Mark your calendars - Blind Dates 2026 will take place from February 8th to February 14th.
What is Blind Dates, anyway? Blind Dates is a festival/challenge that celebrates creating and writing new original characters in fandom settings! The guiding principle is to do something new, and possibly challenging, and to serve as writing practice. It can also be a low-stakes excuse to try out a new character in a fandom you don’t usually work in in a small and manageable way.
Do I need to sign up? Nope! This fest is designed to be low-stakes and informal. There’s no penalty for thinking this was a great idea a few months ago and not having time or energy now.
How do I participate? Using the method of your choice (random generator, dart board, tea leaves, plain old brainstorming, et cetera) find a name and character concept for a new-to-you original character and a scenario to introduce them in. Then, write a short (1000-2000 words) snippet that introduces them inside the fandom property of your choice. The idea is to provide a compelling moment that makes the reader want to know more about this person.
A what if? piece exploring the idea if Rhaegar Targaryen had wed Cersei Lannister after all and the consequences of their union. {AU}.
This is a scrap of story featuring a new OC for Game of Thrones - Caera Targaryen, the daughter of Rhaegar Targaryen and Cersei Lannister.
(word count: 1,472)
@blind-dates-fest
Caera Targaryen retreated to the stone sedilia set in the far wall where Maester Creylen liked to sit and pontificate with his most favored acolytes, gathering her crimson silken skirts with one hand as she moved. The movement made the fabric pool like blood by her feet. Her gown was cast in Lannister colors but the king would call it shades of treason. Red and gold. Blood and coin. Red and black. Fire and blood. Yet what was the difference between lion and dragon? They would both devour the innocent in the end. But her grandfather was not interested in such discourse, only taking care to ensure her wardrobe bore only his influence and no other. Her mother said it was to keep her safe but Caera knew better. It was to show the world she was his chattel, a pawn to play in the game of thrones.
She watched as her grandfather’s councillors and clerks bustled up and down the long gallery, sometimes stopping to confer, heads bent close together. The guards that shadowed her every step were nearby, their gazes sweeping across the familiar, searching as always for the strange. Two of her ladies-in-waiting stood underneath the faded portrait in oils of Lady Jeyne Marbrand, faces bored. There was a sudden flurry as Ser Kevan Lannister swept into view, followed by petitioners anxious to secure his favor. But he ignored their raised voices, too distracted to heed their words. His cragged face bore a consternated expression, his large hand clenching a scroll to the point of crushing it. In his haste to reach the sanctuary of his chambers, he did not see Caera, much to her relief.
No doubt another raven had come from King’s Landing, where the Hand of the King lay at death’s door. It would only be a matter of time before the Stranger came for Lord Jon Arryn. And what then? She knew her great uncle was worried he would be sent away to the stink of King’s Landing to serve as Hand when the time came. Yet he would follow her grandfather’s edict as always regardless. But Caera also knew her grandfather would prefer to appoint her uncle Jaime instead if he were not already in the Kingsguard. Yet rumors were rising the king had already made his choice, disrupting her grandfather’s careful plans of accruing further power.
Robert’s Rebellion had nearly ruined what Lord Tywin Lannister had achieved, but his ambition had dragged it back from the edge. With the Mad King deeply in debt to House Lannister and the Iron Bank of Braavos, Tywin had seen an opportunity to establish his bloodline upon the Iron Throne. He had bought Rhaegar Targaryen like a broodmare, binding the young dragon prince to his daughter, Cersei. But Tywin thought it was no mean trade. Cersei was as beautiful as any princess of the blood, with a wall of great wealth behind her. Tywin knew Rhaegar did not have enough gold in his coffer at times to buy even a set of new harp strings.
But then Rhaegar had laid eyes upon Lyanna Stark, Robert Baratheon’s intended, and abandoned his pregnant wife and young daughter to abduct her. And so began the terrible war. The Mad King had held Cersei and Caera hostage, forcing Jaime to stay by his side and stay his swordhand. Amidst the chaos, Cersei had miscarried Rhaegar’s son, almost dying in the process. Tywin’s shining dreams of seeing his grandson on the throne had been shattered to smithereens. But even he with his far seeing eye could not have foreseen this folly. Rhaegar had always been sombre and studious, almost comically so. It had been jested his mother, Queen Rhaella, had swallowed some books and a candle while he was in her womb. So Tywin could only attribute Rhaegar’s actions to the infamous Targaryen insanity. Rhaegar was not a man to be led by the balls as Jaime had so crudely put it before being told to hold his tongue. What else would compel a man to risk his crown and kingdom except madness?
Caera glanced out of the window, watching as a ribbon of rainbow rippled out from below the clouds before finally fading out of existence, its beauty brief. Not for the first time, she mused upon her father’s supposed lunacy over Lyanna Stark. But were madness and love not forged from the same metal? Or so the ballads sang. They also sang her father had absconded with Lyanna against her will and violated her. Yet there were whispers that had even reached Casterly Rock that Prince Rhaegar had loved Lyanna Stark to the point of his own ruination. Caera exhaled sharply, before turning her thoughts away from the matter for it was to no avail. She was all that remained of Rhaegar Targaryen, with her pale hair and indigo eyes, a constant affront to the king who had killed him.
Tywin had remained on the edge of the battlefield until the last moment, timing his entrance to serve to his best advantage. After Robert Baratheon slew Rhaegar at the Trident and the Mad King dead by Jaime's hand, Tywin had to turn with the tides of change. He had set Cersei forward as Robert’s bride, gilding the offer with gold. Robert had reluctantly accepted, his heart lying with Lyanna but he had to scorn sentimentality for a crown hung in the balance. Such a union would settle the seething populace, creating a precarious sense of stability. Seeing Cersei still rule as queen would aid the illusion. Yet Caera threatened the crux of the matter. Robert wanted to wipe out every trace of Targaryen in the world, especially Rhaegar’s seed. Tywin was in accord excepting when it came to Caera, his own blood. Let Robert slay dragons but not this one, Tywin had warned. She would be kept from Robert’s sight at Casterly Rock and learn the ways of lions, not lizards. Her claim to the throne would be superceded by the sons Cersei would bear Robert in the passage of time.
Thus Robert had reluctantly agreed, and as Tywin had promised, Cersei had borne Robert three golden haired children, including two sons, a spare and heir. Their presence had eased Caera’s existence to a certain extent. She had little use for a cursed crown. If it had not been for Jaime killing the Mad King and her grandfather’s later intercession, no doubt she would have been brutally slain as a babe. If not by fire and blood, then by the blade instead. Sometimes she dreamed of standing before the Iron Throne, watching Tywin present her small body to Robert Baratheon as a show of fealty, her remains wrapped in red cloth to hide the blood. Such dreams disturbed and confused Caera for in her waking hours Tywin was almost suffocating in ensuring her safety.
Caera knew Tywin cared for her in a fashion, but she was no fool. He was merely protecting his property when he had her food tasted and set guards on every door. Tywin was a man who ever sought to expand his empire and Robert was unpredictable in his rages. The loss of Lyanna still cut deep. Who was to say Robert might not snap and secretly send hired knives to Casterly Rock and blame the bloodshed on another? Such thoughts had long troubled Tywin, Caera knew. But he merely shrugged when asked why he had such stringent security. When pressed, he would clear his throat and say coldly he was merely exercising caution.
Even as Cersei was queen once more, and Joffrey would one day be king, with Tommen and Myrcella strong in the succession, Tywin still harboured doubts. There were those who sewed dragon banners in secret and raised rebellious toasts against Robert Baratheon. Would they risk rising up in rebellion with a Targaryen as their figurehead? Yet which dragon they would choose, Caera was not sure. Her paternal uncle and aunt, Viserys and Daenerys, were still alive; abroad and in hiding from Robert’s wrath. Although Viserys was the male successor and held precedence, he was Rhaegar’s brother and not his son, and she was Rhaegar’s only heir. No doubt in the old days, to settle the conundrum, Viserys would have wed her, the thought making Caera recoil.
But Tywin had every position covered as far as Caera could conceive, with both Baratheon and Targaryen heirs to play on the table. For all Tywin stressed her Lannister heritage, pointing out the gold in her hair and the cleft in her chin, he could not change the color of her eyes or the blood in her veins. He was merely hiding her in plain sight in case his gamble didn’t pay off. For if Robert was removed and Cersei’s three golden-haired cubs disinherited, there was Caera to be brought forth to bear the crown instead. Even as she didn’t want to, Tywin would no doubt force her to ascend the Iron Throne, another investment bearing interest.
I am still doing a little bit of data collection, but right now, I think we have...
82 fest blog followers - a new high!
3 new-to-the-fest writers (👏a big round of applause for them!)
13 submissions for 9 fandoms (👏lots of applause to everyone for finishing)
2 authors who turned in multiple characters (👏extra kudos!!!)
At least 3 authors who said "I might not have ever gotten around to writing this character if it were not for this fest" which is the best compliment I think we can receive.
And, finally, a big round of applause to all of you who are reading this post and have commented or liked or shared or helped any of the work this year make it to its final stage. Thank you for being a part of this community!
I'm hopeful that everyone enjoyed themselves, and invite everyone to mark their calendars for July, when we'll be giving everyone some reasons to return for Blind Dates Friendship Fest - an opportunity to take your new character back out of the box, or potentially pair them with an old one!
Since I had so much fun last year, here is my entry for this year's @blind-dates-fest!
Of course, I had to do another OC who works in the Office of Strategic Services, but this time for the Masters of the Air. Meet Elizabeth Sadler, an analyst working within the Enemy Objectives Unit and her witty co-worker Georgia. The EOU was a branch of the Research and Analysis division within the OSS, staffed with economists, historians, political scientists, scholars, and anthropologists. These men and women were tasked on deciding on the most effective targets for the USAAF to bomb. This is a very, very rough concept/WIP I've been thinking about for a while! I thought it would be interesting to have a bit of a different take on Harry Crosby and his interaction with someone in intelligence!
London, February 1944
Enemy Objectives Unit (EOU)
1. You must be able to reach it and drop bombs on it.
2. You must be able to damage it when you do hit it.
3. You must be able to impair the war effort, directly or indirectly, when you damage it.
“Secrets in the moonlight… whispers in the dark—” Elizabeth put the pencil in her mouth, humming along with the quiet radio. Both hands were needed to line up a ruler on a map. She traced a long line from England to an oil refinery in Romania.
“Well, we can reach it…” She muttered to an empty office. She stood up, noticing the ache in her back from sitting at the desk all day, pouring over different methodologies for the new directive. The Enemy Objectives Unit had spent the last several months on targeting the German war industry and now the big push for an ‘Oil Plan’ was taking shape.
Elizabeth stared at the line, gnawing on her lip. Analyzing the effects of an aircraft plant was one thing, but oil was a whole other monster. Although the challenge was welcomed, she was hesitant to be moving on before knowing the full results of her work on the former. Every morning for the past several weeks, she’d skim the newsstand for any mention of a bombed out town in the middle of Germany. More than her love for a challenge, was her wanting to be right.
A potential target had to hit a series of specific factors before the idea was even sent out to the Eighth Air Force. Elizabeth crossed off the first question, satisfied with her discovery. It was half the battle these days.
She clicked off the radio, and threw herself down in the chair once again. Despite it being almost nine o’clock, the US Embassy still had several tired workers milling about the halls. A quiet whisper or a shoe click would fill the silence every once in a while.
“Ms. Sadler?” A knock came from the oak doorframe, as she wrote the specific distances in the report.
“Yes?” She looked up, as a lanky Air Force lieutenant, stood in front of her desk, erratically shuffling a pile of papers. She often wondered how he even made it past basic training. I suppose that’s why they stuck him in the office, but at least he was pleasant to deal with.
“Oh hi, Lieutenant.” She sat up straight.
“Here’s some new intelligence to comb through,” He handed her a manila folder with a bright red Top Secret stamped on the front. “Oil production outputs and statistics.”
“Thank you.” She threw it on top of the current map. “Hey, do you know if Colonel Hughes is set to come by soon?” She asked in hopes of a target result.
“I think he may have a meeting with Mr. Rostow later this week, but I can find out.”
“No need too, I was just curious.” She quickly said, “But thanks for offering.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He nodded. “Anything else?” Twice, she’d told him he doesn’t have to be so formal with her, and to just call her Liz, but it still hasn’t stuck yet. She figured it made him more uncomfortable than what she was with the formalities.
“No, have a good night.” She smiled.
“You as well.” He turned on his heels and walked out. As his footsteps faded, a pair of frantic heels grew louder.
“Liz, we need to get out of here,” Georgia, her closest co-worker, busted through her office, “Let’s go grab a belt.”
“Sure, but I have to be back in an hour, so I can finish this.” Liz began to filter through the intel.
“Alright, one hour.” She checked her watch, “Let’s go—”
"Then I can go home, sleep for five hours,” Liz continued her diatribe, “And then shlep myself up to be back here before eight AM to look at the same map for another eight hours.”
“Well let’s shlep on,” Georgia gestured to the door. “You look exhausted.”
“I’m fine,” she shoved the papers back into the folder and slung on her coat.
“Uh huh… you know, you complain more when you’re tired?”
“If I knew there was going to be this much map reading, I wouldn’t have gotten a degree in economics.” She muttered as they walked through the doorway.
“Well, we wouldn’t be here if we hadn’t.” Georgia pointed out.
“I should’ve taken aircraft fuel ranges one-oh-one and intro to military planning.”
“If it helps, I’ll lend you my copy of The Art of War.” Georgia smirked.
Liz rolled her eyes, and paused, “You’ve actually read that?”
“Didn’t need to,” She sighed, tucking her hands in her coat pocket. “All of my father’s life lessons came from that book, followed by long, drawn out stories about his glory days in the army.”
“At least your father gave you something to use.” She muttered as they made their way down the dim hallway.
“You know,” Liz continued, “I should stop complaining, and be grateful that I’m using my skills for something good and not stuck working for my father. We would have killed each other by now."
“Did your father push you into economics?”
“No, and that’s the irritating part. I truly love it, I’m good at it too.” Liz scoffed.
“I suppose my father was happy for me. This is the closest thing to the army as I can get.” Georgia sighed.
They both ceased talking about work as they stepped outside. The cold air of early February snapped their lungs as they passed through the gate of the embassy. Between the blackout conditions and winter itself, light was a long lost friend.
The MP standing guard outside of the gate, pointed his flashlight to the sidewalk, “Have a good night.”
“Thank you, you too.” Georgia chirped.
“I’ll be back here in about an hour.” Liz smiled, trying to hide her disposition.
“Yes, ma’am.” He nodded with a smile as they headed down the streets London.
“The usual?” Georgia asked.
“Wouldn’t know any place else.” Liz inhaled, happy to be outside, despite the cold conditions.
The usual, was a small pub a block away. The women, trotted down the stairs and into an alley, that provided enough cover to allow a warm glow to pass through the windows.
