Trash Panda

Let Me Steal Your Heart [BuzzingBee + Dagger]

“Yeah, it’s kind of horrifying that I’ve got more power than I’ve ever had in my life but also the least amount of control over my own life at the same time,” Crow wrinkled his nose. From the start, he’d known that noblemen lived by far more rules than peasants did, but he supposed that to a certain extent, he’d always assumed that the rules wouldn’t apply to him if he accepted the title of viceroy. He had the highest rank in Brerra outside of the royal family—which he was technically also a part of as the king’s secret first-born son—so he’d hoped that he would be able to dictate how he spent his time when he didn’t have a job to do for Albin. To his repeated disappointment, he was discovering that that wasn’t how things worked in the inner kingdom though.

“At least things might change when we get back,” he pointed out as they walked, trying to be optimistic. “No one can blame us for spending time together now that we’re courting, and once we’re married, we’ll even be able to live together.” He couldn’t wait for that. Getting to be with her every day would be paradise after they’d spent years struggling to be with each other at all. Of course, they would still have work to do in their respective jobs even then, but at least they could catch up with each other on most nights when they returned to their own shared bedchamber to unwind at the end of each day. The thought of it was so different than what he’d grown accustomed to that it felt like a dream.

When Penelope asked him if there was anywhere in particular that he wanted to visit, he pondered the question. He didn’t know Wellspring as well as he knew the villages further north, so he couldn’t come up with any sights in particular that he wanted to see while they were there. “Why don’t we pay the river a visit?” he suggested with a shrug. “It seemed like a peaceful spot to stop by when you’re not in the middle of being chased by a crazy knight.” He leaned into her side teasingly and then gave her hand a tug. “Come on, huntress; I remember it was this way.”

Leading her into the trees, he strode through the woods until he heard the sound of flowing water. Vaguely, he remembered that the ground on this side of the river dropped off abruptly in a short cliff, so he slowed his pace to keep from stumbling into it. When they reached it, he smiled to himself, enjoying the trips they were making recently to places they had last visited two years ago. He sat down on the edge of the steep bank and let his legs dangle over the side, “We should have done this last time we were here. It’s much more pleasant than waking up downstream smelling like a dead fish and plucking moss out of your trousers.”

Amnesia [Suki & Summer]

I've been integrating little bits of Jacob's backstory into my posts, but basically, he joined the army when he was eighteen and served for a few years as a foot soldier before he was selected to train as a personal guard to the royal family. He takes a lot of pride in his work, so ever since he was promoted to captain of the guard he dedicates most of his free time to his job (probably at least 70 hours per week). He doesn't have much of a life outside of his work (that's why he isn't involved with anyone; he works so much he doesn't have time to meet any women or maintain a long term relationship), but he's well-liked among the other guards, and he's friendly with everyone he meets (specifically other high borns). He doesn't show a lot of emotion in general, so he comes across as tough, but on the inside, he's really torn up about what he thinks happened to Cas - partly because he sees it as his own failure to protect his future king and also because he really liked Cas as a person. He's quietly observant, so he saw Cas's potential to be a great leader and believed he was going to be an influential king after Atlas passed.

Of course, there's more to his history than that, but those are some key points that might play a role in the story as we move it along :)

Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how Regis handles it! I figured that since he's delusional, the interrogators will still have a hard time figuring out what's true and what isn't among the things he says while he's under the influence of the drug.

And Cas is having a hard time with the fact that he hasn't seen any soldiers from the capital come looking for him yet ^^; He's already insecure because of the way Atlas treats him, so this isn't helping him at all with his skewed self-image.

Amnesia [Suki & Summer]

Jacob has a fouler mouth than most characters I write, but he comes from a military background, so it made sense for him to swear a lot. Personality-wise, he's similar though xD He's fun to write too.

Also, you can write out what happens to Regis in the interrogation room if you'd like! The interrogators would inject the Aproveset into the side of his neck, and it would take about five minutes before he starts experiencing excruciating pain and his mind gets muddled. The purpose of the drug is to essentially light a fire under POWs' butts to get them to give up their secrets by promising an antidote to relieve the pain if they comply. The effects it has on the brain make it harder for prisoners to think straight and remember why they're supposed to keep secrets in the first place.

I was going to write the interaction between Jacob and Atlas in the meantime. Neither of those things has to happen all in one post too.

Amnesia [Suki & Summer]

What a sick bastard, Jacob’s upper lip twitched as he fought the impulse to curl it in disgust. Even if Regis had a sliver of intelligence left inside his head, it was obvious that his sanity was long gone. The way he spoke to his captors, as if he was the one in charge, was astounding. It was like every time he was returned to his cell after an interrogation, he forgot that he was going to be tortured again if he continued to refuse to talk. In a way, Jacob’s visits had been a merciful offering. If Nox-Fleuret would just confess to him the information they were after, he wouldn’t have to endure another round of beatings with the questioners’ tools of torture. Granted, once they had what they wanted from him, he was certain that King Atlas was going to have him sentenced to death, but at least that would be less painful than the repeated torment he was going through now.

