Eileen had been walking around for what felt like hours, though the clock on the wall that hadn't kept proper time in years claimed it had only been about an hour or a little more. Back and forth did she walk over the dirty, stained carpet, back and forth, back and forth, from the slightly cracked window to the sagging couch and back again.
She wasn't even high right now. Not as much as she wished to be.
That was the worst part. The clarity. The awful clarity that made every part she could see in this godforsaken house look uglier than it was, every shadow more scary, and every memory more painful.
Her fingers twitched at her sides as she walked in the same circles over and over. She'd already looked through the kitchen drawers—the ones that weren't stuck shut with old grease—searching through four years of expired coupons, bent silverware, and a dead roach across the counter. Nothing. Not a single pill. Not even a half-smoked joint, some of her clients had left behind. The bar had been stupid; Merle had been an asshole again, and the man whose dick she'd sucked had given her cash, but not what she needed so desperately. Cash she'd already spent on nothing, because there was no one to buy from at this hour.
Merle Dixon.
That young bastard, with his wide, dumb grin and dirty hands, made her shiver. He'd watched her crawl on the floor for a pill like a dog, and he'd also snorted the coke himself right in front of her. Then he'd left, walking out like she wasn't even there, like she was nothing but a piece of shit on the floor he'd gotten tired of looking at.
Eileen stopped walking in front of the window, her reflection staring back at her from the glass. Those hollow eyes, her tangled, strawberry blonde hair, and the exhaustion that was written all over her face. She barely recognized herself anymore. When had she stopped being the woman her daughter adored? The one with the pinned-up hair and the white apartment walls? The one who'd had pancakes on weekends and a husband who loved her more than anything and cut the crusts off sandwiches for their daughter?
Their daughter.
Eileen wanted to throw up.
She'd seen them. Ilyana and Daryl. In the tree. Curled up together, Ilyana's legs were tangled with the Dixon boy's, and with her head against his shoulder, as if she belonged there. It looked as if she'd found something Eileen couldn't give her. Like she'd found something Eileen had never been able to give her. The boy had looked at Ilyana the way men used to look at Eileen. Before. When she was still worth looking at.
She shook her head hard, trying to push the thought away, and went back to walking around.
The bedrooms were next. She pushed open the door—Ilyana's door, though she never thought of it that way—and stood in the doorway for a moment. The sheets were still rumpled from the last man who'd used this bed, condom wrappers were on the floor, and a spoon crusted with whatever was left on it was on the nightstand. She'd have to clean that before Ilyana came back, wherever she was now. Not that it mattered. The girl had seen worse.
Eileen dropped to her knees beside the bed, lifting the edge of the mattress, shoving her hand into the gap where the box springs met the frame. Nothing. She checked under the pillow, inside the pillowcase, and between the headboard and the wall. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
Was there blood on the mattress? No, no, that couldn't be blood. Ilyana was fine.
Her hands were shaking now. Reality was becoming unbearable, and every thought was too loud. She needed something to take the edge off. Just a little something. Just enough to stop seeing Ilyana's face when she'd dragged her out of that tree—the way her daughter's eyes had gone empty, the way she hadn't fought and hadn't screamed.
No, she hadn't done anything.
Like mother, like daughter.
There was nothing in Ilyana's room, and she knew that looking through her own bedroom would be meaningless and to no avail.
There was nothing there.
Back in the living room, just when she was about to simply scream, she remembered the one place where she hadn't looked. The closet, the one that was standing far away in the corner of the living room. Eileen moved to the closet fast, pulling the door open so hard it came off its top hinge.
She pulled out something that felt like a few boxes, not knowing what it was at first. The bigger one looked old and dusty, and she didn't remember putting it here. For a moment, she almost shoved it back, too focused on her search for a new high to care about some forgotten bullshit. But something made her stop.
Sitting back on her heels, she opened the bigger box.
The smell of it, oh, the smell… She remembered. There was the smell of old paper, dust, and, underneath it all? Cologne. His cologne. The one he'd worn on special occasions, the one she'd bought him for their first anniversary, which was the one that still lived in her memory even though she'd pushed away every other memory of him a few years ago.
Her hands trembled as she reached inside.
Photographs. Dozens of them, held together with a rubber band that had long since turned to look as if it might snap at any moment. She pulled them out, and the first one made her gasp in pain.
It was Dominic. Her Dominic. Standing by the lake, the one with the peach trees where they always went and where he promised to love her forever, his arms wrapped around her from behind, holding her pregnant belly. She was laughing in the photo with her head thrown back against his chest and her hand resting on his, where it lay across her stomach.
Eileen remembered that day. It had been hot, their first real Georgia summer. He'd insisted on driving there, even though she'd complained about the bumpy roads. "Worth it," he'd said, kissing her temple. "Always worth it."
Eileen's vision turned blurry, and she blinked hard, feeling angry at the tears that were about to fall down. She wasn't going to cry. Not over him. Not over any of it.
But the next photo was worse.
Him holding Ilyana in the hospital. The baby was wrapped in a blanket, one tiny fist pressed against his chest, with her face scrunched up and eyes closed. He was looking down at her like she was the most precious thing he'd ever seen.
"She's perfect," he'd whispered. "Just like you."
Eileen set the photo down, her hand shaking so badly she nearly dropped it. She reached into the box again, pulling out letters this time. The paper was creased from being folded and refolded; some of the ink was smeared—whether from tears or age, she couldn't tell.
The first one she opened was short. Just a few lines in his familiar handwriting.
'My dearest love, I can't stop thinking about you. About us. About our little girl. She's perfect, you know? Absolutely perfect. I never knew I could love someone so much, but she's changed everything. She's my sunshine, my everything. And you? You're my world. I can't wait to see what the future holds for us. For our family. I love you both. Always.'
Eileen started sobbing before she could even stop it. She pressed her fist to her mouth, trying to hold back the sounds, but it was too late. The tears were coming now, rolling down her cheeks and dripping onto the paper.
She'd read these letters a hundred times. A thousand. Back when he was still with her, one of them wasn't home because of work, when she'd put them under her pillow and pull them out in the middle of the night, she'd convince herself that the distance was temporary, that the construction job would end and that she'd get her promotion, and that they'd go back to Atlanta and everything would be fine.
It wasn't fine.
None of it was fine.
She looked through more photos—him at the lake with Ilyana, holding her tiny hands to help her balance on a tree stump; the three of them at Christmas, her in a red dress she'd bought on sale and him in the sweater she'd knitted that came out too big in the shoulders; and Ilyana's first birthday with cake smeared across her face, him laughing so hard she'd nearly dropped the camera.
The letters were words of love, promises of forever, and plans for a future that never came. And then she found it. The long one in the other box, the smaller one. The letter that hurt the most.
She didn't need to read it. She remembered every word.
'This weekend, while you're away to finally earn your promotion, I'm going to take her on a little trip. Just the two of us. I know you told me not to use my remaining sick days, but I want to show her the world, even if it's just another small piece of Georgia. And I've packed a picnic—her favorite sandwiches, the ones with the crusts cut off, and those little cookies she loves so much.'
Eileen couldn't hold herself up on her heels anymore and sat down on the floor, turning her back against the closet door, holding the letter in both hands. She could see it. She could see him in the kitchen, carefully slicing the brown edges off white bread and arranging the sandwiches in the old wicker basket they'd bought at a flea market. She could see him packing the butterfly net—the one he'd found at the thrift store, the one he'd been so excited about because Ilyana had been fascinated by the monarchs that gathered in the backyard.
'We're going to the lake. You remember the one, don't you? Where we used to go before she was born? Where I promised to love you forevermore, among all the peach trees? It's still quiet there, at our favorite place, our own personal paradise, peaceful.'
Eileen was breathing raggedly now. She hadn't cried like this in years. Hadn't let herself. Crying was a luxury, and she'd long since traded luxury for numbness.
But here, alone in the living room, surrounded by the memories of a life she didn't want to remember, she couldn't stop.
'Once we're at the lake, I'll take pictures for you, for us. Lots of them. I know you'll want to see her smiling face when you get back home to us. She's been babbling about her pretty Mommy nonstop, you know? She misses you so much when you're gone. Your cuddles, your kisses, and when you tickle her.'
Her daughter's pretty mommy.
When had she stopped being that? When had the woman in the photographs turned into this hollow-eyed no one, walking in circles inside a house that smelled like piss and regret, selling her body for enough cash to buy the next fix?
'I love you so much, my darling beauty. More than anything I ever loved. And I love her. More than life itself.'
The tears came faster now and dripped onto the paper, smearing the already smudged ink. Eileen moved forward until her forehead touched her knees, and the letter was crushed between her hands.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry…"
She didn't know who she was apologizing to. Him? Ilyana? Herself? The woman she used to be, the one who'd believed in picnics by the lake and butterfly nets and forever?
"I couldn't do it," she choked out. "I couldn't… Not like you thought… I'm not…"
The letter crumpled in her fist, and she let out a ragged scream that was muffled by one of her arms, so no neighbor could hear. Not that they'd care. Not that anyone would come.
When the tears finally slowed down, and her breathing turned slightly normal again, she sat there for a long time, staring at the photograph on top of the pile. He and Ilyana. The lake. The tree stump. His hands holding hers, keeping her steady.
She reached out with a trembling finger and traced the outline of his face.
"I should have gone with you," Eileen whispered. "That weekend. I should have called in sick. I should have…"
She knew there was another picture like the one she'd looked at, showing the first day of Dominic and their daughter together at the same lake. However, she had no strength left to reach out and look at it. Not now, anyway. Now she remembered how she'd been too focused on the promotion and on the career; she'd spent years proving that she could be more than just a wife and a mother. And he'd taken Ilyana to the lake without her.
The letters were scattered around her on the floor now, and next Eileen picked up the shortest one. A note that had been tucked inside the pocket of the old plushie—the one she'd hidden from her daughter because she couldn't bear to see her holding something he'd touched.
'For my little Ilyana, my beautiful sunshine. With love, your Daddy.'
Eileen let herself remember. The way he'd looked at Ilyana and her as if they were his whole world. The way he'd sing lullabies in the nursery, making up Italian words when he forgot the real ones. The way he'd hold Eileen's hand in the car, even when she was too tired from work.
The way he'd loved them. Both of them.
Eileen opened her eyes and looked at the wall. Through it, somewhere in the other half of this miserable duplex house, she could hear footsteps stomping around—maybe Will Dixon had just woken up.
It was a pitiful attempt to distract herself, since she had these letters now. The proof that Dominic loved them. That he'd wanted them. That none of what she'd told Ilyana, the lies about him not wanting her, was true.
And she didn't know what to do with that other than push herself to finally look at the face again, which she so desperately tried to forget about. Eileen's fingers were trembling so badly she could barely hold the next photograph steady. She set it down on the floor beside her, then the next, and then the next. A life she'd tried so hard to forget.
There was Dominic, leaning against a car with a grin and eyes that looked ever so brown. His dark hair was curly, a little too long, the way Italian boys wore it back then, when they wanted to look like they didn't care but secretly spent quite some time on getting it just right. He'd always been so self-conscious about his thick hair until she'd told him it made him look like a young Massimo Girotti in La Corona di Ferro, and he'd called her 'Gioia mia' for the first time.
Gioia mia... My joy… Just one of the many names he'd lovingly called her.
She'd had to look it up later, hiding the dictionary under her medical textbooks so her roommate wouldn't see. Not that her roommate would have cared. But Eileen had been careful back then. She had been careful about everything and especially careful not to appear too interested in a boy who wasn't from her world. But maybe he'd been destined to become her whole world.
