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scripttorture · 3 years

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One of the central characters in a fantasy story I'm writing has torture as part of her backstory. She was captured by an evil race, and one individual in particular put her through a "training" regime designed to turn her into a useful/trustworthy slave. Specifically the goals of the training were:

- destroy her sense of self / agency

- overwrite her ingrained response of healing herself when injured (she has magical healing powers)

- an affectionate or worshipful disposition towards her captors

- immediate obedience to any command

I feel like both physical and psychological torture / mental conditioning are probably appropriate, though I'm leaning away from including sexual abuse. I honestly don't know much about torture at all and the only things that come to mind as producing a result similar to what I'm looking for are the Game of Thrones torture sequence and the use of obdience collars in the Codex Alera book series. The latter is very interesting to me because it is a magical device that inflicts pain in reaction to disobedience but also inflicts pleasure to reward obedience.

I guess I'm just wondering if you have any advice for what kinds of methods would be good to include in a process designed to produce obedience, rather than torture for its own sake or to extract information, as well as if there are any common pitfalls I should try to avoid in writing about such a thing.

The training itself won't be in the book, but I need to be familiar with it for backstory purposes because later in the story this character encounters her torturer again, and is subjected to some further abuse before she finally overcomes her fear and kills him.

Alright well I’m going to be straight up with you: the scenario you’ve presented is a very common torture apologist trope. It’s incredibly unrealistic. And it’s unrealistic in ways that support torture by claiming it can be ‘useful’.

Which probably means that you’re new to the blog and haven’t heard me give this talk before. That’s OK, we all learn sometime and it’s not my intention to shame you for the fact you’re not as obsessed with this stuff as I am or couldn’t afford to shell out for the books.

Torture does not produce obedience. The best evidence we have right now suggests it encourages active resistance.

If you got a lot of your inspiration from Game of Thrones then frankly I’m not surprised you came up with apologia. The torture in that series is incredibly badly handled. And a big part of the point of running this blog is that most people are getting their information on torture from shows like that. Which happens because the research is inaccessible and hasn’t been popularised the way fictional tropes (sometimes fictional tropes literally started by torturers) have been popularised.

The important thing is what you choose to do now.

I’m going to break down the problems here and make some suggestions for what you could do instead.

Firstly: there is no torture or abuse that will guarantee obedience. Pain does not make people meek or compliant or willing to follow commands.

Torture survivors are not broken.

They are not ‘controlled’ by their torturers and the suggestion that they are is used in the real world to bar real survivors from treatment. It is also used to bar them from entering safe countries and to argue that they shouldn’t be allowed visas or passports.

The best statistics we have for any sort of compliance under torture come from analysis of historical French data where torture was used to try and force confessions (something we know torture can sometimes do).

The ‘success’ rate averaged at 10%. Under torture 90% of people will not comply long enough to sign their name.

Secondly: torture does not and can not ‘make’ a victim feel ‘worshipful’ towards their torturer. The suggestion is kind of like asking if someone can tap dance immediately after removing the bones from their legs.

Torturers have no control over a victim’s emotions. They have no control over their symptoms. They have no control over their beliefs.

And there is no such thing as a torture that can change someone’s mind in a way torturers can control.

Once again, this fictional trope is used by politicians and the media to justify marginalising real torture survivors.

I have read hundreds, possibly thousands, of accounts from torture survivors. I’ve read historic and modern accounts. I’ve read accounts from all sort of people from all over the globe. I have never seen a survivor say anything positive about their torturers. I have never seen anything close to toleration.

A lot of survivors are blisteringly angry at their torturers. A lot of them feel overwhelming levels of spite and some report literally putting themselves at risk of death in order to spite their torturers. And yes, a lot of them are afraid too. None of these emotions are mutually exclusive.

Affection is impossible. We are not wired that way.

Thirdly: I understand that ‘evil races’ are a long standing fantasy trope but it would be remiss of me if I didn’t mention the racism inherent in that idea. That some people are ‘born bad’.

I’d strongly suggest you look up the Black, Indian and First Nations people that I know are on this site critiquing these kinds of fantasy tropes. Because they will be able to explain it better then I can.

Fourthly: the term ‘psychological torture’ is a pretty common dog whistle for torture apologia.

Most of the time tortures that people dub ‘psychological’ are things with real, physical effects that lead to lasting injury and death. They just don’t tend to leave obvious external scars. I use Rejali’s term ‘clean torture’ for these techniques. Researchers distinguish them from scarring tortures because they are harder to detect and prove in court.

The majority of survivors today will have experienced clean torture. They will have no obvious physical scars. But they will still be disabled. They’re ‘just’ less likely to see any form of justice for it.

Fifthly: torture is a terrible training method because it decreases a person’s ability to learn.

Torture causes memory problems. It also often causes lasting physical injuries that make performing basic tasks more difficult. And it causes a lot of serious psychological problems which make performing basic tasks more difficult.

A trained person who was never tortured will always out perform someone whose training involved torture.

I probably sound quite angry here.

I write fantasy and I also write about torture a lot. But I can’t imagine that it’s just flavour for a fantasy world or some artefact of the past. Torture is a real, present threat in the country that I grew up in. If I was to return now I could, literally, be tortured and executed.

If you want to include torture in your world, in your story then you are committing to telling someone else’s story. You are representing an incredibly marginalised group of people and you are presenting that representation to a third group, one that has never had contact with real torture survivors.

Are you comfortable with the idea of telling your peers that survivors are still controlled by ‘the enemy’? That they’re passive? That they don’t have the capacity to make their own decisions?

Are you comfortable knowing that the popularity of this message keeps millions of genocide survivors in refugee camps, blocked from citizenship, aid and safety?

I understand feeling attached to a story and a character. And I understand that this information is hard to find. Hell I’m probably going to end up with the only English copy of one of the pivotal textbooks because I’m shelling out to get it translated.

You say you want to write a torture survivor. With respect I don’t think you know what a torture survivor looks like.

I think the most helpful, and kindest, thing I can do here is describe what torture does to people. Because I can’t tell you whether that’s something you want to write. I could try and rebuild this scenario for you (and if you decide you’re interested in that after reading all of this and all the links then I suggest looking through the blog tags for ICURE, torture as training, Black Widow and Overwatch.) But I think you need to decide whether you actually want to write a torture survivor first.

Here’s a post on the most common torture apologia tropes.

Here’s the post on the types of memory problems torture commonly causes. I strongly recommend picking at least one.

Remember that this would never go away. Improvement and recovery in torture survivors means learning to live with symptoms. The symptoms themselves are permanent.

It’s a hundred different alarms set up on their phone to try and make up for the forgetfulness that makes them miss appointments. It’s the little bottle of perfume in their pocket to bring themselves back to reality when they get intrusive memories at work.

Here’s a post on the other common symptoms.

You want something in the range of 3-5 of those, though more are likely if your character is held for years. Each of them should be severe. Every single symptom should have a large, negative, impact on the character’s daily life.

Do you know anyone with chronic pain? It warps their world. Work can become impossible. Basic household tasks like getting dressed, cooking, cleaning the dishes are done through gritted teeth or not at all. Hobbies and ‘fun’ activities dwindle as they struggle to find a way to do them that doesn’t hurt. Interaction with other people, even loved ones, can easily become barbed.

Because the pain makes everything more difficult. It means everything takes more energy, more effort. Which means that things fall by the wayside, whether that’s by a pile of mouldering dishes in the sink or snapping at a child. It means tears and the social judgement that follows them. It means the world narrowing as it gets harder to go out.

Do you see what I mean? Every part of life.

That’s an example for one symptom. You need to work out at least four. Then figure out how they interact. Then figure out what the character can do to make her life better.

With chronic pain that can mean painkillers but it’s always more then that. It’s re-learning how to do things; how to put on trousers without aggravating the bad knee, how to sew with one hand. It means learning to cut down on what they do and it means learning a new sort of flexibility; accepting that there are days when the pain is too much.

It can mean having the same conversation about disability over and over again. With family, with friends, with colleagues. ‘I can’t do that.’ ‘I can do that sometimes but not always.’ ‘That will hurt me.’ ‘I can’t use that chair.’ ‘I can’t get my arms that high above my shoulders.’ ‘I need help with this.’

And that sometimes means learning a kind of patience that is really barely held back rage. Or perhaps I’m projecting a little with this last one.

If you’ve never met a torture survivor, if you’ve never looked at a survivor’s work, then all this is difficult. You’re trying to imagine something from first principals with nothing to fall back on.

So let’s bring some survivors into the discussion here. Some reality.

Who’s listened to Fela? How about Bobi Wine?

Fela Kuti was the father of modern Afro beats music. He was tortured multiple times and during one attack, which destroyed his home, his mother was murdered by the military. When he got out of jail Fela marched her funeral procession past the biggest barracks in Nigeria’s biggest city. He wrote two songs about this attack and he doubled down on his opposition to the military government.

Fela’s music started causing riots.

You can read what I have to say about him here. You can listen to his music on youtube.

Here’s an interview with Bobi Wine, which was conducted shortly after he was tortured in Uganda. He talked about how he was determined to go back and continue fighting. Which he did. He even ran against the president.

I’ve also got a short piece on Searle who was a cartoonist captured by the Japanese during World War 2. His drawings of what happened in To the Kwai and Back are worth seeing. Especially if you want to write atrocities on this scale. They will show you the scale and how to focus on the small, human elements despite that overwhelming scale.

Alleg’s The Question is pretty much a must, it’s one of the most thorough accounts from the Franco-Algerian war.

Monroe’s A Darkling Plain is also a must, it’s a series of interviews with survivors of various different conflicts and atrocities. Some are torture survivors. Some are not. It is essential reading because it shows the variety in survivors as well as giving a sense of their lives beyond the symptoms.

Finally Amnesty International has literally hundreds of interviews and studies available for free online.

The most important decision for any story with regards to torture is whether it should be there at all.

So much of this topic is intimidating and so much of it is difficult to write. Not just in the ‘oh this is horribly effecting’ sense but in the ‘I have twelve things to juggle in this simple scene’ sense.

Ask yourself what torture adds to this character and this story. What does this backstory actually give this character?

Because if the point is to have her vulnerable and then ultimately triumphing violently over her attackers I don’t think you want a torture scenario. You could get the same thing from a bad guy trying to drug her and having the kidnapping fail when she fights him off, clumsy but effective nonetheless.

And she could still come out of something like that traumatised.

Right now I really don’t see this adding anything but torture apologia to your story.

Handling torture well in a story means accepting that it can’t be the same story without it. It means watching the characters and narrative warp under the weight of it. It means lasting effects, for all the characters and for the world itself.

I believe you are capable of writing that if you want to, pet. But this ain’t it.

Edit: I’m having trouble seeing the beginning of the answer here. Can anyone let me know if there are formatting issues again please? The first word in the htmal is ‘Alright’ but what I’m seeing on tumblr starts 8 paragraphs in.

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mandoalorian · 3 years

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I Believe In Love [Maxwell Lord x F!Reader] — Eight: Courage

Summary: When you find your calling to leave Themyscira, you venture out to the World of Man with intentions of helping and healing a very specific person's relationship with his son. You've heard his voice before, but only in dreams. You've felt his pain and anguish and you've never been able to relate to anything more. But things don't come easy for you, and they certainly don't come easy for him either. [This series contains spoilers for WW84 and is my interpretation of what happens after the movie ends].

Warnings: canon typical violence

Word count: 5,000>

Masterlist

Previous - Chapter Eight - Next

You awoke to the phone on the nightstand ringing. Maxwell groaned, rolling over and pulling the pillow over his head. You tiredly opened your eyes before taking the phone off the hook and holding it against your ear. “Hello?” you asked, your voice hoarse and your throat sore. It must have been the implications of yours and Maxwell’s actions from the night before. Max moaned and wrapped his large arm around your naked body, pulling you into his chest and resting his chin on your shoulder.

“It’s me,” Diana snapped back quickly. “I’ve been calling your room for the past fifteen minutes. What’s going on?”

“O-oh,” you groaned, rubbing your eyes and pulling out of Maxwell’s grip. You sighed and propped yourself up on some pillows. “I’m sorry Di, I guess we must’ve slept through the phone call. I didn’t hear anything.” you admitted.

“Listen, we only have two days in Greece so if we want to find the dreamstone we have to work fast. Meet me in the lobby in fifteen minutes or I’ll go without you. I already have a lead.” Diana instructed and you heard the phone slam back down on the hook with a ring.

You turned to Max who had fallen back asleep, his snores gentle and light as his chest slowly rose and fell with every breath. He was so peaceful. When he was asleep, it was one of the few moments where he wasn’t ridden with stress or anxiety. And you wished you had the rest of your life to admire his tender movements.

“Max, wake up, we have to go.” you whispered, shaking him gently.

Maxwell mumbled something incoherent and rolled over, resting his head in your lap. You smiled, feeling your cheeks heat up as he shuffled further into your body. You smoothed out his golden hair and traced the features of his face with your index finger. So beautiful. So perfect.

You imagined spending every single one of your future mornings like this, in bed with him, his face buried in your lap and his gentle snores echoing throughout the room. Your naked legs were tangled together and neither of you had ever felt so comfortable in your life.

“Max, baby,” you cooed, leaning down and pressing a soft kiss into his forehead.

“Mmm, good morning.” Maxwell grumbled, rubbing his tired eyes.

“We slept in,” you sighed, letting your hand trail down his body and lazily circle his tan chest. “Diana is waiting for us downstairs. We have to go.”

“I don’t want to,” he whined, almost child-like. “Wanna stay here with you- foreverrrr.” he purred, pressing a tired kiss to the inside of your thigh.

“Maxie, please don’t make this any more difficult than it needs to be.” you hummed seriously, although you were trying to hold back a smile. If anything was going to wake Maxwell up, it would be that nickname. He opened his eyes and pulled off you.

“Okay princess, I’m up.” He said, running his hand through his wavy morning hair.

“Princess? I told you I’m not a-”

“Think of it as a term of endearment, sweetheart.” he said, pressing a kiss into your nose.

“Oh.” was all you managed to breathe out before his lips caught yours.

***

Just as she had stated, Diana was waiting for you in the hotel lobby, dressed fully in her red, blue and gold warrior costume. It had garnered quite a bit of attention, but nothing Diana Princess of Themyscira wasn’t used to.

“You said you had a lead?” you quizzed, quirking your eyebrow and taking a step closer to Diana.

“Yes, Dr. Minerva,” Diana said, immediately glancing at Maxwell who’s eyes had become comically wide. The name clearly meant something to him. It rang like alarm bells in his head. “Or Barbara, as myself and Max know her as.”

You turned to Max, confused as to why Diana was being particularly smug. She’d acted the same when she mentioned Barbara and Max back at the Smithsonian yesterday. “Who is this Dr Minerva?” you asked him, looking at him with the most innocent, doe eyes. Your voice was soft but riddled with curiosity. He wanted to tell you, he wanted to tell you everything it’s just… things were difficult. He’d done things with Barbara that he’d be afraid of you knowing; afraid of what you might think or if you will think any less of him. He couldn’t stand the fact you genuinely had no idea. It was a long complicated story. He hoped to tell you it one day - but knowing that you might not have much time left on Earth, was it really worth it?

“Maybe Diana is better off explaining.” Maxwell scrunched up his nose, dismissing your question. It brought back too many memories that Max would prefer to just ignore. Even though ignoring his past trauma was how he got into this mess in the first place. If he’d learned one thing from Diana, it was that he must face the truth no matter how difficult it may be.

“No,” Diana shot back, but her voice wasn’t laced with venom as Maxwell expected. “I think you’re better off answering this one.” Diana smiled a perfect smile. Maybe smug wasn’t the word to describe Diana’s demeanor, but she certainly knew something that you didn’t, and she was being particularly hidden about it.

“Well Max?” you narrowed your eyes. Why was he being so secretive? Who was this woman?

“Uh-,” Maxwell trailed off, avoiding all eye contact. He took in the features of your face, admiring your beauty with all he had and thinking about how he didn’t want to lose you. He loved you. And you deserved to know. If Max could open up to you about his childhood and about his pursuit of the dreamstone, he could tell you about his short-lived relationship with Barbara-Ann Minerva. “Shit, okay. I had been searching for the dreamstone for a long time when one day, a newspaper headline told me that there was a robbery at a jewellery store, and that the Smithsonian had all the stolen treasures. Including the dreamstone. So I went to the Smithsonian and requested to see Dr. Minerva because I did my research and I knew she was the fresh faced gemologist they just hired a week earlier. And she was… beautiful,” Maxwell seemed to get lost in the memory of her vibrant blue eyes and blonde wavy hair. His lips then curled into a frown. “But so ditzy... I saw straight through her vulnerabilities and insecurities in an instant and I used that to exploit her and get the dreamstone. I gained her trust when I told her I’d be donating to the gemology department at the museum, I charmed her at the charity gala and I wooed her in her office and took the stone.”

Maxwell seemed to gloss over the chain of events but it didn’t really matter. He’d explained what he needed to. You felt a pang of jealousy strike your heart at his revelation. You had been made aware from Mrs Stagg, Ted and Julianna, Diana, and even Max, that he’d done bad things and made terrible mistakes, but you couldn’t help but feel an irk over what had happened in Dr Minerva’s office. “Wooed her?” you quoted him, folding your arms over your chest. Maxwell blinked, but then sighed and reached out to hold your hand.

“Really?” Diana sighed. “That’s what you're focused on right now? Dolos lives. The God of Lies lives.” she shook her head in disbelief and you bit your lip, supposing that she was right. You had bigger things on your plate. You were a goddess for heaven’s sake, you couldn’t let the irrational human emotion of envy consume you. But you had noticed the way his face softened when he was reminded of Dr Minerva’s beauty. And you couldn’t help but feel the urge to know what exactly went on in her office, the night of the charity gala. After a brief moment of silence and exchanged glances, Diana opened her mouth again. “I had a contact in D.C., Babajide, who knew all about the dreamstone and the powers of the God of Lies. Myself, Barbara and Steve met with him when we found out Maxwell had become the dreamstone.”

“Hey- how did I not know about Babajide?” Maxwell frowned. He’d been researching the dreamstone for years and he’d never known of such a man. A man who supposedly had all the answers about the stone.

“Irrelevant,” Diana rolled her eyes. “Seriously guys, this is important. You need to pay attention.”

“I am!” You and Maxwell exclaimed together, in an unpredicted unison. Diana quirked an eyebrow and you felt a warmth cross your cheeks. Ancient Olympian tales would describe moments like that as soulmate-ism.

“Babajide knew so much about Romulus and the exact dreamstone that Max got a hold of so I paid him another visit and found out he had knowledge on Dolos’ dreamstone too. Only…” And Diana let out a long sigh before pinching the bridge of her nose. “He told me that Barbara had visited him a day earlier, asking him of the same knowledge. ‘Asking’ is putting it nicely. Apparently Barbara was a menace and threatened Babajide. And Babajide told her everything he told me. It’s more than likely that Barbara is already here, in Greece, seeking the stone for herself.”

“She sounds dangerous.” you said quietly. Maxwell held his head in his hands.

“I don’t think I can face Barbara again.” He said, shaking his head, fearful.

“Max I don’t think we have a choice. We have to get the dreamstone before she gets it. What do you think she’ll do with the stone once she has it?” you asked Diana.

“I can only imagine the worst,” Diana shook her head in dismay. “Barbara was complicated… she craved power just like Maxwell only… she had nothing to lose. I fear that she’ll wish to become the dreamstone.” As the word’s left Diana’s lips, Maxwell’s heart sank and he ran off, disappearing amongst the lobby crowds. “Do you think he’s okay?”

You stood for a moment, watching as his dirty blonde hair descended behind the grand staircase. No, of course he wasn’t okay, and you were the only one who truly knew how much this business with the dreamstone had affected him and harmed him. He had come so close to losing everything and so learning that Barbara might make the same mistake as he did, hurt him too. No matter what happened between Barbara and Maxwell, he clearly cared about her. “Excuse me.” you told Diana, following Maxwell through the crowds.

You just noticed him heading through an alcove and outside of the resort. He pushed his sunglasses down the bridge of his nose and stood by the pool, relishing the fresh air and trying to regulate his panicked, erratic breathing. “Max! Max!” you called after him, pushing past the people until finally you were by his side, grabbing his hand. “What happened back there?”

Maxwell said nothing, instead he just looked into the golden horizon. “Max?”

“Maybe I shouldn’t be here,” he told you. “You have Diana. What use am I?”

“We need you Max,” you promised him, placing your hand on his cheek and gently turning his head so he was facing you. “I need you.”

Maxwell smiled softly and felt himself lean into your warm embrace. “I’ve never felt needed… or wanted… until I met you.” he confessed and you felt tears prick your eyes at his admission. You knew that feeling all too well.

“I know, me too. Back home, all the other Amazon’s were fighters and warriors… like Diana. But not me. They made me feel useless… like I had no point. Like I was a mistake. My mother would tell me that Zeus created me for a reason, just like all the other Gods and Goddesses, and that one day I’d serve my true purpose. That’s why I’m here today, with you. I already know that the years of humiliation and feeling like an outcast will be worth the few days that I get to spend with you, Max.”

Max sighed softly. “I never thought a Goddess could feel like an outcast,” he told you and you pursed your lips into a fine line, nodding in affirmation. “I’m sorry.”

“I think we have more in common that meets the eye.” you giggled softly, dropping your hand flat against his chest. Maxwell wrapped both of his big arms around you and pulled you into a hug.

“I think so too,” he agreed, pressing a soft kiss into your hair. “We better catch up with Diana then,” he told you, taking your hand. “Let’s put an end to this.”

***

You had been walking for miles in the blazing Greek heat. Maxwell had unbuttoned the top of his shirt and his collar was slightly wonky. His hair may have been disheveled and the blonde locks may have been sticking to the pearls of sweat that beaded along his forehead, but you still admired his beauty. He was truly wonderful. He was quiet most of the journey, and he didn’t have the agility or stamina that you and Diana had. Sometimes you’d have to take stops and have water breaks or toilet breaks. You tried to include him in conversation but his discomfort wasn’t lost on you. It was clear enough that his relationship with Diana was complicated, to say the least. Little did you know, the three of you were about to become a whole lot closer. You and Diana laughed and talked for hours, sharing stories about your time together on Themyscira.

“Zeus is my father. Zeus is your father. We’re basically sisters,” you nudged her, and she giggled. Maxwell scrunched up his nose. Sisters?! He ran a hand through his hair and continued to listen in your conversation. “It’s just unfair that you got to be Princess of Themyscira and I was stuck living a sheltered life with my mother.”

“It wasn’t always easy being a princess,” Diana scolded, but in a warm and polite manner. “It was all about duty. But hey- you’re a goddess, you know all about that.”

If Maxwell Lord had a dollar for everytime he thought he was in a fever dream… he might have been able to afford Black Gold Cooperative’s utility bill. He’d always been a realist. He’d never engaged in fantasy movies or novella, but there was something about overhearing a conversation between a Demi-god and a goddess that just didn’t feel real.

He knew it was. He’d seen Diana in action himself. Hell, he’d seen the powers you possessed. Albeit, when Diana mentioned how you possessed double her power, he was shocked to say the least. Diana could barely hold off Barbara in the White House but with you here? For once Maxwell finally felt hopeful.

As you furthered deeper into unknown plains, a sudden coldness enveloped you all. It was like a dark, enigmatic spirit ghosting between the three of you, and just like everything else that had happened over the past four days, it couldn’t be explained.

“Do you feel that?” Max finally asked, breaking his silence as he folded his arms over his chest. A shiver raced down his spine as Diana increased her pace and approached the forbidden tomb. “Look at this place. She took us to an ancient burial site, it seems. Like ancient Greek ruins.” he told you, scoping out the place.

“I feel that, yes.” you hummed, your mind wandering the origins of the cold air. Diana’s cries alerted both you and Maxwell as your heads both snapped in her direction and watched her push an enormous boulder away from the tomb, revealing an opening.

“Are you as strong as that?” Maxwell asked, his mouth gaped open in shock.

“Stronger.” you winked before taking his hand and dragging him towards Diana.

The cold spirit then enveloped you, Diana and Maxwell, whispering words of admission, encouraging you all to come forward. “Don’t you think it’s a trap?” Maxwell asked once you were deep enough in the cave that you had hit a point of no return. Even if it was a trap, there was no going back now. You were faced with two path-ways.

“The Sword of Athena is this way,” Diana pointed to the right pathway, otherwise known as the pathway she stood before, and then she pointed her other finger to the left pathway, “and Dolos’ dreamstone is that way. I say we split up and rendezvous here. Maxwell, come with me.”

“Wait what?” Max asked, narrowing his eyes.

