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ashintheairlikesnow · 2 years

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The Same Bed: Lost (And Found)

CW: Trauma recovery, healing internal and external injuries, references to noncon and choking, brief suicide mentions at the beginning, references to past pet whump, consensual spice between survivors, brief masochism funtimes

(using the “Lost” prompt for @whumpmasinjuly day 2 for this! Loosely interpreted, but still...)

“Hey.” Jake drops the stack of folders, stuffed with paperwork, onto the table. “I brought these by for you to look over. I think I have it all taken care of, though.”

“Cool.” Jenna doesn’t look at him, sitting with her chin in her hand, watching a TV in the corner. Jake follows her gaze to see the chyron running along the bottom of the screen, a news anchor talking animatedly. The volume is so low he can’t hear it, but the subtitles are on.

NOTED FORMER CHILD STAR OWEN GRANT FOUND DEAD IN APPARENT SUICIDE…

Jake takes a seat across the table. “Suicide? That’s what they went with?”

“That’s what I paid the coroner to go with, yeah,” Jenna says, leaning forwards a little. She’s cut her hair short, to her chin. It suits her. “Figured it’d be better to have open-and-close suicide case then a bunch of cops looking for a murderer they’re not gonna find. Cops hate that shit, but they love getting to wash their hands of something and say it’s not their problem. And that Grant asshole doesn’t have any living relatives to push for it to be a crime, right?”

“Right. He just had his mom, some distant cousins that hated him as much as everyone else did.”

“Good. Yeah, the coroner’s going to find that Owen went a little off the rails after losing his mom. It’s believable.”

“Yeah. He definitely went off the rails, anyway.” Jake hesitates, and then offers, reluctantly, “Thanks, Jenna. For your help. I know how you feel about Kauri-”

“You know how I felt about Kauri,” She answers breezily. She sits up, then, pulling one of the folders in front of her, opening it up and looking over what she sees inside. “It’s been years, Jake. He’s not who he was then, and neither am I. Plus, I don’t like the idea of people fucking with us after we’ve started to really get better. It wasn’t that big of an ask.”

“Jenna.” Jake barks out a laugh. “I asked you to drive around with a dead body in the trunk to help Antoni get rid of it, that's not a small ask!”

“It is,” Jenna says, almost primly, “When I don’t mind doing it. I didn’t mind following him to make sure he went to that house like we thought he would, and I didn’t mind helping Antoni out with the body. Besides, I used Vincent Shield’s money to bribe a coroner to say Owen Grant is dead by his own hand, you can’t tell me that’s not some poetic fucking shit right there.” She sighs, looking over at him. “You can always ask me for help, Jake.”

“Can I? Since goddamn when? You’ve been calling Kauri a whore for a decade-”

“Nah, I haven’t done that in a while. Since I decided to stop like five years ago. Since, you know, I realized… I was just taking out on him what I wanted to say to the other pet in the house I ran from.” Jenna sets the file down again. A frightened young woman’s face looks back up from a printed out copy of stolen WRU records. Someone new to hunt for, someone listed as ‘assisted walk-in’, an abduction in flowery language. Someone they can save and if they make it public, WRU can’t try to take them back without running afoul of the law again.

“Jenna, I don’t-... I don’t understand-”

“People change. I changed. Just… let me have changed, Jake. I was scared, and pissed off, and just… lost… for years. I was angry at her for nearly getting me killed, and Kauri reminded me of her, so I took it out on him. But, years back, that little one, uh, your brother-”

“Chris.”

“Right. Years back, Kauri called me for help with him. And I helped, because I’m not a complete asshole, just like seventy percent of one, and after that… I don’t know. Kauri really stepped up for that kid, and I could see how scared he was. Kauri and I are never going to like each other, but that doesn’t mean he’s not one of us.”

“Well… yeah, okay. Thanks. I won’t push you on it anymore.”

“Welcome. And thanks. Congratulations on the marriage, by the way.” She waved at the ring on Jake’s finger. “Good fucking luck with that. Marrying two people sounds way worse than marrying just one.”

“Nah.” Jake shrugs, and opens a file himself. He circles what he sees - ‘referred by foster mother, assisted walk-in’. “It’s way, way better. They’re pretty cool to be married to.”

“If you say so. No marriage for me, thanks. Too much like being kept all over again.”

“That’s fair. Live the life you want to live, right?”

“Right.” She smiles, then, looking around the little kitchen in the small brick ranch she lives in. “Damn straight. Live the life you want to live, all yours, on your own damn terms. Okay, so I say we start with this one, she’s part of a bonded pair. We can get them both.”

“Where are they located?”

“That’s the best part. They’re handler’s pets. They’re local.” Jenna grins at him, sparkling and full of mischief. “Ready to break into a handler’s house and fuck some shit up?”

Jake can’t stop himself from laughing. “Clearly not as ready as you are.”

“... so yes or no?”

“Yeah, Jenna. Let’s do it. Let’s plan a raid.”

“Cool. So how do you feel about setting his house on fire?”

“... I might know someone who can help us with that.”

“She’s said sorry like seven fucking times.” Jameson lays on his side on his bed, his back pressed to the wall. “If she says it again, I might lose my goddamn mind, Allyn.”

“She just feels bad.” Allyn smiles at him, laying a hand against the side of his face, their thumb rubbing over his cheekbone, over a small scar. He shudders, closing his eyes as sparks seem to light and dance down his skin, buzzing just under the surface. When they move their hand away, he can still feel the weight of it, the ghost of pleasure.

“I know, but I already told her, I don’t mind hurting for her. I didn’t mind. It wasn’t even that bad, I’ve been hurt worse than that!”

Between them on the bed Trash Cat lays curled in a contented little ball, eyes closed. Her ear flicks whenever Jameson speaks, as if listening to him, keeping track of the emotion in his voice. Reading it for potential trouble.

“But she never wants to hurt you. She never wants to hurt anybody. I get it.” Allyn’s hair falls in loose red waves over shoulder and neck and lays against their face. He tucks a little of it behind their ear, watching their freckles shift as they smile at him, flashing white teeth against pink lips, sparkling gray-blue eyes.

He listens to their voice, tastes the rainshower that comes with it.

“I don’t mind hurting,” He repeats, but softer this time. “If it’s the right person hurting me.” There’s an unmistakable flirtation in his voice, then, although it’s tentative. He’s never sure how to start this, now that he isn’t having to guess at a master or owner’s mood, read the tension in the air and break it down by handing his body over to the whip and the cane until they are both bonelessly satisfied.

No, this is… something else.

Something honest.

Something equal.

If Allyn hurts him, he knows, it will be because he asked to be hurt. Not because it’s his place. The idea feels like wandering in a new landscape. Touching unfamiliar trees that at least still have bark and leaves, but wondering at colors and shapes he’s never seen. Lost, even with map in hand, because the place he is in is so like but not at all the same as the world he knows.

Jameson shifts forwards, as best he can, back curving a little so he can kiss them. Their lips are warm and soft and his own are a little rough and chapped. For a second they go still, and then they’re kissing him back. It’s perfect, at first, too perfect, and then both of them drop the instinctive training and the kiss goes clumsy and they both laugh as they bump teeth.

