#echo and fives would be trouble makers day one of existence

[bellsofblueficlets]

Death Comes For All

If there was one 'failing' to be found in his little mate, it was that Cade, for the life of him, was incapable of hiding things very well. Especially, it seemed, when it came to secrets.

In the weeks leading up to his surprise, Cade was constantly filled with small energy. It showed in his habits, like an increased inability to stay still, or the way he tapped his 'pen' in thought, or spun it between his fingers.

His huffy facade slipped away more often now, revealing that beautiful dancing flicker of firelight he was, with a hasty excitement in his step, and a new light in his eyes.

Solace didn't ask about what he was up to, he just waited, and he watched, enjoying this new enthusiasm in his little mate. It was good, seeing him smile more often, seeing this new energy and enthusiasm.

Four years they'd been mates now, going on five. And still Solace watched the light in his soul bloom more and more, a fire, catching spark and growing more every day, after far too long of the world at large having beaten it so low.

...His soul still held to Life by such a slender, fraying thread. Solace didn't know if that was something that could ever change. But he saw her influence in every part of his little mate, and loved him all the more for it. Not because he saw her, but because, to him, Cade lived in worship of her, lived every inch of his existence as a reminder of how beautiful things can grow under even the harshest circumstance. That life could remain beautiful, in dark places.

Even here, in a world where her touch had faded to such a faint echo, this timeline of dying light, life still held joy, still had beauty. It wasn't always familiar, the ways he saw it now, but- It was there.

...He still loved her. He always would, how could he not? But... It was different now. He didn't love her as the beautiful goddess in the garden, ever beyond his reach, beyond his touch, the maker of all he could never be part of...

It was all still true, but he loved her in another way too.

Cade echoed her, but that wasn't why he loved his little mate. But it was very possible that he loved her all the more now, for the way she echoed through him.

Solace pauses in his introspection, realizing that Cade was now watching him. One bony brow was lifted, the quill in his hand spinning absently between his fingers- one of Solace's, of course. He seemed as lost in thought as the reaper himself had been, only moment's before.

The spinning stops, and tap, tap, tap. Solace know the sound well, and knows too that building restless that came when his mate was having trouble sitting still. Soon Cade would be on his feet, digging for something or other among his assortment of boxes, or maybe snagging books off his shelf, one by one, as he sought some answer to whatever was niggling at his thoughts.

Then though, instead of this, he turned back to his writing without a word, or even an acknowledgement that Solace had caught him staring.

Okay, that was a bit too much. Well, it actually wasn't, Solace was timelessly patient, but he also liked riling up his little mate in gentle ways, liked seeing him huff and grumble and scold with zero venom behind it.

Before he could though, Cade froze as he turned the page of his notepad, then pushed his chair back so hard that it almost fell, just sort of teetering as he left it there, grabbing for his medic bag, and darting towards the door- Before stopping short, turning, and darting back to Solace, who was ready for this, leaning down to receive his quick kiss before Cade was off again, and out the door.

It seemed his little mate had remembered something, though what it was, Solace couldn't be sure of. Smiling in small bemusement, the Reaper shook his head, and left the notebook where it lay, heading for the kitchen. It was already growing late, and if he knew his little mate, Cade would be home even later, and be all the hungrier for it.

Humming under his breath, the Reaper pulled out some slices of magic food he'd prepared earlier, a small cooking pot, and a knife. Vegetables mostly, rich earthy things, sweet potatos and carrots... Mushrooms... Things he'd seen countless times over an all but endless life, sustaining the lives of others... Something beyond his existence, as surely as the affairs of the gods were beyond mortalkind.

He thought about Toriel, and how all of this was her making. How her laughter filled her garden like bells, and how she'd smile at seeing him take joy in it, maybe while teasing him with that warm, gentle smile about becoming so domestic.

He'd thought of her often, over the years. She'd be happy for him, he knew that, and when he thought of home now, of her, the memory felt different somehow. It wasn't with the aching longing he once had- a wistful fondness sometimes, but not pain. Of course, he missed his brother, and he missed Life, but-

He had friends, a mate, a life, a home... All things he never could have imagined having, though at times he'd tried. But Death was a ceaseless task, and even as a tireless god, well... It was occasionally tiring. In a soul deep way.

