#Afghanistan. just their house and the way they were living (most of the things we are during dinner they had grown themselves) and after | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

reasonsforhope · 1 year

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Odd jobs are few and far between in Nearobo. Peter knows because every day he walks the streets of his village in south-east Liberia looking for one. In a good month, he might make $20 (£16.70). That’s hardly enough to feed himself, let alone his children.

But today things are looking up. As part of an innovative new donation scheme, Peter receives $40 (£33.40) per month for a minimum of three years. No paperwork. No requests for receipts. No catch of any kind, in fact. Just hard cash transferred straight to his mobile phone.

The 59-year-old casual labourer plans to use the money to buy materials for a new home for himself and his family, he says. “Although it is going to take long, I will continue until my house is completed.”

The scheme is part of a new-look approach to development assistance that, if taken to scale, could potentially turn the £156bn international aid industry on its head.

At least, so says Rory Stewart, the former UK foreign secretary turned podcaster-in-chief (he co-hosts ‘The Rest is Politics’ with Alastair Campbell, a surprise hit which has topped the Apple podcast charts virtually every week since it launched a year ago). From his new base in Amman, Jordan, Stewart heads up GiveDirectly – the world’s fastest growing nonproft – who are behind the initiative.

“It’s a rather radical, simple idea to help people out of extreme poverty. We deliver the cash directly … there’s no middleman and no government getting in the way.”

It feels like an odd statement from someone who has spent much of his life in government service: first as a junior diplomat for eight years (during which he penned a bestselling book about dodging Taliban bullets and hungry wolves whilst walking across Afghanistan), followed by almost a decade as a politician at Westminster.

Pictured: Rory Stewart and GiveDirectly’s Ivan Ntwali talk with a refugee household in Rwanda. Image: GiveDirectly

His enthusiasm is even more surprising given his initial caution. During his various ministerial stints at the UK’s department for international development (including three months as secretary of state), he was an out-and-out “cash sceptic.”

Giving away money with no strings attached was, he felt at the time, an impossible sell to tax-paying voters. What’s stopping recipients spending it down the pub? Or investing in a hair-brained business venture?

Quite a lot it turns out. No one knows the value of money more than those who don’t have any, he argues. Give an impoverished mother-of-four $40 (£33.40) cash and, 99 times out of 100, she’ll spend it on something useful: repairs to the house, say, or school fees for her kids...

By virtue of GiveDirectly’s model, participants can spend their money on whatever they choose, but the charity’s research indicates that most goes towards food, medical and education expenses, durables, home improvement and social events.

On the flipside, Stewart also has numerous examples of well-funded aid projects that deliver next to nothing. A decade ago, the then United Nations general secretary Ban Ki-moon estimated that 30 per cent of aid money disappears in corruption. There is little to suggest much has changed.

The aid industry doesn’t need corrupt officials to see its funds evaporate, however; it has its own voluminous bureaucracy. Stewart recalls once visiting a $40,000 (£33,560) water and sanitation project in a school in an unnamed African country. The ‘deliverables’ were two brick latrines and five red buckets for storing water...

The beauty of direct giving, he stresses, is not just that it annuls opportunities for thievery and red tape; it also frees the world’s poorest individuals from the well-meaning but, very often, misplaced guidance of donors. An aid expert in Brussels or Washington DC may well have a PhD in development economics, but who is best to judge what a single mother in a Kinshasa slum needs most and how to obtain it most cheaply: the expert with her degree, or the mother with her hungry children?

Empowering recipients to decide for themselves helps end the kind of “mad world” where aid agencies pay to ship wheat from Idaho, US, to Antananarivo, Madagascar, only for local people to sell it in order to buy what they really want, Stewart reasons.

“So often, these communities are having to turn the goods we send them into cash anyway, but just in a very inefficient and wasteful fashion … instead [with direct cash transfers] they are given the choice and freedom in how to spend it.”

Pictured: Villagers in Kilif, Kenya, at a public meeting about the GiveDirectly programme. Image: GiveDirectly

Is the system perfect? No, clearly not. Stewart concedes that opportunities for fraud and coercion exist. To minimise these risks, GiveDirectly employs field officers to meet face-to-face with recipients, as well as a team of telephone handlers and internal auditors to follow up on reports of irregularity.

By his reckoning, however, the biggest impediment to direct giving really taking off is donor reticence. At present, only 2 per cent of official aid is given direct in cash. Stewart thinks it should be closer to 60 or 70 per cent...

‘My children will not have to beg anymore’

Happiness Kadzmila from Malawi enrolled on GiveDirectly’s Basic Income project last summer. She will now receive $50 (£41) a month for a year ($600/£496 in total).

What are the biggest hardships you’ve faced in life?

I am a divorced mother of four children. I got divorced in 2020 while I was eight months pregnant with my last-born child. Since then, I have been depending on working on other people’s farms. I get paid $0.49 (£0.43), or a plate of maize flour per day. As a result, it has been a challenge to feed my children, buy clothes for them, and to pay their school fees My firstborn child is in year 4, the school charges $0.69 (£0.61) per day for her. My second is in year 3, I pay $0.49 (£0.43) for him. There were days when I would have no food in my home, and my children would go to my neighbours’ homes to beg for food. This made me feel sorry for my children as a mother.

What does receiving this money mean for you?

I was so happy the day I received cash amounting to $51.75 (£43.56) from GiveDirectly. I used the money to buy maize at $9.88 (£8.32). My children will not have to go to our neighbours to beg for food anymore. I also bought a sheep at $34.58 (£29.10). I will be selling sheep in future when they multiply. I also bought lotion and soap at $1.88 (£1.58).

How will you spend your future payments?

I plan to renovate my house. I have always admired those who sleep in houses made of a roof with iron sheets because they do not have to think of fetching grass every year for a new roof. I will also start a business selling doughnuts to sustain my income after I receive my last transfer. I did not know that an organisation like GiveDirectly would come to help me this way All I can say to those who are giving us this money is ‘thank you’."

-via Positive News, 3/3/23

More and More People to Help

In addition to their universal basic income programs, GiveDirectly also has dedicated programs where you can donate to emergency disaster relief, people living under the protracted civil war and human rights disaster in Yemen, refugees, and survivors of the Syria-Turkey earthquake.

They have also commissioned a number of large-scale, third-party studies on the effectiveness of their numerous universal basic income models. Find these and other projects here.

#charity #donations #foreign aid #extreme poverty #poverty #economic inequality #africa #yemen #syria #turkey #malawi #kenya #rwanda #refugees #refugee crisis #givedirectly #universal basic income #good news #hope

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 2 months

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The Israel & Palestine Double Standard | Douglas Murray

I'm so fed up of the double standards on all of this. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Muslims have been killed in the last 12 years by Bashar al-Assad and other Muslims in the civil war in Syria.

There's no one on the streets of Sydney or Melbourne. There's no one on the Streets of London. We have seen hundreds of thousands of people killed in the last decade in Yemen, Muslims being killed. There's no one on the streets of Melbourne. Nobody is standing outside the Sydney Opera House calling gas the Hutus or gas the Shia, gas the...

Nobody's marching for the dead Muslims in Yemen. Their co-religionists -- we're always told about care so much about their co-religionists -- don't give a damn about their co-religionists. They really don't.

Muslims do not love other Muslims. They have no love for them. They have no love for the Palestinian peoples. None. If they had any, the Jordanians would have taken in the West Bank Palestinians, Egyptians would have taken in the territory they used to run, the Gaza, and own the Gaza. And they would have taken in the Palestinians from the Gaza. Why have the Egyptians made sure that not one Palestinian is allowed to leave Gaza? Why do they make sure that their border wall is tough as anything?

What do they mind? One thing. Jews living. Jews living and Jews winning. It hits them deep in their soul, in their psyche. It's an ancient, ancient hatred. Perhaps the most ancient among the monotheisms. And the deepest and the ugliest, the nastiest. And the one that that has been least addressed.

And we've imported it. As we sit here, roughly the same population of the Gaza is being forcibly moved by the government of Pakistan. Almost 2 million Muslims are being moved by the Pakistani authorities into Afghanistan. Okay. We have a very large Pakistani community here in the UK. If their country of origin can do that, why can't we?

If it comes to that. If it has to come to that. And why does nobody notice this, why is nobody saying this is an appalling war crime by the Pakistani government? Well, only because there are so many Pakistani politicians and others in the UK and other countries who have a deep connection to their country of origin and would never want to see it looked at in a bad way. They will not criticize that. They haven't said a word about that.

So no, I think that if you are zoning in, zooming in on Israel, lambasting Israel and are basically not bothered with everything else in the world, you're not motivated by anything other than being anti-Jewish, antisemitic of course. And it just has to be said.

I mean, I've said this so many times that I tire myself with it but, it's necessary to say. Antisemitism is a shape shifter. It's a shape-shifting virus. It can come from anywhere. At times in the past, it was the case that people didn't like Jews because they were seen to be a different religion and strange and different, and so they were hated for their religion. Then after the wars of religion, you couldn't hate anyone for their religion, so people started to hate the Jews for their race. And after the Holocaust, you couldn't hate people because of their race anymore, so people hated the Jews because of their nation. On and on...

#Douglas Murray #islam #gaza #gaza strip #palestine #palestinians #israel #egypt #jordan #pakistan #hypocrisy #double standard #antisemitism #religion is a mental illness

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dustedtoblue · 1 year

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In A Single HeartBeat (Jay x female reader)

Content warnings:adult themes,cussing,ptsd,mentions of death,grief

Jay had opened the drawer to his desk,looking at his mothers ring he was planning on giving to his girlfriend,the women he knew was the love of his life,the women he was ready to spend the rest of his life with,having been through everything together.He couldn’t help but smile thinking about the way she was there throughout his hole childhood,when he found out about Ben Carson,through the rangers with him,having only separated job wise when she told him she wanted nothing more then to be a firefighter.

She is the strongest most warm hearted person he knew,he couldn’t help but smile as he shut the desk drawer of the dark oak desk,looking up when hank came out from his office talking about multiple calls that seemed more like arson,a arson case they worked in the past of a psychopath who was hunting and stalking Gabby Dawson,Antonio’s little sister.

When you weren’t answering your texts for two days he couldn’t help but begin to worry,you always answered it no matter the circumstances ready to be there for anyone,it wasn’t like you.Having went down while it wasn’t so busy to firehouse 81 to see you,instead he was brought with the one thing he never wanted to hear,or have to go through,someone who had been part of his life for as long as he could remember..the words stinging and stabbing him as he felt like his lungs began to burn as he heard Hermann standing up to defend your honor against the board who wanted to strip every part of your name from the fire house like you never existed and the owners of the building that was on fire when you were took from him.

“I hope you understand that in the space of a single heart beat,my friend Y/n saved the lives,of me and six other firefighters in your factory fire,but that heartbeat was her last.She was as good of a person,as you could ever hope to know.I know your very careful to make sure that your furniture meets the minimum safety standards but what?” Herman was stating as Jay realized he wasn’t breathing taking a deep breath having a feeling that you were right there beside him like always.

“What kinda goal is that? Bare minimum?” Herman couldn’t help but keep going feeling like he lost a daughter he always wanted.

“Look we are not asking for a miracle here we know you gotta make a Buck,we just want you to take care of your customers.give them more then just a nice piece of furniture,give those people a fighting chance because every single second counts”

It was in those words Jay realize you made a impact on not only his life but others,he knew how badly you wanted to become a firefighter having talked about it so many times when you guys were in middle of a firefight in Afghanistan,the story where you were just a kid and your father almost died in his factory company trying to saving the business his father created before he tried to save himself,the company that was suppose to be a legacy ran from the bloodline that was behind changed and dismantled by a man who didn’t care and wanted it for its land,a place that was more then what it showed,a place that held memory’s.

He planned his whole future with you,an what kinda future would he see without the love of his life,the women he planned to settle down with in a house upon a hill.

#jay halstead #jay halstead x reader #chicago pd

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wafflesetc · 2 years

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this love

Chapter 2

Intelligence thought they were dealing with a small drug operation within the limits of their own city, until their wires got crossed with the Feds. And with the Feds an old friend has come back into town, trying to repair old wounds.

A/N: This is my first Chicago PD multi-chapter fic, so hang with me as I test the waters with this fandom. I’ve watched the show for all ten seasons, just never really dabbled into writing fic for it. Except I just could not get this idea out of my head, so I figured why not go ahead and try and write it. It’s planned at six chapters with an epilogue, if all goes to plan.

Chapter 1 (AO3)

The house is quiet when they walk in the door. He didn’t say much on the way home, and she isn’t one to pry. She’s never been one to pry- usually. There is a good balance between the two of them, with all they have been through, there is an underlying understanding- their “thing” that just works, almost effortlessly.

Hailey closes the door, locks the deadbolt, and unholsters her weapon, placing it on the hallway credenza. She watches him as he takes a few steps into their home, staring aimlessly into the Chicago skyline outside their living room window. “So do you want to tell me what Voight said to you?”

The drop in his shoulders is visible and he lets out an audible sigh to match. Not turning towards her, he unholsters his own weapon, places it on the piece of furniture next to hers, and finally turns to face her. She analyzes his face, and in all her years in being able to decipher what is going on in the mind of Jay Halstead- Hailey Upton finds herself at a loss. They’ve stared down bullets, entered fire fights together, chased down serial killers, and bomb threats, all almost a daily occurrence, yet right here and now-in this moment, in their own home, she can’t read him.

It makes her feel uneasy, so there’s a small shift in her stance, and she can feel her guard starting to rise. The type of guard she had when she first started at Intelligence all those years ago- the one Jay had slowly climbed up, broken down, and crumbled the foundation. The one that he somehow found his way into, without her even knowing or understanding- it’s how they’re here today- together- married. They both have pasts, things they aren’t proud of- ghosts that haunt them. Is Erin a ghost of his? Maybe- she can’t know for certain, at least right now, but she does know right now- she’s his future, and she is most definitely not his ghost. Taking a breath, she closes the space between them and wraps her arms around his waist, resting her head on his back. “What is it, Jay?”

His hands find their way to hers and squeeze them gently. “I…” He’s never really been good at words; he knows this and so does Hailey. It’s one of the reasons he struggled so bad after coming home from Afghanistan. Therapy helped to an extent, but the things that he had done, the things that he had seen, there was nothing in the world that would ever be able to right those wrongs or bring back the lives that were lost. But still, Hailey had pushed him. She had come into his life after a rocky partnership, an unhealthy relationship, and become a stronghold for him. She was a constant in his life- a day to day sun which held his fragile universe together. And when it started to crumble around him, she was the one who helped glue it back all together- she was the one who pushed him to continue to heal. She was his partner- had shown what a partner was like, in all aspects of the word.

