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blurredcolour · 4 months

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I Wish You Love | Part One

I Wish You Love Masterlist

Lewis Nixon x Housemaid!Female Reader

Watching Miss Isobel encourage Lieutenant Nixon's affections only to ignore his letters as soon as he's deployed proves too much for you to bear.

Warnings: Canon typical violence, Angst, Class Divide, Infidelity, Dishonesty, Discussion of War Wounds, Language, Smoking, Alcohol Consumption, Inevitable Historical and Military Inaccuracies, Mature/Explicit Themes - 18+ ONLY.

Author's Note: Reader's nationality is British and liberties have been taken in describing her background and family life for the sake of plot. No physical descriptions or y/n used. A good portion of this fic will be letter-based. This is a work of fiction based off the portrayal by the actors in the HBO series. I hold nothing but respect for the real life individuals referenced within.

Word Count: 4611

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You had met Lewis Nixon first. On a misty morning in early December 1943 when The Honourable Isobel St John��s dog, Dash III, was yet again carelessly let out of the house by the naïve kitchen maid Else. The poor girl, freshly arrived from Austria, meant well, truly. But she simply did not seem to comprehend the vastness of Lydiard Park, nor the fact that a great portion of it had become off limits, requestioned by the 101st Airborne to construct a field hospital in anticipation of the invasion of France.

Wrapping a shawl around the shoulders of your black service dress, lace collar at your throat, you had forced yourself out into the damp chill, shoes crunching on the pea gravel path as you had called out for the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. Miss Isobel thought quite highly of herself, typical middle child syndrome if one were being quite honest, and had kept a series of Cavalier’s named after Queen Victoria’s own – though she preferred the Blenheim colouring to the original’s tri-coloured coat. Of all the staff, and humans, at Lydiard House, Dash III was most likely to respond to you and so this task was one with which you were quite familiar.

What you had not expected to find was the missing canine squirming in the arms of a handsome American Lieutenant, desperately trying to lick at his striking jawline.

“Dash!” You had cried out at the state of his filthy coat, the majority of the white streaked with mud.

“That’s your name, then, is it?” The Lieutenant had smirked, a label bearing the last name of ‘Nixon’ stitched onto his uniform above his left breast pocket.

“Dash the third, Leftenant.” You had gulped roughly at the broad grin that had unfurled across his features at your British pronunciation of his rank.

“Dash the third. I am Lewis Nixon the third, what destiny we should meet.” Nixon had addressed the filthy dog fondly, prompting him to squirm in delight, smearing all manner of muck onto his uniform.

“I am terribly sorry for the trouble, sir, please allow me.” You had moved to take Dash from Nixon, but the gentle shake of his head had halted your movements.

“Not at all, miss, I’m assuming this rogue Dash belongs up at the house?” He had raised an eyebrow and you had nodded quickly. “Allow me then, my clothes are meant to get dirty.” He had tucked the dog under his arm more securely and began walking back with you. “I take it this is not Dash’s first great escape?”

You had shaken your head quickly, biting back a laugh. “Unfortunately not, Leftenant. I truly appreciate your help returning him to us. Miss Isobel will be relieved.”

“And how about you?” Nixon had inquired with a grin.

You had looked to your feet quickly, the expression only making him transition from good looking to dangerously handsome. “Grateful, of course, sir.”

“And is that what I should call you? Grateful? Is that her name, Dash?” He had looked down to the dog beneath his arm, earning a warm tongue along his cheek in response.

A laugh had escaped your lips before you had introduced yourself properly as the pair of you neared the 18th century Palladian style home. “Please follow me to the kitchen door, Leftenant, I’ll need to give Dash a bath before he is unleashed upon the household.”

Nixon’s appearance in the servants’ hall had caused quite a stir, earning him an introduction to the family upstairs upon which Miss Isobel had immediately set her eyes on him. The Honourable Isobel St John was a complicated woman and while you were the same age, born in 1918, your experiences and perceptions of the world could not have been more different. Third child of Viscount Bolingbroke, what she lacked in social standing she more than made up for in entitlement.

While her parents, Bertrand and Elizabeth St John were disappointed in her unwed state at the age of twenty-five, four years into the war it was more common than not. And it was not for any lack of suitors on Miss Isobel’s part. A veritable parade of uniformed men had joined the family at the simpler dinner parties they now hosted, particularly with their eldest child and only son taken prisoner by the Japanese so early in the war. With eldest daughter Gwendoline busily running her own household with two children, and youngest Rosamund off with the Auxiliary Territorial Service, Lydiard House was held hostage by the whims and desires of Miss Isobel. And through the winter of 1943 into spring 1944 that had been Lieutenant Lewis Nixon.

From the glimpses you caught of him whilst serving cocktails and dinner, the lack of footmen pressing housemaids such as yourself into service in unusual roles, and the starry-eyed descriptions provided by Miss Isobel herself as you helped her dress and undress before said gatherings, it seemed Lieutenant Nixon fit in quite well at an upper-class table. Naturally his duties prevented him from visiting every weekend, but he was present more often than not, and as the weather grew warmer, he and Miss Isobel would take long walks on the grounds still available to the St John family, Dash happily accompanying them on a leash.

Lieutenant Nixon was polite and friendly, greeting you with a familiar nod when you would fetch Dash for his meal as they were lounging beside the lake, or throwing you a smile as you would hold out his preferred whiskey on a silver tray before dinner. But you by no means expected his generosity that rainy Sunday in mid-April. Having taken the majority of the day off for your father’s birthday, you had seen to it that Miss Isobel was dressed and on her way to breakfast, before changing into a once-colourful dress of your own, frowning as the skies opened up.

Pulling on your Macintosh, you tucked your small gift into the inside pocket before dashing out to the garage to fetch your bicycle, heading down the gravel drive toward the road into town when Lieutenant Nixon’s covered jeep pulled up beside you.

“Where are you going in this deluge?!” He peered out at you, and you swallowed.

“Good morning, Leftenant. Headed into Swindon to see my father. You’ll find Miss Isobel in the breakfast room, sir.”

Your eyes widened as he put the jeep in park, the door swinging open before he dashed around to open the tail gate. “Put your bike the back, I’ll drive you.”

“But sir, I…” You trailed off as the jacket of his uniform was growing darker with rain by the moment and found yourself unable to argue at the expense of his clothing.

You quickly dismounted and surrendered your bicycle, trying not to stare too intently as he easily hoisted it into the back before ushering you into the passenger’s seat on the right side of the vehicle – the positioning utterly foreign, but you quickly dashed inside, sliding off your hood as he jogged back to the driver’s side.

“This is truly unnecessary, Leftenant, it’s out of your way and will only delay you.” You pleaded with him once he was back under the canvas cover.

He gave you his lopsided grin, shaking his head, scattering some raindrops from his garrison cap. “Izzy’ll not even notice, let her enjoy her cold toast.”

You bit your lip savagely, well aware of the degree to which Miss Isobel loathed that nickname, yet she never seemed to correct him on it. Executing a smooth three-point turn, he aimed the jeep back toward the main road and began to drive to Swindon. “How long does it take you to cycle there?”

“About twenty minutes, sir. It’s a nice ride on a dry day.” You undid the buttons on your Macintosh, overheating in the garment, and slid it open to reveal your dress.

Lieutenant Nixon’s glance in your direction, and quick double-take, had you smoothing the hem of it against your knees self-consciously. “I’m sorry, you look lovely, I’m just so used to seeing you in black and white it’s like we’ve landed in Oz and you’re suddenly in Technicolor over there.”

The analogy was so striking that you were completely taken aback. Laughter bubbled up from your throat as you shook your head and belatedly covered your mouth as he grinned broadly, seeming quite pleased with himself.

“So, you grew up in Swindon?” Nixon asked over the sound of rain pelting the roof and windshield and you nodded quickly.

“Yes, sir.” You swallowed, hands planted in your lap as you tugged at your fingertips nervously.

“Izzy tells me you have a brother fighting in Italy, is that right?”

You looked to him, startled to learn that you had ever been a topic of conversation between him and Miss Isobel. “I do, sir.”

“Is he older or younger than you?” He took his eyes off the road to meet yours briefly, seeming genuinely interested in your answer.

“Johnny is twelve minutes older, sir.”

“Twins?!” His wide, brown eyes flashed back to yours and you nodded with a soft laugh.

“I don’t think I’ve met a twin before…” He murmured thoughtfully. “And what does your father do?”

Swallowing nervously, you glanced out the window a moment to carefully formulate your answer. “He picks up work at the Swindon Railway Works.” You replied, leaving out the part that he only did so when he was physically well enough. The loss of his leg on the Somme was a wound that had never fully healed and nagged him more and more as he got older.

“Do you get to see him often?” He asked, making the turn into town easily as you shook your head sadly.

“Not as often as I should – it’s his birthday today, though, so I asked to take most of the day a few months ago.”

“Well, wish him a happy birthday for me, will you?” He smiled and you nodded before guiding him through the streets to the simpler, working-class neighbourhood where the one-bedroom flat you’d grown up in was located.

Lieutenant Nixon parked the jeep in front of the building and the pair of you hurried out into the rain to retrieve your bicycle from the back. You had just finished thanking him profusely when you turned to see your father standing in the doorway on his crutches, not wearing prosthetic leg. It was no surprise, actually, in weather like this he found the thing extremely uncomfortable.

A look of understanding crossed Lieutenant Nixon’s face and he insisted on walking you to the door, offering his hand to shake your father’s.

“Happy Birthday, sir.”

Your baffled father had shaken it in return with his thanks, completely taken aback by the American Lieutenant on his doorstep.

“Thank you again, Leftenant.”

“It was my pleasure, enjoy your afternoon off.” He smiled and dashed back to the car as you ushered your father inside, explaining everything as you helped him to his chair.

Mercifully, when it came time for you to return to Lydiard House for the evening, the rain had eased up and you were able to cycle back without getting soaked to the skin. As you came up the drive, you spotted Lieutenant Nixon and Miss Isobel walking arm in arm, heads bent toward one another as Dash walked alongside. You dismounted quickly, trying to be discrete, but the dog turned as soon as he caught your scent, barking happily in greeting.

“Ah, you’re back.” Miss Isobel said flatly.

“Good Evening Miss Isobel, Leftenant Ni–“

“Oh, don’t be so British, it’s Lieutenant.” Miss Isobel cut you off, tone rather condescending as she slipped the leash from the Lieutenant’s grasp and held it out toward you expectantly. “Will you take Dash inside for his meal? Then I’ll see you to change for dinner.”

You hurried to close the distance, pushing your bike along with you as you took the leash from her, Dash happily wending his way between your ankles in greeting. “Certainly, Miss.” You replied patiently before excusing yourself with a curtsy, leading the dog inside, finding it rather awkward to manage the bicycle as well but after nearly ten years of serving the St John family you knew better than to test Miss Isobel.

“I think it’s charming how she says it.” You bit the inside of your cheek savagely, trying not to overhear Lieutenant Nixon’s defense of your pronunciation, particularly when Miss Isobel replied in a sultry voice.

“I’ll tell you what’s charming…” The rest of her statement was mercifully out of the range of your hearing as you tucked your bicycle away in the garage.

As the calendar flipped to May, Lieutenant Nixon’s presence became less and less frequent at Lydiard and the ever-impatient Miss Isobel’s eye began to wander. It most certainly was not your place to have an opinion, or loyalties to any of her suitors, but the presence of a RAF pilot named Shore left a sour taste in your mouth.

It was early on June 7 when the first of Lieutenant Nixon’s letters to Miss Isobel arrived. Placing it on a silver tray, you took it up first thing in the morning when you went up to dress her for the day. It sat on her vanity, unopened still, when you changed her for dinner with Captain Shore, remained there while she flirted with him brightly through the meal, and was brushed into the dust bin as you undressed her for bed. “Oh, Miss I think you…”

“That will be all, good night.” She waved her hand dismissively and you frowned, excusing yourself with a nod before stepping out of the room.

Sitting heavily on your twin bed in the attic, the metal frame creaking in protest, your brow remained furrowed as all you could picture was Lieutenant Nixon’s caring face as he had listened attentively to your answers whilst going out of his way to drive you into town. He was a kind and considerate man, not to mention excruciatingly handsome, but now that he was out of sight, he was quite simply out of Miss Isobel’s mind. For all anyone knew he could be lying dead in France somewhere by now, the news of the invasion fresh in everyone’s mind, particularly the steep toll and tenuous hold.

“You keep making that face and it’ll get stuck like that.” Helen, your roommate chided warmly, and you blinked rapidly, shaking your head to clear it with a self-deprecating laugh.

“Just overthinking things, sorry Helen. Shall I get the light?”

With her agreement, you flicked the switch off at the wall and shuffled back to bed, sliding under the covers, mulling over the conundrum of the unopened letter upstairs. You would be emptying that dustbin tomorrow morning while Miss Isobel was at breakfast. Perhaps you should rescue it in case she changed her mind. Plan formulated, you were able to get some rest and later secured the correspondence, storing it in the bottom of your suitcase.

One week later, the second letter arrived, and you took it up to Miss Isobel hopefully.

“Oh, you can stop bringing these to me, I shan’t be taking up correspondence with him.” She muttered dismissively, not even taking the letter from the tray on which you presented it to her.

Your entire body went rigid for a moment, and it took a great summoning of strength to reply, “Yes, Miss.”

“And take Dash for an extra long walk, would you, he’s been positively listless the past few weeks and the weight of his gaze is quite a bore.” She sank in the vanity chair expectantly as you glanced over at the dog, lying forgotten on his plush, velvet bed, no longer of use to her as Captain Shore was allergic.

“Yes, Miss.” Your reply was perhaps terser than it ought to be, but to your good fortune, Miss Isobel was already flipping through a magazine idly as she waited for you to begin styling her hair.

Drawing deeply from your well of restraint, you managed not to jab her scalp with any pins as you secured her hair into a set of fashionable victory rolls before you called to Dash to take him for a walk. As you descended the stairs, you took the abandoned letter from its tray and shoved it into your pocket, grabbing Dash’s leash from the backdoor in the servant’s hall and heading out for a lengthy walk of the grounds. It did both of you good to get out of that house, Dash immediately perking up, tailing wagging as he trotted to-and-fro to inspect the foliage while you worked out your frustration at the petulant child you worked for by setting a brisk pace.

You only slowed after about thirty minutes, when a sheen of sweat had gathered at your brow and your legs were beginning to ache, changing to a stroll as you circled the lake, laughing softly as Dash barked at the ducks far out in the water who paid him no mind. “I promise to bring you out here more often, you silly boy.” You muttered, sliding a hand into your pocket and blinking as you found the letter, guilt twisting like a knife in your belly. “Because there’s a lot to make up for when it comes to your mistress.”

Swallowing tightly, you slowly pulled out the envelope, looking over Lieutenant Nixon’s tidy cursive. Certainly, there were laws against reading another’s mail, but the immorality of entertaining a man’s affections for six months only to throw him over as soon as he went to war seemed to outweigh all that in your mind. He had taken the time to write to an ungrateful, spoiled woman, the least someone could do was grant him the courtesy of reading it. Johnny had always said what a joy it was to send and receive letters, how it took his mind off life at the front first in North Africa and now Italy, and as someone who got to enjoy the safety and comfort of home it was a duty in your mind to do whatever you could to help those fighting for the Allies.

Taking a shaky breath, you carefully slipped the letter from the pre-sliced envelope – Miss Isobel was not even expected to open her own mail, after all – and unfolded the sheets of paper.

