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anotherhumaninthisworld · 10 months

Text

I decided to try this but for the girlies instead.

Are you sure want to click on ”keep reading”?

For Pauline Léon marrying Claire Lacombe’s host, see Liberty: the lives of six women in Revolutionary France (2006) by Lucy Moore, page 230

For Pauline Léon throwing a bust of Lafayette through Fréron’s window and being friends with Constance Evrard, see Pauline Léon, une républicaine révolutionnaire (2006) by Claude Guillon.

For Françoise Duplay’s sister visiting Catherine Théot, see Points de vue sur l’affaire Catherine Théot (1969) by Michel Eude, page 627.

For Anne Félicité Colombe publishing the papers of Marat and Fréron, see The women of Paris and their French Revolution (1998) by Dominique Godineau, page 382-383.

For the relationship between Simonne Evrard and Albertine Marat, see this post.

For Albertine Marat dissing Charlotte Robespierre, see F.V Raspail chez Albertine Marat (1911) by Albert Mathiez, page 663.

For Lucile Desmoulins predicting Marie-Antoinette would mount the scaffold, see the former’s diary from 1789.

For Lucile being friends with madame Boyer, Brune, Dubois-Crancé, Robert and Danton, calling madame Ricord’s husband ”brusque, coarse, truly mad, giddy, insane,” visiting ”an old madwoman” with madame Duplay’s son and being hit on by Danton as well as Louise Robert saying she would stab Danton, see Lucile’s diary 1792-1793.

For the relationship between Lucile Desmoulins and Marie Hébert, see this post.

For the relationship between Lucile Desmoulins and Thérèse Jeanne Fréron de la Poype, and the one between Annette Duplessis and Marguerite Philippeaux, see letters cited in Camille Desmoulins and his wife: passages from the history of the dantonists (1876) page 463-464 and 464-469.

For Adèle Duplessis having been engaged to Robespierre, see this letter from Annette Duplessis to Robespierre, seemingly written April 13 1794.

For Claire Panis helping look after Horace Desmoulins, see Panis précepteur d’Horace Desmoulins (1912) by Charles Valley.

For Élisabeth Lebas being slandered by Guffroy, molested by Danton, treated like a daughter by Claire Panis, accusing Ricord of seducing her sister-in-law and being helped out in prison by Éléonore, see Le conventionnel Le Bas : d'après des documents inédits et les mémoires de sa veuve, page 108, 125-126, 139 and 140-142.

For Élisabeth Lebas being given an obscene book by Desmoulins, see this post.

For Charlotte Robespierre dissing Joséphine, Éléonore Duplay, madame Genlis, Roland and Ricord, see Mémoires de Charlotte Robespierre sur ses deux frères (1834), page 76-77, 90-91, 96-97, 109-116 and 128-129.

For Charlotte Robespierre arriving two hours early to Rosalie Jullien’s dinner, see Journal d’une Bourgeoise pendant la Révolution 1791–1793, page 345.

For Charlotte Robespierre and Françoise Duplay’s relationship, see Mémoires de Charlotte Robespierre sur ses deux frères (1834) page 85-92 and Le conventional Le Bas: d’après des documents inédits et les mémoires de sa veuve (1902) page 104-105

For the relationship between Charlotte Robespierre and Victoire and Élisabeth Lebas, see this post.

For Charlotte Robespierre visiting madame Guffroy, moving in with madame Laporte and Victoire Duplay being arrested by one of Charlotte’s friends, see Charlotte Robespierre et ses amis (1961)

For Louise de Kéralio calling Etta Palm a spy, see Appel aux Françoises sur la régénération des mœurs et nécessité de l’influence des femmes dans un gouvernement libre (1791) by the latter.

For the relationship between Manon Roland and Louise de Kéralio Robert, see Mémoires de Madame Roland, volume 2, page 198-207

For the relationship between Madame Pétion and Manon Roland, see Mémoires de Madame Roland, volume 2, page 158 and 244-245 as well as Lettres de Madame Roland, volume 2, page 510.

For the relationship between Madame Roland and Madame Buzot, see Mémoires de Madame Roland (1793), volume 1, page 372, volume 2, page 167 as well as this letter from Manon to her husband dated September 9 1791. For the affair between Manon and Buzot, see this post.

For Manon Roland praising Condorcet, see Mémoires de Madame Roland, volume 2, page 14-15.

For the relationship between Manon Roland and Félicité Brissot, see Mémoires de Madame Roland, volume 1, page 360.

For the relationship between Helen Maria Williams and Manon Roland, see Memoirs of the Reign of Robespierre (1795), written by the former.

For the relationship between Mary Wollstonecraft and Helena Maria Williams, see Collected letters of Mary Wollstonecraft (1979), page 226.

For Constance Charpentier painting a portrait of Louise Sébastienne Danton, see Constance Charpentier: Peintre (1767-1849), page 74.

For Olympe de Gouges writing a play with fictional versions of the Fernig sisters, see L’Entrée de Dumourier à Bruxelles ou les Vivandiers (1793) page 94-97 and 105-110.

For Olympe de Gouges calling Charlotte Corday ”a monster who has shown an unusual courage,” see a letter from the former dated July 20 1793, cited on page 204 of Marie-Olympe de Gouges: une humaniste à la fin du XVIIIe siècle (2003) by Oliver Blanc.

For Olympe de Gouges adressing her declaration to Marie-Antoinette, see Les droits de la femme: à la reine (1791) written by the former.

For Germaine de Staël defending Marie-Antoinette, see Réflexions sur le procès de la Reine par une femme (1793) by the former.

For the friendship between Madame Royale and Pauline Tourzel, see Souvernirs de quarante ans: 1789-1830: récit d’une dame de Madame la Dauphine (1861) by the latter.

For Félicité Brissot possibly translating Mary Wollstonecraft, see Who translated into French and annotated Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman? (2022) by Isabelle Bour.

For Félicité Brissot working as a maid for Louise Marie Adélaïde de Bourbon, see Mémoires inédites de Madame la comptesse de Genlis: sur le dix-huitième siècle et sur la révolution française, volume 4, page 106.

For Reine Audu, Claire Lacombe and Théroigne de Méricourt being given civic crowns together, see Gazette nationale ou le Moniteur universel, September 3, 1792.

For Reine Audu taking part in the women’s march on Versailles, see Reine Audu: les légendes des journées d’octobre (1917) by Marc de Villiers.

For Marie-Antoinette calling Lamballe ”my dear heart,” see Correspondance inédite de Marie Antoinette, page 197, 209 and 252.

For Marie-Antoinette disliking Madame du Barry, see https://plume-dhistoire.fr/marie-antoinette-contre-la-du-barry/

For Marie-Antoinette disliking Anne de Noailles, see Correspondance inédite de Marie Antoinette, page 30.