New York City in the year of 1975.
Eileen O’Brien was just eighteen, born in 1957, fresh out of high school, accepted to a University's pre-med program, and already planning her escape from the small apartment she shared with her mother and father in Boston, Massachusetts. She'd won a partial scholarship, enough to get her foot in the door, and she'd been working nights at a diner to cover the rest. Saving every tip and planning her future career.
Dominic Feranna had walked into the diner. Born in 1956, and only one year older than her.
She remembered it exactly. April 16th, 1975. A Wednesday afternoon. She'd been exhausted, running on three hours of sleep and too much coffee. Her hair was coming out of its ponytail, and there was a grease stain on her uniform. He'd sat in her section and ordered a cup of unsweetened Espresso, and when she'd brought it to him, he'd looked up at her with those brown eyes and said, "You look like you haven't slept in a week, bella."
She'd given him the death stare—the one her roommate used to annoy her with on purpose. 'The Slavic Stare.' A typical cliché, just because Eileen was half Irish and half Slavic.
"I don't know what 'bella' means," she'd lied, "but my name's Eileen, and I'll bring you the check whenever you're ready."
He'd laughed. "You're part Irish. I can always tell. It's the eyes. And the attitude… Slav? Maybe Russian?"
"Ukrainian. And you're Italian," she'd shot back. "It's all that Dippity-do in your hair and the too many hand gestures. Or maybe it's just grease."
"American and Sicilian!" He'd looked down at his hands, then back up at her, and grinned. "Monella mia... I don't know what to say!"
"Could've fooled me, Жартівник."
That should have been it. That should have been the end of a forgettable interaction between a waitress and a customer who tipped okay. But Dominic had come back the next Wednesday. And the Wednesday after that. And then he'd started showing up on other days too, always ordering the same and always finding a reason to talk to her.
She'd learned that he was nineteen, born in New York City, working construction with his uncle's crew while he saved up for who knew what. He'd dropped out of community college after a semester and said it wasn't for him. Said he'd rather work with his hands than sit in a classroom. She'd told him that was a waste of his chances at a good career; he'd told her she was too pretty to be so mean, and she'd told him to stop flirting and drink his coffee.
But the flirting hadn't stopped.
Dominic brought her a bouquet of wildflowers he'd picked from the side of the road, giving them to her right inside the diner with a bow before he bent down on his knee, which made her roll her eyes so hard they nearly fell out. He'd learned her schedule, memorized her shifts, and started walking her home after her late nights, claiming it was too dangerous for a woman to walk alone in New York City, that he was just being a gentleman, and that he'd be happy to keep her company if she didn't mind.
Eileen minded. At first.
Somewhere between April and the start of September, between the endless cups of coffee and the stupid jokes, she'd stopped minding.
They'd had their first real fight at the end of September.
Eileen had told him she was going to study somewhere else to avoid years of studying in New York for nothing and the mountains of debt. And Dominic, who'd never been anything but kind and charming, had gone quiet.
"You think I'm not good enough for you."
"I think I'm not good enough for myself if I don't try," she'd answered.
He'd stared at her then, and she'd let him. After a long moment, he'd nodded. "Okay… Okay. Then I'll be good enough for you until you figure out you already are."
She'd cried in the bathroom after that shift at the diner, and she'd told herself it was exhaustion, nothing more. But she was thankful.
The next photograph Eileen found was from their first official date. April 16th, 1976. The same date as their first meeting. He'd planned and wanted it that way, she remembered now—he'd confessed it years later, grinning like a fool after she'd asked why it took him so long to officially ask her out, saying he wanted to make their first real date mean something and to let her be sure about him. "Two birds, one stone," he'd said. "Now you'll never forget either one."
He'd taken her to a little Italian restaurant, the kinda place where the owner knew his family and the music playing over the speakers was something his grandfather had probably smoked a cigar to.
She'd worn a green dress in emerald green, her mother's favorite color, the color of Ireland, and she'd let her Strawberry blonde hair down for the first time in months. She remembered how nervous she'd been and how she'd changed clothes three times. She'd denied it, of course. Denied it all the way to the restaurant, and even when she saw him waiting outside in a button-down shirt that was slightly too tight across his broad shoulders, or when he took her hand and led her to a table in the corner.
But Eileen stopped denying it when he'd reached across the table, taken her hand, and said, "My mamma's going to love you. She's been asking about the Irish girl for weeks."
"Your mother doesn't know me."
"For sure she does. I told her everything. The way you talk, the way you walk, the way you tell me to shut up all the time."
Eileen pulled her hand back in shock, but she'd been smiling. She remembered that.
But the racism had started not long after their first official date. Especially after their first official kiss.
Not from Dominic's family—his mother had welcomed her with open arms, a woman who'd pinched her cheeks and loved to cook with her from time to time. His father was a quiet man. who'd worked construction his whole life, had looked her up and down once, grunted, and gave them his blessing.
No, the racism came from outside. From strangers on the street, from their own neighbors, from people who saw an Irish girl holding hands with a Sicilian boy and felt the need to share their opinions.
"You know what they call those like you?" Someone had hissed at her once, waiting for the bus. "Micks and Wops. That's what you two are. Not even two damn peas in a garbage can!"
She'd ignored it. She'd been good at ignoring racist bullshit like that.
"Your kind should stick to your own," a woman had said in the grocery store, watching them shop for ingredients for dinner. "It's not natural!"
Dominic had opened his mouth to say something to defend her, but Eileen had put her hand on his arm and pulled him away. "Not worth it."
"They can't talk to you like that!"
"They can talk however they want. I don't care what they think."
But Eileen had cared. Not about their opinions—those were coming from ignorant people who'd never left their neighborhoods and never seen anything beyond the radius of the block they'd been born in. It was because she could see it hurting him.
Even the letters from that time were hard to read.
Eileen found them at the bottom of the box, inside an envelope with no address and a postmark from New York.
'Eileen,
I can't sleep. It's two in the morning, and I'm lying here thinking about giving you these letters soon, about how you will read them, and about how I usually love our little ritual of me writing you these. Right now, I can't sleep. My Uncle says I'm stupid, wasting my time on a girl who's gonna leave me for a doctor in another state. He says you're just with me until someone better comes along.
I broke his nose.
But I need to know. Is he right? Will you leave? Because I don't think I could take it if you left. I know I'm just a construction worker. I know I don't have a future like you do. But I love you, Eileen.
I'll wait for you. However long it takes. I'll wait.
— Dominic'
She remembered that letter and how she'd read it in her dorm room, with her roommate asleep in the bed across from her. She'd cried then, too, and she'd written him back immediately, a single sentence on a scrap of notebook paper:
'Come with me.'
He'd shown up at her dorm the next day with a dozen red roses and a ring box in his pocket. She'd said no at first. It was too soon; she was too young, and there was still so much studying ahead. But she'd kept the ring box anyway, hidden in her underwear drawer, and sometimes, when the studying got too hard, and the future looked too uncertain, she'd take it out and hold it in her hand and let herself imagine…
A loud BANG made Eileen open her eyes. The memory of the ring box was gone from her mind as she tried to process the sound she'd just heard. A gunshot? No… A door? The backdoor? Yes, that must have been it.
She stumbled to her feet, leaving the letters and photographs behind on the floor, and walked over to the window, careful to stay behind the dirty curtain.
Will Dixon.
Stumbling across the backyard with his hunting knife in one hand and headed toward the woods. Toward his shack in the woods.
Eileen watched him disappear between the trees, waiting to see if he'd turn back. He didn't. But her hands were shaking as she stepped back from the window. Somehow, she was jealous of him, at least, right now. He probably wasn't sober. Will could just let the hours pass by now, but she could feel the minutes ticking away. Even the seconds.
Eileen looked back down at the floor. Down at the photographs and the letters. She hadn't finished looking through them, and she knew there was more in the box. More memories and more of… him.
Sitting back down, she pulled the box toward her. She needed to see the rest. She needed to remember everything.
I just wanted to reach out and say that I think of you all the time. I hope you’re healing, though I also know that’s easier said than done. Sending so much love. 🩵
Thank you for reaching out! 🩷 It's been a hard few months. I thought I was prepared enough for that kinda loss, but... nope, not at all. I still miss him more than anything else in this world. And I can't deny that some days are worse than others, but it does get better, I think? I just never knew grief could be this extreme. Now, I still wear my dog's collar around my wrist, every day, like a bracelet.
Sending love right back. And again, thank you for reaching out. 🩷
I hit over 3K followers while I was gone??? That's crazy. I don't understand why. I haven't posted anything new since March. Only on AO3 so far, in May, which I'll upload after this post. (New chapter of Bittersweet Saccharine.)
Thank you to everyone who read my works while I wasn't here and to everyone who sent asks or a DM, and, of course, to all the new people!
Since April, while I was, and still am, grieving, I've been trying to figure out how to continue with this blog and my online presence as a writer in general. That said, I want to say something else.
While I was gone, I noticed some moots left? If you unfollowed me because I was grieving and not posting, then I'm not going to apologize for it. I'm not going to pretend I was fine and am feeling okay just to keep someone as a moot. Originally, I thought I could find friends that way, but I guess that's just not how the internet works anymore? LMAO. Nah, I'm definitely not going to beg anyone to stay. So, please, see yourself out if we're not in the same fandoms, anyway. Thanks, or whatever.
But, I've been writing again! Got a Rick Grimes oneshot almost done where you're gonna be his good girl and do what he wants you to do. Because I said so. And wrote so. Also working on more Daryl Dixon again, and more FC5 oneshots (Jacob, at the moment), and other characters that I love. Oh, and I've been working on new chapters of Bittersweet Saccharine as well, if there are still people that still care about my OC childhood story with Daryl and Merle. If not, please inform me and I'll delete you from the taglist. Not that there are many people tagged for that OC longfic. LOL.
Anyway, I just need to find my way back to writing and trying to live with grief because it was my first loss in real life and my first confrontation with death. Ever. But I do feel better, yeah. So, I'll see you soon, I guess. (Who wants to be moots?) Okay, just kidding. That was so damn cringe, I'm gonna cry. And laugh. And turn off the notifications for this post.
On April 16th, I lost my forever best friend and my soulmate around 9:20 AM. My 13-year-old Jack Russell Terrier, Fiedel.
I can't write and work on my fanfiction. I can't even draw. I can't do anything, to be honest. My heart is completely broken and I don't know how to survive this. What happened so suddenly was very traumatizing, and I'm unable to concentrate on anything else but the unbearable pain and loss of a part of my soul.
I just know that I need to step away from this blog for a while. I don't know how long. Weeks, maybe months. Please don't ask me when I'll be back. I genuinely don't know. Maybe I'll post once in a while, or leave a comment, but don't expect too much. Maybe I'll never come back if I don't recover from hurting this much. But I hope I will be able to cope with this grief, sooner or later.
To everyone who sent kind messages about my posts: I thank you a lot. I just hope everyone will understand.
My dog, Fiedel, was, and still is, my whole world.
Hi, I hope it's okay to ask, what fonts do you use for your fics on here/ao3?
The fonts I'm using aren't actually fonts because they're just Unicode characters. Basically, they're special symbols that look like styled letters but are treated as distinct characters. That's why they show up on any device without needing to install anything. But Unicode works on every device and browser automatically and you don't need to know CSS or HTML, though I do love to play around with HTML on AO3 and Tumblr! Anyway, I use Unicode text generators! You can find them by searching 'Unicode text converter' or 'fancy text generator' online. Just type what you want and copy-paste it. ♡
That was the last thing you remembered before you blacked out and were taken by the Project at Eden's Gate. Now, as you woke up, you noticed someone was holding your arms.