“Is this the only pub open in London?” Liz said, as they walked through the door, crowded with people. The bar was laden with overzealous servicemen trying to win the affection of the local women, if they got lucky, the next stop for them was to join the other dancing couples in the back, and the third stop was the drunken game of darts.
“Let’s try the corner.” Georgia gestured to a set of tables that looked less occupied. As they passed through the crowd, an airmen backed into them, each of his hands filled with a pint.
“Oh pardon me, ma’am,” he stumbled around.
“No problem.” Georgia gave a big smile.
“Oh, American?" His face lit up.
“There seems to be a lot of 'em in here.” Liz laughed.
“Taking up all of the seats.” Georgia peered over his shoulder.
“I mean American…women, I—” he stumbled, he wasn't completely drunk yet, but the night was young.
Another airmen came up, to save his awkward encounter, “We have two open seats here, you’re welcome to join.”
“That’s swell of you.” Liz smiled.
“I’m Harry.” The man freed his hands of the drinks, “This is Bubbles.”
“Bubbles?” Georgia couldn’t help but laugh, “You’re parents musta had interesting taste.”
“It’s a nickname, it’s really Joesph.” The other man nodded, extending his hand.
“Well, I like it. I’m Georgia, this is Elizabeth.”
“Nice to meet you.” Liz smiled, sliding off her coat as she sat down. She already liked them better than the airmen in the office, less regimented. “Are both of you stationed in London?”
“Nah, we’re just on leave.” Bubbles said. “What about yourself?”
“We came all the way from the States to check out this pub.” Liz joked.
“We actually work at the embassy.” Georgia said.
“Far way from home.” Harry nodded and said something else as Liz became occupied with the patch on the side of their arms–the Eighth Air Force emblem. Georgia nudged her, and snapped herself back into the conversation
“What, sorry?”
“Don’t mind her, she’s been working all day.” Georgia smirked. “Better get her a drink.”
“Need any help?” Bubbles stood up.
“I won't say no,” A grin slowly came across her face.
“Getting close to the army alright.” Liz whispered to her. Georgia rolled her eyes, as they got up and braved the crowd.
“I know a southern accent when I hear one,” Georgia said. “Where are you from?”
“Kentucky.” Bubbles said. Their conversation faded as Liz looked around, scoping out how many other airmen there were. No wonder there were no updates, the whole Air Force was prowling on London. She quickly connected the dots... she might get results sooner or later. One last taste of leisure before the missions begin.
“So, are you a pilot?” Liz looked to Harry, as he was also awkwardly watching the crowd.
“Oh, uh, navigator.” Harry nodded. “Both of us.”
“Ah, seems like an easy, not at all complicated job.” She sarcastically said.
Harry laughed, “It has its moments, though Bubbles is a better man to do the job.”
“So, what’s it like?” She blurted out. She felt bad for prying, but her desire to get any information was stronger.
“Uh, well… it’s—” He struggled to find the words, his eyes grew distant, almost becoming fully sober.
“Sorry, you don’t have to talk about it. I’m sure you’re not allowed too anyway… Loose lips, sinks ships.” She laughed, quoting the numerous posters she sees in the office everyday, although for her it's loose lips, we'll take you out back and shoot you...
“No,” He smiled, letting out a slow breath. “Just kind of hard to explain really… A lot happens.”
Maps, charts, targets, plants, factories, transportation hubs, roads, bridges, and marshaling yards all flashed through her mind at once. More than likely, the reports she’d done months ago, he had yet to fly.
“I bet...” Liz sighed, as a wave of nausea crept up her throat. Of course she knows what it looks like on paper, the causality reports, the planes and crews lost... The nature of their work was to take a shot in the dark, but were they actually making a dent in the war? If she had any sense, she thought, she’d drag him back to the office right now, and cut the middle man out, but alas... she’d only get about three hours of sleep if she had to meet that firing squad at dawn.
“What about your work? Unless…you can’t talk about it.” Harry smirked, brightening his mood.
“Also hard to explain… A lot happens.” She laughed.
Georgia returned with a few beers and slid one over to Liz, nearly ignoring her while deep in conversation with Bubbles.
“Well, here’s to a lot of things happening.” Harry raised his glass to hers.
“And may they get easier to explain.” She returned the toast.
Genuinely can't believe this is year six of @blind-dates-fest!! Even though this is a little late I couldn't handle not participating. Also, this is the first thing I've written in...quite a while. It's good to get back to it even if I feel pretty rusty.
I've been marinating in a lot of 40s Vogue articles, Lee Miller photographs, and general London-ness, but all inaccuracies (and any leftover typos) are my own. Title from Tiny Ruins' song of the same name.
Without further ado, meet Hester!
you've got the kind of nerve i like
There are things to do back at the office, and errands she could run, but it's Friday — the muted thud of surprise in her chest at the realization shouldn't have been one at all — and it's her lunch break.
Hester doesn't usually indulge in café tables. Though, she notes, it's hardly one of the fancier establishments, not like the places her mother used to lunch at with friends before the war. There are asterisks to the coffee now too, roasted from dandelion roots, and to the slice of carrot cake, leaning heavily on its namesake for sweetness. But an hour of reading time with her magazines and a book — that was the real treat. The fresh air is too, and it smells like rain.
She glances at the sky, past the green and white-striped awning, the soft gray like cotton wool shading darker towards the east, the slivers of light. Everyone else is headed towards something else, walking down the street. Maybe it's too chilly for them still, in early May, leaving her with her jacket and the only spot on the patio, her bike leant against the other chair at the little table.
She hangs her bag off the back, a handsome leather messenger embossed with her initials. A gift from Eric at her birthday last year, one of the nicest things she owns. It's full of clippings and scrawled to-dos and random items now, hairpins from when a model's flyaways can't be tamed — from her own braid actually, honey-brown hairs plucked from the pinch of them — a last-minute roll of film, the ribbon from a bottle of perfume chased down for a product shoot, half a biscuit left from wrangling a starlet's cavalier spaniel across the parquet floor. And, always, a past issue or three of the magazine. Of course.
Her heart beats with fondness just a second too long, looking at that monogram, the patina of the leather. Eric always liked — likes — fine things. And now her brother is far away from all of them, somewhere in the jungle.
Half a page of her magazine, a sip of coffee, a bite of cake, a wish it was a Chelsea bun, three pages, another sip. She notices a chip in her manicure, though it's only clear, meant to keep her from biting. Boring. She thinks of the bottle on the beauty editor's desk, new nail varnish in Elizabeth Arden's "Burnt Sugar," meant to complement khaki duds. A breeze starts up, and she pulls her jacket closer. It protects her, her father's old hunting jacket, though she'd belted it like the newest styles over a sweater and skirt, affixed gold-tone button covers to it this morning for a little shine. She likes the weight of it on her shoulders.
A voice above her brings her chin and her eyes up in a start. "This is a hot commodity where I come from," he says, his hand resting not quite gingerly on the leather seat of her bike. "You oughta keep an eye on it."
She should say, I was, but she knows that's a lie. She opens her mouth before she can stop herself. "How do you know I didn't steal it?"
His own mouth twitches into a smile, amused, and his eyebrows go up, like he's expecting a good story. "Did you?"
She only looks a little sheepish. "No." He's awfully tall, this stranger, ducking under the awning. Stranger, soldier. Well, not exactly. An airman. She knows the wings, the dull light still catching on his chest. It makes the insignia gleam. "Did I get your hopes up?"
"A little," he says. He seems, she thinks, like a boy who grew up on adventure novels. "But I'll survive." He looks preoccupied with something in the vicinity of her shoulders. "Where'd you get that jacket?"
Before she can answer, she finds herself ushering him into the seat across. It would be rude, she thinks, to let him stand. "Please," she says. And then, "...my jacket." She looks down at the perfectly-worn canvas like she's never seen it before. "My father's closet." He'd bought it sometime before the war. The first one.
"When did he visit the States?"
This time, she doesn't make a joke. "He's American, actually. No visit." Just..seeing.
"Really?" He looks truly surprised.
Now she does laugh. "Hardly something one lies about here, don't you think?"
"Oh, really?" His eyes practically dance with it, the most expressive face she's seen since nights out with Eric's theatre friends.
She'll be brave about it, now. 'What's your name?"
"Bucky."
"It's like you're straight from central casting," she says, but her voice is full of warmth. She sounds half like her father, that brassiness, the boy with an Arkansas twang and motor oil on his hands, who courted an English rose and stayed, and half like that English rose herself, green-citrus parfum and white lace, opals on her fingers. Hester wonders who she is, sometimes, between them.
"I'd've said you were too," he says. "Nice English girl. But now I know better." His blue eyes dart, but the smile on his face is kind. "John," he adds, when he sees how her expression asks for more of the story. "Major Egan, if I'm in trouble. From Manitowoc, Wisconsin." He leans back in the tiny café chair, at least as much as he's able. "What team does your old man root for? If you say cricket I'll weep."
"The Cardinals." She says it like she means it, like she knows more than she does.
"Enos Slaughter-" he says, a little loud, elongating the name like the man's an Old West gunfighter and he's got a personal grudge. "'42 Series. Now, if Bonham had just thrown that bunt to first-"
He looks like he'd take salt and pepper shakers to construct a reenactment if she offered them. "I take it your team didn't win?"
"No. But we'll get to that. What's your name?"
"Hester."
He smiles like she's proving him right. "Very English." It only occurs to her after she's told him that maybe she should have made something up. "Where's he from, the Cardinals fan?"
"Arkansas." Her father and his American accent are several miles away in West Hampstead, in a suit. Maybe in his study, but likely not. Her mother copes with it all with the women's auxiliary and gardening, the occasional tipple of Dubonnet and soda, and lime juice when she can get it, her father with work and civil defense and the bottle of milk of magnesia Hester needs to pick up from the chemist's.
Bucky looks down at her magazine, the swooping hand-drawn titles, photographs of gowns and suits and plaster casts and props. "People keep telling me to go to Madame Tussauds. You go for any of that death mask stuff?"
Hester remembers walking by the ruins back in 1940, fall, her and her friend Amy pretending to do anything other than gawk. "I'm afraid I've never been." She found it all rather ghoulish, actually, even before the bombs. There are photographs that ran in the magazine, the contact sheets filed away, fashioning the damage into something new. Something she could look at.
"Sounds like a lousy night out to me, unless you want your date fainting into your arms." He moves his mouth like he's just now considering it. "On second thought-"
"Cheeky."
"My middle name." Her half-laugh half-snort is audible, the scrunch of her nose. "John C. Egan, you can look it up."
"I might." She pushes the half-eaten piece of carrot cake towards him, but he holds up his palm. She weighs asking her mother about having a guest for tea. "Does the Army let you out of their sight for long?" Not meant in the way Britain warns its servicemen, posters everywhere, meant in the way she remember her father's stories, the hurried returns and sneaks and near-misses.
"Forty-eight hours. I thought I'd see what all the fuss is about."
"Have you?"
"So far?"
"Yes."
"I'd say so."
Something in her cheeks surfaces, warm and rosy. "You're quite wasting them with me," she says, sounding like a schoolmarm, someone prim and decided. "Your forty-eight hours."
"Well, I don't think so." He sounds honest, unvarnished. Everything she loves about the country she's never met. And it's like he's read her mind, his next question. "Have you ever been to the States?"
It's the simplest answer, and she sounds almost surprised, all of a sudden. "No." Her father talks about America with respect, not with fondness. There's no family there for him, at least not one she's ever heard about.
"Really?"
She shakes her head.
"So you've never been to a baseball game?"
"If I say no, will you still want to be seen with me?"
He considers the question, even more animated than he was before, pointing in her direction. "Hester, all this tells me is that we need some basic remediation. I mean, it's not like you said you've never had a real ice cream cone."
"We do have ice cream in England." Had, at least. She remembers her mother making it with her and Eric when they were children, milky and sweet, tinged with rosewater.
"Favorite flavor?"
"Chocolate."
"Next thing you'll say you've never seen Lake Superior. And chocolate's the right answer, by the way."
She's laughing now. "Is it?"
"And I can tell you right now, you've never had a real cup of coffee." He gestures to the cup between them. "That's an imposter."
"I can't argue the second bit." He smiles. "But you do know Italy's closer to England than America, right?" Her father abides Italian coffee, Scottish whiskey, English suits, and American gadgetry.
"They teach us navigation in flight school, Hester." She'll have to tell him her last name, won't she. "And the best coffee's in a camp mug in America. Or a diner counter. After a winning game. With a home run. Either one." His calf is so close to hers under the table that she can feel the static of the olive wool, her knee hovering a hair from his.
"What's your favorite?"
"After the Yankees win."
She tilts her head just a little. "You can see why I haven't offered you any, then."
"I won't take it personally."
Beyond the awning, she sees the first brushstrokes of rain on the sidewalk. He sees her notice, turns his head. "You all like your rain here, huh."
"It doesn’t always. Summer's rather nice." The rain starts to quicken, as if to prove his point.
"When it's not raining."
"If I say something, it will get worse." She's a little worried about the magazines, extending past the edge of the table. "Could you pass me my bag, please?"
He turns around at her motion at the back of her own chair, looks resigned to getting up. "Sorry to keep you so long."
"Oh, no, no, I just wanted to pack these up." She doesn't want to look at her watch.
"And I'm changing my answer," he says. "About the coffee. Lakeside. Around a fire."
Suddenly, a stab of wanting. Campfire coffee and woodsmoke, a hunting jacket over a heavier sweater, this man she's only just met. And he's still talking with her, still looking at her like she's interesting. Like she's staving something off inside him, in his head. He shifts in his chair, knee pressing up against hers. She doesn't move.
"You know," she says. "I'll need someone to show me around, when I visit America."
He sounds honest again. "You will, huh?"
"Of course. The ballpark. Lake Superior. The best chocolate ice cream."
"And coffee."
"And coffee."
"Is there anything else you'd add to the list?"
He's leant on his elbow, swipes his thumb across his lip. "You ever had a real American kiss? Now- don't swat at me-"
"I wasn't," she says, but she can't help her laugh. "You had to try, didn't you?"
"I did."
"Do you think all English girls fall for the American pilot thing?"
"You're still talking to me." Her mouth falls open in mock-shock. "Besides," he says. "Americans are the best at kissing."
"Does any version of this debate involve me not kissing you?"
"Hey, you said it." She could bottle that smile and sell it. "Should I be offended you just said that?"
She tries to fix him with her best stern look and fails miserably, letting it dissolve from her face like fog. "Hold it against me as an American, and not as an English girl," she says, and steadies her elbow on the table, gently cups his hand with hers, presses her lips to his cheek. Close to the corner of his mouth, still smiling. His eyes are even more blue up close, like a spring sky full of rain. If we weren't quite literally in the middle of the street- she thinks, and when she hears his laugh in her ear, loud and sharp and warm, she realizes she's said it out loud.
"I like you, Hester," he says. "I'm going to work on that list."
Blind Dates Fest starts this week, and usually I'd wait to post mine but it seems like my time will not be my own later this week so I'd better do it now!
Everyone here knows A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms stole my keys last month. This is related - a missing scene (and possible missing character) from Episode 2.
