#just blunt and crude but he knows whats necessary and knows what its like to have friends | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

persona-rrau · 5 years

Photo

An art/fic collab between myself (@straylize) and Polux (@hyakunana)! All of the art by Polux, but below you can read the fic that accompanies it! We wanted to give this pair some love, and the watercolor work is fantastic. The fic was a ton of fun to write too. We hope everyone enjoys this!

Art: @hyakunana

Fic: @straylize

Title: “Axe”ident

Word Count: 5003

AO3 Link: here!

Preview:

Some forces in the world were truly impossible to fight against—the rolling waves of a stormy sea, the beating sun in the desert, the rocky terrain of the mountains—and Haru Okumura.

Ryuji Sakamoto had learned that many years ago—she was a strong-willed woman, one who would never change her mind once it became set on something. It was truly fortunate, though, that she was generally the sort to use that will power in order to bring about good for herself and those around her. Even the greatest of obstacles were not meant to stand in her way, and if they threatened to, then Haru would find a way to tear them down herself. It was simply her way, after all. Despite being generally soft-spoken and seen as demure by many, Ryuji was also aware that she could be firm and assertive; her ability to know exactly how to balance those aspects of her personality were exactly what made her so effective.

It was something he learned when he only barely knew her, as he had experienced firsthand how her sheer strength of will could get her exactly what she wanted once she had set her mind to it. They were only teenagers when Ryuji first met Haru; they were only teenagers when a fateful moments led him to find her in a dangerous situation in a back alley one night. They were only teenagers when he took a stand against her attacker, and only teenagers when he sustained a serious injury to protect her. In turn, they were only teenagers when Haru decided that this brave young man was the one worthy of serving as her retainer.

She had never cared for the man tasked with being her protector; though she was taught to do as her father said, it certainly hadn’t meant she enjoyed it. Kunikazu Okumura was a man of great power, leading both the Okumura region and its capital, the city of Astarte, to great prosperity. His control over things around him was unmatched, and though he abided by the laws of Arisatia and respected the King’s rule, anything purely under his jurisdiction was handled in a manner that couldn’t be denied as uniquely his. But strict as he may have been, there were times when he knew how to compromise—and very often, that compromise had been with his very own daughter. He had not been keen on the idea of Ryuji serving as her retainer, and with good reason. He was a commoner, practically a peasant by Astarte’s standards. He was crass and crude, even when on his best behavior, and it was made clear that he had a short fuse.

To further that, the boy had been injured. Haru’s attacker, a man Kunikazu had once put a measure of trust in, had broken Ryuji’s leg and left him potentially unable to fully recover. He had believed that at most, paying for the boy’s medical care would suffice well enough, but Haru refused that notion. She wanted for Ryuji to be her retainer at any cost. That person was the only one she felt suitable, far more than who Kunikazu himself had tasked, and certainly well beyond that of the suitors he had chosen for her.

It was clear to him that her reasons stretched beyond being enamored by his brave façade. Kunikazu Okumura was a man who knew his daughter well, bold and soft-spoken, but a romantic at heart. She was interested in Ryuji as a suitor, regardless of class and circumstance. And that reason had been precisely why Kunikazu agreed only on the conditions that when his leg recovered, he would have to work twice as hard to prove he was capable of being a protector. Kunikazu needed to ensure this boy would be up to the task, that everything Haru wanted him to be would, in fact, be met.

Her fierce determination was truly a force to be reckoned with, because it hadn’t only been her father that she had won over with her stubborn demeanor. It had been Ryuji as well. She had made it clear to him in those days that she didn’t intend to take no for an answer. Haru stood by his side each day as he recovered and rehabilitated; she had been the one to support his weight when he took his first steps, and the one to cheer him on as he trained his body to meet the standards that Kunikazu had set in place all those months before.

The journey had been a long one, to be sure, but just as Ryuji had inspired Haru with his brave and chivalrous nature, with his boldness and his crass mouth, Haru was just as inspiring. She was a young woman who never gave up, even when things looked grim. She somehow always found a way to smile even through her struggles, and her determination was something that Ryuji himself never wanted to deny. It was why he had given in to being her retainer to begin with…

And why in the years that followed, he found himself unable to say no to her whims. It took them years to find that balance, but it was one that suited them perfectly. A noble and her retainer, but also the closest and dearest of friends—and a myriad of feelings that existed between them unspoken. They owed their lives to one another in a sense—Haru’s very literally, while Ryuji’s was centered solely on how a peasant would not have made a life for himself that was sustainable without her help.

It had been nearly a decade from that fateful day when Haru, the immovable force she was, had begged sweetly for Ryuji to accompany her somewhere new.

“I dunno, Haru. Could be dangerous with so many people in town,” His words came out easily, casually; though it was uncommon to hear a retainer speak their lord’s name with no formality, it was preferred between them. Haru disliked the stuffy formalities. Being called ‘my lady,’ felt impersonal; they were friends, first and foremost, after all.

“That is why you should accompany me though, isn’t it?” Haru’s response, in turn, had been almost sickeningly sweet. Her looped her arm around Ryuji’s and gave it a gentle squeeze against her as she offered him a knowing smile.

Ryuji’s cheeks flushed slightly, he allowed his gaze to avert as his brows knit together. “That circus thing’s in town, ain’t it? Who knows what kind of weirdos are wandering around.”

“I believe they’re a troupe of traveling entertainers rather than a circus. But they’re famous! Mako said her sister has heard of them, even all the way from Eigaon!”

Her tone was airy and delighted; Haru always managed to emanate warmth at even the smallest of details. Careful to press again Ryuji in a half-hug, she elected to reiterate her point. “It’s barely off the manor’s grounds, anyway. If the city weren’t so bustling today, I’d have gone alone like I usually do.”

Ryuji’s expression shifted into a frown.

“Your old ma—Governor Okumura… he’s really gonna kill my ass one of these days if you keep runnin' off to some secret hideout without tellin’ me…” He paused, and it was followed by a brief, but exasperated sigh. “Guess I’m gonna have to go with… you’ll just go without me anyway, won’t ya…”

It was almost immediate how Haru pulled away from Ryuji and clapped her hands together, equal parts enthralled and victorious. She let out a giggle before she turned in the opposite direction. “I’ll meet you at the back entrance, Ryuji!”

With another sigh, Ryuji took off in the direction of his own room; if he was going to accompany her beyond the manor’s gates, then he would have to be prepared for all threats while remaining inconspicuous. That meant wrapping the weaker part of his leg with a bandage for a little extra support, his light armor, and a small but blunt concealed weapon. These were just the basics, as he didn’t anticipate a proper threat in the way he did when they ventured in toward the city center or the harbor—but it was his duty to protect Haru, and he would take all the precautions necessary to be able to carry out his duties as needed.

Getting ready always took a bit of time for Ryuji for that reason; a retainer still had protocols to follow in order to be effective. As he did so, he wondered quietly just what it was Haru was up to. It wasn’t uncommon for her to go off on her own for a bit, particularly after having an argument with Kunikazu or anyone else. No matter how calm she remained, Ryuji had learned that she did have her own fire of rebellion within her. The first time they’d had a major disagreement, she had, with a smile, contemplated getting an axe.

It was something he played off as a joke and then quickly apologized for his insolence, but over the years, that threat had come out a few times. Naturally, Ryuji had never actually seen her wield an axe, or perhaps he would have taken it seriously.

In any case, that day had seemed a bit different to Ryuji. Haru was in good spirits, and yet still wanted to venture off to her secret place. That place she went off on her own to and demanded Ryuji not follow—which, on those days, was advisable. He still followed her a certain distance so that he would be able to come to her aid if needed, but never followed through the whole way, nor did he peek in on what she had been doing. Unlike all of those times in the past, though, she had requested his presence. It was hard for him to not wonder, though he guessed that she would be revealing her intentions soon enough.

By the time he had prepared fully for their small outing, Haru had been waiting in their agreed upon meeting spot.

“Sorry,” Ryuji offered the apology lightly, bringing a hand up to his head to ruffle a bit as his short, disheveled hair. “Wrapping my leg took a little longer than planned.”

It was only a half-truth, and though Haru knew it, she responded by shaking her head and offering him a smile. “We aren’t under any time limits. I wouldn’t just go on my own after you promised me that you’d come.”

That much was at least a truth. Haru certainly would have left without him if he refused to go or tried to stop her. But Ryuji said he’d go—so she had no reason to try an escape a cage that presently didn’t exist. He wished to keep her safe, he was tasked with the same, but he didn’t seek to limit her freedoms—he only sought to keep safe from harm as she chased those very freedoms she wanted for.

“Let’s get goin’ then,” He bowed slightly to her, an offer of gentlemanly politeness that seemed unfitting for someone as rough around the edges as Ryuji always was. Even after so many years, he hadn’t become stiff like many other nobles and retainers they knew. Yet still, despite those frayed edges, he did his duty well, following the nature he had been raised with—polite and only disrespecting those who didn’t show compassion or respect for others. Those types were the opposite of Haru, after all. With a smile, he moved towards the door, pulling it open and gesturing for her to exit the manor.

There was a brief silence that lingered as they made their way outside. The sun shone brightly above them, with few clouds in the sky to offer them shade. The air was warmer than most would expect for late spring—Astarte’s climate was well suited for being a beachside port city, with only the ocean breeze shifting their direction to cool them. It was nothing short of an ideal day to be outside, though even still, Ryuji had no idea what was on their agenda.

“So… where are we headed, anyway? I mean… I know it’s your secret spot, and I know the path’s this way, but…” He trailed off, in need of a brief pause to find the words he needed. Words weren’t exactly Ryuji’s strong suit, though, so he came up short. “Guess I’m just curious. Ain’t like you’ve given me any hints.”

“It wouldn’t be as fun without a little suspense, right?”

Haru giggled, and Ryuji’s cheeks flushed in response. Her answer was so typically like her; Haru was definitely the type to seek even the smallest of thrills if it meant keeping things a little more exciting.

"Haru speak for ‘I’m not telling, so just wait and see,’ huh.”

She responded with only a hum before she elected to take one step ahead of Ryuji. She would lead the way fearlessly, with little reason to hesitate. Her enthusiasm showed in her steps; they bounced in such a way that the curls of her hair seemed to have a life all their own, and Ryuji’s eyes seemed to focus easily on their movement. Her hair seemed to have a life of its own, somehow. When she was feeling glum, her curls seemed to deflate entirely, when angry, it seemed to stand straight on its ends. And then there were the days like this one, where her elation caused that bounce that seemed to been even more vibrant than her smile and more energetic than her steps. Ryuji had no idea how such a thing was even possible, and yet every day, he managed to see it with his own eyes.

There was a silence that fell after Haru hummed, warm and comfortable. It was something familiar between them, that they didn’t always need to converse in each other’s presence. Ryuji trusted where she would guide him; in turn, she trusted that he would keep her safe.

The path they walked wasn’t at all populated, though. Despite the hustle and bustle through Astarte’s streets, they stayed away from the main roads. They walked on one side of a stone wall, through a path of dirt and sand that was lined by trees and overgrowth. The other side of that wall was a populated city street, which left the two able to overhear the conversation of residents and tourists alike. Some spoke about their vacation plans to visit the beach, other spoke of merchant’s business, and further were the ones who spoke of that traveling troupe of entertainers that had made their way to the regional capital—the name ‘Seven Sisters’ came up quite frequently as they progressed along the path. Silence remained between the two of them, though, with Haru and Ryuji both content to let the idle chatter in the distance fill the air instead. For Haru, it was a good means of anticipation—which worked well on Ryuji’s ever-present curiosity.

The silence remained and anticipation built until they came across a small clearing in the path. It was hardly a sight to behold; the clearing was little more than dirt, sand and tree stumps. The stone wall remained on one side of them, while the path ahead narrowed just as it had behind them. Near the further narrowing path sat some large sections of wood, presumably from one of the trees that had been chopped down already, Ryuji concluded. Next to the wood was an axe, which seemed to be where Haru was headed.

She let out a pleased giggle as she bounced towards the axe, it seemed almost like a monumental effort for her to pick it up. She heaved a groan before she turned to look at Ryuji, who had been momentarily stunned into utter silence.

“Wa-wait—!” He barely managed to sputter out before an incredulous sound escaped. It took a long moment before he managed to form another sentence—which had somehow managed to sound even more incredulous than the incoherent sound that preceded it. “You were for real about that axe thing!? What the hell, Haru, that’s dangerous! You can barely hold it without topplin’ over!”

Haru didn’t falter even for a moment, though. It was as if she had completely anticipated the way Ryuji’s would react, and had a response telegraphed for that express purpose. “Did you really think I just took a walk to release all of that stress, Ryu? ”

Ryuji sputtered again; the sweet way she spoke betrayed the hardened edge of how she said his nickname specifically. Most would have thought it cute that she had one at all, but Ryuji knew that with the emphasis on his name that way, he probably needed to avoid pressing his luck too hard. “Lo-look. All I’m sayin’ is… you shoulda told me way earlier. Axes ain’t my thing, but I could’ve given you some form tips or somethin’ so you don’t get hurt.”

His jaw clenched, his brows drew together—Ryuji’s face was contorted in such a way that he was hoping he was cooling off the hot water he’d quickly found himself in. It wasn’t a lie , after all. He would have done all of those things had he known far earlier what she’d been up to… he just also would have perhaps preferred she chose to wield an axe that was more suited to her small frame.

“I think my form’s improved greatly since I picked this hobby up,” Seemingly satisfied with Ryuji’s backpedaling, she offered him a much less deadly smile. “That’s why I wanted to show you.”

“Why you wanted… to show… me?’

He was undoubtedly puzzled by her reasoning, which she also seemed to anticipate.

“You may be my retainer, but that doesn’t mean I want to rely on you for everything. I need to be able to defend myself better… but truthfully, I wanted to learn for myself how to do it,” She began to explain, and though Haru paused, she didn’t give Ryuji enough time to get a word in edgewise. “If I asked Father, he would likely set me up with a fencing instructor. But I don’t feel that suits me, and such… pristine lessons, they won’t lend well to truly being able to fight for myself. So that’s when I decided I would learn with a weapon of my choosing, and when the time was right, I would show you what I’ve learned.”

