VOX POPULI.

I said to the sun, “Tell me about the big bang.” The sun said, “It hurts to become.” :۞: ASTRID HUNTER. TWENTY-NINE. ANGEL AT WAR.

[haloedhunter]

☛ 𝐃𝐎𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐄𝐑.

[redlipstickresurrected]

Koen Lybaert (Belgian, b. 1965, Wilrijk, Belgium) - Mirria III, 2013 from Imaginary Landscapes series  Paintings: Watercolors on Paper

[haloedhunter]

𝐊. 𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐇 —

with. – @haloedhunter​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ where. – kashvi’s office ( & wherever astrid is ) when. – february 18, late morning.

The echoes of the night replay in her head, a cacophony of gunfire and exploding cars and Gabrielle Warden’s fury. Her office is the opposite: the immaculate, spot-free and wood-accented room in the Singh Industries building is eerily quiet, the only sound the ticking of her desk clock and the tapping of her foot. Kashvi is, in truth, in all sense of the word, exhausted. Her head hums with unrest and a displeasure she can’t voice, with a storm that threatens to rage harder than she can afford. And so in stead she turns to hand-written to-do list. Next item: call Astrid. 

It was ironic, was it not? Her Angel had worked so hard to get out of her first assigned murder and yet a body had dropped at her hands, nonetheless. It was if the other had tried to outrun fate and fate had cruelly caught up with her. If she were meaner and more vindictive, Kashvi might find some kind of pleasure in the situation, but she finds none. Really, she is frustrated with this turn of events: bloodshed is inevitable, when part of War, but Astrid was of most use to them with her clever head solidly on her shoulders. ( Not that Kashvi had done enough to shield her, of this blood on her hands: perhaps she was to blame too, and perhaps in the depth of her being something like regret lived. To voice it, though, would do no one any good, she thinks. ) Astrid answers soon enough and Kashvi’s tone is something warm and almost careful, “Astrid, hi,” she says. Desk chair is pushed away from her desk, wheels rolling over wooden floor. “I wanted to check in, if it’s a right time?” She holds off from going into detail, waiting for the go-ahead. Still, if Astrid were to say no, Kashvi intends to push. They were to have this conversation. 

— ۞ —

She never would have thought that there existed a hurt that it could not soothe: Juno’s face tucked against her chest, swathed in blankets, limbs as tangled as those blonde locks her own fingers card through. This tenderness which warms her, down to the marrow. This warmth that had been a revelation when it had first revealed itself to her. But, as it turns out, there is. Does it make her any more than a foolish, lovestruck girl to have truly thought to lose herself in the woman she loves, the sweetness of her smell and the pleasure of her tantalising touch? Perhaps. Yet the shock of the weight she has awoken on her chest with certainly does. The unadulterated, jarring shock that this cannot be expended organically, replacing ugliness with goodness. It cannot be buried, as surely as the body was going to be. Like the rot swathed in flowers, grief festers. For a stranger. For a woman whose name she does not know—and killed. What right do you have? her heart questions; the answer to which her mind knows. Hands cover the ears of her heart, for they know it cannot bear it.

What can it bear? For her to slide her feet into her trainers as she does every morning, and despite it all, as much as because of it, head out for a run. To not shed tears she has no right to shed and let moisture out in the sweat that beads her brow and dampens, imperceptibly, the dark fabric of her shirt. To push her limbs to move faster, her muscles to pump harder, the thundering of her pulse to be the deafening roar in her ears. 

— And still, the vibration of the phone in her pocket cuts through it. What is it, but a testament to her shaky state of mind, that Astrid, so uncharacteristically, answers without a look at the screen. “Hello,” overlaps with the greeting, and it takes another beat still for it to register just who speaks on the other end of the line. You can’t hang up, she reminds herself as she halts to a standstill, narrowly thumped by a passerby before she leans against a lamp-post out of the way, her eyes falling shut as she pants through her breaths. “Sure,” she says, voice hollow. Robotic. “I’m not at work. What would you like to check-in about, Kashvi?” 

[elisabetholsens]

LAURA HARRIER for InStyle Mexico (December 2020) © Kat Irlin

[adoghurtling]

“I have wrestled with the angel and I am stained with light and I have no shame.”

— Mary Oliver, “Of Power and Time,” from Upstream: Selected Essays

[fylauraharrier]

Laura Harrier for BVLGARI Serpenti Seduttori at London Fashion Week

[haloedhunter]

𝐙. 𝐖𝐈𝐍𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑 —

–

The decision to abandon their stance is mutual, linked arms dropping while the Winchester ducks down to allow himself to slide into the car without hitting his head off the roof, watching through the windscreen as Astrid rounds the car. He reaches for the seat belt, pulling it around him until it slides into the buckle, adjusting the seat until he would deem his position comfortable; by which time his friend had settled into the driver’s seat.  

“No change from the usual then,” it’s meant to be a question, even though it’s spoken as a statement - a half-joke almost - understanding stretching the edges of his mouth upward. Neither of them were strangers to a hectic work schedule, which (long term) influenced their perception of a ‘normal’ work day. Brows arch, accompanying a hum of interest as she recalls her week, turning his head toward her as she spoke, almost laughing at her self-awareness. He’d read the newspapers. “I’m sure you had one up your sleeve.” Astrid was not just resourceful but clever too, which left him with little belief that she would have struggled with the task.