You can read more of these over at @blind-dates-fest later on this week!
He still felt like he didn’t belong here.
It had been one thing to come the night before, with Raymun Fossaway, and sit in the crowd with a cup of ale and whatever food had last passed him by - because wasn’t everyone doing that? But it was daylight now, and even if Dunk had been invited in, all of the rest here were in Baratheon black and gold, swapping stories with each other, and he was only in gray homespun, with his belt of rope, and no stories to share with anyone.
“Are you hungry?” Lord Lyonel had asked, after they’d finished at the rope pull, and Lord Tyrell’s bannerman was negotiating with one of Lyonel’s squires for when a good time to settle the prize might be. “Course you are, man, come on. Strong work deserves strong drink.”
And off they’d gone, following Lyonel and his men back to the Baratheon tents so that their lord could call for meat and pies and flagons, though it seemed to Dunk that he hadn’t seen Lyonel stop drinking since they’d met earlier. He had tried to stay towards the back of the group, as much as he could, mindful that no one here really knew him, and contented himself while they were waiting for the food with a study of the tent. There were tapestries on the floor (unnoticed the other night) and an abundance of cushions sitting on top of what, on further notice, looked to be chests for household things, carved over with hunting scenes and, of course, plenty of stags. Useful things, but beautiful, too. My shield will be like that, he thought to himself, when Tanselle is done. Useful and beautiful.
Egg, who had been listening to some of the others as they regaled the table with past feats of strength, came back to him as the ale came around and he rushed to get his master one of the horn cups everyone was using. “Ser, your hand!”
Dunk looked down and saw, much to his surprise, that one of his hands was red and raw - not on the palm, where the skin was already callused from sword and buckler, but on the back, where he'd wrapped the rope to give it better purchase. Had it looked like that the whole time, and he’d not noticed? Looking at it now, it finally began to burn.
"You must let me see to that, ser." Dunk turned in surprise and nearly elbowed the person who'd said it - a woman with dark hair in parti-color gold and black, her skirt kirtled over her belt in the way a servingwoman might wear it so the hem was not so much in the mud.
He did as he was told, though he still wasn’t sure how he felt about how she must see to it, staying in his place while the woman left and came back with a clever looking little chest, setting it down close to him so that she could unlock the lid and have a glance through its contents, rows and rows of glass bottles and linen packets, each one rustling with dried herbs. "You were here the other night," she said, just to make conversation as she pulled out this and that, and a mortar to mix them in, still standing while she ground the herbs into a coarse powder and added a bit of water to make a paste. "For the dancing."
"You remember me?" Dunk asked, a little amazed at having been remembered by anyone, leastways a lord's servant.
"It would be hard not to," the woman said with a little smile, and Dunk remembered Lyonel’s comment about tall men getting punched. "Lord Lyonel likes a dance - and you gave as good as you got last night." She tipped the paste out of the mortar onto a clean cloth and spread it about a bit before gesturing for his hand. He held it out and she turned it over so that she could tie the poultice on, the herbs cooling and pleasant on the surface of the burn.
"Are you a maester?" he asked, amazed by how quick it was working. He had never seen a maester at work up close - Ser Arlan had, when he'd been in house service, but their work did not come cheaply. Nor did the chain they wear, lad, Ser Arlan had said once. Hard won, they are. Never look down on a man who's learned his craft, whatever it may be.
"They don't make girls maesters!" Egg's annoyance with yet another thing Dunk did not know was little hidden, and smarted more a little. Dunk would have threatened him a clout on the ear for it, but he did not want to do it in front of her.
“Mind your tongue,” he said strongly instead. “Knights ought to be courteous to ladies.” He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Ser Arlan talk to a lady, but it seemed the right thing to say, and then he added, on a breath of sudden inspiration, “D’you think Prince Baelor goes about shouting at maids like that?”
Jocasta smiled a little at that while Egg frowned, looking for all the world like he had something he was going to say and was (for once) holding his tongue. “I beg your pardon, mistress,” he managed, looking very sorry indeed.
Fortunately for him, she did not seem to mind. "Your young friend has the right of it, Ser. A little wiser than the wise, but no maester. The knights come for the joust, and I come with for the patching up that must happen after."
Dunk hadn’t really had time to think about that, in all his comings and goings - that at the end of every tilt there was both a winner and a loser. It must put itself at peril for the benefit of others. That was what the whores had said. He felt his blood run a little colder.
"Thank you for helping my master," Egg said, gallantly, and Dunk silently kicked himself that he hadn't at least said that. (He also wasn’t sure how he felt about being anyone’s master - he couldn’t remember a time Ser Arlan had used the word.) "My name is Egg."
"I am very pleased to meet you, Egg," the woman said with a smile. "My name is Jocasta."
That’s a houseborn name, Dunk thought to himself. That was the word Sir Donnel had used this morning, he thought, houseborn, and he hadn’t been sure then what the Kingsguard had meant, exactly, but he thought he knew now. No one in Flea Bottom had a name like that. He wanted to ask how long she'd been in service, but he had no time - Lyonel had made his way over with his own flagon, brandishing it hither and yon without a care in the world for spilling.
"Cousin!” He clapped the woman merrily on the shoulder. (Dunk could see, in the moment, that Egg's eyes were wide as saucers. He could not imagine what his own face was doing - his mouth was suddenly dry.) “I see you have met my giant!"
"And your giant has met me," Jocasta said tartly, her annoyance mixed with an equal measure of fondness, making no move at all to get up or greet him. “If you had better manners you’d let me know his name.”
The Baratheon stared for a moment. “S-s-ser Duncan,” Dunk supplied, before Lyonel could admit to having forgotten it. (It was understandable - he had been rather drunk the other night.) “The T-tall.”
Friends without names were evidently a commonplace occurrence here; Jocasta did not bat an eye. "You should take better care of your friends, ser, Ser Duncan’s hands are fairly ripped to shreds."
Are we friends? It was the first Dunk was hearing that. A problem for another time. "Ah, well, you can see him right, can't you?” Lyonel asked, unconcerned as ever. “Easy as punch. She has the Mother's own touch, this one,” he assured both Dunk and Egg, both still frozen in panic. “None better in the Seven Kingdoms! Wouldn't travel with anyone else! And she dances near as good as me," he added with a grin.
"Have you something I should see to, my lord?" she asked, lightly, beginning to pack her box back up. "You were at the same work as Ser Duncan, I am given to believe."
"What? Oh, only my tunic," Lyonel said blithely, gesturing to a slightly torn cuff, which must have gotten caught between him and something else. "I'll change it before I go to dine with Longthorn."
"Give it here, and I'll see to it now," she said, making a small gesture, and without thinking Lyonel had shucked off the tunic and disappeared off to another part of his tent, presumably to find a clean one.
The idea of an entirely different tunic, especially one in such a lovely fabric as what Ser Lyonel was wearing, was as wild to Dunk as the sun rising in the west. Ser Arlan had taught him to mend his own clothes, and he could sew as good a line as any seamster in town, but his back was bare while he did it. Egg was still staring in subdued and silent horror.
But all of this seemed perfectly fine to Jocasta, too. "He will do the worst things to these," she said offhandedly, picking up the tunic and inspecting the tear. "Still, better I do it now than in three days when it's been cast aside and done in by the dogs."
She reached back into her box and came away with a needlecase and thread, smoothing the sleeve out on her lap so that she could begin surveying what it would take to fix it. Dunk watched patiently and then asked the question that had been bothering him as delicately as he could. "Are you ...really Lord Lyonel's cousin?" Have I been a fool again and taken the wrong woman for a serving wench?
Beside him he could almost hear Egg groaning, but Jocasta did not seem to mind, for she only smiled again, patient and a little sad. "That is his word for it. We shared a wetnurse, as babies, and a nursery after, but …my name is Storm."
The way she said it let it sink into his mind - That's a bastard's name, he remembered silently, for Baratheons. Looking closer - really looking - he saw that she could have truly been a cousin, on the wrong side of the blanket, or maybe even Lyonel’s half- sister - they had the same eyes, though hers did not look quite as merry as his, and her hair, too, looked to be much the same, dark and curling. She looked up from the cuff and seemed, finally, to notice his distress. "My mother did the same work I do,” she explained, “or as good as, and was well looked after, and so have I been. Lord Lyonel cares little for formalities - and his friends follow. When it suits them,” she added, a little softer. “He is a fast friend to have - he does care for things, and people, in his own way - though I’m sure it does not look like it, some days." She gestured with the tunic. “So, are you to join the lists, on the morrow, Ser Duncan? Or shall you enjoy the day from the stands?”
Dunk nodded silently at the first, though the thought now gave him some distraction. There seemed to be a great many things in between now and then - armor to buy and his tunic to be mended and his lance to consider, and the shield with its new device to be fetched from Tanselle. And, now, too, the thought of the little case with its vials and glasses and the calm cool hands of a healer, to say nothing of three or four squires and footmen like Lord Lyonel’s. There was such a lot he did not have. Only Egg, who was scarcely tall enough to carry his sword.
“You should leave that on until supper,” she said, nodding towards his hand. “Should be right as rain for your gloves and lance tomorrow.”
“Thanks again,” he said, raising it just a little and feeling the poultice shift against his skin.
“Have your squire come find me if you have need - for the hand or aught else. I’ll be in his pavilion, or else nearby. They all know me.” She nodded to the group coming around with the food. “Jeyne! Arthor! Another horn of ale for Ser Duncan and his squire here. They’ve done good work today for his lordship and have as much right to be here as you.” Two younger servants near the door nodded quickly and brought over some of the food. “Gods go with you tomorrow,” she said with a smile, rising from her seat, needle and thread back in her case and the tunic in her other hand. “I’m sure even giants can use a bit of luck.”
Egg waited until she was gone to stop sitting on his hands and finally answer Dunk’s look of horror from before “How was I to know?” he asked, almost explosively. “They’re all wearing black and gold!”
“That’s why we should be kind to everyone,” Dunk said, as sagely as he could, thinking of Tanselle’s smile when he’d given her the compliment about her puppets, and Jocasta’s hands grinding her herbs. “You never know who they could be.”
--
The word Ser Donnel uses is housebred, not houseborn, but that didn't sound right as a title, so Dunk is mis-remembering.
Fandom/Pairing: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms/Daeron "The Drunken" Targaryen x oc, Vaeda
Summary: Daeron The Drunken has never met her. Not for lack of trying or wanting, but when the girl who plagues his dreams is before him there is only that same dark vision that haunts him eternally, their entwined suffering.
Warnings: angst, mentions of death
Word Count: 1.7k+
Another's Note: An angsty short intro to my oc, Vaeda who has it real bad for this sorrowful dragon dreamer. This is my @blind-dates-fest entry for 2026 which honestly was not what I had planned, but I am so glad that it created such a lovely sad girl for this sweaty sad boy.
There was still the dampness of wine on his face when he stumbled into his room.
The scent was cast as if a memory unfolding around him. The heat of the incense dulled his senses for a moment. He recalled sleep, memory, and hope in that scent. Did dreams have odors? If they did, the dreams of her would smell like this.
Warm.
Inviting.
Safe.
“You are late.” He muttered not bothering to look upon the woman he knew, but did not know fully.
“Some would say I were early.” Her voice was lower than most women's. He recalled the soft tones of whores and sweet forgivenesses of maidens. She was neither.
His eyes cast away from the knife at his belt to her face. Daeron found himself spotting the differences in her features from the oddities that befell her in his dreams. He had been young when he first dreamed of her. She had been small, a girl no older or younger than he, humming a tune that conjured soot and embers to erupt at her feet. She picked a flower made of ash that turned into black flames that stung her fingers. Her hair was made of tawny owl feathers. Her one eye had been coated over in emerald shimmering dragon scales that blended into her skin.
“You are late.” Were her first words to him.
“Some would say I were early.” Were Daeron’s first words to her.
The dreamer lounged on his bed. The gown she wore was loose though clung to her body in ways that he could not comprehend in his current state of drunkenness. The woman was a beauty to be sure. She wore tones of emerald that nearly mixed the coloring of the crusted over scales on her dream self’s face. Instead of scales over her eye he found a vivid violet eye that sought his own Valyrian colored eyes. He licked the foul taste from his lips.
“Ashford is it?” He muttered under his breath. “Fuck me.” Daeron thumped his way to the bed watching her look down into her hands. She held something small there he could not see. His hand ran over his lower lip. He sat on the bed harshly watching as she wordlessly moved her legs to accommodate him. “Who is the dragon than?”
Daeron had never met this woman.
Not in the waking world.
In his dreams she was a strange prophet guiding his hand through disaster.
“I can not say.” She said softly as one might who wished to know the answers. “There will be too much to feel. One dragon’s demise begets the rest.” In her hand was a skull, small and carefully tossed from one palm to another.
“The knight.”
“He matters not.” She then looked upon him. “Or he matters most.” One hand cupped his cheek. Daeron felt as a boy searching for familiarity. She dreamed too. She knew his horrors, the horrors of knowing and not being able to halt the darkness. “Who is to say but the Gods themselves.”
“Are we not Gods?” He asked. His lips teased her pulse. Daeron was surprised she let him. “We hold the threads of fate, follow them, see them, weep for the fate of others though we can not chase our own, change our own. What is more godlike than that?”
“Dragons.” She hummed.
Daeron The Drunken laughed.
“I shall conjure up a dragon for us to fly off to Old Valyria. We shall live happily away from our own Doom.” He had seen her fate. She had seen his. They had sworn not to share the end of their stories with one another. They had been children once, stuck in dreaming never content with the visions set upon them.
The Gods were cruel.
The Gods were confusing.
The Gods were cunts.
“Off to Ashford to see a fair maid.” She spoke as if it were a lullaby.
“I'll make her my love and we'll rest in the shade.” He sang the song with the proper tune.
“That is unfair, sweet Daeron.” The woods witch let slip through her teeth. “Your voice is sweeter than mine.”
“And your body is prettier.” He let his eyes rest on her hair, long, thick, and dark. Underneath he could see strands of silver as if spun from steel itself. Be it a sign of her age or her clinging to a Valyerian heritage he could not say. He could not care.
“You are too hard on yourself. It will -”
Daeron’s finger settled to her lips, hushing her.
“Sweetling,” he hummed trying to form words in his drunken state. “Do not dare tell me of my demise. I rather a surprise.”
“And I rather you live.” She pulled his wrist from her feeling the heart that fluttered underneath the skin. He could not halt the shock on his face as she spoke. It was her eyes he noticed now, one dark brown and one the violet of his own. “Is that a shock to you? That someone would like you to live or that I may have caught love sickness for your woeful ways?”
Daeron held no talent worth keeping. He was merely born first unable to escape the burden of his birth order. He was his father’s heir, who was a miserable man who sought greatness in sons who were doomed to disappoint. He had no merit for the fight, no yearning for glory or dragons. He simply sought the drink, sought to drink from it deep to drown out the dreaming.
Who could love a man who did not want the life he had?
