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seasideretreat · 3 months

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To pick up a pen is to be at war

"Two cities were formed by two loves: the Earthly by the love of self, the heavenly by the love of God." These words were written by the Christian theologian Augustine of Hippo. We see, that good things come to people sometimes, but in reality there is nothing going on. Augustine built a refined system of automatic thoughts that somehow engaged with the entire mechanism of the true world, but we lose the harmony of the pure systematicity of these thoughts, that echo wildly with the reminiscences of the old world.

The universe instructs us a certain way, to bear ills; and we are given the opportunity to relent from terrific things by taking steps to become better people, and purify ourselves. We know, that Augustine pointed to the revolutionary ideas of the infinite time, which are becoming ever more urgent. Fukuyama pointed at something that truly doesn't seem to be granted to the world, because global capitalism is somehow weaker than we anticipated, and now radicals, inspired by Godless fictions, seek to maintain a terrifying new world order in which there is no place for the weak and the meek. We must fight back against this new tide of fascism, which is truly terrifying, and the only way we can do this is by embracing either a bellicose attitude akin to British nature (which seems extremely much at hand) or by reforming ourselves in a way that might be more Marxist than we ever thought, but I have yet to read Marx; and frankly I don't know if I prefer this to the bellicose alternative, because why should we cower for fascism - give our freedom away - to a way of life that doesn't fit our Germanic, Anglo-Saxon way of life, in which we honestly need to position ourselves in the currents of life, and fight back against the horrendous torrents of fascism, well, and we need to set things in motion. You see, nothing will stop the fighting, but we can use common sense. It is wrong to position only toughness in the entirety of world-politics. I truly believe that the true situation is that culture truly moves in mysterious ways, but there is a better world possible, in which there is certainly religion, or failing that, a righteous struggle. This is why I am interested in communism. Some elements of communism can do a lot to move us away from a evilly religious wold-order, but still maintain a form of "soft power" in the world: solely warfare is not going to work. But we see the consistent application of Edwardian principles of austerity and impassiveness will surely aid us in defeating the enemies of freedom.

I believe in the Kampf, and there will be inconvenient situations before this is all through, but if we keep an agenda of militaristic Britishness going, we might maintain a semblance of freedom in the world. I mean, I am a hopeless anglophile, so maybe I am blinded by love, but I believe in capitalism in some form - I truly don't see how we can obey Marx economic system, but maybe we can find a place for socialism in the end, based on the more philosophical elements of Marx' ideas.

#voltaire #augustine of hippo #slavoj zizek

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theminecraftbox · 2 years

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do you have any ideas on what c!dreams goal was when he put himself in pandora?

/dsmp /rp

really, I don’t know!!

Things we know it’s definitely not:

A way to change people’s opinion of him: he wasn’t trying to achieve pity. Upon getting out he wasn’t sincerely trying to make anyone think he’s changed.

A way to unite everyone against him and achieve peace: we know that his incarceration was always meant to be temporary, so that idea doesn’t work. Plus it’s not like Dream to assume that everyone will just magically get along in his absence. That’s definitely not his managerial style.

A place for him to imprison anyone inconvenient to him: nope, everything points towards Dream himself as the only prisoner/occupant.

Things we know he prioritized about the prison:

Security: heavily fortified, not just for show; extremely difficult to leave or enter

Visitors: a strict and thorough visiting protocol that allowed him to securely communicate with certain people (Ranboo)

His own physical safety: all visitors were mandated to arrive with no items, on half a heart, such that they would pose him no threat

Austere conditions: isolation, potatoes, very little entertainment

Whatever the hell happened with Ranboo’s TNT during Tommy’s visit!! The seven day waiting period Dream wrote in the rules meant this exercise was planned in advance. As soon as we know the precise reasons for this (an escape? A distraction? A mind game with a very specific purpose? Who or what was the target? Did it succeed? Did it fail?), we’ll know a lot more about the why’s of the prison.

Incomplete list of things I think Dream wanted to accomplish with Pandora:

A conspicuous loss to make his enemies think he’d been defeated and his plots ruined, permitting his actual plans to move forward unsuspected.

A period of enforced physical safety during which his enemies can’t kill or hurt or mess with him. (Lol the irony.)

A distraction during which other things could happen that Dream has a clear alibi for.

It sure seems like he always intended to inherit ownership of the prison once he escaped: a fortified base that no one will suspect.

#pandora’s vault

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mari-beau · 3 years

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GIVE ME A REASON: PART SIX - A Rogue One Fanfiction

This is a shorter installment, and maybe pointless… maybe I’m dragging this out too long… But also, who cares, I’m doing this for fun. I just love playing with them!

Read on AO3

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Title: Give Me A Reason: Part Six

Genre: Hurt/Comfort

Characters: Jyn Erso POV, Cassian Andor

Pairing: Cassian/Jyn (mostly pre-ship?)

Spoilers: Rogue One; Episode IV A New Hope

Setting: Post-Rogue One AU (Cassian & Jyn live); Also during/post A New Hope

Warnings: Some coarse language. References to wounds. And… Cuddling?

Words: 1,720

Story Summary: Jyn’s entire universe has been turned on its head, so maybe she’s clinging a little too hard to the one thing she feels certain of (strangely enough) as she tries to figure out her place in the galaxy. And maybe she’s being a little overprotective of a wounded captain.

Also can be found on AO3.

The Death Star had come for them.

Again.

But Jyn couldn’t bring herself to care. It did seem a little strange to have been spared the last time only to probably be destroyed this time, barely a week later. But either way, it was the end to her life she now knew to be her fate, or whatever. It just felt right. It just was. Not the Death Star specifically, but,

Jyn Erso would die in Cassian Andor’s arms.

Whether it should’ve been on Scarif. Or it was here on Yavin 4. Or the next day. Or thousands of days in the future.

And there was a sort of peace in knowing that. One that allowed her to climb into his bed, slide her arms around him, and bury her face in his shoulder. He stirred and her heart skipped a beat. It was easier when he was unconscious, to consider how she felt about him, how she’d been attracted to men before, even had something akin to a relationship with one or two, but it had never felt like this.

“Jyn…?”

“Yes, it’s me. We’re on the base on Yavin 4. Safe. In your quarters.” It was easier to preempt any confusion or alarm Cassian experienced when he woke from his heavy, partially drugged, mostly just exhausted from his body’s healing, sleep.

“How long?” he asked, then realized there were static-laden voices broadcasting over the basewide intercom. “What’s going on?”

“You’ve been asleep for 12 hours,” Jyn said, moving closer and partially on top of him to prevent him from trying to get up in a rush and falling flat on his face. Also, she was admittedly afraid on some level, afraid to be alone and facing death. When he was near her, when they were physically entwined in some way, she felt like everything would be okay. Even if she died, if it was in Cassian’s arms, then everything would be okay. Irrational, yes. But that didn’t make it any less her truth.

“The Death Star is here,” she said, once she could tell he was awake enough to understand, not muddled by pain meds. “The Alliance is scrambling their forces to engage. They’re leaving the comms open, since you know…”

“We’re all dead if they fail.”

His arms wrapped around her and engulfed her in his warm embrace. Cassian Andor, a man who, she didn’t think she was wrong to guess, hadn’t received much at all in the way of affection in his life, somehow was so good at holding a person he made the pain of the universe go away, made the entire universe fade away except for his hands on her body, gentle and undemanding but also firm and reassuring, his breath hot on her neck, sending shivers down her spine, and his body beneath hers, so strong despite his injuries.

“Are you okay?” she asked, remembering the physical state of him.

“Mmm… Yes.” His hands tightened their grip on her side and shoulder, reflexively, a gentle squeeze as he murmured into her neck. “Feels good.”

He probably meant he felt fine, but oh, yes, it did feel good. Or maybe he was still quite medicated?

“My weight isn’t putting pressure on your injuries?” Jyn asked. “Maybe I should…”

“No.” Somehow he managed to pull her further into him, her breasts flattening against his chest, her hip practically fusing to his, her breath hitching momentarily and then joining the rhythm of his own breaths...in and out… in and out… in and out...

Cassian sighed, made a frustrated, growling sound.

“I need to use the ‘fresher,” he said, loosening his grip on her.

Jyn rolled off from him, swung her legs around to sit on the side of the cot and waited to see if Cassian could manage to stand. He slid to sit on the edge of the bed next to her and took a moment. She didn’t press him, though an instinct inside of her wanted to offer assistance, wanted to take care of him, wanted to ease the pain and struggle his recovery was.

He stood, again pausing for a moment, then walked slowly across the small room to his private refresher facilities. Apparently, it was one of very few benefits to his officer’s rank, for the small quarters were nothing more than a glorified closet. But she supposed it spared him from having to sleep in a large barracks with a bunch of others, not that it would’ve deterred Jyn in the least from crawling into his bed.

Part of her felt like she shouldn’t watch his laborious movements, out of respect, but she couldn’t look away. What if he needed her?

Force, what if he didn’t need her? Not like she needed him? Aw, fuck. She needed him.

She watched the muscles in his naked back twitch, stiff from inactivity and injury. But her eyes were inevitably drawn to the perfectly uniform lines of small circular marks running down his spine. She knew there was a matching sort of trail along his ribs. Injections of some sort of bacta cocktail meant to speed the fusing of the fractures in his vertebrae and ribs, injections straight into the bone. How painful would that have been if he’d been conscious, she couldn’t help but wonder, couldn’t help but want to wrap her smaller body around as much of Cassian as she could, run her hands gently over his scars, old and new, make sure his wounds were healing and his bruises fading, hear him sigh contentedly against her skin, hold him forever.

As he disappeared into the ‘fresher, Jyn realized she was hopeless.

Cassian Andor had taught her about hope. And had made her absolutely hopeless at the same time.

But why fret about it? What did it matter?

Jyn was used to dealing with life moment by moment, day by day. And she might not have many more moments, anyway.

The loud, static-laden voices crackling over the basewide intercom announced the launch of yet another squadron of fighters, then abruptly switched over to some ship’s communication officer announcing visual confirmation of the target. The Death Star.

Looming on the horizon like a moon, a harbinger of death, bringer of eternal night. Cold, austere, which made it somehow more terrifying, somehow worse than staring down an angry brute about to put a knife in you. It was just so inevitable, indomitable. Made her feel so small, insignificant, so alone.

“Do you mind if I turn this off?”

Jyn startled. How had she not noticed Cassian reappear in the small room? He pointed at the comm, which was broadcasting the prelims of a battle to determine all their fates.

She didn’t want to listen to it either.

“Please do,” she said, already feeling less… alone.

She watched Cassian lean over to switch the speaker off, wincing in sympathy with him as he straightened again, taking a deep breath that expanded his chest and shifted the muscles beneath his skin, mesmerizing her more than a little. His mostly naked body preoccupied far too many of her thoughts.

But what else had she been supposed to do? She’d woken up drenched in sweat that first night in his quarters, had to strip out of the heavy infirmary clothes, found Cassian tossing in his sleep, nearly feverish, removed the sweltering clothes from his body, as well. Little did she know, how enthralling she’d find his lean muscles, the shape of his body, the feel of his bare skin, his-

His hands cupped her face and Jyn looked up at Cassian Andor, his kriffing gorgeous dark eyes fixed on her. His fingers swept some stray hair from her forehead, tucked it behind her ear, returned to swipe gently over the nearly-healed scar above her eyebrow, in her hairline.

“Are you okay?” A knot formed in her throat. Cassian was a good man, despite every questionable thing he’d done and tortured himself over. Of course he would care about her wellbeing. It didn’t mean-

“Ow!”

“Your blaster wound still hurts?” His fingers feathered over her shoulder, not touching the freshly healed injury this time.

“It does when you jab your finger in it.” She grabbed his wrist and tugged his hand away, throwing him off balance so that he fell into her and she managed to catch him and ease him onto the bed, right where she wanted him.

A chuckle escaped him and he smiled, making something flutter inside of her. And then he was reaching for her, pulling her close.

His embrace was everything she’d never known she’d wanted. His hands stroked her back and he buried his face in her neck, nuzzling a sensitive spot just behind and below her ear.

She sighed, wrapping an arm around his middle and burying the fingers of her other hand in his messy, soft hair. She pressed gently as she massaged his scalp down to his nape, eliciting a hum of pleasure from him that vibrated against her bare skin and into her flesh.

If this was to be her last moment, Jyn held no regrets. It was a good moment.

“Jyn?” His voice had a lethargic but happy edge to it, thick and low and sleepy. She could sympathize.

“Yes?” She twisted her finger in a lock of hair curling about his neck.

“Please don’t let me sleep so long this time.” His whisper tickled her ear. “No more than 10 hours. Okay? Please?”

He wanted her to wake him up in 10 hours… Like there wasn’t a battle raging in space nearby… Like he didn’t believe they were quite probably going to die soon, incinerated by a weapon her own father helped design. Like he didn’t believe they were going to lose, after all. Somehow, he believed they would be there, together, ten hours from this moment.

Hope.

