#Trans Resistance Network

[coochiequeens]

Martyr’s don’t kill innocents including children. Content warning: it’s about a school shooting and people posting pictures of themselves holding weapons.

Controversial group behind 'Trans Day of Vengeance' raised money for firearms training - as other trans protestors pose with guns ahead of march in DC on Saturday

The protest was rebranded before the Nashville tragedy from 'visibility' to 'vengeance' by the Trans Radical Activist Network

But some social media users appear to have taken the protest to another level and have posed with powerful firearms posted along with the hashtag 

Twitter has since removed more than 5,000 posts that have used the flyer for the event on April 1 

Despite three nine-year-olds being gunned down by a transgender shooter at a private Christian school in Nashville, activists are still rallying the troops to protest for a 'Trans Day of Vengeance' - months after raising money for firearms training. 

Transgender shooter Audrey Hale opened fire on the Covenant School in Nashville at 10.30am on Monday, killing Hallie Scruggs, William Kinney and Evelyn Dieckhaus during her rampage at the school.

But despite rising political tensions across the country, which saw a press secretary for Arizona Democrat Governor post a Tweet about shooting transphobes, the Trans Radical Activist Network (TRAN) is pushing forward with their protest in DC.

The Virginia chapter of the group held a 'dance party fundraiser' in Richmond 'benefiting firearm/self-defense training for trans-Virginians' on March 7, before the mass shooting had taken place. 

In statements, the group has taken pains to distance themselves from Hale, and her actions, and changed the name of the protest before the brutal slayings.  

The protest on Saturday was initially meant to be called a 'day of visibility' but rebranded before the shooting to vengeance because it means 'fighting back with vehemence' – though the group was quick to say they do not 'encourage or promote violence' when contacted by DailyMail.com. 

But one person posing as an activist appears to have taken the movement to the next level, posting a picture of a heavily armed person with an assault rifle and threatening to 'kill christcucks' - as Twitter removed thousands of posts with flyers for the event. 

Twitter has been removing the posts that could be deemed threatening or involve guns associated with the 'TransDayofVengeance' hashtag - but it is unclear exactly how many were others posing with weapons as they have since been deleted.

Ella Irwin, Twitter's head of trust and safety, wrote that the company removed more than 5,000 tweets that included a poster for the event.

She said: 'We do not support tweets that incite violence irrespective of who posts them. 

'Vengeance' does not imply peaceful protest. Organizing or support for peaceful protests is ok.'

Two other trans activists have since posted footage and photos of themselves with rifles, which appear to be in direct response to the Nashville shooting. 

One says that she will use the weapon for 'protection' against 'transphobes' who  target them. 

Kayla Denker, who describes themselves as a ‘communist, archaeologist and writer, posted the video of herself with her gun after the incident in Nashville – despite saying ‘advocating for trans people to arm ourselves is not any kind of a solution to the genocide we are facing’.

She is also appealing for help with the medical bills for her transition on her social media, which has now been locked down.

Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Green also saw her account removed after she launched several anti-trans attacks on Twitter.

Greene claimed that 'Antifa' was organizing the alleged event, and reposted a poster for the protest while complaining Twitter kept removing her posts before she was ultimately suspended.

Activists are being encouraged to 'bring a buddy' and wear a mask at the event outside of the Supreme Court in DC on April 1, and is billed as avenging a 'trans genocide.'

Organizers did not respond when asked questions about the safety of protests amid the increasing pressure between the two sides of the political spectrum.

Websites such as Etsy are still being used to sell pro-gun and trans merchandise, with stickers that say 'defend equality' with assault rifles on as well as t-shirts and other items emblazoned with 'Trans rights… or else' which also have the high-powered guns in pink, white and blue – the Trans colors – on them.

TRAN is run by three co-founders, one of whom is a former staffer for the Virginia Democrats and stepped down to work with the group.

Bo Belotti, the national recruitment director, is a 'trans masculine non-binary person' and helped the Virginia chapter of the group to raise money to go on guns and self-defence.

On March 7, the Virginia chapter held a 'dance party fundraiser' in Richmond 'benefiting firearm/self-defense training for trans-Virginians. Come boogie with us and defend trans life!'

Belotti worked as a fellow for Del. Elizabeth Guzman, and Del. Joshua Cole as a legislative aide and helped draft HB 145, which required the state to create model transgender policies for public schools.

His bio on the website adds: 'While working in their state's legislators they helped craft trans-affirming statewide policies.' 

Another co-founder is non-binary Tsukuru, who had been posting updates on the protest before locking down their account following the backlash in the aftermath of the mass shooting.

Their bio states that they were a 'graduate of a high school in Hiroshima where 350 young lives were brutally taken on August 6, 1945, Tsukuru is an anti-nuclear/anti-war/human rights activist.'

It adds: 'After his brief marriage to his best friend and the birth of his child, he first came out as lesbian at age 29 and as a transgender man at age 50.'

The final founder is Noah Buchanan who helped to set up Tran initially, writing on the website: 'Noah Buchanan; I am a transgender male and have been out since 2018. I have 10+ years of working in the mental health field.

'What motivated me to start TRAN was the fact I was bullied to the point where I attempted to end my own life. The person that bullied me was a fellow member of the LGBTIA+.'

In a statement to DailyMail.com Buchanan said: 'What I will say is that this protest was not about encouraging or promoting violence.

This protest is about uniting and letting people know that we are human beings, we exist, and love conquers hate.'

see whole article

#Trans cult and weapons #Nashville #Trans Resistance Network #Trans Day of Vengeance #Trans Radical Activist Network #April 1 #Twitter #HB 145

[ghelgheli]

The epoch of hysteria between 1656 and 1658 found its catalyst in the spontaneous, detailed testimony of someone who I solely re-member here with her chosen name, la Estanpa. Once a linda niña (pretty girl), the now seventy-year-old mestiza found herself apprehended by court magistrates for suspected sodomy in 1656. After initially denying the accusations, an elderly and fatigued Estanpa relented, admitting to having dressed ‘like a woman’ since she was seven and committed the nefarious sin for ‘more than forty years’. Encapsulated within her testimony and larger trial are glimmers of an underground trans feminine world in seventeenth-century Mexico City, of which Estanpa served as a pillar. Coinciding with Catholic feast days, Estanpa and her friends organised parties at changing secret locations, ranging from the secluded countryside to individuals’ homes in the neighbourhoods of San Juan de la Penitencia or San Pablo. Facilitated by trans feminine hostesses, these lively parties consisted of illicit dancing, singing, drinking chocolate and of course inevitable quarrelling over guapos (what they affectionately called the men who loved them), with whom they would eventually retire into rooms for sex. For elders like Estanpa, these parties were also an opportunity to recall ‘the deeds and the conquests of their far-away youth, their lost beauty, and old-time pleasures’.In each other’s company, this cohort referred to one another as niñas (girls), each taking on feminine names following the same convention as ‘la Estanpa’, a title said to have originated from a ‘very graceful lady’. What is certain is that the trans feminine figure held a distinct and explicitly threatening place in the Spanish colonial imaginary. Within underground Mexican subculture, these individuals shared myriad cultural signifiers – in naming practices, celebration of holidays and their habitation in the same neighbourhoods and sometimes homes – that suggest they also established deep-rooted community networks. Perhaps most importantly, despite coordinated and unrelenting legal suppression, trans feminine people would continue to exist and resist across colonial New Spain.

Jamey Jesperson, Trans Misogyny in the Colonial Archive: Re-membering Trans Feminine Life and Death in New Spain, 1604–1821 [doi]

#reading #gender

[queeranarchism]

Reading your posts, and I see you talk about, you know, creating mutual aid networks, or affinity groups. It interested me especially when you talked about relationship anarchy and building such a queer community in resistance to capitalism and exploring open love. How... how does one create such a group/community? Everything sounds great, but what are the practical steps? Especially for someone living in a rather middle big Sweden city.

If you live in a middle-big city, there's a good chance that an anarchist community and/or a radical queer community already exists and that there's a good deal of overlap between the two. Especially anarchist trans people seem like soooo abundant in the trans community. (Because they state screws us over so much.)

Anyway, communities tend to form around a space, like an anarchist cafe or a queer club house or a non-permanent space like a recurring event. When looking for an existing community I tend to frequent those spaces. When I see queer anarchists at protests I try to make friends, invite them to the spaces I know and ask what spaces they're recommend.

This takes one skill you'll need to practice: walking up to strangers and having that awkward first conversation with someone you don't know. This is an essential skill in any form of community building and the only way to learn it is to throw yourself in and to experience that being very awkward for a bit is not the end of the world. Where spaces are lacking, I try to create them. Creating a space sounds hard and if you want a permanent autonomous space then yes, it is hard. But creating a non-permanent space doesn't take a huge amount of work.

It's basically a matter of finding a venue that's okay with you hosting an event and then spreading the message "There's a queer/trans/anarchist/whatever hang out here every first monday of the month." and then just consistently show up there so there's always at least one person to warmly greet new people. (which again takes the 'talking to strangers' skill). The start of building a community can be as simple as that.

In a while, the people in that community will start to care about it and at that point you might want to talk about sharing the monday greeter shifts so you no longer have to always show up for the space to exist. Another step you might want to take is to build communication channels to announce events, like a website and social media channels. Discord is quite useful as an in-group channel to allow people to chat after the events, plan new events, etc.

The big, difficult, but super valuable step that will make your space a permanent space. I wouldn't recommend trying that alone and I don't have a lot of experience with that, so I'm going to leave that step to someone else.

[freyito]

9ꜱ, 2ʙ, ᴀ2, ᴀᴅᴀᴍ, & ᴇᴠᴇ ʀᴇᴀᴄᴛ ᴛᴏ ᴀ ʜᴜᴍᴀɴ ꜰᴛᴍ ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ

so! self indulgent. way self indulgent. getting this outta my head before it drives me CRAZY!!!! i know mk is like my hyperfixation rn but, i really love love love drakengard and nier. and Nier: Automata was the first game I played of the series. OBVIOUSLY this is beyond canon divergent, but i was thinking... (aside from 2b and a2) these guys probably know transgenderism and stuff but like... how would they react when PRESENTED with that yknow yknow... ANYWAYS PLAY NIER AUTOMATA (AND REPLICANT), REAL GOOD GAMES

cw: sfw, fluff, implied romantic feelings (no relationship), SPOILERS, so so so beyond canon divergent, male reader, afab, not proofread.

9S

Nines is curious by nature. He's studied on humans and the human condition. Almost terrifyingly so. He's actually so so so interested in the fact that your trans. Not in a creepy way. Androids have no need to identify, really. And when they wish to be perceived differently, it's quite literally as simple as the switch of a button.

So, to not only be housing a human at the bunker, but one as interesting as you... boy, you are in for so many questions. So. Goddamn. Many. He's curious about your body- but don't take it in a perverted sense. Simply, what do the hormones do? How does your body balance it out? It's all sooooo sooooooo interesting.

He'll even ask if you could lift your shirt for him. He's so unaware of boundaries and proper etiquette, it hurts. But he simply wants to see the scars. Why? Dunno. It'll satisfy his curiosity. Maybe a little more! Nines just wants to know you more intimately. Yes, he knows allll about humans. But he doesn't know about you. He cannot hide it.

2B

2B keeps her distance about the topic. Out of respect, but also, she still prioritizes her mission over you. Unfortunately. Though, at the very edge of her mind, she has all sorts of questions. Mainly about how society would've treated you. Perhaps you are not of those times, but she is deeply aware of the prejudice of the past civilizations.

But, some days, she lurks by your room, too afraid to wander in. She is afraid of her own curiosity. You do not get to see her much, seeing as it is forbidden to bring you down to earths surface, in fear of losing the last human to exist. You are too precious. To her, yes. But to YoRHa, as well. She will not admit those feelings, however.

She does find her courage somewhere, simply asking how it feels. An odd question, from an Android as straightforward as her. But nonetheless, you indulge in her curiosity. And if you were to ask why she's asking? She'll brush it off. It is important to the mission. You are important to the mission. It is important that she understands.

A2

A2 does not care much for humanity. She shows barely any interest in you, even if the rumors of you spread like wildfire amongst the resistance and the machine network. She's lost her purpose, there's not much to care about, aside from her well-being. So why would she care for an interesting anomaly like you?

Why, she asks, when she finds herself seeking you out at the resistance camp. Locked away in a make-shift room while waiting for transport to the bunker. This is her last chance, she knows. She also knows it is dangerous, but she figures it'll be worth it. The last human remaining, something she had thought was long dead. A lie. That's really what she thought you were.

Yet, A2 is surprised to see that you are very very real, and the honest truth. It does not reignite her flame for her mission, but something within her swells. She simply stares at you, almost expectantly. She does not say a word. You can just barley see an ounce of curiosity and excitement behind that flat expression. And when you open your mouth to speak, she walks out of the room, and away. That is the last you saw of her.

Adam

Adam knows almost as much as Nines does. Maybe even more. He caught wind of your existence when one of the stubbies near SCREAMED across the network. He was quick to pick you up before the Androids did. He even created you a nice little room within the copied city. Something like home, no doubt. Or at least, a resemblance of it. He stays every present, not once does he leave you alone. He even stations a Biped by you that he can tap into.

He peppers you with questions on the daily, yet still keeps a maximum of thirty. He's logging your existence. He's actually worshipping it, really. Some sort of pseudo-god in a wasteland. He's so very respectful about his questions and knows when to lay-off, as much as his mind burns with questions.