“No,” you told Diana firmly. “He is coming with me.” “You really think it’s wise to let Max Lord accompany you to get the dreamstone?” Diana quizzed quietly, stepping closer to you and breaking any distance. Her dark eyes flicked between you and Maxwell. “After everything he’s done.”

Diana’s hiss was quiet, but not quiet enough to go unnoticed by Maxwell. He knew he wasn’t going to do anything. He was a changed man - but the realization that he’d have to prove to the people he hurt that he was changed, suddenly overwhelmed him. He’d have to prove himself to Diana, and even prove himself to Barbara before he could put all this behind him. There were still steps Max Lord had to take in order to gain full closure of his trauma.

“I trust him.” you said through gritted teeth. Maxwell felt a wave of relief. You were so pure of heart. So angelic. You took his hand, nodded goodbye to Diana, and guided him through the left path-way.

“How much further?” he asked. You had been walking hand in hand for around five or ten minutes, only your lasso of Hestia illuminating the cave. Before you could reply, you felt the walls and ceiling of the cave begin to vibrate and crumble. “What’s that?!” Maxwell asked again, this time panicked and looking around erratically.

“We might not have much time.” You said, feeling your own heart rate increase speed as anxiety settled in you.

Something wasn’t right, that much was clear. You tightened your grip on the businessman’s hand and began to run, pulling him with you. Within seconds, you had reached your destination. Maxwell was heaving and panting but he straightened up and fought for composure when he noticed a dim, amber light illuminate your skin. It wasn’t your lasso of Hestia… not this time. He slowly looked up and followed your gaze, gasping when his eyes set on the dreamstone.

You had completely frozen up, struck by awe as you took in the beauty of the citrine stone which stood erect on top of a Greek pillar. “Wow.” you mumbled, swallowing the hard lump in your throat.

The stone was practically identical to the one Maxwell had utilized just a week ago, and just seeing it again, in its full glory, sent electric bolts of dread through his body. He couldn’t be here. He couldn’t do this. Not again. Being in the same proximity as the stupid stone that had ruined everything sent Maxwell into his fight or flight. “I can’t- I can’t do this.” Maxwell shakily declared, his coffee coloured eyes glazed with panic.

“It’s okay,” you whispered, taking both of his hands and coaching his breathing. “Let me get the stone and we can head on out of here.”

Maxwell closed his eyes and nodded. If you could trust him, he could certainly trust you. You brushed a chaste kiss against his lips and pulled away from him. It only took a few steps on your approach to the stone before the walls began to crumble again, even more so than previously, and the ground beneath you began to split.

“Shit!” Maxwell cried as he stared at the crack in the floor between you both. It was deep and only getting deeper. If you didn’t run now, you might have gotten separated. He called your name, terror rampant in his voice. “Hurry!”

As you were about to grab the stone. A voice stopped you. A voice that Maxwell thought he’d never hear again.

“The stone belongs to me.” she said coldly. You huffed and opted to ignore the grave voice, taking the dreamstone from the pillar before spinning around on your heel and turning around.

And when you saw the sight before you, you dropped the dreamstone and let it fall to the rocky ground beneath you. Trepidation consumed you and suddenly, it felt like your whole life was on the line. “Maxwell!” you cried, your hand immediately dropping down to your lasso and curling your fingers around the rope. You scowled angrily, your gaze flicking between Max and the woman who was holding him by his neck.

“This- this is Dr. Minerva!” Maxwell choked, tears streaming down his cheeks as Barbara tightened her grip around his throat. Her once blonde hair was white and knotted, and her black kohl eyeliner smudged down her cheeks. Her tights were ripped and a sleeve was missing from her Cheetah print fur jacket. She is not at all how you’d imagined her.

“Let him go!” You begged as anger swelled in the pit of your stomach. “Let him go now!”

Maxwell’s eyes squeezed shut and he let out a groan, his knees wobbling as he struggled to even stand up straight. It was only Barbara’s strong grip of his neck that was keeping him upright. He was hurting. The love of your life was in pain.

“Give me the stone.” Barbara growled.

You picked up the dreamstone and passed it her way. She took it, willingly and let go of Maxwell, throwing him to the ground. The glint in her eye as she analysed the citrine was enough to terrify you. You ran to Maxwell’s side, dropping to your knees and nursing his body.

“Hey! Max, are you okay?” You whispered, smoothing out his hair and running your fingers along his face. He nodded wearily, rubbing the scratches on his neck from where her sharp, cat-like, fingernails had dug into his skin. You helped him to his feet and swung an arm around his body to support him.

“Barbara.” he called, gaining the attention of the doctor.

“No,” you chastised Max. “Don’t. There will be another opportunity to get the stone.” But he wasn’t going to give in that easy, he had to play his cards right. Luckily for you, manipulation was one of Maxwell Lord’s most tactful skills.

“Barbara, did we end things on a bad note? I must admit, I thought we had something special… me and you.” Maxwell said, his voice hoarse. He pulled out of your arms and sluggered towards the gemologist, who had finally looked up from the citrine stone and towards the businessman. For a split second, you saw a glimpse of humanity flicker in her eyes.

“You renounced your wish,” Barbara said, her grip on the stone as tight as ever, but her heart ached as Maxwell approached her. “You were weak. The dreamstone deserves to be with someone like me.” Even her words sound forced and unnatural - like they weren’t really coming from her. Had she not renounced her wish? You wondered what she had even wished for.

“I couldn’t agree more,” Maxwell coaxed. He had gotten so close to Barbara, he was able to cup her face and rub the height of her cheekbone with his thumb. It was an action he’d performed on you many times, but even watching this play out, with your own two eyes, you could tell it was different. It was colder and more forced. He had that fake television smile, not the smile you had been blessed to see so many times. “I just hoped things could’ve been different between us.”

“Max, what are you saying?” Barbara asked, goosebumps lacing her arms and you noticed the way her grip on the dreamstone loosened under his touch.

“Everyone has something to lose,” Maxwell whispered. “I could have all the power in the world but it would mean nothing to me if I lost Alistair, my son. Tell me Barbara, does that really make me weak?”

Barbara considered his words for a few moments. “No.”

Maxwell nodded. “What do you have to lose?” Maxwell whispered, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear.

Barbara sniffed, a single tear dripping down her cheek. She was once so warm and compassionate, so friendly. There was one thing. Only one thing she thought about losing.

Just then, the dreamstone slipped from her grip as the lasso of Hestia curled around it and pulled it away from her. But it wasn’t your lasso.

“Diana!” Barbara gasped, her face hardening as she quickly and fiercely wiped her tears away. “That dreamstone belongs to me!”

“I can’t let you do this Barbara!” Diana cried. “This has to end now!” You and Maxwell ran towards Diana and she passed you the dreamstone. “Get out of here!” I’ll hold back Barbara.”

You handed Maxwell the dreamstone and equipped your own lasso, circling it around until it wrapped around a rocky ledge at the end of the cave. “Hold on to me. One hand around me and keep tight a hold of the stone!” you commanded as the walls of the ancient temple began to crumble around you. Just before you set off, you saw the silver gleam of Diana’s sword of Athena as she wielded it before Barbara.

“Shouldn’t I hold on to the lasso?” Maxwell asked, sliding an arm around your waist and holding the stone tight against his chest.

“Just trust me!” You shouted over the loud rumbling around you. You gripped on to your lasso firmly with both hands before shooting off in the air.

“Whoa!” Maxwell screamed, squeezing his eyes tight shut the second his feet left the ground. “Are we flying?! Are we flying?!”

You giggled as your bodies glided through the air. Max might have been holding on to you for his dear life, but somehow he knew he would be okay. That he’d be safe and you wouldn’t let him get hurt. You rapidly approached the entrance to the cave and used the last of your might to safely land. Maxwell had no time to catch his whereabouts when his feet hit the ground, as you clipped your lasso back to your belt and ran with him to the edge of the ruins.

You hadn’t been in there too long, but by the time you had exited the ancient temple, it was already nightfall. You looked back and there was no sign of Diana. She must have still been in there with Barbara, and you wondered what was going on.

When Maxwell held the dreamstone, he felt opportunistic. He could make a wish. He had the possibility to make a wish again and have a do-over. He knew where he went wrong last time. He could make it right. He could wish for you to stay… and for you to live a peaceful, happy life with him and Alistair. He could wish to win the custody case. He could wish for so many things. But it was the softness of your touch which interrupted him from his intrusive thoughts. The way your fingers gently grazed across his knuckles and you held his hand.

“We have to destroy it now.” you whispered, looking into the glowing citrine rock.

“We?” Maxwell questioned. His eyes were dark and wide. “We don’t even know how.”

“Only the truth can destroy the lies. But my mother said I had to believe in love. Love would destroy the stone. Truth and love… truth and love…” you chanted as you tried to piece together the puzzle.

It suddenly hit Maxwell like a ton of bricks. “True love,” he said out loud, his gaze flicking from the dreamstone to you. “True love will destroy the stone.”

It made more than sense, and Maxwell had worked it out on his own. “You’re right…” you whispered. You squeezed Max’s hand and then reached over to the dreamstone. You placed your hand on the stone, and the tips of your fingers touched the tips of Maxwell. As you both held the stone together, the magic began to work and the stone grew hot and tingled your skin. Very soon, Dolos’ dreamstone - the final dreamstone - fizzled away into a pile of glittering dust and blew away in the cool Greek wind.

You and Maxwell both stood there in silence, still holding your hands out, but this time there was no dreamstone. You had done it. The dreamstone had been destroyed. The God of Lies was dead. It was over.

“You did it,” Maxwell was the first to break the silence. “You destroyed the dreamstone.”

You had both been thinking the same thing. The fact you had both placed your hand on the dreamstone and that your combined energy was enough to disintegrate the possessed rock. True love. It was hard to know what to say. Of course you were in love with Maxwell Lord, and knowing that pretty soon you’d have to leave him, made your whole body ache to the core. And Maxwell felt the same about you. He’d never been this happy in his life - but spending his days with you and Alistair felt so special. You were his guardian angel, sent out from Themyscira to aid him and help him. To rescue him. How could he not love you? But still, neither of you said anything. How could you ever tell him that you loved him when you were going to leave him? It would only make things harder when it was time to go. You winced and blinked away unshed tears.

“No,” you whispered, turning to look into Maxwell’s honey coloured eyes. “We did it.”

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readyplayerhobi · 4 years

Text

Flower | 38

; Hoseok x Reader

; Genre: Fluff, slight angst

; Word Count: 4.7k

; Warnings: Slight mentions of body insecurity/self-hatred

; Synopsis: You finally decide to take a dip into the world of online dating and find the Flower dating app. One of the top matches for you proves to be a guy who looks to be your complete opposite; tattooed, pierced, a metalhead and oh…incredibly handsome. What happens when you throw caution to the wind and reach out to him?

; A/N: Only two more chapters after this one! I apologise if this isn’t good or anything...I wrote it all today as I wanted to make sure I keep hitting one a week for you! This should mean that Flower should officially end in two weeks! 😢 it’s sad to think about but I hope you’ve all enjoyed the journey with me too! Also...once you’ve read the chapter then you might want to look at this link....it’s an important link

; Flower Masterpost

The dress shop you’d chosen for today was exactly how you’d imagine a wedding dress shop to look inside. The elegant interior design gave everything an expensive appearance; creams and golds and muted greens tastefully blended throughout the furniture and the walls. While you knew that wedding dresses weren’t cheap anyway, the whole atmosphere of the shop made it all appear so much more costly.

You had no real idea of how you were meant to find a wedding dress, and your first suggestion of just ordering one offline had almost given Chungha and Soyeon a heart attack. Even Hoseok had looked at you a little funny when you’d mentioned it, making you realise quickly that you’d made a bad decision.

Just ordering one from the internet wasn’t a good choice because you likely wouldn’t get the dress you imagined. Plus, Chungha had pointed out that you had no idea whether you’d even like the dress in person or whether it would look good on you.

That had been all you needed to realise that going to a store would be the best option. You were just a little nervous about it, worrying that they might not even have wedding dresses that would fit you or something. Or that you’d look too fat in front of everyone or you’d rip a dress accidentally.

Despite the reassurance your best friends had given you, you were still convinced that you weren’t going to find a dress you liked. Maybe a dress that didn’t look half-bad as long as you didn’t look in a mirror or any photographs in the future. You may have come a long way in terms of self-acceptance, but you still had your moments of doubt and self-hatred.

Formal events were most definitely one of them. The knowledge that your wedding was supposed to be the one time that you would look perfect and be the centre of attention was horrifying for two reasons. One, you were terrified that you’d just end up highlighting the fat on your stomach or your arms and two, you still hated being the centre of attention.

Already you’d been discussing with your therapist about this, pointing out that you were dreading your wedding day instead of being excited. Hoseok was understanding of it as well and was trying to help you overcome the issues and instead get you hyped up for it, but the knowledge that everyone would be focused on you was nauseating.

How did people enjoy it?

Still, you’d searched around for dress shops that looked to be friendly and held the kind of styles that you’d be most interested in before finding the best looking one. You knew there was every chance you might not find a dress you liked here so you also had a list of backup stores to visit at a later date.

For today though, you had your mom, Hoseok’s mom and your best friends here with you. All the people who would give you the right advice about what dress to pick. You’d told them all to be honest as the last thing you wanted was for them to try and cheer you up by lying.

At the moment, you were sitting on one of the couches that were set around the small room as you waited for the assistant to come back. The store had three rooms that were used for bridal parties to try on dresses and pick their favourites, away from anyone else who might happen to wander by. You’d like the privacy it offered which had been another factor in choosing them.

Before attending, you’d specified the types of dresses that you’d prefer to try on and the colour schemes. Upon arrival, she’d looked over your body with a critical eye that had made you feel uncomfortable before disappearing out of the door once more. As she had a lot of experience in helping brides find the perfect dress, she was now weeding out the dresses that she knew for a fact wouldn’t suit you.

Maybe someone else wouldn’t like that, but you appreciated the extra effort. Plus, you knew that you could always ask to see them if you didn’t find any from the dresses that had been specifically picked out for you to try today. You figured that you’d let her get on with it though. She had way more experience than you did in this area.

You were nervous though, your leg bouncing quickly while your fingers were tapping at your jean-clad thigh. Everyone else just seemed to be excited but the large mirror on one end of the room filled you with dread. What if you looked fat and ugly in every dress? You wanted to look perfect but you weren’t unrealistic. There was only so much to do with an average base, after all.

Unsurprisingly, your mom notices your quiet and shy demeanour. Not that you were naturally outgoing anyway, but mom’s notice these things.

Reaching over from where she’s sat next to you, her hand firmly takes your own and presses it against your leg, stopping it from jerking. Glancing over to her, she gives you a soft smile before running her fingers along your cheek in a gentle movement.

“What’s wrong? Worried?” Nodding self-consciously, you try to avoid her gaze as you feel heat spread through your body. Even your fingers tingle with embarrassment, not wanting to cause a scene in front of everyone.

“Aren’t I supposed to be worried?”

“No, you’re supposed to be excited. But don’t think about what you’re supposed to be. Just enjoy the moment and have fun dressing up!” She encourages you, giving you a bright smile while squeezing your hand. It attracts Soyeon’s attention from your other side, causing her to stop chatting with Chungha and Hoseok’s mom on the opposite couch.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Now it’s her turn to try and comfort you, wrapping an arm around your shoulder before hugging you tightly. It causes you to smile softly before looking at her, shrugging underneath her embrace.

“Nothing. I’m just...you know me. If there’s one thing I can stress over then I will.” You can almost hear the audible sigh in the room. There’s no doubt that it’s not meant maliciously, but you know that everyone was probably hoping that you’d be able to enjoy today and get excited. Instead, you’ve just made it clear that they have damage control to do.

“What are you stressing over? Not finding the right dress today? The wedding itself? The cost?” The questions are peppered at you from your mom and each one is almost right. As excited as you were to get married to Hoseok, you’d never been one of those girls who fantasize about a wedding. As such, you’d never particularly cared to pay attention to what weddings require.

What Hoseok and you had discovered over the last few months was that weddings required a lot of money and a lot of different people involved. The florist, the venue, the interior design of the room, invite makers, catering, suit makers, wedding dressmakers and so much more. It was a headache to think about and you’d tried to get everything sorted as quickly as you could and for something that wasn’t going to bankrupt you both.

Despite that, you were still looking forward to finally getting to marry Hoseok. It was just the whole process getting there that was causing you anxiety. You wanted to look your best for him. Blow his socks off and all that jazz.

“Yes and no. It’s stupid,” Your voice lowers, almost to a whine. “You’ll think I’m being stupid.”

“Hey...no. No, we won’t. You know we won’t, we never have.” That comes from Chungha and you can see that she’d like to be part of the ‘physically comforting’ crew. But there’s not enough space for her, so she’s relegated to just talking to you from over the glass coffee table between both couches. There’s a fresh bouquet in a pretty vase on the tabletop alongside copies of wedding magazines scattered along the surface.

A quick, unsure glance takes in Hoseok’s mom and you feel even more anxious as you wonder whether she’s judging you. Is she unhappy at what she sees? Uncertain whether or not she wants her son to marry you after getting to witness firsthand your anxiety and fears? You know that she knows about that stuff. Hoseok had told her over the years with your permission, but it was another thing entirely to see it in person.

There’s no judgement in her eyes though and it settles you a little. Instead, there’s concern, a frown on her forehead as she leans forward and watches you closely.

Swallowing, you sigh before finally deciding to just be honest with them. You needed their support right now and you wanted to be excited about picking a dress. This was going to be the dress that you’d remember forever. The one that you hoped would make Hoseok cry when he saw you.

“I just am worried. That...you know...I won’t look good. In my dress. Or any dress. Or that I’ll look fat. Like it’ll highlight my fat bits or something. I know he’s going to look gorgeous because he’s always beautiful and a suit is just going to make him stunning. So I’m afraid that I won’t look good next to him.” The little ball of anxiety in your stomach is growing bigger as you speak, paralysing your chest and making it a little harder to breathe as you imagine all the ways a dress could highlight your bad points.

Your mom can tell, purely, by the way your movements beneath her hand start to get a little more forceful as you try to fidget. She presses down a little harder, forcing you to stop and look at her. There’s so much love in her eyes, but you also see the concern and upset.

“You’re going to look beautiful, sweetheart. You know why? Because you’re already beautiful! Everyone will be in awe of you, thinking you’re the prettiest girl in the room on the day and that’ll be because you will be. Because you are.” She finishes, squeezing your hand while a firm smile is pressed onto her face.

“She’s right,” Hoseok’s mom interrupts, causing you to look over and see that she has her supportive smile. “You’re going to look amazing. And as someone who knows my son pretty well, I have every confidence that he’s going to cry like a baby when he sees you. Hoseok thinks you’re the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen. You in a wedding dress is just going to be the cherry on top.”

That makes tears fill your eyes as your breath catches. Pulling your hand away from your mom’s grasp, you wipe at them daintily before sniffing. You’d carefully applied makeup this morning in a possible replica of what you might want your wedding makeup to look like. Smoky eyes and a neutral lip with a subtle natural look to your face. The actual makeup would be more in-depth but you figured this would be enough to get an idea with the dress included.

Before you can say anything in response to her, the door opens up again and a moveable clothing rail is rolled inside. It’s loaded with beautiful dresses, all carefully wrapped up in plastic or paper to keep them pristine for their potential bride to try on. The sight of them makes your stomach knot up in both anticipation and fear.

Your assistant, Fatima, closes the door behind her before giving you that brilliant white smile, full of customer service as she gestures to the dresses.

“Okay, so I’ve kept almost all the ballgown style dresses. I know you said that was your ideal silhouette and I’ve picked out all the ones in ivory for you. There’s only one or two that are shoulderless. I know you said you weren’t fond of that but there are some really pretty ones that I think would work with your body. Minimal lace as well though there’s one or two with some nice designs on them.” Standing, you head over to the rail and gently finger through the dresses with wide eyes.

There were so many of them.

As if she could hear your thoughts, Fatima speaks again. “You don’t have to try them all on if you don’t want to. If you find the dress then just let me know! Don’t force yourself if you’ve fallen in love with one, okay?”

Nodding slowly, you look over at everyone else with raised brows. Understanding the silent question, almost everyone laughs and gestures to the dresses with excitement.

“Oh my god! Get trying!” Feeling shy, you carefully take the first dress off the hook before disappearing into the en-suite changing room. Taking your clothes off and carefully folding them onto the little seat in the room, you let Fatima in once more to help you slip the dress on. She hurries around you, adjusting bits of the dress and smoothing out areas before bringing you back out into the main room.

This one is pretty plain and simple with a ballgown style that reaches down to the floor in gentle swathes of soft, ivory fabric. The bodice consists of what seem to be two pieces of the same fabric, carefully designed so the right side slips underneath the left side in a criss-cross over your chest. It gives you a classic neckline that only gives the slightest hint of cleavage and helps to enhance your breasts while the straps rest on the very edges of your shoulders.

You love the style and overall design of it, appreciating that the shoulder straps are thick and the sweeping bodice manages to highlight the good parts of your body. For a moment, you wonder if you’d managed to find the dress on your first try, but turning around and examining it from all angles you soon realise that you haven’t quite got it yet.

Turning to the others, they all tilt their heads in various directions and make contemplative noises. Slowly, you spin around for them to get a good idea of the whole dress before you look at yourself once more in the mirror. Running your fingers down the luxurious cavenza, you acknowledge that it’s a beautiful dress.

But it’s not yours.

“I don’t think this is the one,” You say. “I think it’s too simple?”

Raising a brow, you look at the girls to get their opinion. They hum for another moment before nodding agreement with you.

“It looks beautiful but you’re right. It’s not quite...right. A little too boring. You look amazing though.” Smiling shyly, you turn to look at the mirror once more with a little hesitation.

You’d been so worried that a dress might just make all of your more unsightly bits even more obvious than normal such as the belly you could never seem to get rid of or your thick hips and butt. Thankfully though, the silhouette style you’d decided to try seemed to be doing a great job of disguising all those bits.

The only thing that you weren’t quite happy about was your upper arms, the fat there a little too much for your liking. Frowning, you take a deep breath and try to ignore it before looking at Fatima.

“Not this one. Can I try the next?” She nods eagerly before gesturing for you to re-enter the dressing room.

The next hour carries on like that with you trying on dress after dress and finding a reason to dislike every single one. It begins to get a little disheartening and you worry if you’re not going to be able to find the right dress. What if it didn’t exist or something? Wasn’t there supposed to be some magical moment when you’d put on a dress and it’d just feel right?

Like a sign from the heavens that you’d found the One?

Shaking your head at the mirror in exasperation, you turn back into the dressing room and begin to peel off the dress you’d been trying. This one had been an instant dislike with the train being far too long and the bodice making your body look particularly frumpy. You were more than happy to get out of it.

As Fatima helps you, undoing the laces at the back and making sure the dress comes off without any tearing, you give her an apologetic smile. “I’m so sorry. I hope I’m not wasting your time.”

She laughs at that, shaking her head as she carefully places the dress back into its protective wrap and hangs it up. Taking the next dress off the rail, she pulls it out of its wrap and turns to you with the same happy expression on her face.

“It’s okay, honestly! It’s what I get paid to do. Besides, it’s all a process. You wouldn’t believe how many brides have to go through multiple appointments before we can find the right one for them. Don’t stress yourself if it’s taking a bit longer than you might have hoped for. It just means that the right one for you is still out there! And trust me, you’re a lovely bride compared to some I’ve dealt with.” Fatima says, smirking before gesturing for you to spin around.

Wincing slightly, you wonder how many bridezillas she’s had to put up with over the years. You’d think it was a sexist term but you’d certainly read enough Reddit to know that it was, unfortunately, true for a sadly large number of brides out there. Hopefully, you wouldn’t even remotely be considered one.

“Not many left to go through now.” Fatima sing-song’s, carefully zipping up the pearl buttons on the back of the dress. Inhaling, you hold the top to your chest to help her along before watching as she continues her routine of making sure any unfortunate creases disappear.

Lifting the skirt slightly, you follow her back out into the room and stand in front of the mirror. It’s not one mirror, but more like a mini-wall of mirrors. There’s five, with one big one in front of you, two slightly smaller to either side and at an angle, while another two are angled even further in. It helps to give you a good look at everything from as many angles as possible while the bright lighting illuminates all the good points of a dress.

Tilting your head, you examine it closely before turning from side to side to try and look over all the angles. Humming lightly, you spin and watch as the skirt flares out dramatically. It had a slightly longer trail than some of the dresses you’d tried but it’s not so long that you’d need someone to carry it or anything.

“What is this one made of?” You ask, letting your fingers trail over the delicate design that makes up the bodice of the dress and spreads down onto the skirt. It feels soft and you feel pretty wearing it, admiring the leaf design and the way it creeps up your shoulders to cover up the straps.