With her head still resting on his back, she can feel his muscles tighten, the tension radiating from him. She wishes she could stop it, understand whatever he was feeling. “Hey, it’s okay.” She presses a kiss to the middle of his back. “We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to Hailey, it’s just I don’t know what to talk about. My mind is racing a mile a minute over here and I can’t catch my breath.” His voice is quiet, but she can hear the processing he’s trying to do.

She walks around to face him, taking his hand, and guiding him to the couch. “Sit.”

“When I was a Ranger, we were on a tour, in country.” He sits, and takes her hands into his, rubbing circles in her palms. “When we had this one assignment, there was a night we were out, decked out in the gear- I’m talking like all tactical gear, it was a special assignment OP, no one was allowed to know where we were, it was that kind of one. I was alone on mountain side, a few hundred yards off waiting for the sign to take out the intended target. I watched my unit go through the door, but they were ambushed. From all sides, somehow the enemy knew we were coming and were prepared for a fight. We lost three men that night. And there wasn’t anything I could do, I was just alone on this hill, watching it all happen.”

She takes a moment to let him finish, makes sure there isn’t more he wants to say. He scarcely talks about his time in the army and after a bombshell like tonight’s visitor, he has obviously been triggered so she wants to tread cautiously.

“Jay, you know there was nothing you could have…” He smiles and lets out a small laugh. She can’t help but also let out a laugh because what in the hell, why is he laughing at her?

“I love you, Hailey, but I know there is nothing I could have done in that instant. I was just trying to think of a time I felt like this- and that night- seeing Erin- that is what it felt like. Watching nearly five years of memories flood through my scope and not being able to stop it.”

It’s her turn to think for a moment and raises a brow at him and swings her feet up so they across his lap. “For a minute there I thought this conversation was going somewhere completely different, you almost sounded triggered.”

He shakes his head and relaxes into the back of the couch, the tension is slowly starting to leave his body. They are home, in their element, just the two of them. It’s their little bubble- their safe space. “Oh, no… I’m sorry, it’s not the best analogy, but being with Erin was… Something else. It was always one thing or another. Communication never a thing, I never really knew what I was going to walk into. I always felt like I was two steps behind her, having to extinguish whatever fire she had started.”

It's her turn to laugh because she doesn’t really know Erin Lindsay all that well. Sure, she was a good cop- she had a special relationship to Voight, and yes- Jay, but from all that she’s gathered about the woman- Erin and her are two very different people. If it weren’t for Erin, Hailey isn’t sure Jay would be who he was. It’s the same with her and Garrett. Because of both of their previous relationships, she thinks, they’re able to be where they are in the here and now.

“Well, I’m not much better, you’re still cleaning up some of my own messes, you know.” She’s teasing, means it in a loving way, but his eyes dart to her and he shakes his head.

“Don’t compare yourself to her, Hailey. You’re nothing like her.” He gives her thigh a tight squeeze and interlaces his left hand with hers, twisting her wedding band between his fingers. “Trust me.”

“Okay, I just meant you and me- we’ve been through a lot too.”

“That’s the difference, Hailey, it’s you and me- we’ve been through a lot. I went through a lot when I was with Erin, and Erin went through a lot when she was with me. We never went through things when we were together. You got me like she never did, okay?” His words are steady and confident. He means this- almost like the vows he said that day in the courtroom. Somehow this is an oath between them, a shared moment that whatever this case is going to bring, Hailey’s his foundation.

“Got it.”

“Promise me, no matter what happens- what is said…”

“Jay,” She takes his hand and kisses the backside of his palm. His eyes dart to the floor, but she reaches across her body, using her finger to tilt his chin to her gaze. “For better or worse, and all that. Partners here and out there. I’ve got your six, always, okay.” She means it- she meant it the day she proposed the first time, she meant it the day she said yes when he got down on one knee in her old apartment, and she meant it the day she said her vows.

He nods in response. She cups his face in her hands, and pulls him towards her, kissing him briefly. He tastes like salt and gunpowder with a hint of her mint chapstick.

“How do you think tomorrow’s going to go?” Hailey asks as she pulls away from his lips, resting her forehead against his cheek.

“They’ll be excited to see her, it’s been a long time. I think the two of us were the biggest hurdles, so as long as go in and act like it is normal, the rest of the team won’t bat an eye.”

“That seems like tomorrow’s problem though, let’s go to bed.”

She stands, kicking off her shoes and tossing them into the abyss of the living room, and sticking her hand out. He willingly obliges, stands, and follows her into their bedroom. She’s not sure what tomorrow is going to look like, but for right now she’s sure of one thing, tomorrow can wait.

#Upstead #Upstead fic #Upstead Fanfiction #Jay x Hailey #Jay Halstead #Hailey Upton #Chicago PD #One Chicago #Chicago PD fanfiction #Erin Lindsay #myfic!

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xtruss · 1 year

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Illustration by Nicholas Konrad/The New Yorker

What Lies Do to a Life

In “A History of Lying,” the novelist Juan Jacinto Muñoz-Rengel argues that lies are inescapable. But being in the periphery of a real man who couldn’t stop lying casts light on the ways that’s not quite true.

— By Lucie Elven | January 5, 2023

once knew a man whose remarkable lying caused me to overlook him. When we met, I was nineteen and world-weary, and he fit a mold I thought I knew: rich (he’d attended Harrow, a particularly expensive private school), clever (then Oxford, early), seemingly conservative (a link to the army). A few years later, I crossed paths with him again when I was thinking of moving into a cheap room in a house in London occupied by a woman he was dating. The room was in the eaves, and I took it, even though it didn’t have a door—just a permanently open trap with a ladder leading in.

At that time, the man worked for the civil service. He was writing a satire about it, he said. He would come to our house with a big army bag slung over his shoulders, and through the square hole in my floor I’d hear him talking about the Grenadier Guards, Afghanistan, P.T.S.D. I paid him little attention, but I knew that class was a constant source of stress in his relationship with my housemate, whom I’ll call Sophie. He had a string of names and well-known relations; he introduced himself as the son of a lord. She was middle class. Sometimes, the liar would go to extravagant parties and not invite her, and she would feel insufficiently impressive.

When Sophie, who had become dissatisfied with her job, applied for a position with the intelligence services, he encouraged her. But then she told him that she’d listed his name on a questionnaire—the sort designed to reveal anything in her private life that might compromise her, Queen, or country—and he said that there was no need to mention him. Days later, he broke things off. Sophie was shocked and upset, and grew more so when, shortly after that, she received a text message from the interviewer to whom she had spoken, meant for someone else. “It’s all a tissue of lies,” it read. “No Grenadier Guards. No Harrow. Nothing.”

The phrase “tissue of lies,” like “web” and “fabrication,” evokes the warp and weft of a narrative woven largely from threads of untruth—its sometimes animal vitality. Since then, I’ve thought often about how to retell the story of the liar. Relating it to friends as an anecdote was to submit to its surreal quality. It didn’t feel entirely right when I told it that way, given the license for exaggeration that the anecdote form allows. Doing so seemed to enact a kind of indulgent dynamic that I associate with ghost tours and urban myths of baby alligators living in sewers, or viral videos of shrouded figures walking across doorways. When I began to write fiction, I considered using the story but felt that it was unsuitable—both implausible and, somehow, too obvious. The parts that were most shocking in real life—the secret services, the texted tricolon, the degree to which he inflated his imaginary aristocratic heritage—would read as clichéd plot devices. But, over the years, the story kept hopping into my mind. When I encountered lies in my own life or in the news—reading about British undercover officers infiltrating the climate movement, for example, using the identities of dead babies and fathering children with activists—I would find the story of Sophie’s liar sitting there underneath, a toad under a pile of leaves.

Perhaps the reason that the liar has stayed with me has something to do with his simultaneous brazenness and banality—though the revelation was shocking, he himself had registered so little with me, and the fact of being lied to seemed, in the end, almost pedestrian. Lies are ubiquitous; in a certain light, to be shocked by them seems precious.

Such is the posture assumed by the Spanish novelist Juan Jacinto Muñoz-Rengel in “A History of Lying,” a book-length essay in which he declares that “the history of humankind is nothing other than the history of making it up.” Best known for a parodic crime novel titled “The Hypochondriac Hitman” and other postmodern experiments with literary convention, Muñoz-Rengel sets out from a brief summary of Cartesian doubt (which, he says, none of the philosophical solutions that have been proposed properly resolve) to argue that lying is not, as conventional morality might have us assume, a practice to be avoided whenever possible but, rather, an innate and inevitable element of language and life.

Muñoz-Rengel marshals a wide range of examples to this end, beginning with that of the Cretan seer Epimenides, who rose from a deep sleep in the sixth century B.C. to declare that “all Cretans are liars,” and stretching to the present day, when Spotify’s sharing function allows people to “stop listening to the things they want to and begin prioritising instead the image of themselves.” Skimming the surface of philosophy (Nietzsche, Freud, Ferdinand de Saussure, and post-structuralists are all praised for their skepticism), Muñoz-Rengel also attempts to give his polemic a scientific varnish by referring to the natural world. The book is laced with nuggets of evolutionary biology and examples of animals with the ability to disguise themselves. Consider the cuttlefish, he writes, for whom deception is a biological strategy. It can not only change color but is also “capable of modifying its texture, the entirety of its external structure, and even of generating patterns similar to the shifting seabed, which it can then set in motion along its body in the opposite direction to that in which it is actually moving.”

The example does much to illustrate the breadth of Muñoz-Rengel’s definition of a lie, as well as his subsequent tendency to blur concrete details, as well as historical fact, in service of his theory. So broad is his lens that people captured and enslaved by the Phoenicians are described as “overly trusting foreigners—the more credulous kind, who probably hung around the bait, rather than withdrawing somewhere safe.” Even his less extreme conflations are absurd. “Having dealings with other people means staying in a constant state of dissimulation,” he writes—in other words, you lie whenever you are polite. Gone are the important distinctions—based on their scale and severity, their effects and their motivations—between individual lies. And who would hold a single cuttlefish to be an example of deceitful behavior, when its aptitude for concealment is helpful to its survival?

Some of the most exaggerated portions of Muñoz-Rengel’s book are those in which he claims that, because language uses signs to represent real things, it, too, is a sort of deception, and that all understandings reached through metaphors are therefore “based on speculation, projection, lies.” This, again, seems to elide crucial nuances. While metaphors can sometimes be misleading, they can also illuminate the speaker’s personal response to a subject. In neither case do they impart knowledge that is empirically falsifiable, as lies do. When I compared the story of the liar to a toad buried in leaf litter, I was not claiming that the story had literally been hibernating for the winter—grayish, warty—then sprung out when it was unexpectedly disturbed, an unwelcome, grotesque, vaguely comic creature. I was trying to convey something of the particular way the story had lodged itself in my mind and, even when I forgot about it, seemed to be leading a life of its own.

Sometimes, among all Muñoz-Rengel’s vague tracings of unreality, I detect something sincere. His fierce allegiance to the idea that the origins of lying reside in any detachment from reality brings to mind the idea of not lying as an active pursuit, which takes the form of a constant sifting through the details of life, and a simultaneous attempt to articulate them as clearly as possible—something akin to producing art. But when he writes off representation with such little regard for the distinction between it and intentional lying, it comes—gradually, frustratingly—to seem as if he is not so much making a case about the inevitability of epistemological carelessness as providing a demonstration of it.

I can’t pretend his lying hasn’t made the liar I knew more interesting, but more interesting still was how, around him, the world behaved in unlikely ways. Like Boris Johnson—who was described by one former Tory M.P., himself often denying having been in the intelligence services, as “the best liar we’ve ever had”—the liar told stories that were superficially entertaining but predictable, and used them to garner power.

The propulsive force of people who know how to gain trust by knitting improbable tales is Muñoz-Rengel’s most generative subject. He recounts the story of the Catalan man Joan Pujol, who, in 1941, approached the British authorities to offer his services as a spy. By his own account, Pujol—whose family suffered during the Spanish Civil War, and who consequently hated Fascism and Communism both—came to spying in a roundabout way:

I was managing a poultry farm. . . . The poultry farm was not a success. . . . I decided to “exit” from the stage, as they say in the theatre. . . . My life in Madrid as a hotel manager began peacefully enough. . . . On 3 September 1939 England had declared war on Germany. . . . My humanist convictions would not allow me to turn a blind eye to the enormous suffering that was being unleashed by this psychopath Hitler.

When the English rejected him, Pujol instead applied to work for the Germans, who, unsuspecting, took him on and assigned him a mission to Britain. Pujol, who had no intention of spying for them (he later claimed that he planned to work as a double agent), told his handlers that he was moving to Lake Windermere. Instead, he and his wife, whom he married in Madrid, had moved to Lisbon, where he bought a British guidebook, railway timetable, and map, and began to send made-up reports to his employer, accompanied by expense invoices. In April, 1942, the Allies signed Pujol on as a double agent, code-named Garbo. Over the next two years, he wove “a network of completely fictitious sub-agents”—twenty-seven in total—who all needed paying. His inventions included a Brit of Swiss-German descent named William Gerbers, a Welsh nationalist named Dagobert, a Gibraltarian waiter living in Chislehurst, and a Venezuelan student in Glasgow (and his brother, whom Pujol named Moonbeam). Their invented efforts led to Pujol charging the Nazis a fortune. Sometimes, when the Germans wondered why Pujol’s sources failed to file reports until after the fact, he made up stories of illness or told them that the source had died, leaving behind a fictional widow who needed the money.

In 1943, Pujol was enlisted to convince the Germans that the Allies were planning an invasion of the Pas-de-Calais, rather than Normandy. He kept up the lie until the last moment, when it was too late for the Germans to stop the D Day landings. By then, he and his wife and first child had been relocated to London, where the couple had a second baby. Declassified M.I.5 files show that, at the time, his wife was so homesick (she especially missed her mother) that she threatened to expose Pujol to the Germans. To keep her silent, Pujol and his British handler tricked her into believing that her behavior had led to his imprisonment, and arranged for her to visit a detention center, where Pujol pretended to be incarcerated. The Allies helped him maintain his cover throughout the war (and even after); he was both awarded an Iron Cross by Hitler and made an M.B.E. by King George VI—after which he faked a bout of malaria, and sloped off to Venezuela, where he opened a bookshop.

Pujol’s story only became known publicly in 1984, when an author named Nigel West went on a mission to uncover Garbo’s true identity: the result was a book, “Operation Garbo,” co-written with Pujol and published in 1985. (Although Pujol used his real name, “Nigel West” is a pseudonym for Rupert Allason, a former Conservative M.P. who has written about espionage, and has published several crime novels.) In “Operation Garbo,” Pujol is a lavish narrator, alert to the possibilities of storytelling even in his everyday life. When meeting his Nazi handler, he wonders whether he was taken on because this handler was “intoxicated by my verbosity.”