Pressing your fingertips to your lips, you only realized your feet had stopped their progress across the lawn when Dash’s leash tugged at your wrist insistently before he bounded over to you, pressing his paws onto your calf impatient to continue on. “Sorry, Dash, yes.” You whispered, carefully folding the letter and sliding it back into its envelope before returning it to your pocket.

For all his jokes and smirks, there had always been an air of melancholy about Lieutenant Nixon, one that he seemed to hide beneath a good story and strong drink. The only crime, as far as you could see, would be for his letters, written with such care and affection and filled with a need for connection, to remain unanswered. You could write well-enough, had received excellent marks on your cursive before you left school at sixteen to begin working and supporting your father as his old wound had become more and more troublesome.

You would, of course, toe the line of impersonating your employer. There would be no soppy declarations, just descriptions of the home and the family. Stories to keep his spirits up – just as he requested. Begging out of the after-dinner socializing with the rest of the staff due to a headache, you slipped up to your room to retrieve the first letter from the bottom of your suitcase and sat on your bed to read it as well, intending to reply to both.

Settling against the headboard with some fresh paper and a pen, you nibbled on the end of it thoughtfully, trying to decide how to begin your response.

Lieutenant Nixon

My Dear Lewis

Dearest Lewis

“You’d think I was trying to reinvent the wheel…” You hissed under your breath before grabbing a new sheet of paper and starting anew.

You bit your lip as you signed off, taking more than a little pleasure in perpetuating a nickname you knew Miss Isobel loathed. There were moments in the letter where you may have let a bit more of your own personality shine through but on the whole, you were satisfied that it was a rather good impersonation of your mistress. And most important of all, provided Lieutenant Nixon with the fuel for his imagination that he so longed for.

Preparing an envelope with the mailing address and Miss Isobel’s return address, you carefully folded it all up once the ink had properly dried and placed it in the outgoing post that night after you’d helped Miss Isobel change for bed. In your thoughts as you fell asleep was not only the hope for your brother’s safe return, but also that of Lieutenant Nixon, too.

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Read Part Two

I Wish You Love Masterlist

Tag list: @ronsparky, @fuckoffthanos, @bcon24

#lewis nixon x reader #lewis nixon imagines #lewis nixon imagine #band of brothers x reader #band of brothers imagines #band of brothers imagine #band of brothers fic #band of brothers

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footprintsinthesxnd · 3 months

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Chapter 1: With Beating Hearts

Eugene Roe x Violet Elwood

Summary: Violet was living a quiet life during the summer of 1941 in Morgan City, Louisiana when she meets Eugene Roe when he stumbles into her families shop. But Violet has a devastating secret that she’s keeping and it’s sure to break Eugene’s heart. They can only hope their love endures and it doesn’t die as a summer romance. Masterlist

8th June 1943, Morgan City, Louisiana

Eugene’s shoes tapped rhythmically at the pavement as he hurried after his older sisters, their curls bouncing as they shouted over their shoulders for him to ‘hurry up’. He wasn’t entirely sure what the rush was, a new convenience store opening in town wasn’t necessarily the exciting point of the summer, or it wasn’t to a 19-year-old boy. Eugene often wondered what his life would be like if he’d had older brothers. They would be out, exploring and playing but instead, he’d been taught to sow with his sisters and cook. ‘You never know when you’ll need to fix a hole in your trousers’, his mother had always told him, and in hindsight, it was a useful skill for him to have. His two younger brothers often got out of the simple household chores. ‘You’re the man of the house’ his father often told him when he went off to work and Eugene believed him, but really his older sisters were in charge.

The hot Louisiana summer had only just begun, and yet for June, it was exceptionally warm. His shirt stuck to his back, as sweat travelled down the valley of his spine. His troubles were not helped by the bundle of bags and the basket he carried, while his sisters skipped along the street in front of him. How he’d been volunteered for this he wasn’t sure.

He could see his sister had stopped beside the shop ahead of him, glaring at him as he quickened his pace to catch up.

“I swear Eugene, if you walked any slower you’d be going backwards,” his oldest sister, Minnie, grumbled and Eugene stuck his tongue out at her once she had turned around. Siblings, who would have them?

The bell above the door chimed, announcing their arrival and the girls quickly scattered, leaving Eugene and all the bags in the doorway. Deciding that no one was likely to steal the bags, he stacked them in the corner before making his way down one of the aisles. He had to admit this shop sure did have everything and he picked himself up an apple on the way past the fruit stand, rummaging to find a nice red one.

Knowing his sisters were likely to spend the next hour investigating the new shop, Eugene headed towards the empty counter to pay. There was no one in sight since he’d entered the shop so he chimed the bell on the countertop, waiting for the owner to reveal themselves. A flash of blonde hair shot past him and dashed behind the counter with a gleaming smile. Her lips were moving in slow motion and Eugene blinked expressionlessly.

He’d never seen someone so beautiful, her blonde locks in perfect curls, framing her pale face, her blue eyes sparkling in the dim shop lightening.

“Excuse me? Can I help you?” She asked again and Eugene stuttered, stumbling over his words as he apologised, asked the girl her name and all but threw his money at her.

Her eyes widened a little as she began to collect the money, picking up several of the coins and passing them back to him.

“Are you okay?” Her eyebrows creased as she questioned him and if Eugene hadn’t been frozen to the spot he might have run out of the store there and then.

“Y-yes…” he wheezed, seemingly unable to breathe at that precise moment. His cheeks grew redder by the minute as he continued to stare at her.

“Okay then,” the girl turned, putting the money into the cashier, “Well, as you asked so nicely,” she laughed and Eugene felt his throat tighten as the jovial tune left her mouth. “My name is Violet, and you are?”

“Eugene, Eugene Roe ma’am and I think you're so beautiful, would you like to go out… sometime… with me… Eugene Roe.” If he could have one wish, he’d have wished for the ground to swallow him up. It’s not that he’d ever been terribly confident with women anyway, but this was just embarrassing.

“Well, Eugene, Eugene Roe,” she grinned, copying how he’d stumbled over his words. “It’s nothing personal but I don’t go out with strangers and I don’t know you.”

Eugene’s forehead creased, “Well how ‘bout ya go out with me and we getta know each other, then we won’t be strangers,” Eugene tried to reason.

Violet tilted her head, “Well, you’ve got me there Eugene, Eugene Roe.”

Before she could say anything else, Eugene’s sisters came around the corner, with bundles of supplies in their arms. He wasn’t sure if they needed all this stuff, they were exactly the richest family but his sisters seemed to be stocking up for hibernation.

“Stop harassing the poor girl, Eugene,” Winnie groaned and Minnie just rolled her eyes. “Go grab the bags, Gene.”

Eugene did as he was told, giving Violet a brief wave before disappearing from view. Violet smiled, watching him go. He was an odd character but he seemed nice enough.

The two girls began bickering as they bundled their goods into two very small bags and Violet took this as her opportunity to escape from behind the counter.

She found Eugene standing outside the shop, his eyes closed and his face turned towards the sky, taking in the late afternoon rays.

“Well, Eugene, Eugene Roe. You don’t seem like a bad guy and I don’t think you’re gonna murder me, so why don’t you pick me up on Saturday at 7?”

Violet was suddenly worried that Eugene was having some kind of heart attack from the way his face paled and she stepped forward before he began nodding animatedly.

“Yes, yes that will do nicely. Yes. Thank you.” Why couldn’t he learn to shut up? Eugene cursed himself mentally. “And Gene is fine.” He corrected Violet and she laughed lightly.

“Sure thing, Gene. I’ll see you Saturday.” She waved him goodbye before disappearing back inside, the clang of the bell tolling and announcing his sister's departure from the shop.

“What was all that ‘bout?” Minnie quizzed him as they began their walk towards home.

“Oh… nothing. Just gave me the wrong change is all.” His sisters didn’t press the subject and Eugene wouldn’t have told them anyway, but he couldn’t help the excited butterflies building in his stomach. He was going on his first date on Saturday.

Eugene Roe had to admit that he was a nervous man, he worried about the slightest little thing and often found his stomach in knots, his anxiety eating away at him when he had something important coming up.

Since his first encounter with Violet, he’d been buzzing with nervous energy. His heart pounding any time someone mentioned her family's shop or Saturday. In fact, his mind was constantly awash with images of her, despite having only seen her once.

He’d sit for hours, tracing her face on his knee as he sat watching his sisters squabble over something irrelevant. He’d even managed to change his route to work, just so he could walk past the shop. Unfortunately, he’d managed to bump into every other member of Violet’s family, except Violet herself.

Saturday came around all too quickly but too slowly at the same time, and by quarter past six on Saturday evening Eugene felt as though he was either going to combust and melt. He wasn’t sure which option was worse but the fear of rejection was worse. What would happen if she changed her mind? What was he supposed to do then?

His mother had tried to reassure him the best she could, having heard all about Eugene’s first crush from his rather annoying older sisters. His younger brothers on the other hand decided to tell him how much they disliked girls, which also didn’t help the argument.

“Would you lot just leave him alone!” His mother's voice had bellowed over the cacophony of rambunctious chattering. The kitchen fell into silence, and even Eugene’s father, who sat in his armchair with his pipe hanging from the corner of his mouth, chose to stay silent.

“Eugene, Darling, you look perfect. No, your hair is fine,” his mother ushered his hand away as he tried to smooth his hair down once more. “Now go. Have a lovely time and be sure to have her home by a sensible time.”

Eugene scurried out of the house as fast as he could, ignoring the shouts of his siblings and his father’s ’go get her son’.

The walk to the store wasn’t more than ten minutes from his house but Eugene found himself dragging his feet. ‘She’d said seven not six forty’, he cursed, annoyed that he’d rushed to get ready but his nervous energy carried him forward.

Once outside the store Eugene could feel his gut tightening, if it was squeezed any tighter he thought he was going to vomit, the stomach acid already building in his throat. Before he could chicken out, his knuckles wrapped against the front door. There was some shuffling around inside before a short, bearded man appeared on the other side. He unlocked the door and glared at Eugene.

“We’re closed! Can’t you read the damn sign,” he spoke gruffly, lighting a cigarette as his eyes bore into Eugene’s soul.

Eugene shuffled nervously from foot to foot as he stumbled over his words, “W-well Sir, I- I’m here to… to see Violet.”

The man continued glaring at him, his eyes travelling up and down Eugene’s frame, squinting when their eyes met. Eugene felt as though he was vibrating and his hand shook as he smoothed it over his dark locks nervously, while he tried not to squeeze the bunch of flowers in his other hand.

“Well, I guess you’d betta come in. Vi is upstairs getting ready,” her father all but dragged him through the door, slamming it closed aggressively.

“This way,” he pushed Eugene through the shop and out the door behind the counter which led into a long hallway. It was rather dark but a light room lay at the end which Eugene assumed was the sitting room. “Take a seat.”

Eugene did as he was told, sitting quickly on one of the wooden chairs. Her father sat opposite him, nursing his glass of whiskey with an unnerving smirk. Eugene dug his fingers into the collar of his shirt, trying to reduce the claustrophobic feeling.

They sat in silence until two faces appeared at the top of the stairs, the girls were giggling and despite his best efforts, Eugene blushed furiously under their gaze. They looked a lot like Violet but a little younger, Eugene noted. The girls were whispering to each other and it was more than clear that they were talking about him before they scurried out of view.

The next person to appear at the top of the stairs was Violet, and Eugene’s legs forced his legs to stand. Violet was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Her blonde locks were curled, framing her face while her rouged lips spread into a wide smile. The blue dress adorning her figure, hugging her curves flowed around her legs as she descended the stairs.

“Wow,” Eugene whispered, as Violet stepped in front of him. “You’re da most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

It was Violet's turn to blush, biting her lip nervously as she smiled shyly. “Thank you, Eugene. You don’t scrub up too badly yourself.”

“These are for you,” Eugene pushed the bunch of Violets towards her and she grinned, accepting the flowers and passing them to one of the younger blonde girls.

“Thank you. I see you’ve already met my daddy. This is my mumma,” she pointed to an older blonde lady behind her who greeted Eugene with a small wave. “And these are my sisters, Rose and Lilly.”

Eugene greeted the other girls and the older of the two, Eugene guessed she was Rose, and leant forward. “Vi here hasn’t spoken of anything else since she met you. It’s nice to finally put a face to the name.”

Violet smacked her sister playfully and Eugene found himself blushing once more.

“You two should be headin’ off before it gets too late,” her father said, “It’s gooda meet ya, Eugene. You have her back by ten, okay?”

“Sure thing, Sir,” he took her father's hand and shook it before Violet linked her arm through Eugene’s and pulled him away.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” Violet apologised once they were out of the shop. “They can be a little much sometimes.”

Eugene grinned, “Not at all. They seem real nice folks.”

Violet laughed, “Well, they promised to be on their best behaviour so I’m glad ya think so.”

It was only a short walk through town to the local picture house and they reached the old building by quarter past six. The picture house was built many years before and its red wooden panels were flaking and haggard but inside it was reasonably furnished.

“I thought you could pick which film we watched. I wasn’t sure if you’ve seen any of them yet,” Eugene mumbled shyly as they approached the ticket boot.

Violet smiled, approaching the booth, “Can we have two tickets to see…” she pondered for a moment looking at the film posters above their heads. “They met in Bombay.”

The ticket masters passed over two tickets and Eugene passed him the money. Violet grasped Eugene’s hand, pulling him through the crowd, “Come on, let’s get some good seats.”

Eugene followed Violet up the winding staircase to the studio. Violet paused at the top of the stairs, breathing a little heavily now. “Those are some steep steps,” she laughed and Eugene nodded in agreement, despite having taken the steps two at a time with ease.

They found some seats down the middle aisle and made themselves comfortable.

“What made you choose this film,” Eugene asked curiously as he studied her face in the dim lights. Her rosy cheeks reflected pale in the light and Eugene realised that this is what an angel must look like.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, turning to face him with a smirk on her lips, “I’ve only been to the cinema once so I just picked one at random.” She laughed lightly at Eugene’s amused expression.

The lights soon dimmed further as the screen came to life with black and white images. Eugene’s heart sank as the images of soldiers appeared on the silver screen and news of the war in Europe was projected to the audience. It was inevitable that he’d end up fighting, every able-bodied man of fighting age would. As if she could sense something was wrong, Violet grasped Eugene’s hand and gave it a small squeeze before placing their joined hands on the armrest. Eugene was glad of the dark room because if he blushed any more tonight he’d be in a permeated state of red.

The film rolled by quickly and before Eugene knew it the lights came back up and Violet was grinning at him. He blushed, realising he’d been looking at her again, in fact, he wasn’t sure how much he’d actually seen of the film, too busy studying her features.

“If you take a picture, it will last longer,” Violet jested and Eugene looked down at his shoes, “I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s okay,” Violet assured him, squeezing his hand gently, “I like it when you look at me.”

All too soon they were back outside, strolling arm in arm along the now quiet, cool streets of Morgan City. Eugene’s heart thumped against his ribcage with every step as he tried to keep his thoughts from running wild. Violet could sense his eyes on her and she looked up at him, her blue eyes setting his heart alight.

“I had a wonderful time tonight, Eugene. I can’t thank you enough. I’ve never had an evening like this,” Violet smiled, stopping in her tracks and causing Eugene to stop beside her. She leant forward, pressing her lips softly to his cheek. Eugene couldn’t help but blush again. It was the kind of blushing that shows a person's soul, and complimented his eyes and the delicate sweetness they held within. “Thank you.”

“I think I shou’ be the one thanking you, Violet,” Eugene reached out, brushing a strand of blonde hair behind her ear. “I had an amazing time tonight. Could’a see you again sometime?”