Zach can feel the smile slide off his expression upon hearing her admittance, the attempt to cement it back in place left him with a facsimile of the genuine article. “Oh,” is all he can say, a monosyllabic acknowledgement that she had been given more than him - choice - grappling with the following thought that considered whether he would have wanted it. The flip of a coin - heads or tails - with an unknown choice on the other side - murder or… what? - could he have still asked for the former as it turned mid-air. Would he have wanted to? “Guessing that was a fun conversation?” 

It still wasn’t something he’d fully come to terms with, though the fire of guilt had dwindled, and he stomped on any remaining embers when they threatened to ignite again. Was a reward for enacting bad deeds still something to be treasured? Cherished? Or was it, too, tainted with spilled blood which caught the sunlight like rubies and served as a reminder? He wasn’t sure if he wanted - needed - to talk about it, ripping it apart alongside his meal and trying to balance the flavours on his palette. “I-,” he pauses, wondering if he should say anything, “I didn’t have a choice.” The realisation soon follows that, perhaps, he wouldn’t have wanted one after all.

Even impelled to peripheral view, Astrid cannot keep from hinging her breaths on Zach’s every minute movement. As though the slightest shift is purloined evidence; crumbs laying the path to where she wishes to venture to, seeking, seeking, seeking, answers – be it to sate the appetites of her angels or her demons. She watches him, raptly, and her chest stiffens, frozen in a moment of bracing itself: her held breath, the anticipation thickening to molasses within her veins. “My sleeves are well-stocked,” she agrees with him in airy ease that gives none of her turmoil away. If there is to be a crumbling, she’d already decided, before she had knocked on the front door, it must be him. Astrid had to stay strong. In control. Steady as a bridge for either of them to be able to get across. Steady enough for it to remain a choice for her to hold her tongue, to not add: The question isn’t do I have a trick; it’s whether they deserve it from me.

The path she cuts down the street is not unfamiliar. But Astrid, on the rare occasion she gets behind the wheel, drives like the law-maker she is: cautious and controlled, always shy of speed-limits, eyes right where they ought to be. She weighed it, the pros and cons of instigating confrontation — for what was this, if not a glorified fucking intervention? — in a moving car, and though she is loath not to watch his eyes give truth away, as most eyes do to her, the way an escape from her scrutiny lends itself to eliciting answers from her friend is not to be disregarded, either. A lesser evil, she’d decided, leading them to this moment, now. He could not exactly open the door and roll out of a moving car, could he? If he did, Astrid could still consider it a learning opportunity – even if only to learn that she does not know him at all, let alone as she’d thought she did.

Oh, he says, and her mind rushes to interpret it. A translator on a time-crunch. What does it relay? it questions. Shock, it diagnoses rapidly. Of what? Did it not occur to him that he has an advantage? Family trumps daughter’s arm candy. Her mouth purses, keeping every word to herself, until she decides which one will do better: “I wouldn’t call it a conversation, Zach. I put my foot down and bartered something else. The man meant to die died; she tasked Juno with it instead. I used leverage of my own. I didn’t have a choice, either – none that was given. I simply took it.” Driving etiquette tucked into her pocket, she does slant a glance towards him then. “I was a lawyer before I was this. There is always a loophole in the fine print. I learnt that a long time ago. When I learnt you’d better have a trick up either sleeve at any given moment. It’s how you survive.”

[haloedhunter]

𝐉. 𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐃𝐄𝐍 —

Born to a gilded, ivory castle and legacy steeped in generations of éminence grise, as a little girl she’d grown with a head full of myth and fairytale. It seemed only fitting, only right, that as princess to her own kingdom and dominion, that she envisage herself a storybook future that would unravel according to perfectly laid fantasy. The architecture of her world was beautiful and glorious, a concoction of daydream make-believe and the boundless expanse of a child’s imagination. Romance, chivalry, courtship were the pillars of picturesque tales woven in gold thread and reverie, and the lodestar of these stories, the shimmering pinnacle of the hero’s journey and the maiden’s patient sacrifices, was love. Love, the undying revelation of truth and virtue and all that was good and worthy. Love, the unparalleled force that could conquer all. Love, she would think to herself, splayed in a garden amidst the wildflowers of the Warden’s Summer Villa, dazed by Monaco sunlight, was worth everything and anything. Even to possess a little scrap of it, a wisp of bliss clutched in the tiny constellation of her palm, would be sacrosanct. 

That little girl would indeed suffer her share of fairytale trials and tribulations — locked in spiralling tower, caged in a glorious prison of her family’s own making, cursed with the blood that ran through her very veins — and she abandoned the illusions of happiness and rapture that came with love. What use did she have for illustrious fantasy and vaunted hopes of finding the keeper of her soul, the object of her singular, perfect love, when she could not make her own mother bare her heart to her? And what was so wrong with her, intrinsically, that she could not make her mother love her? The answer was more elementary than Juno could have conceived: there were simply more important things in the world than love. Ne sois pas bête, her mother had said. Bien sûr que je t'aime. But do you like me, do you see me, do you know me at all outside of maternal obligation and onus. Yes, she realised, there were worse things in this world than not being loved.

It was as if she had been blinkered, blind and deaf when Astrid found her. It was Astrid that had picked her out from a crowd, a lone asteroid in a black sky, silhouetted by her own solitude and reclusion. It was Astrid that had sparked their awakening, the cosmic phenomenon that had rewritten the laws of all that she had known and come to understand about the world, pulling her into orbit of solar flares and soft lips. They had created their own covenant, a binding of truth and honesty, seen without skin or artifice. With Astrid, there was no need to conceal or aggrandise, no purpose for deception or justification. She had seen it all: the horror and the swallowed sins, the trail of blood and bodies spanning a thousand miles to Babylon. The incarnation of War, dressed as beauty and wisdom, was a monstrous thing to love. In many ways, their story was an underworld myth — Persephone descending into the kingdom of the dead to be with her deathless lover, her Queen of shadow and bone. Better creatures could love you, I know. But now they’ll have to get through me.