“Do not tempt me, witch.” It could be a trick, a jest, a pretty thought to be loved by a woman so beautifully broken it made his body seek to be held. He saw the hurt cross her features regretting his words. He swallowed down the sourness.
The room rang quiet around them feeling a pulsating of warmth amongst the incense that burned and cracked. She stared at his hands. What did she see there that fascinated her so? Soon he felt her place the small skull in his hand. It was the skull of a bird, a raven perhaps. He looked at it in the candle light of the room.
It was painted in blood.
“Don’t let him fool you as well.” He felt the echoed words pierce his heart. Her fingertips traced the lines on his palm.
He wanted to chase the words away, chase away all recollection of those moments to come. He could feel the flames from his last dream, see the smoke, feel the weight of the dragon lying dead upon the hedge knight. She pressed her thumb upon his pulse bringing him to this room, his doomed reality.
“Vaeda.” He said her name as if a prayer or sworn secret as if it held some purpose on his tongue. He closed his eyes, humming in the feel of her.
“Do not drown yourself in dream.”
“Rather I drown myself in drink?” He let the chuckle skirt across his lips. It felt better to be in the fog of wine than the mists of uncertainty.
“I rather you drown yourself in me.” Fuck. Daeron let his eyes open to see her.
He tried to focus on the imperfections of her face. Her top lip was thinner than the bottom. Her eyes were of two different colors and sizes with crows feet settled at the corners. Her breasts sagged too deeply though his wandering imagination thought differently of that imperfection. She had weight on her, a small pouch of a belly that he found endearing. He could also see the thickness of each of her thighs, so round and lovely. She had shape and strength to her.
These were not imperfections.
These were assets that made her harder to resist.
Her eyes settled to his lips. Daeron could hear his heart pulse in his ears. The drink fogged his mind, letting libations become his guiding hand. He always felt too much of himself while in a drunken stupor. He should have asked for a whore.
Instead he had her with her sagging breasts, thick thighs, and beautiful needy lips. Her hand creeped over his own thigh. His name crossed her lips. He should not have said her name. He should have kept the secret in his soul.
“You thirst.” She breathed so dangerously close to his lips. “Have me instead.”
The woman was mad.
He remembered his dream, her death.
There was a hatchling. Two legs, a body, and every expanding wings crawled over her lifeless form, breasts bare, body dyed in red streaks. The dragon curled around her breast, a strong lonely hatchling who cooed and cried out for its mother. Her eyes had faded lifeless in the vision.
He’d be her demise.
In the end Daeron would kill her.
“I can not drink.” He told her with much regret. “You are too fine a drink for me to endure.” Daeron The Drunken refused indulging for the first time in his life. He could not end the only person who knew him, understood him.
She searched his eyes before settling back on the bed, away from him, away from her Doom. Vaeda lifted herself from the bed to the incense by the door. The smoke blew across her as if shrouding her. Daeron was sure she would disappear in the smoke, but instead she snuffed out the flame.
His heart pulled at that gesture.
Someday he would not be able to resist her.
“Will you lie with me this evening, my lord?” She looked as innocent as a cress fallen girl child with an infatuation for a princeling. “I yearn for your company. Your touch.” The words could have been spoken with seduction though instead melted with loneliness.
He was lonely too.
Daeron said nothing. He removed the heavier parts of his outfit before settling on the bed. He faced the wall only feeling the dip in the mattress moments later. Her arms wrapped around him as her lips felt like ghosts on his neck.
“Vaeda.” He whispered again nearly a warning.
“My prince.” She said with a tone that mocked and cursed his nature. “I will stay ‘til morning, ‘til you bid me leave. I would stay forever if you wished for it.” Her love was quite apparent. His sorrowful self did not deserve to be loved in her arms.
He wanted to kiss and cherish her.
He could not.
Daeron was barely a prince, barely a dreamer.
He would be her death though he did not know the tears she cried in the silence of his chambers were for his demise.
Summary: The evening after Arthur's rally, those who keep the Guinness family have a conversation. Rafferty/OC. Kinda. (Not friends, not enemies, but a secret third thing. Business associates. This is a disaster of a summary, but I really don't have a great way to describe this. I know it's a roll-your-eyes owing to a missing family member kind of thing but. I get a real kick out of her name, what can I say. Anyway, this is for @blind-dates-fest but I fully understand if it doesn't really qualify owing to the length (...I am not cut out for short 🙈 I know, Jean was better), but y'know. Something wildly different here on this blog :) Also, should probably say, everybody's good post cliffhanger, ofc.)
-
He knows she’s there long before she speaks.
She knows he knows as much, too — and why shouldn’t he? Didn’t everyone in the whole bloody house know he was waiting for this, if they really took a moment to think? Their foreman waiting in the library — not returning to the warehouse, not following Anne — Lady Olivia, rather — well after most retired could only be for one of two people after a day like today, after all.
And anyone could see Arthur wasn’t much disposed.
Still —
“You should know, Mr. Rafferty, I’ve only come at Arthur’s bidding.”
She’d just as well have not broken the stalemate, but one can hardly be expected to remain frozen all the night long, however doggedly he might manage to keep gazing into the licking flames of the fireplace. So much the better, anyway, she thinks, given how unwilling she’d been to begin this rendezvous — tête-à-tête — meeting — warning in the first place.
She really was here at Arthur’s bidding and Arthur’s bidding alone.
That faint familiar flicker in her belly at the sight of those broad shoulders demanding space and attention under the brooding brow is of little consequence. The satisfaction of an uninhibited gaze upon the carefully done up finery that serves as platter for the square jaw that ticks in repressed violence is hardly quantifiable, though. If only because they’d been playing this game for ages and it was a rarity, in their more recent acquaintance, to hold the upper ground.
To watch Sean Rafferty without him having the luxury of watching back, in other words.
“I see,” he acknowledges. She tilts her head ever so slightly, brow raised in clear question — Do you? — when he turns to her at last. It’s the moment wherein a normal person would look away at having been caught staring, but they’re neither of them normal. It’s subtle, too, the lift of his cheek in consequence of the tug of his lips in concert with the setting of her jaw, the brief flare of nostril. His eyes dance with the reflection of the fire. “How long has it been, Miss Guinness?”
Were a cigarette close at hand, he’d have taken a drag in triumph, she’s sure of it.
And oh, he wants to play.
“Long enough and longer still.” And she’s had too much practice to flinch, gives in to the tug of her own lips when he takes an involuntary step toward her before gathering that finely tailored restraint she knows all too well. So much for triumph. “It drives you mad, doesn’t it, never being able to fix the Guinness charlatan?” The condescension in the question is nearly palpable, striking in its vehemence ahead of the soft addition, “It leaves them mad, too — that faux family of mine — but, then, they’re always reaping the benefits.”
And she does know how to hate them for it. But then — well, they were family. Even if they weren’t blood. Besides, all Dublin is surely well acquainted with the closure of the Guinness ranks against any threat, actual or perceived, by now.
No, her hatred is her prerogative. No one else has earned the right to it.
“As am I.” No one, except, maybe, Sean Rafferty. But she has a right to hate him, too. Particularly when he stalks forward to place himself in front of her, danger and threat written in the lean of his torso, and damn him for it, making her look up. “Many a Fenian…many a disloyal, traitorous employee, too, ‘s experienced significant alterations in their health at your word. Only your word.” He’d do well to remember it — “Lot of power to leave in the hands of a charlatan.”
But it’s a belated realization, knowing that she shouldn’t have let him get so close. He has that uncanny ability to draw rage out.
Still, knowing is different than showing. And she won't back down, won’t falter.
“My word is certain, not men playing with one another, pretending they might be God.”
That she was, always — certain. Outside of this godforsaken house where the inhabitants knew her too well, patience routinely topped her list of virtues. That's what it took, being willing to send a man to his grave.
One in professed service to the Guinness family name, anyway.
Not that she wasn’t well assured before she might call on their maker for a Fenian; she simply couldn’t find much interest in them, having not had a real foe in that quarter since 1863. The rest had only ever been pawns taken with ease, occasionally sacrificially. They were always surprised when they worked out what was happening —
But the dock workers, the warehousemen, the administrative clerks — oh, she remembers them all quite clearly. Why Uncle Benjamin wanted them looked after, how she’d done it, the surprise on a face, the resignation on another, and Jack — oh, she’d liked Jack. It was a shame, then, what she had to do at finding him with certain papers in his possession and him with his own uncle in the constabulary —
“Only if the occasion calls for it, Genny.” Only if time is more important than certainty, he means. Only if he needs to give vent to the storm usually held at bay inside his frame. Only if he felt like playing God. “You’ve never turned your cheek to a hot iron against a man’s flesh, never denied a man his undue injuries…though I’ve always thought you preferred getting on with it, sending them to the bottom of the Liffey. Cold and dark. Like you.”
It wouldn’t seem possible if she didn’t do it, lifting her already upturned chin even higher in general hauteur. They’re close enough now — with his enumeration of her qualities — that she doesn’t need to see the grip of his hands on his coat, just beneath the lapels, to know he wants to reach out and touch her. The clench of her own hands remains tactfully hidden in the folds of her skirts and it’s hard to decide whether she’s more pleased or regretful that the proximity of their faces — she hadn’t missed his eyes darting toward her lips, just the same as she imagines he hadn’t missed hers doing the same — seems to restore him to himself, sees him stepping back toward the fireplace.
“Where’ve you been?” comes disinterestedly, as though maybe now he knows playing like that is rather out of the question.
This is still — only — the chess game they’ve been at their whole lives.
“India. Egypt. Gibraltar, France,” she answers, equally offhandedly. Breezy, because it’s not like she’s going to explain the pull of the thread that sees her seeking for her actual relations, though admitting to the path of the last several years is clear enough. “And I might be halfway to Canada by now — the Indies — if it weren’t for —“
“Arthur?” He interrupts. Sentimentality, she mentally corrects, as he adds, “God knows what he’s done to earn such blind devotion, but I envy him that, I’ll tell you.”
Of course, he didn’t understand. No one understood — no one could begin to comprehend — the way she felt about Arthur. Not even Arthur.
Not even Genny herself.
It’s absurd, really, because she’s old enough to have figured out that the boy who’d noticed her had only done so out of his own selfish desire for entertainment, but the fact remained — as it always did — that Arthur had noticed her and for that —
“Seems you envy him more every day, Mr. Rafferty,” she volleys back with all the venom devotion inspires.
They’ve come to the crux of it now.
And even if Arthur hadn’t said a word — which he hadn’t, really, as the very little he’d unwittingly offered in their tête-à-tête wouldn’t have been much to go on if she hadn’t already been watching for nearly three months now — she’d still be showing her claws.
“Genny —“
“You always had too much heart,” she interrupts, bluntly rounding back on him. “You could be cold and dark, too.” The Liffey wouldn’t be such a bad place to spend eternity, after all. Not for thieves and liars, whores and murderers, and all other manner of sinners like the pair of them. “If Arthur —“
“If Arthur,” he spits back in mocking echo before she can finish the threat she’s come to deliver. “You’d do it.”
It’s good, now, that he’s placed a sofa between them. He’s never been one for idle pacing and so stands still on the other side. The sofa hides his hands, though, and she can’t help wondering if they’re as still as the rest of him — a predator lying in wait — or whether they might tick — clench — give away the yearn for skin to skin contact that comes unbidden with memory in lonelier hours.
Her hands have settled back to a normal shade by now, no longer fisted by her sides. It’s deliberate, then, the slow way she moves them. It affords him visibility — a good way to keep prey calm — before they demurely, politely clasp behind her back.
“I would,” she assents. Simple as that.
“I’d fucking let you,” he says and that’s simple, too.
She flares at it, though, mouth twisting momentarily — shuddering quickly across the rest of her sharp features — in agitation.
Everyone fucking let’s me.
“What? And give up playing the mistress to Arthur’s lady?” The condescension is back with the question, because she knows she’s caught him. Whether or not he believes Arthur might’ve shared the relations Rafferty was having with his wife or not, she knows all about it. More than anything Arthur could’ve shared. And it’s easy — too easy — to spot the moment he recognizes the fact. He stills, impossibly, further. The flames dance larger in his eyes. The twist of her lips is a devilish smile. “No. No, you gave in too quickly on that one — you love her, don’t you?”
To his credit, there’s no hesitation.
“Yes.”
But he’d never had trouble with that. She’d pity him for it if there were any sympathy to be had for a man in his position.
The trouble is —
“You love her and she thinks she loves you, but she doesn’t know you. There’s a difference in knowing the inclinations of the flesh and seeing it first hand, Rafferty. She hasn’t seen the ease with which you’d bash a man’s head in, has she? Doesn’t know what you look like in the pleasure of wearing a man’s beating on your clothes. Doesn’t know the lengths you’d go for the dollar of a Guinness — oh, she has an idea, but living as she does…You shouldn’t think to share the soft interior of your heart before the woman you mean to give it to’s seen to the destruction of the steel in your flesh.”
To know you, in all your terror —
She’s insensible of the way she’s been gliding further into the room, a stalking step with each further accusation of what he is — who he is — until he steps around the sofa, back toward her, barely letting her finish before biting back with his own indictment of her character.
“And how about you, Genny Guinness? Hiding in the shadows, collecting secrets until you’ve the urge to yowl about it? Certainty to lay your conscience bare before God with the necessity of calmly watching a man sip poison? The Guinness dollar feeds you well, too, darling.” And yet, for all of the ferocity in their words, they still remain reserved — reserved, until he reaches for her at last, fingers flitting along the box of her jaw as though there’s nowhere else they could be. “I’ve seen your mad woman’s heart.”
The words come low, brush directly across cheekbones, eyelashes, lips. A fact, and a tender one, at that. She feels the heat of it everywhere and for a moment, trapped between it and the hand at her cheek, she can do little more than narrow her eyes back at his. Looking.
Looking for — something.
But she doesn’t find it — doesn’t want to find it, maybe — and her lip lifts slowly in a snarl the longer they stay locked like this, until she seethes out, wrapping her own fingers around his forearm. They only succeed in drawing his hand from her face — he’s too stubborn to let her draw it downward, shove it away —
“I don’t love,” she says, the word enunciated as derogatorily as possible, “— a bastard abandoned to the charity of an old man who saw the use of a child with a penchant for disappearing, hearing all the things she shouldn’t — I wasn’t made to love.”
She wasn’t — she’d never felt it, not once, and she’d profess it, loud and clear, to anyone who dared ask. Sure, she’d had a few trysts and true, there was the matter of the family — Eddie and Anne she can at least respect, even if Benjamin was an outright disaster, and Arthur — Arthur noticed —
But she was only ever meant to be a shadow. The charity bestowed by Sir Benjamin had only ever been contingent upon her usefulness, her value in repeating things she hadn’t even understood. She’d only become invaluable to him — to the Guinness name — when she’d begun to comprehend and more — begun to take matters into her own hands.
