An incomplete Oblivion fanfic for Maddo

For someone as well known-of as she, very little is known about her. The first time I saw her walking through the streets of Cheydinhal I wasn't impressed. She was slight, even for a Bosmer, with eyes so large they made her look far younger than she really was, and hair too short to be feminine. In her leathers, she looked just like any other wood elf stuck in a city. Out of place, awkward, and about two seconds from vaulting the city wall and fleeing into the gloom of the forests and the ruins. I found out later she had just been set loose from the Imperial Prison by the escaping late Emperor. No one seems to remember what she'd been arrested for, and as far as I know she never tells those who ask. Most Bosmers would have grabbed their bow and gone straight back to thieving, but she decided to run off and save Kvatch from the first Oblivion gate instead. I learned of her deeds through tavern gossip long before I saw her again and made the connection between the silk-clad warrior in front of me and the thief I had seen mere months before.

Caleigh is what she tells everyone to call her, but I have a feeling that is no more her name than Lucien Lachance is truly mine. At first I thought she might be a reformed murderer, but none of the signs are there. We've had members of the Brotherhood try to stop and lead a normal life, but they are rarely successful, even if we do let them live. The call to spill blood is too strong for our kind. But despite that, she's also not what common society would call “good,” even though much of what she has done is truly great. People say she has closed Oblivion gates outside of every town and city in the land, but I myself have seen her robbing people blind in the wee hours of the morning when the city was sleeping, safe in the knowledge that the Hero of Kvatch had come through once more. And while I know the Nine are weak, forgiving, the ease of her pilgrimage to become one of their Knights suggested to me that she had never taken a innocent life. In the end I decided that she was not, had never been, a killer. She was merely a wild one, an opportunist. But even then I could see that if something could bring her to our way of life she would be a tribute to the Night Mother herself. And so I waited in the shadows and kept listening at the inns so that when she was in town, I would be there to watch her and guide her if she were to fall from grace.

It didn't surprise me to hear that she was such an indispensable friend to Martin Septim, our short-lived martyr of an Emperor. Before his death, she was his lapdog. He remained safe in his Temple in the mountains, and she ran about the countryside doing his bidding on a unicorn, an honest-to-Sithis unicorn. I know the Bosmer have a way with animals, but even this one proved too much for her. The stablehands outside Cheydinhal both loved and hated her—loved her for her generous compensation for keeping the beast locked up against its will, and hated her for the sheer amount of work it took to keep a unicorn captive. After Martin died, she let it go and stole her horses when she needed to go from one city to another. Eventually, she disappeared from the city entirely, and I lost word of her for months. At the time it surprised me how much I cared.

I broke into her home in Cheydinhal one night out of curiosity and found all her belongings and books covered in dust. She had the sort of library only a person handy with a lock-pick could amass, and her walls and shelves were covered with mementos of whom I must assume were fallen comrades. There was far too much Blade gear there for it to be much else. I shut the door behind me, convinced she had likely moved on for good. In all honesty, I had almost forgotten her entirely when she stumbled back into the city covered in a thin film of road-dust. Every item she carried reeked of strong enchantment, and the material of her armor was something I'd never seen in the land before.

I wasn't sure at the time where she'd gone to, but it was obvious from the outset that she came back different. I'm still not sure if it was her failure to keep Martin alive that broke her, or if something got to her in her travels, but the Caleigh I stumbled upon in the Cheydinhal Dunmer bar, The Newlands Lodge, two months ago was not the Hero of Kvatch or the thief I'd seen skulking down the streets initially. At first she shut herself in her house and refused to have contact with anyone in the city. She was also conspicuously absent at Chapel. When she did leave her house, she was dressed quite finely, but she never went anywhere except the tavern. Caleigh was, slowly but surely, drowning herself in West Weald wine. Such a waste.

I think she would have carried on that way indefinitely if the City Watch hadn't started extorting citizens. The Dunmer don't know when to keep their lips sealed, I've always said, and soon the bar was rife with gossip. Elves being thrown out of their homes. Shop earnings garnished. Caleigh listened, and I watched her back grow stiff and her countenance grim, but she did not act. If Martin were alive, she would have stopped the problems before they reached the breaking point. And if she had acted, Aldos Othran would not have died so pointlessly. I've lived with a love of the glory within death for decades now, and even with my knowledge of its nuances I could find no beauty in his demise. A grieving drunkard, cut down without warning by a worthless guardsman who did not care enough to put effort into his work? It made my stomach turn, but I was not surprised. Caleigh heard the news, however, and for the first time since she returned from her travels her green eyes seemed alive again. Not with the good-natured interest I was used to seeing within them, but with a uncontrolled hatred that made her truly beautiful to me. She downed the last of her drink, clutched her sword, and slipped out of the bar unnoticed. Since no one even realized I was in the room, it was not difficult for me to follow her. Then again, it would not have been difficult for me to guess where she was going--Ulrich Leland, the Guard Captain responsible for the entire mess, was not what I would call a difficult man to find.

It took her less time to break into the barracks than I was expecting, even though I had seen her at work before. The first thing she did before slipping through the door was remove her shoes. Her dress must have had a substantial stealth enchant on it, because the instant she began sneaking to Ulrich's room I almost lost her. That one brief moment when I thought she had actually gotten away from me still sends a thrill through me when I think of it. As drunk as she was, and as soft as a two months of uselessness had made her, she was still a wonder to behold. She had clearly had practice, training even. She's never told me, but I would not be surprised to find she was a ranking member of the Thieves' Guild.

