#omkdear:wip

[omkdear]

stopped every project I was working on to do this quick mock up of Preston, because @gardening--tools and @uptownlowdown are holding the line. This is just charcoal graphite and soft chalk under w/my underpaint canvas. I'm thinking I'll keep him in charcoal or pastels, but I may cave and do a full painting even though my body is still recovering from the last one. Our General deserves it though. 🫡

[omkdear]

Haven't done a WIP Wednesday in a bit, and since I took a break from writing my long fic I was doing some re-read to get back in the groove. Here's a snippet from Chapter 2 of my pre-war longfic series Beyond the Gathering Shadow, book one--Winters Grip.

Assistant District Attorney Georgia Ambrose paced before the jury box, her stilettos tapping a steady beat against the hardwood floor—a metronome keeping time with her words. Her tone was cool and precise, each phrase deliberate and stripped of sentiment. She didn’t need theatrics to make her point. The evidence spoke loudly enough, and Ambrose's confidence in its clarity was palpable.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” she began, clasping her hands with the poise of someone holding every piece of the puzzle, “you have been witness to a parade of facts and findings that tells a disturbing narrative—a narrative confirmed by forensic analysis, corroborated by eyewitness testimony, and substantiated by the defendant’s own unfortunate pattern of behavior.”

Nick Valentine watched from his spot at the back, his gaze moving past the faces of the jurors to settle on her. She wasn’t what he’d expected, given the whispers circulating through Suffolk County’s halls and beyond. Three weeks in Boston, and he’d already seen enough to understand Widmark’s caution about the woman known as the ‘Red Defender.’

He watched as she turned slightly, indicating the pile of evidence beside her. “It is the state’s position that we have shown beyond a reasonable doubt that the individual seated across from you,” she continued, with a steady nod toward the defendant, “has committed acts that are not only criminal but heinous in their disregard for human life.”

Her words, low and firm, hit harder than any raised voice could.

The jurors, a mosaic of Boston’s citizenry, looked on; some bore the furrows of sleepless nights, others held a stern set to their jaw, all united by the solemnity of their charge. Georgia was an anomaly in the Commonwealths legal circles, not so much a rising star as she was a comet with a singular trajectory. She had a quiet intensity—didn’t raise her voice, didn’t need to. Watching her over the past few days, Nick felt like he'd been watching someone disarm a bomb with nothing but a paperclip and a calm word.

She lifted a photograph from the evidence pile, holding it up for the jury. A crime scene photo, stark and grim. "Each of these," she said, letting the brutal image speak for itself, "is not merely a photograph, not just evidence. They are reminders of choice. One man's choice to disregard the sanctity of life."

Setting down the photograph, she turned back to face the jurors squarely. "You've seen the patterns—the way the defendant stalked his victims, the cold calculation in his methods, the complete lack of remorse shown both during and after the crimes." At her gesture, the Ms. Juris unit glided forward, its projector casting evidence across the courtroom wall: Journal entries that had turned seasoned detectives' stomachs. Trophy collections that spoke of more than just a compulsion, but a perverse pride.

Each slide lingered just long enough. Not that they needed the reminder—they were already seared into the minds of everyone in the room from the first time they had been shown in the trial’s progression.

Ambrose paused, letting the weight of the visuals sink in. Nick could almost see the cogs turning in the jurors' heads, feel their collective will hardening. She had them, and she knew it. This was the moment where a less seasoned prosecutor might overplay their hand, but Ambrose was nothing if not disciplined.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury," she continued, her voice carrying to every corner of the hushed courtroom, "you are not just passing judgment on one man. You are setting a precedent that will echo in the annals of our city."

An older woman in the back row of the jury box touched her throat as Ms. Juris shut off its display—a gesture Nick had seen countless times in his years of testimony and observation. It was the touch of someone who felt the noose tighten, not around the defendant's neck, but around their own sense of security and moral duty. Similar unconscious gestures from the other eleven jurors suggested a shared reckoning.

