Diana tried to recall it, but failed. What happened?”

Matthew was about to respond when his enhanced hearing picked up a faint whimper from the direction of his tower. He froze, switching all of his attention from Hamish over to Diana. Seconds later, a pained scream split the air. He dropped his phone onto the desk with a clatter, ignoring his best friend’s frantic demands to know what was wrong on, and the vampire full-out sprinted from the office back towards his tower. He was running at such speed that he actually cracked some of the stone walls when slamming into them, struggling to get around the corners fast enough.

He wasn’t ashamed to admit he was panicking. Diana sounded as if she was in agony, and although he couldn’t scent any strangers within Sept-Tours, there was always a possibility that somebody might have broken in. As soon as that thought entered his mind, his anxiety transformed to anger, fear, and guilt; Matthew had promised Diana she would be safe at his home.

Taking the tower steps five at a time, he was at Diana’s bedside barely a minute after hearing her initial scream. To his relief, she wasn’t being attacked or harmed. It appeared that she was trapped in some sort of intense nightmare. The witch was trembling all over, her limbs shaking with the effort of flailing as sleep paralysis gripped at her. Matthew could feel his heart clenching as he saw the tortured expression on her face.

“Wake her up, Matthew.”

He turned, tensing when he saw his mother and Marthe framed in the doorway. They were respectfully remaining on the staircase and hadn’t entered the tower, as that would be an invasion of his territory. Ysabeau had been the one speaking to him, her voice unusually soft, although her eyes were as cold as ever.

“She is suffering a cachavièlha,” his mother continued. “It would be cruel to let her sleep on.”

Sitting down on the bed beside her, Matthew gently placed his hand on her nearest shoulder, wincing when she flinched at his touch. “Diana, wake up,” he urged. “You’re just having a nightmare. Whatever you’re seeing is not real. You’re safe and I’m here with you. Wake up!”

The witch jolted upwards so suddenly that all three of the vampires startled, Matthew in particular jerking away slightly. Her breathing short and uneven, Diana’s hands were like vices as he gripped onto Matthew’s forearms, her eyes wide with alarm and fright. The vampire stared directly back at her, his own hands grasping her elbows securely.

“Matthew?” she breathed. The frantic, haunted look on her face as she glanced desperately around the room told him that Diana wasn’t sure whether this was real or not. “Knox… he was just…” She placed a shaking hand over her heart, as if remembering some past pain.

“He’s not here,” he shook his head. “It’s just you, me, and my mother and Marthe. You’re safe.”

Something in his expression must have reassured her, because Diana crumpled and threw himself at him, wrapping her arms around Matthew’s neck and burying her head into his shoulder with a broken, relieved sob.

“It’s okay,” he whispered, embracing him to her tightly. “I’ve got you. It was just a bad dream. It wasn’t real.”

“It was definitely real,” Diana murmured, voice trembling. “Knox was looking for me, chasing me… no matter how far and fast I traveled, he was always there right behind me, ready to strike me down. And then you were there helping me get away but Knox was still hunting us.”

Matthew shushed her and stroked over her hair soothingly. He met Ysabeau’s icy eyes and Marthe’s warm, sympathetic ones over the top of the witch’s head. “He can’t get to you here.”

“He got to my parents.” Diana’s hand fisted his shirt. “They were on the run and the witches got to them despite that. What makes you think they won’t find me here?” Her breathing was speeding up and she began to hyperventilate, on the verge of a panic attack. Her shaking only intensified. “Oh god, Matthew.”

He shot his mother and their housekeeper a sharp look, silently ordering them to leave. Marthe dipped her head and vanished down the staircase, and after one last narrow-eyed glance between her son and the witch, Ysabeau departed as well.

As soon as they were gone, Matthew scooped Diana off the bed and slipped underneath her, lying down so he could settle her against his chest. Encasing her in his arms, the vampire sighed when her ear rested over his heart and fingers hooked onto his shirt collar. He reached down to tug a blanket over them both, aware that Diana was still shivering. After a minute or so, the trembling stopped and the witch lay on top of him quietly.

"I'm here," he whispered, dancing his fingertips over her back. "It's all right."

“No, it's not. Knox’s looking for me,” she said, sounding dazed. “He’s using a location spell. But you have to use a map and the one he’s working with is only of the UK. But soon he’ll realize that he needs to search further out and then he’ll find me.”

The glazed-over look in Diana’s blue eyes told Matthew this was not just an educated guess of hers; she was utilizing some kind of witch power. Perhaps she was using seer abilities. “Even if he does discover you are here, he won’t come to find you,” he promised. “You’re safe here.”

Turning, she propped her chin on his sternum. “I’m safe with you.”

Matthew stared at the ceiling, swallowing down the suddenly erupting burn at the back of his throat as he heard the witch’s blood begin to hum in her veins due to their proximity. “I don’t deserve your trust,” he said quietly. “I don’t know what I ever did to earn it in the first place.”

Diana leaned up and brushed her lips against his tenderly. His body stiffened and he reminded himself that such relations between a witch and vampire were forbidden, trying to find the inner strength to push her away. But sensing how unresponsive Matthew was beneath her, Diana pulled away and slid off him, curling up at his side with a sigh.

She was asleep again within seconds.

“You smell like her,” Ysabeau muttered with a disgusted wrinkle of her nose when Matthew eventually forced himself to part from Diana’s side, heading downstairs to his study where Marthe was stoking the fire and Ysabeau was sitting in the chair beside it. “I can deal with one witch who smells like fresh grass and morning dew, but I will not have my son smelling the same way.”

“Diana is fine, thank you for asking,” he responded flatly.

His mother looked away dismissively. “I knew she would be fine the moment you woke her up. Nightmares have no lasting effects on witches.”

“I’m not so sure that was a nightmare Diana was suffering from.” Matthew frowned, cracking open a decade old bottle of wine from the vineyards down the road.

“La sorcière est une voyante?” Marthe asked.

“She is a seer?” Ysabeau snapped, unintentionally translating what their housekeeper had just questioned.

Matthew inclined his head. “Perhaps. I doubt she knows what she is capable of when it comes to magic.”

His mother stood abruptly and left. Marthe finished adding firewood to the grate and hurried out after the other female vampire.

Matthew sighed. He needed to return to his father’s study to fetch his phone, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave the tower in case Diana suffered another nightmare or vision, and needed him to comfort her. Instead, Matthew gathered a couple of books so he could work upstairs sitting beside the bed; that way he could watch over the witch while she slept for a couple more hours, before he would wake her mid-afternoon for a late lunch, so she could get some of her own work in before dinner with Ysabeau later on.

He had no idea whether Diana would remember her nightmare or her actions when he’d woken her up. The idea of her forgetting kissing him caused a twisting sensation in his chest.

As long as Diana was safe, though, Matthew would be happy.

#ADOW #a discovery of witches #ADOW fic #mine #bishmont

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stozzierr · 6 years

Text

He Floats Too

a/n: okay so! this one is not a request, but something that has been swimming around my noggin for a while. the prompt for this one is “what if richie floated instead of beverly?” now, here me out, there’s a couple stories like this on AO3 already (kudos to those writers) but it’s all reddie. me, being a slut for stozier, decided to change it up a little and have stan kiss richie. so enjoy!

ps: the ending got a little rushed and sloppy because i got tired and i apologize. i think it’s fine, though

warnings: mentions of blood, stan’s special scene where everyone cried, and of course, clowns. don’t worry it’s fluffy towards the end

ship: stozier

word count: 2.4 k

Richie Tozier, with his anger from the “incident” three weeks ago reduced to a dull grumpiness (he hadn’t talked to Bill since then, so that helped a lot), slammed his fingers down on the buttons of the machine. If he could juuuust beat his high score before he had to go home-

“Hey, kid.” Richie flinched at the sudden voice and swiveled around quickly. He’d been so on-edge since his adventures in Neibolt, that any noise could be that fucking clown coming to chomp on his brains.

To his surprise and luck, it wasn’t a clown. It was just Elliot, someone who worked at the ticket counter and who Richie made a small friendship with. The 17-year-old was known for just up and leaving in the middle of his shift, but seeing as Elliot was alone without Marcus at the counter with him, it was a little odd for him to be leaving now.

Elliot tossed his keys at the glasses-clad boy and a grin manifested on his oily, acne-ridden face. “Lock up for me when you’re done, got it?” With that, Elliot sauntered off, pulling a cigarette- or possibly a joint?- from his pocket as he went behind the arcade.

It was now that Richie realized he was completely alone in the arcade. He was used to being alone, at home. Not here. Why here, where did all the kids go? Not like they all went missing. Yeah, bad joke, and Richie felt bad for thinking it.

Nevertheless, he turned back to his game, which he was on the verge of losing for not paying attention to it for that brief interaction with Elliot. He put his game face on and began to aggressively tap on the red and blue buttons, lip pulled between his obnoxious teeth in concentration. Almost there, almost there, almost winning!-

“No! Aw, you dipshit!” Richie cried out when he saw his character KO, bottom lip jutting out in a pout. Damn it. He gave a small kick to the machine, bitter about the loss, before he turned around to leave.

Two strong, gloved hands wrapped around his throat. Before him stood Pennywise, a grin on it’s face that gave his worst nightmares a run for their money.

Black-bellied whistling-duck. Check.