At the end of the day, though, Adam's practically on his knees, begging to see just how your body has held up. He wants to see what testosterones done, he wants to see this marvelous thing called "top surgery", he wants to see it all. ONLY if you allow him too, of course. Regardless, you are stuck with him and his brother until his inevitable demise.

Eve

Eve was actually the first to find you once that stubby alerted the machine network of a human. Yet, before he could even touch you, his brother had whisked you away to the copied city. Only there did you get to meet Eve in full. He is a lot less contained than his brother, most days he spent leaning over your (uncomfy) bedside, asking you all sorts of questions. About how it feels to be human, what hurts more (like if he threw a block at you or a machine at you!), he is less so interested in your identity.

But when he connects the dots, oh boy. More questions. More and more as the days go by. When his brother isn't there, he's asking alllll about your anatomy. Why can't you switch it so easily like he could? Wait, that's a silly question, he knows the answer. Did you know in old civilizations you we-

Adam shuts Eve up real quick before his questions can border insulting. He means you no harm, and actually he feels kind of hurt if he insults you! He's just so damn curious and he has to know allll about you. For now, you are the second most important thing in his new life, something he would willingly go to this thing called hell- you know that place, right?- for you. And back!

© nervouzwreck, 2023 | masterlist | queue

#⁺◟freyito #nier automata x ftm reader #nier automata x male reader #nier x male reader #nier x reader #nier x ftm reader #nier automata x reader #9s x ftm reader #2b x reader #2b x male reader #2b x ftm reader #a2 x reader #a2 x male reader #a2 x ftm reader #adam nier x reader #adam nier x male reader #adam nier x ftm reader #adam x reader #adam x male reader #adam x ftm reader #9s x reader #9s x male reader #eve nier x reader #eve nier x male reader #eve nier x ftm reader #eve x reader #eve x male reader #eve x ftm reader #adam nier automata x reader #adam nier automata x male reader

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Olivia Reingold

Published: Apr 15, 2024

CHICAGO — About 300 anti-war activists crowded into the basement of the Teamsters Union’s headquarters on Saturday to hear organizers from all over the country describe their plans to disrupt the Democratic National Convention this August. Joe Biden’s backing of Israel since Hamas’s October 7 attack has turned these left-wing radicals against their own party.

“It’s really inspiring to see that people are just as enthusiastic, and maybe even more enthusiastic, to march on the DNC as they are to march on the RNC,” says Omar Florez, a Milwaukee-based activist. “We can thank Genocide Joe and our movement for that.”  

But then a man stumbles to the podium, wiping sweat from his forehead. He grabs the microphone to announce that the Islamic regime of Iran has launched missiles and drones heading straight toward Israel.

“They believe that they will be in Palestinian—I don’t call it Israeli—airspace between two and four a.m., which means about two to four hours from now,” he says. “In addition, there are reports of drones having been fired on Israel from Yemen and Iraq.”

The crowd, all wearing black N95s, erupts into applause. Someone in the back lowers their mask to send a celebratory whistle soaring throughout the room.  

The man at the podium, Hatem Abudayyeh, heads the U.S. Palestinian Community Network, “a purported community group which, on information and belief, is an affiliate of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a designated terror organization based in Gaza,” according to a lawsuit over the alleged relations between U.S. advocacy groups and Hamas. 

“This is when this country and the world needs us because the United States is going to, quote unquote, defend the criminal Israeli state,” says Abudayyeh, whose home was raided by the FBI in 2010 as part of an investigation “concerning the material support of terrorism.” 

“We have to assume that the United States is going to try to retaliate against Iran.”

After the boos and calls of “shame” subside, Abudayyeh says it is “incumbent” upon Americans to “stop the United States from expanding this war and hitting Iran.”

“We’ve got to be the strong, powerful anti-war movement that we are,” he says, placing the microphone down and exiting the stage. 

The crowd immediately began chanting, “Hands off Iran.”

A woman in a hot pink gas mask, wielding a matching neon cane and dressed in a “Protect Trans Kids” t-shirt, throws her fist in the air. Nearby, a service poodle is taking a nap under the chair of his owner, who is wearing a leather harness over his t-shirt. Then the group that has joined here from cities across America—Seattle, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles—cheers and claps in celebration. 

Joe Iosbaker, an organizer with the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, which called October 7 a “good turn of events” in its press release about the terrorist attacks, tells me he supports Iran. His organization has since released a statement backing Iran, where citizens gathered to shout “Death to America” during their nation’s strike against Israel Saturday night.

“We demand hands off Iran,” the statement says. “The people have power, and we will exercise it in the streets.” 

Earlier that day, before news of the attack broke, at a “breakout session” on “the anti-war movement,” Shabbir Rizvi, an organizer with Anti-War Committee Chicago, taught participants how to chant “death to Israel” and “death to America” in Farsi. 

“Marg bar Israel,” he chanted, leading a group of about 80 attendees along with him. A man draped in a Soviet flag bearing a gold hammer and sickle clapped his hands. 

A man in a full black denim outfit shouted out behind his N95—“Can we get a ‘marg bar America’?”

“We can get a ‘marg bar America,’ ” Rizvi replied. 

Then Rizvi raised his hand in the air, leading the crowd like a conductor.

“Marg bar America,” they cheered. 

On my way out of the event, I ask a woman smoking a cigarette to fill me in on the latest news regarding Iran’s lobbing of missiles and drones, which were later intercepted with help from forces from France, the U.S., and the UK. Iran said its strike was retaliation for Israel’s hit on the Iranian embassy in Syria earlier this month, which destroyed the consulate building next to the embassy and killed two of Tehran’s top commanders, and that the matter is “concluded”—unless Israel hits back.

“Iran is part of the resistance,” said the woman, who flew in that morning from New Orleans, where she’s been part of an effort to disrupt Israel-bound shipments in her hometown. “Yemen and Iran and Hezbollah, who are also a militant group in Lebanon, and the Syrian government are all parts of the arc of resistance.” 

A smile creeps across her face as she tells me: “They’re part of the arc of resistance because the enemies are Israel and the USA.” 

==

Remember Mahsa Amini? These insane fuckers don't. They've sided with the brutal Islamic Republic of Iran.

They hate our liberal, secular countries and they want to destroy them. They keep telling us who they are. Do you believe them yet?

Revoke citizenship and deport. I wasn't kidding before and I'm still not kidding now.

#antisemitism #anti war #death to israel #death to america #hamas terrorism #Iran #pro hamas #islamic terrorism #islam #this is islam #pro palestine #sedition #palestine #israel #islamic terrorists #religion is a mental illness

[blinkpen]

stream of consciousness merbling about the state of things (personal level) again

another alleviation acting a salve in this awful situation is my brother, regardless of his "???" about trans identities, still came to the same conclusion about mom i did in that conversation, and it's one of those "gain 90% defense boost from all future verbal barbs bc a layer of cowardice accidentally showed its hand to you, and the person is officially too pathetic, too willfully and maliciously ignorant for you to have any reason to even value their opinion of you, draining the venom to the potency of a bratty child's squirt gun" moments:

while he is confused but open-minded and wants to learn what's up now that the concept is even on the table, having not actively hated trans people prior, just never really considered the fact they exist, or (knowingly) encountered any before

she's been willingly infected with that hot new rightwing podcast boomer batshit virus where people who are way more fashy than they want to admit react so badly to the concept of trans acceptance it makes them more and more evil about literally everything else just to get allies about it, and has been for quite some time. she's already dedicated a lot of ego into being hateful as a sustained belief held proudly and with a sense of assumed intellectual superiority over anybody being kind due to the fixation on "facts and logic" (that are all bullshit), despite multiple opportunities to bail out gracefully by me being patient and a dumbass still trying

so she has to be brick wall level stupid/stubborn on the matter and inly go increasingly scorched earth in response to the very concept now, because she has to be forever scared shitless of the possibility that "humoring" the pronouns for a few weeks could yield swift, visible, and positive results

he agrees with my assessment that she is terrified of the possibility that if anybody plays along, even just out of token gesture... and i suddenly become less anxious, more confident, my cognitive decline ceases to be so much more rapid as it had been getting, if i am more 'present' more often, if the constantly on-edge chihuaha syndrome vanishes as a result

she would then have to think about The Implications of that

and The Implications of "this is what we could have gotten the first time they asked. imagine where they could have been by now, if you had let them be a person, and not define them by a coin flip of their organs"

my brother is not scared of a positive outcome; that'd be ridiculous

but mom? she now has to be (and having to fear positive outcomes is another reason people like her are so fucking miserable and doing it to themselves)

that's the true fear of a lot of them, i think. to face a level of culpability for totally asinine harm inflicted willingly upon their children while claiming they were doing the most noble protections of all.

and she'd be among them. proof in front of her, rubberstamped by the golden child, that she's has been resisting the medicine i needed all along, with every ounce of strength she has, for a decade.

to face a level of guilt she's never had to face before, a buck she cannot pass onto any of the shitty now ex-husbands she brought into our house, that she has actively hurt me, not just by accident or neglect or in fallout of obliviously poor choices made in a moment, but chosen actively, to hurt me, as much as the worst of them, but they were horrible flickers and splinters in our lives, i won't ever have to put up with them again,

but she was the only world i had as a child and then as a disabled person who was reliably bullied (partly For Being Queer!) out of developing in-person support networks... and she became a hostile world, willingly, proudly,

that she has been The Most Wrong She's Ever Been, for Years, and she looks not only cruel and evil, but like an arrogant stupid jackass clown as well, and she played a much greater role in my mental trauma than she thought even possible of herself

that's not just an ego bruise. that is the entire perception of herself as a good wise moral person getting oblitered into motes of ash, and she has to strike the match herself on top of that

-inhales-

like yeah. that would suck to face that, wouldn't it. it'd probably suck so bad you'd be tempted to just lean in and start tearing everything around you to shreds than humble yourself as painfully as that

but uh. Tough Shit that was Hard Earned, maam

#sporadic warbling #hoooooogh discussions of transphobia and abuse but not in the dire sense #we're now at the 'looking at the abuser like a tantrum toddler thatd just be embarassing if not for all the very real destruction' stage

[thewebcomicsreview]

https://pandorastale.com/

Okay, this one got submitted to me, so lets take a look.

Okay, first things first. This is a pretty solid first page. It immediately establishes our protagonist, an external conflict (”broken rules”) and an internal conflict (”What am I if I’m not obedient”) in three panels and fifteen words. This is a page that makes me want to read more. Good job!

This leads into a scene that we later realize is a few minutes ago, and I like that the first page was “smoky” like that, which made it feel more like an “intro page” than the actual page 1 of the story. If there had been a detailed background this transition would’ve been more jarring but as is it works.

Your getting a lot of mileage out of this art. I like that our unnamed trans catgirl is sitting with her legs crossed in a feminine way, and the way the director is covering the P in the sign in the background. HERE TO HELL!

Anyway, our catgirl escapes in a smokey pod while she has a think, letting us know we’ve “caught up” to the intro. Cool.

She’s found by a group of normal people who awkwardly explain to the black person that slavery is bad, which is an unfortunate blocking decision. Also, I feel like the preceding 16 pages did such a good job explaining the helpers that this exposition is redundant, and it makes Isabelle (who we soon learn is in “the resistance”) look a little dumb, like she joined an anti-slavery network but is only learning about slavery just now. This is kind of nitpicking, I know, but the comic’s been really smooth up until here and this has been the first speed bump I’ve noticed.

Okay, so, our protagonist is technomagically compelled to fall in love with Isabelle, who is also the most anti-slavery member of the group. There’s a lot to unpack there, and me saying that isn’t a criticism. 

Isabelle reveals this is a t4t romance and I’m not sure how I feel about the trans flag being in grayscale there. Like, the whole comic’s in greyscale, so it fits, but also the only way to tell it’s a trans flag is from context because otherwise it’s just kind of stripes.

On the other hand, even ignoring my shit ten-seconds-in-MS-Paint recoloring skillz, busting out the Sin City splash colors makes it really fourth wall breaking, but it’s literally a giant trans flag magically appearing so that ship’s sailed....but also if you ever want to print this book it’d be pain....but also also you could keep the spot colors in the book maybe....I dunno. I’m bouncing back and forth on it.

Anyway, Isabelle names her pet slave Pandora.They go to a doctor and are all “Can catgirls get HRT” and the Doctor’s all “Fuck if I know, let’s ball” and I’m not sure if that’s handwaving away a detail in the service of the main story or setting up Pandora having an allergic reaction that causes anime shenanigans to happen. Either/or in this comic

Pandora offers to be a sex slave and Isabella is like :| and they sleep next to each other in an awkward but happy embrace that feels like this comic could end there and be a complete short story, one that I’d say is pretty good.

There’s another six chapters, and I kind of skimmed them and I’m still a little iffy on the resistance side of the story, but at the least this is a pretty solid opening.

I got to admit, though,...I’m not super fond of the handling of the cops. Not that it’s Objectively Wrong, but I feel like they’re not quite bumbling enough to be comedy foils but they’re too bumbling to be dramatic threats so they’re just kind of there.

My subjective suggestion is think about making the cops even dumber. Having them come in guns ablazing as a serious threat like in the Matrix or whatever doesn’t seem like it’s the tone you’re going for, and you can always have the rich people have Elite Private Security if you need a scary competent villain later.

All-in-all, though, I think this is comic is well-done!

#submission #Pandora's Tale

[dailyanarchistposts]

Chapter 8. The Future

Recommended Reading

CrimethInc., Recipes for Disaster: An Anarchist Cookbook, Olympia: CrimethInc. Workers’ Collective, 2005; and Expect Resistance, Salem: CrimethInc. Workers’ Collective 2008.