Muñoz-Rengel approves of Pujol for his “capacity for artifice,” which he used to fight against injustice “without firing a single bullet.” (None of Pujol’s wife’s role or treatment appears in the book, and one has the sense that Muñoz-Rengel is captivated by Pujol’s madcap behavior, rather than curious about its roots or its implications for the people who knew him.) Muñoz-Rengel attributes West’s success at tracking down Pujol in part to his vocation, writing that “novelists understand better than anyone the fictional nature of reality.” If there is an optimistic proposition in Muñoz-Rengel’s book, it is the idea that such an awareness grants you a special kind of agency. Once one knows that “everything” is a lie, one is no longer “some unsuspecting sap” but instead becomes “an actor who has chosen to act.” What this agency grants the person who wields it is not clear, but Muñoz-Rengel emphasizes that it is through art—“a sublime kind of deceit”—that one can obtain it. Cubists, for example, ditched the “fleeting lie” of classical beauty, and Dadaists broke with “the dominion of logic.” Conceptual art draws the viewer “into a game of reinterpretation and construction about what is real.”

It’s a shame that Muñoz-Rengel doesn’t connect these musings to his own work as a fiction writer. His account suggests a unidirectional process of unsettling that emanates from the artist into the world. But invention can also lead artists to unearth experience that was unadmitted to themselves. I write fiction partly to work out what I skate over and keep secret from myself; it’s difficult to start without something that feels real, a solid platform on which to stand. After that, it’s stimulating to stitch artifice and reality into a performance—a lie that lets someone in. Sketching out the relationship of truth and falsehood in Muñoz-Rengel’s own process might have offered the reader a foothold in the shifting sands of his argument, and an example of the kind of liberation and agency that he claims to value.

After Sophie learned that her boyfriend wasn’t the person he claimed to be—he had cribbed aristocratic middle names from fiction and an adopted forebear, had not obtained his undergraduate education early at Oxford, and so on—I did not see him for years. I drifted away from our shared friends, whom I hadn’t told what I knew. In our post-university social universe, personal and professional connections were difficult to disentangle, and there seemed to be a violence in puncturing their relationships and confronting them—him, too—with the truth. I had the opportunity to expose him to them, and I decided not to take it.

Still, I heard things about him from this or that person from time to time. One said that his age was different depending on whom you asked. Another maintained that he had tried to warn Sophie by recommending Graham Greene’s novel “England Made Me,” in which the protagonist pretends to have gone to Harrow and goes on lying from there. One night, I saw him at a bachelorette party. At the end of the evening, he was met by a willowy blond woman, a celebrity whose face I knew from science-fiction and period dramas—another notch in the story that seemed to me, in the days and years after, so implausible it was like a narrative contagion.

I sometimes wonder whether, in the end, not telling friends about the liar wasn’t so much an act of gentleness but an avenue to power. If the liar felt that he had a nice view over the people in his life—knowing more, seeing more—then I was there, watching them all, from a little higher up. It can be intoxicating to watch someone turn themselves into a character when you can see the color and the construction of the work. Nowadays, the liar works in tech, occasionally writes articles, and appears in front of governmental bodies.

Whenever I see her, Sophie and I add something that we’ve heard to the story of the liar, reframing the tale with new information, joking darkly about the latest development—it doesn’t look like the story is about to end. It’s not that Sophie hasn’t moved on. It’s not that the liar was particularly magnetic or charismatic. It’s that his lies made her marginal, and reduced their relationship to petrol fumes, and we want to make it solid again. Perhaps in using words carefully, placing the events in relation to other facts, and admitting how much we don’t know, Sophie and I run the risk of being overly literal, but I don’t think so. When the truth is strange, telling the story to each other—a version of it that incorporates both the plotline he wanted us to inhabit and our own experiences—is a way of showing how much life is driven by fiction, and then of weaving that fiction back into the real world, where it belongs. ♦

— The New Yorker

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qqueenofhades · 3 years

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Do you really hate this county? Or were you just ranting?

Sigh. I debated whether or not to answer this, since I usually keep the real-life/politics/depressing current events to a relative minimum on this blog, except when I really can't avoid ranting about it. But I have some things to get off my chest, it seems, and you did ask. So.

The thing is, any American with a single modicum of genuine historical consciousness knows that despite all the triumphalist mythology about Pulling Up By Our Bootstraps and the American Dream and etc, this country was founded and built on the massive and systematic exploitation and extermination of Black and Indigenous people. And now, when we are barely (400 years later!!!) getting to a point of acknowledging that in a widespread way, oh my god the screaming. I'm so sick of the American right wing I could spit for so many reasons, not least of which is the increasingly reductive and reactive attempts to put the genie back in the bottle and set up hysterical boogeymen about how Teaching Your Children Critical Race Theory is the end of all things. They have forfeited all pretense of being a real governing party; remember how their only platform at the 2020 RNC was "support whatever Trump says?" They have devolved to the point where the cruelty IS the point, to everyone who doesn't fit the nakedly white supremacist mold. They don't have anything to do aside from attempt to usher in actual, literal, dictionary-definition-of-fascism and sponsor armed revolts against the peaceful transfer of power.

That is fucking exhausting to be aware of all the time, especially with the knowledge that if we miss a single election cycle -- which is exceptionally easy to do with the way the Democratic electorate needs to be wooed and courted and herded like cats every single time, rather than just getting their asses to the polls and voting to keep Nazis out of office -- they will be right back in power again. If Manchin and Sinema don't get over their poseur pearl-clutching and either nuke the filibuster or carve out an exception for voting rights, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act is never going to get passed, no matter how many boilerplate appeals the Democratic leadership makes on Twitter. In which case, the 2022 midterms are going to give us Kevin McCarthy, Speaker of the House (I threw up in my mouth a little typing that) and right back to the Mitch McConnell Obstruction Power Hour in the Senate. The Online Left (TM) will then blame the Democrats for not doing more to stop them. These are, of course, the same people who refused to vote for Hillary Clinton out of precious moral purity reasons in 2016, handed the election to Trump, and now like to complain when the Trump-stacked Supreme Court reliably churns out terrible decisions. Gee, it's almost like elections have consequences!!

Aside from my exasperation with the death-cult right-wing fascists and the Online Left (TM), I am sick and tired of how forty years of "trickle-down" Reaganomics has created a world where billionaires can just fly to space for the fun of it, while the rest of America (and the world) is even more sick, poor, overheated, economically deprived, and unable to survive the biggest public health crisis in a century, even if half the elected leadership wasn't actively trying to sabotage it. Did you know that half of American workers can't even afford a one-bedroom apartment? Plus the obvious scandal that is race relations, health care, paid leave, the education system (or lack thereof), etc etc. I'm so tired of this America Is The Greatest Country in the World mindless jingoistic catchphrasing. We are an empire in the late stages of collapse and it's not going to be pretty for anyone. We have been poisoned on sociopathic-libertarian-selfishness-disguised-as-Freedom ideology for so long that that's all there is left. We have become a country of idiots who believe everything their idiot friends post on social media, but in a very real sense, it's not directly those individuals' fault. How could they, when they have been very deliberately cultivated into that mindset and stripped of critical thinking skills, to serve a noxious combination of money, power, and ideology?

I am tired of the fact that I have become so drained of empathy that when I see news about more people who refused to get the vaccine predictably dying of COVID, my reaction is "eh, whatever, they kind of deserved it." I KNOW that is not a good mindset to have, and I am doing my best to maintain my personal attempts to be kind to those I meet and to do my small part to make the world better. I know these are human beings who believed what they were told by people that they (for whatever reason) thought knew better than them, and that they are part of someone's family, they had loved ones, etc. But I just can't summon up the will to give a single damn about them (I'm keeping a bingo card of right-wing anti-vax radio hosts who die of COVID and every time it's like, "Alexa, play Another One Bites The Dust.") The course that the pandemic took in 21st-century America was not preordained or inevitable. It was (and continues to be) drastically mismanaged for cynical political reasons, and the legacy of the Former Guy continues to poison any attempts to bring it under control or convince people to get a goddamn vaccine. We now have over 100,000 patients hospitalized with COVID across the country -- more than last summer, when the vaccines weren't available.

I have been open about my fury about the devaluation of the humanities and other critical thinking skills, about the fact that as an academic in this field, my chances of getting a full-time job for which I have trained extensively and acquired a specialist PhD are... very low. I am tired of the fact that Americans have been encouraged to believe whatever bullshit they fucking please, regardless of whether it is remotely true, and told that any attempt to correct them is "anti-freedom." I am tired of how little the education system functions in a useful way at all -- not necessarily due to the fault of teachers, who have to work with what they're given, and who are basically heroes struggling stubbornly along in a profession that actively hates them, but because of relentless under-funding, political interference, and furious attempts, as discussed above, to keep white America safely in the dark about its actual history. I am tired of the fact that grade school education basically relies on passing the right standardized tests, the end. I am tired of the implication that the truth is too scary or "un-American" to handle. I am tired. Tired.

I know as well that "America" is not synonymous in all cases with "capitalist imperialist white-supremacist corporate death cult." This is still the most diverse country in the world. "America" is not just rich white middle-aged Republicans. "America" involves a ton of people of color, women, LGBTQ people, Muslims, Jews, Christians of good will (I have a whole other rant on how American Christianity as a whole has yielded all pretense of being any sort of a principled moral opposition), white allies, etc etc. all trying to make a better world. The blue, highly vaccinated, Biden-winning states and counties are leading the economic recovery and enacting all kinds of progressive-wishlist dream policies. We DID get rid of the Orange One via the electoral process and avert fascism at the ballot box, which is almost unheard-of, historically speaking. But because, as also discussed above, certain elements of the Democratic electorate need to fall in love with a candidate every single time or threaten to withhold their vote to punish the rest of the country for not being Progressive Enough, these gains are constantly fragile and at risk of being undone in the next electoral cycle. Yes, the existing system is a crock of shit. But it's what we've got right now, and the other alternative is open fascism, which we all got a terrifying taste of over the last four years. I don't know about you, but I really don't want to go back.

So... I don't know. I don't know if that stacks up to hate. I do hate almost everything about what this country currently is, structurally speaking, but I recognize that is not identical with the many people who still live here and are trying to do their best, including my friends, family, and myself. I am exhausted by the fact that as an older millennial, I am expected to survive multiple cataclysmic economic crashes, a planet that is literally boiling alive, a barely functional political system run on black cash, lies, and xenophobia, a total lack of critical thinking skills, renewed assaults on women/queer people/POC/etc, and somehow feel like I'm confident or prepared for the future. Not all these problems are only America's fault alone. The West as a whole bears huge responsibility for the current clusterfuck that the world is in, for many reasons, and so do some non-Western countries. But there is no denying that many of these problems have ultimate American roots. See how the ongoing fad for right-wing authoritarian strongmen around the world has them modeling themselves openly on Trump (like Brazil's lunatic president, Jair Bolsonaro, who talks all the time about how Trump is his political role model). See what's going on in Afghanistan right now. Etc. etc.

Anyway. I am very, very tired. There you have it.

#anonymous #ask #politics for ts #covid for ts #i had a lot to say evidently #rant

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 years

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Early on Sunday morning I was heading to university for a class when a group of women came running out from the women’s dormitory. I asked what had happened and one of them told me the police were evacuating them because the Taliban had arrived in Kabul, and they will beat women who do not have a burqa.

We all wanted to get home, but we couldn’t use public transport. The drivers would not let us in their cars because they did not want to take responsibility for transporting a woman. It was even worse for the women from the dormitory, who are from outside Kabul and were scared and confused about where they should go.

Meanwhile, the men standing around were making fun of girls and women, laughing at our terror. “Go and put on your chadari [burqa],” one called out. “It is your last days of being out on the streets,” said another. “I will marry four of you in one day,” said a third.

With the government offices closed down, my sister ran for miles across town to get home. “I shut down the PC that helped to serve my people and community for four years with a lot of pain,” she said. “I left my desk with tearful eyes and said goodbye to my colleagues. I knew it was the last day of my job.”

I have nearly completed two simultaneous degrees from two of the best universities in Afghanistan. I should have graduated in November from the American University of Afghanistan and Kabul University, but this morning everything flashed before my eyes.

I worked for so many days and nights to become the person I am today, and this morning when I reached home, the very first thing my sisters and I did was hide our IDs, diplomas and certificates. It was devastating. Why should we hide the things that we should be proud of? In Afghanistan now we are not allowed to be known as the people we are.

As a woman, I feel like I am the victim of this political war that men started. I felt like I can no longer laugh out loud, I can no longer listen to my favourite songs, I can no longer meet my friends in our favourite cafe, I can no longer wear my favourite yellow dress or pink lipstick. And I can no longer go to my job or finish the university degree that I worked for years to achieve.

I loved doing my nails. Today, as I was on my way home, I glanced at the beauty salon where I used to go for manicures. The shop front, which had been decorated with beautiful pictures of girls, had been whitewashed overnight.

All I could see around me were the fearful and scared faces of women and ugly faces of men who hate women, who do not like women to get educated, work and have freedom. Most devastating to me were the ones who looked happy and made fun of women. Instead of standing by our side, they stand with the Taliban and give them even more power.

Afghan women sacrificed a lot for the little freedom they had. As an orphan I weaved carpets just to get an education. I faced a lot of financial challenges, but I had a lot of plans for my future. I did not expect everything to end up like this.

Now it looks like I have to burn everything I achieved in 24 years of my life. Having any ID card or awards from the American University is risky now; even if we keep them, we are not able to use them. There are no jobs for us in Afghanistan.

When the provinces collapsed one after another, I was thinking of my beautiful girlish dreams. My sisters and I could not sleep all night, remembering the stories my mother used to tell us about the Taliban era and the way they treated women.

I did not expect that we would be deprived of all our basic rights again and travel back to 20 years ago. That after 20 years of fighting for our rights and freedom, we should be hunting for burqas and hiding our identity.

During the last months, as the Taliban took control in the provinces, hundreds of people fled their houses and came to Kabul to save their girls and wives. They are living in parks or the open air. I was part of a group of American University students that tried to help them by collecting donations of cash, food and other necessities and distributing it to them.

I could not stop my tears when I heard the stories of some families. One had lost their son in the war and didn’t have any money to pay the taxi fare to Kabul, so they gave their daughter-in-law away in exchange for transportation. How can the value of a woman be equal to the cost of a journey?

Then today, when I heard that the Taliban had reached Kabul, I felt I was going to be a slave. They can play with my life any way they want.

I also worked as a teacher at an English-language education centre. I cannot bear to think that I can no longer stand in front of the class, teaching them to sing their ABCs. Every time I remember that my beautiful little girl students should stop their education and stay at their home, my tears fall.

A Kabul resident

#afghanistan #taliban #south and central asia #world news #Kabul #women #girls and women #political

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andieperrie18 · 3 years

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a thousand love to another daughter of another universe

That's a long title but anyways this is my pull on the prompt that I made a millennia ago ahahahaha. It's short as it's just a trial of writing but I hope you guys like it. P.s. English is not my first language so forgive my grammar.