For Louise-Élisabeth Tourzel and Lamballe being friends, see Memoirs of the Duchess de Tourzel: Governess to the Children of France during the years 1789, 1790, 1791, 1792, 1793 and 1795 volume 2, page 257-258

For Félicité de Genlis being the mistress of Louise Marie Adélaïde de Bourbon’s husband, see La duchesse d’Orléans et Madame de Genlis (1913).

For Pétion escorting Madame Genlis out of France, see Mémoires inédites de Madame la comptesse de Genlis…, volume 4, page 99.

For the relationship between Félicité de Genlis and Louise de Kéralio Robert, see Mémoires de Madame de Genlis: en un volume, page 352-354

For the relationship between Félicité de Genlis and Germaine de Staël, see Mémoires inédits de Madame la comptesse de Genlis, volume 2, page 316-317

For the relationship between Félicité de Genlis and Théophile Fernig, see Mémoires inédits de Madame la comptesse de Genlis, volume 4, page 300-304

For the relationship between Félicité de Genlis and Félicité Brissot, see Mémoires inédites de Madame la comptesse de Genlis, volume 4, page 106-110, as well as this letter dated June 1783 from Félicité Brissot to Félicité Genlis.

For the relationship between Félicité de Genlis and Théresa Cabarrus, see Mémoires de Madame de Genlis: en un volume (1857) page 391.

For Félicité de Genlis inviting Lucile to dinner, see this letter from Sillery to Desmoulins dated March 3 1791.

For Marinette Bouquey hiding the husbands of madame Buzot, Pétion and Guadet, see Romances of the French Revolution (1909) by G. Lenotre, volume 2, page 304-323

Hey, don’t say I didn’t warn you!

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vexwerewolf · 17 hours

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Working on a störtebeker build, and I'm on the fence about using heavy melee weapons with executioner, or a main melee with duelist, what are your thoughts for putting together a highly aggressive störtebeker? (I play highly aggressive anyway and figure'd it'd be a good fit)

The main problem with the Stortebeker is that it has very limited SP, and once you've hit LL3, your build is basically complete, so it's hard to recommend anything to do with it.

-- IPS-N Störtebeker @ LL6 -- [ LICENSES ] IPS-N Raleigh 3, HORUS Pegasus 1, SSC Dusk Wing 2 [ CORE BONUSES ] Auto-Stabilizing Hardpoints, Reinforced Frame [ TALENTS ] Combined Arms 3, Gunslinger 3, Skirmisher 2, Vanguard 1 [ STATS ] HULL:2 AGI:2 SYS:2 ENGI:2 STRUCTURE:4 HP:20 ARMOR:1 STRESS:4 HEATCAP:7 REPAIR:6 TECH ATK:+2 LIMITED:+1 SPD:6 EVA:12 EDEF:9 SENSE:8 SAVE:13 [ WEAPONS ] FLEX MOUNT: Hand Cannon / Hand Cannon FLEX MOUNT: Hand Cannon / Hand Cannon HEAVY MOUNT: Kinetic Hammer (UNCLE-Class Comp/Con) // Auto-Stabilizing Hardpoints [ SYSTEMS ] Hunter Lock, “Roland” Chamber, Flicker Field Projector

I call this one Degrees of Falsehood.

We don't even bother with Executioner here. The only part of it we care about is No Escape, which is the third rank and we don't have room for it in an LL6 build. This build is entirely focused around trying to get Dynamic Reload to trigger after we've emptied our guns into an enemy.

Your basic combat loop looks like this: pick an enemy with low Evasion, move adjacent to them, Skirmish to empty two of your Hand Cannons into their face, Lock On, and then have UNCLE smack them with the Kinetic Hammer, consuming Lock On. UNCLE usually makes attacks with 2 Difficulty, but you've permanently removed 1 with Auto-Stabilizing Hardpoints, Combined Arms 3 removes the other since you just shot them with a Hand Cannon, and you've just consumed Lock On.

Next turn, if your enemy is still alive, we do it all over again. What we're aiming for here is a natural crit with the Kinetic Hammer. This will trigger Dynamic Reload without us having to force the issue with Truesilver, but we always have Truesilver as a backup just in case we can't pull it off. We fire the guns in 2-2 rather than in 4 because we ideally always want to have at least 2 guns loaded so we can fire them to trigger Combined Arms 2. Remember that to reactivate Flicker Field Generator, we need to move at least 1 space with our standard move, so use Skirmisher 2 to get in position for that - usually just dodging away from an enemy and then dodging back.

Remember that Roland Chamber triggers on the first attack with a Loading weapon after any weapon has been reloaded - it doesn't have to be the last weapon you reloaded. Be careful when you use I KILL WITH MY HEART - it's ready on your sixth shot, which if you're firing the guns in 2s will be the second shot of a Skirmish, and won't line up with Gunslinger 1 or Roland Chamber. Once the dice is ready, hold it so that you can combine the bonus damage from Roland Chamber and the extra Accuracy from Gunslinger 1 with the AP and bonus damage from I KILL WITH MY HEART.

#lancer #lancer rpg #lancerrpg #lancer-rpg #mecha #stortebeker

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doom-dreaming · 4 months

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The More The Merrier: Ch. 3 - Consummation

They’re not even five steps down the corridor when Kelly slams her against the wall, fingers twisted, tight with intent, into the fabric of her shirt. Adrenaline spikes through her, sharp and familiar and white-hot; a heady rush of arousal follows quickly on its heels. Lightning-fast, her own hands seek the straps of Kelly’s tank top. It would have taken much stronger alcohol—and a lot more of it—to dull her reflexes. Still, she should’ve known she wouldn’t be fast enough.

With a swiftness that's nearly impossible to track, Kelly swats her hands away. A heartbeat later, her wrists are clamped together over her head and Kelly is pressed against her so tightly she swears she can feel every layer of fabric separating the two of them. “This is for you,” Kelly whispers, chasing the words with her tongue, following the curve of Sarah’s jaw.

It was a bold move—she'd give Kelly that much—and boldness, while usually a risky strategy, was also (unfortunately) one of the very few keys to Sarah’s heart. She could already feel her sense of decorum starting to crumble. The firm curves of Kelly’s body fit so perfectly against her own and she allows herself a moment of fantasy, imagining those curves naked under her hands… She’d be damned if she was the only one getting stripped tonight.

“Taking her down right here in the hallway?”

Kelly hums; it’s halfway-adjacent to a laugh. “She might like it.” For a second or two—not long enough—Kelly’s lips linger on her skin. “But it’d be a shame to’ve kicked the boys out of the room tonight for nothing.”