Ulrich was not there, but she settled in with a practiced patience and waited until his return. I have no idea how long it took because I was too busy studying how perfectly still she kept herself in the shadows by his bureau. As soon as his door was shut she fell upon him in a silent fury, dagger gleaming in the faint candlelight of his bedside table. He was dead before the blade pierced the flesh of his throat for the second time. The third time. Once she had finally sated herself his corpse was barely recognizable and her face was splattered with his blood. She stood in his quarters, panting, for several moments before collecting herself, looking down at her dress, and sighing in annoyance.

That was the moment I knew we had her. I had just seen her murder a man in cold blood, unfairly and without warning, and someone as used to the craft as I could tell the flush in her cheeks betrayed enjoyment, not shock, at what she had just done. The blade in her hand was red to the hilt and dripping and her face was laced with splatters of his blood, but her first concern was that she had ruined her dress. She was going to turn out to be a very tidy assassin if I played my part in the next few hours of her life properly.

After making use of Ulrich's mirror to get the worst of the blood off, she sneaked off back home and burned her dress in her fireplace without fanfare. I thought for a moment that she might be feeling a stab of remorse, but the look in her eyes as she watched the fabric ignite suggested older, far more bitter memories were associated with it. While the thin layers of the dress went up in smoke, she cleaned her weapon. Once the entire garment had turned to ash, she ate half a sweetroll and then went to bed to sleep off the rest of the wine coursing through her system.

As I always do before I decide to approach someone new, I watched how she slept. A worried killer will twitch, whimper, whine. Weakness will be etched into the slightest movement of his eyes under their lids, in the way he breathes. She had none of that, but slept on peacefully, face relaxed and unlined, breathing steady, chest rising and falling with the quiet rhythm of one who has not had an unusual day. One hour passed, then two, and still no nightmares occurred. When I woke her from her slumber and watched her take the same dagger that had just ended Ulrich's life into her hand, I could not help but smile.

"You sleep rather soundly for a murderer," I told her. “That's good. You'll need a clear conscience for what I'm about to propose.”

Normally the accused sputter denials at me, white-faced with terror, but she did not respond at all.

I invited her to join the Dark Brotherhood and told her of a contract I thought might be appropriate for her initiation. She remained absolutely silent for the entirety of the conversation, but her hand tightened around her dagger and for one glorious moment I thought she might attack me. I hadn't had a decent fight in years, and the hair on the back of my neck was telling me Caleigh might actually be a good enough fighter to prove a challenge. But her blade never unsheathed, nor did she turn the new weapon I bestowed upon her back on me, and I left her with a sense of bitter disappointment.

The contract I had given her was all wrong, I was sure, but it was all that was available at the time. Rufio was not obviously bad enough for her to be compelled to end his life. He looked too weak, and would react in terror instead of aggression if she confronted him while he was awake. Which she was sure to do, being who she was. I'd fumbled it, hoping that her sanguine acceptance of Ulrich's death meant this was nothing new to her, but her stony silence made me wonder if I was wrong. I told her if she made no move on Rufio I would never contact her again, and as I left was once more surprised to realize how much I would miss shadowing her. But I am a man of my word, as frustrating a trait as that may be.

My plan was to go home to Fort Farragut and return my focus to the administration of the Guild, but something made me decide to travel to the Inn of Ill Omen and take a room instead on the off-chance I had come to her at the right time. I was not worried about her recognizing me—outside of my Robe of the Hand, I am a very unassuming man. If I sit in the shadows of a tavern and quietly sip at my beer, neither she nor Rufio nor any Imperial Soldier to come in for a break will even notice I am there. I enjoy fading into the background, and was prepared to wait for two weeks if need be, just to make sure she wasn't coming after all. I would find out even if she completed the contract while I was not there, but I wanted to be. I wanted to see if and how she did it. I wanted to watch her fall completely.

Every time the door to that accursed inn opened something in my stomach stirred restlessly, but six full days went by before the person entering turned out to actually be her. Hair wild as always, cheeks flushed from a breakneck ride. She told me later the Guard had realized who killed Ulrich, forcing her to flee Cheydinhal on a stolen Legion horse. However, she has not yet realized I am the one who tipped off the Guard. And so she fled to the Inn of Ill Omen as I was hoping she would, bursting through the door at top speed in a blue gown, so comely that even the filthy old Nord innkeeper stood up straight and tried to preen. Those huge, wide eyes flicked about the room appraisingly, resting on me for an instant before I was dismissed. I was so glad to see her I had forgotten she wasn't supposed to recognize me. I'd thought I was too old to feel slighted.

“I'd like a room, please,” she murmured to the innkeeper.

“Plenty of rooms available,” he replied, much too loudly. I doubt he'd seen a woman of her caliber in years. “No one staying here these days except Ol' Rufio.”

She gave him a polite smile, which he took for encouragement to ramble. By the time she freed herself from his company, he'd given her all the information she needed to find him. Not that it was that hard. I'll never understand why so many people think moving into a basement room counts as going into hiding.

And then we had sex. >:D

How the fuck does one write as a psychic?

It's too bright outside. Light keeps bouncing—reflecting, Asha—reflecting off all the materials they have used to build. It wasn't this much of a problem when we were inside the ship. Inside it was darker, and cool, and the artificial lights glared, but they didn't burn like the sun does now. Most of the time it was dark. Looking at the sky from my old home, it had never occured to me that something so full of light would be pitch black. The metal of the ship is smooth under my fingers and feels strong. The plastics don't feel strong.

“I don't trust plastic,” I say to Nanda. People stare. Suddenly I want to cut my hair and change my clothes and why is my skin so dark? It shouldn't be that dark if I want to belong I obviously am not from here and why can no one understand me when I talk? He grabs my hands in his and makes me look into his eyes. His eyes are brown, not blue. They don't stand out like mine do. No one stares at him.

“Shhhhh.” It is a soft noise, but I feel my breathing slow. He is calm, so I am too. Or I try, but the light is really too bright and I can't figure out why no one else is bothered by it bouncing everywhere, off the metal and concrete and into eyes, how can they see with all this light?