“I love you 3000…"

Morgan was the first to react.

Bruce along with his sons and the JL eyed his Y/n who stood in front of them. Their face who had heard the phrase contorted into confusion and curiosity.

Tony had already stopped from his steps along with Morgan who was fully facing Y/n. His gaze turned towards the girl clad in her signature hero suit that bore a significant resemblance to his Iron man suit that at first was just a co-incident as the girl was of another world.

Throughout the mission of planning to take the Avengers back to their world. Y/n had remained reserved and contained herself from jumping on her father who hasn't seen him for five years after she woke up in the body of Y/n Wayne. The daughter of Bruce Wayne, who had a lot of prejudices with her family of superheroes. Y/n Wayne was a normal kid, but Y/n Stark wasn't.

Like Y/n Wayne, she didn't have powers and barely had any kind of high-end combat abilities but she was smart. When she was reincarnated in Y/n Wayne's body, she had retained her IQ level and had remembered how the Iron Man Suits came to be. As living memory of her lovely life in the past that she will never dare to forget, she became the Iron Maiden. She had a rough start at the Wayne Manor as she barely had any interaction with the people within the house and the only way to distract herself from a lonely home was building, a hobby that she and Tony would do in their spare times.

In school she managed to get friends, she entered robotics and technology that gave her access to the science labs where she created all her tech. The sudden presence, she created in Gotham Central School was the time Bruce finally took notice of her and so did her siblings. From that point on she's been with them, living a good life. But she missed her past life, as much as she wanted to move on from it. She really can't and just treasured that life of hers.

"W-what did you say??" Tony asked with high hopes that what he heard was true. His footsteps slowly made their way to her with his youngest daughter following close, her eyes twinkling with light.

Y/n smiled, eyes watering, and chuckled, "I said, I love you 3000…" she said again. Her eyes shifting to each person she called along with the endearing phrase.

Y/n felt an all through familiar warmth. A warmth she distinctly remembers from the very first time she had been pulled to an embrace by Tony when he came back to Afghanistan after being taken hostage for a long time. And another warmth when she first got a chance to cradle her newborn sister.

The two captured her in an embrace.

There was confusion etched on Bruce Wayne's masked face as he watched another father hold his own young like if he was his own. Granted that he did his best to be the father Y/n but it was unknown to him that another person had taken the body of his child who had the same name but had a more attentive father.

Seeing a natural gesture of fatherly love somehow never looked so different in his life upon seeing Y/n break into an ocean of tears which is a gesture that she had never shown ever since she started gaining presence in the family.

Tony pulled away muttering a small "let me look at you sweetie" as he cradled Y/n's tear-stained face in his callused hand. Y/n giggled and hiccupped at the childish nickname but she didn't mind, even if they were in the presence of the JL and the other avengers.

"You're so big," (A/n: *sigh* *remembers endgame…*)

Y/n broke into a small fit of laughter before turning to her sister about half of her high as of now. Sharing wide smiles first before pulling each other once more in an embrace.

"I knew it was you," Morgan muffling in a whisper to her big sister. The Y/n smiled and pulled the teen closer, "I knew you did," she trailed.

"Will we see you again?" the young teen looked up Y/n who's eyes furrowed but retained her sweet smile then turning to her father who gave the same expression.

A parent's greatest pain was burying their child six feet of the ground. He could still remember the moment on the battlefield when his daughter took the blast for everyone, for her friends, for Pepper, for Morgan, and for him. Then she left a message, a message that woke him, that gave him the peace that left him in peace. In peace while living a good and half normal but okay life as an ex-avenger.

"I know you dad. And I understand that you want to save everybody and I saw you do the recording. At first, I want to accept it but I can't let you do it. I can't let you do it, Morgan needs you. Pepper needs you and Peter… needs you…

So I hope you forgive me that you had to bury a child but I let you do it. I am contented with my life because you gave me all the love you can give for years ever since you hugged me in a one-armed hug after you came back to Afghanistan…

I only ask one thing, just live. Just live happily for me." Tony wiped his teary eyes as she watched the recorded holographic message of her daughter. He watches her sigh in the record before pulling the happiest and most genuine smile that pulled all of him out of his guilt that day.

"I love you 3000 dad,"

Tony caressed her Y/n Wayne's face that bored an extreme resemblance of his own. He smiled once more, his eyes then cast themselves towards the Dark Knight who gazes back at him in return.

There was no word of exchange but Bruce knew the message the man was sending. From a message from a father to another father.

"Take care of her, treasure her… love her…"

With that, Batman nodded with a soft smile slightly growing on his lips.

Y/n led her father and sister towards the portal saying their final goodbyes. Morgan pulled her in another warm and tight embrace and Tony simply but lovingly planted a kiss on her forehead.

"I love you kid," he mumbled with a sappy smile before he and Morgan walked backward to the portal and had completely entered through it.

Y/n smiled, she somehow she to herself this was a closure she needed before she fully embraces her new reality. Her new family. Granted they weren't as close that she had in her past but a family nonetheless.

Bruce eyed Y/n's figure staring from a distance as the portal that she faced had already disappeared from existence. His eyes never left as she finally moves to turn to him, and then she gave a sad but somehow contented smile towards him.

TAGS:

@laurcad123 @woderfulkawaii @webslingingspidergirl @emilythezeldafan @teenwolflover28

#ironman's daughter #tony stark x daughter #bruce wayne x daughter!reader #batfamily x y/n #DC x MARVEL #dc x reader #i love you 3000

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freedomseeker91 · 2 years

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The Ultimate Betrayal....

Chapter 10

Title: The Great Unknown

Summary: With Beca due to leave inpatient care, the question marks hanging in the air finally begin to land as the weight of the unknown weighs heavily on Chloe’s mind. Will she finally lay bare the reality of what Beca missed in those two years?

Rating: T for Angst/Comfort

Warnings: None

Chloe made her way down the corridor of the hospital in a daze, the remnants of the previous nights’ conversation with Aubrey still fresh in her mind. How could it not be when her best friend had made so many more than worthy points in the middle of yet another heated discussion about Chloe telling Beca about what had happened in the two years they had been apart.

As much as she never wanted to have the conversation, Chloe was aware of the fact that time was slipping by, several months in fact, and the longer she put it off, the more fearful she became of the potential fallout. As much as Chloe believed in her and Beca’s love, she was also aware of the fact that the depth of Chicago’s betrayal ran deep and that his actions may just be one mountain Beca was unable to climb, irrespective of Chloe’s innocence.

And that was Chloe’s greatest fear.

As she rounded the corner, she spotted Beca wheeling herself down the corridor from the opposite direction, the brunette rolling to a stop once she caught sight of Chloe, giving her a small smile. The redhead couldn’t help but stop and really take in the woman before her.

The former soldier had come on so much in the last few months. She had gained back some weight and some muscle tone, she looked healthier, stronger, a far cry from the emaciated skeletal figure that had been pulled from the depths of the Afghanistan desert on the brink of death. The buzzcut that once sat atop Beca’s head had now grown some length, and Beca had taken to styling it in a pixie cut just to give it some flair, though she was determined to grow it back out to it’s once natural longer state.

“Hey,” Chloe said once Beca was close enough and she was greeted with that smirk she fell in love with all those years ago.

“Hey yourself,” Beca replied before gesturing down to herself, “I just got done with rehab, was gonna grab a coffee and chill in my room if you want to join me. I figured there’s some stuff we need to talk about, especially if I’m gonna be busting out of here soon.”

Chloe nodded her head in agreement. This had also been playing on Chloe’s mind. With Beca’s recovery going so well, she was due to leave the centre and continue rehabilitation and counselling as an outpatient, which meant she needed to figure out living arrangements.

Home. What even was home now? Their lives had been in a cute little house just on the outer city limits of New York where Beca was often based when not on tour. The place where most of their friends were based, where they had made a life together. With Chloe’s family based in Connecticut and Beca’s family in Virgina, it seemed ideal to stay on the east coast.

And their life together had truly been amazing. When the news of Beca’s apparent death had reached them, both families had congregated in New York to be there for Chloe. Even after Beca had allegedly died, Chloe couldn’t bring herself to leave. Even though Chicago had wanted to move out to the Midwest, Chloe wouldn’t budge. There were too many memories there that she couldn’t leave behind, more importantly, it would’ve meant not being able to visit what was once Beca’s supposed grave.

The only thing that had changed, was the roof over her head. While Chloe couldn’t bear to leave New York because of those memories, she also couldn’t bear the thought of moving someone else into the house she had once shared with the love of her life. So, she had sold it, preferring that it go to a new family rather than have the memory of her life with Beca tainted by her new relationship with Chicago.

That all seemed like a lifetime ago now, but even still, the logistics of where they would live was becoming a problem. Both sets of parents had offered to take them in until they got back on their feet, but both women had declined, mainly because, they didn’t know if they would be living together or not once Beca was well enough to go home.

“Sure,” Chloe said, giving Beca a tight-lipped smile in return which made the brunette furrow her brow in contemplation. She could tell Chloe was being cagey, she just didn’t know why.

Heading down to the cafeteria, they purchased two take out coffees, an apple slice for Chloe, and a protein bar and yoghurt and granola for Beca before heading back to Beca’s room. Upon entering the now too familiar space the soldier had called home since landing back in the US, they took up residence at the table by the window, Chloe taking a seat as Beca parked up her wheelchair.

“Do you mind if I…” Beca trailed off, one hand resting on her stump and Chloe instantly knew what she was asking.

Having just finished rehab, the soldier was still wearing her prosthetic stump covers, the ones her stubbies screwed into, and socks and wanted to let her skin breathe. Chloe just sighed.

“Bec’s we’ve talked about this you don’t need to ask. Just do whatever makes you comfortable,” Chloe said.

To emphasise her point, she pulled her seat up closer to Beca and reached out, taking one of the stumps into her hand. She gently applied pressure and pulled until the prosthetic shell that was covering the stump came free and then placed it down before helping to remove the sock. She repeated the same action with the other stump before standing up and walking around the bed.

She reached down and picked up the small cushion that was sitting on the floor and returned to her seat. She carefully placed the cushion under Beca’s stumps for added comfort, knowing they were probably aching from her workout. All the while Beca gazed on, amazed at the care and comfort Chloe showed in her actions. When the redhead was done and was sitting back up, Beca smiled at her to show her appreciation.

“Thanks Chlo,” she said, “sorry I just, I still find it weird sometimes looking at them, I guess I just assume that it makes other people uncomfortable.”

Chloe nodded her head understanding where Beca was coming from.

“I get it, I do. I mean our brains are conditioned to see anything that isn’t considered ‘normal’ as odd. And yeah I’ll be honest, it took me a minute to get used to it. But not because it weirded me out, I just, I was remembering before,” Chloe said with a wave of her hand as if gesturing back to a time gone by.

“It just took a little time to wrap my head around the now instead of the before. But I’m more than comfortable and okay with this,” Chloe finished, hand again resting on Beca’s stump unbeknownst to herself.

Beca instinctively reached down and placed her hand over Chloe’s, lacing their fingers together. For a brief moment they got lost in each others eyes, and the magnetic pull that had alway existed between them began to manifest itself as they found themselves leaning in closer, eyes briefly flickering down to waiting lips, the temptation oh so strong.

But before anything could happen the voice in the back of Chloe’s head snapped her back to reality, and she jerked back. She couldn’t give in, couldn’t allow herself to until Beca knew the truth and could decide if their relationship was still worth fighting for.

“Sorry,” Beca said as she leaned back into her chair, rubbing self consciously at her brow, “I don’t know what I was thinking, I thought….” She began to say, but stopped, not really knowing what it was she thought.

Chloe shook her head at Beca’s apology.

“No don’t apologise. You were right, more than right. There’s nothing I want more,” Chloe sighed, eyes closing in frustration as her heart thundered in her chest.

“Bec’s, there’s something I need to tell you. Something I’ve been putting off for a while because I’m scared of what it will mean for us once I tell you,” Chloe said, eyes finally opening and gazing up at Beca who chuckled at little.

“What are you seeing someone else?” She asked jokingly before the humour was sucked out of the room by Chloe’s stoic expression. The smile on Beca’s face dropped as she gazed back and forth at Chloe’s ocean blues that seemed to display her growing fear.

Beca sat back, mouth bobbing up and down trying to find the words to speak.

“Are you seeing someone else?” She finally managed to get out thought the crack in her voice clearly indicated her growing anxiety.

“Bec’s…. I…. I….”

#Bechloe #Pitch Perfect #FanFic Drabble #The Ultimate Betrayal #Chapter 10

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thedamageofherdays · 3 years

Text

This week's [23-08-2021 - 29-08-2021] reading log is here! I read a lot again this week and I feel like it's a lovely variety of fics. Most fics are Stucky like usual, but there's at least one other ship. I am constantly amazed by the talent people have in this fandom! There was one fic I read on Tumblr that I can't seem to find unfortunately, but when I do I'll make sure to reblog and rec it 💕

Favourites are marked with a 🌻

When life gives you lemons by moonthejedi394 @moonythejedi394 [Stucky, 40k words, Mature] (12/15 chapters available)

Or 13 Terrible Things to Do With Lemons Other Than Making Lemonade

Steve Rogers is a home health nurse. He works for an agency, which assigned him to the aging Winifred Barnes, the one and only Silent Era Hollywood darling. As her needs increased, she requested the agency assign Steve to her full-time. She could pay for it, so she got it. Steve then moved in with her, becoming her caregiver; he cooked, he cleaned, he managed her medications, he made sure she was comfortable.

Winifred's children treated him less than ideally. He was the help, after all. And then Steve had the audacity to go and turn out to be eldest son James Barnes's soulmate. No one saw that coming.

The Masseur and the Assassin by buckybarnesdeservestobehappy @buckybarnesdeservestobehappy [Stucky, 17k words, Explicit]

Bucky Barnes needed a vacation from his job. What he found was a happy ending.

The Words Breathe by buckbarnesdeservestobehappy [Stucky, 1k words, Mature]

All Steve has to do is keep his promise. When he doesn’t, Bucky gets mouthy.

Soft by this_wayward_life @wayward-lives [Stucky, 2k words, Explicit]

The last time he'd seen Bucky he'd looked unhealthy, with pallid skin and greasy, lanky hair. Now, Bucky shone; his hair was thick and silky, his skin a deep bronze from spending so much time outside. He was softer, too; the hard muscle that used to cover him was now replaced by soft fat, his body still strong, but in a more mundane way. His thighs were thicker, his ass plumper, and when he'd pulled Steve into the river Steve had noticed the pudge on his stomach.

Seeing Bucky so happy, well-fed and shining, was a bit of a kick in the face. For all the years they'd known each other, he'd never seen Bucky so... care-free. Now that Bucky was putting on weight, his middle soft and his body malleable, it sent a bolt of arousal through Steve every time he noticed the curves of Bucky's body.