Such a man as Cassian… The most unexpected thing she’d discovered about him was his belief in hope. That he possessed any at all after all he had done, all he had seen. And then he’d given it to her.

And again, it warmed her, deep inside, that small seed of hope. She snuggled closer to the man, hoping for something she couldn’t even begin to conceive of. But yearned for it, with every fiber of her being.

#fic: Give Me A Reason #Rogue One #fanfiction #rebelcaptain #my fic #Cassian Andor #Jyn Erso #Cassian x Jyn

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hellomynameisbisexual · 3 years

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“The fear of rejection is twice as scary when the person looking out for you is not only is your parent, but they also have a higher responsibility of care because of your disability,” says Rian Hiney. As a bisexual, trans man, the 17-year-old has not only had to reveal his sexuality to his loved ones, but his gender identity, too.

Growing up being treated as a girl, Rian tells The Independent that he “never exactly felt ‘feminine’.”

“My mum used to try and dress me in pretty ‘girly’ dresses but all I remember is how I used to refuse and how uncomfortable I felt. I was constantly labelled a ‘tomboy’ and now that I am older, I totally detest the word," says Rian, who was born with an unknown condtion similar to quadreplegic cerebral palsy.

“It’s just a phase. You’re a tomboy. You’ll grow out of this’, whatever ‘this’ is’,” is the response that Rian became used to hearing.

“If I am going to be honest, when I was younger I didn’t even know what ‘this’ was, I just knew that ‘this’ wasn’t a phase, ‘this’ was me and there was nothing I could do to change ‘this’," he adds.

As Rian grew older, he gradually realised there was vocabulary - “trans” - to describe what he was feeling. The term describes a person who does not identify with the gender they were assigned with at birth, and therefore doesn't relate to a person's sexuality. But first, he had to deal with coming out as a bisexual.

“I initially came out as bisexual at the age of 15," he says. "I remember I first told my sisters and my friends. It wasn’t a massive shock to them and they actually took it quite well. I don’t think I really came out as bisexual to my parents, I just talked about bringing a girl or a boy or whoever home one day, and they had a hard time at first but they kind of accepted it. My mum did keep asking about it, ‘so who do you prefer,’ and what I got from my dad is ‘you’re missing the point, you silly girl’.”

But Rian still didn't feel quite right. Having been open about his sexuality, he was still uncertain to articulate his feelings about his gender identity without any role models to follow.

"When I first heard the word ‘transgender’, I initially thought of the offensive and outdated stereotypes of ‘cross-dressers’ and ‘lady boys’," he says. "There was no representation for me to look up to.” Rian slipped into a depression, and his sister noticed the red flagsof his mental health. With her support, Rian was able to open up about how the gender he was assigned at birth didn’t match up with how he truly felt inside.

“I just asked her, ‘What do you think of the name Rian?’, and we went from there. I told her everything.”

What frightened him was how his parents - who were responsible for his care - would react. "I didn’t want to feel like a 'disappointment' to my mum, and with my dad being your typical old fashioned conservative type of guy, I was very apprehensive."

"In the end, it wasn’t too bad. I just kind of came out with it spontaneously one day and my Dad's reaction really surprised me. He was quite calm about the whole thing and he has taken it within his stride. And apart from her at first teasing me about the name Rian (she didn’t like it at first), my mum has been fine."

Still, Rian's journey to acceptance was far from over. He quickly learned that while he was certain he was bisexual, the prejudice towards disabled people meant that others struggled to understand how he could have sexual feelings at all. And when he came out as trans, the prejudice he already faced was compounded by an unwanted fascination with his sexuality. Disappointingly, he discovered that while the disabled and LGBT communities are largely progressive and open, Rian didn't always feel accepted.

“Both communities regularly face other people’s nonsense. People being condescending, trying to teach you about gender and or disability, people treating your identity as a burden, and both communities are still fighting for their rights,” says Rian. Recent figures show that attacked on LGBT people have spiked by 80 per cent in the UK over the last four years, while the United Nations recently criticised the Government for failing to uphold the rights of disabled people following the implementation of austerity policies.

“Our sexual identities are constantly under critique,” he goes on. “Within the Trans community we are often overly sexualised. People do not see anything wrong with asking invasive questions about our genitals. Transwomen are often objects of sexual desire for straight cis‐men, but then still face violent transphobia from these cis‐men. Transmen and Transwomen aren’t looked at as ‘real’ men or women by some people, if they haven’t chosen to or been able to get surgery on their genitals.”

“On the other hand, people don’t think those who have a disability and in particular, wheelchair users have the right to be intimate. Some people can’t even comprehend it – someone at school recently said to me, ‘How can you be bisexual? You’re disabled and you can’t even have sex’. Trans people are hypersexualised and disabled people are desexualised. This is why people struggle to box me in.”

“I haven’t always felt embraced by the trans community as someone who has a disability. I have heard ableist comments made within the LGBTQI community and I have encountered ableism within LGBTQI ‘safe’ spaces numerous times. I often see people who are supposed to be allies making offensive ableist comments on social media during arguments and it is.”

So Rian is facing his situation by paving the way for others like him. He is currently on the board of Whizz-Kidz, the charity for young people who use wheelchairs, and hopes to act as a role model to other disabled and LGBT people.

He looks to a future where coming out is no longer necessary.

“I hope a time will come in the future where people won’t need to ‘come out.’ Instead people will just be allowed to ‘be’. I can’t see that happening in this generation to be honest, but I am confident that we are changing things enough so that people in the next generation will find things slightly easier. That’s what it is all about.”

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bluepecanpie · 3 years

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You know what I find hilarious about this whole ‘Labour right working to change the leadership election process’ thing? The Labour right have pretty much consistently throughout the party’s history controlled its internal structures. The only time outside of the Corbyn era that there was an effort to make the party more democratic was under Michael Foot with Tony Benn insisting on a electoral college rather than the MP secret ballot ‘mandatory selection’ (basically allowing challenges by prospective candidates to incumbent MPs for local party selection in an election without allowing the weight of the party machinery, unions, local socialist societies for support - essentially encouraging direct accountability to membership, and incentivising the incumbent MP to work harder for support) which was one of the reasons why the SDP split from Labour to begin with. John Smith returned it to ‘one man, one vote” (OMOV) to put a stop to that and to break the influence of the unions - and was further pushed by Ed Miliband to allow in disgruntled Lib Dem types disillusioned with the Conservative-Liberal coalition between 2010-2015.

Corbyn was a (un)happy accident - he wasn’t supposed to become party leader but frustration with austerity and the lack of a clear alternative presented by labour propelled him in - the very machinery that was used to rejuvenate the decaying membership (it had around 200,000 members - about half what it was when Blair came in) with middle class sorts and put in some bland dry technocratic centrist, instead propelled its most left-wing leader since George Lansbury (and maybe more than even him in some respects - either way, he was definitely more left wing than Foot, who was more of a ‘uniter’ type) and it only took 3 quid to get a membership and vote in.

But the machinery was still broadly controlled by pupils of the Blairite style of management, and they raised the membership price to 25 quid (pretty anti-poor of them, tbh), then expelled members for not being members for long enough, or voting Green in the last general election (hilarious when you consider how much Greens are also defined by middle-class types, and Labour’s irritating tendency to chase after Lib Dem and Tory votes) - all of which I remember quite well. And as you might already know, party resources were diverted from left-wing candidates (or people perceived as left-wing) to those MPs in their little cliques.

What the machinery gives, it takes away. What opportunities that the Labour left took to make the party more democratic during Corbyn’s time was squandered thanks admittedly understandable anxieties of a press already grotesquely hostile to Corbynism, and their own myopic electioneering tendencies about getting Corbyn through number 10. Now that we know that commanding the ship, doesn’t mean running it - those who’ve been running the show are now mobilising to push the electoral process back to how it was before Miliband. I think that their long-term goal is to put it back to “MP secret ballot” which would be turning the clock back to 1981 - literally forty years ago. The guy who’s now pushing for a return to the electoral college I suspect only sees it as a first step to this given this gross, tactless article he wrote on the other guy who originally pushed it in to open the party up after his death. If they win, the only time you’ll see them open it up again is probably was they prioritise killing the union influence than the possibility that anyone like Corbyn could ever happen again (hell, the man is still suspended from their party and they’re figuring if they parachute a candidate during a by-election, they’ll have forced him out)

It’s hilarious that the Labour Party has the nerve to call itself ‘democratic socialist’. This is a party so defined by elitist impulses, and bureaucratic tendencies, that their natural inclination to the wider membership is one of contempt. They fear them, so they wall off any say in their structures - and certainly don’t bother to politicise them. The membership are people to be managed and directed to leaflet and knock on doors, not peers. Some are even to be bought off by patronage with promises to councillor positions where they walk around as community ‘big men’. This is probably the logical conclusion of a reformist party that put having a place in ‘representative democracy’ over socialist politics, and to see this nonsense play out in the face of zombie neoliberalism, and the risk of of irreversible climate change is well and truly pathetic. A part of me thinks that allowing this organisation to be the representative of the British labour movement was a serious mistake, and the only way it would be rectified is if they do the honest thing and join the Lib Dems, so that an actual socialist organisation can emerge - since the LP nothing but liberals posturing as socialists.

The Labour Party does not represent the interests of the working class, but petite-bourgeois wankers who are quite satisfied with anything that goes on so long as their property doesn’t get taken from them at the very least, and business elites at the most. It will continue in its attempts to phase out the unions, now that their attempt at getting a pliable lackey in Unite the Union has failed, and in the event GMB and Unison turn on this strategy. It is aggravating that I spent nearly a decade on this pink pseudo-left organisation without pay to better my situation to see this play out, but here we are. Any serious person who calls themselves a leftist shouldn’t fuck with it, and it is enraging that it takes so much political space that no-one on the British left can’t help even talk about due to its hegemonic influence.

#labour party #democratic socialism #social democracy #lp party structures #keir starmer #jeremy corbyn #tony benn #ed miliband #not a member no more but strangely i can't help but get worked up about this shit #british trade unions #unite the union #gmb #unison

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a-for-alternative · 3 years

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Hello, A! So I was wondering do you have any headcannons about how you and B were like at Wammy's together? PS. I thought dead men tell no tales lol (sorry about the joke if you didn't like it)

// Oh do I ever... Alternative has such potential to highlight things about B’s character that develops him into the killer of Mello’s novel. The lore surrounding the first generation (and the notion of Mello writing about a dead successor that previously filled his position - his predecessor) is more poignant than I think it was intended to come across but here are some headcanons~

Wammys House:

A & B are the first to receive their secondary alias after which it becomes a kind of right of passage for other successors, choosing their own (though often not official) - to A & B, only theirs will ever be legitimate.

A is introduced to B after only 1-2 years of being at the house

A, before becoming a letter, was taken into Wammy’s due to his intellect but only later is selected as the first attempted L-backup, probably pulled from a satellite home

Alternative & Backup (A’s perspective):

His introduction to B is a pivotal moment for him. After so much loss, he sees this as an opportunity for redemption and a return to a clear path forward, and now it is under threat. B represents for A the physical manifestation apathetic fate, he is foreign in every sense, they cannot even communicate when they are initially introduced. His presence signifies A’s disposability - B is the backup plan for when A fails, like a vulture circling over head, it looms over him like a prophesy he is trying to outrun.. though, B can also overtake him at anytime, relegating him to a future that, from A’s perspective, is neither known nor the success story that he has put so much hope in. The world for Alternative at this point in his life is an unreasonable and precarious place. All he knows, up to this point as a seven year old, is that everything is fragile and must be hard won - and there is no guarantee that one can keep what they have fought or sacrificed to obtain. --- after all, he is in line to replace L and L is about as far from vulnerable as he believes a person can get --- Maybe, B also represents a challenge that requires a level of maturity that he does not yet possess - the inevitable dilemma, that this position is of such consequence to the world, that it needs the best person for it, — and that may not be him...

There is nothing genuine in the sweet smile.

The way he extends an open hand, how his soft, his boyish voice offering “ Hello, Alternative ” …

A feels an unpleasant sensation snake up his spine like a fever’s chill, empathetic aptitude ringing in his ears with all the incongruence rolling off this boy.

His gentleness feels scripted, words trilling out of his mouth- practiced and angular; absolutely, wholly contrived. A has never meet anyone with such an emptiness in their words and actions…

A returns the greeting with a stony, silent stare - I know what you are.

They slide up from the open palm to meet the foreign boy’s gaze - Blue eyes resting soft, knowing and stormy, heaven’s skies empty of angels. Alternative is standing his ground, refusing to pretend they are not here for a reason, telling himself, “I’m not afraid…”

But, he has never seen anyone with such deep eyes.

They are the windows into an empty soul, a black abyss, absolutely apocalyptic…

Alternative is capricious in his treatment of B, vacillating between animosity and empathy- at times he’s even conspiratorial , allying himself with B and undermining their superiors- beginning to identify with B (even in spite of the language barriers). Backup is clever and naïve and careless, and unreserved in a way that A wishes he felt safe to be. B is the only one that can truly grasp what he is going through but he is also very strange... -- Alternative struggles with trials & setbacks that roll off Backup’s back with ease. B is several years into his understanding of his eyes and it shapes how he moves through the world, what he feels is worth his pain, what ultimately just doesn’t matter. A is, in some ways, what B might have become if he were a little more ignorant, spared the ever present reminder that this is all so temporary.