“You certainly can,” Violet agreed, clutching Eugene’s hand once more. “Come on, my Daddy will be expecting me home.” As the pair continued their walk down the street, Eugene felt a sense of great relief filling his soul, his first date had been a success and maybe, just maybe this was the start of something beautiful.

Tags: @blueberry-ovaries @mads-weasley @coco-bean-1218 @she-wolf09231982 @georgieluz @docroesmorphine @liptonsbabe @hesbuckcompton-baby @ronsparky @allthingsimagines @bucky32557038ww2 @iceman-kazansky @yeahcurrahhe-e @msmercury84 @blvestxr @dustyjumpwjngs @theflyingfin @jump-wings @kafka-ohdear @kmc1989 @hanniewinnix @inglourious-imagines @l13bg0tt @xxluckystrike @hogwartslegacypics @softguarnere

#heart to heart #Eugene roe #eugene roe imagines #Eugene roe x oc #Violet Elwood

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darklinsblog · 2 years

Text

Love of My Lives | Sandman Imagine

Summary: Morpheus is a history teacher and after many lives he finds his wife reincarnated as a student of his.

Pairing: Teacher!Morpheus x Student!Reader

Author’s note: little disclaimer reader is 21 here so no underage romantisazing!

Morpheus had lived many lives and in every one there was you, his beautiful wife Y/N. Like him, you had many names.

Unlike Morpheus you weren’t a powerful entity, you were simply a human whose soul was intertwined with his, bound to meet him in his every step, as a dark apprehensive being, he needed his counterpart, a light at the end of the tunnel, a never ending loving and optimistic person.

But that didn’t make it easier to lose you each and every time, having all your memories be erased from your memory, but it too, gave him a chance to literally make you fall for him each and every day, in any life.

It had been 79 years since you died during World War II as Jewish you were trying to escape your awful destiny, but it was inevitable for you and your family to be taken to the concentration camps.

Even apart Morpheus and you shared many letters each day, until one day you had told him you were sick and it was getting worse and worse.

Sadly, you had passed away in camp, away from your lover and deprived from your freedom. With your passing Morpheus felt adrift to its purest expression, and after finding a bit more stability within himself he decided to spend more time in the Waking World, somehow he managed to get a job at a prestigious university as history teacher (ironically enough but he was good at his job)

Today, marked the first year of Morpheus’ being a teacher and even when it wasn’t truly monumental, something about this day felt different but he shrugged it off and headed to his classroom intending to get everything ready for the newcomers.

While writing on the board thinking back on his lecture for that day when there was a knock on the door, the chalk on his hand fell to the ground when his eyes found yours.

You were even more beautiful than the day he lost you back on that snowy day in 1943. From your hair, to the light blush on your cheeks and that particular glow in your eyes.

“I’m sorry, is this the Mr. Storian’s class?” You spoke with slight confusion looking at your schedule, Morpheus’ had to blink a few times before responding.

“Yes, this is my class, miss…?”

“Oh! I’m Y/N Y/L/N. Nice to meet you, sir” you said, hurrying to shake his hand with a smile on your face, tingles run down your spine when your hands touched, almost as if something simply… clicked.

“You’re Professor Lorien Storian, then?” You asked further, still smiling softly but frowning slightly puzzled with the sensation this man provoked in you.

“Yes, I am”

“Lorien was the God of Dreams, at least for Tolkien” you commented, making Morpheus’ eyes shimmer, he had chosen that name for that very particular reason, it was a way of subtly letting in on his identity.

The classes went by as usual, you loved History class more than you ever thought you would and you couldn’t deny Professor Storian was undoubtedly attractive, there was something about him that allured you and it was obvious he felt that attraction as well, but being a student and teacher made it impossible for you to pursue your intentions.

But for Morpheus’ it had been more than enough, he wanted to be with you, touch you, talk to you beyond the banalities of some assignment or exam.

So one day, when the bell rang he gathered the courage to speak.

“Miss, Y/L/N. May I speak to you?” He called out, your cheeks went red as you swallowed harshly, you had never been with him one on one.

“Of course” you muttered softly scared that if you spoke even a little bit louder your voice would crack and he would notice your nerves.

When everyone left, he closed the door and stood right before you while a million thoughts went through your mind.

“You’re not in any trouble, Y/N” it was the first thing he said, your eyes widened, it was almost as if he could hear your thoughts.

“Then what is this about?” you asked feeling your heart beating louder.

“I think we both know we share common interest beyond the academic matter” he spoke softly, you instinctively looked towards the door, you knew no one could see you or hear you clearly, but still talking of this while still on campus felt dangerous.

“I- We can’t speak of this, Mr. Storian” you muttered softly, attempting not to raise your voice for anyone that could be in the corridors.

“Lorien, please” he requested you, you bit your lip it was wrong for you to call him on first name basis, because it was stepping on thin ice, but you were already doing so by being all on your own with him after class.

“Lorien” you corrected yourself, complying to his demand while also testing out the way his name felt on your tongue “If I go further with this, we could get in serious trouble” you tried to reason with him, even when deep down you just wanted to follow your heart and taste his lips, to be embraced by him beyond the rational thoughts.

The Endless nodded, he knew he should back down and listen to you, but he had waited for you years upon years and he wouldn’t waste another second, not when you were right here.

He came closer to your your ear, sneaking his hand on your waist, bringing you closer making you tremble.

“Who’s to find out if we keep quiet?” He whispered in a low husky voice, when he stepped slightly back, your lips were mere inches away and he was the one to pull you out of your misery as he kissed you softly.

You didn’t even hesitate to reciprocate his actions, even as your brain was screaming for you to stop, that this was your teacher, you just couldn’t help but indulge to the feeling of him.

The way his hands wondered on your body almost as if he knew it by heart, the way it was easy for things to get more heated as the passion between you became an overpowering force of action, he refused to let you go, he refused to slow down, to contain himself.

Finally somehow, you found it within you to have enough strength to pull away, you were both breathing heavily as you looked into each other’s eyes processing what just happened.

“I have to go before they suspect anything” you spoke holding his hand, leaving was the last thing you wanted, but you had no other choice.

You looked in your bag, tearing a piece of paper and grabbing a pen, writing something down before giving it to him. He inspected the writing, knowing this was an address.

“This is my apartment address outside of campus” you explained. “We can meet there, at 7, after classes”

Doing this was risky, you could lose your scholarship, even be expelled and him fired, the consequences could be stratospheric, but the more you thought of it, the less you cared.

Because you wanted to continue that kiss, to go even further and not just one time, many times.

Morpheus had to restrain the smile that appeared on his lips.

“I can be there tonight” he said, making you smile with complicity, feeling not even an a bit of guilt, but a rush of excitement instead.

“Tonight” you repeated, coming to an implicit accord before you left his sight.

Taglist:

@emiemiemiii @ladyfairenvale @hungrhay @aurorarevenclaw1927 @adishax @meganmayhem89 @mrs-captainsteverogers @hb8301 @sarahbullet235 @bambooing-shenanigans @queenshelby @characterxreaderimagine @emarich7 @carolcrysis @sister-of-stars @coolsnowker @sandman-33 @jesllianaquilesrolon @supermegapauselouca

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numinousmysteries · 4 months

Text

Dancing the Tandava (5/10)

[on Ao3] @today-in-fic

Long Island, NY 1993

They fly as far as a small airport in Islip, near the middle of Long Island, but still have to drive another hour and a half to reach Montauk.

Scully’s been quiet on the flight over, no doubt digesting the news from the phone call he received earlier in their office. He has to admit, the idea of the two of them one day having a son who’s visiting them from the future is a little far-fetched, but he’s heard the lore about Camp Hero and is eager to see it for himself.

“You were a Navy brat, Scully,” he says, breaking the silence. “Have you ever heard about the Philadelphia experiment?”

“I’ve heard about the cream cheese,” she says, absentmindedly gazing out the passenger window.

“Well,” he goes on, “in 1943 a Navy destroyer, the USS Eldridge, disappeared from a Philadelphia shipyard. It reappeared in Norfolk, Virginia, more than 200 miles away with no evidence of how it got there. The crew members weren’t as lucky—some were never found and others were discovered physically fused to the walls of the ship. It’s suspected that the Navy was testing out extraterrestrial technology, possibly stolen from the Nazis, that could make ships invisible to radar detection. Of course, the Navy maintains no such experiment was ever conducted, and no living crew members have any recollection of the event.”

“You think that has something to do with this case?” she asks.

“Apparently, the military continued experiments using this same technology at Camp Hero. I’ve heard stories of a foot of snow falling in the middle of a hot, August afternoon in Montauk, or residents experiencing episodes of mass mind control with dozens of unrelated people feeling sudden surges of anger or sadness simultaneously. Plus, there are reports of a time tunnel in Camp Hero that researchers have used to go forward or backward in time.”

Scully turns to face him. “And that’s where you think this guy came from?”

“I guess we’ll see.” Mulder shrugs, cracking a sunflower seed in his teeth. “Do you ever think about having children, Scully?” He chews hard, hoping the personal question hasn’t crossed a boundary.

“Well, sure,” she hesitates, staring at her hands in her lap. “But I’d like to be further along in my career and, well, with a significant other. What about you?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “In an ideal world, I think it would be nice to have a family, but I didn’t have a great childhood myself and I’m not sure I had the best parenting models. Besides, the instability of this job isn’t conducive to settling down. I think you’d be a great mom, though.”

Scully laughs.

“I’m serious, Scully. You’re patient, caring, and you’ve kept me out of trouble so far which is no easy feat.”

“I suppose being your partner is pretty good practice for parenting,” she says.

Her warm smile encourages him to test the limits even more. “I know we’ve only been working together for a few months, but I think we have a good rapport. I don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility that one day our friendship evolves into something more and that we have a child together.”

Scully doesn’t respond and he regrets his words. It’s a step too far. She probably doesn’t consider him as anything more than a coworker and, to be honest, he’s only now realizing he sees her as a friend. When she first walked into his office, she was a curiosity to him—a spy with the confidence to rewrite Einstein; the intestinal fortitude to dissect a corpse, handle its oozing organs, and walk away hungry for lunch; and constellations of freckles on her cheeks that she hides under makeup but that delight him whenever he catches a glimpse of them.

He tried to keep his guard up around her, but he’s slowly learning to trust her loyalty. At first, he didn’t expect her to last long on the X-Files but recently he’s been hoping she sticks around.

“Sorry,” he says after another beat of silence on her end. “I didn’t mean to imply or insinuate anything. I’m sure if you do have children one day it’ll be with some hotshot surgeon or the future head of the FBI, not your crackpot partner.”

“I assume there have been worse cases of Stockholm Syndrome,” she says, grinning at him.

“Stockholm Syndrome? Really, Scully?” He smiles back at her in relief that she’s playfully teasing him and isn’t totally repelled by his comments.

“I’m kidding,” she replies. “I enjoy working with you, Mulder. In just a few months I’ve seen things that have tested my beliefs in concepts I’ve considered to be invariables, and you’ve taught me the power of maintaining an open mind—even if our theories don’t always align. And sure, it’s not possible to say where we'll be a decade from now, but it’s also not possible to travel backwards in time. This is just someone playing a prank on us.”

He nods and turns his attention back to the road unfolding in front of them. As they get closer, the highway narrows to two lanes lined with bare trees. Finally, they turn off onto a dirt road, eventually reaching a tall, barbed wire fence with a guardpost outside. In the distance, he can see the radar tower from his file.

A uniformed officer leans out of the post to inspect their vehicle. “Can I help you?” he asks.

“Agents Mulder and Scully with the FBI,” Mulder says as he shows his badge. “We received a phone call that there’s a young man here asking to speak with us.”

“One moment,” he says.

As the guard goes back inside his post and picks up a phone, Mulder turns to Scully. “Doesn’t seem so decommissioned after all?” he asks with a smile.

Before she can respond, the guard turns his attention back to them. “They’re bringing him out now.”

“We can’t enter the base?” Mulder asks.

“No sir,” the guard says. “This area is restricted to authorized personnel only. The person who asked for you, we would have arrested him ourselves for trespassing if the bureau wasn’t taking care of it.”

Mulder doesn’t add that the FBI hasn’t sanctioned any of the day’s activity. He convinced Scully to claim they were responding to a missing person report when they requested their travel expenses, but they didn’t elaborate on where this person had gone missing from—or who he claimed to be.

“We can’t come in and take a look around?” Mulder presses. “We’ve been told this man has appeared under mysterious circumstances and it would assist with our investigation.”

The guard shakes his head gruffly. On the other side of the gate, another military officer approaches escorting a younger man in handcuffs. As they get closer, Mulder feels a shock of recognition. The handcuffed man could pass for him in his Oxford days. They share the same long, lean frame, bulbous nose, and angular jawline. He feels Scully turning toward him but he can’t take his eyes off this young man. Once they reach the gate, the guard enters the post and presses a button to open it just wide enough for the office and the young man to pass through. The military officer pushes the handcuffed man in front of him towards Mulder and Scully’s rental car.

“You want him cuffed?” he asks.

“Um, no,” Scully says absently, her mind working to process what she sees.

The young man is smiling at them now as if he recognizes them. In his eyes, Mulder sees Scully’s bright blue irises.

“Whatever,” the officer says. He unlocks the handcuffs and guides the young man into the backseat of the car. “Now you all need to get out of here. Authorized personnel only.”

“We’ve heard,” Mulder says, although he’s looking at the young man’s face in the rear view mirror and not at the officer. He’s cataloging his features, assigning some to Scully and some to himself. The resemblance is uncanny.

As Mulder turns the car around and starts pulling away their passenger exclaims, “This is crazy! You guys look so young!”

“I’m sorry,” Scully says. “Do we know you?”

“Mom, it’s me, it’s William,” he says, confused. “Oh shit, it’s 1993. I don’t exist yet. But listen, it’s me, William, your son. Mom, you’re a doctor, you have two brothers, Bill and Charlie, and had—have—a sister, Melissa. Your mom’s name is Maggie and your father’s name is Bill. Dad, you had a sister Samantha who went missing when you were a kid. Your parents are Teena and Bill. You two used to—well I guess, as of now, still do—work at the FBI investigating paranormal cases in the X-Files department.”

“This is all public information,” Scully says, although Mulder can hear the doubt creeping into her usually confident delivery. “You could have researched us. We don’t have a child together.”

“No, not yet you don’t,” he says. “I’m not surprised you don’t believe me. But I can prove it. You can do a DNA test, right? Wait, can you do a DNA test in 1993?”

“Yes, I can do that. And I’m confident that the results will prove that you’re lying.”

“Look, I have pictures of the three of us together on my phone. Shit, I don’t have my phone with me.”

“You have pictures on a phone?” Scully asks doubtfully.

William falls quiet in the backseat. Mulder catches his sad eyes in the mirror.

“Let’s go somewhere we can talk and figure this out,” Mulder says.

Back on the highway, they find a chrome-sided diner. Mulder and Scully secure a booth while William excuses himself to use the bathroom.

Mulder can only sit and grin dumbfoundedly at Scully.

“What?” Scully asks, exacerbated.

“You see it, don’t you?” He asks. “You have to admit the resemblance is undeniable.”

“It’s the power of suggestion,” she counters angrily. “We were told he was our son, so we’re looking for similarities. If anything, this could be a setup. Maybe someone found this guy, who looks a little bit like both of us, and is using him to lure us into something.”

“That doesn’t add up. They’d have to be assuming we would believe in this whole time travel angle as well.”

“Mulder,” she sighs. “You do believe William, or whoever he is, traveled back in time.”

“I’m not ready to rule it out,” he replies. “You’ll do the DNA test. That’ll give us some answers. Let’s hear what he has to say in the meantime.”