“Asha,” he says again, and his hands grip mine more tightly. “We have to get in line now. Please stop staring.” His words sound forced. He's not talking for me.

“Why are you talking to me in this language?” I ask him in Kiranese. My accent must not be right because the people behind me are annoyed. No, that's not it. They want me to move because I am in the door and I am blocking the steps and I should just go back to my rock if I can't handle how different things are here. I hit Nanda across the face, then start to cry.

“Come on, Asha. We're almost there. We have to get in line.”

Everything is swimming. People's faces are washed out and they all look the same. I can't focus. I'm dizzy. He catches me as I pitch forward.

“They're too angry,” I explain. “I can't. I can't. Nanda, please.”

Suddenly there is understanding. I feel a hand on my shoulder. He is twenty-three and from Newearth and thinks my eyes are pretty.

“You seem to have your hands full,” he says to Nanda. His accent is thick and I don't understand the words.

“She's usually fine. I'm not sure why she's so bad right now.”

“Oh come on. It's obvious the poor girl is scared. Why don't you give her a breather?”

Nanda stiffens against me. They don't like each other. “I am trying to get her out of the way.”

He rolls his eyes. “Burn them, they can move around her.” His voice gets louder. “Guys, guys!

Hey! She's a Type Three! Yeah, that's right, feel guilty. You're all making it worse, so just get moving and give her some room, hey?”

My eyes are closed and that's why I can't see. I open them and sit down in the dirt next to the shuttle. Nanda is anxious that I am drawing attention to myself, but the stranger sits down too. He is comfortable. I feel suddenly ill. My heart isn't beating right.

“I can't understand a word you're saying,” I mutter to the blonde. My words confuse him. I must have used the wrong language.

“She know any Kiranese?” he asks Nanda, who is standing behind me in case I forget to keep sitting.

“Some,” he replies. “She's just a little scattered. Give her a minute.”

The air smells good here, much cleaner than at the station we landed at initially. Plants live here. The sky has no haze, and the clouds are coming in thickly. It will storm soon. My head hits Nanda's legs and I flush as I realize I forgot to hold myself up. Hands on my face, and the blonde comes back into focus. He's holding me still and looking into my eyes. His are hazel. His skin has spots. I've never seen a spotted human.

“You're a handful, aren't you?”

I focus on his spots. Freckles. Where did Nanda learn that word?

“Hey, you in there.”

I blink. He's a person. “Hello,” I say, and I know I said it right because they both understand.

“What's your name, little one?”

Name, name. I have to think. No more clouds. “I...”

“Her name is Asha,” Nanda says. I sigh in relief.

“No. She's gotta learn to do this for herself, you know. I know you want to help, but let her be the one that talks to me.”

Now there are hands on my shoulders, pulling me back to my feet. By the time I tear my eyes away from his freckles they are gone, but Nanda has not moved so it must be the tall blonde. I have to tilt my head back or I am staring at his chest.

“You have a nice shirt,” I tell him, and he laughs, but I can't figure out why Nanda is embarrassed.

“Thank you! You'll get one just like it if we can get you into a line.” His smile makes me trust him. Something in what he says is bothering me. I need to be able to think.

“What...what are you called?” It's not quite right, but Nanda isn't helping and I don't know why.

“My name is Keven.”

He snaps into focus, suddenly, and I am able to stand on my own. Line! We were at the University, and we needed to check in to receive class, Teacher, and dorm assignments. I've held Nanda up.

“I hope I haven't made you late, Keven,” I stammer.

“Not at all. I'm in my third year. Just here to help out. Feeling any better?”

I nod and take the chance to get a good look at his face. His features are so much stronger than I am used to. Nanda doesn't like them, but then again, Nanda is jealous and insulted that he cut in.

“Yes, I am. I don't...I don't do well in crowds.”

“That's why you're here. They can fix that, you know. They can fix anything.”

“That is what I am afraid of,” Nanda mutters. His hand reaches for my elbow. It is time to go. Keven reaches for my shoulder to give me a goodbye pat and I flinch away.

“Whoa, which one of you was that?”

“I...I don't know,” I stammer.

“I was just trying to help.” He's getting taller. Nanda's cheek is already burning from where I hit him, and I don't want it to get worse.

“Can we, can we go Nanda?” His hand on my elbow is infuriating, and I can't figure out why it should be. What am I, his pet? Wait, no. That's not me. My knees buckle and I am almost back at the dirt when Nanda's arms encircle me. He presses his lips to my ear and begins to speak in a language I do understand, but I don't listen to the words because I don't need them to soothe me.

“Some help you are,” I hear Nanda say, but everything is too bright again, and I can't get my body to move right. How can I be holding me, falling, and looking at myself all at once?

“No, no, no,” a girl's voice says, and after a full ten seconds I realize it's me. My right hand arcs out and hits Keven square in the chest. Nanda lets go, and I stumble forward, following with my left.

Like that, the rage goes away, and I am back in the dirt. I stand up slowly and brush myself off. I'm not going to be fit to be seen by the time I actually get to the line.

“How did you do that?” I look up at the blonde, who is grinning down at me. I can't feel his amusement, so I am forced to rely on his face. I don't like this, but I can think now, at least.

“Training,” was his one-word reply. Nanda understands it before I do, so I get the strange echo of the Kiranese overlapped with our own dialect. It makes my head hurt.

“It was...nice...meeting you,” I tell him, but I can't tell if he knows I am telling the truth.

“Same here! I'll come check in on you in a week or two, see how you've settled in. Both of you,” he adds, as Nanda glares up at him. They give each other curt nods and then I am being guided back up the path toward the place where we need to line up. The grass crunches under my feet in places, but it has mostly been worn away.