Two Peggies were dragging you through the night to nowhere.
And your head was still spinning, leaving you with almost no feeling in your body as they finally let go, and you fell into the dirt, unable to say anything.
A voice came from somewhere above you. "This one?"
"No. This one." Another voice. And this time, you noticed the man pointing down, standing right in front of you.
All it took was a single hand grabbing the back of your shirt, and you were dragged forward. Soon, you realized that you'd reached the river.
"Don't seem very worthy."
"It is not for us to judge. Deliver them unto the waters. The Cleansing begins tonight."
What those two Peggies said? It is not for us to judge. It made you want to laugh.
That was rich, coming from people who'd shot at you and your colleagues, burned down houses, and kidnapped the innocent of Hope County.
But the laugh wouldn't come.
Once they stopped, you were held upright again by the two cultists. Ahead of you, right in front of the headlights of a van, John Seed stood in the water like a preacher at his own baptism. He held a book in one hand with a white cover, with the symbol of the Project at Eden's Gate on it in gold, yet that was all you could make out. His other arm was raised, and his thumb was pressed to the forehead of a woman getting pushed toward him.
"We must wash away our past." Maybe what he said was for the other initiates in the water, the cult members on the riverbank, or maybe God himself. "We must expose our sins. We must atone. For only then may we stand in the light of God and walk through his Gate unto Eden."
Letting the woman go, a cultist directed her toward the van just as another initiate was pushed into her place. After the initiates were gone, the cultists holding you started to move you toward whatever came next.
"Not this one."
John stopped them, and when you raised your head, he was standing just a few feet away, the book closed now and given over to another cultist.
He was staring at you. Right into your eyes. "This one's not clean."
Before you could understand what that meant, his hands grabbed your shoulders, and he pushed you backward into the water. You hadn't been ready, and you hadn't even managed to breathe before the panic came. You could see John's face through the water, waiting and watching you drown.
This is it, you thought. This is how it ends. Drowned by a damn cultist in a river in Montana, while nobody knows I'm here.
Yet John yanked you up, with the water running out of your nose and mouth as you coughed after having felt the panic of your lungs giving up.
Holding you upright, he watched you choke. "Ahhh," John smiled. "Shhh."
He seemed to enjoy what he was putting you through and shook his head, trying to look disappointed. His smile disappeared, and you knew he was about to put you under a second time. But while getting forced under once more, the calm voice that came from everywhere and nowhere stopped him.
"Do you mock the Cleansing, John?"
Joseph Seed.
John stopped, and he immediately stepped away from you, with you trying not to fall onto your knees. He moved to the side while looking down, standing there in a way you'd never expected to see from a man like him.
"No, Joseph."
Between the headlights of the van, he stood there, like a saint in a church.
The Father.
This wasn't real, right? No, it couldn't be. The light moved wrong around him, and it was as if the trees around you started to glitch, with white particles flowing all around you. Even knowing it wasn't real didn't make it less true. Joseph was definitely there, in front of you, and his eyes were on John.
"Shhh," Joseph told his brother. "You have to love them, John. Do not let your sin prevent that."
His voice sounded so gentle and so kind that you could almost believe that the man you were supposed to arrest meant it. However, Joseph raised his fist and pointed directly at you with a single finger.
"Bring that one to me."
A cultist pushed you forward, or maybe you floated. The Bliss and shock from almost getting drowned made it hard to tell. Still, your body moved through the water and toward the man standing in the light. And Joseph opened his arms.
Touching your shoulders, he looked into your eyes with an expression of such love that it made you feel sick.
"Despite all that you have done, you are not beyond salvation. You are not here by accident or by chance. You are here by the grace of God. You've been given a gift. Now it remains to be seen whether you choose to embrace it..."
His eyes looked so blue behind those yellow aviators, and so, so sincere.
"...or to cast it aside."
Joseph let go of you before he turned to the side, and there was John, standing next to you. He'd followed, and on his face was the look of a man who had never gotten enough love and was terrified of losing what little he had.
Joseph raised his arm and pointed at you again, though his eyes were quickly on John. "This one shall reach the Atonement."
His other hand came up, moving it to the back of John's head and pulling him closer until their foreheads touched. "Or the Gates of Eden shall be shut to you, John."
John's breathing stopped, or at least, you swore it did. But his eyes stayed closed, with his forehead still against his brother's.
"Yes, Joseph."
Joseph's palm stayed on the back of his head for a while longer before he turned and walked into the night. Suddenly, he was gone. John stood there in silence as he watched his brother leave, staring at where he had been standing before he faced you.
"You will confess. Every sin you've ever committed, no matter how petty, no matter how small. I will pull them from you, one by one. I will hold them up to the light and name them, and you will watch them burn. Then we'll see if you're worthy of Atonement."
Continuing to stare into your eyes for a while before he lifted his chin, a Peggie came up right at your side.
"Put her in the van."
The cultist's fist grabbed you way too hard, even though you were too tired to resist and too weak to fight. He didn't care at all. You let yourself be brought toward the van with the open doors and the other waiting victims of Eden's Gate inside.
"No."
The man stopped as John walked over, looking at the others, only to focus on you.
"Not with others." He reached past you and pushed the van door shut. "She comes with me."
The cultist let go of you, and John immediately grabbed your arm, yanking at it. "My car. Now."
Dragging you away from the river and the van, you stumbled after him. The car waited near some of the many trees, and John quickly opened the passenger door and pushed you inside. He sat down in the driver's seat next, turned on the engine, and pulled out onto the dark road without looking back. Meanwhile, you were watching the night in Hope County, with no idea where he was taking you and no voice left to ask.
You are not beyond salvation.
All the way, the car drove in silence. And it was the silence of a man talking to himself in his own head, not liking what he heard or what he was told.
You have to love them, John.
John wouldn't even look at you the entire way to wherever he was driving. His hands were holding the steering wheel, occasionally stroking his beard from time to time, and his eyes were staring at the road in front of him. The book you'd seen him holding at the river with the symbol of the Project at Eden's Gate was on the console between you, now closed.
You thought about grabbing it and throwing it at his head. Or maybe just opening the door and throwing yourself out into the dark.
But you wouldn't move. And even if you could fight, where exactly would you go? You didn't know this road in Hope County, and you certainly didn't know this part of the woods. John slowed down the car when the road changed, his eyes looking into the darkness ahead, and you saw it: John's Gate.
Black Horse Peak.
When he stopped the engine, he opened his door and got out.
You thought that, if you stayed very quiet and made yourself very small, he would maybe forget about you. That he would go inside and do whatever it was he did down there, and you could find a way to escape to Fall's End.
A moment later, your door was opened by him, with a look on his face that was ever so unreadable.
"Get out."
Watching how you refused to listen, he grabbed your arm and pulled you out, though he kept you from falling.
"Walk."
You stood still, staring at the entrance of the bunker. "Where are we?"
John wouldn't answer, grabbing the back of your neck to push you toward the door.
"I said walk."
Walking up the path and through a steel door he unlocked with a key he wore on a chain around his neck, you had a feeling that this was definitely a place people didn't just leave.
John pushed you deeper into the bunker, past closed doors and through big corridors. While you walked, you tried to memorize the turns. Left. Right. Another left. But since the Bliss had messed with your sense of direction, everything literally looked the same. Huge and endless.
"Move." He shoved you forward.
"Just let go of me!" You stumbled and caught yourself against another door, but your plea sounded pathetic, even to you.
John laughed in return when you reached another one of those blast doors as he turned the wheel to open it. Was this part of the bunker some private wing? You couldn't tell, nor did you want to know. All you wanted was to get the hell out of this place.
"No. Stop fighting."
"Fuck you!" This answer made you expect a reaction from him, though all he did was to shove you further through a long corridor.
After a while, he stopped at another door. Not much different from any of the others you'd seen so far, except that when he pushed it open, the smell hit you first.
Bleach and iron. Dark stains on the floor. Red lights everywhere… It was the smell and the sight of blood that had dried and that had been scrubbed clean over and over and never quite disappeared.
In the center of the room stood a large, heavy steel table; bolted to its surface was a flat cross with leather restraints at the four corners. It looked less like a bed and more like an altar for a very specific kind of sacrifice.
It was the shape of the crux decussata, the Roman ten. Saint Andrew was begging for it, a martyr who didn't feel holy enough to die upright. On a table like that, you weren't just killed; you were shown off in a state of surrender, spread out on it until there was nothing left to give.
It was a Saltire.
John Seed had taken a symbol of sacrifice and turned it into an altar where your soul was supposed to end and his 'Atonement' was meant to begin.
The sight of it made you stop walking.
"No." You couldn't help but whisper in fear. "No, no, no, no!"
For a moment, you thought and hoped that John was letting you leave as he let go of you, but then he turned, and his fingers squeezed your jaw, forcing your face up to look into his eyes.
"No?" His voice sounded way gentler than before. "That's not the word you are supposed to use."
Letting go of you and stepping back, the gentleness you thought you'd just heard went away.
"Get on it."
John wasn't angry yet, at least, and seemed more curious while trying very hard to pretend he wasn't.
"I said… Get. On. It."
Your back hit the wall. You hadn't meant to move, yet you couldn't help pushing yourself against it like it could save you somehow.
John was right there, with his fist in your hair, pulling you across the room before he stopped near the crux decussata. Thinking he was about to bend you over on it as his other hand grabbed your shoulder and pushed forward, you fell. Right in front of it.
"There. That's where you belong."
You stayed on your knees because your legs had given up again.
Even though you couldn't see it, he was smiling. "No one fights anymore." John let go of your hair. "Not really… I bring them to the water, and they're already done with fighting. They are already saying Yes before I even ask. It's efficient, I suppose. It's grace." He started to walk in circles around you. "But it's not very satisfying."
That's when you heard him stop behind you. "You," he continued, "are very satisfying."
"What do you want from me!?" You screamed at him, louder, desperate to just run and get out of here, just before John came around to face you.
"Want?" He crouched down to look into your eyes. "I don't want anything from you, Deputy. I want everything for you. There's a difference."
Slowly, he held out an arm, and his fingers brushed your cheek, making you flinch away from his touch.
"Salvation. Atonement. Freedom from your sins." His fingers moved along your jaw and your throat and stopped right underneath it. "I want to give, and show you, the Power of Yes... Just say it."
"I don't fucking want it!" Nonetheless, you were hoping that talking might help the situation you were stuck in, but John only gave you the same smile from the river, looking somehow beautiful and horrible at the same time, yet very much sincere.
Standing up, he turned from you to face the crux decussata, only to look at the small table right next to it. On it were tools that looked like they would rather belong in a hospital. Though you couldn't see all of them from where you knelt, you definitely saw enough. Blades. Clamps. Needles. And more such tools, whatever they were. That alone made you want to throw up, but you swallowed and forced it back down.
"Please." You were begging now. "Please..."
"Oh, please?" He repeated your plea as he looked through the tools. "Please don't save you? Please don't cleanse you? Please don't love you?"
Deciding to take a knife, you realized it looked like one a surgeon might use. A scalpel, but with a different kind of handle and not the one you would usually expect in a hospital. This one was thicker, with an angled and longer handle.
"Joseph said I have to love you," he reminded you. "And I do. I've loved you since the first time I saw you. Since the first time you looked at me with hate and so full of wrath."