Trash Cat chirps, lifting her head to look back at them, and then slowly stands up. She stretches in a perfect arch before stalking down to the end of the bed.

“She’s giving us our space,” Allyn whispers against Jameson’s lips, and giggles. The sound of their laughter sends warmth down his spine, and he moves closer, until they’re touching from collarbone to knees, even their feet twining together. His bandaged hand moves slowly up their side, feeling the slight curve, nearly an angle, from narrow waist to larger ribcage. His thumb is so, so close to their chest, and they inhale in a soft hitch.

“She just doesn’t want me to push her off the fucking bed in a minute,” Jameson answers, a little breathy, and he hates his hoarse voice - can remember he had a normal voice, with Nanda, before Brute and Robert made him scream until it was gone over and over until it stopped coming all the way back.

“Can I-... can I try something?” Allyn asks in a whisper, and when Jameson nods, they give a little smile and reach up, taking his hand from their face and holding it in their own. Their soft sotto voice is like subtle droplets on Jameson’s tongue, a burst of the way the air taste just before it really starts to rain. He watches them, meeting their eyes with his own, as their thumb settles just over the center of his palm. Beneath that, a healing cut, where Nat had jammed a GPS tracker as deep as she could get.

And Jameson hadn’t screamed.

He knew how to hurt.

“Can I push down?” Allyn’s eyes search his. “While I kiss you, can I… push down on the cut a little bit?”

His mouth goes dry. Jameson’s body is a lightning rod, and he stares at the storm and wants to beg for the roll of thunder that follows the strike. He nods, a little jerk of his chin. “Yes,” He breathes.

Their lips are on his own, again, opening to slide their tongue against his, and he hums into the kiss, pressing his body to theirs. Warmth stirs deep in his stomach, his body waking up, answering the firmness of their kiss.

Then they press down, pain racing down Jameson’s arm and into his body, and he moans, unmistakable and louder than he means to be. He’s rolled onto his back with Allyn pressing into his hips before he can think, and Allyn’s mouth is on his neck, teeth bearing down on soft skin as they roll their own hips against his, and he moans again.

The front door closes, muffled downstairs.

Allyn pulls back, startled. Then they burst out laughing, leaning over until their forehead touches Jameson’s. “Oh, no, I forgot she was home.”

Jameson breathes in soft gasps, and laughs, too. He tips his head back, baring his neck. The place they were biting is cold where air and the remnants of drying saliva meet. “She’s not home anymore,” He offers.

Allyn leans down to bite again, and presses their thumb into his hand at the same time.

“I love this,” Jameson groans, eyes fluttering closed. His hips move to meet theirs right through their clothes. It doesn’t occur to either of them to take them off… not yet. “I love, love this-”

“I love it, too,” Allyn murmurs, nipping at his earlobe.

Neither of them says what they really mean. Both of them have loved men who could never fully love them in return. Both of them know the words have always been hollow. But both of them think it, if not consciously, then with every inch of skin where they touch.

I love you.

“Antoni.” Kauri’s voice, still hoarse as he heals from the hands that had tried to choke the life from him, is laced with a kind of affectionate irritation. “I don’t need it.”

“You do.” Antoni sets the mug down on the side table next to the bed. The tea within is faintly pink, see through, not marked with milk. Kauri can look down into it and see, a little muddied, the image of a cat face painted on the bottom. He sighs and looks up at Antoni, whose eyebrows raise. “You do,” He repeats. “Tea is good for sore throat.”

“Yeah, for like… when you have strep or the flu or some shit,” Kauri groans, but he pushes himself slowly up to seated, back cushioned by approximately eleven million pillows Jake and Antoni have both insisted on keeping near him at all times. Not that it isn’t really, really nice to have one to sit on when he leaves the bed and ends up in a chair like a dumbass. “I was choked, Ant, it’s not the same. Not even the first time I’ve been choked. Not even just Owen! There was this one guy I went home with once…” He smiles, but the laugh dies in his throat before it comes out as he meets Antoni’s dark eyes.

“I remember,” Antoni says. “I remember that night.”

“Of course you do.” Kauri sighs, and pats the bed beside him. Antoni sits, just at the edge, as if he might flee at any second. Like he wants to run from the pain still marking Kauri’s skin.

Kauri leans over, and places a hand over his. Long fingers that have been slightly cool for so long are warm from too much tea and time under the covers. His ring glimmers in the light, back on his finger where he plans to never ever take it off again. It overlays Antoni’s own.

“Ant,” He says, softly. “For the thousandth time. It isn’t your fault. I knew what might happen when I went into that room. I was… I was ready for it.”

I was ready to die.

“I should have been inside faster,” Antoni says, and he leans slowly over until his head rests on Kauri’s shoulder. The soft, messy nearly-black hair tickles Kauri’s cheek and he smiles, pulling Antoni’s hand to his mouth to kiss his knuckles, gently, one by one. Bruised knuckles, torn and bloodied the night of the rescue, now healed but still scarred. “The fight with the other one was not supposed to take so long. We had a plan, and we nearly-... you could have been dead-”

“I’m right here,” Kauri says, voice low. He turns and breathes deep. Antoni’s hair smells like tea-tree and mint shampoo, and there’s always something of a kitchen around him. Smells like flour and baking things and sweetness. “I’m right here, Ant. I am alive, I’m right here, look, I feel like a flip flop left out in the mud but I’m here.”

“If not for Vince-”

“Then you would have saved him.” Kauri smiles, and he keeps that smile in his voice. “And that’d be something, wouldn’t it? Secret runaway pet saves multi-millionaire movie star…”

“It would not matter. It would be nothing, if Jasha and I lost you.”

“You would still have had each other-”

“It would be nothing. You are the… the piece of puzzle that holds two others together. You are color, we have none without you.”

“Bullshit.” Kauri’s smile widens, though, and he flushes a little at the praise, at being told he is needed. Not just needed but wanted. That, at least, he’s never quite lost, and he wonders if that was inherent in Liam Harker, the man who once walked around in his skin. What parts of him have survived within Kauri?

Maybe just a need to be loved, and wanted, and needed.

Maybe Liam had that, too.

“Kasha, I love you,” Antoni whispers. It’s hard for him to say the words. Kauri kisses his forehead. Then the tip of his nose.

He pulls back. “I love you, too, Ant. You and Jake and I… we’re forever.” They sit in silence for a few minutes. In the background, a soap opera plays, which both of them are entirely ignoring. Then Kauri says, softly, “Antoni… will you go get my phone? I forgot it in the bathroom and I don’t think I have the energy to go get it on my own just yet.”

Antoni stands, retrieving the phone where it lays on the bathroom counter. When he comes back, he climbs right into the bed, lying on his side under the blankets, near to Kauri without quite touching him. Kauri doesn’t push, this time.

Antoni offers touch, when he wants it.

“I’ve been thinking,” Kauri says, taking it and tapping idly on the screen, listening to his fingernail click against the shining black. “About a lot. Since I, uh, didn’t die. Lots of time to think when your partners won’t let you leave the fucking bed.”

