#prodigcl

—  jesus  can  always  reject  her  father,  but  she  cannot  escape  her  mother's  blood. she'll  scream  and  try  to  wash  it  off  of  her  fingers,  but  she'll  never  escape  what  she's  made  up  of.

HOUSE OF THE DRAGON, 1.09 “THE GREEN COUNCIL” SENTENCE STARTERS // ACCEPTING

The accusation doesn't even phase her.

"Sometimes in life," she starts, "you grow a garden. Sometimes you spend hours and hours carefully tending it, watching it flourish and grow, and sit on your porch with pride at the end of a long day protecting and loving it."

The book in her hand slams shut a little too hard.

"And sometimes, you wake up the next morning to that garden infested. You watch the vermin, uncaring and unbothered, take what is rightfully yours, never wondering if perhaps, this might belong to someone else! Content in their ignorance to just assume it's theirs to begin with!"

She turns to face her.

"Sometimes, you don't even have to do it yourself. You send your big scary dog to do it for you."

◈   @prodigcl​​ said:   ❛ [  nap  ]  sender  falls  asleep  against  receiver // for Maria! ❜  //  nonverbal meme prompts

Slavic predecessors watched from the walls, disdain daubed into oil-painted features, gilt frames draped with shadow.  Canvas served as a window into an aristocratic past.  These forerunners disapproved of the scene that played out before them, of the last of their line keeping such peculiar company.

Wounds and weariness had drawn Miriam from the wilds, like venom from a snake bite.  Bloodied, terror-stricken, desperate, painting mud-tracks across the boot room.  Now, the guest drowsed, drowning in one of Maria’s unpressed linen shirts, pinned beneath the weight of woollen blankets.  With the moon rising, the manor house sighed and settled around them. Its bones drank in the heat of the fire that writhed and flickered in the grate.

Long nights bred long silences.  Hours stretched.  An exhausted bottle of apricot brandy at last went unharrassed, with barely a finger of liquid amber remaining.  The remnants of an improvised meal grew stale; sourdough crusts and cheese truckle crumbs, a few wilted fronds of salad gruesomely stained by a massacre of pickled beetroot.  Morsels scavenged from the neglected pantry, from the flourishing garden.  What Maria grew, she gave away.  What she could not give away, found itself returned to the earth.  At every opportunity, she fed her increasingly infrequent visitors.  Some, once warmly welcomed, might now be greeted with gunfire.  A sign of the times in Hope County.

During the lengthening gaps of hushed conversation, a weight grew against her shoulder.  Miriam, eroded and eventually defeated by her exhaustion, succumbed to sleep.  Gently, Maria coaxed hair – still damp and curling with bathwater – away from her face.  A tilt of the head, a long look from the corner of her tired grey eyes, and she was struck by how much younger Miriam seemed.  Slumber smoothed her features, erased the horror and fury.  It made a girl of the woman with split knuckles, bruises upon bruises.  Even now, she smelt of blood. 

As with any stray, the visit was sure to be short.  Maria, ever sleepless, made the most of it.  Darkness crowded the windows, wooden panes creaking under the press of the wind.  The fire died slowly, unfed, starved of fuel.  Flames burned low, until only embers remained, smouldering among the ashes.  A perfect metaphor for a doomed dynasty, a noble line that ended quietly, malignantly.

                                        always  the  fool  with  the  slowest  heart.

  the  radiation,    he  explained  as  he  laid  the  hammer  at  her  bare  feet.  and  the  concussion,    he  added  as  he  crawled  across  the  mottled  length  of  her  body  to  lay  against  her  back.  you  could  pass  out  from  either,    the  doors  will  have  to  go  until  i  know  that  the  dangers  have  passed,   he  said  as  he  pressed  kisses  along  the  curve  of  her  shoulder  as  she  faced  resolutely  away  from  him,    every  inch  of  her  as  stiff  as  she  could  muster  in  the  moment.   what  if  i  couldn’t  get  to  you?  or  you  couldn’t  get  to  our  daughter?  what  then?    he  cooed  as  he  pressed  his  stubbled  cheek  against  the  crown  of  her  soot  covered  head.   baby,  baby,    aren’t  you  overjoyed?    our  daughter.   our  daughter  is  with  us,  again!    she  flinched  at  the  use  of  the  shared  determiner,    our  ,    neither  of  them  deserved  to  carry  the  title  that  it  implied  after  what  stretched  between  them.  there  was  too  much  pain,    too  much  pain  ,    and  he  wanted  to  pretend  that  there  was  something  more  than  biology  tethering  them  together?    hannah  wanted  to  hit  him  all  over  again  as  the  thoughts  of  their  failure  continued  to  spiral  and  build  within  her.  it  was  his  fault  that  they  had  been  set  to  this  path,    but  it  was  also  hers  for  never  thinking  to  stray  from  it,    to  never  look  too  closely  at  his  story.  grief  blinded  her  and  he  knew  it.  she  moved  then,  her  elbow  making  contact  with  his  rib  cage  causing  him  to  sigh  before  seeking  her  mouth  with  his.  she  attempted  to  deny  him,  but  his  hand  found  the  burn  which  brought  about  a  stillness  allowing  for  the  affection  he  wanted  to  be  gained. he  promised  to  return  shortly  with  medicine  for  it  before  removing  himself  from  her  bed  and  the  room  with  the  doors  tucked  under  his  arm  and  a  smile  on  his  face  as  if  he  had  completed  a  task  on  his  honey  to-do  list  for  her. 

@prodigcl asked: ❛   i wish i had done everything with you.  ❜ // ways to love

His coarse palm touches the side of her face with the honesty of a chapped-lipped kiss, the urgency of an almost-missed goodbye. He looks at her with the same awe he did years ago when they'd first met: like he saw God's spine in the curve of her lips and His holy water in the color of her eyes. And then he remembers, suddenly, brutally, that it's not the first time, not even the second or third, and they've wasted their chance. He’s wasted his chance with her.

"I wish we had more time," he whispers back at Miriam. Beneath his words is the unspoken plea not to leave him. In the glistening of wet eyes lies the truth. "It's late. It's so late it's almost dawn again." He's not speaking of the time of the day, no. A different dawn. One even more imminent and unstoppable than sunrise. "But..." He knows better than to press, but his foolish heart doesn't. "You could still come with me. With us. Miriam— Miri. Please."

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