Or: Bucky put on a bit of weight in Wakanda, and Steve is Not Coping.

🌻 Revive Another Side of Me by dontcallmebree @iamthe-wo-manwhocan [Stucky, 1k words, Mature]

Steve’s never lived in a world without Bucky, and he’s not living now. It takes them a while, much too long, to get that awaited rest, a little slice of peace after the dust has settled.Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes are inseparable, history remembers. But they’re not men of the past quite yet.

🌻 imagine being loved by me by spacebuck @spacebuck [Stucky, 20k words, Explicit]

Just after 1am - a few hours after he posted today’s photo - he hears the tell-tale sound of a twitter message. Bucky grabs his phone, not checking who it’s from as he opens it because it’s probably one of his mutuals yelling at him as per usual. When he actually looks at his phone, though, it’s not Natasha

The ‘verified’ check stares back at him for a long moment before he can even bring himself to process the name on his screen. Steve Rogers is messaging him. Or, he reasons, a very good fake. The handle looks right though, not that Bucky knows. Not that Bucky has Captain’s America’s tweets set up as notifications, or that Bucky’s own display name is set to captain america’s bitch. Not at all.

Hey, the first message says. It’s Steve.

🌻 JB’s Complete Lube Services by dixons_mama @dixons-mama [Stucky, 3k words, Explicit]

People just didn’t approach Captain America and proposition him. Although, sometimes Steve wished they would; even the pinnacle of virtue and justice needed to get dicked down from time to time.

Or, the one where Steve has the hots for a mechanic and decides to be proactive in getting that dick.

If it had to be someone by rainbow_nerds [Stucky, 1k words, Mature]

Bucky had known since he was a child that he didn’t have a choice in who he married, but he’d thought he had more time before the day arrived.

Miscalculations by christywantspizza @christywantspizza [Ransom Drysdale/Reader, 6k words, Explicit]

Ransom tries to get you to sleep with him by less than honorable means. You give him what he wants, just not how he wants it.

How to Seduce a Writer by obsessivereader [Stucky, 2k words, Teen]

What's a determined master strategist going to do when the oblivious writer he's trying to woo keeps missing all the clues?

He doesn’t think it’s because he hadn’t signaled his own interest to Bucky. He’s pretty much done everything short of hitting Bucky over the head with semaphore flags by this point. There’s no way Bucky could’ve missed them. Unless… There’d been that one link he’d stumbled upon when he’d googled ‘how to talk to a writer’. It’d been written by a writer, who’d been candid about how oblivious writers could be, and how someone could go about seducing one. An idea starts to form. It’s ridiculous, but at this point, he’s willing to go with ridiculous, since subtle wasn’t getting him anywhere.

🌻 Pod Bless America by Deisderium @deisderium [Stucky, 6k words, Teen]

Bucky can't believe his favorite podficcer recorded his newest fanfic AU of the show Commandos. He's even more surprised when the customer who busts him listening to fic while he's working in the office supply store turns out to be that podficcer.

* The guy—maybe bi_shield?—took his phone, looked down at the screen, and smiled. "Yeah, that one's mine," he said with no evidence of embarrassment. "It was a good one." He handed the phone back to Bucky.

"I wrote it," Bucky croaked.

take a bite by wearing_tearing [Stucky, 7k words, Mature]

"I’d never let anyone freeze to death.” Steve gives a big sigh and flutters his lashes. “All that blood gone to waste.”

Bucky’s lips turn down and his nose scrunches up a little. “I want to be grossed out, but…”

“But you get it.” Steve gives him a pointed look. “Vampires aren’t the only ones who can appreciate how juicy blood is.”

Or: Vampire Steve saves newly-turned werewolf Bucky from a snowstorm.

Leaving the Shield Behind by BuckyAboveEverything [Stucky, 6k words, Teen]

“So, on one hand, we have Steve Rogers - hunk, genius, animal lover. Buys you waffles and overpriced coffee. 100% wholesome all-American boy.”

“And, on the other hand, we have Capsicle – twink, smart-ass, fanboy. Reads your stories and sends you fanart. Possibly a pervert or a serial killer.”

Bucky groaned.

“I am 100% certain I am 0% sure of what to do."

Bucky Barnes, full-time copywriter and free-time fanfic writer, struggles to choose between two equally-attractive suitors, only to find that he doesn’t have to after all.

* Based on a true story *

Cap's Book Corner by Neche [Stucky, 2k words, Teen]

Recluse Author Bucky Barns stumbles into fanboy Steve Rogers bookstore one day...

Cat Nap by galwednesday @galwednesday [Stucky, 8k words, Teen]

Objectively, losing the Bucharest safehouse and its contents was the least of Bucky’s problems. The balding agent he’d seen directing the raid was apparently affiliated with SHIELD, which was a shadowy government agency that made representatives from other shadowy government agencies suddenly remember urgent appointments when Bucky tried to bribe, threaten, and otherwise shake them down for information on what the hell SHIELD might want with a former brainwashed assassin. Dodging SHIELD should be his number one priority.

Subjectively, he wanted his fucking cat back.

at any given moment by honeypuffed [Stucky, 1k words, Teen]

Steve and Bucky find out that everyone thinks they're sleeping together.

Brought to Brightness by eyres [Stucky, 10k words, Teen]

Army veteran Bucky Barnes has fallen in love with Steve, a guy he met online a few months after he returned from Afghanistan. Only problem is, he doesn't know Steve's last name or even what he looks like.

When his sister helps him send his story into MTV's Catfish, he's hoping they can help him meet Steve or, at least, let him move on with his life if Steve isn't real. Little does he know, Steve and Captain America have more in common than just a first name.

🌻 Nokken Wood by leveragehunters @leveragehunters [Stucky, 10k words, Teen]

When Sam's friend needs a house-sitter for his place in the country, Steve jumps at the chance. Six months rent-free to do nothing but draw and paint and wander the countryside, looking for inspiration? It was like a dream. But when he gets lost in a storm and nearly falls into a pond he starts to rethink the whole like a dream aspect of life in the country. And when a red-eyed, sharp-clawed, silver-fanged creature rises out of the darkness, Steve is one hundred percent certain the dream's morphed into a nightmare.

...until it gives him a cup of tea.

(Inspired partly by this prompt a supernatural creature is supposed to scare you but instead it gives you a cup of tea and a blanket because you're having a bad day and you keep coming back and partly by this painting.)

Professional Pride by galwednesday [Stucky, 700 words, Teen]

Bucky is having a very good day, until he turns around and finds himself face-to-face with Captain America.

“Oh shit,” he blurts before he can stop himself, and Captain America blinks at him. “Hey, hi, I didn’t expect to see you here.” Here, at New York’s Pride parade, surrounded by thousands of happy screaming people wearing rainbows and sometimes not much else. What is he doing here? Is he on guard duty or something? Was he just on a mission and happened to be passing by on his way back?

He’s in uniform but with the cowl loose around his neck, so when he rubs the back of his head it fluffs up his matted hair. “I, uh. I saw one of your–temporary tattoos?” Captain fucking America says, like it’s a question.

The A-bridged Guide to Trolling by galwednesday [Stucky, 1k words, Teen]

“I don’t have any money.”

Oh no, now the girl looked upset. Her eyes were huge and her lip was wobbling. Bucky tried to think fast despite the oh shit oh shit oh shit looping through his head.

“That’s okay,” Bucky said gently. “I don’t need money. We can figure out another kind of toll.”

The girl frowned at him. “Like what?”

Bucky scratched his head, trying to think of something a kid was certain to have on hand. “Do you know any jokes?”

(Fantasy AU in which Steve is a hedge witch with a green thumb, Bucky is a bridge troll who's new in town, and knock-knock jokes are a viable form of currency.)

It's a bittersweet ending (if you know what I mean) by relenafanel [Stucky, 1k words, Teen]

“I’ll see you around, Steve,” Bucky answers with a smirk, moving away from the counter with a wink.

Steve watches him go. Bucky’s wearing a pair of skinny jeans coated in something to give the appearance of leather. It’s impossible to not watch him go.

stuck on you by wearing_tearing [Stucky, 5k words, Teen]

“Bucky? You don’t look so hot.”

Bucky makes a tiny little sound in the back of his throat, only to start coughing. Of course he doesn’t look hot. He’s sick and he’s dying and Steve obviously isn’t attracted to him.

Decision-Making in Relationships (Paid Research Opportunity!) by castiowl [Stucky, 8k words, Teen]

Clint looked thoughtfully at the flyer. “I guess your actual roommate wouldn’t be down with it?”

Bucky frowned. “Have you met Steve Rogers?”

no way out but through by hollimichele [Stucky, 9k words, Teen]

Steve never sees it coming.

you got blood on your hands (and i know it's mine) by nighimpossible [Stucky, 3k words, Teen]

Bucky refuses to see Steve after his deprogramming.

Like What You See by daisymondays [Stucky, 8k words, Teen]

For all the time Bucky’s spent fantasizing about meeting Captain America, he’d never imagined it would be while posing nude in front of a drawing class.

🌻 A Real Boy by itsnotbleak [Stucky, 5k words, Teen]

It took the Winter Soldier three weeks to remember that human beings needed to sleep and eat.

It took Steve far too long to realise the Winter Soldier was sleeping in his bed.

Amapola by chaya [Stucky, 830 words, Teen]

Total fluff. Bucky's recovering nicely. Steve's oblivious. Sometimes it's best to set aside subtlety for action.

Knocking Boots With Sugar by buckybarnesdeservestobehappy [Stucky, 4k words, Explicit]

In between summers at college, Steve Rogers wants a new adventure beyond his lonely life in Brooklyn. He ends up in West Texas working on a dude ranch where Bucky Barnes is a long-time employee. When Bucky offers to buy Steve a drink, they end up drunk on tequila and making out in public. For the rest of the summer, they're inseparable. As the summer draws to a close, Steve realizes he doesn't want to leave.

Rogers and Associate by roe87 @jro616 [Stucky, 7k words, Teen]

When they first meet, Bucky is a hooker and Steve is a cop. She's been arrested, but Steve lets her off.

Years pass and they maintain a casual friendship, seeing each other out on the streets most nights.

Though he later makes detective, Steve loses faith in the system and quits his job.

He wants to set up as a private investigator, and he asks Bucky if she'd be his assistant.

Just in time by rainbow_nerds [Stucky, 1k words, Mature]

Bucky knew the apartment he was renting was old fashioned, but walking in the front door and finding himself transported back to 1938 was not on the list of things he had prepared himself for.

🌻 You Like What's in My Head by dontcallmebree [Stucky, 15k words, Explicit] (with art by @kocuria)

Bucky can’t decide if Steve’s a tough nut to crack or incredibly easy. The timbre of his voice, a low and almost amused, “Sure, kid,” when Bucky asks for a drink feels like something gripping him on the back of his neck.

He thinks this might be one of those moments in life he’ll pinpoint in the future and either curse at for dooming himself, or remember fondly with pride.

He’s right. Bucky Barnes blunders through falling in love with Commander Rogers and tries to find a deeper meaning behind the expensive gifts and thorough fucking.

Can I Sit Here? by BuckyFrickenBarnes [Stucky, 962 words, General]

Bucky has unusual methods for getting rid of his writer's block.

Or, Bucky needs that table.

Workplace Romance by BuckyFricken Barnes [Stucky, 1k words, General]

Bucky is under the impression that his boss hates him.

Or,

Steve needs to get better at dealing with his feelings.

🌻 1-800-MAYTAG by Miss Plum @misspluckyplum [Stucky, 1k words, Explicit]

Bucky just wants to get some housework done. It gets out of hand fast. Silly little fluff and smut romp with snarky stucky boys.

Eyes of the Forest by Lordelannette [Stucky, 7k words, Explicit] (2/8 chapters available)

When Omega Bucky Barnes comes to Eagle Lake, it was in search of wolves, a creature that had not been seen in the area for decades.

What he finds instead is Steve Rogers, a handsome, though quiet Alpha who seems to be everywhere in the forest.

#r's reading log #my reading log #fic rec #stucky #stucky fic rec #fic recs #stevebucky #long post

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study-coffee-chicago · 3 years

Text

Seasons of Med: Season 1: Glad I Didn’t Make it that Far (A Halstead brothers + Halstead sister! imagine)

Trigger warning: Talk of eating disorders

As always, I do not own any quotes from Chicago Med 1x04 that show up here!

Your age: 14

Jay's age: 28

Will's age: 30

"We should go to a movie," your best friend Emma suggested when you were sitting on the playground of Central Chicago's elementary school one summer day.

You had been coming here since it was pretty close to your house to be able to read without worrying that your dad would show up drunk. He wasn't violent, he was just rude, asking why there was no food and when you explained it was because he wasn't going shopping, he'd scoff and tell you to get a job if you wanted to eat. It wasn't your fault; you'd tried to get a job, but no one would hire you because you were only fourteen. Most places required that you be at least sixteen and the occasional place would let you start at fifteen, but only with very limited hours. And, the places that let you start at fifteen were too far away for you to walk to. You'd have to take the El...and that would turn out badly if Will and Jay found out, even though your dad wouldn't care in the slightest.

"Em, I don't have any money. I'm literally rationing out my feminine products at this point."

"Hey, just tell me if you need any. Me or my mom can get you some. Oh, and some neighbors of mine run a little kettle corn company. They're looking for some extra help on the weekends and they'll pay you under the table. I can give you their number if you want."

"Really?" Emma smiled and nodded. "Yes, please! And, you're the best."

But, what you didn't tell her was that you hadn't eaten since yesterday since there was barely anything in your house and that your cramps were killing you and because of all this, you were feeling nauseous.

"Let's go to the movies. My treat."

"I can't let you pay for me."

"Yes, you can. Best friends help each other out. Now c'mon, let's go." You sighed and closed your eyes as you stood up. "You good?" Emma asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just dizzy."

"You wanna go home?"

"No, no I'm fine. Just seasonal allergies from all the pollen," you lied.

"Okay, let's go."

You started to slow down as you got closer to the movie theater. "I'm so excited to see The Longest Ride!" Emma squealed. "Scott Eastwood is just mwah!"

"Yeah, but he's- he's a lot-- I gotta, I gotta sit down," you stuttered, starting to feel more lightheaded and seeing your vision become blurry at the edges.

"Okay, let's get to the front where you can sit on the curb."

You slowly started to make your way there, but it was too late. "Em- Emma," you slurred as you tried to reach for her as your legs gave out underneath you, and then everything went black.

"Y/N!" Emma yelled as she squatted down next to you and pulled out her phone.

Just then, everyone started running out of the theater shouting something about a shooting.

***

Will's pager went off as he was eating with Natalie and the rest of the team from a taco truck outside of Chicago Med. And, everyone else's pagers were going off, too, making it sound like alarm clocks that were all set for the same time. Then, Maggie ran outside.