“If you consider an end to your suffering ‘nothing,’ then yeah, I guess there’s nothing in it for you,” he agreed with a sardonic roll of his eyes. After putting up with the rebel leader’s attitude for a whole night, his patience had been whittled down to a nub, and he didn’t even pretend to put up with the cheeky comments anymore. If it wasn’t for the fact that the military had a set of protocol in place for dealing with prisoners already, he would have unlocked Regis’s cell himself and beaten the shit out of him multiple times by now. Everyone knew he deserved it after everything he’d done to the royal family—especially Caspian.

As Regis described the sick ways he would have liked to turn the prince into a trophy, Jacob eyed him with revulsion. Now more than ever, he was convinced that the rebellion was a plague upon Aspiria. If their leader was this deranged, it spoke volumes about the way the terrorist organization was being run. His stomach churned with the image of Caspian’s body taxidermied like the prize of a serial killer, but he knew Regis was lying about burning him. He’d seen human ashes before, so he knew what they looked like. The dust beneath their feet had been too fine of a powder to belong to any previously living creature. If it had come from a body, they would have been stepping on bits of bone and teeth.

“You’re a twisted son of a bitch,” he growled. It was hard to tell if Nox-Fleuret genuinely believed the prince’s corpse had been burned. Perhaps it had. Just because the bit about scattering the ashes in the house had been a lie didn’t necessarily mean the rebels hadn’t incinerated Caspian’s body. If they had, he was going to have yet another piece of bad news to deliver to Atlas. He cringed as he imagined how the king was going to react when he woke up to find out that his only son was dead and they might not have any way to recover his body.

Almost as if he’d summoned his own nightmare, his phone pinged with an alert. The guard glanced down at it and took a deep breath as he saw a message on the screen from one of the security guards in the palace. Atlas had woken up. “Shit,” he exhaled under his breath. Tossing one more cold look at Regis, he tapped into the military’s frequency on his com device, “The use of Aproveset on Nox-Fleuret is approved. Bring him in for interrogation as soon as the drug is ready. I want that information out of him before lunch.”

Directing his next words at the prisoner, he tilted his chin up, “I gave you a chance. Now you’ll find out what happens to dumb fucks who don’t do what they’re told.” With that, he turned and headed out of the prison, leaving Regis behind as he prepared himself to confront his king with nothing but bad news.

Let Me Steal Your Heart [BuzzingBee + Dagger]

Mood xD I've probably got too much writing motivation right now. I need to be working on my projects, but I'm procrastinating a little. At least I'm almost done, so I'm not stressed about not getting done in time anymore.

Let Me Steal Your Heart [BuzzingBee + Dagger]

Stepping outside the inn, Crow felt a cold draft of air wash over him right away, and he shivered. Taking the winter weather into account, he and Penelope might not cause Otto to keel over in a panic by staying out for too long. He didn’t expect that they would wander off for as much time as they had in the past anyway. Honestly, he had just wanted to have a moment alone with her before they parted ways tomorrow. It was funny. They were officially courting now, but they barely spent more time with each other now than they had when they were still keeping their relationship a secret from everyone else. He hoped that would change after he got back from Younis and the war was winding down to end.

With a shake of his head, he turned toward Penelope, who looked like she had been waiting for him by the front of the inn. “Of course,” he grinned back at her. “The trick was just walking out of the room before he had a chance to tell me ‘no.’ He couldn’t argue with me when I wasn’t there.” Shrugging with feigned nonchalance, he leaned down to press a kiss to her cheek and took her hand in his. The opportunities they had to share casual touches were still few and far between since they spent most of their days on horseback recently, so he relished being able to get close to her for a little while tonight.

When he pulled back again, he smiled at her cheekily. “So, did you have something in mind when you lured me out here after dark?” he asked her with a joking nudge. Even though he was sure she had just been trying to get away from their stifling companions like he had, he couldn’t help teasing her a little. A part of him was even tempted to turn their secret rendezvous into a steamier getaway, but between the brisk air outside and the promise they had made to John that they would stop fooling around before they were married, he wasn’t going to push for anything more than just enjoying her company.

Amnesia [Suki & Summer]

He's really interesting cx

Jacob is actually a lot more similar to characters I usually make, haha. I like to go for the rough and tough male characters, so writing from Caspian's perspective is a change for me

Amnesia [Suki & Summer]

Jacob wrinkle his nose in disgust at the sight of his all too happy prisoner. When he’d first laid eyes on Regis, a part of him had wondered if this was just some elaborate joke. There was no way that a man with as many screws loose as Regis Nox-Fleuret could be capable of single-handedly leading a rebellion, right? If it hadn’t been for the fact that the intelligence team had gained that information through the use of their most potent truth serum, he wouldn’t have believed for one second that the madman in this cell was the one who had caused the crown so much trouble for so many years. It seemed impossible that he was even capable of holding a coherent conversation.

However, even in his lunacy, the rebel apparently had some wits left. Jacob narrowed his eyes as the other man pointed out that he sounded tired. Either Regis was just bluffing to try to act like he was stronger than him or he’d noticed the subtle cues he was giving off that he had indeed not slept for the last twenty-four hours. Either way, it irked him that his prisoner seemed to have noticed his weariness so quickly, and he folded his arms over his broad chest, holding his weight in a stern pose to tell the madman with his body language that his state of energy was inconsequential.