Now though, all of that was taken care of, and it didn't need to be by him. Somewhere out there, another him lived the existence he once had, as if he'd never left at all, and honestly, while he would always miss those he loved, in his soul of souls? That life... The one he'd felt so robbed of... That other him could have it.

...This was his home now.

----

Late, late, late, late-!

Fucking hell, Kháry's was going to kill him!

...Not literally, mind? But the vortex nightmare still wasn't someone to leave waiting.

He was running so fast as he turned the bend of the alley that he almost ran straight into Weasel. Naturally this resulted in finding himself hoisted into the air, pinned to the brick, and with a glinting knife in his vision, before his mind even fully registers the dust's presence, or even the near impact.

The first time this had happened- Okay, in all honesty, the first dozen times- His soul had seized so hard that his vision had tinged dark, and he'd almost passed out...

He'd like to say he'd learned his lesson at that point, but he obviously hadn't. The look in Weasel's eyelights was hard, and tightly controlled, but semi manic look ever lingered.

...Beyond this, at the moment, he showed little emotion. He showed little patience either though, huffing as he half tossed Cade back down- Only to be caught by a gently snagging tentacle, as Kháry gave him a look that registered somewhere between amusement, and bewilderment. "How are you still alive, again?"

Weasel mutters something about him having an in with the Reaper. It was a cheap joke, and one that Cade had huffed at, hearing for the first time- Earning a look from Weasel that had impressed on the little science sans to never, ever assume that kind of familiarity again.

...Velvet might like him, and Rat might like him, but Weasel's capacity to like or tolerate anyone began and ended with his mates, and only his mates, and always would.

So yes, despite the situation being one he was far too used to now, his soul was still racing pretty good, and he might be shaking just a bit. He no longer froze up as he once had though, and didn't protest either, as rather than setting him down, Kháry just tugs him into the swirling vortex that served as the nightmare's own private, permanent hell. At this, Weasel doesn't protest...

But when he didn't let go, pulling the science sans in even further, Cade knew with a sinking sense of certainty that in that silence without sound, Weasel was probably cursing, and looked back at the dust, who currently seemed to be falling away... dwindling to a speck in the distance before Cade could even think to draw another breath.

...Kháry would be the one to take responsibility for that, right?

"Of course," That deep, echoing chuckle, despite being a place so utterly without sound... Where sound wasn't needed, because something else took it's place, something Cade had no grasp on, and couldn't begin to comprehend. His mind shied away from even considering it...

He's set down gently by the... Demon? Bitty? He'd thought the second, when he was first getting to know him, but these days, he isn't so sure.

It takes him a few seconds to get his bearings, as well as he was likely to anyway, at which point he spot the dust bitty, and very young cross as well. The second looks up at him, brightens, and waves, while the dust bitty doesn't so much as look his way, gazing off at something in the far distance that Cade couldn't see, and suspected he didn't want to.

The young cross looks at his guardian for permission to visit with the science sans, but Sopt just continues staring, until Kháry gently nudges him with one tendril, nodding permission when Excess looks to him instead.

"Cade came all the way here to see you, little prince. You don't want to keep him waiting."

The words are nothing but gentle, but the child puts fiercely on hearing them. While Cade can't hear the protest, it seems like he's saying something about how he isn't a prince, he's a great warrior- or going to be, one day.

"Princes can be warriors too," Kháry assures, nudging him again. This time there's something... Under this statement. A barely veiled resignation, though he hides it well.

Excess frowns, but after a moment, accepts it, gesturing to his 'sister' to follow.

Excess was the first Cross that he'd met with a phantom sibling. Cade knew many Dusts had them, though not all, which was further compounded by some genuinely having a phantom entity hanging around, while others could be coached through realizing the delusion, and others still existed as a manifestation of magic. Which of these, if any, was true for Excess? He didn't know, and if his guardians did, he wasn't telling.

It was a... routine-ish appointment, Excess' physical and magical growth were measured, and taken careful note of, and many, many questions and stories were exchanged in that soundless place. Cade took careful note of all of these, coaxing more from the child when he could. He wasn't a therapist by any means, but he had learned he had a way with children.