Heat blossoms somewhere in Sarah’s gut and quickly sinks lower, and not just from the shock of Kelly leaving a parting nip on her neck. “You prepared for this?”

Kelly’s eyebrows arch. “You didn’t think we were just being friendly, did you?”

The heat between Sarah’s legs settles into a tight, heavy ache that makes the trek to Blue Team’s quarters more torture than it should be. Sure, when Roland had mentioned all three of their elevated heart rates, she’d expected some light flirting—or whatever passed as flirting for Class-IIs—not an entire contingency plan complete with semi-public foreplay and a conveniently-unoccupied room.

But Kelly and Linda were the core of the most competent Spartan unit to ever exist—should she really have expected anything less? Having Blue Team onboard the Infinity was teaching her—quickly—not to underestimate them. She’d watched them train, she knew how they approached a challenge, how they played when they could sense the odds were heavily in their favor, reveling in their skill and efficiency and ruthlessness. Really, it was her mistake for assuming this would be any different.

She risks a glance at the camera mounted over the door while Kelly’s fingers fly across the keypad. It was impossible to know where Roland was or wasn’t looking at any given moment, but she knows he’s too invested in this to allow his attention to lapse completely. They’d have an audience tonight whether she gave him permission or not.

The soft ‘beep’ of acceptance from the keypad is almost drowned by the hydraulic hiss of the door opening.

“After you,” Kelly chirps, punctuating the words with a firm slap to Sarah’s ass.

“I should write you up for insubordination.” Her tone stays stern and professional, but she’s betting they’ll pick up on the joke. …she hopes they’ll pick up on the joke.

“We’ll remind you in the morning,” Linda snipes back without missing a beat.

The lights in Blue Team’s quarters dim significantly when the three of them cross the threshold, almost as if on cue.

“Mood lighting, hm?” Kelly murmurs from somewhere over Sarah’s shoulder. “Thanks, Roland.”

Sarah grits her teeth. “Do not encourage him.”

The room’s holotank flickers gold, but that’s the only sign of acknowledgement the AI gives—no avatar, no pithy comment. Sarah’s almost impressed by his restraint. Almost.

The gentle ‘hsss-chnk’ of the door closing behind them may as well have been the starting alarm of a wargames match. All three Spartans burst into a flurry of motion, a storm of hands pawing, grabbing, tugging at anything within reach. Again, Sarah goes for the straps of Kelly’s tank top, and again Kelly slaps her away. It quickly becomes something of a dance, a rhythm, a give and take; Kelly yanks at the waistband of Sarah’s pants, Sarah takes the opportunity to slip her hands under Kelly’s top.

She knows it’s a losing battle; she’s outnumbered and outgunned and sure enough, with two against one, it doesn’t take long at all for Sarah’s—and only Sarah’s—clothes to litter the floor. Somewhere in the midst of the scuffle, her hair had been freed from its ponytail; she catches a glimpse of the band around Linda’s wrist.

Undoubtedly emboldened by the new vulnerability of their quarry, Kelly and Linda redouble the intensity of their attack, pressing in from both sides. Lips dance over skin, hungry, working their way up and down her neck, across her shoulders and collarbone, along her jaw, behind her ears.

Kelly drags her in by her bra straps, crushing their mouths into a rough, messy kiss. It’s not a good kiss—it’s mostly teeth and not nearly enough tongue—but it’s enough to distract Sarah from Kelly’s primary objective. Slim, quick fingers target the frontal clasp of her bra—a breath and a snap later, it’s open and Kelly is sliding the straps down Sarah’s arms for Linda to catch and remove from the other side.

Kelly’s teeth close down on Sarah’s bottom lip. “Looks like someone did a little planning of her own,” she notes, pulling away. “No way you just happened to be wearing that.”

Sarah runs her tongue over her lip and tastes copper. She smirks. “I had my hopes.” Despite all her best attempts at bravado, she’s embarrassingly wet by the time they actually make it to the nearest bunk. Kelly’s hands play cruel games at the junction of her thighs and she’s halfway made up her mind to just grab Kelly’s wrist and—

Kelly is on her faster than the thought can finish forming; a welcome weight settled on her hips, firm hands pinning her shoulders to the mattress. Another weight—Linda—slides onto the bunk behind her head and a second pair of hands takes the place of the first.

Kelly sits back on her heels, head slightly cocked, just the barest hint of a smirk on her lips. “How do you want to be fucked, Commander?”

Maybe it’s the use of the title, usually so formal, spoken so casually and in such a context. Maybe it’s the bite in Kelly’s voice, the way the words punch out of her. Maybe it’s the gentle, agonizing swipe of fingertips against her clit. Maybe it’s a combination of all three. Whatever the cause, there’s fire rising swiftly in her neck, threatening to spread to her ears. It’s damn near reflexive, the way she rocks her hips into Kelly’s hand, hungry for more pressure than the other woman seemed willing to give.

“You like that?” Without waiting for verbal acknowledgement, Kelly indulges her, tugging the damp fabric of her panties to the side and slipping two slender fingers into the slick heat between her legs.

Sarah can’t stop the growl that claws its way out of her throat, ears burning at the immediacy of the reaction. It wasn’t supposed to be this easy—she did this to herself on a regular basis, for fuck’s sake. But Kelly’s hands were not her own and that was making all the difference.

**********

Kelly curls her fingers on the return stroke before pushing deeper into the next thrust, studying Palmer’s body like a tactical map. Each twitch of muscle and every micro-expression that fluttered across her face was feedback for Kelly’s performance and so far, all Kelly could see were green lights across the board.

Palmer’s hips roll with the flow of Kelly’s fingers, her hands are gouging furrows into the sheets, and she’s blushing so hard Kelly swears she can feel the heat of it. Still, a change in tactics might yield better results... It was a risk she could take. Briefly, Kelly withdraws, switching fingers, pressing the heel of her hand into Palmer’s clit. The motion provokes an instant response, a shiver and a breathless, whispered curse.

Spurred on by the encouragement, Kelly shifts her weight, bracing herself on one arm, sliding her tongue up the length of Palmer’s stomach. She slows herself down, takes her time, licking long languid stripes over salty skin, rewarded by the involuntary ripples of toned muscle underneath. She works her way higher—over the curve of a breast, around a nipple.

At the fringes of her peripheral vision, she sees Linda’s hand pressed firmly against Palmer’s jaw, tilting her head back, no doubt forcing eye contact. “All bark and no bite so far, Commander,” Linda purrs. “I think Kelly’s disappointed.”

It was a familiar trick. Even though their roles were usually reversed on the battlefield, Kelly knew when Linda was setting her up to take a shot. She closes her lips around the nipple she’d been teasing, sucking gently, swirling her tongue to match the rhythm of her hand.