The old man’s wants and desires were clear as crystal and the one thing Genny had always understood — even as that poor little bastard — was that her comforts, her room and board, her life, depended upon meeting those. So she could never love him. Could never love the man who’d abandoned her, either, nor the woman who’d brought her into the world and promptly left herself. Not the Reverend Uncle Henry who called her an abomination, nor suspicious Aunt Agnes. Not any one of the regular Dubliners on the street, down the docks, at the warehouse —
No, there was no one worth loving, anyway, if she thought about it. Which she didn’t.
Not unless —
“You and I both know that’s not true.” Rafferty’s voice stays low, dangerous as he flirts with truth. The backside of his fingers stretch, brush gently at her temple, and that really is taking things too far. She jerks downward on his arm and he lets her — lets her just enough so that he can gather her closer, her chest flush to his, his arm a vise at her waist. All those lines in his face illuminate starkly — a panther baring its teeth. “That hellfire inside you, Genevieve — that’s the scared leanbh desperate for Uncle Benjamin’s approval, and that’s all the cion in you that you’ve no idea what to do with.”
“You don’t know me,” she fires back, palms flattening against his chest to create some modicum of space between them, because he simply doesn’t.
“I do,” he argues, infuriatingly self assured and casual, too, as though to reiterate the ease with which he can keep her.
“You don’t,” she huffs, shoving — rather unfortunately with all her might — a deceptively not insignificant amount — out of his grasp.
“I do,” he repeats, as collected as if he hadn’t just been holding her hostage. Her chest heaves in irate contrast. “It’s my business to know Guinness,” he says, as though they’re in the midst of an entirely disinterested business meeting. “I’m very good at it. I know the virtues, as well as the sins. Religiously. Secularly. Not even the black of the stout could hide you from me, any one of you.”
Genny takes a deep, steadying breath.
And if Rafferty notices it — if his eyes draw along the entirety of her mildly disheveled outward and utterly stormy inward appearance — she sure isn’t fucking noticing.
Because he doesn’t fucking know her.
“After seven years, what makes you think you can say these things to me?” She demands with all of the self assured pride of a Guinness. The kind that says they’re better than anyone else, the kind that won’t broker argument, the kind that says they will get an answer, and God help the poor fool whose answer displeases.
But Rafferty only tilts his head, as though feigning a terrible interest.
“You’ve yet to send me to the bottom of the fucking river.” His nose scrunches with the words, a touch — just a touch — of malice in them and something else, too, something that sounds like —
“Well, if that’s all it takes —“ she starts, snidely.
“And maybe I know the burn of cion, too, destructive as it is.”
His interruption is soft enough that she might’ve missed it — might’ve ignored it — if only —
Damn him!
“Burn well, Mr. Rafferty,” is the benediction from the lips of her again haughtily raised chin. A chin that turns to escape the room and all the weight of the accusations they’ve thrown at one another. She’ll defend Arthur to the last, of course, but this —
“I’d wish the same to you, Miss Guinness, if I didn’t know you’d take it as an insult,” he says, with a slight bow toward her retreating form.
Of course she’d take it as an insult — it was one.
But she stops before the door nonetheless.
“Perhaps I shall let Arthur decide. He ought to have the right to in someone’s relationship.” This is venom, low and deadly serious, and precisely what she’d come into this room to proclaim. But she can’t help herself — has never been able to in this fucking house — adds a taunting, “But do let me know when you get bored with his wife. You know I’ve never had any qualms about strangling you,” as she turns to go.
“Just a bit,” he says, in perfect agreement — the memory of her hands at his neck, the ferocity of teeth on skin, and bodies flush against one another, sweaty in the act of love making — making, not feeling — violently as wild animals, is as ever present, if dormant, in his mind as it is in hers, then.
Genny spares him one final glance, one that radiates a whole tangle of emotion that she calls utter disdain in spite of the fact that it undoubtedly encompasses more. The more she’s never put name to, though, just as she’s never given name to the flicker in her belly, the one that licks again at the sight of his stillness beside the fireplace.
The light frames his face, casting haunting shadows across the thick brow, the creases and indentions, the cuts that mark the small smile tinged with a grief that she always did her best to ignore.
And the flames — the flames illuminate the pierce of those eyes.
She turns her head. Her step is steady in the forced retreat — not even the addendum of Rafferty’s parting, “As you wish,” sees them falter. They couldn’t, because his winning this match matters not. She did what she came to do.
a/n: of course this took me until the last possible second to complete. so grateful to have had the time to participate in @blind-dates-fest this year and excited to branch out to the pacific for the first time. thank you merc for putting this on, we owe ya one!
“Jesus Christ, Runner, move.”
“I — There’s uh—”
“Get outta the way, I gotta fuckin’ piss.”
“T–There’s girls, those are girls.”
“Huh?!”
There’s a scrambling, long-limbed rush into the hut and as his eyes adjust to the wavering orange light of the lamp they left on when they departed for Greenville, Robert can make out three figures standing by the empty beds in the back. A man and two women in fatigues, caps still on as if they just beat his crew inside. Upon observing them back, the man steps in front of his companions, hands low at his sides in a gesture of peace.
Hoosier starts. “Who the hell are you?”
“This is H Company Gunner Section, right?” The man’s voice is smooth, lilting.
“Sure is,” Chuckler nods, amazed.
“We were just assigned. I’m Jeremiah Thomas, this is…” He turns to the girl on his left and blinks, mouth fumbling. “Uh—”
“Valentina Alessi,” she says between snaps of her white chewing gum. “Call me Pitch.”
Runner, perking up, points with a loose finger. “Like Valentino Alessi Jr.? The Yankees first baseman?”
Robert gives her a once over. She’s tall — taller than all of them but Chuckler — and lanky, knobby at her joints and pale like stored straw whose color comes out in the summer, with a stark black braid winding over her shoulder and ending at her belt. Alessi’s photos had been in the papers a couple of times, related to his signing last year and him being a beanpole of a kid, taller than Lindell and Levy, 6-6 even at his team physical. And he’s got dark hair to boot.
“He’s her brother,” the other girl says, her ‘er’ more of an ‘uh’ in what he assumes is a peachy Southern drawl, all molasses slow and sweet. “Pitch Alessi is a two-time ASA MVP.”
“ASA?”
“Amateur Softball Association of America.”
“Huh, and you are?”
Pitch shakes her head and cuts a hand over her neck, back and forth. “Don’t make her say the whole thing. We’re callin’ her… Bessie, right?”
Jeremiah nods. “Bess, yeah.”
The other girl, Bess — who’s stout and round in her hips, the rosy flush of chill across her freckled button nose — pushes a wayward curl off her temple, tucking it behind her ear and smiling wryly at her boots. Her presence is sturdy next to the more frenetic energies of the towering remainder of her trio, like a flagpole, a heavy anchor. From a cracked window, a warm breeze rolls in, sweeping through the freshly clipped curls at the nape of his neck, and he feels true relief for the first time in days. A mid-February hint of spring.
“Well, I still gotta piss,” Hoosier declares and excuses himself to the latrine. The rest of them fall out, changing with miraculous speed on account of their guests, but the girls and Jeremiah do the same without the hurry, Pitch pelting her friend with spare socks as they jostle at their racks across from Robert’s, Pitch down to just her brassiere and PT shorts. It’s the same ease the four of them would have on an unintruded night and he catches his friends looking on similarly, hesitant but as desperate for a good time as ever. Except for Chuckler, who’s always a bit tongue-tied around willowy, brash brunettes and bats his eyes at her, ignored.
Scuttlebutt had it that there’d be elms at New River. Not the tree, elms — LMs, Lady Marines. The mythical women who hadn’t been flunked out of Parris Island and sent to the Navy or assigned to a kitchen company or desk duty in the rear. But every mildly curious G.I. was shot down by his NCOs and officers; the Corps maintained the internal and public position they’d only enforce Order 81 if Roosevelt himself came down to South Carolina and started rearranging the barracks. Last week, scuttlebutt also had it that Vandegrift got hauled to the Pentagon for a closed door meeting, but that could’ve been about anything. Runner swears they’re invading Canada.
And yet, here they are, poster-ready for the enlistment ads the Navy’s been spitting out, white and black sailors shoulder to shoulder as they gaze heavenward, planes and smoke trailing against vivid blue. Of course they’d discussed it on evenings like these, what they’d do when a beautiful woman was assigned to their platoon, or when they were inevitably in joint operations with an elm company. Chivalry, gentlemen, is to be maintained at all times. Their charm would be undeniable, their physical conditioning leagues above the rest of their platoon. They’d wine ‘em and dine ‘em and be married by Christmas, sending postcards home to their parents who’d be bouncing chubby, gurgling grandbabies on their knee.
But now it feels like the summers he’d spent at his grandfather’s house, stuffed in that second-story bunk room or God forbid the attic with his sisters, scrapping over whose similarly beige towel was whose and the radio. Across the way, Runner’s started an argument about batting stats with Pitch and Hoosier’s on his way over to instigate.
Miss Whitfield takes the last bed on Robert’s right, the only empty rack in the hut between them. She’s delicately twisting her hair into a silky patterned kerchief when Chuckler emerges from his shift in the head and stops at the end of her bed, reading over the assignment paperwork she set atop her trunk.
“Holy hell, I ain’t callin’ you all that.”
“Good thing I ain’t ask you to,” she snarks, snatching the paper to her bosom and shooing him away, but Robert can see the corner of her mouth twitch as she fights a smile. She catches him and sighs. “Elizabeth-Mae Abilene Tyler Sutton Whitfield, or… Bess, I suppose.”
It takes him a minute to realize she’s offered a name. “Bob — R-Robert Leckie. Robert Hugh Leckie, but Hoosier calls me Lucky.”
“Hoosier?”
Right, they’d skipped their half of the introductions. He points out his friends in turn, giving their Christian names easy enough but stuttering on their monikers, suddenly aware how arrogant and kiddish he sounds, how it must seem like they’ve made this out to be some big joke — little boys playing at silver screen soldiers. Yet Bess nods along solemnly and says nothing about how the Corps threw her a war’s worth of hell just to get here.
“So Lucky,” she drawls after he’s done, “where’re you from?”
“Rutherford, New Jersey. You?”
“Mississippi.”
“The whole state?”
Her head tilts and she fights that smile again, and in the moment he wants to see it more than anything.
“Vicksburg,” she says eventually, then mumbles an addition. “We just discovered the radio.”
He plays along in stride. “Welcome to the 20th century.”
And how wonderful is it that she grins? Still tries to cover it by tucking her chin into her hand but grins nonetheless after surprise flashes across her face, her eyes alighting cool hazel and amber and coming to sit in his stomach with a dawning suspicion that she’s not used to being noticed, that she assumes she’s obscured from view. No, she appeared in his hut and scared the shit out of him as he stumbled home from another night of drinking. No, he sees her well, has a million questions, none he wants to ask aloud. What’s a girl like you doin’ in a place like this?
“You like baseball?”
“Softball,” she corrects, tone warning. “The ASA comes up on the radio from New Orleans. That’s where Pitch plays, for the Jax Brewery Brewers.”
“I’m a sports writer, y’know?”
A brow arches. “Is that so?”
Nodding, he slumps onto his rickety headboard. “Lead columnist for the Bergen Evening Record.”
She gathers stationary while they talk — two sheets of blank paper, a sleek Parker 51, a debossed navy hardcover missing a dust jacket whose title he can’t make out in the dark — and assembles them on her knee, opposite leg laid out on the bed. He wonders about her handwriting, if it has the curls of finishing school or the neat lines of private tutoring.
“You cover softball?”
On a technicality. “High school, yeah, but not professional.”
“You should. Jersey’s got a team, the Linden Arians. They play the big tournament in Detroit every year.”
He likes how she says that, Dee-troit. Southerners are a recent fascination of his, he must confess; they’re as varied as folks back home in accent, in faith, in taste but they sit easier in their fatigues than his fellows from the tri-state, lacking the natural fidgeting impatience of the Northeast without the apathy of the West Coasters. He’s struggled to get them right on the page thus far, not lazy but not raring to go, neither fearful nor naïve, perhaps simply content. No need to make this war come faster than it needs to.
Mighty Miss Whitfield — he has an inkling that’s how he’ll put her down in the memoir — is the first to join their gang and has the grace not to be bothered by the mess of his bunk or his lack of grooming standards enough to think him unworthy of a conversation. And he’s curious, a little, as to where she gets the sheen of her chemical-flattened hair and the cream laden coffee color of her skin.
“You play?”
“Me? Oh, no,” she says, not looking up from the start of her letter, “Mama thinks it’s unbecoming of a lady. She cried when I joined up because ‘what if they make you wear trousers?’” she fawns in a voice more Scarlett O’Hara than Scarlett O’Hara.
“Is that who you’re writing?” he asks and then immediately wishes he didn’t. Her gaze hardens and he can hear the scratch of her pen as she pushes down harder, furrowing the inside of her bottom lip between her teeth.
It’s silent long enough that he feels the need to apologize but as soon as he opens his mouth, she does too. “I’m not allowed to write everyone separately, I gotta send one big letter or she pitches a fit, says I’m keepin’ secrets.”
“Ah, mothers.”
Her shoulders sink with the weight of her sigh, followed by her head flopping toward her chest and a bitter laugh. “Ain’t they somethin’?”
When she looks back at him, a dark lock escapes her kerchief and tumbles onto to her forehead and oh, there’s a girl in his hut and he’s giddy in the pit of his stomach, the same as when he sees Hoosier across the room at the USO and gets one of his rascally smiles, losing all his words watching Hoosier bring a smoke to his lips, the curve of his Adam’s apple as he exhales. Transfixed.
Jeremiah comes out of the latrine humming low, a tune that rumbles through his chest and fits in with the misty rain starting to fall outside and the singular light of Robert’s lamp casting the room in a warm buzzy glow. The man keeps his song as he puffs on one last smoke by the screen door, watching the night slink by.
“He always like this?” Robert whispers, turning to Bess.
She’s in bed now, letter folded away in even thirds, hands tucked behind her head. Her bottom lip juts in an unconcerned pout. “Hell if I know. I met ‘im ‘bout five minutes before you did.”
“Jesus, Jerry,” Pitch says from her rack where she’s spread lackadaisically. “I’m tryna sleep.”
“Sorry, Pitch,”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Robert takes that as a sign to hit the switch on the lamp and settle in. Silence falls except for the occasional creak of a bed frame as someone flops for a more comfortable position and distant rolling thunder. He can’t sleep; all he wants to do is write. Might Miss Whitfield and the famous Pitch and Singin’ Jerry, new heroes to craft, new corners of this country to build out of ink. He tosses and turns for a bit and resolves to get out his journal once everyone’s asleep. But he’s not that lucky, go figure.
A voice in the dark. “Shit, I meant to tell you we’re movin’ out to the shore tomorrow.”
Four lamps flick on at once with a flood of curses, variations on “goddammit, Pitch,” as men race for sea bags and the disarray in their trunks. He has a feeling he’ll be hearing identical sentiments throughout their time together.
“When?” Runner snaps, hands on his hips as he leans over Jeremiah’s prone form to confront Pitch.
Her eyes widen innocently as she sits up, arms raising in defense. “In the mornin’, I’d guess.”