“Haru…” It took a long moment before Ryuji managed to utter even her name. He wasn’t sure how it was possible, but she always managed to find new ways to surprise him. Really, her reasoning hadn’t been at all surprising. She had always rebelled against following strict tradition, and always desired to do things on her own terms. This had been no different.

It was difficult not to just admire her tenacity, and so Ryuji dipped his head as a smile tugged as the corner of his mouth.

“You win, like always,” It wasn’t as if Ryuji would really say no to her anyway—it was merely an acknowledgement that her reasoning resonated with him, and Ryuji was not one to stop her. She was, after all, an unstoppable force in his eyes. A cyclonic beauty that couldn’t be matched in any sense of the word. “So… you just want me to watch what you can do, then?”

“If you could just move that piece of wood onto the stump for me…” She was capable of doing so for herself, but Haru knew she’d have to set the axe down in order to—and once she had it in hand, she didn’t want to have to pick it up again.

Ryuji’s eyes shifted warily to the axe before he nodded and moved towards the pile of unchopped wood. “Just watch where you’re swingin’ that thing.”

He meant it to say ‘ don’t swing it in my direction and take off a limb, ’ but even Ryuji had enough self-control to not let those words slip from his lips. The smile never left Haru’s lips, and though in that moment, it was difficult to read whether or not she harbored any annoyance that warranted a release of stress… there was at the very least, an aura of pride. Rather than push his luck any further, he did what she had requested from him—and then immediately pushed some distance between them by way of stepping back toward the wall.

“Watch closely, Ryuji!” Haru’s words were brief, but bright; that aura of pride in what she had taught herself seem to pour out of her. She stood in front of the tree stump, her hands tightly gripped around the haft of the axe. There was no form or finesse to it at all; the weapon was large and unwieldy for someone of her size and build. Yet still, Haru drew upward before she slammed the tool down towards the wood that sat upon the tree stump. It was with absolutely no skill at all that she’d somehow lucked out, splitting it down the middle. Her aim was good, to be sure… but she lacked technique.

Despite that, she looked at Ryuji proudly. “I know my form needs improvement, but when I first tried, I could hardly lift the axe…”

A stunned silence filled the air; Ryuji’s eyes were wide, but it was impossible for her to tell what he was thinking. Was he impressed? Surprised? Completely abhorred? She wouldn’t know, not until he spoke.

“Ho… ly… shit… ” stunned was certainly one way to describe his state at that moment. “Haru…”

Immediately, she began to backpedal. Her shoulders slumped slightly, and Ryuji responded in kind by leaping forward. “Oh… um. Did... Did I do poorly?”

“N-no. Nonono, it’s not that! I mean, yeah. Your form kinda sucks, but that shit ain’t easy. That axe is fuckin’ huge and you still split that thing right down the middle!” Abhorred definitely would not describe Ryuji—awed would, however. Haru brightened instantly; though Ryuji was crass and blunt, not hesitating at all to tell her that she still had a long way to go before improving—he was honest. She could see that even if he agreed she had much to learn, he had no intention of being discouraging toward her. Ryuji had never been good at holding back, after all—he was the sort who wore his heart on his sleeve and his emotions plainly showed in his expression. It drew a sense of relief from Haru; even if Ryuji still appeared to be keeping a safe distance to avoid her wild swings, it was plainly obvious that he wasn’t displeased.

“Perhaps now that I have the basics, I could seek out someone to train me,” She mused quietly, more to herself than to Ryuji. It wasn’t as if she expected him to know where she’d even be able to find such a person—but Haru felt encouraged by Ryuji’s awed reaction.

“Keep it up and you’re gonna put me out a job…” His response came with a bit of an awkward laugh. He wasn’t really concerned that she would use that sort of training as a means of firing him, not after all she’d done to ensure he would be her retainer. He couldn’t deny though, that he felt a sense of joy and purpose in being able to be a pillar of strength for her, though. Even still, he believed in her ability to stand strong on her own Maybe it would mean that in the future, he would simply have to watch her back instead of guarding her on all sides. And really, would that be so bad? Ryuji didn’t think so. “Can’t deny that I kinda wanna see you do it again. Think you can go two-for-two?”

“I’d be happy to try, if you’d do the honor of placing down another piece of wood for me.”

That was a request that was easy for Ryuji to comply with; he wanted to see Haru try again. He didn’t actually harbor a single doubt about her capability to do so, he simply wanted to watch her a little more closely. He’d been (and still was) so awed that he couldn’t commit the action to memory as he’d wanted to. Besides that, Haru seemed so thrilled with herself that he could hardly resist indulging her once more. So he did as requested, offering her a playful bow at the formality of her request, and once he retrieved another piece of wood from the pile, he placed it upon the stump.

“All right, let’s see it!”

He encouraged, and Haru readied herself. It all looked just about the same to start, but as she began to swing the axe downward, the weight of the tool got the better of her. Her wrist twisted, her face contorted, and she let out a cry of distress. The axe dropped from her hands, and she managed only barely to evade another injury with a quick step back.

Ryuji left absolutely no room for hesitation.

“Haru!” He leapt forward, no time wasted as he made his way to her side. The axe was all but forgotten, as was his request to see any more of her new resolve. All that mattered was tending to her; it was his duty. But more importantly, he didn’t wish to see her in pain. Haru held her wrist and bit her lip in an attempt to hold back the tears that had formed in her eyes, but hadn’t fallen. “C’mere… let me get a look at it.”

His words were gentle, but still carried that sense of duty and urgency that made it clear why Haru harbored so much trust for him. She nodded, wincing just a little as she held her arm out. His touch was just as gentle as his words; for all that he seemed rough around the edges, he never seemed to let that carry through when it came to his touch. He poked and prodded gently, which she responded to with small hisses of pain.

“Looks like it’s just a sprain. We’ll have the doc look at it tomorrow, since he’s probably off-duty by now. Still…” Ryuji didn’t want to just leave her injury untended to. “Let’s sit for a sec.”

“Sit? But…” She spoke quietly, her gaze shifting to the space around them. The tree trunk was the only spot that could double as a seat, or else one of them would have to sit in the dirt and sand.

“I’ll give you a boost,” Ryuji took the thought in another direction. He motioned toward the stone wall that lined the path. Even if other civilians were walking along the road on the other side, they would blend in just fine. Plenty of people sat atop the walls to rest through the day—the only difference would be what side of the wall they came from, something hardly anyone was likely to notice.

Haru offered him a nod of trust in return, and within moments, with her good hand clasping her injured arm, Ryuji lifted her by the waist. He used all the strength his arms and legs could muster, especially at that angle, and with his overcompensation for his own weak leg, to set her atop the wall. After a moment, and with a deep breath, he hauled himself to the spot next to her on the wall. Haru held back the displays of pain, though a few whimpers managed to escape her throat as he settled himself in.

“It’s a bit of a walk back,” Ryuji pointed out—that and the later hour in the day, with twilight looming—meant he couldn’t just leave things be. He began to roll up the fabric of his pants until he could find the cloth wrapping that he’d used earlier to keep his leg secure. He continued to speak as he began to unwrap it. Though he knew he would put himself at risk that way, Haru’s well-being came first. “We gotta secure that thing so you don’t aggravate it.

“Ryu, your leg…” She was worried, and it wasn’t as if Ryuji didn’t know exactly why that was. She looked at him with that soft, concerned gaze, but all Ryuji did was shake his head.

“No biggie. I’ll be fine. Besides, that’s my job, y’know? Gimme your wrist again.”

He wasn’t going to take no for an answer; Ryuji was just as stubborn as Haru herself. As he tended to her arm, he held it steady. Ryuji wrapped the bandage with care—his expertise in doing so for himself lent well to their current predicament. “Just lemme know if it’s too tight.”

“No… it’s perfect, Ryu…” As Ryuji finished wrapping the injury, she used the hand now stabilizes to reach for his. She didn’t allow him to pull his hand back. Instead, she clasped it tightly, careful to not bend her wrist the wrong way. It still hurt, but the stabilized positioning kept her tears at bay. Instead, a soft and grateful smile tugged as the corners of her mouth. She scooted closer and rested her shoulder against Ryuji’s arm, cheeks flushed. His flushed in turn, before she even finished her thought. “Thank you for being so thoughtful, and for taking care of me.”

***

A short distance away from atop the wall sat another. He was quiet, observant. With little more than a pencil in hand and a sketchbook settle in his lap, he smiled at the sight of the future Governess and her retainer sharing a sweet, intimate moment.

“Yes… you are both truly… inspiring in every sense of the word.” He laughed quietly to himself; though he would not interrupt them now, there was little denying that they would soon prove to be precious muses to him. He turned the page of his sketchbook and began to draw—a moment like that was meant to be captured and never forgotten, after all.

#persona 5 #ryuji sakamoto #haru okumura #yusuke kitagawa #royalty/retainer au #universal vers #fanfiction #fanwork #art #lore #ryuharu #we're both super proud of this!!

78 notes · View notes

camomills · 5 years

Text

Title: Melting Point Pairing: Asuna/Lisbeth Fandom: Sword Art Online Word Count: 2,620 Summary: The one thing Asuna can’t forget from their first meeting was Lis’s smile. Notes: SAO Pride Week is officially here! This is the fic I made for Day 1's prompt, Virtual World VS Real World. This was an old WIP I revised for the event, so it’s a bit longer than some of the other stuff I’ll be posting in the coming days, and it doesn’t tackle the theme as directly. Thanks to @thegayfromrulid for beta-ing this.

AO3 Link

It doesn’t matter how much you fight here, you’re just changing on which floor you’ll die.

These were Asuna’s words.

While she thought differently nowadays, traces of such ideas still lingered in her thoughts. You’ll die here, something deep down whispered. This virtual castle will be your grave, and the ‘strong swordswoman’ you’ve nurtured over the past six months will shatter away, not even leaving a body to be honored.

For now, however, this ‘strong swordswoman’ was who she was. She carried on as the Vice Commander of the Knights of the Blood Oath, the stark general she needed to be.

She wondered, at times, if, perhaps, she didn’t take this position for the protection of others, but for herself. Maybe, without the burden of others’ lives draped over her back, her psyche would crumble down like a puny sand castle against crashing waves. This enormous pressure was the only thing holding her together; a single strand carrying limitless weight.

It’s hard remembering, sometimes, that she’s merely a girl.

Whenever Asuna strode down the corridors of her guild’s hall, a steely mask of fortitude resting upon her face, rounds of weary faces passed through her. Faces used to strife and loss.

Such faces were what she had grown used to.

As such, she couldn’t help but be taken aback when that brown-haired girl flashed her the most genuine smile she’d seen in her time in Aincrad.

“Welcome to Lisbeth’s Smith Shop!”

Asuna wandered through the merchant district of Ralberg in the 19th Floor in search of someone who could reinforce her new rapier. Before she knew it, she had been engulfed by the place, the bumping and rustling of moving cargo and the bustling voices of shoppers and vendors disorienting her until she was lost.

As she aimlessly roamed through one of the alleys within the district, darting her eyes through the passing figures and stray vendors in the narrow passage, she caught sight of this girl.

She seemed to be about Asuna’s age. She sat with her legs crossed, a short anvil and a petite hammer in front of her. Her face donned a hint of freckles, along with lively copper eyes adorned by an equally lively smile.

Approaching her, the swordswoman lowered her head towards her. Brushing some strands of brown hair behind her ear, the blacksmith raised hers in kind.

“How can I help you today?” the brown-haired girl asked, gesturing to the plain carpet in front of her, along with the diminutive hammer and anvil resting on top of it. Asuna wasn’t sure if that could be called a ‘shop’.

“Oh. Uh, yes,” she mumbled out in reply, instinctively forcing her voice into a lower pitch. Recovering her focus, Asuna unsheathed her rapier from its scabbard, a faint gleam reflecting from it. “I’m looking for someone who could reinforce this.”

The blacksmith raised her hand, and Asuna hesitantly rested her sword onto it. As per usual, she had grown oddly attached to a weapon.

The seated girl swiped her right index finger down and selected the Item Appraisal option, a small, semi-transparent window popping over the weapon with the action.

“I generally go to this other guy for reinforcing, but… it’s been hard to contact him lately.”

The implication in Asuna’s comment sent shivers down the blacksmith’s spine. Her voice cracked a bit, but she continued to smile regardless.

“Sure, that uh, that shouldn’t be a problem!”

The blacksmith started to perform the usual reinforcement procedure, and Asuna watched intently as she did, as if to inspire (or perhaps shame?) her own blade into succeeding.

The copper-haired girl struck the metal exactly ten times, and both sighed in relief as the sword was set back in Asuna’s hand, a small notification with a plus sign popping from it as the green light surrounding it faded. The swordswoman had to suppress the urge to flourish her improved weapon right then and there.

As she navigated the menus to transfer the necessary money and prepared to leave, Asuna remembered the shop’s name contained its owner’s as well.

“I’ll see you later… Lisbeth.”

“Please do!”

Lisbeth’s reply came out louder than intended, catching both of them off guard. The seated girl didn’t notice the words leaving her mouth until they were already blabbered away.

To be more precise, she hadn’t noticed how lonely she’d been.

“… I mean, if you need another enhancement, I’d be glad to have you as a customer again!”

Lisbeth positioned a proud hand over a thin bicep, as if to exude confidence.

Asuna had to hold back a chuckle at her words. She couldn’t help but relate to the brown-haired girl’s struggle.

She gave the blacksmith a curt nod before leaving. “Later.”

“Later.” Promising to come back to someone in Aincrad was rarely a good idea when you were stationed in the front lines. Asuna knew that. She didn’t know what came to her.

Yet, she did see her later.

She came back multiple times, in fact– whenever she had some extra Col for another enhancement, whenever she wanted to show the “shop” to a guildmate, whenever she could make up another excuse to go. Soon enough, she started coming just because, and most of the time not spent with the guild or the broody solo player she’s taken a liking to was allocated to Lisbeth.

Asuna couldn’t pinpoint what drew her to the blacksmith.