Whatever retort Palmer may have had to the comment comes out as a whimper instead.

**********

They were unraveling her—fast. She knew they would and she wanted it, but…god damn. Every inch of her skin is on fire and the brilliant green of Linda’s eyes may as well have been the beckoning of a cold, clear pool. She can almost imagine herself diving in as Linda leans closer.

“Relax,” the sniper murmurs. “If you’re not gonna fight, you might as well enjoy it.”

The grip on her jaw loosens, but their eyes stay locked. She swallows, still intensely aware of Kelly’s mouth on her skin, her fingers curling and spreading and exploring. Sarah’s palms are sweaty, her hands are twisted in the sheets, and she’s not sure she could move them even if she wanted to—not against the ruthless tempo Kelly is currently torturing her with. Relaxing was easier said than done.

“Having fun yet?” Kelly flashes a grin that falls short of 'cheeky' and lands somewhere in 'predatory.' Lips at the wrong angles—again, too many teeth.

It’s hot. Sarah feels cornered. Her wildly-enhanced fight-or-flight response is wreaking havoc in her brain, crossing wires about what her body should or shouldn’t be doing. She pushes through the haze and focuses, managing to tilt her hips into a more agreeable angle. She hopes that’s enough of an answer.

Kelly makes some strange sound of approval, more animal than human, and the inferno raging under Sarah’s skin blooms to a breaking point in the pit of her stomach. Muscles tighten. Spasm. Release. Kelly fucks her through it, leaving a line of light kisses down her chest. Linda’s fingers are delicate and strangely affectionate as they comb through her hair. Gradually, the fire ebbs into a dull, heavy smolder that settles into her bones.

They leave her alone for a minute, enveloped in that warmth. Gracefully, carefully, they move over and around her, leaving her blissfully untouched as they switch places. Linda slots herself into the space Kelly had left, maneuvering until she can lay flat on her stomach. A sniper’s position, Sarah thinks lazily. The mental alarm bell of what that actually entails catches up with her a second too late. By that point, Kelly is already behind her, grabbing her wrists, pulling her arms over her head.

She squirms and tugs. Unsurprisingly, Kelly’s grip remains steadfast.

“Didn’t Linda tell you to relax?”

Yeah, because that’d worked so well the first time. But her head was clearer and she wasn’t balanced on the edge of an orgasm, being betrayed by her own muscles… She could try. She shuts her eyes and puts some effort into it, taking inventory of her body, trying to sink into each sensation. There’s a grounding effect to the pressure of Kelly’s hands around her wrists, it’s warm and comfortable, in an anchoring way. The sheets are soft under her bare back. Cool air blows across her stomach, counteracting the heat of her body.

She loses focus as Linda’s tongue leaves a hot, wet streak up the inside of her thigh—and another directly against the already-soaked crotch of her (still yet to be removed) panties. Linda’s fingers join her tongue a few seconds later, toying with the edges of the fabric, sneaking under for a touch before retreating again.

Sarah doesn’t know if she’s in any position to negotiate, but she tries anyway. “Will you get those damn things off me?” Her voice doesn’t come out nearly as strong as she’d hoped it would.

Linda’s only answer is a snort and a playful tug at the waistline that sends the elastic snapping back against Sarah’s hip. She bites back a groan and shuts her eyes again, doing her damnedest to be patient. Linda’s tongue works in slow strokes; it does feel good, but the flare of returning arousal is quickly burning off the effects of the afterglow and it takes significant willpower to keep Sarah from bucking her hips directly into Linda’s face.

They were right. She should be enjoying it. Her date nights with Tom had been few and far between as of late, and in the event there was sex involved, it was quick. Not unsatisfying, not at all obligatory, just…quick. It seemed as though everyone in her life, herself included, always had something going on, something they needed to be doing. Tom’s responsibilities only multiplied by the minute. Miller was almost always running an op—not that that ever discouraged her from screwing around with him if she had a few minutes to kill…

The point was, she hadn’t had a good, thorough fucking in what felt like an eternity. She could relax. She could enjoy this. Really, they were doing her a favor—

Without warning, Linda pulls her panties to the side. The sudden rush of cool air against hot skin instantly sends her train of thought crashing off its tracks and into a ditch. Linda’s tongue is back in action within seconds and Sarah’s fingers twitch, desperate with the desire to tangle into that gorgeous red hair and yank…but Kelly's grip on her wrists makes that impossible. At least for the moment.

The movement, of course, doesn't escape Kelly's attention. She leans down into Sarah’s line of sight, a dangerous smirk on her lips. “Need something?”

Sarah opens her mouth to bite back, but Linda’s tongue sliding across her clit draws a breathless whine from her lips instead.

Kelly’s smile gets toothy and feral again. “Sorry? Didn’t quite catch that…”

“Just fuck me already,” Sarah hisses, jerking against Kelly’s restraint at the next flick of Linda’s tongue. To hell with relaxing; she was done being patient. “What do I have to say? Please?”

“Might be nice.” Linda’s tone is cool and utterly unbothered. The sensation of her breath is enough to send goosebumps crawling across Sarah’s skin.

“Tell us how badly you want it,” Kelly purrs.

Oh, she made it sound like such a simple request. No, this was a game for them. Sarah was nothing more than a mouse caught between the paws of two very cruel cats. She huffs. “You're sadistic, you know that?”

Kelly leans even closer, almost cheek-to-cheek. “You like it.”

Of course she did. But relaxing and enjoying herself was one thing. Admitting desperation was another. Besides, they didn't need her to vocalize anything her body wasn't already communicating; she may as well have been broadcasting her desire over open comms. And they were picking it up loud and clear.

“Alright then.” Kelly pulls back, smug. “We do this the hard way. I think she wants to sing for us.”

Linda answers with a low chuckle. “Let's hear it.”

**********

Kelly can't school the grin that crosses her face the moment Palmer finally breaks. Seeing her commander laid bare and vulnerable in front of her is akin to a battle-rush—that feeling of hot blood and razor-sharp senses at the first hint of danger.

She locks eyes with Linda over the writhing plane of Palmer’s body. Her sister was working her calculated, methodical magic and Palmer was singing. She’d been trying to say something for the past few minutes—something Kelly assumed was ‘please’—but hadn’t managed to make it past the initial sound without the word devolving into unintelligible moans. Linda’s head bobs, prompting the loudest cry they’d heard so far.

“Agh—!” Palmer doesn’t even have time to catch her breath before she’s gasping out another attempt. “Pl—p…” She’s staring up at Kelly with manic arousal. “Please! Please...”

Kelly cocks her head. “She’s pretty when she begs.” Even though she means it more as a taunt than a compliment, Kelly can admit there’s a layer of sincerity in the comment. Palmer has the beauty of a caged tiger, seething with powerless fury, hungry for control Kelly isn’t allowing.