“You know that’s not the information I want,” he said brusquely, getting sick of repeating himself. Since Regis had woken up, he’d been all too eager to tell him and the other men what he’d done to their prince. However, they still hadn’t been able to get him to cough up the location of Caspian’s body. Objectively, he didn’t care if they found their future king’s corpse in one piece or ten. As long as they brought him back to the capital, where he could be buried alongside the rest of the deceased Maydestone family after a deserved funeral, that was all that mattered.

“I want you to tell me what you did with the goddamn body,” he reiterated harshly. Of course, there was other information the interrogators had been attempting to squeeze out of Regis as well. They wanted to know the names of the other high-up members of the Scourge as well as to find out how their enemies had been intercepting some of their shipments of supplies. Battle plans, lists of resources, base locations, anything that would help them squash what was left of the rebellion before it had a chance to recover from the loss of its leader. All of that information was vital to the military in the midst of the war, but Jacob was focused on finding out what had happened to the prince he’d been charged with protecting.

He glared at Regis poisonously. “Why even bothering hiding it from us? If he’s dead, there’s no more reason for you to hold onto him.” By the morning, they had learned by examination that the blood in the basement had belonged to Caspian, so he didn’t question the authenticity of the rebel leader’s claim. “Unless you’re so far out of your fucking mind that you want to keep a rotting corpse as a trophy, you’ll make your own life a lot easier if you just tell me where he is.”

Amnesia [Suki & Summer]

Yeah, it's a rough time, but he's learning a lot through it

I threw in the switch to the capital :)

Amnesia [Suki & Summer]

“You and me both,” Caspian muttered with a shake of his head. He couldn’t believe that for as long as he’d been missing, the soldier on the other end of the line wouldn’t have even stopped to consider that it was really him making the call. Something was off. At least, he wanted to think so because if it wasn’t, that meant that the military wasn’t in any hurry to bring him back. He grimaced at the thought, stung by the possibility that his disappearance wasn’t as big of a deal as he’d expected it would be. Is my dad even looking for me? He wondered dejectedly. He didn’t want to believe it, but as awful as it was, he wouldn’t have been entirely shocked if he found out that Atlas wasn’t prioritizing finding him while the war was still ongoing. It wasn’t like his father had ever shown much interest in him before.

Don’t go there again, he exhaled slowly, reining in his spiraling thoughts. All he knew for sure was that he’d gotten through to a particularly disagreeable guard when he’d tried to call home. That didn’t necessarily have anything to do with his father. For all he knew, the king was worried sick that he still hadn’t been found. He had to assume the best because if Atlas didn’t actually care if he came back or not, there was no point in trying to go back to the capital. After all, why should he bother if his own father wouldn’t even shed a tear over the fact that he had been abducted and could have died? For his own sanity, he had to assume the monarch was doing everything he could to bring him home.

Realizing belatedly that Maisie had left the room, he finished off the rest of his tea and set the cup back down on the table. Worrying about what was going on outside of his scope of knowledge wasn’t going to do him any good, so he laid down on his right side and pulled his blanket up to his chin, closing his eyes to finally give in to his exhaustion and get some much-needed sleep.

--

[Earlier the same day]

Jacob stifled a yawn as he walked with the warden down a long line of cells. He and the rest of the team that had gone to Tongsen had brought Regis Nox-Fleuret back as their prisoner the night before. Since then, he hadn’t had a wink of sleep, but he couldn’t take a break until they got the information they needed from their newest POW. Surprisingly, the leader of the rebellion had a mouth on him. Not in the sense of foul language—although that was part of it—but rather because he jabbered on and on about how he’d won and how the monarchy was doomed to collapse.

It was infuriating to watch him act so high and mighty, but luckily, he wasn’t in charge of interrogating the bastard. The men who questioned Regis were better trained in that realm than he was, so he had reduced his involvement to intermittent visits when the rebel was returned to his cell between rounds of interrogations. The use of Aproveset had been discussed to speed things along, but for now, they had been following the usual protocol of demanding answers and encouraging their prisoner to talk with other creative methods of torture.

He also hadn’t told King Atlas anything yet. Technically, he was supposed to report to the monarch as soon as they had brought Nox-Fleuret in, but he was reluctant. It was seeming more and more like the gutter scum had actually killed their country’s crown prince, and he didn’t want to tell their king about that until he absolutely had to. So, he’d decided to wait until he received word that His Highness had woken up on his own before he made the visit to the palace to tell him the bad news that his son was dead.

Approaching Regis’s cell, Jacob ground his teeth, simmering with anger. King Atlas wasn’t the only one who cared about Prince Caspian’s wellbeing. It took all his willpower not to barge in and beat the living daylights out of the man who claimed to have ended his life. He managed to hold himself back though, and merely growled through the bars, “Rise and shine, Nox-Fleuret. Are you ready to talk to me or do I need to call my buddies with the fun toys over to do a little convincing?”