From across the diner Mulder sees William emerging from the restroom. “Your parents are right down at that end, hun,” a waitress tells him, pointing in their general direction.

Mulder glances at Scully and she rolls her eyes.

William slides into the booth across from them, still smiling wide, with Scully’s blue eyes lit up on his face.

“I can’t believe this,” he says with excitement in this voice. “You guys used to tell me about going to all these random diners while you were on the road for cases and now I’m getting to see it myself. How long have you two been working together now? Did you find Tooms yet? That was one of your first cases, right?”

“Slow down,” Scully says. “We need you to tell us who you are and where you came from.”

William laughs. “I feel like I should be the one asking you two that,” he says playfully.

“Give us the benefit of the doubt here, William,” Mulder says.

“Okay, well, where do I start? I’m your son, William Scully Mulder, I was born on May 20, 2001. I’m currently a research intern at CERN in Geneva. You two were actually supposed to come visit me today—well, 2023 today. I was assisting this physicist with an experiment on the large hadron collider when all of a sudden things got hazy and I came to in some sort of tunnel at that military base you picked me up from.”

“The large what?” Mulder asks.

“The large hadron collider,” Scully answers. “It’s a particle accelerator but it doesn’t exist. International scientists have proposed plans for its development, but right now the only particle accelerator at CERN is the large electron–positron collider.”

“Yeah,” William nods. “But the LEP was dismantled like 20 years ago to make room for the LHC, which is magnitudes more powerful. Mom, you’ll love this. They discovered the Higgs boson in 2012.”

He’s interrupted by the waitress who comes to take their order.

Scully starts to speak but William reaches out his hand to stop her.

“Watch,” he says. “I know what you want. Mom, you probably think the crispy chicken sandwich sounds good but you’ll order the Greek salad, no feta cheese, with dressing on the side. Dad, you’re going to get the Reuben with fries. And two black coffees.”

Mulder turns to glance at Scully, befuddled.

“Sounds like your kid’s got you down pat,” the waitress says. “And what about you, young man?”

“Um, I’ll have the crispy chicken sandwich—you can have a bite, mom—and an iced tea.”

As the waitress walks away, William asks, “Do you believe me now? Dad, you probably have a bag of sunflower seeds in your pocket that you’ll snack on before the food comes.”

Mulder laughs, pulling out an opened bag of seeds. William reaches over and takes one, opening the shell with his teeth, mirroring the movement Mulder knows he does himself.

“Well, before we eat, I’d like to take a sample of your saliva for a DNA test,” says Scully. “You can take a lucky guess on our lunch orders but genetics don’t lie.”

As she opens her briefcase to get testing swabs and evidence bags, Mulder sees a look of resigned disappointment flash across William’s face. It’s as if he’s sad Scully won’t believe him, but also not surprised.

“May I?” Scully asks, pointing an elongated Q-tip in William’s direction. “Just a cheek swab.”

He nods and opens his mouth, letting Scully get a sample of his saliva and zip it into an evidence bag. She does the same for Mulder, and then herself, before packing all three plastic bags into her briefcase.

“I can drop these off at the nearest field office and have them start sequencing the DNA.”

“Why don’t you tell us how you think you got here,” Mulder says.

“I told you,” William starts impatiently. “I was working on the collider with Dr. Bellona—wait, shit, it must have been Dr. Bellona.”

Mulder and Scully stare at him in confusion.

“He’s a physicist at CERN,” William continues. “His office is next door to Dr. Farber who I actually work for, but he called me in last night to assist on a project. That’s kind of weird, for an intern to work directly on the LHC, but it’s not even the weirdest part. Dad, you’re going to love this.”

Mulder leans in across the table. He can’t help but feel drawn to William’s energy.

“When I was coming back from work yesterday it was just getting dark and I saw Dr. Bellona outside this statue near my apartment. It’s a big statue of the Hindu god Shiva. And Bellona wasn’t alone. He was with about a dozen other people and leading them in a chant. I couldn’t make out any of the words but I also saw he was scattering something on the ground as he chanted. And I kind of stopped to look because it seemed so odd, and then Bellona saw me and he gave me this ice-cold stare. It was kind of creepy, actually. Then, just a couple of hours later, he calls me in to assist on an LHC run. That’s strange, right?”

Mulder looks over at Scully, her brow furrowed as she tries to make sense of the story.

“Did you tell anyone what you saw?” Mulder asks.

“Just Hannah, but she wouldn’t tell anyone.”

“Who’s Hannah?” Scully asks.

William’s about to answer when the waitress comes and sets their plates down in front of them. He waits for her to walk away to continue.

“She’s, um, my friend, and my roommate. We went to MIT together and we both got internships at CERN. She’s the best. You guys met her last summer, and you really liked her. And like I said, she didn’t tell anyone about the Bellona thing. We were together the whole time in between me seeing him and when he called.”

“So you suspect this Dr. Bellona caught you witnessing something you weren’t supposed to see and then, to keep you quiet, sent you back in time?” Scully asks hesitantly.

“It’s possible,” he says.

“It’s really not,” Scully responds wearily.

WIlliam shrugs and takes a sip of his iced tea. “I know it sounds crazy, but dad, back me up here. You must’ve heard about something like this happening before. Maybe in one of your cases?”

“Physicists have theorized about wormholes and time loops—” Mulder starts.

“Yeah, of course, like Stephen Hawking,” William interrupts. “He said the possibility of time travel was more likely than the existence of God. And mom, didn’t you even write about it in your senior thesis?”

Mulder smiles and turns toward Scully. “That’s what I said, mom,” he says.

“Well, as I explained to Agent Mulder, time travel is only a theory, and even if it were somehow possible, the human body wouldn’t be able to withstand the extreme forces and temperatures that would be required to create a transversable wormhole and manipulate space-time.”

“And yet, here I am.”

Mulder makes eye contact with William from across the table. William flashes a smirk at him that, if it didn’t come from a face with Scully’s eyes, could be like looking in a mirror.

“How old is this Dr. Bellona?” he asks William.

“I don’t know,” he says in between bites of his sandwich. “Probably around your age, 60-something.”

Scully stifles a laugh.

“Well,” says Mulder. “Then he must be around our age now, too. Maybe we can track him down and see if he plans on creating a time machine thirty years from now. Any idea where he might be in 1993?”

“I don’t know,” William says. “He’s American, which narrows it down a little. I know that’s not much, but it’s not all that common at CERN so at least we’ll be sticking within your jurisdiction.”

He holds out his half-eaten sandwich to Scully. “It’s really good, mom. You sure you don’t want a bite?”

Mulder watches as she squints at William, then slowly reaches out to take the sandwich. He winks at William who smiles back.

#xfiles #txf #xf fanfic #msr #xfiles fanfic #x files #the x files

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girlactionfigure · 8 months

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Sewer Worker and Savior: Poldek Socha

He brought them everything they needed.

Leopold “Poldek” Socha was a mild-mannered maintenance man who saved the lives of eleven Jews by hiding them in the underground sewers of Lvov, Poland during the Nazi occupation.

An uneducated Pole living in poverty, the only job Poldek could get was cleaning up the underground sewage system in Lvov. The pay was so low that he supplemented his income with theft and burglary.

The Germans occupied Lvov in 1941 and immediately forced all of the city’s Jews into a squalid, overcrowded ghetto teeming with disease, death and misery. Ignorant and barely literate, Poldek had something more valuable than education, something the oh-so-sophisticated Nazi leaders lacked: a moral compass. Outraged by the Nazi occupiers’ persecution of the Jews of Lvov, Poldek – who didn’t know any Jews personally – decided to do something about the injustice he witnessed. He visited the Jewish ghetto and after befriending some of its desperate occupants, he vowed to find a way to rescue Jews. He had no money, resources, or influence; all this humble man had was a desire to save the lives of complete strangers. Poldek convinced a fellow sewer-worker, Stefan Wroblewski, to help carry out his brave mission, although they still weren’t sure exactly how they’d accomplish it.

The aspiring heroes got their answer when the Nazis began the Aktion, liquidation of the ghetto, which meant transporting the inhabitants to concentration and death camps. The night the Aktion started, in June 1943, Poldek was cleaning out sewage canals when he saw a family of Jews trudging through the stinking filth, heading toward the river. They had escaped the ghetto through the floorboards. Knowing that the riverbank was crowded with police and Gestapo storm troopers, Poldek approached the terrified Jews and told them not to go that way. Instead, he said, they should stay underground and he would take care of them.

Poldek brought the Jews food and clean clothing. Others found out about the safe hiding place and joined them until there were twenty people living in the sewer. Poldek, his wife Magdalena, and Stefan and his wife took care of all the hidden Jews’ needs. At the beginning, the Jews paid them, but their money soon ran out and the brave Polish couples continued paying for everything from their own meager paychecks.

Hiding in the sewers was a temporary way to stay alive, but it was horrible. It was dark, cold, wet, and the fetid smell was overpowering. There was nothing to see or do, and the sheer terror of being discovered never left them. One of the Jews, eight months pregnant, was there with her elderly grandmother. The conditions were so harsh and unsanitary that both the baby and the grandmother died. The Sochas and the Wroblewskis went to great trouble to remove the bodies from the sewer in the dead of night, and bury the tiny infant and his aged great-grandmother. Other Jews couldn’t take the brutal conditions in the sewer and they decided to find another safe haven, but getting out of the sewer was fraught with danger and they died on the way out. When he found their bodies, Poldek made sure they received burials.

Besides providing the hidden Jews with food, medicine, clothing, blankets and other necessities of life, Poldek went out of his way to enable them to practice their faith. He rummaged through empty tenements in the ghetto – the residents had been sent to concentration camps – until he found a dog-eared prayer book. During Passover, when the Jews couldn’t eat bread, he brought them potatoes.

Among the Jews hiding in the sewers was the Chirowski family of four. The Chirowski children were 4 and 7 years old. It was very difficult to keep the children occupied and entertained for over a year in their filthy, smelly underground hiding place. Mother Paulina Chirowski spent the days telling her children colorful stories and keeping up their schooling as much as she could. In Paulina’s testimony to Yad Vashem years later, she recalled that much of the family’s time was spent huddling under the sewer grills and listening to street noise, their only link with the normal world above. One particular painful moment among many she mentioned in her testimony was when she and her little daughter overheard a mother and daughter above chatting happily about which flowers to get on their way to church. The child was distraught, not understanding why a different little girl and her mommy were able to live freely and enjoy life when she was stuck living in literal excrement day after day. To soothe the girl, Paulina promised her that they too would be free one day – although she wasn’t sure if she believed it.

Finally, after the Jews had been underground for thirteen months, Lvov was liberated by the Russians and it was safe to come out of the sewers. Of the 21 Jews who found refuge in the sewers, 10 survived, including the entire Chirowski family.

The war ended in 1945, and the next year Poldek and his daughter were on their bicycles when a freak tragedy occurred. An out-of-control Soviet military truck careened towards them. Thinking quickly, Poldek used his bicycle to push his daughter out of the way, saving her life but sacrificing his own. He was only 36 years old.

Poldek Socha and his wife Magdalena were honored by Israeli Holocaust Memorial Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations in 1978. Three years later, the Wroblewskis were also honored.

In 2011 Poldek Socha was the subject of the movie “In Darkness,” a drama by acclaimed director Agnieszka Holland, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

For saving eleven Jews, at great risk to themselves, we honor the Sochas and the Wroblewskis as this week’s Thursday Heroes.

#Thursday Hero

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cinemaocd · 3 months

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Jenny's ongoing list of films watched 2024

January

RRR (2023)*

Peter's Friends (1992)*

The Lady Eve (1941)

How to Get a Head in Advertising (1988)*

High Fidelity (2000)

Frieda (1947)*

Oh...Rosalinda! (1955)

The Quick and the Dead (1995)*

The Barefoot Contessa (1954)*

The Life and Death of Col. Blimp (1943) Commentary Track (2012)*

Rhubarb (1951)*

The Birds (1963)*

House of Yes (1997)*

Cassandra Cat (1963)*

Foreign Correspondent (1940)

The Long Goodbye (1973)

Night of the Comet (1984)

The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961)*

For Me and My Gal (1942)*

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

The Small, Back Room (1949)

House of Games (1987)

Water (1985)*

The Ballad of John and Yoko (2023)*

The Meaning of Life (1983)

Track 29 (1988)*

*New to me

Thoughts on the New to Me films:

New Year's Eve we watched RRR, a lot of fun, energetic, bright and action-packed. I enjoyed the way that little attention was given to the British characters. They were straight up villains in ill fitting ahistorical costumes, kind of like the way Indian/Asian characters are treated in Western films most of the time...$$$

New Year's Day we watched Peter's Friends, a drama/comedy from the early 90s starring all of the famous Cambridge Footlights. Big Chill-ish film set in a country house over the Christmas holidays. $$$

How to Get a Head in Advertising was weird and also really good. Had a similar vibe to Withnail and I (possibly because of Richard E. Grant, but also possibly the mixture of the surreal with the realistic). Quite stage-y in some ways but clever and savage in it's satire of life in the 80s. $$$

Frieda: Oh I loved this! Weird World War II melodrama about a German girl marrying a British boy and all the trouble it causes with his complex family situation. Such a stellar cast including the late, great Glynnis Johns. $$$$

The Quick and the Dead: I set my expectations quite low for this and was pleasantly surprised. I liked Sam Raimi's comic book-y take on gunfighters and esp. loved Sharon Stone's character. We love to see a female action hero with no love interest. A nice twist on the Man with no Name trope. Excellent cast as well with Russell Crowe, Gene Hackman, Roy Scheider and Woody Stroud in his final film. $$$

The Barefoot Contessa: Joseph Mankewitcz is one of the geniuses of old Hollywood but this ain't it, chief. Just kind of all of the place melodrama that makes no sense and relies too much on Ava Gardner looking amazing in technicolor in the South of France. A bit of a commentary on Grace Kelly who a few years earlier married minor royalty on the Riviera. Even Rossano Brazzi can't save this mess for me. $

Rhubarb: Two genres I usually kind of hate (family-friendly animal centered film, sports film) combined into one and it's actually a lot of fun. Ray Milland and a bunch of classic character actors as the baseball team (also Leonard Nemoy has a tiny part as a mobster) in this slight/ predictable romp. $$

The Birds: Woah, shit this was good. I should have known. Amazing tension created and Hitchcock just sells the surreal horror with lots of rear projection...so. much. rear. projection. $$$

House of Yes: How about House of NOPE. Ugh what a mess this was. Some good performances and intriguing story, but it was very stagey and I don't know why the 90s couldn't make a story about adult children and their parents without reducing everyone to cliches and stereotypes but this and Six Degrees of Separation are definitely guilty of that, but the latter is just a better film. $

Cassandra Cat: Takes a long time to get to the cat which given that this was a family film from the 60s might be a problem for some viewers, expecting a more cat-centric movie. Interesting riff on fairy tales from the Czech New Wave. Beautiful Demy-esque technicolor and settings make this 60s nonsense fly by. $$

The Day the Earth Caught Fire: 60s nuclear panic disaster film that really just shows the earth as it is now in the throws of global warming. Yikes. Thoughtfully written and well acted by a bunch of folks I'd never heard of. $$

For Me and My Gal: Directed by Busby Berkley and starring Gene Kelly and Judy Garland and set in the 1920s on the Vaudeville circuit, I was expecting a lot more fun, dancing, color, costumes etc. This is actually more of a black and white war time melodrama with some music shoved into it and the dancing is very rudimentary. (I think this is probably because Garland esp. at this stage wasn't in the same league with Gene Kelly and I think it would have been too noticable...). Filmed at the entry of America into WW2 this was quite a deliberate propaganda piece. $$

TLADOCB Commentary: I've watched this movie 20 times at least but the commentary really made me think about a bunch of things differently. Can't say I recommend unless you are fanatic though as it's obviously pieced together from interviews Michael Powell and Martin Scorcese $$

Water (1985): If you smoke the exact right strain of sativa and ignore some of the more dated aspects of this 80s comedy, that reads as if Local Hero were a Cheech and Chong film--this is a total classic. Irreverent Michael Caine just straight up breaking character the minute he turns into a guerilla fighter in the jungle and being far too competent and cool, and then snapping back to sweetly shy, inept British Civil Servant, finding he actually loves his hated backwater post (the invent Casara part Caribbean, part Devon Jurassic Coast) while having to actually do his job. Political satire and fully both barrels to Maggie Thatcher and Reagan. Good on em. Filmed in St. Lucia, the movie has a zany heart and little taste, hoovering up vast quantities of competent TV players from my youth: Herman Munster and Reginald Perrin to name but two. Awkward love story and some uneven acting from Valerie Perrin and Brenda Vaccaro. I enjoyed myself, heartily, anyway. $$$

The Ballad of John and Yoko: Technically a video essay with amazing production values (the licensing alone was epic) dragging together disparate topics around the central theme of women being blamed for bad things happening to infantalized male geniuses. Is it the most coherent argument? No. Does it absolutely tap into many unexpressed or implied ideas that have been floating around since me too? Absolutely. $$

Track 29: This was some of the worst casting I've ever seen in a film. When I think of Texas nurse who is into trains and spanking, I don't automatically think of comedian Sandra Bernhardt. When I think of an actress of that era who was old enough to play Gary Oldman's mother, I don't think of Theresa Russell who is the same age as Oldman and looked every bit as young as he did in the film. Maybe that was the point? I'm not sure. The story was weird, like a Southern Gothic melodrama/black comedy ala Flannery O'Connor, but there was something off about the whole thing.