“Like a deer trail,” I mutter, and Nanda agrees. The air is too hot, and I am beginning to wish I had agreed to put on their strange clothing. I wanted to feel comfortable, and instead I feel stuffy and everyone stares.

“They would stare anyway,” Nanda tells me, and I am forced to agree. We do stand out. Everyone is so much taller, and paler. Changing into their clothes would only make us stand out more because then we'd be trying to say we belonged.

“Asha, the buildings. Look!” His excitement forces me to look up from my sandals, and I stop walking when I see what he sees.

“They get that tall?” As far as I can see, tall, slender buildings of white stone rise from among the trees. Sections of them are open so we can see inside, where students sit in rows and wish they were somewhere else. Some of them are covered, but the covering is clear. It is unlike anything I have ever seen.

“Glass,” Nanda mutters in Kiranese.

“Where did you learn all these words?”

“On the plane flight. While you slept, I listened.”

“I wish I had been able to, but everyone was too loud and the shot they gave me made me sleepy.”

“It was supposed to. They were worried you would panic.”

“Thank you for being angry.”

He pauses. We see the line, but he wants to ask me a question before we get back around all those other strangers.

“Do you really think you'll be happy here?” Nanda has already decided he won't, and I can't understand why. But he didn't want to leave in the first place, and I so I don't really know why he is here at all.

I sigh. “Do you really want me to stay this useless? I know how frustrating it is to take care of me all the time.”

“I like it.”

“I don't.” I walk over toward the line and stay focused on the grass. Grass doesn't think. It's not working because someone is staring and wondering what could possibly be so interesting about the lawn. My eyes meet his and he looks away quickly. He's a poor Type One, or less, and doesn't understand how hard it is to think. It's a shame, since I'm so pretty, that I'm so damaged.

Damaged?

“Nonono,” Nanda says, pulling me to him. I push my face into his shoulder and try to get rid of all the people in my head, crowding in, and giving me all those opinions that aren't mine. “Here, focus on me. Tell me about your brother. Show me your favorite memory of him.” And like that, Mani is alive again.

“Excuse me, miss?” says the redhead at the table. She's staring at a machine and entering a password so she can pull up my name in their database. I'll have to figure out what that word means later. She thinks the password so loudly that I am sure I'll never be able to forget it. There's something I am supposed to say, clealry, since the people in the line behind me are waiting.

“Yes?”

She smiles, clearly relieved that I speak Kiranese. “Your name, please?”

“Asha.”

“Last name?”

“I...don't...”

Nanda cuts in. “Sudra.” I flinch, and he runs his hand over my back reassuringly. They had to have a last name, after all. She is satisfied, and exclaims brightly. “Ah! There you are!” I am amazed at how adept she is at showing enthusiasm she doesn't really feel.

“You'll be bunking with the other Natives. Here's you-”

“No, no!” I am yelling, and Nanda cannot make me quiet. “Can't you put me somewhere else?” It is Kiranese. Where did I learn so much Kiranese?

“I...don't you want to live with them?”

“It would most likely be easier for her if she didn't,” said Nanda over my shoulder. “There are some...cultural issues at work here.”

I bring my eyes up to the girl behind the desk, and she has a sudden flash of understanding when she sees how blue they are. Even here, they know what a disgrace it is that I am a half-breed. At least it is working in my favor. She scrolls furiously and stares at her screen.

“There is space in a second-year dorm, if you'd like it,” she offers at last.

“That is fine.”

“No, that's not fine. Why is she getting preferential treatment?” I don't know what the words mean, but the girl behind the desk does, and so we get angry at the same time.

“Reid, why are you even here?”

“Just walking by and overheard the conversation.”

I turn and look up at him. Something is not quite right. He has wavy black hair, pale skin, and green eyes. Once I am used to this place, I think he might be attractive. Except...

He makes eye contact and smiles at me, but I do not feel it.

“Hello.” The word is flat.

“You have no emotion,” I say, and am surprised when everyone begins to laugh. Nanda looks around, confused. The man's cheeks tinge with the faintest red.

“Have we met?”

I shake my head. The laughter increases.

“An empath, then. Type Three.”

“Yes.”

“Been having fun hopping in and out of people's heads all day?”

I stare at him for a minute, working out what he is trying to say. “No, actually.”

“I thought that's what you people do.” A hint of stress on the last word.

“It is.”

“So why don't you enjoy it?”

“Do you enjoy what you do? And what do you do? I can't tell.”

Reid's face grows redder, and everyone around me is laughing. Nanda grabs my shoulder and tries to turn me back to the blonde girl, but I keep my focus on Reid.

“I'm sorry, what did I say that was funny?”

“Nothing at all,” he replied. More laughter from the crowd. I am suddenly giggling, too, and Nanda is tugging harder. When he sees me laugh, the dark-haired man turns on his heel and walks off quickly.

“Why does everyone like me now?” I ask Nanda, but I ask it in Kiranese by accident, and everyone that hears me laughs harder.

“Let's just get you to your room. I take it you'll both want in the dorm?” she asks Nanda, who nods. “Alright. Here is your keycard and wristband. The screen shows a map of campus. Follow it to the flashing dot and you'll be at the dorms. Your Teachers will be by tonight to introduce themselves, so feel free to relax!” She is still giggling as Nanda leads me away.

“What did I do?” I ask Nanda.

“Why were you provoking him?”

“Provoking who?”

“The dark-haired man.” Nanda kicks a rock off the path.

“I wasn't!”

“You made him angry!”

“I couldn't feel him getting angry! How was I supposed to know?”

“Use your eyes, Asha!” He snapped, gesturing at my face. My breathing gets irregular again and I am back down in the grass before I realise that I am crying.