Pink-footed goose. Check.

Black brant. Check.

‘That’s the last of them,’ Stanley Uris thought to himself as he stood up from his spot at the nearby pond. It was an extremely pleasant day in the middle of August, and a perfect time to go bird watching. But, he’d checked off all the birds he was hoping to see, and some repeats he’d already seen. Not that the repeats weren’t beautiful, he loves their beauty, he just got all he was looking for today.

He stole a quick look at his watch. 12:34. 26 minutes until he had to meet Richie. He smiled softly at the thought of the wild boy with wild hair. Always so wild, that boy. Stan felt his cheeks tinge a light pink at the thought of his wild smile, and he shook his head. Not the time. He could think about his smile when the two finally met up.

This outing between the two was planned two weeks ago, after the Bar Mitzvah. In Stan’s mind, it was like a date. They’d go see Honey, I Shrunk The Kids (Stan’s choice. Richie wanted to go see A Nightmare On Elm Street 5, but Stan was too much of a wuss. Not to mention, they didn’t do well with scary things, especially with recent events), then get milkshakes, and then spend the night in Richie’s house. It was a great event for Stan that they planned forever ago. Hell, Richie called him three days ago to confirm the plans.

As Stan began to work out the best seating for the two where they could see the movie, and Stan could steal glances at Richie while he was enthralled in the movie, he hopped onto his bike and took a leisurely ride towards his house.

Coming up on the side of the road was Maggie Tozier, which surprised him. She was usually at home or partying with friends, not stapling pieces of paper to a telephone post. The next odd thing that caught Stan off guard was her soft cries escaping her lips as she stared at the paper. Stanley felt a deep pit in his stomach begin to form, and he slowed down to a stop next to her. She was like a second mother to him, after all, and he hated seeing her (or her son) upset.

“Mrs. Tozier..?” Stanley spoke quietly, looking up at her with worried eyes. What could be so upsetting that she’s crying?

She turned around a little bit to look at him with glasses-clad eyes, just like her son. Her face was blotchy and the tears that pooled at the corners of her eyes like pearls were threatening to fall again.

“Oh, Stan.. Stan, he’s missing..” She wrapped her thin arms around him quietly, tears falling again to accompany the sobs. Stan went rigid. No, that’s not possible, he’d just talked to not three days ago! He took a look up at the paper stapled to the post only to find Richie’s smiling face staring back at him.

Almost mechanically, Stan adjusted himself on his bike. “It’s okay, Mrs. Tozier. He’ll come back. He always does.” When Maggie unwrapped her arms from Stan’s shoulders, the boy sped off in the direction of the Denbroughs. He had to have a talk with a certain Stuttering Bill.

Clink. Clink. Clink. Clink.

Bill Denbrough let out a sigh and broke out of his conversation with Beverly Marsh. Tears had streamed down the girl’s face as she ranted about what happened with her father, involving inappropriate touches followed by a toilet seat. Now wasn’t a great time for pebbles being thrown at his window.

The two young teens approached the window and were surprised to see Stanley Uris standing there, a worried look on his face. Bill opened it up. “Stan?” Bev called out, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. He had a crumpled piece of paper in his hand, and what it was, they didn’t know.

“It got Richie.” Stan said simply, fighting back tears of his own.

“What got Richie?” Bill drawled in annoyance. He still didn’t want anything to do with Richie, after the words that were said 3 weeks ago.

“It, Bill!” Stanley shouted up at him, a stray tear falling off his cheek. He held up the paper in his hand to reveal a missing persons poster, the words “YOU DIE IF YOU TRY” scrawled over Richie’s smiling face with blood. The look of annoyance on Bill’s face was wiped off fairly quickly. When he tried to look at Beverly, she was already climbing out the window. A silent decision was made as Bill ran downstairs to his phone to call Eddie, Ben, and Mike.

The losers club had to band together again to get their Trashmouth back, wherever he may be.

Drip. Drip. Drip-drip.

Richie blinked his eyes open as he felt a stick substance drip onto his face and stream down his neck. “Ow, fuck…” He gently touched his temples, pain sparking from the area and zipping all around his head. It took him a minute to realize where he was and what he was lying on, and once he realized it was the wet concrete of the sewer, he scrambled himself up…

Only to stumble back to his knees.

He let out a small string of curses and stood himself back up again, this time leaning against the walls for support. One of the lenses of his glasses were missing, the other cracked beyond repair. His dad was gonna kill him for breaking the glasses so badly when he got home. If he got home.

A large pile of toys and children’s clothes were piled up in a huge mound in front of him, with a large box-like structure set up in the bottom. Richie knew it was part of the circus, but what it was called, he was unsure of. He just had to get away. As he tried prying open the nearest door he saw, a loud voice suddenly shot out from the speakers attached to the box-thingy. “Step right up, Richie! Step riiiiiight up!”

“Oh, what the fuck..” Richie muttered to himself and slowly turned around to stare at the box.

“Come change, come float! You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll cheer, you’ll die!” Richie’s blood ran cold, but it wasn’t out of fear. He was not afraid of this bastard anymore. “Introducing, Pennywise! The daaancing clown!”

The box suddenly kicked open, sparks flying up in some sort of grand gesture. Pennywise stood there for a moment, looking.. scared itself. It began to dance for Richie, it’s legs coming up and kicking in an, admittedly, hilarious manner.

Richie couldn’t stop himself. He began to laugh at the scene in front of him, which only made the clown more distraught. Thinking Pennywise was distracted, Richie made a split-second decision and tried to run for his life, still giggling. His giggling ceased when It hopped down from it’s podium and grabbed the young boy by the neck.

Rich gasped for air, legs kicking wildly in an attempt to free himself while It laughed in his face. “I’m not afraid of you..” He choked out, large eyes glaring at the creature holding him. Pennywise leaned It’s head forward and sniffed, recoiling at the lack of fear. It glared at Richie for a moment, before a smirk appeared on it’s makeup-painted lips.

“But you will be.” It began to open it’s jaw, wider than ever seen before. Richie’s head was held in place so he had to stare down into it’s never-ending maw. At the back of the throat held three, swirling bright lights. Lights that sucked him in further, and further…

Pennywise slowly let go of the child, watching him float up up up…

Teeth. So many teeth, all latched around his face.

After gathering the gang and barging into Neibolt, Mike had been attacked by Henry (wherever that bastard came from) and Stan had been taken away from the group only to end up with Judith’s teeth wrapped around his head. It was horrifying, and he could see everything, everything that It would become, would give birth to, so many of It-

“Stanley!” He heard Eddie’s muffled voice somewhere in the distance, muffled yet shrill. Everything moved so damn quickly. It was gone but people began touching him, yelling in his face, so he yelled back.

“You aren’t my friends! You took me into Neibolt, you aren’t my friends!!” He cried out in fear, legs pulling to hug his chest. He was so scared, so damn scared. He shouldn’t have been by now, they weren’t as afraid of him. Why couldn’t he be strong like them? Strong like Beverly. Strong like Bill.

Strong like Richie.

Speaking of his wild friend, wild wild wild, he was nowhere to be found. That scared him worse. What if Richie was already dead what if he was next-

Bill had disappeared a while ago, hellbent on avenging his brother like the crazy suicidal bitch he was. The group stumbled there way after him, like lost sheep following their master. They all yelled a chorus of “Richie!” “Trashmouth, where are you?!” in attempts of finding the wild wild wild boy, if he was still able to be found.

Eddie and Beverly, at the front of the pack, stumbled to a stop. “Oh my god..” Eddie mumbled, patting his pockets frantically for an inhaler that wasn’t there. Beverly surged forward, still. “Help me get him down!”

Mike, who let Stan lean on him for support, made sure he was okay before he ran off to go help Beverly and Eddie, with Ben right behind him.

Stanley had to, of course, follow them. Why shouldn’t he follow them? Richie was there. If they could find Richie they could go home-

Oh. Oh that’s where he was.

Richie, suspended in the air with his head tipped backwards, was too high for one person alone to get. Eddie climbed on top of Ben’s shoulders and took a leap, managing to catch onto Richie’s sneaker. The Losers minus Bill managed to pull Richie down, and Eddie nearly gagged at the sight of his face.

His face was wet with sewage water, curls knotted in a horrible mess, and neck red with hand prints. And his eyes, god, his eyes. They were milky white and devoid of any life. Stan nearly burst into tears.

“Richie.. Richie!” Stan called to him uselessly, worming through the Losers to get to him. “Why isn’t he responding.. Why isn’t he saying anything, what’s wrong with him?!” The group remained silent, which provided even more frustration onto Stan.

Stanley thought back to everything he’d done with Richie. Everything he wanted to do. He wanted to hold his hand, hug him, kiss him, dance with him at prom. He wanted everything. And now, he had nothing.

If this was his last chance to do something, he was going to take it. Stop being the pussy he was, man up, and do it, even if Richie was dirty, so dirty. He grasped Richie by the cheeks and let their lips collide.

It wasn’t a perfect first kiss. Hell, it wasn’t even good. Inexperienced, rushed. Richie’s lips were cold and unresponsive. But it was enough for Stan. Noises of confusion circled around him but he wasn’t focused on that. He stared at Richie’s dead face for a moment, hope flushing out of him quickly… Until the boy burst to life.