“Mmhmm.” Antoni doesn’t take the bait, but he smiles a little, pleased with himself. “What do you think about?”

“I think I should call my mom.” Kauri says it all in a rush. He barely gets the words out, even so. The old drumbeat begging him to run from what’s behind him is still so strong, it nearly drowns him out inside his own mind. But he clings to this thought, because he needs Antoni to either encourage him or talk him out of it. “Well, Liam’s mom. I was thinking, if I had died… she’d been trying to get ahold of me, but what if I died and like, she found out Liam was alive and then I got his body killed anyway? Before she could see him?”

“You are Liam, Kasha,” Antoni says. He watches Kauri with inscrutable eyes, looking up at him from where he lays propped up on one elbow.

“Yeah, but… what if I’m too different, and she hates me for stealing him? What if she thinks Liam is lost, and Kauri is what came back from the dead?”

“You cannot do this,” Antoni says, shaking his head. “Steal him. WRU stole, and he is not lost. You are him. I think it is a good idea to call your mother.”

“But… what if she hates me?”

“Then you never speak to her again, and she can go fuck herself.” Kauri’s eyebrows nearly raise to his hairline, and Antoni laughs, low and soft and deep. ‘What? You think I can’t swear?” He takes Kauri’s hand, and presses warm lips to the back, right in the middle of blood vessels and nerve-endings, making Kauri shiver pleasantly. “Call her. Kauri Grant is brave, and strong-” He kissed again. “Smart, and good. I think that Liam Harker would like this Kauri Grant. So I think Liam Harker’s mother will like Kauri Grant as well.”

Kauri swallows. “Are you-... are you sure about that? I’ve done some pretty seriously fucked-up shit to this body, Ant. Remember when I spent like a month straight on ecstasy?”

“I do, yes.”

“Plus, there have been, like, seven orgies…”

“Sssshhh. Kasha. Listen to me. She will love you. She loves you already, she is Liam’s mama and that means yours. And also… it will probably help if you do not talk to her about the orgies.”

“Right, right, keep a lid on the orgy talk. Got it.”

“Oh, one more thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t talk to me about the orgies, either.”

Laughing hurts, but Kauri discovers that once he starts, he can’t quite make himself stop.

“And… and, and then they… laugh at me.” Chris sits with his knees pulled to his chest, the heels of his feet just barely balanced on the edge of the chair, arms wrapped tightly around his calves. He won’t look at everyone else, keeping his chin tipped down so the shimmering light purple of his hair hides his green eyes. “And, and, and say, um, you-you wanted me to, and when I, um, when I say I, I, I-I didn’t, they, they, they… get angry.”

He has a silicone feather pendant on a small cord stuck in the corner of his mouth, slightly muffling his speech.

“They say then, um, then why did you you you sign up? Like… like they, they don’t already know that, um, that I didn’t, and… and then they, they say, let’s go again, and I start… I, I, I start crying, because, because they sound just, um, just like… like my-... like him. And they, um, they put me on my, my my my my, my, my… on… on m-my… stomach…”

There are tears in Chris’s eyes, running down his cheeks, but no one moves. No one speaks. Not yet.

“And, and, and then… I wake up.”

There’s a breath of silence, and then a man to the left of Chris leans towards him, putting a hand to his back. “I have dreams like that, too.”

Chris looks over at him, resting his head on his knees. His eyes are red-rimmed, wreathed in shadows. “You, you do?”

“Yeah. I’ve been married for, like, what, three years now?” The man gives Chris an encouraging, soft smile, rubbing at his back a little. “And free for ten. And I still, sometimes, I wake up just gasping for air because I remember how it felt. And sometimes I dream that my wife is the one hurting me like he did. Probably-... probably all of us have nightmares, right?”

He looks to the rest of the group of twelve, seated in a circle of folding chairs in a small side room in a community building they rent for these meetings. The others, men and women from their early twenties through their late forties, all nod.

“It just… it goes with getting better, is that-” The man’s eyes flicker to the therapist ostensibly in charge of this meeting. Dr. Francis just nods, gesturing with one hand for the man to continue. He has a cup of bad, bitter decaf coffee in his hands, slowly warming the styrofoam cup, with powdered creamer stirred in and bits still floating a little on the top, refusing to fully dissolve. “That your brain doesn’t always know that you’re safe. And nightmares are just… how your mind tries to, to put together the two parts of your life.”

“It’d… it’d be, be, be be-be nice if it could, um, could do that some other way,” Chris mutters, and there’s a scattering of soft laughter, kind and well-meaning, from everyone else.

“It would be,” The man says, and gives Chris a final pat on the back before sitting back. “But that’s not really how brains work.”

Dr. Francis clears his throat. “Isaac is correct,” He says, and moves to take his own seat, sipping his coffee and steadfastly making no expression at the awful taste. “It is, indeed, more common than not to have nightmares, and for many those nightmares can last for years. But they are just that - nightmares. They are your minds working inside of you to put together a life of subjugation with one of freedom, and struggling to reconcile the details. But that doesn’t mean you aren’t doing that. It’s only that our brains must adapt in order to survive at a lightning speed. But… it takes so much longer, doesn’t it, for our brains to realize those adaptations are no longer necessary.”

More nods from everyone around the circle.

“It… it, it does help,” Chris offers, without uncurling himself. “To know everyone else, um, does, does those dreams, too, that it it it doesn’t… they wouldn’t ever, um, hurt me… they wouldn’t.”

Dr. Francis nods. “But someone did. And our bodies and minds catalog those hurts, and hold on, because they are trying to prepare you for that pain to start again. Your body is trying, as hard as it can, to keep you safe. Let’s take a moment to close our eyes, and just-... you can do this silently, everyone - just say thank you to your body for keeping you alive, and safe, to get this far. Just a quick thank-you. All that fear and pain, that was adapting to survive. Let’s thank our bodies for those adaptations.”

There’s another silence, heads bowed and eyes closed. It looks like a prayer. Some of their lips even move, but no one here is thanking God, not really. Instead, they’re whispering a prayer of thanks to nerves and bone and blood that bruised and broke and sent screaming pain signals to brain cells that rearranged, rerouted, made new pathways of survival where none had previously existed. They are giving their gratitude to lungs that fought to expand even with hands around their throat, to a heart that refused to stop beating even as it broke again and again, to hands that slapped and punched, feet that kicked out, lips and tongue that held desperately to the memory of words they weren’t supposed to say.

Words like fuck you and I don’t want this and stop touching me.

Words like we did not sign up for this.

Words like no.

Dr. Francis ends the moment of silence by clearing his throat again. Some of the men and women in the circle have glimmering eyes when they look back up, rubbing just under them in ways they think are subtle, but which everyone recognizes and no one remarks on.

“Now,” Dr. Francis says, “We have someone new here tonight, and he would like to tell his story. Would it be all right if I call him in? Remember that there is no wrong answer here. And he won’t be listening to any of your stories, just telling his own.”

Some of the group meet eyes, and then they look back to the doctor and nod. Some carefully, others more enthusiastically. A few even smile, kind and soft, agreeable.

The doctor stands and steps out of the room.