“Fuck me,” she huffs, teeth bared, still clearly trying to capture enough air to form the words. “That’s a gah—ah!” Her hands tighten into fists as she fights against Linda’s distractions long enough to spit out the rest of the sentence. “...a goddamn order!”

Kelly’s gaze flicks from Palmer back to Linda. The sniper’s brows raise by mere millimeters, but Kelly interprets the question with ease. Should we?

She waits, counting heartbeats. One. Two. …three. She sets the caged tiger free.

**********

Her inhibitions and final shreds of professionalism tear to tatters as her hands find purchase in Linda’s hair. She needed more contact. Now.

With another low laugh that rattles Sarah’s bones from the inside, Linda obliges. Silent moans spill from Sarah’s lips, swallowed and stifled by quick, heavy breaths. She’s been stripped to raw nerves, capable of doing nothing but feeling. Linda seems determined to map out Sarah’s entire internal topography with her tongue. Kelly’s fingers dance over the ridges of her ribs. Stars bloom behind her eyes as she crashes—finally, mercifully—over the edge. She’s vaguely aware of Kelly crooning something into her ear, but she’s too far gone to actually parse the words.

She feels like she floats for hours, hazy and warm, suspended in honey. Kelly and Linda are speaking, but the conversation is distant and watery and it doesn’t feel like she’s included, so she doesn’t bother trying to understand any of it. Her muscles have turned to wet sand; she knows it won’t last long and doesn’t bother fighting it. Relax, they’d told her. Well, now she had no choice.

She’s not sure how long she lays there. Kelly and Linda’s words gradually sharpen as her mind clears, then fall silent as she forces herself to stir and stretch. It takes her a minute to realize they’re watching her with some flavor of expectation, so she says the first thing that comes to mind. “...is that it?”

Kelly scoffs. “And risk insulting your stamina? No. That was a warmup.”

Sarah’s face flushes with heat. Before the other two have a chance to comment on what she knows is a highly-visible blush, Roland chooses that moment to make an appearance. She’d never thank him out loud, but she's grateful for the distraction.

“Ahem.” He makes a show of clearing a throat he doesn’t have, a gesture made all the more ridiculous by the decision to speak without the added illusion of his avatar. “Apologies for the intrusion, Commander, but I’ve taken the liberty of rescheduling tomorrow morning’s drills with Fireteam Hydra. Hope you don’t mind. …have a good night!”

And just like that, her gratitude evaporates. The glow of the holotank doesn’t even fade, it just snaps off. Roland was, metaphorically, sprinting in the opposite direction. And for good reason. Sarah didn’t know how to strangle an AI, but she was sure with a little creativity she could figure something out.

#HUGE HUGE HUGE THANK YOU to my lovely friend @reidentifying #for looking at this with a set of fresh eyes and giving me suggestions when i forgot how to use words #halo #halo fanfic #my writing #sarah palmer #kelly 087 #linda 058 #palmer sandwich #kelly/palmer/linda

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vincentpriceofficial · 6 months

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Sex, Violence and Power in Hilary Mantel’s A Place of Greater Safety

Ever since I finished this book I’ve been thinking about how gendered and sexual violence kind of continually lurk in its subtext and then break into the explicit text in periodic but still-shocking instances of abuse. At first I thought this was mostly unrelated to the central political plot — a matter of historical realism as much as anything — but the more I’ve thought about it the more integral and connected to everything else it seems.

CW: #rape, #abuse, #csa

From the first chapters of the novel, we see that women and girls in this time and place lack the ability to say no to sex with their husbands. As a child, Robespierre hears his maternal grandfather accuse his father of having murdered his mother via repeat pregnancies. Much later, Danton’s wife Gabrielle has a conversation with other women about the impossibility of using birth control in her marriage. Within a year Gabrielle is dead, her death eerily similar to that of Robespierre’s mother.

Manon Roland is molested as a child and carries a fear and revulsion of sexuality with her throughout her life as a result.

And Camille is taken advantage of as a young adult by an older man who controls the future of his career. The fact that Camille’s mentor is sexually predatory seems to be common knowledge throughout the professional community, and instead of intervening to protect Camille they humiliate and ostracize him. When Camille disavows responsibility for the relationship to his father (“None of it was my fault” and “I was just a child”) his father outright scoffs at the idea he might be trying to say he was raped. Much later Danton himself marries a young teenage girl and, again, no one seems willing or quite able to intervene. You get the overwhelming sense that this is a society where sexual abuse and exploitation are treated as mildly unpleasant facts of life about which nothing can or should be done.

Later, Camille narrowly escapes being coerced into sex by Babette, the young daughter of Robespierre’s landlord. Camille’s lingering terror of her after this incident is horribly psychologically realistic, but also…. Babette, teen girl predator of adult men, is the one instance of sexual violence in the book that has never sat entirely right with me.

The real Elisabeth Duplay wrote in her memoirs that Georges Danton tried to kiss her and made inappropriate sexual comments to her when she was a teenager. I see no reason to believe this isn’t true, and in light of it I do think representing Elisabeth as a sexual predator herself is kind of a strange and tasteless choice. It feels like an outlier in Mantel’s otherwise very grounded and realistic portrait of an 18th century rape culture.

The choice to represent a single individual person who lived and died hundreds of years ago as a rapist when she probably wasn’t one itself might leave a slightly bad taste in my mouth, but on the other hand historical fiction as a genre does tend to necessitate casting some dead people in unflattering lights just to create conflict and make the plot run. This alone doesn’t bother me nearly as much as Babette’s later “false rape accusation” against Danton (which is obviously how we’re meant to interpret it in the book, as a lie devised for political expediency) and that accusation being framed as a deciding factor in Robespierre’s decision to condemn Danton to death.

For one thing, this plot beat feels out of step with the development of Robespierre and Danton’s uneasy alliance and rivalry throughout the rest of the novel. From the beginning of the revolution the two of them have a grudging respect for each other but don’t like each other, they don’t share one another’s fundamental values or worldview and those differences increasingly drive a wedge between them as the external pressure on both men mounts. Robespierre becomes more ruthless and paranoid while Danton becomes more violent, exploitative and corrupt. Danton is a sexual abuser by this point in the story. He has married a teenage girl and it’s implied that he’s raping her (by the very implication that she is a child he is having sex with, and by a line in her internal monologue where she hopes he’ll get drunk and fall asleep right away so she won’t have to have sex with him). Meanwhile Robespierre is growing more committed to a belief system wherein “the people” of France are inherently morally pure and if they behave badly it’s because of external bad influences, wherein immorality is a societal cancer that needs to be cut out by chopping off the heads of every Evil Person.