Alternative has many faces that none are as acutely aware of as B- it is why he doesn’t take the quips and backhanded apologies personally. Alternative’s identity has been tailored to his circumstances — so much of it he had to leave behind to become this -- to his superiors, he is mature, disciplined and motivated -- exemplary if not a bit too austere. To those that benefit him, he is considerate and trustworthy- and honest. To those that he fears will take advantage of him, he is an arrogant and harsh - conniving and spoiled. When he is caught without a persona on hand, he is awkward, reclusive, and reserved. Despite this, his cardinal traits are eloquence and persistence, he thinks deeply about his place in the world and who he should be but not enough on who he is — Only B is audience to moments when he is short sighted and immature, when he is undone or humiliated - when he is elated or truly.. afraid of what lay ahead of them. When he is sick or less than who he wants to present himself as, B has been there whether he wanted him to be or not.

Alternative is attracted to B though it is initially a disquieting realization, one even he doesn’t entirely understand. It isn’t that B is unusually good looking or charming — though perhaps A has peculiar tastes that B unintentionally satisfies (I can’t imagine him actually trying)... The level of intimacy involved in knowing someone this long, on such a personal and inescapable level has made B a source of unwavering acceptance, — because he had to be. The alternative would have been sleeping next to someone he would gradually come to despise any who really wants to live that way? Yet, B comes to represent stability and unconditional regard that feels a lot like love. There is a fraternal element to it in that B anchors who he is. B is someone that has a history with him that hasn’t been erased or eroded -- that contradicts A’s perception of the world as fragile or finite - it is comforting to have something seemingly permanent ... and terrifying that he cannot start anew, if he doesn’t like who he is and cannot be hidden in the obscurity that L enjoys.

When B begins to insinuate an interest in something more, A is not initially receptive and becomes genuinely distressed. This doesn’t translate with any logical sense to B, who believes it’s born out of A’s latent fears of realizing his own sexuality... But, by the time they are entering late adolescence, A is more concerned with the prospect of romance and that becoming L is destined to be a lonely path. He sees their childhood in it’s twilight as a tragic loss that cannot be reclaimed or rewritten, and B’s subtle advances as destructive to the purity of their friendship -- but he can’t stay a child forever even if he feels a sense of unfinished business surrounding it and he can’t keep B there either... It takes B’s attention shifting elsewhere for A to begin softening to the idea that B isn't ruining what's between them but expanding on it.

Alternative has experienced depression -- at some point he was prescribed SSRIs, as a part of basic care for successors. While it does alleviate the depth of his lows, he begins to worry that it is dulling the sharpness of his mind, which he has come to see as central to his self-worth. It may have no foundation in reality but A develops an inconsistent relationship with any medication prescribed to him out of those fears. In the end, - there are some things medicine cannot fix...

A few other small things:

- A loves the smell of lavender and grass, it reminds him of his home though as he gets older this memory is more elusive and he begins to wonder if they memories from funeral flowers or even if they are impressions left over from a dreams.. did he even attend his parents funeral?

- A knows they aren’t allowed to take pictures of each other in Wammy’s for good reason but when Y sneaks a camera into the house one summer evening, he is can’t deny there is something precious about having pictures of B perched on the railing of the back steps - his hair sweep by the wind just as he turns his eyes to look, soft unfocused, — like the tender look he gives him just as he wakes up in the morning before he remembers who they are. A traces the lines of his face while lying beneath his bed, where he tucks it between the boards. It’s only a few years later that he will see how much his friend has matured. -- B hates photographs and will place them face down when they go into Roger’s office. Roger has never understood why.

- A drinks his coffee and tea black as tar. B thinks it is terribly bitter but will bring it to him anyway, unaltered. There is something uniquely enjoyable in knowing that B doesn’t need to be told what he likes~

- A is borderline masochistic though perhaps only B has any inkling of it. He would probably never acknowledge it openly... it is degrading to get a charge out of being hurt.

- A loses his faith around age 10 but still believes that he might as well act as though there is a purpose in being good and not just adept and ruthless. The only alternative, from A’s perspective, is to believe that everything he has been through meant nothing and he will ultimately change nothing. And, that may be too painful a philosophy for him to embrace.

- A’s worst injury occurred when he was deliberately shoved off the roof by an irate B ( thatvhe provoked). While it was a watershed event for A coming so close to death and experiencing the consequences of pushing B beyond that point of caring about consequences... For Backup, this a was also critically informative event, an exercise proving the numbers were infallible -- he was genuinely surprised that A survived the fall and, to a greater degree, surprised that he felt regret in having done it ... left alone in their room to wonder for days, searching for the contraband pictures from that summer A had hidden that could prove if A was even still alive....

#death note #beyond birthday #wammys house #death note a #the first child

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pacific-rimbaud · 3 years

Note

45 and narcissa x remus (recissa? black wolf? blupin?)

Drabble #45: “Tell me a secret.”

Asylum Seekers

by PacificRimbaud

Pairing: Remus Lupin x Narcissa Black Malfoy

Tags: Angst, infidelity, brief blood, suggestions of violence, swearing, mild sexual content (Rated M)

On AO3

Fall, 1978

The line to fucking another man’s wife is neither a straight nor a moral one. Would it help if I told you that of the two of us, I might be the werewolf, but the monster, unequivocally, is him?

Fucking is the furthest thing from my mind when I see her for the first time since she left school—four, maybe five years before I did. Hollow-boned and apprehensive as a hedgerow bird, she sits with one white hand splayed open on the surface of the table and the other one in her lap, like she’s waiting for one of us to serve her.

Sirius rounds the corner from Andromeda’s kitchen carrying three fingers of Ogden’s, no ice, in a cut crystal glass and sets it down, slow and noiseless, as though she’ll bolt at the sound of the contact.

She picks up the glass with the hand she’s keeping out in the open, drains it, and does it again the moment Sirius refills it.

She smells like whiskey and blood.

Arms looped around her own waist, Andromeda leans in the door frame, Moody talking close at her ear.

The sisters are representative works by the same artist, in two different moods. Andromeda is taller and more substantial: dark, warm and still, a heavy-canopied forest in an abundant summer. Narcissa is hard daylight and the sharp, mythical line of a distant peak, white-capped in perennial snow.

Her eyes are her sole submission to softness; between hers and Andromeda’s, Narcissa’s are the warmer iteration of blue.

Moody mumbles, his face erased of everything but formless intensity, and Andromeda’s vision fixes on Narcissa’s pale, restless hand, the pads of her fingers lighting on the table again, preparing themselves to take flight.

Andromeda mutters, and then she moves, palming something from Moody and taking a seat beside her sister at the scrubbed dining table.

“They’d like you to take this." Her voice comes in at a crawling crescendo, pianissimo to mezzo-piano, then retreats.

She places a vial on the table: Veritaserum, in olive green glass with a tiny cork.

Narcissa pulls in a breath, filling her belly and then her chest, and then she bends away in violent submission toward the floor, her gut belatedly rejecting what I identify as several days of nothing but booze.

Ted arrives at her elbow before she’s finished, carrying a glass of water.

Two glasses, one wet cloth to her mouth, and a full minute later, and Narcissa tips the cork from the top of the vial with her thumb, and drinks it down.

“What do you want to know?”

Her voice is scraped and austere, wounded with whiskey and sick and some other interior, mechanical insult: crying, or screaming, or both.

“Tell the rest of us what you told your sister,” says Moody, turning a chair around at the table and straddling the seat.

Narcissa’s right hand rises from her lap.

For a moment I think she’s wearing an elbow-length glove, like she’s come from a formal ball.

But she’s dressed in nothing more than a thin satin slip, lace-edged, with narrow strings for straps, skating over her unrelenting leanness, either black or dark, dark green.

It's not a glove.

She’s slicked from her fingertips to the curve of her inner elbow with dried and drying blood, a lavish, painterly layer, thick and congealed. It’s an opaque garment of gore, covering everything but a row of four lines where her weakly pigmented skin shows through, like someone has grasped her arm, then drawn their fingers away.

I don’t understand why she looks at me. Between her sister, her cousin, her brother by a hated marriage, Moody and Alice Longbottom nipping at her thumbnail by the window, she settles her wide warm eyes on me.

I watch the tide rise inside her.

I watch it breach the barrier.

I watch her flood.

She closes her glazed fist loosely, fingertips touching her thumb, in the way you would make a compassionate cage of your fingers to carry an injured bird.

“I tried to help.”

She has a flat in Muggle London that her husband knows nothing about.

It’s small, purchased with her private money in another name. She only has two rooms and a bath, but she’s cleaned it with magic, repaired it, made it sharp and neat and softened it with pale fabrics, made it private, and made it her own.

“Why me?”

It’s the first thing I say, after I’ve come through the door, and just before she closes it behind me.

She doesn’t answer straight away. Instead she pours herself a gin from a cupboard in the galley kitchen, and asks me whether I’d like one. I would, but I tell her no, thank you, and she sits on her sofa, ankles crossed underneath her thighs, and tells me why I’m here.

“Because of the way that Sirius looks at you.”

“And how is that?”

There is so little in the way of the unintentional to her that it’s unnerving.

The tilt of her head isn’t a tick or a quirk. It’s a communication.

I could press the issue, but she and I would both understand the deflection.

Call it what you will in another language, in English there’s only one word for love.

For Sirius, and for me, I believe it’s enough.

“Why not him? Andromeda?”

She’s amused by me.

I can’t help but wonder what else she delights in.

Her hair falls over her shoulder, iced gold against the fabric of her white wool jumper, while I draw a plan of Malfoy Manor to her specifications.

The entry. Staircase. Ballroom. Drawing room. The room where she sleeps. The one Lucius keeps for himself.

Where Tom Riddle lays his head down on the nights he stays.

Where else he might be found.

I don’t push for more than she gives me.

When it’s time to go, I roll the diagram, shrink it down, and shove it into the bottom of my trouser pocket next to my wand.

“Thank you,” I say. “For your honesty.”

It makes her laugh.

The next time I meet her in her flat, it’s uncomfortably close to a full moon, and I half gag on the smells of two different men clinging to her body.

She’s washed with an intensely herbal soap, but underneath that is a tinge of nervous sweat, and every unctuous, enzymatic marker of sex.

We cover things the Order already knows, and that she knows we know, but we both understand the nature and necessity of what we’re doing.

It’s safer for her, I think, to start slow, without fully understanding why I would care.

“Good luck to you,” she says while my hand finds the doorknob.

She doesn’t bite her lip. There is never a twist to her mouth.

She’s practiced to rote. Her performance of herself is without error.

I turn halfway around.

“Thank you.”

“Of course.”

I spend the hours of my turning in a vast, borderless desert of physical suffering.

I map it with my own blood, and by the time I wake, it’s a void I can’t recall.

“Try this next time.”

She sets a pot of ointment that I can’t afford on the table in front of me.

I leave it behind when I go.

She keeps rare and beautiful wines that I refuse to drink.

When I arrive at night on a Wednesday, two months into our regular, irregular meetings, she’s so glassy with ethanol that I nearly leave.

I don’t think about what she wears at home.

When she’s here, she dresses down, in satin trousers and jumpers that fall away from her lustrous white shoulders.

I wonder if this is home.

The surface of her wine rolls and coats the interior of her glass as she lowers herself to sit.

My gut pings with anxiety at the unnecessary closeness, but then she leans away, and rests her head on the leather arm of the sofa while her knees fold against the back.

“I’m going to tell you about death,” she says.

I hear the wine on her breath, and lick my own lips.

I take names, where she recalls them. Where she doesn’t, I make ticks beside dates and locations.

She finishes a bottle, and opens another, her thin arms flexing with the turn of a Muggle bottle opener.

Does she feel safe here? With her magical signature tucked away with her wand? It’s folded between the pages of a day-old newspaper, on the table beside a wingback chair neither of us ever sits in. She never so much as glances in its direction.

Half the new bottle disappears inside her.

“He smells like blood when he comes to my bed.” Her performance falters. “Every time.”

I realize, too late, that the curtain has lowered, and that the house lights have come on.

I’m not prepared to see her this way.

“Which one?” I ask.

She smiles, her mouth a narrow bow.

“All of them.”

I walk home in the dark, staring at my hands.

I feel an urge, sharp and angular and immediate, that can I only explain as the opposite of sexual hunger.

What I want is for my palm against her flesh to cancel and negate every other hand that arrived there before it.

I would smooth my skin against every inch of her.

Outside, and in.

I’m not angry. I don’t know what I am.

I won’t touch her for the world.

I’m desperate for her to ask me to.

“I can’t be her handler anymore.” I can’t look at Moody when I say it.

A week later, Moody glares at me over the rim of a soup spoon. “She won’t speak to anyone else.”