He blinked blindly for a moment before staring Stan in the face. A watery smile crossed both their faces. “Jesus, fuck.. Stan the Man..”

“Trashmouth..”

They finally had a desperate, proper kiss that had all the losers giving little cheers for them. It was short lived as they heard a little boy’s voice, a little boy that went missing a year ago, begin to speak to Bill in the distance.

It was time to kill this fucking clown. Together.

#stozier #stanley uris #richie tozier #beverly marsh #ben hanscom #bill denbrough #mike hanlon #eddie kaspbrak #i'm so sorry #but they're good boys so it's okay

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empoweringworldofmpj · 6 years

Link

Episode Transcript:

(provided by: http://makinggayhistory.com/podcast/episode-11-johnson-wicker/)

I’m Eric Marcus. Welcome to the second season of Making Gay History.

In this episode you’ll meet two very different heroes of the LGBTQ civil rights movement. People I’d never expected to find in the same room.

Beginning in the early 1960s, Randy Wicker promoted the then radical idea that homosexuals should be accepted because they were nice middle class people. Just like everyone else. Randy led the first public protest against anti-gay discrimination in 1964 dressed in a coat and tie.

Marsha P. Johnson was Randy’s public relations nightmare—a self-described drag queen hustler with a drug problem and mental health issues best known for her role in the 1969 Stonewall uprising.

My plan was to interview Randy at his Art Deco lamp shop just a few blocks west of the Stonewall Inn. But Randy had other ideas. He suggested we go to his place across the Hudson River in Hoboken, New Jersey, where I could talk with Marsha, as well. I had no idea they were roommates.

When we get to Randy’s modest apartment, Marsha’s in the kitchen making dinner. After a few minutes, she walks into the living room. She drapes herself in a chair like a cat in slow motion and absentmindedly starts sorting through her shoulder bag. A frosted wig comes to the surface and then disappears and then comes back to the surface again.

Before I can get the wires to the lapel mics untangled, Randy is talking a mile a minute. He’s throwing off so much nervous energy that I wish to myself they’d offered me something stronger to drink than water.

I ask them both to sit still for a second so I can clip the mics to their collars. I go back to my chair, reach across to the cocktail table to my tape recorder, and press record.

———

Randy: Marsha’s the only one, she’s the only one everyone agrees was at the Stonewall riots. There were a lot of other people, but everyone agrees that Marsha was there, so…

Marsha: The way I winded up being at Stonewall that night, I was having a party uptown. And we were all out there and Miss Sylvia Rivera and them were over in the park having a cocktail.

I was uptown and didn’t get downtown until about two o’clock, because when I got downtown the place was already on fire. And it was a raid already. The riots had already started. And they said the police went in there and set the place on fire. They said the police set it on fire because they originally wanted the Stonewall to close, so they had several raids. And there was this, uh, Tiffany and, oh, this other drag queen that used to work there in the coat check room and then they had all these bartenders. And the night before the Stonewall riots started, before they closed the bar, we were all there and we all had to line up against the wall and they was all searching us.

Eric: The police were?

Marsha: Yeah, they searched every single body that came there. Because, uh, the place was supposed to be closed, and they opened anyway. ‘Cause every time the police came, what they would do, they would take the money from the coat check room and take the money from the bar. So if they heard the police were coming, they would take all the money and hide it up under the bar in these boxes, out of the register. And, you know, and sometimes they would hide like under the floor or something? So when the police got in all they got was the bartender’s tips.

Eric: Who went to the Stonewall?

Marsha: Well, uh, at first it was just a gay men’s bar. And they didn’t allow no, uh, women in. And then they started allowing women in. And then they let the drag queens in. I was one of the first drag queens to go to that place. ‘Cause when we first heard about this… and then they had these drag queens workin’ there. They didn’t never arrested anybody at the Stonewall. All they did was line us up and tell us to get out.

Randy: Were you one of those that got in the chorus lines and kicked their heels up at the police, like, like Ziegfeld Folly girls or Rockettes?

Marsha: Oh, no. No, we were too busy throwing over cars and screaming in the middle of the street, ‘cause we were so upset ‘cause they closed that place.

Eric: What were you screaming in the street?

Marsha: Huh?

Eric: What did you say to the police?

Marsha: We just were saying, no more police brutality and, oh, we had enough of police harassment in the Village and other places. Oh, there was a lot of little chants we used to do in those days.

Eric: Randy, were you at Stonewall then as well? Did you know Marsha?

Randy: No, no, I met Marsha, Marsha moved in here about eight years ago. I had met Marsha in 1973 as an Advocate reporter. The GAA people had freed her. It was, they locked up our gay sister, Marsha Johnson, but they went into the mental hospital and they snuck her out in an elevator and they ran out the door. Now the reason they…she was in the mental hospital is she took LSD and was sitting in the middle of either Houston Street or…

Marsha: There was no LSD…

Randy: …pulling the sun…

Marsha: What do you call that, umm?

Randy and Eric: Mescaline?

Marsha: No, what’s that other fierce stuff?

Randy: Bella donna?

Marsha: Uh, uh. Purple… purple passion or something?

Randy: But, anyway she was sitting in the middle and pulling the sun to the earth, but fortunately before the world ended and the sun hit the earth the paddy wagon from Bellevue came and took Marsha away to the mental ward and that’s how she ended up getting on SSI as a mental case, because they obviously saw, you know, she had a history of prostitution going back to ’62. And I had met Marsha.

I mean, when I did this article, this story, my impression of Marsha was that she was sweet, but you know, a little bit spacey. So when this boy I met at the Gaiety and he said… I said would you ever go to the Village? “Oh, yeah, I go to the Village and I run around with Marsha.” And he was a nice white boy and I said, “I don’t know that, you know, Marsha’s the kind of person that, you know, you should really be hanging out with.”

Well, to make a long story, this boy became like my adopted son. But he moved in, I guess, in January. And one… it was ten degrees and he said, you know, he said, “Marsha, you know, she’s out there, she doesn’t have any place to sleep. She didn’t mind sleeping on the floor. Couldn’t she come home and sleep on the rug?” And I said, “Willy,” I said, “are you absolutely sure she’s not gonna’ rip us off?” You know, I mean, I don’t…you know… And he said, “No, no she won’t rip us off.”

Well, Marsha came in, I guess, in ’79 or ’80 and began sleeping on the rug here. You know, I mean, I got to know here and like her and she became… And I’m a big Marsha fan now. It was so funny, ‘cause, I mean, I counseled Willy that Marsha wasn’t the kind of person you want to get involved with and run around with, you know.

Eric: And you’ve lived together now for eight years.

Randy: Yeah, yeah.

Eric: Now were there lots of people hurt at the Stonewall that night during the riots?

Marsha: They weren’t hurt at the Stonewall. They were hurt on the streets outside of the Stonewall ‘cause people were throwing bottles and the police were out there with those clubs and things and their helmets on, the riot helmets.

Eric: Were you afraid of being arrested?

Marsha: Oh, no, because I’d been going to jail for like ten years before the Stonewall I was going to jail ‘cause I was, I was originally up on 42nd Street. And every time we’d go, you know, like going out to hustle all the time they would just get us and tell us we were under arrest.

Randy: Drag queen hooker.

Marsha: Yeah, they’d say, “All yous drag queens under arrest, so we, you know, it was just for wearing a little bit of makeup down 42nd Street.

Eric: Who were the kinds of people you met up on 42nd Street when you were hustling up there.

Marsha: Oh, this was all these queens from Harlem, from the Bronx. A lot of them are dead now. I mean, I hardly ever see anybody from those days. But these were like queens from the Bronx and Brooklyn, from New Jersey, where I’m from. I’m from Elizabeth, New Jersey.

Randy: See, I, I, Stonewall, I don’t want… I shouldn’t start on this note, but it puts me in the worst light, because by the time Stonewall happened I was running my button shop in the East Village and for all the years of Mattachine and you see the pictures of me on TV, I’m wearing a suit and tie and I had spent ten years of my life going around telling people homosexuals looked just like everybody else. We didn’t all wear makeup and wear dresses and have falsetto voices and molest kids and were Communists and all this.

And all of a sudden Stonewall broke out and there were reports in the press of chorus lines of queens kicking up their heels at the cops like Rockettes, you know, “We are the Stonewall girls, and you know, fuck you police.” And this, I thought, you know, it was like Jesse Jackson used to say, rocks through windows don’t open doors. I felt this… I was horrified. I mean, the last thing to me that I thought at the time we’re setting back the gay liberation movement twenty years, because I mean all these TV shows and all this work that we had done to try to establish legitimacy of the gay movement that we were nice middle class people like everybody else and, you know, adjusted and all that. And suddenly there was all this, what I considered, riffraff. And I gave a speech, I was asked to speak, I was asked to speak at the Electric Circus, which was a major, which was a major… Marsha, you just got me. Where are you going? What are you doing?

Marsha: It’s Carmen, wagging.

Randy: Oh, she’s outside?

Marsha: Yeah, c’mon sweetie.

[When Marsha gets up she forgets about the microphone and it pulls off her shirt. Eric and Randy search for the microphone’s foam cover.]

Randy: Watch out. God, you’re so dumb.

Marsha: You think so?

