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queenshelby · 3 years

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The Judge’s Daughter (Part One)

Featuring: Tommy Shelby x Virgin!Reader

Words: 8,700

Warning: Angst, Blood, Gore, Mention of Suicide, Mention of Miscarriage, Drugs, Racism, Smut

Tag List:

@lilymurphy03 @deefigs @theflamecrystal @chrisevanshoeee @desperate-and-broken @weepingstudentfishhorse @captivatedbycillianmurphy @fookingshelby @livinginfantaxy @rosey1981 @atomicsoulcollecto @peakyboyslover @nerdy4itall @elenavampire21 @hanster1998 @mariapaiva13 @fairypitou @harry-is-my-sunflower @zozeebo @lauren-raines-x

………

Challenging Times

In early 1930, times were hard. The Wall Street crash in 1929 caused many men to lose their fortune. Your family had also lost money on the stock exchange. A lot of money.

Your father was a wealthy judge and now, he was just a judge. Your family home had to be sold and your father moved into a medium sized apartment in London with one of his maids.

Since your mother had passed away in 1920, your father had often sought comfort in his employees. There was one maid in particular who was of interest to him. Her name was Catherine and she was 10 years your father’s junior.

You accepted his relationship with her but soon felt uncomfortable to live with them in the London Apartment.

But your father wasn’t the only family member who lost his fortune in the stock market crash. Your brother had also lost a lot of money. So much money that he could not repay his gambling debt to one of London’s most notorious criminals.

As a result, your brother committed suicide. His mental health had always been troubled ever since he’s been to France, fighting for England in the First World War. Your brother was much older than you and it was almost a miracle when your mother fell pregnant again and gave birth to you after three miscarriages.

Your brother adored you and protected you whenever necessary. He was kind hearted but, unfortunately, got himself involved with the wrong people on several occasions which is when he began gambling.

Following your brother’s death, your father struck a deal with the man to whom the gambling debt was owed, releasing three of his gang members from prison.

The debt was forgiven and you inherited your brother’s small cottage north of London. Regardless of your father’s actions, he began to despise criminals who involved themselves in illegal gambling activities. Your father was known to be particularly harsh when it came to offences of this kind.

He once told you a story about a man who used to be a prominent criminal who made his fortune through race fixing and illegal gambling activities. That man was now a member of parliament and your father despised him.

Being Jewish, your father’s hate for this man increased even more when he became the deputy leader of the British Union of Fascists.

The man’s name was Thomas Shelby and you met him once at a gala organised by the socialist party in Westminster. He was a smart man but he was also extremely rude and insulted your father at the gala following a dispute they had earlier in the day.

Your father threatened him and told him that, one day, he will ensure his downfall. It was your father’s mission and it was dangerous.

With that threat in mind and heated political events unfolding around the country, your father asked you to move to the countryside. Take up your brother’s cottage and lay low until things were taking a turn.

It took you quite some time to build up the courage to move into the house where your brother took his own life. But, you eventually did, taking up your brother’s work at the property while attending nursing school every second week.

The cottage was free standing but behind a larger house owned by wealthy Londoners. Their wealth seemed to have been unaffected by the stock market crash and, just as your brother did, you attended their yards and animals on the small farm in exchange for a wage and free food from the produce.

You also spent some time renovating the cottage which was rather dated.

The cottage had two bedrooms, one of which you converted entirely to a studio for your paintings. You enjoyed painting and you were quite good at it.

The other bedroom you redecorated with your own furniture.

The downstairs area consisted out of a small living room with a fire place and a small kitchen and bathroom.

It wasn’t much, but it was a place you could call your own. It was home.

Initially following your move, you would travel to London occasionally to visit your father and his mistress. You wondered when he would finally propose to her. She had been waiting for years.

When you visited, you would often sit in one of his open hearings. You were quite interested in the political and legal situation in the country especially following recent events.

Notably, it has been six weeks since the assassination attempt on Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists.

Being Jewish yourself, you, just like your father, despised fascism.

The event at which the assassination attempt occurred was visited by many Jews, protesting against the establishment of the party and their obscure ideas. Despite your father’s instructions not to get involved, you were one of the protestors on the day and, although not openly, you have been associating yourself with the communists.

Your newfound friend Jesse Eden had since led several more protests you attended. Being only 20 years young, you believed that you could make a difference and convince people that their support for fascism was wrong and immoral.

The problem was that your father was at the centre of it all.

Following the assassination attempt on Oswald Mosley, two Jews were arrested and appeared in your father’s court. The prosecution didn’t have enough evidence for a conviction and the men walked free.

No one really knew who was behind the assassination attempt. There were no witnesses and everyone who may have witnessed the attack had since been found dead.

Regardless of this, for some reason, the leaders of the British Union of Fascists seem to have believed that a Jewish man by the name of Alfie Solomons was behind the attack. But there was one little problem, Alfie Solomon was dead. Or wasn’t he?

The men that were arrested used to work for Alfie Solomons and took the fall until your father set them free for lack of evidence.

A week after this decision, a Jewish owned factory was bombed. The factory was owned by the men who were set free by your father and a company owned by a Trust.

Ten men were killed and, following some arrests, it became evident that Jimmy McCavern was behind the attack.

Jimmy McCavern was the leader of the Billy Boys and, over the course of another week, your father was able to make a connection through some documents admitted to evidence between Jimmy McCavern, Alfie Solomons and a man named Thomas Shelby who was the deputy leader of the British Union of Fascists.

An arrest warrant was issued against Jimmy McCavern and Thomas Shelby by the London police following your father’s advice to them. Since, apparently, Alfie Solomons was dead, no arrest warrant could be made against him.

Thomas Shelby was the first member of parliament who was subject to such warrant and your father may have just, like this, gotten himself a lot of enemies.

The men he had against him now were not only the Billy Boys but also the Peaky Blinders and it was too dangerous for you to continue to visit him in London.

Unfortunately, little did you know that the danger was about to lurk just in front of your doorstep.

An Unexpected Visit

It was a Wednesday evening at 8pm that you heard a rather loud knock on the front door of your cottage.

You didn’t expect anyone and approached the door with your loaded gun. It’s not that you had ever shot a gun, but you bought yourself one two days ago just in case you needed it.

‘Who is it?’ you asked from behind the closed door.

‘It’s Jesse Eden’ you’ve heard from behind the door and you immediately recognised Jesse’s voice.

You put the gun aside and unlocked the door.

To your surprise, Jesse wasn’t alone and your chin dropped as you saw the man standing right in front of you. You remembered him. He was the man who stood beside Oswald Mosley during his speech in Birmingham and you had met him before at a gala at Westminster.

His name was Thomas Shelby.

‘I think we have met before Miss Rosenberg’ Tommy said.

‘Yes, we have Mr Shelby’ you said nervously and frightened at the same time. You immediately wondered whether Jesse was under duress by him. Why otherwise would he be here with her you wondered.

You invited them both inside after Jesse made the request to come in. She wasn’t sure whether they had been followed.

To your surprise, Jesse soon told you that she required your help. According to her, Thomas Shelby had to lay low due to the arrest warrant issued by the London police.

If Thomas Shelby was to be arrested, he may be killed in prison before a hearing could be conducted.

Accordingly, Jesse asked you to hide him at your house until the charges against him are dropped.

‘You mean until the chief of police has been bribed enough to drop the charges?’ you chuckled in response to her request.

‘I wish it would be that easy Love’ Tommy said as he looked at the pictures on your living room wall. His hands were in his pockets and he almost looked unbothered by the situation.

‘You cannot be serious Jesse. You seriously want me to hide this man at my house?’ you said in disbelieve.

‘I am afraid I am serious Y/N’ Jesse responded.

‘Well, a fascist hiding at the house of a Jew, how ironic’ you said angrily, still unsure why Jesse was helping him.

‘I know we have gotten off on the wrong foot at the Westminster gala Miss Rosenberg, but I would greatly appreciate your help’ Tommy said, recalling his argument with your father in your presence in late 1929.

‘You think Mr Shelby?’ you chuckled. ‘You insulted my father and my entire family’ you said.

‘And for that, I apologise’ Tommy said politely but firmly.

‘Jesse, you need to explain to me why you are helping this man. I do not understand it’ you said.

‘I cannot give you more information Y/N. You just need to trust me on this, alright?’ Jesse asked almost fearfully.

‘Alright, but why me?’ you pondered.

‘Because you are the daughter of the judge hearing this matter. No one will think to look for me here, at your house’ Tommy explained.

‘Jesus’ was all you could respond with to Tommy’s comment.

‘Y/N, trust me, please. It’s for the cause’ Jesse said.

‘I find this hard to believe, but alright, he can stay’ you responded.

Not long after you agreed to house the deputy leader of the British Union of Fascists, Thomas Shelby, Jesse made her way back to Birmingham. It was a three-hour drive and she had to hurry before anyone became suspicious.

‘You will have to sleep on the lounge. Please help yourself to any food, water and drinks’ you said while you walked into another room to fetch a blanket, pillow and change of clothes for Tommy.

You still held on to your brother’s clothes which should have fitted Thomas just fine.

‘I thank you for your hospitality Miss Rosenberg and I apologise for intruding your space. I should be out of your hair within the week’ Tommy said as you came back to the living room and handed him everything he needed for his stay.

‘I am doing this for Jesse, not for you Mr Shelby. Although I do not quite understand why she is helping you’ you said just before you sat down in one of the arm chairs.

‘Let’s just say, we had a thing once, eh’ Tommy smirked.

‘I didn’t think that she would fall for a man like you’ you said.

‘A man like me, eh?’ Tommy chuckled.

‘Yes, a socialist turning to fascism. It’s rather disappointing’ you said.

‘Sometimes we do what we have to do Miss Rosenberg’ Tommy said.

‘Yes, if we didn’t, you wouldn’t be staying here, trust me’ you said before excusing yourself.

You made your way to your studio, painting and drinking wine. It was what you enjoyed most and you wanted to space from the stranger now living with you in the small cottage. A man you had literally nothing in common with and who you despised.

While you were painting, Tommy made use of your telephone and enjoyed some of your late brother’s whiskey.

It was obvious to you that he was struggling with being cooped up in your cottage and, just as your thoughts got lost in your paintings, you heard some a cracking noise near the door of your studio.

‘What are you doing?’ you asked as you noticed Tommy walking into your studio, looking through your many paintings.

‘You are talented. These paintings are extraordinary’ Tommy said.

‘Thank you, Mr Shelby’ you said with surprise. Had he really just complimented you?

His presence and closeness sent shivers down your spine. It wasn’t that you were frightened but you were clearly intimidated.

‘What are your plans, Miss Rosenberg?’ Tommy asked as he kept looking through the paintings.

‘My plans?’ you asked.

‘Your plans for the future? What are they?’ Tommy asked.

‘I am studying to become a nurse. Perhaps, one day get married and have children. The usual’ you said shyly.

‘Well, let me tell you, marriage is overrated’ Tommy chuckled before he asked how old you were.

‘I am 20’ you responded.

‘Still young with a life of opportunities ahead of you. Don’t waste them on the cause’ Tommy said.

‘Coming from a man who wastes his political career on fascism’ you said, causing Tommy to chuckle.

Your comment instantly sparked a political debate between you and Tommy which soon erupted into a heated argument.

During the argument he told you that you were too young to understand, ignorant and naïve and you were keen to throw him out of your house right then and there.

But, you bit your tongue and reminded yourself of the promise you made to Jesse.

You couldn’t stand him and his arrogance any longer and went to your bedroom, leaving him to debate about politics with himself.

Things Must Change

The next morning, you woke up early to attend the garden, ignoring Tommy as you left the house.

But, it wasn’t long until Tommy joined you in the garden. It was obvious to you that he was clearly bored.

‘What happened to the people who lived at the large house over there?’ Tommy asked as he walked outside to have a cigarette. You didn’t allow him to smoke inside the house.

‘They are in France for their annual vacation. Apparently, their fortune was unaffected by the stock market crash’ you responded.

‘Lucky them eh’ Tommy grinned as he grabbed some of the leather gardening cloves and a bucket from the side of the house.

Wearing his expensive suit and with the bucket in his hand and a cigarette in his mouth he walked over to the berry bushes where you were standing.

‘I might as well make myself useful eh’ he said jokingly as he began picking some berries.

‘Uhm yeah…but these aren’t ripe’ you giggled as you observed Tommy picking off some of the raspberries.

‘Right. Well, I usually don’t garden’ Tommy chuckled.

‘I couldn’t tell’ you laughed, causing Tommy to smile back at you.

This was the first time you noticed him smile. It was a gentle smile and it suited him.

Tommy helped you in the garden for the remainder of the day. It wasn’t like he had something else to do other than make phone calls to his brother and someone by the name of Kent.

You managed to keep your arguments to a minimum and you started to worry that you were slowly beginning to enjoy his company.

Later that evening, following dinner, you even sat down together in front of the fireplace in the living room to drink whiskey and wine and make some conversation.

‘I have been checking on your calls, contacting the directory because I wanted to make sure that I am safe with you being here. I have been told that the last call from my number was made to the Crown Investigations Office’ you said with surprise as you poured Tommy a glass of whiskey. After everything that happened in the past, you still didn’t trust him.

‘That’s correct’ Tommy said.

‘The only reason I could think of as to why you were talking to an officer of the Crown while you have an arrest warrant against you is if you were working for the Crown yourself. Otherwise, you would be mad tipping them’ you said.

‘I was just trading information that might be useful. In exchange, I am hoping for the arrest warrant against me to be dropped’ Tommy explained.

‘Mr Shelby, do you actually believe in fascism? I have not heard you speak about your party’s ideals since you’ve been here. We spoke about politics but you still seem to be a socialist at heart. So tell me, why do you follow this mad man Mosely? I am curious’ you said.

‘The thing about political parties is that they take the course into the direction in which they are steered. Much like a car. But just like with a car, if you fill it with the wrong fuel and the engine breaks down as a result, you will be going nowhere’ Tommy said as he took a drink.

‘And you are the fuel Mr Shelby?’ you asked with curiosity.

‘Yes, I am the fuel Miss Rosenberg’ he said.

‘Your intention is to undermine Mosley on behalf of the Crown. Jesse knew and this is why she helped you, isn’t it?’ you said after pondering on about what Tommy had just told you.

‘And now that you know this as well, it makes you my accomplice. I might be able to use your help Miss Rosenberg’ Tommy said.

‘If it helps to end fascism, perhaps I am willing to give it’ you said with a smile. ‘But I am curious now Mr Shelby. Was it you who initiated the attack on Mosley?’ you asked.

‘I rather not answer Miss Rosenberg’ Tommy said.

‘I understand. Also, you can call me Y/N now that we aren’t enemies after all’ you said.

‘Alright Y/N, then I insist that you call me Tommy’ he responded.

After some more conversation you decided that it was time for you to make your way to bed. It was late and you had to get up early to attend the animals.

Nightmares

Falling asleep that night was easy. You felt much safer now despite Tommy’s presence. You knew he wasn’t going to harm you.

But just as easy as you had fallen asleep, you were woken up by a loud noise coming from the living room at 1am.

‘Tommy, are you alright?’ you asked worryingly as you walked downstairs in a haste, wearing nothing but your silk nightgown.

‘My apologies, I didn’t intend to wake you’ Tommy said as he sat on the lounge, covered in sweat.