Chuckled and Hoosier swear terribly and Robert looks over to Bess, unsure of her Southern sensitivity to language unfit for mixed company. But she hasn’t moved, glances over at him with a smile like she’s trying not to gloat. That’s when he notices her sea bag, still where she’d dropped it when he first saw her, untouched.
“A head’s up would’ve been nice,” he says from the floor, gathering his things from under the bed.
“Head’s up.”
His gaze snaps to hers and he’s struck by the mirth in her eyes as she angles away from the commotion and tugs her sheets to her chin. “G’night, Lucky.”
He’s not upset enough not to respond as a gentleman should. “Good night, Miss Whitfield.”
My submission for @blind-dates-fest! Thanks to the wonderful @mercurygray for running this fest and letting us play with some wonderful new OCs! My submission is for The West Wing, but all you really need to know is that it takes place in season 3, so around the year 2001/2002. President Bartlet recently announced that he has multiple sclerosis and that he's running for re-election, the White House is a little crazy as always, and White House Communications Director Toby Ziegler is gruff and grumbly and definitely intrigued by the stranger in his office...Brooke McFadden.
Enjoy!
There was a woman in his office.
On its own, that wasn’t quite so out of the ordinary. There was an unfamiliar woman in his office. Actually, that wasn’t quite correct either. There was a woman that Toby had never spoken to before, but whose face he definitely knew from somewhere, sitting in his office. Not just sitting in his office–perched on the edge of his desk, as if she were making herself at home, her feet dangling over the edge and swinging a little bit as she, presumably, waited for him.
Toby Ziegler had no earthly idea what was going on.
He glanced around the communications bullpen, filled with the usual hustle and bustle. Sam, Bonnie, and Ginger were huddled around her desk, no doubt sharing whatever baked good Ginger had decided to bring in today. If he wasn’t careful, word would spread and before he knew it, Andy would show up here, too. Andy and the mystery woman in his office who was–yes, was definitely now reading Toby’s newspaper.
“Bonnie?” he asked, not taking his eyes off of the woman, who pushed her honeyed blonde hair off her shoulder as she turned the page. “There’s an intruder in my office?”
Sam was the only one who even bothered to turn around. The two assistants were, apparently, entirely unmoved by Toby’s plight. “You have an intruder in your office?” Sam asked, his mouth full of what looked like coffee cake, his eyes wide with curiosity.
“Yes, I have an intruder in my office, is there an echo in here? Why does no one care that I have an intruder in my office?” Usually, a security breach would merit at least a little more concern from the junior staff, but apparently, not today.
Toby gestured with his head for Sam to peek into Toby’s office, which he did, and his eyes only widened more. “A very beautiful intruder in Toby’s office,” he mused to no one in particular. “Hey, doesn’t she look like–”
“Do I look like I care about that right now?” Toby snapped. “Bonnie–”
Bonnie just looked bored as she ate a slice of coffee cake with a plastic fork. Toby caught a whiff of cinnamon. “She’s not an intruder,” she said, “she’s your eight o’clock appointment.”
He glanced at his watch. “It’s 7:15.”
“She’s early.”
“And who is my eight o’clock appointment with, Bonnie?” he asked impatiently, shifting from foot to foot. Bonnie just looked amused as she flipped through his appointment book.
“Someone from Brooke McFadden’s office, it looks like.” Bonnie’s tone was light, not quite flippant, but the distinction didn’t do much to calm Toby’s sour mood. “Probably about the new formula they’re going to be releasing for calculating the poverty level, I would expect?”
Toby opened his mouth to respond, but Sam got there first. “Oh, that’s why she looks familiar,” he said, snapping his fingers for emphasis. Toby felt a headache begin to seep in behind his eyes. “Toby, that’s not someone from Brooke McFadden’s office. That’s Brooke McFadden.”
“Brooke McFadden?” Toby repeated stupidly. “Brooke McFadden. Is in my office.”
“More accurately, she’s on top of your desk. She looks a bit different on your desk than on the cover of Time magazine, doesn’t she?”
“Not just Time,” CJ’s voice cut in, “The Economist, Forbes, I think even Marie Claire, too.”
Toby followed Sam’s gaze as he heard Josh and CJ come up behind them, because apparently his humiliation this morning needed even more of an audience. Because now that he was looking at her, it was rather obvious who he was looking at. The blonde hair tumbling down her shoulders, the intelligent blue eyes, the full lips that looked to be on the verge of a smile even as she looked down at the newspaper in her hands. She wore a gray pantsuit over a blouse that he could only describe as fuschia, but somehow she made the color look classy, not garish. She was, if he was being honest, more beautiful than the photos had led him to believe. He heard Josh chuckle behind him.
“Hey, Toby, how’s it feel to have a Nobel Prize winner in your office?”
“Oh, he didn’t even recognize her.”
“You think she can hear us?” CJ said in a mock whisper.
“I hate all of you,” Toby mumbled.
—--------------
It had taken a few minutes for Toby to shoo everyone away and stop gawping at the visitor in his office like she was a new exhibit at the zoo, though he hadn’t been able to stop CJ from bursting into the office ahead of him and introducing herself. He had watched Brooke McFadden hop off of his desk gracefully and extend her hand to CJ to shake, while Toby made himself scarce in the doorway. He watched as they had exchanged pleasantries, the Press Secretary and the current holder of the Nobel Prize for economics. The new Bartlet, some had painted her when the award had been given. Toby wasn’t quite sure how the President himself felt about that comparison. Besides, he wasn’t sure if Brooke McFadden had any political aspirations whatsoever.
Maybe he’d find out.
He cleared his throat gently and CJ and Dr. McFadden both turned to look at him. “Forgive me for interrupting,” he said quietly, “but I think I’ve kept poor Dr. McFadden waiting on me long enough.”
She waved her hand at him. “Oh no, it’s my own fault. I always like to show up early for things, but I have a bad habit of not warning people about it. I was perfectly happy to wait in the bullpen, but your assistant said I could wait in your office. I hope you don’t mind. And I’m sorry for ambushing you, also,” she said, sounding a little embarrassed. “I should have said it was me coming, not just someone from my office. I hope I didn’t ruin your morning.”
“Of course not.” And to his surprise, he did feel a bit of his earlier agitation melting away. Just a bit.
“I should let you two work. It was nice to meet you. Dr. McFadden,” said CJ quickly.
“Brooke,” she corrected with a laugh. “Nice to meet you too, CJ.”
CJ slipped out of the office and Toby held out his own hand to the Nobel laureate. Her hand was cool under his touch. “Dr. McFadden.”
“Brooke. Please.”
“Brooke, then.”
She was humming something. Toby thought it might have been a Sheryl Crow song, but he couldn’t have named that tune if his life depended on it. Apparently, the Nobel Laureate for economics was habitually early and listened to Sheryl Crow.
What an unusual morning this was turning out to be.
“I have to ask,” he said as he released her hand. She bounced a little on the balls of her feet, like a small child who couldn’t quite manage to keep still. “Were you always planning on taking the meeting yourself, or was this a last minute change of plans?”
Dr. McFadden–Brooke–gave him a little smile. “It might have been planned all along, with just enough vagueness to give plausible deniability in case things didn’t end up working out,” she said with a little shrug. “Though I still think I would have tried to find some way to make it work. It’s important, after all.”
“Yes, I know. The new formula is going to create 4 million more poor people,” Toby said, remembering how Sam had phrased it the other day.
Brooke shook her head quickly. “Not create them. They already exist, they’re out there, living their lives, blissfully unaware that they’re about to be reclassified as living below the poverty line.”
“They’ll be eligible for more benefits, though,” Toby said, well aware that he was parroting the very words that Sam had said to him just a few days before. “Not that many people will like that distinction very much.”
“No, I wouldn’t imagine so,” Brooke said, sounding amused. “What if I told you that there was another way?”
“To calculate the poverty level? To change the formula?”
She nodded. “Changing the formula, to begin with, yes. It would only make 2 and a half million more people poor, instead of four million.”
“Still seems like about two million too many. Especially if it happened on the President’s watch.”
“Like we said, they were already poor, it could have happened on any President’s watch.”
“And yet,” Toby said, his tone growing a little more exasperated, “it happened on this one.”
“Right, but that brings me to the second part of my plan,” she said, her voice growing more animated. “Actually fixing the poverty level. Actually helping more Americans keep more money in their pockets at the end of each month, no longer living paycheck to paycheck. Actually helping to bring about some real change.”
“Did you find a money tree I’m not aware of?” Toby asked, amused. Brooke’s eyes sparkled a little, but not with humor, with something else, something that it took Toby a moment to recognize was…determination.
“I’m serious. Toby Ziegler, would you like to help me change the world?”
Blind Dates Fest 2026 | Marjorie Burkhardt, The Pacific
Marjorie Burkhardt is a young and ambitious wartime correspondent who fights her way into covering Pacific island combat, managing to follow troops into inhospitable jungles and witnessing the slow and bloody advancement of the Allies towards Japan. As the war progresses, Marjorie is embroiled in battle, endangered by starvation, and hunted for reckless behavior by the US War Office. In the years she spends abroad with men she grows to love, Marjorie discovers that stories aren’t just commodities to be sold – they are special lifelines she has the privilege to document.
My @blind-dates-fest 2026 submission! Here's an excerpt of something I wrote just in time for this event. Better late than never :)
Marjorie leaned sleepily against the portside deck rail with a cigarette in her right hand and a notebook in her left. She heard her name and peered through a sea of sunbleached olive uniforms, finding one figure in starched powder blues coming towards her from out of the passageway door, the sunlight hitting her red cross uniform and making her glow almost unbearably bright. Virginia – a girl who Marjorie had to admit she was growing quite fond of – was a prim and proper Red Cross morale worker, with shiny waves of gingery hair and naturally red lips. If Marjorie was a jealous girl, she’d be jealous of Virginia. Virginia herself seemed to be mostly unaware of her natural gifts, plodding across the ship deck in ungraceful, loping strides. Still, Marjorie watched the eyes of most of the surrounding marines progressively drawn to Virginia’s slender, glowing figure as she marched towards Marjorie.
“Goddam, Virginia. You bleach those blues again?” said Marjorie, shielding her eyes from the bright overhead sun with her notebook. The ship tilted starboard and the door Virginia had come through slammed shut with a big ringing bang. One nearby seaman wrapping line looked up, glowering, until he realized it had been a girl who’d come through the passageway.
“It’s only regulation,” said Virginia, coming up beside Marjorie to the deck railing. She frowned at the cigarette in Marjorie’s hand. “Those aren’t good for you, you know.”
“So they say. Don’t trust everything you read,” said Marjorie, taking a draw off and then offering the cigarette to Virginia, who wrinkled her nose and shook her head.
“We’re not supposed to,” said Virginia.
“Alright, Shirley Temple,” muttered Marjorie, flicking ashes off the side of the ship and watching as they were scattered in the wake of the wind. “They let you go early?” she said.
“Rocking’s getting to me,” said Virginia. The railing was full up with Marines leaning out over the water, but Marjorie muttered a shove over to the closest one, who gave up his spot for Virginia. Virginia closed her eyes against the onslaught of wind, and reached up to hold her Red Cross service cap from flying away.
“You gonna blow, do it here,” said Marjorie, giving Virginia a pat on the back. She herself had gone into a haze of nausea on the first week of the journey before obtaining some seasickness pills from a corpsman. Hearing and smelling Marines vomiting everywhere – not just in the head – had probably sent anyone else who wasn’t already motion-sick into bouts as well. Now, she was fighting a sleepy fog that tended to come over her sometime in the afternoon, trying to keep herself awake and alert by leaning into the stream of air washing by as the ship made its way over the water. As Marjorie woke, ate, and slept on the ship, she was blearily aware that the time she had so carefully planned to use to organize her notes and conduct interviews was slipping away.
Marjorie shoved the small notebook she’d been fruitlessly staring at into her pocket, listing to the side and grasping the lukewarm metal railing as the ship hit a swell.
In all directions, there was open sea: sky and ocean an intense blue-on-blue. Sometimes seagulls and petrels flew apace with the ship and dolphins would breach below the bulkhead – Marjorie had caught this one time by herself at night, hearing a strange splash-gasp of blowholes, barely audible over the sea spray and howling wind. Now, each time she came out onto the deck, she hoped to find more dolphins, but this far out in the Pacific, she had the feeling that they were a little speck of dust floating in an infinite empty puddle. No bugs – this was the strangest thing of all.
“You a woman Marine?” said a voice over Marjorie’s left shoulder. She turned – there was a curly-haired Marine there looking at her – not uncommon – with a wry smile. That expression Marjorie immediately distrusted. It reminded her of those old money fellows at college who’d follow up that same smile with a pass. And out here, all the Marines were thirsty, so Marjorie didn’t have any doubt about his intentions.
“No,” said Marjorie, sourly, before turning back to look at the ocean. Try as she did, there were no dolphins or tuna she could see. Just a blank, vast blue. Nothing to give her justification for blowing this Marine off.
“Whatcha doing here, then?” said the Marine. “Wearing a pair of dungarees. Smoking. Out here on the way to hell.” The Marine, to his credit, did not look her up and down.
“I’m a correspondent for the Times,” said Marjorie. Trying to sound nonchalant. As if this position wasn’t something she had to fight her boss – and his superiors over – for months. Marjorie had boarded the USS George F. Elliott with the rest of the 1st Marines 2nd Battalion, but she’d never discussed her own background with any of the Marines until now. No one had been interested. They’d all just tried to pinch her ass and earned slaps in return.
“The Times?” said Virginia from Marjorie’s right. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“I’m a staff writer,” said Marjorie.
“Really?” said the Marine, tone changing. “What columns?”
Marjorie turned to the Marine, trying to read his expression. Less cocksure now but still with that trace of unpredictable boyish playfulness. Well, Marjorie thought, settling against the railing, drawing once more on her cigarette. I can be unpredictable too.
“I don’t run a column,” said Marjorie. She shrugged. “Finance, crime, local government. Whatever I get wind of, whatever my sources mention. I’ve written about a lot of stuff.”
“Oh, really?” said the Marine. Oddly enough, he sounded interested. An odd juxtaposition to his hotshot presentation. “What’s your name? Maybe I’ve seen your work.”
“Marjorie Burkhardt,” said Marjorie.
“Hmm. Might ring a bell,” said the Marine. It clearly didn’t, but Marjorie just nodded agreeably, a flicker of hope starting to grow every passing moment that he didn’t ask if she had a boyfriend. “Robert Leckie.” That funny smile came back onto his face, as if he knew something Marjorie didn’t. She didn’t like it one bit, but took his offered hand and gave him a firm shake.
Despite the annoying air of overconfidence around Leckie, Marjorie was starting to realize that the potential source rapport she’d been putting off for a while might have a chance of materializing. No one had shaken her hand in her time around the USMC – not the battalion commander, not the other Marines she’d interviewed at New River. And even though Leckie seemed a bit smug, he clearly had some kind of intellectual interest in her job. Even if it was just to shoot the shit to stave off the monotony of life at sea.