I emerge from my next change three kilos lighter.

I couldn’t afford one of them.

In the mirror in the bath, I run my fingertips through the bloody trenches of my ribs.

“Oh,” I say, dumbly. “You’ve cooked.”

I haven’t seen her since her last drop a month ago, and I’m grateful for the smell of garlic and onions, seeped into everything and overwhelming whatever secrets her body keeps failing to keep from me.

Standing at the Muggle range, she holds a spoon out over her cupped palm.

It’s more shocking than anything she’s ever done.

I open my mouth, and think, briefly, about the weight of a pomegranate seed.

My mouth blooms.

I don’t know what I need. I look for it inside the cunts of the women I meet in the discos of Muggle London.

They’re sweet, and warm, and smell like cocaine and strong perfume and laboratory hormones, and they feel fine.

They feel fine.

Sometimes when I’m inside them, I think about white-blonde hair and narrow hips.

I think about the time I saw her wearing a single red glove, ending at the inside of her elbow.

When I’m looking for what I need inside of other women, I think about her.

I’m looking for her.

“You’re moving too fucking much,” says Moody, never once looking up from his parchment. “Go out.”

He doesn’t make suggestions.

So I go.

The gleaming street reeks of urban petrichor, and the steady incursion of moisture tells me about a new hole in the right side of my left boot.

I’m waxing gibbous inside, something I’ve never tried to explain, but it encompasses something like an unreachable itch, and an ache in the marrow, and a skin-crawling restlessness that I’ve tried exorcising through bone-jarring movement and gallons of liquor, by screaming in train yards and flattening the cilia inside my ears with catastrophic decibels of music, through aggressive sex that turns me into someone I no longer know.

I dance, curled into the form of a brunette with silver eye shadow and no knickers under her shining nylon dress.

I’m stretching my own skin, ready to hurry up the inevitability of what I can already smell between us, when I see her.

She’s wearing a tight silver dress and a glamour that would fool nine out of ten wizards.

Dark hair, dark lips, dark eyes. She’s left her breasts unchanged. Left the unpadded divots of her ribs beneath her constricting dress. Left the perfect lines of her long, long legs.

I follow her out when she goes, and at the mouth of an alleyway I stop five paces behind her, and call out her name.

She’s already pulling at the frame of my belt buckle, but she does ask.

When I fuck her for the first time, against a brick wall behind a bin full of wet newspaper, she’s wearing a face that doesn’t belong to her.

I smooth my hands up her thighs.

I slide my fingers through the pulse of damp between her legs.

I erase anything she needs me to.

“Was it—”

I’m barely through the door.

An hour later, I wonder if I’ve ever been naked next to a woman.

I have.

I never have.

She lets me in again.

And then again.

Then again.

“Don’t come here if you smell like another man.”

I say it while I’m inside.

She takes shallow, open-mouthed breaths.

“That’s not fair.”

“I know. But I don’t care.”

I extract promises she can’t keep from her flesh while it quivers below mine.

While my bones construct a wolf from the materials of a man, I leave my body behind me, howling in a voice that isn’t mine.

I find my way into a dream about the scent of her hair, soaked through with both of our sweat.

“Tell me a secret.” Her open mouth lands against the skin of my belly and then slides closed, a gorging, formless kiss. She skirts my aching cock with a generous deliberation. “I’ve told you all of mine.”

“Not all of them,” I say.

I’m panting like a dog, sweating through sheets we ruined three hours ago.

She looks up at me, hair draped over one warm blue eye, the perfect proportions of her mouth still sliding beside my cock, her legs wrapped around my calf, her knickers slipping against my thigh.

I wrap her secrets in a bow, and pass them along to those who can use them.

I keep my hands buried in her hair.

I keep her secrets for myself.

#drabble #my fic #Remus Lupin #narcissa malfoy

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whitehotharlots · 3 years

Text

Previewing the 2024 Democrat Primary

Within a couple weeks of his being sworn in, just about every person on earth will wish Joe Biden was no longer president. Sure, the few surviving John B. Anderson voters will be thrilled to see 4 years of crushing austerity and half-assed attempts at Keynesian stimulus. But most people will begin dreaming about a brighter future.

Good news! The 2024 Democratic primary field is going to contain dozens of options. Bad news! They are all going to be disgusting piles of shit.

The “top tier”

While it’s too early to do any handicapping, these are the candidates the media will treat as having the most realistic chances of securing the nomination.

Kamala Harris

Kamala did not win a single primary delegate in 2020. This is because she dropped out before the first primary, and that was because no one likes her. She has no base beyond a few thousand of twitter’s most violent psychos. Her disingenuousness approaches John Edwards levels: any halfway incredulous person can see immediately beyond her bullshit. She has no principles whatsoever, and while that may be par for the course for Democrats, she lacks even the basic politician’s ability to intuit anything that might, hypothetically, constitute a principle.

Even better: she is an awful public speaker. She sounds like how a talking dog would speak if he were just caught stealing people food off the kitchen table. She communicates in weird grunts and faux sassy squeaks, which is how she imagines real black women sound like, but something about her is unable to sell the bit. She begins her sentences in halfhearted AAVE, stops and panics halfway through as she realizes that maybe this sounds fake and offensive, and then reminds herself oh wait, no, this is okay since I’m black. This doesn’t happen once or twice per speech. This is how every single sentence sounds.

Kamala is like Nancy Pelosi in that no sketch show will ever impersonate her correctly, because anything that came close to authenticity would be considered far too cruel. This might benefit her in the primaries, as she exists in the minds of Democrats as someone and something she absolutely is not in reality. Nominating her would be like allowing your child’s imaginary friend to attempt to drive you to the store.

Andrew Cuomo

Easily one of the 50 worst people alive, Cuomo has a solid chance because Democrats, same as Republicans, are unable to differentiate between electability and self-serving ruthlessness. Cuomo used the deadliest public health crisis in American history as a pretext for cutting Medicaid and firing 5,000 MTA workers, and his approval rating increased. New York Dems are little piggies who love eating shit. If we assume that the political media will continue their habit of refusing to discuss the legislative history of right wing Democrats, Cuomo might well cruise to the nomination and then lose to literally any human being the GOP nominates by an historic margin.

Joe Biden

The party loves him because he is a right wing racist. “Progressives” tolerate him because black primary voters over 40 supported him, and their opinion is supposedly a magic window into god’s truth. Everyone else can tell he is manifestly senile. I don’t put it above the DNC to pick a candidate who is in horrible health, dying, or even dead--whatever the financial sector wants, they’ll get. But I would be shocked if his approval rating is above 39% by mid-2023, and by that point deep fake technology will be advanced enough they’ll put out a very lifelike video in which the Max Headroom version of Joe explains he’s proud of his accomplishments--that budget’s almost balanced already--but, man, I gotta abd--I gotta abdica--, uhh, I gotta, I, uhh, I gotta move down, man.

Wild Cards

These candidates would have all have a chance if they ran, but they could all much more easily retire to Little Saint James off of kickbacks they’ve gotten from Citibank and I.G. Farben.

Rahm Emanuel

Rahm is going to receive some hugely influential post in the Biden administration. Let’s say he becomes Secretary of Education. His signature achievement will be replacing all elementary school teachers with Amazon’s Alexa, which saved the taxpayers so much money we were able to quadruple the number of armed police officers we put into high schools. This will give him several thousand positive profiles on network news programs and the near-universal support of the Silicon Valley vampires who will own 99% of the country by the time Biden’s term ends. They will use their fancy mind control devices to convince geriatic primary voters that Rahm’s the one who will bring Decency back to the white house. His candidacy will be the paragon of wokeness, as expressing concern toward the fact that he covered up the police murder of a black guy will get you called a racist.

Rahm has a bonus in that Jewish men are now Schrodeniger’s PoC. When they are decent human beings, they are basic, cis white men who are stealing attention from disabled trans candidates of color. When they love austerity and apartheid, they become the most vulnerable people of color on earth and criticizing them in any way is genocide. No one will be able to mention a single thing Rahm has ever done or said without opening themselves to accusations of antisemitism, and that gives him a strong edge against the rest of the field. The good news is that an Emmanuel candidacy would result in over 50% of black voters choosing the GOP candidate--which, I guess that’s not really good but it would certainly be funny.

Gavin Newsom

Newsom is every bit as feckless as Cuomo, but he doesn’t put off the same “bad guy in an early Steven Segal movie” vibes. He will mention climate change 50 times per speech and no one will bother to mention how he keeps signing fracking contracts even though his state is now on fire 11 months of the year. If anything, this will be spun into an argument about how he’s actually the candidate best suited to handle all the water refugees gathering on the southern border. Look for his plan to curb emissions by 10% by the year 2150 to get high marks from Sierra Club nerds. He’s also a celebate librarian’s idea of what constitutes a handsome man, so he’ll have some support from the type of women who claim to hate all men.

Larry Summers

I mean, why not? Larry, like most members of the Obama administration, has politics that are eerily similar to those of Jordan Peterson. In normal circumstances, this makes a person a dangerous fascist who should not be platformed. But if that person has a D next to their name this makes them a realistic pragmatist who has what it takes to bring suburban bankers into our tent. If current trends in Woke Phrenology continue apace, Larry’s belief that women are inherently bad at STEM will be liberal orthodoxy by 2023, and his dedication to the Laffer Curve could see him rake in massive donations. Seriously, I’m not kidding: cultural liberalism is now fully dedicated to identity essentialism and balanced budgets. Larry is their ideal candidate. If he were black and/or a woman, I’d put him in the very top tier.

Jay Inslee

Unlike Newsom, Inslee’s attempt to crown himself the King of Global Warming won’t be immediately derailed, since his state is only on fire because of protestors. This, however, poses a different problem. He’s going to be a good test case for the Democrat’s uneasy peace with the ever increasing share of the electorate who become catatonic upon hearing a pronoun. On the one hand, you need to take their votes for granted. On the other hand, they’re not like black people or regular gays: most voters actively, consciously despise wokies, and associating yourself with them will ruin a campaign even in deep blue areas. There’s still gonna be riots in a year. Biden’s gonna announce the sale of all our nation’s potable water to the good folks at Nestle and some trans freak named Sasha-Malia DeBalzac is going to use that as an opportunity to sell their new pamphlet about how it’s fascist to not burn down small businesses. No matter what Inslee does in response, it’ll end his career.

AOC

I’m not one of those “AOC is a secret conservative” weirdos, but I am aware enough of basic reality to know she has zero chance of coming close to the nomination. The right and the center both regard her as a literal demon. The party is already blaming her for the fact that a handful of faceless Reagan acolytes failed to flip their suburban districts even though they ran on sensible pragmatic proposals like euthanizing the homeless. The recriminations will only get more unhinged when the Dems eat shit in the 2022 midterms. She will be a Russian, she will be white male, she will be a communist, she will be a homophobe: any insult or conspiracy theory you can name, MSNBC will spend hours discussing. Her house seat challenger will receive a record amount of support from the DNC in 2024 and it’ll be all she can do to remain in congress.

Larry Hogan

Don’t be dissuaded by the fact that he’s a Republican. Larry is the DNC’s ideal candidate: a physically repulsive conservative who owes his entire career to appealing to the most spiteful desires of suburban white people. He’s an open racist in a material sense--if you’re old-school enough to think racism is a matter of beliefs and actions, rather than the presence of cultural signifiers--but his is the beloved “never Trump” style of racism that Dems covet. He’s also a Proven Leader who thinks the role of government should be to finance the construction of investment property and give police the resources they need to run successful drug trafficking operations. Few people embody the Democrat worldview more than Larry.

The Losers Bracket

These people will have at least a small chance due solely to the fact that the Democrats love losing. They have lost in the past, and in the Democrat Mind that makes them especially qualified.

Joe Kennedy

The man looks like a mushroom-human hybrid from a JRPG. Trump proved that physical hideousness need not doom a presidential bid, but a candidate still needs some kind of charm or oratorical abilities or, god forbid, a decent platform. Joe aggressively lacks all of these things. A vanity campaign would be a good way to raise money and perhaps secure an MSNBC gig, so Joe might still run.

Mayor Pete

I am 100% convinced that Pete’s 2020 run was a CIA plot meant to prevent working class Americans from ever having a chance of living decent lives. I am also 100% aware that Democrats are dumb enough to enthusiastically support a CIA plot meant to prevent working class Americans from ever having a chance of living decent lives. If we have some sort of military or terror disaster between now and 2023 the Dems are sure to want a TROOP, and wait wait wait you’re telling me this one is a gay troop? Holy hell there’s no way that could lose!

Stacy Abrams

Never underestimate the power of white guilt. She lost the gubernatorial race to Gomer Pyle’s grandson, and her spiritual guidance of the Dems saw the party lose black voters in Georgia in 2020. Nonetheless, she is regarded as a magic font of fierceness within the DNC. She might stand a chance if she can establish herself as the most conservative non-white candidate in the field, but there’s going to be stiff competition for that honor.