You initially thought that he might haven gotten sick until you saw a small empty bottle on the living room table. Your brother used to have one just like it which he carried around everywhere. It contained Liquid Opium and helped him sleep. He took it every night until, one day, he stopped. The withdrawal was barely manageable and his addiction soon rebounded.

You knew what this was. You had seen it before.

‘I will make you some tea to help you sleep’ you said kindly as you observed Tommy’s struggles.

‘I don’t think that tea will help me sleep Love’ Tommy chuckled.

‘My brother used to have nightmares after France. When he returned home, my mother made this for him and he managed to get at least some sleep. It’s worth a try’ you said with a warm smile. You knew Tommy had been to France. You had spoken about it when you spoke about your brother earlier that evening.

‘I suppose why not, eh’ Tommy said as he walked to the bathroom to clean himself off with a cold wet flannel.

After you put on the kettle, you walked to the studio and grabbed some more of your brother’s clothes.

‘These should fit you’ you said shyly as you handed Tommy a clean plain shirt and pants.

‘Thank you, Y/N’ he said as he took the clothes.

This was the first time you saw Tommy without a shirt and, despite his level of exhaustion, it was quite a sight. He certainly was a very attractive man.

After Tommy had gotten himself changed, you sat down next to him and handed him the cup of tea.

‘Do you want to talk?’ you asked.

‘It’s the middle of the night Y/N, you should get some sleep’ Tommy said.

‘It’s alright. I am not tired’ you said with a warm smile.

That night Tommy spoke with you about everything. About France and his late wife Grace who visited him in his dreams. He didn’t know why, but he felt as though he could talk to you and trust you.

At 4am, you eventually fell asleep on the lounge next to Tommy which is where you woke up the next morning covered with a warm blanket.

The fire was lid and there was a note on the coffee table as you woke.

‘Borrowed your hunting rifle, will be back by 8’ the note said.

You didn’t know how to hunt and had been telling Tommy how your brother shot bucks whenever you came to visit him at the cottage from London. You would then prepare it with veggies from the garden just the way your mother had shown you.

You thought that, perhaps, Tommy was better equipped than you when it came to hunting. You struggled enough even just to slaughter a chook from the farm and your intake of meat was clearly lacking as a result.

Attacked

With Tommy gone, you decided to attend to the horses. Grabbing your shovel and rake, you walked into the stables.

But, just as you walked inside, you could hear a loud noise from behind the barn.

You wondered whether it was Tommy and approached the back area of the property carefully. After all, he had a loaded gun and you certainly didn’t want to get shot accidently.

Just as you walked to the side of the property, you saw a strange man.

‘Hello Love’ the man said, cocking his gun.

‘Who are you and what do you want?’ you asked holding on to your rake tightly.

‘We’ve got a dispute to settle with some Jews Love. Now be a good girl and put down this rake would you’ the man said firmly.

You obliged and the man approached you slowly.

‘Now Love, we will be having a good time and then we will visit your father’ the man said just before he called for another man who was at the back of the barn.

Within an instant, the man grabbed your wrists and pushed you against the outer wall of the barn.

‘Such are pretty thing aren’t you’ the man said as he aimed to cover your mouth while moving away your skirt.

But, just when the man’s hand reached your mouth, you bit him firmly just before yelling for help.

‘You fucking bitch’ the man said as he reached for his gun.

In this moment, you heard a shot. The other man was hit, but barely and went to check out where the shot came from.

With both men distracted, you ceased the moment and pulled out the gardening scissors you were carrying in your thin jacket. Within an instant and without thinking, you rammed the scissor into the neck of the man who was still standing right there in front of you.

This was all it took for the man to fall to the ground. You couldn’t help it but scream as your hands and blouse were covered in the man’s blood.

You were besides yourself, sitting on the ground next to his dying body in shock, unable to do anything.

After what felt like an eternity, you saw Tommy approach you, making his way through the veggie patch carrying your hunting rifle and covered in blood himself.

‘Are you alright Y/N?’ he asked as he kneeled down next to you, comforting you.

‘There is another man Tommy, he walked to towards the berry field’ you said.

‘I know. He’s dead now and so is the third man who was driving them here’ Tommy said.

‘Did you kill them?’ you asked.

‘Yes, I did’ he said and, just in that moment, you threw his arms around him.

This is when you realised that he had been injured and was in agony himself.

‘Tommy, you’ve been shot’ you said with worry as you saw blood staining through his white shirt.

‘Yes’ was all he managed to say at this point as he was losing blood.

‘We will get you to a hospital’ you said in a haste.

‘No hospital Y/N. I will be taken into custody if I set foot in a public place like this until the arrest warrant has been dropped’ Tommy said.

You could see the agony on his face as he held onto the side of his chest. He was in pain. A lot of pain.

‘You are nurse, aren’t you?’ Tommy asked, breathing heavily.

‘I am a student nurse Tommy. I have not practiced on a life person’ you said worryingly.

‘Well, it’s about time then eh’ Tommy chuckled.

‘Tommy, you can’t be serious’ you said.

‘I am serious Y/N. I need you to do this, please’ Tommy said.

‘Alright, common’ you said nervously. It wasn’t like you had a choice. Tommy was bleeding a lot and his wound needed attention immediately.

With haste, you walked inside with Tommy and placed a towel over the lounge and got your first aid kit as well as a bottle of vodka from the dining room. You then went to the bathroom quickly to get a bowl of clean water and more towels.

While you were getting everything ready, Tommy made a phone call to his brother Arthur, giving him your address. By that point, Tommy was barely able to stand up.

As you returned from the kitchen, you helped Tommy to remove his blood-soaked clothes.

You gasped for a moment. You weren’t sure whether the blood or the sight of his naked body took away your breath.

‘You’ve got whiskey?’ Tommy asked.

‘Tommy, I don’t think it matters which alcohol I use to clean out your wound’ you said as you got everything ready on the table.

‘To drink. Trust me, I’ll need it. I am out of Opium’ he said, his breathing still laboured.

‘Yes, of course’ you said before you poured him a large glass of whiskey and handed it to him.

He drank all of it in an instant before lying down.

‘This is going to hurt’ you said as you cleaned your hands and the tweezers from your first aid kit with some of the vodka.

‘I know’ he said, taking in a deep breath.

‘You have to stay still’ you went on as you reached for his wound which was still profusely pouring blood.

‘I know’ he said again before closing his eyes and holding on to the edge of the lounge in anticipation.

As soon as you entered the wounds with your fingers and the tweezers, all that you could hear was a loud grunt.

‘Fuck’ Tommy screamed as your fingers went in deeper, retrieving the bullet from his wound. By this point, you were breathing as heavily as him.

‘I’ve got it Tommy, don’t move now’ you said as you carefully pulled the bullet out of his flesh.

Tommy took in a deep breath and, with another loud grunt, you dislodged the bullet.

It was intact and you sighed with relief while Tommy opened his eyes, looking at you in agony.

‘Now I will clean up the wound and stitch it, alright?’ you asked, causing Tommy to nod.

He let out another loud grunt as you poured some of the vodka over his wound before handing him a clean towel to apply pressure to the wound while you prepared the stitches.

His face was expressionless when you placed the stitches. You knew that the worst pain was over but, nonetheless, you were surprised by how well he had handled it.

This was when you noticed several large scars across his chest and arms. Almost too many to count.

‘You have been shot before, haven’t you?’ you asked while Tommy looked almost relaxed when you placed the sixth stitch.

‘Just a few times’ he smirked.

While you placed the last stitch, you could hear a car pull up in front of your door.

You opened the door quickly before applying a bandage around Tommy’s chest.

‘Fucking Hell Brother’ Arthur shouted as he walked into the living room with Isiah.

‘Arthur, this is Y/N’ Tommy said by way of introduction.

You quickly shook Arthur’s hand by which he was rather surprised.

‘Who the fuck did this?’ Arthur asked.

‘The Billy Boys. But they weren’t after me. They were after her’ Tommy explained.

‘Why?’ Arthur asked.

‘Because she is the daughter of the judge hearing the McCaven matter. I assume they wanted to send a message’ Tommy said.

‘Did they see you?’ Arthur asked.

‘Yes, but it doesn’t matter. They are dead’ Tommy responded.

‘Alright, what do you want us to do with the bodies? Send a message?’ Arthur asked.

‘Burry them behind the property. This never happened. They just disappeared and never made it here. By the time McCaven finds out the arrest warrants will be dropped and I can deal with the situation and Mosley’ Tommy instructed.

Arthur and Isiah attended the bodies as instructed by Tommy. You were surprised how quickly and efficiently they made the bodies disappear without any evidence whatsoever. It was clear to you that they had done this kind of thing before.

Before they left, Tommy gave Arthur a note to give to Jesse Eden and a note to give to a person named Kent.

In return Arthur gave Tommy three guns, a change of clothes and a bottle of opium.

After Arthur and Isiah had left, you made sure that Tommy was resting. After all, he had lost a lot of blood and you didn’t want him to pull a stitch.

Tender Moments

‘Do you have any more of that tea?’ Tommy asked as he held on to the bottle of opium that Arthur had given him. He starred at it, but didn’t open it.

‘Yes, sure. I will make some’ you said.

You were surprised by Tommy’s request but didn’t dare to argue.

You sat down next to him to have some tea while he placed the bottle of opium on the table in front of him.

‘Tommy, don’t’ you said.

‘Don’t what?’ he asked.

‘The opium, don’t take it’ you said.

‘Well, then put it away somewhere I cannot find it eh’ Tommy said as he handed you the bottle and you obliged with his request.

Tommy knew he would be regretting this soon, at night when his nightmares would wake him once again. It wasn’t the pain he couldn’t handle, but rather it was Grace’s visits in his dreams and dreaming about France hat destroyed him.

He was afraid of going to sleep but he needed sleep badly especially after today and so did you.

‘Are you not going to sleep?’ Tommy asked as clock struck midnight and you were still there with him talking about matters which he never talked to anyone about. He felt like he could confine in you and, despite your young age, you understood and you cared.

‘I don’t think I can. Not after what happened today. Not after what I have done’ you said as tears were building up in your eyes for the third time that evening.

‘Y/N, listen to me, alright?’ he said, caressing your face gently.

‘What you have done saved your life. These men were here to hurt you and now they can’t. You are safe now’ Tommy said as tears began to run down your cheek.

‘I killed someone Tommy’ you said in disarray.

‘You killed a bad man’ Tommy said as he used his thumbs to wipe away your tears.

‘It’s still a man Tommy’ you said before pressing your head against his chest. ‘Will the picture of him ever leave my head?’ you asked.

‘No Y/N, it won’t. But your guilt will, that I promise’ Tommy said. ‘Now, let’s get you some rest, eh?’ Tommy said.

‘Will you come with me Tommy?’ you asked nervously, knowing that your question was somewhat unusual.

‘Come with you? To bed?’ Tommy asked with surprise.

‘Yes, just to sleep by my side. I am scared Tommy’ you said.

‘I never had a woman ask me to join her in her bed simply for the purpose of sleeping, but alright, I suppose I can do that’ Tommy smirked before he followed you upstairs.

As Tommy lied down next you, bandaged up and wearing not much more than his white undergarments, you could feel something unusual. It was almost like some sort of warmth which was flowing through your chest.

‘Do you want me to turn off the light?’ Tommy asked as he got comfortable on the large white pillow, facing you and starring into your dark eyes.

‘Not yet. Perhaps we could talk for a little longer’ you said as you looked into his comforting blue eyes.

‘Alright, what you want to talk about?’ he asked and this is when you brought up his current wife Lizzie and his children.

‘What about your wife and children, where are they?’ you asked.

‘They are in Scotland, where, apparently they are safe from all this and from myself’ Tommy said with some disappointment.

‘From yourself? But they are your children’ you asked with some confusion.

‘They are, but they are indeed safer without me until I sort things out’ Tommy explained.

‘Do you miss your wife’ you asked.

‘No, I do not miss my wife. She filed for divorce six weeks ago’ Tommy said.

‘You do not seem upset about it. Why is that?’ you asked.

‘Because I know that it’s the right thing to do, to keep her safe. Our relationship was never one made of love. I never loved her the way a husband should love his wife. But, she is mother of my daughter and she cares deeply for my son. I trust her. She’s always been loyal to me and to the Company’ Tommy explained.

‘That’s nice…to have someone like this in your life’ you said.

‘It is indeed. Now you should get some rest eh’ Tommy said as he turned off the bedside lamp.

To his surprise, as soon as he turned off the light, you leaned over towards him carefully and rested your head on the uninjured side of his chest.

He let you and wrapped his arm around you, pulling you close until you drifted off to sleep.

This was the first time for Thomas Shelby since he came back from France that he shared a bed with a woman other than his wife who didn’t have any sexual interactions with. To his surprise, despite the pain after having been shot, he slept better than he had expected. In the absence of nightmares, he was well rested until, after five hours of sleep, the next morning you heard a loud bang on the door.

Taking a Turn

You walked downstairs again with your loaded gun in your hand.

‘Who is it?’ you asked as you approached the door carefully.

‘Jesse Eden’ the person said and you quickly opened the door while Tommy came walking downstairs, out of your bedroom.

‘I actually just came here to make sure you didn’t kill each other but it looks like you’ve managed to become acquainted’ Jesse giggled.

‘It’s not what it looks like’ you said as Tommy walked out of your bedroom wearing nothing but his undergarments.

‘I assume Tommy has informed you about our past relations. But, for the record, I no longer have any interest in the man, so it’s quite alright with me if it is what looks like Y/N’ Jesse laughed.

‘You are no longer interested, eh?’ Tommy said to Jesse with a cheeky smile.

‘Unless you have forgotten, you ended up marrying someone else’ Jesse said.

‘Should I give you two some privacy?’ you asked as you felt uncomfortable being caught in between their conversation about old times.

‘No Y/N, there is no need eh Jesse?’ Tommy said with a laugh.

‘No there is not. Arthur came to see me last night to give me your note. But he hadn’t said anything about you having been injured’ Jesse said.

‘It’s alright, she’s a nurse. I got lucky’ Tommy chuckled.

‘Well, I am glad because I have information from one of my informants that will be of interest to you now that you are still alive. The Crown prosecutor was removed from the case and so was the chief of police. Apparently, it was found out that they both involved themselves with illegal prostitutes at some of your brothels’ Jesse said.

‘Now that is interesting, isn’t it?’ Tommy smirked.

‘You obviously knew and blackmailed them. The man in charge of the matter is now your friend Lawrence Staghill who, I believe, is filing for a motion to dismiss for lack of evidence in front of the judge who still owes you a lot of money. So, it looks like that everything is going to plan for you once again Thomas Shelby OBE. You should be free to leave after the next three days. The case is to be heard after the weekend’ Jesse said.

‘You hear that? Three more days and I will be out of your hair Y/N’ Tommy said.

‘I can’t wait’ you said cheekily and with a hint of sarcasm.

Jesse stayed for a little while longer before heading back to Birmingham and you made sure that, for the entire day, Tommy rested.

It was hard for Tommy to rest. It was almost like he needed to do something at all times. He wasn’t a man who could ever just sit still and, say, read a book. His mind had to busy constantly and he loved to be challenged.

For you, the day went by quickly and looking after Tommy was almost like looking after a child who refuses to listen.