Kuwasi Balagoon, A Soldier’s Story: Writings by a Revolutionary New Afrikan Anarchist, Montreal: Kersplebedeb, 2001.

Ann Hansen, Direct Action: Memoirs of an Urban Guerrilla, Toronto: Between the Lines, 2002.

Lorenzo Komboa Ervin, Anarchism and the Black Revolution, 2nd edition online at Infoshop.org, 1993.

Emma Goldman, Living My Life, New York: Knopf, 1931.

Richard Kempton, Provo: Amsterdam’s Anarchist Revolt, Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 2007.

Bommi Baumann (trans. Helene Ellenbogen & Wayne Parker), How It All Began: A Personal Account of a West German Urban Guerrilla, Vancouver: Pulp Press, 1977.

Trapese Collective, ed. Do It Yourself: a handbook for changing our world, London: Pluto Press, 2007.

Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, Outlaw Woman: A Memoir of the War Years 1960–1975, San Francisco: City Lights, 2001.

A.G. Schwarz and Void Network, We Are an Image from the Future: The Greek Uprising of December 2008, Oakland: AK Press 2009.

Isy Morgenmuffel and Paul Sharkey (eds.), Beating Fascism: Anarchist anti-fascism in theory and practice, London: Kate Sharpley Library, 2005.

Call (Appel in the original French, an anonymous manifesto with no publication information given)

The article, or zine, or book that you are going to write, to share your experiences with the world and expand our collective toolbox...

#book recs #book lists #recommended reading #organization #revolution #anarchism #daily posts #communism #anti capitalist #anti capitalism #late stage capitalism #anarchy #anarchists #libraries #leftism #social issues #economy #economics #climate change #anarchy works #environmentalism #environment #solarpunk #anti colonialism #acab

[vriskakinnieaynrand]

you understand certain things. why do these guys want everyone not to be trans? you know? because like, from where I'm standing at great remove, it seems like half the reason or more is just to stake out their own identity, you know. we're NOT those liberals, we HATE the trans. like that's how it looks to me. but idk I'm not close to it.

wdym why. why in the sense of 'what reasons have you personally heard', or why in the sense of 'what's a plausible ideological framework for the main current of public statements'? the two are not the same! for a number of reasons.

first, ppl don't straightforwardly air out their brainworms or bare the darkest recesses of their souls in the genre of political oration. it's just a (sensible) constraint of the genre. yr trying to make yrself look authoritative, which requires looking functional, sane, etc., perhaps more so than you actually are

second, these recesses aren't necessarily beliefs. they aren't necessarily things you can just up and state - they can be patterns you've noticed (or hallucinated), deep symbolic vocabularies...

third, i've met some weird people. like, here's something i've actually heard: "i get that we should let people do what they want and all, but one thing i'm worried about is... doesn't it really suck to be a man? so if we let people transition, most men will decide they'd rather be women, and then, as a straight woman, who will i date?"

but this was at the beginning of the current wave of "reminder that transition is an option", when it was still an obscure thing that rationalists and communists did, and when the culture - including, like, 'blue tribe', 'coastal liberal' culture - was really weird about traditional gender roles. i went to a liberal arts college in new england and had a mutual crush that never went anywhere because neither of us had thought to come out as anything, and while it was getting déclassé to call someone a faggot, a man with a scarf or skinny jeans was a 'metrosexual', which meant the same thing.

(also, when word got out that the girl i was seeing had religious objections to sex before marriage - with a narrow enough definition of 'sex' that in practice it wasn't an issue, lol - i was advised, with as far as i could tell a straight face, 'what? just rape her, bro.' at, like, a social event, with other people and everything. things were bad back then!)

anyway... conservatism. american conservatism is generally pro-instrumentalization. you're born into a network of duties - to God, family, country, and so on - and as you mature you carry out those duties and take on others. you 'find a place in society', fit yourself into a vast machine as a set of gears so that society can extract work from you - ideally (if you're in the right class for it) work that is rewarded with money, which is how society tells you what it cares about -

and, like, there's no 'you' anywhere in this process. there are harmless affectations and personality traits, which don't get in the way of yr self-instrumentalization, of discharging yr duties - but anything that does is either selfishness or perversion. if you let your wants get ahead of society's, you're selfish; if you're too deranged to resist your desires, you're a pervert. in some sense, both of these things are Sin

you also aren't supposed to deliberate on the norms and structures of society. because this might lead people into temptation, into selfishness or perversion, or in some other way make everything worse. civilization is hard to build and easy to destroy, and destruction is evil

which is how you get people assuming everyone's secretly gay and heterosexuality is just a prosocial thing people go through the motions of. they don't know!

i think it's not all like that, though, and some ppl actually are worried abt the like medicalization / pathologization of gender variance. what if we let ppl transition the pressures to conform to gender norms intensify and we end up like iran? that would in fact be bad! (it seems like ppl have kinda realized this and stopped posting egg memes about anyone mildly gnc, which is progress, that shit was so annoying lol)

of course, another facet of the conservative thing is Traditional Gender itself. men are agents and have high sex drives; women are patients and have low sex drives. your wife probably isn't that into you, she's just using you as a bundle of resources, which is how things should be since if you give them freedom they'll never marry and your civilization will die out (and men will become degenerates in order to fuck loose women, like drug addicts who make filthy "music" in order to fornicate with groupies, instead of doing something prosocial and making themselves marriageable), so trans women are Perverts and trans men were Groomed. obviously AGP is a thing and AAP isn't, who'd associate fuckability with men? gross! no, a wife, properly speaking, is another currency society uses to reward good behavior. why do women put up with being used as currency? idk, inscrutable woman reasons, but they shouldn't have a choice in the matter anyway, any more than a man should have a choice to marry a man, or to remain a bachelor without good reason such as being a monk. furthermore, no-fault divorce and "dating" are both degenerate and we should bring back arranged marriage. this is all from the darkest fringes of the 2010s blogosphere of course, except now there's matt walsh...

[antifascistblackmetalnetwork]

Mycorrhizal - Blessed Be the Match (full EP, 2024)

Today is a day of resistance and struggle for the Antifascist Black Metal Network. Well, every day is one in truth, really, but today has the special symbolism of being March 8th, the International Day of the Struggle of Women Workers, a day that celebrates the February Russian Revolution of 1917  where women led textile strike toppled the czar. And today, as Palestinian and Ukrainian women strike back against imperialism and colonialism, as trans women in the West fight genocide, from Wallmapu to Manipur, from Myanmar to Saharaui, we want to add to that fire of revolt - and we do that with the newest release of the already familiar Mycorrhizal, from Winconsin, US. Aptly titled "Blessed Be The Match", this EP defies easy classification; we can say, though, that Christine's experimentation, which have never been bound to black metal, now have gone waaaay beyond our namesake genre, landing somewhere between ambient, trap/hip-hop, and harsher but still danceable electronic music, in what could be described perhaps as "Grendel meets shrieked rap". May we burn to the ground this world that destroys us, along with its agents like Antideutsche and TERFs! From the spark, let the plain rise up in flames!

#ABMN #RABM #antifascistblackmetal #mycorrhizal #experimentalblackmetal #electronic #greenblackmetal #blackmetal #Youtube

[sissytobitch10seconds]

Expanding the Flock

Fandom: Grishaverse: SIx of Crows Summary: The five times that they tried to have a baby and the one time that it worked. Warnings: Trans male pregnancy, miscarriages, mentions of self harm, canon backstories/trauma, brief sex scenes, and childbirth Word Count: 16,873 Ship(s): Kaz Brekker/Jesper Fahey/Inej Ghafa/Matthias Helvar/Wylan Van Eck/Nina Zenik

Archive link!

A/N: So I'm back on my bullshit when it comes to writing things that only I will like. I love angst, my autistic interest is pregnancy/birth, and Kaz is one of the characters I love to torture here. I hope that whoever else this appeals to enjoys it! Stay sissy and bitchy everyone <3

1. Jesper

He had gone out on a nice date with his husband that night. They had stopped by their favorite cafe and shared a bottle of wine and more pastries than their wife needed to know about before they had gone to the new opera house to watch a show that was a shared favorite of theirs. They had held hands as they walked along the side of the river and giggled together over the jokes that the actors had made. It had been a wonderful night and it was going to be topped off with what he hoped would end up with them both sweating and cuddled up together on their big bed.

That had been before two incredibly stupid looking goons had stepped out from an alley that they were passing by and started yelling at them. The one on the left had long red hair that was brushed out so that it had almost become as fluffy and big as Jesper’s hair, but down to his waist instead of tucked up against his head. He was wearing a pair of mismatched socks that were only on display because his pants had been hacked off at the knee with what appeared to be safety scissors. The one on the right had short black hair and his left arm was such a tight network of scars that it hung uselessly down at his side. They were both dressed in a very distinctive pink and orange polka dot pattern and they were both holding guns. 

“Don’t resist, come with us quietly!” the one on the left almost screamed. Jesper would have felt bad for him if the wasn’t threatening his husband.

“Are you attempting to kidnap us?” Kaz asked, raising a brow as an amused smirk began to pull at his lips. Jesper was so unafraid of what the thugs had to offer that he turned his head to the side so that he could admire the absolute beauty that was his husband. It sent flutters of butterflies up from his stomach to his heart and then down to his fingertips. Kaz was bathed in the flickering yellow light from the oil lamps and the silvery moonlight. His skin almost glowed when he was in this kind of mood and it was addicting.

Jesper snapped his attention back to the attempted fight at hand when the thugs began to move. He flicked his coat back and pressed his thumb to the pearl handle of his revolver just to remind himself that it was there if he ended up needing to use it. He didn’t really want to have to kill the new thugs since they hadn’t learned their lesson, it likely wasn’t even their fault. Whoever had sent them to try and do business with Dirtyhands and his sharpshooter should have told them what they were getting into. Maybe he could convince Kaz to just knock them out and then leave them in the alley they had jumped from, since he was already in a good mood. 

They looked towards each other and then turned back towards the duo. “We-we’re mugging you!”

“You’re mugging us? I don’t think that anyone has mugged me like this since I was seven,” Kaz snorted.

“You weren’t even in Ketterdam when you were seven,” Jesper whispered through a snort. He saw the dark sparkle in his husband’s eye and knew that Kaz was enjoying toying with the two thugs.

“We’re mugging you!” the thug on the left replied, though he dropped one of his hands from his gun to itch at his leg.

“Likely,” Kaz hummed. “If you want to get money from people in the Barrel then you should learn how to run a con or pick-pocket. If you can’t manage either of those then you could always attempt to sell yourself to one of the whorehouses, though they don’t take the extra guests.”

That got the thugs angry enough that they actually launched themselves at Jesper and Kaz, which was about the stupidest thing that they could have done other than coming after the Bastard of the Barrel in the first place.

They seemed to have the same idea about how they were going to deal with their new problem, thankfully. Jesper went for the one on the right and Kaz went for the one on the left, neither of them bothering to pay attention to the other because of how many fights that they had endured alongside each other. Jesper grabbed the thug’s wrist and then slammed it down onto the streetlamp that they were next to so that the nerves frayed. It caused the thug to let go of his pea shooter, which clattered noisily down to the ground and shot the lackluster bullet through the night air.

“Damn, you really need to up your weapons if you’re going to try and go after people like us,” Jesper laughed. He wrapped one of his lanky arms around the back of the man’s neck so that he could cut off his air. He pressed a little bit harder when hands began to claw at his skin to try and get him to let go. He counted to ten before he felt the body leaned up against him go completely limp. He dumped the thug down onto the ground and then turned to his husband, fully expecting the other thug to be incapacitated as well.

He forgot that Kaz was recently recovering from a cold, or at least that was what they had assumed it was. After everything that Kaz had been through when he was a child, it was almost impossible to get him to admit that he was actually sick when he was. The recovering and slowness meant that Kaz hadn’t quite taken down his thug. The man in question was already beat to a near pulp but was persisting on regardless. He had a black eye and several cuts on the arm that was holding onto his gun, but was standing strong. Jesper walked over and grabbed the revolver on his right hip. He made eye contact with Kaz as the two of them communicated silently.

Kaz lurched forward with his cane clasped in his hand at the same time as Jesper, both of them knocking their weapons against the thug’s head so that he crumpled down to the ground. What they hadn’t been expecting was for him to fall forward and onto Kaz, knocking the already unsteady man down onto the ground.

Immediately after seeing his husband on the ground, Jesper jumped into action. He grasped the thug and tossed him off Kaz with no particular care before he offered his hand out. Kaz was already holding his cane so if it turned out that he had been triggered and needed to not touch someone, he would be able to get up on his own.

He had been doing a lot better lately, thankfully, so he was able to reach out and take Jesper’s hand. He used his cane and his husband to right himself properly. His gloved hands brushed over his suit, Jesper helping but really just using it as an excuse to try and reignite the mood that had hung in the air between them at the time. The sharpshooter only paused his ministrations when he smelled the thick coppery scent of blood and pulled his hand away after feeling something damp.

“Kaz, love, did you get hurt in that fight?” he was trying to keep the fear from his voice. It had been a long time since any of them had been involved in something that could be considered deadly, but he still had nightmares about holding the dead bodies of his partners in his arms.

“He only hit me a couple of times and it was mostly in my arms,” Kaz replied, his face grim and a little bit gray.