Eric: Okay, you were saying about Stonewall…

Randy: Yeah, I was saying I was running my shop in East Village, the button shop, the big hippie shop, and when this happened I was horrified because it was civil disorder. Somewhere I saw a picture from the Stonewall and it had a big sign up from the Mattachine Society, which was one of my base groups. It said the Mattachine Society asked citizens to obey poli… to not obey the police, but to respect law and order, to act in a lawful manner. In other words, the Mattachine itself was basically a conservative organization and they had a…

They asked me to speak at the Electric Circus and I got up and said that I did not think that the way to win public acceptance was to go out and form chorus lines of drag queens kicking your feet up at the police. And I was just beginning to speak and one of the bouncers at the Electric Circus found out that it was a gay thing, that the guy up there talking was gay and somebody standing next to him, he said to them, “Are you one of them?” And the guy said yes and he began beating the hell out of him. And this riot broke out in the Electric Circus. And I remember driving him home, because the kid was only about twenty-one or twenty-two years old. And he said, “All I know is that I’ve been in this movement for three days and I’ve been beaten up three times. I mean, he had a black eye and, you know, a puffed up face…

Marsha: Oh, how terrible.

Randy: …and, you know, no serious damage, but the thing was that you were dealing with a new thing. And it shows that what my generation did, we built the ideology, you know. Are we sick? Aren’t we sick? What are the scientific facts? How we’ve been brainwashed by society? We put together, like, you know, Lenin… I mean, Karl Marx wrote the book. That’s what we did. But it literally took Stonewall, and here I was considered the first militant and a visionary leader of the gay movement, to not even realize when the revolution, if you want to call it this, this thing that I thought would never happen, that a small nuclei of people would become a mass social movement was occurring—I was against it. Now I’m very happy Stonewall happened. I’m very happy the way things worked out.

Eric: Now you mentioned an organization that Marsha, you were involved with. What was the name?

Marsha: Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries with Miss Sylvia Rivera.

Randy: STAR.

Eric: What was that group about? What was it for?

Marsha: Ah, it was a group for transvestites.

Randy: It was a bunch of…

Marsha: Men and women transvestites…

Randy: It was a bunch of flakey, fucked up transvestites living in a hovel and a slum somewhere calling themselves revolutionaries. That’s what it was in my opinion. Now Marsha has a different idea.

Eric: What’s your opinion?

Marsha: Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries started out as a very good group. It was after Stonewall, they started, they started at GAA. Mama Jean DeVente, who used to be the marshal for all the parades. She was the one that talked Sylvia Rivera into leaving GAA, ‘cause Sylvia Rivera who was the president of STAR was a member of GAA, and start a group of her own. And so she started Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries. And she asked me would I come be the vice president of that organization.

Randy: They had an apartment, they didn’t have the money to keep up the rent and they began fighting over who was using drugs or who was paying rent or who was taking whose makeup. And, I mean, it got to be pretty low life and pretty ugly…

Marsha: No, the building was owned by Michael Umbers, who was in jail. And didn’t Michael Umbers, when he went to jail, the city took over the building and they had everybody thrown out. But originally the rent was paid to Michael Umbers who went to jail, and Bubbles Rose Lee, Bubbles Rose Lee, who was secretary to STAR, she had all kinds of things [?] around the building and stuff, you know. So the city just came and closed the building down.

———

The dream of STAR House was to provide a safe place for street kids, but those kids were just a little younger than Marsha and Sylvia, who were in their early twenties and still had to hustle to survive.

Marsha died in July 1992. Her body was found floating in the Hudson River near the piers on the western edge of Greenwich Village. She was forty-six. The New York City Medical Examiner ruled her death a suicide, but Marsha’s friends believed she was beaten to death or accidentally fell in the river. They lobbied for a new investigation and twenty years after Marsha’s death, the District Attorney’s office agreed to reopen the case.

To learn more about Marsha P. Johnson and Randy Wicker, please visit makinggayhistory.com. That’s where you can listen to all our previous episodes and also find photos and really interesting background information on each of the people we feature.

I’ve got a few key people to thank for making this podcast possible. Thank you to

our executive producer, Sara Burningham, and our co-producer Jenna Weiss-Berman. Thanks also to our audio engineer Casey Holford, our webmaster Jonathan Dozier-Ezell, our social media advisor Will Coley, and our head of research, Zachary Seltzer. Our theme music was composed by Fritz Myers.

A special thank you to Matthew Riemer and Leighton Brown, the men behind the LGBT History Instagram account who have so generously spread the word about Making Gay History. Be sure to follow them @LGBT_History. I learn something new from them every day.

Making Gay History is a co-production of Pineapple Street Media, with assistance from the New York Public Library’s Manuscripts and Archives Division.

Season Two of this podcast is made possible with support from the Ford Foundation, which is on the front lines of social change worldwide.

And if you like what you’ve heard, please subscribe to Making Gay History on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.

So long. Until next time.

###

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tweakerwolf · 6 years

Text

Marcus Ending 3

Marcus’s ‘good’ ending where the two of you are happy together! yay!

You dream about that day, when you finally walked away from Marcus forever. Aria, his lawyer, seemed pretty smug- you got almost nothing in the divorce… But you don’t care that much, you got rid of Marcus and that’s all that matters. But after Aria walks away, Marcus continues to stand there and look at you, making you uneasy. His silent, large presence frightened you… even after he walked away. That’s when you sit up, jolting out of the dream. Even dreams about Marcus make you so uneasy. He just gets under your skin, even now. Your boyfriend John notices your sudden movements and asks if you’re okay. You mention that you had a bad dream and when he asks for details, tell him “I dreamt about Marcus” and he’s very understanding about it, comforting you and acknowledging how horrible that would be to experience. The two of you cuddle until his alarm goes off and he has to start getting ready for work. You get ready too since you’re going to be dropping him off; being down to one car kinda sucks but you really don’t mind. The two of you talk and joke while making breakfast and getting dressed. He even jokes about your cat, Munchie. Munchie likes to steal John’s socks but he’d never ask you to get rid of her, you love her. Really, you’re glad that you got her and not Marcus. John was a great guy that way. You can’t help but think about how easy things are with John, especially after that dream about your ex-husband. You shake off those thoughts as you head out the door with John, driving him to work at the university. Things are fine until you’re on your way back to the apartment… suddenly there are flashing lights behind you (slow red and blue pulses on screen); you pull over quickly, not wanting to cause any trouble. But you can’t help but feel nervous- cops had that effect on you now because of Marcus. You roll down your window and wait for the cop to approach.

It’s your worst nightmare come true… when you hear a familiar voice asking for your license and registration you freeze- Marcus! You turn and look and it’s your ex-husband, in the flesh… Your hands are shaking as you hand him your things but so far he hasn’t acted like he even recognizes you. Maybe it won’t be so bad, it was always a possibility that you’d run into him again anyways. He takes your stuff and walks back to his cruiser without a word. You get lost in your thoughts as you sit and wait; should you just drive off? Was this some sort of harassment or was it legit? Before you can go down that train of thought any further, Marcus is back, banging his hand on your car roof. Randomly -apologize- to him since you aren’t sure what else to do… being around him again just brings out the submissive side of you. He says not to apologize and asks if you know why he pulled you over. You have no idea so you shake your head. He takes off his sunglasses and looks at you, saying that you ran the stop sign. But he assures you that he isn’t going to give you a ticket, just a warning to be more careful. You nod, not wanting to piss him off, of course you’ll be more careful. Your hands touch as you take your license and registration back; Marcus blushes lightly and chews on his lip a bit. You thank him shyly, intrigued by his reaction. But his face closes off eventually and the sunglasses go back on; he tells you to have a good day and you return the sentiment, politely addressing him as ‘officer.’ GASP, was that a teeny tiny smile you saw before he walked away? That couldn’t have been any further from your expectations of seeing Marcus again.

Even though the interaction didn’t go as horribly as it could have, you’re suddenly shaking and weak. Being that close to him again… and right after the dream you had that morning? It’s too much, way too much. You call John for some reassurances; he immediately knows something is wrong and asks what’s up. You try to tell him but you’re crying and stammering so badly… he gets the gist of it though and tells you he’ll meet you back home as soon as he can (he does have to find a ride). So you do just that, you drag yourself home and collapse on the bed and Munchie is there to greet you. She sits on you as you lie there, keeping you company. Thankfully it isn’t long until John is there, holding you, letting you cry, and quietly reassuring you that it’ll all be okay. He’s here for you and really, that helps comfort you so much. Eventually you calm down and collect yourself, suggesting a movie night. That’d be a great way to finish off the evening, just chilling with John. He agrees that it would be great and heads out to go get dinner. You don’t know where he goes but he’s gone for awhile, the sun sets as you sit on the couch and play with your cat. But have no fear, he does come back with bags of food and as you greet him at the door… your day goes from bad to worse.

Marcus suddenly appears behind John with a huge knife… He moves fast, it’s all you can do to scream out as Marcus shoves the knife in his back. You just didn’t have time to do anything else… John screams and drops to the floor as Marcus pulls the knife out. He tsks and says that John is unfortunate… he has to bleed out since he missed all the vital organs. That’s when you finally move, charging at Marcus. But he was expecting it, pulling out a stun gun and shocking you before you could get too close. You fall to the ground and look at John… -beg for your own life- because if he’s willing to do that to someone that hasn’t wronged him… what does he have planned for you? You beg him to let you go but Marcus comes over and touches your face, admitting that he doesn’t want to let you go. In fact, you’re leaving with him! He pulls a pair of cuffs out and puts them on you, throwing you over his shoulder. John tries to crawl towards you but Marcus assures him that he can do whatever he wants. Then he shoots John because he knows he can’t have any witnesses to the kidnapping (bleeding heart). It’s all too much for you and you shut down for awhile as Marcus carries you away.