Gone Too Far

‘I see you made yourself a bed on the sofa again’ you said as you noticed Tommy putting the blanket and pillow on the sofa.

‘Whilst I enjoyed our pillow talk, I figured that last night was an exception. Unless you think you might have difficulty sleeping again’ Tommy smirked.

‘I think I just might’ you said with a smile as you finished brushing your hair.

‘Alright, I will take my pillow and blanket upstairs then eh’ Tommy said.

‘Alright, see you up there’ you smiled, causing Tommy to chuckle.

This was strange indeed, but he figured that, at least, the bed was more comfortable than the lounge.

‘So, what do you want to talk about tonight, eh?’ Tommy asked as you walked into the bedroom with a glass of water and two white pills.

‘I went to the chemist today. This should prevent infection’ you said you said as you handed him the glass and the tablets.

‘Thank you’ Tommy said as you lied down next to him.

He swallowed the tablets and waited for you to say something, start a conversation of some sort.

But you didn’t. You lied there quietly, your dark eyes gazing over his half naked body.

In this moment, he didn’t know what came over him but, just as he leaned to lie on his uninjured side, he ran his hands through your hair and his eyes met yours.

‘I haven’t met anyone quite like you’ Tommy said.

‘Why is that?’ you asked.

‘I am not sure. There is something about you that intrigues me. That doesn’t happen very often’ Tommy said and, just as he did, you leaned forward and your lips met his.

His lips were soft and still tasted like whiskey.

Reluctantly at first, he returned the kiss, gently but passionately.

It was a short kiss and your tongues never touched by the time you lips drifted apart.

Once your lips separated you starred at each other, questioning in your mind what had just happened between you.

With embarrassment, you pulled away and turned around quickly.

‘Goodnight Tommy’ you said after you turned around. You turned off the night light and pulled your blanket over you tightly.

‘Goodnight Y/N’ Tommy said with a slight chuckle, still facing into your direction.

Despite the fact that Tommy had been on your mind now for days, you were surprised by your own actions and wanted to pretend that the kiss between you just moments ago didn’t happen.

You knew about his past, the killings, the illegal businesses, everything. He was a man you knew you shouldn’t get involved with. He was also still married and, at least in the eye of the public, he was a fascist.

You tried very hard to ignore the fact that he was lying next to you, half naked. The fire was lightening the room slightly and you simply couldn’t close your eyes, starring to the other end of the room.

For ten minutes you tried to lie still, but couldn’t. You fidgeted and kept starring up and then to the side again.

‘Do you want me to help you go to sleep?’ Tommy asked as he noticed your restlessness, which instantly broke the silence between you.

‘Help me go to sleep?’ you asked with some confusion and without turning around to face him. You were still to embarrassed to look at him.

‘Yes’ Tommy said as, suddenly, you could feel his body moving closer towards yours but still separated by your individual blankets.

‘What do you mean by that Tommy?’ you asked with some ignorance and, just when you did, you could feel the back of your blanket lift slightly.

Within seconds, Tommy’s fingers trailed over your bare shoulders downwards over your small breasts which were covered by nothing but your silk nightgown.

Your nipple turned hard instantly at his touch and you let out a deep sigh.

‘Tommy, I have never been with anyone before’ you said, allowing his touch but worrying about what he was intending to do to you.

‘Don’t worry Love, I am not going to fuck you. At least not in the conventional way’ Tommy chuckled as his fingers circled over your hard nipples.

You had no idea what he could possibly mean by that. Did he not find you attractive? What was he going to do to you then if not that?

‘So, you don’t want me?’ you asked curiously while small moans escaped your lips as the tips of his fingers continued to run circles over your nipples.

‘I want you alright. But I am not keen on tearing my stitches’ Tommy said as his hands began to take hold of your breasts harder.

You moaned at his touch and felt a strange and unfamiliar sensation build up in between your legs.

It wasn’t long until you felt his fingers move downwards over your stomach until they finally began teasing the top of your mound through your panties.

‘Tommy, I don’t think I will be going to sleep with you touching me like this’ you said with heavy breath. You wondered how on earth this was actually going to help you go to sleep.

‘I hope not’ Tommy laughed quietly. ‘But once I am done with you, you will sleep very well, that I promise’ he whispered into your before biting your earlobe gently.

You took in a deep breath and moaned quietly. The feeling of his hot breath was intense.

‘So do you want me to continue?’ he whispered.

You couldn't say yes. But you also couldn't say no. Instead, all that escaped your lips was another soft moan.

‘I need to hear you say it Love. Tell me you want me to keep going’ he said.

You whimpered under his touch, your hips now rocking to meet his hand. But he held firm.

‘I...it feels really good’ was all you could manage to say.

‘And you want me to continue?’ he asked as his fingers moved a little lower, over your panties, expertly brushing over your clit.

‘Yes Tommy, please continue’ you moaned and, just like that, Tommy slit his hand beneath your panties, running his fingers directly over your wet slit, dipping only the top of them into you gently.

He then began to rub his wet finger tips over your clit, circling around your hard nub with light pressure.

‘Oh my god Tommy’ you moaned as you never felt anything just like that.

After a minute or two, Tommy gently slid one finger into you, looking out for any cues from you to ensure that he didn’t hurt you now that he knew that you were a virgin.

You were so tight, it was almost too much to start and he could feel the resistance of your hymen within you. But he kept going, carefully and gently thrusting his finger in and out of you at a slow pace.

You moaned softly and Tommy loved pulling a reaction out of you. It was almost like it was his goal to break your normally stoic composure.

Tommy wanted to know that you were enjoying what he was doing.

He began sliding his finger in and out of you all the way slowly at first, but not long after he started to build speed.

You enjoyed the alternating feeling between emptiness and fulness inside of you and were making the most delicious noises now. Your eyes were completely closed and you were moaning louder.

Suddenly Tommy slipped a second finger inside of you just to give you a little extra jolt and you reacted better than he could have expected.

It was slightly painful at first but the mild pain soon subsided and turned into pleasure.

‘Tommy, oh god...fuck’ you moaned as you began squirming just slightly and moaning a bit louder.

As his fingers kept thrusting in and out of you, your breathing became heavier and your legs began to quiver.

His thumb soon gave extra attention to your clit while he kept up with the movement of his middle and index finger.

Your moans kept getting more frequent now and you were certainly getting wetter too as Tommy kept going faster and harder.

You couldn’t believe how good he was making you feel with his fingers but you also didn’t know what to expect when an overwhelming sensation of warmth and tingling overcame you slowly.

‘Tommy, I don’t know if this is right. It feels strange’ you moaned as your legs began to shake and you couldn’t control your movements.

You tried to squirm away as the feeling was too unfamiliar to you. But Tommy persisted, pushing his hand firmer against you and his fingers even deeper inside of you.

‘Does it feel good?’ Tommy asked, knowing already what your answer would be as he could feel your walls tightening around his fingers.

‘Yes Tommy’ you managed to let out in between moans.

‘Then its right Love’ Tommy smirked. ‘Just relax and let go eh’ Tommy whispered.

You moaned once again, louder than before, and gave into the sensation.

It was intense, so intense that you had to clench onto the sheets and, just like this your orgasm washed over you.

You were a shaking mess and Tommy kept up the speed with his fingers until your orgasm slowly began to subside.

‘Fuck, what the hell just happened?’ you said once you began to calm down and while Tommy still stroked the outside of your now soaked mound.

‘Did you never have an orgasm before?’ Tommy asked surprised and with curiosity.

‘Like this? No. Never’ you said. Of course, you pleasured yourself before but the sensation was different, way less intense than what Tommy just managed to do to you.

As Tommy removed his hand from you, you turned around, your cheeks flushed. It was almost like you were embarrassed to look at him after what had just happened.

‘Feeling relaxed now?’ Tommy asked with a grin on his face.

‘Yes…uhm…thank you’ you said shyly.

‘It’s my pleasure’ Tommy said with a smile before giving you gentle kiss. You could have spent all night just kissing him. He was good at it and his lips were full and soft.

‘You should get some sleep now, eh’ he said after your lips drifted apart and he caressed your face.

‘Is there anything I could do to return the favour?’ you asked shyly, feeling somewhat guilty about the way he made you feel with nothing in return.

‘No, not tonight Love’ Tommy said as he pulled you closer. Whilst he had the desire to be with you that night, he was still not well enough after his injury and felt as though he should give you time. You were inexperienced and this was new territory for you, possibly overwhelming. Just like this, you had awoken the soft and gentle side of Thomas Shelby and that, in itself, brought him out of his own comfort zone.

He did not know what to do or how to act. The only woman who had managed to do this to him after he’s fought in France was his late wife Grace and he was certain that he would never meet another woman like this again. A woman he would care for in the same way he cared for Grace. Having met you changed everything for him that night and he struggled with the idea to accept his fade, especially with a woman half his age and who was the daughter of the man who tried very hard to bring him down.

Thus, as you leaned your head against his chest carefully, making sure that you didn’t lean against his wound, he couldn’t help but stare at you and ponder about what had brought him to you. Perhaps it was meant to be.

‘What’s wrong Tommy?’ you asked as you began to notice his eyes being fixated on you as he ran one of his hands through your hair gently.

‘Nothing, just enjoying the moment’ he said.

‘Me too Tommy’ you responded before closing your eyes and drifting off to sleep.

Change of Heart

The next morning, when you woke up, Tommy was not by your side. His side of the bed was empty.

But, when you walked downstairs you could see him, sitting in the dining room area with a pen and paper.

You weren’t sure what he was writing and you weren’t sure how to approach him after last night.

You decided to go with a kiss and, just after you said good morning and leaned in to kiss him, Tommy pulled away.

That was unexpected and you looked at him, full of questions.

‘Last night was a mistake Y/N for which I apologise. I should not have been temped’ Tommy said.

‘A mistake? Right’ you said as you walked over to the kitchen bench to boil the kettle. Small tears were running down your eyes and you tried hard to hide them from Tommy.

You had begun to care for him and you most clearly were developing feelings for him.

‘Y/N?’ Tommy said as he noticed you being upset.

‘Tommy, please just give me some space alright’ you said as you walked into the studio with your cup of tea.

You were embarrassed and you felt weak. Yet you wanted to be strong.

Were you too naïve, failing for a man like him?

504 notes · View notes

rayshippouuchiha · 3 years

Note

I know we joke about how Snipes quirk is basically just "gun" and how like, wouldn't it be funny if he was actually quirkless and decided to bullshit a quirk?

But genuinely, how did they realize what his quirk is? What did a small toddler have at hand that he could utilize in such a way that he was *shooting* something, and then, further, did the adults in his life immediately begin testing to what level his quirk worked?

I know in the series quirks tend to be at least somewhat inheritable. So like, yeah one of his bio parents could have had an aiming quirk or some such but I just.....

HOW DO YOU PROVE THAT SAFELY WITH A TODDLER?

Especially when I'm pretty sure guns aren't really legal in Japan to my knowledge?

Wait... What if Snipes parents were like, Yakuza, and that's why he knows he can shoot weirdly well as a toddler, also a big part of why he became a hero, and covers his face in a fallout rejected gas mask.....

Okay so all of this is glorious and would make for some interesting Snipe-centric fic.

But, that being said, I think there's actually a certain amount of confusion/misunderstanding as to what Snipe's quirk actually is and what it means.

So as you might know Snipe's quirk is actually called Homing. Homing allows him to lock on to any target he can see within six hundred meters and make any projectile he releases chase after said target. He cannot choose what part of the target's body his projectile hits and his attacks do not carry much strength.

Nowhere in Snipe's quirk description does it mention a gun of any sort. Because his quirk's not technically reliant on a gun. He could've picked throwing knives or really anything he can turn into a projectile. My man made that perfectly logical support gear choice of going full gunslinger on his own.

And that also means that discovering the particulars of his quirk would have actually been a lot easier and safer than a lot of people probably think.

Bet he was a fucking menace at dodgeball in school though.

#BnHA #MHA #Snipe

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not-close-to-straight · 5 years

Text

Shadowed Hearts/Winter Souls (Chapter Twenty-Four)

MASTERLIST

*******************

Spring swept through Chioggia in a wash of floral scents and vibrant colors, the gardens bursting into bloom, the trees blossoming, the sea warming where it splashed against the rocks. The wind was gentle as it came through open windows, the sun shining stronger every day and as the weeks passed and life settled, the shadows that lingered over the little family’s shoulders seemed to lift bit by bit.

The servants were dismissed after a few weeks once Wanda and Natalia were comfortable cooking in the beautiful kitchen and organizing their own pantry and linens. Jarvis arranged for a laundry service to come by once a week and for the more perishable groceries to be delivered from the nearby market, but at Tony’s urging, even Jarvis returned to Brescia and his wife, leaving them alone in the house.

Wanda wanted to stay close to her brother, so she moved her belongings from the room across the hall to the one that connected to Pietro’s by way of an adjoining door. Natalia didn’t go so far as to ask if she could stay in Tony’s room, but more and more of her clothing filled his wardrobe, her favorite bath soap found it’s way into Tony’s bathroom and eventually, she even had a favorite pillow on Tony’s bed.

It was fine, it was fine.

Tony stepped into his role of patriarch and provider of their family with a sort of grace that no one-- not even he-- expected. He swallowed his panic to focus on helping Pietro every day, pushed aside his heart break so he could be strong when the pregnancy made Natalia emotional and fragile. Tony worked through his despair and made sure Wanda smiled as much as possible and every day he ignored the loneliness that lingered and focused instead on how much better life was in Italy.

There were no soldiers hunting them down here, no reason to glance furtively over their shoulders as they went to shop, no need to over stock a pantry to ensure they survived a winter, no need to worry about hauling water when the pipes froze through, or trying to do hours and hours worth of chores.

Instead, Natalia and Wanda spent their days in the garden admiring the already planted and thriving blooms, and coaxing new ones to grow. Natalia took endless delight in the rose bushes while Wanda preferred the vines that crept up the walls and every day there were freshly clipped flowers in various vases scattered throughout the house.

By force of habit and maybe just to keep the loneliness away, everyone still gathered in the downstairs parlor at the end of the day. Wanda spent hours poring over the library upstairs before selecting a pile of novels to read aloud, and Natalia sat in her rocking chair and knitted blankets for the coming baby. Pietro still needed help changing bandages, so Tony would kneel at his side to unwrap the coverings and put ointment on the worst of the lingering burn damage as they listened to Wanda’s reading.

Sometimes Tony would work on James’s gun, taking advantage of being home in Italy again to order specific parts, even to fashion what he needed in the workshop down the hill from the house. The rifle was in better working condition now than it had ever been, beautifully polished, the intricate scroll work on the barrel repaired to perfection. Tony had reinforced the stock, shaved down the butt and replaced it with a softer, easier material that wouldn’t recoil so hard into James’s shoulder.

It was a masterpiece of a rifle and the only bit of James Tony had left. He had snatched it from the vault beneath the Falconers lodge along with their coin and pieces of Natalia’s jewelry, and left a note in its stead. The note was a reassurance that he and Natalia and the twins were all safe, and then coordinates and directions to the house in Chioggia just in case...

...just in case.

Refusing to dwell on the past for any longer than it took to clean James’s rifle in the evening, Tony turned his focus to the future-- to their future.