“It’s the guy who came with you, right?” A woman asks Chris, and he nods without uncurling, chewing on the silicone feather. He starts to sway, just a little. “I wondered why he didn’t come into the room right away. He’s one of us, right?”

Before Chris can answer, the door opens again. Dr. Francis steps in first.

Vincent Shield steps in after him.

He moves with a slow, slightly shuffling step, showing the aches that haven’t quite faded in a body still working hard to heal itself. His movie-star megawatt smile is subdued, simply lips pressed together. The shadow of a bruise still wreathes his eye on one side, another clings to a cheekbone. Finger-shaped bruises are finally fading enough from his throat to not be immediately visible for what they are.

“Hey, Chris,” Vince says, voice low and slightly rough. Chris hums a greeting. There’s a whisper from a few of the circle participants, people who have seen his movies. Their eyes are wide, surprised, but no one comes at him. No one even stands.

They respect the circle, and the people within it.

“Okay, Vince,” Dr. Francis says amicably. “The circle agreed to hear your story tonight, and welcome you to our meetings from here on out. Gang, let’s make some room for Vince to sit down.”

“Uh, Dr. Francis-”

The doctor looks over at a woman in her thirties, while others are shifting their chairs with soft scrapes along hard floors so Vince can unfold a new one and put his own into the empty spot, slowly sitting down, looking around and smiling with a nervous shyness utterly at odds with the empty friendliness he has on the red carpet.

“Yes, Trin?”

“He’s… he’s not a Romantic, though,” Trin says, glancing to the side. “Sorry, Vince, no offense.”

There’s a bit of low laughter, not unkind, from the participants. “It’s not exactly something anyone should apologize for not being,” Isaac says, good-naturedly. Trin blushes a little and looks down and away, shrugging, smiling a little uneasily. “But she has a point, Dr. Francis, this is group for Romantics only, isn’t it?”

“Normally, yes. But Vince’s story is a little different. He’s been seeing me for a couple of weeks now, and I think it’s worth all of you hearing it. So many of you struggle with feeling separate from the world, and that’s because of the laws and societal isolation, of course, but… I want you to hear this. Your stories, your experiences, they are connected with the experiences and stories of people outside of WRU, outside the system. I think it could help to see that you are not set apart in that way. Vince, if you wouldn’t mind?”

Vincent Shield sits back. He doesn’t look like a movie star - his hair is shaggy and unwashed, he’s wearing an old Nirvana t-shirt he borrowed from Nat and sweatpants, a pair of sandals that don’t even match. You’d never know who he was, if you saw him on the street.

You might wonder if Kauri Grant was having a bad day, but looking at Vince, you’d never see the movie star beneath the real man.

“Hi, um. Hi everyone.” Vince smiles. “Dr. Francis asked me to talk to you all tonight. He thought it might help, and I’ll… I’ll talk about my, um. What happened to me, and then you can… I’ll step out and you can vote if you want me here. If you don’t, no harm no foul, I totally get it. I’m not sure I even want me here.” He laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “I’m… I’m really lost, if I’m honest. I’m totally lost at what to do with… everything now. I have this entire life and it’s just… hollow. I’m just doing what everyone told me I wanted to do, but-...”

“But it’s not what you want,” Trin suggests.

“It isn’t. I’m not sure it ever was, or if I just… was told so many times…”

“They tell you that you want it, the way they treat you.” That’s another young woman. “They tell you you’re a flirt, but they make you flirt to get everything, to get food, to get a place to sleep. They make you… they make you pretend, over and over, and tell you that you’re not pretending.”

“They call, they, they call you a slut,” Chris whispers. “And, and, and if you say you’re not, they, they, they say you’re so good at acting that, that, that you must really be…”

“Right.” Vince clears his throat. “Shit. I didn’t know that I would feel… I told myself for forever that what everyone told me was true. But I can’t… I can’t lie to myself any longer. I just can’t. It’s been eating me alive for so long, and I don’t know what it’s like not to feel that way, and… I guess we’re going to find out. But Nat suggested… therapy, and… maybe not lying to my therapist so much this time.”

“You lied to Dr. Francis?” A third person, a man Chris’s age, asks in a scandalized hush.

Vince smiles - it’s a real and sincere smile. He shakes his head. “No, my old therapist. I’m not seeing her any longer. I wanted to start over. I’m… I’m starting over. So. Uh, where… Dr. Francis, where should I start-”

“Anywhere you like,” Dr. Francis says, voice low and gentle.

“Uh, okay. I’ll, uh, I’ll start kind of like I start when I go to AA, if you all don’t mind?”

“I go to AA,” Isaac offers, a kind of hand outstretched, in words if not in gesture. “Every week. I’ve been sober for two years.”

“Congrats,” Vince says, sincerely. “I’m, uh, it’s been… a few weeks, but after I got to Nat’s I kind of, I fell off the wagon. I wasn’t sleeping, every time I closed my eyes I saw him... what happened. At the end. Drank until I blacked out and woke up on the floor with Nat’s, uh, that Jameson guy pouring water on my face. Then I got so sick I could barely move, turns out when you stop drinking and then start again, your liver gets really angry… it doesn’t matter. I’m starting over. So here’s to… three days sober, I guess?”

“Here’s to three days,” Isaac says, and smiles. “Three days is a start.”

Vince looks up, then, letting his eyes drift over the ceiling. He shifts and his chair creaks beneath him, as if castigating him for pausing for so long, for letting the silence draw out. Then he takes in a deep, deep breath. He fills his lungs with the oxygen until it burns, lets it slowly, slowly push out again.

“My name is Vincent Shield, and I’m an alcoholic. Sorry, just. That bit’s habit. Anyway… When I was twenty-one,” He starts, still not looking at anyone. His voice shakes a little. It’s thin and strained, pushed out past twenty years of keeping secrets and bruised from Owen’s hands. His throat wants to close around the truth, the way it has always wanted to close. The way he allowed it to close over and over for so, so long. His hands find the sides of the chair and grip, white knuckled. “When… when I was twenty-one, my best friend - my only friend, really, kind of my only real family, my parents had already stopped talking to me by then - told me he loved me.”

The room is silent, except for the soft hissing crackle of the coffeemaker and the hum of air conditioning blowing cold air through vents.

“I told him I didn’t… feel that way about him. He said okay. For a little bit, things were okay. I thought it was fine… and then he-... he acted normal for a while, but… but then he drugged my drink. And when I woke up, I was tied to a bed.”

Vince swallows.

“Naked.”

Perfect silence, nodding heads. They’ve been tied to beds, they’ve woken up naked, they’ve faced down what had felt like such a unique horror to Vince. A terrible thing that it felt like didn’t happen to other people, and here is an entire room of people for whom it was so commonplace they were told their entire lives revolved around it.

Here they all are, with new lives, hobbies, friends. Things they do that aren’t pretending to be someone else, or being… or…

“I was raped.”

It comes out all at once, a single breath of air, a slur of syllables. Iwasraped.

The next words, somehow, harder to say. He forces himself to speak more slowly. He makes his mind dwell on each and every single word. On what it means, on what it’s always meant, on what damage it’s done. He fights not to cry.