At the end of those two character arcs I would have believed Robespierre was willing to have Danton killed without any false accusation scene, without any out-and-out lies being told to him about Danton. It feels like Mantel didn’t have enough faith in her own story and her own central character arcs and did this weird punch-pulling maneuver at the last minute that weakens the story. Two complex and well-developed characters becoming more entrenched in and committed to their own worst qualities over time until they destroy one another is a strong arc with a strong conclusion. One character being “tricked” into betraying the other by a one-dimensionally villainous minor character is weak and unsatisfying.

Babette and her purely malicious opportunism also makes it feel like… the call is coming from outside the house, so to speak. Like, as Robespierre believes, there are individual Bad People who are the problem and if they could be gotten rid of all societal ills would disappear. But throughout the rest of the story we see that really isn’t the case. Perrin hires Camille out of a desire to take sexual advantage of him, but also treats Camille well enough that years later Camille is willing to risk his own position to save Perrin’s life during the September Massacres. Danton is a loyal friend, a charming and charismatic leader, and someone who likes to compromise and negotiate rather than make enemies. And he’s also an abuser, a sexual predator, and a murderer (especially if you accept Danton’s own judgment that he killed Gabrielle “by unkindness”). When Manon runs into her own rapist years later she observes that he is “a perfectly ordinary young man”.

This is a more compelling and a more true portrait of a culture where exploitation and coercion are baked into the “normal” social structure.

Mirabeau has this internal monologue near the beginning that feels to me like the closest thing APoGS has to a thesis statement:

When you get down to it, he thought, there’s not much difference between politics and sex; it’s all about power. He didn’t suppose he was the first person in the world to make this observation. It’s a question of seduction, and how fast and cheap you can effect it.

So like, we’re all here in politics trying to accrue power. (Even if we hope to use that power for good.) We’re trying to exert as much control as we can over as many people as possible. We’re trying to coerce and manipulate and bribe each other. The methods of the outside world are not alien to the revolution; they are inside it from its genesis and present within it at every step of the way. And much, much later the revolutionary government will collapse into chaos not because of the foreign plots against it that Robespierre imagines but because of internal factional power struggles turning desperate and bloody and murderous.

From Robespierre’s first introduction to the story, we are shown that he has an intertwined horror of sexuality and abuses of power. He understands that his mother’s death was a result of abusive or “excessive” sexual behavior on the part of his father. He understands that as an illegitimately conceived child he would not exist if not for his parents’ immoral sexual excess. He spends the rest of his life trying to distance himself from that legacy and to prove he’s nothing like his father.

Asking himself why he’s so afraid of foreign political conspiracies, Robespierre directly draws the link to his own bodily alienation:

Why, he asked (since he is a reasonable man), does he fear conspiracy where no one else does?

And answered, well, I fear what I have past cause to fear. And these are the conspirators within: the heart that flutters, the head that aches, the gut that won’t digest, and eyes that, increasingly, cannot bear bright sunlight. Behind them is the master conspirator, the occult part of the mind.

Robespierre becomes obsessed with the idea that anyone whose policies he disapproves is a malicious foreign agent, bent on the destruction of the republic. This idea particularly takes root when people whose political views he otherwise shares advocate starting a war. Robespierre cannot accept the possibility that warmongering is an honest miscalculation — that people brought up surrounded by propaganda about glorious military triumphs might sincerely believe war could be a good thing for the republic.

He can’t accept that the violence he abhors is in his allies, that it’s in The People, that it’s in him. He can’t accept that Camille is sullied by sexual deviance, or that Danton could be both a powerful force for political stability and a corrupt, largely amoral bully. Robespierre can’t cope with the murky ambiguity and ambivalence that lurks in the “occult part of the mind”; he can’t bear to think of himself or anyone else he loves as a body capable of sex and violence. So he destroys Camille and destroys Danton and we know that he’ll be killed himself a few months later. I imagine him finally keeling over after slowly and gradually bleeding out from a self-inflicted wound, a self-surgery, a botched organ removal. He tries to excise the impurities from his own life and finds he can’t survive without them. He cannot bring himself to negotiate or make peace with the “conspirator within” and instead destroys himself completely.

#a place of greater safety #hilary mantel

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avocado-writing · 4 months

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Please may I request 😈 ─ decide who has been the naughtiest and the nicest and give each other rewards & consequences accordingly?

I was thinking for Roland Blum x reader? Thank you :)

notes: tried to make this one more “holiday” rather than “Christmas” seeing as Roland is canonically Jewish!

Seeing as he’s Jewish and you’re Christian-adjacent enough to have been brought up to do Christmas, the two of you sort of celebrate one thing or the other non-stop throughout December. Mostly it’s via fucking. And drugs, too. The two of you trip through the month in a blissful haze of slick sweat and loud orgasms.

It’s fucking great.

Tonight he’s sitting - impatiently, you might add - waiting for you to finish dressing up.

“Is there any fucking point in this? Whatever you wear is just gonna end up on the floor in five minutes, anyway.”

“Have some fucking patience for once Roland, Jesus.”

“I’d be surprised if he turned up. If he does he’ll probably have something to say about all the lines I just did off your - ”

You silence him by stepping out of the en-suite and into the bedroom. And he is silent. Mouth hung open, eyes wide.

It’s a nice set of lingerie. Expensive. Red and in ornamental bows, you look like a present ready to unwrap. He grins as you sidle over to him, mounting one of his thick thighs.

“Well, Mr Blum. I’m your holiday present this year. Tell me, have you been naughty or nice?”

Fuck he is so weak for you. Yes, the bra and panties will end up thrown over his shoulder in a matter of moments. But at that moment?

“Anything you fucking want me to be, sweetheart.”

#xmas prompts #roland blum x reader

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bloodgulchblog · 4 months

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First section of Touchstone, insane Miller-has-a-crush-on-Master-Chief fic premise.

It is not currently nsfw. It is currently running away from me as I relish in the opportunity to flop around in this space in Halo lore like a crow in a rain puddle.

But anyway, here's how it's going so far. (Reprints the thing I posted before for coherency, mostly it's Miller suffering, eventually once I feel like I have a substantial amount of fanfiction built up here I might post it to ao3 but who knows)

—

Directing Blue Team is different from directing Crimson, or Majestic, or any other Spartan-IV team. It shouldn’t be. A Spartan fireteam is a Spartan fireteam, and Spartan-IV outcomes are equal or superior to Spartan-II. This is the official line. Miller has all the data rattling around in his head that would confirm it, all the performance metrics and wargames statlines and field reports.

But data’s only one piece of a puzzle. The other piece is the VISR feeds streaming across Miller’s display, pooling together the four perspectives that make up the whole of the mission.

Kelly-087. Fred-104. Linda-058. John-117, the Master Chief himself.

