#safefromsin

  the heralds have gone too far.  their methods too cruel!  the flock is slowly dying out as the heralds are allowed to run free with their methods of salvation.  something must be done or they may all perish before the great collapse comes.  joseph looks for a solution,  he looks to the world to find someone who can be the one to deliver the final blow if it was needed. he looks for someone who could pass judgement without letting emotion and personal opinion blind them.  he looked and looked, and found the wives to be fitting.  they are all good and knowing.  they would be the ones to make the final call.  he gifts them with a duty. 

  he looks to his own wife and tells her that she is to be the one to spin the spinning wheel and make a choice for his followers.  john’s wife is to dispense their judgment whatever it may be,  and jacob’s wife is to wield the scissors and cut the thread as needed.  she is the last one to speak and there is no going against them.  they take to their duty a little too well. 

  the heralds still have their jobs,  but lack true power.  they cannot move unless the wives will it.  every person that comes into the project is presented to the three women.  hannah decides where they will go and what they will do. she will not be swayed by tears or jeering comments,  she looks to the prospective’s heart and makes the judgement.  mary will organize it and make sure that it does get carried out as was ordered,  she has an iron will that cannot be questioned and a strong right hook if you try.  sara signs the execution orders.  if they want to kill anyone for any reason,  they must get her blessing first.  no more training that isn’t safe, no more accidental drownings, no more too much bliss, or eye gouging.  not without her consent at least.

“   i’m  not  sorry  for  rachel  anymore  ,  i  left  her  in  the  dark  and  that  was  cruel  of  me.     faith  saved  me  and  i  could  never  abandon  my  faith  but  i  spent  a  significant  portion  of  my  life  just  BATTLING  WITH  MYSELF  instead  of  learning  to  actually  heal.     i  just  needed  someone  to  love  me.     i  spent  my  time  forsaking  tracey  and  it  wasn’t  until  i  had  to  watch  you  drift  in  and  out  of  consciousness  ,  fighting  for  a  resemblance  of  your  own  individuality  and  ,  finally  ,  almost  losing  you  to  john  did  i  realize  what  really  matters :      i  only  gave  up  cocaine.     i  was  still  addicted  to  a  drug  and  i  thought  i  had  the  power  ,  but  i  didn’t.     i  could  use  bliss  to  my  advantage  more  than  i  ever  could  with  cocaine  but  i  was  still  a  junkie.   ”

faith’s  green  eyes  are  still  focused  on  her  flowers  ,  this  pause  ,  only  a  few  seconds  later  does  she  look  at  sara.

“   i’m  so  sorry.   ”

         ( ♛ )   ────   “  Ah, yes. Good to see you haven’t lost your spirit. We’re gonna drink wine, talk about everything and then.. --we switch to tequila!  ”  

nonverbal starters || accepting

🤗 Pull my muse into a hug

     Radios are a necessity in Hope County. Not just for music, but for tuning in to local happenings – the broadcasts from both the cult and those resisting them. It makes sense, considering the spotty-to-non-existent phone service in the area, but that doesn’t mean Miles has to like it. It seems like an awfully inefficient means of communication, especially when the frequencies vary from region to region. But he’d bartered his way to acquiring one anyway – when in Rome, as the saying went.

     He’s fiddling with it at the kitchen table when, through the garbled static that is liable to give him a wicked headache, there comes a voice. The tone is fairly distinctive even buried under all the white noise, though Miles is trying to pay more attention to what’s being said than who’s saying it. Picking up a nearby pen, he jots down the words he’s able to make out. Somewhere in the middle of his rough translating, Sara enters the kitchen. She pauses with her hand about to pull open the refrigerator door, and from the corner of his eye Miles sees her knuckles turn white. He’s never pressed her for more information about her experiences with the other members of the Seed family, and now doesn’t feel like a particularly good time.

     The broadcast pauses, then loops back to the beginning. Miles sits back in his seat. Sara, still frozen fast, asks “What was he saying?”

     “Something about an escape attempt down in the valley.” Tapping pen to paper in a nonsensical rhythm, Miles tries piecing together his haphazard notes. “I got “tunnel” and “collapse” out of that. Must’ve been something big, though, if there was a broadcast about it.”

     The skin on the back of Sara’s hand turns impossibly paler. Miles’ brow furrows.

     “I guess we could go check it out?” he offers.

     She nods, slowly, eyes fixed on some faraway point that Miles can’t see. If she knows anything about what he’d heard from the radio, Sara doesn’t specify. But Miles has a funny feeling that she’s withholding something, even if it’s just a gut feeling.

     The drive is long and silent. Miles flips back and forth between all two available music stations for a solid fifteen minutes before he gives up. He tries once or twice to initiate conversation, but Sara is all tensed muscles and stony expressions in the passenger’s seat, so he eventually throws in the towel on that, too. As the winding road carries them into the rolling expanse of Holland Valley, Miles keeps an eye out for what they’re looking for. He tries a few routes and side roads to little avail. Just as he’s about to call the whole thing a bust, they come to an intersection punctuated with yet another bleached-white wooden church at one corner, where a perpendicular road veers sharply towards the county’s border. It seems about as promising as could be hoped for on such a blind expedition, so Miles turns the car down it.