“Then why do you smell like blood?” Jesper asked, growing more worried by the second. If it turned out that they had misidentified the sickness that Kaz was suffering from and he was far more ill than any of them had anticipated, he wasn’t sure that he was going to be able to handle it. He had already lost someone that was very dear to his heart once and it had torn him to shreds. 

Kaz was quiet for a bit, staring down at the ground. He pressed his hand to the lower half of his stomach and then let out a shaky sigh. “I think that I was pregnant, Jesper.”

His mind had been whirling with the thoughts of what might be wrong with his husband and the ways that they could fix it before he lost another person that held his heart. As soon as he heard what Kaz had said, every thought flashing through his mind ground down to a halt. He blinked a few times and then asked, “What?”

“My cycle was late. I didn’t have one last month,” he bit out. He was already limping in the direction of their home, his cane clacking loudly against the ground. Jesper hurried after him, his hands twitching as he wanted to comfort his distressed husband but wasn’t quite sure how he could do it effectively. “I didn’t want to say anything because I know that the Firepox messed up my system. I’ve heard of it causing infertility in people that get it as children.”

“But you had cycles even after you recovered,” Jesper said before he realized that it was a stupid thing to say.

He moved on instinct after that, looping one of his long arms around the back of his husband’s waist so that they were pressed together. He walked them slowly down the streets of their city so that they could find their way back home. Whatever was hurting Kaz wasn’t going to stop soon, so the best place for them to deal with that was back in their own house and away from prying eyes.

They were quiet through the entire walk, Kaz only pausing when they got to the front entrance of their home in Geldstraat. He kept his head bowed down and his body began to quiver, so Jesper tried to pull back. Kaz’s arm tensed from where it was looped over the other man’s body so that he had to stay where he was. “Please don’t leave me,” he whimpered.

“Never, baby, never,” Jesper whispered in promise. He pressed their bodies closer together and then helped Kaz through the front door of their home and down the hall to a parlor. He sat his husband down and then knelt in front of him, their hands still clasped together but no longer quite as close as they had been before. “What did you say was happening, again?”

“I’m having a miscarriage, Jes,” Kaz pursed his lips into a thin white line. It was as if speaking the words into the open air between them had made them all the more real, made them sink low and deep into both of their minds.

They had never talked about children, but it was always kind of understood that they might happen at one point. They had all already opened themselves up to the danger of having something that they loved so adding pets and kids didn’t seem like that far of a leap, not when they were as powerful and intelligent as they were. Still, they hadn’t talked about it and no one had really dwelled on it. Jesper wasn’t quite sure how he was supposed to feel about it.

He didn’t have to try to sort out his own thoughts as quickly as he was anticipating, thankfully, as Nina’s cheery voice rang out through the grand halls of their mansion, “Welcome home!”

Wylan and Nina walked into the parlor to greet their spouses but then stopped when they saw the ashen expression on both of their faces and the blood that was slowly turning Kaz’s pants crimson red through the navy black. “What happened?” Nina immediately asked as she rushed over to her husband.

So that they didn’t overwhelm the poor man, Jesper stood up and tried to brush the blood on his hand off on his pants. He didn’t even know when he had brushed against the part of Kaz that was bleeding to get it, but the idea of keeping it on him made his skin crawl. “We got in a fight on the way back. Just two low-brow thugs that thought that they could get something good out of us,” he explained.

“Did you get shot?” Wylan asked, worry evident across his features.

Kaz shook his head. “I think I was pregnant. Got knocked pretty hard in the stomach and I guess my womb isn’t good enough to hold onto a baby after a little bit of damage,” he pursed his lips again and then turned his head to the side.

None of them knew what to say to try and make it better. None of them had even known that Kaz had the ability to get pregnant, not after they had all spent nearly five years since the Ice Court heist fucking like rabbits with nothing happening. Still, they had to support their husband in the tumultuous time that he was going through before they gave themselves the grace to process their own emotions.

Nina was the first to act, giving him a gentle kiss to his forehead. “Come, let’s get you cleaned up and then into bed. I’ll make you some tea and a hot water bottle for the cramps.”

Kaz didn’t say anything as he took her hand and then limped after her. He kept one hand grasping the head of his cane and the other pressed to the very base of his belly, where their baby might have grown had Jesper just been a little bit faster in protecting him. He winced when he realized what his thoughts were flying towards, so pulled Wylan aside to talk to him so that he could work through his worries. They were going to have to tell Inej and Matthias what had happened soon too, but Jesper had to get his thoughts out of the clump they had formed first.

---

2.Inej

She hadn’t seen any of her partners in far too long, which meant that she had been in her room taking a nap with Koshak for nearly two hours. 

Inej didn’t claim to be particularly clingy, she thought that she was one of the more distant members of their polycule. Kaz and Matthias had to spend most of their days in a room with one or more of their partners present to feel sated while Nina and Jesper had to be touching someone at least every five minutes or they acted like they were going to die. Out of everyone, she and Wylan probably had the least damage when it came to aggressive separation anxiety.

Still, she missed them and she wanted to spend some time with them. So, Inej rolled over on her bed while trying very hard not to dislodge the cat from where he had curled up in a happy spot of sunshine. She stood gracefully from her bed and then pulled on the slightly uncomfortable trousers that she had chosen to wear that day. She was still getting up as early as she had during her last voyage, but she was staying up later than she had while she was at sea. It made her more tired throughout the day, so she spent a lot of time napping. She had been doing said napping with Kaz more often than not because he had also been struck by some sort of exhaustion that he refused to talk to anyone about.

Inej had been informed of the loss that the polycule had suffered while she was out at sea. It was one of the reasons that she had chosen to face more of her attention to the land persecution of slavers and bad rich men instead of hunting down ships. She wanted to be there if something like that happened again, and she knew that Kaz was going to be more reckless now that he had another tragedy hanging on the forefront of his mind.

Something in the very back of her brain was letting her know that there was a specific reason that Kaz had been so tired outside of him trying his best to match her own sleep schedule. She wasn’t able to track his cycles the same way that she could with Nina, which was how she made sure that her wife wasn’t unknowingly expecting whenever the other woman made something strange for dinner. She was still a spider and the Wraith, even if she didn’t do as many crimes as she had before they had taken down Van Eck.

She felt bad for employing the same tactics that Kaz had taught her back on him, but there was no other way that she could really figure out what was wrong with him. He seemed to be tired no matter how often he slept, often dozing when Matthias read in the evenings or when Jesper and Nina were arguing about something. He was also clingier than he had been, usually choosing to sit on the couch with one of them instead of in his chair to get his requested space. He had been eating a little bit more than he usually did, but Inej was also fully aware that he did that often when she came back into port so that he wouldn’t be caught mistreating his body.

She hadn’t been able to put her finger down on any type of conclusive proof, but she was beginning to suspect with every nap that her husband took that they might have another pair of feet running around their home before the year was out.

The thought both terrified and excited her. She had always wanted children, it had been something that she had clung on to even with her trauma from the Menagerie. She was glad when she fell in love with two other people that had the ability to carry children because it increased her chances to have the huge family that she knew that her heart was chasing after even if she wasn’t ever able to have sex enough to conceive herself. The idea of having children was overwhelming, especially so early into her slaver-hunting career and with what had happened to her. She knew that they were far more powerful and wary than her own parents had been, so no child that they had would ever have to go through what she had.

Inej shook her head to get rid of her thoughts. She noticed that her braid had begun to come undone around her neck, so she started unweaving the strands so that she could replait them. She opened the door to her room with her foot and then slipped silently out into the hall in search of some companionship. 

Wylan had a Merchant Council meeting that day and he was bringing Matthias with him so that he could have the upper hand when arguing about why they should handle the shipping of items to Fjerda in a very specific way. Nina and Jesper hadn’t mentioned having anything to do when they had gotten up to pretend to help her with breakfast that morning, so it was likely that they were also somewhere in their home. Kaz was probably either taking his own nap or down in his office.

She decided that she was going to patrol the house until she ran into someone, like she was a ghost haunting her own halls.

Her first stop was down in the kitchen, which was empty other than a long-cooking meal in a pot on top of the stove. Her hand twitched at her side as she longed to lift the lid so that she could see whatever concoction one of her spouses had whipped up that time, but she knew better than that now.

So she continued through the empty dining room to the family room where most of her spouses hung out when they weren’t working or sleeping. She smiled fondly when she finally came across one of her partners, taking in the sight before she let them know that she was even present. 

Jesper was splayed out on the couch so that his lanky body took up the entire piece of furniture. Nina was laid out on top of him, wearing only a chemise and a set of bloomers instead of being dressed in her grandeur like she usually was by that time of day. Jesper had one of his arms around the back of her hips to keep her up on the couch and her arms were pillowing her chin. They were looking at each other and talking in soft voices, neither of them paying attention to a single other thing in the world.

“Have either of you seen the others?” Inej asked as she stepped out of the shadows. 

She had to bite the insides of her cheek to keep from giggling when they both startled and nearly fell off of the couch. She walked over so that she could kiss them both as payment for frightening them. Once Nina had finished huffing her way into more affection, she finally answered her wife, “I think that Kaz said he was going to work in his home office. He might be taking a bath, I thought that I heard the water running.”

Inej startled slightly at that and worry overwhelmed her. Baths were a rarity for Kaz, both because they took quite a lot of time to get the trouble to be worth it and because being entirely submerged in water often reminded him of the worst trauma that he had ever endured. “I’m going to go check on him, I’ll see you both later!”

“You’re always welcome to join the cuddle pile, Inej,” Jesper said, his words slurred with comfort and sleep now that his surprise had faded.

The warmth from her spouses was enough to temporarily drown out the feeling of panic that she got about hearing where her husband was. She carefully stepped up the stairs of their home, skipping over the boards that creaked despite their higher quality of the building compared to the Slat. She paused when she got to the second floor, wondering briefly if she should check Kaz’s office before she resigned herself to continuing with the main mission. She wasn’t going to allow herself detours if it turned out that Kaz really needed her or something else had gone wrong.

Inej paused when she got to the door, knocking first instead of just entering right away. “Kaz, are you in there?”

“Go away,” he rasped back in reply. His voice sounded worse than it had before her nap, almost like he had been shouting or crying.

That only got her worry to increase so she grasped the handle to the door and pressed it open without asking. She knew that Kaz was going to demand that she leave, even scream or yell at her, but if something was wrong then she was going to help him. He didn’t have to sit alone with his fear and pain, not after so many years of companionship and marriage.

Before she had even had the chance to properly look at him, he did exactly what she was expecting he would and yelled, “Get out!

“Kaz, I’m not stupid, I know that something is wrong,” she snapped in reply. She stepped onto the heated tile of the bathroom and then closed the door behind her so that they could have a shade of privacy, though the rest of their partners could get through the locks in the house or open the doors themselves.

She took in the bathroom then, placing her hands on her hips so that she didn’t look as timid as she felt. Kaz very rarely yelled at her anymore so when he did it reminded her of the time before she had gotten her ship and learned how to be more than just his Wraith.

There was a heap of clothing on the ground between the counter with the sink and the toilet, which was usually where they all tried to hide something if they had been injured. Kaz was sitting in the tub, which was full of rather murky looking water. His hair had been perfectly styled that morning but now it was rumpled and hanging down over his pale forehead into his dark eyes. His shirt was off, which exposed his puffy chest to the open air and made his dark nipples stiff. The most peculiar thing about the whole situation was that he still had his smalls on even though he was submerged into the water.

“Inej, get out,” Kaz growled, doing his best imitation of a feral animal. He then let out something close to a whimper as he wrapped his arms around his belly and hunched forward. His jaw set, which meant that he was in pain, but his eyes also squeezed shut and his mouth twisted, which meant that he was upset about something.

It was then that Inej noticed that his once-white smalls were soaked through with blood in the crotch alone. His slacks were likely stained with the sticky red substance as well.

Her heart sunk low in her chest as she realized what had happened.

Inej cursed her saints for what they had done to answer her prayers. She had asked them to make sure that she was back with her partners if something like that ever happened again, which was why she was staying more in Ketterdam instead of sailing the seas. She was grateful that she had made that decision when she thought that Kaz was pregnant, but now that it was evident that he was having another miscarriage she wished that she hadn’t asked in the first place.

She gracefully closed the space between them so that she was kneeling down beside him. “I’m not going to touch you but I want you to know that I’m here.”

“Inej,” he sobbed. “I don’t want you to see me like this.”

“I’ve seen you vomiting after the first time that we had sex and fainting in a prison carriage, being by your side while you go through trauma is kind of my thing,” she said. He wasn’t going to respond well to gentleness or kindness, she knew that after all of the time that they had spent together. 

“I know how much you want children,” he sniffled. His good leg moved so that his knee was almost pressed into his chest, trying to make himself smaller so that he felt protected. Kaz groaned when the shift caused something inside of him to send pain throughout his entire body. He put his leg back down and leaned against the lip of the tub so that he was somewhat close to her.

It was true, he did know how desperately she wanted children. It was so hard for her to imagine herself growing old without a child to take care of, a mind to foster, a baby in her arms. She also knew that this wasn’t something Kaz could control, he hadn’t been in any fights like he had the last time that he had suspected he was pregnant. 

Inej took a deep breath so that she could steady her own mind and resist crying. She began to weave her fingers through his hair to put it back where it went, continuing the motion when she saw the shakiness of his shoulders stop. “Talk to me about what happened,” she murmured when his most recent cramp passed.

“Why?”

A small smile played at her lips despite herself. He was always going to be the same bastard that she had fallen in love with, even if his emotional range had expanded exponentially during their time together. “It will make you feel better.”