They speak very little, they move in perfect concert, the whole execution of every objective the wargames protocol spits and Miller calls out for them is ruthlessly, antiseptically clean.

If Crimson is like a rocket launcher, the Spartan-IIs feel like a goddamn tactical nuke.

Directing Blue Team is a rush.

“Enjoying yourself?” Roland asks, the surprise lighting up all the muscles in Miller’s shoulders and making his teeth click together. The yellow figure of the Infinity’s AI, arms folded behind his back and brows arched, has co-opted the workstation’s holo display. He manages to project the full energy of someone leaning on the back of Miller’s chair despite lacking both the body and the weight to lean.

Miller feels his ears burn, like he’s been somehow caught doing… something.

He’s not going to analyze exactly what that something is or why he feels that way about watching Blue Team sighting in on a Promethean Knight, right now.

“...Sure. Just putting Blue Team through their paces,” he replies, starting off cautiously neutral. Roland hasn’t done anything yet. There’s a chance he won’t do anything, or say anything. Miller can be the bigger person. Miller can offer Roland the chance to better his track record vis a vis the doing and saying of things.

The Master Chief makes a hand signal, invisible on his cam but Miller sees it flicker in triplicate across team feeds before they all start moving. Fred-104 pops from cover to herd the Knight, tightly placed AR groups forcing it to move back before it has a chance to hit him with its scattershot. Linda-058, further off up a stone ledge where she’s been cleaning Watchers out of the air, fires a round that slices through one side of the Knight’s carapace and bursts out the other with a flare of damaged orange hardlight. It staggers and step-turns to hunt the sniperfire, and immediately gets hit from the back by Kelly-087, lightning fast with a shotgun blast that shreds the rest of the rear armor and exposes the Knight’s glowing core.

Then there’s the Master Chief. He slides in from the flank, closing immediately to drive in a knife. The Knight staggers forward and the Chief mounts up, tipping the big construct with a powerful twist of his body while he adjusts the angle of the blade. There’s nothing random about the stab, Miller can see him pull the Knight’s core with one hand while the other slices into the contacts along its rim. It screams as something pops with one disdainful flex of the Chief’s wrist, and he jumps away clean before the Knight dissolves into sparks and cinders under him.

Roland whistles appreciatively.

Miller swallows.

It’s here that he gets the first inkling that maybe, possibly, he might have a problem.

“Very nice,” Roland is saying. “Ooh, Miller. Miller! Can I tell Majestic how much this beats their time?”

“Good work, Blue Team,” Miller says, ignoring him. “That was the last target. Head back to the first waypoint, and we’ll pull you out of the sim.”

“Spoilsport,” Roland grouses. “I think a little competition would be good for Majestic! Light a real fire under ‘em.”

“Roland, clear the channel,” says the Master Chief before Miller has to do it himself. “Miller, it was a smooth run. Good job, Spartan.”

Miller’s heart doesn’t skip a beat, because that’s the sort of trouble reserved for mere mortals with organs not reinforced by polythread weave.

And that’s the only reason.

“Thanks.”

It’s lame, Thanks, but the word gets out of his mouth in one piece and he couldn’t be more grateful.

Roland’s trying to lure the Master Chief into giving him some pointers that he can offer next time Thorne’s team runs this exercise, no doubt because he’s bored and would love to rile Majestic up, but the Chief can hold his own and Miller’s lost focus on it in the face of what he’s learning.

Because oh.

Oh.

He has a problem.

—

MJOLNIR variants, the names of specific patterns for alien weapons, the shape and flow of familiar combat situations. The ways his teams fall together, the ways the personalities play off one another or don’t. How something can happen, and someone can suddenly be different from how they were before.

The things Miller knows snap into focus every time he recognizes them, like the targeting reticle blinking awake on his HUD when the MJONLIR’s gauntlet contacts clock a supported weapon. He’s always liked knowing things, even made it his business to know things when he could be relying on a machine to pull up the details. Memory is faster, sharper, lets him fit facts together into something that might actually help. Maybe. Maybe it’s also just a certain amount of residual nerdery that the UNSC decided it liked enough not to sand off of him.

Usually, he likes this about himself too.

But right now, the new information slotting itself so helpfully into all Miller’s awareness is that the Master Chief is hot. The Master Chief is really really hot, and he can’t stop noticing.

Just not thinking about him doesn’t work. The Infinity is the biggest ship in the fleet and has a population to match, but in the grand scheme of things? She’s a small town, and Chief’s a big resident. People still talk over the rumors about the Biko peace talks, the whole slate of rumors about Requiem, about Cortana, about even quieter and older rumors only some of the Spartans are allowed to know and only most of them know if ONI isn’t asking.

People wonder stuff about Master Chief.

“How’d he take it?” is what Carmichael wonders over lunch.

Miller twists his fork in his noodles.

“He’s…” Miller searches for a word that has nothing to do with anything he has possibly felt ever in his life. “Professional.”

“That bad?” Carmichael’s eyebrows lift. It’s more than just thinking it’s funny, though.

“Not bad,” Miller clarifies, maybe a little too quickly. “It’s just…”

Carmichael’s scheduled to do some trial runs with Blue Team, too. Palmer hasn’t said anything, but Blue Team hasn’t had to work under a Spartan mission handler since John-117 came back from the dead. Blue Team also hasn’t been out in the field since the disaster at the Biko peace talks. Everyone on S-Deck is smart enough to figure out what’s happening without having their hands held.

Carmichael’s real question, the one Miller’s trying to answer, is: How is the legendary defender of humanity doing with his wings clipped?

The answer to that question should absolutely not be hot.

“If he’s upset about it – and I’m not saying he is – he’s not showing it.”

Carmichael nods, accepting this.

“So, how do they run?”

This one’s worse to answer. It’s so much worse. Miller can hear his pulse in his ears and feel the fork digging into his hand.

He laughs nervously. He hopes Carmichael can’t tell.

“I won’t spoil it for you.”

He can feel Carmichael studying him. Carmichael’s older, all of the other mission handlers are older than Miller and most of them are from a Spartan-IV class or two before his.

It doesn’t bother him, most of the time, but it is enough to create a divide between him and the few other people who share this highly specific job.

“Alright Miller, keep your secrets,” Carmichael says. “May the best man win, eh?”

Miller manages not to choke. Oh. Oh, no.

“That’s not what I meant, I-”

“Don’t worry about it.” Carmichael’s tone is amicable, but a little of the friendliness has slipped back. They’re not in cahoots sharing information anymore. This has gone totally professional.

Carmichael has completely misread this. Maybe Miller has too. He didn’t realize Carmichael might care about who gets assigned Blue Team?

Maybe it would be a prestige thing? God damn it.

