[warscorned]

𐤲 warscorned. JUST BECAUSE YOU CARRY IT ... presenting  ▇▇▇ ▇▇▇▇▇▇  [ 𝙲𝙾𝙳𝙴𝙽𝙰𝙼𝙴: 𝚆𝚄𝙻𝙵𝙴 ]. dependent, original portrayal for ops416.  DOESN'T MEAN IT ISN'T HEAVY.

⁰¹ DOSSIER  ⁰² MUSING  ⁰³ THREADS  ⁰⁴ PINTEREST

SPIED ON BY KAY, SHE/HER, TWENTY1+, EST.  BE FOREWARNED THAT THIS BLOG WILL LIKELY CONTAIN MENTIONS AND/OR DEPICTIONS OF WAR, RELIGIOUS TRAUMA, HORRIFIC THEMES AND VIOLENCE.

[pearlboned]

it's the warmth of it that leaves her quiet ⸺ the one found in the intent of the gesture, not foster's palms. stilling in place, madalena surrenders her hands, a set of instincts unsuitable for their profession. keep moving and you're less likely to get hit. offer up soft skin and find yourself eaten.

in the dark and cold their breath comes visible in the air between them; stood this close its as if they're fogging up two sides of a pane of glass. does that make her the animal, than, the thing observed and understood by cal's gaze? it isn't a line she's capable of arguing with him, this idea that one day she will come up short. run out of things to give. it's not so much that madalena has considered this herself as the fact that she knows, above all others, callum foster ⸺ in this iteration that he's known and the ones that he isn't, those that only she remembers ⸺ is uniquely suited to assessing foregone conclusions. it's what he's done for decades, in a matter of speaking. see the approaching end. bring it closer.

"i build a new piece." she says it jocularly, lightweight enough that it could spin under the weight of their breath. twist like the leaf they've long been trying to turn over. "there's been a lot of developments in stem cell research lately."

he gives her back her hands. she takes them. it's the simplest exchange they've had in some time.

"thank-you."

it's funny, the things you leave behind in a hurry. in situation of duress, you escape holding only what you can carry. in their home, madalena had abandoned a collection of cds, mismatched shoes, a stack of unused wedding china. in her exit, the fragments of a hollow point bullet in foster's abdomen. whatever her ex-husband had left under her skin, she's never named. but it twinges now under the heat of the bonfire, a thing dislodged but never fully extracted.

"m'alright." she has to lift her chin to reach his gaze, but madalena does it all the same. she is, in this krovograd dark, making a promise in the way he will know she means. "i know what i'm doing."

[warscorned]

mistake not, this had not been a deployment of compassion. it was an occupation of a city on the hinges of tearing itself apart. their tenancy was a distraction from the greater task they'd been handed ⸺ containment by any means. this was an obstruction, a bandaid over a bullet blown clear through the tissue of this city. foster doesn't mention how she holds herself together once he's let her go. it's like watching a machine work through an error in its coding, a glitch that could resolve itself or corrode the system entirely. he could have corrected her, inform her that she had been standing in the midst of a city that ate people and spat them out unrecognizable. it would be a waste of breath, he knows. " you're not the one i'm concerned with, " because concern wasn't quite the word to call it. whatever this was that had been chewing at him had an entirely different set of teeth. the blood letting hadn't been a quiet bother, it had gone all at once ⸺ a cold, swift butchering. " it's this place ⸺ the people. " they were corrosive. even in the separation between foster and the child he once was, he could not be separarated from that likeness. krovograd didn't just wear you down, it hollowed you out. made you complicit in the neccessity of its rot. in the cold he can hardly smell anything but the drywood, foster wonders how long it would take for the city to start smelling like bodies again. it always does.

the fire continued to throw embers out into the night, the smoke is already etched into his uniform; carried east by the wind. it shifts the hair at the base of her neck, and for a moment he considers pressing his thumb there, pressing for a another pulse. proof that she was still warm even after she'd left him. that she was still whole.

foster shifts his weight onto an opposite foot, swallows what had been left in his bottle. " i don't think your research can protect you from what war chooses to take from you. "

[warscorned]