She had a cheerfulness that waltzed between genuine and forged, and a bluntness that rivaled a certain someone else she knew. Asuna’s rank as a member of one of the clearing guilds made people talk to her with a tone of reverence at times (the flashy title of Lightning didn’t suit her, she thinks), so having another person she could speak to so casually felt satisfying. Despite her first impressions, Lis could be… rather crude.

They stood there, conversation wasted away for hours now.

“Ah,” Lis sighs, crossing her arms, “I really thought I was done for then. His sword’s durability hit zero the moment my hammer touched it, and he thought that was my fault, somehow.” She tapped the surface of her Smith’s Carpet. “It’s a good thing no one can touch you while you’re on one of these things. He did say he was going to get back at me, though.”

She pshaws.

“People here love saying stuff like that to merchants. Guess they see us as NPCs, or something. Figure we’re not real people.”

Cities are safe zones, and as such no one should be in mortal danger inside them. Nonetheless, vengeful people can get crafty in here. A threat is no laughing matter.

“Lis, that sounds… dangerous. Are you sure you’re safe?”

Lis waves a hand dismissively, and forges an especially bright smile for Asuna. She pshaws again.

“Don’t worry about it, Asuna. It’s not like they’re real anything either.”

This wasn’t the first time she’s noticed Lis making light of awful happenings and players surrounding her; she does it with near death experiences and creepy customers and disastrous blacksmithing attempts that invalidated days of work looking for materials. She turned her tragedies into comedies, always forcing herself to smile doing so.

In fact, she doesn’t remember ever seeing Lis legitimately sad in their time together. She always wore her smiting smith grin, or some variation of smirk.

“I mean…”

Asuna paused, pensively.

Lis, are you really okay? is what she thought about asking, but perhaps that was Lisbeth’ way of dealing with all of… this. Aincrad and the constant threat of death and missing her family and even the people she might have lost here.

If this place isn’t real, then the people within it aren’t real.

By extension, her pain, too, was non-existent. That seemed to be Lis’s thought process.

Was it wrong, if it allowed her to smile?

Unlike me, she…

Perhaps a bit too forcefully, she choked out a chuckle for Lis’ reply.

“… Fine, fine,” she gave up, tapping the freckled girl’s shoulder, “but promise me you’ll let me help you look for a new base of operations for your business. I think it’s about time you got a better place.”

“Haha… there is this one place I’ve been eyeing in one of the upper floors,” Lis confessed, scratching the back of her neck, “but the price is pretty hefty.”

Asuna squinted her eyes, anguished hearing Lisbeth’s plea.

“… I’ll make my entire squadron to commission something from you if that’s what it takes.”

Lis couldn’t help but chortle out at Asuna’s uncharacteristic comment.

“What? I’m serious!”

“No, you’re not!” Lis retorted through jovial, watery eyes.

She patted Asuna’s head, which made her shoot a look Lis couldn’t tell was meant to be embarrassed or indignant.

“… But it’s really cute that you’d say something like that.”

The months go by and Asuna doesn’t think as much about dying.

She’s a general and she’s a swordswoman, but she’s also a mere girl– a fact a year of this death game forced her to forget. She thinks there’s nothing mere about being one now, however.

The pressure crushing her soul into moving forward, jaw clenched and nails digging into palms, is replaced with the warm push of her friends. With Kirito’s eyeroll-inducing antics. Argo’s impetuous comments. Lisbeth’s crude laughter. It surprises her, how this kindness motivates her far better than the looming anxiety. How she can live for the sake of living.

She doesn’t know when, but she knows.

She’s leaving this castle, and she’s taking those dear to her in tow.

The door creaked as Asuna slowly entered Lisbeth’s new shop. She was glad Lis managed to get this place without her having to resort to strong-arming her guildmates. Regardless of Lisbeth’s incredulity, she was serious about it… probably.

“Lisbeth!” She beckons, trying to warn the blacksmith of her presence. No response comes and she realizes why after a quick investigation: muffled clanks of steel meeting iron ring out from the backroom, and the spinning of the gigantic waterwheel resounds through the entire building. Lis must be hard at work.

She walks to the door behind the counter, whispering excuses under her breath as she ducks under the wooden seam. Surely enough, Lisbeth is hammering away at her anvil, the chime of weapons reverberating through the room.

Asuna barely caught sight of Lisbeth shivering as she approached.

“… Lis?”

Lisbeth turns to her, a grin on her lips and red on her eyes.

“Asuna!” she exclaims, voice sniffly, with a hint of surprise. It doesn’t sound how Asuna remembers. “Sorry, didn’t hear you coming in. Here for the materials?”

Asuna’s brow knits in worry. “Lis, were you crying?”

“I – what –” Lis stammers, then sets a hand to her eye. “Really? They programmed puffy eyes in this stupid game?”

Lis scoots her chair back as Asuna steps closer, her gloved hand brushing roughly against the corner of her eyes.

“Sorry, I’m–, I didn’t want you to have to see me like this. Don’t worry. I’m fine!”

“Lis…”

“I’m fine, I promise, just. Just give me a couple of minutes and I’ll be back to normal.”

“Lis, please.”

Asuna approaches slowly, hands outstretched. She offers them to Lis, who takes a step back before taking two forward.

She takes Asuna’s hands in hers, and the stream of tears she had stifled moments ago start racing down her cheeks again.

Lisbeth slumps over Asuna, her forehead resting over the swordswoman’s shoulder, her arms wrapping tightly around Asuna. Right now Lis feels so delicate, looks so frail, so unlike Asuna has ever seen her until now, and every part of her being wants to protect her.

A part of her knew Lis was keeping it in – who isn’t, in Aincrad? But seeing Lisbeth, her ever-cheery, best friend Lisbeth, crying in loneliness as she shakily continues to perform her work, clicks with Asuna. That’s what she was like, before meeting her.

Why wasn’t I there for her in the same way?

“I’m not sure how long I can keep doing this,” Lisbeth confesses. “Waking up every day and acting like this is normal. Like this is my job, like this is real, like my body isn’t wasting away outside.”

Lisbeth uses the forbidden word, outside, the one no one is meant to be using here to keep their sanity in check. In that moment Asuna realizes she is not simply talking to Lisbeth the Blacksmith, but to whoever Lisbeth is in the real world.

“I wish I was like you, Asuna. You’re so strong.”

It sends Asuna reeling. Lisbeth? Like her?

“What are you talking about? You are much stronger than me. You’ve kept smiling this whole time.”

She parts the locks of hair at Lis’ nape with her nails, and feels Lis’ grasp tighten.

“I’ve only been able to stand this long because I had people who reminded me I was still living in here. People like you, Lis. Your smile kept me going.”

For a moment, Lis simply digs her weight further into Asuna, the flutter of fanning eyelashes brushing against Asuna’s shoulder, streaming tears running down her arm.

When Lis’s crying subsides and she raises her head, Asuna sees that she’s smiling.

This one looks different, however. Time seems to stop as Asuna studies every inch of Lis’s face. She can tell as she sees the real thing in this moment, how Lisbeth’s winning smiles in the past were forged, a convincing replica fabricated by an expert craftswoman. This weary image in front of her now, with its displayed teeth and reddening skin and baggy eyes, is Lisbeth in her earnest, and it’s breathtakingly beautiful.

Time runs once more as Asuna sees Lisbeth’s face shorten the gap between hers, eyes half-lidded, approach slow and pleading.

It only lasts a mere moment, a fraction of a second, when their lips meet, but Asuna’s heart bursts all the same. It was more of a peck than a kiss, and yet she’s burning and Lisbeth’s burning and she’s not sure what this means, so she goes for seconds to find out, a chaste first kiss shared between two friends, pure affection woven into action.

Lis sets her head back on Asuna’s shoulder once they part lips.

“Nothing here ever had felt real, you know,” Lis starts. “Until you started talking to me. Visiting me. Thank you, Asuna.”

She interweaves their hands together, and Asuna squeezes them in response.

She can’t believe she let Lisbeth feel this way, so lonely.

She wouldn’t make the same mistake again.

She’s a general. She’s a swordswoman.

She’s a girl, young and wise, frail and powerful, and so, so real.

They share a bed, their combined warmth reminding them how genuine they are.

These bodies, countless shards of light interlinked through a virtual thread, are mere representations of themselves. But how can they be called fake, when it allows them to be like this, more intimate than they’ve ever been with any other person in the real world?

Lis fell asleep as soon as her body met the bed. How long has it been since she last had a night of sleep? How long has she been forging that smile that inspired her so many times? Asuna, however, cannot bring herself to drift off, not after the way she saw Lisbeth today.

She spent a long while wondering what she was fighting for, since her entrapment. Holding her friend delicately, caressing her head as she basks in Lis’s droopy, drowsy smile, Asuna thinks she found one of many answers to the question.

As she watched Lis shift in bed, murmuring something unintelligible, her steely resolve became something beyond a mask. An earnest, warm wish solidified itself over her heart.

She would protect that smile.

#SAO #Sword Art Online #AsuLis #saoprideweek2019 #Fili writes

26 notes · View notes

artificialqueens · 5 years

Text

i've been too lonely too long (trixya) - cherry

a/n: hello, this is my first fic, ever. so be gentle pls. i hope that you all will enjoy it! this is also posted on ao3 under the user satinhorror! (also the song “the end of the world” by skeeter davis is mentioned throughout the fic, it’s not necessary but listen to it to understand some references)

summary: it’s the early 70’s, katya’s on a roadtrip, trixie’s on tour, and the radio are playing sad songs for the sleepless.

fic:

when katya thinks about it, this is it. she’s racing through the dessert in a red cabriolet, just her and a duffle bag of necessities. she’s somewhere between huston and phoenix, closing in on tucson. she’s on the road, kinda like jack kerouac, but also kinda not. she’s visited a friend in florida, and is making her way to another one in san francisco; and maybe after that, she’ll make her way back to boston, just maybe. a pair of big square sunglasses shielding her eyes and a houndstooth pattern dress covering, well, not so much skin. lou reed’s shouting through the car radio and the sun’s melting the train tracks, making them twirl like a phone cord. a marlboro cigarette is hanging between slender fingers, her hand resting on the car door, whilst the other’s drumming on the steering wheel in rhythm to venus in furs. a dusty sign gives promises of a world class diner and a decent motel “now with a pool!”. katya takes a drag from her cigarette, and swerves into the parking lot.

well in the diner she’s met by a hardworking air conditioner, and a jukebox playing johnny cash. she sighs, pulls her sunglasses up behind her blunt bangs and sits down by the counter. she orders a milkshake and a slice of cherry pie and eats slowly whilst getting through another chapter of william burroughs’ naked lunch. with her duffle bag in one hand and another marlboro in her mouth she gets a room for the night and throws up a few crumpled bills to the receptionist. mumbles a “thank you” when she’s given her key. her room is hotter than hell and though the sun may be close to setting the room’s been heating up all day. katya thinks about her options. waste a few hours in what feels like hell, or cool down in the pool? it’s an easy decision and katya quickly changes into her bikini and opens the windows, hoping the evening breeze will chill her room down.

katya enters the pool area, sunglasses once again resting on the bridge of her nose, the sun’s setting throwing an endless amount of shades of pink, orange and red across the sky. along the edge of the pool sits a group of people, not too far from katya’s age, she pays them no mind wanting nothing more than to drown in the blue. she eases into the water and feels it cool her blood and bones, resting her head against the edge. wonders to herself if she could have a cigarette in the pool, then scolds herself for the bad habit. she hears a voice, “ya know, i love your hair”, the vowels dragged out, and she can’t quite place the accent. katya follows the voice to its owner and realises it comes from the only other woman by the pool, sitting with a group of men. but katya doesn’t see the men, only the woman. she’s sat on the edge of the pool, her blonde hair up in a huge bun on her head. clad in a pink gingham bikini, her thighs thick and hips almost spilling out from the bikini bottoms, she’s oh so curvy and katya doesn’t want to be crude but katya also has to rip her stare away from the woman’s breasts. when she does reach her face her jaw drops. her eyes are dark and katya can’t tell the colour from where she is, but she guesses brown, her features are somehow soft and defined at the same time, and her lips. her lips holds a smile that has to have been carved out by what must have been god. katya squeezes out a “thank you”, after realising she’s staring at the woman like a creep. “what’s yous doin’ over there all by yourself”, the woman speaks again, raising a thick eyebrow, “come over mama!” katya softly scoffs at the mama, but walks over to the woman nonetheless. “trixie” - she introduces herself as, and katya likes the way the name makes her tongue moves to pronounce trixie. trixie starts talking, and katya finds out that trixie doesn’t stop talking once she’s started, but katya doesn’t mind.

it turns out trixie’s a semi-known country singer, who’s on tour, but she dreams endlessly about being something bigger. katya tells her she’s trying to be a writer but mainly ends up being a waitress. trixie laughs loudly, like sharp, shattered stars, at katya’s jokes. tells her about tours that never end, introduces katya to the men around them - her band - who turns out to be a lovely bunch, who ultimately decides to leave them alone after listening to them speak for no more than 20 minutes. trixie’s fingertips are are light and soft as feathers when she drags her fingers through katya’s blunt cut, choppy, blonde bob. slowly untangles the wavy mess whilst they tell each other about their childhoods. trixie growing up in rural wisconsin, hours away from any big city. and katya can finally place her accent. she puts her trust in katya. shakily tells her about her stepfather, who really didn’t like her, who beat her until she turned blue. “i had to move to my grandparents ’n so. but i s’pose there was good in that. my grandpa was the one who taught me to play guitar, he taught me how to sing. ya know, without him, i’d be stuck back up north”, trixie breathes deeply. katya can see that she’s shaking and takes trixie’s hands in hers, rubs her thumbs over them. “but you did get out, he must be so proud of you”, katya whispers and trixie looks up at her, smiling though her cheeks are stained with tears.

the sun’s long gone and before the cold of the night has a chance to set into their bones, they move to katya’s room. “i’m sorry”, trixie says, “ i didn’t mean to pour my heart out on ya, but i feel like i know you. must sound like an idiot but, we clicked, didn’t we mama”. katya hides a smile at the mamas that trixie throws around, but she can’t help but like how it sounds coming from her. “no yeah we did, don’t be ashamed trixie, i lost my shame a loong fucking time ago”, trixie laughs at that and katya does too. they sit down on her hotel bed, katya licks her lips and can feel how dry the are, she hopes her crimson lipstick still looks decent. notices how plump and soft trixie’s lips are, she almost reaches out to touch them. trixie asks about her childhood, and katya tells her about her russian parents, who moved from moscow to boston just before the cold war started. how it didn’t matter that they were professors and spoke perfect english, they were always seen as the immigrants, as the russian communists, the enemy. tells trixie how much they try to hide that they’re russian, how they never really spoke russian to katya and her siblings because it was best that they had as little of a visible connection to their home country as possible. katya tells trixie how her babushka almost cries when she’s on the phone with her, because her grandchildren can barely speak their own language. they look at each other, both breathing heavy, it feels like the calm before the storm. trixie reaches over to katya and hugs her. they sit like that, just holding each other for quite some time. katya can feel trixie’s heartbeat against her own chest, and if feels like she’s found a piece of herself.