That was when he turned around, needing to make sure you were actually listening.
"And I love the way you refuse to say Yes. I love that you're still trying to find a way out. Away from God." Grabbing you, he threw you backward while you were on the floor. "I'm going to love every sin. I'm going to cut them out of you one by one, and then I'm going to fill you with Yes."
You couldn't move because his hand was on your throat, keeping you still. And then you felt it, the blade, cutting through your shirt and slicing it open right down the middle.
"And when you're clean, when you're finally cleansed, you're going to thank me for saving you from Hell."
Once he was done, his fingers touched and slid down between your tits. You tried to push him away with your legs, to escape somehow, even if there was nowhere to go. It only made John's smirk grow.
"Stay still. This will be so much easier for you if you stay still."
"Don't." Your voice was shaking. "Don't fucking touch me! Don't you dare fucking touch me!"
The hand he'd used to touch your skin moved to hold one of your hands.
"You're the one who came to Hope County. You're the one who fought us, killed our people, and took some of our properties. Only to refuse, over and over, to say, 'Yes!'" His fingers slid softly over your palm. "You did this. Not me. You."
Bringing up the scalpel, he pressed it against your wrist.
"When the Father says I have to love you, then I will. You should understand that by now, Deputy. Accept it." John moved the scalpel up your forearm, over the inside of your elbow, and toward your wrist again.
You watched him slice the blade through the long sleeve of your shirt. "Please. Please, I'll do anything. Just, please! Don't!"
"Anything?" He stopped when he was close to your shoulder. "Would you say Yes?"
Opening your mouth, you let John wait for an answer that wouldn't come, so he just continued to cut open your shirt, now the other sleeve. Every time the blade cut a little bit of your skin, he let out a small and satisfied sigh. He did it on purpose, cutting you and making you flinch to try to escape the pain. When you were sobbing, his other hand grabbed both your wrists to put them above your head.
"Good… Good. Feel it. Feel every sin leaving your soul."
After the rest of your shirt and also your bra were thrown aside by him, leaving you half-naked, you couldn't even cross your arms to hide yourself. Tightly holding your wrists once more, as well as the scalpel, he pressed the tip against your belly.
"You really are beautiful. All that rage, all that violence. Do you know how many of our men you killed? Do you remember their faces?"
You refused to answer.
"No matter…" He moved the knife higher, between your tits, and up to your throat. "You were always meant to be here. With me. Beneath me."
John let go of your wrists. "Stand up."
Not moving as fast as he wanted you to, he grabbed your arm and pulled you to your feet, holding you against his chest, letting you feel the scratch of his beard where his chin pressed against your temple.
"Shhh," he whispered against your head. "Shhh. I know... I know it hurts. Believe me, the pain is grace. Now, look at me."
Trembling, you shook your head.
"I said… look at me."
This time, you dared to look at the man who had taken you with him, yet you couldn't help but look over at the waiting crux decussata. Up close, you could see the restraints at each corner. Black leather cuffs on chains.
Out of nowhere, John threw you hard, making you hit it with your back and a cry of pain. You immediately tried to roll to the other side, yet he was already there, his body pushing your legs down as he sat on them and his hands finding your wrists, putting them over your head just like he'd done before on the floor.
"No!" You cried out. "No!"
"Yes!" John laughed against your ear, already moving again. "Yes, yes, yes!"
The first cuff closed around your left wrist, though he was very careful while using it. Your right wrist followed before he got off you and stepped back to take a good and long look at you. Then his eyes stopped on your thighs, specifically your wet pants.
Without a word, he set the scalpel aside and reached to open them, yanking them down roughly off your legs. You were left in just your soaked panties when John's smile returned, looking ever so amused before he restrained your left ankle and then your right.
Spread out with your arms stretched over your head and to the sides and your legs forced wide apart, your body was trembling helplessly. You pulled at them, thinking maybe you could rip them off, which you tried until your wrists and your ankles hurt, although you hadn't moved an inch. There was no escaping this. But it was all you had left, that pathetic little bit of fight you just couldn't let go.
So you watched how John watched you, his eyes looking at your body like you were some offering on his altar to God.
"Why?" Yelling desperately at him, you already knew that he wouldn't care. "Why the fuck are you doing this to me!?"
John tilted his head. "But you already know why, Deputy."
Picking up his tool of choice, he dragged it slowly across his own palm, yet it wasn't deep enough to make him bleed. "This is what love has always looked like. And what it is… to say Yes. My parents were the first ones to teach me about the Power of Yes. One night, they took me into the kitchen, and they threw me on the ground, and I experienced pain after pain after pain after pain. And when I didn't think I could take anymore, I did. Something broke free inside. I wasn't scared; I was... clear. I looked up at them, and I started to laugh. All I could say was... Yes. You have to understand, my dear Deputy. Love is discipline. Love is correction."
He stepped closer. "And they taught me the Power of Yes. Every time I said it, the pain stopped. Every time I accepted my punishment, accepted my sin, and accepted that I deserved everything they did to me, I understood that I was loved. That I was finally, finally, worthy of love."
"No!" You shook your head, starting to feel the tears running down your cheeks. "You're insane!"
He smirked, ignoring your words like they were nothing. The knife returned to press into your skin, right between your tits, sliding down until it stopped just underneath the left. "So you see… I'm not hurting you. I'm showing you the way that saved me. The way that will save you, too."
And then he did it. The blade cut into your skin, and you cried out, your body arching off the crux decussata when the pain came. "Fuck! Stop! God, please stop!"
"'For all have sinned!'" He quoted Chapter 3 and Verse 23 of Romans with a rising voice. "'And fall short of the glory of God!'"
The letter L took shape slowly, a clean line downward, then a shorter line at the bottom. To him, it looked perfect, like he was signing his name on your soul. The blood welled up immediately, running along your side, and John leaned in, closing his eyes. He dragged his tongue over the fresh cut, tasting it from bottom to top, and licking up the blood before it could drip onto the crux decussata underneath you.
"Mhm… Sweet. So sweet. You even taste like sin..." He licked his mouth clean, groaning and opening his eyes to stare at the letter L. "One down. Three to go."
You were shaking while the tears were still coming, yet you spat at him anyway. "Go to Hell! Go to fucking Hell! You and your whole fucking family! Fuck you!"
John still couldn't care less about what you had to say as he positioned the scalpel just above your skin again. The blade of it cut in for the U, slower this time. Biting your lip, you let out a whimper.
"Don't move, Deputy," John was whispering now, his free hand grabbing your side to keep you from moving. "Don't move. Don't fight. Let God in. Let me in."
As he worked, he positioned himself differently, maybe on purpose, maybe not, who the fuck knew with him? His thigh pressed between your legs, shoving forward until it pushed right against your pussy. And you felt him. Hard as hell, his cock throbbing as it rubbed against the inside of your thigh.
John moaned at the feeling, closing his eyes. "God," he gasped with a smile. "God, you feel…"
He trailed off as he put his forehead to your shoulder, with the knife held loosely between his fingers, before he bucked his hips forward repeatedly. You could feel every inch of his twitching cock, pulsing with need as he moved against you. He was already breathing faster, yet moving with slow thrusts that made his whole body tremble.
"My brother said to love you. But he didn't say how. He didn't say… Joseph never tells me how!"
Despite yourself, your hips bucked harder, and you gasped. You hated it, hated how his cock was so close, how the feeling of him went through your soaked panties.
"Get off me!" You tried to move in the restraints, which only made his cock leak more. "You're so fucking disgusting! Stop!"
His free hand slid back up to the cuts, smearing the blood around as he kept grinding against your thigh.
Slowly, he opened his eyes after a while. "I have to. I have to finish this."
Taking the scalpel, the knife, or whatever it was—you didn't give a shit about that tool anymore apart from wanting to slit his throat with it—John started on the letter S.
They were just slices that made your blood drip faster across your ribs, with him grinding in time with each cut. The pain was turning on his lust. And as you screamed, it only made him moan.
"God, yes!" He leaned down to lick the blood away with his tongue again, laughing loudly and sucking lightly with his mouth as he cleaned it. The taste must have driven him wild because his hips bucked harder, and a wet spot formed on his pants, the precum that was slowly soaking through.
You whimpered, hating the sound, hating how your pussy clenched at such a feeling between your legs. "Shit! Stop!" Your voice turned into sobs. "That hurts! Please! Get off me!"
Stopping, John's eyes stared right between your thighs. You were unable to understand it at first, too lost in the pain and fear, until you tried to follow his line of sight as best as you could. Past your tits and past your bloody ribs, to where your legs were spread wide on the crux decussata.
And even though you realized that your panties were still drenched from the river water, there was another spot—a darker one.
Your pussy was wet. Very wet. Your body had reacted to everything that was happening, to the torture and the terrible feeling of his bulge, and there was no hiding it.
John looked as if he stopped breathing when he reached out, his fingers touching the wet spot before he whispered in adoration. "Look at you, Deputy. So, so willing now…" He pressed a little harder, rubbing your panties against your clit, and your hips bucked without meaning to.
"No, don't," you cried out, as if this would somehow stop him after all the things he'd done already. "I'm not... It's not what you think! Get the fuck away from me! Fuck off!"
"Jeremiah, Chapter 17, Verse 9… 'More torturous than anything is the human heart,'" In an amused voice, he quoted again, with his fingers circling your clit ever so softly, "'and beyond remedy; who can understand it?'"
"Stop! Fuck, please! I don't want this!" Your voice was begging, yet he ignored it as his fingers slipped under the edge of your panties.
It was obvious. You were shamefully wet. And for a man like John Seed, this was more than just an invitation.
"Oh, Deputy," He pushed a finger inside your clenching pussy, even if it wasn't very deep, pumping in and out a little. "You're feeling so nice." He added another finger, stretching you a little wider with a groan.
"No, no, I hate you," you whimpered, moving against his touch despite everything. "You're a fucking monster…"
"'Watch and pray.'" Quoting Matthew, Chapter 26, Verse 41, he ignored your pleas as he fingered you harder, pushing in deeper and knowing exactly where it felt good. "'The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.'"
Unable to deny it, you were getting close… God, you were so close to an orgasm while John was teasing you, even though the word underneath your left tit still wasn't finished yet.
Without any warning, John removed his hand because he had already grabbed the knife once more, with his fingers still wet from your pussy as he took it. The T came next, the last letter, as he continued to grind against you. The upper part was first, then the part downward, and more fresh blood was running along your skin. You screamed, bucking wildly, which only pressed his cock harder against you, making him hiss.
John moved faster after he finished the T. "Yes, yes, fight me!" Breathing harder, he then pulled away and stared at the complete word.
LUST
Four letters were cut into your flesh beneath your left tit, and each was swollen and bleeding. Reaching out again, he touched them lightly with his fingertip, smearing the blood around some more, leaving you to cry quietly.
"Please... it burns! Just let me go. Let me leave, and I'll never go near Holland Valley again! I'll never even return to Hope County, I swear! I swear! Listen to me!"
"Quiet now… Look, look. There it is. One of your sins." He leaned closer, fully kissing the wound before he decided to lick the T as well. Afterward, his mouth kissed over each letter, sucking gently at the cuts. "Have you ever heard of sacramental wine during communion?" He bit a little into your skin around the edges of the cuts, pushing out fresh blood that he immediately licked off. "It's delicious."