#Jenny's Film Odyssey #all credit to @dweemeister #January film Odyssey

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andnowanowl · 4 months

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Since "Palestine Speaks: Narratives of Life Under Occupation" is suspiciously not available in the US in the form of an e-book, I purchased a physical copy and wanted to share it here for anyone else also unable to get access.

LAITH AL-HLOU

Farmer, day laborer, 32

Born in Bethlehem, West Bank

Interviewed in the West Bank

The first thing we notice as we drive to Laith Al-Hlou's home southeast of Bethlehem is the challenge presented by the roads. Some roads are almost too steep to climb, and others almost too muddy or rocky to navigate. The bottom of our car crunches and scrapes as we creep along toward his village.

Eventually we reach the compound where Laith lives with his family. Laith's house, the family's olive trees, and two other houses belonging to his extended family are surrounded by a short rock wall topped with barbed wire. When we pull up in our car, a dozen or more kids come spilling out to greet us - Laith's children and nieces and nephews. Some wear cracked plastic shoes, some wear no shoes at all.

Laith is a skinny thirty-two-year-old with a wife and five young kids. The seven of them sleep in a twelve-foot by twelve-foot room that includes a wardrobe, a crib for the baby, and twin bunk beds piled with blankets. This is the main room of the family's living space. They also have a small kitchen and toilet, all of which is on the second floor, above a chicken coop.

After a tour of his house, we sit with Laith on plastic chairs outside, and he tells us about the ways his community has changed since 1996, when Israeli settlers first moved near his home. His wife stays close by, and even though she is hard of hearing, she interjects periodically with her own stories.

Laith is one of up to 300,000 Palestinians living in Area C - the roughly 60 percent of the West Bank that is still under full military and administrative control by Israel following the Oslo Peace Accords of 1993.¹ Area C also contains many of the West Bank's Israeli settlements, a collection of villages established by Israeli citizens following the occupation of the region in 1967. Today, there are 400,000 - 500,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank outside of Jerusalem. The guard tower of a nearby settlement looms above Laith's property as we sit and talk. He tears up as he tells us that pressure from the settlements may force him to someday relocate his family.²

THE DAYS THAT HAVE PASSED ARE BETTER THAN THE DAYS THAT ARE NOW

I was born in Bethlehem in 1982, but I've lived here in my village southeast of Bethlehem for twenty-five years, since I was a little boy. My grandfather brought his whole family here from Bethlehem-my father and my uncle and their wives and kids. My extended family had land here going far back, and my grandfather inherited a piece of it. We have paperwork going back to 1943 that documents our right to these twelve acres and three houses.

The days that have passed, they are better than the days that are now. I remember how much fun it was as a child, taking care of my family's farm and chasing animals in the wilderness nearby, and just living on the land. We went on picnics. It was nice. It was normal. We worked and moved easily with no restrictions. We were happy, with a simple life.

Then, when I was around fifteen years old, the settlers came onto our land. There had been settlements in the area since I was a boy, but none so close. First, we started seeing roads going in sometime around 1996. That same year, the first settlers showed up in trailer homes. There were maybe fifteen to twenty trailers that appeared near our village. These first settlers were just a few families. But they were never without guns - AK-47s, big guns. The first thing they did was come to the village to see if they would have any trouble. They were pretty rough. There were some clashes at first over land. I remember one old man whom the settlers struck on the head - he almost died. They also started building a fence around the settlement and some of our farmland right away. We had a fence around most of our property, and that helped keep the settlers from building directly on our land, but they took the land where our sheep graze outside the fence, about a thousand square feet of grazing land. They also took some of my father's sheep. And they took other villagers' land and sheep when they could.

At one point in 1996, the villagers had a big protest. We set up tents around the village, and there were about a hundred of us protesting the settlers taking our land. There were human rights groups at the protest, and we explained things to them. But it didn't matter. The settlers just attacked us, struck us with their guns. After that protest and some early clashes with the settlers, the villagers here just gave up.

THEY SAID A BULLDOZER WAS COMING

In the summer of 1997, the Israeli military came to my family's home and demolished our sheep pen. It was a Saturday evening, and sixty or seventy soldiers arrived in jeeps. They gathered up my family - I was with my parents, six brothers, and four sisters - and they told us to stay in a single room. We also saw them go to my uncles' houses, which were on the same property. At first they were just securing the area, making sure nobody protested or made trouble.

They said a bulldozer was coming. My father tried to argue with them. He said that the sheep pen was the first floor of what would be a new home that he was building for some of his kids. He needed to build a new structure to house his growing family. But the soldiers told him to be quiet and stay in the room, and then they locked us in. We could see what was happening out the window, and we watched for an hour and a half while they drove the sheep out and knocked down the house. We cried. We had just built the barn the year before, all by hand. It had taken months of work and it was a big investment. We knew the soldiers might come. We'd gotten a demolition order the year before, while we were still building the first floor of the new structure.

It was on our land, but the Israeli authorities said we didn't have a permit to build it. Many people in the village got similar notices that demolition was planned on houses or buildings they'd built without permission from Israel. But the Israeli military only demolished two buildings that day our sheep pen and one other home in the village, the home of some neighbors half a mile away. I'm not sure why they chose our structure. Afterward, we had to take turns sleeping outside with the sheep, to protect them. We live near a wilderness, and there were wild dogs and jackals to worry about. After we cleared away the rubble, there were still a couple of the walls left, so we put up a tarp and that became the new sheep pen.

I remember the feeling I had after that day, a suffocating feeling. Our family was large, it was growing, and we weren't allowed to build. My father wanted to grow the farm and build homes for his children, but he wasn't allowed to. His plan had been to build upward, adding floors to existing structures. The sheep pen was a new structure, and he wanted to build more floors on top of it for his children to live in when they started families of their own. But after the demolition, that was no longer possible.

My family tried again a couple of years later. Around 2000, we bought stone to build a new house on the property. We paid about 60,000 shekels.³ This time, we tried to get a permit to build. There was so much we had to do, so many requests of us-money, negotiating with lawyers, endless paperwork. My father tried three times, but we couldn't get a permit. The stones we bought to build a new house are still on the property today. It's just a pile of marble that's been sitting there for fourteen years.

Many people in the village have gone elsewhere. Some of my uncle's family members who used to live on the property have gone to live abroad. The Israelis, the settlers, it seems like they want us to go away. If we didn't have this land, we'd go back to Bethlehem. It's a better place-it's easier to live there. But if we leave, we won't be able to protect the land, which has been in our family for generations.

WE ARE LIKE PRISONERS HERE

I got married a few years after the demolition on our sheep barn. I needed to find a job to make more money, since my wife and I wanted to start a family. So I found work at a marble company in a large settlement a couple of miles from here, and I worked there for three years. But work stopped and the workers were let go in 2008. Around this time my wife and I were growing our family. We had children, and we needed money. So I began entering Israel illegally to work. I snuck in once to do some work on a construction site. I tried to sneak in a second time, but I was caught by the army. They put me in jail for two months, and I couldn't apply for a permit to work legally in Jerusalem for years.⁴

Since then I've worked around the family home. My family has sheep and goats, but I just take care of the chickens. I have about forty of them, and I get around ten eggs a day. The eggs we don't eat we sell in the market. We also grow most of our own vegetables - cucumbers, cabbage, beans. And we have about three hundred olive trees on the property. We make about eighty gallons of olive oil every year, and we sell what we don't use.

Most days during the week, I wake up at six-thirty in the morning and go to work by seven. Right now I'm working in the olive groves on the farm in the nearby settlement. It's the time of the season when we dry the olives. I actually don't like working in the sun - I get dizzy and I get headaches so my job is to work inside where I help get the olives ready for packing. I usually work from seven to three, but sometimes I get overtime and stay until five. I've also done work in the nearby settlements preparing firewood, making bricks, doing other jobs. I talk to the boss, and he tells me where I should go to find work. In general, I like working in the settlements because I can travel back and forth easily, see my kids more. But the work I get around here doesn't pay much. I get about 100 shekels a day, usually. My friends who go into Jerusalem, they get a little more - 150 or 175 shekels.⁵ I used to go with them sometimes, but you need a special permit, and I haven't been able to get one since I was arrested.

The settlement near my home has about forty or fifty settlers. Then there's a handful of soldiers or private security guards that patrol the area in four or five jeeps. They have a tower set up nearby so they can watch everything. We can't move off our property without them seeing us. There are maybe ten to twelve of us Palestinian men who work in the settlement next door. Me personally, I'm not afraid of the settlers. They know me, I've worked in the settlements, so they go easy on me. But with my kids, some of my other family, some of my neighbors, the settlers can be rough. My family and many of my neighbors feel like they're trapped at home, trapped in the limits of our own land. The settlements are all around us, and they have private security. If you leave your land, security guards will see you and come hassle you. We are like prisoners here in this area.

Sometimes, tourists will come onto this land to have picnics, especially in the springtime. Settlement soldiers will come and surround them and tell them the area's closed off. And for a long time, some settlers would come to our house maybe twice a month and shout at us, tell us to go away. They'd have guns with them, and they'd scare my children. They'd say things like, "If we see you in the street, we will shoot you. If we see you with the sheep over in those fields, we'll shoot you, we'll take you to jail. If you don't stay in the house, we'll shoot." They'd tell the children they couldn't go outside our fence. Now I don't really let my kids leave the property, except to go to school. And my kids have nightmares - they dream of being shot.

But it's actually gotten better. When the settlers first arrived, they were much rougher. Some of those people left, and some of the new people are a lot less threatening. But I remember an episode a while back where some settlers caught a man near the settlement. He was in the fields picking nettles, and some settlers spotted him. They took all of his clothes, and they made him walk home naked. Everyone in the village saw him, and he just kept his head down and walked all the way home. The settlers are nicer now, but they say the settlement is going to expand. It makes me feel like I'm choking. We already feel afraid all the time. I think it'll get worse when they get bigger.

THE BIGGEST PROBLEM IS WATER

We have electricity sometimes through our generator. But gas is expensive. We usually only turn it on around once a week to wash clothes in our washing machine. It's hot now, and we have no electricity for fans. In the winter, we have no heat to keep us warm. When it gets cold, we stay in bed all day under the blankets to stay warm.

The biggest problem for us is water. The pipes run through the settlement, and we're the last in line in the village. During parts of the summer, we hardly ever have water come through the pipes. We have to ask the soldiers at the nearby military base to turn on the water. We have to ask a lot - for days - before they'll turn it on, and then they might turn it on for only a day or two.

We have to buy some water in tanks, and then we get some from a well on the property. The well doesn't have enough water in the summer, so we're buying a lot. Each tank is about 60 shekels and holds a few hundred gallons of water. We also save water as much as we can. The water we bathe with, we'll save and use to flush our toilets. The children all wash using the same bucket of water. There's very little waste.

At the moment there are about thirty of us in the family living on the property, and about ten in the family who are temporarily living elsewhere for work. Then there are the animals and the olive trees. We have to make priorities. We make sure the children have enough water first, then the adults, then the animals. I don't think there will be enough water this year for our olive trees. We won't see any olives from them this year.

At the nearby settlements there's no problem with water. People living there don't have to have tanks on their roofs or anything, they get enough from the pipes. The settlements look like heaven to us. They even have swimming pools there.

And we still can't build on our property. My father has paperwork that goes back to 1943 that proves ownership of twelve acres, all the land we live on, and three of the structures on the property. They won't demolish those. But anything else we try to build on the property, they'll demolish if we don't have a building permit. Five years ago my father was going to build a small house for just him and my mother. He tried to do it without a permit, since it's so hard to get one. He got a demolition order immediately. So he turned the foundation he'd started into a small chicken coop. Next we tried to build another floor on the house he'd been living in. We built it, but we got a demolition order. The army gave us the order three years ago but haven't showed up with bulldozers yet. We don't know when they might come, but we expect it all the time.

WE LOVE THIS LIFE

We have two boys and three girls, our youngest is one and a half. We have one room where we all sleep, and then we have the kitchen. Still, it isn't enough, and we can't build. The kids, they need a place to run around and play. There's no electricity, so they can't even watch TV. They spend a lot of time fighting each other.

There are things I love about living here. It's not the city. It's not overcrowded. It's simple to make a life here - we raise animals, live off the land. We love this life. It's normal for me. We are coping with the situation, we are coping with the settlements. We have lived through hardships from the beginning. I'd like to move, but I can't leave my land here. So if I go, what is the nature of my life? I work in the settlement, so it is very difficult for me to move and find work. My land, my family, my father and mother are all here on this land. Even if I move, my parents will not go.

But still, we feel like we are suffocating. If the settlements keep growing and surround our property, our lives will be hell. Right now, we are depressed from being worried all the time. I can't describe my feelings. We feel inferior, and no one helps. The settlements will only grow, and so will my family. Right now I'm just trying to make money, so that we can have a better life. For my children, I hope they live in safety, that they are not hurt or attacked, that they study and are good at school. Knowledge is the last thing that remains for us to achieve, and I want them to study at university. People we know in Bethlehem, they have water, electricity, it's a much better life. A number of villagers have moved already-they've gone out looking for something better. Someday we might move. Here, there's no room to build and grow.

---

Footnotes

¹ Following the Oslo Accords in 1993, the West Bank was carved up into three fragmented administrative areas. Area A is made up primarily of large cities and is fully controlled by the Palestinian Authority. Area B comprises some 440 villages and is under Palestinian civil control and Israeli security control. Area C includes mostly rural areas and numerous Israeli settlements. Area C is fully controlled by the Israeli military.

² We have changed names and obscured details about this narrator's location out of concern for the safety of his family.

³ At the time, 60,000 shekels equaled approximately US$15,000.