“Oh, no. Nonono, I'm sorry. Asha, no. Don't cry. It doesn't matter. Come here.” He's helping me up but he's still angry at me and his face hurts from where I hit him earlier. I'm crying so hard I can't even see and I don't know why.

“I'm so tired, Nanda.”

“Come on, let's get you to your room. I'll make sure any students that come by to meet you do it tomorrow, okay? You can have the whole night alone, just you and me.”

He helps me navigate to the second floor and undresses me with the door shut. He folds my clothes, rubbing grains of dirt off the leather as he does so, and I feel the bedclothes. Smooth, not at all like dirt under the fingers. My skin has never felt something this soft that wasn't alive. It envelops me and drags me off to sleep. For those few seconds before I slip into unconsciousness, I am actually alone.

Those few seconds always terrify me.

Musings of a Bookkeeper

This is a freewrite I thought you all would enjoy. The point is to sit down and write from beginning to end with no grammar checks, etc, so what you're really after here is content. I got the idea while ushering; the music department has their share of Thors, and I am on to them, oh yes.

---

I love old books, which is good, since my livelihood depends on convincing other people they are worthwhile. Luckily, I have a winning smile. When business is slow at the shops, I like to grab old scientific texts and flip through them. It’s terrifying what we thought would be alright, and often funny what we assumed would be okay. Genetic engineering is my current favorite topic. People in the early 90s and 00s were panicking every time some scientist inserted a gene into a fruit to make it resistant to local viruses. Talk about small thinking. Does anyone remember the Golden Rice debacle? That crop could have saved thousands of lives. Or, at least I think so. We’ll never know, because some activist group bombed the greenhouse where the protoplants were being stored, and the engineer who crafted the strain offed himself with equal parts Ambien and Vodka a week later. Poor guy; all those patent laws had worn him down, and he must have not wanted to start over.

Still, it’s kind of amusing. Genetically engineered plants were used in the last war. No one thought their troops would need a solid background in botany not to be lulled to sleep, devoured by acid, or in the case of one platoon, eaten alive by hybrid vines. I think the war ended out of horror more than anything else. That, and America was been torn apart from within by an army of genetically modified men calling themselves Thor. (I have just ensured that anyone reading my diary in the generations to come is going to be convinced I am insane. Hopefully, for the sake of my image, there is something left behind to excavate once they’re done over there.)

I think the general consensus is it started out as a frat joke at some big college in the Northeast. Some sort of ostensibly pagan activist group which believed the answer to the war was to sort of...clean house within the US Government. Even when their numbers grew, no one took them seriously until the President was assassinated by a thrown hammer at 800 feet. Turned his skull into pudding. They weren’t actually stronger; they’d just been modified to produce adrenaline constantly, which made them feel like they could do these things.

I think one of the reasons no one paid attention until it was too late is because no one could take these guys seriously. They’d grow their hair out, and if it weren’t wavy, they’d actually wave it. The only requisite to becoming a Thor was being blonde of one shade or another, but they tended to work out a lot on account of not wanting to look bad in the loincloths, so eventually they all ended up looking alike. People used to sit and wonder how, if they all called each other “Thor,” was it possible for them to ever pick their friends out at the Thorventions? (I still wonder about this.) Their silly image was, in the end, their ultimate weapon.

Thousands of people a year are still dying at the hands of the Thors, and I do feel bad sitting here being so cheeky about it, safe in my little country across the sea. But we are less complacent; we have learned from America’s mistakes, and will not be taken by surprise.

After all, London may have its odd members of society, but a hulking blonde man in a loincloth is going to stand out. (At least I should hope so; otherwise I have made myself look quite silly again in the eyes of my descendants.)

Mired

This is the "deep revision" of Denial, which is essentially the final for the class. It's pretty much done, other than a few word choice changes and dialogue tweaks. It is also far more depressing and most definitely villanizes Reid, which just...kinda happened.

But then again, he is an asshole.

Word Count: 2,225.

---

Reid can still smell her on him. He is sitting under the old lone oak on the campus green, the smell of the recent thunderstorm almost as tangible as the mist rising from the ground, and her scent still overpowers it all. Flowers. After all of last night, he still couldn’t name which one. But that wasn’t what had driven him away from her warmth and into the morning air. Her smell was lovely, as always; It was the images it was conjuring up, and their consequences, that had made him abandon her in his own bed.

Had he known then how their encounter would end, he would have never opened his door and let her into his room yesterday afternoon. She had tracked him down, upset about an argument she had inadvertently sparked in her morning class. He had listened awkwardly as she explained what had happened in a ragged, jerky voice.

“You're antisocial; I figured you'd understand why I'm so upset.” Her face had been damp and the light streaming in from his dorm room window made it look ill.

He hadn't known what to say. Instead, he had stepped forward impulsively and given her a hug, like his mother used to do when his face had looked like that. She squeezed him roughly in response and pressed her face into his shirt. Reid's pulse shifted into a jerky, confused pace as the hug's duration extended. They had never touched, despite knowing one another for over a year. Neither of them were what he would have called physical people. But as she started crying again, the close smell of her perfume had caused him to lower his face to her hair and inhale deeply.

And that's where the entire situation had gone to hell.

He becomes aware of a squelching sound in the distance, and looks up from the grass he has been absently shredding to see a short female form approaching. Reid’s mind clears, and he realizes his jeans are soaked through from sitting for so long. The damp air has also pervaded his shirt, and he feels sticky. And there she was, trudging through the mire to find him. She always knew where to find him, a talent which he had desperately hoped she’d not put into use today. He stands as she approaches. His heart is beating so hard it makes him feel unsteady on his feet.

“Go away.” He turns his back to her and begins walking toward the Arboretum.

