FANDOM: Brimstone (2016 Movie with Dakota Fanning and Guy Pearce)
CHARACTERS: Joanna and Samuel (Canon fix-it oneshot)
SUMMARY: “My father was a real bastard. He used to put cigars out on my arm, the sadistic fuck. And he was a pervert, just like you.”
When Samuel raised the gun, Joanna could feel her heart pound fiercely, in fear or elation, she couldn’t tell.
“Who are you?” said her father, his tone promising her pain if she didn’t escape his grasp soon.
Samuel’s warm brown eyes turned to stone. “I am the man who frees her.”
RATING: Mature
TYPE: Oneshot
Read all that I have written here.
Part 1: My Angel
Ironically, Joanna was sitting in a chapel when she completely lost her faith in God.
Her father was kneeling in front of her, determined to destroy her life, to make her into her own mother. She didn’t want to be his wife, didn’t want to fear him for the rest of her life. She thought about the way her mother’s body had hung from the rafters of this very chapel, and imagined her own replacing it in a few years. She couldn’t. She didn’t want to. She tried to imagine the years of torment ahead, the word seeming to close in on her the longer she thought and the more she remembered.
Even if she could breathe, even if she wasn’t choking back her own tears for fear of drowning in them, she knew there was no way she could plead for mercy. Her father wouldn’t listen, and she would end up getting whipped.
It was in his eyes. Joanna had never really dared to look her father in the eyes before, but she had no choice now. He was talking to her in that feverish tone she had learned to fear, his words echoing in the empty chapel.
“When two people make their vows in the name of the everlasting, they pronounce their wish to belong to each other fully in love.” She was wearing that loathsome contraption he had forced onto her mother, so the only sound she could make were her sobs. She shook with the fear, wondering if this is how it was all going to end. His voice was quivering strangely, his breath coming fast. She had seen this frenzy before. “Together they shall search for what god wants from their lives. Together they shall perform their duties and care for their family.” His grip on her hands turned cruel, but she wasn’t sure he noticed.
Does God really exist? she wondered when he presented her with the ring. Was this what God wanted from her? To be what her mother was, a woman who turned the other cheek till the day it killed her? God couldn’t want this of her, she decided. Perhaps there was no God. There were no archangels that avenged their chosen, no visions of smiling deities. The parish could dream of kind angels washed in white light all they wanted. She had to live in reality, and reality was more dreary than any of them had ever had to endure.
When the door to the chapel creaked open, she saw she was wrong. God had sent her an angel, a saviour named Samuel who walked into the chapel in the midst of white light. Joanna couldn’t stop staring. He will save me , she thought childishly. It’s God’s will.
“My father was a real bastard,” he said as he walked towards her father. He didn’t even seem to notice her. She couldn’t stop staring, even when her father stood up. “He used to put cigars out on my arm, the sadistic fuck. And he was a pervert, just like you.” He stood a few steps away from her father now.
When Samuel raised the gun, Joanna could feel her heart pound fiercely, in fear or elation, she couldn’t tell. Her faith in God came rushing back to her, and she prayed for His help. Let him free me, she thought. Let this end.
“Who are you?” said her father, his tone promising her pain if she didn’t escape his grasp soon.
Samuel’s eyes turned to stone. “I am the man who frees her.”
The gunshot rang out loud and fierce, but Joanna didn’t make a sound. She watched with a morbid fascination as her father fell, as his legs crumpled like sticks and he hit the ground with a sickening, final thud. He didn’t look so fierce now, sprawled on the ground with his face in the dirt. She began to shiver, hardly daring to believe that she was free.
Samuel rummaged around for the keys to her imprisonment, but Joanna’s eyes stayed fixed on the vacant eyes. They seemed so common without the zeal that had lit them before. He was like the man Samuel had killed before--just meat to feed the pigs.
“It’s alright now,” said Samuel in the same tone he had used the night before. He approached her warily, as though afraid of her reaction to him, but she wondered why that was. He was her angel, her saviour, and she loved him. She wished she could find the courage to tell him that.