⁴ Palestinians in the West Bank need special permits to enter Jerusalem. Some permits are granted on a one time only basis for special reasons, and some are granted for access to work in Israel. The application process can be difficult and expensive, so many Palestinians risk imprisonment by entering the city illegally.

⁵ 100 shekels equals approximately US$29. 175 shekels equals approximately US$51. (Bloggers Note: As of right now, 100 shekels = US$27.)

#palestine speaks #palestinian voices #book exerpt #strike for palestine #thank goodness for text scanner apps #part 3 of 16

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dramoor · 3 months

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"A British family went to Scotland one summer for a vacation. The mother and father were looking forward to enjoying the beautiful Scottish countryside with their son.

But one day the son wandered off all by himself and got into trouble. As he walked through the woods, he came across an abandoned swimming hole, and as most boys his age do, he took off his clothes and jumped in!

He was totally unprepared for what happened next. Before he had time to enjoy the pool of water, he was seized by a vicious attack of cramps. He began calling for help while fighting a losing battle with the cramps to stay afloat.

Fortunately, a farm boy was working in a nearby field. When he heard the frantic cries for help, he rescued the English boy and brought him to safety.

The father of the boy who had been rescued was of course very grateful. The next day, he went to meet the youth who had saved his son's life. As the two talked, the Englishman asked the brave lad what he planned to do with his future.

The boy answered, "I'll be a farmer like my father."

The grateful father said, "Is there something else you'd rather do?"

"Oh, yes!" answered the Scottish lad. "I've always wanted to be a doctor. But we are poor and could never afford to pay for the education."

"Never mind that," said the Englishman. "You shall have your heart's desire and study medicine. Make your plans, and I'll take care of the costs."

So, the Scottish lad did indeed become a doctor.

The legend of this fable says that years later, in December of 1943, Winston Churchill (the English boy) became deathly ill with pneumonia while in North Africa. His life was saved for a second time by the Scottish boy (Sir Alexander Fleming). This time with a new drug Fleming had invented, the first antibiotic, penicillin. Two years later under the unshakable leadership of Churchill, Britain and her Allies would defeat Hitler and the Nazis, ending the most diabolical regime in history."

~From Holy Moments

(Photo © dramoor 2017 London, England)

#Winston Churchill #Sir Alexander Fleming #Holy Moments #travel #photography #photographers on tumblr #legend #London England #Christian #Prime Minister of the UK

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zep-writings · 9 months

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You Feel Like Home

CHAPTER ONE.

Warnings: Bad words, mention of war and military, fluff, loss of parents.

Pairings: Steve Rogers x OFC Ellie Barnes.

Notes: I do not own any of the characters present in this story, except for Ellie Barnes, an original character. This is pure fiction.

This has not been beta and English is not my first language so be nice haha.

Please give me some feedback, even just a small comment is really appreciated!

I've been working on this one for a while, so please let me know what you think!

You Feel Like Home Masterlist || Main Masterlist.

April 1943.

The 107th.

The words kept on resonating in Ellie’s head. Bucky was shipping out. He was leaving for London the next morning and she hated the idea. Since they had lost their parents in March and July 1933, Bucky was the only family Ellie had left. It had been ten years and, even if she still daily missed her parents dearly, she had managed to keep on living because of Bucky. Sure, she missed her mom’s tenderness, her hugs and her smile and she missed the way her dad always managed to make her laugh and the way he would play dolls with her without a care in the world, but she still had Bucky. Buck was her brother, her protector, her anchor and knowing that soon, way too soon to her taste, he would be fighting in the war raging in Europe terrified her to her very soul. Bucky was a good soldier, she knew full well, but it was war. He was young, he had just turned twenty-six and just the thought of ever losing him made her shiver.

“Are you listening to me Ellie?” Bucky’s soft voice raised, pulling his little sister out of her thoughts.

“Yes, yes. Sorry.” Ellie answered, offering a soft smile to her brother even if she didn’t have the heart for it.

“Talk to me Liz…” Bucky’s hand dropped to hers, gently giving it a squeeze.

“I just…” Ellie sighed, her eyes filling with tears. “I’m scared Buck… I can’t lose you too. What would I do if you…”

“Hey, hey. Look at me.” Bucky cut her off and she looked up, her eyes stopping on those warm blue eyes of his that he had inherited from their mother and that she loved so much. “You’re not going to lose me, okay? I will come back.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Maybe I don’t, you’re right. But I’ll do everything I can to, I can promise you that. But you know I have to do my part.”

“You sound like Steve when you say it like this.” Ellie whispered.

“Elizabeth Winnie Barnes, you are the strongest woman I know. You can get through anything, and you will be just fine, I’m certain of that.” Bucky said gently as he grabbed her face in both his hands and wiped off the tears on her cheeks.

“I still hate it when you call me by my full name. Makes feel like I’m in trouble.” Ellie snorted.

“I know.” Bucky chuckled, pulling his little sister into a hug and she wrapped her arms around his waist, pressing her face against his torso.

Bucky was five years older than Ellie; he had always been the one to take care of her, he knew how strong she was, he had seen it but sometimes he wished he could do more to protect her from the world around them. When they had lost their parents, she had been his rock also she never completely realized it, but he had always needed her as much as she needed him. They were each other strength. He knew he could go fight in the war simply because he knew she would be home waiting for him when he will be coming back. He will fight and come back for his little sister.

It was Ellie’s 18th birthday, but she wasn’t feeling it. It had been almost seven years since her and Bucky had lost their parents, she always missed them in some way, but somehow today it was harder. She wished they could be here, celebrating her passage to adulthood with her and Bucky. She quietly sighed and rolled over in her bed, her eyes dropping on the picture on her nightstand. It was her favorite picture, George holding four years old Ellie in one arm, his other one wrapped up around Winnifred’s shoulders who had her arms around nine years old Bucky standing in front of her. All their smiles were genuine and the happiness on their faces was almost contagious. She sniffled a little, rubbed her eyes and rolled out of bed. She made her way to the bathroom and took a quick shower, cleaning herself up before throwing on a large pair of kakis pants with a simple black tee-shirt and same color cardigan. Ellie had always preferred pants to dresses or skirt, she felt more comfortable, more of herself and also it wasn’t the norm, she didn’t really care what people thought. After putting on some light make up, she made her way to the small kitchen in the apartment she had been sharing with Bucky for the last few years.

“Hey, you’re up early.” Ellie said softly noticing her brother was already up and moving around the stove.

“Happy birthday!” Bucky greeted her, a huge smile on his face and she couldn’t help but grin in return.

“Thanks Bucko.” Ellie snuggled into her brother’s torso for a quick hug.

“You haven’t called me that in a long time. Feels like I’m back to us being kids” Bucky dropped a kiss on top of her head.

“I know, but it still suits you.” Ellie grinned, kissing his cheek in return.

“Steve should be there soon; we’re having a birthday breakfast and after I thought you might like to go to Coney Island.” Bucky explained, stepping away from his sister to go back to the stove where he had started cooking pancakes.

“You know, we really don’t have to do anything special, Buck. I’m fine with just staying home.”

“No, huh-huh.” Bucky shook his head. There was no way he wasn’t doing anything for her today. “We’re not staying home. You’re 18 Liz! It’s a big deal. We have to celebrate.”

“We can celebrate here. Just you, me and Steve.” Ellie offered.

“Hey, what’s going on?” Bucky frowned, surprised she didn’t want to do anything.

“It’s just…” Ellie sighed. “I’m not sure I’m feeling like it, that’s all.”

Bucky suddenly noticed the look on her face, she was sad. “Talk to me, kiddo.”

“I miss them Buck… I miss them so much. I really wished they were here.” Ellie admitted, her eyes feeling up with tears.

“I know, sweetie. Me too.” Bucky grabbed her face, dropped a kiss to her forehead and gently pulled her into a hug.

They stayed liked this for a moment, Bucky rubbing her back, his chin resting on the top of her head, until the front door of the apartment flew open, and Steve appeared. His left cheek was covered in a bruise that had started to turn from blue to green, and his lip had a deep cut. The two siblings exchanged a quick look perfectly aware he had been in a fight, again.

“Again?” Bucky sighed looking at his best friend who simply shrugged.

Ellie pulled away from her brother and walked up to Steve, taking his face into both of her hands, a concerned and worried look on her face. Steve gently dropped his free hand on one of hers, the other holding up a small package, and smiled at her.

“I’m fine Angel. I promise.” Steve reassured her.

“You have to stop doing that Stevie…” Ellie whispered.

“You know I can’t do that. I don’t like bullies.”

Ellie sighed. She knew Steve would never give up on a fight, that who he was, but it didn’t make it easier to see him covered his bruises and cuts. He was a brave man who was always standing up to defend other people even if it meant bullies beating the crap out of him. Truth be told, it was one of the things that made him a good man and one of the reasons why Liz liked him so much.

“Happy birthday.” Steve changed the subject, handing her the small box in his hand.

“Thanks.”

It was that day Ellie truly realized that even if she kept on missing her parents dearly, she would always have Bucky and this little punk by her side. After breakfast, they spent the day just the three of them at Coney Island walking around, eating sweets and going on a few rides. In the evening, Ellie opened the presents the two men had bought for her, Bucky had purchased a golden locket inside of which he had placed a tiny picture of the three of them, and Steve had gotten her a typewriter, the kind she had her eyes on for a while. After that, they all settled into easy small talks.

“Come on, we have to go pick up Steve from the movies.” Bucky’s voice pulled her out of her thoughts.

Ellie simply nodded, wiping the tears from her cheeks. Without a word, she followed Bucky to his car and sat on the passenger seat as her brother started to drive away. She knew Brooklyn like the back of her hand, growing up here, she had always loved to wander in those streets, and she looked as they passed by so many familiar places, memories flooding through her mind. Ellie, barely four years old, and her father going for a stroll as she sat on his shoulders, Bucky walking by their side. Bucky playing catch with her when she was ten. Bucky and her, side by side as he held her hand after their mother’s funeral. Steve, Bucky and her sitting near Steve’s apartment after he had lost his mother.

“How’s nursing school going?” Bucky asked, stopping at a red light.

“Good, I think. It’s not always easy but it’s good. One more year and I’ll be graduating.” Ellie turned to look at him.

“I’m sure you’re going to make a great nurse someday, you know. Mom and dad would be proud.” Bucky grinned proudly. “Hell, I’m damn proud of you.”

“Thanks Buck. They’ll be proud of you too, you know. Nazis should be scared.” Ellie joked even if her head wasn’t much into it.

Bucky quickly squeezed her hand in his before the light turned back to green and he drove away. She looked back at the window, New York building passing by in front of her but soon enough the car came to a full stop as Bucky parked in front of the movie theater. Bucky came around to open the door for her, having a look around for his best friend but Ellie was the first one to spot him. He was in the small alley behind the movies, being beat up by a tall blonde man who was at least 15 centimeters taller than him. Steve had always been as stubborn as hell when it came to standing up to bullies and it wasn’t the first, and probably not the last time, he was getting his ass kicked because of it.

“Buck.” Ellie simply said, dropping her hand on Bucky’s arm and pointing at the spot where Steve was getting punched again, sending him to the floor.

“You’ve got to be kidding me…” She heard her brother mutter before he stepped closer to his best friend, and she followed.

Steve was there, laid on the floor near a garbage can. Ellie hated to see him like this, she never liked it when he got hurt, and sometimes it was infuriating that he was never one to give up.

“Hey!” Bucky called out to the man bullying their friend, catching him by the arm and pushing him away from Steve and Ellie. “Pick on someone your own size.”

The man threw a punch toward Bucky who easily avoid it before the soldier punched him straight into the jaw. While her brother was kicking the bullies’ ass, Ellie went around him and without a word grabbed Steve’s arm to help him up. At the sight of his face Ellie’s heart skipped a beat. His bottom lip was cut by the side of his mouth, his nose was bleeding, and he was probably already starting to have bruises on other parts of his body from falling down.

“You okay?” Ellie whispered softly, her thumb brushing against the cut on his lips.

“I’m fine.” Steve simply replied, still bent over, his hands resting on his knees to stabilize himself.

Ellie sighed and was about to say something else, but Bucky was faster than her.

“Sometimes I think you like getting punched.” Bucky said, looking at Steve and bending over to pick up a piece of paper, as the bully ran away from them.

“I had him on the ropes.”

“How many times is this?” Bucky asked, opening up the enlistment paper his best friend had dropped in the fight. “Ah, you’re from Paramus now? You know it’s illegal to lie on the enlistment form. And seriously, Jersey?”

Steve brushed himself off, wiping the blood from his nose before his eyes landed on Bucky. He was wearing his kaki army uniform and it didn’t take long for Steve to understand why. His best friend was shipped out to war while he was staying here, in New York. He felt his throat tightened.

“You get your orders?” The blond man asked also he already knew the answer.

“The one O seventh.” Ellie answered for her brother as she exchanged a glance with Steve.

A simple look and Steve already knew what Elizabeth was thinking. He had known her long enough to be able to see the fear and concern in her eyes. She was scared, for Bucky, and a part of him was too. However, the dominant feeling in Steve’s mind was not fear, it was injustice. It was so unfair that James could go help out in the war, but he couldn’t because of his health issues.

“Sergeant James Barnes, shipping out for England first thing tomorrow.” Bucky announced, a proud smile spreading on his lips.

Steve looked at him in his uniform once again and he shook his head. “I should be going.” Rogers declared, rubbing his hands together to get rid of the last dirt on them, a sad look on his face.

“Come on, man.” Bucky said cheerfully, placing his arm around his best friend and pulling him with him. “My last night! I got to get you cleaned up.” He added, pulling his arm off of Steve’s shoulders.

“Where are we going?” Steve questioned, walking by Bucky and Ellie’s side.

“The future.” The sergeant answered.

He handed the journal he was holding in his hand to Steve, throwing the enlistment paper to the side. Steve opened it and glanced at the front page which was stating: World exposition of Tomorrow. Bucky had been talking about going to the Stark exposition for weeks now and when he had asked Ellie to join them, she had agreed.

Ellie always loved to spend time with his brother and Steve. They were all so close and she cared deeply about both of them. In some ways, this was why a part of her was glad that Steve wasn’t going to fight in the war, at least he was staying home with her. She knew he hated the idea of staying behind, of not doing his part in the war effort, but selfishly she was glad he couldn’t enlist. Ever since she had met him for the first time when she was just a kid, Ellie had always had a soft spot for Steve. He had always been so nice to her, in the contrary of some of Bucky’s friend. He always made sure she was okay, always had nice words and the truth was, she had started to care for him more than she was ready to admit it. However, she never said a word about it to anyone, she didn’t feel like it was the right thing to do. After all, Steve was her brother’s best friend, he was the sweetest man on Earth, and she clearly didn’t think she deserved someone as amazing as he was. She was probably just like a little sister to him, at least that what she believed.

“You alright Angel?” Steve asked softly grabbing Ellie’s arm as Bucky sat in the driver’s sit of his car.

“Yes, I’m okay.” Ellie nodded offering him a gentle smile.

“Are you sure? I know it must be hard for you to see him go.”

There it was, Steve sweetness to its best, putting his own feeling to the side to make sure Ellie was okay. That was what he always did, taking care of anyone else’s, never putting himself first especially when it came to the Barnes’.

“I promise you, I’m fine Stevie.” Ellie reassured him, squeezing the hand he had resting on her arm, and he simply nodded.

Satisfied, for now, Steve, as the gentleman he was, opened the front door to let Ellie sat in the passenger seat. She offered him a smile to thank him and sat by her brother side as he turned the ignition on, Steve slipping into the back seat. The ride to the expo was pretty quiet, Ellie looking by the car window as they approached the huge parking lot. She had never loved crowds, it made her anxious, but having Steve and Bucky by her side always eased her mind. Plus, the exposition was a big deal and she had an interest in science. She stepped out of the car, quickly followed by her brother and his best friend, and took a look around. There was a huge globe resting in the middle of the hall and she was filled with excitement.