“No, Reid. We need to talk.” A swish of cloth behind him indicates she has no intention of obeying. Something clicks in peripheral vision, and he realizes she is wearing his one of his shirts. She’s not the kind of girl who would just help herself to his wardrobe, so she must not have been able to find her own in the mess of his room. Nevertheless, the sight makes his jaw clench.

“We need to talk,” she repeats.

“No, we really don't. Go away.” As he says this, he catches her scent on a surge of air and inhales sharply. It mingles with the warm smell of the rain and the trees, creating a combination he associates with the first time they were ever alone together. It was just as damp and rainy then as it is today, and he had decided to stay in his room and out of the weather. He'd always hated the rain, but this fact has crumbled in the face of her stubbornness.

“Come on,” she’d said with unusual force, smiling up at him. “Everyone else is busy, and I don't wish to walk alone.” Her voice was accentless, her diction foreign. He’d often wondered if she spoke that way purposefully.

“No,” he replied. “I don’t like trees.”

“How can you not like trees? That is the most inane thing I've ever heard.” Her laugh sounded amused despite her mocking tone.

“Look, nature is not my element. We don’t mix. I like concrete.”

“That is because you've not tried to mix. Now, come on.”

“No! It is raining.” Staying dry was a privilege he had always intended to hold on to with the same teeth and nails his ancestors had used to claw out their first sheltering holes.

“So? It is only water. Lighten up, Reid.” She’d grabbed his arm with more strength than he had expected and dragged him toward the door. She smiled up at him then, and as she did so, he realized that she asked him at that moment, he probably would have agreed to do something exceptionally ridiculous, such as camping. And, though he never admitted it later, they did have fun that day, a fact which in the present moment strikes him as unfortunate.

Reid glances at her over his shoulder before increasing his stride. He hears her sigh; his peripheral vision tells him she is following as best she can, though having difficulty because her legs are much shorter than his. He forces her to half-jog to keep abreast of him, and he imagines her eyes are narrowed in her trademark signal of annoyance. A vengeful part of him enjoys her discomfort.

“Reid, please,” she says, breath fogging in the chilly air. The ground beneath their feet makes damp noises as he presses on determinedly. They are nearing the edge of the lawn, and the nearby woods appear no less water-logged than the surrounding field.

“What.”

“Stop fucking walking for two seconds and look at me!” The force of her words makes him stop and turn out of sheer surprise; he has never heard her curse. She cranes her neck and her blue eyes meet his defiantly, providing him another painful reminder of last night. As soon as she noticed him smelling her, she had had looked up at him, causing a tickling sensation as her hair slid along his face. His cheeks had flushed then with embarassment, and she had smiled. Now his face is red from stress, and her eyes are far less amused as she gazes up at him.

Reid sighs and stops walking. “Happy now?”

“Hardly,” she mutters. She stares him down until he looks away nervously. He has never seen her so angry, which surprises him, since they had fought almost constantly since their first meeting. First impressions are crucial; She had found him caustic, while he saw her as naive. That first year they had fought constantly in classes, in the cafeteria, and once she’d slapped him in the hall outside her suite, scraping part of his cheek raw with one of her nails in the process. He found the weaknesses to exploit in her self esteem, and she found the ways to make him guilty for it. The entire campus assumed they despised one another, and after a while he began to believe they were right. But when they ended up alone together, everything was suddenly comfortable. He drops his eyes from hers and misses that sensation.

“You like me.” Her words are made tangible in the air between them by the cold.

“No, I don't.” He tries to resume walking, but she grabs his arm in a strong grip, like she always does when he refuses to listen to her.

“Yes, you do.”

He laughs weakly in response.

“Hey, who sought who out here to begin this whole nightmare of a friendship? You were one of the first people I met at University, remember?”

He did remember. When he’d first noticed her, he couldn’t help but wonder how she saw herself, and what had driven her to attend this specific university of all places. It was her hair. Long, dark brown, only slightly darker than her skin, falling in a thick braid down her back and to her knees. Or, it could have been her eyes, darting up at him furtively when he addressed her, but never seeming to make eye contact for more than a few seconds at a time, as if she was worried their almost obscene blueness would distract from the conversation. She had seemed so out of place, a short brown wisp of a girl with a name like a sigh in a land of hard consonants.

Asha. It was a name meant to be inhaled. He’d never had to wonder why she’d always intrigued him. She was visually interesting, but everyone agreed her personality was even more so. He’d decided to meet her after hearing this, to see for himself if she was as amazing as rumoured. His discovery of the truth of their words had filled him with a hostile resentment that tended to leak into their conversations. That resentment had never fully left him, and he hides behind it now in self-defense.

“We're not friends. I talk to you because I am bored.”

She snorts. “Right. Boredom's why you work so hard to be nice to me? You're not that good at it, but I can tell you try.”

He shakes his head. “No.”

“Reid. You like me. You seek me out, you actively pick fights with me. You antagonize anyone who shows interest in me. Admit it to me!”

“I don't like you.” He clenches his fists until his palms can no longer stand the pain from his nails.

“Why won't you admit it?”

“Because I'm not going to lie to you.”

“You're funny. You lie to me all the time, and we both know it.”

He bites back another lie and glares down at her.

“Reid,” she says after a pause, “If you don't like me...”

Her eyes meet his again, but the anger and stubbornness he is expecting are entirely absent. Instead, he sees vulnerability. Uncertainty. He realizes she isn't completely convinced what she is saying is true. His shoulders tense He pushes against her roughly, and she half-stumbles back. Her look of reproach has him talking again.

“Asha. All you need to know about last night is that I was bored.”

She slaps his cheek; he ignores both her and the familiar pain flaring behind his eye and resumes walking.

“Reid!”