"Shooting in a movie theater! Mass casualties! It's about to get crazy!" she yelled to the doctors and other nurses. "EMTs are four minutes out!"

Not even a second after she finished her sentence, an ambulance pulled up with lights flashing and sirens blaring.

"Check that!" Will yelled as he threw his food in the trash can. "They're here!"

Then, all of them sprinted into the hospital, their main focus now being saving as many lives as possible.

"Another maniac gone crazy in a theater," Will said as he put something over his scrubs to keep them from getting blood all over them. "Is this the world we live in?"

***

You slowly opened your eyes to be met with the white ceiling and an IV in your arm. You groaned. "Where am I?" you asked as you rolled over to see Emma sitting on a bench. "Are we in an ambulance?"

"You don't remember?" Emma asked.

"You passed out, sweetie," a female paramedic told you as she put a blood pressure cuff around your arm. "Luckily for you, we came pretty quick after hearing about the shooting."

"The shooting? There was a shooting?"

"In the movie theater," the paramedic answered you. "You were lucky you didn't go in."

"Guess so."

Your eyes widened as you realized they were probably taking you to Chicago Med. You couldn't let your brother know that the most likely reason for you passing out was that you hadn't eaten since yesterday. They'd freak out.

"Am I good to go when we get to the hospital? I feel fine." You were still nauseous, but that was better than being passed out.

"You passed out, we need to get you checked out at the hospital."

"But I feel fine," you protested.

"I understand that, sweetie. But you need to get checked out anyway to make sure that there wasn't something that made you pass out other than the heat."

"She's right, Y/N," Emma said. "You need to get checked out."

You huffed. "Fine." Maybe Will would be too busy to even notice you were there. And, you figured your dad wouldn't pick up his phone, so you could just sneak out undetected when the doctors and nurses weren't watching.

When you got in, you were met by Natalie. "Y/N?" she asked. "What are you doing here?"

"It's nothing. I just passed out. I'm fine, really."

"Shoot," Emma said. "My mom's here to pick me up. Said she doesn't want me here because of all the press since I'm not hurt. I'm sorry."

You waved your hand. "It's fine. Hopefully, I'll be getting out here soon, too. See you later."

"Bye, Y/N."

"If you passed out, you're not fine, Y/N," Natalie said.

As you were wheeled past a trauma room, you saw your brother. Luckily for you, he was too focused on his patient that he didn't notice.

"Want me to get Will?" Natalie asked when she saw you glance in there.

"No! I mean, he looks really busy and I'm not dying. They should be the first priority."

"Okay, well I'll have Maggie call your dad because after all the standard tests, if I need to do more, I'm going to need your dad's permission since you're still a minor."

"Okay."

"Hey, Maggie," Natalie called, "Do me a favor and call Y/N's dad for me. I just might need permission to run some additional tests."

"You got it."

You got on the bed in the treatment room and allowed Natalie to listen to your heart and lungs. "Were you part of the crush?" she asked. "Did you get the wind knocked out of you? Is that why you passed out?"

"No, I got dizzy before we could get inside. I felt nauseous, too, but I think that was just from period cramps."

"The paramedics said you were dehydrated and that they had to administer an IV. Have you been eating and drinking properly? I know it's hot and that can cause you to pass out. Other than that factor, have you been eating and drinking normally?"

"Yes," you lied.

"Okay, I'm just going to need to get your height and weight and other vitals before we continue."

You nodded and followed her to where she took your height and weight. She wrote it down and you started to walk out, but she stopped you. "Uh, Y/N, come with me."

You followed her to the doctor's lounge where she handed you her sweatshirt. "Why are you giving me this?"

"You bled through your shorts. There's free pads and tampons in the bathroom if you don't have any on you."

You nodded. "Thank you."

"Meet me back here once you're finished."

"Okay."

When you got into the bathroom, you took all the pads and tampons you could fit in your shorts pockets after you had finished changing your dirty one.

Now, it was time for your great escape. No one would see you; they were all too busy treating other patients and worrying about the press.

You were almost out into the waiting room, but then a voice stopped you.

"Y/N?"

Shit. Jay.

You stopped in your tracks but then continued walking.

"Y/N, I know you heard me. Come back."

You sighed and turned around, hoping you wouldn't have to spill all the secrets about what's been happening at home.

***

"Poor guy," Erin said as she and Jay exited Sharon Goodwin's office. "He thought what he was going was right."

"I probably would've done the same thing if I were in his shoes," Jay agreed. "I mean, if I thought I saw a guy with an AR-15 in a movie theater and then thought the shots from the movie were coming from the gun, I sure as hell would've acted. Not that my service weapon can shoot bullets off as much as my sniper, but I'd try. Try and save civilians."

"Jay." Erin placed a hand on his arm. "You're not in Afghanistan anymore."

"I know. There's just some sick and twisted people in this world. Why would someone go into a theater with a leaf blower anyway? With all the mass shootings that have happened, that's probably the stupidest idea I've heard."

"I agree with you. But he's just a kid. He didn't ask to get shot. But, if I were in that teacher's shoes, I'd probably do the same thing and draw my gun."

Jay furrowed his eyebrows as he saw someone walking towards the exit of the ED and towards the waiting room. She had shorts and a t-shirt on with a burgundy sweatshirt tied around her waist. Jay wouldn't have given it a second thought, but he knew you had the same gray beat-up Converse because he had gotten them for you for a birthday present two years ago and you always wore the same polka dot scrunchie when you needed your hair to be in a bun and needed it to be tight.

"Is that?..." Erin trailed off.

"I think so," Jay answered, quickening his pace to catch up with you before you got out of the ED and he lost sight of you due to the number of people in the waiting room. "Y/N!" he yelled.

The girl he thought was you froze for a split second and then continued walking, this time at a faster pace. That was all the confirmation he needed. "Y/N, I know you heard me. Come back."

You sighed and turned around.

"I was going to tell you," you mumbled once you were in front of him.

He scoffed and crossed his arms across his chest. "Yeah? And when were you planning on calling Dad? You know you're a minor so a parent needs to be notified."

"Y/N!" Natalie yelled. "I thought you left, I was so close to getting security to look for you. We couldn't get a hold of your dad and were going to call Jay since he's your secondary emergency contact, but he's here now, so if both of you could follow me then that'd be great."

"You got it from here, Erin?" Jay asked.

"Yeah, text me if you need me to pick you up and bring you back to the district."

"Will do. Don't let Voight bust my balls because I skipped out."

"I'll tell him Y/N had a medical emergency. He'll understand."

"Thanks."

You, Natalie, and Jay walked back into the treatment room where Natalie had been previously treating you.

"First of all, let me just say it was not a medical emergency," you told your brother.

"Oh yeah? Then why are you here?" he asked.

"I was feeling nauseous."

"And you came to the ED just because of some nausea?" He raised an eyebrow. He so knew you were lying.

Meanwhile, Will was walking out of a trauma room after Rhodes brought a victim up to surgery.

"Hey. You hear?" Reese asked as she walked up to the doctor. "The kid at the theater, the one who got shot, he didn't have a gun, he had a leaf blower."

"What?" Will asked, stunned. He had worked on that kid and knew that it wasn't good.

"Yeah, turns out it was some kind of prank." She was about to turn around to leave, but then stopped. "Oh, and your sister's here. Treatment one."

"What? Why?"

"I think she passed out or something. Dr. Manning's in there with her right now."

"Thanks, Reese."

Will barged into your treatment room. "So, she comes into the ED and nobody has the common decency to even notify me?" he asked rhetorically.

"You were busy treating other patients, Will. I was going to get around to it eventually," Natalie said.

"Natalie, please just finish explaining what happened. Or just start from the beginning because Will's here now," Jay suggested, not wanting to have to break up an argument between the two doctors.

Now it was Will who was the one who crossed his arms over his chest.

"So, Will, what happened was that Y/N passed out. She was almost inside the movie theater, but she passed out, so she didn't go in."

"The movie theater where the shooting happened?" Jay asked. You nodded. "Jesus, kid, if you would've gotten inside, you would've given both me and Will heart attacks."

"Sorry. But, I'm glad I didn't get that far."

"Yeah, us too," Will agreed. "So, why'd she pass out?"

"Can I talk to you two for a minute? Outside?"

They nodded. "Be right back," Jay told you.

"So, what's going on?" Jay asked once the three were safely outside of the room and out of earshot from you.

"Have you noticed anything strange with her eating habits lately? Any skipping meals? Going to the bathroom right after meals? Not wanting to eat?" Natalie asked the two brothers.

"No, nothing," Jay answered. "Granted, we don't eat with her a lot because she lives with our dad and we both live on our own."

"Okay, because since her physical check-up a month and a half ago, Y/N's lost fifteen pounds."

"Fifteen?" Will asked, flabbergasted.

"I thought she looked smaller, but I just thought I was hallucinating from lack of sleep because of all the crazy cases we've had," Jay said.

"No, she's lost fifteen pounds since her last check-up," Dr. Manning reiterated.

"So, what are you saying?" Will asked. "Our sister's anorexic? Bulimic?"

"I'm not saying any of those yet. But, I talked to Dr. Charles while Y/N was in the bathroom and she said to try and have her eat something, like the greasiest thing you can find in the cafeteria, and see what she does. We'll even leave the room after to chat and I'll have Maggie keep an eye on the bathrooms to see if she goes in there. If she refuses to eat or freaks out over it, then we might be dealing with anorexia. If she goes into the bathroom after, we might be dealing with bulimia. Or, it could be a combination of the two or just possibly her trying to lose weight. Has she ever mentioned wanting to lose weight to either of you?"

"No, not all," Jay answered. "Even when we went out after her last day of school, which I think was about two weeks after she had that physical, she ate a ton and she didn't go to the bathroom right after."

"But you did go home right after," Will pointed out.

"Yeah."

"But, with some bulimics, if they know that the food has already been digested, they won't try to purge. And, it sounds like the food had time to digest."

"Alright, I'll go grab her a bacon cheeseburger."

"And a side of mac n cheese," Jay suggested. "She loves that stuff." Will started to walk out, but Jay stopped him once more. "Can you pick me up a bacon cheeseburger, too? I'm hungry."

Will rolled his eyes. "Yeah, but just so you know, you're paying me back."

"I know," Jay said and then went back inside the treatment room.

"Where's Will?" you asked.

"He's getting you some food. How does a bacon cheeseburger and mac n cheese sound?"

God, your mouth watered just at the thought of the bacon cheeseburger alone. The juicy patty, melty cheese, and crispy bacon, yum. And, you hadn't had a burger in who knows how long.

"That sounds amazing honestly," you answered.

"Okay, good because that's what Will's getting you." He paused. "Is everything okay with Dad? Everything good at home?"

"Yeah, everything's fine," you lied.

"Did someone tell you that you were fat at all?"

Shit, he knew I'd lost weight. "No," you answered. "I guess I'm not just mindlessly snacking when I'm doing homework anymore. It's not like I'm trying to lose weight."

No way were you going to tell him that there was rarely any food in the house, not here anyway.

"Okay, good," Jay answered. Then, he looked out of the room to see Will talking with Natalie. But, they were close enough that you could hear them, so you turned your attention to the two as well.

"Hey, Nat," Will said, carrying a bag with three cheeseburgers and a side of mac n cheese.

"Yeah?" she asked.

"I'm thinking, I only live a mile from you. So, when you go into labor, call me. I'll drive you here."

"Thanks, but...you know it could be three in the morning, right?"

"Sleep's overrated anyway."

Then, Will made his way back into your treatment room. "I wanna take you to the hospital," Jay mocked. "Very smooth, Will, very smooth."

"Will's got a crush, Will's got a crush," you said in a sing-song voice.

"Would you two knuckleheads keep it down? And no, I do not have a crush, I was just trying to be helpful."

Jay scoffed. "Yeah right. You totally have a crush on her, man. Now, give us the food and we won't say anything."

***

"Everything seem normal?" Natalie asked Will as Jay was still sitting with you after the three of you had finished your food.

"Yeah, she ate a little faster than normal, but we waited an hour and she didn't even get up to go to the bathroom, so I don't think that's the issue. She told Jay she wasn't trying to lose weight. She said she just wasn't mindlessly eating anymore when she was doing homework. But, I don't think that could make her lose fifteen pounds. Do you?"

"No. But unfortunately, given her height and age, she still has a normal BMI, so we can't do anything."

"Yeah, I get it. Me and Jay will keep an eye on her. It was around this time when our dad just kind of checked out on parenting us."

"What do you mean?"

"He wouldn't cook or really help us with anything. But, it was okay because our Mom was still around, so she'd cook and help us with things. He just thought we were old enough to deal with stuff on our own."

"Things that a teenager without another parent still needs help with."

"Exactly."

Jay poked his head out of the room. "Everything good? Y/N's asking when she can leave."

Will rolled his eyes. "Wonder where she gets that from."

"Shut up."

"I'll grab you the discharge papers," Natalie said and then walked to a nurse's station.

Just then, Will's pager went off. "I gotta go." He fished into the pocket of his scrubs. "You can take my car home and then just come pick me up from work and we can drive back to the district to get your truck. That way you don't have to bug Erin."

"Thanks, man. Go save some lives."

Natalie came back and handed him the discharge papers.

"Thanks, Nat. Me and Will will be sure to keep an eye on her, maybe have her over for dinner once or twice a week to monitor her eating habits."

"That's a good idea. Good luck with all this. Will told me that this was around the time that your dad clocked out on you, so maybe pay him a visit when Y/N's not there and check? I don't know if that's something you'd want to do or not."

Jay nodded. "I'll keep that in mind. Thanks."

"No problem."

Jay signed the discharge papers and then walked back into the room. "Good news."

"We can leave?" you asked excitedly as you sat up.

"We can leave," he confirmed.

***

You got out of the car and stood on the stoop of your house, Jay right next to you. "Jay," you started, "I have to tell you something."

"Okay, what is it? You can tell me anything."

You opened your mouth to tell him that there was barely any food in the house and that your dad refused to buy you feminine hygiene products because, by his logic, if he had another son, he wouldn't need to buy them, so you should buy them yourself.

But then, the door opened, revealing your dad.

"I was just going to say thanks for staying with me at the hospital. I would've left if you didn't stop me."

"You're welcome."

"Care to tell me where you've been?" your dad asked.

You knew he was just putting on a show because Jay was there.

"I was at the park and then me and Emma were going to see a movie and then--" your phone buzzed, alerting you that you had a text message.

"I've got it from here, Y/N. Dad, can I come inside?"

Pat Halstead nodded and you walked inside followed by your brother. "I'm gonna go upstairs and change," you said.

As you walked past the kitchen, you noticed a bunch of grocery bags, all of them full. He must've gone grocery shopping. At least you didn't have to worry about food for the next few days. But, you didn't know if he just did that because he finally listened to his voice mails and heard that you were in the hospital and were worried that they were going to find out that he was an unfit parent or because he finally came to his senses and realized that he was still responsible for you because you were a minor, which meant he needed to have food in the house.