He tries to think of how to fix this, to make it less awkward to share workspace with Carmichael for… for however long this might last? But he can’t do it.

Carmichael finishes eating and leaves the mess first, and Miller’s shoulders sink.

He goes back over the testrun in his head as he picks at what’s left on his tray, appetite gone. Did he miss anything during the mission? Any hesitations or bad calls? What’s Commander Palmer going to say when she finally records feedback? Was it a clean run? He thinks maybe?

Is this even a competition?

Is there any chance they’ll assign Blue Team to him?

Miller thinks about the hole in his roster that’s been there since February, and his gut still twists. Fireteam Castle, all six Spartans, lost to Covenant remnant shooting down their Pelican. All the arguments with himself about whether or not there was something he could’ve done better, arguments he’s had with himself hundreds of times since, start rising to the surface of Miller’s thoughts.

He forces them all away and rests his face in his hand, fingers on one temple and thumb on the other. He breathes out, long and slow, focusing on the transfer of air until there isn’t any left and his head’s quiet again.

No. They’re not going to put him in charge of Blue Team, and it’s going to be for the best for all concerned.

#my writing #touchstone

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alexmurison · 1 year

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Mount Roland, Tasmania

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fuzzkaizer · 7 months

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Humphrey Barclay - fuzz collection

"Fuzz. A few are nominally overdrives, but do the fuzz thing nevertheless. Fuzz freaks will note there are a couple of very obvious gaps... . The greatest fuzzes have come out of the UK (Sola Sound/Colorsound, Dallas-Arbiter, Top Gear), Italy (Vox/Jen), the USA (Electroharmonix, Maestro and many others), Japan (Roland/Acetone, Shin Ei). . The Orange Ibanez OD850 and the green Ibanez OD9 next door to it are the exact same board, a copy of the EHX Big Muff. Neither are overdrives! The EHX Hot Tubes, nominally an emulation of an overdriven tube amp, can also give a Muff a run for its money. . The Guild Grizzly is a rebranded Top Gear Fuzz - identical inside. The orange Colorsound-made B&M Fuzz on the top row is the fuzz section of the yellow Supa Fuzz Wah Swell to the right, but mounted upside down."

cred: instagram.com/humphreybarclay

#fuzz #fuzzology #collection

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lovesickdeadsims · 8 months

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Roland is spending time with his neighbors, the single father Yudai and his daughter Haruko. Haruko doesn't know that her father and Roland already met in one of Mount Komorebi's bars; but she still looks pretty suspicious about Roland.

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bettathanyou · 3 months

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Betta Presents...

WIP WEDNESDAY!!

Welcome to my first take on wip wednesday, where yall get a snippet of a current original fic im brewing up! I thought it would be a cool way to give yall content without stressing myself out with needing it to be finished content. (i work slow asf lmao) Anyways. here is the wip of my upcoming two part fic, titled "The Death Of A Sorcerer; A Requiem Of A Princess"

___________

Cedric stared up at the ceiling of his cell, watching the little beads of water that slipped through the cracks in the stone above drip onto the hard brick of the floor below. Rats scurried in and out of the rusted iron jail bars to his left, carrying the untouched food he cast aside earlier back to their dens.

The tiny cell he occupied had no windows of any sort; the only light available to him was the dying embers of the torches mounted in the hallway, leading out of the cell block. The sorcerer shifts uncomfortably on the hard, freezing cold slab fixed to the wall of his prison, feeling the pins and needles wrack his thighs from sitting idly so long.

Cedric shivers, trying to pull his robe tighter against himself. It was a fruitless task, he knew- his stiffened fingers could attest, from clenching the fabric so taut for hours on end.

Though Cedric hasn't moved more than a few inches since his imprisonment the day prior, his exhaustion lingered down to the marrow of his bones. The sorcerer's mind had provided him no rest since being dragged away in chains- although, he was usually accustomed to racing thoughts that took away his sleep.

But not like this.

Cedric was normally used to the usual spiraling thoughts of "what if" when it came to his magic, his reputation, his worth as a person. Followed by the self hatred when he became a self fulfilling prophecy, and those what ifs became reality.

That was why he threw everything, everything he had into his evil dreams, wasn't it? To escape the purgatory that he was forced to call his reality. To force the hand of fate to deal him a better card. It seemed like his own blind faith, alongside his lofty ambitions, (desperation, in disguise, truly) was just another folly, and he was played for a fool.

Although, Cedric would be lying if he hadn't imagined the possibility of his evil dreams being a failure. The dream was born from him, after all- it was already doomed from conception.

At least, that's what Cedric had initially thought.

Shaking his head, he thinks back to the moment he hesitated to take over Enchancia. Sofia's bright blue eyes, pleading. The tip of his wand pointed towards her, the Medusa stone gleaming with every ounce of misguided resentment harbored from his life thus far. None of it which was Sofia's fault.

In fact, his sights were aimed at the little girl who gave him everything- which Cedric realized far, far too late. Only when Cedric had stood on the precipice of no return, did he find what he was truly looking for; not a crown, not a throne, not revenge.

A friend.

Cedric laughs humorlessly, the echo bouncing off the dampened stone walls. He tilted his chin up, the back of his head bumping into the wall as he contemplated.

How ironic. My greatest failure was also one of the best decisions I ever made.

Cedric takes in a shaky breath, feeling panic at his own demise writhe from the pit of his stomach.

"Probably the only good decision I've ever made." Cedric muttered grimly, digging his heels into the floor. Memories come crashing back into his mind, too quickly to rewind. But one instant remained.

Roland's decree was burned into Cedric's head, his authoritative voice cold and final:

"You will face the guillotine by sunrise tomorrow, Cedric. I sincerely hope you will accept your death with a little more grace, and dignity, than what you've shown me today."

The sorcerer slowly lays down on the bench as the words fade from his mind, feeling restless as his panic flared up again. His back meets the cold slab that hungrily leeched more of his body heat, and he winced in discomfort.

Cedric knew there was no chance of him getting any sleep tonight. He was too restless, and the wheels in his mind kept turning with its relentless pace about what led him to the dungeons at all.

But frankly, he was spent from regretting things that cannot be undone nor forgiven for. He was also painfully bored of staring at the same four stone walls, tracing the grout between each rock aimlessly.

Cedric's eyelids flutter shut, his chest feeling heavy.

Tomorrow, I will die.

Cedric huffs out a slow, resigned sigh.

All the better, Cedric thought, feeIing the back of his eyes burn with unshed tears.

I don't think I can live with the weight of my sins any longer.

#wip wednesday #cedricthesorceror #sophia the first #cedric the sorcerer #cedric sofia the first #current wip #my wips #stf fanfic #uhhh oops sorry yall this one is a doozy

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