This time, she doesn't follow. He wants to look back, to see if she is standing there, looking after him, but he is worried this will goad her into continuing the conversation, if that is what it had been. He makes it to the cover of the trees before giving in and turning, but by that time she has disappeared. Reid fixates on the choked voice she had used to yell his name; he’d made her cry. There was definitely irony there, but he did not find it at all amusing.

The privacy of the surrounding trees proved to be no help. He’d spent too much time with her there over the past year, and the smell was cloying, forcing more of memories that he’d spent all morning trying to escape back into his mind. Reid punches a sycamore on the edge of the path tracing the way back to his dorm. His knuckles split open almost willingly, leaving three smears of blood on the smooth, white bark. As the pain in his fingers develops, the tight feeling in his head dissipates, and his thoughts clear.

“I’m an idiot,” he mutters to himself, sucking on the knuckle of his middle finger. The air is so damp he can barely taste the blood. The skin has been torn and feels wrinkled under his tongue, like deli meat or a dried fruit. He rips the broken sections off with his teeth in one clean motion. The wound, now fully exposed to the air, stings and brings tears to his eyes. Reid drops his hand from his mouth, spits the shredded skin onto the path, and continues home.

The door to his room has never seemed less welcoming. He opens it and is greeted by the smell of mingled sweat and scattered laundry. His eyes, familiar with the normal mess of his room, find Asha’s shirt immediately, a scrap of lavender tossed aside under his desk. He picks it up with his un-injured hand, resisting the urge to pull it to his face . Depositing it on his desk chair, he forces himself to face the one item in the room his eyes keep avoiding.

The bed has clearly slept two the previous night; his unassuming white sheets have been rippled and bunched and pulled, and now lie in uneven wrinkles around the middle of the bed, leaving the mattress exposed at the bottom. His comforter, which Asha had won from him sometime around sunrise, was spilling off the side nearest the window, leaving the sheets exposed like a wound. And there, in the middle of the bed, was something he had not noticed the night before; a rusty stain, standing out starkly from the cloth of the sheets.

Reid experiences a sudden understanding so strong it makes him feel ill. He sees Asha’s eyes again, and the uncertainty within them, and realizes why her stubbornness had crumbled so easily before his denial. He stumbles to the desk chair and snatches up her shirt, completely disregarding the blood oozing from his own hand. It seeps into the fabric instantly as he brings the shirt to his face, intending to inhale her. Instead, he begins to cry, and is soon sobbing so hard that the muscles in his back and stomach contort as if being struck.

“I’m an idiot,” he gasps again between sobs, and sinks to the floor, still clutching her shirt in his bloodied hands.

The Least of My Problems

This is a "short-short" I wrote for the final story in my Intro to Writing Fiction Class. It's supposed to be "brief, but intense, and packed with detail." Call this draft 1.5, and look for the partial cameo of me.

Word count: 1019

---

I didn't have much time. James was going to be here at any moment, and I'd forgotten my lipstick. Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but I'd also left my handbag on the roof. I'd been feeling so proud of myself, too, for managing to squeeze myself out the second-story bathroom window. The feeling had remained as I was crawling along the roof, inhaling tar and hoping desperately that I didn’t fall and break something important. I felt like a rebel. I felt bad. I'd never even taken a screen off a window before tonight. Then, right as I jump off the garden trellis and feel the satisfying thump of solid ground vibrate up into my knees, I have the sinking feeling that I have forgotten something. And let's face it. I'm standing on the curb-side at midnight with roofing granules embedded in my palms, black gunk from the screen all over my manicure, mud all over my platform heels, and no purse— the lipstick is probably the least of my worries at this point. But I start to fixate. He's not going to notice the house-escape battle scars, oh no. He's going to take one look at my face, see my bare lips, and drive right on past in that junky old Ford of his.

It makes no sense, and I know it makes no sense, but I need lipstick now. There's no way I can go back up the trellis in these heels. In fact, it’s a miracle I even made it down in this dress! If I walk back in the front door, the night is officially over. Through the door lies family, and my sister angrily demanding to know how long I'd been borrowing her clothes. It was just this one time, but of course she's never going to believe me, especially if I bring it back dirty and torn. I knew when I agreed to meet James tonight I’d have to face my family once the night was over, and that means I am not walking back through that door one instant before I have to. At least I can be almost sure the purse will be safe, barring discovery by a confused and very lucky cat burglar.

But I still want lipstick. This night isn't going to be perfect unless every little detail is right, and so far everything else has been exactly like what I imagined sneaking out would be. I can justify the mess on my hands and the cut on my cheek from the wayward wisteria branch I encountered during my jaunt down the trellis. There's nothing I can really do about the make-up, though. I'll just have to find a way to let it go.

My eyes scan the neighbourhood around me, and I soon notice an unfamiliar car. Oh, right. The house across the street has recently been sold, and the new family moved in two days ago. Then, I think, the parents promptly went out of town, leaving their teenage daughter all alone in the huge house. She didn't throw a party, which to me means they are new to the city entirely, or she is way too exhausted from the move to be social. I caught a glimpse of her washing this car, actually. She was in a leopard-print string bikini with a lot of beading on the ties that swayed back and forth as she scrubbed. Her hair was hot pink, and clashed with the swimsuit but looked great with her tan. She's the kind of girl who knows how to put on lipstick.

I amble over to look into her car windows and see if I can learn more about her in manner of a creepy stalker. She's got a sunroof, which means her parents bought the car for her, and the interior is spotlessly clean, which means it is still a newish present. A stylish leather purse with one of those ridiculously large silver clasps is sitting on the passenger seat, forlorn and forgotten.

Wait. Purse. Lipstick. Sunroof!