“Come on, let’s go see the show.” Bucky announced, slipping and arm around his sister’s shoulder as they started walking toward the entrance.

They passed by a few buildings and, by the spinning globe in the middle of the fair, Ellie stopped to take a look at a train passing on top of them. Ellie was amazed, her mouth slightly open in astonishment and Bucky couldn’t hold back a chuckle at the sight of her eyes sparkling with wonder. She had the exact same look than the one she had on her eighth birthday when their dad had bought her her very first bicycle and she had ridden it down the street they lived on at the time. Bucky pressed a kiss to her temple and turned a little more toward his best friend who clearly wasn’t as excited as Ellie, his hands pushed into his pants pockets, looking sad and disappointed. The Barnes’ siblings really hoped tonight would lift his spirit a little.

****

Chapter two

#marvel fanfiction #mcufanfic #steve rogers fanfiction #steve rogers x original female character #chris evans fanfiction #steve rogers #steve rogers x ofc #chris evans fanfic #You Feel Like Home #Ellie Barnes #bucky barnes #captain america fanfiction #OFC Ellie Barnes #Steve Rogers x Ellie Barnes

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themculibrary · 28 days

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Letters Masterlist

1796 Broadway (ao3) - rainproof, teaberryblue steve/tony, bruce/natasha M, 460k

Summary: Captain America respectfully requests that all complaints be addressed to him in writing. On paper, the nice old-fashioned way, because the computer screen hurts his eyes.

Put your phone down, Tony.

all my love (ao3) - casdoms (moffwithhishead) sam/bucky, steve/bucky M, 4k

Summary: September 7th, 1943

Steve,

Tell me something good. Tell me a story about home, about the neighborhood. Give me something to live for, here, because I’m dying. I’m fucking dying. All these guys, dying, and they’re not even –

How are you? There’s been fewer letters from you. Hope you haven’t gotten yourself into trouble. Becca said in her last letter, that she hasn’t seen you in a while. I hope you didn’t do something stupid, you fucking moron.

I’ll be unreachable for a while. Keep sending letters, if you’re not dead. I want something to read when I get back.

Yours,

a whole new world (ao3) - Icylightning pepper/tony T, 18k

Summary: For last six months Tony and Pepper were looking for a child to adopt but luck wasn’t on their side. Until one day, Tony receives a letter from five year old Peter Parker.

better when i’m with you (ao3) - thelilacfield wanda/vision T, 69k

Summary: He’s had a number of firsts. Virginia Reed, his first crush. Wanda Maximoff, his first kiss. Eve Simon, his first heartbreak. Mandy Fournier, the first girl who said yes when he asked her to dance. And he’s becoming increasingly certain that Sam Wilson is his first love.

Vision writes a letter each time he has a crush so consuming he can’t forget it. They are tiny pieces of his heart, written out for his eyes only, a way to say goodbye.

Until the day they’re sent out.

Christmas Letters (ao3) - thesoundofasmile clint/laura T, 6k

Summary: In the lead up to Christmas while waiting for Clint to get home, Laura remembers some instances of Natasha celebrating the holiday with the Barton family, and Nathaniel inadvertently starts a new tradition to continue to include Natasha in their celebrations.

counted days, counted miles (ao3) - CrimsonPetrichor sam/bucky G, 2k

Summary: Separated for months by Captain America duties and missions with the Thunderbolts, Sam and Bucky somehow still manage to keep up their domestic squabbles, browbeat each other into taking care of themselves, and deal with their not-strictly-platonic feelings.

A story told in correspondence.

Dear Sam (ao3) - QuestinWitchFace sam/bucky M, 18k

Summary: Months after the events of TFATWS, Bucky and Sam are work partners and roommates living in a house together in Delacroix. Bucky's therapist suggests that, since Bucky has trouble verbalizing his feelings sometimes, he should try writing them out in letters to the people in his life. Bucky can only think of one person he wants to write to.

Dear Yelena (ao3) - flipflop_diva T, 1k

Summary: While the Avengers wait for word on Steve's quest to return the Soul Stone, Yelena reads a stack of old letters Natasha once wrote to her.

dust off our new love (ao3) - ArabellaAM steve/tony G, 1k

Summary: Tony’s clothes are full of dust when he finds the box.

Letters between Captain Rogers and Sergeant Barnes: 1942-45 (ao3) - Jakcett steve/bucky T, 4k

Summary: Content Summary:

Historical documents, with annotations.

Letters Never Sent (ao3) - wisteriafic wanda/vision T, 9k

Summary: Dear Family and Friends,

I’m not sure why I’m writing this. I don’t have any friends or family anymore to send it to. The moms on TV would write these holiday letters, and I guess I like the idea of putting the past year down on paper.

letters we never sent (ao3) - MissAmyShay bucky/sarah G, 6k

Summary: Bucky likes Sarah. Sarah likes Bucky.

Cass and AJ think it’s time for their relationship to progress to a new level.

Post Haste (ao3) - roboticonography steve/peggy T, 13k

Summary: Steve, Peggy, their friends and family, and a mad dash to the altar. A story in letters.

Read It and Go From There (ao3) - Write_To_You bruno/kamala G, 1k

Summary: A peek into Kamala’s mind when she reads Bruno’s letter.

Shallow Pockets (ao3) - Chargedlion T, 3k

Summary: Valentina doesn't recruit Yelena. Yelena doesn't dedicate her time to hunting and killing Clint Barton. Instead, she wakes up alone in a world without her sister.

All that was left of Natasha was her legacy and the vest she shared with Yelena. And there's something in one of the pockets.

sincerely, (ao3) - catjeno mj/peter G, 5k

Summary: It's been weeks since The Spell, since Peter Parker was erased from the Earth. And though he loves being Spider-Man full time, his new life is not an easy adjustment.

Peter needs someone to talk to. So he turns to his loved ones, in the only way he can.

The Notebooks (ao3) - Ribbonsflying steve/bucky G, 3k

Summary: To cope with his new reality, Steve wrote notebooks to Bucky long before Bucky was ever found.

to live without a lifeline (ao3) - himynameisv T, 1k

Summary: She allows herself one day to grieve.

She comes out the next day—ready and not ready at the same time—to face the world.

What happened during that time is between Natasha and the dead.

(Or: Nat writes a letter, of all the things left unsaid.)

To make things right (ao3) - missingcrowdsof1000s bruno/kamala T, 3k

Summary: A peek into Kamala’s mind as she finally reads Bruno’s letter (a.k.a. an alternate ending to Episode 6, in a world where the deleted scene “Just Friends” from Episode 3 is actual canon).

waiting on my soldier (ao3) - Areiton, BladeoftheNebula steve/tony, bucky/natasha M, 13k

Summary: Here, it feels like anything is possible, like he could ask for the world and actually get it.

It’s that, more than anything, that makes him ask, “Can I write to you. When I’m gone? I don’t--I have Bucky and Ma, but I’d sure love to have a pretty omega like you waitin’ on my letters.”

Tony leans into him a little heavier, and squeezes his hand as the sun begins to rise, and paint the sky purple and pink. “Yes,” he says simply.

#themculibrary #marvel #mcu #masterlists #letters #letters masterlist

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thislovintime · 1 year

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Peter Tork, on his own, with his mother (in Washington, D.C.) in 1943, and with his brother Nick and their father during their time in Berlin in 1947.

“My childhood was pleasant. My parents are tickled now about my success, but my younger sister thinks more of me as a Monkee than she does of me as a brother. I remember a couple of times when my father vented his emotions on me because of circumstances. He didn’t mean it the way it sounded to me then. If I had never realized this, it could have left me with a traumatic wound for the rest of my life. Like the time when I was minding my little sister and she went off without my knowing it because I was reading comic books. When he discovered she was missing he yelled at me but later I realized that he did it because he was so worried about her absence. Or the time he shouted, ‘Be calm!’ at me and brought his fist down on the table with such force that I trembled all over. I am told that once — I was too young to remember — I was climbing up on the phonograph and he shouted at me just before the lid of the phonograph struck my head. For many years I couldn’t go under anything that had a lid on it without lifting my arm and holding it there to make sure the lid wouldn’t fall down.” - Peter Tork, Seventeen, August 1967

“[M]y parents were together all my life and I had to put myself through an incredible school of hard knocks before I came to any sense of self-worth. I'm still coming to grips with the feeling that there is support for me in the outside world. I'm still relating on a day-by-day basis with my own loneliness and isolation. I've had some bleak moments, of course, and I'll continue to have them, but I trust that if I stay in contact with my source, that my bleakest moments will be a prelude and a vehicle to other times.” - Peter Tork, When The Music Mattered (1984)

“Tork said he argued continually with his cold, unemotional father, came from a dysfunctional family, and drank to drown his loneliness, sorrow, and feelings of being left out and different.” - San Jose Mercury, 1996

“Every time I thought I did something good, my father said, ‘Don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back.’ [...] Twice I‘ve seen colors. Once I was so totally in love that everything was pink; I mean, rosy, like that dusty pink that is the rose color. I swear to God, rose-colored glasses, man. It was, I swear to God, it was as if a pair of rose-colored glasses had been implanted in my eyes. Everything had this hue, and it was just, you feel, ‘Okay!’ And then once, I came downstairs, and my parents had had a lot to drink the night before, and the air was black. And incidentally, on our [Shoe Suede Blues] last CD, Saved By The Blues, is the song ‘Saved By The Blues,’ which contains all this stuff. A friend of mine, I’d been, I’d just talked to a friend of mine the way I’m talking to you, and he went home and wrote a song, and called it ‘Saved By The Blues.’” - Peter Tork, Music Groups interview, 2007

“There never was a time I couldn’t drink. My parents let me drink wine if I wanted with dinner, or a sip of cocktails or a bit of beer, nobody ever cared, and I never got too deeply into it when I was young. But it’s pretty clear that everybody’s... that alcoholics have a curve to their disease, to their syndrome, that is basically not affected by life or by anything else, just it’s genetic, it’s in their bones. And I guess my curve hadn’t taken over me, it didn’t... I didn’t even notice I was in trouble until my late thirties. One or two friends of mine knew I was in trouble before that, but not many. [It appears there’s a genetic history] My father died at 86, you know. It’s hard to say that he died of alcoholism, because alcoholics at best die in their sixties, or early sixties, you know, most alcoholics who can survive, who don’t die of anything else, who just die of the organic damage alcohol does to them, die in their sixties. So it’s hard to say, you know. But I think the best teller of the disease; well, there’s two good tells, I think. One of them is: do you drink when it’s against your better interest to do so, and when the information is there that lets you know that it is. And the other is: personality changes, you know. And I used to see my father with personality changes. My mom drank like a fish, but she may not have been an alcoholic, it’s hard to know. But almost certainly my father was. And that’s the only genetic information I have.” - Peter Tork, Take 12 Recovery Radio, (late?) 2000s or early 2010s

“I firmly believe that a low self-esteem did not make me into an alcoholic. It’s far likelier that I was born a pre-packaged dry alcoholic, and was just waiting to develop into a full-blown sopping wet alcoholic; low self-esteem was probably a function of my alcoholism, rather than the other way around. Similarly, it wasn’t reversing my low self-esteem that enabled me to get into recovery. I began my recovery after seeing with the starkest clarity that I was well and properly crushed by the alcoholism. It was in recovery that I began to gain any self-esteem I have now. In other words, I didn’t think my way into well-being, I began to learn how to behave well and then began good thinking (better thinking, anyway, heheheh).” - Peter Tork, Ask Peter Tork, 2008

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cartoonyfangirl · 11 months

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This is just something that I've been thinking about that is a part of @thepixarau AU world, and that is the outside studios besides Disney and Dreamworks that are included in their AU

So I decided to do my rankings of how each side would be on, We have Allies, Neutrals, and Enemies (Might not be any, but still)

Here's what I got so far!

(The Muppets) - Allies!

Yeah, this was a no-brainer! The reason is actually very sweet, in RL, Pixar actually helped the branch with giving some ideas, and even doing some technical stuff for the 2011 film, which I never knew, but I thought was very nice and kind!

As for the group in the AU, The Pixars would probably get along with The Muppets even more so than the Disney's, why? Two reasons

1. Both are just a chaotic group of characters that while can get on each others nerves they still love each other, to the point of being a family in whole

2. Both leaders always try to keep the group as steady as possible, but even they know that can't be achieved very well

It's just something that I feel like it could work, especially with a chaotic yet colorful group like The Muppets

(Universal) - Neutral

Okay! This one is going to be split for some characters, as some do see The Pixars as good people, while others, not so much, Woody Woodpecker is definitely one of them, in my version, he does see them as interesting, but when he has his limits, he won't hesitate to go "screwy" on them, since while he is more tame and zany, he still has his early 1940-1943 insanity with him

Winnie Woodpecker is the opposite, she enjoys seeing the chaos that The Pixars have, and sometimes has the urge to want to get to know them better, but even she knows that she doesn't want to get in trouble with anyone that's against them in The Universal Lot

Woody.W's other counterparts (Wally Walrus, Buzz Buzzard, Andy Panda) are just as neutral towards the group as they could be, despite Wally and Buzz being enemies themselves

(Illumination) - Neutral

Like Universal, I think the Illumination characters would be on neutral standings with them as well

For me, I feel like The Mario characters and Gru and his minions would get along with The Pixars fine, but for the rest, they either back off, or won't hesitate to fight back, if messed with

(Warner Bros) - Slightly Allies

Yeah, this one is just a me thing, I don't understand why everyone would think Disney and WB would be against each other, quite honestly, I feel like they would work something out (The Pixar and Dreamworks feud works more than that)

For me, The Looney Tunes, as well as the Warner Siblings would be kind of interested with The Pixars shenanigans, but they usually keep it to themselves, as they want to stay focused on what's been happening with their home (Since WB has been kind of been sinking recently)

Otherwise, I don't see why they wouldn't be allies by the slightest

(Etc)

Rocky and Bullwinkle (Allies secretly)

These two are apart of the DreamWorks team, and while they pretend to hate The Pixars, they secretly don't, they feel like they're forced to hate on a group that like their antics, but they know that one wrong move, and William (Or Tigress) won't hesitate to get rid of them (Despite those two being close to Mr. Peabody and Sherman)

Felix The Cat (Neutral)

He is the oldest toon around, and being a crazy toon himself, he does take interest in The Pixars by a bit, but he doesn't really go near them, as he tries to keep his distance away from the toons young and old

#thepixarau #pixar #dreamworks #warnerbros #the muppets #universal #illumination #other characters #au idea #just for fun

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classicfilmfan64 · 9 months

Video

youtube

All ALFRED HITCHCOCK CAMEOS in his Movies The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927), The Ring (1927), Easy Virtue (1928), Blackmail (1929), Murder! (1930), Number Seventeen (1932), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), The 39 Steps (1935), Sabotage (1936), Young and Innocent (1937) - The Girl Was Young (1937), The Lady Vanishes (1938), Rebecca (1940), Foreign Correspondent (1940), Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941), Suspicion (1941), Saboteur (1942), Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Lifeboat (1944), Spellbound (1945), Notorious (1946), The Paradine Case (1947), Rope (1948), Under Capricorn (1949), Stage Fright (1950), Strangers On A Train (1951), I Confess (1953), Dial M for Murder (1954), Rear Window (1954), To Catch A Thief (1955), The Trouble With Harry (1955), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), The Wrong Man (1956), Vertigo (1958), North By Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960), The Birds (1963), Marnie (1964), Torn Curtain (1966), Topaz (1969), Frenzy (1972), Family Plot (1976)

#youtube

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carewyncromwell · 11 months

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“Hey, Dad, look at me: Think back, and talk to me -- Did I grow up according to plan?”

