#thefcther

When they had first emerged from the bunker, he had taken to his new part too easily. There was nothing else that he could do at this time. There was absolutely NOTHING that stood in his way to do so. No outside forces that he had once called his friends. Just Joseph. ONLY Joseph. As the Father began to build his family back up, gathering them from all corners of Hope County, the Judge was there with him silent  and stoic.

That was how he REMAINED. 

Unless it was night.

When everyone was asleep and Alder found himself alone, he’d shed the mask that he wore, thinking long and hard about the horros he had faced before the bombs fell. He’d lost EVERYONE he cared for more than anything: Joey and Staci and Earl. Alder didn’t even know if the Ryes or ANYONE ELSE were alive for that matter. The car crash came so suddenly, the FIRE raining from the sky, the RUSH of blood flooding the sight in his right eye from the gnarly gash across his face. 

It still hurt after all these years.

He spins the mask around in his hands, perched up high away from everyone else. Not like they noticed where he was. As far as he knew, they were all ASLEEP. All but one.

It was finally over. After weeks of fighting, and months of trying to find a solution to the hell that was Hope County, they’d finished it. Finally, they’d managed to get ahold of Joseph Seed. Enough of the Project had been beaten back to allow the sheriff’s department to consider transporting him to the maximum-security prison down south in Colorado. John Seed was livid, spitting mad and threatening more than legal means of hurting them should they not hand the Father back over, but Whitehorse dismissed him and his rantings. After having subdued Joseph, cuffing him for a second time, the worst of it seemed over. Her, Hudson and Whitehorse transported him back to the jail, Staci’s presence sorely missed. Rook was assigned to watch Joseph once he was secured in the jail. The other resistance members would take any chance to get back at the man who had allowed this entire mess to start in the first place and they couldn’t risk him being martyred.

So she sat in a chair outside his cell, barely moving except for when Whitehorse came to relieve her of duty.

There’d been no word from the mountains, where Jacob still held Staci captive, but they couldn’t risk going after him, splitting their forces further when they had the lynch-pin in their grasp. Whitehorse assigned her and Hudson to get Joseph Seed out of the state. They took the assignment seriously, and while Staci would have been a better pilot –– Rook had learned how to handle aircraft by this point. Within two days of having arrested Joseph Seed, (for a second time), they had loaded him in, still cuffed and taken off. He was as eerily quiet as he had been since they’d taken him into custody.

Maybe he was contemplating the gravity of his actions, of the decisions he’d made. The flight shouldn’t take long. Little more than an hour and a half if they had good winds going. The three of them didn’t talk much, with Hudson in the back, keeping an eye on Joseph while Rook flew them. Along the way they had little contact with airports they passed, the airwaves were crammed with people talking over one another. Military, and air force personnel talking in code that they couldn’t keep up with. The pair of deputies exchanged a look, Rook over her shoulder and Hudson shrugging. Both were clueless about the worried chatter, but it was when they were crossing over the Rockies, that the first streak of a missile alerted them to what was going on.

“No fucking way.” Hudson says, her shock clear in the headset despite the grainy quality of her voice.

Then there were more, countless anti-missiles in the distance and it’s not seconds later the explosion goes off. The very one she’d seen in the bliss vision back when Faith had drugged her. The bomb had to have hit Denver, maybe Colorado Springs which was exactly where they were going. Or were going to be going. Rook changes direction, tries to cut towards the mountains and utilize them as a break from the incoming blast wave.

“No, no not again!” Hudson shouts from the back, and of course Joseph Seed is humming that damned song again. Rook isn’t Staci, is nowhere near as adept and she can only do the bare minimum to try and get them lower before it hits. The instruments go out, the rotors stall and they plummet into the tree line below. The branches help soften the landing but not enough to keep Rook’s head from bouncing off the plexiglass in the door. Everything goes black, and when she next opens her eyes she hears nothing. Her ears are ringing, her body pinned between a tree branch that was inches shy of impaling her and her chair. She calls out for Hudson, turning as best she can given her limited mobility to scan for the other deputy. Her eyes land on the blood splattered woman. Where Rook had miraculously missed being eviscerated by mother nature, the same couldn’t be said of Hudson. Her eyes widen and she flails a hand backwards, gloved fingers searching for a pulse but she can’t reach her neck. Rook struggles to slip free and after scraping her stomach raw on the bark she manages to wiggle out, and crawls into the wreckage of the back. From this close she confirms her worst fear. That Hudson’s dead. There’s no sign of life, no rise and fall of her chest. There’s too much blood. Her eyes are glassy.

Then Rook’s head snaps to the side, eyes darting around the back, looking for Joseph Seed but he’s gone. Again. Rook gives Hudson one more look and apologizes, unable to hear her own soft-spoken ‘sorry’ through the persistent ringing in her ears. She lays a hand on the woman’s knee before crawling out through the hole torn open in the side of the helicopter. She doesn’t get far, stumbling along the mountainside for a few minutes before she realizes that she’s bleeding, a lot. The branch had missed her, but she must have sliced open her side on some of the torn metal when she’d been climbing through the wreckage.

She spots a rock nearby, large enough for her to ease herself down on, using it as a makeshift chair so she can pull her uniform jacket off and see the damage. Rook shucks it off her shoulders, cringing at the pull on her skin. There’s a huge gash along the left side of her torso, right below her ribcage. She inhales shakily, glancing back the way she came from.