“What do you do, Leckie?” said Marjorie.
“Machine gunner, Ma’am,” said Leckie. “You know anything about that?”
“What do you think?” said Marjorie, putting her cigarette back into her mouth. “I’m a broad. Not a goddamn clue.”
Leckie’s smile grew. “Hey, how about that? You could be a Marine with that mouth.”
Marjorie just shook her head, half amused and half trying not to be. Behind Leckie, coming from the aft deck, was a few other Marines approaching. One of them started to run up behind Leckie.
Virginia leaned over the railing to take a better look at Leckie. “Virginia Thomas,” she said, by way of introduction. The wind and sea spray swept her hair forwards across her face, but she still glowed.
“Good to meet you,” said Leckie, and then one of the men behind him jumped up with an arm around his neck. Leckie staggered backwards with a startled laugh as the ship mounted a crest, and him and the other Marine fell against the railing in a tangle of limbs.
“Goodness,” muttered Virginia. “They’re–”
“Just boys,” said Marjorie, watching them stand up and continue to rib each other. In the span of one second, a thought flashed before her eyes as she recalled something Charles had said to her back on her last day in the office. Those boys you meet are going to land on some beach and get torn apart. She blinked rapidly, trying to erase the thought, watching the taller Marine shove Leckie aside.
“You’re the writer?” he said. His shoulders were broad and he was blue-eyed and dark-haired with a straight brow. Marjorie appraised him, suddenly intimidated. He belonged on a USMC recruitment poster.
“So I’ve been told,” said Marjorie neutrally.
“Juergens,” said the Marine with a winning smile, not sly but just as squirrely as Leckie. He extended a hand to shake, endearingly sincere. Second handshake, thought Marjorie. “But they call me Chuckler.”
“Good to meet you,” said Marjorie.
“And who’s your friend?” said Chuckler, turning his eyes onto the pastel blueness of Virginia, who was standing weakly at the railing.
Virginia blinked, dabbed at her forehead with the shoulder of her sleeve. She opened her mouth to speak, but Marjorie did it for her since Virginia was looking worse for wear.
“Virginia Thomas,” said Marjorie. “Hey, Virgie. Think you should lay down for a little bit?”
“Lie down,” corrected Leckie.
Marjorie just looked at Leckie in surprised disbelief while Virginia patted Marjorie on the arm.
“I’ll be fine,” she said, and saying a quick goodbye to the two Marines she’d briefly met, Virginia made her way to the passageway door, which the seaman from earlier tugged open for her. As Virginia disappeared into the shadow of the interior, Marjorie turned her gaze back on the two Marines who’d been friendlier than most.
Leckie had corrected her grammar. Marjorie got over her shock and had the wherewithal to be irritated.
She raised an eyebrow at Leckie. He shrugged, and that damn smile was back on his face.
This whole troop ship ordeal was turning out to be a lot more interesting than Marjorie thought it would be.
+++
I don't have a title for this fic. If I ever finish my main BoB longfic I may go to the Pacific with Marjorie. She's waiting for me patiently... and has been for about four years.
Thank you @mercurygray for coordinating this event!
Fandom Jane Austen, Book Sense and Sensibility, second oc entry for @blind-dates-fest
The other Dashwood
Having three younger sisters and a very steadfast creative mother, Hyacinth Dashwood could never complain about not having any entertainment in his youth. Altho Margaret, his youngest sister, barely fitted the title of a sister, for she had all the strength of Elisabeth Gloriana in her blood to be placed in breeches and armour. He loved them all dearly, Elinor whose frown had increased over the years of their shared callous youth still found herself cracking up at his jests and secretly admire the spoils of war, what he called the little trinkets and treats he brought back from his journeys. Marianne was much of his own heart, they shared the same golden curls, as if they had been created out of the same straw puppets woven in autumn's demise. Shared the same free romantic spirit set about to roam and have one's heart broken like the wings of a butterfly at the first touch of hail. Being his fathers second son he had no illusions regarding an inheritance and had placed a grand effort in making it in this world. At 25 he was regarded as a highly decorated and eligible bachelor, without the rakeish reputation his smile and charm might endanger him to build. Now being a travelling scholar with a seat at the crown of the kingdom's university, there truly was no want for a wife, so he tried his best to avoid the season as much as he could. The love he sought was not to be found in fortune hunters desperate attempts to give up one cage for another one. Lost in the words of Keats his heart yearned for La Dame sans Merci, if not for the poet's lips himself. As the season was once upon the land, it had been Marianne's turn to make her debut and he wouldn't miss it for the world.
London had been quite the journey from Norland Park, Hyacinth had taken it upon himself to spoil his twin spirited sister to her own fairytale gown for her first dance in society. Mrs Dashwood had taken ill, not serious enough to worry greatly, thus Elinor had enquired for Marianne to be placed with their brother on the matter of running errands for her outfit. Knowing his way with muslin, gloves, brooches and ribbons, a blessing or cursed brought on by having three younger sisters, Hyacinth had drawn up a battle plan regarding which merchants to visit for fabric, gloves and the like, Elinor had set their sister a budget and entrusted her with it in the hopes she would be cautious with it, not bearing in mind that their brother would with a knives certainty not allow his sisters allowance to be spent.
"Will this be the season, you shall find a merry wife dearest brother? All this knowledge of gowns should go to waste if it's not soon spoiled on a wife and sweet children." Marianne teased as she danced around a shop with the most fashionable colourful ribbons she had ever seen. Having already challenged high street vendors for bits and bobs, they had taken to the likes of an oriental merchant, whose shops smelled of spices and fine floral tea.
"Is it not a brother's joy to spoil his sister first?"
"Do not deflect. You ought to be married soon, think of your poor sisters being bereaved of the privilege of throwing flowers at your wedding. Of singing songs in your and your wives honour and think of all the little laughters you bereave us of. I was born to be an aunt."
"Perhaps it is time for Elinor to be wed and have children."
"Elinor oh sweet Elinor… No.. No, I have my hopes set on you dearest brother. I shall not rest till we have found you the most eligible match."
"If it were as easy as matching emerald buttons to auburn hair… say what you make of this fabric?"
"It is most ardently, for a grooms vest."
"Alas Marianne… cease teasing, we ought to find you a fitting fabric for your Spencer."
"And whilst we do we may cast our gaze to the ladies of the town who've been snickering behind your back? Dare I say we are being watched by delightful company?" lowering her voice, she indicated with a nod in the right direction to the shop keepers' daughters who had watched them with curiosity. Hyacinth was almost immediately star struck by the taller of the sisters who had held a book close to her chest, but tried his best not to alert his sister.
"Jewels in their own right… well Marianne may we focus on your spencer again?"
"Aye… aye.. we'll take this one as it suits the both of us… but did you not see her smile? I wish I were to make out her book!"
Instead of answering Hyacinth grabbed the fabric and brought it over to the merchant table. The sisters moved in unison, each on their own accord to their task at hand, one retrieved a pair of scissors while the other brought her book and quill.
"It's a fine fabric, sir. You've made a good choice."
"I will take the whole lot, my dearest sister is in need of ribbons as well and we'd be delighted to hear your expertise on the matter…. Then we must not forget our dear Elinor in our pursuit for fabric, would you be so kind as to add a few extra ribbons."
"Any preference of colour?" The taller of the sisters had moved swiftly from behind the counter to guide the siblings to follow her. She carried herself with the grace of a swan across the crowded shop.
"Elinor seems rather taken to dark tones to match her hair and complexion but we ought to be giving our sister a surprise, so please present us with what you deem appropriate Mrs…." Marianne, the matchmaker, made sure to state that Elinor is their sister.
"Miss Kapoor… I think I got just the right ribbons for you."
Marianne gave her brother a nudge with her elbow. Oh her teasing out to be relentless once they leave the shop
Well, heres my 'something' for @blind-dates-fest. As usual with me it's turned into a 'Read- between the lines' fest, and I'm not sure how much actually comes through.
But this was the scene that wanted to be written (and I wanted Arthur Valentine to have someone in his life)
Readers are advised that the following contains explict entire episode plot -spoilers for the final episode of Foyle's War "Elise." If you haven't seen it and want to not know, don't read this.
He strides up the stairs to the landing, turns to the door and sets the 'spare' key in the lock - really its his - it turns as it always does and he lets himself in, then as instructed he makes sure the door has clicked shut, even leaning back against it before he calls out into the flat
"Arthur, it's me!"
No answer, not even a muffled acknowledgement But he must be home, surely. It was agreed
He heads down the hallway, plain utilitarian painted. You could put a Utility stamp on this place
"Arthur? Arthur." He turns into the sitting room. A dark figure slumped siting on the sofa. "Artie?"
The shape lifts just a little, head still bowed to it's hands.
"Artie, what is it?" He hurries across the room, crouching by the other man.
"Hilda's dead" the man he loves speaks the words in a flat tone, formal final.
What? "Was it an infection, I thought you said she was home?" That had been a dreadfully few days, after the shooting, the worry that pervaded the flat.
The bowed shape of his lover sways a little, answers before he speaks words "no. It was deliberate. She took Woodhouse with her, used a grenade. 'Gas explosion' we'll say, the usual deniability"
Theory's swirl through his mind, making no sense. Hilda Peirce taking her own life. Not possible. Killing, maybe but not suicide
Arthur lifts his head,now revealing eyes red rimmed, tear lines on his cheeks
It's a stupid thing to say, but he blurts it out like a stupid schoolboy "I Don't understand."
Arthur's eyes don't even crinkle in the flicker of amusement at his niavety "I shouldn't tell you Eddie, but I don't think she'd mind... You know there were agents sent to France in the war. Women a lot of them..."
He nods, silent. Interrupting Arthur now - impossible
"Well, towards the end several of them barely made it to the ground before they were caught. Woodhouse it turns ..." Arthur gulps "Woodhouse knew the networks were blown, but he didn't tell anyone. And so we, Hilda, sent more agents to the networks right into the German hands."
"He deserved to die then." She granted him a quicker death than he deserved, a quicker smoother path to one than that of the girls.
"Yes, but why did she?"Artie's voice nearly cracks,
he reaches out, puts a hand on his loversshoulder around his back. Feels the soft internal shuddering that doesn't show on the outside
" We needed her here more." Arthur leans forwards, to rest his dark forehead on his shoulder, and slowly Edward feels the shaking grip him as the tears come once again.
His own eyes burn and sting, remembering the sharp eyed, sharp faced woman who had sat across a desk from him, drilling him on his clearances and his politics (ostensibly for a job, but really,really, he knows now, for Arthur's benefit) Shrewd and sharp as a blade she'd been, and yet there had been a glimmer of kindness behind the outward visage.
She hadn't ever sacked Arthur, in spite of his 'proclivities' - as some would call them-being both Illegal and a security risk. She quietly approved me, she knew what we are to each other, and she never said a word to denounce us.
Hilda, why? And then, a stone in his stomach, he knows "Did she blame herself, for the girls?
Arthur shifts in his arms, lifting his head a bit, "She was their CO, the last person they often saw on English soil, of course she did, and then the Miles boy died as well, in this whole mess."
There's an icicle of sense through his heart.
"Then, perhaps - she thought her death would be an atonement to them." God knows, I saw enough of the radio ops sitting ghost faced when their calls went dead, or echoed into silence- and often times they wouldn’t have been able to do anything to help the plane on the other end, except bear a witness, and speak as a final friend.
For Miss Pierce it would only have been worse, the Service all knew the tales of her seeking through German and France for her missing, accounting for all but six of them.
He doesn't shift his grip on Arthur, but in his mind he stands to attention, offers a salute.
May you find peace, of some sort Ma'm, and may you find those you couldn't, even though you tried to do right by them.
But England still needed you here, the Service, Arthur, me.
Arthur weeps near silently onto his shoulder, and he gives what little comfort knowing you are not alone, and that your back is watched, might give. Little that it is, I'm here
it's that time of year again! i wrote this in a bit of a fugue state way too late at night lol. anyway meet deor, my tlk oc - ironically my first considering how much i love this show. happy blind dates all and enjoy :))
(wc: 1k)
Deor has loved the sunlight since he was young.
Years have passed, but when he closes his eyes he can still remember it: sitting on the edge of the dock outside his family’s home in the marshes, face tilted to the light, eyes shut as he listened to the wind soughing through the reeds.
Perhaps if he hadn’t loved the light so much, the monks wouldn’t have come for him and he would never have left. But then he would not have met Sihtric. Strange that someone who favours black and grey more than any other man Deor has met should make his life so bright.
A hand grasps his. He would flinch from the coldness of the touch were he not so cold himself. Ingrith.
“Do not be afraid,” she says. He can see her breath faintly in the cold air. It has been hours since the king’s men left them here, shut them up in a cave away from Bebbanburh and Sihtric and home. Perhaps longer. Without the light, it is hard to tell.
“Sihtric will come,” he says with more bravery than he feels.
He feels rather than sees her smile. “Yes. And my Finan. And then we will have to ask them what took them so long.”
If they still live. The thought is a treacherous one, seeping into the corners of his mind and turning everything dark inside. Lord Uhtred is banished, perhaps dead. Who is to say Finan and Sihtric have not suffered the same fate?
Deor closes his eyes to pray. The words will not come. What good are they? All that is left of his former calling is the cross around his neck, a cross that now hangs there alongside the Thor’s hammer Sihtric had gifted him several Yuletides ago. Deor had given him a cross of his own, and Sihtric had smiled, a precious thing for how rarely it appeared. “Your God watches over me, as mine do for you.”
Please, Deor sends the thought into the cold, dank air. There is no sky, no sun. They are hidden from everyone. If God cannot find him, how will Sihtric?
He must have made a noise, because Ingrith holds his hand tighter. “Sihtric will come,” she says, soft but firm.
Deor lets out a shivering breath. The dark presses in. “Sihtric will come.”
~
More time passes. Hours, days… It is hard to breathe. The darkness seems to have taken on a life of its own. Right now it feels like it might swallow Deor whole.
Ingrith squeezes his hand. Weaker, now. Deor tries to turn his head, but his limbs refuse to move.
Don’t let me die in the dark, he thinks numbly. If I am to die, let it be in the light. And please let me see Sihtric again, if only for a moment.
Their faiths will separate them after death. Even if he shared Sihtric’s belief in the Danish gods, he is not a warrior and never has been. Yet perhaps, if there is mercy, there will be a moment, a pause…enough time for them to say goodbye before their paths diverge forever.
Don’t let me die in the dark.
~
Scraping noises. Voices.
Deor’s eyes flutter open briefly. Still dark. Ingrith's hand is lax in his. Her skin is so cold.
The voices make him frown. They seem oddly familiar, and yet he still cannot move. There is a heavy rock crushing his chest and all he wants to do is sleep.
His eyes close just as the first stone is removed.
~
“Deor.”
Someone is calling his name.
He is frozen.
“Deor.” Hands cup his face, calloused and familiar. “Please.”
Deor breathes in. It stabs right through his chest, but the air is clean.
Is he dead? Is this the moment?