# INT. vesna night, sat in the midst of the festivities. 21:00. WITH @an4tomies

he hadn't bought it ⸺ it had been doled to him, like a haphazard token you might offer upon the altar of a saint. the killer had been given a honey cake. he'd spent the better portion of three minutes turning the golden mass of it over between his fingers ( childhood relic pinched between a poorly embossed napkin ) because even in despair there could be finery. goodness, even. sunshine over a grave site. foster hadn't considered sharing until he'd caught jacqueline onlooking the act of his observation. truthfully, he'd come to unlearn to trust things given freely. tokens were not without a price. for her intrusion upon him ⸺ sat knee to knee with each other though there was more than enough room for personal space ⸺ foster halves the cake and makes an offer to her. all of which is to say that the act had not been a charity but a litmus. because again, free things were nothing of the sort. the cake could have been poisoned ( for all the sins waged in the case of the non-humanitarians ) and if it were, at the very least foster would not be asphyxiating all on his lonesome. he was certainly alone in the world, but so was jacqueline. and what a grievous comfort that was. when he'd no longer been taken to dissecting the sweet with his eyes, foster watched a densely dressed woman across the square string lights between two stalls, her hands quick and practiced. still waiting for jacqueline to take her bite first, foster licks the sugar from his thumb. " they think it's going to be alright. "

[warscorned]

# INT. vesna night, in the nondescript dark. thirty past 19:00. WITH @gcdlessrot

it's dark, the sort of blackness that makes it hard to tell whether its late or too early to be out unaccompanied, or worse ⸺ unarmed. the base was mostly quiet, operatives sent to patrol the village on the accord of keeping peace. ordered not to trample on the perennial merriment, only to meld into it best as they could. the moon casts long pearlescent shadows, carving the night to pieces. he's unblinking in the dark, largely thinking of nothing but checking corners, counting exists and listening to the stark, chirping night. foster tells himself this is routine. he tells himself plenty of things.

and then over the sound of frost compacting underfoot ⸺ ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ [ ... ] ALEKS? it was too late to pretend he hadn't heard. the name lurches like something unearthed from the cold, foster stops mid-step; stomach clenched in something like nausea, like hunger. he swallows against the hammering of his pulse in his ears, and before he can concede, the gun holstered against his thigh was up, cocked and aimed at the figure dark. the one that knew him.

" i don't know who you're referring to⸺ "only when his light shines upon the other does foster realize it. a memory forced to the surface like a drowning thing, thrashing hard to be seen. fucksake. foster breathes the other's name but does not lower his guard, " leon. "

[junk-thunder]

you can hit it raw, i’ve got an IED

[sparrow-va]

you have a wha

[pearlboned]

IT FEELS LIKE A MEMORY. LIKE SOMETHING SHE IS ALREADY REMEMBERING OR ONE DAY WILL. here madalena crouches by the fire, fleeced by a handful of children, dispensing magic for the cost of a dug-out flower. find me one in the snow, and i will make it bloom for you. it is an expensive trick and a cheap magic, showing them a vestige of the real spring they'll never see before the night ends the flower will have browned, rotten from its unnatural blossom. every action has an equal and opposite reaction, the third law says. it's another way to say everything has a cost.

another way to say it is you're too close. which he does when the children have fled, when they've paid for their flower in small and unnecessary deposits, a kiss on her cheek, a strip of dyed cotton woven into her hair, paint dotted along the line of her brow, and she is finally alone. madalena had not acknowledged callum's presence, but she'd felt him all the same. it's symptomatic of what they once were, residual of either scientific law or anatomic rule: once you stitch in a shadow, it can never be undone. for the rest of her life, madalena will see his silhouette at every high noon.

but it's nothing he hasn't said before, and nothing he won't say again. you're too close to the fire, to the edge, to the teeth. to the thing that burns, the stone that crumbles, the animal that bites. he likes to tell her that she's always overstepping bounds, and madalena always wants to remind him that she was born in a place beyond the fences. that she'd made a home with a wolf. that they had lived on a crumbling cliff face.

this is simply her nature, as damning as any other. she was no moth, but she had inherited cold-blood. if she didn't bring her body up close to the warmth, she'd die.

"not all of us have a scope permanently against the eye, cal." the handling of so many frozen buds has left the doctor's hands stiff, pink and tight-skinned, and she flexes them as she stands. tries to push blood back in, to feel something. it's similar to the way she uses his first name in address rather than the last. an attempt to feel something real beneath the cool skin of a lie. "you can't see the point from a distance."

[warscorned]

interspace made all the difference when you were nose to nose with it ⸺ the point. breathing its cold breath, somehow entirely amiss of it still. foster didn't need a scope or a laser sight to see her in the dark. he'd known her with both eyes closed, instinct alone told him that the point was making people believe in things they shouldn't. he watches the children run off to the next jaunt, closes the distance between him and where she now stands. he watches her hands, flexing them as if trying to remind herself who they belong to. like she's trying to bring dead things back to life. " mm, " it's a preemptive warrant but not an absent one. an acknowledgement that foster had taken heed to her.