It isn’t until Marcus throws you down onto a bed that you snap back into it and look around. Where are you? What’s he doing? Marcus forces you to meet his gaze, hands on your face. At first he wants to know why you left him for someone like John but then he changes his mind and tells you not to answer. All that matters now is that you’re with him and you’re going to stay with him. You shake as he pushes you down on the bed- what does he want? He’s a police officer, he can’t just kidnap you and kill people! Call out his name softly, confused, “Marcus…?” and he asks what you want. Tears well up in your eyes and you aren’t sure what to say. Marcus comments that he loves the tone of your voice when you say his name (he likes the tone of fear!!). He starts to kiss you, pinning you down and sucking on your neck. You struggle of course but he’s stronger than you… When he pulls away, he comments that ‘that’s a better look for you’ and you know that he’s left a hickey on your neck. A mark, from him. That’s when you notice that his hands are still bloody and it sinks in that he was willing and ready to kill John just to get you back. You struggle and try to get away but he pins you down and pulls out a knife. Now you lie as still as possible so he doesn’t hurt you… Marcus uses the knife to cut away your clothes and leave you naked underneath him.

(rape scene below, unavoidable)

Once you’re naked he runs his hands over you as you cry out for him to stop. When he pulls out his cock, you try to close your legs but that doesn’t stop him at all; he just lubes himself up and then forces your legs open. Then he forces himself inside you and pins your hands to your sides. He wants to see your face, doesn’t want you trying to hide from him. He thrusts into you painfully as you try to turn away… as he comes, you lie back and try to forget everything. Marcus pulls out of you and heads for the door, warning you that you’re going to stay there, for as long as it takes. He will make you his again. Then he’s gone and you cry.

You lie on the bed and cry until you hear the door opening some time later. You scramble to the far side of the room as Marcus comes in, trying to be as far away from him as possible. He comes over anyways and strokes your cheek, commenting that he doesn’t like that you’re so afraid of him. -Slap him- instead of saying anything, you figure that will communicate more to him than anything you might have to say. It has the opposite effect, he kisses you as his cheeks flush. You try to pull him away from you but he pins you down, grabbing your hips. So you bite his lip, drawing blood. He finally pulls away, slowly, and he smiles at you. You realize that he’s enjoying the fight, he doesn’t mind the rough treatment at all. But he doesn’t actually say anything, just goes and retrieves the box, opening it to show you that he brought you food. You aren’t really sure you can trust the food but you also don’t want to piss him off… plus you need your strength and it’s doubtful that after all this, he’s just going to kill you. So -eat- the food and be thankful he’s a good cook. He could’ve given you anything really… You eat and try to push away the memories of back when you were married. Marcus sees the tears in your eyes and assures you that he won’t hurt you; you know he’s lying. He wants to keep you, and if that means hurting you to do that, he’d have no problems hurting you. You don’t comment, you just finish your food.

Marcus tells you that you should clean up but warns you not to take too long. You really don’t want to piss him off so -go clean up- in the small bathroom. You make note of the camera right before you walk into the bathroom, realizing that he was watching you. Maybe to see if you’d follow his directions or not- it wouldn’t surprise you. As you catch sight of your reflection, you realize that you’re covered in blood… -wash your face- to get clean, it’s all you can really manage at the moment. Then you go back out into the bedroom and lie down, getting a little bit of sleep at least.

When you wake up you notice that the house is silent. You aren’t sure if he’s just sleeping in or if he’s gone to work. Either way you realize that you have an opportunity- he isn’t watching the cameras! -Look at the door- just to see if there’s a weakness you can try to use. You pull on them to see if they are loose or maybe he didn’t lock it right… but you have no such luck, they don’t budge at all. Now you really start to wonder just how long he’s going to keep you locked up… he says he wants to make you his again but how long is he prepared for that to take? Eventually Marcus gets out of bed and starts making noise. It isn’t much later that he’s coming into your room to see you; when he walks in, comment “You seem tired” so he knows that you’re trying to care about him (keeping him happy can’t hurt right?). He half agrees but doesn’t say much at all, just steps closer to you. As he sits on the bed, he says that he wants to play a game with you. But he doesn’t tell you what game he wants to play, instead he starts to kiss you; you lie back and let him touch you but you’re tense. Next Marcus tells you to put your hands over your head; -do it- so he doesn’t get mad. You slowly raise your hands and he cuffs your wrists to the bed. He touches you, hands roaming your body as he comments about how soft you are. You can’t help but recognize that the touches feel nice and you arch your back. He grabs your face and asks why you left him- couldn’t you see that he loved you?! He tells you to apologize and he’ll go easier on you. -Apologize- because you can see how unstable he is in that moment, protect yourself.

(rape scene below, unavoidable)

He brightens a bit when he hears you apologize but continues to rub himself against you. He grabs your face and tells you to say it again, like you mean it. So you apologize again, asking him to forgive you. When he pushes his thumb into your mouth, you lick it instead of biting. He likes that; he gets naked and pushes himself against you. Then he tells you to beg for it but you struggle a bit, trying to move away from him. He holds you in place, waiting. -Beg for cock- like he asks, won’t it be easier that way? Marcus presses himself against you harshly so you scream out that you want him so he believes you. That’s when he undresses and pushes inside you, forcing you deeper down into the bed. He’s so forceful that the whole bed is rocking with his thrusts. You moan a bit and notice that he’s smirking to himself, so self-assured. He wants to hear you admit that he’s the best so he asks who has the best cock. Shout out “you!” both to appease him and also because he still knows how to fuck you. You strain forward to kiss him, begging incoherently for more. Marcus is happy to oblige, sticking his tongue into your mouth as he kisses you. At this point you’re more into it than not and you try to move your hips in time with his but you can’t keep up. You actually beg him to come inside you and he is all too happy to do so. After a moment he reaches up and unlocks the cuffs so you can move your arms again, and you instantly sit up a bit to nuzzle against his big strong arms.

Ending 3: He nuzzles you back for a moment before he grabs the knife out of his pants. The sight of it mostly intrigues you instead of scares you, all you do is tilt your head and he says that he wants to give you something special. He stretches out your leg and kisses it as you splay out for him. Marcus says that he wants to remind you of who you belong to. As he touches your leg and holds out the knife, you ask him to give you the ‘gift’. So he sets the knife to your skin, carving his name into your leg carefully, not going too deep. It’s painful but you do your best to keep still. It isn’t long before you start to feel warm and aroused, you want to feel him inside you again. He’s amazed that you like it, you’re even holding his free hand. You nod as he finally touches you again, you want this. He gentle fingers you as he buck against his movements. It’s then that you realize that he’s carving his name into your skin. Between the pain and the pleasure you’re feeling, you moan loudly. Marcus works faster, wanting to see if you’ll come just from his fingers. As he’s working on the last letter, he orders you not to come, not yet. You know you have to listen to him, you can’t disobey, so you hold off as long as you can until he’s done with the carving. After he kisses you, he tells you that you can come; you scream out his name as you do. Marcus carefully bandages your leg before telling you to get some rest. You grab onto him and ask him to stay; you fall asleep as he cradles you in his arms. The next morning you wake up and he’s still with you, you kiss him as a good morning. He calls you cute and then gets up, saying that he has another gift for you. He leaves the room and you pout because he’s gone for so long. But he does come back into the room with an pet carrier! He opens the carrier and out steps Munchie! Marcus knew that you’d be staying with him but that you love her so he went and got her for you. You thank him and hug Munchie before Marcus puts a collar around your neck as well. You can’t believe how good Marcus is to you. Survived- Marcus gave you something special.

#Til Death Do Us Part #TDDUP #TDDUP game #TDDUP Marcus #Marcus endings #violence #abuse #kidnapping #ownership #scarring #marking

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madisonsclarks · 7 years

Text

Calling it Hope

Summary: Abby misses Marcus after returning from Polis, so she seeks comfort in his room, his trinkets, his clothes. Of course, because she’s back in Arkadia, nothing is ever really private...and she learns some news that changes everything for her and the man she loves.

(Translated, my Abby/Raven brotp feelings got away from me and I cried three times while writing this and it’ll probably have another chapter).

Everything looked like him, smelled like him, felt like him.

From the trinkets on his bedside table to the paintings on the wall, Abby could practically sense Marcus Kane in the room. She could see him sitting in the chair at his small metal table poring over maps of the surrounding area, laying in bed reading one of the numerous books from his amassed quantity on his bookshelf, gently hanging his guard jacket on the hook on the back of the door.

He was everywhere and nowhere, with her and in Polis.

Some logical part of her knew it was silly, girlish even, to come wandering into his room in the middle of the night when she couldn’t sleep. What was she, a lovesick teenager? She’d only returned from Polis that morning, could still taste their goodbye kiss on her tongue. His “may we meet again” still echoed in her heart, her head, written into her pulse. A few hours was by no means enough to stir the deepest depths of absence-induced longing in her heart, but it was enough to make her uncomfortable: enough to drive her thoughts back along the path she’d travelled and up into their room in the tower.