His cock still throbbed in his pants, and the wet spot of precum was growing bigger, but he didn't touch himself yet. "First Corinthians, Chapter 10, Verse 16… 'The chalice of benediction, which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ?' You see what your body confesses? What it knows, even when your words sound like the lies coming from a serpent?"
Turning your head to the side, you couldn't look at him anymore.
When his fingers grabbed your chin and turned it in his direction, he quickly pressed with his thumb against your lips until your mouth opened slightly. "I'm going to miss that, you know, when it's gone. When you finally say Yes and all that beautiful rage has been cleansed away."
Once he let go of your face, his eyes went down to look at your pussy. "But you haven't said it yet. You haven't given me the word." Looking back up, the word LUST was staring back at John. "Say it." His voice got louder. "Say Yes, Deputy. Say it!"
You shook your head, biting your tongue. "No... I won't! No!"
That was enough for John. Gone was the Inquisitor preaching and quoting scripture from the Bible. He quickly picked up the forgotten scalpel from the crux decussata and jumped at you, yelling into your face.
"No, no, no, no, no, no, no! You will! You'll say it! I promise you! You will!"
He grabbed the edge of your panties with his fist, pulling them aside from your body, and ripped them off with the blade in fast cuts, making you scream in shock. Pieces of it were thrown to the floor by him, and then he was about to throw the scalpel aside, too. Though in the end, he only held it tighter.
"The Book of Revelation! Chapter 17, Verse 1! 'And there came one of the seven angels, which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither; I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters!'" He was laughing as he stared at your naked pussy that was looking ever so wet under the red lights. "Verse 16! 'And the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore and shall make her desolate and naked and shall eat her flesh and burn her with fire!' And you still won't say Yes? To God? To me!? You're mine to save! Joseph said love you! Love you!"
Before you could even think about what he said and meant, he climbed onto the crux decussata with you, his knees pushing your hips down. The scalpel was back at your skin, this time higher, moving up your chest, over the bloody LUST, and up to your throat.
"Revelation, Chapter 18, Verse 24! 'And in her was found the blood of prophets and of saints and of all who have been slaughtered on earth!' And you think you can deny me!?" John yelled into your face. "Deny Him? Deny the Atonement?!"
Putting the knife into his left hand this time, he moved it lower and pushed it into the side of your right ribs, between the bones where the flesh gives way. He cut into it, though not deep enough to kill.
Because John Seed needed you alive for salvation.
But it was definitely deep enough that you felt every inch of the blade sliding through your flesh and through a bit of the layer of fat. Blood leaked out immediately, running over your skin again as you whined in fear and pain.
"The Gospel of John, Chapter 19, Verse 34." His free hand reached out and stopped just over the wound without touching it yet. "'Instead, one of the soldiers pierced Jesus' side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water!'"
"Stop! God, please! It hurts! It hurts so damn much!" You finally managed to scream back at him, but John didn't stop. "Yes, Deputy!" His eyes were wide. "Scream every single one of your sins out!"
His mouth was on the new wound, sucking hard at the deep cut, moaning against your skin as he drank from it. Licking, sucking, and biting around it to make more blood leak out. The pull hurt more than anything, opening it up further, but his mouth kept going.
"Taste of wrath... taste of lust..." John pulled away with red-smeared lips, blood dripping a little from his chin as he tried to talk.
Leaning back down to gather more blood, he filled his mouth until he had enough. Without warning, his hands grabbed your thighs hard, holding you still from flinching around underneath him.
You knew what was coming, but it didn't prepare you at all before John spat after he leaned back down, making your own blood run over your clit and your pussy. It was disgusting, and yet your pussy clenched at the feeling, betraying you again as it had done before.
"No!" You pulled wildly at chains, screaming in fear. "Stop! You sick fuck! You're fucking crazy! I'll kill you! I will kill you!"
Not stopping, John buried his face between your legs with his tongue licking everywhere. Right across your clit and even sucking on it.
"Mhm, yes," he growled against your pussy. "This! This is communion!"
Hating every second of this nightmare, you continued to scream. John's tongue thrust inside you, fucking you with it and licking up more of the blood until he pulled back.
"Do you want me to help you?" He lifted his head, laughing. "Tell me! Do you want this to end? Say the word, Deputy!"
Feeling how your pussy throbbed after he had teased you, you were still able to shake your head. "No... I mean, FUCK!"
The pain from the wound at your side was now mixed with sweat, while his mouth worked you over. "Say it! Yes or no?! Give me the Power of Yes!"
"No! No!" Your screams turned to whimpers, but your hips bucked up toward his mouth anyway, not caring about how much you hated him.
"Liar!" John bit your inner thigh hard enough to make it bleed there, too. "The Book of Psalms! Chapter 34, Verse 8! 'Taste and see that the Lord is good!'" Eating you out, his tongue pushed back in deep, then out again to lick your clit, over and over, devouring you.
The orgasm you didn't want? It was coming. Forced out by him. "Please... John, I…"
"Do you want this to end!? Say Yes if you want my grace! Say Yes to God!" He yelled again, two fingers getting pushed inside your pussy next, before he continued to suck on your clit.
You couldn't hold it back any longer, screaming as the orgasm came ever so hard, with your pussy clenching around his fingers. "Yes! Fuck, yes, stop, no… yes!"
Pulling back almost immediately, John laughed with wide eyes, licking his lips clean. "There it is! The first 'Yes;' Deputy! Praise be!"
Trembling, you squeezed your eyes shut in shame, unable to look at the man whose mouth was smeared red with your own blood.
Inside your head, you weren't in the bunker anymore.
You were a child, sitting on a bench in your local church, with your Grandma's hand gripping your wrist too tightly because you'd squirmed during the reading. Grandma had been dead for a few years now. But her voice wasn't. You also remembered her hand patting your knee during the scary parts. "It's just a story, sweetheart. A warning. God loves you."
'The Apocalypse of John,' she'd always called the Book of Revelation. "The only book that tells the truth about what's coming."
God loves you…
The words were still there. Deep inside of you, under years of not believing and of skipping church the second you moved away. But not even John Seed could cut those words out of your skin.
"Revelation, Chapter 14 and Verse 10!" You swallowed hard, squeezing your eyes shut as you yelled at him. And you continued, louder this time. "'He will drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out full strength into the cup of His indignation. He shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels...'"
John didn't move after you confessed the verse you remembered, and when you opened your eyes, his hands started to tremble. His own looked empty in a way that scared you more than his anger had.
"You... You know the Word?" He looked confused and hurt, and crawling back onto you, he touched your face softly.
"You know," he whispered in wonder and awe, as you'd just revealed yourself as an angel. "You know and you still… And you still fight me? Us? Why, Deputy… Why?"
His forehead pressed against yours, letting you feel his shaky breath against your lips.
"You're so beautiful." It wasn't sounding the way he'd said it before. "You know… You know Him…"
His lips found your tears first, kissing them away one by one. Your cheeks, too. Each kiss felt gentle, yet for you, it was somehow worse. Worse than the cuts or the way he'd just made you come all over his face.
"I could love you so deeply. I do love you. I have to love you. I already do. I do. But…" Pulling back with wet eyes, he whispered. "Why didn't you say Yes before? I want you to see. To understand… Is that so wrong? Is wanting to save someone from the Collapse wrong?"
John genuinely didn't seem to understand why anyone would choose to fight over surrender, especially you.
You ignored him just like he'd ignored you before. "Chapter 13 and Verses 5 to 6! The Book of Revelation! 'And the Beast was given a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies, and he was given authority to continue… Then he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme His name, His tabernacle, and those who dwell in heaven!'" The wonder in his eyes was gone. "The Apocalypse of John…"
John sat back, making you think he might be done. Maybe your words had reached something, after all.
"Blasphemy?" He let out a laugh, and his hands moved to his belt. "But… Deputy. You really didn’t listen to the verses afterward, did you? 'It was allowed to make war on the saints and to conquer them. And all that dwells upon the earth shall worship the Beast.'"
Watching him reach inside his pants and take out his cock, you couldn't look away. Couldn't close your eyes. Couldn't do anything except lie there and see what you had done to him. He was so hard. Thick and throbbing, still leaking precum. Not once had it gone soft.
He wrapped his hand around himself and pumped once, his eyes never leaving yours.
"You know the Word. You know. So why do you make me do this?"
His hand moved again, slower this time. He was thinking about something inside himself that he didn't understand.
"When Joseph said, 'love you'... I thought it would be easy." A broken laugh escaped him. "I thought you'd fight, and I'd win, and then you'd say Yes, and I could... I could..."
His free hand came up to touch the cuts on your ribs. LUST. It was still bleeding, but his touch was softer this time.
"But you're not like the other sinners. You know Him. You know the Word. And you still..." His jaw tightened. "You still choose wrath over grace. You still choose sin over me."
Moving his hand to your side, he grabbed it tightly.
"I can't let you do that, Deputy." His voice turned into a whisper. "I can't. Not when I know what you could be. What we could be."
And his mouth found yours.
Bloody lips sliding against your own with no patience until his tongue pushed past your teeth, making you taste it.
"I'll take your sins into my body. I'll carry them for you. That's what love does, Deputy."
His hand left your side and found his cock, still sticky from your blood, pumping it faster before he slapped the tip against your swollen pussy a few times, smearing his precum over your pussy lips, teasing himself.
And he thrust into you without mercy.
One deep thrust, letting him push every inch of his cock into you, and John moaned at the feeling, your pussy squeezing him ever so tight. You clenched hard around him, fighting, trying to push him back out, but he was too damn deep, and too thick, stretching you around him until you felt the burn uselessly.
You screamed in agony once he was all the way inside of you, his balls pressing against your ass, with his hips grinding hard near your clit to make sure you really felt every inch.
John let out a broken moan, with his head dropping to your shoulder. Then a laugh came, his whole body shuddering while he stayed inside your clenching pussy.
"Yes… Oh, yes!" He rolled his hips slowly, moving himself deeper to feel you resist.
Quickly, it turned into harder thrusts. Each one drove him balls-deep. John groaned like it was the sweetest sound he’d ever heard when he heard you whimper louder. Another deep thrust. He pulled back to watch his cock slide in and out of you.
"Look at what you do to me… What I do to you."
More thrusts followed, fucking the air out of your lungs, which made your pussy get wetter around him despite the pain.
"'The wages of sin are death. But the gift of God…'" His teeth grazed your shoulder. "'…is eternal life…'"
John bit into your skin. He sucked at your flesh, groaning, while his hips lost their rhythm. They were stuttering, then pounding faster, desperately.
"'…through Jesus Christ, our Lord!'"
One hand made its way to your throat, not choking you, but holding its palm over your hammering pulse, feeling it race because of him. For him.
You couldn't speak anymore, only shaking, leaking, and bleeding. All the while, John stared down at you with a smile.
Thrust after thrust, pounding the 'Yes' out of your body until any resistance was gone and all you could do was take him, take the grace he forced inside you. But underneath the pain, underneath the hate, your body kept betraying you. Just like it had done before. Every thrust pushed against that spot inside that made your pussy wetter around him, even as you wished you could go dry.
He felt too good, and you hated it, hated how your hips started to meet his without meaning to, and hated the wet sounds your body made for him.
"Et dabo vobis cor novum..." His voice cracked with each pound of his hips. "Et spiritum novum ponam in medio vestri..." His hand slid down to your tit again, teasing your nipple once, twice, then pinching it roughly. "Et auferam cor lapideum de carne vestra... Et dabo vobis cor carneum…"
His voice was trembling and on the edge of breaking when he started to translate, irritated by the fact that you wouldn't answer him with words anymore.