Elizabeth Warren

Liz is probably angry that the party so shamelessly sold her out even after she was a good little girl and sabatoged Bernie’s campaign for them--yet another example of high ranking US government officials reneging on their promises to the Native American community. Smdh. The fact that this woman hasn’t been bankrupted a dozen times over by various Wallet Inspectors genuinely astounds me. So Liz is probably going to run again, and her campaign will be even sadder the second time around.

It might surprise you to hear this if you don’t work at a college or NGO, but Liz diehards actually do exist. She’ll get even less support this time because there will be no viable leftist in the field for her to spoil, but she’ll still hang in long enough to make sure the very worst possible candidate beats out the second worst possible candidate. Maybe she’ll fabricate a rape accusation against Sherrod Brown. Maybe she’ll spend her entire allotted debate time doing a land acknowledgment. With Liz, anything is possible--so long as it ends in failure.

Amy Klobuchar

Amy was the most bloodthirsty of the 2020 also rans. She will double down on the unpopular failures of the Biden administration, explaining that if you weren’t such a selfish idiot you’d love the higher social security retirement age and oh my god are so such a moron you think you shouldn’t go bankrupt to get a COVID vaccine? There’s a non-unsubstantial segment of the Democratic base that’s self-hating enough to find this appealing, but it won’t be enough to make her viable.

Martha Coakley

She lost Ted Kennedy’s senate seat to a retarded man who was pretending to be even more retarded than he actually was. Then she lost a gubernatorial race to a guy who openly promised Massachusetts voters that he would punish them for electing him. Her record of failure is unparalleled, making her perhaps the ideal Democrat standard bearer for the twenty twenties.

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aowski · 3 years

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Changing the Narrative

It seems that death is coming at us from all sides these days. Police shootings, mass shootings, road-rage shootings, COVID deaths, and the execution spree of the last administration.

What most of us know about the death penalty in America, we probably gleaned from movies like “The Green Mile”. In our minds, we confine it geographically and historically to the old South. I propose that it encompasses more of our lives than we care to admit. We just don’t see it and recognize it as such. The sentence of death hangs over all of us. We’ve become numb to all the ways this is true, especially if it doesn’t directly affect us or our demographic today. But executions are happening daily in this country. It might help if these executions were categorized:

Judicial Execution - Death administered by the State, as a punishment for a capitol crime, usually for being too poor to afford a proper defense.

Civil Execution - Death administered by law enforcement as punishment for no reason at all except being a poor person of color.

Stochastic Execution - Death administered randomly in a public place by another person by reason of their own uncontrolled rage and easy access to military-grade firearms.

Domestic Execution - Death administered by a significant other, usually an aggrieved spouse or lover. Again rage combined with easy access to firearms. May result in stochastic execution of others.

Policy Execution - Death administered by state austerity that neglects human well-being. Reverend Barber’s “Policy Violence”.

Economic Execution - Death administered by poverty. Holes in the social safety net coupled with grievous inequality depriving people of access to food, water, shelter, and healthcare.

Environmental Execution - Death by industrial pollution, its toxic effects on food, water, or air, and climate change.

Epidemiological Execution - Death by a communicable virus that spreads like wildfire because of government negligence, politicization, assertion of personal freedom, and utter disregard for the well-being of others.

Self Execution - Death caused by our own hand. More than the act itself. The culmination of untreated depression, bi-polar illness, or hopelessness, i.e. the psychic death that precedes it.

Taken together, the result is...

Actuarial Execution - The reduced lifespan resulting from living in the United States. With a life expectancy of 78.5 years (per a WHO 2019 report), we have fallen to 40th among the world's nations in life expectancy! These are Life-years stolen! How did we get here? What is it about America that has made 39 others countries a better place, a place to live longer?

We have accepted a "culture of death", a phrase coined by Pope John Paul II. The Psalmist called it “the Shadow of Death”. In this country, the culture of death began with genocide of the indigenous, but gained an enduring foothold with slavery.

Slavery was the foundation of the economy at our country’s inception and was well-represented at the Constitutional Convention:

Let us consider the first fifty years of our national history. There was never a moment during this time when the slavery issue was not a sleeping serpent. That issue lay coiled up under the table during the deliberations of the Constitutional Convention in 1787.— John Jay Chapman

Much of our Constitution was an agreement made by compromising with slave-holding states and interests. The most notorious artifact was the “three-fifths” clause which counted slaves as 3/5 of a human being for the purpose of apportionment, thus giving the slave-holding states disproportionate representation. The Second Amendment is another concession to the interests of slavery. By the time of the Convention, “Slave Patrols” were well established in the South. There was concern that Article 1, Section 8, giving Congress the power to form and finance armies could gain control of state militias. Virginia would not ratify the Constitution unless the Second Amendment was included.

The cohesion (and fragmentation) within our society is based on identity. Too often this identity is not based so much on common interests, but on caste.

Identity is not who we define ourselves to be, but who we define ourselves to not be. More to the point, we understand ourselves to be in a hierarchy, so we define ourselves by who we are above.

They have had to believe for many years, and for innumerable reasons, that black men are inferior to white men. Many of them, indeed, know better, but, as you will discover, people find it very difficult to act on what they know. To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger. In this case, the danger, in the minds of most white Americans, is the loss of their identity.—James Baldwin

"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." —Lyndon B. Johnson

It is a human failing that we need a scapegoat to blame others for our shortcomings and vulnerabilities. White people impugn our shadow on Black people and other minority groups. Everything White America refuses to believe about itself, hates about itself, is projected onto people of color.

The white man's unadmitted and apparently, to him, unspeakable-private fears and longings are projected onto the Negro. —James Baldwin

Of all the things we want to push away from ourselves, the certainty of our death is chief among them. Yet...

Mortality the reality that we are most adept at denying.

Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have.

—James Baldwin

And, again, White America, finds it convenient to avoid the reality of death by projecting it on others:

White Americans do not believe in death, and this is why the darkness of my skin so intimidates them.

—James Baldwin

Is this is why White America has been so indifferent to the suffering and death of Black Americans? Per CDC data, life expectancy for Black Americans is approximately five years less than the population as a whole. Indifference may not be imputation, but it does translate into the lack of political will to change things.

Racism is the Poison. Although inequality disproportionately affects people of color, all working and middle-class people are struggling to survive. Compared against other wealthy Western nations, America’s systemic ills are dragging us all down into the shadows of death.

...racism is a poison first consumed by its concocters. What's clearer now in our time of growing inequality is that the economic benefit of the racial bargain is shrinking for all but the richest. The logic that launched the zero-sum paradigm-I will profit at your expense-is no longer sparing millions of white Americans from the degradations of American economic life as people of color have always known it.

—Heather McGhee (The Sum of Us)

Solidarity is the alternative and people are waking up to it:

Everywhere I went, I found that the people who had replaced the zero sum with a new formula of cross-racial solidarity had found the key to unlocking what I began to call a "Solidarity Dividend," from higher wages to cleaner air, made possible through collective action. And the benefits weren't only external. I didn't set out to write about the moral costs of racism, but they kept showing themselves. There is a psychic and emotional cost to the tightrope white people walk, clutching their identity as good people when all around them is suffering they don't know how to stop, but that is done, it seems, in their name and for their benefit. The forces of division seek to harden this guilt into racial resentment, but I met people who had been liberated by facing the truth and working toward racial healing in their communities.

—Heather McGhee (The Sum of Us)

A New Way, a way of life, a way of economic security is possible, but only if we seize the moment we are in. A moment of crisis is also a moment of opportunity. As we come out of a once-in-a-lifetime crisis, more people are facing the bankruptcy of 40 years of trickle-down Reaganomics.

Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced —James Baldwin

The politics and messaging of racial scapegoating is deeply embedded in the American psyche. Race-baiting and fear are the tools used against solidarity. The answer is a new story, a race-class narrative.

If we lead with a shared value, that means race and class, for example, ‘Whatever your race, gender, or religion, most of us work hard for our families. Every child, regardless of where they come from, deserves a chance to pursue their dreams.’ Reminding us of our common humanity (that’s a good place to start) and then saying that racial scapegoating is a weapon that economically harms all of us. You’re actually putting a shot in your listeners’ arm, inoculating them, so the next time they hear that racial scapegoating, they have antibodies for it. —Heather McGhee

This is the pivotal moment we find ourselves in. Our choices are to continue with the old story of racism, division, and death or to embrace a new story, a story of solidarity and an abundance. This can happen when we realize we are more than "The Sum of Us" (McGhee).

#death #execution #police brutality #COVID #white #black #life expectancy #zero sum #inequality #political #solidarity #baldwin #heather mcghee #identity #racism #trickle down economics #resentment #race-class #the sum of us

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sasorikigai · 4 years

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BLOOD TIES - Prelude Meta

Years ago, a great war between realms brought the universe to the brink of destruction. In their most desperate hour, Earthrealm's champions rallied in strength and spirit—saving their world from the forces of evil. In the years that followed, there existed a peace between realms for the first time since the Mortal Kombat tournaments began. But peace did not last for long...

The story begins in the Himalayan wilderness with Kenshi Takahashi battling infamous Red Dragon member Hsu Hao and other Red Dragon members with Takeda Takahashi, his son. While Kenshi is quick to attempting to subdue his enemies in order for Takeda to escape, Kenshi incites by trespassing the Shirai Ryu Territory, which smoothly transitions forth Hanzo Hasashi’s abrupt intervention, which quickly disposes of Hsu Hao by a skewered kunai to his chest, with a flaming fist impaling the Red Dragon’s head.

Even in this brief fighting scene, it could be referenced that Kenshi and Hanzo has been close friends, who would reciprocally save each other’s lives, and acting not only on vengeance, but justice (but this parallel and ongoing concept when it involves Hanzo will come later on, repeatedly, in fact).

"Good is not nice, polite, well-mannered, self-righteous, or naive, though good characters may be some of these things."

Hanzo Hasashi may be a redeemed character who has gone through hell and back to experience growth and redemption, but he is a natural loner - a lone wolf throughout the franchise, ever since he lost his family, his clan, along with his life. His senses of duty may force him to perform heroic acts, but he does not consider chitchat or politeness to be parts of their obligations, lest someone really deserves it through mounted trust and reciprocation as it is extremely hard to downright trust anyone. Also, he may want to be an affable person, but Hanzo believes that being nice does not always get things done, and that doing good requires them to be harsh and cruel, particularly if he has to teach something. This may be an intermittent effect, applied only when necessary; to train Takeda, who wasn’t obviously handpicked by Hanzo himself, but taking care of him on Kenshi’s behalf.

Hanzo may be no longer an Anti-Hero, nor Vigilante Man, but he still harbors that significant dualism in a sense that he could be a genuinely friendly, sociable, caring person, always looking out for his friends and family and trying to do the right thing. It's just that this niceness doesn't extend to giving free passes to the truly vile and horrific among his enemies (Quan Chi in canon, Havik in the comics). They are the reason why the villain should Beware the Nice Ones, especially since Hanzo is not gonna wait to be angered or snap before the inevitable beatdown/killing begins. Hanzo will find them, will stop them and (if they're lucky) will kill them before they can hit that Berserk Button (where Hanzo fails, which will come later on with Hanzo vs. Havik fight).

The Shirai Ryu Temple is full of Shirai Ryu warriors who lost their families in the Netherrealm War, sole survivors like Hanzo Hasashi himself. It’s a jarring reminder of his death, and resurrection as Scorpion, as he would serve as the Enforcer of the Netherrealm on Quan Chi’s leash... With all things past him, as Kenshi Takahashi helped Hanzo to get him out of the darkness, Hanzo reciprocates the good deed upon them. Kenshi has his own vengeance as Kenshi was performing a deep covert cover mission to eradicate the Red Dragon’s cult leader, Daegon. When his cover was blown, his son living in Thailand was also blown and Suchin (Kenshi’s wife) was killed in gruesome matter before Kenshi could get there, but Suchin was smart enough to hide Takeda in the next town, to escape slaughter. Hanzo takes him in, as he sought revenge and find death. Takeda fears and resents Hanzo, because he is a wraith from hell. Kenshi, intimately knowing of Hanzo’s demons, tells his son that Hanzo conquered his own years ago. When Hanzo catches Takeda running away from the Shirai Ryu Compounds, he catches up to the boy and tells him.

“You are a survivor, Takeda, like me. But Shirai Ryu do not run. We fight.”

This philosophy, the strong, iron-willed Sasori Hanzo wears will be a continued ouroboros that will repeatedly return as the comics’ events continue. It will also become the catalyst in Takeda’s harbored strength as he grows from a weak boy to a formidable warrior.

Hanzo trains Takeda, as the young Takahashi battles Forrest Fox, who comes on top as he gets beaten over and over again. Years later, Takeda simply feints using his speed, instead of countering Fox when he attacks. Hanzo immediately calls Takeda out for playing around, even when he could have utilized his advantage to strike at first opportunity given. Hanzo does not hold back with his criticism, be imposing and charismatic when he needs to be, while also offering protection towards Takeda, as he assigns Fox to protect him.