Vincent Shield confesses someone else’s sin.

And grants himself absolution.

“Owen Grant raped me… and it wasn’t my fault.”

@burtlederp @finder-of-rings @endless-whump @astrobly @thefancydoughnut @newandfiguringitout @doveotions @pretty-face-breaker @gonna-feel-that-tomorrow @boxboysandotherwhump @oops-its-whump @cubeswhump @whump-tr0pes @downriver914 @whumptywhumpdump @whumpiary @orchidscript @nonsensical-whump @outofangband @eatyourdamnpears @hackles-up @grizzlie70 @mylifeisonthebookshelf @keeper-of-all-the-random-things

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grandmaster-anne · 1 year

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My Memories of Princess Margaret

Who | Published 14 May 2020

Princess Margaret famously accessorised a cocktail in one hand with a cigarette in the other. But the fun-loving royal, who struggled to find purpose in the shadow of her sister Queen Elizabeth, proved she could rein in her vices when she had to give up smoking and drinking in her later years.

“I asked her, ‘Is it very hard?’” recalls her lady-in-waiting of three decades, Anne Glenconner. “She said, ‘No, Anne, once I make up my mind to do something, I do it’.’’ That was certainly the way she lived. In Lady in Waiting: My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown, Glenconner, 87, opens a window into the royal world as it intertwined with her own.

Glenconner grew up in an aristocratic family; had a rocky marriage to fellow aristocrat Colin Tennant (who later became Lord Glenconner); and lost two of their five children (Henry died of an AIDS-related illness in 1990; Charles died of hepatitis C in 1996). She was an attendant at Queen Elizabeth’s 1953 coronation, joined Margaret on her many getaways to the Caribbean island of Mustique and watched as the princess’ own tempestuous marriage, to photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones, crumbled.

But it was the simple times with Margaret that Glenconner treasures most, “when we were just together. Without our husbands.” Margaret, who died at age 71 in 2002 following a stroke, had a tender side too: When Henry was diagnosed with AIDS, “People were terrified about how you caught it,” says Glenconner. “But she always came and brought [ her children] David and Sarah, and she always hugged Henry.”

Even her biting wit had surprising heart. During a mid-flight storm, Glenconner became “nervous as we were bouncing about”, she recalls. “She put her hand on mine and said, ‘No point in being frightened, Anne, we’ll either be all right or we won’t. I think we might have another drink on the other hand.’ She always came up with good advice.”

The following are short extracts from the book, revealing previously untold details about the royal maverick …

In 1968, Margaret – then married to Armstrong-Jones and mother to David, 7, and Sarah, 4 – began planning a home on Mustique, where Anne’s husband, Colin, had given her land.

Although incomparable to a royal palace, Mustique offered Princess Margaret a break from her husband. Like Colin, Tony was unpredictable, sharing similar character traits: He was eccentric and extremely demanding, often rubbing people up the wrong way. But, just like Colin, he could be incredibly charming.

Everybody she had ever met had treated her in a certain way and there was Tony, being spiteful in creative ways, bothering to come up with nasty little one-liners to write down and hide in her glove drawer, with her hankies or tucked into books.

In the late afternoon we would often go and sit in Basil’s Bar, watching the sunset, sceptically waiting for the ‘green flash’ that is supposed to appear on the horizon just after the sun vanishes … We always seemed to be distracted by the thought, pausing our conversation to stare at the view, just in case we saw it. We never did but it became a fun habit.

In 1973, as Margaret’s marriage was falling apart, Anne and Colin introduced the princess to fun-loving landscape gardener Roddy Llewellyn.

Princess Margaret and Roddy had immediately clicked, even though Roddy was 17 years younger than her. [After a car ride, Anne’s son] Charlie explained, with a twinkle in his eye, that they had taken so long because Princess Margaret had whisked Roddy off shopping to find him some swimming trunks for the pool. With a big grin on his face, Charlie said that the trunks were so tight they could have been described as “budgie smugglers”. I said to Colin, “Oh, gosh, what have we done?”

When Roddy had been at [Anne and Colin’s estate, Glen] for about two days, he told me how beautiful he thought Princess Margaret was, and I said, “Don’t tell me, tell her.” So he did, and from then on, Princess Margaret and Roddy were inseparable, staying up late after dinner, sitting at one of the card tables in the drawing room after an evening of playing bridge or canasta … After the weekend in Glen, they were together for eight years, and friends for life, making all the difference to Princess Margaret who, by the time they met, had endured several years of unhappiness with Tony.

By the mid-1970s, Princess Margaret’s marriage was at breaking point, but with two children and being very religious, she didn’t want a divorce. In the end, Tony pushed her to it because in 1978 his mistress, Lucy Lindsay-Hogg, became pregnant with their first child.

Day after day there were screaming headlines, with pictures of Princess Margaret caught looking miserable, not helped by the fact that she had the type of face that looked sombre when she wasn’t smiling.

During this press-frenzied time, and in an attempt to escape their ghastly intrusion into her private life, over the next several months Princess Margaret would come quite frequently to stay with me in my Norfolk farmhouse or at Glen … Roddy would arrive later in the evening and I would leave them to relax. Going through such a private matter in public, and the scandal of being the first high-profile member of the royal family to divorce since King Henry VIII, was enough to make anybody need a friend.

Throughout countless hours together, Anne grew protective of Margaret, whose reputation as a demanding bon vivant had spread.

People complained about Princess Margaret being difficult, but I think quite often it was because she was bored or fed up.

She would often be invited to meet strangers at lunch or dinner but, not surprisingly, her idea of fun wasn’t sitting next to the mayor, the bishop, and the chief of police for Sunday lunch. When she was staying with friends, she didn’t want to be on show.

She also appreciated being asked what she actually wanted to do and what she wanted to eat but she often wasn’t. Great dinners would be arranged, when really she preferred much simpler food.

I minded very much when people complained about her behaviour. I knew she could be difficult: she was known for her icy stare if she felt someone had overstepped the mark, often accompanied with a curt remark normally with good reason. She had moments of being very grand indeed, but I worked round these ‘royal moments’, finding her quietly amusing. I didn’t like it when people criticised her, especially when she was already being hounded by the press.

In her later years, the single Margaret grew more dependent on Anne than ever.

In the years that followed, Princess Margaret had one or two more strokes and then her eyesight started to fail. Very quickly she lost it almost entirely. Having loved being surrounded by men, she now refused their company, even Colin’s, only feeling comfortable with a few female companions.

A few of us would regularly read to her and sometimes I would stay the night. Her taste in reading material was eclectic to say the least. On one visit, I arrived to find her extremely animated. “I’ve got a new book,” she said excitedly. “Would you read it to me? It’s all about seeds.”

My heart sank. A whole book about plant seeds. What could be more boring? I thought, but Roddy had given it to her, and not only was she thrilled but she was clearly genuinely interested. I got as far as a chapter on potatoes before saying, “Ma’am, are you really interested in this book? Should I carry on? Isn’t it rather boring?”

“Keep going, Anne,” she said, without missing a beat. “It’s fascinating.”