If it was a matter of happiness, of relinquishing heritage and birthright for a dazzling, sunburst chance at peace, then Juno might have taken it just for her. For her, anything. — But they had both been named for goddesses, born with a hunger for the divine, for purpose and glory and the right to rule pantheons with an empyrean burning that outweighed any mortal longing for ordinary bliss. 

Her beloved is fair and magnanimous, a searing beacon of justice and compassion. She says Lives are not petty in the same breath of laughter that she kisses Juno with, sweetness melting upon their mouths like sunlight and the distant warmth of stars.  “In the grand scheme of things, Darling, some lives are.”  They don’t hold their tongues with each other, no bitten tongues or suppressed words to smooth the fault lines of difference between them. She loves Astrid for every way they’re different, the many and varied paths they diverge. She understands things about the world that Astrid would interrogate and argue into submission before she would allow it to become prosaic. Death, murder and War’s laissez-faire approach to morality are just the tip of the iceberg.  

“I’m not saying that betraying us should automatically equate to death — trying, sentencing, due process and all that —”  Juno gives a little wave of her hand, a teasing acknowledgement of Astrid’s unwavering conviction in the law. I know the scripture and the holy writ, she thinks, I learned it all by heart before my world ran red with blood and retribution. She shrugs, insouciant and cold-hearted even as she strokes a hand across Astrid’s jaw, a finger brushing her cascade of dark curls across her shoulder. Not so much a rationalisation because Juno doesn’t deal in philosophical quandaries or existential doubt, but a reinforcement of stark reality. In the law of War, treason is tantamount to worse fates that death; to die swiftly, quietly, is a mercy.  “But he knew what he was getting into. Everyone that swears allegiance to us understands that what we do to our enemies as a necessity. Whatever he chose to value more than his own life — money, sex, power — he chose it knowing that crossing us would make him an enemy of the House of War.”  

She watches Astrid think, admiring the intricate machinery of her cunning and calculation. Their attraction had been wrought equally by mind as it was by body, an understanding struck between equals perfectly matched in wit, brilliance, and political savoir-faire. It was glorious to watch her in the House, castigating the ancient Lords that reigned from the comfort of corruption and languorous rot, but it was something else to see her like this, her guile and adroitness out in the open, artfully constructing manoeuvres.  “That would do quite nicely. Appropriate, too, with their recent campaigning to greenwash their activities and paint themselves as saints of the new environmental crusade.”  She spares a wayward, far-flung thought of Rafael and what this would mean for his family’s empire, before discarding it just as easily as a devious smile blooms across her face.  “FemEn served up on a silver platter for the life of one man. She’d be a fool to turn down such a trade. It wouldn’t even have to be you if you planted the information with the Daily Mail. And of course, with you leading the exposé, all she’d have to do is sign on the dotted line.”

A little thrill of pleasure and adrenaline runs through her spine as she leans in to capture Astrid’s lips, licking into her mouth with a blossoming of heat and desire. It’s fiery and a touch obscene, her hand anchoring on Astrid’s jaw so she can press deeper, closer, harder. When she pulls away, the slight hitch in her breath and composure tellingly reveals the state of her arousal.  “Have I ever told you that watching you plot the destruction of our enemies is extremely attractive?”

Astralis, her mother calls her more often than she calls her the name she had chosen with her husband for their daughter. My little star, she had hummed through girlhood. She hums, still, sometimes, when the woman Astrid has become needs to hear it most. Perhaps it is hubris, the hunger for such blasphemous benediction, but the Hunters had raised their daughter to blossom with an uncaged mind – had taught her that belief could not be indoctrinated and remain true faith. They had raised her to discover: to crave knowledge and be insatiable for its every taste, to earn the satisfaction and respect its magnitude, to be still with its weight in the cradles of her palms. It had led her to the letter of the law, hadn’t it? To Lady Justice’s feet to lay down a bounty in allegiance she had meant. An allegiance she means, still, to this day – no matter the hurdles or perceptions of her heart. It had never been the laudation Astrid had craved from her parents’ endearments, she concludes retrospectively. It may just have been the reminder she requires, then and now, now and again, that stars have points sharp enough to cut oneself on. Does much folklore not preach of the power that beauty holds to annihilate? Biblical lore defines her name as one with divine strength. Astrid cannot decide which feels more a prophecy.

Then again, she cannot vow that Juno is the fulfilment of one, too.

Some days, she knows not whether to call her collision with Juno — and a collision it had been, to feel struck by the very sight of her, to jolt at the first brush of fingertips against her waistline — an exhibition of the ouroboros, or kismet at work. She had once called her a demon of temptation, champagne bubbling as golden as her laughter, spilling across skin that wore imprints the shape of her mouth. The demon that called to the darkness within her, deep-seated and tamped down upon, as visceral as her light, for there was no light without shadows. She had called her a knife to her throat. The blood in her mouth. The arrow in her heart. Such violent notions of a divine, primordial love—and Juno understood. Juno understood as no one had. As none could. Juno, who would prick her finger upon the spindle with a grin ablaze with feral defiance. Juno, who had fallen, and taken Astrid down with her, with the promise of her soul never being alone again. 

Consumed, only to carry the one another within the other’s heart. It was not becoming whole; it was to be more than. Just what Astrid has always wished to be. How can she ever doubt that her dragon would not make her every wish come true—when her existence alone is just that?  