As you walked upstairs, you checked your phone. It was Emma's neighbor asking if you could start helping her with kettle corn this Saturday. You responded with a yes because now, if your dad went back to not buying groceries, at least you'd be able to buy some for yourself.

A/N: Sorry this one was so short! It's kind of just to foreshadow the next installment of this. And, in the next installment, I will probably combine Seasons of PD: Season 4 and Seasons of Med: Season 2 because the storylines kind of go together. Anyway, thank you for reading! Please reblog/like and comment and tell me what you think! As always, if you want to be added to the taglist, just tell me and I’ll be happy to add you!

taglist: @theambracer88 @virtualreader @kelelas-life @celyndavies @brookerz122493 @musicismyescape27 @anotherfan07 @thexplosivegirl @dreamingwithlens @xoxmariaxox @onechicago18 @iamasimpingh0e

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deadpresidents · 3 years

Text

We Remember: When 9/11 Forged a Genuinely United States of America

Today, we remember.

We remember that the weather was perfect throughout nearly the entire country on that Tuesday morning. We remember where we were when we heard about the first plane hitting the tower. We remember what we thought as the new just began to trickle in. We remember our horror as we watched the second plane hit the South tower. We remember the evacuations -- people running out of our monuments of freedom and democracy, our centers of government and finance, and spilling out on to the streets of our nation’s capital. We remember the dust and debris chasing thousands of New Yorkers through the streets of our most iconic city. We remember the smoke rising from the Pentagon. We remember that impact site in Pennsylvania -- a smoldering hole in an empty field instead of the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol building because Americans decided to fight back. We remember watching the towers fall.

We remember the fear, the chaos, the sadness, and the feeling of not knowing what was happening or when it would end. We remember a feeling that Americans were not used to experiencing up to September 11, 2001: the helpless feeling of being attacked as went about our normal lives. We no longer remember what it felt like on September 10th.

Do you remember pointing fingers? Do remember placing blame? Do you remember partisanship? I remember patriotism. Not bumper sticker and window decals. Genuine patriotism. I remember flags and candles and donating water and giving blood and having a new appreciation for first responders. I remember that, for at least one week, we weren’t Democrats or Republicans. I remember that we were Americans. I remember that we cared a little bit more about each other for at least a couple of weeks.

When Democrat Lyndon Johnson was the Senate Majority Leader and Republican Dwight Eisenhower was President of the United States, LBJ -- one of the most intense, passionate, partisan political animals in our history -- never attacked President Eisenhower. It wasn’t because LBJ agreed with Eisenhower’s policies. It wasn’t because LBJ was scared. It was because, as LBJ explained in 1953 in a comment that has an unfortunately haunting connection to 9/11, “If you’re in an airplane, and you’re flying somewhere, you don’t run up to the cockpit and attack the pilot. Mr. Eisenhower is the only President we’ve got.”

The only President we’ve got.

We all want to head in the same direction. We all want to move forward. We all want to progress and be happy and healthy and safe. But now, more than ever, our country’s prosperity is crippled by divisive partisanship. As World War I and World War II approached and the world realized that we are clearly connected on a global level, the people who seemed the most out-of-touch -- the people who were wrong -- were the isolationists. In both of those great wars, the isolationists were proven wrong. Yet, in the span of our grandparents’ lives we have regressed to the point where most Americans have become individual isolationists -- not isolationism on a national level, but on a personal level. We’ve tried to disconnect from the people in our own country -- especially if they look, love, or think differently than us. Don’t you remember how powerful it felt after 9/11 to be united? Don’t you remember how we helped each other in so many different ways?

I guess I could be cynical. I guess I could remember the look on President George W. Bush’s face when his Chief of Staff, Andrew Card, whispered news of the attacks in the President’s ear as he sat in a Florida classroom. I guess I could remember The Pet Goat, and the fact that Bush didn’t immediately get up, sprint from the room, and change out of his Clark Kent clothes into the Superman suit. I guess I could remember Air Force One zig-zagging across the country, the only plane in the air besides military escorts and combat air patrols over our major cities. I guess I could remember the surveillance videos of the well-dressed hijackers walking through airport terminals that morning before they turned our planes into weapons. I guess I could remember that the passengers of Flight 93 didn’t actually get through the cockpit door and force the plane to crash into that Pennsylvania field. I guess I could remember our government’s alphabet agencies -- the FBI, CIA, NSA, and everyone else listening in on our world -- being unable to work together and stop the attacks from happening in the first place. I guess I could choose to remember those things, but that doesn’t make me feel better. It doesn’t make 9/11 anything but a success to those who tried to frighten and frustrate and intimidate us through terrorism.

This is what I choose to remember:

I remember that the passengers of Flight 93 tried to get into that cockpit. I remember that their plane didn’t make it to Washington, D.C., and even if they never actually breached the cockpit and physically forced the plane into that meadow in Pennsylvania themselves, they certainly fought back and forced the hijackers to abort the mission that they had planned. That plane didn’t crash into the White House or the Capitol, and that’s not because the hijackers got lost.

I remember driving to the wedding rehearsal for two of my best friends on the Friday after the attacks, feeling bad for them that they were getting married in the shadow of 9/11. I remember being amazed at thousands of people in the streets of Sacramento -- neighborhood after neighborhood, thousands of miles away from any of the attack sites -- holding a candlelight vigil. I remember that it was then, as I drove through the silence of these peaceful vigils, with flags and flames and tears all around me, that I thought, “We’re going to be okay.”

I remember George W. Bush -- a President I never voted for -- who, like all of us, was a bit unsteady with his words in the hours immediately following the attacks as he processed the magnitude of what we were living through. But I remember how he found his footing and found his voice quickly and began to speak for all of us. I remember him returning to Washington, D.C. that night, against the wishes of his government and his Secret Service protection. I remember how this President -- a President I didn’t agree with, a President I never cast a supportive ballot for or whose campaign I ever donated a cent to, a President whose beliefs were diametrically opposed to almost everything that I believe in -- went to Ground Zero and met with the families of those who were dead or missing, and gave them all the time they needed with him.

I remember how that President visited the rescue workers at Ground Zero. I remember, more than anything else, how President Bush climbed on to a pile of rubble from the fallen towers of the World Trade Center, grabbed a bullhorn and began to speak, but was interrupted by the workers yelling, “We can’t hear you!”

I remember that the President -- the only President we had at the time -- shouted to these exhausted, weary, grieving, heroic rescuers, “Well, I can hear you! And the people who knocked these buildings down are gonna hear from all of us soon!” I remember that it was genuine, that there was nothing manufactured about that moment, and that, despite all of his faults and deficiencies, George W. Bush said exactly what those people -- our people -- needed to hear. As the workers chanted, “USA! USA! USA!”, I remember thinking that I didn’t vote for him and I won’t vote for him in 2004, but at that moment he was my President and I was proud of him.

As we look back, we can’t help but think about everything else that has come out of 9/11 -- the interminable war in Afghanistan, the unjust and unnecessary war in Iraq, the humiliating and annoying experience that flying in an airplane became in this country -- but I think about that stuff pretty much every day, and I feel like this should always be a day where we think differently.

So, even if it’s just for this day, I’m going to think about those flags and candles and President Bush on top of the rubble of the World Trade Center with a bullhorn. I’m going to think about being an American -- just like I was in the weeks following 9/11 -- rather than who I voted for or what team I like or any of the millions of things that divide us and can get back to tearing us apart tomorrow like they did yesterday.

I’m going to remember thinking, “That’s my President,” as President Bush spoke to the rescue workers, just as I did a few weeks later when he went to Yankee Stadium for Game 3 of the World Series, strapped on a bulky bulletproof vest under his FDNY jacket, walked to the pitcher’s mound, and with millions of Americans watching on television, with thousands of rabid New Yorkers watching in the stands, and with Derek Jeter’s words of warning (”Don’t bounce it or they’ll boo you”) rattling around in his head, threw a perfect strike.

I’ll remember thinking, “That’s my President,” about a guy I never voted for and didn’t agree with, and I’ll hope that you do that when the guy you didn’t vote for and didn’t agree with says the right words, does the right things, and throws a strike when our nation needs it -- not because you’re a Democrat or a Republican, but because you’re an American and that’s the only President we’ve got. We don’t have to disagree about everything just because we don’t agree about most things, and we don’t have to like everything about one another to understand that, sometimes, we need each other.

What do you remember?

#September 11th #9/11 #September 11th Attacks #History #Personal #Politics #Americans #20th Anniversary of 9/11 #Never Forget #Never Forgot #I Remember #We Remember #George W. Bush #President Bush #Bush 43

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dreamingaboutreid · 3 years

Text

Hospital Bed Confessions: Chapter 1

Link to Summary/Masterlist

*Present time – in the car*

Y/N’s POV:

"So, Agent Y/L/N. Your reputation precedes you," said Agent Luke Alvez in a polite but warm manner.

"Please call me, Y/F/N. I'm guessing Penny might have mentioned me a few times?" you said as you shortly diverted your eyes from the road to give the agent sitting in the passenger seat a genuine smile.

"Oh, a 'few times' doesn't explain it. When we heard that we were working with your team on this case, Garcia dragged me to her dungeon and gave me a 2-hour powerpoint lecture on how amazing you are," Agent Alvez said jokingly.

"I’d expect nothing less from Penny. I would've been disappointed if she did," you joked back.

Alvez's laid-back attitude and your welcoming personality matched well, and you were glad that someone like him was part of the BAU.

“A profiler, linguist, and negotiator. That’s no small feat,” he said.

“I’ve heard you been in the hospital bed more times than anyone on team,” Alvez continued with a sense of respect.

“Haha, that’s true. I guess hospitals just call out my name on every case,” you said, slightly embarrassed while trying to suppress both sad and happy memories that seemed to flood into your head. Hospitals, specifically hospital beds, held a very unique place in your heart. It was the place where you had both the happiest and saddest memories of your life. But you didn’t want to reveal it to Alvez. At least not just yet.

“Don’t get humble on me, Y/N. According to Rossi, everyone on the team owes you at least once for saving their lives. You won’t hesitate to put yourself in a bullet to protect your teammates. That’s an aspect I truly respect and admire, agent,” Alvez continued.

“Well, you know how the team is our family. I’m sure they would’ve taken the same risks for me,” you said with confidence.

“Sure, but it’s not something that comes naturally,” he replied.

With a bit of hesitation, you said, “I was in the military.”

This answer seemed to genuinely take Luke by surprise.

“Oh, wow. That info wasn’t in Garcia’s powerpoint,” he stated.

You gave a light laugh. You were thankful that Garcia didn’t reveal something so personal about you but also knew that it was a story that would’ve been hard for her to tell without watching 3-hour cat videos afterwards to brighten back her mood.

“I was in the US military too. 75th Rangers,” he revealed.

“I could tell. The way that you talk and carry yourself reminds me of the brothers from my squad,” you reminisced.

“Ahh, the brotherhood bond you make in the military is unbreakable. It’s practically sacred. Seeing and experiencing the things you see…” he trailed.

The silence was filled with mutual understanding.

“I actually just visited a friend from my squad. He’s doing PT and it was good to see him doing well. Do you still see your squad around?” he asked.

You debated whether or not to tell him. But his understanding of the military and the fact that he was family of the family you were once part of allowed yourself to answer what should be a seemingly harmless question.

“Just one. Jim. We joined the FBI at the same time after we were discharged. I used to see him around a lot back when I was at Quantico. We still keep in touch,” you replied.

“Can I ask what you did in your unit?”

“I was a hostage negotiator on a task force in Afghanistan. I was in a squad that went house to house to identify potential threats and negotiate with possible terrorists, attackers, or civilians with hostages.”

“Wow. That must’ve been tough. Entering into houses where you’re obviously not welcomed and trying to convince them the impossible.”

“Yeah, Rossi helped me out a lot when everyone found out,” you said.

Wanting to switch the conversation, you said,

"It gets easier, by the way."

"What does?" he replied curiously.

"Liking someone on the team," you replied with an all-knowing smile.

Even with your eyes fixed on the road ahead, you could tell that he was staring at you.

His silence prompted you to ask a follow-up question.

"Did I catch you by surprise, Agent Alvez?" you asked teasingly.

"Please, call me Luke. And yes, you did. Is it that obvious?" he said with a light blush appearing on his tan skin.

"Did Garcia not mention how much of an amazing profiler I am?" you joked.

“I must have missed it between her explanation of you being a 'magical unicorn who had a gift of talking to people' and 'the most loyal and loving ray of sunshine at the end of the rainbow' she knows," he said with a chuckle.

You couldn't help but smile as you could tell Garcia still loved you despite leaving the BAU a few years ago.

"Is your advice coming from personal experience?" he asked cautiously and with an almost undetectable hesitancy. Almost.

Not dropping your joking banter but wanting to address the elephant in the room (or in the car, in this case), you answered,

"I can't give you profiling credit for that, Luke. Spencer wasn't exactly being subtle in the conference room earlier."

“Eh, I gave it a shot. But yeah, subtle isn’t exactly the word I would use to explain what happened earlier,” Alvez said.

*Flashback to 4 hours ago*

A/N: The next few chapters have a bit of exposition, but I promise the story will become more eventful in later chapters!

#criminal minds #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x y/n #spencer reid angst #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid imagine

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kindlyones · 3 years

Text

Diary of Baldwin Montclair

Dear Diary,

I haven’t written in you in quite some time! But I found you in my hiding place at Sept Tours and I have a lot on my mind and would like to organise my thoughts. No one has managed to crack the code Pater and I devised when he orchestrated the death of Caesar, so I feel safe enough confiding in you.

What’s bothering me today is the continued pattern of “vampire murders” in the news. I hope to the Gods it isn’t Matthew. He seems happy enough holed up in his laboratory. Miriam swore to look after him and she would speak up if something were really wrong.

Strong armed Knox into giving a statement to the press saying there was nothing supernatural about the murders. He seems more receptive to Gerbert than myself, so I had to convince Gerbert to approach him. Gerbert gave me the go around, but eventually agreed to do it, as if our entire way of life didn’t depend on this.

Dear Diary,

Saw an advert for some Hercules musical production on Broadway. Thinking about Pater. I wonder if he really thought of Matthew as his son?

Dear Diary,

Saw Katerina. Feeling much more relaxed. I’m keeping an eye on China today. Looking into steel futures.

Dear Diary,

I’m in London. It rained a lot and now my house smells odd. I shall need to call someone to check for mould.

Dear Diary,

There is mould in my wine cellar. I repeat, there is MOULD in MY WINE CELLAR. As the youths on Twitter say, this is not a drill. I need to call in a specialist. My London wine collection cannot simply be moved as if they were bottles of Coca Cola.