What was he doing right now? Had Roan fought and won? Was the alliance still intact? And if it wasn’t, had he, Octavia, and Indra gotten out of the city safely?

Again, logic: there was little merit in giving weight to unfounded questions and doubts. But with Luna’s arrival – and illness – it had been a chaotic day, and Abby had quickly begun tiring of reining in her wayward brain. Her exhaustion pushed her doubts into a downward spiral, and a constant, nagging churning in her stomach hadn’t subsided since she heard the Polis gates close behind her. It had become increasingly difficult to force herself to remain sensible where Marcus Kane was concerned.

Such ruminations would be typical of the kids – of Monty and Harper, maybe, whom she’d just learned were in a relationship – but she was a grown woman, well past having learned how to cope with the absence of the man she loved. She constantly reminded herself that Marcus was fine, that this was by no means the first time they’d been separated, that they’d been parted during far more strenuous times in the past. All things considered, this separation should have given her less cause to worry than the others.

And yet, when she woke from a hellacious City of Light flashback of a nightmare, there was only one person she wanted to see. One man whose arms she wished were around her, one voice she wanted to hear soothing her as she briefly struggled to see through the hazy mirage of dreams. But her bed was empty, the sheets around her cold with his absence, her skin cool without the warmth of him beside her. As she took a seat in one of the cold metal chairs at his table and rested her elbows on the surface – then her head in her hands – she took deep breaths and tried to shove the tears searing at the corners of her eyes into submission.

It may have been late – later than almost anyone else in Arkadia would be awake – but she’d left the door open out of an informal self-reassurance. She couldn’t give into this now: not when they’d only been separated for less than a day. She just needed to be here, she told herself, for a few minutes. To feel him for long enough to calm her racing heartbeat, to absorb the remnants of his smile and laughter that remained in those stationary objects. Being here was like sitting in the sunlight; she felt safe, warm, hopeful.

When she was here, she was with Marcus.

Lifting her head from her hands and brushing a few strands of hair out of her eyes, she glanced around the room and saw something familiar: his guard jacket. He hadn’t hung it on the back of the door as he typically did (even before they were together, months of holding informal meetings in his room made her privy to his habits), instead, it was neatly folded on his bed. Her feet moved before her brain could fire to stop them, and she quietly pushed in his chair to walk over to the bed.

At first she was torn, merit on both sides of her dilemma: whether to pick up the garment or leave it there. She guessed someone had left it for him to find when he returned, given the precision in the fold and the careful placement on his bed, but it was also one of his most well-worn items. If anything could give her even the tiniest moment of inner peace, his jacket would do it.

So she reached out and picked it up, letting the open air unfold it before her.

The last time she’d seen him wear it had been weeks – only weeks? – ago, just before Pike relieved him of his command. It hadn’t changed much since then, the Skaikru patch on the arm missing from his trade with the grounder woman in Polis (when Polis had been a city of sunshine instead of bloodshed). It was almost impossible to believe how much had changed since then – both how far the world around them had fallen and how close they’d become.

She breathed in, and the scent was his: soft, slightly sweet, the smell of earth after a rainstorm. Comforting, quiet, calm. Peaceful. Hopeful. Something inside her fixed itself after her deep inhale, and the vise around her lungs relaxed. Those images – images of a scalpel and her hand and her daughter, images of a rope around her neck, images of a cross and him and a hammer – melted away, leaving her with only tranquility. As long as she had his jacket, he was never far away. Her chest expanded again as she repeated the process, intoxicated off the scent of him, tempted to take the jacket back to her quarters. Just in case.

“I thought I might find you here,” a voice declared from the doorway, and Abby jumped. Her eyelids snapped open and she lowered the jacket to her side, still unwilling to let go of it. She followed the sound to the doorway and…

“Raven?” she said, incredulous. Her room was on the other side of Arkadia, not to mention that she’d been relieved of her command more than two hours ago so she could get some sleep. If there had been a list of people she thought that voice might belong to, Raven Reyes would have been at the bottom of the list. And yet here she stood, clad in her simple red shirt and cargo pants: she hadn’t even changed into pajamas. Something was wrong, and Abby felt a sharp need to determine what it was.

“Are you all right?” she asked, gaze trailing toward the girl’s leg. There were still complications that needed to be solved, now that the City of Light had returned her pain to her. It wasn’t too far-fetched to believe her leg had prevented her from getting some much-needed rest.

Thankfully, Raven shook her head. She leaned against the doorway, arms crossed, ponytail swishing at the gentle motion.

“I’m fine, Abby,” she said, keeping her voice low. “Just couldn’t sleep. Decided to go for a walk.”

Abby nodded. “And you looked in here and saw…”

“Well, it was better than walking in on Monty and Harper,” she said, aiming a wry smile Abby’s way. “If the worst I’m gonna have to deal with is walking in on you holding your boyfriend’s jacket, I can handle it.”

Abby laughed, though a slight flush accompanied the sound. Memories of their time in Polis flooded back at Raven’s insinuation, and…if she’d been there, there were much worse things Raven Reyes could have walked in on.

“Next time I’ll close the door,” Abby said, earning a laugh from her companion. “Just to be safe.”

“Yeah, I’m more worried about what happens when Kane gets back,” Raven said, taking a few steps into the room. She leaned against the side of Marcus’ table, her hip pressing against the metal edge. “These walls aren’t soundproof. If it wasn’t for the end of the world, I would get working on that.”

Her fingers tightened around the worn material, skin tingling with the ghost of kisses past. There was an element of truth in Raven’s words, as loath as she was to admit it: when Marcus came back, they wouldn’t be in their own private room in Polis. They’d be in the heart of Arkadia, with nosy teenagers and confused civilians meandering around during all hours of the day and night. But nine days of languid indulgence had been something, at least. Now memories to cherish.

“If it wasn’t the end of the world, we would all be working on different things,” Abby said, joining her on the other side of the table. Her presence seemed to make Raven keen on sitting, and, by some unspoken agreement, they both took seats on opposite sides of the table.

“It’s always the end of the world,” Raven remarked. “Only thing that changes is the timeline. This time we’ve got six months until certain death.”

There was a dark edge to her tone that tripped something in Abby’s senses: something that reminded her of Clarke. Of the burdens she’d carried. Without Sinclair Raven was the head of Engineering, and at the lateness of the hour her composure was starting to slip. There was no hiding it – Raven was exhausted.

“How are you?” Abby asked, her tone conveying the depth of her concern. “Really, Raven. If something’s wrong, you can tell me.”

“Hey, I’m not the one standing in the middle of my boyfriend’s room getting high off his jacket.”

Abby resisted the urge to roll her eyes. As much as she loved Raven…

“You miss him,” the girl added, and the urge evaporated. Struck by the change in her tone – from joking to genuine emotion – she had to take a few moments before responding.

“Yes,” she said. One word was enough.

“I didn’t have to ask,” Raven said. “It was pretty obvious.”

Suddenly, Abby put two and two together to arrive at a four that never should have added up.

“You called him my ‘boyfriend,’” she said, wincing a little internally at the rusty word. Marcus was many things, but he meant more to her than such a feeble term. ‘Soulmate,’ she thought, or ‘hope,’ fit closer. “How did you know we were together? Did Clarke tell you?”

“Nah,” Raven said. “She wouldn’t talk about it unless she knew you guys were okay with going public. Everything I know, I learned from ALIE.”

Abby raised her eyebrows, and Raven elaborated.

“She kinda…upgraded me. So I know more about computers, but she gave me info about the people she had in the City of Light, too. So I knew about you and Kane.”

“Oh,” Abby said, uncertain what else there was to say. Not that she minded Raven knowing – once Marcus returned, the truth would come out anyway – but it would have been nice if they’d been able to choose when and how.

“I haven’t told anyone, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Raven said, reading her. “But for the record, I’m pretty sure seventy-five percent of Arkadia thought you guys were already together when he left.”

Thinking back, Abby could understand the assertion. Marcus had rarely left her side during the three months when Clarke had been gone. And although nothing had happened, the constant association was all it took to get people talking – to get rumors flying. Fortunately, she’d always been too busy to hear them.

But was it fortunate? What if she had heard something, all those months ago? What if she’d come to Marcus with it then, instead of waiting until the hour of his execution to realize the depth of her feelings? To feel the weight of all the things she thought she’d never be able to say? If she’d talked to him then, could their six months have been eight? Seven? Nine?

She felt the weight of his jacket in her lap and swallowed hard.

“I can understand why people might have…” she stopped, trailing off. Raven gave her a soft smile. “We spent a lot of time together. But until Pike, nothing happened.”

Raven nodded, understanding the reference was as much to clarify anything that might wind its way back to Clarke as it was for her own understanding. “For whatever it’s worth, everyone I talked to about it wanted you guys to happen,” she said. “Sinclair was this close to pretending there was an emergency as an excuse to lock you guys in a closet together.”

Her smile took on a quiet wistfulness, a soft grief.

“He’d be proud of you, Raven,” Abby said, reaching across the table to slide her hand overtop of the mechanic’s. “You’re doing so much to help. People look up to you.”

Raven shifted her hand slightly, turning it so she could hold Abby’s in return.

“He could have done better,” she said. “He could have figured this out.”