Kaz was quiet for a while longer before he started talking, “I thought that I was pregnant. I… I know that you noticed the way that I was changing. I was going to do something sweet to tell all of you, but then I was down in my office and I started to feel pain. By the time that I finished up my work and came up here to check what was going on…”

She leaned down and pressed a kiss to his temple. She kept her lips there as she murmured a prayer in the language that her parents had spoken to her, something to send the soul of the child they might have had to their next incarnation. “We will have a child one day, Kaz. It might not come from you and it won’t be in nine months, but one day. This wasn’t your fault.”

He stayed quiet, which made the worry inside of her increase tenfold. There was nothing that she could do about his thoughts, about the way that his mind worked. The only thing that she could do was stroke his hair and remind him that she was there.

---

3.Nina

She felt an arm around her waist twitch and then shudder as the nightmare increased. It was enough that it woke her up from her light doze. It was hailing outside, the droplets of ice shooting against the window loud enough to keep reminding her of what it had been like in the Druskelle ship when Matthias had taken her. She could never sleep well when there were storms, and she knew several of her other partners couldn’t either.

Slowly, she shifted in the bed so that she had turned around to see who was having the nightmare. She wasn’t able to soothe the emotions of people any longer since her powers had changed, but she could still hold them or talk to them when they woke up.

Inej was sleeping directly on top of Matthias, his long arms looped around her tiny frame so that he looked almost as if he was cradling a kitten against his chest. Wylan was sleeping with both of his hands over the top of his eyes and Jesper’s head resting on his shoulder. Kaz was the one that had ended up next to her even though she had come to bed first and him last, which meant that he was also the one having the nightmare.

“Kaz,” she whispered just loud enough that it would be able to rouse him from his sleep. She didn’t want to touch him because there was a good chance that the nightmare was a flashback to the Reaper’s Barge, which meant that he would feel oversensitive and panicked if he woke up with someone’s hand on him.

Her husband’s eyes flew open and he sat up in bed. His chest was heaving to bring in the breath that he needed to survive. His eyes had that wild, panicked look that they always got whenever he was thinking about something that scared him.

Nina carefully slipped from the bed and then placed her hand down on the top of the blanket so that it would pull on him and get his attention. “Love, come on. Let’s go to the kitchen,” she murmured. She didn’t want to wake any of their other partners but she did want to be able to break through the haze of post-sleep panic to get through to Kaz.

He didn’t respond for a second before he gave a shaky nod. He moved to the edge of the bed and then waited as Nina found his cane and handed it to him. That was something that they had done a lot during the beginning of their relationship, when nightmares were far more frequent than anyone in their polycule really wanted to admit.

Once the crow’s head was grasped in his pale, bare hand, he stood up and carefully followed after her. They were both completely silent other than the sound of shuffling feet on the wood floor until they reached the kitchen. “Did you have a nightmare?” Nina asked. She didn’t even turn to look back at him as she lit the stove and got out a pot so that she could heat up some water for tea. 

“I suppose that you could call it that,” he rasped. He sat down on the stool that had been tucked underneath the counter next to their icebox so that he could ease the pain in his leg.

She was quiet for a bit longer as she searched through the cupboards to find one of his favorite cookies. The tin was almost empty but there was enough that they could share a few while they talked. She still didn’t touch her partner as she knelt down beside him and then offered him one of the sweets.

Kaz turned his head to the side, his pale skin tinting green as he gave a minute shake. “I’m not hungry.”

“Are you going to be able to handle some tea?” she asked then. She wasn’t going to force Kaz to drink if he wasn’t up to it, but the tea usually soothed them both back to sleep when they had a bad dream.

“I think so,” he replied softly. Something was off about him but Nina couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Her powers had changed so much since she had taken the parem, so much so that she barely knew how to interact with other people now that she didn’t have the natural benefit of her Corporalki powers. Luckily, she had been together and married to her partners for long enough that she could read them decently even without the ability to sense their heart rates without thinking about it.

She carefully placed the lid back on the tin without taking one of the cookies for herself. Her husband was acting strange enough that the idea of taking one of his favorite treats made her skin crawl. She tucked the tin back up into the cupboard and then sat down in front of him. That gave Kaz the ability to reach out and touch her if he wanted, but didn’t force him to if he was feeling overstimulated like she suspected. “Kaz, what’s going on?”

“Can you still feel heartbeats if you focus? Without relapsing?” he asked instead of answering her question.

Nina felt even more unsteady than she had before. The distance in his eyes and the hunch of his shoulders told her that he had had a bad dream of some kind, but it wasn’t the type that usually plagued him based on the way that he wasn’t shying away from her whenever her dressing gown brushed against him in their small kitchen. She also knew that he never brought up her powers because he didn’t want to send her back down into the near-depressive spiral that had been triggered when she had gone back to Ravka and was unable to get her powers back to what they were before.

She took a deep breath as she told herself that whatever was going on with Kaz wasn’t something that required her to panic quite yet. She was sure that he would explain himself in time, he always did. “I can sense heartbeats without wanting more parem. I think that it has something to do with my ability to control the dead. They aren’t really dead if their heart is still beating,” she chuckled to try and lighten in the mood but the only thing that it did was make several watery tears raise in her husband’s eyes.

That by itself was rather terrifying and her heart began to beat a million miles a minute in her chest. She wasn’t sure what the dream had been or why it was upsetting her lover so much, but she wasn’t quite sure that she wanted to figure it out yet.

Kaz reached out before she could ask any more questions. Her breath hitched in her throat when she felt the callouses on the tips of his fingers from too may hours holding a lockpick brushing against her wrist. Her arm moved so that it was out straight and her hand was flat against the base of Kaz’s stomach, her fingertips just barely brushing against his hipbone. “Do you feel anything?”

It clicked in her brain then, what he was asking of her. 

She glanced towards the calendar and suddenly it made sense. She kept a little red circle that would be filled in so that she could keep track of her cycles, just in case her powers began to interfere with the natural way that her body worked. She had noticed that a blue version of the system had joined her when Inej had come back and then a black one had started to show up two months after that.

That month her dot was right beside Inej’s, but the black was still unfilled. Nina took a deep breath as she turned back to Kaz and asked, “Do you think that you’re pregnant?”

“I wouldn’t be asking you to search of a heartbeat in my belly if I wasn’t, Zenik,” he growled. “I do know basic human anatomy.”

She didn’t respond to his goading this time. Usually when he said something like that it was because he wanted to fight with her and then they would end up falling into each other with teeth and tongues and grabbing hands. This time he was saying it because he was scared, which was understandable if what he thought was happening really was.

Nina moved so that she was kneeling in front of him. She placed both of her hands on his lower belly and then let her eyes fall closed so that she could focus on what he had asked her to do. After she had recovered from the drug, it was harder for her to sense heartbeats, it was much easier for her to feel when there was the absence of one.

Still, she was going to work as hard as she could so that she could meet her husband’s request. She focused on pulling at that dark, empty place inside of her that had been left after the fall. She let out a low breath when the echo was returned to her with nothing, the same way that corpses did. 

At the end of the day, no matter what she did, she was still a criminal and a spy. That meant that she was usually very used to having to say hard things to people and was very sharp-tongued. This time, when she tilted her head up so that she could look at her husband, all of the words that were swirling in her mind had completely disappeared. “What other symptoms have you been feeling, love?” she asked, not moving her hands.

“Don’t stall, just tell me the answer,” Kaz replied bitterly. She could tell by the dark look in his eyes that he already knew what it was going to be before she even said anything.

“I can’t feel a heartbeat. I think that you were definitely pregnant but the only thing I can feel is…” she trailed off, unable to say anything. This was the third time that Kaz had conceived that they knew of and the third time that they had lost the baby before they even had the chance to grow. She wasn’t sure what that was doing her spouse if he felt even half as heavy as she did.

She watched the sharpness in his dark eyes dull slightly. Nina kissed his forehead as she pulled her hands away from him, forcing thoughts of a happy pregnancy into her mind to stave off the sadness for a while. She handed him the tea that had finished steeping and then sat with him until the rest of their partners could get up and help her take care of their husband.

---

4. Matthias 

After three miscarriages from unknown conceptions in four years, Kaz had finally told them that he was pregnant. 

They had all been absolutely overjoyed and nearly exploded all over him when Wylan put together the words found in the notes that Kaz had left all of them in a song. They all knew that the next several months were going to be spent treating Kaz enough like glass to soothe their own worries while not enough that he would snap at them.

Matthias was very careful when he opened the backdoor to their home before he reminded himself that Koshak had gone with Inej and Nina to Ravka. He closed the door tightly behind himself and then walked further into the house. He dumped his exercise equipment where it belonged in the mudroom before he stepped into the kitchen. He was searching through one of the cupboards for his favorite cup so that he could have some water when he felt another body press up against his back. A while ago, that would have made him feel so aggressively overstimulated that he wouldn’t have been able to handle it. Enough time had passed that he knew that it was his husband and what was going to happen.

An ungloved hand pressed onto one of his shoulders while lips kissed at the other. Kaz rasped, “You’re going to drive me insane.”

“That was certainly not my intention, karaste,” Matthias chuckled. He turned around and his hands easily settled down onto his husband’s hips to bring him closer. “I was simply giving you a show to keep you entertained.”

“Well I can think of something else that I would prefer entertain me,” Kaz grinned. Now that they were facing each other, he let his bare hand slowly trail down Matthias’ shoulder and abs down to where his pants were barely clinging to his hips.

The taller of the two men resisted the urge to grin maniacally. That was exactly what he had wanted to happen when he went outside to workout that morning. He could barely contain himself as he reached out and took hold of Kaz’s hips, which gave him the ability to lean down and connect their lips in a very passionate kiss.

Carefully, he let his hands slip around the back of Kaz’s hips so that his palms were pressed to the perky ass hidden beneath another pair of perfectly tailored trousers. He gave a cheeky squeeze before he let himself continue down to hold onto Kaz’s thighs. The other was able to pick up on what he was doing almost immediately, so Matthias lifted his partner up into the air and then turned them around so that he could place his husband down onto the counter. The kiss didn’t break even for a second while he was doing that, both of them meeting together over and over again.

He only stopped when he could feel himself beginning to get lightheaded from the effort that it took to keep the kisses going without taking a breath. “Is it okay if I fuck you right here?”

Usually Matthias was a lot more chaste when he spoke about sex, years of repression and purity culture telling his mind that it was indecent to say such things even though he was already going against those teachings by being married to so many people at once. He was riled up enough that he could barely think about the teachings that had been enforced in him for as long as he could remember, though.

“Of course it is. I would have waited for you to come find me in the bedroom if I was having a bad pain day,” Kaz snarked.

Matthias drank the words in like he was a dying man and Kaz was air. He used to hate the way that the Kerch man spoke, the vile bitterness that was pumped into every word feeling like a poison to his already fragile mind. Now he loved it more than he knew was possible. He longed for the dirty words and bitter musings whenever they were away from each other for a few hours. This time the words made him smirk. His hands moved to begin undoing the front of his husband’s pants as he said, “So ravishing me was an inevitability?”

“Of course it was. I’ve been so horny since you knocked me up that I got off in the office of the Crow Club last week,” he grumbled.

The idea of his dear husband sitting behind his desk, one gloved hand plunged down the front of his pants while lewd noises emitted from his dripping wet cunt was enough to make Matthias speed up the process. 

He nearly ripped the fabric when it wasn’t getting off of the pale thighs he wanted to sink between fast enough. Once it was finally off, his breath caught in his throat and he spent a long moment looking at the curls of neatly trimmed dark hair resting just underneath the barely changed curve of Kaz’s stomach.

“You’re not wearing anything under your trousers already? Should have made sure to knock you up when we first met,” he mumbled as he began to work on the ties of his own pants, only to find that his husband’s nimble fingers had already taken care of that. He was sure not to mention the pregnancies that they had lost on the way to getting to where they were now, since it would kill the mood immediately.

“Shit, if I had known that me getting knocked up would have made you this horny I would have let you,” Kaz groaned. They both knew that it wasn’t true since they had hated each other when they first met, but neither of them were going to say that.

As soon as they were both nude from the waist down, Matthias slotted himself back between his husband’s legs again. He curved the leg with the good knee around his waist to keep him in place and then bracketed Kaz in with his hands against the counter. Their lips met in another tender kiss as he pressed forward and into his lover with practiced precision. He gasped when he felt the slick wetness and heat waiting for him with every inch that he pressed inside.

“Oh, oh fuck, Matthias,” Kaz groaned when the other man bottomed out so that he was completely full. He looked debauched already and they had only been going for a little while. It was enough to make Matthias want to go entirely feral, ripping Kaz apart with his teeth and sharp thrusts. That was going to have to wait for another time because he was going to take his time while they fucked, he had already decided that when he went outside that morning.

As soon as they had both adjusted to the new flood of sensations that were overcoming them, Matthias slowly pulled out and then pressed back in. He knew that Kaz liked to be held down against every surface and used almost like a toy when he was having his good days, but Matthias was so excited about the little potential life that had burrowed its way into the famed Dirtyhands that his thrusts were slow and worshipful.

He felt a hand reach up to his shoulder, fingernails digging into the skin and muscle there. He was worried that he was going to lose all control if Kaz ended up begging him like he always did, but his mind was immediately snapped out of that line of thought. Kaz whimpered and said, “I need you to stop.”

Matthias pulled out and took a step back from his lover almost immediately. He knew what it was like to get overwhelmed from touch without a phobia coming into play, so he could only guess how much worse it was with one. He held his hands out to the side so that Kaz could see them and knew that he wasn’t going to advance forward again.