~“Perfect (cover)” by At Sunset

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animation made with EZGif // my other accompaniment while drawing this

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Um... “happy” Father’s Day, everybody? 😅 Here’s some Jacob Cromwell content to mark the occasion -- specifically Jacob content that also features his estranged father, Evan Bach!

Those of you who are familiar with Jacob and Carewyn’s backstory are probably already aware that Evan was a pretty poor father. He tried continuously to shape Jacob in his image and only vindicated the opinions of others labeling him as a “delinquent”; he actively plugged out of his daughter Carewyn’s life from an emotional perspective, leaving her to be raised solely by her mother and brother; and worst of all, he abandoned his wife Lane and their children after the arrival of Jacob’s Hogwarts letter, unable to accept that his wife had lied to him about her and their children’s magic for so long and not wanting any part of the Wizarding World he’d have to join to be part of their lives. But at the same time, I never saw Evan as an inherently bad person, so I wanted to explore the generational trauma that both Evan and Jacob suffered through, and how it ultimately shaped them as people.

Evan Bach was the only son of Josef Bach, the son of a German immigrant raised largely by his uncle Jakob after the death of his father in the first World War. Josef learned from an early age how to lie to stay out of trouble with both his uncle and the authorities, and coupled with his chronic alcoholism, this led to him getting involved with a lot of petty crime. Josef’s childhood sweetheart Margie thought that having a family might help coax Josef to stay at home with her more, rather than spend his nights at speakeasies and pool halls, and at first, it seemed to work -- Josef wanted to put on a good face for his wife and newborn son, so he tried to hide his more illicit behaviors from them. Then Britain entered World War II, and Margie was forced to take one-year-old Evan out of Westminster and into the countryside to safety, leaving her husband behind. Soon Josef fell head-over-heels into organized crime, which actually flourished during the Second World War in Britain with most legal authorities having to focus on the war effort, and he soon became very rich working as an “enforcer” for a prominent London gang who participated in dozens of protection rackets. All the while, Josef wrote letters to his wife and son claiming he’d used that Ivy League education he’d convinced Margie he’d gotten somehow to land a job for the British government, and that with the profits he was making as part of the war effort, he’d bought them a huge house on an acre of land that they’d be able to enjoy together once the War was over. For Evan, who had next to no memories of his father aside from what his mother told him, he clung to these written lies enthusiastically, endlessly proud of the man he thought his father was and looking forward to the day that he and his mother would finally get to return home and meet him.

Sadly, while in the country, Margie became very sick and died in the winter of 1943, just before the end of the War. Following his wife’s death, Josef became all the more devoted to his gang life, and soon extortion, arson, and murder became everyday occurrences. Even so, on those few occasions when Josef would speak to his young son Evan on the phone, he’d lie about the weird noises and explosions the boy would hear in the background, saying that he’d be there to pick the boy up when he returned to Westminster and he’d take them home to their beautiful (and completely fictional) house outside the city. When the War was over, though, Evan did not find his father waiting for him at the train station, but instead his great-uncle Jakob -- for Josef, it turned out, had been lying to a lot more people than just his wife and son: he’d also lied to his bosses that he had no wife and children. And in order to keep up that charade, he couldn’t have Evan live with him -- so Josef asked "Uncle Jakob” to pick Evan up and take him in instead. The revelation of Josef’s lies and subsequent abandonment shattered Evan in a way he had trouble articulating to anyone, though he tried to once, when confiding in his future wife, Lane --

“I know what you mean. About your father, I mean. ...My father...wasn’t like yours, really. He was a crook, a liar...a petty criminal, in every way. ...But I know what it’s like, seeing the love other people seem to have for their kids and just wondering, ‘...Why? Why didn’t I have that, why couldn’t I have that? Why does my father have to put himself, and his wants, and his vices, first, instead of his family? Why isn’t he like those parents who, when faced with a tough choice, always choose their kid? ...Why didn’t he choose me...?’”

Not long after, Josef’s lies and crimes finally caught up with him, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment for all of the violent crimes he’d gotten wrapped up in. And so Evan was raised by his great-uncle, who desperately tried to take advantage of his “second chance,” raising the orphaned son of the boy the old man had raised as a son himself, and teach Evan to live an upstanding, honest life. Evan was so haunted by the corruption of his father through his addiction to alcohol, his proclivity toward violence, and his pathological lying that he was determined to be a man who would provide for his family the right way -- one who would be a proper role model for them, who would model the correct way to behave and instruct them about how to do the same. A man who wouldn’t let his son throw his whole life and potential away the way his father did.

Unfortunately Evan’s rosy view of fatherhood was complicated when his son -- named “Jacob” for the man who had largely raised him and had passed away five years previously -- ended up being both a wizard and a completely different person than Evan himself was. For as conventional and people-pleasing as Evan was, Jacob was opinionated and eccentric. For as rule-abiding and respectful of authority as Evan was, Jacob was rebellious and irreverent. For as uptight and conservative as Evan was, Jacob was wild and sometimes even violent, when provoked. Add to this Jacob’s distinct disinterest in any of the classic “father-son” activities Evan had envisioned them doing like fishing, playing catch, and going to sports games, as well as the boy’s frequent “misbehavior” (in truth outbursts of underage magic) that would get him into trouble at school, and Evan honestly didn’t know what to do to alter his son’s course. And because of his departure, Evan never saw just how hard his son worked to get top grades at Hogwarts, only to have his life upended by Lane’s father Charles and his criminal organization R and get locked in a magical portrait for seven years. Evan also never saw Jacob pull off the best, “underdog”-style comeback imaginable and graduate the school he’d been expelled from with honors so as to become a world-renown freelance cursebreaker and magical researcher. Nor did Evan ever see just how loyal, heroic, brilliant and loving of a man Jacob ended up becoming, even without his father there to mold him into what he thought he should be.

But perhaps, in a sad way, that’s the way things had to be. Evan had no desire to be part of the Wizarding World, the place where Jacob felt more complete and “himself” than anywhere else. He had no desire to lie to the people around him or to live a life outside of the straight and narrow path that had helped him move past his father’s tarnished legacy. He’d wanted to give his wife and children what he hadn’t had -- a stable, peaceful, middle-class life in Westminster, where they could just live normal, modest lives and grow into normal, upstanding people with normal, respectable careers. He’d failed in that...and ultimately, Lane -- the woman he loved, who chose him over her abusive family, who he cherished so much for having chosen him, over any other man in the world -- had chosen their son over him. Just as Jacob chose Lane over him...just like how their daughter would’ve chosen Jacob and Lane over him, if she’d had the choice. It’s not like Evan could’ve molded her any better than Jacob, even if he’d tried -- Lane said she was just as “normal” as she and Jacob were. And if Evan had stayed, it no doubt would’ve been out of duress, rather than out of sincere loyalty -- for how could he not resent a woman who he bared his heart and soul to and worked day and night to provide for, only to find out she had lied to him from the very beginning? Would he then only be a pocketbook for his family -- someone to write the bills every month, rather than someone to lead, protect, and guide them in being upstanding members of society? Someone for them to respect, love, and be devoted to, the way upstanding families were supposed to? Was he just meant to accept this life he’d never chosen for himself -- a life where he had to bow to the whims of the rest of his family, just because they had these bizarre, mysterious powers he didn’t have anyway to curb or restrain?

So perhaps Evan leaving ended up being the best outcome for all parties, however cowardly and cruel it was. If nothing else, the Obliviators assigned to keep tabs on Evan after his departure never found any evidence that he tried to expose Lane’s magic or the Wizarding World to any of his friends, associates, or remaining family, or even to the Muggle authorities. He never even made up any stories explaining away his departure to cast Lane in a bad light or absolve himself of blame -- not of her having an affair, nor of her being involved in any criminal activity, impropriety, or abuse. On the contrary, Evan always shut down any accusations of that nature, whenever anyone would suggest them.

“Lane lied to me,” was all he’d ever say. “That’s all it was, and that’s the last I’ll say about it.”

It seemed that, no matter how much Lane’s betrayal had hurt him and how much he resented how their children had chosen to follow her down a path far removed from the upstanding society he’d so wanted them to contribute to, as he did, Evan was an honorable enough man that he refused to tarnish his ex-wife’s name with lies and false accusations. For however poor of a father he was to Jacob, and however justified Jacob might be to hate the man, that honor at least can be respected.

#hphm #hogwarts mystery #my art #jacob cromwell #evan bach #lane cromwell #carewyn cromwell #josef bach #evan honestly mostly knew carewyn as 'the baby' or 'their(our) daughter' for most of her life #he was very detached from her upbringing as he had been so badly hurt by how much he'd screwed up with jacob #so in an attempt to not make things worse he tried to just let lane take the wheel in raising carewyn #and so kind of removed himself from her as much as possible not wanting to get 'burned twice' so to speak #evan was kind of surprised seeing how much jacob latched onto his little sister honestly #it made him all the more aware of just how out-of-sync he and jacob were though since evan was clueless about raising a daughter #and yet jacob -- who was so terrible with people -- seemed to just instantly 'get' carewyn #(yay legilimency potential)#but yeah for however bad a father evan is I stand by the thought he wasn't a bad person #unlike charles and the rest of the cromwell clan :I #yes blaise pearl and claire have shades of gray but they're still bad people #definitely worse morality-wise than evan however s****y of a father he was to jacob and carewyn

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missnight0wl · 1 year

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I have many thoughts about Jacob & MC's in-game parents

Some of which are :

Exactly WHAT year did they split up in ?

Why did they split up ?

Which side of the family did Jacob & MC inherit their Legilimency from, their father's side or their mother's side ?

Is Jacob & MC's last name their father's last name or their mother's maiden name ?

What year were Jacob & MC's parents born in ? ( I'm assuming they were both born somewhere between September 1st 1942 and August 31st 1943 )

Is there a possibility that Peregrine may have had an affair with another woman ( or more than one affair ) during his marriage to Jacob & MC's mother ( either willingly or possibly while under the effects of the Imperious Curse ) that may or may not have resulted in him knowingly/unknowingly siring an illegitimate child ( or more than one illegitimate child ) ?

In regards to questions 2 & 6, yes I admit that Peregrine being away from home way too often due to work may have caused enough strain on the relationship to result in separation or divorce ( especially if there had been more than one argument regarding Peregrine's job ), but I don't think it's the sole reason behind Jacob & MC's parents separating

If Peregrine WAS seeing another woman behind his wife's back, since his job involves traveling, it would be easier for him to cover up the affair. I also think that IF Peregrine had an affair, the affair might have began somewhere between the birth of Jacob & the birth of MC.

Maybe the reason behind the 9-10 year age gap between Jacob & MC was because their mother had experienced some miscarriages in the years between their births or had trouble getting pregnant again after Jacob's birth ?

I feel like Peregrine may have originally planned to have a big family ( I'm assuming for selfish reasons ), but his wife having trouble conceiving or having miscarriages in the years after giving birth to Jacob may have put a damper on those plans ( hence why he might have started having an affair )

Now, if Jacob & MC DO have a half-sibling ( or more than one half-sibling ) running about, either

A.) The mother of Jacob & MC's half-sibling(s) is a member of R & the half-sibling(s) grew up believing in R's goals and may or may not know that Jacob & MC are their half-siblings

B.) Some of the R members kidnapped the half-sibling(s) from their birth mother when they were very young & were raised by an R member and may or may not know that Jacob and MC are their half-siblings

Or C.) The half-sibling(s) grew up with their birth mother without much or any knowledge about their birth father & zero knowledge about their birth siblings

Now that I think about it, Peregrine might have been cheating on Jacob & MC's mother before they had even gotten married ( cause I have a feeling that Peregrine was very popular amoung the female student body during his time at Hogwarts )

Sorry if this ended up being a very long ask and I apologize if I ended up rambling for most of it 😅

Once again, I apologise for the very late reply. I'm a bit distracted lately, guys. However, if it takes me longer to answer, it's absolutely not because I don't want to discuss things with you. On the contrary, I always want to give you as thorough answer as I can, so I don't want to do it when I'm not in the right state of mind, let's say.

I'll try to address all of your points, but that being said, I'll also link some of my previous posts. I just feel like I explained some issues pretty well in the past already, and so I assume it'll be the most informative for you.

Now, without further ado!

1. It is unknown, and I'd say the information we got is rather confusing. It's being said all the time that MC was very young when Peregrine left their family. At one point, Jacob even says:

And MC said in the same conversation, for example:

Then we also had this:

And honestly, I think it'd make the most sense if MC was 3-4 when Perry left. However, nothing was ever confirmed. And then Peregrine said this about the amulet:

Now, it definitely implies that Peregrine was still with his family when he found the amulet. The thing is that 10 years ago MC was 7-8. Admittedly, Peregrine said "for over ten years", but if it was much more than 10... why he didn't simply say: “for over 15 years”, for example? I know JC hates being specific with dates, but “over 15” is still quite vague and at least more consistent with what was said before.

2. The official version is that it’s because Peregrine chose work over family.

And while I see why you might not be convinced by it, I think it’s quite reasonable. I mean, it was the time of war when Peregrine started disappearing. It’s understandable, in my opinion, that the Mother eventually was like: “If you can’t stay to keep us safe, I don’t need you in my life at all”. And sure, it’s possible that Peregrine’s prolonged absence had something to do with his affairs, but… I just don’t see anything in the game that could confirm it. I honestly believe that Peregrine chose WORK over his family. I think he has a bit of a god complex, judging by the way he talked that his job was helping people and whatnot. I talked more about it not long after he was introduced to the story, in this post.

3. It was never confirmed by the game, but I believe that Peregrine is a Legilimens. I talked about it more HERE.

4. It is unknown. Peregrine was referred to as “Mr Lastname” just once, by Penny. However, it can be interpreted in different ways. More about it HERE.

5. Again, it is unknown. However, some speculations can be made. Personally, I still believe that Jacob was born in 1966 (full analysis of Jacob’s age available HERE). Now, assuming that the Mother got pregnant very shortly after graduation, it’d mean that they were about 18 when it happened and then 19 when Jacob was born – meaning that Peregrine and the Mother were born in 1947 or earlier.

6. It is possible, but as I mentioned already, I don’t see anything in the game that could confirm it or even hint at it. It’s a “Schrödinger's Cat” theory: it’s both possible and impossible, simply because we don’t have enough information.

It’s also hard for me to comment on the rest of your message because it’s based on assumptions. To be clear, I’m not saying that you’re wrong. I just think it’s not necessarily the only explanation for what we know so far. For example, a while ago, I proposed that perhaps Peregrine and the Mother split up TWICE and that’s the reason why there’s a big age difference between MC and Jacob (more about it in this post). Is it possible that Peregrine had an affair in the meantime? Sure, but it’s also possible that he didn’t. And yes, it was said that Perry was always a charmer, but it doesn’t have to mean he was a womanizer. It CAN mean that, but it doesn’t have to mean that. For example, during our conversation with Dumbledore, Peregrine actually mentions the Mother:

… but there’s no comment by Dumbledore that “Many girls were interested in Peregrine before he settled with your mother” or something. You know what I mean?

The same goes for any potential half-sibling(s). I don’t see anything in the game hinting at that. However, JC still can pull it out of their ass, just like they did with Peregrine himself.

#long post #hogwarts mystery #hphm #hphm mc #hphm jacob #hphm peregrine #jacob's family #hphm r #analysis post #ask #princess of pearls and stars

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