So, on I ploughed through that beastly book, but not without her stopping me several times and questioning my pronunciation, which she was always correcting. This was a habit of hers.

Anne had a front-row seat to Margaret’s complex and sometimes difficult relationship with her sister.

One day, the Queen came to tea with Princess Margaret. I stayed in the drawing room so they could have some time together and she went off to the bedroom to find Princess Margaret. Quite soon after she had gone in, she suddenly reappeared.

“Oh, Ma’am, is everything all right?” I asked.

“No, it isn’t,” the Queen replied. “Margaret is listening to [the UK radio soap opera] The Archers and every time I try to say something she just says, ‘Shh!’”

I wasn’t surprised. Princess Margaret’s defiant streak extended to her sister, despite her being the Queen. I had always noticed that she had a very subtle strategy for one-upmanship, which contributed to the bickering that went on between her and the Queen Mother.

I said, “Let’s go back up together.”

When we got into the bedroom, I said to Princess Margaret, “Ma’am, the Queen is here, and she can’t stay all that long. Would you like me to help pour the tea?” I switched off the wireless, made sure they both had a cup, and left the room.

Margaret died following a stroke on February 9, 2002.

The months after her death felt very quiet without Princess Margaret. She really was an extraordinary woman: If someone was anxious about something, she would always see the problem in an entirely different way, from a new angle, which would often help in finding a solution. Even now, when I’m faced with a problem, I wish she was here to tell me what she would do. Right up to the end, she stayed interested in the world around her. Life has not been the same without her, especially when I go to Mustique.

#princess margaret #lady anne glenconner #article

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popentertainment-moviereviews · 7 months

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THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER (2023)

Starring Leslie Odom, Jr., Ann Dowd, Jennifer Nettles, Norbert Leo Butz, Lidya Jewett, Olivia Marcum, Ellen Burstyn, Okwui Okpokwasili, Raphael Sbarge, E.J. Bonilla, Antoni Corone, Danny McCarthy, Norah Murphy, Chandu Kanuri, Richard Carr III, Malena Cunningham Anderson, Emily Rachel Gordon, Linda Boston, Nick Benas and Linda Blair.

Screenplay by Peter Sattler and David Gordon Green.

Directed by David Gordon Green.

Distributed by Universal Pictures. 121 minutes. Rated R.

David Gordon Green and Danny McBride have spent the last few years briefly rejuvenating and then quickly continuing to sully the legacy of the popular horror film franchise Halloween. And let’s face it, multiple sequels and reboots had done enough harm to the series’ reputation even before Green and McBride got their hands on the IP, but Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends were just as bad as any of the multiple terrible earlier sequels.

Now they have moved on to take on another legendary horror franchise, one which also had a terrific first film followed by some horrifically bad sequels. (The Exorcist II: The Heretic, anyone?) However, the original 1973 The Exorcist was a revelation at the time. People in the audiences at the time were passing out in the aisles from horror. But the world has changed a lot over the years, and what was shocking in 1973 is not necessarily going to be so extraordinary 50 years later. The new filmmakers are looking to make a trilogy of this new reboot. Let’s hope they do a better job this time around.

From the evidence of The Exorcist: Believer, whether or not that is going to happen is… maybe? But they will have to work harder than this.

The Exorcist: Believer has some scary parts and some interesting philosophical and religious viewpoints, but sitting through it you mostly feel: what’s really the point of this?

Sort of like the Halloween films, they are somewhat trying to deconstruct horror tropes – and I guess that’s a good thing. Also like the Halloween series, The Exorcist: Believer basically completely ignores the existence of all the other movies in the series other than the classic original film. That should only be a good thing.

So why doesn’t it really work?

The story is basically a stand-alone storyline, although for the fans the movie brings back the original star Ellen Burstyn – still radiant and vibrant at 90 years old. Sadly, it seems a bit of a waste to bring Burstyn back – and believe me, when she is on screen, she is phenomenal, the best part of this movie – only to quickly… umm… mostly sideline her.

Instead, Believer tells the story of two young teen southern girls (Lidya Jewett and Olivia Marcum) who disappear for three days, and when they come back, they are acting increasingly odd. Eventually it is decided that during their three lost days, a demon must have possessed them. (It is never exactly explained how a demon can be in two different bodies at once – I’m no expert, is that really a thing?) Of course, two girls mean twice the cursing, twice the scary phenomena, twice the worried parents. It also sets up a “Sophie’s choice” that the demon eventually torments the parents with.

Interestingly, this exorcism is somewhat removed from religion. The Catholic church refuses to cooperate with the exorcism (seeing a PR disaster in the waiting), although one priest (EJ Bonilla) briefly helps out after the others are well into process of the exorcism, to extremely negligible effect.

Instead, the ritual is handled by the parents (a church-going couple [Jennifer Nettles and Norbert Leo Butz] and a faith-challenged dad [Leslie Odom Jr.]), a local preacher, and a once aspiring nun who has been working for decades as a nurse (Ann Dowd).

One of the big problems, I suppose, is that unless you are very into the religious aspects of the thing – and perhaps even if you are a total true believer – an exorcism is a strange and totally inhumane procedure. It’s chaotic, clunky, and brutal, and sadly this filmed approximation of an exorcism makes the movie share those traits.

It’s too bad, because the new film does try exploring some interesting themes – family dynamics, faith (and the lack thereof), guilt, community and missed opportunities. Sadly, the ugly and frenzied climax overshadows what little intrigue the filmmakers have stirred up. And frankly the ending feels unfinished, like Believer is the first act of a three-act play, which for better or worse, it is.

Jay S. Jacobs

youtube

#The Exorcist: Believer #2023 #Movie Review #Leslie Odom Jr.#Ellen Burstyn #Ann Dowd #Jay S. Jacobs #Youtube

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heavenboy09 · 10 months

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Happy Birthday 🎂 🥳 🎉 🎈 🎁 🎊 to The Distinguished Talented Actor Of England 🇬🇧 Of Our Time and Century.

Patrick Stewart was born in Mirfield on 13 July 1940, the son of Gladys (née Barrowclough), a weaver and textile worker, and Alfred Stewart (1905–1980), a regimental sergeant major in the British Army during the Second World War who later worked as a general labourer and postman. He has two older brothers named Geoffrey (born 1933) and Trevor (born 1935)

In 1966, Stewart became a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. He made his Broadway theatre debut in 1971 in a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. In 1979, he received the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his performance in Antony and Cleopatra in the West End. His first television role was in the Coronation Street in 1967. His first major screen roles were in Fall of Eagles (1974), I, Claudius (1976), and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979). In 2008 he played King Claudius in Hamlet and received his second Olivier Award and his first Tony Award nomination for respectively the West End and Broadway theatre productions.

Stewart gained stardom for his leading role as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987–94), its subsequent films, and Star Trek: Picard (2020–23).

He gained further stardom when he portrayed Professor Charles Xavier in the X-Men series (2000–2014), Logan (2017), and an alternate version of the character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022).