What Matthias was met with again surprised him. Kaz looked down to the space between his legs and then let out a startled sob when he saw the sticky crimson that was beginning to spread between onto the counter.

“Love, what happened? Are you alright?” Matthias asked. He looked down and saw that his cock was also streaked with the sticky material, which reminded him of the time that Nina had started her period in the middle of them having sex. Given that Kaz was pregnant, the period was a non-option, but that meant that the blood was being caused by something else entirely.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Kaz whispered as tears began to streak down his face.

They were both aware of what was happening, they both knew it and neither of them were able to admit it out loud. Saying the words would make it all the more real and that felt more damning than the blood that was slowly seeping out of Kaz. All of their hopes and dreams were spilling in crimson, just like they had thought that they would when Matthias had a bullet lodged in his shoulder and broken aspirations in his mind.

This time, he was not the broken eighteen-year-old boy that he had been back then. He leaned forward and pressed their foreheads together. He didn’t bother to try and dress again since it would only ruin his clothing. He was going to have to strip out of it again when he got them to the bathroom. “It’s alright, it’s alright,” he murmured as he pressed gentle kisses to Kaz’s forehead.

He brought them up to the bathroom and then lowered Kaz down into the tub. He took a cloth from under the sink and washed them both off before he got Kaz a pair of the underthings that he wore when he was on his cycle so that they could track the blood, just like they had done with the last three miscarriages. 

He had just settled Kaz down into bed when the other turned to the side so that he was looking at his husband. Matthias felt his heart break a thousand times over in his chest and he had to ask, “Did I do this?”

“No, I was having cramps yesterday. I assumed that it was normal, I lasted so much longer than I had with all of the other ones,” Kaz whispered. “I broke the hopes of everyone again… you were all so excited to finally be parents.”

Matthias realized he shouldn’t have brought up his own guilt to the person that was going through the most pain in the situation. He brushed Kaz’s hair to the side with a slightly trembling hand and said, “It will happen, Kaz. One day we will have a child. No one is going to blame you for what happened, it was simply not the right time.”

---

5. Wylan

He didn’t work in his lab as much as he did before. Despite his rampant protestations to the contrary, Wylan did like making bombs and whatever other chemical compound Kaz required for his newest job. The compounds made sense and the rush of being able to control that much destruction was enough to make him forget about the weakness that had been assigned to him for so much of his life. With the combination of his Merchant responsibilities and having as many high-maintenance partners as he did, he barely got the time to spend with the bombs as he used to.

Today was one of the rare times that he was basically alone in the mansion, while also having no work to do for the empire that he had inherited from his father. That meant that he got to do what he pleased, and this time he chose to experiment with some of the powders and chemicals that Kaz had gotten him for his birthday. Nina and Matthias were meeting with some of her old teachers in the Embassy, Jesper and Inej were staking out a new brothel that they were working to take down, and Kaz was going back and forth between the house and his clubs for business meetings. Wylan missed his partners, but he was excited that he got that time by himself.

He heard the door behind him open slightly and assumed that it was Koshak since the cat hated being alone. Inej had originally gotten him to keep the mice out of her vessel, but she became very attached to her little companion. They were in the process of socializing the creature with dogs so that Matthias could have a pet of his own.

He turned his head and then startled slightly when he saw that it was not, in fact, his wife’s cat but rather one of his husbands. Kaz was standing in the doorway to Wylan’s laboratory with a rather pained looked on his face. His suit was still immaculate, tailored lines making him look angular and dangerous in a way that got them all very riled up. He had his gloves securely on over his hands even though they were back in their own home, which meant that it was one of the days were he was feeling too overwhelmed for even his partners to touch him. He was also leaning very heavily on his cane.

“Kaz!” Wylan gasped, adrenaline rushing through his system from seeing a figure much bigger than what he had been expecting. He set down the vials that he had been toying with and then stripped off his work gloves. He also removed the goggles that were not serving a purpose other than keep his red-brown curls out of his eyes. “I thought that you were going to be working today.”

“I was,” he replied. His voice was tight, like he was hiding something that was upsetting him.

Wylan carefully brushed his hands off on the cloth that had been resting next to his chemicals on his work table. He didn’t technically need to be doing that because what he had been working with wasn’t that dangerous and he was wearing gloves when the was touching it, but it gave him something to do. He always struggled to figure out how to move around Kaz when either of them were too overstimulated to be touched. He understood the emotion since he had experienced it enough himself, but he was so awkward and malformed when it came to being in a relationship with anyone.

“Oh,” he nodded. Something about the energy of the room had changed when his husband entered. It was making him feel a lot more like he did when Jesper first came to get him from the tannery so that he could make bombs for them for the job that they did in Ravka. His stomach was tied up in knots and his hands were beginning to get shaky with worry. “Um, not that I don’t love being around you, but why are you here?” He did adore his partner almost more than life itself, but it was rare for Kaz to come all the way up to Wylan’s lab and even rarer for him to come in and then stay there.

Kaz walked from where he had been standing near the doorway to the little seating area that Wylan had next to his worktable. It was supposed to be so that he had more places to sit down when he was being flighty, but Jesper and Nina primarily used it to take meals with him when he was too distracted to come down to the dining room for dinner. Slowly, the man lowered himself down into the seat, though Wylan was unable to miss the wince on his face.

“D-do you need more pain meds?” he asked as he fluttered over to the edge of the table. Something had shifted in his husband so that Kaz felt almost completely unrecognizable to who he had been that morning, his face unreadable and his body language stiff.

“I’m not sure that I can have medication in my present condition,” he replied, tilting his head down towards his lap so that he didn’t have to meet Wylan’s eyes.

The cryptic way that he was speaking was enough to get the other man to pause. The anxiety began to drain from his system now that he had a puzzle that he could help riddle out. He set the cloth that he had been grasping down next to him and then settled himself at the table. He traced one of the grains in the table just so that he wouldn’t have to look up at his husband as he asked, “Are you pregnant?”

“I might not be for much longer, unless you have something to help me,” he said, his voice rasping even more since he was speaking quietly.

Wylan’s mind stopped and then jumped to the next thought all at once, so quickly that he almost gave himself whiplash. The thought of them getting another chance at being parents when the last pregnancy that had been announced to them had ended far before its time was exciting. He was also terrified of the idea that Kaz was expecting out of the three members of their polycule because he was the one that had been through the most out of them all concerning that kind of loss. It took him a moment to process the fact that Kaz had just admitted that he was pregnant after the fight that he had with Inej the morning before when she had asked him. He then finally caught up to the present when he realized that Kaz was asking him to make something that would chemically stop another miscarriage.

“Oh, love,” he whispered. He wanted to reach across the table so that he could take his spouse’s hand but he knew that it wasn’t the day for that. “I… I’ve never heard of something that can stop a body from rejecting a pregnancy. I don’t think that I have the stuff to make it even if I had.”

“Then just the painkiller is fine. Leave it outside of my room when you finish,” Kaz said briskly. He pushed himself up from the desk and silently walked out of the room, leaning even heavier onto his cane than he had before. 

Wylan didn’t take it personally. He had seen Kaz go through four miscarriages before and knew the drill at this point. Even if Kaz was simply anticipating losing the baby before he actually had, he was going to be going through that same cycle of grief that he had every time before. Wylan got up so that he could move aside the explosives that he had been working with so that he could get make what was asked of him.

By the time that he was able to get the bottle up to his husband, there was a pair of blood stained pants sitting on top of Kaz’s dresser with his husband curled around a hot water bottle. The pain reliever was the only thing that he could do to help, so after he dropped off the first batch he went downstairs back to his lab so that he could make another.

---

+1 Kaz

He thought that his partners were never actually going to pack up and leave. They all had something that they were supposed to be doing out of the house that day. Normally that would bother him, but today he wanted them gone. He also knew where they were all going and was sure that they would send someone back to the house to tell him if plans changed so that he could find them if he had need. 

Matthias was going to be visiting a local breeder so that he could pick out a puppy or work with the dogs, whichever ended up working out best for him. Wylan had a meeting with a couple of interested investors but nothing serious enough that he had to bring someone else along. Nina was going to be spending some time with the friends that she had made while working at the White Rose, which meant that she was going to be coming home with a new dress. Inej and Jesper were going out on their monthly date to their favorite cafe and then likely to a bookstore so that Inej could pick something new out for her upcoming voyage. Kaz himself was supposed to be heading into work so that he could finish up the tax paperwork for the new Barrel empire that he had been shaping up since the day before.

He knew that wasn’t going to happen. He had been trying to get as much work done as possible before what inevitably was going to happen ended up happening, though it was turning out to be a little different than he had expected.

Kaz hadn’t necessarily meant to keep his pregnancy a secret from his partners. He also hadn’t meant to tell them about it, but he was half expecting someone to force it out of him. Inej had known every other time he had ended up pregnant, sometimes even before he did, afterall. He wasn’t not telling them about his pregnancy out of some sort of malice, but rather because he was terrified of seeing the disappointment on their faces when he miscarried again.

He had been pregnant five times before and none of them had even lasted long enough for him to pass something that resembled a baby when he started miscarrying. Every single time that had happened, he had to deal with the sorrowful looks that his partners wore when they tried to take care of him and the grief that they carried about the disappointment he had handed them. He wasn’t sure that he would be able to handle that again, and so he had actively worked to keep his pregnancy hidden as soon as he noticed that he had missed one of his cycles.

It had started while Inej was out on her ship, which meant that the person most likely to notice that something was off with him was gone. It had been easier to hide the cravings and increase in appetite, especially since he didn’t have any morning sickness. The exhaustion and increase in libido had been harder to pass off but Jesper and Nina were excited enough to nap with or fuck him that they were able to subsconsciously help the others brush it away as well.

He found that even when he passed from the first trimester into the second, his body hadn’t changed all that much. He had put on a bit of weight but blamed it all on Matthias’ increase in baking to put off his stress about getting a new dog soon. Even when Kaz finally got to the blessed third trimester, his belly had only swelled ever so slightly. He had regressed back into not letting his partners touch him more than a few brief kisses or hand holding when he got to that point because he knew that if they felt his belly they would feel the butterfly-wing movements of the baby inside of him or the rounded nature of his torso.

Kaz really had meant to tell them when he finally passed the first trimester. He had been secretly seeing a midwife to make sure that everything in the pregnancy was going smoothly and she had informed him that was when the ‘danger zone’ passed. He had meant to tell them for the last five months, but every time he opened his mouth to say it all he could see was blood covering his underthings and their sad faces.

So he had kept it a secret, trying to figure out ways that he could explain the sudden appearance of a child that none of them had known he was carrying or find another way that was easier to inform them of their upcoming parenthood. Nothing had come up and now he feared that it was too late, though he was also in denial about that.

He had gone to bed the night before feeling a tiny bit out of sorts. It was mostly a foggy head and vague cramping in his stomach, but that also could have been because he had no appetite that entire day and had thus barely eaten anything. When he woke up the next morning he had felt even stranger than he had when he went to sleep, but he wasn’t willing to show any of those symptoms until his partners had finally left.

Once he was alone, he slipped from his bed and walked to the mirror hanging in the corner of his room. He looked himself over to make sure that he was presentable and his belly wasn’t noticeable in the suit that he had had chosen for his meetings that day as he got ready to head down to the club. For a reason beyond him, he was still planning to go to work despite his anxiety around his pregnancy the night before.

He got to the top of the stairs that would lead down to the rest of the house before he had to stop. It was an almost overwhelming feeling when he finally let his brain process what was happening. There was a stark pressure building up along his spine before it spread out through the rest of his hips so that it was hugging his entire pelvis. It shifted into bone-shattering pain only when it wrapped around the front of his stomach.

It wasn’t the first time that he had a contraction, he had several practice ones that the midwife he was seeing had warned him about. They were very similar to what had happened when he was miscarrying but more intense. The contraction that he was currently experiencing was like the practice ones had been ramped up to ten and like the cramps he had with his other five pregnancies times twenty.

It left him winded and leaning on his cane so that he didn’t sink down to the ground. When his mind finally returned to him, the only thing that he could think about was the panic he had felt when he realized that he was losing his pregnancies the last several times that he had conceived. All he could think about was blood and gore and the sorrow that came with knowing that he was too bad and too monstrous to actually bring good life into the world.

He decided against going into work that day. He turned around and slowly made his way back to his bedroom so that he could change into a fresh pair of sleep things. He laid down on the bed with his back propped up with half of the pillows they kept spread out on the master bed. He wasn’t sure what was happening but he knew that he had to be in the safest place that they had in their entire house.  

About seven minutes had passed before he got another one of the pains. By that point, his panic had ceded enough that he was able to realize what was happening. It made him anxious to think that he could be in labor before he had the chance to tell his partners that he was even pregnant, but the thing that scared him more was the fact that it was about a month too early.

He had heard of babies being born early and then nursed into full health by their parents, but he had also heard of babies that were born looking raw and red and without breath because they were far too small. Part of him was worried that he had gotten his dates wrong even though the midwife had assured him that everything was alright. He didn’t know what was going to be waiting for him at the end of his labor, but he did know that he was going to be facing everything alone.

Kaz relaxed back into the bed and tried to keep his mind about him so that he didn’t lose himself when his child needed him. His thoughts eventually began to drift over the past few months as he started mourning the things that he could have shared with his partners, the things that he had denied both them and himself from having with his own fear. 