It might have been the low lighting – the feathery beams of white that drifted in from the hallway, highlighting her tanned skin in patchy lines – but Abby thought she glimpsed tears in the girl’s eyes.

“And you’re going to figure it out, too,” she said, giving her hand a reassuring squeeze. “I know it.”

“Thanks,” Raven said, somber.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, listening to the gentle hum of generators and the white noise of the flickering lights. Then, without prompt, Raven shattered the quiet.

“Bellamy put his jacket back,” she said. “He found it a few days ago. Guess he wanted Kane to be surprised when he got home.”

Instinctively, Abby’s fingers froze on the material. Taking it back to her room with her was out of the question, then: the last thing she wanted was to step on something Bellamy Blake had carefully planned. While he and Marcus weren’t blood-related, they might as well have been. And the present of his guard jacket, returned to him by the boy he all but considered his son…she wouldn’t deprive him of that.

“I’ll leave it on his bed, then,” Abby said, stomach sinking as she realized she’d be parted with the thing that felt most like him. “It was nice of Bellamy to give it back.”

“Yeah, well, he still feels shitty about everything that happened with Pike,” Raven said, as though her words were self-explanatory. To some extent they were – although over a week of time spent in Polis had blurred the memory around the edges, she remembered Marcus’ speech to the boy just before he and Clarke left. You turn the page. You don’t look back. “He wants to make up for it however he can. The jacket wasn’t a bad place to start.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Abby agreed, remembering how heartbroken Marcus had been when Pike “relieved him of his command.” When he came back to Arkadia and found the jacket in his room, he’d be overjoyed. And right now, they could all stand to find some joy in their lives. “But he doesn’t have to atone for anything, Raven,” she added. “I don’t think Marcus ever thought there was something to forgive. He might not have agreed with his choices, but he knew Bellamy would come through.”

Raven shrugged, her delicate shoulders moving in the dim light. “Hey, tell that to him,” she said. “I already know Kane’s basically his dad.”

In spite of herself, the deep melancholy she’d been feeling, Abby couldn’t stop a laugh from bubbling up her throat and past her lips.

“Is that common knowledge?”

“Pretty much. Then again, I guess you guys kind of adopted all of us.”

Her smile turned soft, her head tilted a fraction. To some extent, Raven was right – she’d become close with all the kids, not just Clarke. And who else did they have, really? Other than Nathan, who still had his dad, the rest of them were orphans. She’d never really thought about it, but…

“Are you saying we’re your parents?” Abby asked, both amused and curious.

“I’m saying you might as well be,” she said. “You both act like it. You’re good at it. And…that wasn’t a luxury all of us had on the Ark, you know?”

Abby’s gaze dropped to the airbrushed steel of the table, picking out the scratches and dents that evidenced years of use. She still had her doubts about whether or not her parenting qualified as “good,” but thankfully she and Clarke had laid the past to rest. The subject of Jake and her wedding rings hadn’t yet come up – they’d been too busy with Luna to have a moment for themselves – but the discussion was coming, and she hoped her daughter would understand. After all, she planned to give the rings to her.

“Raven,” Abby said, her voice soft as she remembered the girl’s situation on the Ark. Finn’s all I have left. “Anytime you need someone to-“

“I was talking about Murphy,” she said, evaporating the emotion in the room with one word. “Dude had a screwed up childhood.”

Her tone was a little too light, her smile a little too forced, and Abby knew there had been truth in her statement. That despite Murphy’s less-than-pleasant family life, Raven’s growing up in space hadn’t been carefree, either. And their reunion – the way she hugged her when she walked through the Arkadia gates and thanked Abby for saving her life – evidenced more than Raven would ever admit aloud.

If Raven wanted a mother figure, Abby would be proud to serve that role. Warmth expanding in her chest, Abby stared at her from across the table and let her gaze speak for her: she didn’t trust her voice to remain steadfast.

“I used to stay in Finn’s room after he was sent to the Skybox,” Raven said after a beat, changing the subject. “His parents didn’t know he took the fall for me, so they just let me in. I mean, to them I was just his girlfriend. And we all missed him. As shitty as I felt about everything…it made me feel close to him. It helped.”

Abby nodded, remembering the boy Raven had loved. There was now bare skin where his necklace used to lay, but Abby knew better than anyone that the absence of a memento didn’t mean absence in one’s heart.

“My point is, you’re not stupid for wanting to be close to Kane,” Raven said. “Even though he’s gone. You love him. If you want to sleep in his room and hold his clothes, no one’s gonna judge you. We’ve all been through hell. We’re going through hell. If this is what makes it a little better for you, you should do it.”

Abby, stunned, could only give her a nod. How had she known exactly what she was thinking, what she was feeling? Had it been so easy to tell? Could everyone have known her feelings for Marcus before she knew them herself?

She opened her mouth to say something – anything – but the girl cut her off by standing abruptly from her chair. The noise of metal on metal was louder than she’d intended, and her full lips twisted into a grimace when they heard the sound echoing down the hallway.

“Right,” Raven said after an awkward pause. “Anyway. I’m gonna go nag Bellamy to get some sleep. I get that he has nightmares, but at some point we’ve all gotta suck it up. Face our demons.”

Abby sensed the declaration was more for her own benefit that Bellamy’s, but she stood to say her last goodbye for the night. She wound her way around the table, left Marcus’ jacket on the surface, placed both hands on the young girl’s shoulders.

“If you ever want to talk about anything,” she said, “I’m here, Raven. Always.”

For a moment Raven stayed quiet, regarding her in the yellow halo of light from the rest of the station, her brown eyes unreadable. Then, as if on an impulse, Raven leaned forward and gathered her close in a tight hug.

Taken by surprise, Abby gently wrapped her arms around the girl and held her back just as tightly. While Raven wasn’t given to public displays of affection – the simple fact that she’d gotten a hug in front of everyone upon her return was enough to leave Abby shocked and in awe – she wondered if the knowledge of the impending doomsday was changing that aspect of her personality.

Or maybe, she thought, the girl just wanted to give her a hug.

“I’m really happy you’re okay,” Raven whispered, her voice shaking with the ghost of a computer program of which she’d never be free, trembling with gratitude. Abby ran her fingers gently up and down her back, remembering how Clarke used to find it comforting when she cried.

“I’m happy you’re okay, too.”

The embrace lasted only a few seconds longer – apparently, Raven wasn’t that comfortable with prolonged displays of emotion – and when she stepped away her expression held an air of slight embarrassment. But Abby, her heart soaring and breaking and aching all at once, realized the simple contact had mended something broken inside her. That after that, tonight, she might yet be able to get some sleep.

“I’d better see you leaving this room tomorrow morning,” Raven said, accompanying her vague threat with a dazzling smile. “’Cause I’m not gonna deal with you moping around tomorrow and sighing about how much you miss your boyfriend.”

Abby smiled. “I haven’t been moping, Raven. And I’ve never sighed about Marcus.”

“Yeah, okay,” she said, playfully sarcastic, aiming a wink her way as she turned to leave. “Whatever you say, Abby.”

But despite her misgivings, Abby Griffin fell asleep that night in Marcus Kane’s bed, inhaling his scent off linen sheets, fingers curled around one of his old t-shirts.

Even just the ghost of him was strong enough to keep the nightmares at bay.

***

TWO WEEKS LATER

Curled in the warmth of him – or rather, the warmth of his bed – Abby barely heard the knocking at the door until it threatened to awaken all of Arkadia. Confused, shaking the cobwebs of sleep from her slowly-awakening mind, she wondered why Marcus’ alarm clock hadn’t gone off. Usually she rose of her own accord early in the morning, was one of the first people in their camp with her feet on the ground to start the day. But John Murphy had been given express instructions to wake her if she hadn’t risen before 8 o’clock, which meant…

Bang! Bang! Bang!

John’s voice sounded tinny through the door, faint and almost unintelligible. “Yo, Abby, rise and shine! It’s almost noon! Jackson needs you in Medical.”

Noon?

Abby couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept so late. Even on the Ark, the latest she’d managed to sleep had been eight or nine – noon was unheard of. Although she was still tired from her journey to Becca’s lab, which had been a treasure trove of information they sorely needed, she had been back for a day and a half. The exhaustion should have worn off by now.

Searching for a lie in her assistant’s words, Abby sought out the glowing face of Marcus’ alarm clock: it lay on his dresser next to a walkie talkie, which kept her in contact with him throughout the past few days. When she found it, she paled.

Not only was it noon – John was telling the truth – but the screen was flashing. His alarm had done its job. It had gone off at seven-thirty as it always had…but she had slept through it. She had slept through him radioing her at ten, too, a thought that swept hot currents of shame through her whole being.

Abby Griffin never slept through alarms, and she certainly never slept half the day away. With a pit in her stomach, she realized something must have gone wrong.

Taking a deep breath, she summoned her courage and answered John.

“I’m awake,” she said, sitting up and raising her voice as loud as she could despite her growing concern. “Tell Jackson I’m sorry. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

Opening her mouth seemed to have jump-started some kind of reaction inside her, and her stomach began to churn with more than just shame. Dizzy, she clutched the worn velvet of his comforter and swallowed hard, breathing deeply, colliding with a wave of unexpected nausea.

“Okay,” John responded, oblivious to her struggle.