He had more than enough money to be sure Natalia and the twins never worried for anything in their life. A few strong worded letters to the proper officials had ensured the marriage certificate from a year ago was correctly filed so there would be no question Natalia was his legal wife. Tony had also included provisions for any children conceived in their marriage to be heirs in part to his portion of the Carbonell Stark fortune. Unless Samuel and Ronin somehow made it home again, this baby would be the only child, but Tony put the provisions in anyway.

Just in case.

Next was paperwork concerning Wanda and Pietro, and that had taken several letters, nearly two months of waiting, and even a quick trip to Venice for Tony to press the issue in person but just this morning a messenger had come to the house with a packet of official documents. Tony read through them quickly and then locked him in his safe with a satisfied smile.

They would be alright.

Things weren’t perfect and it hadn’t been anywhere close to enough time for their hearts to heal, but Tony was trying to take care of his family in every way he knew how and now--now they would be alright.

*************

“Come along, beauty.” Wanda helped Natalia up from her chair at the lunch table to coax her outside for a few minutes. “The sun is beautiful today and the apple trees have blossomed. You need some fresh air and a little walk to lift your spirits. You’ve been quiet today and I don’t like it.”

“I am less worried about lifting my spirits than I am about getting freckles.” Natalia said dryly. “My skin cannot take all this sunshine.”

And then as she smoothed her hand over the burgeoning swell beneath her dress-- “And hefting this around. I’m starting to resemble a bear in the fall. Round and cranky--” Wanda burst into laughter and Natalia jabbed at her. “--and covered in hair! My hair is so thick lately I can’t hardly wash it!”

“I will help you wash your hair.” Wanda muffled another bit of laughter and wound her arm around Natalia’s waist. “And you do not look like a bear, not in the least. You are beautiful and if Samuel and Ronin were here they would--”

Wanda stopped mid sentence, and Natalia’s steps faltered, her eyes dimming in sadness. “--well, they would say the same thing. So come along. Outside to get a few more freckles and if your feet swell, I will even rub them for you.”

Natalia did breathe a sigh of relief when they stepped out into the sunshine, her full mouth curving into a smile. “Oh, it is lovely here. But you should be having more fun than escorting me around and offering to rub my feet. I heard Antonio offer to take you to Venezia again last night, why won’t you go?”

“Because I am needed here.” came the simple answer. “The gardens need tending and now that Antonio has let the other servants go, I am cooking for our family again. You will only need more help as the summer goes on and Pietro is doing much better this last month, but he is a long way from healed. And besides, what would I do for the Season in Venezia?”

“Wear beautiful gowns and hold entire harems of guileless young noblemen in your thrall.” Tony came out from the house behind them, bussing a kiss to Wanda’s cheek and smoothly extricating Natalia from the girl's grasp so he could hold her. “Lounge around the town home while flowers are delivered and various Ladies of the Court beg for an invitation to tea. Wanda, you are a Carbonell Stark now. Italian society will be frothing at the bit to discover who you are.”

“Frothing at the bit?” Natalia echoed, turning her cheek for a kiss from Tony as well and leaning into his side. “Surely there’s a more polite way to describe the wealthy.”

“There really isn’t.” Tony directed the women towards one of the benches in the gardens. “You remember the Russian nobility, Natalia. Italians are every bit as wild. All the silk and lace and manners in the world cannot disguise the absolute rabid-ness that comes along with being wealthy. The rich are practically feral, but Wanda will take the Season by storm and be engaged and stolen away from us by next Spring all the same.”

“Heaven forbid.” Wanda snorted. “How can you describe the wealthy as rabid and feral and then in the next breath tell me I’ll be engaged?”

“Love works in mysterious ways, love.” Tony winked at her. “And if not love, money certainly does.”

“Hush.” Natalia smacked at Tony’s shoulder and adjusted her dress as she sat. “Don’t you dare encourage Wanda to marry for money. That is terrible advice. Wealthy men are barely leashed animals who would see Wanda as fresh meat and try to destroy her.”

“You are entirely correct, and I would never let her marry for money.” Tony said mildly. “Neither would I let anyone destroy her. The Carbonell Starks have far too much influence for anyone to risk our anger by being careless with Wanda. I might have been out of my element in Sokovia, but here in Italy there are very few people who won’t move aside when we walk into a room, do you understand? You have nothing to worry about.”

“I see.” Wanda reached for Natalia’s hand and squeezed it tight, chewing at her lip before asking timidly. “Antonio, does this mean we are officially family then? Pietro and I?”

“Yes, love.” Tony sat himself right next to Natalia and planted a soft kiss at her temple, smoothing away her hair. “Wanda and Pietro, Natalia and the little one. In every way that matters, you are la mia famiglia and are entitled to everything my name provides. Money, security, safety, all of it.”

“And your parents?” Wanda pressed. “How do they feel about it?”

“I don’t know.” Tony flattened his hand to the small of Natalia’s back and rubbed in slow circles. “I haven’t spoken to them since coming to Chioggia, and they have made no attempt to reach out to me. It doesn’t matter, though. I came into most of my wealth when I turned twenty five and will inherit everything from my Mama’s side in a few years when I am thirty. We will want for nothing, even if my Papa decides he is unhappy with my choices and withdraws the Stark wealth from our name.”

“But--”

“But both Mama and Papa will be thrilled.” Tony interrupted, waving off Wanda’s question. “I am home again, I have brought a wife to eliminate any lingering scandal. At the very least, adopting two Russian children will seem like an act of philanthropy and mio dio do the rich love to seem as if they are generous, and when they learn of their nipote--” he patted feather light at Natalia’s stomach. “--everyone is swayed by the thought of a new baby.”

“A nipote.” Natalia repeated, turning the word over in her head and searching her limited Italian knowledge for the definition. “Nipote-- grandchild? Antonio, you would lead your parents to assume the child is yours?”

“Ours.” Tony corrected, and Natalia’s eyes filled with relieved tears. “The bambina is ours, and no one will ever say different.”

“And if she looks like Samuel?” Wanda pointed out. “What then?”

“We will say she spends lots of time in the sunshine.” Tony said dryly, and Wanda snorted at his terrible attempt at a joke. “It won’t matter which of her father’s she takes after. She will have my name anyway.”

“You are a good man, Antonio.” Natalia sighed shakily. “Thank you.”

“I’m going to find Pietro and tell him the news.” Tony politely looked away as Natalia cried again, and when Wanda wrapped her in a hug, he slid off the bench to leave them in peace. “I’ll see you both at dinner.”

He set off out of the garden and towards the very edges of the property, walking along the path that followed the line of the cliffs.

Tony and his Mama had planted a flowering ash tree out here for his tenth birthday and a few summers later, Tony had made a beautifully carved wooden bench that sat beneath the wide stretched branches. It was a place of reflection and meditation and peace, and since coming to Chioggia, Pietro had claimed the spot as his own.

Pietro walked to the isolated spot every morning and spent the hours staring out at the water. He could see the sails of the fishing boats dipping in the waves and just barely catch the larger merchant ships pulling into the port of Venice on the far end of the protected waters at the coast. It was peaceful and it was quiet, the sunshine gentle on his still healing skin and even though the family worried about Pietro, no one interrupted his routine or suggested that he spend more time at home.

At least the ocean made him smile.

Wanda came with lunch every day and then again to call him for supper and on the days Natalia was feeling up to it, she walked the wide path to sit and carefully hold his hand.

Pietro’s healing had been slow, painful, heartbreaking in a million different ways. The burns had almost ruined both vision and hearing on the left side of his face, traveling down his arm to render it almost useless so Pietro wore a sling and an eye patch every single day, full sleeves and trousers, and a hat tipped over his face to protect from the elements.

His voice was permanently hoarse, deeper than it had ever been because of the trauma to his throat and vocal cords, the sparkle gone from his eyes and his smile a rare sight. But he was alive, and every day he moved a little easier, spoke a little clearer and after two months in the ocean air and gentle sunshine, a full diet and plenty of sleep, it finally seemed that Pietro was making some progress.

Still. Tony would give almost anything to hear the boy laugh, really laugh, just once. Just one more time.

“Pietro.” Tony sat on the boy’s good side and patted him on the knee gently. “How are you today?”

“Th’same as always, I suppose.” Pietro said slowly. “How are you?”

“Same as always.” Tony propped his elbows on his knees, clasped his hands beneath his chin. “I have good news though. I received the documents this morning that declare you and Wanda as my legal responsibility. Of course Natalia is already my wife, but I drew up documents for her child as well making sure you are all entitled to a share of my wealth.”

“Your legal responsibility.” Pietro stated. “Not your children.”

“You and your sister are less than ten years younger than I am.” Tony pointed out with a smile. “Which would make for some awkward questions, don’t you think? Italians are known for their virility, but that is too much, hm?”

Pietro didn’t answer and Tony cleared his throat, “And I-- I didn’t want you to feel as if I was taking your name. You and Wanda are Maximoffs first, and Romanov’s second, and I won’t erase those to tack on my own moniker. It is easy for me to come home to Italy and forget most of Sokovia, but Sokovia was your entire world and you don’t have to--”

He blew out a breath, searching for the right words. “I’m saying this badly, so let me just tell you that your official name is Pietro Maximoff, dalla casa di Carbonell Stark. You are Pietro Maximoff, of the house Carbonell-Stark. That is how you will be introduced, how you will be accepted into society, and the name that will ensure you have the coin to do whatever it is you wish, as well as to provide for a family of your own.”

“A family of my own.” Pietro’s mouth twisted into a faint, bitter, resemblance of his old smile. “I do not think you have to worry about that, Tony.”

“If or when the day comes.” Tony maintained. “You and those you love will be provided for.”

“The ones I love are here in Italia.” Pietro said flatly. “Everyone else is dust in Sokovia.”

Tony didn’t know what to say to that, didn’t know how to comfort the boy when he felt much the same way. He never wanted to think James and Samuel and Ronin were gone but he couldn’t hope they were still alive without sacrificing his mental health, his emotional stability. Their family was hurt and ripped in half, the manor in ashes and their loved ones torn away, but Tony couldn’t think about it.

He had to be strong or Talia, for the new baby, for Wanda who had taken over so many responsibilities with a warm smile and willing spirit, and for Pietro who seemed fragile enough for a sea breeze to carry him away.

Tony had to be strong, so when Pietro went quiet again, he simply sat next to the young man and watched the sun move across the water.

“You…” The words came with difficulty, Pietro sounding close to tears when he spoke again. “You are different now. A year ago you didn’t care what happened to us. Now you are giving us your name?”

“A year ago we weren’t family.” Tony pointed out gently. “And now we are. It’s as simple as that, Pietro. If giving you my name means you and Wanda and Talia will always be taken care of, then that’s what I will do. We’re going to be alright, kiddo. I promise.”

Pietro flexed his damaged fingers and shook his head. “You are better at hiding your anger and your fear and your heartbreak now, but it is still obvious. We are never going to be alright again. And nothing--nothing is simple. Or people as smart as ourselves would have figured out a way for life to not hurt as much.

“...Pietro.”

“Ronin and Samuel always said I had to grow up sometime.” Pietro closed his good eye, a solitary tear slipping down his cheek. “I suppose now is as good a time as any.”

****************

“How is Pietro?” Natalia tipped her head forward so Tony could get to the buttons at the back of her neck, breathing out a sigh of relief as the dress loosened around her frame. “You were out there for a long time today.”

“I didn’t want to leave him alone.” Tony pushed the gown to the floor and helped Natalia step out of it, glancing away while she got into her robe. “I told him about the documents I had drawn up, told him that everything would be alright and he-- he doesn’t really believe it.”

“I don’t think any of us believe it, not truly.” Natalia pulled the pins from her hair and grimaced when the red bulk fell in a tangled clump to her shoulders. “Antonio, I am chopping my hair off tomorrow, I am tired of this mess. In fact, hand me my shears and I’ll cut it off tonight. I would be beautiful with short hair.”

“You would be beautiful with short hair.” Tony pushed the scissors out of her reach with a patient smile. “But why don’t you let me try to comb it before you take it away, alright?”

Natalia muttered something Russian that was definitely a curse, but obediently sat when Tony pulled the chair from the vanity for her. “You have become quite the ladies maid, Antonio. Brushing my hair, helping Wanda in the kitchen, changing the linens for Pietro. Perhaps you were meant to be--”

“--that’s quite enough out of you.” Tony huffed and Natalia laughed at him. “Hold still, love. It has been a very long time since I combed anyone’s hair but my own and I don’t want to hurt you.”

“No of course you don’t, you have been wonderful these past few months.” Natalia was prone to melancholy more and more these days, a hand resting listlessly on her belly and gaze far away. “I thought I was done mourning, you know. I’ve lost so much in my life, I thought losing James was inevitable, I thought losing Samuel and Ronin would be something I would survive. I had no idea how much more my heart could break. I had no idea I could mourn from my very soul. When does that go away?"

Tony’s hands stilled a moment as the all familiar anguish threatened to choke him, but he cleared his throat and went back to combing again before comforting, “Natalia. It has only been a few months. Time will heal us.”

“You’ve said that at least a thousand times since we came to Chioggia.” Natalia smiled wearily. “Time will heal us, the sunshine will chase our shadows away. Not so long ago you were practically furious because we teased you about being in love with James, now you are placating us with empty words. You are pretending again that you don’t love him, that you care for nothing in this world, that you aren’t hurting.”

“I’m pretending no such thing.” Tony said evenly. “But now I have a family to take care of, a wife to support and the twins to protect and a little one on the way. You were strong for me when I was on the verge of collapse, Natalia. Wanda and Pietro pushed past all of my irritability to make me laugh and to draw me into conversation. It’s my turn to be strong for you, to make Wanda smile and to encourage Pietro to talk.”

“I--” Tony swallowed, blinking back tears. “I miss James more than I thought I could miss anyone in my life. I miss him in a way that makes how I felt for Ty seem trite in comparison. Ty broke my heart and I left the country, but losing James--” he swallowed again. “I would wage war by myself to bring him home, to bring Samuel and Ronin back to your side. I would drag Brock Rumlow to the middle of a field and set him on fire if I thought it would help anything at all. And I would--”

“I did it.” Natalia blurted, and when Tony’s brow furrowed in confusion, she explained in halting words, “I did it. I--I killed Brock. I sent a message to have him brought the manor house and then I--”

“...Natalia?”

“I killed him.” she finished in a whisper. “I poured kerosene over him and set him on fire. Stood there until he stopped screaming and it wasn’t half what that man deserved. It smelled awful and it took so so long and I didn’t leave until it was done.” Natalia clenched her fists until her knuckles were blood white, her eyes wide and empty in the mirror. “Ashes to ashes.”

“Dust to dust.” Tony rested his forehead against Natalia’s hair, hiding the horror in his expression. “Oh, Talia.”

“I’m not sorry.” she whispered. “And I don’t have nightmares about it. Tell me Antonio, is that awful? Am I wicked? My child will not have her father’s but neither will she grow up in a world where their murderer walks free. I cannot be sorry for that, does that make me wicked?”

Natalia sat with tears slipping down her face, and Tony didn’t know what to say, so he just kept combing her hair.

Everything would be alright.

Somehow... everything would be alright.

**************

SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THE CHAPTER!