I give the top of her car another glance, and sure enough, the sunroof is cracked about an inch. I do my best not to think as I scamper back to the vegetable garden in my yard for a bamboo stake. James had told me a couple of days ago that people can unlock car doors through the sunroofs without damaging anything. I wedge the stake in the crack and start wiggling it around, working it toward the latch on the door. It was easier than I thought it would be. In moments, I hear a “click,” and the door opens for me willingly.

I slide into the driver’s-side, smooth my sister's dress over my knees, and practically lunge for her purse. The wallet and phone I ignore, because I have no intention of robbing this girl. She seems pretty nice, as far as car washings go, anyway. I'm just here to borrow.

She's got three colors. I flip on the dome light and apply a burgundy to my lips with shaky fingers. The hot pink is fun, but I'd feel like her; she'd obviously bought it to match her hair. There is also a brown, but that is far too formal for a night like this. I have enough time to check my application job in her rear-view mirror before I am blinded by headlights. He's here!

I lock up the girl's car, feeling a brief stab of guilt that I didn't have time to get everything back in her purse. She's definitely going to think she was robbed. But I can't let James know I broke into a car for lipstick. Maybe she and I can befriend each other and a year down the road I'll tell her this story and she'll laugh hysterically.

He pulls up to me on the curb, windows exuding diabolical curls of smoke in the mist. He's always smoked. I hate the way it tastes.

“Hey hottie!” I curl my fingers nonchalantly.

“Yo Keven, you ready?”

I'm probably not, actually. But I nod and open the car door.

Second short story assignment, draft 1

This one is set secretly in the future, but in this case it is even less pertinent. You know both the characters already, but they are much younger here because I changed the timeline and the setting pretty drastically. Reid is 19, Asha 17.

Word count: 900 (I think it needs to be a little longer.)

---

“Go away, Asha.” He turns his back to her and trudges resolutely through grass made muddy by the recent rainstorm.

“No, Reid. We need to talk.” A swish of cloth behind him indicates she has no intention of obeying him.

“No, we really don't. Go away.” As he says this, the wind picks up, slamming into his back, ruffling his shirt and sending a chill down his spine. He catches her scent on the surging air and inhales sharply. An unpleasant pang jolts through his stomach as her perfume triggers recent memories. Asha had tracked him down, upset about a presentation in one of her classes that had not gone well. He had listened awkwardly as she explained what had happened in a ragged, jerky voice.

“You're antisocial; I figured you'd understand why I'm so upset.” Her face had been damp and the light streaming in from the window made it look ill.

He hadn't said anything. He hadn't known what to say. Instead, he had stepped forward and given her a hug, like his mother used to do when his face had looked like that. She had squeezed him roughly and pressed her face into his shirt. As she started crying again, the close smell of her perfume had caused him to spontaneously lower his face to her hair and inhale deeply.

That's where the entire situation had gone to Hell.

Reid glances at her over his shoulder before increasing his stride. He hears Asha sigh; his peripheral vision tells him she is following him as best she can, though having difficulty because her legs are much shorter than his. He forces her to half-jog to keep abreast of him, and he imagines her eyes are narrowed in her trademark signal of annoyance. Part of him enjoys her discomfort despite the sour feeling in his stomach.

“Reid, please,” she says, breath fogging in the chilly air. The ground beneath their feet makes damp noises from the recent rain. Her leather shoes are probably ruined, but she doesn't seem to care. His stomach pangs again; she adores those shoes.

“What, Asha.”

“Stop fucking walking for two seconds and look at me!” Her blue eyes meet his defiantly, and he feels another pang of memory as their eye contact is maintained. Once he had realized what he was doing, he had jerked his head up roughly. She had made eye contact with him almost instantly. A slow smile spread across her face, and he felt his cheeks flush as he realized she knew. Asha's eyes ae far less amused as she looks up at him now.

He sighs and stops walking. “Happy now?”

“Hardly,” she mutters. They stare each other down until Reid looks away nervously. He has never seen her so angry. Other people have been this angry with him; it usually is his fault. This time he isn't being spiteful, but her eyes still have that familiar cold look. For a brief moment he hates them.

“You like me.” Her words are made tangible in the air between them by the cold.

“No, I don't.” He tries to resume walking, but she grabs his arm in a strong grip.

“Yes, you do.”

He laughs weakly in response.

“Hey, who sought who out here to begin this whole nightmare of a friendship? You were one of the first people I met at University, remember?”

He did remember. Reid had been intrigued by her hair long before he had been captivated by her personality. It was long and dark brown, and fell to her knees, making her appear even shorter than she really was. She always kept it in a thick braid down her back, which had made him imagine almost incessantly what it must look like loose. Last night she had finally allowed him to find out. The texture of her hair under his fingers had been exactly what he imagined it would be. He forces himself to ignore the memory stemming from his fingers.

“We're not friends. I talk to you because I am bored.”

She snorts. “Right. Boredom's why you work so hard to be nice to me? You're not that good at it, but I can tell you try.”

He shakes his head. “No.”

“Reid. You like me. You seek me out, you actively pick fights with me. You antagonize anyone who shows interest in me. Admit it to me!”

“I don't like you.” He clenches his fists until his palms can no longer stand the pain from his nails.

“Why won't you admit it?”

“Because I'm not going to lie to you.”

“You're funny. You lie to me all the time, and we both know it.”

He bites back another lie and glares down at her.

“Reid,” she says after a pause, “If you don't like me...”

She sidles closer, and he smells her again. This time he remembers the feel of her skin under his hands, and he shudders involuntarily. Her hands are on his arms again in a mocking parallel of last night, just as warm as they were then. Reid remembers her quiet strength vividly. She stands on tiptoe and brings her lips close to his. Where they are standing feels suddenly public.

His shoulders stiffen. “Asha. I was bored.”

She slaps his cheek; he ignores her and the pain in his stomach and resumes walking.

“Reid!” This time, she doesn't follow.