"Regard your soldiers as your children, and they will follow you into the deepest valleys; look on them as your own beloved sons, and they will stand by you even unto death."

Imposing, intimidating and austere, Hanzo Hasashi, at least before the events of MKX storyline still harbors the duality of his personality (Hanzo and Scorpion), Scorpion being that of vengeance, hatred and wrath, while Hanzo is his humanity and compassion. One of the worst things Hanzo’s enemies can ever do with him is to do something that gets him well and truly furious, because rage makes him close to being unbeatable despite him being a mortal being now. He will go into a frenzy and become stronger, faster, braver, more agile and more indestructible than he has ever been, and he will annihilate anyone who stands in his way. In Takeda’s training, Hanzo is most definitely harsher with him than any of the other handpicked ninjas, for Forrest Fox comments on “If you thought Hanzo was a harsh master before, wait until you meet the real Scorpion.” And Hanzo regards the Shirai Ryu as his blood and family - For Hanzo Hasashi is a Grandmaster, a commander cares deeply about their men and exhibits it constantly. A mentor to the officers (generals and ninjas) under them, Hanzo takes a deep personal interest in their welfare and try to keep them out of harm's way. Even those non-kombatants, who stay behind the front defense line (those that work in infirmary, women who take care of the ninjas, as being a traditional Japanese setting, there still are more women non-kombatants than their male counterparts) will be treated with utter respect and made to feel as valued as the ninjas on the front line.

Hanzo thinks of being abruptly interrupted by Raiden - unexpected and unwelcomed - as the Thunder God warned Hanzo of the Netherrealm Invasion damaging cosmic barriers that protect the Earth from realms beyond. A powerful demon from another realm broke through before Raiden could repair them. Hanzo comments that it is Raiden’s fault, and as he recalls his memory, comments to Takeda that if this demon shows up, warns that warriors don’t dance around it, but kill it before it kills him. Forrest Fox, corrupted with the Blood Code, massacres almost all of the Second Shirai Ryu and takes Takeda to Grandmaster Hasashi, who is in a mental entropy; a state produced by a psychedelic from Hanzo’s own poison collection, reliving old times to stroke the fire until vengeance consumes him. He struggled years to control his vengeful spirit, and now he’s lost yet another family, corrupted Fox waits for what Hanzo will become.

In his poison-induced delirium, Hanzo remembers the tragic, agonizing event, seemingly from a lifetime ago, Hanzo fights against Lin Kuei warriors, and comes across Harumi (Kana) and Satoshi (Jubei), who are solid frozen with Sub-Zero before him. That day, Hanzo has lost everything - his family, his clan - as he thinks himself becoming Scorpion, the hellfire never being able to burn him whole. Takeda refuses to kill Hanzo, and Fox calls on an occasion where Hanzo has been especially hard on him, considering Hanzo handpicked every fighter he trained, except Takeda, and calls him a runner, not a warrior. Hanzo gives into Scorpion’s persona, burning Fox in hellfire, then Takeda splits him in half, killing corrupted Fox as they burn the Shirai Ryu Compounds, and plans to visit Raiden, to have him beg for mercy.

Since Hellfire is often explicitly magical in nature, it may also have other affects or the way it does what it does is different from conventional fire. While normal fire might melt something with heat, Hellfire may just disintegrate it entirely, or even go against the annihilative nature of the fire itself, as it was shown with corrupted Forrest Fox under the Blood Code. Maybe whatever normal fire affected will be hot after but eventually the heat will die down but with Hellfire, the object may stay hot or even feel cold. More than that, when used on a living creature, Hellfire might not hurt it the same way as normal fire. Instead of burning the body, Hellfire may burn the soul and physical injuries are the result of a wounded spirit that may never heal. And this also goes along with how Hanzo faced his violence; immoral, thriving on hatred rather than love, not only it destroyed communal sense of his wholeness, it left his world in monologue, rather than dialogue.

Hellfire itself was a stark metaphor of his violence ending by defeating itself, Hanzo Hasashi’s own triad of body, mind and soul. For it had created bitterness in a sole survivor within him and brutality in destroying them as his cruel madness pulverized so many innocents.

At this point, Hanzo’s hatred towards Raiden is rampant; for he blames the Thunder God for giving him the Kamigodu Dagger, then having the Second Shirai Ryu massacred, to come close to losing almost everything, save for Takeda and his own life.

#✗ obsessive cathartic (headcanon)#hanzo hasashi #takeda takahashi #mortal kombat #✗ the ineffable testimony of spawned hellfire (scorpion)#✗ seeking reconciliation with his own humanity (iii)#(relationships; takeda)#(oof this took two days to write)#(it's all over the place but this will do)

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angmarwitch · 5 years

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The third installment to my Orm One-Shots Series. Also my post-Valentines gift to you all.

Summary: 5+1 kisses with our beloved King Orm.

Warnings: Angst, Fluff, Happy Ending

You fidgeted, uncomfortable at being under the scrutiny of the King and Queen of Atlantis. You felt small inside the massive foreign court, your young mind filled with fear and apprehension but you tried to put on your bravest face. There is nothing to fear, your Father had said before he sent you here, you are their guest, they will never do anything to harm you.

“Welcome to Atlantis, princess,” Queen Atlanna greeted, descending from her throne gracefully, her silver hair forming an elegant halo behind her head.

You stared at her unabashedly, fascinated by her effortless poise and beauty. She was a good Queen, kind, strong and sympathetic to her people. You know of her past, the tragic tale of her adventure in the surface, of the shame she has brought to the royal lineage of Atlantis. Yet, you found yourself nonchalant about the history of this Atlantean Queen. If anything, you just idolized her even more, admiring the courage she displayed when she spurned her husband but saddened that she may never see the other family she had in the surface.

“I thank you, your majesty.” You bowed, remembering your courtesies.

While you arrived in Atlantis to be fostered, you also represent your kingdom and your sister, who was originally the one planned to be sent here, so needed to show that you were from a good upbringing given that you are of royal descent. You can’t disappoint your parents.

“Now, your highness, let me introduce you to my son, Orm,” Smiling genially, the Queen ushered the preadolescent boy who had followed her down to meet you.

The Crowned Prince of Atlantis was a little male replica of his mother in appearance, silver hair and blue eyes, but he boasted the same air of confidence and austerity as his Father, who had frightened you a bit. So, this boy was to be your sister’s betrothed and your companion in the duration of your stay here. You were curious as to what kind of person he if he was more his Father or his Mother.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, your highness,” you chirped extending your hand to coax a handshake. You were taken aback when he choose to place a quick, courteous kiss on it instead.

“The pleasure is all mine, my princess."

II.

You found him in one of the sunken ships that settled below the city. He sat by the corner, arms hugging his knees, his face hidden by his disheveled blonde locks. You drifted towards him in an instant, wrapping him in an embrace, his head settling on your chest. Your heart broke at the first sobs he made. You wished you could do something to stop the pain and anguish he felt but it was impossible. No child should have been put in the same position as he was. It was one thing to witness his Father and Mother fight every single day but to watch her sacrificed to the Trench was very traumatic and unthinkable that you found yourself loathing his Father even more. What sort of Father would do that? You wondered and thank the gods that King Nereus wasn’t as terrifying and cold as Orvax was.

You worried about his future, about the kind of life he’ll have without Atlanna by his side. His mother had been his shield and rock, his tether to kindness and compassion. With Orvax becoming his only parent, you feared the kind of man Orm will become. But no, you were still here and you won’t allow that. You will do everything in your power to prevent Orm from becoming a monster like his Father.

"I’m here, Orm,” you cried, pressing kisses on his brow, “I’m here.”

III.

“What’s this?” You asked, eyeing the box suspiciously.

You had been busy packing your things when he arrived, preparing for your long journey back to Xebel after all the years you have spent here. Despite the excitement, you felt about going home, you sensed a deep sadness and longing forming deep in your heart. You were going to miss Orm, your best friend in the entire world. The weight of the realization that you are going to be parted with the person you have spent half your life with, hit you, square in the chest, when Orm arrived at your door, a box in hand matched with an indescribable expression written all over his face. In his blue eyes, however, were a plethora of emotions that mirrored the ones you felt inside.

“Open it,” came his abrupt reply.

Hands shaking a little, you opened the parcel in a sluggish pace and your eyes widened in surprise as you saw what was inside. It was a necklace, a simple pearl necklace. One that you had seen adorned Queen Atlanna's neck so many times. The trinket had been her favorite piece amongst the vast collection of jewelry owned and passed down by generations of Atlantean royals. You stared at Orm in disbelief, clueless and shocked as to why he would present you such a priceless piece.

“It’s a gift, something you would remember me by,” he said answering your silent question.

You gasped, he can’t mean that, can he? This necklace was meant to be given to a woman he was supposed to be married. Your sister in this case. You can’t accept it, it’s too much.

“Orm…I… I don’t think…,” you started, unable to find the right words to say. You don’t want to disappoint him by rejecting it, at the same time, you don’t seem to have the will to accept it either. You weren’t worthy.

“It’s too much, I know,” he cut you off, as if sensing your hesitation, “but you are very precious to me and I want you to have it.” He continued, his orbs softening into that pretty shade of blue that you have always liked.

You were important to him.

You could have sworn that your heart burst with so much warmth and joy at his words. Unable to suppress your emotions and gratitude, you jumped into his arms and gave him a quick peck on the cheek, never noticing the deep blush that formed in his face nor the lop-sided grin that painted on his lips.

IV.

“Let me out of here!?!" you screamed, furiously pounding on the door inside the room both he and your Father confined you in.

Ever since the messy altercation with his half-brother and Mera, Orm had locked you up in one of the guest chambers of the castle, imprisoned like those dirty criminals dwelling in the dungeons below. He even restricted your daily activities and limited your means of communication to the outside world. You know that he was aware that you weren’t a part of the conspiracy to put Arthur on the throne, you were just as clueless to Mera and Vulko’s plans as he and your Father were. There was truly no concrete motive to keep you here.

Unless, he was keeping you as a hostage, leverage to force your Father to continue fighting with him now that his engagement to Mera was severed.

You stopped.

No.

You refused to jump into that conclusion, rejecting any notion that Orm would use you as a pawn to whatever grand scheme he was fabricating.

You were his confidant and friend.

He would never do that to you.

However, the dark, devious part of your mind tells you otherwise and warns you that this man was no longer the same person you have befriended all those years ago. This wasn’t your Orm, this was a stranger, a product of Orvax's machinations. You have grown apart since he was crowned King. He barely even looks at you now.

You failed him. You weren’t able to sway him from following the path of his Father. You didn’t want to admit it but you were terrified of the person he has become now.

Your knees gave out, enfeebled by this newfound knowledge. You would have collapsed further down had it not been for the strong arms that caught you out of nowhere.

You observed your former friend through hazy eyes, tracing the shape of his face with your eyes, as he carried you across the room towards the bed. You can’t see his entire face from your perspective but there was a discernable tightness in his jaw, you desired nothing but to raise your hand and touch the outline of his face and remove all the tension set there. You don’t know why he was here. Was he already tired of hearing you scream? You wanted to ask.

However, as exhausted as you were by all the efforts you have exerted in trying to break out from this prison, you simply leaned to his warmth, enjoying one of the remnants of the familiarity you once shared. You were already drained and stressed out to start an argument. All you needed was for him to reassure you that everything was otherwise, that there was a silver lining to his plans. Adjusting in his hold, you set your head near his chest, letting the calm beating of his heart lull you to sleep. Everything pales in comparison to the semblance of peace and comfort his present proximity gives you right now. You want to savor it, to bask in it.

Succumbing to the bone-tiring exhaustion of your predicament and the melody of his heartbeat, your senses neglected to register the lingering kiss he left on your lips when he placed your unconscious form on the bed.

The battle had been over by the time you have escaped your confinement. There was no need to ask who the victor was as Arthur’s name resonated throughout the city. Huge crowds, the same crowd that once cheered Orm, had gathered in the streets to celebrate their new King.

Watching from one of the towers of the palace, you waited for the ships to arrive, your eyes scanning every person that disembarked to see any signs of Orm. The more and more they come without you catching the glint of his blonde hair caused your heart to shatter into tiny little pieces. Arthur would never do anything to harm his brother nor would he decide to kill him, right? You shook your head, you have no knowledge of what kind of person this new King was but he does not depict a picture of a kinslayer. Yes, he may have been a bit uncouth and ignorant of the royal ways but Arthur Curry doesn’t appear to be a cruel or unmerciful man.

A few more ships came but still no Orm, your hope diminishing little by little. The chanting below waned, the crowd now trying their best to enter the palace to get a better glimpse of their new King. The whole city rejoiced, yet you stood there, waiting for what feels like minutes or hours. Your lower lips trembled and your hands tightened on the railings of the balcony when the last ship came, the frontrunner of his fleet, Orm’s own battleship. The thunderous beating of your heart drowned out the noises below and your breathing grew heavier as each of the crew stepped out yet without Orm in sight. You were on the verge of giving up, already prepared to retire to the solitude of your room, defeated and heartbroken, when you finally saw him, restrained by two guards, his trained eyes on the ground as he was escorted to the castle.