**************

@bethy-sue @shipeveryonetogether @shadowrayven @hausoffro @thereaderandwriterwithin @zerokrox-blog @zuretha-metal @tstilcr @larissaloki @blackhearted @itsallyd @megahuffledor @tabziecat @ceealaina @cwar1864 @pidgist @yukina64 @multishippinglife @susana0 @paranormalmoonlight5 @girlnic @vgurl18 @sw3etpotat0 @jade-taillia @glitternotgold73 @atomicfandombomb

#ncts fics #winteriron

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daincrediblegg · 4 years

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What do you want to see in a joker sequel? Do you want a sequel? With Joaquin Pheonix

This is... an interesting question, nonnie. And I’m so sorry about the fucking thesis that I’m about to unleash, but hey, I’m an industry hopeful, so I think about this kinda thing a lot.

I mean. Here’s the thing, Joker is in a weird space because I think I could go the rest of my life without a follow-up to what has become my favorite movie of all time and be happy about it. It’s so rare in today’s industry to see such an incredibly well executed, self-contained narrative. ESPECIALLY a pop culture property. The likelihood that it would fall to the usual sequel pitfalls seems incredibly likely (studio pressure and time constraint being some), and to ruin a really good story for that just doesn’t seem worth it to me. I like Joker as the one comic book movie that stood on its own two feet. That didn’t try and force a moral or put its main character into a box, but rather told Arthurs story and allowed you to fill in the blanks about who his character is and what he means. I’ve said before and I’ll say it again: That is worth more to me than a whole decade of Marvel films (I’m not knocking them, but in terms of narrative quality, all the avengers combined will never hold a candle to this single film about one fucking dude).

... but also, I’m never one to say never. Where there’s an idea, there’s a solid 50/50 chance of executing it well or poorly, and that outcome depends entirely on where you focus your efforts in building the narrative off of what you’ve already done. Todd I think knows that as I’m pretty sure he said in an interview that it would have to embolden the themes of the first. Problem is that I don’t think he may know what that means

But I do, because I’m a fucking madman who has a whole notebook full of this shit. So with all that in mind, I have a few critera that I can think of off the top of my head thatTodd and the crew would need to focus on in order to make any sequel to Joker really worth it.

The narrative superposition that is maintained throughout the film that allows for narrow, but free interpretation of the characters within (this kind of stuff that allows you to come to your own conclusions about whether everything that happens in the movie is stuff that the joker made up while in the hospital or really happened, whether he really is thomas wayne’s illigitimate son or not, etc.). It’s positively the film’s best quality and following this up in a way that wouldn’t ruin the air of mystery of the first would be EXTREMELY DIFFICULT. But I believe that if Todd stuck to his guns, didn’t reveal any answers to the original questions we’re left with in the first movie, and makes up NEW questions surrounding Arthur’s charater (and perhaps any other new characters that are necessary for the longevity of this depiction of the batman universe), then it can maintain some of the enigmatic, cinematically roarschach-y kinda quality that the first one had and make the sequel worthy of the name.

I think one of the greatest charms of this film is how heavily reminiscent of films like Taxi Driver and Network and other late 70’s/early 80’s indie flicks it was. But I think it doesn’t necessarily have to stick with those specific inspirations. I’d like to see it go in a different direction (my personal favorite and one that’s inspired a long fanfic of my own being early legal films with an emphasis on moral ambiguity and “the impossible court case” like To Kill A Mockingbird and Inherit the Wind). So another sort of tasteful repurposing of themes and aesthetics from classic films wouldn’t be too out of line, and it would be interesting to see what kind of personality this version of Gotham takes on because of it.

The music. It needs to follow in that period-appropriate tradition that gives a good feel for the person and the place. Hildur would obviously need to come back for the score (I cannot see a complete sequel without her, todd, lawrence sher and Joaquin honestly), but all the little music on the side would need to count just as much. I’ve got my own ideas to this end (in a playlist that I hope I’ll publish eventually), but the feel would have to feel classic but evolved from the previous soundtrack.

This is probably gonna get me a lot of hate, but here it goes: I don’t think Arthur Fleck should be the main character. Why? Well, it all boils down to that air of mystery again. The matter of fact is- this ain’t your granddaddy’s joker, running around like a mob boss and wreaking havoc in gotham for a thrill. This guy is down to earth with deeply rooted emotional motive and method behind the things he did. In order to appreciate his character even more, I would like to look at him from the periphery of another character. To know the depth of his actions not at an emotional distance, but rather at a physical distance. I think someone like perhaps The Riddler would be a good jumping off point for this kind of thing, or perhaps some other classic batman villains renewed in this gritty 80’s indie Gotham. Of course, Joaquin would have to reprise, but with someone else observing his actions he might have enough range to find some new avenues to take with the character. (And honestly, nonnie? I don’t think this one really hardcore falls into absolute sequel critera like the other two. This is only really ONE avenue that a sequel could take. But I can’t come up with all of them in one post.)

#whew meta talk is exhausting #but oh so funnnn #I miss it #joker #arthur fleck #please come yell at me or ask me about how I interpret and write our boy oh my god I’d love that right now #joker 2019 #joker dc #I mean if we wanna real talk TDK is a technichal spiritual sequel/prequel #but that’s a whole other post

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ghostofviperwrites · 4 years

Text

Suzuki Gunz Crime Family - Chapter 2

Warnings: Death, blood, murder

December 11, 1995

On a Friday night most seventeen-year-old boys are found out looking for trouble. Doing a bit of drinking, maybe looking for some female company. Minoru Suzuki was not like most 17-year-old boys. Most 17-year olds had not just inherited an estate valued in the millions or an organized crime family. No, Minoru Suzuki had never been normal, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. Instead of being out on the town living it up, he was standing in a dark alley waiting for his trusted friends. His brothers by choice if you will.

Inside the old bar a meeting was being conducted. A meeting meaning to usurp Minoru Suzuki from his rightful place as head of the Suzuki Crime Family. What those inside didn’t realize was that Minoru had already begun taking over the family. Or rather reinvent the family. His chain of command was in place and they were ready to act. There was just the pesky little matter of the men inside plotting against him.

They were severely underestimating their former boss’s son. For the past five years Minoru and his group of friends had been training. Spending every free hour they possibly could learning different fighting styles, becoming proficient in weapons use, learning the ins and outs of the family and its various dealings. Minoru had barely slept as he worked with Taichi overnight when he was free from his father. They had acted as a for hire mercenary group for three years. All of this without the family having a clue.

The only weapon they weren’t proficient in were guns. Due to the strict Japanese gun control laws, they were nearly impossible to get. The crime families were about the only ones with firearms, and even those were limited. Instead of worrying about the lack of guns, Minoru had adapted, and he and his brothers had learned other ways.

Yoshi, Taichi and Iizuka appeared silently behind Minoru. Without spoken words they each pulled out their weapons of choice. Minoru preferred his blades, carrying two Shanghai Warrior 9inch knives. Yoshi liked to have a little space to maneuver so he brought kama. Taichi liking to get up close and personal was using two kubotas. Iizuka wasn’t much for hand to hand, so he brought along an escrima stick. He could do damage with the stick without needing a ton of skill. There was no need for discussion, they had already made their plan and would execute to perfection. They knew no other way. This wasn’t their first walk in the park. For years the four had worked together without knowledge of the family, making a name for themselves with their ruthless acumen. Nobody knew who they were yet, but after tonight there would be no doubt.

Pushing through the door, the boys rushed into the room, each taking up a stance on one side of the table, their weapons trained on the men who had made up the upper hierarchy of Suzuki Crime Family.

“Well this is a bit rude,” Minoru said with a smirk as he stood behind the head of the table. “Conducting clandestine meetings before my father is even cold in the ground. And without your Kumichō no less.”

“You are not my Kumichō,” His father’s so-honbucho Goro Harada spat, looking behind him to glare at the impudent young man. “There has been no vote of trust.” Those were the last words he spoke as Minoru stepped forward grabbing him by the hair and exposing his neck before slicing his blade across the man’s throat. Goro’s body slumped forward when Minoru released his hair, his head landing on the table with a loud thump as red liquid pooled on the wooden surface.

“I never did like him.” Minoru said with a dark laugh, causally wiping the blood off his blade on the back of Goro’s jacket while the men around the table stared in shock. “As for the rest of you, it’s really nothing personal but your services are no longer required.”

“Now Minoru,” Eiji Oho, the saiko komon spoke up. “You cannot just take over like this. You have no experience, you need guidance. Counsel. You are too young to be head of the Suzuki Crime Family. Without people they trust in place, your family will revolt.”

“It’s a good thing I’m not looking to run the Suzuki Crime Family.” Minoru said with a shrug of one shoulder. “It’s now time for the Suzuki Gunz to rule, and; as I said your services are no longer required.” Iizuka stepped up behind Eiji and pulled his stick against his throat, slowly choking the life out of him. As the rest of the men around the table started to panic the Suzuki Gunz struck, Minoru burying his knife into the back of one as Yoshi brought his kama down across the side of the faces of two of them with one strike. Taichi drove his kubotas into the back of the neck of the man in front of him, relishing the blood splatter as it sprayed over his hands. Seeing one of them trying to run Taichi raced after him, tackling him just before he hit the door and landing brutal punches to his body with the kubotas until he was nothing more than a bloody mass.

Rising to his feet Taichi turned to look over the room, meeting Minoru’s eyes and smiling widely at the carnage.

“Well MiSu, looks like your coup is well underway.” Taichi said, kicking the body at his feet as he moved to stand with his brothers, the four of the them looking over the fallen.

“That it is Taichi, that it is.” Minoru said with a smile turning his head to look at Yoshi. “Yoshi, send out a missive. I want to meet with the entire family tomorrow night.” Yoshi nodded, and the four men began gathering their weapons as well as those of the former Kobun. Before they left Minoru paused dragging his fingers through a pool of blood and writing out Suzuki Gunz Crime Family and their newly adopted symbol in the middle of the table. He wanted his message received loud and clear by his family, rival families and the authorities.

December 12, 1995

Minoru Suzuki sat alone at the end of the great hall, staring out over the room that held his so called family. His brothers were not at his side. They were scattered throughout the room, listening and watching, learning where loyalties lie. No one knew how close the four men were. Tongues would be loose in front of them. As far as anyone was aware, Minoru was alone and that was exactly the perception he wanted for the moment.

Tonight was a night of intelligence. To hear the gossip. To see who fell where on the line of allegiance. Minoru had his core, but he knew he needed more men he could trust with his life to be his inner circle. To be what Minoru envisioned for this family, four would not suffice.

Waving off the waitress wanting to fill his cup Minoru abruptly rose to his feet, immediately drawing the attention of everyone in the room. Conversations ceased and silence filled the hall as every member of the Suzuki Family looked to their new Kumichō. Not even a legal adult yet and Minoru still had a commanding presence. One that demanded respect as his cold eyes seemed to stare into the soul of every person in the room. Some shifted uncomfortably, feeling as if they were being laid bare by his gaze.

“By now I’m sure all of you have heard about the unfortunate demise of my father’s Kobun. I’m sure you’ve also heard of the symbol written in their blood. A symbol that looked like this.” Shocked gasps filled the room as Minoru shook out a black flag with a symbol reading Suzuki Gunz holding it up for view before laying it out on the table before him. “Let them serve as an example of what happens to those that are not loyal to me or my family. What happens to those that try to take what is rightfully mine. Yesterday they died. With them died the Suzuki Crime Family. Today a new family is borne. A new era begins. The era of the Suzuki Gunz.

Japanese Translations:

Kobun – underlings

Kumichō – Boss

so-honbucho – underboss, second in command

saiko komon – senior advisor – like consigliere in American mafia

#sgcf #Suzuki gunz crime family #Suzuki gunz fanfic #Suzuki gunz imagine #njpw fanfic #wrestling fanfic #mywriting #ghostofviperwrites

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absentlyabbie · 5 years

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Flommy. Soulmate AU of sorts. Kiiiind of canon divergence, very loosely.

First, the canon divergence:

So all the pre island shit still happens. Rebecca Merlyn dies when her son is eight years old. Her husband abandons their child to gnash his teeth on a global tour and develop his plan for class warfare and eventual class genocide. Thea Queen is conceived and born. Tommy Merlyn grows up under neglect and contempt as his father manipulates and strong arms his fellow one percenters into committing to his deeply shady undertaking, becoming more criminal and morally bankrupt the deeper they all get into Malcolm’s plan. Oliver Queen grows up lost and misunderstood and acts out as badly as a rich white boy can until he’s looking to sabotage every relationship he has (that isn’t with Tommy) because he doesn’t like himself and doesn’t know who else to be.

Instead of boarding a boat to China that Malcolm sabotages, setting into motion the chain of events that make Ollie into the Hood, the Queen men elect to fly. (Not sure yet how Sara is involved but she probably is; also the flight thing might not be how it goes down) and Malcolm has them kidnapped before they reach the airport.

It’s a huge national story. Billionaire CEO and playboy heir abducted and missing for three weeks. No calls for ransom. No leads. So many tabloid stories being nasty at Moira and about Robert’s history of infidelity.

Meanwhile, Oliver and Robert are held at an obscure facility as both are interrogated and at times tortured, as Malcolm seeks to know how, he believes, Robert is planning to betray him.

Robert gives away nothing, but two weeks in, Oliver is in terrible shape, often tortured to try and break Robert. Robert in their cell does his shitty confession and putting his burdens on his son, making Oliver memorize names and dirty deals and connections and giving him cryptic clues to a cache of incriminating evidence against Malcolm and all the others. Then Robert makes a half assed escape attempt, wresting a gun from a guard and trying to force them to set them free. When it’s clear that won’t work, he apologizes to Oliver and shoots himself in the head, hoping that with no more reason to hold him, they’ll let Oliver go.

Oliver, crazed by grief and days of torture, violently assaults the remaining two captors, disabling one. Little does he realize the authorities have found them and the FBI sweeps in just as Oliver finishes beating a guard to death.

This helps get him into the situation that comes next.

Oliver ends up turning state’s evidence. To protect his mother and sister, to get revenge for his father, and because he is threatened with a trial by agent Amanda Waller.

So, traumatized, changed forever, and on a mission, Oliver can’t bear to return to Starling. When Tommy tries to visit him, before it’s known it was Malcolm behind it all, the encounter goes very badly. Oliver is dark, angry, obsessed. They feel impossibly far from one another. Tommy goes home heartbroken and feeling abandoned again. Oliver pursues revenge disguised as justice. This however leads only to more pain.

Two revelations come at the same time: his mother was as deep in as his father and therefore could be subject to prosecution, regardless of the pressures that put her there. Also, at last, the man behind it all. Malcolm Merlyn, his best friend’s father.

Oliver knows this will destroy Tommy’s life. For that alone he would hesitate. But. But. Malcolm is poison. A monster. And he has only one chance to broker a deal to save his mother, and giving up Tommy’s father is it.

And so, the Undertaking is averted, but its full scope revealed to all. Malcolm is arrested and charged. Oliver could only bring himself to tell Tommy at the last minute. The two are in such hurt and anger they do not speak for the next few years. Still, Tommy does testify at his father’s trial. For the state. He corroborates details and speaks to Malcolm as a father: cold, cruel, exacting and contemptuous. Tommy is dragged in the press plenty on his own. The final nail in the coffin of it all is when Malcolm flies into a rage at the Merlyn house the last day of the trial and almost kills his son.