Astrid arches a brow at those ruthless words, challenges, as few would dare: “Oh? Whose grand scheme?” She dares. She dares dauntlessly, because she knows what even fewer are privy to: fear is relished, respect is required—and all pales in comparison to one who can give as well as they take, can keep up, and keep you on your toes. Juno has taught her this, over the years. Juno has shown her. For this, Astrid does not condemn her. But condemnation wasn’t judgement, as Juno’s skin is as thick as her own – off of which her lover’s quips roll off, without snagging a single thread. “That’s right, you little shit,” she harrumphs with gusto in response, the bob of her head triumphant. "I’ll pull the handcuffs back out again, if you want a refresher course on how impactful the law can be.” The sensation of that fickle fingertip traipsing against her skin is undeniable, but she only cants her head to it. Her gaze never wavers, smouldering.

As easily as her words play with levity, they return to the grave – pun intended. She is far from pleased by those words. They are not a placation or fantasy spun to soften the blow of reality. They are not coddling. “Your game, your rules,” she surmises from Juno’s words, relinquishing reins where she absolutely must, if only for it to land where they often land: at a stalemate. The world it operates in — the House of War, as her lover calls it, and the others — are not subject to the law. They pass the judgements. They decree the executions. This far in their underworld, the letter of the law does not reach. Not the law Astrid has studied, and practiced, and challenges at least half as often as she enforces it. Astrid has not yet learnt to stomach it. Somehow, what daunts her most is the lurking day she may. Not that her words betray it when she purrs, “That’s fair enough, so long as we keep Mummy Dearest from turning me from the pawn she is still under the illusion I am to a murderer. The only red on my hand I enjoy, my heart, is my nail polish, or the lipstick on your mouth.”

It is that lipstick that distracts Astrid, in the end. “Excellent,” is all her mouth has the chance to conclude before it is caught and all others are devoured from her tongue, caressed by one that demands as the hand entrapping her jaw does. All rebuttals yield to desire that elicits a whimper from the depths of her, warmth pooling in her belly till the rest of it — the rest of it all, the rest of them all — is inconsequential. Astrid succumbs, surrendering to the touch that ensnares her as it sets her alight, the storm and safe harbour all at once. “No—” leaves her in a gasp of breath, as unravelled at Juno is, composure whittled down to flushed apples of cheeks that coax Astrid’s knuckles to their rosy curves. It is not the wisecrack she intends for it to be, too affected by breathlessness, and the eyes that wander a countenance she wants bare and against her. Commanding as Juno’s hand on her jaw, Astrid’s lips drag the slant of hers – straying, till her teeth catch on sensitive lobe. Her whisper hot against fragile carotid. “But you can show me, Juno. The way you’re dying to. The way I need you to.”

[ 𝐅 𝐈 𝐍  ]

[haloedhunter]

𝐄. 𝐒𝐀𝐃𝐈𝐊 —

with a permanently bruised heart in her throat, there’s only so much that eden can do save for drive, unwilling to indulge in any pointless conversation with her assigned companion —  she stays uncharacteristically quiet, her steady hands clad in black leather gloves all glued to the steering wheel as she swerves to the left, making no sound, refusing to even blink when she makes the following sharp turn, powerful enough to knock the air out of a man’s stomach. medusa’s daughter, a fool turned to stone, serpent-headed girl, she’s never felt so distant from the person that she is, or rather the girl that she tries to be. for a fleeting moment, she glances back at astrid, making sure that the other angel has her seat belt fastened, and in that exact moment her mask shatters, falls to the ground and leaves her bare, betrayed and exposed. she has yet to reach the perfect level of stoicism; but she’s always been a slow learner. 

“12 minutes and 54 seconds, 53 seconds, 52 seconds…” she starts counting down, all too familiar with london’s streets and hidden paths, each bump and crease and dent on the road, every faded zebra crossing tarnished by squealing tires and stop sign that she boldly ignores. the road  —  her second mother —   a mother that welcomes and envelopes her into her wide arms, but forever advising her to stay cautious. the road is a mother, but a merciless one. “– no. but i have faith in her. she’s a capable girl, she doesn’t need to inform me of everything,” it’s a half-lie, for she would prefer to at least know something of her current state. “i know that she’s fine. i can’t explain it, but i would know if  – ” she doesn’t have the courage to finish the rest of her sentence, her mind refusing to engage in a battle with her frightful heart. “i would just know,” she read about it numerous times during her university days — the adamantine chains that bind some siblings together so that they can sense more than most assume is humanly possible; danger, pain of the other, a crisis. it’s just a theory, a hypothesis, something intangible and hardly explainable, but at this very moment, she’s a believer. “some things can’t be explained. that’s how it’s like when you have a sibling,” carman, please forgive me. “what about juno?” her mind goes back to he flaxen-haired woman and she finds herself wondering how astrid could ever love her. does it take a monster to love another?  “are you worried about her?”

twelve minutes, eden grants. the process of exsanguination can drain blood fatally in as little as five seconds, as much as over a minute, given the arterial source slit, astrid’s mind supplies. the tone robotic; one belonging to relaying of factoids and small-talk about the weather and inconsequential woes. it stops her short. not the information her mind summons, with a lifelong relationship with her own eidetic memory one she’s long-since been rendered used to – but, rather, that she cannot place where it is summoned from. it’s never happened to her before. this has never happened to her before. it is a failure she is fazed by, that makes her blink twice, in a manner that the macabre cannot faze her. does not this say everything about her? or at least too much. an uncomfortable amount that stops her short, turning her head to eden with disconcertment crumpling features unaccustomed the the humanness only her heart is steeped in, caged securely, as criminals assigned maximum sentence for detriment to society ought to be. astrid is unopposed to change, she will claim, and she is... so long as it is on her own terms, in accordance to her own plans, spurred by her own ambitions.

