#prompt16

A coarse palm pushes it’s way up along the natural half of the roegadyn’s face, smushing her features along the way while trying to drag the outer layers of glaze from her attention. She was starting to go mentally numb from the constant re-reading of the ‘script’ in front of her, something she imagined Sana had locked into memory within the first couple of readings. It wasn’t a lack of interest in the moment being practiced for, or even the words themselves. Just thinking about the fact that they were so close to the actual date of the wedding continued to get a few goosebumps going. 

The issue was that she had never actually had to practice this sort of thing, at least not since she was a child reciting something for her instructors. Needing to sit and practice for showing her love simply felt weirdly stilted. The Sea Wolf certainly appreciated that some things had ceremony to them, tradition mattered deeply after all. But a declaration of love, one to be soul linking and everlasting felt like it deserved to come directly from her, and not a priestess’s script. After all, she had declared things she was far less passionate about to entire crowds off the cuff hundreds of times now. Why not this?

A tired eye sets back to the page in front of her to start reading through the script again, even if her mind was only half behind the effort. The ceremony wasn’t about her, not as directly as it would have seemed anyway. It may mark officially starting a life with her lover that was already underway, but the wedding itself was for everyone else. Friends, family, the Twelve themselves. A promise to the lot of them that she would not falter in her words that day. And as such, the words themselves mattered. Mattered too much to get wrong.

@doubi-ixi​ @linariouswrites​ @thethistlegirl​

Cute dragon below cut

Warning: Pretty graphic description of how Adam looked after he was tortured so skim the paragraph that starts with  “ Adam hung in the light and it was not pretty.” if that bothers you.

A terrible, horrible, very bad, no good day

................................

Adam Beckly was a very well kept secret. He had to be. He was the link between The Adventurers and the Government. He wouldn’t exactly call himself The Adventurers’ handler, though the Gov seemed to think he was. And so did bad guys. So he was a well kept secret. He knew almost everything about The Adventurers. If he was caught, villains could use him to get at one of the most unbreakable teams in the seven dimension rings. 

Too bad he got caught.

Adam had been stripped of his suit and shoes, keeping only the jeans he had been captured in. The air was cold on his skin as he hung in the middle of a cell, chains already rubbing his wrists raw. Adam tilted his head up as a man stepped into the cell with a grin. He had diamonds in his teeth.

“Well, if it isn’t The Adventurers’ leash,” the man said as if he hadn’t expected to find Adam hanging there. 

“I’m not their leash,” Adam hissed. “I’m just how the Gov contacts them.”

The man laughed. “I’ve done my research. You’re not their leash or their contact. You’re their friend.” The man strode over and looked Adam over before pulling a knife out of his belt. “I’m going to make them beg to get you back.”

Adam gritted his teeth just before the first swing hit.

…………………

Laurance and Rin were the first to find him. The four adventurers had split up into pairs. The guys stepped into the room and were both startled when the iron door slammed shut behind them. Rin’s ears perked as he heard a rattling breath. A light snapped on and both adventurers winced. 

Adam hung in the light and it was not pretty. Blood dripped from his hanging toes, his fingers were discolored to the point of possible nerve damage, there were cigarette burns across his arms and chest, cuts littered his body and he couldn’t seem to open his swollen, weeping eyes or swallow with his bruised throat. Laurance had to take a few deep breaths to keep from being overwhelmed by nausea when he saw some of the skin on his ribs was hanging off his body. Laurance was glad they found him first. Anisha would have lost it.

The villain stepped from the shadows, teeth glinting. “Welcome, you two,” he said, arms open. Laurance couldn’t help but notice the blood on his fingers. “Here you are for the party.”

“We’ve come to get him back,” Rin growled, hackled rising and ears going back.

The man smiled. He held up his hand to show a truth ring around his wrist. “You two know what this is. A truth ring. It will burn me if I tell a lie. I was given this as a….. Gift when I crossed one of my rivals early on.”

“You’re the Truth Boss,” Laurance said with narrowed eyes. He had heard about this man.

The man nodded. “I’m a little annoyed with you and those two girls of yours,” he said. “That’s why I did this. So, I have a proposal.”

“Which is?” Rin asked. 

The man grinned. “You will beg me to let him go. On your knees and everything, and you will beg. I will let him go with you, and let all of you, even the girls out, without a fight or a chase or anything. If you refuse, that vial of acid up there will open and dump directly onto dear old Adam’s head and he will die. Do I make myself clear?”

Rin twitched. He was a fairly prideful man, but Laurance got on his knees at once, sword flat on the ground in front of him. Rin swallowed thickly and got down slower, bowing only slightly. Laurance’s head was bowed fully as he said, “Please, let him go. We need him.”

“Not a great reason,” the boss sang.

Laurance swallowed. “He’s got a girl back at home. They’re not dating yet, but she needs him and he needs her. They just don’t know it yet. Please. He’s got to see his sister get married next week and spend time with his nieces. He has to come home.”