When she was free, he hugged her as he had the night before, an innocent, kind hug. It was a novelty, so she indulged longer than she should have. They stayed there, with her father’s blood seeping across the dust to soak her white dress and his arms tight around her.
Part 2: My Shepherd
She learned more about him as they changed towns, as they pawned his hard-earned gold for a life on the road. They traveled for nearly two years, never settling for long. Samuel was not like her father, he worked hard at whatever work God availed them, and never did they really rely on the gold he had dug out of cold mud a lifetime ago. He told her about his father sometimes, always when he was drunk, and once he had shown her the scars on his forearms. She had told him that she had scars too, too shy to show him, and had felt a strange kinship.
In the end, after two years of running, they traded all their remaining gold for a quiet little farm they began to call home. It was miles and miles from the little piece of land where they had first met, where her father had driven her mother to suicide and tried to steal Joanna’s body for his own lusts. That life was behind her now. She belonged with Samuel now, not because he had stolen or claimed her somehow, but because she wanted him. She wanted to belong to him, body and mind, but he never touched her, not in that evil way the only other man in her life had. His hugs were gentle, his gaze soft. She loved him fiercely.
The first time they went to the market in town, an old lady selling oranges asked them who they were.
“My name’s Samuel,” he said simply. “And this is my sister, Joanna.” And that was that.
They had separate rooms. There were times when she was glad of that, but there were also times when she wanted to show him she was a woman, that she was his if he wanted her.
Joanna knew that spying was bad. She had been caught spying on her parents once, when her father had been beating her mother, and that had been the first time he had punished her. She knew it was bad. The scars on her back seemed to tingle in warning and sympathy as she spied on Samuel.
He was groaning as he lay in his bed, his naked body glistening with sweat. It was the sounds that had woken her up, perhaps, that had called to her. The muscles of his right arm moved under the thin blanket as he thrashed about on the bed. His other arm was flung across his face, obscuring her view of his eyes. She wished she could see them. His eyes wouldn’t be soft now. He was touching himself, she knew. It didn’t look pleasant, but that is what her father had wanted her to do a few months ago, and she knew it was for a man’s pleasure. Her father had told her that right before her mother had found them and did the task herself. She had fled from the room before he could have stopped her. Now, she didn’t want to flee. She wondered if Samuel looked the same down there as her father had,and had to clench a fist to soothe the itch in her palm.
There was a pull in her belly as she saw the glistening limbs struggle with their pleasure, as she saw him bite his own arm to keep the noise down. Her own pants sounded too loud to her. She was sure he was going to hear her, find her, and then what would she do? Her other hand twitched, aimless, until she rested it against herself, low on her belly. She dared not blink. Her hand fluttered lower as he stifled a moan, and she pressed the heel of one hand against herself. Almost simultaneously, Samuel arched off the bed with a grunt that seemed painful, the following shout muffled against his arm.
Joanna gasped when she felt the knot in her belly turn warm and liquid, when she felt the wetness seeping out of her. Samuel’s blanket was getting wet too, right next to his hand. He was panting heavily in his room, his eyes heavy, and didn’t notice.
She fled before he could.
Part 3: My Love
This was the first time she had truly seen him angry.
He hadn’t been home, and she had began to wonder if he had gone to the alehouse to quench his thirst. Men had different kinds of thirst, and even though there was brandy at home, she knew there was a kind that could only be quenched at the alehouse. The teeth marks on his forearms, the ones she had made him make, were healing. She had seen them fade, spied on them every day when they ate breakfast.
She had fallen asleep on their small couch before he came home, and Joanna had dreamt of his hands on her, of those beautiful lips supping on her own. When she had opened her eyes with a gasp, her hand was between her legs, heel digging hard against her mound.