her head turns away as quickly as it did before, quick as a shock to the system. it matters little that, like this, with her gaze aimed out the window, watching london pass in a blur she does not see, her smile, as genuine as it is wearied, cannot be seen by the girl who elicits it. her words are spoken aloud, diction cogent as ever, somehow, and eden will hear them. “what has capability to do with it, eden?” the words do not mock. the question remains veritable, tin. “aren’t we all? our modern-underworld demands we be, or we don’t survive it.” 

we, her mouth says. 

there is an us & a them, still, her heart pleads. 

her mind is silent, supplying nothing at all. 

her mouth fights to fill the void of crippling quiet: “which means we all battle to survive it, depiction of darwinism at its most antediluvian. fighting back as hard as possible, because who doesn’t have something to prove? someone to survive for, if not one’s own self.” it did not help the if eden anoints no ending, cutting off the unbearable as ruthlessly as a diseased limb must be, too soon and in the middle as her sister’s life could be. as juno’s could be. would astrid know, too, then? as eden believes she would? “i was an only child,” she says, rolling the words around in her mouth, contemplation softening her words – or allowing them to rot, exposed to nefarious enzymes. was, she says, as though its past tense. isn’t it? “i’d like to say that i’d know, too. if,” astrid echoes eden, leaving unfinished just that, so long as the possibility was only a possibility. “she is my soulmate, that woman. i’m not a religious woman, but i am a spiritual one. i believe in divine force and mythic romanticisations – that the universe speaks to us, rushes in when we hold ourselves open to it. to find her was a cosmic event. i imagine to lose her would be, too.” her laughter is already haunted. “i am bloody terrified.”

[haloedhunter]

𝐒. 𝐑𝐎𝐌𝐄𝐑𝐎 —

he can honestly do without this.

the plan wasn’t exactly one he thought held a great deal of merit in the first place, but their role in it had been simply this - to cause a distraction - and in that much they had certainly achieved their goal… and then some.

bullets shattered glass - no fine spiderwebbing of visible cracks blossoming, just a series of sudden explosions of glittering fragments, helpless against the onslaught.  stonework and concrete joining the fray, chunks of mortar and fine dust adding to the chaos and confusion in the air.  confusion - at least, to those within the building.  some of whom think it a good idea to run - toward - the crack of gunshots.  to swarm toward the noise, simply because there was a portal from which they… mistakenly… think there will be an easy exit.

and to those shards of cutting glass. and the fine white dusting of brick and stone. is added a crimson splatter. a pool spilling here. a pound of flesh idling there.

he can’t help them.  darwinism at it’s finest on display. but if they escaped the hail of lead, they surely were felled by the fire that followed. fire - which - was not of their doing.  raining down from on high to blossom sudden petals of scorching liquid, smashing, spraying and ignighting faster than the eye could perceive.  off to one side there is a sudden ‘thump’ in the air.  an almost silence as a blast so loud drowns out everything else, the sound of gunfire, the screams of those who lay wounded, among the dead.  the thump - is pressure.  an explosion - and within his protective clothing, even solomon can feel the heat scorching at his skin.

they have achieved their goal.  and with the added bonus of pest retaliation to contribute to the chaos - it’s time to vacate before one of those falling missiles manages to hit a little too close to home.

and now he can’t see - too much smoke and ash and cloying fumes in the air…  kashvi, liam… the others seemingly beyond sight.  the only one he still has a view of is – astrid…

…standing there with debris and disarray around her.   impotent in the moment.  no reaction.  no resolve.  nothing.

– fuck.

he’s seen people freeze before.  people who have no control over their own instincts or emotions.  at least - not the instinct or emotion that would come from a moment like this.  and it’s not a common one.  solomon has seen destruction on this scale before… grander even.  he recognises it and adjusts accordingly.  astrid seems… catatonic.  frozen in place.   shock. detachment. disassociation.         – and just one… could be deadly.

“move!”

“move now!”

his voice raised still makes little dent over the cacophony of sound. no reaction.

– f u c k.

if she ends up toast, then solomon is going to have to answer some – testing – questions.  so yes… he can honestly do without this.  all of these little toy soldiers thinking they’re ready for – WAR – in the truest sense of the word.  unable to fucking function as soon as there’s a drop of blood on the ground.  she’s going to have to get used to those… stains…

…at least, she will… if she makes it out in one piece.

so he moves.  reaches out with one hand and snatches the back of the body armour of the riot suit.  snatches and all but drags her back - away from the flames.  he has no clue if her feet are moving with him, or if he’s just hauling her weight along with him, heels scraping on the ground beneath.  there’s a quick yank of his arm as he drags - like a dog shaking it’s prey between camped teeth - attempting to break through that rabid catatonia.

“astrid - move.  if you don’t we’re both dead.”

fuck it.  she can complain about bruises if they make it to the morning.

How many times had she stood outside this very building? PEST nightclub. A London attraction that had called to her, moth to flame, standing aglow in neon-bright glory as a symbol of a headfirst dive into the peculiar purgatory that was a traversing path beyond adolescence into the infancy of adulthood. Tequila shots couldn’t entirely blur the first night. How she’d been just through with final exams, free for the moment before it was time to jump into further education and brace herself for the price of her aspirations. A-Levels bested, prepped for the next chapter of her life. She had let herself go, relinquished a characteristic death-grip on moralistic ambition and cherished control—and let herself be, for the single span of a night. She had let music sink into her bloodstream, lace with amphetamines, let the rhythm lead and carry her astray. 