Her backpack with the med kit might be at the crash site .  .  . she moves to get up, but stops short when she hears rustling. One hand flies to the holster at her side, snapping the 1911 free and lifting it. She’s expecting a wild animal, not ––

A gift. Something to make his little brother smile in spite of the Hell through which they walked. And it turns into a beating. God, it made Jacob’s teeth hurt. Twenty-five lashes, though Joseph hardly cried, his brother could only take it for so long. It wasn’t his fault. Besides, Jacob was responsible for the crime and for his brother as the eldest. 

Hours later, a single light burns in the dim house, the heretical berating and beating long since quieted. Both the older boys smart with lashes so the eldest prefers to stand though it only makes the words on the page dance all the harder. His brow knits in a frown, his frustration rising back near that tipping point. Muscles lock down by degree without conscious thought. Only John’s sleepy protests and slapping of sticky baby hands derails him, all--most-- of that bottled tight. “C’mon,” he mutters to the babe, shifting him to the other shoulder as he heads toward the dark bedroom shared with Joseph. It’s time and past to lay the youngest back down and Jacob’s more than prepared to accept the homework as just another red mark in the books.

There’s a faint creak as the door gives to a bump of the boy’s hip, a quick-trained reach of the foot keeping wood from clattering against the wall.No sense waking Joseph or the rest of the house up. Teeth bare in a hiss as lowering the baby into his crib pulls at the raw flesh of his back, but he quickly catches it, forcing a smile. It’s worth it when John smiles sleepily back, rubbing at his eyes with chubby fists. Maybe he’ll actually stay asleep this time. Maybe.  

Trained-silent feet pad over to Joseph’s mattress on the floor, crouching to peer at his middle brother. He’s been... strange. No stranger to beatings, but this one seems to have left Joseph rattled and oddly... at peace. An already calloused palm reaches out-- wants to brush the dark hair from his face, but he’s not John. The relationship has always been different, Joseph significantly more independent and only rarely needing his big brother. But the love’s still there. Instead, Jacob gently rocks the younger’s shoulder-- unsure if he’s even asleep and careful to avoid where the angry marks lay. 

“What’s eating you?”

The original plan was to head straight for New Eden and destroy any that tried to stop them and, after leaving the smoking burned out wreckage of a Highwayman patrol in their wake, that plan didn’t change. Not until they reached what was the remains of US Auto. The troops in the convoy barely broke stride, sweeping through the outpost with military precision before the few guards could raise the alarm. Those left behind to clean up and defend should the Highwaymen attempt to reclaim it, were told to behave as if they were loosely attached to Prosperity. And then the convoy rolled on, a few passengers lighter. 

What used to be the Gardenview Packing facility suffered the same fate, only this time one of the trucks with a mounted gun remained, as the location seemed far more vulnerable than US Auto. 

At the head of the convoy, the man in the black truck merely watched with an almost impassive expression -- one only punctuated by the occasion curl of contempt that pulled his lips into a snarl at the music being piped through the speakers. He felt no remorse, no pity, for the ones who screamed as they died at the hands of his militia; they would all soon learn that the Valley belonged to him -- Highwaymen and Prosperity alike. He had stayed quiet in his bunker for far too long. 

He paid no mind to the Bliss-fogged island as they passed, though many in the convoy slowed to look. John can’t blame them, most were advised not to cross the river unless there was an absolute need, but they were not on a sight-seeing trip and he accelerated towards the former Project compound and forced the drivers behind him to concentrate on the task at hand without even touching his radio. But even he slowed when he reached the turn that once upon a time lead towards the church and it’s buildings -- he’d been there once, back when they’d first set foot out of the bunker after seven years, and found it a flooded ruin that had been overtaken by the lake when the McKinley dam had broken. Back then, he didn’t know what had happened to Joseph, but now he knows better. 

His moles inside New Eden made sure of that. Just like his ones inside Prosperity made sure he had his finger on that pulse too.

The convoy was forced to stop on the small island between the larger island behind them and the wooden walls of New Eden in front of them and the bulk of his militia remained with the vehicles while half a dozen of the most skilled Chosen flanked their leader as they crossed the shallow waters towards the gates. As if commanded by an unseen force, the gates creaked open to the faces of his informants and a wave of panic behind them. 

Joseph’s people rushed out of their dwellings at the sound of the gates and the reaction was explosive. John couldn’t help the smirk that tugged at his lips as his name rippled through the camp; the Baptist, the Inquisitor, the Herald. Reverence mixed with fear. Everyone thought he was dead but there he was, stalking his way through camp with an armed guard like he was expecting trouble only to pause and wait in what was likely the main square without saying a word to anyone.

A teenager, no more than fifteen and likely born in a bunker, had bolted towards the Father’s home, barging in without announcement and panting heavily as he practically fell over himself with the news. “Father! Sir, pardon the intrusion, but we’ve got a problem.” The boy’s words came out in a rush. “A man with men and guns, someone opened the gate.”

“   the  new  world  ,  our  new  world.    it’s  bright  ,  luminous  and  while  some  of  the  people  in  this  world  are  full  of  sin  that  they  can’t  get  rid  of  ,  this  was  still  our  new  chance  and  we  took  it.    i’d  truly  like  for  you  ,  father  ,  to  join  my  son  ,  eliza  and  myself  for  dinner  tonight.    you’re  still  apart  of  the  family.   ”       faith  even  holds  out  her  hand  ,  palm  facing  upwards  towards  joseph  himself.

😭: Your threads make me cry!