He could have been worshiped and waited on the same way that Alys had been when they kidnapped her by Matthias, who was always eager to cherish them. He could have told Nina about his cravings and had her fatten him up even more with her delicious cooking. He could have sat with Inej in front of him while she rubbed that oil that her parents had brought them when they heard that they were trying for a family during one of their visits. He could have slept in Jesper’s arm as the zowa sang Kaelish nursery rhymes to his belly. He could have sat with Wylan while they both worked, helping each other get thing squared away so that they could enjoy the first couple of months with their baby without the panic of work on top of it. He could have watched Matthias build the baby’s first cradle. He could have spent days with Wylan discussing traditional Kerch names. He could have cuddled with Inej while they both napped during her adjustment back from sea life. He could have taken long walks with Nina in the garden while she told him all about the place that she had come from. He could have watched Jesper struggle to make their child’s first soother.

But he had denied himself and them all of those things because he had been too afraid to tell them that he was pregnant simply because he didn’t want to let them down again. By refusing to give them that disappointment, he had offered himself another by keeping the baby a secret to himself.

He was basically writhing on the bed by the time that the noonday sun began to creep over the slanted rooves of Ketterdam. He had started crying while imagining how his pregnancy would have gone if he had trusted that information to his partners, and he hadn’t been able to stop when the pains overcame him.

Kaz had tried to stand up and sway against the bed like his midwife had encouraged when they had talked about what would happen while he gave birth. He found that whatever position his little one had taken was playing games with his hip and he was basically imobile from it, so was stuck in the bed. 

Eventually he was overcome with a rush of energy and had to move around. He grabbed his cane and began to pace up and down the hall while leaning heavily on it and the wall on the other side. He paused every time that he had a contraction, letting his head rest on the cool plaster. It was one of the only things that brought him any relief. His entire body felt hotter than a fever, but without the cool sweats that made him feel clammy. His stomach was clenching around the nothing that he had eaten and his mouth was dry with panic. His hand couldn’t stop moving to his stomach when he was having a contraction, trying to feel any movement from the baby that would reassure him that they were okay.

“Shit, shit, shit,” he swore as he leaned heavily against the wall when a particularly strong contraction chose that exact moment to try and make him feel horrible. He leaned so heavily against the wall that he was basically sliding down it. But then there was the feeling of relief that came whenever the pain left him, right before something splashed along the floor and soaked through his pants.

He stared down at his toes that were now soaked with clear fluid, blinking a couple times when the only thing that his brain was able to bring up was blood and viscera.

His labor was steadily progressing now, even though it was a month early and he was completely alone. He certainly wouldn’t be seen walking the streets of Ketterdam while moving into the second stage of labor and he had no one that he could send to his midwife, not that any of them would know where she was working. His water breaking only confirmed the thing that he had half been denying, so he stripped off his pants and his smalls and left them in the hallway over the top of the puddle because he didn’t have the energy or ability to lean down and clean it up properly.

When he got back to his room, he continued his pacing. He was restless, almost like a caged animal in the back of a zoo or a royal palace. He was surrounded by gold and opulence but he didn’t have the one thing that he really needed, companionship.

After his water had broken his labor began to progress even faster than it had before. He could barely walk at all now that the pains were coming less than five minutes apart. He knew what it was to be so sick that pain was the only thing that he felt, and he had been scared that labor would be similar to that every time he had gotten pregnant. Now that he was in the midst of it, he knew that the sensations were completely different and the only thing that he could see in his mind’s eye was his babe.

Kaz hiked himself up onto the bed when his knee began to scream at him, informing him that the pacing had to stop if he wanted to be able to walk normally for the next week. He wasn’t sure that he would be able to do that regardless, but he was okay with laying down because he was beginning to get tired. He leaned back against the pillows that smelled like his partners, allowing his brain to drift off into the thought of them surrounding him like he so desperately wanted.

“Shit, fuck, ow,” he swore when he felt the babe he had been secretly carrying begin to shift lower down inside of him. It was only just then dawning on him that it was all real and happening right then, and that he had no control over it. Fear overwhelmed him so that his breathing was rapid and his heart felt like it was trying to break through is ribcage. He could barely stop the tears that were running down his face as he grasped at the bedsheets with his ungloved hands. He wanted his parents, his brother, his spouses, anyone to be there with him and reassure him that he was going to be okay.

The urge to push started to overwhelm him just as the day began to creep into evening, which was when his partners were allegedly going to be coming home. Inej and Jesper were likely going to come home last unless one of them got worn out. Wylan and Matthias were both a toss up about when they were arriving, but Kaz was honestly surprised that Nina wasn’t back yet.

As soon as he felt the urge he knew that he had to give into it. He was usually so good about controlling his body and what it did that it wasn’t a concern what he wanted, just what he had to do. This time there was no question about what he was going to do, so he placed both of his hands on the top of the headboard and began to push so hard that his body curled forward over his tiny baby bump.

When the urge passed and he had no more strength, he collapsed back against the bed and panted so that he could get desperately needed air. He could feel his arms shaking with the force that it took to keep himself in one place.

He was so tired and so scared. The only thing that he wanted was his partners by his side, to tell him that he was doing well and give him their strength. The images of a happy, gurgling baby and happy spouses interacting with their firstborn had been replaced by angry faces and a limp body. It only served to scare him more. He wanted to go back and correct all of the mistakes that had made, to tell them that he was pregnant so at least he wouldn’t have to go through the traumatic loss of his sixth baby on his own.

He knew that he couldn’t hand them the pain of having missed his pregnancy and helping him through a stillbirth instead of a miscarriage. He hadn’t given them any of the joy of seeing the minute changes of his body as their baby grew or letting them feel the baby move, so he didn’t deserve the comfort they would provide him. The thought of not getting to have them made a pain erupt in his chest that was more intense than even his contractions.

His attention was brought back to his labor and his baby when another contraction wrapped around his belly. He grunted as he leaned forward and pushed as hard as he could to try and make as much progress as he could. He felt the baby inside of him slowly moving down further into the birth canal. 

His mind began to scream at him to call for help so that he at least had someone else with him when he heard the door at the front of their home open. He could tell by the pace of the footsteps that it was Matthias, but he was walking slower than he normally did. The part of Kaz’s mind that was always looking for the most information he could get to help keep him safe was able to process the fact that he had a dog with him. He had to physically bite the insides of his cheeks until he tasted hot, coppery blood seeping from his tongue and gums to resist the urge to call out to him. He wasn’t going to ruin the happiness that Matthias had just earned by getting another canine companion with a dead baby.

A sob escaped Kaz’s mouth when he leaned back against the bed so that he could try to catch his breath again. He felt almost as if he were drowning, like he was never actually going to be able to overcome the agony that he was in while trying to birth a human.

He could hear Matthias moving to the living room, his deep voice reverberating through the home while he talked to his new companion. Kaz briefly wondered if he would talk to his child that same way but with different affectionate nicknames, or if he would want to speak to them like an adult. 

The contractions kept relentlessly coming and Kaz kept pushing. He heard the door open again before he had made any more progress and then Nina’s voice joined in with Matthias. They were both laughing and shouting at each other and the dog, but in the way that meant they were overly excited and had lost the ability to control their volume instead of being upset with one another.

Kaz’s entire body was shaking with the force he was exerting to not only birth their child but to hold himself back from calling out to them. He could almost feel the way that Matthias would hold him in his strong arms, helping him bend forward. He could almost feel Nina’s calm hands moping the sweat that was running down his forehead off of him. He wanted them so badly that his entire chest felt hollow with the ache and yet he refused to let himself have it.

He had to move to make more progress, so he painfully raised himself onto his hands and knees and then into a squatting position while grasping the rails of the headboard to support himself. “Please, baby, please,” he begged, though at this point he had thoroughly convinced himself that the lack of movement meant that he had once again lost his child. He wanted to wail and scream in pain as he pushed down hard enough to get the head to come to his opening, spreading him wide so that all of the nerves down there burned with the fire of nothing he had ever felt before.

When he gasped and stopped pushing, surprised by the pain, all of the progress he had just made left. He felt like crying when he felt the sliver of his baby’s head slip back into him. His entire body was quivering with effort and aching with hurt but he was going to get no relief. He must have pushed without any change for about ten minutes before he got the entire head to crown. He had collapsed down so that he was kneeling instead of squatting at that point, but he released one of his shaking hands from the headboard so that he could touch the slimy, blood-covered downy hair on the top of his baby’s head.

His heart was already mourning the loss of the child once he did, he knew that it was temporary. This baby was not going to last, just as the other one’s hadn’t. He was doomed to never create anything good, to be a monster that could only bring forth pain and misery. He knew that Inej and Nina would tell him that he was being stupid, that Wylan would reassure him that he could make great things happen, that Jesper would give him that sad look, and that Matthias would just kiss his forehead and say that demons did not look like him. He wanted them with him so badly, but he knew that he couldn’t have them no matter how badly he wanted it.

That pain was amplified to the point that he started crying again when he heard the door open. He wanted the others to be waiting for Wylan so that they could tell him the happy news, that they were moments away from being parents, but instead he had to listen to them ask him about work as if Kaz were an intruder in his own house. He knew that he had to be quieter now that one of the more aware people had returned. Nina was a spy and could hear things easier, as was Inej, but Wylan had had to listen for his father and danger at all times so was more attuned to noises than the rest of the polycule was.

He was trying to push while staying absolutely silent, but he almost felt like the effort that he was expending on keeping himself quiet meant that he was making less progress than he had before. He was in so much pain, he just wanted the entire process to be over with. He couldn’t move out of the position that he was in despite the red hot burning pain that was spreading through his body from where his knee had been bent for too long.

On the floor below, the door opened and his last two partners came home. Everyone that he loved and cherished that was still loving was now in his home and he had no way to reach out to them for help. He knew that he could scream and shout and they would come running, but the pain was swirling together with the panic in his brain so that he felt so vulnerable he thought that he would disintegrate into nothing. He also couldn’t ruin the joy that Jesper and Inej had brought with them, both of them laughing happily. It was the laugh that he could get drunk on, the one that made him feel safe and warm and happy, the one that he would sooner kill himself than cause to disappear.

He was certain that forcing Inej to see him go through another grisly, bloody loss like the one he was sure he was about to face would be enough to strip the rest of the joy from her life. So he kept his jaw clenched so tight that he was going to crack his teeth and kept pushing to try and finish the ugly process that he was embarking on.

Kaz gave a grunt of discomfort as he pushed again and the head slipped entirely from him and into his waiting hand. He kept it there while he shifted positions so that he was laying back against the bed. He wracked his mind with the panic of a man being hunted for sport while he tried to remember everything that the midwife had said about that stage of the delivery.

Finally, he was able to connect what it was and ran his fingers around the base of the baby’s neck to check for the cord. There was nothing, but he was given the overwhelming sensation of feeling their little face for the first time. His hand moved almost reverently down across a tiny nose and a little puckered mouth, then two eyes that were still closed.

He was barely aware of the sounds out in the hall where he had left his bottoms when his water broke and then hurried footsteps coming towards his office. He jumped slightly when he heard two doors bang open and his partners calling his name throughout their massive house. He had to ignore it as the urge to push overwhelmed him again and he had to listen to it. He kept his hand underneath the head of the baby as he let out a small, strangled noise.

The door to the grand bedroom opened just as he gave a final push and the baby was born. He was quivering like a leaf in the world’s worst storm, his hair was caked to his forehead with sweat, and fluids from the delivery a babe were now covering his bottom half and their bed. He could barely think about any of that as he held his tiny little one in his hand and stared straight ahead at his partners.

Inej was leading the charge with Nina right behind her, peaking over her shoulder at what was happening. Wylan was standing beside Inej with his face as pale as paper and his mouth covered with one of his delicate hands. Jesper was holding onto Matthias like he was going to fall over, his eyes as wide as saucers. 

“What is that?” Jesper asked, astounded and terrified.

“A baby,” Kaz replied weakly. There were no cries, no movement from the little limp body in his hands. He had known that it was coming, but it was still too much. He didn’t know how he was supposed to handle the overwhelming surge of energy in the room when his partners had piled into the space and the death of the fist baby that had actually been able to hold.

“Kaz-” Inej started.

She was cut off by their wife shoving past her and into the room. Nina stopped by the edge of the bed and then carefully reached down so that she was holding the baby. “Matthias, go and get me some hot water from the tap in the kitchen. Wylan, I need you to find as many towels as possible. Inej get me the suture kit,” she commanded as she took the baby. She sounded every bit the trained soldier that she had been when they first met her.

“She’s not crying, Nina, she’s not crying,” Kaz sobbed. He had lost so many people before, and yet he hadn’t known that it was possible to experience grief like the kind that was currently washing over him. There would have been a time that he wouldn’t have thought twice about a dead baby in the streets, just focused on his own rage. It was so different when it was his own child, the one that he had longed for with his entire heart and soul.

“Shh, shh, it’s okay. Babies take a little bit of time to perk up sometimes,” Nina soothed easily. She knelt down on the edge of the bed so that the cord didn’t have to stretch between Kaz and the baby quite as much as before. She then placed one of her fingers into the baby’s mouth with a scooping motion towards her little throat. 

The entire house went completely silent as they heard the tiniest cough and then the shrill cry of a baby who had been through something terrifying. 

Wylan had stopped in the doorway, his pale face flush with exertion as he looked on to their eldest daughter taking her first deep breaths. Inej had returned with the suture kit and was smiling so wide that her cheeks had to hurt. Downstairs, Matthias could be heard whooping loudly as he no doubt cued in to what that sound meant. Jesper let out a little broken noise as he staggered over to the edge of the bed and looked down at the tiny face of their babe. 