     At the end of the newly truncated road sits, as promised, the remnants of a tunnel. Even from a distance it’s obvious that something was detonated in order to bring down that many tons of rock. Cars are dotted around the mouth of the tunnel, like picked-over carcasses at the threshold of a beast’s lair. Miles pulls the car over to the side of the road, parks it at what he thinks to be a safe distance away. Sara is leaning forward in her seat, magnetically pulled towards the destruction ahead. He gets out first, but waits for her to follow suit before proceeding.

     The cars are empty husks. Refuse is scattered about the site, the trash littered in patterns that suggest objects being pulled carelessly from the vehicles. There’s blood in places, too – the occupants of the cars likely got the same treatment as their belongings. But there’s no immediate sign of life, nothing but a slight breeze to scatter the lightweight junk and blow a curl of hair into Miles’ eyes. The one body he does see is already done up in Hope County’s signature fashion – gutted and stuffed with those sickly white flowers, trussed up and left to hang – and therefore very clearly not alive. In the hunt for clues, he spots and grabs one piece of paper in the rubble that looks fresher than the others.

     Here hangs a sinner by the name of–

     He hasn’t been paying much mind to Sara, and he might not have noticed her position at all had she not sobbed. The sound is thick and harsh and wounded, wet with tears and heavy with a primal sort of horror. Miles’ head snaps toward the source of the noise, instantly worried that she’s hurt. What he sees instead is Sara standing under the hanged body, head tilted back with her hands pressed over her mouth. “Sara?” She stumbles back a step, eyes wide with shock. Still holding the note, he moves towards her, hoping to catch her before she trips. “Sara?”

     When he’s behind her she turns and damn near falls into his arms. He catches her roughly, shifts to adjust his weight before she takes him down. Her face is pressed into his chest and his shirt is instantly dampened by her tears. Sara’s shoulders shake and she’s holding onto him like he’s the only thing keeping her standing. It’s both the first time he’s touched her and the first time he’s seen her cry since that day in the woods, and there’s no present reason why. Over her shoulder his attention returns, briefly, to the paper in his hand. He skims is as though it might provide an answer. 

     Here hangs a sinner by the name of Alex.

     Fuck.

     Glancing upwards, towards the keystone at the apex of the tunnel, Miles can just barely recognize the corpse now that he’s paying attention.

     “Fuck.”

     Sara’s arms are around him and her fingers clutch desperately at his shirt and he knows that in that moment he could be anyone – it’s not his comfort she’s seeking, just a presence in a world that somehow managed to turn itself upside-down. He drops the note and rests a hand at the middle of her back, at a loss for how best to respond. Offering condolences feels paltry so he just stays there, holds her, tries to ignore the faint taste of bile creeping up the back of his throat every time a wayward white petal drifts past on the breeze.

     Time slips by unnoticed, but eventually her tremors are reduced to shivers. She pulls back and he lets her, allows her to reclaim her space and her dignity but he stops her when she goes to look back. He catches her when she tries, a gentle hand on the side of her head. “Don’t–” she grabs him roughly by the wrist, the pain in her features melting and re-solidifying into something far harsher. “It’s not worth it, I know. I’ve seen–” Lynn. He’s thinking of Lynn. Of her body, bloated and wrong, at Temple Gate. Dead before he could save her. He’d seen her alive so many times before that but that’s the image that sticks, the version of her he sees behind his eyelids no matter how badly he wants to forget it. “Not like this. You don’t want to see him like this, alright? Trust me.” She’s already looked, already seen. A second scrutiny won’t help.

     Her expression crumples around another breathy whimper but she nods, fingers slipping away from his wrist. “Go back to the car.” She looks at him from a place of hurt and confusion as he lets her go completely. “I’m going to try to– I’m going to get him down, okay? We won’t leave him, I promise. But I think you should wait in the car.” For once he trusts her not to go anywhere in the absence of his watchful eye. 

     Before she does anything else, Sara pulls him into an uncertain embrace. The gesture warms when Miles returns it, and it slips into something almost natural, affectionate, before she breaks away to return to the car.

raw as hell sentence starters /  accepting       *  @safefromsin

      “ How optimistic of you. ”

“No time for questions.” Quick to the point as always, The Judge shifts his weight restlessly as he watches Sara from behind his mask. “Pack your things.” He repeats, nodding his head towards her. “Only what you need. Quickly.”  Turning from her then, the former deputy steps out of the cabin once more to stand just outside the door, arms folding across his chest as he waited.

With Joseph gone, His commitment to The Father had kept the fallen deputy posted right at Ethan’s side and that’s where he had stayed until talk of The Highwaymen started circling around once more. His obligations were to protect New Eden and those affiliated with it. If Sara was in his line of sight he would be able to ensure he had fulfilled his mission. He wouldn’t fail anyone again.