Malcolm is sentenced to life in prison for numerous crimes, including conspiracy to commit domestic terrorism and attempted murder of his own child. In prison, soon after, he is killed in a prison riot (actually dead or orchestrated disappearance? Who knows.)

Meanwhile Tommy is left to grieve and process and pick up the shattered pieces of his life. The Queens leave Starling, and Oliver becomes almost a hermit to, like, bodybuild and try to psychologically heal and hopefully stay out of Waller’s clutches. Tommy stays in Starling, his trust and assets and inheritance tied up or seized at large by the federal government, the board of Merlyn Global desperately seeking a rebranding or possibly overall firesale, and the city and world in general associates his last name with violent class hatred and corruption.

Years pass. Oliver and Tommy don’t talk. Oliver does not return to Starling. Tommy regains fractions of his fortune over time, maybe opens a business, definitely opens several clinics, charities, and nonprofits across the city. To some he is a hero, a prince of redemption. To others he’ll never shine bright enough to be free of his father’s shadow. Laurel is his good friend and he has been quietly repressedly in love with her for some time, and doing nothing about it.

Now, the concept:

Soulmates happen, though they’re referred to as soul bonded. They’re not always romantic relationships. It’s a metaphysical bond between people uniquely suited to understand, support, and be complemented by one another.

Being bonded is not a given. It happens, not infrequently, but not so much so that everyone can assume it will happen to them.

Being bonded also doesn’t mean there can’t be breakdowns in the relationship. It’s still something you have to choose to work at. Being bonded just means really that this is a person so well suited to being a vital part of your life, why wouldn’t you choose to work at maintaining it?

So. The way it works. You encounter a person who is your bond partner in the wild, and a mark appears, typically near the chest region, often over the heart or center of the sternum (anomalies do occur.) You can’t miss it because it appears with a feeling almost like you’ve been branded, and it’s described by those who experience it as an electric current tethering you suddenly to your bond partner. You become hyper aware of them.

To outsiders, the bondmark is unmistakable. They couldn’t draw it or describe it in detail, but there is something visceral in the human brain that recognizes it, and recognizes when they match. Even when directly photographed, this holds true to observers.

In this way, bond marks cannot be copied or forged. They cannot be imitated with tattooing or obscured by scars or burns.

(Because even in stories I’ll never write I go hard on world building.)

The bond does confer certain unique connections. Not like telepathy or viewing through one another’s eyes or walking in dreams. But that hyper awareness of your bond partner doesn’t go away. It’s almost an empathetic awareness. It hums, and it carries non verbal understanding, and it feels most settled and right when the partners are together and spend time with one another as best suits who they both are and the dynamic they establish between them.

New bonds are tricky. They are intense and absorbing, and can even be uncomfortable and strange and almost obsessive at times. This newness can last for a period of typically three to eight weeks. This period is referred to as “settling.”

It’s the time during which the new bond through physical and psychological stimuli encourages the new partners to get to know and become comfortable and familiar with one another.

This is typically characterized as a time when new bond partners have difficulty focusing on things unrelated to their partner for long stretches, and a need to not just be in each other’s presence, but often physical contact. This may mean cuddling, sitting closely, thoughtless, casual intimate touches. Ignoring or denying these settling urges can lead to physical discomfort, anxiety, and emotional and mental distress.

Bond partners who are romantically or just physically suited often get rapidly intimately involved during this period, though that doesn’t always mean it will stay that way, and it’s not a given.

(You can be bonded to more than one person, of course. Multiple people can even be bonded to each other. For now the idea is Flommy but let’s not pretend OT3 isn’t always an option with me and it’s definitely an option this concept allows for.)

That’s the other thing, though. First: bonds do not manifest until after maturity, typically no earlier than age 20.

Second, and this is the thing least understood: bonds most often manifest when mature partners first encounter one another. BUT not always, especially with people who knew each other prior to maturity.

There’s a lot of theories, most popular that the bond manifests when both partners are ready to be bonded, or in other words, have grown into the version of themselves truly suited to their partner. But no one really knows. It’s not an exact science.

And plenty of scientific research has indeed been done on soul bonding. There’s a department of the national health organization dedicated to it, legal provisions made for bonded partners, including work and school accommodations for those in the settling period.

(Settling can typically be physically measured through hormones via bloodwork.)

There are societal benefits to bonded relationships after all. Bonded partners tend to be more stable members of society, the possibility of your bonded being anyone promotes empathy, outreach, and social safety nets being extended more broadly, and on the local scale, many studies have shown that bonded partners have a stabilizing, sometimes even calming effect on their immediate social groups and environments.

And of course, there’s plenty of media romanticism of bonded relationships. It’s the biggest subgenre of romance books and films, but is often prevalent in all other genres, especially popular in law enforcement/war story/etc stories.

Now for the actual story:

Tommy visits Queen Consolidated one day to try and woo the board into partnering with one of his charities. He leaves uncertain if they will take it as an opportunity for redemptive PR or treat associating with a man named Merlyn like bathing in radioactive waste. On his way out through the lobby, he literally runs into a cute blonde he wouldn’t have really glanced at twice.

And nothing will ever be the same.

The bonding is instant, electric, and undeniable. However, it is also... unwelcome.

Neither of them is remotely happy that it happens.

Tommy is in love with Laurel and has been talking himself into making a real move. This is the worst timing. And bonding or not, the idea of letting someone get close to him like that is terrifying. He has been abandoned and betrayed and discarded his whole life. In his mind, not even a bonding can make someone want to keep him around in any capacity.

And if they do, he would think it was only because they “had to” because that bond. That’s not how bonding works, but it’s a popular and persistent misconception.

And new bonds can put serious strain on preexisting relationships. When opposite sex, attraction-compatible partners are bonded, the general public has a hard time believing it’s not sexual and/or romantic, and even still insecurity and jealousy from nonbonded romantic partners can complicate matters.

So Tommy is exasperated and suspicious and unhappy.

Felicity is no happier, however.

New bondings require mandatory paid leave from work during the settling period and Felicity has been trying to make advancement finally happen in her career at QC. And bonding leave has historically had a more negative effect on women’s career trajectory than men’s.

It’s still our world, unfortunately.

It’s no different than women starting families.

Beyond even just the career implications, however, Felicity has never wanted to be bonded. Not in any way she’d admit to anyways.

Her parents were bond partners. And still her father walked away from them when she was six.

Her mother, when she is drunk and feeling reflective, will admit they were never meant to be romantic partners. He was her best friend. They rarely slept with each other after settling, but it wasn’t never. The pregnancy wasn’t planned. Donna was delighted. Her husband had never wanted children.

And while he loved Felicity, he never really took to fatherhood. The strain broke down their relationship. And even bonded, when you stop communicating, and circumstances are adverse to both partners’ needs being met, and you stop working on your relationship... no relationship is perfect or safe forever from hurt. Not even a soul bonded one.

(Because in my concept, being soulmates isn’t a magical fix for everything. It’s too much an easy button sometimes. I find that dissatisfying.)

Now, what happened between Felicity’s parents isn’t impossible. It’s even understandable, if tragic nonetheless. And her father still made cruel choices in abandoning them and never returning.

But Felicity was six and it hurt her deeply while her ideas of the world were still forming. She decided as she grew up that bonding was bullshit and looking to be bonded so you could feel safe or be happy was asking to get your heart broken, a fairy tale you would be stupid to trust.

So now here she is, bonded to someone whose last name is almost synonymous with domestic terrorism, who doesn’t want to be bonded either, and is in love with someone else. And right when she’s trying to take control of her career, too. Add to that how impossible it will be to maintain her happily anonymous life when bonded to one of Starling’s most infamous sons and none of this looks like a good time.

But you can’t take back a bonding. You can’t undo or break it. Some people are made to have a home in your heart, and the best you could do is evict them and board it up. Still leaves a chamber empty. You can live with it, but you’ll always feel it. And the settling is unavoidable. Even if you choose to never see each other again after, you have to get through settling first.

(You cannot, by the way, be bonded to someone who would truly abuse you. If they would rape or willingly harm you, they’d never be the person so suited to you that you were bound.)

Like there are ways to get through settling on the bare minimum. If both partners are not interested in fostering their connection to its full potential, they can do the least possible to get through settling with minimal discomfort, then simply choose to drift apart and not keep up with each other or stay in contact. (Even then, though, you’re still bonded. Sometimes you’ll just Know something is happening. You’ll feel the urge to reach out, to look in on their life. Hearing about them will always make you pensive for a while. But it’s up to you what to do about any of that.)

Felicity got this far forcefully assuming she’d never be bonded with anyone. Insisting to herself and anyone who asked that she actively didn’t want to be. Tommy had always thought if he bonded with anyone it’d be Oliver. And when that didn’t happen at 20, and things fell out as they did, he assumed... well. He was too broken. Too fundamentally unlovable. Too tainted by the loneliness of his childhood and the selfish monstrosity of his father. His parents weren’t bonded. They chose each other completely on their own, was how his mother put it. He used to think that was even more romantic. As he got older he talked himself into believing it was because of how terrible and cold a person Malcolm was, incapable of bonding equally to anyone at all. Talked himself into believing he must be enough like his father to be similarly incapable of bonding.

(And you know, in every soulmate au I’ve ever toyed with that’s held true. Tommy has always assumed it would be Oliver.)

So when the bond happens to Tommy and Felicity completely out of the blue, two perfect strangers, oh they are pissed. And resistant. They assume they will get through settling and never bother one another ever again if they can manage it.

They want very much to keep it quiet.

That lasts less than a day.

After all, it happened in public. Bondings aren’t entirely commonplace but they’re not rare. If you’ve ever witnessed one, you knew it. That sense of electric connection isn’t imaginary, and at point of contact, can be felt like a ripple by those around the connection. Like holding your hand up to an old tv boxset screen just after turning it off.

All it takes is for someone to follow the feeling back and realize they recognize one of the people now staring at each other with their hands on their chests.

A call to a newspaper or tabloid. “Tommy Merlyn just got soul bonded in the lobby of Queen Consolidated!”

The news is spreading before Tommy and Felicity are even properly grappling with it. By the time they’ve had their first conversation and already decided they want to settle quietly and go their separate ways, it’s already a Twitter rumor and the trashiest tabloid in town is putting out speculation about the mystery bond partner of the infamous Merlyn son.

So. Tommy and Felicity don’t get to settle quietly. The first dent in Felicity’s knee jerk hostility towards Tommy is when he immediately works to do what he can to keep her identity concealed once it’s out there that she exists, just not who she is.

Things get complicated fast too. They can’t keep her identity hidden for long at all, though it matters that Tommy tries, and when higher ups at QC find out that the new bond partner of Tommy Merlyn is an employee of theirs (and a bonafide trending topic), it shifts their standing on his proposal for partnership.

He was right that they were leaning towards not partnering with his charity out of a conservative desire to keep the Merlyn and Queen names still separate. It’s only been five years after all. But as interest in Felicity grows it will be impossible to avoid connection since she works there, and if they fired her to try and cover their asses they’d open themselves up to a lawsuit and public backlash. It’s bad optics to make employment decisions based on a person’s bond partner(s), and if provable is illegal in certain circumstances. It’s also wildly unpopular with the public.

So they pivot to cozying up and trying to maximize on it. They’ll do the partnership and even go over the requested funding, but only if Felicity agrees to participate in the PR push. They intend to go with the partnership/redemption/community healing spin.

And won’t it look pretty to partner with a Merlyn charity for lower income health care initiatives with Tommy Merlyn showing up with their employee, much closer to that class than his own, on his arm.

All of this is complicated by the initiative rolling out the pr push during their settling period, a time most new partners choose to stay out of public by and large.

It can be pushed back slightly, but not enough.

So that will be Felicity’s first public appearance as bond partner to Tommy Merlyn, at a donor gala soliciting funding for free clinics and other low income healthcare initiatives.

In the meantime, they have to actually deal with their settling period, and hope they can be balanced enough at the time of the gala not to be petting each other in front of the press corps.

After all, what happens when you have two deeply lonely and desperately touch starved people bonded at the soul level?

Intense need and desire for physical contact.

Most new partners actually move in together during their settling period because need for prolonged physical contact between bond partners is extremely common.

Think Tommy running his hand up and down Felicity’s arm. Felicity absently playing with his hair when they’re alone. And Felicity’s gala dress will have a plunging neckline (showcasing the mark) and an even more plunging back. Tommy will not be able to stop running his hand down her spine. He isn’t even conscious of it most of the time. She hardly is either, just unconsciously leaning into the instinctive comfort of it. But there will be plenty written about it before press time the next day.

The touching starts soon in the settling process. Before they realize it tbh. They’re angrily telling each other they don’t want this and yet they keep touching each other. Hand on her arm to pull her out of the lobby to talk privately. Pushing at his chest to underscore her point. Etc.

He probably guides her to an unused conference room or whatever and she probably immediately ignores him to start unbuttoning her shirt in a panic, looking for her mark, brand new and right smack in the middle between her breasts. Tommy wigs out at that and they’re on the wrong foot from the jump.

(Tommy’s is upper left pectoral. Literally right above his heart)

“Whoa! Whoa whoa whoa, I did not drag you in here for sex, stop undressing!”

“Shut up! I need to see it. Don’t you need to see it? I can feel it. Oh my god. Oh my god, this can’t be happening to me. Do you see it? Tell me this isn’t real.”

They probably argue until the frustrated tears in her eyes lead him to suddenly unbutton his own shirt and prove to them both the marks are real.

But every second since the bonding that electric hum ratchets up til it’s an impossible to ignore itch. They part ways at some point, within hours after, but it’s hardly dark out before Felicity is getting in her car. She tells herself she’s just too damn ansty to be still and needs to go driving. She winds up outside his apartment building without even knowing that’s where she is. He thinks he’s gone downstairs to take a walk and sees her instead.

So Felicity goes up to Tommy’s place once they realize they were literally being drawn to each other. She spends the night there. They talk long into the night, admittedly a lot of it arguing and snarking, but once they’re sitting on the couch with no space between them he starts playing with her fingers without even realizing it. Once they do, they both just watch his fingers toying with hers in loaded silence until she abruptly bursts into tears.

He’s startled, panicking and trying awkwardly to comfort her and please tell him if he did something wrong. But she’s so frustrated with her tears and it’s making her cry harder. She only barely, figuring it out out loud, manages to articulate that she can’t remember the last time someone just touched her like this, and it’s killing her, and she doesn’t want him to stop and that scares her.

And he terrifies himself by nearly crying too because fuck he gets that. He wants so badly for her to just please let him keep touching her like this, because it hurts how much his skin aches to touch another person so simply, just simple human contact, and he’s not sure that’s okay and why would she want to let him touch her, and how do you even ask for things like that without sounding like a creep?

And she doesn’t look at him like he’s evil incarnate, or the son of it. It helps that she moved to Starling after it all happened. She heard about it, but in the abstract way you hear about local taxes going up, or how everyone hates that one sports team.

He was an abstract concept. She didn’t research him or read the articles or follow his big moves into charity work.

He’s just a person to her.

He’s just himself.

Everyone has baggage.

His is just larger scale as far as she’s concerned.

Not that they get into that right away. That first night is still kinda awkward. The getting to know you small talk mixed with late night slumber party deepness interspersed with bouts of silence and a whole lot of cautious casual touching.