“The leaf design on the bodice and the shoulders are ivory lace, tulle and Royal Organza with an ivory gown, tulle illusion and beading,” She gestures to the material that covers the bottom of the gown, the material light and see-through in an elegant manner. “The back of the dress is a v-design and the leaf design also continues around here. I must say, it looks beautiful on you!”

At any other moment, you’d be wondering if she was just trying to hurry the appointment up to get it moving and have you putting a deposit down already. You’d taken up so much of her time today that you wouldn’t be surprised.

But she sounds genuine, and you’re too busy admiring the dress to care. Because you agree with her. It’s a stunning dress and for once, you think it does look beautiful. It hides all the bits you were self-conscious about yet outlined your body perfectly to give you a body silhouette that you loved.

The lace design extends along with the skirt in all directions but it’s only directly in the front and behind where it extends almost to the edge. It’s intricate and so delicate, causing you to wonder how people managed to make these. You certainly wouldn’t have the patience for it.

“I...I love it.” You find yourself saying, eyes wide as you look yourself over in the mirror. Shifting around, you turn to everyone and give them an expectant look. Posing for them slightly, you shift in all directions to make sure they can see it all properly before spinning and letting the dress flow out.

“Oh my god, it’s so beautiful.” Chungha breathes out, pressing a hand to her chest as her gaze is focused firmly on the dress. Soyeon is nodding too, a huge grin on her face before she squeals and claps her hand as her excitement takes over.

“Ahhhh! It’s amazing. Oh my god, it’s perfect!”

Hoseok’s mom nods, standing up to move over to you and get a closer look. She slowly moves around you, taking in the gown up close before reaching out to gently trail her fingers over some of the lace. You let her, watching closely to see what she thinks.

“Oh my, Hoseok is going to cry. You look amazing.” Her words cause a sudden surge of emotion in you as you look over your shoulder, taking everything in once more. It’s not the fairytale moment you’d imagined it might be, but it feels close enough. There’s not a single thing you hate about the dress.

You don’t even particularly hate yourself in it. Biting your lip, you try to imagine yourself on the day itself; the veil trailing down your back while your makeup has been professionally done and a specially made bouquet is held in your hands. The feeling in your stomach isn’t anxiety or self-hatred but...excitement.

“Mom?” Looking at your mom, you see the way there are tears in her eyes too. She’s got her hands covering her mouth and you frown, hoping she’s okay. Stepping over to her carefully, you reach out and take her hands gently.

“Mom? Are you okay? What’s wrong?” You’d crouch in front of her but you didn’t want to potentially do anything to ruin this dress. Not when you’d taken so long today to find it. Maybe you were just lucky that it had only taken one session to find it. You didn’t know, nor did you care anymore.

You’d found it.

“Oh honey, you look so beautiful! I told you that you would, didn’t I?” Wiping at her eyes, she gives you a watery smile before giving a weak laugh. Slowly, she stands and places her hands on your shoulders, taking you in from a little distance with such a fond and happy look.

Feeling a little shy under her stare, you look down at your hands before taking a careful step back and letting her look at you from all directions. Chungha and Soyeon are almost vibrating with excitement as they stand to the side, clasping their hands together and giving you the biggest smiles possible when you laugh at them.

Looking over at Fatima, you smile at her. The look on her face is satisfied and you guess she’s probably content that she’s managed to fulfil her job today. Another bride was satisfied with her choice, after all.

“I think I’m going to have to put a deposit down on this one.” Looking back down at the dress, you run your hands down it once more in wonderment. It was odd to think that you were going to be wearing this in a few months, only then you’d be walking down the aisle to Hoseok. For a moment, you imagine what his face might look like.

Glancing at everyone else, you smirk slightly as you feel a little mischief taking over at the thought of him.

“Hoseok was bugging me this morning about if he could be allowed to see the dress. Trying to say that traditions are silly and everything. I’m going to call him, right now. Wearing this. Just to tell him I’ve found it. It’s going to drive him up the wall knowing I’ve picked it and he’s not allowed to see for months.” That makes his mom snort in amusement while Chungha let’s out a whoop of delight.

Your mom is shaking her head, amusement thankfully drying up her tears. Reaching to her, you embrace her in a tight hug that’s a little rare from you. But you’re thankful to her for everything she’s done and for all her support so far. Plus, you get the feeling she needs to have a hug right now.

She hugs you back just as tightly, patting your back before rubbing at it in soothing motions that make you feel young and small once more. When you pull away, she gives a slightly exasperated look before rolling her eyes.

“Go on then, go call him. Honestly. Do you two ever go a day without teasing each other relentlessly?” Laughing, you nod at Fatima who exits the room. You presume there’s more to go through before you’ll finally be able to leave but at least you can stop getting in and out of dresses finally.

“Never. Besides, this is revenge for him eating the last of the Crunchy Nut this morning.”

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ao3-sucks · 4 years

Text

An Archive of Someone’s Own: my experiences being groomed in fandom circles on AO3

TW: Childhood sexual abuse, grooming, mentions of incest and rape.

I used to be a big writer of fanfiction. It was the logical choice for me. I loved to write and create bold and immersive worlds, and I craved an audience who would enjoy my work as much as I did. Since my writing wasn’t actually good, I needed a community of other amateurs who wouldn’t mind that, and by tweaking my characters and settings into ones from canonical media, I got the audience I so craved.

I started writing fanfiction online when I was 14, posting initially on FanFiction.net and then moving to AO3 a few months later. As I got back into writing original fiction towards the end of high school, I lost interest in this community, and it’s been a long time since I posted anything much on AO3.

I’ve always struggled with the fact I display a lot of symptoms of CSA, and for the longest time, I couldn’t figure out why. Throughout my teen years, I refused to get changed or bathe when anyone was even vaguely nearby, constantly paranoid about being spied on; I developed a severe touch phobia, and would have frequent panic attacks from something as small as brushing arms with a passerby; I resolutely identified as asexual and refused to get into anything resembling a relationship with others because the very concept disgusted and repulsed me.

Weird, considering I had grown up pretty normal and all of these symptoms had started around my early teens. It was only when I told my friends about my friendship with a 30 year old I had met online that the pieces started falling into place for me.

Child grooming is usually discussed in the context of one adult going out of their way to befriend a child with the goal of lowering their resistance to sexual abuse, through normalisation and friendliness. I’d like to talk about how that worked on the fanfiction website AO3. Since it’s an open website and most communication takes place between anonymous users or accounts in the comments section of a work, there is very little delineation between spaces for adults to discuss whatever dark topics they like and spaces for kids to do the same.

This frequently leads to pretty inappropriate conversations between people of widely varying ages and life experiences, which is how I ended up talking sex as a fourteen year old with people ranging from a couple of years older than me, who were generally okay, to more than twice my age. The 30 year old in question listed on her profile how many pedophilic ships she loved, and she knew my age but pushed me to keep discussing sexual topics with her. Sounds like a red flag, yeah? Well. I was 14, and very stupid.

This 30 year old woman, who I will call Aku (because it’s similar to her screen name and because it’s funny to name her after the bad guy from Samurai Jack) would start conversations with me whenever I posted anything to AO3 and would refuse to take no for an answer when I tried to back out of conversations with her, and since these conversations were public and occurring within comments, I didn’t want to be rude to her since this was taking place on content I was trying to promote.

I told her my age multiple times and she would either pretend she forgot from last time (saying her memory is super bad) or continue as though it was just trivia about me and not a sign she shouldn’t have been pushing me. My primary objection to what she would say to me (since most of it was just her being annoying) was her insistence on sexualising everything I wrote, and her determination to push me into writing pornographic content, which I eventually gave in to.

Yes, she was a terrible person. She emailed me using her personal email address, so I know her full name and place of residence, because she’s an idiot. These emails also contain sexually explicit materials. Nothing much ever happened between us except for these very creepy interactions and the fact we remained online friends for a few years. But here’s the thing: she wasn’t the only person pushing me into creating sexual content. Lots of people would comment on my writing demanding that I show explicit sexual content when I really didn’t want to.

After a while it felt like I couldn’t write a longer, romantic fanfiction without including explicit sexual content. Like my work wasn’t valid without it. Other, more popular writers were usually sexual in their content, and I wanted to be like them and bring in the views, right? So, when I look at my back catalog of works, I can see how my content moved from completely non-sexual to featuring sexual content over time, and the views usually came with. In this way, I was in an environment that was encouraging me on many levels to sexualise my own work, which impacted the way I thought about my creative process.

Here’s another example I remember. When I was a young sprout, I remember reading down someone’s list of fanfiction recommendations and seeing a work called Hug Therapy, which I promptly read. While the work is marked as explicit and containing the Loki/Thor pairing, the use of relationship and rating tags on AO3 is so poorly regulated that it didn’t really mean anything to me to see either of those. People tag hardcore material as non-explicit and tag friendships as relationships, because there’s no motivation to tag properly. Plus, someone I followed here on Tumblr had recommended it to me.

Now, you wouldn’t know from the listing, but while this piece starts out as comedy, it turns out in the end to include rape, incest, and BDSM in very explicit terms. The fact it was tagged as being explicit didn’t slow me down, because the liberal use of these tags could mean that an explicit tag was just there because sexual content was implied or mentioned, which I thought would be the case based on the rest of the listing. Out of curiosity, I recently tried to report this work to the moderators for containing no warnings about incest or rape, and I got this in response:

“Selecting “Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings” satisfies a creator’s obligation under the warnings policy. Users who wish to avoid specific elements entirely should not access fanworks marked with “Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings”. Our Terms of Service note: “You understand that using the Archive may expose you to material that is offensive, triggering, erroneous, sexually explicit, indecent, blasphemous, objectionable, grammatically incorrect, or badly spelled. ….. This decision is in accordance with our policy of maximum inclusiveness; we have therefore closed this case and will not be investigating further.”

Which, yeah, I guess. The frustration comes from how ‘Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings’ is an extremely commonly used tag, and most things that it’s used on are totally harmless.

This fanfiction, which I was recommended by a friend, is hugely popular, in the top 60 most read fanfictions in the entire fandom. You wanna hear the kicker? The author, Astolat, is one of the founders of AO3. They’re not just some random author who isn’t following the rules. They’re a creator of the whole website, and they made the rules. This is pretty telling about how seriously the website actually takes protecting their users.

My final example I want to give is one of fetish content. People in fetish communities generally (not always) say that fetishes are probably something one should work up to after the onset of sexual activity, especially potentially harmful stuff like BDSM. In the circles I was running in, if you weren’t sporting a fetish or two (no matter your age) you were a boring bitch.

Maybe this isn’t true of everywhere in the fanfiction community, but I used to feel that bizarre pressure until I got out. Bear in mind that my main time in this community was from ages 14 to 17. I never made my age a secret, either. I told people outright I was that age, I was in high school, I was playing hockey and studying The Great Gatsby when I wasn’t online.

Since I was in the Avengers fandom and I liked Loki and the Asgardians, I was frequently exposed to incestuous content between Loki and Thor, and a lot of it came out of nowhere or was poorly tagged. This was considered the norm, and while I at first felt completely horrified and repulsed, within a year or two I no longer gave a shit. It’s only in the last few years as I’ve begun to unpack everything that I’ve started to get that strong revulsion reaction to incestuous content.

In the circles I was in, it was relentlessly normal. Normal to the point that people who disliked it were usually shouted down. Even to this day, debate rages on in fandom spaces about whether or not content like this normalises this kind of abuse. In my own personal experience, which I don’t usually like to talk about, it absolutely does.

In real life, this normalisation started to have serious consequences for my mental health and interpersonal relationships. In fanfiction, any occasion when you are alone with someone could become sexual, any familial relationship is possibly sexual, and it doesn’t matter if you like it or not. I became incredibly anxious around male family members for fear of being sexually assaulted, and my OCD, which I had been developing since I was a child, turned from thoughts of physical violence to thoughts of graphically sexually assaulted by anyone and everyone around me.

My fear of being touched got to the point where I would have panic attacks if anyone came anywhere close to touching me. I quit sports, fucked up my romantic relationships, and didn’t hug anyone, not even members of my family, for years. All the while, I had bought my first laptop and was consuming more fanfiction than ever before. I struggled with my sexuality growing up, as I am bisexual, and while fanfiction provided LGBT content to help me, the content was frequently so disturbing that I viewed any expression of sexuality as something evil and predatory.

The community on AO3, whether you like it or not, is often sexual, and provides no barriers between the casual user looking for content and extremely intense fetish material. It’s sometimes called the Pornhub of fanfiction, but considering the wide range of people who use it, it’s more like if you opened Youtube and saw niche hardcore fetish videos just on the front page, recommended and trending.

Sure, you have to click a little button to confirm you’re 18 before you can actually read a story, but the tags and descriptions of readily available works can be extremely explicit. Fanfiction also brings you into close contact with fellow readers and the author, and encourages you to become a content creator, which in some ways makes it more dangerous.

I was affected much more strongly by what I saw than most people would be, because I was already treading shaky ground. But I’m also not the only person out there who has been hurt in this way. Most of my friends who grew up in fandom can report the impact that fanfiction culture had on them. One of my friends from high school knew a panoply of porn terms at age 14 or so due to reading fanfiction, and another of my other friends at high school almost exclusively read rape porn because it was her favourite. I didn’t have friends who watched porn; I had friends who read fanfiction. These are just as troubling to me as any other accounts of young people consuming visual porn from a very early age.

It’s frequently cited that fanfiction gives minority groups the opportunity for creative outlet. It was a great place for me to cut my teeth as a content creator, and a source of acceptance and kindness when times were tough. Fanfiction communities have historically been the domain of women and minorities, and create a space for these people to tell their own stories.

It’s largely because of this that fanfiction communities fear censorship and strict moderation, as they have been attacked in the past on homophobic or misogynistic grounds, resulting in mass deletions of works or the shutdown of websites. But there must be some middle ground between total censorship and the kind of free rein that puts vulnerable people in danger, and I strongly encourage the board of AO3 to seek this middle ground out.

But it’s the community itself that needs to shape up; AO3 is, after all, a community-led website built by fans for fans, so the fact that this website has such issues is a reflection of the issues that run deeply within the people who created it. Aku didn’t talk to me with the intention of doing me harm, or so I believe at this time, and she didn’t pursue me as a lone wolf or in isolation.

She was simply a particularly brazen member of a community that was used to having inappropriate conversations with young people and sexualising everything they did. Even people my own age were jokingly pushing me into discussing and consuming extremely sexual content. It was just normal. That’s what I want to say here. Inside the world of fandom on AO3, the grooming of children with sexual content is normal. And that’s scary.

- Mod Daft

#mod daft post #ao3 discourse #fandom wank #fanfiction discourse #fanfiction wank #csa//#rape//#grooming//#incest//

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pomegranates-and-blood · 4 years

Text

νοσταλγία (Chapter 12)

νοσταλγία Masterlist

Pairing: Ivar/Reader

Summary: This is a retelling/romantization of the Greek myth of Persephone’s abduction with Ivar as Hades and you as Persephone. The Reader character is a Byzantine woman, follower of the Greek Pantheon/Religion, and a devoted follower of Persephone. This takes place after 5A, but the universe of this is a little changed in relation with the series, of course. Thank you for giving it a chance, hope you enjoy!

Word Count: 4.2k

Warnings: The usual

A/N: Hi, so...either in this chapter I completely dissapoint you or I pleasantly surprise you, I’m very much hoping for the latter lol. I would love to hear your thoughts on this, cause I’m an insecure little fuck and I’m very afraid you’ll all hate this chapter and where the story goes from now on lol

Taglist: @youbloodymadgenius @heavenly1927 @toe-vind-ek-jou @xbellaxcarolinax @pieces-by-me

Decided to post this a day earlier cause ffs, between the fucking election and minks with covid and destiel and putin, the world doesn’t make sense anymore. So fuck it, have some Ivar :)

“Word has it that the King has made you a free woman.” The girl whispers, handing you a piece of bread and sitting beside you, looking out at the stars.

“Mhm.”

“We’ve known you were more than a prisoner since the moment you arrived, though.” She quips quietly.

“Oh.” You can only mutter, but the surprise is written in your face.

Freydis smiles, warm and a little cold at the same time, “It is written in the way you walk, witch. You were never a slave, were you?”

“If you are asking if the Saxons kept me a prisoner, the answer is no. That privilege seems to be reserved for your King.” If your last words drip with venom and anger, she does not mention it. You dare think she understands.

“I was. But now, like you, I am free,” Freydis sentences, and this does bring your attention back to her eyes. Depthless blue eyes, perverse and innocent, relentless and broken. When the girl leans closer, you don’t move. Her words are barely a whisper, but carry the strength of the vow you hissed at Stithulf, “Neither you or me will die slaves to men.”

“To whom, then?”

“The Gods. Yours or mine, I do not know,” She answers simply, fierce when she hisses the words at you, “But we mustn’t settle with mortal men. What we have suffered, it has to…mean something. It has to mean we are destined for more, that we are more.”

“Sometimes pain is just pain, Freydis.” You offer quietly, but her mind is set. You wonder for a moment if these thoughts were what made her spirit survive her time as a slave.

“No,” She shakes her head, stubborn, “We are broken because our fate is to be strong, we are…we are defiled because we are to rise above it.”

You roll your eyes, and even if the conversation remains quiet in the dead of night your voice is strong when you argue, “Did Freyja release you from your binds? Will Despoina release me from mine?” The pain lacers at your heart, but you insist, “No. I shall not be thankful for an unending fight to survive.”

“Yet you survive.”

She is not talking about surviving the Byzantine warriors’ almost successful attempt to silence you like they did your mother. She is not talking about surviving the pain of years, centuries, that marks your soul, a pain that Freydis may not know about but understands regardless.

No. She’s talking of the ‘freedom’ you have garnered here in her homeland, of what it means to be a free woman in a world that steps over the ones that cannot fight like men. She is talking of surviving Ivar the Boneless.

As your eyes meet, different stories, different agonies, and different destinies meet as well; but you feel she understands, better than almost anyone, what guided your words, your steps, your promises, that made an army be laid at your feet, to make a mad King set you free.

“King Ivar was the one to free you.” You say quietly, leaning away from the girl. It is not even a question, is a realization. All her words, all her advice…she spoke from experience, more specific experience than you thought.

“He wasn’t a king then.”

A hopeless laugh leaves your lips, “What men like Ivar the Boneless need you to be, you become.” You repeat her words from a few weeks ago, a new meaning to them altogether.

The girl laughs as well, the sound dainty and musical even if it carries iron beneath, “Although now I realize you may have been too arrogant to lie.”

All you can offer her is a shrug and a sigh as you say, “I die on my own terms, with my own face, Freydis.”

“But you didn’t. Die, that is,” She insists, smile on her pale face that you find yourself starting to return in kind. Her hand settles on your knee and she squeezes and you wonder if it is in comfort or something else. “Whatever you are, he wants to keep for himself.”

You say nothing else, turning your gaze back into the sky outside, suddenly reminded of the circumstances that brought you here, of the invisible chains that still remain on you, of how you have failed to become what you ought to.

If we must, we will die. Resisting, like your mother and I taught you.

And yet you cower and accept scraps of freedom at the first chance you have. Shame and resentment fill your heart, and your mother’s favorite piece of jewelry hanging from your neck feels like a noose when your fingers toy with the old metal.

“Did you seduce him?” Freydis starts suddenly, dragging you away from your thoughts so quickly you find yourself disoriented.

You blink a couple of times before you can answer with anything other than a wordless sound to her question.

“What?”

She shrugs with one of her shoulders, drinking from her own cup of warm milk before explaining, “You earned your freedom, or whatever measure of it that you don’t seem to be happy with. Did you bed him for it?”

It should be insulting, but her clear eyes tell you she does not shame you for it. She seems almost…impressed. It still makes something churn at your insides, and you find yourself hating the world that bound her and made her a slave a little bit more.

“No,” You say, slowly, “Was I expected to?”

Did you? Is what your words whisper but you don’t dare voice, although you have an inkling that she hears it regardless. Her eyes remain on you for a few moments too long, and the start of a knowing smile curves at her lips.

The girl still shakes her head in response, “I was curious.”

“Why?” If you sound harsh, if what Sieghild calls your ‘Athenian nobility’ is heard in your tone, Freydis does not mention it.

“He wants you, you know that. Half of Kattegat wants you.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

She shrugs, “Word runs that he has never taken a woman to his bed. Earls have even gifted him noble women and slaves, but he never accepts them.

A part of you wants to ask why she is aware of all this. You remain silent however, looking back out at the stars and wondering why does she believe the King’s cock and its use or lack thereof is something you are interested in discussing.

“It’s not about beauty, the women brought in were the most beautiful I have seen,” She continues on, talking to herself as she recalls, “It’s also not about…power. Most I have seen wouldn’t be sharp-witted enough to try to get something out of him either.”

She seems to be willing to babble on, but a sharp voice interrupts you, no matter how quiet it is.

“Girl,” One of the older women chastises, gaze set on Freydis. “Eyes and ears follow the witch. Be careful.”

You are stunned into silence, as is the girl next to you, and when the quiet of night settles upon you, you can hear the rustling of leather and the deep breaths of soldiers set outside your door.

His guest. You guess to them being a guest just means a looser set of chains, or invisible shackles.

True fear settles in the girl’s pale eyes, and you reach to place a hand in her knee, placating her. The older woman, you do not know her name, motions so that you both move closer to the crackling fire and away from the windows.

“It will do you no good to gossip like this about any son of Ragnar, especially Ivar,” She advices, but a glint in her eye tells you of times in her youth spent just like this. She leans closer, and whispers, “And also, despite the rumors, you must remember he is a hot-blooded young man commanding an army, you oaf.”

“Maybe it’s about control,” The blonde ponders, side-glance directed at you. After a breath, she shrugs, “Maybe you were brought all the way here just to be fucked, witch.”

Freydis ends her sentence in a giggle, her voice quiet and eyes shining. The young girl behind the past suffering and fear.

The old woman smiles, and points towards you with her head, “She speaks like one of our own, she better fuck like one too.”

Her jest is well-meaning even if insulting, and used already to Sieghild’s equally brash humor, you only roll your eyes with a laugh.

The three of you continue exchanging secrets of this land and its people till the moon is high up the sky. It helps with the feeling of shame, the feeling of having betrayed your purpose; it helps, but it doesn’t quieten the voices that demand to know why you get the right to spend the night next to a warm fire laughing and exchanging stories while your people’s corpses are still fresh, while the survivors await the embrace of the incoming winter to let go of their strength.

When the whispers quieten, when the city sleeps, when you are left alone with your thoughts; you realize what a mistake you have made.

You were taught to fight, you were taught to resist. The Gods made you smart and ambitious, and it was for a reason. It may be Fate you are to cross paths with the Varangian, but it is not written that you are to be bound to him, you refuse to believe so.

You have fought with claws and teeth before, you have lied and kissed and promised to avoid bindings. There is no reason why you shouldn’t now, no reason why foolish thoughts and feelings should stop you from doing what you have before.

Fight. To return to your people. To remain free. To overcome.

And so, letting go of the guilt of not trying enough but with a new sort of guilt and shame settling upon you, you depart the apothecary towards the main hall in the dead of night.

You are not stupid, you know the Viking wants you, at least slightly, at least begrudgingly. And he knows he cannot get any political advantage from making you his wife, he may even lose power by making you queen. There aren’t many things he can force out of you, so that leaves your body.

So, if it is your body he wants, you will let him have it, in whatever way he sees fit.

When it is done, when the foreignness is no longer mysterious, when you make the allure of whatever it is dissipate; then it will be easier to make him see that this was not ordained by the Gods, not his and definitely not yours.

You thank the warrior that leads you to the quarters with a nod and a silent smile, wondering in the back of your mind when or how these men got directions that you are to be allowed in the King’s chambers when he hasn’t called for you.

It surprises you that he hasn’t yet gone to sleep, makes you wonder what he has entertained himself with. A foolish thought of it being a someone that entertains the King at night makes you clench your jaw.

Still, you stand in wait, letting curious eyes wander over the spacious room. When the uneven steps reach your ears, followed by the fainter footsteps of two slaves, you straighten your back and face the doorway.

King Ivar’s eyes widen when he finds you in the room, quickly moving over your form in the red dress before he dismisses the slaves with a gesture of his hand.

You keep your eyes on his, but there has never been a time you have shown less in your gaze. He sits down, discarding the crutch at his side, and you walk closer even though your legs shake and your hands tremble.

Playing games kept you from your freedom, but…playing games may keep you from chains this time.

You’d prefer iron shackles on your wrists and ankles for a thousand years if it meant not having to be an unwilling wife before Gods that, although you don’t worship, you respect and believe in.