"A new heart…" His forehead pressed against yours, and his beard tickled your skin. "I will give you. And a new spirit will I put within you... I will take away the heart of stone from you... And give you a heart of flesh…"
He thrust deeper on the last word, grinding right against that certain spot once more, your pussy clenching ever so tight.
"And you shall be my people… And I will be your God."
One of his hands slid down your body, over the bleeding LUST, until his fingers found your clit. He circled it slowly, softly, moving them in time with his hips.
And his rhythm changed. It was slower now, yet still deep. He was savoring this, you realized. Drawing it out and making himself last. But his eyes? His eyes were begging.
"Please," John whispered. "Please, Deputy. Fight me. Scream at me. Don't go quiet. Don't just leave me."
His mouth found your neck, pressing kisses against it, tasting the salt of your sweat, while you kept staring at the ceiling as you'd already left your body behind.
Pulling back, John's hand slapped down onto the crux decussata right beside your head.
"Talk to me!"
You didn't.
John's hips stopped moving, and he grabbed your chin, forcing your eyes to look into his. "You know the Word, Deputy! You proved that!"
Nothing. Just your breath was the answer, coming out shallow and fast.
"I will give you a new heart! A new spirit! I will take away your heart of stone!" He thrust back in so hard on that word that it was making you gasp. "And give you a heart of flesh!"
Watching you closely, John waited, knowing you'd answer anyway. "Show me you're still there..."
"Ezekiel…" Your voice was wrecked from screaming and crying. But it was yours. Then you spat in his face. "Chapter 36, Verses 26 and 28."
All you heard at first was a laugh. John actually laughed like you'd given him a gift.
"There you are! There you are, my dear Deputy!" He wiped his cheek against his shoulder, smiling. "I knew you weren't gone… And when you're finally, finally clean, when every sin has been carved out of you and replaced with grace? I will take you to Joseph. I will present you to him, whole and healed and saved, and he will see what I've made of you. He will see that I loved you the way he commanded. He will see that I am worthy."
His hips bucked forward. Thrusting harder again. The slap of his hips against yours, the sound of his cock sliding through your soaked pussy, his ragged breathing… You could hear how wet you were. John could hear it too. And he moaned every single time.
"And the Gates of Eden will open for me. And I will walk through them, and you will walk beside me, and we will stand together in the light of God!"
With his breath coming in pants against your throat, he couldn't help but fuck you faster again. John was getting close… You could feel it in the way his cock twitched inside you and the way his hips stuttered and slowed only to pound into you again.
Though he didn't come. Pulling out, his fist was wrapped around his cock roughly, squeezing, and stopping himself with his eyes closed in concentration.
"Iterum…" He whispered. "Again… Once more. I need to love you."
And when he thrust back in, it was as if he had forever, like he meant what he said about walking through Eden with you by his side.
"Iterum," he breathed. "Again."
Another thrust. Another cry.
"Iterum." Again.
"Iterum." Again.
"Iterum!" Again!
Each repetition of this word was timed to a punishing buck of hips, fucking you as if absolution depended on it. John's voice got louder after a while, falling back into scripture.
"Propter quod dico tibi…"
'Therefore I say to thee…'
THRUST.
"…remittentur ei peccata multa…"
'…many sins are forgiven her…'
THRUST.
"…quoniam dilexit multum…"
'…because she loved much…'
THRUST.
"…cui autem minus dimittitur…"
'…but to whom less is forgiven…'
THRUST.
"…minus diligit."
'…he loveth less.'
John moaned as he fucked you as hard as he could, yet he still denied himself, feeling undeserving. He didn't allow himself to come until you said the one word he wished for. Until you really meant it.
"To whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little... Deputy, I have been forgiven much."
His hand slid along your throat, up to your jaw.
"You're my atonement. You're my proof. You're the evidence I'll lay at my brother's feet. But if you willingly say Yes, without needing my help, then everything I've done, everything I've suffered, everything I've become…"
His whole body was shaking again, trembling with the effort of holding himself back.
"…it won't just be for nothing."
Looking at John, this man who had carved a sin into your skin, who had drowned you and restrained you, who was buried inside your bleeding body, you said the only thing you could say.
"No."
This time, John's face didn't change. He just looked at you. Through you. He looked at something you couldn't see, something far away.
"Eventually…"
One word he gave you as an answer was all you got before he leaned down, pressing his lips to your forehead, only to move lower. But the bite happened before John could even process that you'd moved your head.
One second, he was there with his forehead pressed to yours and with lips so close, smelling her own blood still on his tongue from when he'd sucked it into his mouth. He was being gentle now. Gentle. Like you were worth saving more than ever.
And then your teeth bit into his lower lip.
Not hard enough to rip a piece away from his skin, but hard enough to hurt and hard enough to make it bleed. John jerked his head back fast, pulling out of you, and his hand flew to his mouth before he stared at the blood on his fingers as you'd just shown him the face of Lucifer himself.
For a while, there was nothing. Just John Seed standing there, bleeding from the lip, looking more confused than angry, with his cock still hard.
Then his face changed.
"What… What did you do?!"
Barely able to breathe through the pain still coming from every cut, every wound, and all the things he'd done to you, you didn't answer.
"I was… I was trying to love you. And you?"
John yanked your face up to his, close enough that you could see the blood still welling from the bite mark on his lip.
"You bit me!"
The laugh that came out of him now wasn't right. Letting go of your face, he stepped back, both hands coming up to slide through his hair.
"I give you everything! I give you grace! I give you atonement!" He turned back to face you, though this time, he stepped toward the small table next to the crux decussata. "And you bite me? You bite me!?"
Something fell to the floor, metal, glass—you couldn't tell and didn't care. When his hand returned, it held a small vial.
Liquid.
"You know what this is. You've been there before. You've seen it before. The Bliss took you once, and you fought it. You fought her. You fought Faith."
John opened the vial with his teeth, spitting the stopper onto the floor. Grabbing your nose, he squeezed, making your mouth open automatically, and he poured.
The Bliss went down your throat, and you gagged, choked, and tried to spit it back out, but his hand was over your mouth now, holding it closed, forcing you to swallow it.
For a moment, nothing changed. John was still there, coming closer and crawling onto the crux decussata, still bleeding from the lip. The bunker was still the bunker. The pain was still the pain.
Then the red lights started to blur around you. And the bunker was gone. It was gone in the way sugar dissolves in water, the way salt dissolves on the tongue. One second there, the next second gone, leaving nothing behind but the memory of John smiling down at you…
Suddenly, you were standing on a road.
The kind of road that led somewhere private. White particles drifted through the air like snow, like ash, falling from a sky you couldn't quite see.
Looking down at yourself, you realized you were wearing a dress. White and simple. The kind of dress you wore to church when you were a child, together with your grandmother.
At the end of the road in front of you stood a ranch.
It looked familiar. You knew it. You knew it the way you knew things in dreams, without knowing how you knew. The lodge had two stories, and next to it sat an aircraft hangar. But standing at the edge of that courtyard, waiting for you…
John Seed.
Though not the one you knew. This John stood with his head slightly tilted, watching you approach with an expression you'd never seen on his face before.
Peace.
He looked peaceful. His mouth? The mouth that had bitten and sucked and drunk your blood showed you a warm smile. And even his eyes, those blue eyes that had gone crazy and wet and hungry, were calm now.
He even wore white. A shirt made of the finest silk velvet, open at the collar and trimmed with dark‑blue damask fabric at both the throat and sleeves. White pants and shoes, too. And he looked like a saint at the gates of his own small paradise.
You started to walk toward him, right in his direction.
The white particles were floating past your face, and you couldn't help but reach for one, watching it dissolve without a trace. Colors glitched at the edges of your eyes again, just like they had before, at the river.
When you were close enough, he finally started to speak.
"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."
You stopped in front of him. Up close, his eyes were even more beautiful.
Reaching out slowly, he cupped your face in both hands. They were warm, yet soft—the hands of a man who worked, yes, but who worked with care.
"I've been waiting for you, Deputy."
You should've said something. Maybe you should've asked why you were here or why everything felt like a dream when it should've felt like a nightmare. But the words wouldn't come, and anyway, it didn't seem to matter. Nothing seemed to matter except the way he was looking at you, like you were the answer to a question he'd been asking his whole life.
"I know you're confused." His thumbs caressed your cheeks. "I know you don't understand. But you're here now. That's what matters. You're here."
Behind John, the ranch waited. The lodge with its many windows. The hangar... Somewhere, distantly, you even heard music. Not the cult's hymns, nor the preaching propaganda. Just slow, peaceful music.
'Darkness be over me, my rest a stone.
Yet in my dreams I'd be nearer, my God, to Thee.'
John's hands slid from your face to your shoulders, down your arms, until he held your hands in his. "Come inside." Tugging a little at your hand, you decided to follow him one way or another. The front door to the lodge stood open when he led you there, and when you crossed the threshold, you felt safe.
The inside of the lodge was nothing like you'd expected. This was a home. And it felt like one. Letting go of one of your hands but keeping the other, he pulled you deeper into the house. Past the fireplace, up a set of stairs. Upstairs were doors, all closed but one. The one at the end. The one that stood open. And he led you inside.
It was a bedroom. Quite large, but not overwhelming. A bed stood in the center with a wooden frame and white sheets. A window that looked out over Holland Valley, though through it you could see sky in a way you'd never seen before, with clouds looking as if they didn't exist in any sky you knew.
Finally, John turned to face you.
"My beloved… Song of Solomon, Chapter 2, Verse 10. 'Rise, my love, my fair one, and come away.'"
Through the white dress, you felt his warmth once his hands found your waist.
"I will betroth you to me forever." His lips kissed your forehead, then the tip of your nose. "Hosea, Chapter 2, Verse 19. 'I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy.' I will betroth you to me in faithfulness."
John's lips were on yours the second he stopped talking, feeling ever so soft. This was a kiss that waited, a kiss that gave you the time and permission to pull away from him whenever you wanted to.
Though you didn't want to.
Worshipfully, you opened your mouth against his until your tongues touched, and you felt yourself melt. John's hands moved from your waist to your back, pulling you closer, and you went willingly.
Eagerly, even.
"'Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm, for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave. The coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame.'" He quoted the Song of Solomon, Chapter 8, and Verses 6 to 7, against your mouth, between kisses. "'Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.'"
His fingers found the tie at the back of your dress, asking with a tug, and when you nodded against his mouth, he pulled. The white dress slid down your body, and you stood before him in nothing but yourself, naked.
Taking a few steps back far enough to look at you, his eyes showed nothing but awe—the adoration of a man seeing something holy for the first time.
"Isaiah, Chapter 61, Verse 10. 'I will rejoice greatly in the Lord; my soul will exult in my God, for He has clothed me with garments of salvation and wrapped me in a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom wears a priestly headdress and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.'"
He reached out, and his fingers slid along your collarbone, downward, stopping just above your heart. "In aeternum… Ad infinitum…"
Forever… To infinity…
Without thinking clearly, your hand reached for him, for the collar of his white shirt, but his fingers were already working on the buttons, slowly opening it.
Nothing but smooth skin was visible once he took it off. John was pure here.
His hands slid up your arms right after, over your shoulders, until he stopped on either side of your neck, and his thumbs stroked your jaw softly.
"Ephesians, Chapter 5, Verses 25 through 27." He sounded certain in the way that only true believers ever sounded. "'Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.'"