Please This Legendary Distinguished English 🇬🇧 Actor Whose Acting Career Has Spanned Over 7 Decades, A Very Happy Birthday 🎂 🥳 🎉 🎈 🎁 🎊

YOU KNOW HIM, YOU LOVE HIM & YOU GOTTA ADORE HIS LEGENDARY ACTING

THE 1

THE ONLY

SIR PATRICK STEWART AKA PROFESSOR CHARLES XAVIER AND CAPTAIN JEAN LUC PICARD OF THE STARSHIP, ENTERPRISE. 👨‍🚀🚀🌌🇻🇬

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SIR PATRICK 🙏 ☺ 🎂 #PatrickStewart #SirPatrickStewart #ProfessorX #JeanLucPicard

#Sir Patrick Stewart #jean luc picard #Professor Charles Xavier #Spotify

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navree · 1 year

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Was Alicent really religious in the book? Wasn't she more of Margaery-type of a character ? I remember there was something about her seducing/having affair with Viserys when Aemma was alive , and i don't really remember the greens were conservatives and religious in F&B they seem more ambitious, also wasn't Aegon the only one who was genuinely religious after what happened to him?

Sorry for my many questions but there are many attacks on anyone likes the greens characters in saying that they're misgonystic, right-wingers , trump supporters etc.... And i got confused by that because it has been a long time since I've read the book

(so gonna be honest, it's been a while since I've read the book as well, but I tend to do most of my reading on Ebooks since that's what I've got available so when I remember certain quotations or areas of the story I can just use the search function to pull up the passages I look for, but in terms of beginning to end read throughs? It's been at least a couple years)

So, for starters, the Greens can't be "right wingers" or "Trump supporters" since they don't live in 21rst century America nor is the society that they live in analogous in any way shape or form to 21rst century American society, so the anti-Greens can jot that down and also learn what some words mean (there's a screed somewhere on my blog if you scroll through my "answered" tag on why the "women for Trump" thing wrt Alicent is stupid because of how that's a specific political movement in a very specific social context in a specific moment in time).

The thing is, when I constantly point out that Fire&Blood is a "history textbook" rather than a narrative, I'm not doing that for no reason. It is imperative to understand that the characters in Fire&Blood are not written to be characters in a novel, they are written to act as historical figures that we are reading about from an academic source, all discussed by people with their own agendas and compiled by another person centuries after the events described happened. Nothing in Fire&Blood can be ascertained as one hundred percent true or false save for previously recorded dates of birth and death and major historical events that had multiple witnesses (such as the main battles of the Conquest, or coronations/weddings/other ceremonies). People's thoughts and feelings aren't often written down unless they were being expressed externally, because that's how historical chronicles in a pre-mass literacy society operate in our world. Let me explain: I read a lot of historical texts. And because of my own interests, I've developed a tendency to gravitate towards historical figures who don't always have the best posthumous reputations and around whom there are a lot of "yes no maybe so" type of stories. I'll provide two examples, because this has a point.

Example one, Augustus. Very famous guy, incredibly influential, basically helped shape the Western world as we know it. Also had a lot written about him, not just contemporaneously but also well after he died. There's a story that was spread while Augustus was alive, that was written down by numerous Roman historians as a "well people said it happened so let's just include that they said it did just incase" type of story, that Augustus, who was Julius Caesar's great-nephew through his mother and from a relatively minor branch of the family, ingratiated himself to Caesar in order to become Caesar's primary heir in his will (that happening was a whole Thing) by having a sexual affair with him during a campaign in Hispania when Augustus was 17. However, while we're never going to know for certain, we can pretty confidently say that didn't happen because war camps were just a really inconvenient place to have affairs, for one, and for two, the people spreading this rumor were Mark Antony and his supporters, who had a vested interest at the time in painting Augustus as weak, sexually deviant, conniving, and unworthy fo what he had, due to the fact that he was Antony's primary political rival and was amassing power directly at Antony's expense (if you're wondering why I didn't include things like age or laws against incest in why this might not have happened, Augustus would have been a legal adult at the time and also the Romans didn't consider it incest if the sexual relation was between two people related matrilineally, because they were fucking weird). Another rumor about Augustus is one written down by Suetonius, a Roman historian, who was writing decades after the fact because Augustus had been dead for multiple years and his dynasty (the Julio-Claudians) had already died out by the time Suetonius was born. Suetonius writes that Augustus had an apparent predilection for cheating on his third wife, Livia Drusilla, and specifically with virgins. Again, while possible, it's likely also not true because Augustus was a notorious square personality-wise who also put in place several conservative family and marriage laws that he wanted followed so religiously that when his own daughter, his only child, broke them, he exiled her and permanently ended their relationship, and also Suetonius is notorious for literally just inventing shit and putting it in his works as objective fact.

Example two: Richard III. And I'm not reinventing the wheel by pointing out that a large part of Richard's bad rap after his death comes directly from the vested political interest his successor and his successor's family in painting their reign as legitimate, which would only be possible at the direct expense of Richard (and I am not here to rehash the Wars of the Roses for the five hundredth time, birthright monarchy is a scam and Henry VII won the fight fair and square and both men had good and bad qualities that make them enjoyable to read/learn about). One of the most famous ways that Richard's posthumous reputation was dragged through the mud is with the story that he was heinously deformed, which was a sign of his secret evil. Nowadays, we know for a fact that this isn't true because when his remains were discovered in Leicester, the only "deformity" that was discovered was a case of adolescent onset scoliosis that, while creating a severe S-curve in his spine, would only have manifested physically as one shoulder looking slightly higher than the other, easily disguised with clothing, and that otherwise he seems to have a fair looking dude. But even before we dug up His Majesty's Royal Parking Lot, we could generally figure out that Richard's "deformity" was either an outright fabrication or very slight. Contemporary chroniclers all agreed during Richard's lifetime that the only known physical abnormality was having one shoulder higher than the other, and John Rous, who was at Richard's court and no friendly to Richard considering he also wrote that the dude poisoned his wife (he did not) did note that, while he had a shoulder higher than the other, the difference was slight enough that he wasn't able to remember which shoulder was higher than rich. But once Richard was defeated at Bosworth in 1485 and Henry Tudor took the throne, the line that would ingratiate you to the new king and also show that you weren't a traitor was to point out that Richard sucked, with one of the first instances of "actually Richard was super uggo" happening in 1491 (already six years after Richard died) when a school teacher heard a defense of Richard and launched into a rant about how he was a "crookback" who deserved what he got. Then there was Thomas More, who was a friend to the Tudor royals and whose power at court relied on his proximity to the family and their love for him, who went further in describing Richard as outwardly ugly in order to have it reflect on the fact that he was ugly on the inside as well, even though More was the tender age of seven when Richard died and likely never saw him in person. And then, famously, Shakespeare, patroned by a Tudor and thus knowing that his monetary success came as a direct result of what made the Tudor dynasty happy, took all these biased sources presenting themselves as historical fact and wrote a play depicting Richard as the evil and most monstrously hideous man to have ever lived, and since Shakespeare is more famous than God and had such a huge affect on the English speaking world at large that no one could have ever predicted ("oh Shakespeare's not as famous/influential as-" gonna stop you right there, Shakespeare invented the word pickle, no one is more famous than that), that became stuck in the public consciousness as objective fact, in spite of the contemporary sources and the dodginess of the non-contemporary ones, until we got physical proof of what was true and what wasn't.