“could you sing me one of your songs”, katya asks.

“really, ya wanna hear one of my songs?”, trixie looks surprised. “yeah of course, i can’t help but think you write beautiful songs”. they smile at each other, “well kat, i do appreciate that, most fuckers don’t even think i write my own songs. but let me tell ya, i do! but a lot of people don’t even think i have any brains”. trixie winks at katya before leaving the room, she comes back a few minutes later with an old battered up guitar. she sings katya songs about breaking someone’s heart, a town called bluegrass, and then one that makes katya want to ask trixie just who judy is. but she refrains. katya reads trixie some of her poetry, about people that she’s loved. hoping, really fucking hoping trixie won’t get disgusted and leave when she realises they’re not about men. but she stays, praises katya’s way with words, and katya blushes and can’t for some reason meet trixie’s eyes. trixie rolls katya’s hair up in curlers - because she always fails when she does it on herself. she smokes another cigarette. they turn on the radio and sing along to skeeter davis’ “the end of the world”, katya supposes they must be playing sad songs for the sleepless.

“trixie, do you ever get homesick?”, katya asks, they’re sitting next to each other and katya’s drawing never-ending patterns on trixie’s thigh. trixie shakes her head no and smiles. “me neither”, katya smiles back, and continues, “i suppose we both got restless blood in us”. and she can hear how trixie’s accent already has made its way onto katya’s tongue. “i’ll miss ya katya” “i’ll miss you too”

“you never told me, where are ya goin’?”, trixie crooks her head whilst she asks. “san francisco, i should be there the day after tomorrow. i’m staying with a friend there, at least for a month”, katya chips at her nail polish whilst she speaks, it’s a nervous thing, but she can’t understand why she is nervous. “i’m playing there, i mean san francisco, in ‘bout 2 weeks. would ya like to come meet me then?” katya smiles at her, “i’d want nothing more”. they make plans about guest lists and meeting spots and katya writes down the number to the friend she’ll be staying with, sloppily, on paper with the motels sigil. “call me, whenever.” trixie kisses her forehead so lovingly that katya almost melts, and then they fall asleep on each other.

katya wakes up alone, she sits up, confused, scans the room for traces of trixie. there’s a note on the nightstand.

“ katya!

i had to go, tour calls. i couldn’t bring myself to wake you at the ungodly hour i got up!

i’ll try calling you in 2 days & hope you’re in san francisco

love trixie xx “

katya feels something boil in her stomach, guesses it’s happiness. she balances a cigarette in her mouth whilst taking out the hair curlers, and studies her map-book. she should be able to make it halfway today, stay overnight in five points. she looks at herself in the mirror, takes a drag and puts her sunglasses on.

katya’s long back on highway 10 when she - unlike skeeter davis - understands why the birds sing, katya thinks she’s in love.

#trixya #trixie mattel #katya zamolodchikova #70's au #lesbian au #fluff #mutual pining #cherry #rpdr fanfiction #submission

23 notes · View notes

badmousestuff-blog · 5 years

Text

CPGB-ML Final Report

A Marxist-Leninist case against the CPGB-ML’s reactionary stances on gender identity

I would like to note that the CPGB-ML is hardly worth writing an entire article about alone. Were it simply an outlier case, this party would merit no investigation. However, while they certainly epitomize the worst reactionary elements within the Left on the issue of LGBT+ rights, the fact is that echoes of this sentiment can be found across the Left in a variety of flavors and intensities. It speaks to an unwillingness to employ the actual theory underlying Marxism, and instead relies on vacuous notions of gender, race, and so on that are treated as self-evident, eternal truths that are not engaged with historically, if indeed they are engaged with in any scientific capacity whatsoever. This approach fails whole swathes of the working class in its failure to meaningfully engage with their conditions beyond pure, abstract class struggle.

If we are to criticize the CPGB-ML on their stances as Marxist-Leninists ourselves, it necessarily must be done through the lens of dialectical materialism, as it is foundational to ML theory and practice. We cannot simply declare their opposition to identity politics to be “reactionary” without justification; baseless dismissal and name-calling is pointless sectarianism. In the same light, we cannot hide behind identity politics just because it is being attacked in a reactionary fashion. Instead, we must demonstrate the need to introduce the class element back into our discussion and action regarding identity rather than rejecting all ideas about identity wholesale, so that these disparate movements can be directed at the true source of their oppression and not accept meager concessions by bourgeois society.

However, I must admit that this argument will be somewhat simplistic, though somewhat lengthy; partly for ease of explanation, and additionally for the purpose of meeting time constraints. Some details may be glossed over in the course of putting forth this argument. While I believe it to be sufficiently strong as a counter-argument to the vague arguments of the CPGB-ML et al., under no circumstances should it be seen as an authoritative end to the discussion, nor should it be treated as a source in and of itself. Rather, it should be seen as (a) an attempt to provide a summary of the various ideas it draws upon, (b) a more complete argument for LGBT+ struggles from a Marxist-Leninist perspective, rather than several disconnected articles touching on the subject, and (c) an effort to do away with the dismissive chauvinism that has occasionally characterized discussion among Marxists upon this very issue.

I will provide references to the sources at the end of this document. Given the non-academic nature of this document, I have elected not to adhere strictly to formatting with respect to in-line citations and references, and will simply append references to the source material that most directly informs this argument at the end of this document.

PART ONE—The case for LGBT+ issues as class issues

If we are to form our critique, it is necessary to determine the function of gender roles (specifically binary gender roles, or simply ‘the gender binary’) within capitalist society. To that end, we would clearly do well to discern how gender roles came to be in the first place. While this piece will not exhaustively cover the historical progression of these roles, it is necessary to at least put forth a rudimentary explanation of their formation and evolution. From there, we can examine their role in capitalism, the important connection it has to LGBT+ struggles, and the intersection between normative gender roles and other systems of capitalist oppression. With this, we can avoid the vulgar materialism and often outright metaphysical idealism of the CPGB-ML without resorting to faulty assertions of our own.

I. Sex and gender are both constructs

The naive suggestion often put forth is that these roles are a logical consequence of natural sexual differentiation, but this is simply not the case. While there may be a case to be made for biology playing a part in the beginning of gendered division of labor, biology alone does not determine nor explain why women occupy a subordinate position in capitalist society, or indeed any class society where women occupy such a position. This is not to mention the vague ways in which ‘biology’ is often appealed to when putting forth such claims about the oppression of women. It is not ‘self-evident’ or ‘common sense’ that the division of labor between men and women (and indeed, even the mere existence of those two categories) is natural; even if it were, it is undialectical. Nothing is “just so,” it is a product of what comes before, and gives rise to what comes after.

Biology itself, as mentioned, is also vaguely defined, so much so as to be useless. If by biology we mean “genetics,” then the two assumed categories of XY men and XX women are insufficient to explain the other chromosomal configurations which produce perfectly valid people who are still considered men and women. If we instead mean to refer to, say, menstruation and pregnancy as necessary identifiers of womanhood, then sterile women and women who do not menstruate could not count; yet, we still consider them to be women. If, again, we mean gonads, then there are people with both sets, or gonads that do not match what is expected by their secondary sex characteristics. For every biological definition anyone has put forth, one can find plenty of examples of people for who that definition is inconclusive. These indistinct definitions leave these people having to defend their identity; if biological differences were so clear, these defenses would not be necessary. Furthermore, biological definitions of sex are not consistent—what is implied physically by ‘woman’ or ‘man’ is not consistent between people or between periods in history. The notion of sex, like gender, is a product of its time.

The notion of fundamental sexual difference, that is, biology determining society and morality, is not even very old in the first place. It is a relatively new idea. The two-sex model was predated by the Galenic one-sex model, asserting women as an ‘inversion’ of men, lacking ‘vital heat’. That is to say, women were defined by their lack. There was an inherent essence of ‘manhood’ that defined men positively, as possessing an innate characteristic which made them men; it would not be until the advent of the two-sex model that “science” would come to regard women and men as biological categories. Notably, these categories purported to explain the dominant social phenomena regarding men and women (sexism, to be blunt) as a natural consequence of biology. In short, the notion of ‘biology’ was used to justify existing systems.

This is, as many Marxist-Leninists (and even non-communists, to be fair) understand, the role of the intellectual class as they are employed by the ruling class in any class society; the legitimization of the existing system through science, religion, philosophy, and so on. While any given intellectual may not do this, the ruling class always rewards those who work in this way. Ideas which uphold the system upon which the ruling class justifies their existence and maintains their supremacy are rewarded and propagated; ideas which contradict these are suppressed if they are discovered, else they are left to eke out a minimal acceptance in society at large. Intellectual output is not totally neutral, and often has this incentive from above to support the system. This output also has a large role in generating the “common sense” of the day; that is, common sense is simply the default, shaped at least in part by the ruling class, in absence of personal experience which contradicts it. This is how one should look at the biological determinist perspective; the science does not support it, and the idea did not even come around until fairly recently in human history.

II. Division of gender is division of labor

Anthropological studies strongly contradict the notion that labor had always been divided in a gendered way. That is, it disputes Engels’ notion that procuring the necessities of life (read: productive labor) was the role of the man, and that this had simply always been the case. Instead, productive and reproductive labor was more equally spread among all members of early human societies. The family as we know it had not even begun to materialize, as mating was only very loosely restricted at the time. Monogamy was nowhere close. In this sense, women taking on more of the reproductive labor makes some sense, as it was impossible to know for certain who one’s father was—but it was certain who the mother was. However, this does not imply that reproductive labor was always relegated to the women; as stated above, anthropological studies demonstrate that labor was much more equally divided in early humanity’s development.

Even as recently as feudal Europe, women had not yet been forced fully into their current subservient role. While the old matriarchal system of lineage had or was giving way to patriarchal lineage, women still had some degree of autonomy with regards to their access and ownership, limited as it may have been, to the means of subsistence and production. Men had gained the right to pass property down to their own children, but he did not own it in the sense we think of today. In other words, men had changed how property was passed down, but not fundamentally how property was owned, which was still collectively, by the family. He could not yet leverage this state of things into a totally dominant class position.

‘Traditional’ gender roles as we understand them had not yet crystallized at the time when the rising bourgeois classes in feudal society were, crudely speaking, privatizing all the land and means of production. They were transforming common property into private property, into capital; in doing so, they were depriving the peasantry of access to this property and relegating them to wage labor. This was a marked difference from the old system, by which a family (not to be confused with the modern “nuclear” conception of the family) could reasonably accumulate additional wealth in their usage of this common property. The upcoming bourgeois classes sought to appropriate this property, and the surplus that was generated through labor done on “their” property would also be appropriated.

Obviously, this upset the peasantry.

This is not to say that feudal society was egalitarian in any sense of the word. What is important here is to see the transition from early man’s communal, roughly egalitarian distribution of productive and reproductive labor, to today’s gendered roles dividing “masculine” productive labor from “feminine” reproductive labor. This transition necessarily implies a transformation at some point from the unity of production and reproduction to the division of production and reproduction. Thus, gender roles cannot possibly extend back indefinitely in humanity’s past.

The crystallization of the basis for this distinction happened generally during the period of primitive accumulation mentioned above. The peasantry, now stripped of the commons they had been accustomed to, resisted this change, and the rising bourgeois classes had to divide the peasantry against itself. The creeping changes towards patriarchal systems of lineage and inheritance had given men leverage over women, but not yet total control. Backed up by religious institutions, sweeping attacks against women’s control over their reproductive capabilities were made. This coincides with the witch hunts of the 15-1600s and it was through this process that reproductive labor was divested from productive labor in its entirety.

The bourgeois classes, which were emerging out of the feudal society of the time, needed laborers to work on their property. While before, as mentioned, families would keep the surplus wealth produced by their labor, now the bourgeois classes would appropriate that surplus. Only productive labor, labor which would now generate surplus value for the bourgeois classes would be of any value to them. Reproductive labor—child rearing, housekeeping, etc—produces no surplus value, and as such is worthless to capital. However, reproductive labor is obviously not something you can do away with as a society. This task had to be assigned to someone, and women were the gender created by class society that would be responsible for this “worthless” reproductive labor.

This is obviously not to say that women were created by capitalism. However, the gender—the set of expectations, their role—was crystallized in this transition phase. The role of reproductive labor was to now support the man’s productive labor; productive labor, in turn, was now in service of the bourgeois classes and their desire to accumulate wealth. By turning women and men against one another, whether through accusations of witchcraft or other diabolic practices, the rising bourgeois was able to defuse the resistance by dividing productive labor, which it valued, from reproductive labor, which it found worthless, and privileging men with the “right” to earn subsistence from “their” property. Women, on the other hand, were made dependent on the earnings of men, and were not compensated for the very real work they were doing. They were reduced to supporting the working men.

In other words, men became the “breadwinners”, while women became the “housekeepers”.

III. The function of the divide within capitalism

In the previous section, I briefly laid out the evolution of gender roles. While a crude approximation, it lays out the idea that the unity of production and reproduction gave way to the separation of the two, and that women were saddled with the latter, along with some general reasons for the selection of women for this role. Additionally, it is possible to begin to see gendered oppression in capitalism as not just an unfortunate remnant of a darker time, but as a foundational contradiction within capitalism. Sexism is not a vestige, it is a feature.