John's lips found your neck, kissing you there. "Song of Solomon, Chapter 4, Verse 7." He whispered against your skin. "'You are altogether beautiful, my darling; there is no flaw in you.'"
Breathing in deeply, the smell of bleach burned your nose, and somewhere distant, you heard the rattle of a chain. But then it was gone.
"Isaiah, Chapter 61, Verse 3." He breathed the words against your collarbone. "'To bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.'"
His hands found your shoulders next, pushing until you let yourself fall backward onto the bed. John then knelt on the edge of the bed, his body blocking the view of the sky through the window—that sky. You could see it past his shoulder, purple, gold, and pink all at once, the colors of a sunset that never ended. It was the sunset of a new dawn that never quite arrived. Clouds that moved like you were dreaming, and behind them, a light that might have been holy.
"'I will present you as a pure virgin to Christ.'" Second Corinthians, Chapter 11, Verse 2.
Crawling right above you, his beard tickled you while he moved lower. Lower between your tits, kissing his way down the middle of your chest until he stopped where a crucifix might be, like the one you always wore before you decided to leave home.
Not kissing further, you could feel his smile against you before he spoke again. "Song of Solomon, Chapter 1, Verse 15." John's voice was a little quieter against your skin, but you heard it anyway. "'How beautiful you are, my darling. Oh, how beautiful. Your eyes are doves.'"
Moving back up, his body pressed against yours, and you could feel him. Hard and ready, letting you feel what you did to him. And his eyes were on yours. Blue and patient. And your body answered him.
You moved against him, desperate for his touch. And he noticed it; even though the movement was so quick and small, not even you would've noticed it if you weren't paying any attention.
Thighs. Hip. Waist. Ribs.
He caressed every part of you until his fingers found your tits, massaging them until your nipples were hard, leaving you to gasp quietly for more.
And his mouth replaced his fingers.
Sucking on your nipple like he had all the time in the world, like there was nowhere else he'd rather be than here, doing this, worshiping you with his mouth, his other hand stayed busy playing with your other tit.
You moved again. This time, it was noticeable, your body wanting more of him, your hands finding his shoulders and pulling him closer.
Moving his palm away from your tit, he quickly replaced it with his mouth, giving it the same devotion. All the while, his right hand now slid down your body until his fingers found your pussy.
Wet. So wet. That's what you were for him.
Groaning once, his fingers found your clit, and he touched you there, watching your face for every reaction. One finger slid easily inside you. Quick. And a second finger joined the first, stretching you further, before he continued to thrust in and out. In and out…
"Isaiah, Chapter 62, Verse 5." The words came out faster. "'As a young man marries a young woman, so will your Builder marry you; as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you.'"
Out of nowhere, you felt pain in your side. Pain as if you'd been stabbed. Though as soon as it had been there, it was gone, too.
John's fingers were still inside you, still moving and worshiping. His face was close to yours, and if he'd noticed, he gave no sign. But his rhythm changed. Harder and deeper. Until he pulled back out.
With him standing back up from the bed, you watched as he opened his pants, stepping out of them. John was beautiful. He looked like a Seraph, you thought in silence to yourself.
After he positioned himself back over you, his cock pushed into you inch by inch, letting you feel every part of it. John moaned against your mouth when he was fully inside you, his forehead pressing to yours, his breath coming out shaky against your lips.
Your hands moved without thinking, sliding up his chest, wanting to feel his heartbeat beneath your palms, but you felt something else instead.
Letters. Scars.
Carved into his flesh. Your fingers touched them without meaning to—five letters—but you couldn't make out the word just yet. Opening your eyes, you noticed the word SLOTH, cut deep into his chest. Blinking in confusion several times, you wanted to get a better look at it, but it was gone all of a sudden. His chest was smooth again. Pure. Your palms pressed against nothing but warm skin.
But he was still fucking you and still talking scripture.
"Colossians, Chapter 3, Verse 14." His voice was still sounding like honey. "'And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.'"
John's cock was so deep now. Deeper than before, if that were even possible, and you felt every thick inch of him filling you up. The angle changed when he hooked one arm under your knee, pushing one of your legs higher, spreading you wider for him, and your pussy clenched around him, trying to push him out, but it only made him groan and pound you, groaning loudly against your skin.
The white sheets underneath you, ever so comforting, were what you meant to reach out for. To grab them and to hold onto them, as you continued to moan. Reaching out, you noticed how cold they were. Cold and hard under your back. And pain... You felt actual pain from somewhere in your side, from somewhere near your ribs, but the sheets were warm again once one of his hands moved to your chin to make you look into his eyes.
Those blue eyes, so beautiful, looking so wrong in the red lights above you…
Several quick, shallow pumps followed before he slowed down, then one deep, grinding thrust that pressed his body against your clit, over and over. His hand left your leg and found your tit, squeezing roughly, playing with your nipple, and pinching it just enough to make you cry out in need. Then his hand slid up toward your face, and his thumb found your mouth, pushing past your lips, making you taste sweat and precum as he let you suck on his thumb in the same rhythm his cock was fucking your pussy.
Changing the angle again, and pulling both your legs over his shoulders, he was making you watch his cock disappear inside you, making you watch how your pussy stretched wide around it. His hand quickly moved from your mouth between your legs, and his fingers found your clit, so wet and swollen, and he touched it in time with his thrusts, too. Fast little touches when he pushed in deep, slow and rougher when he pulled back. And John's eyes were watching your face for every reaction.
And you screamed. No, you moaned… You were moaning. You were sure of it.
He pushed your legs back down to your chest to pound into you harder, and his fingers scratched over the steel underneath your back. Steel? You felt steel underneath you… But none of that mattered right now, because his cock was hitting that spot inside you over and over and over. Sweat dripped from his forehead onto your tits, and he leaned down and licked it off, turning his groan into a moan. Your pussy was soaked from your own lust and from the precum that leaked from the tip of his cock with every thrust, and the sounds your bodies made were almost louder than both of your moans. His balls were already so tight, and you could feel them twitch against your ass with each desperate pump of his hips.
"Romans, Chapter 8." He groaned after he lifted his head to yours, speaking directly against your lips. "Verses 38 and 39." He was getting closer. You could feel it in the way his cock throbbed inside of you. "'For I am convinced that neither death nor life…'"
Your wrists hurt again... As if they were restrained by something. Handcuffs? You weren't sure.
"'Neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future…'"
John's thrusts turned sloppy, and his control was slipping further when he pounded into you so deeply that you even met the headboard of the bed, and he slid his hand to the back of your head to hold it and keep it safe, though he kept going without mercy.
"'Nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation…'"
His teeth were suddenly on your shoulder again, biting you—no, kissing you. He was kissing you there.
"'Will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.'"
Your legs trembled uncontrollably when you clenched around him with every thrust, trying to hold him inside, trying to push him out, unable to decide what it wanted. But your body knew. Your body was soaking his cock with every thrust. You were fucking him back, and John loved it. You could see it in his eyes, in his smile, and hear it in the way he moaned out loud.
"Say it. Say Yes, Deputy. Say Yes to me. Say Yes to us."
Yes? … Deputy?
Unable to understand what he meant, you only realized how his repetition of that particular word became unbearably confusing. Every second, another word of Yes, another truth, another lie, and you couldn't tell anymore which was which, or which one you wanted to be real.
Before you could question him, his lips were back on yours, moving against them like he had all the time in the world, like 'eternity' was the word he'd meant, and this kiss was its meaning. Then his tongue was in your mouth, and it tasted like the inside of a wound, and you swallowed without meaning to, without wanting to, and it slid down your throat like a promise you hadn't asked for.
"Say Yes, Deputy. Say Yes to me… To me only."
His hips still slapped against yours, grinding that thick cock against every spot that made you feel good, and his fingers on your clit never stopped moving, worshipping you closer to what you so desperately wanted.
"Yes." The word came out as a quiet, broken moan.
John's whole body shuddered above you. "Again…"
"Yes."
You said it louder this time, with your hips trying to buck up to meet his, fucking yourself on his cock, needing it even more now.
"Yes, yes, yes!"
The word didn't come out of your mouth anymore, only moans and gasps, but your body said it for you. Your pussy clenched around him so tight you felt him tremble once again. "Say it!" He was begging now, feeling how close the two of you were. Way too close. And you already came.
"YES! GOD, YES, JOHN! YES!"
Coming around him, you felt the exact moment he lost it as well. He couldn't even warn you when his mouth fell open, and his eyes went wide before his cum shot into your pussy and filled you up. He kept thrusting through it, pushing it deeper with every twitch. His cock pulsed so hard, like this was the only thing he'd ever wanted.
"Yes," he cried out in a groan. "Yes, yes, yes…"
Right afterward, John gently put your legs back down at the sides of his thighs, leaning back down over you, though his cock was still inside your pussy. His face pressed into your neck, and you felt him shaking. Crying, maybe. Laughing, maybe. Or both. His hips gave one last weak thrust, grinding his softening cock around and making you whimper. Looking at you, you saw how his eyes were wet. And somewhere, distantly, you thought you heard the rattle of chains as you'd heard before. But it didn't matter. Nothing mattered.
"The Gospel of John, Chapter 3, Verse 5." He kissed your forehead. "'Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.'"
He pulled out of you and stood up from the bed. You watched him move to a small table in the corner of the bedroom. A table you didn't notice before. Right next to it. On it sat an alabaster bowl, white and beautifully made and decorated, with liquid in it.
"Holy water," John said, lifting it carefully with both hands. "As a blessing of this sacred act." Turning back toward you, he held the bowl against his chest. "The Water of Life."
Sitting down beside you, his hand found the place on your side—the place where, in some other world you couldn't quite remember, something felt wet and hurt. But here, there was nothing.
"'I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; from all your impurities and from all your idols I will cleanse you.'" Ezekiel, Chapter 36, Verse 25.
He tilted the alabaster bowl. Water slid out and moved in a slow path down your collarbone and over your tits and made your nipples harden before the water continued its way down your ribs.
Making you gasp, John leaned in and followed it with his mouth. His lips kissed away the water. "Blessed." He licked it away with his tongue. "Blessed are the pure in heart." Another kiss, letting his mouth move lower. "For they shall see God."
With one hand, he tilted the bowl again. More water dripped over your other tit, across your nipple, and he quickly moved his head to catch it, to drink it from your skin. His lips and his tongue were warm, and you groaned at the feeling without meaning to.
"Thou preparest a table before me," he quoted, "in the presence of mine enemies." His lips moved to your stomach, following the water's path. "Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over."
The bowl got tilted once more, letting more of the water run slowly over your hip, your thigh, and slipping between your legs and toward your pussy, where his cum still leaked out of you. He positioned himself differently again to follow it down, kissing the inside of your thigh, your knee, and even your calf.
"Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me." Breathing the words against your skin, he was working his way back up from your calf, tickling you with his beard. "All the days of my life." His mouth found your pussy, letting his tongue slide through the water and his cum, and closing his eyes as if this were salvation.
You were shaking. Floating. Dissolving. Just like the particles you'd seen before… At the river? No… The ranch. Outside. Right here, nowhere else.
And then John moved back up and returned to your side, setting the alabaster bowl down on the white sheets beside you. His hand touched and caressed your ribs, all the while looking into your eyes. His own looked so sincere. And so full of love.
"Behold," he whispered, "I make all things new..."
He lifted the bowl one last time and let the water drip down slowly. But something was wrong with the light. It looked red all over, yet not for long. You barely noticed, watching the water fall toward your skin.
You were happy. You were loved.