Dear Diary,

I refitted my Thames penthouse for my most precious and delicate bottles of wine. Going to bid on the ‘45 Romanee-Conti from Drouhin’s cellar. I drank the last one when I thought it was at a risk of mould. Matthew sent me an email about it. He likes me to know he still has spies watching me.

Dear Diary,

Mixed news today. I got the ‘45 Romanee-Conti, but some cunts from China drove up the price and I had to pay $558,000 in USD. Absurd that I have to pay that much after all I did to set up trade routes to introduce wine to France in the first place. Everyone keeps asking me what I’m going to do with it. Obviously, I am going to drink it by myself while I pull my hair out over Matthew’s latest drama. He has abducted a witch. I can’t contact him. Everyone looking to me for answers, as if I understand one ounce of what’s in that libertine’s brain.

Dear Diary,

It is so much worse. He didn’t abduct her. They are in love. Marcus claims they are mating. He is usually reliable, but barely over three hundred. What the fuck does he know. Going to Sept Tours. The witches are very keen to speak to this woman, so I’m going to use her as a bargaining chip to stop them from seeking retribution against Matthew. They get their witch and Matthew gets to live another day to ruin my life yet again. Everyone is hell bent on some mythical quest involving the Book of Life. As if. I remember when we didn’t even have books, we had scrolls and tablets. If it were that important, it would be written in stone, like all important documents. How could a book tell us about something that happened thousands of years before I was born? If he had wanted to know of our origins, he should have spent more time with Pater. I saw more in his blood than any “book” could ever tell me.

Dear Diary,

What the actual fuck. I went to get the Bishop witch from Sept Tours, aka MY HOUSE on MY LANDS that I earned from TWO THOUSAND YEARS OF SERVICE TO MY FATHER AS HIS ONLY SURVIVING SON only to find she had already been taken by a flying witch. Why do I even bother showing up for Congregation meetings if this is what is achieved. Matthew was flailing. I had to talk him through it and remind him that witches don’t fly that far and he built most of the castles in the area himself. Finally we ended up pulling the witch out of an oubliette in the Cantal. No one was guarding her. Extremely suspicious. There is nothing particularly special about her. She can barely do magic. I suspect she might be spellbound, but she doesn’t seem insane enough. The best and easiest course of action would be to simply eliminate her from the board, as it were, but Ysabeau managed to find some semblance of her old terrifying self and put her petite foot down. I gave the witch the best advice I could and left. She is even less of a strategist than Matthew. If she listens to me, perhaps she will have a chance. Perhaps I should have just left and let her get herself killed, but Pater made me promise to protect the family when he made me paterfamilias and that includes Matthew. At least the witches’ trespass on de Clermont land has given the Congregation something else to talk about and now they no longer have the moral high ground as the injured party.

Dear Diary,

I am tired of everyone acting like being the de Clermont family head is something I just love doing. Like I want to be up in everyone’s personal business, managing them like children. Pater gave me a job to do. Pater never gives easy jobs, least of all to me. Wonder how long before the killing starts.

Dear Diary,

Thinking of Eva. I always thought I would see her again before I died. Does she think I didn’t pay dearly for what I did? Does she think I am not still paying for it now? I live under the weight of the consequences of my actions every day. I wrote her an email and deleted it before I sent it. She is in America now, close to New York. I wonder if she ever comes into the city.

Dear Diary,

Well, it’s started, and first on the docket is ME. Had to vote against my own execution today. That’s a first. They wanted to behead me and burn me, presumably still alive. Why did we never update that part of the charter? I’m going to replace the librarian with someone I can trust. That was too close for comfort.

Dear Diary,

Matthew and the witch have vanished. I am trying to locate them. Had the damnedest time getting into the Bishop house. No matter which way I turned, it kept showing me to the door. Regardless, I found no trace of them leaving the property recently. If I can’t follow them, at least no one else can.

Dear Diary,

Matthew must be enjoying playing the Boy Scout for his witch because there has not been a whiff of them anywhere. Where could they possibly be, the caves of Afghanistan? I would very much like to speak with them about whatever developments they’ve made with the Book of Life. If it will restore witches to their former power, I don’t want anyone else having it.

Dear Diary,

I dyed my hair grey. I must be having some sort of crisis. It’s nice to look somewhat as old as I feel. These past few months have aged me more than the last hundred years. I’ve taken to wearing all black. I have a right to be a bit angsty. I can’t even manage to lead the way Pater did on my own for a measly hundred years without our entire way of life falling apart as well as the legacy of our family. I keep asking myself what he would do. People obeyed his orders because they loved him. Nobody loves me. Philippe was everyone’s hero, and when I do exactly as he did, I’m a tyrant and a bully. Ysabeau told me she hated me to my face for the first time. I wish I could get drunk but it’s really not the time. I could be needed at a moment’s notice. They don’t love me, but they still need me. And I made Pater a promise.

Dear Diary,

Bloody Marcus is the head of the Knights of Lazarus. The child takes part in a single revolution and thinks he is some beacon of hope to the world. Meanwhile, the vampire murders have stopped. I really hope it isn’t Matthew. That would be the last thing we need right now. I am a veteran of hundreds of wars, let alone battles. I should lead the Knights. Marcus wasn’t even alive when there were knights. He isn’t a knight. He just plays at one.

Dear Diary,

My house has been overrun with daemons and witches. I try to turn up at unexpected times to see if I can catch them plotting against me. The revolution is being fomented from inside my own house. No word on Matthew.

Dear Diary,

Gallowglass and Fernando have materialized. Verin is headed for Sept Tours for the first time since Pater. My jet is fueling up and I am on my way home. The family isn’t gathering without me for no reason. I will gather them all together and exercise my rights as head of family and make them tell me what is going on. This has gone on long enough.

#baldwin montclair #a discovery of witches #adow #baldwin de clermont #baldwin montclair fic #fan fiction #it was supposed to be funny until it wasn’t #goes through s2 so no BOL spoilers

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lazyunknownhideout · 3 years

Text

My light || Billy Russo x OC ch-1

new chapter is up on -- > lazy-ass-bitxh-blog also on my wattpad -> Rose_Davidson

Rose Wilson, an artist doing well in her profession, going out to party, traveling, living her best life. Although she gotta admit being best friends to the CEO of a multimillion military company had much of a hand in her blooming success.

Billy and Rose have been friends for three years. After Billy returned from his first tour of Afghanistan, he found a new neighbor. A quiet girl showed up to his doorstep with a shepherd's pie, claiming it to be an introductory gift. And the next day the same girl showed up asking him to help fix her plumbing. After a few help with her plumbing and light fixing and car fixing, they seemed to have formed a nice bond. Soon Billy found himself going up to her place every weekend with a pizza and spend an evening watching movies and talking about the week, for that few hours Billy seemed to forget most about the horrors he faces at the front daily. He found a confidant in her and began sharing as much as he could about his experience in Afghanistan without breaching confidentiality. Even though Billy Russo was a ladies' man, always good to talk his way into their beds and their arms, she seemed to be the one you would like to sit and have a nice cup of coffee and talk all about your day.

On the day Billy had to go back to Afghanistan he told her all about his childhood, opening up all about the abuse the tortures. He figured if he died at the front he would know there was someone who knew all about him, and hopefully still thought good about him, and rose did just that.

"Well Billy, what would you like as your coming home meal?" Rose asked as he was packing up all his bags.

Billy looked at her and smiled, "If I do come back, I will have one of your pies"

"You will come back Billy, you're a stubborn man" Billy chuckled at her words.

"Well I hope I do, until then stay safe and happy okay rose?"

"Yep" She hugged him tight and smiled looking at him.

_____________________________________________________

Timeskip--

Anvil, Billy's company has been thriving, getting a lot of clients of high profile always kept the business going smoothly, however, a small inconvenience had popped up. Homeland security agent Madani seemed to have caught a sniff of operation Cerberus and going public about it would destroy all he has worked for. So Billy did what he does best, chatted her up, and made her trust him.

He just came home after having a drink with Madani, satisfied with the progress he had made, taking all the information out of her would be easy. As he went in to take a shower his phone ranged, it was Rose.

"Hey Billy, where were you? Your phone was switched off"

"Yea I was out confidential work, everything alright?"

"It's Saturday Bill, you didn't come for our pizza night" Her voice sounded sad.

"Shit sorry, It completely went out of my mind, I could come over now order something" He stepped out of the bathroom and started looking for a change of clothes.

"Hey it's alright, you must be tired, we'll just do it next week"

"You sure its alright?" He didn't want to upset the one person he cared about.

"Yea yea, its alright, I'll see you later kay?"

"Yeah see you"

The next morning Billy found her drying a piece of her canvas on her balcony as he was returning from his morning run. Deciding to apologize for last night he walked up to her door.

As she opened the door Billy couldn't control his laugh when he saw the state she was in, clothes splattered with paint all over, face half covered in red paint, and a pencil behind her ear.

"Well stop laughing and come in" Rose rolled her eyes at his reaction.

Billy walked, "Did you run out of canvases to paint on and decided to paint yourself?"

"Shut up Russo" She shook her head unable to hide a smile creeping onto her face.

"So as I missed out on last night, I was thinking maybe go for a cup of coffee and breakfast"

"Sure lemme wash up all these paints then"

"Right give me a call when you are done, I'll be at my place"

"Okay"

------------

Billy walked up to the counter, "An espresso and a caramel latte and two bacon with eggs"

"Well you know my preference Russo" He smiled at her, ordering exactly what she had in mind.

"What can I say, I'm pretty observant and I know you well" She smiled at him and sat down. As the order cane real soon they started eating. Rose was debating whether or not to ask him about last night, deciding to just go for it she did

"Hey, so what was the work that kept you busy even on a saturday night"Billy looked up from his cup, "It was a meeting with an informant " He lied effortlessly, although technically it was a 'meeting' she called him upto meet, and as he was trying to pry out information from her it did make madani an informant.

Rose nodded her head, "And how was your week Billy, saw you returning pretty late last few nights"

Billy smirked at her,"Have you been stalking me Rose, I must say Im a bit flattered"

Rose laughed at his reaction,"I can just see your ego inflate up Russo, that car of yours is hard to miss when it pulls up in the driveway, so I guess you can say I stalked your pretty car"

Billy's smirk never faltered,"just the pretty car not the very pretty man inside it?" Rose smiled at him, it was hard to imagine this man sitting infront of her, laughing and making jokes was a person with 300 confirm kills at the upfront and had a whole organisation of henchmen at his fingertips.

"Just finish your coffee Billy" Billy chuckled at her, and sipped his coffe, "How about you how was your week" "Non monumental"

They talked about their week and all other things while having their breakfast. It seemed easy for them to talk to each other, it was effortless Billy never had to worry that she might judge him based on his work that he did, she always seemed to understand him. The only other person that he was this open with was Frank but it has been 2years since he died, even though he missed him, it was comforting knowing Rose was here for him.

She never questioned too much about his work, some times when he returns home wounded up, he goes and visits her after cleaning himself up and one cup of coffee with her seems to ease the pain.

Rose had never met someone like Billy before, he had practically everything at his fingertips, just one call away, she knew people feared Billy, she knew his service in the marines he had killed so many people, enemies, she knew everything he was capable of, but whenever she was with him, she just saw this man, someone who jokes around brings pizza for her, makes coffee sometimes and even goes shopping with her and patiently waits for her to try out many many clothes, and also provides some very constructive advice on fashion.

They walked back to their place and went on with the daily chores.

Back at Anvil things were getting quite busy with new recruiters coming in, Billy had to go in for orientation almost every day, a fresh batch of young men and women, eager to get recruited.

There was also the case of Madani, the sooner he gets to get all the information out of her the better, so far he had taken her out drinking and slept with her almost three days in a row and found out very little.

As the weekend approached Billy had the one thing he looked forward to after a rough week. It was Saturday evening, people at Anvil, finished their work for the day and were headed back. Billy thought to go grab the pizza and go straight to her place. As he was gathering up his stuff, his phone rang Dinah's name popped up.

He picked up the cellphone and answered with a gruff tired voice, "Dinah"

"Well, Mr.Russo you sound tired"

"Yea long day" Billy went on and locked his office, heading out.

"Why don't you come over then Billy, vent some of that tension out" She said in the best sultry voice she could manage.

Billy smirked, "Careful there agent Madani, this might just become a regular thing"

She chuckled, "Why do you have plans tonight?"

Billy took a moment before answering her, maybe if he called Rose she would understand, it was just pizza and movie, it wasn't like they were dating. And he couldn't miss any chance that he can get to search Madani's house.

"No, no I'm free I'm coming over, hope you are ready for me"

"Why don't you come soon and find out" She hung up.

Billy dialed Rose's number, hoping she wouldn't mind missing out tonight. She picked up after three rings.

"Hey Billy, everything alright?"

"Yea, listen um, something came up, so I won't be back like late tonight."

"Oh," She was upset it was evident in her voice.

"I'm sorry Rose" He said softly. "How about coffee like last week?"

"Yea don't worry Billy, it's alright. Job is important"

A tinge of guilt washed over Billy. He did still hesitate a bit but still, went on to Dinah's place.

-------------------------------------------

Rose looked over at the clock, 35mins since she ordered her pizza, "Well I should be getting it for free now then", she decided to watch a movie herself, after all, it wasn't Billy's fault that urgent work came over.

The doorbell rang and she went over to collect her pizza.

"That will be 8 dollars, ma'am"

"Shouldn't it be free, you are over 30min"

"No ma'am sorry, we don't have that policy"

"Alright then" She went in to get her purse, as she came back out she was shocked to see the pizza guy holding out a gun, pointing at her.

"Don't dare to scream or move, I won't hesitate to shoot"

Rose was frozen in place, too shocked to comprehend what was even happening. The man came up tied her hands behind her back, all while pointing the gun at her throat.

"What do you want!"

"Shut up girl! You are leverage for Billy Russo. Now don't make a single noise while I take you downstairs. One scream and the bullet goes straight in."

"If I'm to be leverage then I wouldn't be much use dead would I?" Rose regretted it as soon as those words came out of her mouth.

The guy gave her a deadly stare and put gauged her mouth shut and shoot a bullet at her hand. Her scream was muffled by the gauge covering her mouth, she struggled to free her hands but the knot was too tight, the man dragged her to the door and pulled her up.

"Now don't cause a fuss and come quietly or the next bullet goes through the leg. Rose didn't dare to struggle against the guy, he was a foot taller than her, and manhandled her like she weighed nothing. He dragged her out and shoved her into the car. There were two more men inside the car, she tried to take a closer look at their faces when suddenly a hand came in and put a cloth over her face, and then she blacked out.

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chapter 2

A.N: Hey there guys!! hope you like this start, its just the first chapter so not much BillyxRose in here except a build-up of their relation, but there will be action in the next chapter so brace yourselves!

And also: review! review! review!

#billy russo #billyrusso #fanfiction #benbarnes #ben barnes #billy russo imagine #smut #jigsaw #thepunisher #billy russo fanfiction

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