“There we are, there we are,” Nina crooned as she carefully cradled the newborn in her arms. “Kaz, we’ve gotta put her on your chest while we get everything settled out. Are you okay with that?”

“Please,” he nodded so quickly and eagerly that his head actually dizzy because of it. He barely registered what was happening when he got pushed forward by Jesper’s calloused hands so that they could remove the shirt from his pale body, which revealed the tiny bump that he had been sporting in secrets for months. Neither of his present partners said anything about it as Nina carefully moved the newborn so that she was laying against Kaz’s chest.

His entire world shrank down to her like he knew that it would if he ever got the chance to have an actual child. She was grimy with mucus, blood, and vernix, but she was so utterly perfect that he couldn’t believe that she was really there. Her skin was as pale as his had been, but there was the chance that it could darken as she got older. Her tiny body was still curled into a tight ball against his skin even though she had already been born. Her little legs were tucked up into her stomach and he could feel the feet that had been battering his kidneys for months pressed against his lower belly with ten perfect little toes in a line. Her arms were close to her face, wiping at herself while she cried. She had wispy black hair and likely blue eyes, but those were also things that would change when she moved out of the newborn stage. Even the idea that she would eventually move out of that phase of her life sent a thrill of joy throughout his body.

“I’ve got you, Papa’s got you,” he whispered quietly to the newborn now cradled in his arms. She soothed when she felt the vibration of his voice against her tiny body, likely remembering it from when she was inside of him only moments prior.

“Love, this is very important, have you been going to see a midwife?” Nina asked. She had taken the suture kit from Inej so that she could tie the cord off in two spots and then cut it, which allowed Wylan to carefully take the newborn so that he could wash her with the warm water Matthias had just brought upstairs in their biggest pot.

“Yeah,” Kaz nodded sleepily. His entire body ached like nothing else, but he knew that he was safe because his partners were there and his baby was crying.

“Thank the Saints,” Jesper whispered from the spot that he had taken up behind his husband. Kaz barely even remembered him moving back there but he was so happy that he had. He wished that was the place that Jesper could have been during his entire labor and birth process. “Hate to think about the pain you might have gone through all on your own if you actually hadn’t told anybody.”

“I’m sorry,” Kaz whispered morosely. He was, truly and deeply. He had wanted them to share the moments of his pregnancy that he had rejoiced after, but he had let fear reign over him the same way that he had after Jordie’s death. He whimpered and shied away from his own body when he felt another small cramp and then something wet and slippery move out of him. 

Nina soothed him with a gentle hand on his knee. “Just the afterbirth love. The entire thing is out now so this is really over. I’m going to check to make sure you didn’t tear anything too badly and then have Nej sew you up,” she explained. The two woman worked in tandem like a well-oiled machine as they got him fixed.

As soon as they had finished, Jesper’s lanky arms wrapped around his knees and his back as they shuffled towards the edge of the bed. “Come on, my love, we’re going to get you into something clean. Do you want a bath?”

The idea of having to be submerged into water after thinking that he was to be surrounded by death in the same way almost made him vomit. He focused on swallowing down the bile and giving his head a strict shake. “Okay, no bath,” Jesper said softly. Instead, he settled his lover down on the chest at the end of their bed. Matthias and Wylan worked together so that they could strip the bed and replace the sheets with the emergency set that they kept just under the frame. Kaz felt bad for ruining such expensive items with his ignorance of just how messy birth was, but he could barely focus on that. 

Jesper took a wet towel and began in the messiest part of his lover. He cleaned off the blood that was caked between his legs, along with all the fluids that had dribbled through his smalls when his water broke. As soon as he had done that, Inej appeared with a pair of the period smalls that belonged to him. She and Jesper worked together to get Kaz’s hips tilted up enough that they could slip the garment over his wrecked body. They were soft and compressive enough that he felt grounded, to the point where he began listening for the sounds of his baby.

Kaz had turned his head to the side so that he could look for the newborn girl while Jesper finished up his work, ridding Kaz of the sweat that was sticking to his skin. He smiled and relaxed softly when he saw Nina speaking delicately to the baby in hushed tones that he couldn’t hear from his distance as she got the makeshift nappy pinned into place.

He was dressed in a soft pair of cotton pants and then one of his sleep shirts before he was placed back down onto their blissfully clean bed. The others were still whirling around the room as they got into the process of soaking the blood and fluids out of the sheets, as well as disposing of the suture kit that they had used to clean him up. He could barely pay attention to any of that as his body finally got the chance that it needed to relax.

His world turned miniscule again when his daughter was carefully placed back into his arms. Nina knelt beside the bed so that she was looking over her husband’s shoulder at the baby. “She’s going to need to be fed. Are you comfortable with doing that?”

Despite the panic that he still got at times when his own partners touched him, there was something different about having his baby pressed up against his warm skin. He hypothesized, in the back of his very tired mind, that it was because she was a part of him. He had wanted her so desperately when she was growing in the safety of his belly that all he could think about was how much he wanted to keep her safe. The lapping of water at his ankles wasn’t something that even crossed his mind.

“I can do that,” he mumbled. Awkwardly, he shuffled forward so that he could lift up his shirt and help his babe find his nipple. By the time that she had gotten the hang of suckling and was greedily drinking down her first meal, everyone else had finished what they were doing. Inej and Wylan were sitting at the end of the bed, their hands clasped together but every other part of their body separated from the other. Jesper and Matthias had made their way up onto the bed so that they bracketed Kaz and their baby in, keeping them both safe from the outside world. Nina was fussing slightly but eventually got dragged down into the bed by their husband so that she also had to be still.

“Why didn’t you tell us, Kaz?” Inej asked, her voice small and slightly scared. Kaz wasn’t sure what she wanted the answer to be or what she was expecting, but he was so tired that the only thing he could say was the truth.

“I wanted to. I wanted to tell you all the second I noticed that my cycle was a week late, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t bear the thought of you all getting to excited about the potential to be parents just to have my body kill off that hope because nothing good can ever happen to me. I… I wanted you to be there for all the parts of the pregnancy but then I was just so scared,” he didn’t realize that he was crying until his daughter let out a tiny, fussing noise.

“Sorry, sorry baby,” he mumbled as he wiped the tear from her head. He leaned into the touch that Jesper offered to him, curling into the warmth and protection that it offered.

Wylan reached out to offer Kaz a blanket so that they could burp the baby as he said, “We’re not mad at you, Kaz. We’re all a little bit scared and shocked that this suddenly happened because I don’t think that anyone even realized that you were pregnant, but we’re not mad.”

“We could never be mad when we have this,” Matthias whispered reverently. Kaz had always known that Inej and Matthias were going to be the best parents out of all of them since they had the longest to go without trauma and the nervousness that came with everything Jesper did. It still made him feel like he was melting when he watched his husband’s huge hand brush over the top of their baby’s head, though.

The others gave a murmur of agreement. As soon as the baby had finished her first meal and been burped, he wrapped her up in the blanket that Jesper had found in between helping Kaz get cleaned up and settling into the bed. Matthias was the first to hold her, but she made her rounds with every one of her parents so that they could all meet her for the first time. Kaz kept himself awake so that he could savor those first few moments of her life, reassuring himself that she was okay every time he saw a blissfully pink nose or heard a little gurgle of discontent when she was shifted the wrong way.

She had finally landed back where she belonged in his arms when Nina asked, “What are you going to name her?”

Despite having thought about so many things when she was carefully hidden away in his belly, a name had never crossed his mind. He had so many names that were assigned to him through his life, from the one that his mother had given him to the one that he had chosen when he was five and figured out he was a boy, to the last name that he had chosen after Jordie died. “I… I like the name Posey but if any of you have something that you need to name her then we can also do that.”

“I like Posey. It’s a good Kerch name, in between the stupid upper class names and the peasant ones. Gives her opportunity to do a lot in her life,” Wylan grinned.

“Posey,” Inej whispered softly as she moved forward to look over their daughter. She placed a gentle kiss to the baby’s forehead and murmured a prayer to her, the only word of which Kaz understood being the newborn’s name.

He fell asleep with his partners carefully tucked around him and his daughter steadily breathing in her sleep. They had wanted that for so long and they finally, finally had it.

#fanfiction #fanfic #writing #ao3 #archive of our own #soc #six of crows #shadow and bone #sab #polycrows #pregnant kaz brekker #trans kaz brekker #pregnancy #tw miscarriage #tw birth #kaz brekker #jesper fahey #inej ghafa #matthias helvar #wylan van eck #nina zenik #expanding the flock fic

[anarcho-smarmyism]

"Resistance to oppression takes on the confident form of political organizing only after a certain critical mass of collective awareness of oppression, and a determination to end it, has been reached. There are always isolated individuals prefigure that awareness, who openly rebel before the oppressed community of which they are a part can offer them significant support and sustenance. These individuals -the Nat Turners of the world- are in some sense trans-historical: They have somehow never been fully socialized into the dominant ideology, into its prescriptions and limitations; they exist apart, a form of genius.

Resistance, of course, can take many forms short of open defiance. The day-to-day resistance of African-American slaves who deliberately broke their hoes, feigned illness, slowed their work pace, or ran away -and the development of vehicles, especially religion and music, to express their unique experience- may never have reached Nat Turner's level of dramatic visibility, but did nonetheless provide outlets for "refusal".

In the years before World War II, gay man and lesbians, too, developed subcultural forms of daily resistance -from Walt Whitman's encoded language of "subversiveness", to the female "support networks" that emerged with the settlement-house movement, to distinctive forms or dress, body language, and "camp" argot. . . But if the United States lagged behind Weimar Germany or Edwardian England in the pre-World War II period, the experiences of gay men and lesbians during that war went a long way toward creating the needed critical mass of consciousness in this country that could eventuate in an organized political movement. During World War II many men and women who had grown up in rural areas or small towns and had regarded themselves as singular freaks, discovered in military service legions of others who shared their sexual orientation. The experiences and bonding that followed led many gay men and lesbians to decide, after the war, against returning to their hometowns and in favor of settling down in one of the subcultural enclaves that existed in the large cities, and particularly on the two coasts. Their presence helped to fuel a proliferation of gay and lesbian bars in the post war period. . .And the bars, in turn, became primary social institutions for gay men in general and for working-class lesbians, allowing for increased contact and cooperation."

-Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBTQ Rights Uprising That Changed America by Martin Duberman

#stonewall: the definitive story #lgbt #lgbt history #queer #queer history #resistance #education multiplies power

[gatheringbones]

[“How are we showing up for each other, and how come it sometimes feels so hard to do so? The language we have to describe exhaustion in the context of coalitional political work—burnout, compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma, self-care—doesn’t quite grasp the complicated reality of working to make one another’s (deeply interwoven) lives more livable in the broader context of institutional disinvestment and systemic harassment and discrimination that produces mutually resonant forms of traumatization and triggering.

I think through how we might begin to move beyond the rhetoric of burnout and toward a logic of postscarcity in order to do justice to the methods of collective support that we have spent decades actively inventing and elaborating—and to render them more robust. This necessitates really grappling with questions of care—how we understand it, how we measure it, how we account for it.

For far too long, both hegemonic and resistant cultural imaginaries of care have depended on a heterocisnormative investment in the family as the primary locus of care. Let me use a colloquialism from my years in the South: this ain’t right. Another colloquialism: this shit is fucked.

To state the obvious: some of us have okay relationships with our families of origin, but a whole lot of us don’t. A lot of us don’t have families, full stop. We lost them somewhere along the way. They rejected us. We had to escape them in order to survive. We cobbled together some network of support, some other kind of care web, instead. We might call that a family, too—a family of choice, a family constructed through consent rather than accident and forced relation. But whatever our relationship to family—the word, the construct, the ongoing practice of building one—it’s also obvious that our ability to flourish is reliant on forms of care that outstrip the mythic purported providential reach of the family.

One thing—maybe the main thing—I’m trying to do here is think about what care actually looks like in trans lives. This means decentering the family and beginning, instead, from the many-gendered, radically inventive, and really, really exhausted weavers of our webs of care.”]

hil malatino, trans care, 2020

#hil malatino #trans literature #currently reading

[avesblues2]

The The Trans Resistance Network said that the Nashville shooter felt 'no other effective way to be seen' and I really just hope that absolutely disgusting response makes people wake up. Imagine if a Christian group said that, what the response would be.

Of course they are defending her. She targeted a christian school, it's a hate crime no doubt.

#asks

[libracorpvs]

Trans Resistance Network of the infamous statement unlocked their twitter and. what level of projection and cruelty

every time I think they can't sink lower, they do. you have to be an absolute lowlife for your reaction to one of your own killing innocent children to be this self-centred and delusional. not only did they put out a statement implying that the dead children deserved it because "hate has consequences . . . we will not be eradicated" but they're doubling down on it now! it's SO rich of them to complain about "fascists" politicising the shooting when the trans resistance network were right there turning it into a political act of vengeance for the "anti-trans" bills that were passed in Tennessee.

there's no other group on the planet who can get away with this. the death toll of the Iraq war was in the millions and we still distance ourselves from every act of terror perpetuated by any arab or muslim because it would be fucking insane to support it in the name of revenge. despite that, we're still demonised as if we were terrorists ourselves. this lot can embrace this act of terror committed in their name and the whole world will keep kissing their ass about it

#nashville #receipts #ask #thank you for sending this!

[bighermie]

#transgenderism