But it does make them realize that they’re going to have to deal seriously with being bonded and especially settling.

Whiiiich necessitates certain moves.

First, Felicity has to deal with work. Before the board has moved on their big idea, she puts in her notice of bonding, starting the paperwork to initiate her government mandated settling leave.

The process is completed by a doctor's note stating that bloodwork shows she is indeed in the settling phase of bonding.

Which precipitates their next stop.

Most hospitals and clinics have specialists for this sort of thing. Not just for bloodwork but for sort of... entrance counseling. They talk to the partners separately, confirm bloodwork, provided documentation legally recognizing the bond, and if the partners choose, they can then also be counseled together. It’s the point at which most people get their questions answered about both being bonded and the settling process.

In his individual session, Tommy is probably asking questions about the practicalities of settling, and how to maintain relationships outside a settling bond, and what to do about being in love with someone else while the bond is making you focus on a different person entirely.

(His doctor, a handsome black man in his later thirties, smiles in amusement at that and reminds him not all bonds are romantic and they are certainly not automatically exclusive of other relationship possibilities.)

But Felicity.

Felicity is after the numbers and statistics. How many bondings go badly, what’s the average length of a settling period, what percentage are platonic vs romantic, and do bond partners who are attraction-compatible always end up romantically or sexually involved or can they remain platonic from the start?

So many questions. Her doctor is a youngish Latina woman, close to 30, maybe a little past, and she takes Felicity’s frenzied questions in stride, patient and reassuring but not condescending. When Felicity asks that last question the conversation veers a bit.

“Do you want the speech I’ve already given you about your continued autonomous freedom to choose and control over your actions? Or do you want more numbers and statistics?”

“Numbers, please. Unknowns bother me. Not like scare me, but they bother me, I just need to know, I need cold, hard numbers. Numbers are trustworthy, numbers are reliable.”

He doctor gives her a tolerantly skeptical look. “The cold, hard numbers it is then. In most studies and surveys, the numbers have been pretty consistent. This doesn’t change anything I said about choice or your control over your decisions, but statistics wise? Typically, for attraction-compatible partners, in all honesty, it’s above 80% odds that the partners at some point become romantically or sexually involved. It doesn’t always remain that way, but that’s the odds of involvement at some point over the lifetime of the bond.”

Felicity gapes. “Eight... eighty percent? More than eighty percent?”

Doc nods. “More than 80%. Of course, that does include brief flings and even oneoff intimate encounters. Are you ready for more numbers?” Felicity gulps and nods. “About 93% of those partners get romantically or sexually involved during the settling period. Even if it never happens again, if it’s going to, the odds are overwhelmingly in favor of it being during the most intense period of the bond, while it’s still new and the partners haven’t found their balance quite yet. After all, it’s a very absorbing, intensely emotional period.”

Felicity sits there looking poleaxed. The doc looks at her a little pityingly. “Still prefer those numbers?”

Felicity groans and falls backward on the examination table. “So I’m definitely going to sleep with him? Or, ugh, fall in love with him?”

The doc shakes her head, rolling her eyes heavenward while Felicity isn’t looking. “Not definitely. But it’s a strong possibility.” Felicity muffles a low scream in her forearms. The doc snorts and, when Felicity sits back up, smiles brightly. “But hey, even if it does happen you don’t have to worry about getting pregnant. Protection is still best in all cases, but an aspect of the hormone cocktail that indicates the settling period does preclude the possibility of successful conception.”

Felicity is not really reassured by this.

So Tommy asks the existential questions at the clinic and Felicity asks how screwed (ha) they are by statistics. Neither is feeling particularly awesome about things after their individual counseling sessions but because they are stupid they opt not to also be counseled as a pair.

They’re morons who are resisting the trust and communication aspect of being bonded.

Idk if I’d end up splashing plot around on this thing or just focus solely on the relationship aspect.

Regardless, even if plot, large focus would be on these two getting to know each other during settling and slowly realizing that the bond—and each other—might be exactly what they needed in their lives. It would be hellaaaaa slow burn.

And then there’s the option to expand.

Tommy and Felicity settle before I’d let Oliver butt in, that’s certain. Adding him to the mix too early would be a disaster.

So big focus on Tommy/Felicity relationship development. Lots of talking and cuddling and minor metaphysics. Eventual shift towards the romantic, and its undoubted accompanying angst.

But also possibly some at least minor plot developments in regards to Felicity pushing to further her career, and plenty of entanglement with Tommy’s reputation and unearned notoriety as well as his efforts to make up for his father’s sins by furthering the legacy of his mother’s life’s work.

I’m thinking there miiiight be an incident of some sort at the charity gala.

Not sure if like... an actual attack aimed at Tommy or like disgruntled people going too far.

And I have this line in my head of them like hiding out in a dark spot somewhere and Tommy miserably apologizing for dragging her into his family bullshit. “You were living a normal, safe life until I happened to you. I’m so sorry.”

And Felicity is half ignoring him as she tries to figure out how to help the situation, and just smirks at him wryly. “Please don’t make the mistake of thinking you’re the most interesting thing to ever happen to me.”

And of course at some point in the chaos they’ll get separated and it will drive them crazy, frantically searching through the crowd until they find each other. The photo of them clinging desperately to each other once reunited probably makes a few front pages.

Laurel may or may not be there, and Tommy will no doubt end up deeply conflicted about that.

Felicity at some point follows him around on the job with his various charities and nonprofits he’s either started or is deeply involved in and she develops a troubling passion for the work he does. Troubling because she initially wonders if it’s her own passion or something she’s picking up from him.

She starts making mental notes of things that could be improved.

Not on purpose. But when she notices things that could help she can’t just not tell him of course.

And that’s it that’s the meta thus far.

@abuiltinremedy @sweetme86 @illgiveyouallofme @arrowsgirlfriday @folly1977 @memcjo @it-was-a-red-heeler @karolstrange @hungrytiger11 @adeusminhacolombina @lfcoffee @trinket-the-bear @tosailuponthesea @julandran @fiore-della-valle @deathandindignitybedamned @obscure-sentimentalist @dullbittylife @posterchildforinsanity @msbeccieboo @mell-bell @thebravething @lemmyeatspeaches @soaringcities @inevermindyou @sickandtwisteddoc @acheaptrickandacheesyoneline

#arrow #arrow meta #flommy #felicity smoak #tommy merlyn #oliver queen #arrow au #arrow fic #arrow fanfiction #flommy soulmate au #cover photo from unsplash

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vault752-blog · 5 years

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hi! i was wondering if you can give more insight into the everyday life and amenities in the vault? do people have a lot of material possessions, what type of clothes they wear, what kind of food they eat and if food's hard to come by or rationed? is there a monetary or rationing system? sorry for all the q's, i just want to know the setting more! tysm

thank sooo much for these lovely questions. i lovelovelove making headcanons about the vault tbh. i think the appeal of the fallout shelter/vaults concept is that u can really make it anything u want!! i planned to make a post about it soon but no better time than the present~~!! (might make a better, more organized and detailed post of headcanons in the future.) this post is quite L O N G, but i think also quite informative, so i hope our members take the time to read through it c:

dwellers definitely have their own material possessions, whether inherited from family (first generation dwellers were allowed to bring in a limited amount of precious items), obtained from within the vault (ex. the standard yellow jumpsuit dwellers are given to wear if they don’t have any clothes of their own, outfits crafted in the outfit workshop, etc.) or brought in from the wasteland by explorers (ex. clothes, blankets, weapons, armor, etc.). when explorers bring in supplies from the wasteland, the overseer distributes them equally among dwellers, or gives them to whomever needs them most (ex. better guns and armor are given to guards and dwellers who work in rooms that are easily accessible to raiders or are frequented by radroaches or mole rats). though explorers are tasked to bring back items that can be useful for making things (ex. duct tape, hammer, glue, animal hide, etc.) or for improving work rooms (ex. a microscope for the laboratory, scissors for the barber, books for the classrooms, yarn for the outfit workshop, etc.), it’s not uncommon for dwellers who are friends with explorers to ask them to bring back little trinkets (ex. pocketbooks, toys, holodisks, etc.) you can use this list of items that can be found in the game itself as a reference! (oh, and explorers are all given a pip-boy!)

as for clothes, all dwellers are given a standard plain yellow jumpsuit, but it’s their choice whether they want to wear this uniform or something else. the fashions/trends in URK at the time the dwellers moved into the vault was 80′s/minimalist (yes, irony! but urk made it work–think 80′s style with minimalist color palettes), so styles haven’t changed muchsince then. there are definitely a handful of girls walking around in scrunchies, pale pink leg warmers, off the shoulder tops and ruffled skirts; as for guys, preppy 80′s fashion dominated, but it’s not uncommon to see a bomber jacket or two. there are no uniforms that are room-specific, but it’s typical for dwellers that work in the same area to wear similar clothes to work (ex. workers in the nuclear reactor are commonly seen sporting military fatigues or radiation suits, medbay and science lab workers are seen in white clothing like lab coats, guards are seen wearing metal armor,etc.) feel free to base your ideas off of this canon list of clothes!

as for food, the vault uses food synthesizers and hydroponic farms to produce food. all food consumed is made within the vault to ensure that it’s not affected by any form of radiation (although irradiated water has caused a number of deaths in the past.) recycling is a big, big thing in the vault, and recycling rules are followed strictly. vault-tec also stored a sizable stockpile of packaged food (ex. just-add-water noodles, heat-n-serve tv dinners, dried fruits, etc.) in the vault, along with emergency food rations for desperate times. vault-tec claimed that dwellers won’t run out of food for up to 400 years. at the present time, the vault has no problem with food production, as there is a large, active garden, and few dwellers to feed. (you can even find The Official Vault Dwellers’ Cook Book by Vault-Tec and the URK in the vault’s library! starring popular urk favorites such as kimchi jjigae, tteokbokki, etc. typically, this is used by diner workers.) dwellers can order food at the diner at any time, which serves dishes that are largely composed of vegetables–meat dishes can only be found on the menu about twice a month, and the meat is usually from vault-tec packages since the vault doesn’t raise livestock. there are also a few vendor-bots around the vault that can provide snacks and beverages.

as for the vault’s monetary system, dwellers barter with each other to trade personal affects such as clothes, blankets, books, trinkets, etc. necessities such as food and water are made readily available to dwellers at any time. there is no strict rationing system in place except for gambling chips at the game room and alcohol (both of which all dwellers have equal and limited access to–

gambling chips can only be acquired twice a month from the vendo-bot that supplies it at the door of the game room–this bot logs dwellers’ usage by requiring a fingerprint scan everytime a dweller withdraws chips. additionally, gambling is done only for fun and not for profit. any gambling chips won cannot be exchanged for any kind of prize and must be given back to the vendo-bot.

dwellers are entitled to two glasses of the vault’s stored alcohol every month, that which they can acquire at the lounge, and must consume before they leave. similar to gambling chips, a vendo-bot oversees the provision of alcohol and requires a fingerprint scan for each glass acquired.

legal drinking age is 19!

note that the overseer has the power to grant exceptions (ie. water purification canon being given access to more alcohol than the rest), and that dwellers think so highly of the overseer that they see these exceptions as well deserved and a mark of good work done for the vault–that doesn’t mean no one will judge you, though.)

lax rationing is a system that has been passed down from the very first overseer and the first generation of dwellers. most of them were quite spoiled on earth, and remained quite spoiled in the vault. however, instead of a strict rationing system implemented by the overseer, there exists a strong culture of being judged for taking excessively. gluttony is seen as a very ugly trait. for example, eating at the diner five times in one day is extremely frowned upon, and might even result in other dwellers thinking that you’re lazy and not working hard enough.

as for amenities, vault 752 is quite luxurious. the materials used and the furniture appear to be of high quality and all the rooms offered by vault-tec are available to be used (ex. game room, lounge, etc.) all rooms are open to all dwellers.

most of the headcanons about the vault are taken from fallout shelter, the game itself, however, there are a few differences here and there~~ i hope this was helpful. sorry it was a little allover the place hhh. this is just general stuff, so members can feel free to make more specific headcanons of their own. (might be helpful to check out this fallout wiki page about technology in the vault!). if u have any more questions, we would be more than happyto answer them!

#Anonymous #faq #WHEW #THIS IS SO LONG LMAO SRRY

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comradekellzwweapons-blog · 6 years

Text

Gun Control Lead Off

As a Marxist, I cannot and do not support gun control reforms. American violence did not begin with school shootings, nor will it end with regulating individual weapons. It's important to point out that school shootings are extremely rare, with statistics showing children are more likely to die on their way to school any given day than being shot inside of their school. Though a difficult topic to navigate emotionally, we should not let the media magnifying glass dictate how we approach the issue of violence in our society. With ever-increasing instances of police brutality, imperialist attacks on the working class abroad, deathly poverty and inequality, amongst countless other things, it's understandable to see America as becoming increasingly violent and needing a fix. Sadly, no quick fix exist. Any attempt to address violence in our society must also be paired with an analysis of the root causes of violence, how the State perpetuates and uses violence politically, and how careless reforms will mean increased violence in our most oppressed communities.

Historically, gun control has been used against black/brown people and the working class to uphold white supremacy and the violent capitalist mode of production. This can, and should, be traced back to the conception of our country as a colony and then as a State. The United States was founded on violence, against both indigenous populations native to the lands, and towards the enslaved Black and brown populations who were made to literally build our country. The Second Amendment is a product of this time; the settlers were legally able to continue to use violent means to expand the colony state by waging war against the Natives they found to be in their way. Ridding the Constitution of the Second Amendment will not rid the Constitution, nor the country, of it's violence or hypocrisy. Tidying up the Second Amendment will have grave consequences. You can't erase history or simply smooth over centuries of racism, sexism, and class conflict. Especially not with gun control laws from the same institutions creating and upholding those oppressions. From slavery and colonization, to the Trail of Tears and the black codes, our “justice system” was crafted to uphold this violence for the continuation of capitalism. Mumia Abu-Jamal put it's it eloquently,

“Social structures—courts, police, prisons, etc.—have within them a deep bias about what constitutes crime and what does not. Any social structure is a product of its previous historical, economic and social iterations, and these previous forms bear significant influence on later forms. The present system, in addition to being increasingly repressive, is the logical inheritance of its racist, hierarchical, exploitative past, and it is also a reactive formation against attempts to transform, democratize, and socialize it.”

When attempting to address violence, we cannot take reforms out of the context of the violent State in which laws and reforms are written and enforced. Any guesswork of demands will have very serious real-world consequences, especially in our communities of color and working class areas. These communities already bear the brunt of capitalist violence, with disproportional rates of poverty, homelessness, unemployment, drug and alcohol abuse, and over-policing, to name a select few. Gun control laws will be a double-edged sword in increasing violence by ramping up racist enforcement of superfluous laws, and by leaving those who most need protection personally defenseless while under more policing. Once we acknowledge who the state prefers policed and defenseless, it's only logical to assume our government will act as it always has in the face of any “violence” related reform.