It is one thing to see the gender binary as inherent to capitalism, but what is its function? In the last section, I laid out the basic antagonism. In order to retain control over the means of production, and therefore economic supremacy, it was necessary to pacify the large majority of the population by turning them against one another. By state-sanctioned violence against women, women were forced into the economically subordinate position of unpaid reproductive labor in support of men’s productive labor. This set men into the economically privileged position, effectively ‘bribing’ them into complicity with the bourgeoisie.

Antagonisms such as this one are how bourgeois society keeps workers fighting each other instead of challenging the capitalist system; by effectively “layering” exploitation, some parts of the working class benefit from the worse exploitation of the people below them, creating an economic incentive to defend the status quo. This arrangement is then legitimized by religion, science, and other parts of the societal superstructure to provide an additional social incentive to maintain one’s designated position in society. Without antagonisms like these, (race is the another major antagonism among the working class) the working class would quickly ascertain the nature of their collective exploitation and turn against the bourgeoisie.

Additionally, as stated before, capitalism only values certain kinds of labor. Only labor that can increase the value of existing capital is valued by the bourgeoisie. Labor which only maintains itself, that is, reproductive labor, has no direct value to capital. Reproductive labor itself can be thought of in two major ways: the daily “maintenance” of existing labor, that is, ensuring the continued capacity of existing laborers to perform labor; and the generational replacement of laborers by way of child-birth. This labor is necessary for the continued existence of the working class that capital requires, but it is reduced to ‘natural’ work that merits no direct compensation, and it is women as a whole who are expected to perform this labor.

However, this supporting labor does have a cost. The economic unit of capitalism is not the individual, after all; it is the family as a whole. Man, wife, and children all require basic subsistence, at a minimum, in order to reproduce the labor power that is valuable to the capitalists. The wage the traditional bread-winning working man receives must therefore also pay for the continued subsistence of his entire family. This was not always the case; early industrialization replaced costly men with cheap women and children. This system could not last, however; the long hours and dangerous conditions threatened the reproduction of labor power by pulling women and children out of the family home and killing them off at an alarming rate.

This exploitation was an attack on the entire class as a whole, but labor-aristocratic leadership convinced many men that their jobs were instead being threatened by the employment of the traditionally subservient women and children of the family unit, rather than the attack by capitalism upon the working class as a whole. The aforementioned family wage rectified this problem in a way that was suitable to capitalism; the man was put back in his ‘rightful’ place as head of the family, and the wages he earned were now sufficient to ensure that women could return to domestic servitude without worry. This element of sexism, as that sense of being ‘master of the house’ can be thought of as the replacement for property that would have ensured his control in previous modes of production.

In this way, women’s societal role as the gender responsible for the reproductive labor can be made more specific; it is her role to perform this duty within the family as a unit. This is where the specific distinction between the role of women and men under capitalism can be brought to light; as stated before, she bears the responsibility of reproducing labor power. This reproduction of labor power, while indeed being labor itself, is not labor that produces value, and therefore cannot produce surplus value. Her labor is not governed by this law of value because it must be done regardless of the current demand for labor power, as this labor is necessary for survival.

She is, therefore, not exploited by capital in the strictest sense. She does produce use-value in the home, but her labor is removed from direct participation in value production (what I have called ‘productive labor’) with regards to capital. It is in this way that her assigned role is an oppressive one—she is reliant on her husband’s direct participation with value production to acquire the means of subsistence from him. Obviously, women do perform wage labor in capitalism, often for poor wages or only in part-time employment, but she is saddled with the burden of providing domestic, reproductive labor in addition to the wage labor she performs. It is the notion that her immediate priority is domestic labor, rather than wage labor, that capitalism takes advantage of in these circumstances.

In addition to this, women’s societal obligation to perform domestic labor, often at the expense of productive wage labor, serves another function within capitalism: its need for unemployment. Unemployment serves not only to ensure a “reserve” supply of labor power in times of crisis, it also serves to create competition between workers, which gives a strong incentive to workers to accept poorer wages and conditions lest they be replaced by someone else who will.

While this does not cover the function extensively, it is sufficient to see the basics upon which the entire sexist system of oppression is formed. Of note is that capitalism needs to maintain this system so as to suppress the idea that it is society’s responsibility to provide this service rather than women; however, it is also constantly subjecting the family unit to upheaval. It both requires the family as a unit, but wants no part in sustaining it economically; it needs women to take up the burden of sustaining work rather than make demands of the bourgeoisie to provide these services to her and her family.

The fundamental contradiction, as with all others in any class society, must be papered over with ideology that masks the contradiction so as to prevent consciousness within the exploited class(es) of people. Gender roles, in this sense, are that ideology that sustains the family as a unit which is necessary for the exploitation by capital, and the ideology that exploits women by chaining them to the drudgery of domestic labor.

IV. How LGBT+ people cross the divide

Once you accept the formation of gender roles as constructs beneficial to capitalism, and understand their basic function within it, it is possible to demonstrate the connection of LGBT+ persons to this construct. Specifically, LGBT+ persons, in some way or another, directly challenge either the gender roles inherent to capitalism, or the normative sexuality it imposes.

Gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, and any other persons with non-heteronormative sexualities confront this by defying the traditional gender roles within their relationships. (They may also defy these roles individually, but this is the more notable point of defiance for our purposes.) For instance, a relationship between two men necessitates that at least one of them defies the traditional role of producer. In a relationship between two women, similarly, at least one of them must defy the traditional role of homemaker. This challenges the necessity of gender roles; if this couple can do well enough for themselves while rejecting the heteronormative gender roles that define the concept of the modern family, how necessary are these roles? This is a direct blow to the ideology which props up the gendered division of labor by demonstrating that these roles are, effectively optional, which weakens the superstructure that sustains these gender roles against the interests of proletarians (and the proletariat as a whole, for that matter).

Transgender individuals defy gender roles in a similar way, but on the individual level; they reject the role specifically assigned to them. In their rejection of their assigned gender, they reject the role thrust upon them corresponding to that gender; either the role of producer or the role of reproducer. Assigned-male-at-birth trans people are damaging to the patriarchal system by rejecting this ‘manly’ role, which throws the dividing line into question. Similarly, assigned-female-at-birth trans people damage this by ‘usurping’ (which I mean here in the driest possible sense) the role of men in patriarchy. Non-binary trans folk pose an additional challenge to gender roles; they cannot even be reconciled with the gender binary. All trans people therefore challenge the ideology surrounding gender roles by discarding their assigned gender role, in part or in whole, and some even discard the notion of gender altogether.

Additionally, asexual individuals challenge gender roles by refusing in some way to participate in the generational reproductive cycle; they do not form relationships and sustain families (and therefore produce future labor power) in the way that the capitalist system requires. They also reject the ‘compulsory’ nature of normative sexuality, demonstrating that the desire to rear children and/or even the desire for sex at all is not universal.

The common thread that ties all LGBT+ people together is their collective challenge to normative gender roles and sexuality that capitalism relies upon. While individual LGBT+ people may not challenge these significantly, or only bits of one or the other, collectively, LGBT+ people throw the necessity of these systems and all their associated baggage (appearance, behavior, etc) into question. This poses a threat to capitalism, which relies upon these systems (among other systems of oppression like racial oppression) to sustain itself. The most important takeaway is that the source of LGBT+ oppression is the same source as women’s oppression. These struggles only appear to be disconnected when the class element and systemic analysis of capitalism is omitted.

PART TWO—Rebuttal to the CPGB-ML

With this, the connection between the LGBT+ struggle and the class struggle as a whole is established. While not an exhaustive proof, the link is clear enough between the two, and we can move on to tackling the CPGB-ML, and by extension, those that hold similar views. Additionally, while the link between the class struggle and LGBT+ struggle has been established, LGBT+ oppression and its sources have ramifications beyond simple class issues; they intersect with imperialism, racism, and other struggles that must also be vigorously opposed by any communist person or party.

-Considering the previous, in what ways is the CPGB-ML et al deficient in their stances on trans rights/idpol? (fetish of the average worker and class reductionism, rejection of grassroots in favor of broad appeal, failure to apply dialectics in favor of vulgar materialism/idealism, simple strategic failure to ally with oppressed peoples, etc)

-Conclude: What is the role of both communists and the LGBT community on this front?

I. Marxism is not vulgar materialism

The most notable of the failures of the CPGB-ML is their dismissal of not only identity politics, but of the theory they profess to hold so dear. They make many references to material reality, materialism, and even make occasional mention of dialectics, but make no effort to utilize dialectics (or even materialism in some cases) in their analysis of LGBT+ issues. Indeed, analysis of any kind, when it is done, is done in only the crudest possible fashion, without actually engaging with the history of LGBT+ struggles. No effort is made to engage with the established research nor to perform research of their own; they simply assert that what is commonly accepted as ‘reality’ itself serves the function of a materialist analysis. But of course, we are not materialists, we are dialectical materialists—our understanding of what is material must be mediated through history. Without engaging with the history at all, can you arrive at anything other than idealistic, and therefore deficient understandings? Lewis Hodder writes,

“Members of the party have praised ‘realism’, assuming that reference to what is ‘real’, ie material, fulfils the function of negation and of dialectical materialism itself. Yet, this does not come up against anything that exists but merely seeks to replicate it and keep things as they are; in assuming that it has established a natural history, it looks at the end product of the development of material conditions within capitalism and seeks to maintain it on the pretence of fighting idealism and supposes that it has established a positivist science out of dialectical materialism.”

In essence, the party has reduced Marxism to vulgar materialism. Assumptions are not grounded in research, they do not perform any of their own. They do not contemplate and expose the contradictions withing LGBT+ struggles, there are simply assumed to be none of note. Marxist theory alone does not provide answers to these questions; it is only a tool for analysis. Without researching the contradictions of capitalism, Marx himself would have never been able to write Capital; it was only through reckoning with the development of capitalism through the lens of dialectical materialism that he was able to discern its workings and offer an insightful analysis of it.

For example, in “The reactionary nightmare of gender fluidity,” the speaker for the CPGB-ML says,

“Are ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ synonyms? Well they are synonyms, but a certain group of academics in the seventies in the United States decided that they weren’t synonyms. They were going to use ‘gender’ in their own way; they were going to use ‘gender’ to mean the social construct of behaviour surrounding what was expected of the biological differentiation among human beings (men and women).

But biological differentiation between male and female is a real thing. It doesn’t just exist in humanity, it exists in many species throughout the natural world.”

This is not a slip-up or simple glossing over of facts; this is a naked assertion that sex is ‘biological differentiation’, whatever that is supposed to mean, without justification. Furthermore, is there any reason we ought not to differentiate between biology and behavior? That this is ridiculous to them insists they hold that sex and gender are unified, that is, that biology and gender (along with all the expected behaviors that entails) are inextricably linked. A cursory search of the existing research, or even the relevant historical science, would reveal that this is not only untrue, but a relatively new concept, as I demonstrated near the beginning of this piece.

The CPGB-ML cannot move past this “common sense” understanding of sexuality and gender. The belief that men and women are immutable biological categories, that their expected behaviors are direct products of the differences between these categories; these are simply elevated to principle. However, we cannot simply assert that this is true; we must, as has been repeatedly stated, engage with the material through theory. They dismiss the research off-hand as the product of some bourgeois academics, and conduct none of their own. That this is pure arrogant idealism is not merely an insult being slung at the party: they openly reject the notion of even considering the distinction between sex and gender.

As Marxists, we cannot dismiss things out of hand and make assertions in place of hard research and study. Having read Marx alone does not empower us to speak on specific issues; again, Marxism is simply a lens through which to examine material reality and construct a coherent narrative. Without doing that examination, you cannot hope to arrive at a useful, much less accurate understanding of reality. The CPGB-ML makes this clear; by refusing to engage in this careful analysis, they end up siding with evangelicals in their conception of LGBT+ people! Though we get the benefit of a through-gritted-teeth acknowledgment, they refuse to stand with us; we are to be contented with “equal rights” as a natural consequence of socialism. One need only to refer to Cuba or the Soviet Union to understand how “natural” LGBT+ rights are under socialism. These rights must be actively campaigned for by challenging the institutions that withhold them, and the CPGB-ML flatly refuses to do so.

II. The obsession with the ‘average worker’

There is also a very class reductionist element at play within the party. Several articles devote no small amount of time dismissing issues of identity in favor of a broad-base appeal to the working class as a whole. Only strictly class issues are given much attention, as it is asserted that the working class can only be appealed to on the basis that “an injury to one is an injury to all.” One need only consider history to see that this approach has never worked; this approach does not challenge the divisions present in society, and it is obvious to see that this approach never can. Only when the people have been connected to the broader working class through their own experience can they understand their place within it and begin to develop a class consciousness; without making this connection from their place within society to the class struggle first, they will not see themselves as part of the class as a whole.

Even the CPGB-ML’s own iconography represents this, to a degree: the hammer, representing the urban industrial worker, and the sickle, representing the rural peasantry. When Lenin appealed to the peasantry, did he simply appeal to them as workers? Did he do this for the industrial workers in the same way? He did not; he appealed to them by connecting their respective grievances to the greater struggle against capitalism. This is the important part; one must actually acknowledge the differences within the working class and engage with these particulars before the working class can be united. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to building consciousness. People do not see themselves as in the same boat as others; capitalism has trained them not to. It is true that the class struggle is the critical struggle that we must all actively participate in, however, this struggle takes on a variety of forms that must be shown to be just reflections of the class struggle. Declarations do not convince people, demonstrations do.

Their insistence that the ‘average worker’ will reject them if they were to support trans people is also a puzzling stance to take. Are we to believe that communist movements are built by simply appealing to the sensibilities of the working class? Are we chasing votes or are we building a revolution? What are we doing if not challenging the misconceptions that keep us in servitude? By working to mirror this caricature of the working class as closely as possible, they just replicate the most reactionary elements within their own party. That this caricature is ultimately just a vision of what they think the working class ought to be, is evident when you consider how consistently this vision of the working class lines up perfectly with their unwillingness to engage with LGBT+ struggles and their broad-appeal rejection of grassroots practice. Their supposedly objective vision of society ordains them as the vanguard party; that the working class will come to them is treated as a given.