So what does that tell us? Historical sources can have biases due to the political machinations of the time, reputations and popular views often get distorted as the years go on and more contemporaries of the subject die, the pop culture understanding of a subject by the general populace can infect even "unbiased" historical compilations about someone, people lie about other people for the furtherances of their own agendas, and that things told after someone's death by non-contemporaneous writers need to be examined within the context of that person's known personality and habits and also that sometimes people are just liars for no other reason than the lolz. Historical texts in a pre-mass literacy society, while important, are not wholly unbiased sources, since the concept of "the biography" is only a couple centuries old (and I'm being generous). Historical texts can include things like political leanings dictating what's being written down, distortions in the hopes of gaining favors, social views that were the norm at the time but changed from then to the present, the inclusion of rumors without delving into whether they're valid or not, and sometimes authors just blatantly making shit up. That is the conceit under which Fire&Blood operates as a book. That, unless it's a birth, death, or major historical event, we simply cannot know anything as objectively true or false and need to take every single story with a grain of salt, and it's up to us as the readers to decide what's most likely based on consistencies in stories/characterization along with the objective known facts. Nothing about these people can be taken at complete face value and any stories told about them need to be closely examined even by us as readers who are aware that it's fictional.

So, with all that in mind.

Is Alicent described as religious in the book? Not explicitly, since not much of her personality was recorded and we actually know very little about her character. But it's safe to assume that she was religious to an extent, the Hightowers are from Oldtown and Oldtown was the current center of the Faith of Seven at the time since the Starry Sept was still the epicenter of that religion given that it only changed once Baelor built his Great Sept. And even beyond that, Westeros is a religious society, analogous to Middle Ages Europe, and religion played a significant part in every day life. So it's not out of the question that Alicent was religious, perhaps even more religious than the average Jeyne, but whether she was as religious as her show counterpart, and whether the motivations were the same (loneliness, desire for community amidst isolation, clinging to moral superiority when she feels she's a bad person for her wants and desire) is unknown.

Wasn't she more of Margaery-type character? Well, for one, book Margaery or show Margaery. The two Margaeys are incredibly different characters, almost to the point of not being the same character at all. Since Margaery is not a POV character in the books, and we only see her through the eyes of Sansa, Cersei, and briefly Tyrion, we don't really know what she's like. We know she's very intelligent, and we know that she possesses a shrewdness and cunning not unlike Olenna, as Sansa remarks, but Margaery is also very kind, very sweet and gentle, and tenderhearted to a certain extent, as well as the model of a proper young Westerosi (and also according to Cersei a vicious slut but Cersei's viewpoint of people is so distorted we can't rely on anything she says or thinks). Show Margaery is honestly just what Cersei thinks book Margaery is, as if D&D read Cersei's POVs for Margaery and took that at face value without remembering that Cersei has never had a correct observation about another person ever, except Robert. Show Margaery is also intelligent and cunning, but she's conniving and fiercely manipulative, incredibly power hungry and more sexually open than book Margaery. Is Alicent like either of those? Again, hard to say, we don't really know much about Alicent as a character other than that she held grudges, was ambitious for her kids, and loved her family with everything, tender and gentle with people who mattered like her children and grandchildren (given that they always came to have her say goodnight to them every night aaaaaaahhhhh) and was a somewhat unforgiving person, which she appeared to pass on to her two eldest sons. She doesn't really seem like either Margaery to me, especially in the fact that, while book Margaery might be putting up a sweet facade to hide true feelings and show Margaery absolutely does that, Alicent doesn't. She has no problem exhibiting what she really feels on full display without hiding anything, likely due to her power as queen consort (like her "do keep trying Ser Laenor" line, ugh cuntery at its finest). The main similarity between either Margaery and Alicent that I can think of is that they're both incredibly well loved by the commons.

Did Alicent have an affair with Viserys while Aemma was alive? No. Again, not something we can know for certain because "historical" but looking at it, no. There's no evidence that Viserys ever kept any mistresses in either of his marriages, Alicent doesn't get married as young as she is in the show but she's still eighteen and that's pretty young, the only way this would be marginally appropriate and allowed by Westerosi customs is if she were an official mistress, which she isn't ever described as, it doesn't line up with any of her following actions or how she's described later in her life, and also the only person who even hints at any sexual impropriety in Alicent's past in F&B is Mushroom, who is one of those aforementioned sources that lies just because they wanna lie and add things in for no reason (and also because GRRM likely wanted more sex stuff in the book than he'd have been able to do due to the constraints of the format he chose and added Mushroom in as this asshole ribald lil lying liar who lies in order to do that).

Were the Greens conservative and religious? For religion, please see answer number one, which is just: most likely religious, no way to know whether they were more or less religious than other Westerosi, particularly Westerosi Faith worshipers. For conservatism, pleas see the first full paragraph of this behemoth of an answer. The concept of conservatism has changed drastically over human history, and often has specific definitions and political affiliations based on which country you live in, and even if we mean American conservative, this is not an American based society with any American based values and it's practically impossible to try and attach those to people living in what amounts to Middle Ages England but with dragons and blood magic.

Were the Greens ambitious? Yes, they very much were ambitious. So is every other character in Fire&Blood. They're not more or less ambitious than any Westerosi family, it doesn't seem like that ambitious motivation was changed all that much in the show either, just certain characters are less so (most notably Alicent).

Wasn't Aegon the only genuinely religious one? Again, I return us to the first answer, which is that he likely was religious but there's no way to know whether he was more or less so than anyone else (unless you take a certain Mushroom story at face value which I do not because not even the guys compiling the in universe histories take Mushroom at face value). There's nothing written down about Aegon being particularly more devout than most people expect, since the majority of what's written about him on his own as a person is devoted to him during wartime, in which he isn't described as doing anything particularly religious since he's either fighting or convalescing. The only concrete thing we get is when he goes to the royal sept and subsequently dies, and there's no explanation given for why he wanted to go there (if you're like me, it's cuz you believe the suicide theory and are incorporating it into how you think the show should end so that you can then cry for ten thousand years about it). You can certainly believe that his experiences and what he suffered might have made him more open to devotion, that he turned to the gods in hope of comfort, but you could also make the argument that all his pain would have turned him against the gods, like Stannis's anti-Seven ideals being borne of how he refuses to worship any gods who would let him watch his parents die.

And lastly, never apologize for too many questions anon! For one, people make this confusing because between the source material and the changes and everyone taking this shit way too seriously, it can be tough to parse everything out. And for two, I love questions! I'm an incessant rambler and I get bored easily and unless people are being rude, I always love when people wanna chitchat with me about stuff <3

#personal #answered #anonymous #wow this got to an ungodly length #but i figured i might as well type this whole thing out so that people have it on hand #cuz i keep on repeating this and i think some people wonder why #and i do wanna explain why #it's like hugely important for us to remember what f&b is presented as #as with all things this is in fact rebloggable if anyone wants to have easy access to my ranting #on why we need to treat f&b differently than we do most stories

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