there is no hesitation in clasping her cold between his palms, pressing her hands between his. fingers make slow, methodical work of kneading warmth back into hers. he swallows the argument she would have wanted, " one day, " the fire pops behind him, heat wafts his back. after all this time, he'd still burn to keep her warm. he rubs the warmth upward to her wrists, feels the bird-flutter of her pulse. it makes the weight of the shrapnel she left in his side twist. phantom pains. he can see her much better now, marked up in many little ways. allowing the children to leave their fingerprints on her ⸺ letting the locals carve out what they want ⸺ and never seeming to note the cost. of course the spent man takes notice. " there won't be any pieces left to give. " its a shaded mouthful, words unsure if they should be spoken loud enough for others to hear. her hands are warmer now, he allows them back to her. " what then? "

[d0gt7gs]

vasco   had   been   fiddling   with   the   strap   of   his   holster   more   than   paying   attention.   it   had   an   interesting   texture.   the   type   of   velcro   that   wasn't   tacky   or   fuzzy,   but   a   clean,   firm   feeling.   vasco   hated   the   fuzzy   velcro.   he's   sure   his   uniform   had   been   mostly   comprised   of   it   at   some   point,   but   trips   to   his   mothers   to   replace   it   and   begging   quartermasters   had   culminated   in   most   of   the   textures   of   his   uniform   being   manageable. 

“huh?”   he   said   once   he   realized   he   had   zoned   out.   “oh,   no,   i   mean.   lying   is   useful,   right?"   most   of   vasco's   job,   if   he   was   honest.   if   he   wasn't   buried   in   a   dirty   pit   with   his   rifle   glued   to   his   eyeball.   he'd   started   calling   them   bunny   holes   just   to   feel   something.   in   an   inventor's   expo   in   moscow,   he   was   lying.   in   a   kentucky-based   chatroom,   he   lied.   he   lies   all   the   time.   still,   his   mom   was   catholic.   genetically-spread   guilt. 

“sometimes,   it   feels   icky,   though,   right?   like   i   get   it.   we   have   secrets.   sometimes   you   need   to   lie   for   the   mission,   or   to   keep   a   civilian   safe.   but   telling   a   miner's   wife   that   he's   already   dead   when   everyone   with   a   radio   can   still   hear   him   choking   on   air   feels   wrong.”   he   paused,   wondering   if   he   took   the   scenario   too   far.   “i   mean,   you   can't   just   take   into   account   how   being   lied   to   feels.   you   have   to   think   about   what   it   is   to   be   the   one   lying.”

[warscorned]

foster cannot train on his holster ( it was too hostile for such merriment ) so he kept his hands pocketed, hands balled against his thighs as if a final resort to keep them occupied. strange, he's only ever known to bury his violence. he's not quite listening but vasco is talking, voice soft at the edges, picking away at the strap of his holster like a blushing scab. velcro rasping. the sound makes cal's teeth feel loose in his gums. VASCO SAYS IT FEELS WRONG. THIS IS NOT SOMETHING FOSTER WILL ACKNOWLEDGE. he's too busy watching his feet move up the gravel ⸺ the sort that wedged loosely into the grooved soles of his boots. one foot in front of the next, counting the steps. he's done it before: walked these roads. walked worse ones. listened to men talk their way around how the world works. lying doesn't feel like anything, anymore. it was just a thing foster did. like pulling a trigger, sopping up the mess after. YOU HAVE TO THINK ABOUT WHAT IT IS TO BE THE ONE LYING. because it is his third nature: a man of not-truths. said things he doesn't mean. told lies he wished he could believe. because sometimes lying was cleaner, kept people from looking too close ( lies like: i'll be home soon. lies like: my name is callum foster. ) vasco's still going on about something grotesque. " it's not about how it feels, "

foster tilts his head up from the ground and draws a long breath, lets the cold sear his throat dry. he considers the lies he's told. the ones he's been told. the way people survived by making things sound better than they were. " it's about what it gets you. "

[warscorned]

# INT. vesna night, around the bonfire. 17:00. WITH @inhumanes

the firelight has a way about making things appear softer than what they were. the winter-cracked earth, the smoke-hazed sky. the weight of what was to come. foster has learned better ⸺ spent too many years watching rot spread from the inside first to believe in softness. things were as they were, not as they appeared. she's doing it again.foster had seen it before ⸺ letting the locals believe that they could fix this, that she'll be around long enough to matter. it was easier to ignore when it wasn't his problem. when they no longer belonged to each other. but there is this divine fallacy: like she could still belong to something noble. as if this place ( THIS WAR ) hasn't eaten that softness out of her yet. it's a cyclical tale. villages turned to mass graves. people who thought kindness would save them. he should like to remind her that she isn't one of them ⸺ no longer a doctor first, and not much more than what this job made of them.

the fire sears throught the last of the dry wood, the dark has begun to press in and so has foster. he's nursing something in a dark bottle, tips back a swig only to cut in when the companion she'd taken in conversation had flit elsewhere. speaks over his shoulder, " you're getting too close. "