Without having second thoughts, you yelled out his name, all forms of decorum long forgotten, and jumped off of the balcony with a clear destination in mind. Orm. You stopped a few feet away from him, chest heaving from swimming with a lightninglike speed, fearing that they will take him apart from you without a giving you a chance for a proper goodbye.

"Orm,” you murmured his name meekly, slowly drifting towards him, your body becoming heavier as you inched closer. The former King, stubborn as he was, refused to look at you, his face still focused downwards, you sensed the shame emanating from him.

“Leave us,” he grunted gruffly to the two guards who hesitated, unsure whether or not to follow the order of their former king-turned-convict. You shot them with a pleading look. The two exchanged glances before reluctantly releasing him.

“You shouldn’t have seen me like this,” he muttered, head still cast downwards.

“I don’t care,” you answered. Your hands quivered as you reached to grasp his face, compelling him to look at you. You choked back a sob as you saw the shadow of defeat and humiliation projected on red-rimmed eyes. There was naught left of the proud young King, the replica of Orvax, who ruled Atlantis for following his Father’s death. Instead, the man who stood before you was the same boy you have seen and comforted in the sunken ship below the city.

This was your Orm.

“I don’t care," you repeated again. He smiled forlornly.

"Will you wait for me, then?” he asked, resting his forehead against yours.

“Yes,” you nodded fervently, closing your eyes as the new tears began to fall. “Always."

The kiss you shared was fuelled by all the emotions you have repressed in all those years you have spent with each other. It was short, sweet, heart-wrenching, but it was definitely not goodbye.

It was the start of a new future.

A better one.

Bonus

He watched you as you sleep, silently observing the steady rise and fall of your chest. He had always thought that you were beautiful but he thinks that nothing can compare to the picture you painted now, dazzling in the afterglow of childbirth. He knows you will contradict him like you normally do when he compliments you, so he opts to keep the thought to himself.

Two years had already gone since his fateful battle with Arthur, and Orm still can’t believe that he was here right now, experiencing pure happiness and enjoying the marital bliss without a throne and crown, a burden which belonged to his brother now. No matter what their past had been, Orm was thankful that his brother fought him, as if it weren’t for Arthur, Orm wouldn’t get the chance to savor this kind of life. He shuddered, imagining what his life would have been had Arthur failed to dethrone him. He would have destroyed everything in his grasp, submitted to a loveless marriage, and lost the person he cared the most about.

A soft whimper coming from the bundle in his arms caught his attention and Orm looked down to see his newborn son shifting, his blue eyes so alike his fluttering open and his mouth forming into a silent snarl, ready to release a piercing wail anytime. Not wanting to wake his tired wife, the former king hummed a familiar lullaby his Mother had sung to him when he was a child. This immediately quieted the distressed child.

Smiling proudly and contentedly, he placed a gentle kiss on his sleeping son’s forehead, happy that he was finally home.

#orm x reader #orm marius x reader #reader insert #i'm lazy to think about oc names #so i write reader fics instead #post valentines #ocean master x reader #king orm x reader #aquaman imagines #orm imagines #orm marius #dc imagine #fluff #angst #my work

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gadgetgirl71 · 4 years

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Amazon First Reads for April 2020

Here we are again, it’s time to choose one of eight books that Amazon First Reads lets Amazon Prime Members download for free. At the moment I seem to be downloading more free books than ever. I wonder if it’s my mind trying to get off what is happening around the world, lets just hope that I start to read more quickly.

This months book choices are:

Psychological Suspense

What we Forget to Bury by Martin Montgomery, Pages: 439, Publication Date: 1 May 2020

synopsis: Truth and deceit blur as one woman’s desperation twists into another’s desire for revenge in this mind-bending psychological novel.

Charlotte Coburn has a tragically dark past. But she’s safe now. She lives in a gated community, protected from danger. When teenager Elle knocks at her door looking for shelter during a particularly severe storm, the woman can’t help but think how lucky Elle’s been to have found someone as friendly as her. Except Elle chose her door on purpose…

She knows all about Charlotte’s secrets because they ruined her family and her life. And it is time that everyone else knew. But Charlotte’s past has left a dark void in her life, so she is concocting her own vicious plan, convinced that Elle can help fill that void.

As events unfold, the truth unravels and pulls both women into a dangerous game that will leave you wondering, Who’s the villain?

Contemporary Fiction

Little White Secrets by Carol Mason, Pages 33, Publication Date: 1 May 2020

Synopsis: A daughter pushing the limits. A marriage ready to crack. A secret that can break them.

For Emily Rossi, life may not be perfect, but it’s pretty close. She has a great career, a house in the country, a solid marriage to Eric and two wonderful children—tennis superstar Daniel and quiet, sensitive Zara. But when her fourteen-year-old daughter brings home a toxic new best friend, Emily’s seemingly perfect family starts to spiral out of control.

Suddenly Zara is staying out late, taking drugs and keeping bad company. And just when Emily needs Eric to be an involved father, he seems too wrapped up with his job in London to care. What’s more, he’s started drinking again.

When a dark secret from the past emerges, Emily’s life is turned upside down. Struggling to protect the people she loves, can she save her damaged family? Doing so may mean keeping a secret of her own…

Thriller

The Girl Beneath the Sea by Andrew Mayner, Pages: 328, Publication Date: 1 May 2020

Synopsis: For a Florida police diver, danger rises to the surface in an adventurous thriller by the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Naturalist.

Coming from scandalous Florida treasure hunters and drug smugglers, Sloan McPherson is forging her own path, for herself and for her daughter, out from under her family’s shadow. An auxiliary officer for Lauderdale Shores PD, she’s the go-to diver for evidence recovery. Then Sloan finds a fresh kill floating in a canal—a woman whose murky history collides with Sloan’s. Their troubling ties are making Sloan less a potential witness than a suspect. And her colleagues aren’t the only ones following every move she makes. So is the killer.

Stalked by an assassin, pitted against a ruthless cartel searching for a lost fortune, and under watch within her ranks, Sloan has only one ally: the legendary DEA agent who put Sloan’s uncle behind bars. He knows just how deep corruption runs—and the kind of danger Sloan is in. To stay alive, Sloan must stay one step ahead of her enemies—both known and unknown—and a growing conspiracy designed to pull her under.

Science Fiction

A Girl from Nowhere by James Maxwell, Pages: 442, Publication Date: 1 May 2020

Synopsis: Surrounded by fire, a girl with mysterious powers and a young warrior search for safety.

Life in the wasteland is a constant struggle. No one knows it better than Taimin. Crippled, and with only his indomitable aunt to protect him, Taimin must learn to survive in a world scorched by two suns and frequented by raiders.

But when Taimin discovers his homestead ransacked and his aunt killed, he sets off with one mission: to seek revenge against those who stole everything. With nowhere to call home, his hunt soon takes a turn when he meets a mystic, Selena, who convinces him to join her search for the fabled white city. Taimin and Selena both need refuge, and the white city is a place where Taimin may find someone to heal his childhood injury.

As they avoid relentless danger, Taimin and Selena attempt to reach the one place that promises salvation. And they can only hope that the city is the haven they need it to be…

Romance

Love on Beach Avenue by Jennifer Probst, Pages: 310, Publication Date: 1 May 2020

Synopsis: True love is in the details for the Jersey shore’s premier wedding planner in this heart-swooning series about big dreams and happy endings from New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Probst.

Avery Sunshine might not have a soul mate of her own, but she still believes in happily ever after—for her clients. Making dreams come true is her business at Sunshine Bridal, which she runs with her two sisters. When her best friend announces her engagement, Avery is thrilled to take charge of the giddy bride-to-be’s big day. Less thrilling? Her best friend’s arrogant and demanding brother, who just so happens to be the man of honour.

Carter Ross’s first instinct: call 911. He promised to always take care of his impulsive little sister, and he honors that vow. Even if it means taking over her wedding, where he is sure Avery will fail. At best, Avery is unpredictable. At worst, if she’s anything like the spitfire of a college girl he remembers, the main event could run wild.

With Avery and Carter wrestling for control, tempers heat up. So does the spark of attraction they’re fighting with every kiss. As the wedding draws near, it’s time to reconcile a rocky past and make a decision that could change everyone’s lives. Because what they’re rebelling against looks a lot like love.

Contemporary Fiction

Stories We Never Told by Sonja Yoerg, Pages: 328, Publication Date: 1 May 2020

Synopsis: From the Amazon Charts and Washington Post bestselling author of True Places comes a suspenseful novel of love, secrets, and obsession.

Psychology professor Jackie Strelitz thinks she’s over Harlan Crispin, her ex-lover and colleague. Why should she care if Harlan springs a new “friend” on her? After all, Jackie has everything she ever wanted: a loving husband and a thriving career. Still, she can’t help but be curious about Harlan’s latest.

Nasira Amari is graceful, smart, and appallingly young. Worse, she’s the newest member of Jackie’s research team. For five years, Harlan enforced rules limiting his relationship with Jackie. With Nasira, he’s breaking every single one. Why her?

Fixated by the couple, Jackie’s curiosity becomes obsession. But she soon learns that nothing is quite what it seems and that to her surprise—and peril—she may not be the only one who can’t let go.

Literary Fiction

Meadowlark by Melanie Abrams, Pages: 238, Publication Date: 1 May 2020

Synopsis: A haunting novel about the lasting effects of childhood trauma and the resulting choices we make for our children.

After growing up in an austere spiritual compound, two teenagers, Simrin and Arjun, escape and go their separate ways. Years later, Simrin receives an email from Arjun. As they reconnect, Simrin learns that he has become the charismatic leader of Meadowlark, a commune in the Nevada desert that allows children to discover their “gifts.”

In spite of their fractured relationship, Simrin, a photojournalist, agrees to visit Meadowlark to document its story. She arrives at the commune with her five-year-old daughter in tow and soon realizes there is something disturbing about Arjun’s beliefs concerning children and their unusual abilities. When she discovers that the commune is in the midst of a criminal investigation, her unease grows deeper still.

As tensions with police heighten, Arjun’s wife begins to make plans of her own, fearing the exposure the investigation might bring for her and her children. Both mothers find themselves caught in a desperate situation, and as the conflict escalates, everyone involved must make painful—and potentially tragic—choices that could change their worlds forever.

Gripping and beautifully crafted, Meadowlark explores the power and danger of being extraordinary and what it means to see and be seen.

Children’s Picture Book

Bear & Fred (A World War II Story) by Iris Argaman, Pages: 47, Publication Date: 1 May 2020

Synopsis: Based on true events and beautifully illustrated, this is the story of a friendship that will last forever—told by Fred’s best friend, his beloved teddy bear.

During World War II, Fred must leave his home and live in hiding, apart from the rest of his family, but he always keeps Bear by his side. Bear knows it’s his job to take care of Fred and make sure he doesn’t feel alone.

After the war, Fred and his family are reunited and leave Holland for the United States. And still Bear is with him. When Fred grows up, he and Bear part for the first time when Bear is sent to Yad Vashem—the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Israel, where this book was first published—to show the power of hope, friendship, and love.

I felt Fred’s small hand grab me. He patted me and whispered, “Bear, I won’t leave you here all by yourself. You are my best friend.”

*** Which book will you choose? I decided to go for Love on Beach Avenue. ***

#amazonkindle #amazon prime members #amazonprimemembers #amazonfirstreads #Kindle #Kindlebooks #books #childrens #childrenspicturebooks #contemporary fiction #goodreads #literary fiction #PsychologicalSuspence #romance #thriller #science fiction

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allen-howell · 5 years

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What is Freedom?

What most working class Americans possess is nothing like true freedom. They are kept just comfortable enough so that they will continue to serve as cogs in the machinery—but their productivity has been harnessed in the same way as has the productivity of those lower down in the pecking order who work 40 or more hours per week and yet still must apply for public assistance. Using data by the U.S. BLS, the average productivity per American worker has increased approximately 400% since 1950. The productivity of the labor force has increased dramatically, but wages have been uncoupled from that productivity—starting at around the Nixon era. From top to bottom—from the highest paid to the lowest paid wage earners (those who actually work)—we receive a meager fraction of the true fruits of our labor. Our wages, adjusted for inflation, are nothing like 400% higher than wages were in 1950. The number of hours we work per week also is not 400% lower. The American dream is predicated on the bedrock principle that hard work pays off. We have been taught to believe that a) the harder a person works, b) the more skill and talent a person possesses, and c) the more ability a person has to work well with others; the more success each such person ought to be able to enjoy. That’s what the concept of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness means to most Americans. Most people who “want to make American great again” probably would accept that definition.