As socialists we understand that our society has enough homes, work, food, medicine, etc., to go around but supplies are increasingly monopolized in limited hands. Upholding this system of capitalism requires violence, from the police who enforce fundamentally unjust laws, the capitalists who enforce wage labor for survival, to the military who plunder the working classes in other countries when sectors our country has been squeezed to its pulp. If this is hard to conceptualize, imagine being homeless and sleeping underneath the window of an empty townhouse. What stops you from breaking inside to get a good, warm nights sleep? The property laws that enforce homelessness, the militarized police that enforce those laws, or the threat of violent prisons where lawbreakers are enslaved? We must ask ourselves, where is the violence in this situation rooted? Is it when the homeless person breaks a window, or when the police break the homeless person, or is it the fact that a home sits empty while members of our community freeze in the streets. This is a violence that effects every person that lives under capitalism and imperialism, as we all must participate in the system for survival. To address the violence we must address the system.

By acknowledging the root cause of our historical and overarching violence problem, we can analyze which reforms help the working class, and which do not address the root and in turn harm the working class. For example, the liberal reform of increasing the number of “school resource officers”. While on the surface this may seem helpful in the specific instance of fending off a school shooter, these officers essentially take on the role of school police throughout the school year when school shootings aren't happening. Armed guards, metal detectors, strict discipline, constant surveillance... These reforms manage to widen the school-to-prison pipeline by simply removing the pipeline. It has incalculable consequences for every black and brown student who are already 4 times as likely to be suspended, twice as likely to be arrested, and nearly twice as likely to be expelled than their white counterparts. This idea of reducing violence in a single theoretical scenario will definitely increase the violence our marginalized students face every single day. The resources could be better spent by hiring new teachers, ensuring classrooms have enough supplies, or expanding extracurricular activities. To quote Angela Davis,

“When children attend schools that place a greater value on discipline and security than on knowledge and intellectual development, they are attending prep schools for prison."

Another liberal reform worth mentioning is the idea that stricter background checks will curve gun violence. Currently through the Brady Bill, firearm retailers must run a background check on purchasers through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, an FBI database that enforces the Gun Control Act of 1968. The word “criminal” should immediately alert anybody who understands the mechanisms of the State. To quote Mumia once again, “crime is simply a conception of harm held by those who have power to make laws.” Under the Gun Control Act, people prohibited from owning guns include anybody arrested of a crime facing over a year imprisonment, anybody taking illegal substances or medical marijuana, any immigrant that lives in the US illegally, and anybody tried for domestic violence. Granted some these sound reasonable enough, if it weren't for our racialized and inherently violent state upholding these controls. Black people are incarcerated at a rate of 3.6 times that of white people, and poorer people are more likely to be incarcerated than those of a higher class, meaning the “year in jail” limit disproportionately limits the working class, specifically working class black people, from owning arms. The undocumented community is also barred from legally owning arms, despite the constant threat of violence and deportation from ICE. While those convicted of domestic violence are barred, this does not include law enforcement, who's families are 4 times more likely to experience domestic violence than those of the general population. To allow the State to tighten background check criteria will only perpetuate the racialized enforcement of who can and cannot own arms. Men like Stephen Paddock, the Las Vegas shooter who murdered 58 people and injured over 500, routinely pass the background check as it was not crafted to stop them. How could a law be written that restricts certain types of people, frankly white males, usually with a history of DV, militarism, or right-wing ideologies, from owning guns when so many of those same types of people make up our police forces, militaries, and governing bodies?

All of these examples are way the State prohibits people from legally owning guns, but we must not forget that legally obtaining arms is not the only way to obtain arms. Our country has an estimated 300 million firearms, not including black market guns for which we don't have an accurate count. If a person wants to buy a gun legally, they're subjected to State scrutiny that discriminates based on race and class. If a person wants to get a gun illegally, or off the books of the racist State, they risk much higher charges and longer incarceration if caught. Given the States lack of interest in regulating arms manufacturers, who “donate” to the NRA who then buy the politicians who run the State, guns themselves do not seem to be the problem. Rather, it's when the State's monopoly on violence is threatened by those who have the desire or material benefit in addressing the State itself. Gun control laws, and the police who enforce them, are simply self-preservation acts of racist, oppressive institutions.

While this all may seem discouraging or abysmal, analyzing the root causes of violence and the politics surrounding violence is vital to eliminating it. Capitalism and our bourgeois government that upholds it was founded on violence and must inflict violence on the working class to keep itself running. Attempts to address violence without addressing the root cause will fall short, will not bring about a radical change, and can possibly backfire by placing the working class under tighter State scrutiny. If we attempt to change the system within it, our choices are largely between the Democratic and Republican parties. While the Republican party is quickly written off for its strong ties with the NRA, violent militarism, or general disregard for human life over profits, it's worth noting that the same can pretty much be said for the Democratic party as well. They're the "lesser evil” choice between the two, but once we adopt the realization that capitalism is the root cause of what we believe is so bad about the Republicans, we must also realize that the Democratic party is a capitalist party that overall exists to uphold capitalism and is extremely violent as well. For example, the most unarguably “progressive” of the Democrats, Bernie Sanders, supports the state of Israel in its colonization of Palestine, a mirror image of the colonization the white settlers perpetrated on the indigenous here in our own country. Are we willing to ignore violence as long as it's not us, not our country, not our people? Or do we stand in solidarity with the working class around the world in the rejection of violence, be it colonialism, capitalism, imperialism, etc. Democrat Barack Obama deployed drone strikes 10 times as much as his predecessor George W Bush. He spent billions of taxpayer dollars to bail out the failing big banks, while income inequality, homelessness, poverty, and wage stagnation continued to grow. He also built the deportation apparatus, the Department of Homeland Security, that Trump utilizes to deport people today. If I didn't say “Barack Obama,” you probably would have guessed he was of the Republican Party. And if so, it's due time to break with the idea that the Democrats are the “lesser of two evils” when even the “lesser evil” includes deportation, drone strikes, imperial wars, and general negligence to improving conditions of human life.

It's becoming increasingly obvious that we must move away from the two-party, capitalist system and build towards something that prioritizes human life over greed, profit, and violence. Violence cannot be reformed away in an inherently violent system. As a matter of harm reduction for the time being, we must support any reform that challenges the capitalist hold on the working class is a reform that will in turn reduce violence. We need to demand higher wages and an end to austerity, to address income inequality that forces people into poverty while the wealthy exploit and squander. We need to demand guaranteed free housing to eradicate homelessness, as housing is a human right. We need to demand a socialized, single-payer healthcare system, as healthcare is a human right as well. “Demand” does not mean begging the capitalist class to piss pity upon us, but it is a declaration that we will stop at nothing to bring about our demands and the end of capitalism and its ills. It's inevitable that more people realize the violence capitalism perpetrates worldwide, and that is it in the material interest of society to eradicate capitalism by building socialism. We don't need racism, we don't need sexism, we don't need poverty or homelessness, we don't need wars, and we don't need to slave away our lives creating profit for the wealthy. This is in the interest of all of humanity. As Karl Marx once said, “Capitalism contains within it the seeds of its own destruction.”

#gun control #second amendment #Marxist #Marxism #march for our lives

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8-intergalacticbutterfly-8-blog · 6 years

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Relationships: Part II – I’ve Heard You Shouldn’t Make Homes Out of People

Thinking more about the problems and questions I posed in the first part, I felt it necessary to make some distinctions. Although I condemn the use of pain to hurt others in person-to-person interactions, I do not believe the same can apply at other “levels” or “layers” of social and historical existence. When we speak of structural violence, we often refer to social institutions that perpetuate discrimination, exclusion and marginalization through various processes. These “processes” are composed of social practices and beliefs that, through their simultaneous operations, create the kinds of worlds in-and-through which we, as social subjects, come to see ourselves and others. The term “structural” can be interpreted as “networks” that coordinate themselves according to shifting condensations of economic, social, cultural and human capital – a “push” here, for example, might necessitate a “pull” there. In this way, no singular person could be said to serve as a point of absolute origin for the forms of violence that people experience in their day-to-day lives. Instead, power comes to embody the shape of conglomerations, of clusters, of interconnected nodes in network societies. Based on this particular understanding of power, authority and violence, the finger of blame cannot be pointed at a singular subject. Or, in other words, the problem does not necessarily lie with, for instance, “white people” themselves but with whiteness as a network of social institutions, ideologies and practices that maintains people who identify as (or even look) white in a structural position of relative privilege (whiteness also affords power to people who align themselves with these same institutions, ideologies and practices – of which my writing as an academic trained in elite institutions is complicit with).

So, what do we do with statistics such as these:

“In Australia, indigenous youth are 28 times more likely than non-indigenous youth to be detained (ABC News, 2011), while in the US black and Hispanic youth face harsher treatment at each stage in the criminal justice system (The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, 2000). While black youth represent 5 per cent and Hispanic youth 19 per cent of the juvenile population in the US, respectively they account for 45 per cent and 25 per cent of the incarcerated youth population (Saavedra, 2010).” (Andy Furlong, Youth Studies: An introduction, 2013, p. 191)

Clearly, there are groups of people that are structurally pre-dispositioned to be kept in certain social segments (e.g., physically in jail cells [issues of space/place]; migrants kept waiting for the right to have rights [issues of time/temporality]). There are specific histories of economic dispossession, social displacement and cultural genocide that help explain why brown and black communities (this isn’t exclusive to issues of skin color, though colorism can and does affect how people experience their lives) are over-represented in prison populations. To move from an individual level (the person-to-person engagements I addressed in “Part I”), to a structural level, means having to reckon with suffering and exploitation in ways that consider the larger contexts that inform how people think and act. At this level of social experience, attempts to count and leverage “coins” of pain in a group’s “historical jar” cannot be simply reduced to selfish acts of vengeance or egotistical demands for attention and care. At a structural level, socially afflicted communities are often cornered into political positions where there is little wiggle room to act “ethically” according to existing frameworks of morality and legality (morals and laws that often contribute structurally to more violence and marginalization, than to support or assistance).

I’ve heard that you shouldn’t make homes out of people.

My discussion of relationships in Part I begins to carve out the reasons why this statement might be true. “Hurt people, hurt people,” as the saying goes. The violence people embody often gets displaced onto others because they lack the capacity to hold the unbearable weight of histories (simultaneously distant and personal) that both connect and separate them. I think this is why we often “snap” at those whom we consider to be the closest and most intimate—we expect them to serve as our personal punching bags (after all, they love us, right?). This is also why people, amidst their busy schedules and right to live their lives, can sometimes only offer a share on Instagram or a status update on Facebook when confronted with global atrocities—including those sponsored by their “own” governments and countries (which also means, economically-speaking, their taxable incomes). The line that separates virtuous resistance from complicity to oppression is becoming increasingly thinner and thinner in social worlds where the clothes we wear and the foods we eat come to us from disparate locations, near and far, and often by exploitative means.

Is anyone innocent?

If one shouldn’t make a home out of people, perhaps it is in part because our insides mirror the wars taking place outside. There are terrible, invisible battles inside people’s hearts and minds that twinkle like guns fired all over the world—past and present. I believe change at a structural, systemic level requires social retribution for historical debts that persistently and perniciously feed current forms of inequity across differences of class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, ability and nationality. At an interpersonal level, however, I fear these same demands fuel further alienation, splinter coalitions and build a general distrust of people who are different from “us.” Is there a way to mediate the two positions without falling into extreme forms of nationalism and territoriality, or empty “inclusions” that simply reproduce and reinforce social hierarchies? I return to an often-cited quote by Subcomandante Marcos: “El mundo que queremos es uno donde quepan muchos mundos;” “The world we desire is one where many worlds can fit.” I highlight this demand not to romanticize indigenous Zapatista politics, nor to offer a solution to planetary disarray, but to suggest that a haunting question/reality remains with many communities today: Are people capable of letting “difference” live with integrity and on its own terms? Or are certain organizations of political and communal life automatically hostile to one another, preventing any “sincere” or “authentic” compromise from emerging? It is important to note that difference has many forms: ecological environments; non-human animals and plant life; cultural and political systems; spiritual and religious beliefs and practices; gendered and sexual diversities; and the list goes on.

My point, I suppose, is that even if we consider the brief, yet deeply complex scale that is a human life, an individual person’s biography, we will eventually reach a point where violence feels inevitable, even natural: to live in societies so entrenched with bloody histories, as is the case with the United States, can anyone truly say they exist free of charge? If we do, in fact, live in social networks, does this kind of (globalizing) cultural existence not implicate practically everyone? And if it does, are people touched by violence in the same way? I think the answer would be “no,” especially if modern histories of genocide, enslavement and dispossession are to be taken seriously at all. To equalize oppression, as when one claims that “All Lives Matter,” is to commit an error of magnitude and proportion, for people of color, women, and queer and trans* folks have served historically as collateral for the “civilized,” modern lifestyles that citizens, noncitizens and second-class citizens get to live in the here and now—whether they enjoy it or not, find it meaningful or not, is beside the point. It seems to me that across the tenuous spectrums of oppressor/oppressed, there runs a loud silence, a dazzling absence that grounds the very existences of people as social individuals: systematic death as a contemporary common origin – but not one from which everyone benefits equally.

Which brings me to another question: can trauma purify?

What does an inheritance of collective pain at an individual level do? Consider the following scenario: a third-generation indigenous girl accompanied by her Mexican-American father is called “Pocahontas” by an elderly white woman at a Whole Foods in Southern California. The woman looks down at the girl and repeats her observation with a warm smile – “You look like her [Pocahontas]” –, only to be met with an uncertainty that gleams from the girl’s eyes as to the significance of the claim, of the way in which she is being interpellated by the woman as looking “native” (I won’t go into the problematics of basing native and indigenous identity on Disney representations). So, what happened here? Are these innocent, everyday exchanges? Or has certain damage been done (again)? And, if so, who’s at fault? How ought one to respond? One way to reply to these questions—arguably the most obvious—would be to assume a binary approach: the woman is the oppressor and the girl is the oppressed; each is a symbolic condensation of histories of colonial violence. But we can also just as easily say that the woman is not a willful oppressor (her comment, from her perspective, was not meant to be offending). Likewise, the girl does not willfully assume the position of the victim or the oppressed (in fact, the woman’s comment might not even make an impression amidst other priorities and preoccupations). Rather, both are given to larger and deeper structures that, before they even happen to bump into each other at an aisle in a grocery store, already situate and render meaningful interactions in ways that seem to necessitate an implicit, and thus explicit, hierarchy.

This is the distinction that I highlight between the pain people wage on one another through interpersonal contact, and the suffering that people as communities depend on, and must therefore politically mobilize, in order to make claims for social justice. The two levels co-exist and constantly inform each other—this makes the problem of historical trauma particularly tricky to frame. Through this distinction, violence demonstrates the paradoxical and contradictory ways in which an emphasis on trauma might prove necessary on one level of social experience (the systematic nature of social institutions), while possibly detrimental on another (everyday encounters with people).

At the end, however, we are still left with questions of justice and ethics. How might the woman be made accountable for her supposed “innocent” remarks based on, and supported by, the structural privileges afforded to whiteness in the U.S.? Relatedly, how might the incident be made conscious to the girl in a way that does not propagate a victim mentality or an inferiority complex, but instead affirms the dignity of her identities and her right to exist as a person? I do not have answers to these questions. They might be questions for policy and lawmakers; for researchers and scholars; for grassroots activists and organizations. The issues I raise do not have singular, once-and-for-all remedies (or at least not any that I can personally identify) – they are symptoms of the immensity and the difficulty of existing in a world haunted by the debris of chance encounters gone terribly wrong, whether they happened in 1492 or last week.

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