His eyes open.
Light. Too much of it. He whimpers, flinches away. It is as if he is being run through.
“Breathe.” Sihtric’s hands, Sihtric’s voice. He is here. That soothes Deor somewhat. “Breathe. You are safe.”
And then, quieter: “Do not leave.”
Deor wants to reassure him, to ask him how it is he is here, but the dark pulls him under again, away from the light and the cold and the pain.
Away from Sihtric.
~
When Deor wakes again, he knows he is alive.
Everything hurts, from his fingers to his toes. Opening his eyes is a battle in itself; the light he has loved now more like an enemy than a friend. But it’s enough to show him where he is.
Bebbanburh. A bedchamber. Fire burning in the hearth. Furs piled around him. Outside he can hear the sounds of early morning: hens clucking, footsteps, quiet voices.
And next to the bed is Sihtric, head resting on his chest as he sleeps.
Deor watches him carefully. He knows he is alive, and yet a part of him still wonders if this is some kind of dream conjured up by his own longings.
Sihtric looks tired. Thinner. There is a new scar across his cheek that was not there before. His clothes are muddy and stained. But he is breathing. Alive.
They both are.
Relief floods Deor. Tears run down his cheeks. Those hurt too, but he does not mind.
Sihtric’s eyes open then. His gaze—one brown eye, one blue—goes toward the bed instantly. “Deor.” He crouches by the furs.
“Sihtric,” Deor says, and then he is crying, really crying. He sobs until the breath is all but choked from his lungs, and Sihtric holds him for all of it.
~
“Is anyone else here?”
Deor waits until he has finished crying to ask the question. His voice is a little hoarse, leftover tears still clogging the back of his throat.
Sihtric does not answer him immediately. “Lord Uhtred. Finan. The queen too.”
“And from the cave?”
Sihtric has never lied to him. He says nothing, and somehow that tells Deor all.
They are gone. Everyone else in the cave is gone. The dark stole them away.
He does not realise he is crying again until Sihtric sits down next to him. “I need to see Finan.”
“When you can walk,” Sihtric says. Quiet as ever, and yet Deor knows there is no moving him. “The blame lies with those who advised the king. Not you.”
It is the most distant term Sihtric has ever used to refer to Aethelstan. Truthfully Deor has no idea if he will be able to look the boy he’d once known in the eyes again without seeing Ingrid and everyone else who had died in that cave.
“Is he here?”
Sihtric nods. “There was a battle. King Aethelstan’s advisor Ingilmundr was working for the Danes. We pushed them back. I heard the king took Ingilmundr’s head himself.”
“Good,” Deor says, and despite vengeance being a sin he cannot bring himself to regret it.
He does not want to sleep. But the dark is coming for him again.
“Rest,” Sihtric says. “You will be better when you wake.”
“Can you stay?” Deor asks. He knows with the aftermath of a battle there will be a hundred things to do. But if he has to lie alone in this room, as spacious as it is, he fears the walls will close in and crush him, blocking out the light forever.
Sihtric runs a thumb over his forehead and then rests one hand over his heart, where the cross and hammer lie. “As long as you will have me.”
Perhaps Deor is imagining it, but the shadows seem to retreat a little at his words.
He settles back under the furs, Sihtric’s hand in his, warm and alive. There will be time to mourn, to pray, to perhaps…try to forgive, one day.
But for now he sleeps. And the light follows him down and keeps the dark at bay.
a/n: my first band of brothers oc!! she's silly! if you were looking for dialogue, I'm sorry because you will not find this here. I love my cringefail baby, she thinks she's sooo funny. I hope you all will enjoy this silly girl written by a silly girl (me). Dear Petronella 'Nellie' van der Heide has been in my heart for a while now and I'm happy to share her for the @blind-dates-fest. I do have a story 'planned' for her (two little bullet points in my notebook) and that is coming to a cinema near you soon! Until then, enjoy this! (And special thanks to my dear friend @loserkaleidoscodes for beta reading.)
Life (magazine) had tasked Petronella van der Heide (third generation Dutch immigrant, younger sister and most importantly, massive snoop) with writing a short piece on the airborne infantry, a branch of the military which, up until recently, she had known very little about. Very little meaning absolutely nothing, in this case.
In order not to embarrass herself in front of the (future) parachutists and her superiors, she read up on everything she could find about them. Then Nellie packed up her equipment and her photographer (it had indeed been hard to get him to fit into her backpack) and headed out to Camp Taccoa, where she was first introduced to Colonel Sink.
He pushed her off to Easy Company, his flagship Company apparently, because he must be too busy being an old fart to talk to a lowly journalist like her.
E-Company was led by a Lieutenant Sobel. Now, she prided herself in being exceptionally well in reading atmospheres and coming to conclusions (often even to the right ones) about the relationships between people. But even someone who was blind, deaf and overall entire incapable of taking in an environment, would be able to tell with absolute certainty that nobody in E-Company liked this man. Nellie would write her sister Betsy a long and gossipy letter about that, but she sure as hell could not write it down in her article.
“This,” Lieutenant Sobel introduced them, “is a photographer from Life magazine. And this is a journalist.” It did not go unnoticed to Nellie that he mentioned the male part of their little documenting duo first, nor did it escape her that he hadn’t mentioned their names. “They will be documenting you shameful people for the next few days. I hope you will at least be able to perform for the camera because the good of the country and this company is clearly not motivation enough. Switch into your PT gear, we’re running Currahee.”
Any interest which she, a woman, an alien creature, might have garnered in a group of soldiers was entirely overshadowed by Sobel’s little speech, so quickly and totally that Nellie almost felt offended. What the hell had she gone through the trouble of curling her hair and putting on make up for?
Upon finding out that ‘Currahee’ was a mountain, Nellie promptly dropped her plan of following the soldiers around during their training and decided to document the camp, barracks, mess hall and the likes first. Now, she wasn't lazy by any means and she certainly took her job very seriously and did what she could to deliver her readers the most accurate and engaging report possible, but she also had limits. One of those limits just happened to be running up hills when she was already panting just from looking up at the top. Especially not when it was so hot that she could feel sweat forming in her arm pits while doing nothing more strenuous than standing around.
So, while she waited for E-Company to come back down from the top of Currahee, she went on a little tour around the camp.
“Here,” she instructed Flimsy, the pitiful photographer by her side, “take a picture of this.” Flimsy was of course not actually named Flimsy. His real name was James Ford (“No relation to the Fords though, Ma’am.” As if she couldn’t tell.) and she had nicknamed him Flimsy after the worn out elbows of the shirts he wore.
While Flimsy was occupied with getting the best shots of all the things Nellie pointed him towards, she tried to come up with the best snappy title something along the lines of: 'Easy-Company's training - anything but easy'. Yeah... that would need a little work.
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It was confirmed to her half an hour later that not running up that hill had been a fantastic decision when she saw the state in which the men returned.
"How was the exercise?" Nellie couldn't help but ask one of them, a man whose name tag read Muck. Nellie had quickly become very fond of these name tags; like a gift just for her. It wasn’t that the woman was bad with names, as a journalist it was more or less her job to be good with them, but when being confronted with an entire company full of new faces even she reached her limits.
She had always liked to tease and he looked just so delightfully ready to drop to the ground and not get up for hours.
"It was goddamn shitty. Write that in your little article. Shitty."
"I will," she promised and noted down: exercises exhausting but the men push through without complaining. Nobody wanted to hear about them whining. That was just boring. America’s best, their heroes of tomorrow did not whine. They were romantically stoic and filled with patriotism so strong it dulled all aches of training. Or this, at least, was the picture which would sell.
Then she watched Sobel chew the men out for ridiculous things (messy boots, creased trousers, thread on their shoulders). Jesus, she thought, this is the army, aren't they kinda supposed to be dirty all the time? Not even she had noticed these things and she had started out as a writer for a fashion magazine, for heaven's sake, she was trained to find flaws in clothing. Maybe Nellie should suggest Vogue to him, if he came looking for a job after the war. She had certainly seen more than one fashion designer scream at his frightened models like this, over similar irrelevancies. She doubted however, that he had much of an eye for fashion.
The food was abysmal, as she had expected it to be and she only ate a few spoonfuls of it for the sake of trying it. She'd get something actually edible on her way back to the little hotel she had rented.
But maybe, she should get used to army gruel, if she really planned on reporting from Europe. She couldn't simply stop by a roadside diner for a burger on her way through (hopefully) formerly occupied France.
Nellie took a few notes, which mostly would go toward Betsy and not the entry, notes about how the food tasted and looked as if it had been eaten before, about how handsome some of the soldiers were, and about how maybe Betsy still had a place for her back home if this whole war journalist thing didn't work out for her. The last part was mostly joking, she wasn't seriously going to drop her life long dream just because of some bad food but Betsy would find it entertaining anyway. And she lived to entertain.
Speaking of entertaining, she knew of course what the readers wanted the most: quotes.
Direct impressions not from some little journalist but from the soldiers themselves, their brothers, sons, husbands. Or simply random American men, but she had found that random American men were always more interesting than her, a random American woman. She decided to talk to some of them men she had written off as calmer and more approachable than the others first - she'd handle the rowdy bunch later.
After that meal she really couldn't stomach having to endure any annoying sexist remarks (which were always coming), so she headed for a man named Winters first. The tall, red headed (did you know they still made those?) man basically emanated calm, so she approached him while the measly lunch was being cleaned up.
"Well there is someone you ought to meet but whatever you do, no Crocodile Dundee jokes or anything. I know it's tempting but don't, right side of the planet but wrong island." Rebecca with her clipboard in hand tapped Ted's chest before leading him down a hallway with flickering lights.
"Crikey."
"No none of that either."
"Right. I'll be quiet as a mouse then." Ted zipped his lips with an invisible zipper but still smiled, making Rebecca roll her eyes at him before her high heels filled the air like a murderer dragging their blade across marble floors.
Knocking on an iron door before a caramel soft voice called them to come in.
"Rebecca, what brings you down to the dungeons... Oh I see..." a tall dark man dressed in scrubs and a labcoat , who looked like had just escaped an BBC Arthuriana adaptation, had gotten up from his chair and now slowly moved over to them from behind his desk. His accent was all over the place, as if his tongue was in an internal conflict between Wales and New Zealand. Some words were very clearly pronounced with a lovely Welsh valley accent, while others had down under kiwi charms. Either way something about his English told you that he would rather be speaking a different language he was fluid in than this one.
"Dr Acosta meet our new trainer Ted Lasso. Ted meet Dr Acosta."
"Ah… the American! Croeso."
"Bless you!" Ted shook his hand, which made the good doctor frown.
"Croeso means hello...You'll find out Wales exists once we play in the millennium stadium in Cardiff...."
"Ah Cardiff crikey!"
The sports medics frown deepened, while a sour look spread across his face at the Americans smile.Taking a deep breath and reminding himself that he loves the club, no matter the management, he decided to give him a chance.
"Well if you need me.....need being if anyone is bleeding, crying or to solemnly cast fear into someone's heart you'll find me here an hour before practice and depending where and especially who we play during the match on the sidelines on the pitch...Let's put like this it's best if you don't seen."
"Alright noted,I'll leave you to your crypt then. Let us know if you need anything."
Rebecca's eyes widened as Ted bid his farewell. A crafty part of her mind began to wonder how long the Doctor would keep up with his shenanigans. He was a volunteer there, they very well needed him but he didn't need them, he had a private practice in town.
Laying his head to the side, running his fingers through this beard, the medic beamed with a mischievous smile,as something dawned on him.
"Say Gaz is still not allowed to drive for at least a fortnight….We're playing against Nottingham Forest on the weekend, so you'll be needing a driver. I would most happily take over his position till he's back."
Rebecca tried her best to stifle her laughter, oh she absolutely was going to let this happen. Potentially bribe someone to film this.
"Well almighty gotta love someone who goes all in for their team….Really appreciate it."
"So that's a yes?"
"You got my word doc!"
Ted gave him a handshake, to seal the deal. Not a clue what he had just agreed to. Rebecca and the medic exchanged a quick smile and nod, before the latter send them on their way to continue the tour.
A few days later...
Dr Acosta wandered into the changing rooms, a medic backpack half strapped on one shoulder, most of the team had already gathered to listen to an impromptu motivational speech by their new coach, placing his finger on his lips, indicating that he meant not to interrupt. Some of the players cheered when they saw the doctor, while others just nodded at his presence with a grin, they all held a mutual respect for him, afterall he was the one who fixed their often not game related injuries without questions. Not always free of judgment tho. Mainly due to post match dart games meant sooner or later one or two players would show up staggering with one or two darts in need of retrieving. Yet his loyalty to both the club along with giving out cherry heart lollipops to brave patients, at the beginning just as a joke in a if you behave like childrens I will treat you like children manner,had made the team claim him as their own. They also very much knew not to mess with him. Or to give him car keys.
Nate frowned when he noticed the medic going straight for the coaches cabin instead of joining his side, which was unusual as they normally stuck to each other's side whenever the medic was on sight. They didn't speak a lot but both had a deep care for the other, which didn't require lots of words per se, perhaps a push in the right direction at some point.
Ted was still rambling on enthusiastically throwing in anecdotes which left more questions open than answered, while the assistant coach decided to slowly remove himself to check on the medic. The good doctor was occupied with deciphering the writing on the keychains in order to find the correct bus keys, cursing under his breath in a language Nate had tried to teach himself to well he wasn't actually sure why he had done so, not as if they spoke much to begin with. Hearing footsteps come closer Dr Acosta turned around to almost bump into the coach's assistant who had moved in close enough to assist him.
"Oh… kira ora Nate you scared the hell outta me."
"I didn't mean to scare you… sorry… Can I help you?"
"Well yes actually. I'm looking for the bus keys."
"How come, if you don't mind me asking?"
Dr Acosta smiled sweetly, a smile which didn't really reach his eyes and usually cast fear in the hearts who were on the receiving end of it, save Nate who just smiled back. Leaning in to whisper while he placed a hand on the coach assistant's shoulder, the medic decided not to give up his game play strategy just yet.
"We play Forest so I'd like to take our mobile stretcher with us and I'd put it in the hatch without anyone noticing."
"Oh of course… It's this key. Do you need a hand with anything else?"
"Diolch cari.. thanks, that be all."
Without losing much more time the medic rushed past him and disappeared out of sight till it was time for the team to gather for their departure. The players were too caught up in internal debates to even question who'd drive the bus until it was too late to jump ship. Donning his aviators, Doctor Acosta hopped into the driverseat, shutting the automatic doors, while three people suddenly became very aware of the situation. Keelee, Roy and Nate each held their breath and shared a horrified look at the driver then at each other, as if they just spotted the iceberg heading straight for the titanic, while the engine began to come to life with a roar. Now here's the thing, the most important thing to know about Doctor Acosta besides that he's very proud of his kiwi-welsh heritage and devotion to the club, is and it's quite surprising that it wasn't put up on posters everywhere, was to never let him drive. After all he had learned how to drive in a hearse and drove like a bat out of hell, no matter the vehicle.