She had come alone, because she had needed to be. A decade prior, approximately. When she had still been just a girl. When she had looked upon the sight, and thought, truly, wholly, that she knew who she was and where she stood. Alone, yes. But good. Bright, solid as gold. Meant for something great.

She is alone now. But good—? Is she? Does she know anymore? Does it even matter?

MOVE! She can hear him through a fog of melee. She can see the gun that shakes in her hands, like a rattle in a baby’s grasp, except this toy does not belong. It does not belong, and neither does she. Does she? The blood in her veins morphs in the moments she stands rooted to the spot, turned to quicksilver that weighs her rooted to this spot amidst the chaos. Fire rains down mercilessly—and fate braces her beneath divine castigation, Astrid, a fighter and survivor and woman to make history, thinks: Good. Let it devour me. Looks at the immobile woman in a heap amongst gravel and debris. Thinks: Please. 

MOVE NOW! The voice demands.

She does not move. She cannot. She does not want to.

– Until a hand fists in her gear and yanks sharply, hauls her bodily, dragging a ragdoll across a battlefield she has helped make, fighting for a war she does not believe in. A hand that takes away her choice, the way another hand has done. There is always another hand, isn’t there? Another thumb pressing down? Her chest aches as the front-door of an abandoned house must. Her heart pounds—THUMP, THUMP, THUMP—and there is no answer. 

IF YOU DON’T, WE’RE BOTH DEAD, the voice growls dangerously.

“She’s dead,” leaves her in a hot gasp.

“I — I killed her. I KILLED HER,” she howls, agony tearing through every word, yanking from his grasp, shoving at a gear-covered body that may as well have been a wall. So quickly, her words turn pleading. Cajoling. Begging: “You can save yourself. You can– No one will have to know, Solomon. Just go– Go! Go to Kashvi, save her. Save– Liam, alright? Leave me.”

[haloedhunter]

𝐕. 𝐏𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐄𝐓𝐓 —

Location:The Savoy Hotel lounge

Timestamp:February 20, evening

With: @haloedhunter​

Despite the breaking of the Truce, Victoria liked to think that some things remained the same. She was new to this, that much was true, but she at least knew what was intended to be a neutral space, which was why the sit down with Astrid had to be here. She wasn’t complaining, feeling right at home in the dimly lit, dark paneled room as soft music played. This was an element they shared in common: forging a spot for themselves in places that reeked of privilege. 

Legs crossed, Victoria was on high alert with her eyes on the door, in spite of the exact reason she had chosen the spot. She would honour the rule of neutrality, but given all that had happened, she wasn’t sure other people would. Even Astrid had her cautious, though she knew too well that the MP was smart enough not to draw attention to herself in such a public spot. (Or at least she hoped as much.)

Astrid’s arrival did evince a sigh of relief and she watched her for a moment, her free hand grasping a half-full glass - just water, something to keep her occupied. “You look well. Given the circumstances.” Her voice was low as she set her glass down on the table. “Had quite a surprise on Thursday morning. Bit of a mess to clean up.”

The broken truce had changed everything. It was after the fact that she had even realised that she hadn’t been holding her breath for it to. But that had been then. Now, circumstances were not all that found themselves inherently, fatally altered. She was, too. Even as she strode into the Savoy, heels clicking in a sturdy, calculated gait that was all swaying hips and even footfalls. Her hair twisted back in an immaculate updo; her features enhanced by neutral tones of makeup, with the exception of the deep burgundy staining her moue; her dress and blazer as pristine as they had been when she’d walked out the door that morning. Everything she ever was, with nothing amiss—nothing, but what had been lost from within.

When she sank into the seat beside Victoria Pinkett, Astrid did so with an ease that refused to give that loss away. Not a wrinkle of brow or purse of lips in sight, she arranged her limbs with a seasoned politician's grace, steady hands and unnerving focus to the gaze that bothered to peruse nothing of their surroundings before they landed on her. Given the circumstances, Victoria said—and Astrid’s heart stopped in her chest, its fighter’s fists clenched white-knuckled. Does she know what you’ve done? her heart questioned. “Oh?” her mouth questioned, unblinking. “Someone get stabbed again, Vic? That always does make for a horrid surprise, I hear.”

[harrytheehottie]

Laura Harrier on Instagram.

[haloedhunter]

❝ — the evening of FEBRUARY 19, 2021, astrid lurks through THE HUNTER-WARDEN TOWNHOUSE with a drink in hand and the music on blast, surround-sound system quivering with the bass’ insistence. having sent her girlfriend out of the house, pleading for reprieve from deserved worry, it is perhaps ironic that she awaits @zhangrita​ whilst juno visits her brother... rita’s ex-but-not-husband. ❞

She would never be so uncouth as to drink from the bottle. But, as it turns out, she is certainly unopposed to fingers curled in a chokehold around a bottle’s neck whilst she totes a Baccarat flute ensnared by the second set of them, easy fill... and re-fill, and re-fill, and re-fill. 

One might venture, thus, that perhaps Astrid Hunter is not in the most sober of mindsets when she replies to her friend’s text on a rainy Friday, eagerly inviting her over. So what? Astrid is fine dancing alone, this much is true. She always had been; never one to shy away from succumbing to a good song’s rhythm if it called to her, regardless of who else might be on a dance-floor, or whether there was a dance-floor at all. The kitchen counter serves as hers right then. If not a dance-floor, then a stage: upon which she shimmies in a cosy, if uncharacteristically unkempt, ensemble of a deep emerald sweater from filched from her father’s closet and a pair of kneesock to keep wiggling toes toasty warm despite the marble countertop atop which they pivot with the enthusiasm of a seasoned flamenco dancer.