Your steps falter, and your heart remembers the consequences of the last time you lied in exchange for freedom. The words in your head are promises that this is no different from Narses, even if Narses was kind, and sane, and you cared for him.

What men like Ivar the Boneless need you to be, you become.

You reach up, keeping your eyes on his, and let the dress drop down to the floor, leaving you bare to hungry blue eyes that immediately trace over your body.

His lips part before he speaks, and he seems to stammer for a moment before he asks, “W-What are you…?”

“I know you want me,” You offer, a little entranced by the desire, the fear, the struggle for control that you see written all over his face; taking a small step forward before you realize it. You shake yourself off your stupor, standing straighter. With what feels like your last breath before a defeated descent to Hades, you whisper, “You don’t have to make me your wife, whatever you want you can get without marrying me.”

Any wonder, any trace of desire and boyish vulnerability you could see written all over his face, shining in his hungry eyes; it all disappears with your words.

His expression hardens and his nose furrows on a snarl, his voice gravelly and almost disgusted as he motions dismissively towards you.

“Get dressed.”

You startle, and resist the urge to cover yourself with your hands.

“W-What?”

“I said get dressed. I do not want your pity.”

Your brow furrows along with your nose, and although with trembling hands you grab onto the linen and cover yourself, you still grit out,

“It’s not pity. It’s…desperation.”

“Desperation?”

“I cannot be bound to you, I cannot be made into your wife.” You try, and the pleading tone of your voice makes disgust at yourself churn at your insides.

“Are you ashamed you will have to be the wife to a cripple, hm? Disgusted?” He taunts, the flip of a coin and back into the cruel rage you have faced before, although with a different, more raw edge to it as he presses, “Is that it?”

And as before, the glimpse of something real, the victory of drawing something human out of the monster that bears the crown makes your own back straighten, your own voice turn into steel.

“That you think your legs are the reason I would have for not wanting to be your wife, King Ivar, tells me all I need to know about you.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” He spits out, and even as his raised voice puts you on edge, you still run your hands through your hair as you start placing, “Do not walk away from me!”

You turn back to him with wide eyes and quickened breath. But it is not fear, it’s rage. For a moment when your eyes meet you want to dare him to make you fear him, but the arrogance beats the desire to prove your foolish heart wrong, and you spit out,

“You have had me chained and humiliated; you have forced me to become something I do not want to!” Your nose furrows and your eyebrows crease, but your voice lowers and you settle the fury in your voice as you answer his question, “And you thinking me being against all this charade has anything to do with your legs makes me realize in your mind all of this,” You gesture around you, “is somehow alright.”

His nose furrows, his lip curls in a snarl before he argues, “It is Fate!”

“Why!? Because you say so!?” You shake your head, “Impressive a man as you may be, you are not yet a Manteion.”

“A what!?”

Of course he doesn’t know, how could he, how could anyone in this cold and foreign place know at all what you mean when you speak in your tongue, to your Gods, about your world.

Letting all the breath leave your lungs, you let yourself fall to the ground, hiding your face in your hands.

“Our worlds are so different, Ivar, how can you think that-…” You sigh, “I do not belong here, I do not belong here with you.”

“Well, you are here.”

You are here with me.

And his arrogance as he says it, his pride, his power, you have known those for a long time, you have seen them in familiar faces and strangers. You have been forced to accept them, accept their rule over you simply because of the way the world is, for too long now.

Your calves grow warmer before the fire, but even if you put your legs above the burning wood it wouldn’t feel as stinging and as burning as the red mark now on your cheek.

The reminder, the thought of it alone, makes your weak hands tremble and your eyes fill with useless tears.

“Tis your pride hurting more than your face, little one.” Sieghild starts, but even if there is the start of a jest in her words, there’s gravity in her voice.

“He had no right to-…”

“He did,” She interrupts. And it is the truth, and it makes you clench your jaw and look away from her green eyes. “You wounded his pride, most men don’t take kindly to that offense.”

You stay silent, because you know. And you know you spoke out of place, you know you acted like a child, wanting things out of your reach. You know you should have lowered your eyes, shut your mouth.

Still…

“Is what he said true?” You ask meekly, feeling the burn of shame at the base of your throat. “That they can…take me?”

“As a prisoner?” The Viking leans back on her bed, a crooked smile on her inked face, “They can try.”

“As a concubine.”

Your mother focuses on you, “You are my daughter, little one. They can force no binds on you.”

“What do you mean?”

Sieghild smiles, with that same smile that speaks of a world of liberties women where you come from could never even fathom.

“You need me to say yes!” You yell before you can stop the words from leaving your lips, and you can only watch with widened eyes and a hand over your treacherous mouth as Ivar the Boneless turns to look at you again, the arrogant ire shining in his clear eyes. You scramble to stand, your eyes wide and hand still somewhat covering your mouth.

“What?”

He heard you. This would be your opportunity to take back your words, to take back your resistance, to accept surrender. You waged war against the very Empire the last time you were asked to surrender, though.

“You need my consent for us to be married, Varangian,” You state instead, the words fast and your breath also. You stand up, hands tightened to fists. A flinch of anger passes over the King’s expression as he presses his lips together, irritated that you are apparently so bent on being free. Yes, truly scandalous of you. You swallow your own irritation down and insist, “I am a free woman, you can’t force me.

He considers you quietly for a moment, and before he has a chance to argue, you remind him,

“You won’t break a promise, so you won’t make me a slave,” Even if your voice shakes, you continue, “I-I know of your ways, of…of your Gods. This wasn’t arranged, and since I’m free you need me to say yes.”

He hears the words you don’t say: And I will say no.

After a moment of stubbornly considering you, the King merely shakes his head.

“You have already been given to me.”

“That Christian has no claims to me, and you know this.” You tell him, speak ing of Stithulf and his useless chains.

“I’m not talking about him,” Ivar says, cold smile on his face as he leans on his crutch and serves a goblet of mead. He lifts the cup to you in offering, but you remain in your spot. With a sigh of both disappointment and irritation, the King gulps down the drink and clarifies, “I’m talking about your mother.”

“My mother is dead.” You say without hesitation, although a pit of fear starts opening at your stomach.

But he shakes his head, lifting a finger from his hold on the cup and pointing to you as he corrects, “I don’t mean the Greek one.”

“You are lying,” Is all you say as you look into Ivar’s eyes, your voice trembling as much as the rest of your body. Your nails dig into your palms but you cannot help it, you cannot tell your body to uncoil, not until you hear the truth. “You are lying to play with my head.”

“How would I know Sieghild Vorsdottir, King Rorik’s wife, famed shieldmaiden from the Danes, is the woman that raised you?” He offers, and with each word the ground under your feet dissolves more and more, “She came to me, told me she gave me your hand. I have witnesses.”

No, no, she would never. All those years, telling you to stand tall, teaching you not to bite your tongue, it cannot all have been for her to ditch you and sell you off to the first king you encounter.

You want to think this rationally, you want to remain calm and look for the truth but…

A part of you that will always be her child, that will always love her like the mother you lost too soon; that part of you leaves you with your hands shaking and your throat clogged with only one word.

Móðir…

“She would never do that, she…” You close your eyes with a deep breath, “If she did such a thing, she told you why.”

“She said she had to, that it was fate.”

“You are lying.” The words are choked, the last grasp of a dying hope.

“Would you stop with that? I am not lying.”

Sieghild’s sad and loving eyes on you, her hand holding your face, “I have asked Freya for help ever since we arrived in Scandinavia. She has answered.”

Frantic questions leave your lips, but in her smile there’s the same resignation you saw when she said goodbye as you readied to face the Byzantines for what was supposed to be your death, “The Seer’s words-…it does not matter anymore.”

“She said-…she knew all this time,” You choke out, wide eyes searching the nothing before you for answers, “Her visions, the Seer’s words, she…she knew.”

There’s a strange moment of hesitation, a breath of uncertainty where you think the Viking is trying to find a way to comfort you.

“Prophecies, visions…it is usually too late to change the result when we realize what the Seer’s words mean.” Is what he finally settles on saying.

Foolish, stubborn tears sting at your eyes, and it is with a shaky hand you reach to hold on tight to your mother’s necklace, despair cursing through your veins.

The Völva offers you a small smile, equally mocking and apologetic, “Run if you want to, fight, kick, scream. Fate will drag you home by the wrists, child. You know how this tale goes. The chariot’s pace will tear the world asunder as darkness goes looking for you.”

Your eyes trace over the skyline, almost frantically searching for an answer you know you will not find there.

“This…this place,” You look over the sea, feeling your chest tighten. “This was Ragnar’s pride. Sieghild’s tales…this is Queen Aslaug’s home. The empty throne.”

“You are not making any sense.”

“I was supposed to come here, before I even returned to Greece. I was-…Sieghild, she knew we were to return to her homeland, to that place ruled by a witch from the Danes.

You turn to him with wide eyes, a manic laugh bubbling up in your chest at the realization. For once, the King stays silent, watching you raptly.

“She knew it was fate. We ran from it, I ran from it.

It is with wide eyes and parted lips you look at the man before you, now in a new light, now with a new weight over your shoulders and heart.

“I have no choice,” The revelation is stealing the air from your lips, but with cracked tones you whisper, “I am…I am to be here. It is fate I become your wife.”

Fate. You never thought a word that once brought you so much comfort would make you feel so devastated.

“I will not be a bad husband for you,” He promises after a moment of silence, voice as uncertain as his eyes searching yours, “You will want for nothing, you will be respected by our people, I...I will take care of you.

You nod, but stay silent as the weight of it all settles upon you. You don’t know what is expected out of you now, what fight can you conjure up, what you can try -and see fail, again- to try and escape these…these invisible shackles.

There’s a moment of quiet, and the man moves in his seat, settling back in place with a posture that in anything other than a monster would make you think he’s sheepish, awkward.

His voice is low, almost hesitant as he offers, “You can ask for anything you want.”

You look at him out of the corner of your eye, “I do not ask for things I do not deserve, my King.”

Maybe it is time you stop asking for freedom.

____

Kay so Ivar’s words at the end are inspired on Hades’ speech to Persephone in the Homeric Hymns: “(…) feel kindly in your heart towards me: be not so exceedingly cast down; for I shall be no unfitting husband for you among the deathless gods, that am own brother to father Zeus. And while you are here, you shall rule all that lives and moves and shall have the greatest rights among the deathless gods: those who defraud you and do not appease your power with offerings, reverently performing rites and paying fit gifts, shall be punished for evermore."

Anyhow, I would love to hear what you think of this chapter and of where the story has led. I hope I haven’t dissapointed you, honestly.

Thank you so much for reading and I hope to see you next Tuesday!! Love you all :)

#ivar the boneless x reader #ivar x reader #ivar the boneless imagine #ivar the boneless #vikings #νοσταλγία masterlist

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into-the-daniverse · 3 years

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The Strait of Sirens

When the game map doesn’t give you the waterways you want, just carve them out yourself, am I right?

In this case, I’ve carved a strait from the Sea of Persephia to the Salty Sea, purely so my pirates can cross paths more. And it wouldn’t be a fantasy location in my canon if it didn't have something supernatural—so there’s also sirens.

This would come up in my canon specifically in Muriel’s route, where he and MC (Alec or Viviane depending) need to travel south. But before the events of the game, this gets used a lot by the band traveling back and forth over years, and obviously, by the pirates.

Gonna put most of this under the cut to save your dash!

Let’s start with the name of the strait.

The Strait of Sirens is inhabited and guarded by fairly neutral aligned sirens. Neutral as in they hate all humans equally. They’ve been there for a very long time, and they don’t plan on leaving anytime soon.

The strait itself is fairly big. Traveling through the strait takes about a week to cross from one end to the other on an average sized ship, so there are a number of small towns scattered across on both sides with at least one substantial inn for travelers to rest at along the way. The towns all have enchantments on them, so once a ship is docked, it is considered safe, and the sirens can’t affect it or any of the crew members.

Both entrances to the strait are guarded by sirens from two different clans. One clan guards the entrance to the Sea of Persephia, and the other the entrance to the Salty Seas. The entrances look like this; large jagged rocks meant to discourage ships from entering.

For this reason, only experienced sailors usually attempt to enter. Though, once past the entrance, it’s pretty smooth sailing. Because the sirens themselves are enough of a threat.

Onto the sirens themselves; they don't look human.

Well, they kind of do, in the same way that Valdemar does.

Their skin is translucent, and their fins glow in the dead of night. Their teeth are too sharp to offer a comforting smile, and their eyes are too much like fish eyes to give any warmth as they peek over the waves. They all have long hair, but hair is a loose term, as it’s more like another appendage, laced with seaweed and rope from wrecked ships.

Not all of them have fish tails, some have tentacles, some beaks like squids. Some of them look more human than others, and they act as lures, sometimes pretending to be drowning so a naive sailor will jump in to “save” them.

They are not considered attractive (conventionally) and they don’t lure travelers into the depths by appealing to their sexual appetite. Instead, they use illusion magic in their songs to show their victims either their wildest fantasy, most horrible fear, or best kept secret. Whatever is the strongest pull is what will be shown to them.

They sing in a style similar to Kulning, an ancient Swedish herding call, except they’re herding the travelers off their ships, instead of calling cows home. This is an excellent example of what they would sound like.

They don’t speak in any known language, those who have heard it say it sounds more like clicking. They are not easily reasoned with, highly temperamental, and prone to feeding frenzies. If some poor unfortunate slips over the railing, they are to be considered dead the moment they hit the water.

And here’s a little siren moodboard for the aesthetics.

Generally, all ships that pass through the strait have to do the old “plug your ears and hope for the best” routine as they sail through, but the closer you get to the towns, the safer you are.

Some ships employ magicians for the purpose of counteracting the sirens, as a seven day journey is a long time for most vessels to go without hearing. When the band travels on supply ships Alec is usually sought after, as her vocal magic works directly against them.

She can use her magic to sing over them, and to cancel out their illusions. This takes a lot of concentration, and she can’t sing for seven days straight, so it’s only used when absolutely necessary.

For my pirates, they each have their own way to cross the strait safely.

For Meredith, she has Saoirse. They are the only thing the sirens fear, as all seas feed into each other, and the water from the Frozen Sea has a lot of stories to tell about the Pirate Queen’s quartermaster. The crew is still encouraged to keep quiet, and to keep away from the railings, as the sirens will try to snatch any distracted crew member. She usually stops at a few towns on their way to let the crew rest.

Rodrigo doesn’t know the extent of his magic, but he knows how to use it well enough to challenge the illusions that the sirens cast. It takes a ridiculous amount of energy, and he hates doing it, but in the case that the crew can’t just plug their ears, he can redirect the sirens illusions. He can even cast illusions on the sirens, though not for very long. His crew is the only one who’s been able to retrieve members after they fell into the water, as he can make the sirens think the crew member fell in a different spot just long enough for Jacqui or someone else to fish them out. He’ll stop at villages frequently just to get away from the sirens as much as possible.

The sirens hate Syd, and seeing Inuwashi on the horizon will send them into a frenzy. But he has agreements with both clan leaders (agreements, thinly veiled threats, hostages—the Sea Palace has a few sirens hidden in the catacombs) so they let him and his crew pass. Because his ship is much smaller and faster, it takes him closer to four days to cross the strait, so usually he’ll only stop at one town to rest up, or he’ll just push through for the four days straight.

Now as mentioned above, there are a handful of towns across both sides of the strait for travelers to stop at. There’s at least one town within a day’s range of each other on the North side, around seven total, and on the South side they are spread further apart, around four total.

On the North side, the biggest town (and the only one with a ferry to take you South) is called Hinode. This is where the Koizumi Inn is located, run by Manolo and Manuela Koizumi.

Hinode, and a few more villages that are closer to Venterre, would look similar to this picture of the fishing village Ine in Japan.

Hinode is simultaneously the safest and most dangerous village, as it is directly between both clans territories, and the only thing the sirens hate as much as humans is their rival clan. 90% of the time, this means that you are unlikely to see either clan in the waters, as they will just avoid each other, but the other 10% of the time will see bloodshed.

Once every 2 years or so, during a blue moon, the clans will fight, and Hinode is in the “splash zone” for lack of a better term. All ships will need to be properly secured and enchanted for protection, or they will be turned to splinters as the sirens fight, and people living directly on the water will often move inland for the duration of the fight. Or, the day before, they will take the day travel across the strait to the South side.

On the South side, the biggest town is called Sólsetur, and it would look more like Portloe, Cornwall, shown below.

There are a few more towns on the South side, but Sólsetur is the only one that will ferry you across to the North side, and the only one directly on the water. It’s not as centralized as Hinode, and because it’s hidden in a cove it is safer to be here during the blue moon.

All the villages along the strait have protections on them, especially the closer they are to the water, that keeps the sirens from attacking them. But, travel too far outside the barriers of the spells, and you are on your own.

Both Hinode and Sólsetur are very welcoming of travelers, sailors and pirates alike, and though the people on the South side are generally colder, it’s not hard to find a warm place to sleep and a good meal to eat.

#the arcana #the arcana game #into the daniverse #strait of sirens #lore #I dont know how to tag this lmao #I think that's it for now maybe lol

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haphazardlyparked · 3 years

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the war AU, part 2

the part where it’s not actually a war, and i clearly know nothing about politics but i sure do a lot of BSing. :)))

---

Hikaj couldn't help but compare the double-edged sword he held with the woman who wielded it: High Lady Masara, a knight of the cultish order that half-ruled Amir, from what Hikaj had learned so far of the surprisingly secretive order. The sword itself was light and well-balanced, with unfamiliar runes etched down its length that had Hikaj’s best warmage tearing his hair out. It all reminded Hikaj of the first time he had met the high lady.

She had visited Kas years ago, with one of her king's councilors, and they had both been unfailingly polite. Duke Inarim, High Lady Masara, and their whole, modest entourage. Hikaj knew, because his spymaster had complained that the Amirran servants had answered all of his questions happily, or happily misunderstood them—and his veiled offers of bribes for real information.

At the formal dinners they attended, the high lady said little, but was always polite, and Hikaj had heard her laugh often enough. It had been enough to make him wonder if she knew something incriminating about every person she crossed paths with. Admittedly, he had been a little high-strung those days. Torral was the kind to be happy doing a job competently, but Hikaj's other dear uncle had liked the regency a bit too well. Hikaj had walked a fine line, trying to appear non-threatening while still presenting himself as a future ruler full of potential that his vassal kings and dukes could put their weight behind. It had made him very suspicious about every interaction around him.

But then they had danced, and Hikaj had started to see that High Lady Masara didn't laugh at anyone in particular, but at all the little parts of his court he hardly saw anymore. From the tiny carved woodland creatures that flitted through the ballroom's ceiling to the tendency to change glasses for each new drink at dinner, she had taken delight in the novelty of his court--not laughed at its secrets. She had seemed to know very little about Kas, actually.

Now, with the weight of Masara's strange sword in his hands, Hikaj was back to thinking that maybe it was the secrets. When he had recognized High Lady Masara in the knight he'd been told had charged his advance company alone, he felt a little bit like laughing himself. At himself.

They'd gone riding during the Amirran visit, in a large party that scattered into small groups and wended their collective way through the manicured Forests of the Empress-Mother. The ever-changing groups of courtiers flitting here and there again centered around a string of nobles who preferred the most sedate of paces. High Lady Masara had been one of those riders, hesitant in her sidesaddle, good-naturedly laughing at her own inexperience with a shifting tide of the Kassan court. Hikaj decided she simple hadn't had many chances to ride before.

Now, he wondered what kind of rider the knight Masara was. How many more things in Amir were mysteries to him?

***

Hikaj crossed his camp back to the bespelled tent, Masara's sword and scabbard in his hands and a nervous energy quickening his step. He should have let Qemaile go and poke the bear, he was the mage, after all - but Hikaj honestly wasn't sure if Lady Arlis would send poor Qemaile into a uselessly towering rage, or leave him crying and still unhelpful. Hikaj needed his mage, as temperamental as the man was, so he went to the tent himself.

It was guarded, but the flap was tied open for light, breaking the net of spellcloth. They had stopped burning the slightly caustic incense and started opening the tent after the high lady and her squire had each given an oath not to flee. Hikaj had made sure his healers looked after the high lady, too. While Lady Arlis had surrendered with barely a scratch on her, one of Masara's arm was broken and a spear had gone through - luckily enough, the healers told Hikaj - mostly skin and muscle where arm and shoulder met. It was declared to be healing as expected, and it had not seemed to trouble Masara too much on the (admittedly slow) ride back to Amir's capital city.

The ride had taken a week because of the hilly country, which turned large companies of men into slow, winding targets on the narrow roads, but Hikaj had taken the risk. He had also left a rear guard behind, to keep Amir's forces penned up in the blasted mountainous Foothills as a guarantee.

Now the spelled tent - and the bulk of the imperial soldiers - were all camped outside Amirasa's outer walls. At the Sascrin knights' request, the tent's opening faced the city that rose up on a high hill, topped by a sprawling palace that overlooked the cliffs and the sea on one side, and Amirasa on the other.

Hikaj blocked their view of it when he ducked into the tent.

He could tell they'd been looking because Lady Arlis had the intent, stormy look on, the one that seeing his blue-cloaked guards on the walls always provoked. She was leaning forward in her chair, her elbows on her knees, and she reminded Hikaj of a wildcat about to pounce. Masara, of course, was calmly collected by her side. But was she also angry behind that calm? Or was she hiding something else?

Or maybe he was reading too much into what was just polite civility. It didn't help that Masara's attention--but not her expression--shifted as soon as she saw what Hikaj was carrying. Arlis didn't see--she straightened and jerked her head to the side so that Hikaj couldn't see her face when she noticed him. Struggling to control her anger, probably.

She was able to mirror Masara's calm for abut half a second, and then her eyes narrowed suspiciously on Masara's sword.

"Oh, let me guess," the squire immediately snapped. “You have questions.”

Hikaj tried a smile. "There must be something you can speak about," he said, already conciliatory in his preamble. Part of him regretted already starting on the back foot, but the rest of him was focused on High Lady Masara's sudden smile.

She didn't say anything.

"Why should we spill secrets to the emperor we're at war with?" the young and very vocal Lady Arlis demanded.

For a fourteen year old, she was shockingly forceful. But then, she was an ambush-laying, sword-wielding fourteen year old. It didn't help that every time she opened her mouth, the high lady—who was an ambush-laying and sword-wielding noblewoman herself—would nod in agreement, and then cycle through a wide variety of polite looks.

Hikaj opted for what he hoped was the safest answer: technicalities.

"In the purest sense of common accord, we are not at war, because neither your king nor I have declared it,” he corrected Lady Arlis. “I suppose we could call it… armed conflict?”

Arlis gasped with deep offense. “Or more accurately, invasion or attempted conquest!”

Masara turned her steady gaze on Hikaj, and then stoked young Arlis's fire.

“You are correct Imperial General, technically," she said, turning her gracious concession into an elongated but. "Yet I fear my king has been a little busy fleeing your unprovoked… armed conflict... to make war declarations just yet.”

Lady Arlis leapt on that. "Yes! We'll see what the king says once - once he has a chance!" she told Hikaj, furious in her enthusiasm.

Hikaj was a general who knew when to retreat. He didn't quite try to hide Masara's sword and scabbard--there was nowhere to put it--but he lowered his hands and made it clear he wasn’t going to ask any questions about it. Of course Masara would want her weapon back--knights everywhere felt the same about that, Hikaj suspected, no matter how peculiar otherwise they were to him--but Qemaile wanted to study it more, and frankly, Hikaj worried it might scare some of the men if he returned it to her.

That problem for later.

Changing topics, Hikaj did his best not to get kicked out of the tent by the furious silences which had driven him from it before.

"Instead of declarations of war,” he said, in his best diplomatically soothing voice, “would you not prefer peace?"

Masara's neutral expression seemed to consider that, but Arlis frowned deeply.

“We had peace before you came,” the squire eventually said.

Hikaj looked at Masara when he answered. “Did you?”

She met his gaze, but for once, she was the one who looked away first. “Whatever we had,” she mused, “it was certainly not bloodshed from Amirasa to the Foothills.”

Hikaj bit back the dozen different things he wanted to say. He had weighed the risks and made his agreements before the first Kassan soldier set foot in Amir, and even if he was starting to re-evaulate those decisions, now was not the time to throw any plan away. Revealing any inopportune might weaken his leverages in Amir, and no matter how unfortunate this campaign was turning out to be, he did need this kingdom as a bulwark against Lapur.

So he winced and said, "No, it was not, you are correct. But I do believe smaller conflict is justified to avoid greater perils."

"For Kas, perhaps," Masara countered.

"Not just for Kas," Hikaj maintained, though he didn't mention Lapur specifically. He knew Masara would already be thinking of Amir’s other large, imperial neighbor; who west of the sea of sands didn’t? “Regardless of how it began - would you not like the chance to end it?"