The man smiled and nodded slightly, but turned his attention to Rin. 

“Beg.”

Rin bared his teeth and winced as the man shoved the cigarette he'd been smoking into one of Adam’s wounds. The moan was low and defeated. Rin was pretty sure Adam wasn’t even conscious. Rin bowed lower, matching Laurance and then just an inch more. “Please,” Rin whispered, though it made him quiver to be seen begging. He didn’t know how Anisha and Laurance did it so easily without looking defeated or wounded. It was as if their pride meant nothing to them. Rin swallowed. “We need him. He…. he’s the only one who can be there for us. When we need it.”

That was apparently enough for the man. He nodded and turned, a secret door opening. “Go ahead,” he said just before he disappeared and the door closed behind him.

Laurance jumped to his feet and ran to Adam, arms under him to support his weight. Rin undid the chains, wincing at the skin that peeled off in places. 

“It’s okay,” Laurance said as Rin guided Adam’s limbs into a better position for carry. They were so stiff. “Adam, I’m so sorry it took so long.”

One of Adam’s eyes opened. Rin was startled to see such awareness under the bruises. Adam leaned into Laurance as the three men left the room and called to the girls that they were going home. 

“I… knew……” Adam whispered almost silently. Laurance held his friend closer as Anisha and Kiera met up with them, making a portal with one hand wave to take them home.

The stage is not mine now, the set has moved and the players recast without telling me

The changing room has new initials on the walls with dates far beyond May 2018, where I decided to quit the soccer team, I fear I cannot find mine but

“I guess orcs just don’t have a sense of humor.”

BBC, Sherlock/John

Every dance of flame played out against the pale roegadyn’s features as she sat on the edge of the table parked just in front of their home’s fireplace. Most of the other lamps and candles were out being that it was some unreasonable hour of the morning she’s long since lost track of. The upper floor was full of snoozing miqo’te that she’d snuck her way out of a while ago now. As much as she loved each of them, for the first time in what seemed like ages that comfortable bed and cozy home felt like a boxed in cage. Not born out of any feeling not wishing to be there; quite specifically the exact opposite. Save for occasionally having the ship out for a voyage or a particularly wild night at the Mason, she couldn’t remember the last time she wasn’t eager to get back to that bed. Even those nights away, her thoughts would keep back home even she couldn’t. And until the incident with her sister, even her family seemed proud in ways she wasn’t familiar with. But it all spoke to one thing.

She had been domesticated.

She still had the thrills of cheering crowds at the arena, the chance to sweep up the attention of people on her stage in her bar, and even had her sky back, even if it was still in it’s infant steps with the current crew. These she had either swiftly fallen into needing or had yearned for all her life, they were all sitting there in the palm of her hand. If her name came up, these were the things likely to come along with it. What right did she have to go complaining when literally all the things she would choose to have if she were completely free were already in her hands? It wasn’t that she wasn’t allowed to chase the things she wanted that was setting up the golden bars of her gilded cage. It’s that she was wanting them less than the other. That if a day came where she didn’t have it in her to keep doing everything at the nearly impossible rate she was doing them, that the things she would chose to toss aside were the tent poles of the persona she cultivated. That years of hearing her family talk about ‘when you meet the right man’ or some other such nonsense to chase her away from her dreams would be true. Trading away her dreams, a piece of who she was for being comfortable and happy.

That of course all twists back into it’s own guilt as she stares down at the bottle of rum that’d been in her hand for the last several hours, still unopened. Shouldn’t she love the three of them more than all these selfish things? Isn’t that what love is supposed to be? She had once told them, earnestly, that she would give up the sky for them if they ever asked it. But was that in good faith if she knew they never would, because both sides knew what bitterness that would invite? It’s been nearly a year since Del and Sana’s bonding, and the night before with the collar. Not once since that night had she been given any reason to doubt the words ‘I love you’ from any set of lips of the bunch. The love hadn’t gone anywhere, and that was perhaps the more terrifyingly comforting thing. She couldn’t talk to the two of them about it though. How does one even phrase the question? ‘I don’t really want anything to change and I love you and our boy, but also this feels like me giving up on being me some days and I don’t know what to do about that?’ That would be absolute madness at best, and a dagger into each of their hearts at worst.

Unfocused eyes drew their way back down to the bottle of rum once again. She hadn’t had a drop in over two moons, and had been largely cut back even before that with the medicine for the falling sickness. The blissful haze of a drunken stupor almost felt like a long forgotten memory, but certainly one that had a siren-like call at that unreasonable hour of the morning. And after all, she and Sana were well ahead on pumping, so much so it was getting tossed out sometimes. One night wouldn’t kill her. Setting the bottle between her thighs to work the cork with one hand, she fishes out a link pearl with the other and pulls it up into place.