When the doorbell rings, Astrid does not leave her stoop. Instead — alright, perhaps! — uncouthly, she hollers in a drawl that is pure Hackney: “COME ON IN, RITA, MY DARLING DEAR!” A holler that manages, she decides proudly, to cut through the song her hips sway to.

[haloedhunter]

𝐋. 𝐆𝐑𝐈𝐅𝐅𝐈𝐓𝐇𝐒 —

Somehow, after Mitzi’s unexpected assistance in getting back on his feet, Liam manages to get himself on the tube and back to the Ritz. It’s a bit of a blur but he’s able to buzz in the back entrance and make it to the staff lockers without any issue or running into an oblivious patron of the hotel. The locker room is blessedly quiet, and though he seems to have regained his hearing, the loud noises of the tube had done the ringing in his ears no favors. 

He moves on autopilot, biting his tongue as he pushes the dozens of pricks of pain scattered across his body. He unlocks his locker with a languid speed he’d like to say is just tiredness, but its more than likely the loss of blood. He pulls his crash kit from the locker and sits himself down on the closest bench, resting his head against the cool press of the concrete wall. The chill sooths a headache he hadn’t noticed amidst the throbbing pain in his leg.

He tenses when he hears the door to the staff room open, lets his shoulders fall when he sees the familiar silhouette of Astrid at the end of the row of lockers. It’s a relief to see her, relatively unharmed as far as he can tell – just the fact that she’s alive, breathing on her own two feet where so many at the club didn’t have the luxury of doing the same. He’s glad the angel didn’t fall to the same misfortune.

He huffs a deadened sort of chuckle at her words, giving a one-shouldered shrug that twinges. “Yeah, its a bit of a problem,” he says, pulling out the first aid kid from his bag tiredly. He stares at the sleeves of his jacket, eyeing small bits of metal embedded in the outside of the jacket’s armor. He’d probably need help getting it off, honestly. There are a handful of holes in the reinforced fabric, where the embedded armor didn’t quite reach. His right leg is in similar condition, but most notably is the quite visible blood staining his thigh. He’d been lucky the artery hadn’t been hit, but there’s a sliver of metal he can see at the center of it all, and judging by the sharp jab of pain he feels every time he moves his leg, it’s still firmly in his leg. “How you feel about digging shrapnel out and stitching a guy up?” He asks, offering a tired sort of smile. 

— ۞ —

Perhaps the shock has numbed her. Dully, does register that she is glad to see him – safe and sound. Yet again, she seems to float above her corporeal-self; condemned to witness that which she has been rent apart from, cleaved off neatly, like a chicken’s head whilst its body continues to writhe in the aftermath. It softens features despite what shadows them, appraising Liam’s clothing and the stains and raggedness that mar it, peeking through riot-gear she has disposed of already from her own body, left to smoulder to ashes in the debris left behind at PEST nightclub. A hint of her true self sparks at the sight – a cognizant jolt that questions, immediately, How the bloody hell did you get into the Ritz looking like this?

Not that the question makes it to lips that purse instead. “Ah-huh, just a bit,” she agrees in an echo of the exhaustion that envelopes Liam’s words, sinking down onto the locker-room bench beside him, and taking the first-aid kit pulled from his bag with hands she watches steady themselves. No longer do they tremble, latching on intuitively to the task at hand, with a switch’s-flick that feels mechanical – robotic, Astrid posits swathed in a veil of indifference. 

Likely, it is a good thing. Robots tended to be more fail-safe than fragile, compromised humans, were they not? A futuristic revolution in the process that they were, perhaps they were more dependable than mankind. Less emotional. The way she feels right then, sapped clean of humanity and left operating with wires plugged in its stead. It is those hands that coax his jacket from his shoulders with methodical, voided care, already working on the gear on his legs once discarded, ensuring haste did not shift embedded shrapnel at any random angle that would cause damage that was wont to take far more than her intermediary expertise and a first-aid kit to deal with. It stays her, every movement that she makes. Astrid always had needed her hands busied to soothe her mind — as much as it could be.

“I’ve got you,” she promises him, her words failing to effuse characteristic warmth she approaches him with typically, her brave lamb in a slaughterhouse, even more ill-fitting a cog in War’s machine than she is and still an admirable study in survival despite it all. A shadow of herself lurks over the ghost of a smile on her lips. “But I need you to be a doll and be still for me while I work. Not scream when the antiseptic stings. And talk to me while I work; it’ll help both of us,” she instructs with the kind authority of a preschool teacher, cajoling a toddler to nap-time. If she felt she could have, perhaps she might’ve laughed.

[luthienne]

I am light now, or on the side of light—:                light-head, light-trophied.                Light-wracked and light-gone.

Natalie Diaz, from Postcolonial Love Poem; “Skin-Light” (via luthienne)

[penabranca-deactivated20230916]

Meiodia

©Penabranca 

[haloedhunter]

𝐖. 𝐋𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐅𝐎𝐎𝐓 —

Wren is prone to self-pity. It is a habit borne out of loneliness, of choosing to rely on no one but themselves and becoming something singular. They reflect on life with melancholy, observing their circumstances with something that comes close to compassion, even if it has a judgemental edge to it. Life has not been kind, Wren knows that objectively, and they sometimes hold themselves in tight embrace because of it. 