And the water touched your skin when you closed your eyes, letting out a deep sigh. But it didn't feel like the cold water from before. It was warm and thicker. That wasn't right... The water wasn't even running over your skin anymore. And the alabaster bowl wasn't there anymore, too. However, John watched you ever so closely, looking still beautiful and giving you the softest smile.
Until you noticed that you couldn't move anymore, something was restraining your ankles and wrists.
And the warmth on your side? The warmth was burning. It was heat. Unbearable heat right against your side, right where the slight pain had been. And you screamed. A scream that came out of you from your very soul after you quickly opened your eyes in pure terror and fear.
A branding iron got pressed into your flesh. This was skin burning. And you realized…
The ranch bedroom was gone. The white sheets, the impossible sky, John's smooth chest without any scars, the gentle hands, the alabaster bowl, the holy water—it was gone—all of it. You were in a bunker. On a crux decussata. Restrained by leather cuffs on chains, bleeding, covered in sweat and blood and cum, the word LUST carved under your tit throbbing with every beat of your heart.
And John Seed was standing over you, his face that of a man experiencing divine revelation and standing in the presence of God himself, while he held the branding iron against your right side. Against the wound, he'd cut deep into your flesh. Against the place he'd drunk your blood from. Against the place he was now sealing for Eden's Gate forever.
He held the iron there.
One second. Two. Three.
Each second was an eternity, leaving you with the knowledge that this would never come off and that you would carry this forever, whether you lived or died. You could hear and smell it, the sizzling sound of your own flesh burning under the iron and the smell of burning skin and the lightest layer of fat. And then he pulled it away.
The relief was almost as unbearable as the burn after the iron was gone, and he put it aside.
John's lips moved, yet you couldn't hear the words over your own screaming. Your throat was hurting already, but you couldn't stop because the pain was beyond anything, beyond the drowning at the river, beyond the cuts, beyond him having been inside of you.
You watched it through eyes full of tears and agony as the last bit of Bliss slowly left, leading you back to reality. John must've taken the iron from somewhere, next to the small table, from a brazier you hadn't noticed before. But you knew now. You'd been in the Bliss. You'd been gone. And while you were gone, he'd prepared this, gifting you the eight-pointed star in the name of God—the Project at Eden's Gate symbol. A vertical cross and saltire overlaid on the skin around it.
That was when John leaned closer.
His face was back above you, that beautiful, terrible face, and his beard was smeared with your blood and his own, still smiling. His lips formed words as before, but you couldn't hear them over the pounding of your heart, which was slowing now. But you read them ever so clearly.
"Expiatio… Propior, Deus meus, tibi, Deputy."
'Atonement... Nearer, my God, to Thee, Deputy.'
───────────────────────────────────────
𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫'𝐬 𝐍𝐨𝐭𝐞: This is my first Far Cry 5 oneshot, and I was honestly terrified to post it. English isn't my first language, so if you see any mistakes, please know that I tried my absolute best. And my fic is NOT meant to glorify anything! I can and do write other stuff and things! Different smut, fluff, and canon-divergent AUs. If this isn't your kind of story, that's completely okay. Please take care of yourself and click away. And the title is from the hymn "Nearer, My God, to Thee," by the way. The song that was played on the Titanic as it sank. Felt appropriate for a story about cleansing, salvation, and going down with the ship. If you made it this far, thank you.
I'm currently at over 10K words and editing my oneshot. I don't even know if that might be too short for the FC5 fandom. And it's John Seed x Fem!Deputy!Reader.
I'm still editing it because I'm not satisfied with the ending and I'm looking for different scripture I can use for him. It's definitely non-con heavy, so I'm not sure if anyone wants to actually read that. And it's cringe. Sorry.
But the oneshot starts during the Cleansing cutscene at the riverbank and is inspired by Joseph's sentence: "You have to love them, John."
That's where I currently am with writing for John Seed, if that's what you wanted to know. I'm not sure.
Just had another idea that includes more Bliss while John fucks the Deputy and carves her skin with a knife. That lawyer is gonna look like a Saint in that Bliss hallucination. Holy Water included. (It's the Deputy's blood.) Anyway, back to writing the draft. I'm sorry this takes so long. Too many ideas and then I need to delete parts and rewrite them again so they fit and I also try to keep it short but then I repeat myself over and over and ugh... help.
Update: Never thought I'd be chilling on Bible Hub while writing smut, but here I am.
Another Update: I officially lost my sanity. Famine... The actual Baptist called John... Or the John of Patmos... Or the fact that John the Baptist was killed the same age as John Seed when he was martyred...
I'M DONE! WRITING IT TOOK ME LIKE TWO OR THREE MONTHS, I DUNNO, AND I'M SORRY. BUT FOR NOW, IT IS POSTED TO AO3!
𝐍𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐫 𝐌𝐲 𝐆𝐨𝐝 𝐓𝐨 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐞 ♱ 𝔍𝔬𝔥𝔫 𝔖𝔢𝔢𝔡
I'LL POST IT ON TUMBLR AS SOON AS I HAVE TIME. I FEEL SO BAD ABOUT IT SINCE I ORIGINALLY MEANT TO POST IT ON MY BIRTHDAY YESTERDAY, BUT WHATEVER, I GUESS.
Watching No Country for Old Men with other people is such a surreal experience because they're all creeped out and uncomfy during the coin flip scene, or literally every other scene with Anton Sugar Chigurh, while I'm just sitting there, having to pretend I'm also scared, but actually I'm just scared of how DOWN BAD I am for a psychopath with a damn bowl haircut. I blame Javier Bardem entirely.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME, BY THE WAY. I bought myself the newest book edition of NCFOM, too. But in German, of course. And I thought the cover will look super Country, yet it ended up looking rather CUNTry. Help. The giant stacked text looks like a saloon sign that drank too much whiskey, and gives "aggressive Western typography after one too many."
Watching No Country for Old Men with other people is such a surreal experience because they're all creeped out and uncomfy during the coin flip scene, or literally every other scene with Anton Sugar Chigurh, while I'm just sitting there, having to pretend I'm also scared, but actually I'm just scared of how DOWN BAD I am for a psychopath with a damn bowl haircut. I blame Javier Bardem entirely.
Fuck that anon. Take your time!!!! Anyway I can't wait for your Far Cry fics <3 (Would virgin Jacob take any romance or sex advice from John.....)
First of all, thank you so much, nonny! I'm blushing that you're waiting for my fics!
Well, Adelaide said, "If he (Jacob) had an experienced woman in his life, this wouldn't be a problem." But I think anyone can interpret that differently.
I think he wouldn't take John's advice, in canon, at least. Jacob is a Darwinist. He'd condition John out of Montana for even suggesting it. I mean, Jacob hates weakness, brainwashes with "Only You," and protects Eden's Gate despite seeing their flaws. Also, John fears him, as it is said by Joseph in the Collapse DLC.
"And I know that you are afraid of Jacob…"
And think back to Jacob being a war veteran. The PTSD killing machine who "culls the herd" since "the weak have their purpose." I think he'd see such advice from John as unnecessary, right up there with Eli's militia.
But given canon alone? Definitely no simp lessons from the baby brother! But imagine!
Jacob, staring at the captured Deputy who keeps sassing him: "…"
Jacob, internally: "They won't stop talking. They called my Judges 'puppies.' I could break their neck. That would help. Why am I not breaking their neck?"
John appears out of nowhere because if Rook is there, he's going to be there, too: "Having trouble, brother? I noticed they're not submitting the way you're used to. I could show you."
Jacob: "They called my Judges 'puppies.'"
John, leaning in: "That's resistance, Jacob. And resistance must be cleansed away. You start by isolating them…"
Jacob: "They're in a cage, John."
John: "And then you find their weakness…"
Jacob: "They keep asking if I've ever been hugged."
John: "...And then you get rid of their sins until they say YES!"
Jacob: "I'm going to shoot them."
John: "NO! You have to love them! Joseph said…"
Jacob: "Joseph said YOU have to love the Deputy. And the Deputy just called me 'a sad mountain man with issues,' and I don't know what that means."
John: "…That's the Holy Spirit."
Jacob: "It's annoying, is what it is. They won't stop talking."
John: "That's typical. They always talk at first. Resistance. You have to break through it."
Jacob: "They asked if my Judges are house-trained."
John: "…What?"
Jacob: "They said, 'Big bad soldier man with big tough wolf army, but do they do tricks? Can they fetch? I bet you've never even thrown a stick for them.'"
John, trying to understand: "Jacob. They're undermining your authority."
Jacob: "They're annoying."
John, stepping closer: "Look. I've dealt with this. I made the Deputy say Yes, so they can understand."
Jacob: "You drowned them and then you cried about Joseph."
John, offended: "I… I did NOT cry! I was overcome with the Spirit."
Jacob: "You called me in the middle of the night and said, 'Jacob, I think I fell in love with the Deputy,' after they destroyed your YES sign and then you hung up."
John: "That was… that was DIFFERENT! This is about YOU. And the Deputy. Who is in a cage. Smiling at you."
Jacob looks back at the cage. The Deputy is actually smiling.
Deputy: "Hey! Is that John? HI, JOHN! Does Jacob know that you cry during sex? You know what? You two should hug it out. When's the last time you hugged your brother, Jacob?"
Jacob, turning back to John: "Make it stop, John."
John: "That's why you have to LOVE them, Jacob! Pray!"
Jacob: "I don't love them. I want them to stop existing."
John: "But with God all things are possible!"
Jacob: "…I'm still going to shoot them."
John: "JACOB. NO. You have to ATONE them. You have to find their sins and expose them!"
Jacob: "Their sin is TALKING. How do I expose 'talking too much'? Where on the body is that sin located?"
John, thinking: "…The tongue?"
Jacob, considering: "…I'm going to cut out their tongue."
John, shocked: "NO! That's not… You can't just… Jacob, you have to be METHODICAL. You have to find their weakness. The Deputy's sin is wrath. And also, eventually, my cock, but that came later."
Jacob, disgusted: "I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR COCK, JOHN."
John: "But I'm trying to HELP you!"
Jacob: "You're trying to tell me about FUCKING the Deputy and I'm trying to get them to stop asking me if I've ever considered THERAPY."
John, holding his arms out: "Hug me, Jacob."
Jacob, staring: "…No."
John: "Jacob, listen. This is your moment. The Deputy's resisting because you've never… you know."
Jacob: "What?"
John: "I… I mean… The Power of Yes. You make them say it. Over. And over. I did it with them. Started with the baptism and ended with…"
The Deputy, from the cage, yelling: "…ENDED WITH YOU CRYING, JOHN! I SAW THE TEARS!"
John: "That's… Be quiet! It really is the Holy Spirit, Jacob!"
Jacob cuts him off: "It's weakness. I'd rather rip out their tongue and play 'Only You' to condition you next."
John: "JACOB! No. Think of the Deputy!"
Jacob: "The weak have their purpose."
John: "Brother... This is going to take a while."
Jacob, still regretting everything: "...I'll kill you instead."
John: "JACOB! I can help! I MADE them say Yes! I can teach you!"
Jacob: "...I'll love them from a distance. With a sniper rifle."
In canon divergence? WHERE THE DEPUTY WON'T STOP TALKING?
Imagine Jacob, genuinely CONFUSED by why his newest captive won't just die. Imagine him actually considering John's advice because NOTHING ELSE IS WORKING. And John, realizing his older brother is asking for HELP, would be SO sassy about it. So insufferable. And Jacob would immediately regret asking.
OKAY. SORRY. I went a little overboard with this...