That made Arlis scowl, though Masara smiled and dryly observed, “I am sure the terms would be so wonderfully generous."

Hikaj suppressed a shrug. "That is what negotiations would determine, I suppose."

Masara didn't answer, but her unchanging, humorless smile seemed to say, What treaties ever went well for the ones who were forced to the table by a greater military power? Even Arlis didn't say anything, though the naked outrage in her glare made it clear what she thought of this kind of coercion.

"How could we trust an agreement with you?" Masara asked finally. “We have no foundation for trust yet.” She paused, purposeful and considering, then added, before Hikaj could fumble for an answer, “Though we could work on that.”

Hikaj felt weakly grateful for the opening Masara left him. “What would you suggest?”

Arlis bristled again, probably ready to demand that the Kassans leave Amir immediately, but High Lady Masara said, “Something small, to start,” as though she were thinking aloud. “An easy trade. You could answer a question for me, perhaps, and I could answer one for you… or I could give you a demonstration with my sword.”

She didn’t look at the scabbard while she suggested the little deal. Hikaj met her dark, careful eyes, and told himself her offer was probably not a threat, and he definitely did not feel a sudden, thrilling swoop in his chest.

“All right,” he said.

Arlis scoffed and then muttered, just loud enough for Hikaj to hear, “I’ll demonstrate the Lady’s Peace for them.”

That was definitely a threat.

• • •

After whatever Lady Arlis had claimed to have done and Hikaj’s healers’ work, Masara's wounds all looked as though she'd had months to heal, not a little over a week. Her right arm was still in a sling though, so she held her sword in her left hand. She still wore the knee-length blue tunic that the healers had found for her too, as well as her gray knight’s cloak. But whereas her presence usually filled the small spellcloth tent, out in the open, she suddenly looked small and alone. Just one injured woman with a sword, facing off against a dozen archers.

That was probably what Hikaj's men had thought, right before Masara had charged them. He tried not to fall into the same trap when the high lady turned to him, smiled, and raised the tip of her sword with the ease of long familiarity.

“Shall I begin?” she asked.

“No!” Qemaile insisted from where he stood at Hikaj's side. He hopped from one foot to the other in his excitement, and from somewhere in his robes little bells started jingling. “You must explain what spell you plan to use! Incantation! Materials! Something?"

Masara laughed. Not at Qemaile, per se, but Qemaile retorted just the same, guestring out at Masara and her sword. "I want to know what I'm looking for!”

"You will see it," Masara assured him. It didn't really assuage Qemaile’s defensiveness, but she didn’t give him time to argue more. "Please, Imperial General, when you are ready, count to ten and then give the order to shoot."

She turned back to face the archers, who stood some hundred meters off.

Hikaj raised his hand and began to count. Before he'd even finished saying the first number, Masara's sword leapt into action, the tip of a blade tracing a large shape in the air before her. By the time Hikaj got to six, Masara's blade began to glow, first a small point of bright light, one of the etched runes turning to silver light that began to grow, sliding along the blade like liquid before it reflected into a bright arc of light that flashed, and then settled into a faint shimmer in the air. Hikaj reached ten, and lowered his hand. Twelve bowstrings twanged.

Fear flashed hot through Hikaj as the arrows whistled through the air--this was mad--but then all twelve shots slammed against the abruptly solid silver light, metal tips lighting in an incandescent spark before the wooden shafts splintered. Half-melted arrowheads and wood fell to the ground, and High Lady Masara lowered the sword.

"The arrow guard," Lady Arlis said into the silence, after the silver light faded away and Masara's sword was nothing but etched metal again. "It is one of the first things we learn."

“But I didn’t see the spell,” Qemaile wailed.

Hikaj was still staring at Masara. She had shifted the sword to her broken arm, and was holding it awkwardly in the sling so she could use her left hand to wipe sweat off her forehead, or maybe to brush her dark curls out of her face. He imagined her thundering down a narrow path through the Foothills, wreathed in silver spouting from her sword and staring down his men, and he felt a shiver in his spine.

“Figure it out, Qemaile,” Hikaj said. “I want that spell.”

“But my lord, it’s not a spell!”

• • •

In the tent (after Qemaile has asked his hundredth question and Masara had managed her ninety-somethingth evasive reply) the high lady shifted in her chair to turn a flat, expressionless look on Hikaj. It was just the three of them again, and an empty chair, but Masara didn’t even glance at Lady Arlis. The squire, for once, seemed just as unsure of what Masara would say as Hikaj.

“Imperial General,” the high lady said finally. “Who betrayed us?" She asked the question without preamble, firm and direct. Arlis closed her eyes and looked away. Was she surprised?

Hikaj himself was taken aback. Not was there a traitor, but who. How had Masara known? Had she known all along? If she’d known, that would change Hikaj’s understanding of what had gone wrong so far.

“I cannot build a foundation of trust alone, Imperial General.” The quiet, matter-of-fact tone was belied by the intensity of Masara’s brown eyes. She had said they could start with a small trade, an exchange of trust, but Hikaj suddenly realized this question was important to her. Maybe she’d been waiting for a chance to ask this whole time.

“No, of course not,” he agreed. He tried not to hesitate. Maybe the arrow guard had not been such a little demonstration, either. “It was the prince,” Hikaj said. “It was your cousin, Prince Panam.”

Masara closed her eyes, and then nodded once, shortly.

"I thought so," she said, and it was a quiet exhalation that seemed to take the strength out of her. She leaned back in her camp chair and bowed her head.

The silence was too loud; not even Arlis raised her voice to accuse Hikaj of lying. When he looked to the squire, he was shocked to see she had tears in her eyes.

“The High Priest, too?” she asked, her voice a thick whisper. Hikaj thought she was talking about the assassination that had drawn Kas into Amir, at Prince Panam’s invitation. Hikaj had had nothing to do with it, despite Arlis’s most heated accusations, but he had known the prince must have.

Masara didn’t raise her head when she replied. “It would seem so. Our own armed conflict, after all.”

“I’m sorry,” Hikaj found himself saying, feeling awkward and intrusive. “I’ll--I’ll leave you now. Have a good night.”

Then he rose from the campaign chair, flinched as the unstable thing folded loudly in on itself, and fled the tent.

#writing #masara #hikaj #the war au #i love aus #maybe 2021 will just be AUs #but tbh that woudl not be very different from most of the last few years lol #self indulgent 2021

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g7mafiascenarios · 3 years

Text

Confession of The Rain.

synopsis : Mark finds out that Athena hated rain while he loves the rain, but he knew the rain brought them closer that day.

characters : Mark Tuan, Ahn Athena, Ahn Aethia

genre : mafia!mark, got7!mafia

a/n : a little angst and fluff, mention of weather depression, basically Athena assuming she has weather depression

“Gosh, I would rather be at home and study.”

“.....I agree on staying indoors…. But not the study part - and it’s just once in a while, Tina! You should relax once in a while! Break a leg, have a chill pill you know!”

Athena looked towards the slightly grown bob girl who had icy white hair, seeing how relaxed she was since she was wrapping her arms behind her head while sucking onto a lollipop.

The older Ahn girl couldn’t help but to judge how the way Aethia - her younger sister, dressed herself as both of them were attending a party being held at one Jaebeom recently opened hotel - being friends with the Lim family, the Ahns’ were invited to the party too.

“Mum is gonna kill you, you’re supposed to wear a dress,” nagged Athena then seeing Aethia shrugging, taking out her lollipop out of her mouth as she turned towards her older sister.

“I already told Mother and Father about it. I just said I came back from work so I ain’t got time for changing onto a burden outfit,” answered Aethia coolly, earning a reaction from Athena as she shook her head to hear how unbelievable her younger sister is.

Unlike Aethia who wore a simple outfit which was just wearing a simple white shirt and jeans along with a leather jacket and slip ons plus carrying a gym bag, Athena was being forced to wear a dress since she was the oldest and she had always had to be the representative out of the Ahns’ siblings.

Athena can’t help but admit to herself that she is tired of playing the ‘good’ one - the one that parents always look up to.

Her parents’ didn’t force her or tell her anything, it’s just the way others portray her to become what they want her to be.

“I just checked the weather and it’s going to rain so I think you need—

“It’s okay, I’ll probably leave after conversing with Mum and Dad’s friends.”

With that, Aethia looked at Athena before shrugging while putting back the jacket she had brought for her older sister.

“I heard all of Jaebeom’s members will be attending this party and also, I heard that Mark is hunting you,” Aethia simply commented that made Athena snapped towards the icy white haired girl with widened eyes.

“Hunting!? N-no! We’re friends! I didn’t do anything wrong!” Athena panicked, making Aethia to chuckle out loud.

“I was just kidding, Tina! You should see your panicked face!...... So it’s true then, the Mark guy has feelings for you,” Aethia muttered to herself at the end, not wanting Athena to hear her.

Athena frowned after hearing Aethia’s comments.

“How did you know about me and M-mark?”

“I work closely with Jaebeom so.. Let’s just say that I heard it from the people who are working for him,” answered Aethia, looking at Athena with a playful glare at her - causing Athena to hit her younger sister on the arm roughly, who was laughing.

That caused Athena to giggle upon hearing how contagious Aethia’s laughter is.

Both the Ahn sisters’ laughter soon faded as soon as they turned towards a venue where they could hear deep laughter and music.

Athena can’t help but feel anxious. Let’s just say she wasn't fond of this type of parties, also knowing she has final exams right around the corner.

“Hi Mark! You look—

Mark slightly groaned in annoyance after walking past the 10th woman she met at the party.

Hearing their purposely high-pitch tone voices always gets his nerve knowing they just wanted to be in his pants.

If it wouldn't be for Jaebeom, Mark would already reject the other members’ invitation since most of their parties were for fun but whenever it is Jaebeom, there would always be an inner intention regarding his parties.

At the same time, it was an opportunity that he couldn’t miss seeing a certain girl that he had boldly given his number to. He was surprised that Athena didn’t even give him a single heads up.

Mark wanted her to ring him up first, he expected her to call him or maybe text him but it’s already been 2 weeks and his phone is only filled with calls from work or his 6 loyal friends.

But he suddenly remembered that he was dealing with the Ahn Athena, a girl who was way more different, she was way out of someone's league.

‘Maybe that’s why I am attracted to her,’

“What’s with the long face, Mr Tuan?”

A voice made Mark snapped towards where it came from - he swore that he could feel his lips curving upwards automatically when hearing the familiar voice, but it seems his face turns into a frown after seeing an unknown face.

Mark raised an eyebrow towards the girl, as he kind of judged her - from the way she dressed then analyzing her features until he finally gets it.

He should have known since he has been into Athena’s apartment, seeing family pictures that were hanging in the living room. But Mark was slightly surprised to hear how similar their voices were.

“You should be Ahn Aethia, Athena’s sister.” Mark answered, seeing the resemblance of Athena and Aethia - except that Aethia has a very obvious hair color and she has that dark vibes while to Mark, Athena was more radiant in terms of her vibes.

Mark looked around Aethia’s shoulders, to not find the one he was looking for and Aethia was smart enough to figure out Mark’s body movement - knowing what he wants.

Mark caught the gaze that Aethia had shown him - and it made Mark frown slightly.

“My sister is probably being forced by my parents to walk here and there. I’m sure she will get tired sooner or later so… I suggest you should look for her, Mr Tuan.”

“Isn’t it better for you to be the one to follow your parents around rather than Athena? I think she has done enough as an older sister.” answered Mark, his voice sounding serious which he was surprised to see how calm Aethia was.

Almost everyone knew that out of the 7 guys in Jaebeom’s group, Mark has the ability to read other people’s emotions just by reading their body language - and he was surprised that he wasn’t the only one who had that skill previously.

It seems that she didn’t even show any sign of fear.

“As you can see, my parents favored Athena more - in a good way, I mean I’m not jealous or anything, because Athena has pure intentions on how she wants to live her life. In a sense that Athena prefers to not be involved in whatever businesses my family has.” Aethia explained rather smoothly yet coolly, as she let out a small smile.

Mark nodded slowly as his response, somehow not to question Aethia more since he preferred to talk Athena directly regarding this.

“But are the two of you.. Close?” Mark questioned curiously - because in other mafia members' families, most siblings - especially sisters, hated each other to the point where they would sabotage each other sadly.

Mark was a little hesitant to hear his answer, knowing if Aethia replied with an answer he was expecting, he had no choice but to be physical with her - if he finds out Aethia has plans to hurt Athena.

Aethia scoffed, after seeing Mark’s clenched jaw then letting out a slight chuckle.

“We’re like magnets and there’s no way I would hate Athena. She has a big heart and she has compassion - she mostly has taken care of me back when we were kids when our parents would be out for work so… That’s why I preferred to be the one doing the heavy work.,” answered Aethia with a smile, this time it was a genuine one and Mark could tell that the younger Ahn girl genuinely cares for her older sister.

Maybe that’s why Mark is slowly falling for Athena.

“Enough about me. Since you are just right in front of me, let me ask you one question and it’s up to you if you want to answer me the truth or… you could easily lie to me,” Aethia’s voice changed drastically from sounding friendly to a tone which made Mark have his guard up although he didn’t show it.

Mark slightly glared towards Aethia, seeing the look that she had given him.

“Do you have feelings for my sister?”

“Your daughter is beautiful!”

“Is your daughter single? Well, my son is single too!”

“I think my son looks good with your daughter.”

“This is the perfect age for Athena to get married. Have the two of you found a suitable husband to be for her?”

That was the 4th question that she had heard regarding marriage, and it actually pisses Athena off. Almost all of her parents’ friends have been bugging them for Athena to pair off with their sons.

Feeling herself getting slightly uncomfortable, Athena slightly tugged onto her father’s arm as she leaned towards him.

“Father, I might have to excuse myself.” Athena whispered, giving him a knowing look and her father automatically nodded in understanding - slightly pushing the girl out of the picture so that the others wouldn’t question Athena much.

Trying to squeeze herself through the crowds, Athena was trying to avoid the people she knows - to avoid the question regarding her private life.

‘I should have stayed at home, or called in sick,’

As Athena was about to squeeze in through another crowd, she felt a strong grip on her wrist, that made her turn towards a specific direction.

Her face that showed disgust, slowly turned to a shocking expression to see Mark standing right infront of her.

Her eyes fell towards his attire - Athena admits that he looks extremely dashing, his suit that was neatly ironed and the way his hair was styled made Athena’s heartbeat a little faster.

It’s the same feeling she had felt when she had a crush on a little boy back - a boy where she had play-dates with. Sadly, her play-date disappeared without a trace and till now, she hasn’t seen him.

Not that she was curious or anything.

“I thought you have left,” Mark voiced out, his hands still gripping onto Athena’s wrist which Athena’s eyes moved towards her wrist. That caught Mark’s attention as he immediately let go of her wrist.

“I was about to, but you stopped me.” answered Athena slightly, seeing Mark’s eyes wandering on what Athena was wearing.

“It’s ugly, isn’t it? I prefer wearing a suit or something,” Athena commented, letting out a dry laugh as she looked at her long blue dress that had a long cut on her thigh, which people could see her bare legs.

“Ugly? Well, if you put it as ‘ugly’, I don’t think men would have looked at your direction at all if you put yourself in the ‘ugly’ category.” Mark answered with a slight amused smile after seeing Athena’s cheeks getting slightly pink.

Mark had actually seen Athena at first, after having a talk with Athena’s younger sister which he surprisingly had made friends with - aside from Athena.

Aethia had told Mark lots of interesting facts about Athena, and he was surprised that Athena was someone he had known for long.

“Hmm.. you must be busy with Jaebeom and your 6 loyal buddies that you had forgotten about your old friends.” Aethia commented while sipping onto her own glass of wine - not caring Mark’s intense stare.

“Friends? I’m not as free as you to make friends, Aethia. I’m sure you know about this dirty world that we live in since you have helped Jaebeom with assassinating his enemies.”

Aethia scoffed loudly, fully turning her body towards Mark as she gave him a slight frown.

“Hmm.. you really have forgotten about your play-dates with her. I’m not surprised.”

“Play-dates?”

That’s when Mark had somehow put little bits of pieces, already figuring out about why he had an unknown connection with Athena.

She was the girl that he had spent most of his childhood with, the girl who had attended play-dates with him, the girl who still wanted to be friends with him although he was a little kid who doesn’t talk much.

Mark somehow remembered, a memory had popped in his head back when they were just kids.

“I don’t think no one wants to be my friend, Tina. I wish I could be like you.”

“No. I think you should be your own ‘you’. Everyone is special in their own way, Markie. That’s why I want to be friends with you. I love kids who play quietly! So don’t change for others, okay?”

“Markie…” Mark muttered to himself as a result of Athena waving her hands right in front of Mark’s sight - causing Mark to have his eyes fluttering as he realized he was daydreaming.

Athena was staring at him, she had a frown on her face while gazing on Mark’s face - seeing that she looked concerned at Mark’s sudden quietness.

Mark quickly looked around his surroundings before grabbing a hold of her hands, as he dragged Athena who shrieked in taken-aback.

“Wow! Jaebeom literally picked a nice spot on building the hotel!” Athena commented in amazement after seeing the venue where Mark had dragged her to, which was the top-bar.

The night-view was amazing that Athena didn’t realize that her jaw went wide, also not realizing that Mark had his eyes on her as soon as they stepped out of the elevator - with Mark still holding onto her hand while pulling her to the open area.

Mark unknowingly had a small smile on his face, seeing her eyes that filled with innocence - seeing her eyes staring into the night sky that was filled with stars.

“It’s nice, isn’t it? Jaebeom, Youngjae, Jackson and I voted in this area to be built and our wish came true.” Mark commented as his eyes changed it focused towards the city.

Athena’s attention has now turned towards Mark, seeing him eyeing towards the busy streets with a small smile.

“Voted? So, Jaebeom lets you choose?”

“Of course, that’s because I along with Youngjae and Jackson invested money on this building. You can say that aside from Jaebeom, the two of them and I own this hotel somehow.” Mark explained simply, again earning a reaction from Athena which was having jaw widen.

Mark turned towards Athena as he saw her reaction, making him let out a genuine laugh - as he reached out to Athena’s chin, him moving her chin upwards to close her slightly opened mouth.

Giving her a small smile, Mark’s attention turned towards the night city while Athena regained her focus with her feeling her own cheeks turning warm after realizing Mark had touched her chin.

That was the moment when Athena’s heartbeat a little too fast - a feeling where she had felt before. It was different previously.

When she was trying to figure out her emotions, Athena felt a wet sensation on her cheeks that made her frown.

“Oh no,” Athena muttered to herself before letting out her hand in the air, feeling more droplets in her hand.

Rain.

“We have to go back inside, it’s going to rain.” Mark somehow had figured out as he took out his suit jacket - he wordlessly put it onto Athena’s shoulder while gently leading her in.

Athena out of a sudden grabbed his arm, which made Mark turn towards her.

“Can we not go in?”

Mark stared at Athena’s side profile - gazing at her face that was looking at the pouring rain.

Athena somehow wanted to stay outside, not caring if she had gotten wet since she wanted to avoid the people in the hotel hall and from there, he had small talks that turned into a long one since both of them were sitting in a sheltered area.

With Athena covering her small frame with Mark’s blazer tightly and Mark somehow sitting closely to Athena as their shoulders touched each others’.

“As much as I hate rain, I hated the people who are back there,” muttered Athena as she sighed loudly.

“You hate rain? I love rain.” Mark answered, as his voice turned a little quieter as he confessed at the end. But Athena had heard his answer, making her fully turn towards him.

“You love rain? I respect your preferences.” Athena commented, pouting a little while nodding.

“Why do you hate the rain then?”

Athena’s expression quickly fell, her eyes went downcast as she was trying to find an answer. This was something personal to her but there was an inner part of her that Mark is someone that she could trust - looking at where they are now, she is sure that Mark is someone who could keep secrets.

“It’s not that I hate rain. I think I have weather depression, because whenever the rain gets heavier and thunder flashing here and there, my heart feels heavy and I tend to shed tears as it turns into me crying like a baby.”

Athena confessed truthfully, and when she was slowly explaining, Mark’s eyes moved towards her expression - at the same time he was listening to her rather attentively, compared to the ones where he had meetings with mafia daughters who were interested in his body rather than his own feelings.

Mark knew he had already fallen for her with just the way he responded to how she talked and acted.

“Have you found someone to talk to regarding this?”

Athena’s head slightly tilted to him, meeting his eyes that looked soft and genuine for the first time.

“No. I didn’t think of that, maybe because I didn’t want to bother others with my problem.” answered Athena softly, before turning fully towards Mark with a wide smile.

“Enough of my sad story, now why do you love the rain?” Athena questioned curiously while smiling towards him.

Mark was taken-aback with her sudden change of mood, also knowing that she was trying to change the subject - guessing that she didn’t want to talk more about it.

“I was just like you actually, I hated rain at first because the day where storms and rain were pouring out heavily, my parents died. But I didn’t know in the long run, I felt more sentimental because whenever I visited my parents’ grave, it would rain. I should hate the rain but I don’t know, somehow rain made me and my sister become closer with us just talking with my parents.” Mark confessed and Athena somehow became more quiet, somehow trying to find ways to answer him in a genuine way.

“...I’m happy that the rain makes you closer to your sister.” Athena smiled softly towards Mark, his eyes gazing towards hers.

They were full of life and just happiness compared to him, that was filled with emptiness.

But it seems whenever Mark is with Athena, no matter what situation it is, his heart, his eyes would light up with happiness and for the first time ever, he feels happy to wake up the next day, knowing he would see her every time - which is where Athena studies.

But that happiness doesn’t last long for Mark, coming from a guy who had done deeds that he wasn’t so proud of.

𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 ⇿ 𝐧𝐞𝐱𝐭 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫

𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭

#got7 mafia #got7 mafia au #got7 mark #got7 mafia scenarios #got7 mafia imagines #got7 mark scenarios #got7 mark imagines #got7 scenarios #got7 imagines #latest update !

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redbeardace · 4 years

Text

Between Panic and Indifference

Okay, serious post time.

As you may know, I live near Seattle. And if you’ve been paying attention to the news (in between the politics), you’ll know that we’re currently going through a bit of something. I’ve been making jokes about it, but I sort of want to talk seriously about some of what it’s like here right now.

Quick recap: About a month ago, it was announced that the first case of COVID-19/coronavirus had popped up in Everett, Washington. Everett’s one of the larger suburbs of Seattle, home to a Boeing airplane factory, FunkoPop HQ, and Half-Price Books that I go to once in a while. It was someone who’d been to Wuhan in China and got sick after returning to the US. He went to the doctor, got quarantined, and that was it. The system worked, the disease was contained, the guy got better. And that was it.

Until last week. Last week, they closed Bothell High School “out of an abundance of caution” in order to clean it, because a family member of someone who works at the school had gotten sick after returning from overseas travel. Bothell is a smaller suburb than Everett. It’s largely unremarkable, one of those places that takes up three exits on the freeway, but no one really understands why. It’s also where I live, so hearing that the high school was closed was a bit unnerving, but also a bit ridiculous because it was all speculation. It was a family member of a school worker, and that employee was staying home. And it turned out that there was nothing to it, that family member did not have COVID-19. But at least the high school got cleaned.

False alarm, back to your regularly scheduled--

Scoop Jackson High School in Mill Creek is closed on Friday, this time for a confirmed case. Mill Creek is an even smaller suburb, sandwiched between Bothell and Everett, and it’s where my post office and a grocery store I go to is. A student had the “flu” earlier in the week, went to the doctor, the doctor said go home, get better. So the student did that. They got better and went back to school on Friday. Unbeknownst to them, their doctor had performed a coronavirus test. The student hadn’t been out of the country, hadn’t been around anyone who’d been out of the country, so they shouldn’t have had it, the doctor was just performing the test as part of some study.

It was positive.

They hadn’t been out of the country. They hadn’t been around anyone who had been. The only known case in the area had been contained. There were a few cases in California that were mysterious, but at least those were linked to a possibly mismanaged quarantine situation. But in Mill Creek, there wasn’t any of that. Sure, it’s next to Everett where the first case was, but that was contained. So what the hell?

Later that night, there was another case of “possible coronavirus” in Bellevue, the city where I work.

Then Saturday happened. The first confirmed death, in Kirkland, Washington. You know Kirkland as the Kirkland from “Kirkland Brand” at Costco. I know Kirkland as the place I drive through on my commute that’s between Bothell and Bellevue. Several more hospitalizations. A news conference talks about the death and the hospitalizations and, almost as a side note, mentions 50+ people connected to a nursing home, also in Kirkland, as showing symptoms. Fifty people. I’m going to come back to that. None of these people had been to China or Italy and I don’t think any of them knew anyone who had. So what the hell?