The fat cats who own banks, corporations, governments, and so forth, have figured out how to keep us working their fields (so to speak) in an increasingly profitable manner from 1950 until now. They have figured out how to make our slice of the pie narrower and narrower, although we are the ones producing the pie and helping it to increase in size relative to the overall U.S. population. Even those of us who have figured out how to start our own businesses end up paying most of our profits to the fat cats at the top because smaller businesses must compete on price with publicly traded businesses who are unfairly favored by all three branches of the government. Therefore, small businesses are not able to afford to pay employees substantially more than big corporations pay employees because of the economy of scale created by the unlevel playing field that was becoming the new status quo as Nixon and his Supreme Court appointees began to work things out. They managed to fix things so that “our wealth circuit got plugged into our political circuit.” Government officials who work for the fat cats (pretty much all of them regardless of their political stripes) have continued to rig the game against the little guy. Because of high interest rates, low corporate tax rates, and exorbitant pay for top-level managers, we all end up working for the same few fat cats who exist at the very top of the pyramid.

To keep this system working and to keep us from revolting, all the fat cats need to do is make sure that, in the words of George Orwell, “some animals are more equal than others.” Even though we all get milked, shorn, and butchered, those of us who live in nicer houses in nicer neighborhoods are content to allow those at lower socioeconomic levels to suffer unfairly because their pain doesn’t touch us directly. We watch police brutality on the news but it doesn’t move us. We see public schools that are grossly underfunded and it doesn’t affect us. We have been taught to think of each other as different—depending on race, religion, and so forth. The fat cats have artificially divided us so that we will not work together to fight the oppression that touches all of us—as long as it doesn’t touch us equally: “Well, at least I’m better off than that guy over there.”

When we vote to preserve the status quo (voting for Joe Biden is a good example, but voting for Donald Trump, in a sneakier way, also is), we vote to keep ourselves at our current levels of freedom, which, as I’ve already explained, is not true freedom—because the quality and quantity of our labor has been uncoupled from our wages. The fat cats have figured out how to steal our productivity in the same way that Kings in wealthy kingdoms have stolen from the peasants who work “their” land. We still haven’t awoken to the fact that we all are yoked—that none of us are truly free.

The primary hindrance for all of us is a fear-based belief in scarcity. That’s why austerity is so devastating. “How you gonna pay for that?” We have failed to adjust our expectations higher as productivity has improved. This belief plays right into the hands of the fat cats. In this vastly wealthy country, there is enough for everyone to live well without exhausting the resources of the planet and without bullying other countries. We do not have to live in the world of Charles Dickens. But the fat cats have figured out how to keep the mid-level frogs on simmer so that they won’t align themselves with the increasingly desperate frogs who are being cooked at higher temperatures.

The way out of this dilemma is probably not going to be as simple as “Vote Blue No Matter Who.” As George Carlin points out: “Forget the politicians. They are irrelevant. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice! You have OWNERS! They OWN YOU.” The only hope to fix this mess and get our productivity hooked back up to our wages is to reduce the influence of the fat cats who together control the planetary economic system. UNPOPULAR OPINION (at least to the fat cats): WHEREAS, money is the predominant way to control this planet; and WHEREAS, the fat cats possess most of the money; THEREFORE, we need to remove most of their money from them. Until we do, they will retain their influence and easily rig the next system—whether capitalism or communism. The real problem is how money flows and who controls that flow.

The people who are talented and industrious still deserve to be compensated in proportion to their talent and industry—particularly if their high ethical standards match their talent and industry. In a just system, those who would inevitably succeed at the highest levels should be able to live very well, as long as their high standard of living would not require others to live in squalor. Collectively, humanity would need to agree not to exploit and prey on each other and not to exploit the planet. We would need to agree that hard work and talent should pay off but that, at certain income levels, most of the surplus wealth of individuals and of corporations should be used to fund infrastructure and other items that can be clearly justified as beneficial for the common good. Banks and corporations should be limited in size and scope and occupations and industries that exist primarily to skim wealth from regular people should be abolished. The fat cats cannot hope to spend even a fraction of their wealth in ways that benefit them personally so we all should admit that, most of all, their wealth has been used to control the rest of us—their wars, their diseases, their “cures,” and their need for there to be so many of us all crowded together in utter dependence on them and on their systems.

Will the fat cats agree to all of this? Will their puppet politicians write and enforce the laws that would strip their masters of power? In short, can there be a solution that happens at the ballot box—or will the voter revolution that some envision end up with torches and pitchforks (or assault rifles and missiles) after all? If George Carlin was right, we must resign ourselves to our fate: “It’s never going to get any better, don’t look for it, be happy with what you’ve got.” He was referring to our educational system that now indoctrinates us in ways that make it easy for our masters to keep controlling us. If he was right, we need to educate ourselves in some other, better way so that we can stand up in unity with our fellow wage-earners and come to some agreements that will not allow for future predation. If Carlin is right, the fat cats will never agree with us. As Frederick Douglass stated: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” For the demand to be made in a way that foregoes bloodshed, everyone who works for a living will need to understand that we’re all in this together. We will need to come to an understanding that is based on the underlying principles of mutual abundance and justice. We will need to overcome our predatory instincts and allow our best motives to come to the front.

Carlin was right about our education system. Not only is education terrible at educating everyone from all walks of life, it is intentionally so. Those on the higher rungs of life have long been taught how to exploit others rather than being taught how to create a rising tide that could lift all ships. Our fat cat masters know where the weak place is in their vicious circle. If people could be truly educated instead of being indoctrinated, everything would change. If viable solutions are available and humanity continues down its predatory and mutually exploitative path, it is because we will be unable to discover the truths that are hidden in plain sight.

#freedom #carlin #bernie #biden #communism #capitalism #socialism #education #democratic socialism

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believerindaydreams · 5 years

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in which we are introduced to a paradoxical lady

further adventures on the chicken fetch quest. leaves off on a cliffhanger, cos I’m debating a POV change after this

It'd be hilarious, Tuco figures, if the situation wasn't so dire. A sharpened pitchfork is a vicious enough weapon to have left quite a slash down his arm, and that's gonna hurt like hell once the adrenaline wears off.

It is hilarious. He's got a chicken stuffed down his shirtfront, and its heavy fluffiness is the only thing stopping him from doubling over with laughter; while Blondie's busily defending the pair of them with a filthy trashcan lid. The clang of metal against metal has a fine lurid ring to it, just like in the movies...

only, well, this is infinitely stupider than anything on the silver screen.

"You thieving, n'er-do-well, good for nothing tramps!"

That's her kindest statement yet; for an old lady farmer, she's got a remarkable turn for cursing. Enough to give Tuco a pleasant flashback to Brooklyn, while he’s been improvising a bandage from the tattered remnants of his jacket. Of all times not to have his pack along...

"We'll give it back!" Blondie yells it, needlessly loudly in this quiet barn. A couple of the cows moo at him. "If you'd just quit trying to kill us, we'll leave the chicken here and never bother you again!"

"Think that's good enough? I'll call in the marines on you before I'm done!"

Now, that would not be good. Somewhere outside in the dark is Angel Eyes, keeping a lookout and waiting for them, and while he'd probably be smart enough to keep out of sight- just the split-second recollection of a diner makes Tuco wince.

"Aunt Huldah...it's me. Joseph. Your worthless nephew who ran off to be a Papist, remember?"

"Go on! Tell me why that should make a blind bit of difference!"

But she stops trying to eviscerate Blondie; and Tuco figures that's some progress.

************

"All things considered," Angel Eyes says aloud (after the farmhouse door has closed upon the hapless three; he's comfortably ensconced in a tree and inclined to remain so). "All things considered, it's just as well I never did take you along on an assassination, Blondie. With smarts like that, you'd have blithely wandered right into somebody's gun sights."

The hen he's holding turns its beak up, and clucks at him inquisitively.

"A caelo usque ad centrum...o gallus, have you any notion what a comedown your theft constitutes, from a past such as mine?"

Cluck, cluck.

"No. I don't suppose you do."

************

Apparently a snowball's chance in hell isn't bad at all, when kept safely inside the confines of a timeless globe. A house, a Christmas tree, two pink-cheeked twins staring at the soap flakes with open mouths. Shake the globe or not, they'll just keep gaping forever.

The small tacky horror stands out incongruously in this austere room, otherwise all hard wood and ruthlessly practical knitting. Probably why his heart's gone out to it. Poor thing doesn't belong here any more than he does.

"Do stop playing with that," Aunt Huldah says. "It's a family heirloom. That's antique Bakelite, Joseph's father brought it back from the Great Lakes Exposition."

"Sorry," Tuco mumbles. Puts it down carefully.

"It's been nice to see you again," Blondie says.

That's not a hustle, that's not anything but a simple barefaced lie. Blondie's holding his yellow china cup almost sideways, like he's forgotten what it's for; maybe hoping that a lapful of cold coffee will wake him up. Cristo, this is enough like a nightmare that'd make sense.

Three hours it's been, by his watch- who knows what Angel Eyes thought was happening, while freezing outside- and three quarters of that has been spent in silence. No radio or television or even talking. Nothing moving, only being, only two relations communing with each other while the quiet is so loud it's deafening.

"Joseph," the woman says. Her parched and weathered face shuddering a little in the attempt to smile. "It's so good to have you home again like this."

Okay, so a lie that passed muster. He should know better than to guess he has a handle on this situation- damn his arm. It itches.

"Shame about uncle."

Blondie's said that already. Twice, in fact; and that seems both not enough for the man who brought him up and yet so much needless repetition. The words ring in his head meaninglessly, and he listens until they lose all meaning; it sounds something at least like his partner in crime. Like a way out of here.

If this room was frightening, he'd feel so much better; he's used to fear, he has ways and means of coping with that. This stiffness, on some level it has to be a kind of love, and that unnerves him far more than the woman who stabbed and cussed him out.

"Oh, it was."

"I should have been at the funeral."

"Yup."

They've just repeated a whole conversation they already had. Why couldn't it be Angel here to drink sugarless instant coffee, instead? Or he should have just been himself from the start, should have been loud and boisterous instead of waiting for Blondie to give him a cue. His partner's given him nothing all evening, he’s got nothing to work with.

The itch in his arm is crazy, maddening. Tuco leans forward to put his cup down, uneasily conscious of the eyes following his every slightest motion. In this constricted universe, one lonely half-circle of lamplight, there's nothing else for them to consider.

So when he notices that the impromptu bandage is failing, dark liquid leaking from him in lazy slow driblets, he knows with frightful confidence that the two of them have observed it also; and can't understand why they don't act. Poor hospitality, that's understandable if inexcusable, but this is different.

Breathe.

Don't wonder, he tells himself. Don't think what will happen if you collapse against this knit throw, too weak to move.

(would they watch and sip coffee, until he bled out as white as they? stay here forever in unmoored indifference?)

(has he lost more blood than he's realised, to be nursing a fantasy that idiotic?)

Damn it, damn it. If he can't trust his instincts or his partner, sheer cussedness is going to have to pull him through. "Is there a- you know?"

Waves indistinctly. The syllables sound like an imposition.

"Down the hall to the right," Blondie says tonelessly.

"Thanks..."

The bathroom window is wide open; Tuco’s closed it tight before realising it's probably meant to be that way. Never mind. He could do with some warmth before stripping his shoulder bare.

Messy. Shallow, though; he sets his teeth and cleans it out with rubbing alcohol, wraps it up tightly with cloths from the linen cupboard. Too bad if Blondie's aunt doesn't like it. She shouldn't have run him through in the first place.

Away from that winter room, his good sense is already starting to restore itself; he'd been right the first time, thinking he'd be okay. He will be. As soon as they get out of here.

There's a knock on the door.

"Out in a minute!" Must be the aunt. Blondie would have just walked in.

He runs the tap a little, cups his hands and drinks; tastes fresh on his tongue, good after that musty coffee. Dries them crudely on his pants, feels better.

Blondie all but falls on him, the moment he opens the door: limp and nerveless. "Tuco. Are you okay?"

"Be a lot better without your weight on me." He can’t muster up much anger for the quip; it’s too good to feel his partner's body against his. Tobacco and incense mixed, half-forgotten need making itself manifest again. Comfort as condolence.

"I'm sorry." Grotesquely sincere, banal even. "She wants us to stay for dinner. We should get out of here. Go back to Angel, tell him what's going on-"

"Gilipollas."

"...I'm a what?"

"You know what that one means, Blondie, I've told you. You know what? You don't get to run out on your family just because you don't like them, I'm not going to let you leave this time." It's something he's never felt free to say, how incomprehensible and cruel he finds Blondie's lackadaisical attitude towards his family; he's always kept in touch with his, even if they haven't always seen each other much.

"She's not like- your family. Tuco, she isn't."

"Tough. She wants you to stay for dinner, we're staying for dinner. It’s the least you can do for a lonely old woman like that."

"But what about Angel?"

"Dollars to doughnuts," Tuco says, pulling what's left of his jacket back on, "that Angel knew already whose farm this was and went home early when we didn’t leave. You know what he's like about planning ahead, you think he didn't put two and two together to figure out why you insisted on stealing from here in particular?"

"...I was thinking, maybe, it wouldn't count as stealing if it was my own family farm."

"The way you've described her soups, I think we're more than paying for it."

#70s au #the good the bad and the ugly

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