III. The intersection of LGBT+ and other oppressive systems

Capitalist nations have not contented themselves with the exploitation of their own people. Imperialism, often called the highest stage of capitalism, has its fingers around the entire globe. Where it may use a softer grip in the mother country, in its colonies and semi-colonies, brutal exploitation generates super-profits which are used to provide luxury commodities for the homeland. Oppression is intense in these subjugated nations, and what would be considered unthinkable brutality here is the norm there. In addition, racial oppression divides even the working class of the mother country. In the United States, for example, African slaves were brutally exploited, along with the indigenous peoples in the “New World”, in order to serve the white settler-colonial nation; an exploitative relationship that continues largely unabated to this very day. In these cases, the imperialist power imposes its own norms upon the native populace, destroying their own norms and culture. Criminalizing “deviant” behavior paves the way for the imperialists’ oppressive systems by force.

These peoples are subjected to the imperialist power’s standards of beauty and behavior, the imperialist power’s religion is imposed upon them, and all attempts by the colonized peoples to retain their own sense of identity is savagely repressed with state-sanctioned violence. This happens not only abroad, but at home, where racial minorities are subjected to white standards. It hardly takes any time to find an example of, for instance, a black woman’s womanhood being questioned on spurious grounds. Examples of repression of indigenous peoples’ familial structures, sexual practices, gender expressions, and so on are commonplace. The Indian hijra under British imperialism, homosexuality of some indigenous American peoples under Spain’s genocidal practices—take even the example of Caster Semenya for a contemporary example of racialized misogyny.

Deviations by non-white people in the imperialist powers of today from Eurocentric ideals about gender and sexuality are not tolerated. While the superficial justifications may vary in any case (religious objections and conflicts abound), the result is that the gender roles and compulsory heteronormative sexuality under capitalist society is imposed upon the colonized peoples—often violently, especially in the Third World. The CPGB-ML has asserted that the

“western imperialist bourgeoisie has suddenly discovered and embraced gay and transgender rights, which only yesterday it was vigorously opposing… the advantage to the bourgeoisie of its newly-discovered enthusiasm for gay rights is that it can use them to castigate oppressed countries who stick to traditional religious prejudices...”

This preposterous statement implies that they have somehow failed to notice that the western imperialist bourgeoisie has far more often castigated oppressed countries for sticking to traditional sexual and gendered practices that defy heteronormative gender roles and sexuality. That Saudi Arabia is spared our unholy gay bourgeois wrath has everything to do with Saudi Arabia’s ruling class generally co-operating with the imperialist United States and nothing to do with “enthusiasm for gay rights” the bourgeois has supposedly developed over the last 40 years. This enthusiasm does not exist; it is an illusion that is created by elevating the preconceived notion of LGBT+ rights as “bourgeois ideology” into a principle, and applying that to their analysis of capitalism and imperialism. This blinds the party to the very real oppression abroad and how it compounds with racial oppression at home, a blindness that could be alleviated by engaging critically with the “material reality” that they appeal to so often.

This serves to show that a rejection of identity wholesale in favor of crude, purist notions of class inevitably produces a deficient analysis of capitalism and imperialism. There is not just ‘the working class’, it is a diverse group whose members face differing kinds of oppression. This oppression still comes from capitalism itself, which liberal identity politics does not recognize; however, the oppression is directed along lines of identity, which the CPGB-ML does not acknowledge with respect to LGBT+ rights.

IV. Strategic failures as a result of bad theory

The preceding sections provide examples of the deficiency of the CPGB-ML’s stances. These stances, being built on shaky, idealistic foundations, are divorced from the theory that is foundational to Marxism-Leninism; they do not provide accurate assessments of the struggles they speak authoritatively about. Beyond this, these stances also affect the strategy the party employs in its efforts to build class consciousness, and by extension, revolution.

I have already touched on the first strategic failure; that is, the refusal to go grassroots in favor of a broad-base approach. By this, I mean that the party restricts themselves to appealing only to the working class as a whole. I have already demonstrated the problem here, as well; workers must be engaged with on issues specific to them in order to bring them into the movement. People form their understanding with the conditions in which they live, in combination with the ideology they hold. The ideology they hold, by default, is typically bourgeois ideology in nature; this ideology must be challenged. In this respect, the party’s stance on identity politics is correct: identity politics as an ideology is bourgeois in nature. The problem with their approach to identity politics is that they also reject the underlying conditions which produces it, that is to say, they reject not only the ideology which shapes identity politics but the grievances of the people who ‘practice’ it.

The obvious problem here is that the grievances of these people are very real grievances. The CPGB-ML’s rejection of these grievances stems from their inability or unwillingness to engage with the grievances directly; that is, they do not engage in any kind of analysis of the issues plaguing groups that practice identity politics. Whether this is because of prejudice or ignorance, it is hard to say, and frankly kind of irrelevant.

However, to repeat: their rejection of the ideology behind identity politics is valid. Their fault comes from only engaging with the superficial ideology and none of the material conditions underlying it. While ‘idpol-ers’ hold both the ideology and grievances as legitimate, and the CPGB-ML denies the legitimacy of both, the truth is that the underlying conditions are valid (as I demonstrated to some degree in Part One), while the ideology is rotten. By exposing the contradictions in the ideology, it would be reveal the deficiency of omitting the class element; in returning the class element to the struggles, these struggles are not denied, but justified and supported in the larger context of class struggle under capitalism.

It is this kind of dismissal that characterizes the entire CPGB-ML’s approach to building socialism. By rejecting the opportunity to engage with the various underlying circumstances of workers directly, the opportunity to connect their distinct struggles to the larger class struggle is lost. This direct engagement cannot be skipped over, and it cannot be done in broad strokes. Whether it be challenging identity politics, or convincing white and black workers to unite as a class, without going to these people directly, engaging with their struggles, and connecting these struggles to one another by way of including the class element, the movement will never be able to take place. When you engage in this broad strokes approach and refuse to get down and “do the dirty work” as it were, you fail to bring about the class consciousness required for revolution.

V. A brief critique of identity politics

This all being said, the last elephant in the room is identity politics itself. I will specifically critique it on the LGBT+ angle, as it is more relevant to the piece. However, the arguments here will more or less hold for any other struggle being carried out through the lens of bourgeois identity politics.

As Lewis Hodder writes in “Inside the last days of the CPGB-ML”, the problem with identity politics is that:

“This is the failure of identity politics, that the immediacy of identity is elevated into a principle; it is without concrete content and remains indeterminate, along with all of the contradictions that manifest itself from taking either race or gender as a self-evident apparition and the defining factor of oppression.”

This is to say, the problem with identity politics is not the validity of the underlying identities, which the CPGB-ML rejects as well. The problem is that this “elevation” of identity into a principle is without justification. This is where the CPGB-ML comes close to getting it right, in saying that it is idealism; liberal identity politics is idealistic. Furthermore, this elevation of identity into principle also obscures the real source of oppression—bourgeois society’s need to maintain oppressive structures to maintain capitalism—by asserting that the identity itself is the crux of oppression. It is this assertion that leads liberal identity politics down the road of reformism: they do not see their oppression as an inherent contradiction of the system, which does not compel them to challenge that system.

Instead, they content themselves with concessions, and long, arduous struggle to acquire them. One of these concessions is that bourgeois members of these oppressed identities are given a modicum of power. The problem of liberal identity politics, then, becomes this: the drive to overthrow the system is suppressed in favor of requesting limited participation in the system. This is similar to the liberal clamor for “female CEOs”, in which success within the oppressive system is held up as a virtue. It is clear to us that no amount of female CEOs or gay representatives will fix the true problem, but as identity politics can only associate identity with oppression directly, success in the system is treated as proof that the system is no longer (as) oppressive. Of course, these bourgeois LGBT+ people are economically removed from the proletarian struggle; their economic interests, which require them to exploit the labor of the proletariat, suppress their identification with their proletarian LGBT+ fellows.

This granting of certain oppressed peoples the “privilege” of becoming an exploiter themselves gives them this economic incentive to oppose revolution, and content themselves with slow, marginal legal reforms, so as to not challenge their economic supremacy. They are still LGBT+ themselves, no doubt: the problem is that by placing them in an economic position that relies on the exploitative system, they come to justify the exploitative system, and betray the best interests of the LGBT+ community as a whole. Of course this is not a problem for capitalism: it is quite handy to have members of an oppressed group justify the system that keeps them oppressed in the first place.

Thus, our rejection of identity politics has to be along these lines: we must insist on the class element being of primary consideration in relation to our individual struggles, we must insist on the overthrow of the system and never content ourselves with meager reforms, and finally, we must never allow bourgeois members of our own communities to divert us from the path of revolution in order to prop up their own exploitative position. We should see identity politics as a problem, to be sure; but it should also be an opportunity to connect disparate struggles to the larger struggle of capitalist class society, and by engaging with the underlying conditions unique to these various identities, we can create for them meaningful connection to that larger struggle. Only through this engagement can we truly uncouple LGBT+ oppression, as well as all other oppressive systems, from opportunist tendencies within our movements and truly unite to create a society in which oppression can finally be ended.

CONCLUSION

In this essay, I have provided my justification for LGBT+ struggles as class struggles, and spoken of the deficiency of the approach of the CPGB-ML with regards to these struggles. It is my hope that with this essay, I have demonstrated the need for communists to connect to the struggles of people directly; that communists must stand with oppressed people actively, and not merely passively accept them; that communists have a duty to engage with the scientific aspects of our ideology, and not merely the theoretical abstract aspects; and finally, that as communists, we cannot allow ourselves to become complacent, and must always subject ourselves to criticism, so that we never fall into the trap of assuming that the revolution will come to us. It will only come when people can personally connect to the wider struggle, and to this end, it is our duty to stand with all oppressed peoples, to vigorously defend their struggles, and to bring their plight to the forefront of any action we take. In this way only can we build the trust needed for the formation of a revolutionary proletariat, and finally bring about the overthrow of the system that exploits us all.

References

1. Excerpt of a speech given by (person name) at the 8th Congress; this section about why gay rights is not a class issue according to the CPGB-ML. https://www.cpgb-ml.org/2019/04/20/news/why-gay-rights-is-not-a-class-issue/

2. Excerpt of a speech given by (person name) at the 8th Congress; this excerpt about transgender people and gender fluidity https://www.cpgb-ml.org/2019/03/23/news/the-reactionary-nightmare-of-gender-fluidity/

3. Excerpt of a speech given by (person name) at the 8th Congress; this excerpt about how “identity politics” supposedly divides the working class https://www.cpgb-ml.org/2018/12/07/news/the-only-thing-that-unites-us-is-class/

CPGB-ML Timeline

1. Saturday 3 July 2004 – Party founded at Saklatvala Hall in Southall. After expulsion from the Socialist Labour Party run by Arthur Scargill over clashes between the social-democrat wing and the Marxist-Leninist wing, some ex-SLP members create the CPGB-ML, citing the SLP’s support for the “imperialist Labour party” as one of the chief reasons for creating the new party.

2. Monday 26 February 2018 – Red Fightback, another Marxist-Leninist organization in Great Britain, posts an article detailing their stance on LGBT oppression in capitalism.

3. Early 2018 – Lewis Hodder, among others in the CPGB-ML, encounter resistance by the Central Committee regarding transphobia and homophobia within the party. Hodder is prohibited from attending the 8th Congress (see September entry, below)

4. 4 June 2018 – CPGB-ML Twitter account links the above Red Fightback article, receiving a great deal of backlash in the replies.

5. July-August 2018 – Hodder begins work on an essay attempting to “set a baseline of theory that would allow these problems [on trans/homophobia and other reactionary sentiments] to be overcome,” that would not be finished until April of the following year.

6. September 2018 – CPGB-ML holds their 8th Congress, stating “five months of discussions and inner-party debate” in preparation, and that “Motions were submitted from around the country on housing, education, identity politics, racism, employment rights and a great many other issues...”

7. CPGB-ML passes Motion 8 (see References document for full details) during their 8th Congress, enacting a rule that makes any “propagation of identity politics” grounds for expulsion from the CPGB-ML.

8. Party founder and chair Harpal Brar steps down after 14 years, replaced by Ella Rule. Zane Carpenter and Joti Brar (daughter of Harpal Brar) elected as vice-chairs.

9. October-December 2018 – Transcriptions of speeches given at the 8th Congress are posted in quick succession, all centering around identity politics and making frequent reference to LGBT rights.

10. December 2018 – An article is posted briefly covering some changes to the party’s tactics and organization; of note, membership purges are admitted to in the then recent past.

11. 29 April 2019 – Lewis Hodder (see above), now former CPGB-ML member, posts an essay entitled “Inside the last days of the CPGB-ML” on Ebb Magazine, citing clashes with the CPGB-ML Central Committee that resulted in his barring from the 8th Congress, and the resultant fallout from inter-party fighting in the middle of 2018.

This timeline is not totally complete: some articles and videos that were relevant to this have been deleted or are no longer available due to missing archives. However, it serves to show the relatively brief, intense period of vicious transphobia and homophobia by the party—the developments and later purges of the part occur over the course of less than a year.

2 notes · View notes

beekeeperofeden · 5 years

Text

Fic: Prophylaxis

Wordcount: 1405 Summary: Space Opera AU. Vierna wonders sometimes if the flaws of the old jumpships have fallen wholly out of human memory; Jarlaxle would know, perhaps, but she daren't turn his mind to the question if it isn't already there. Takes place between But Only So An Hour and Underbelly. [Warnings for canon-typical drow sexism.]

It is a warning known to every every cosmonaut—when you sail the stars and go through a wormhole, you are forever changed.

Forever lasts until the next wormhole.

Before long, humans had developed better travel, faster travel, that didn't require them to send their sailors through rips in the fabric of reality. But the old wormhole-jumpers had never been mothballed, and there were still a few ships out there with the capability, with old engines that can't run along the stars but can skip right through them.