Abby waited to hear the sound of his footsteps carrying him away from her thundering down the hall, then leaned over the side of his bed and vomited every morsel of last night’s dinner into the trash can.

The sound of the glop hitting steel was enough to stimulate her gag reflex even further, and she retched until her stomach was completely empty. Even then, after the deed was done, she ached.

Left alone, trembling, Abby took a moment to rest her head in her hands. She’d graduated to wearing one of his shirts while she slept – she was already sleeping in his room, she thought she might as well go all the way if she were going to do it – and right now, she was thankful for the softness of the fabric that brushed against her back, her arms, her torso. Without him here, it was the closest she could come to his embrace.

Something’s wrong, she thought, wishing she could say those words to him instead of his shirt. And I don’t know what it is.

Her mind offered her an explanation she didn’t want to hear, so she did her best to drown it out. Nonetheless, she was a doctor and it insisted on making itself heard.

Radiation. It’s radiation poisoning.

And if it was radiation poisoning – probably a side effect from going into that lab, although they’d tested the air and thought it was clear – there was a limit to what could be done for her. Unlike Luna, who had healed from the effects, Abby’s blood wouldn’t help her in this fight. There was a reason Luna had been the sole survivor from her clan, and she knew if this was anything similar, she might not even have six months. In all likelihood, her time would be less.

As much as she loved his penchant for diplomacy, his ever-insistent driving desire for peace, she needed Marcus more than ever. Though she knew he was needed in Polis, Roan respected him and his ability to maintain stability between the clans, Indra was keeping him safe…right now, she felt like curling into a ball inside his oversized gray t-shirt and sobbing.

She needed him, and she needed him now.

The coolness of his floor seemed to knock her off-balance, and her stomach flipped again. There was nothing left for it to expunge, but it tried anyway, leaving her gagging on open air.

After five minutes or so the nausea subsided and she was able to dress, leaving her with only her racing heart and a keen sense of dread. How long had it taken since Luna first got sick for her to be almost bested by the disease? A week? Two? Could she only have a week left with Clarke, Raven, the rest of the kids?

Could she only have a week left with him?

Fighting to keep herself calm, she reminded her spiraling thoughts that nothing had been proven yet. For every worry of radiation sickness, there was a common flu. The irony of getting sick with a regular disease when the world was sickening with a nuclear meltdown was not lost on her, and she managed a sad little smile as she opened and closed his door behind her.

She could practically hear John’s sarcasm: “The end of the world, and Doctor Griffin comes down with the flu.”

***

“It’s not the flu, Abby,” Jackson said, his voice gentle. It was the very end of the day – practically night – and he’d just received the results of her blood sample he’d taken earlier in the day. Mentally, she prepared for the worst.

“You should have me isolated,” she said, steeling her nerves. “We don’t know how contagious this is. Luna wasn’t, but it could be a new strain-“

“Abby, you’re not sick,” Jackson said. “It’s not radiation poisoning.”

His tone grew even softer, and she frowned. If it wasn’t the flu, and it wasn’t radiation, then what…

“If the results are right,” Jackson said, reaching out to hold her hand as she stood before him in the flickering lights of the Med Bay, “you have elevated levels of hcG. Which would mean, in theory, that you’re…”

He stopped, as if waiting for her to say the word.

“Pregnant,” she finished for him, dropping his hand, her lips forming the words as the rest of her body went numb.

It was impossible.

There was no way for her to have gotten pregnant with her contraceptive implant still in place, not to mention the unlikelihood of conception after the age of forty. She’d rarely known the implants to fail – after all, they were built with the express purpose of maintaining the Ark’s population, and the Ark was nothing if not precise. In over twenty years as a doctor, she’d only had one patient with that problem.

It was impossible.

“Jackson,” she stammered softly, feeling as though every ounce of breath had been stolen from her lungs, “how confident are you that…” she trailed off, knew he could guess the rest of her sentence.

He nodded, chin dipping slowly. “I can show you the results, if you want. But the numbers…they don’t lie.”

It was impossible.

If there was one thing she learned in her years as a doctor, numbers didn’t lie. They were dispassionate, unemotional, detached. They gave information no matter the emotional impact, no matter the detonator they set off when they were analyzed. Numbers had never lied to her.

But at the same time…it was an explanation. She’d felt queasy at times during her trip to Becca’s lab, but had explained it away as changes in radiation levels. Then, when she threw up this morning, she thought it could be the flu. Admittedly, both of those signs were symptoms of something else. She just hadn’t thought…

“How could this happen?” she asked, leaning against a cot for support. There was a ringing in her ears that hadn’t gone away since she’d said the word, her stomach churned, and her legs threatened to give out at any moment. “I haven’t had my implant removed.”

Jackson bit his lower lip. “I’m as confused as you are,” he said. “It looks like the implant failed. It’s rare, but when they were issued…it was a possibility.”

“A 0.01 percent chance,” Abby corrected him, tucking a strand of brown hair behind her ear and out of her eyes. “In medical terms, it’s next-to-nothing. Less than a rarity.”

“I know,” he admitted. “But did you…in Polis…I don’t mean to pry, Abby, but medically speaking, I need to know.”

She stared down at the ground, feeling a sob welling up inside her chest.

“Yes,” she said to the tiles. “We did.”

Repeatedly, she thought. If it had just been once, she would have had more cause to be skeptical of Jackson’s test results. But they’d treated those nine days like a honeymoon, because for all intents and purposes, that was what they were. It was the closest to peaceful bliss they’d ever come. It was their eye in the storm and they’d made that tiny room into a castle, a fortress that kept the rest of the world and its problems out while they fell deeper and deeper into emotional and physical intimacy. For those nine days it had just been her and him, exploring each other, finally consummating the thing that had gone unspoken between them for so long.

She’d been confident it wouldn’t happen, because it couldn’t happen. So they hadn’t exactly taken precautions. They hadn’t been careful. With her implant, why would they need to be? Her love for him was stronger than any unfounded concern in the back of her head, and by then…at the moment they would have had to make that decision, she wanted to be as close to him as she could. Needless to say, a pregnancy had been the last thing on their minds.

“Oh,” Jackson said, quiet. “Then Abby, I don’t think – unless you really want me to run more tests, but the results were conclusive.”

“I understand,” she said. The room was spinning around her, and up was down and down was up and somehow impossible things could happen now, because she’d ended up pregnant with an implant expressly designed to prevent that from happening. “We can’t use any more of our resources. What’s done is done.”

Jackson nodded, swallowed hard. “You need to take it easy,” he said. “You can’t go on any more missions. From now on, you need to stay inside Arkadia where there’s medical equipment and we can be sure you’re eating well. Even though you’re only a few weeks in, we need to start taking precautions.“

Abby didn’t bother stating the obvious.

None of it – their precautions, her resting, eating well – would matter if they couldn’t figure out a way to stave off the impending nuclear doom. That thought, that singular realization, hit her like a punch in the chest.

Marcus might never meet his child.

“I’m going to help in every way I can,” Abby said, giving Jackson the determined glare she’d perfected over months of working with him on the Ark. He opened his mouth, prepared to contradict her, but she persisted. “I understand the limitations of pregnancy, Jackson. But I’m not going to stop working because of it. Please don’t ask that of me.”

In fact, she’d continue working because of it.

Their child, growing inside her, deserved to see the world. They deserved to breathe the air on the ground, to hear the sounds of the birds chirping in the trees, to feel a warm summer breeze on their skin. They deserved to stand outside in a rainstorm and feel the icy droplets of rain on their skin. Earth was something both she and Marcus had never thought they’d see, and their child deserved to live on it. Her heart was soaring, racing, slamming against her ribcage at the thought of their child - her child - and the life she desperately wanted to give them.

Their child would live on the ground.

“I won’t,” Jackson said, seemingly understanding her strengthened resolve. After a few moments, he asked the question she’d been dreading, a question she didn’t know how to answer or what to answer it with.

“Are you going to tell Kane?”

Not while he’s in Polis. This was in-person news, face-to-face news. She needed to be able to see him when he learned he was going to be a father, register whether or not this revelation was welcome. Though she doubted he’d be upset – if anyone wished they’d been a father earlier in life, it was him – she hoped he’d be allowed to come home soon. This wasn’t news she wanted to sit with for another week.

“When he gets back,” she said, wondering how the hell she’d act like she was fine during their conversation tonight. He had a keen ability to tell when something was wrong with her: a sixth sense, as it were. It would take all her effort to put on a happy, normal façade and pretend nothing was amiss, and even then he might see through it. “I’m not telling him over a radio.”

Jackson surprised her by smiling, a soft, sweet expression he reserved for quiet moments and great triumphs.

“I’m sure he’ll be happy about it,” he said, “considering how much he loves the kids.”

Then it was Abby’s turn to smile. There was no doubt in her mind that he’d be an excellent father: he’d had so much practice already. Under normal circumstances, she would have been nervous – but elated – to tell him. But now, with the end of the world barreling down on them, she hoped the news wouldn’t bring him more heartbreak than happiness.

And yet, despite it all, there was one emotion she felt stronger than the rest, one emotion that overpowered all her doubt: hope.

“I’m sure he will, too.”

#kabby #marcus kane #abby griffin #emily writes #MY EMOTIONS GOT THE BEST OF ME AND THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED #I'd apologize but I'm not sorry

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