[omkdear]

Be sure to wear some flowers for the WIP game 🥰

Eee thank you! OKAY SO.

be sure to wear some flowers

TL;DR: this WIP is scaffolding for a larger post-war trauma arc. Told from Nick’s POV (my human Nick), it’s a shared delusion—something warm and safe George builds in her head after the bombs, where they live in SF and run a PI agency together. It's an AU inside her head, and later a shared delusion with Synth Nick for...reasons I cannot reveal lol.

By the time he reaches the topmost step, Nick Valentine is seriously reconsidering every life choice that’s led to him still craving cigarettes while his very pregnant partner—who could go into labor at any moment—is lapping him like it’s nothing.

Ten properties. Ten. They’ve circled the city more than once these past weeks—her leading, him trailing, revisiting old haunts from med school. She’s been narrating the rhythm of San Francisco like a private tour guide with a vendetta against nostalgia.

It’s no Chicago.

And definitely not Boston.

The building’s over two hundred years old, and it’s a miracle it’s still standing with the San Andreas fault humming beneath it. Still, there’s a charm to the place. Nick has to admit: it’s got her energy. Stubborn. Enduring. Full of stories. Still standing.

"You coming, Valentine?" she calls from the landing, one hand pressed to the small of her back, the other holding the realtor's business card. She’s haloed by afternoon sun through dusty windows, and for a moment, he forgets the ache in his knees.

"Just catching my breath, muñeca," he calls back, hauling himself the last few steps. "Not all of us are powered by hormones and spite."

George laughs, the sound echoing off empty walls. "The agent said there’s roof access. Can you imagine? A garden up top..."

He tries not to wheeze. He’s a few weeks into trying to kick the habit, and her grandparents—well into their eighties—find his withdrawal deeply entertaining. Her abuela even patted his hand over Sunday dinner and whispered, "The devil you know is better than the one you don’t," before slipping him a Cuban cigar behind George’s back.

"A garden," Nick echoes, fishing the keys from his pocket. "We live on a farm right now, sweetheart."

She clicks her tongue and snorts—not annoyed, just pretending. "A farm isn’t the same as a rooftop garden, Valentine. Picture it—morning coffee, herbs growing outside the kitchen, the Golden Gate cutting through the fog..."

The lock sticks. He jiggles the key with the patience of a man who’s learned the hard way that force only makes it worse. Two centuries of humidity and neglect have warped the frame, but eventually the door groans open like something ancient and half-asleep.

"Christ," he mutters, stepping into what the listing had generously called a penthouse. High ceilings. Brick walls. Dust motes tumbling through shafts of slanted light. "This is..."

"Perfect," George finishes, waddling in with that late-pregnancy shuffle that somehow still looks graceful. She moves like she already lives here, fingertips trailing along the brick. "Look at these bones. These beams. That light."

Nick glances up. The beams overhead are massive—weathered survivors of earthquakes and fires and God knows what else. The tall, industrial windows need reglazing. The floor is battered hardwood, scarred but solid.

"Needs work," he says, but there’s no real protest in it. He sees it now—what she sees. The possibility.

"Everything worthwhile needs work," she replies, smiling at him the way she did the day he finally told her he loved her. “My brownstone on Pearl Street was older, and I refurbed it before I passed the bar.”

“You were ten years younger,” he counters, “and not about to pop out our kid any minute.”

Still, he’s smiling. The light glints off the silver at her temples and brings out the copper in her hair. It hits him all over again—how beautiful she is. How damned lucky he is.

She crosses to the far wall, where the windows frame the city skyline. “I’ve done harder things than renovate a building, Valentine. We both have.”

And that’s the truth. Nick watches her against the light, remembering the first time he saw her like this—in their Cambridge office, those early days on the task force. Before the real fight. Before the world turned inside out. Before they knew what they’d become to each other.

[omkdear]

IT BEGINS