But the old ships grew rarer and rarer as human captains became skittish about their fatal flaw:

When you go through a wormhole, reality reverses itself. You reverse yourself. You come through backwards, down the molecular structure. Your DNA goes widdershins in your blood, and your proteins flip symmetry. You went in right-handed, and you come out right-handed still—but you return to a universe of lefties.

When the body digests malformed proteins—prions—it fails to understand them, then tries to incorporate this failure into its entire being. Men have died with seafoam on their lips and whalesongs in their head trying to bring the universe into a body not ready for it.

After you go through a wormhole, the entire universe becomes incomprehensible, a file your body can't read. All food becomes poison, unless it's gone through the wormhole with you, been translated into protein that is compatible with your new hardware.

And then you go through another wormhole, and the sinister universe rights itself.

To compensate, most pre-faster-than-light fleets had rules about never stopping after an odd wormhole. Battle maps and trade routes went by the rules of two by two by two. Sailors followed this guide for centuries, for so long that, even today, many space captains with faster-than-light engines still take a short break during their journey, long enough to pause the ship, to study a nebula, to wait—what they're waiting for, they don't know.

Some of the older fleets, of course, still use wormhole technology. The universe does not throw away a tool that works. Evolution does not invent so much as it recycles—vestigial traits linger, are given new purpose, until they become necessary again.

The drow fleets, for example, depend on wormhole jumping. They could switch over to faster-than-light—even galactic sanctions are not so powerful as to keep them limited to obsolete spaceflight—but the matriarchs find it a useful tether on their ship-captains. Two by two by two, they say. Two by two by two is eight, and our lady abhors odd numbers. Oddity is for heretics.

Heresy is punishable by death, and death conveniently applies itself to any captains (and their crews) who may have ventured off the carefully cultivated map. The drow matriarchs, every one trained in genetics and bioenegineering, must surely know the real cause of the Death of the Heretic, but they find it more convenient to hide that fact.

They have built control into their sons' blood, carved obedience into their bones. But power held loosely is apt to slip out of grasp, and tools, however crude, should not be simply abandoned. Not when they work.

In a shielded bubble, hidden in the shadow of a crater on the scarred surface of Lloth's eighth moon, Vierna the houseless, formerly of House Do'Urden, frowned at a microscope and studied her brother's blood.

"This is the only sample?" she asked. She didn't look at Jarlaxle. If she looked at him, she would be able to tell that he was lying. If she caught him lying, she would have to do something about it.

Better not to know. If she were of House Baenre or Del'Armgo or even Mizzrym, she could send soldiers or spies to search his base and confiscate any material. But it's just her. She has no soldiers, no spies. His base is also her base, her laboratory and home.

By not asking, she may have made it easier for him to commit blasphemy, but she couldn't solve that right now.

Later, she promised herself. When she's redeemed herself and her name to the great houses, she will have the power to undo whatever damage she has allowed Jarlaxle to do.

"Of course." He perched on a counter, boot heels kicking against the cupboard doors. He could have been a coddled child sitting on a kitchen counter, not in a bioengineering laboratory with rigid expectations for safety and protocol.

Vierna reminded herself that she couldn't just kick him out or tell him to get his ass off the counters. It was, technically speaking, Jarlaxle's lab.

Why was he still here? Vierna squinted at the blood, barely seeing it.

He wouldn't ask what she had found, surely. That would be too bold, even for him. So, she told herself—he was lingering in hopes that she might let some information slip. He would be looking for the same thing she was, no doubt—the key to her brother's survival away from Menzoberranzan's atmosphere—but all of his researchers were male. Even if they had the training to know what they were looking at, they wouldn't be as good. He needed a real bioengineer to tell him what there was—he needed Vierna.

She smirked.

"Get off the counter."

He swung his boots up onto the opposing counter instead, ignoring how it made the glassware clink. Vierna felt her smirk fade.

"Dinin told me you haven't allowed anyone into the lab for months. I thought that surely you would appreciate the company."

"Dinin may appreciate your company." Far too much, by Vierna's reckoning, but she had long ago accepted her brother's limitations. "I appreciate your absence more."

"You wound me." He sounded pleased, though, and Vierna knew that he enjoyed her company as little as she did his.

"What else did you find?" She was aware that Jarlaxle had raided several human labs before acquiring this sample, and still had the stolen computers. Trying to pry answers out of simple machines was a mundane task, suitable for the male researchers. Their minds were too shallow to grasp the fractal complexities of biology, but the binary simplicity of humanity's machines seemed to suit them well.

"Nothing yet."

He was lying again. She decided to allow it. After all, the truly important knowledge, the real answers, were in right front of her, in a language only she could read.

Finally he took the hint and left, abandoning her to blessed silence. She closed her eyes for a moment, letting the darkness calm her mind, before going back to examining the blood sample.

She had expected some kind of cludge. A sturdy virus that would keep his immune system too busy to destroy vital organs. Or a hatchet job, cutting out the entire immune system—which would leave him vulnerable to many other diseases, but would stop him from dying immediately. Instead she found a work of art. She studied the sequence that had been grafted onto the end of the strand.

She was humming, she realized, tracing holy geometry on the countertop with her fingers.

The new genetic sequence was a work of art, modulating the subject's immune response rather than distracting it or cutting it out entirely. Whoever had done the work had built in a response to the signals that organ failure would send to the rest of the body, telling the immune system to reduce activity if the liver or kidneys or lungs started to die. Vierna felt her breath catch in the way that sudden understanding always granted—the solution was elegant. Beautiful, in its own heretical way.

She started planning viruses to counter it—and it would have to be viruses, because the kind of intensive gene re-writing to undo it would require custody of her brother, which she did not have. Perhaps if she keyed it to attack the organs first, it could make the immune system surrender without a fight...

She started growing a copy of the blood for testing purposes, then kept studying it. It was the work of an hour to prepare a cludge-virus that would accomplish the task.

She frowned, considering how brute-force that approach seemed. It seemed wrong, to use such a blunt instrument to destroy such delicate work. She felt like a virus was the right approach, but perhaps she could make it neater. Something a little more elegant, to show respect for her anonymous counterpart.

She tossed the first version in an incinerator and began again.

#fic #au: heaven is overrated

10 notes · View notes

kiruuuuu · 6 years

Text

I asked you and you said feelings are also acceptable, so I took it and ran :) I hope you like it! Keep showering these older dudes with love ♥ (Rating T, lots of introspection, ~1.3k words)

Drops of water are drumming on the wooden roof overhead, creating an almost magical ambient noise interspersed with thicker drops falling onto the wet ground. Rain has always been Montagne’s favourite weather and rain in the English countryside in the middle of summer is a beautiful experience – the stately country home in his back, wide open fields ahead of him, a bulbous glass of Marc in his hand and he feels waves of nostalgia washing over him. He’s in an odd mood today, a mixture of seeing Thatcher overwhelmed with gratitude at the fact that everyone came, tasting the sharp bite of the Pomace brandy and watching the others interact effortlessly like puzzle pieces that fit. He couldn’t even say why or for what but his heart weeps and rejoices at the same time, selfishly longs for more, whatever that means, mourns for what has been lost, is grateful for what is still there.

He withdrew from the party not because he felt the need to distance himself but because he felt the need to approach himself, address this strange pressure in his chest that’s not yet unpleasant. It’s only a short run from the back door to the pavilion and Montagne doesn’t mind getting his shoes dirty if it means he can enjoy the refreshing, fruity brandy in the privacy and cosiness of the fancy gazebo Thatcher and his mates built themselves years ago. Even after decades, they’ve stayed in touch with each other, sometimes met up here and have openly encouraged use of the house whenever anyone so desired. As far as Montagne knows, it belongs to one of their families but they all come here now and then, invite guests, family, friends. Each of them has a key.

Squelching footsteps alert him to someone’s presence, a familiar groan announcing a certain someone who first shakes himself like a dog and then, with a sigh, plops down on the bench next to Montagne, making no effort to be anything but loud or preserve the quiet serenity of the place. Regardless, Montagne can’t help but smile – it’s so typical. He’s never been different, always came barrelling in unsubtly. “Am I disturbing you?”, his voice rasps, accent thick, and the tone of it makes clear that he wouldn’t leave even if he were.

It could be dangerous. Montagne is feeling wistful already and being faced with him of all people, right here, right now, might trigger something in his current fragile state of mind. Still, he turns, lays his eyes upon Tachanka who’s watching him attentively, curiously, seeming open and approachable in his casual clothing. Something takes hold of Montagne’s heart, strengthens its beat to the point where he’s sure the other man can see it through his shirt. “No”, he replies softly, “you can stay.”

A nod and Tachanka leans back, studies him mutely. Oftentimes, he has the desire to fill silences, used to distract Montagne from his thoughts as if he were afraid of what was going on in the Frenchman’s head. Now, he sits, listens to the water dripping and drumming. “What are you drinking?”, he wants to know eventually and this question is a lot easier to answer than the ones Montagne anticipated.

“Marc de Beaujolais”, he says and willingly hands the small glass over when Tachanka reaches out. There was a time where Tachanka would’ve downed the contents in one go, grimaced and then complained about the taste just to mess with him, just to break out into booming laughter and refuse to offer to get Montagne more. The playfulness between them has faded, however, there’s a distance between them, born of respect and the things Montagne said that he cannot unsay. The Russian sniffs at the clear liquid, turning the glass a little, and then hands it back with an unimpressed scowl. “It’s not for everyone”, Montagne smiles, “I haven’t had it in years. It’s Cathérine’s favourite.”

The name sparks no ill will on Tachanka's face, not anymore. She was never his rival, the divorce had been the end of her and Montagne’s relationship after all and though they were still on good terms, talked regularly, she herself never stood in the way. It was the idea of telling her about Tachanka, having to tell their daughters, exposing this side of himself that filled him with dread, made him recoil. He wasn’t comfortable with himself, had to fight the idea that his life had been a lie up to that point a year ago. It wasn’t a good environment for something as unstoppable, sensual, overbearing as Tachanka.

He misses him. There’s no sugar coating it, Montagne misses him, the lazy kisses in the morning, the neverending innuendos, the company, the carnal side of it all – his entire home, his shower, his sofa, his bed, they all whisper of panting breaths, tight embraces, muffled moans, distracted, affectionate gestures. The months that seem endless in his head were staggeringly intense and shook him to his core. Maybe that is also why he felt the need to put an end to it: it was too much, he wasn’t prepared, lost his footing and wasn’t confident Tachanka could catch him if he fell. Tachanka never does anything half-heartedly and his confidence and devotion made Montagne feel like an impostor, as if he was leading him on. He didn’t allow himself to commit.

He regrets it.

The revelation feels like a punch to his stomach and he can’t breathe for a second, forgot how, almost breaks the delicate glass between his fingers. He thought about meeting with him, a few times, to see whether they could form a tentative friendship but ultimately didn’t for a number of reasons. Fearing that he’d come to this conclusion was one of them. They’ve moved on, asking for a second chance would be selfish, inappropriate, maybe even insulting. Tachanka accepted his decision and so should he.

“It’s fucking unbelievable how much the old bastard can drink”, Tachanka speaks up and Montagne knows exactly what he’s doing: giving him an out, an excuse to partake in small talk and then go back to the party, no harm done, no hard feelings, hardly any feelings at all. He hates that the Russian deems this necessary, assumes Montagne feels uncomfortable in his presence. Hates that he’s probably right. The rain has lessened, the noise of it allowing for his thoughts to clear up a little.

“Yes”, he agrees and looks back to the large house that seems more and more appealing, like a distraction. “I should probably go -”

“I’m sleeping in the guest room downstairs.” He announces it matter-of-factly and so it takes Montagne a moment to parse this information. “But yes, let’s go back.”

His mind staggers. Was that – he’s floored, watches as Tachanka gets up and turns away but it was definitely – it was an invitation, no? So that means –

“Wait”, he says hurriedly.

They’re both motionless but it doesn’t feel that way to Montagne, to him Tachanka is sliding away, out of his grasp, inevitably gone if he doesn’t do something. He thought he’d lost him already, thought he’d drifted away and is astonished to find his hands still holding on to his body. There is a chance. He thinks of teasing remarks, crude humour, unapologetic touches, blunt honesty and what he once perceived as threatening has always been his heart’s desire, he realises now, how was he so blind. He can almost feel Tachanka's skin between his fingers and so he tightens his grip and pulls.

The glass shatters on the floor, splashes its contents over the wooden planks and is immediately forgotten as Montagne’s breath mixes with Tachanka's, their bodies melting into each other and their lips touching, gently at first. The shards crunch under Montagne’s shoes and it’s extremely satisfying, feels almost as good as the strong arms encircling his torso. Reciprocating his tight hold.

He didn’t think he deserved a second chance. But he’s boundlessly grateful that Tachanka does.

#rainbow six siege #tachanka #montagne #tachanka/montagne #fanfic #oneshot #request #I hope I did them justice

48 notes · View notes

kaitanisb021 · 7 years

Text

Truth

A rebel captain faces interrogation by the notorious Agent Kallus, but is unprepared for his methods.

Notes:

May contain or imply Season 2/early Season 3 spoilers. Written and posted prior to Season 3: Through Imperial Eyes. May eventually be part of a series of Kallus shorts. Reference to previous series canon violence (i.e., torture, Lasan massacre) (Cross-posted at Archiveofourown.org, TheForce.Net and Fanfiction.net)

Truth

Flanked by four stormtroopers, Captain Ranu was being quick-marched down the hallway of an Imperial administration building, two blasters uncomfortably jabbing into her kidneys. She smiled ruefully. At least they didn’t take it for granted that she would go easily.

The stormtroopers stopped in front of a nondescript door. One pressed the door com.

“Agent Kallus? We have the prisoner.”

Ranu’s heart jumped into her mouth. Agent Kallus, a high-ranking member of the Imperial Security Bureau, was apparently on the other side of that door. Her hands clenched into fists, tightening the binders which secured them in front of her.

Agent Kallus was known to be ruthless. Stories had made it back to the newly-formed rebel alliance. Dark stories. Torture, ruthless murder, genocide. Doing the bidding of the Sith Lord Vader. Working with the cold and clever Grand Admiral Thrawn. And she knew that the ISB was known for effectively…extracting information from captured leaders. She took a deep breath. She felt sick. This was going to be her biggest challenge yet in her near-lifetime of rebellion.