Their own pity has made a home in their body, but that of others is like a toxin it wants to reject. Wren does not want it, feels small under warm gazes and caring hands. It reminds them of being eleven, twelve, thirteen again and having the eyes of adults bore into them, willing them to talk. Come on Wren, we’re just trying to help, they would say — and Wren would reject it, time and time again. Their lips glued together, finding no comfort in any acknowledgement of their sorrow. Finding no comfort in help whenever it was not handed to them by their father. ( Nothing would be handed to them by him ever again and Wren did not wish to speak a word in a world where that was true. )

Astrid Hunter has all the tools in her arsenal to pity them. When the two had crossed paths before and Wren had relied on the kindness of strangers ( something they never want again, as they know that most strangers are not kind ) to fill their hollow stomach, Wren had felt pitied, to be sure. Now, they do not, nor had they at the Truce. They feel something uncomfortable all the same, though — recognition. The knowledge that the politician across from them knew a part of them that Wren has turned their back on. It’s almost like looking in a mirror to the past.

But Astrid has kind, brown eyes and Wren decides to trust that part of themselves that still wants to believe that there are plenty of good people on this godforsaken earth. They have looked into the other, typing name into Google and reading about political accomplishments and romantic rumours. The digital picture matches with who sits across them now, somewhat. A good sign. “Oh, I feel you. I get antsy too, when I sit still for too long.” Wren gives a small smile, like attracts like, even if it is a half-truth. There are plenty of days where they hardly move a muscle, frozen by the thunderstorms that cloud their mind. They’d like to ask Astrid about her day, listen to her talk rather than turn the conversation towards them. But it does, and they’re hardly one to fight it. “I found a place to live,” they say. Three months without a roof had felt like eternity. “A small shoebox studio, but it’s mine.” Wren grins a little. They’ve grown fond of their little studio. “Well, as long as I pay my rent of course. But no more shitty roommates.” No more couch-surfing and shelters, either.

They don’t have to explain where they got the money, as they both know. Besides, Wren is hardly in the mood to tell Astrid that just the day before, they had thrown a brick through Saint Warden’s window in the name of Famine and that it was apparently things like that that now paid their rent. “Oh, and I got an office job. I just started this Monday, actually.” It’s why they now wear button-up and black tapered trousers rather than their usual get up of a tight-knit jumper and jeans. “Things have been looking up, I suppose.” And they have, oddly enough, even if they stand on the precipice of something darker than they ever wished from life. 

— ۞ —

Astrid is prone to calculation. An odd predisposition perhaps, given that she had never actually quite developed a taste for numbers, despite a genuine knack for crunching them throughout schooling years and well into her professional endeavours into the legal world. As she must, when she has never been one to posture emptily, or baselessly, setting, instead, her foundations with undeniable statistical truths; collected from all corners of vintage academia and modern gatherings, from mathematics and history and philosophy and literature, ensuring every argument she has to make and every stepping stone she leaps onto next, is one cemented in place by the glueing coating of rationale. Pragmatism. The irrevocable. 

Sitting with Wren Lightfoot, she calculates, yes. But she listens, too. Often, she thinks of what Stephen Covey once wrote: Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply. She has never wished to be one of those people. Thus, she watches Wren through a curtain of dark lashes, lets chocolate brown irises anoint them the undivided attention to an answer to her question, watching their movements as much as she weighs the nature of Wren’s words. As she does, Astrid must hold at bay her preconceived notions (and of those there are ever-many) about every word that leaves their lips: attempting to hold their opinion with a measure of humility and grace that does not come easy to a woman with such a ruthless penchant for winning and being right. She tries to hold close that she does not know them beyond the glimpse she had caught of a rough-housed version of a far more immaculate image sat across from her right then. And yet, it seeps in, doesn’t it? The bridging steps between what took that Wren to this one? Of its own volition, immediately. Questions that ponder and prod, incessantly, as to what life choices they’ve made that have gone and made Famine the rope to pull them out of the ditch they’d dropped into. A rope that could, as easily, find itself ensnaring that pretty neck, fragile as a wishbone.

In her own, far-less-immaculate days of girlhood, Astrid had never been one to hold her tongue. She was mouthy and outspoken, subject to detentions here and there when authority did not intimidate her, so long as she believed in what she fought for. If that was giving a bully a fat lip before eviscerating him with deeply personal, cutting words that invited a school counsellor into the mix, then so be it. Her manners may have been greased smooth and glossed up over the years — but has her essence not remained the same? Even if that inherent ache to be of use, to save anyone and anything she possibly can, when her every instinct screams for it, screams behind the perfection of a charming grin tossed out. 

“Wren, that’s absolutely wonderful to hear. I’m so happy for you,” Astrid beams. “Proud of you.” There is a nearly maternal warmth that bleeds from within her, staining her words with lifeblood. Laughable for a woman who very much has no particular attachment to children, big or small. And unlike many an interaction conducted by her, day in and day out these days, the sweetness glazing her words remains utterly genuine instead of a saccharine, poisonous ploy. “My first place was about the size of a postage-stamp, really. There was a bathtub in my kitchen. A bit of a roach-infestation until I dealt with it. And I loved it very, very much, because it was mine and it represented something to me I value above most things, which is my independence.”

It’s subtle enough a prompt, she knows. On the surface, her words are no more than easygoing chatter, sharing joint experience, building an empathetic connection. As if subtext does not coax a question, the answer to which Astrid watches those elfin features for: Independence, Wren; don’t you see they will strip you of yours?