[rob-pattinson]

ROBERT PATTINSON “The Batman” | 2022, dir. Matt Reeves

[warscorned]

# INT. vesna night, mid-patrol philosophising. twenty-six past 13:00. WITH @d0gt7gs

spring had not yet come and the land had been stale with it, the absence. of abundance. of unclouded skies. harvest, too. foster had known early on what truance could breed among a society on the fringe. absence was equally a presence ( A LESSON IN HAVE-NOT ) the people of krovograd would learn to make do with. because there was nothing left but to survive. to smile up at the black sky only if to acknowledge that you could. that you were here, by all odds. living had become rightful cause for celebration. and much like spring ⸺ could not be promised come morning. he'd know this yearly flourish as a child, mouth full up of honey cake, brimming with enough sugar to last him the summer. content. EXCEPT, HE SHOULDN'T REMEMBER. FOSTER DOES NOT ALLOW HIMSELF TO BELONG TO THESE MEMORIES.

there is no child before the man he has become. on paper, his history tracks presently. a man hurdled into existence eight and four quarters of a month before his assignment. callum foster was a stranger to himself, but most begrudgingly, not to the man with whom he walked the square. they'd crossed the length of it twice by the time wafting boredom encroached. there was only so much silence that could be stretched over unwanted company. only so many dead-ended, useless questions foster could bare before ⸺ " well, fool me once ... " because of course they've begun to argue the ethics of deceit amid their errand; foster does not ponder it, no fray in the still of his voice. though, a smile prongs. cordial but not to be mistaken. " i'll probably kill you. "

[warscorned]

# INT. vesna night, standing in the dark. twenty-six past 22:00. WITH @garapedien

a woman inherits a shadow within her shadow. the untrained eye could mark it as a following, wolf stalking after the smaller bait. the ones who know however ⸺ the ones with minds prickling a gross curiousity ⸺ would call it a study. curiosity pinned by the edges of its wings. flittering in place. hope caught within the vacuum of a jar half-screwed. so, there is a woman and hope trailing not far behind with its jagged posture ⸺ uniformed and sopping with intention. except hope is a man, A MAN WITH AN APPETITE. a man with an obligation. a man. and he's been watching her for however long its been, wonders if she's noticed. if, even in the far evasion of the girl she was, had she remembered the shape of her own shadow. could she tell he had been standing in it. had she known what foster had. WOULD SHE LIKE TO? there's no hiding it: the unbelonging. a man removed from himself, foster is stood at the edge of the square, firelight shifting the mass of him into more figment than person. they are the same but not, foster supposes that time itself could not estrange them. that was the ill they shared: knowing. remembering.

[endiness]

[classichorrorblog]

American Psycho (2000)

[roadmotel]

Daniel Lavery & Cecilia Corrigan, From the Makers of “Two-Mom Energy Drink,” It’s “Let Your Father Die Energy Drink”

[sloppjockey]

dog person ii / oils on coaster

[preacherboyd]

True Detective | 1x04 Who Goes There

[warscorned]

ODE TO THE WOLF IN WAIT,   AN EXPLORATION OF WAR AS THE ONLY CONSTANT YOU'VE KNOWN: BRUTAL & UNRELENTING, WANTING AS A SICKNESS ROTTING FROM WITHIN, AND DEVOTION AS INEVITABLE RUIN.

NAMED    CALLUM FOSTER, ALEKSANDER BREMOVYCH.    KNOWN AS   WULFE; CAL ( PREFERS TO BE CALLED FOSTER, ITS LESS PERSONAL. )    AGE    FORTY YRS OLD.    ORIGIN    ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇.    GENDER    CIS MAN.    PRONOUNS    HE/HIM.     ORIENTATION   UNLABELLED.     OCCUPATION   MARKSMAN ( BRAVO-O1 ).    FACECLAIM   EDDIE REDMAYNE.   

INSPIRED BY     MIKAEL BLOMKVIST ( THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO ), DAVID PERCIVAL ( ATOMIC BLONDE ), RAOUL SILVA ( SKYFALL ), BORIS PAVLIKOVSKY ( THE GOLDFINCH ), JAMES BOND ( SELECTIVELY )

HEIGHT    FIVE ELEVEN.     HAIR    AUBURN, WITH A SLIGHT UNBEHAVIORAL WAVE; GROWN OUT TAPER.     EYES    DARK GREEN.     ACCENT    NONDESCRIPT; EUROPEAN INCLINATION.    POSITIVE TRAITS    INTREPID, DOGGED, METICULOUS.     NEGATIVE TRAITS    OBSESSIVE, INTRACTABLE, MORALLY STREWN.