Later that night, a scientist from a local research facility posts a short Twitter thread that potentially could have gone unnoticed. It’s a Twitter thread for crying out loud, who knows what kind of crackpot this could be? But it’s not a crackpot. It actually is a local research scientist. The thread kinda gets right to the point. An analysis of a sample of the virus from the first patient genetically matches a sample of virus from the Mill Creek student, therefore it is highly likely that the virus has been circulating around the area, on the loose, for six weeks.

Oh.

That deadly disease that we’ve been watching cripple other parts of the world, killing thousands. That’s here. Now. And it’s been here for weeks.

And by here, I mean HERE. You may have noticed that all those cities I mentioned are places that I go regularly. “Here” is literally right outside my door. I am in the bright red bullseye of the hot zone, as this virus swirls around me.

After Saturday, it’s a bit of a blur what happened when, but the specifics really don’t matter. More cases, more deaths, a Seattle skyscraper closes, Amazon closes, Microsoft closes, more schools close, including the entire Northshore School District (the district I live in), which closed today for the next two weeks.

So that’s the recap. That brings us up to now. But you could’ve gotten all that by watching the news. I’m really writing this post to talk about what it’s like here at the moment.

I think the scariest thing about it all is that we don’t know how scared to be. We’re used to thinking of disasters in terms of a concrete event. Something happened, you can see the impact. An earthquake, a school shooting, a hurricane, a terrorist attack, a volcanic eruption, a nuclear meltdown. Most of the time, it ends, you can count the bodies, tally up the damage, and that’s that. Even in a longer term event, you can see the lava coming and get out of the way or look at a map of the Chernobyl or Fukushima exclusion zones and avoid those places.

But this is an invisible disaster. It’s literally in the air around us. It’s on door handles and shopping carts and library books. Your coworker or neighbor or roommate could be The Thing, and you have no way of knowing. We’re playing a dangerous game of tag against an invisible opponent, and you have no idea you’re it until way too late.

Even worse, we have absolutely no idea whatsoever how bad it actually is. The latest official number I can find as of this writing is that there are 39 confirmed cases, and ten of those have died. A significant number of those cases are associated with that nursing home I mentioned earlier. So 39 isn’t bad at all, out of a couple million people in this region. Even if you limit it to just the “bright red bullseye of the hotzone”, that’s several hundred thousand people. So 39 out of that is nothing. But you’ll remember that I mentioned that there were 50+ people connected to that nursing home that were sick, and only some of them are counted in that 39 number. Then there’s a bunch of firefighters in the area who went to that nursing home, who are sick. Family members who are sick. And that student in Mill Creek and the first guy who died got it from somewhere... And other random people just popping up here and there who had to get it from somewhere. You add those all up, and it’s probably 100+ cases, but for some reason, they’re not yet confirmed (or even tested), so they don’t show up in the official counts yet.

They weren’t really testing people who hadn’t been overseas or been in contact with someone who had been, until this week. It’s been here, on the loose, for six weeks. There are probably thousands of cases that have gone undiagnosed. For most people, it’s like the flu. So how many cases of the “flu” were really COVID-19? They’re retroactively discovering people who died prior to Saturday who had it. Their deaths had been chalked up to some other respiratory disease.

So it’s here and it’s killing people. But... It’s been here for six weeks and we’re not all dead yet. So what does that mean? Is the disease not actually as bad as people feared? Sure, it sucks if you get it and it’s really bad if you’re old or already sick, but so’s the flu, and we haven’t panicked about that since Seattle made it to the Stanley Cup. If that’s the case then maybe this is as bad as it gets, which, frankly, isn’t that bad at all and we’re all overreacting. Or are we just at the start of the spread and it’s about to go Beast Mode on us and lay us flat for two years? We don’t know.

Everything’s shutting down except huge gatherings like ECCC and the Sounders games. King County just bought a motel to use as a quarantine site. Stay in your car on the ferry. Awkwardly jab elbows instead of shaking hands. But only ten people have died out of 4 million, and all of those ten had “underlying conditions”, and it hasn’t been bad enough for anyone to notice until now, so...

So what are we supposed to do about all this? Raid every store for every last bottle of Purell and every last roll of toilet paper and hunker down in our homes like it’s the end of days? Or do nothing in particular because enh no biggie?

It’s like we’re standing on a beach and we’ve been told that maybe a tsunami is coming. We’ve been standing here for a month and a half, and the water is up to our ankles and we’ve just noticed our feet are wet. Is the tsunami still coming? Is this the tsunami? Or is this just the tide?

It’s weird living like this. You find yourself doing things in different ways, noticing things you never noticed. Every morning now, I’m checking my work email before driving in, just in case we’ve been told to work from home “out of an abundance of caution”, or worse, told that we need to self-quarantine because someone in the office tested positive. Every night, I bring my laptop home in case this is the last day I’m in the office for a while. Everyone’s telling a lot of morbid jokes. Traffic is amazing. There are even spots on the second level of the parking garage and there are NEVER spots on the second level when I get in. Every cough is treated with suspicion, and your coworkers cough a lot. Every door handle is treated with suspicion, and there are a lot of door handles. No one from the other offices is allowed to travel to our office and we’re not allowed to go elsewhere. I’m getting targeted ads for hand sanitizer and Windex. I had a slight tickle in my throat that might just be allergies, but I started mentally doing contact tracing of everywhere I’d been and everyone I’d talked to over the past two weeks. I’ve never even considered that I might have allergies before. I have a day off tomorrow, so do I risk going to the store to make sure I have at least three weeks of supplies, instead of only the two weeks I currently have, just in case? Or do I go to the store just to see the circus of empty shelves? Or do I go to the store to buy an Xbox One X so if I do get quarantined, at least I can be quarantined with True 4K Gaming?

I was listening to the radio this morning, and they were interviewing musician Dave Matthews about the coronavirus. He was talking about touring while this is going on, and how he might come home to Seattle between the legs of his tour, and he said something like “We’ve got to find a balance between panic and indifference”. And I just felt like that’s the best possible way to describe where we are right now.

Seattle: Somewhere between panic and indifference.

#covid19 #coronavirus #seattle #but seriously seattle y'all gotta learn about disaster preparedness #we live in an earthquake zone #and ya ain't gonna be able to pop down to Costco to get a cartful of water #when the full rip 9 hits us #why do you need a cartful of water anyway #you know there's a device in your kitchen that gives you water right #and it's probably going to be fine through all this #this virus isn't going around causing water main ruptures #life in the hot zone #that was a longer post than I was planning

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margridarnauds · 3 years

Note

margrid arnaud das music-i mean marie antoinette das musical for that ask meme

LET’S GO

Top 5 favourite characters: Margrid, Orléans, Louis, Marie, Fersen

Other characters you like: Lamballe, the kids, Robespierre, Danton, Immortal Marat

Least favourite characters: Hébert, Bertin, Hébert, Leonard, Jacques Réne Hébert, Drouet, Hébert...

Otps: Margrid/Orléans, Marie/Louis....I COULD ship Margrid/Lamballe and Margrid/La Motte but let’s be real I’m not going to, Marie/Orléans in a very specific way (namely Bitter Ex Friends)

Notps: Hébert/Margrid, Fersen/Margrid, Hébert/Orléans

Favourite friendships: Fersen & Margrid, Lamballe & Antoinette, Orléans & Lamballe (not canon to the musical, but was a historical Thing), Orléans & Margrid when I’m not actively shipping them.

Favourite family: Marie’s family, especially her dynamic with Margrid (LET ! MARGRID ! BE ! THE WEIRD! AUNT!) and Louis’ odd dynamic with Orléans. Really, MA is just the story of one very, very dysfunctional family.

Favourite season/book/movie: 2018 Toho Production.

Favourite quotes: .....showing myself for the Orléans Stan I am: “Oh, cowards, tremble and sleep!” Mitsuo Yoshihara’s delivery SELLS it. Honorable mention: “Just the smallest of sparks is sufficient to set dry grass into an inferno - I just need to promise them a new world where they can live in.”

That and the from the final song, the entire cast: “Can we change the world for ourselves? What can we do to break the chains of violence? What is equality? When will people finally learn from the past? Will revenge ever end? That answer can only be yielded by ourselves!”

Best musical moment: There are some REALLY good moments in this musical - Margrid calling the wrath of God down on the aristocrats during “Blinded by the Light of a Thousand Candles”, the reprise of “Blinded” when the poor join in with Margrid, the entirety of “I Am The Best”, the key change in the Korean version of “Kill the Snakes”, the part during the March to Versailles when the other women join in for the first time to tell Margrid they aren’t going, Fersen’s low note during his first love song with Antoinette, the bit during “The Only Thing I ever Did Right” when Fersen comes in for the first time and he and Antoinette duet, the bit during The Jacobin Club when the entire Jacobin Club steps out together and swears to bring down Antoinette, the bit during “Eyes of Hatred” when Margrid and Antoinette’s voices blend PERFECTLY, the bit during the trial when the crowd begins to apply pressure to Antoinette while Margrid realizes how fucked up things have gotten.

Moment that made you fangirl/boy the hardest: I was trying to not be predictable.....but look. I lose my shit every time we get to “I Am The Best”. Because they really DID give Orléans the single best song in the musical and expected us NOT to stan. That and when he takes his final bow, because he gets a reprise of the song WITH electric guitars because, yes, he’s an extra bitch.

When it really disappointed you: The 2021 Toho. I could devote an entire post to how that production disappointed me, even outside of my personal ships, but like. It was a disappointment from beginning to end and I’m actually happy that it’s out of Tokyo now.

Saddest moment: Margrid sobbing after Antoinette’s death and then having to wipe the tears off her face to meet the tribunal. And then the look on her face at the end....

Most well done character death: Marie’s - Literally the entire musical has been leading up to this and the scene itself makes a wonderful use of callbacks and musical cues to give it this sense of TENSION throughout the entire thing, which builds off of that earlier scene where Hébert confronts Margrid. We know that Antoinette is going to die - There’s no way of avoiding it, but we still are wondering what’s going to happen. What’s Margrid going to do? Is she going to risk a life of security for the sake of the woman she’s started to feel sympathy for? Are these two women ever going to come to terms with one another, with the answer being yes as Antoinette by calls Margrid by her name instead of “the girl” and Margrid gives that last, dangerous bow.

Favourite cast member: I’m not generally big on following individual cast members, but PROBABLY Sonim?

Character you wish was still alive: I. Might have toyed with a few ways of keeping Marie alive in the past.

One thing you hope really happens: Really, really hoping the upcoming Korean production is good. Like, that’s the extent of my ambition after the last Toho.

Most shocking twist: Lamballe’s Death. I have NEVER seen anyone come in prepared for it in over 2 years of streaming. *I* was shocked when I saw it because I literally never expected a Japanese depiction of Marie Antoinette to get into the September Massacres, especially do THAT extent. And it really is the point where, suddenly, you realize that NO ONE is safe. Up until this point, no one’s died. The Royal Family’s imprisoned, but there’s a certain romanticism you can find in the situation, the idea that, hey, now they’re a happy, nuclear family. Then, the show distracts you with that discussion between Marie and Margrid so that they it can SLAM the knife into your back. And, from that point, no one’s safe. Literally anyone in the cast can die, to the point where people do, genuinely fear for Margrid’s safety by the end. It’s probably one of the single best twists I’ve seen in musical theatre, because it sets the stage for the last twenty minutes brilliantly.

When did you start watching/reading?: You know? It had to have been back in 2013. A subber that I liked had JUST finished Rebecca das Musical and had moved on to Marie Antoinette, and I thought “Well! Kunze and Levay came out with a Mar’ie Antoinette musical? I’ve got to see this, it’s going to be good!”

Spoiler alert: It was not good. I made it twenty minutes in, got to the brothel scene, and never looked back. Which means that, actually, I only BARELY missed Orléans’ song.

Favourite location: Antoinette’s bedroom - Those crazy sons of bitches REALLY replicated Antoinette’s ACTUAL BED to use.

Trope you wish they would stop using: Stop trying to make Fersen/Margrid happen, it’s not going to happen. In general, there’s this idea that Margrid MUST be totally, absolutely loveless, and I don’t really see it. I’ll be the last to say she hasn’t had a hard life, but there’s this need to ISOLATE her that I just don’t really vibe with. I’m not even saying in an inherently romantic sense (in canon...I wouldn’t actually WANT to see, say, her and Orléans making out on-stage), but just in terms of having genuine connections.

One thing this show/book/film does better than others: It really does a wonderful job as far as developing two separate female characters - Which shouldn’t be THAT HARD, given you have plenty of musicals about multiple guys all the time, and yet SOMEHOW....

Also, Margrid in particular is phenomenal, as a character. It’s definitely not uncommon for people to go in for Marie and end up really, really attached to Margrid and her development.

Funniest moments: Hébert nearly getting hit with a door, Margrid peaking under her ball gown while it’s on the rack and Orléans dragging her away, the Stars and Stripes Gown....

Couple you would like to see: .....Orléans/Margrid. I know that I say I don’t want them to actually be CANON canon but also I would NOT complain if they did. Especially after the 2021 Toho production, it’s what I deserve.

Actor/Actress you want to join the cast: Park Hye Na as Korean!Margrid would kill me, I know it.

Favourite outfit: Besides Orléans’ 2018 coat (4ever in our hearts), special props to Antoinette’s golden gown in the opening. WHAT a character introduction.

Favourite item: Margrid’s little knapsack she keeps on her.

Do you own anything related to this show/book/film?: I own a ballpoint pen and a program from the 2021 Toho run - One of these days, I keep meaning to buy the German libretto so that I can translate it.

Most boring plotline: BERTIN AND LEONARD. (But, in all fairness........look, they’re annoying, but also, when they’re gone, you do miss them, because that’s when shit gets fucked.)

Most laughably bad moment: The entire 2006 Toho Cast exists just to be one very long laughably bad moment. That and, tbh, the German. Special props to the Brothel Scene.

Most layered character: Margrid. Marie is ALSO a very layered, complex character, but Margrid gets special props because, off the top of my head, I can’t REALLY think of another female protagonist, in a musical, like her. Not saying they don’t EXIST, but I’m saying I haven’t personally seen them.

Most one dimensional character: ...2006 Orléans. He Who We Don’t Discuss.

Scariest moment: See above for Lamballe.

Grossest moment: Hébert's final confrontation scene with Margrid.

Best looking male: Kim Jun Hyun’s Orléans. *Wow*.

Best looking female: Jang Eun Ah’s Margrid. Once again. *Wow.*

Who you’re crushing on (if any): ...both Orléans and Margrid. Predictably.

Favourite cast moment: Furukawa Yuta pranking Mitsuo Yoshihara by giving him “poisonous” things for his birthday, because “You are Duke d’Orleans and I am Fersen. You are poisonous and I am passive aggressive.”

Most beautiful scene (scenery/shot wise): The ball at Versailles. One of the most STUNNING scenes I’ve ever seen. Whoever did the lighting deserves all the accolades in the world for creating a scene that’s surreal, seductive, and gorgeous

Unanswered question/continuity issue/plot error that bugs you: Not an ERROR, but I’m really, really interested in the story of Jeanette Arnaud, because this woman really haunts Margrid’s entire life but there’s so LITTLE we know about her and Margrid’s feelings about her. How long did her affair with the Emperor last? Did she always know he was the emperor during their affair, or did they meet under different circumstances? Fersen was clearly able to figure out that she was a mistress of his, so how public was the affair? And, if it was that public, does it mean that she was a servant, or was she, at the very least, middle class? How did he find out her mother’s identity? Why didn’t Orléans double-check himself? Does Margrid have any living grandparents or uncles/aunts? How old was Margrid when she died? Did she die before or after Margrid was kicked out by the nuns? (In the German, it’s very clearly the former, but who knows?)

I feel like there’s a really, really dark, tragic tale underneath all this about a young woman who ended up paying the ultimate price for falling in love with someone above her station, but it’s one that’s kept to literally only a few sentences.

At what point did you fall in love with this show/book: Probably about.....five or ten minutes into the Toho, with the Palais Royal scene. I knew, from the time I saw Furukawa Yuta on stage as Fersen, that they’d changed things around, and then seeing the changes that were made, I was able to go “Oh! It’s good now!” I feel like the moment where I REALLY fell in love was “I Am The Best” because that had been a scene I’d been REALLY concerned about from the German and then Mitsuo Yoshihara casually came in there and owned it.

#lochley

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warrioreowynofrohan · 4 years

Note

you mentioned your headcanons on when and if other finweans forgive maedhros... if you wanted to share some (or all) of them I'd be very interested!

Okay, wow, I have a lot of thoughts on this….it basically covers large parts of a fanfic that I’ve had broadly plotted out in my head for a long time but am completely incapable of actually writing.

This is going to be very long (EDIT: extremely long, apparently) - and rather messier and more scattershot than my usual posts - so I’m putting it under a cut. This one only covers events in the Halls of Mandos; I would need another one to lay out post-Mandos headcanons, if I can put it together.

Fingon is deeply conflicted and unhappy about Maedhros; he’s horrified by Maedhros’ actions, but he can’t stop caring about him even if he wanted to, and he doesn’t know what’s happened to him after death and isn’t sure he wants to know. For at least the first couple hundred years that Maedhros is in the Halls, he’s in extremely bad shape and is not communicating with or visible to anyone. (This is not unusual for elves who are wrapped up in their own thoughts or deliberately avoiding others.) And between Maedhros’ actions, and the manner of his death, and the Oath, Fingon can’t be sure of whether he’s even in the Halls, or if he refused the Halls and is a lost spirit, or even if he’s in the void.

Fingolfin is sympathetic to his son’s pain but doesn’t really see any hope for Maedhros, and tries to say that it’s hard, but that sometimes you have to accept that you’ve lost someone you love to evil and they’re not coming back. Fingolfin’s lost his brother (who he still has complicated feelings about. Aulë has lost people. Even Manwë has lost his brother -

That comparison doesn’t go over well and from that moment Fingon isn’t speaking with his father anymore.

When Fingon decides that not knowing is worse than anything he could know about Maedhros’ fate, he goes to Námo and asks whether Maedhros is in the Halls, and Námo tells him that yes, Maedhros is.

He looks for Maedhros. He seeks quiet corners of the Halls, and sings, and hopes Maedhros will hear him, and one day he senses in his spirit that someone else is present near him. He continues to sing, simple things, and then moves to the song he sang at Thangorodrim -

- and Maedhros is there, ragged and shaking and trying with all his might not to look at Fingon. Stop he says. Please, stop. Why must you torment me?

The last thing Maedhros wants is to be reminded that once, he had a chance to do right, that once, he had a chance to recieve mercy and he has thrown it away, to be reminded of the gaping gulf between the person he wanted to be and person he is. You still think you can rescue me? he says with a twisted smile, and holds out his hand. Across the entire palm and to the first knuckle of the fingers, it is charred black. Fingon’s expression goes stubborn and he takes Maedhros’ hand in his own - and then releases his hold in shock. The hand is hot - not as with fever, but as metal newly withdrawn from a forge. Maedhros gives a bitter laugh and disappears.

Fingon cannot find him again.

This brings the story roughly to the start of the part I wrote in response to your last Ask, where Maedhros goes to Nienna and recieves, beyond his hope, mercy and forgiveness and help and healing. That’s not the endpoint of his journey to recovery, but it’s the beginning; it gives him the knowledge that there is someone who can love him absolutely unconditionally, that he’s not beyond redemption. And that gives him the foundation he needs to start facing the people he knew and the people he’s harmed and answering to them and seeking their forgiveness.

The Halls have a will of their own, if you let them; their geography is as much spiritual as physical, and they’ll lead spirits to the people whom they need to resolve things with. Fingon isn’t the first person Maedhros talks to, but he’s one of the first.

*****

FIc snippet

It would have been easier if the Halls had brought him to the Teleri, or even the Sindar. He could bear condemnation from them.

He did not know how to bear it if Fingon turned him away. As he had every right to.

He wanted to flee to some abandoned corner of the Halls and never face Fingon again.

He wanted to lay at his friend’s feet for a year, for a yen, for an Age, and beg Fingon not to despise him forever.

He forced himself to do neither of these things.

Fingon had still not seen him; his eyes were shut, his head bowed to his knees and his lips moving wordlessly, and it was the evident misery in his hunched shoulders that gave Maedhros the courage to kneel down beside him say softly, “Fingon.”

He did not seem to hear. “Fingon. Fingon.” Fingon looked up, made a choked noise of surprise, and grabbed Maedhros by the shoulders, staring into his eyes for a long moment, and then pulled him into an embrace. “Thank you,” Fingon said, low and fervent, and Maedhros knew it was not him that Fingon was addressing.

“You’re all right. I mean - not all right, but - better.” A spirit’s appearance in the Halls drew on both their true condition and their perception of themself. Maedhros was clothed in rags, his hair matted, but his hand no longer burned and he could meet Fingon’s eye with a look that, though still deeply ashamed, was no longer tormeted.

“The Lady of Sorrows has been very kind. Far more than I could ever deserve. Though in truth even to be in the Halls is better than I deserve.”

“Maedhros, surely you cannot believe that you deserve the Darkness?”

Maedhros’ laugh was rueful. “Deserve it? I believe I specifically requested it. Demanded, even! What does it say, that the very worst anyone could do to us would be to take us at our word? But by the end I earned it more in keeping the Oath than in breaking it.”

The question refused to be suppressed. “Maedhros, why? We beseiged Angband for over four hundred years without attempting regain the Silmarils, and the Oath did not trouble you then, yet the moment one was in the hands of Elves - ” Fingon paused. “Maedhros, please tell me it was not because of my death.”

Maedhros’ words came halting. “I blamed myself. I blamed the Valar. I blamed the Doom. I told myself that abandoned you again, this time to your death. I told myself that if this was how I was repaid for trying to win the war, if the Powers had mandated that any attempt to do good could only turn to evil and the destruction of all that I loved, then they had no right to judge me for doing ill. I told myself that I had chosen war on Angband to avoid war on Doriath, and if they were going to punish me for that choice, well, then they were in no position to complain when I made the other.

“I was wrong. We were not wrong to fight Angband, but on my part the Fifth Battle was waged in service of the Oath, and everything done in its service turns to ill. Good becomes evil. Evil becomes…worse. The words we intended to drive us against Morgoth turned to his service, and we did his work.

“I am sorry for what I have done. I will spend the rest of Time being sorry for it. We should have thrown ourselves against the walls of Angband and died there rather than ever again raising our swords against our kin. You have every right to despise me.”

Fingon, lacking words, took Maedhros’ remaining hand and lifted the burnt palm to his lips. “I will not leave you. I hate what you have done - I would rather have seen you dead on my blade than do any of, though that would have killed me - but I will not leave you.” He wrapped his arms around Maedhros again. “Please don’t disappear again.”

“I won’t.”

The dead have times of rest of thought, even if it not what the living would call sleep. A little time later found Fingon resting with his back against a pillar and Maedhros curled on the floor, his head pillowed on Fingon’s feet and an expression of deep contentment in his face.

*****

My thoughts on Aredhel and Maedhros are in the Halls are largely covered in this post.

*****

Turgon, in contrast, is exceptionally angry at Maedhros, especially about the Third Kinslaying, and not at all inclined to forgive or to care for apologies. This is also wrapped up in Turgon’s own guilt about the Fall of Gondolin. He feared that he had left the remnant of his people defenseless against Morgoth, but Ulmo found a way to protect them through the waters at the Mouths of Sirion; instead, they were defenseless against Maedhros and his brothers. And to Turgon, Maedhros’ renunciation of both the Oath and the Silmarils after his death is meaningless, because he did so only after he had lost any possibility of achieving the Oath or obtaining the Silmarils. How can it mean anything to renounce evil only after you’ve lost the ability to commit it or to gain anything from it?

Maedhros and Turgon have an intense conversation on these points (well, intense on Turgon’s part) while Maedhros is in the Halls. Maedhros, for his part, while he does want to apologize and beg forgiveness, does not really have any expectation that Turgon will forgive him; his hope in his early conversations with both Turgon and Fingolfin is mainly to arrange a detente where the Nolofinwëans can get back on good terms with each other by dint of all of them agreeing to just not talk about Maedhros (who is the primary subject of contention between them). This, he does succeed at.

#tolkien #the silmarillion #cliff notes for my unwritten fanfic #maedhros #fingon #turgon

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alo-piss-trancy · 4 years

Note

Ok hi, I didn't wanna say anything, but please don't write knifeplay/bloodplay for Yuri. I def don't wanna spoil anything, but it's learned on a certain route that Yuri has a s*lf h*rm problem (I'll leave it at that).