She had began to cry with the frustration that all these new feelings brought. She was fifteen now, a woman grown, but a woman was not meant to feel lust. Lust was for men, to make them want their women, to urge them to honor God’s will and populate the Earth. This was wrong, what she was feeling. She was sure of it. Why would God gift her with this lust if Samuel refused to touch her? He would much rather find his pleasure himself. She had to stop her thoughts, had to stop her lust before she became as lecherous as her father. She had no whip to chastise her body with, and she didn’t want one. She hated the whip, the whistling in the air that heralded its fiery kiss, the pain of it searing across her back.
So she slapped herself instead.
The pain that bloomed across her face grounded her, and the shock of it stopped her tears. Suddenly, she could think much more clearly, and her lust seemed to jolt back in surprise. It had worked, but it had hurt like hell. Should she do it again?
She raised her hand to strike again, but Samuel’s strong grip stopped her. She gasped and turned around. The pain and anger in his gaze made hers lower with shame. Why had she done that? Why had she hit herself? Had she left her father only to abuse herself?
She waited for him to speak, but he only stared at her, both angry and sad at the same time. He looked like he was looking for the words to express himself. “I am sorry,” she said in a small voice. “I needed… I needed to be chastised.”
His gaze melted with understanding. He drew her close and sat her upon his lap like a child. “And why is that, Joanna?” His voice was kind, and gentle. He sounded as if he was talking to a beloved sibling.
Joanna could feel the color rise up in her cheeks, could feel the way her hand trembled in his warm grip. “I had… thoughts.”
Samuel’s smile was grim. “Seems to me a person is made to think, don’t you? God has enough dumb animals, he could do with a few intelligent folk.”
She said nothing. How could she explain to him that her thoughts had been improper? He thought of her as a sweet, innocent girl. She was sure he loved her in his own way, like a man loved his sister. Would he like her still if she told him of the filth that was in her mind?
“Do you really think any thought that comes to your head is wrong? God doesn’t hate thoughts, child. He gives you these thoughts.”
“He couldn’t,” Joanne protested. God couldn’t give such improper thoughts. Unless… were they trials to test her? She hadn’t set foot in a chapel since the day they ran away, but today, she wished she could go to church and confess.
“What thoughts were these?” said Samuel. A sudden thought made him uncomfortable. “May they be something of a...” He trailed off before he thought of a suitable word. “Carnal nature?”
If she hadn’t been looking at his beautiful, kind eyes, if she hadn’t been drowning in them, she never would have nodded. “I… I dreamt of you,” she whispered.
“Me?” Abruptly, he took her off his lap and deposited her beside him. She wanted to laugh at his panic. It made her forget her shame. She realized, suddenly, that she didn’t need a church to confess in. She had him.
“I dreamt of your hands, on me,” she said boldly. “Of us in bed together, of you on top of me.”
“Fuck,” said Samuel on a long exhalation, as if it were a prayer. He screwed his eyes shut as though it would help him forget what he had heard. “Joanna--”
“I am a woman,” she said stubbornly. “I have seen how men look at me in the streets. I have seen how they stare at my breasts, but… You are the one I want,” her voice grew small when she said it. She was afraid he would laugh at her and turn her away. She was afraid he was going to wed her off, to suddenly realize she was too much trouble.
Samuel was out of words. He let his head thunk back as he exhaled, and in his posture Joanna saw her victory. She leaned forward till she was very close to him, till she could count his eyelashes, just looking her fill. When he opened his eyes to stare at her, she kissed him.
Even before Joanna could worry about her inexperience, Samuel jolted as though hit by a bolt of lightning, and his hand shot out to grip her arm. She had shocked him, she knew, but she was done waiting for his kiss. She didn’t move.
When his hand slid up from her arm, when it cupped her cheek, she shifted back to gaze at him. Samuel stared at her wordlessly, his eyes dark and hungry, before he surged forward to mold his lips over hers. Joanna melted into his embrace, learning from him. He taught her how to show him her love, licking and nipping at her lips, waiting patiently till she opened them. His tongue didn’t demand, it coerced, enticing her own to come out and play. She felt his heart beat against her palm, felt his emotions through lips, teeth and tongue. When his hand slipped into her hair, she smiled against his lips.
She had found the man she was meant to belong to, for he belonged to her.