“Enter,” growled the voice on the other side of the door.

The door slid open to reveal a plain office with a window and a desk. A tall man with reddish-blond hair and a closely-cropped beard—no, large sideburns, actually, now that she looked—and dressed in a dark grey and black uniform sat behind the desk, looking at a datapad. His eyes glanced up as the stormtroopers marched her into the room. He stood and walked toward them, searching her face carefully as he approached. He walked with a slight limp, she noticed. But more than that…she had never met him before, and yet he seemed strangely familiar. She saw his eyes widen slightly as he approached, but then his face hardened into an impenetrable mask.

“Thank you, soldiers. You may leave the prisoner here.” He turned to the officer who stood to the side of the three soldiers. “I will call you when I am…done here.” He turned menacingly toward Ranu. Her stomach turned.

“Yes, sir.” The soldiers and the officers saluted briskly and turned to leave the office. She was alone with the agent. Her eyes quickly scanned the room for weapons, for escape routes—anything that could help her in a match with this monster. When her eyes returned to the agent, she noticed he was watching her with a smirk.

“Any luck? Have you found a way out? Or perhaps discovered a clever way to render me senseless while my back is turned?” He snorted derisively. “You have no idea what you’re dealing with, rebel,” he growled, turning to walk back to his desk. She noticed he kept one eye on her nonetheless. He was no fool, this man. She had binders on, but she could still fight, and he knew it. But he also knew that she didn’t have a chance of getting anywhere in this imperial facility on her own. There was little on his desk to use as a weapon anyway—nothing but a datapad and a strange, glowing meteorite.

“Nice rock,” she said.

Kallus turned quickly and walked to the desk, placing the rock in a drawer and turning the key with a click. “You aren’t going to smash me over the head with that, rebel. Thank you for the reminder.”

He glanced out the window. “You will find that this office, on the fifth floor of the Imperial Headquarters, is rather unfortunately high for a daring escape. Near the roof, in fact. A floor below your cell, which is an even higher jump—or fall.” His eyes flicked back to her, then away again. “Unless you are hiding a jetpack under your uniform, or have rather more resilient bones than you appear to have at first glance, you aren’t going anywhere, rebel.”

Fifth floor. She followed his gaze out the window at the setting sun and clocked her position. Fifth floor, south side. Cells on the sixth. That would be useful information if she could ever get a message out of here. She was surprised that the Imp let that slip. Sloppy.

He came around from behind the desk and leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest and staring at her with that searching gaze, eyes narrowed. “So. Let’s get on with this. Name?”

“Ziro,” she spat back defiantly.

Kallus’s eyes widened and, much to her surprise, his head tipped back as he barked out a hearty, genuine laugh. He looked almost boyish for a moment. He met her gaze again, a wide smile on his face for a moment before he controlled his mirth with some effort. “The rebels have a surprisingly rich connection to infamous intergalactic crime families, it seems. Not that I should be surprised. Nonetheless, I have to point out that you are a little….small for a Hutt.” He placed his hand over his mouth, wiping away the smile that was creeping back. “Small. And human. And female, which is rather at odds with our knowledge of Ziro the Hutt. That, and the fact that you are alive.” He chuckled softly and walked away from her, hands clasped behind his back.

Ranu’s face reddened. She did not like being mocked. She narrowed her eyes. “May you burn in the fires of Mustafar, Imp.”

Kallus turned back to her with an unreadable expression on his face. “Although it is not entirely out of the ordinary for the Empire to grant a reasonable prisoner request,” he said, turning to look out the window again, “I am afraid that that particular request will have to go unmet.” In a lower voice, as if to himself, he added, “for today, at any rate.”

He walked back to his desk and pulled out a circular metallic device. “I suppose I’ll have to do this the hard way, then.”

Ranu’s heart started beating faster. “I can withstand your torture, Agent. I will give you nothing.”

Kallus approached her with the band, shaking his head. He looked annoyed and, if possible, bored. “I don’t think torture is really necessary at this stage, is it, Miss Ziro? Torture is a rather….crude approach. And pain is a blunt instrument. I don’t need to use them to get what I want.”

Ranu’s eyes flashed. “That’s pretty rich coming from the Butcher of Lasan.”

Much to Ranu’s surprise, the Agent reacted as if he’d been slapped—for just a moment, before he replaced his expression with a mask of grim impassivity.

She was surprised. In that brief moment, his face had registered hurt, anger, something more.… But why, she wondered, would that comment bother him? It was true—she was sure at least that that story about him was true. Kallus was notorious for having called for the use of T-7 ion disruptors in the genocide on Lasan. She had heard through the grapevine that he had even bragged about it when facing down members of one rebel cell. The rifles were known for having particularly cruel effects on organic life forms, destroying them agonizingly slowly, painfully, and completely. Even the Imperial Senate, not generally known for its sympathy with insurgents and their feelings, had banned their use. But Kallus had employed them mercilessly, and she imagined that despite the Senate’s publicly-expressed hand-wringing, this particular victory had been instrumental in his promotion through the Imperial ranks. So why would this memory leave him so pained? Curious, she thought.

Kallus ran his hand through his hair and met her gaze again. “Ziro,” he mocked, “do you think I rose to my position in the ISB because of my ability to cause pain?” He drew closer, anger reddening the tips of his ears. “I rose to my current position because I am, quite simply, better than anyone else at getting information from those from whom I seek it. Pain is”—his eyes flicked away briefly—“occasionally required”—he met her gaze again with renewed control—“but rarely so.” He paused, taking a deep breath. “You will see what I mean. This,” he raised the band, which he had opened, “is a tool, but it isn’t entirely necessary. It is just convenient and slightly more direct than the low-tech alternative.”

Ranu felt her stomach flip as he snapped the band around her wrist. Was this some sort of torture implement she’d not heard of? Was it going to stab her, or drug her, or….

“It is,” Kallus continued as if she had asked the question aloud, “a biofeedback reader. But one can do the same work with some basic biological knowledge about the species one is interrogating.” He straightened. “Now. Let’s begin.” He glanced at the datapad. “Your name is Captain Ranu. You are a pilot and leader of a rebel cell”—his eyes glanced over the datapad; she could tell that he was looking at different things on the pad, not reading—“now centered on Lothal. Your cell took over as the organizing force there after another rebel cell, consisting of a Jedi, his padawan, a Twi’lek pilot, a Lasat, a Mandalorian and a C-1 series astromech droid, left the system. For the time being. Yes?” He looked searchingly at her face before dropping his eyes back to his datapad and nodding.

“Wrong,” she responded defiantly.

“I think…not,” he replied flatly. He turned the datapad to her. “See this?” He pointed out numbers and readings as he spoke. “The combination of your pulse, your respiration, your temperature and…”—he peered into her eyes – “pupils tell me what I need to know.” He glanced back at the datapad. “You rebels could stand to be a bit better at this sort of thing,” he said, his voice sounding almost disappointed. “Bad information was at the heart of the death of the Republic, and it could be the death of the rebellion.” His face, again, had an unreadable expression. He paused to let his statement sink in. But why in the stars would he be explaining his interrogation strategies to her? She shook her head, confused.

He kept squinting at her eyes. “Oh, and Coruscant was your home, not Lothal. These are the things I know about you, Captain. And you have confirmed them quite helpfully.” He looked back down at his datapad.

Ranu was furious. She intended to give up nothing, and already he knew who she was, what her status was with the rebellion, and where she was from. Nothing much, of course. More than she wanted to give up, but not what was really important. He didn’t know that she came from a moneyed elite family that traced its successes in trade to the time of the Republic, a family that continued as Imperial loyalists from the very start of the Empire, thus keeping their power and position secure. He didn’t know that her older siblings had been shuffled off in their youth, first to the Republic Academy and then to the Imperial Academy on what she assumed was the very planet on which she was standing right now. Her successful siblings were, of course, her mother and father’s pride and joy. She never saw them, could barely remember them; they were sucked quickly into the machinery of the Empire and her parents couldn’t have been happier to see them go into that glory, even if it meant that they were effectively gone forever. Her eyes filled at the loss. And this man didn’t know that she had run away at a perilously young age when her best friend’s family had “disappeared” after criticizing the Empire publicly. She had been on her own since she was a youngling, and found a small band of rebels early. She had shown her dedication quickly, and worked hard to hone her ability to shoot, fight, and fly. She straightened her back unconsciously. She was proud of this history. A history he would never know, if she could help it, and that he certainly would never understand.

“Now,” he said, raising his eyes from his datapad and narrowing them again. “Do you know Commander Sato of the Phoenix Squadron?” He stared at her.

“No,” she said, as impassively as she could.

He looked at his datapad, and then back up to her face. His eyes glanced over her eyes, her face, searchingly, almost desperately. Then his eyes lit up. He looked almost…joyful. Ranu’s anger rose. “You do. You know them. Are you in contact with them?” he asked quickly, his pitch rising. “Can you contact them?”

He knew. Why did he even ask? That blasted wristband, that datapad, those searching eyes. She ignored the strange tone in his voice as she was overcome with shame and self-loathing. He knew. She had broken without being broken. Her treacherous human self had given her away, had given everything away. She was furious with herself. She had expected to grit her teeth against horrible torture. She didn’t expect to be bested by an Imperial bureaucrat with a bracelet and a datapad.

“Karabast,” Ranu mumbled.

Kallus froze, his eyes lighting up with surprise as he met her eyes again. Then, once again, his face was transformed entirely as he laughed another hearty laugh. “Karabast?” he sputtered merrily. “Karabast! What does that even mean?” His laughter was uncontrollable now, tears running down his face. “Oh, Captain. Bless you. Karabast! Karabast!”

Ranu stared at the man. Was he insane? What was happening? She watched, stunned, disbelieving. The hardened Imperial Agent was practically falling over laughing at a joke she had somehow made and didn’t even understand. But he wasn’t mocking her. He was….happy.

Then she looked more carefully at him he tried unsuccessfully to catch his breath and regain control, breaking out into rolling, joyful laughter again. That face….when he laughed, it looked so familiar. She shook her head, trying to reach into her memory…who? Who did he look like? Why did he seem so …

Her mouth dropped open as the realization struck her. Her head spun and she stumbled a step toward him, barely keeping herself upright as the shock of recognition overwhelmed her. Tears rose to her eyes.

“Kal?” she whispered.

He turned and wiped away his tears of laughter. His face looked serious now. Serious but...kind. Searching.

“Ralia?” he said, a wondering smile crossing his now-familiar face. “It is you. I thought…I hoped, when I first saw you….It is you,” he finished. He paused. “You changed your name.”

“And you yours,” she replied quietly, eyes shining.

“It is required of security agents,” he said simply. “I gave myself a name to live up to,” he added wryly, turning away.

“You weren’t so callous when I was young,” she said with a smile. “You always played with me when Mother and Father were busy. And they were always busy.” She looked away, pain crossing her face. “I changed my name, too. So they wouldn’t find me. And,” she said, cocking her eyebrow, “so no one would make the connection to our illustrious family.” Her indignation began to rise as she realized what was before her. Her brother was an ISB Agent. Her sworn enemy, a torturer, a brutal Imperial. How could he?

“Ralia.” He looked back at her, his face serious, almost stern, ignoring her obvious anger. “I needed to know if you knew those in the larger rebellion before I told you anything more. I’m glad it is you. Ralia, I am about to tell you something, but I don’t know if you’ll believe me.”

Ralia’s face hardened. This might be her brother, but she was no fool. He, like her other siblings, was their parents’ pride and joy because he had become a successful Imperial. And he hadn’t done it by playing dolls with his sister.

He approached her and clicked the band off of her wrist and attached it to his own. She looked at him in confusion.

“If I release your binders, Captain, will you promise to give me five minutes before you attempt to kill me?”

She paused. “Yes. I suppose.”

He put his hand on her wrist and stared into her eyes. Then he nodded. “Very well.” He unlocked her binders. She resisted the temptation to sucker-punch her brother in the gut. He handed her the datapad.

“Look at me, and look at the datapad. And ask me a question that you know the answer to.”

Ralia looked at him, puzzled. He nodded to her impatiently.

“OK. Did you grow up in the Imperial capital of Coruscant?” she asked hesitantly.

Kallus looked at her with an expression of mild frustration. “Yes, Ralia, but I could be lying about being your brother. Try something else first to set your default data. Something the answer to which you are more certain.”

Ralia thought. “Are we standing in Imperial Headquarters?

“Yes,” replied Kallus. “Good. Look at the data. Remember it. And did you look in my eyes? Did you note what you saw?” he asked.

“Yes, I think so.”

“Good. Now. Ask me something you know to be false.”

“All right.” She thought for a moment. She didn’t know much about him, but she was certain of a few things. “Did you fail out of the Imperial Academy?”

“Yes.” Ralia looked at his eyes, and examined the datapad. She could see the variations in his biodata that showed her that his response was false.

“A lie. Good,” she replied, warming to the game. “Is the current emperor named Palpatine?”

“Yes.”

“True. Now. Are you trying to trick me?” she asked quickly, her eyes darting to her brother’s.

“No,” he replied simply.

She looked at him, and looked at the data. Nothing suggested he was lying to her. She took a breath, about to ask him another question, when he stepped toward her.

“Now, I will tell you something, Ralia. Listen to me very carefully. Watch me. You don’t need the datapad or the band for this, but use them. It is very important that you have no question about this. Am I understood?” he said.

“Yes, I understand.”

He paused. Then he straightened, and looked into her eyes with deadly seriousness.

“I want to join the rebellion.”

Ralia looked at him, blinking rapidly in disbelief.

“Ralia. RALIA,” he snapped. Then his eyes softened. “Am I telling the truth?”

She looked at her brother searchingly. She glanced at the datapad. She read the signs there, noted all of the clinical data. But she didn’t need it. She could tell in her heart.

Her brother—he had changed. He was coming home to her.

“Yes.”

Brother and sister smiled at each other.

At the truth.

#agent kallus #the honorable ones #swr #fanfic #might as well get this out there in case Agent Muttonchops bites the dust this weekend #don't kill him Filoni

22 notes · View notes