You honestly seem like you're not trying to be a jerk with this ask, so I'm going to do my best to answer this as politely as possible without compromising my personal beliefs on the matter. This is going to be long and a little serious, but please note I'm not attacking you or trying to start a debate. I'm just laying all my thoughts on this down at once so I make myself clear, because a short answer would leave a lot of nuance out.

I understand what you're trying to do here. For the record though, I also considered that a pretty massive spoiler and I did not appreciate that at all. Even if you all think you're 'helping', don't do that again. Y/uri was pretty much the only character I'd managed to avoid most spoilers on and you killed the surprise for me. This game is already so full of fluffy 'filler' in the beginning that I don't have a ton of big plot points to look forward to in each route.

Now, I realise this is a very delicate topic and incredibly triggering to some people, especially with those two things combined. I am 100% willing to tag it with just about any variation needed to ensure you or others affected can blacklist/block it and never have to see a word of it in the future. I'd also be happy to go back and tag that original text post I made if needed. I mean that. You all are welcome to ask me to tag things anytime, and so long as you're polite about it I'm perfectly willing to oblige to the best of my ability in future posts! If I occasionally forget, just toss me a light reminder and I'll jump into editing and add it in.

That said, I want to make it clear that I am very firmly against censorship. I'm willing to take all necessary precautions to ensure people can curate their experiences on this blog and AO3, but at the end of the day I can still post whatever fictional stuff I choose to. As can anyone else. Same goes for more formally published media.

Now, it's entirely possible I would have gotten to that part of the game and decided 'oh dang, I'm not so enthused about that fic idea anymore...'. My whims and ideas change frequently, and what you mentioned is a heavy topic with a lot to unpack and process. It's also entirely possible that future plot would only provide more fuel.

Fyi, when I originally mentioned the knifeplay I was actually thinking a lot more along the lines of her doing it to the protagonist, not the reverse. But for the record, if I did choose to write it with focus on Y/uri, I would still be well within my rights to.

This next part of my answer is going to address some heavy topics, this is your warning!!!

Sometimes people's kinks are a way to take a thing that is personally scary or upsetting to them and find a way to reverse it. To find pleasure or power or get used to the idea of the awful thing in a safe, controlled fashion. I'm not going to go into the full details on this because there's plenty of explanation and research elsewhere already written up, as well as an excellent book on the subject, and I'm not turning this blog into a discourse debate. But I needed to mention it for my point.

There are plenty of stories that could be explored with Y/uri in this context. Did she have this kink before the self harm events started and it was completely unrelated, or did she develop it afterwards? How did she discover it beforehand? If developed afterwards, did it start out as another way of harming mixed with pleasure in a self-destructive way, often done sloppily and without proper technique? Or was it strictly used as almost exposure therapy to deal with those urges and thoughts in a safer, more contained scenario, maybe even allowing the partner she trusted to wield the knife to prove their bond/reinforce that she can be loved without being hurt deeply, that she is worthy of affection and trust and loyalty. Maybe this finally helps give Y/uri a tool to embrace her 'weirdness' without harming herself and others. Or, what if she thinks it can be a useful tool and is sure she's ready, but partway through the scene she gets triggered or has flashbacks... how does she deal with it? How does her partner? Can it be overcome with effort, research, and taking things slowly, or does she realize this kink is actually completely off the table for her?

What if she has this kink and is excited to try it, but her partner isn't? How does she take that rejection? Or do her poor social skills mean she skipped negotiation to begin with and attempted it in the middle of a vanilla session? Would her partner freak out or even get mad, or try to swallow their fear and let her do it so they don't hurt/offend her, even at the cost of their own comfort?

This topic also opens a ton of potential plots for darkfic, but I'll refrain from discussing that out of respect for you and others.

So as you can see, there's much more to explore than 'Knife=Hot'. I believe those discussions and ideas are necessary and provide important fuel for thought when explored fictionally, especially since mainstream media doesn't cover a lot of them.

~~~

I feel I should take a second to clarify knifeplay for those who may be unaware. It doesn't always equate to actual cutting/drawing blood. That can be an aspect, but usually only by those far more experienced and, you know, actually into that. A lot of participants don't actually go that far. Mostly, it's either about the physical sensation of the knife touching you at all, or the adrenaline/controlled fear and intimate trust of a partner bringing an object like that so close/teasing you with it.

In fact, it's frequently advised in those circles (especially to newcomers) to use a dull butterknife instead, because it simulates the same feelings of metal on skin/can dig in a little without any real risk of cutting/drawing blood. Even if one chooses to use a different knife, it's still pretty common to dull the blade, or some people even substitute with a closed pair of scissors (combined with the partner blindfolded, you can't really tell it apart from the real thing).

These versions of knifeplay are well controlled and ultimately pretty harmless, so long as both parties know what they're doing and stay alert. And more experienced players with sharper knives are even more cautious/have studied extensively to know where/how deep to go without risking scarring/serious injury.

Remember the golden rules of kink: Safe. Sane. Consensual.

With those in place, it is not nearly the same as self harm. Just as controlled, consensual, well-negotiated BDSM with safewords, respected boundaries and a trusted partner is never in the same league as abuse.

~~~

Now that that's out of the way, back to my point:

There's no perfect representation or narrative for everyone, in any group (be that gender/sexuality/triggered by certain things, etc). Every human being is different, everyone interprets media differently, and everyone takes away different elements from stories.

What one person in a particular group may find cathartic, relateable, or painful but necessary food for thought, another may find completely repulsive, personally hurtful, offensive, something they can't stand to hear. And guess what? Both of those can be true at the same time. One side is not immediately right over the other.

There are queer characters or interpretations of them in fics that I vehemently despise, might even find hurtful or sickening and think 'how can anyone create this, it's insufferable! People in 'my group' aren't like that, it's a horrible representation. I can't relate to it at all!' But you know what? Other people can and do, may find comfort in those exact narratives and experiences, may heal their pain instead of inflicting more. And that's great. It's what they needed or wanted and if I don't like it, I click away and do my best to avoid it.

There are specific tropes and narrative themes I personally cannot get through without being triggered into anxiety attacks or dragged back to bad times and places in my life. Sometimes I see them tackled in ways that are hurtful or seem insensitive to me. But I recognise that for someone else, it's exactly what they needed to see to get through that or come to terms with it, or see a way they wish that thing could play out. I would never dream of telling those people they aren't allowed to enjoy it, OR telling the creator of that piece of media or a tv show 'Hey ummm please don't use this plot because it turns me into a human wreck for a week'. Because it's not remotely my place to do so. They can create whatever they want, they have no responsibility towards me or my well being. A few might be kind enough to include a warning at the beginning of that episode or in the description, but they are in no way required to. It's up to me to curate my experience and try to keep my guard up/research what might have those tropes, and in the rare occasions I get blindsided, yeah, it hurts like hell. I struggle, I might even backslide a bit. But I just have to try my best to deal with it and make a note to be more careful next time. Because you can't control the world around you, not even the online world, and you have absolutely no right to. The only right you have is to protect yourself without infringing on other people's boundaries/rights.

And there's also another important point. There doesn't have to be a big important point or explanation for why a creator creates something, or why consumers can enjoy that creation! If someone wants to create a plotline with all of my triggers used in the most 'insensitive', 'wrong', pointless ways possible, strictly for Entertainment or pure kink material instead of some deep dissection of the issues involved? They can go hog wild!!! They are 100% allowed to do so on this earth, and I can't (and wouldn't want to) do a thing to stop them.

One person can read a kink fic and it hits a very emotional theme for them/they think it explores a deep topic well. Another person can read that same fic and get nothing out of it except their rocks off. Both of those readers are completely equal and 'allowed' to enjoy that fic. Both reasons are completely valid reasons for why the creator was 'allowed' to post/create that fic in the first place. Nobody needs permission, nobody has to answer to anybody except themselves. Period. This extends to any topic, any type of fic.

Yes, even for things I find absolutely abhorrent and insensitive and don't understand/want to read ever. I may resent everything about its existence, but I will defend to death the creator's right to make it exist in the first place.

It only affects me if I let it affect me. If someone's making content I despise or am upset by and can't handle, I can choose to ignore or avoid them, blacklist those tags, I can block them and move on with my day. I can do anything within my own bubble, but the second I consider going into their bubble and saying they can't make that thing, I am in the wrong. Because I'm not respecting their space and rights.

If someone makes cookies with ingredients I'm highly allergic to, pastes the ingredient warnings all over the box where I read them, and I still eat one, would anyone cheer me on for blaming them when I have a reaction? Would anyone think it was remotely okay of me to start calling up every bakery in town and saying they weren't allowed to bake those cookies EVER, because some people somewhere might be allergic?

No. They'd tell me I was crossing the line, because I'm infringing on other people's boundaries and lives. I'm expecting everybody else to take responsibility for something that, while horrible and painful, was my fault for touching.

Now, if someone sets out unlabelled cookies not realizing I'm allergic to something in them, and I eat it and have a reaction, that sucks. It's an awful experience. But is it the baker's fault? As long as they didn't do it maliciously, not really. They can be advised politely to label it in the future, and I can do my best to remember to ask/be more cautious next time I come across something I'm unsure of, but they're still allowed to bake those cookies for themselves and others.

Now, if I deliberately baked cookies with an ingredient that people are very frequently allergic to (ex. peanuts) and set it out in a crowded buffet without a warning label, that's a jerk move. That's intentionally trying to cause harm to others. But simply baking that flavour of cookies still isn't a crime or harmful by itself.

~~~

I'll be honest, I'm running out of steam and I think I've said most of what I have to say, so I'll wrap it up. I want to reiterate that I'm not ripping into you with this long answer, anon! I understand why you sent me what you did and I'm trying not to come off as harsh. I'm happy to go back and tag things and will tag anything else similar in the future!!! But at the end of the day, regardless of whether I personally end up writing that fic or not, or even want to after I get to that plot, I don't agree with telling anyone they can't/shouldn't write it at all. I wanted to try and explain my viewpoint thoroughly, and I hope you can respect that, just as I'll respect and try to accommodate you and other followers. This is the only time I'll really get up on a soapbox like this, and I have no interest in debating these things on my blog further, but it is a topic I've been passionate about all my life so I'm afraid I'm not budging on it.

#bear gets a letter #not omo #tw knives #tw knifeplay #tw cutting #tw self harm #d/dlc spoilers

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saiilorstars · 4 years

Text

Dare To Forget Me

Ch. 21: Birthday Blues

/ Previous chapters /

Fandom: Law & Order SVU

Pairing: Rafael Barba x Original female character

Warnings: Due to the nature of the series’ plots, I do have to rate this as ‘mature’ for constant mentions of rape.

~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ` 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~

Chapter Summary: Montserrat makes her decision about her transfer and returns to Manhattan on the night of her birthday...the day she'd been dreading so much. Rafael wants to help, part of a way to make up to her for his past mistake, but will it turn out fine this time?

While things with Heba's case had died down, though not with a good ending, SVU gradually seemed to fall back into its normal routine that week. There was only one thing that was still up in the air for everyone to see.

Montserrat was on her way out of the bullpen while Rafael was coming in. He walked on like nothing but despite his efforts to keep going, he came to a stop anyways. He had fresh new thoughts thanks to one Carisi who, for some reason, had gotten the idea that he, somewhere along the way, had developed some feelings for Montserrat. Rafael thought that was probably the moment he ever felt so much anger towards one person. Needless to say, he'd thrown Carisi out of his office with the threat that he better not say such ridiculous things in his face again.

That had been this morning. It was lunch time now which had given him some time to think about Carisi's words, no matter how uncomfortable it made him.

"Montserrat?" Rafael had gone back to the hallway and stopped the detective halfway towards the elevator. She turned back and, for the first time that week, she didn't look like she would kill him on the spot. "I know you're not speaking to me but...I just need to say that I'm sorry. Again. I'm really sorry. I was never owed any of your secrets and...I still screwed up."

Montserrat could immediately see differences between now and then. She had finally managed to control her feelings. Before today, she was furious beyond belief. If this was still before, she wouldn't have heard Rafael out - she'd probably curse him and then leave. But that hadn't been getting her anywhere expect for fueling more rage. For her sake - and for the sake of her blood pressure - she needed to calm down. After all, like she once admitted to her therapist, Rafael accidentally letting her secret out took away the fear of having to do it herself. She hadn't been brave enough to tell the squad of her plans. And now, with a clearer mind, she could straight away see the guilt on Rafael's face.

"I know," Montserrat said quietly, even nodding her head to show she'd heard him loud and clear. The mere fact she'd listened was already surprising for Rafael. "And I'm sorry it took me this long to understand."

Rafael gave her an uneasy look. She was acting too strange, too...180. "... you're not upset anymore?"

"I mean, I am but…" Montserrat drew in a deep breath and sighed, "I'm... I'm leaving for Brooklyn," she instead said, now truly surprising Rafael. "I'm visiting their Homicide division for a few days. I think it's a good idea to put some space between me and everything here."

"Right," Rafael agreed, although he wasn't sure why he would. He didn't like it.

"I should be back on Friday."

"Your birthday?"

There was visible dislike for that reminder. "Friday," Montserrat reiterated. She offered him one small smile then turned to leave.

There was a feeling in the pit of Rafael's stomach warning him that even if Montserrat returned, things would not be the same as before. He didn't quite like that either.

~ 0 ~

Montserrat packed light, after all she was only going to be gone for two days. She argued with Kara probably during all her packing and preparation time.

Kara was relentless that Montserrat was running away from problems. And she was not quiet about it either. "Montserrat Irene Novak, this is the most childish thing you have ever done!"

Montserrat scoffed after shoving in a blouse enter suitcase. "Really? Going to observe a different division is childish?"

"When you're doing it to avoid facing reality, uh, yeah it is!"

Montserrat rolled her eyes and continued moving around her room to get the last of her things into a suitcase. "I promise you, Kara, that I am not running away. I really think some space is what I need to clear my head and maybe get rid of any lingering anger I have. Hell, I think it might even be good for us to have some space. We might end up killing each other."

"I think you're doing things wrong," Kara folded her arms. "And it is kind of scaring me because I've never seen you act like this before."

Okay, that one Montserrat would give to Kara. She was confused herself why she needed to do all this just to be okay again. But the point was that she needed to do this.

"It'll just be for a few days and then I'll be back," Montserrat said with a cheery smile.

"Well, what if you end up liking it there?" Kara frowned for a second. "And you don't want to come back."

Montserrat thought about that possibility and could only shrugged. "Then I like it."

"Montserrat!" Kara whined.

"What?" Montserrat laughed for a bit. "Kara, you and I were supposed to be only temporary roommates, remember? I was supposed to find my own place eventually."

"Well, yeah, but…" Kara shifted on her feet, looking more like a child than an adult right now. "You're my best friend. It's kind of fun living with you."

"Thanks," Montserrat offered the woman a smile. "But I just have to go. I'm sorry."

Kara saw there wasn't no point in arguing with her. She'd made her choice to go, but it didn't mean Kara would stop hoping Montserrat hated the place.

~0~

Two steps into the Brooklyn Homicide bullpen and everyone already knew who Montserrat was. She felt bombarded with all the "hello's" she got as soon as she walked in. There was a moment where Montserrat felt overwhelmed enough to turn around and leave.

"Miss Novak," a tall, older man emerged from the Captain's office. He was already gray on the head but he had piercing green eyes that looked like they could catch anything wrong in a second. "You made it. And I see that my squad has already given you a vibe of our dynamic."

"Uuh, yeah," Montserrat couldn't come up with anything to actually say right now. She didn't like being the center of attention from strangers.

"Captain Delisle," the man held a hand to shake with Montserrat. She smiled and shook hands.

"Montserrat Novak. Can I ask how everyone knew who I was before they even saw me?"

"Simple, you're the only redhead we know in the building," one of the detectives answered from their desk. Montserrat turned to give a strange look, making the man laugh. "Kidding. We know your cousin? ADA Novak? You guys got the same hair."

"Oh," Montserrat didn't know if that was worse or better than the former explanation.

"Alright, Detective Novak is here to observe how we run things in this precinct so let's make a good impression," the Captain said. "Novak, if you'd stay you'd be Mulvoy's partner," he directed her towards a man who'd risen from his desk at the call of his name.

"Jake Mulvoy," the detective introduced himself as he crossed through the desks to shake hands with Montserrat.

"Montserrat," she smiled politely. He looked nice enough, though there wasn't that playfulness Sonny seemed to naturally carry.

"Please treat Montserrat well as she visits us. She might become one of ours by the end of the week," Delisle said playfully then spoke to Montserrat. "We can talk at the end of the day to see how you like it here and discuss other things."

Montserrat nodded and was freed to mingle through the bullpen. She got to know the rest of the detectives, which she immediately could tell would not be like her SVU squad. For one, Detective Miranda Kim was, to put it in simple terms, was a downright bitch. It appeared that Mulvoy's previous partner was Kim's best friend who was transferred to a different department. In Kim's eyes, Montserrat was there to replace her best friend.

Great.

Detective Xavier Lance, Kim's partner, was a somewhat better person. He was tall, had a charming smile, and was kind to newcomers. He lamented their old detective's transfer but was excited for the prospect of a new co-worker. He kind of reminded Montserrat of Nick, except that Lance could be a bit more snippy once you started asking questions about their specific cases. It was as if Lance thought Montserrat was there to steal the cases they were already working on.

"Don't worry about them," Detective Connor Shein brought Montserrat to his desk. He wasn't as tall as Lance but he was still taller than Montserrat. He had nice blue eyes and rather shaggy brown hair. "They're a little more on the reserved side. But they're good detectives."

His partner, Detective Paulina Quell, was a smiley blonde woman that made Montserrat instantly think of Amanda. The only difference was Paulina was taller. And no accent. She came to stand beside Montserrat and placed a gentle hand on Montserrat's arm. "Yeah, if you stay they'll warm up to you."

"Would you like to see some of our cases right now?" Shein asked Montserrat and gestured to the files sitting on his and Quell's desks.

"Sure," Montserrat gave a nod. "It'll almost be like a trip down memory lane since I used to work homicide back in Queens."

"You did?" Mulvoy suddenly asked then exchanged looks with Shein and Quell stopping to glance at each other then to look at the ginger.

"You've been around then," chuckled Quell. "Homicide and SVU? Which one do you like better? If that's not a weird question…"

"Well, they each have their own things," admitted Montserrat. "Homicide you don't know how to deal with live victims which saves you a lot of sleepless nights and standoffs with the victims and their families. But SVU gives a little bit more of a satisfaction because when you do get the victims' culprit, you got the satisfaction of knowing that you got the guy and you made justice for someone who's alive to see it." And as Montserrat said these words, she grew distant with thoughts. SVU, however challenging at times, always brought a different type of satisfaction when they were able to put the culprit away because more than often the victim was still alive to see it happen. They could see the impact they made on the victim. Homicide didn't offer that.

"Do you mind if we ask you why you're thinking about transferring here?" Shein asked quietly. "I mean, you've started making a name for yourself back in Manhattan."

"I have?" blinked Montserrat. That's the first time she heard any of that.

"Yeah, you and SVU as a whole. You guys are pretty good at what you do over there," Quell said and had the agreeing nods from the other two detectives. "I mean, don't get us wrong, we would love to have you on board with us but we're just a little curious why you would want to leave that department that's doing so well?"

"Fair question," Montserrat nodded. "It's just personal reasons. Um, just wanting to see if Homicide is my true calling." Well, she couldn't very well say the truth here could she? Still, the answer was deemed good enough for the two detectives.

For the rest of the day, Montserrat spent her time going through cases with Mulvoy, Quell and Shein, featuring remarks from Lance but absolutely nothing from Kim. She got to know a few of the officers lingering in the office, and most importantly she began to get the feel of the squad as a whole.

"So, how do you like it here?" Captain Delisle asked once they were both seated in his office.

"It's different than what I'm used to now," Montserrat began with, considering it was the easiest things you could say that didn't involve a lie.

"I'm sure it is," Delisle nodded. "I've talked to your sergeant and she doesn't seem like she wants to let you go. But that didn't stop her from giving me good remarks about you."

"Olivia's very kind," Montserrat said with a small smile. "Too kind."

"May I ask why you're looking to transfer?"

If Montserrat was score how many times she'd been asked that question today, she'd probably lose count. It was a fair question, she knew, but it didn't mean she wanted to keep hearing it. It involved a lot of things she couldn't (and didn't) want to talk about.

"I used to do Homicide," Montserrat began with what Delisle probably already knew, "And it was hard, sometimes, to see what we had. The corpses. The way they died. But sometimes, SVU is a little harder. We typically have live victims and...hearing what they've gone through…"

"It's tough," Delisle nodded. "But someone's gotta do it, right?"

Montserrat took those words more to heart than she planned to. "...yeah…" She felt her phone buzz inside her pocket but didn't get it right away.

"Well, we'll see you tomorrow then. Hopefully by then you'll have made your decision regarding where you want to be," Delisle got up to shake hands with her then led her out the door.

As Montserrat checked her phone, Detectives' Mulvoy, Shein and Quell called to her from their desks.

"Hey, how'd it go?" Mulvoy's question didn't register for the first few seconds as Montserrat had focused too much on her phone.

A smile came to her face after checking the new text message she'd received from Rafael.

If you haven't already had dinner, try Morgan's Barbecue. I think you might like. Your type of food I...

"Hey, Novak?" Quell's voice finally broke through Montserrat's concentration.

The ginger looked up from her phone with blinking eyes. "I'm sorry?"

Quell only chuckled. "We were just wondering how'd it go with the Captain."

"Oh, it's fine. I'll be back tomorrow to keep observing. Thank you for letting me do that, by the way. I know it's probably annoying to have some newbie looking over your shoulder."

"Nah, it's fine," Shein assured. "Better to know what you're getting into before you put in your papers."

Montserrat nodded. She looked down at her phone for a quick second then smiled. "Would either of you know where Morgan's Barbecue is?"

~0~

As much as they offered, Montserrat reassured the Homicide detectives that she was fine eating dinner on her own. She was tired anyways so she wasn't sure if she'd even eat inside or just do take out in her hotel.

She had to admit the restaurant was nice, though. Its lights were dim to give it a nightly look, but gave off a relaxing atmosphere from the moment one stepped inside. When Montserrat saw bar right on the side, she immediately pictured Rafael coming in at least four times a week. The stock looked pretty full...and good.

She eventually found herself drifting towards the bar counter after having enough of looking around. From there, she looked at the menu and, to her delight, found that there was indeed many barbecue options. After ordering, she started going through the wine selection and was surprised to see so many options. They seemed to have a lot on whiskey so of course Rafael would know the place.

"Now I know why you came here," she mumbled her thought about Rafael. He could get over the barbecue because of what was at the bar. She was so focused on choosing a drink, she didn't notice someone taking a seat beside her.

"Can I buy you a drink?"

Montserrat, of course, flinched and looked up from the menu to find a blonde sitting next to her stool. "Me?"

The man nodded. "Who else? You're the only pretty redhead in this place."

Montserrat cleared her throat and offered one polite smile. "Thanks, but...no thanks."

"Are you waiting for someone?"

"No, but I'm not interested. I've got...things going on." What things Montserrat spoke about she had no idea, but neither did the man anyways.

"I'm James," the man first introduced himself, giving Montserrat the indication he was not leaving soon. "I come here every week, so believe me I know the best drinks here."

"Well, my friend probably came here everyday so I'll just go with his recommendations, thank you," she smiled ever-so-politely as she got up from her stool and picked up her menu and bag, "And just so we're clear, this is my definite no. Don't need to show you my SVU badge, do I?" her snappiness came as a surprise to James but she didn't stop to see his full reaction as she stormed off to take a seat at the very end of the bar.

Okay, maybe she shouldn't have been that snappy since the man hadn't really done anything except ignore her first 'no'.

One of the bartenders, a woman who looked just a bit older than Montserrat, stopped by Montserrat's new seat to chuckle. Montserrat could see the name 'Elise' written on the bartender's name tag. "Nice one. I don't see a lot of snippy women around here. It's like they're too scared of being mean or something."

"Well, I'm a bit guilty right now, so…" Montserrat admitted.

"Oh don't be," Elise waved a hand to the side. "That guy's in here every night trying to pick up women. And let me tell you-" she leaned an elbow on the counter, "-that he is not interested in dating, if you know what I mean."

"Oh, well in that case, screw him," Montserrat nodded, making the bartender chuckle.

Elise gave an approving nod of her head. "What can I get you, then?"

"Honestly," Montserrat put a hand over the closed menu on the counter, "I have no idea. I'm from Manhattan and, really, the only reason I'm here is because a friend who used to live here in Brooklyn told me I should come here. Though now that I think more about it, I assume he only ever came in here for drinks than actual dinner. Rafael's more of a eat-while-on-the-job guy than actual breakfast, lunch and dinner."

Elise seemed to pause for a second, something Montserrat caught but wasn't sure how to ask about it. Luckily, Elise spoke up after a few seconds of pondering. "You wouldn't happen to be talking about Rafael Barba, would you?"

Montserrat blinked, and somehow nodded slightly. "...yeah...how did you…?"

Elise smiled at the woman's confusion. "You said SVU before and then Manhattan, plus what you mentioned about a friend living in Brooklyn? The name was just a bonus."

"Wow, maybe you're the detective in this conversation," Montserrat tilted her head, honestly impressed by the woman.

Elise laughed for a moment, but Montserrat seemed dead serious which just made Elise laugh even more. "Okay, you're definitely his type."

Instead of snapping like she usually tended to, Montserrat quietly sighed and closed her eyes. "I'm not…" she didn't even bother with the same response. She opened her eyes and came at it from another angle. "Can I ask you something?" Elise nodded her head. "I literally said 'friends' like two or three times so...why would you say something like that to me?"

"What -- the being 'his type' thing?" Elise asked and Montserrat nodded. "Rafael used to come here every night, literally every night, when he worked for the Brooklyn DA's office. So believe me when I tell you I know him very well."

"Were you and him…?" Montserrat found herself asking and when she realized it, she felt a warmth on her face. "Sorry. Didn't mean to ask that…"

Elise just smiled again. "Nah. We just really bonded over what drinks were the best. Though due to his profession I lost almost every argument."

"He's snippy but not impossible to win, believe me," Montserrat said all too proudly. "I've won a few rounds against him."

"I believe that based on how you got rid of that guy earlier," Elise smirked. "I told Rafael he'd meet his match sooner or later. Too bad it's not yet happened, huh?"

Montserrat was more pensive than she would've liked to be. As Elise recommended some of the drinks she thought were good, Montserrat's head was somewhere else - more specifically on someone else.

~ 0 ~

"Okay, just, please change if you get a stain or something," Kara trailed after Sonny into the bullpen, ignoring his looks for her to stop talking and the others' amused smiles.

Sonny went straight to his desk and plopped down, but that didn't stop Kara either. She was a woman with a plan today and she was getting things done. "And you said you'd be out by 7:00, right?"

"I guess," Sonny shrugged.

"What's going on, Carisi?" Amanda just couldn't stop smiling at the pair. "You had lunch for an hour, what could you possibly have done in that hour?"

"Nothing," Sonny scowled, and thankfully Kara was still there to clarify.

"I'm just making sure everything's good for Montse's birthday," the woman smiled excitedly.

"Oh right, that's today," Amanda looked to Fin and Nick, all three realizing it was indeed Montserrat's birthday today.

"Yup! And I'm expecting everyone at eight o'clock today. It's Montse's favorite restaurant," Kara wagged a finger at them as if she were speaking with children.

"Yeah, but, Montserrat's still away in Brooklyn," Nick thought Kara needed a reminder since the woman was probably going detail-crazy. "What if she's not back today?"

"She said she would be," Kara shrugged. "I don't think she needs more than 2 days to realize Brooklyn ain't happening."

"How are you so sure?" asked Fin.

"Because I'm Montse's best friend and I know she's not going to stay in Brooklyn," Kara seemed very sure of herself they almost believed it. "So-" she clapped her hands together, "-we're all set for eight, right?"

"Set for what?" Olivia asked as she'd only caught the last part of Kara's question.

Kara looked back to see her and Rafael coming into the bullpen. She grinned, though, because now she had all of them in one place. "Montserrat's birthday, remember?"

The two in question looked at each other then nodded.

"Yes, what about it?" Rafael was the one to ask.

"What do you mean?" Kara raised an eyebrow. "It's today."

"Yes, and she asked us, many times, not to celebrate it," Rafael reminded her, looking pretty serious in that he'd be following the request.

"But that's what everyone says," Kara rolled her eyes.

"But she means it," Olivia said, internally sighing because she knew without a proper explanation Kara would never give up this birthday party. "And that's what Rafael and I are going to do."

"You're not coming?" Kara's face fell but was quickly replaced with offence. "Neither of you?"

The two shook their heads. Behind Kara, the rest of the squad exchanged confused looks amongst each other.

"It's what Montserrat wanted," Rafael reminded once again but with a touch more annoyed.

"Oh of course you're going to listen to her," Kara waved him off. "You still want to get into her good graces."

"I decided that a long time ago. I don't need your incessant shouting for us to do something Montserrat specifically asked us not to."

Seeing Kara getting actually mad, Sonny shot up from his seat with the intention of removing the stressor - which in this case, unfortunately, was his girlfriend. "Kara, let me take you to your car."

"Fine," Kara said and only because she was on a tight schedule. She let Sonny walk her towards the exit but she stopped at Rafael's side. "But you and I both know that Montserrat would want you to come. And you want to be there anyways."

The glare Rafael was giving Kara wasn't something anyone wanted to be caught under, but Kara just smirked and went on her way rather proudly.

Sonny mumbled a quick 'sorry' to Rafael as he followed Kara out into the hallway. Of course once they were out of hearing shot, he had a go with Kara. "You can't do stuff like that!"

Kara just rolled her eyes while she waited for the elevator to open. When they finally did, Sonny blocked the way inside with an arm.

"I'm serious, Kara. That wasn't okay!"

Kara's eyes flickered to the detective, getting annoyed by the second. "Let me go through, right now. I have plans I can't be late for." With a sigh, Sonny did but he followed her in. Kara pressed the down button then stepped back and allowed a heavy silence to fall on them for a couple seconds. "I'm not choosing to be an ass, you know."

Sonny still lightly sighed. "I didn't say that-"

"-no, but you're thinking it."

"No," Sonny said loudly for it to be clearly clarified. "I just disagree with how you're taking this whole...situation. I don't think it's your place-"

"-my best friend is in Brooklyn right now, thinking about staying to live there!" Kara exclaimed and walked out the moment the elevator door opened again. "I have to do something and, unfortunately for Rafael, he's the only one I can think of who can stop Montse. And you know why, Sonny, so stop pretending like those two are."

"Okay," Sonny put his hands on Kara's shoulders, hoping to calm her down before she left the building. Now that he saw where her mind was, he could help better. "You don't want Montse to leave and that's completely understandable. What's not going to work, however, is you harassing both Montse and Rafael. It's not going to end well and you know that."

"I'm desperate here!" Kara frowned. "I don't want her to leave, and much less run away from someone. Doesn't it feel like that?"

Sonny bobbed his head while he considered the idea. "On some level, sure, but...we can't be 100% sure about it. We'll just have to wait for Montserrat to come back and tell us her decision. In the meantime, let's just make sure she has a nice welcome back party."

"It's a birthday party," Kara pointed.

"Well she didn't want that so let's call it a welcome back party or she might just hurt us."

"Good point," Kara nodded.

"So...we good…?"

Kara's smile said it all. "Yeah." She let him hug her tightly for a few minutes before it was time for her to really go.

~ 0 ~

"Just out of curiosity, will you be going to this party?" Rafael simply could not help himself with the matter. He watched Olivia drop her things at her desk and give him quite a look.

"I thought you were smarter than this," she said bluntly. "Of course not. I respect Montserrat's wishes and I wished everyone else did too." Now it was Rafael's to give her a look. She noticed it after sitting down. "What?"

Rafael tilted his head at her, continuing to stare at her until she shifted in her seat. "You know more than I do."

Olivia raised an eyebrow at him, clearly not getting what he meant. "What?"

"You're the only one actually not going," Rafael continued with his words, letting Olivia wallow in confusion for the next minute, "And that can only mean you know exactly why Montserrat hates her birthday. Like Casey."

Olivia shook her head, doing that noise with her mouth that Rafael had come to learn was her 'You got me but I'm not admitting' noise.

"Casey's also not attending," he said for her sake. "What is it that made you and Casey so trustworthy that Montserrat decided to confide in only you two?"

Though Olivia would never openly admit that he was right, she did turn her gaze back on him. "Why do you sound so bothered by it?"

"No so much 'bothered' as I am tired of this same subject."

"Look, I cannot say anything except what you already know. And what we know is that this party will only hurt Montserrat, and us attending - just as everyone else - will only show that we don't care what she decided."

While that sounded logical, Rafael had to disagree. He didn't say it because there was no point. Olivia knew what he didn't, and no matter how much he asked her, she would never tell him because Montserrat wouldn't tell him.

But there was this idea of his that compelled him to do the opposite of what Olivia and Casey were planning. Sure, Montserrat would hate anyone who attended this godforsaken party, but if he, Olivia and Casey didn't go then she would be stuck with the clueless people who believed she wanted the party. At least if one of them went, they could help her out.

~ 0 ~

When Montserrat entered her apartment, it was a literal twenty minute hug-fest from Kara. Montserrat felt truly loved in that moment, as well as a little claustrophobic.

"I'm just so glad you're back!" Kara exclaimed as Montserrat was finally able to peel her off. "And happy birthday!"

As Kara went for another hug, Montserrat dove to the side and wheeled her suitcase towards the hallway. "Thanks, but...please don't."

"Oh c'mon, don't go to your room," Kara tailed after the ginger down the hallway. "Let's go out for some drinks. My treat."

"I'm not in the mood for it, Kara," Montserrat opened her bedroom door and walked in, along with Kara.

"But it'll be fun! And relaxing! Plus, you can tell me about Brooklyn. You can start with whether or not you'll be moving."

Montserrat sighed as she brought her suitcase to her bed. "I just...Kara, I've said this before over and over...I don't like my birthday. I'd really rather stay in my room."

"Well that's just depressing," Kara folded her arms over her chest. "And I'm not leaving until you say you'll get drinks with me."

"You're being extra childish today," Montserrat took notice. "Who pissed you off today?"

Kara would love to say it was her almost boyfriend but she knew if she did Montserrat would never agree to going out. "I'm a little upset you won't come out with me, that's all."

With another sigh, Montserrat turned to her roommate. "I'm sorry. I really did miss you, though."

A smile returned to Kara's face. "Then c'mon! Let's go out! Couple drinks and then we can come home."

Montserrat nearly rolled her eyes. She knew this 'drink night' was really Kara's surprise party that wasn't such a surprise. She did have to hand it to Kara in that she was persistent and thoughtful. She should be more grateful, she knew, but her birthday still felt...wrong. Like, what was she meant to celebrate? Her rapist was still out there, living his own life, while she had to switch jobs, move cities, make new friends.

But you did have some good times, she thought after a moment.

Yes, she did switch jobs but she did find SVU to be a good place. The city was okay too. And her new friends? Yeah, they were good too. She couldn't deny she hadn't been handed some good things this year but...it was hard to focus just on that when the bad was so...impacting.

"Montse?" Kara was now putting her hands together to plead. "Let's go out, yeah? For a little bit?"

"I'm going to regret this," Montserrat mumbled under her breath before agreeing.

Kara was ecstatic and, to Montserrat's surprise, she already had an outfit in mind for the night. Though after a moment, Montserrat realized she should've seen this coming. Still, she told herself to be prepared for this party and its livelihood she wasn't quite ready for.

~0~

Montserrat's mind raced the moment she stepped into the restaurant. Everyone screamed 'Surprise!' and while they cheered for her and wished her a happy birthday, Montserrat kept a tight smile on her face as she thanked each person. It shouldn't have been that hard considering these were people she liked. There was Sonny, Fin, Amanda, Nick...there was Madison and Caroline. Her father was even there, sans Damian, Gael and his daughters.

"Yeah they're still away on that seminar," Montserrat's father said after giving her a hug. "But he wishes you a happy birthday too."

"Thanks Dad," Montserrat said.

"How does it feel being 30 now?" He picked up his glass of bourbon from the table.

"Honestly, not that great," Montserrat knew that was as much as she could say without lying.

He didn't get it of course. "Yeah, I remember that one. But this doesn't mean you're old, sweetie. Just means a new chapter of your life is starting." Montserrat nodded, listening to his words but as seconds passed by she felt like she had to breathe harder. "Could be that this is the year you finally settle down…"

"Oh, Dad…" Montserrat knew this topic definitely wouldn't help her feel any better.

"I'd like some more grandkids, dear--"

Montserrat nearly choked on her saliva. A certain memory was popping into her mind and it was not letting her breathe easily. As her dad went on and on about new grandchildren, Montserrat started to feel like she was going to drown. Eventually, she just couldn't do it. "Sorry Dad, I gotta go." She turned away and made a hasty stride for the entrance doors. She practically shoved some people out of the way, ignoring their dirty looks, till she could see the doors. Her heart was racing and she honestly felt like if she didn't breathe in fresh air she would pass out.

Am I having an anxiety attack? Montserrat realized this was a possibility. It never really manifested past biting her nails but it certainly wasn't impossible. She had feared her birthday for months and now that it was finally here she was spiraling.

She practically slammed the doors behind her and leaned against them, breathing hard and fast but at least she was outside now. Oh dear Lord help me. She closed her eyes for a moment and focused on just breathing.

"Montserrat?"

Montserrat nearly fell from the door - if that was even possible considering she'd been leaning against it - but got her balance in time. She saw Rafael cautiously approaching her, probably wondering what the hell was wrong with her. "You came…"

"Yes, and I know you didn't want this--" Rafael made a nod at the restaurant where they could hear the loud party going on, "--but I'm not here as a guest."

"You're not?" She leaned away from the door and looked him over. He wore a white collar shirt with a dark jacket and matching pants. "Because you're dressed like one."

"I could say the same about you," he countered with the same accusing tone she used, only his came with a smirk.

Montserrat wore a sleeveless, tight, black dress that hugged her body and ended a bit above her knees. There was a golden necklace around her neck, bringing some attention to her plunging neckline. Her red lips didn't smile nor smirk like they usually would.

"It wasn't my choice," she frowned. "Kara had everything planned…everything."

"You don't look good…" he noted her nervousness, accompanied with a frantic glance at the restaurant.

"Yeah, I'm not," she didn't hesitate to confirm. "I'm, well…"

"Not good?"

"Yeah," she bit her lower lip. She awkwardly folded her arms over her chest. "I thought I could handle it but it turns out that I can't, and if I don't get out of here I'm going to lose it."

Even though it was a quick paced ramble, Rafael followed perfectly. "Do you want to go home? You know that's why I came. I may not know what's going on but I would like to help you."

Montserrat could appreciate that and she would take it. She glanced at the restaurant before deciding she really did need to go. "Let's have drinks. Somewhere away from here."

"Are you sure--"

"--yes," she said rapidly. "Let's go!"

Well, he wouldn't argue with that. She looked like she would chew someone's head off at the first chance she got and he was not putting himself on the line. Luckily for her, he was an expert at knowing places that had great drinks.

Once Montserrat was in the presence of a new, peaceful restaurant she seemed to act more like herself. "Thank you." Her gratitude was so quiet Rafael almost missed it.

"Of course."

The two had sat down at a particularly empty bar counter. They'd already ordered some drinks and were just waiting.

"So you came to this party just to...help?"

Rafael bobbed his head. "More or less. My logic was that I'd be the only one who knew you actually hated the damn party so I could actually help you out."

"Well thank you," Montserrat honestly said, and meant it too. Who knows where she could've ended up if he hadn't shown up. "I needed it."

The bartender passed by to hand out their drinks at the same time. Rafael picked his up first and with a light smirk on his face he said, "Not-so happy birthday to you."

Montserrat chuckled as she picked up her own drink to clink with his. "Sure."

"Thirty is an awful year."

"Really? You still remember yours?"

Rafael rolled his eyes. He took a drink from his glass then set it down to reach for something inside his jacket. "Even though it's not a wanted birthday, I hope you'll accept this."

Montserrat's eyes blinked when he set down a small rectangular black box on the counter. "Please tell me you didn't actually buy something…"

"My mother would kill me if I went to a birthday party without bringing a present," Rafael said and looked dead serious about it too.

"I gotta meet your mother some time," Montserrat smirked for a moment then looked down at the present again. "But, I mean, you shouldn't have. And I know that's what a lot of people say and don't mean it but in this case I do. You shouldn't have because I said I didn't even want a birthday."

"But I'm happy you made it to another birthday. It's a small win but an important one nonetheless. And I don't know what your year was like before coming to Manhattan but I am glad you made it here."

Montserrat blushed against her better instinct. "Wow, didn't think you could say things like that." Rafael frowned for a moment, about to ask what she meant by that when she spoke up again, "... I'm staying at SVU." She rested her arms on either side of her drink.

The sweet smile on her face unintentionally reminded Rafael of a time, months ago, when they had drinks together after working their first case; though now Montserrat had shorter hair and was far more comfortable with him. Whether or not he'd wanted to, he ended up smiling as well.

"What made you decide that?"

"Honestly? It's just not the same as Manhattan," Montserrat shrugged. "Everyone's nice there, but...I like it here."

"I did say Brooklyn wasn't as nice as Manhattan," Rafael picked up his glass again to take a drink.

"Well, there were some things that...were good," Montserrat had a secret smile on her face that grew when she said, "I, uh, went to that restaurant you suggested and wouldn't you know it? I met your old friend, Elise."

Rafael choked on the alcohol in his mouth. "What?" came the scratchy voice a second later.

"Yeah," Montserrat started bobbing her head. "She remembered you and she had a lot of stories to tell."

"Don't…"

"Should we start with June 2012? The day you-"

"-I said don't, Montserrat," Rafael warned. Even the way he said her name had become sharp, but not at all terrifying. In fact, she started to laugh instead.

It didn't stop her from re-telling all the stories Elise had confided in her. And boy was there a few. With each story, it got harder for Montserrat to say it without laughing...until she just couldn't stop.

"And here I thought you went to Brooklyn for work," Rafael sourly said, side-glancing her laughing figure. He had to admit, however, that he preferred this Montserrat over the version he had earlier. She was happier, livelier...just her.

"I did, I did, but-" Montserrat couldn't help it. She just couldn't do it. She brought a hand up to her mouth to cover her laughter, but she had to lean away to get all of it out.

"Happy birthday I guess," Rafael raised his glass to the air as if toasting before taking a last drink.

"Okay! Okay! Okay! I'm done! I promise!" she had to take in a deep breath in hopes of finally calming herself down. "Here, let's switch subjects." She raised her hands to show she was done, or at least that she was going to try and be done. She noticed his present was still sitting on the counter, unopened, and that just couldn't be. "I know what'll help."

"Will it though?" Rafael sent her a hard look that subsided once she smiled again. She really had a knack for that smiling thing. Her nose seemed to crinkle each time.

Montserrat ignored his snippy question, as well as his look, in favor of the present. When she took its lid off, she found a rose-gold necklace inside with a pendant in the shape of a ballerina. The ballerina was in a dance pose - one foot on the other leg - with her skirt outlined with silver stones.

"That is...beautiful," Montserrat gawked with widened eyes. "This could not have been a $20 gift."

"You are not guilt-tripping me for this," Rafael warned, but she could see he was shifting in his stool. She was right.

"I can't take this," she shook her head. "It had to have been expensive. I can't--"

"Well, you have to because I'm not taking it back," he looked her dead in the eyes and told her the same thing with them. "It's for you." Montserrat opened her mouth as if to protest but...there wasn't much to do if he'd already decided against it. "It's for you and your ballet dancing dreams."

The fact Rafael still remembered that she'd once said she'd originally wanted to become a dancer was...it made her feel special.

She smiled so widely it could've cracked her face in two. "Can't believe you remember that."

"I remember everything you say," he said matter-of-factly then smiled for a brief moment, "Even when you're yelling it at me." She chuckled but gave that to him.

"Thank you," she said softly. She drew her hands to the back of her neck and unfastened the necklace she was already wearing. She put it down on the counter and gingerly picked up the new necklace.

"You need help?" Rafael asked her after watching her trying and failing to put on the necklace on her own.

"Please," she said and handed him the necklace. "But don't break it. You break it, you buy it."

"Because I haven't already done that?" He got up from his seat like she did.

She turned away and raised her hair off her back, giving him perfect access. As his hands moved forwards on each side of her neck, she could smell whiffs of his cologne. Each time she smelled it, she remembered she loved it. Get ahold of yourself Montserrat, she berated herself. She always did this. Every time. Without fail. Like it was a--

Rafael's fingers had brushed along her skin. He hadn't meant to, of course, but it was impossible to avoid.

Oh dear Lord. Montserrat felt chills and she really wished she could stop acting like a teenage girl but it was so difficult.

Putting a necklace on someone shouldn't be taking so long, but for some reason Rafael doddled with the task. He could smell Montserrat's perfume from where he stood and each time he did he felt like backing away was out of the question. He couldn't budge from his spot even when he was more than unprofessionally close to her. He'd never stand that close to, say, Olivia? Or Amanda?

But Montserrat was different. She always was. Whether it was her ability to keep up with his mouth or handle his snark, she always had something to throw back at him. It was like she had the perfect talent - the perfect ability - that allowed her to pull the right strings with him. And he really liked it...but it was really wrong. When his fingers touched her skin, he felt her flinch in surprise. Yet when he set the necklace on her and let his fingers stroke down her exposed skin, she didn't shy away from it.

Montserrat turned around to face him and let her hair fall back over her shoulders. "How does it look?" She asked, raising her head to give him a better view of her necklace, though Rafael could see a little more than just her neck.

"...good," he said, sounding like he needed more air. Even his nodding was off. Maybe Montserrat knew why, maybe she didn't...but she probably did. "We...should probably go," Rafael's suggestion went right over Montserrat's head.

"It's not that late, is it?" She stepped closer to him, if it was even possible, and brought her hands to his chest.

Rafael was pretty sure it wasn't late but that's not what he was going for. For someone who rarely felt nervousness, this was probably his worst case. She smelled absolutely delicious, and if he got into how she looked right now...I'm losing it. How the hell am I losing it?

Montserrat smiled sweetly and unknowingly answered his question. He watched her fingers stroke circles over his chest, playing a wicked game with him. His hand suddenly snatched one of her wrists and after taking her second one, Montserrat thought enough was enough. She kissed him.

It was surprising but Rafael wasn't ready to pull away. Her lips tasted of alcohol and when he put his hands on her waist he discovered she was curvy. He wrapped his arms around her, unknowingly reminding Montserrat that, apart from his scent, she loved the feeling of his arms. It was probably the first thing she ever noticed about him. Back when she was his witness, 9 months pregnant, he'd caught her in a moment of imbalance. He was able to once again see the very light freckles under her eyes and she saw the flecks of brown in his green eyes. He was strong, and the way he held her made her feel...protected? She didn't know if that was the right description, but it was close enough. To have him back, like this, was even better.

The two seemed to find their fit with each other in a matter of seconds (which, if they'd been more in-tune with reality, they would've been surprised by). It could've been minutes of beautiful bliss if someone's cell phone hadn't gone off.

Rafael was in a daze as he got to his phone in his pocket. He wasn't even sure if he'd actually answered it but upon hearing Sonny's voice on the other end of the line, reality started settling again. Montserrat watched him with more or less of the same daze in her eyes.

"Have I seen Montserrat?" He repeated what he was being asked. He saw Montserrat silently shake her head, almost looking like a plead. "No. I didn't even go." Rafael scrunched his face for a second, looking like he was getting irritated by the second. "I know what I said, Carisi, but I didn't! Go find her yourself!" He ended the call with that snap and turned away from Montserrat. He pressed his hands on the bar counter and leaned forwards, closing his eyes for a moment.

She recognized the look on his face. It was regret. And it hurt.

"I'm sorry, Montserrat," he apologized quietly. She opened her mouth to respond, but he cut her off before she could say anything, "It's unprofessional. And it's…" he leaned away from the bar counter and faced her once more. He looked her over, wishing nothing more than to have her all to himself.

But it wasn't right.

Least that's what he kept telling himself over and over.

Montserrat, being who she was, couldn't take his words without protest. "You can't tell me this after a kiss like that. You want me like I want you." The fact the words slipped through her lips so easily didn't even faze her at the moment. She'd need a few hours.

"Yes, but it's not--" Rafael forced himself to stop before he got more upset. He took a deep breath in and started again, though he knew he had to keep it short so that he could get the hell out of there without falling back. "It just wouldn't work. Your age, our jobs...the way we are with each other? It just can't."

Montserrat's eyes widened slightly at his words but only briefly before anger started settling across her face. That was the moment Rafael knew he had to leave. He knew if he faced her while she showed clear pain that he caused, he would not be able to leave her. At least with anger he could tell himself she'd hate him and that'd be the end of that. If he was lucky, maybe it would work out that way.

Either way, he didn't know because he finally walked out.

He was right, though, because Montserrat only spent a few minutes in rage before anguish sought her.

#ocappreciation #svu #rafael barba #svu fics #rafael barba fics #svu imagines #oc: Montserrat Novak #fic: dare to forget me

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