Maybe he and Solace could adopt a babybones one day... Even if their own magic wasn't compatible, he was pretty sure they'd make good parents...

At the end, he held onto the notes, pat Excess on the skull, and then nearly startled as Soot plucked him up by the hood without a sound, set the child on his own shoulder, and looked at Kháry for the way out. This was far, far deeper than his usual vortexes, after all...

Once the two were gone, and it was just him and the... Demon? Bitty? Kháry seemed to give him a long strange look, weighted with things unsaid. Almost... sad.

...Cade asked him how many more favors he owed before he'd be free. As much to fail to break the silence as anything.

"One more," The nightmare responded, with that same grave weight to his gaze. "After that, my side of the contract will be fulfilled." It had been a long time coming, and even if it worried Cade, not fully knowing what this meant, he still congratulated his friend. Or, someone he now thought of as a friend, anyway. Maybe they could meet up, after? Just to actually talk, in a space not limited to this soundless place.

Kháry smiles, but it seems a little sad. "I think of you as a friend too, Cade," He assures, offering his hand, "And I've been privileged to know you."

Confused, the science sans accepts his hand, not liking how final this feels. Kháry hadn't said anything about meeting up after, either...

"...I'm sorry," Is the nightmare's only answer this time, that same weighted sadness in his tone. It left a chill washing over Cade's bones...

And then he was standing outside Velvet's place again, and Weasel was gone. Rat however, perched on a trashcan nearby, perked up to see him, and scampered down full speed to relieve his due in pets. Wiggly with excitement and endlessly affectionate, he could almost forget how utterly dangerous this bitty was to most people. He dropped right to a sitting position, making it clear he expected pets, his tail flicking in excitement-

Many scritches were offered, as was his due, before at some unheard command, Rat turned, listening, and darted away quickly. He had almost unnatural hearing, that one...

...It was late, Cade reflected, looking up at the sky. The moon, barely risen when he'd left home, had already set, leaving the night even darker than usual, and him to the mercy of the sputtering streetlights.

Fortunately, by this point he knew the way home by heart, and all the shortcuts, as well as all the places to hide along the way if he needed to. He'd made his lateness up to Solace, later, not that the Reaper ever asked him to do so...

...It was almost strangely cold, wasn't it? Cade slows, looking around. Something felt off all of a sudden, a sense of dread slowly overtaking him. He was almost home. It was fine. He'd be back with Solace soon, his mate all but curled around him, his wings wrapped about in their utter softness, driving the cold from his bones. A flicker of a smile brushes Cade's expression, as he looked forward to another night with his mate, his love-

...it was such a small sound, in retrospect. Just a pop, followed by an impact so hard that he was thrown back. Pain flared through his body as he hit the concrete, and he didn't think he could breathe, stunned and confused by what had just happened. He'd heard bones break when he landed, he was sure of-

"Ha, you got it! Here, let me try-!" A voice from a nearby open window, and something that glinted, and two shapes, one passing the glinting something to the other-

Solace was his main thought as the next pellet hit him. His love, and his mate, waiting at home for him. And this time, he would be the one not coming home.

It wasn't fair. It wasn't. After everything that he'd survived...

Part of his body was already dust, he couldn't see his legs, but he struggled, senselessly uselessly, as if one more breath could make any difference-

Solace...

Solace...

I'm sorry...

----

The reaper would have no memory of dropping the bowl, his soul in his throat as he took in what was happening, never mind that he couldn't see it.

He knew, the instant the first pellet hit- How could he not? Cade was already dying, with that first shot. He knew it like his little mate's dust and marrow already covered his hands. There was no question, there was no doubt, no instant of not knowing.

No instant of decision, as that terrible pain seized at his soul, and he ignored it, no instant of doubt, or question, or regret, as he reclaimed what was his, casting aside the life he'd grown to love so much without the faintest trace of hesitation. It hurt, it hurt like anything, it hurt more than any pain he'd ever felt as his soul fought the binding, and won, his magic tearing free. At least partly. Enough. ...Too much.

He knew, in that instant, what he'd never known before. He knew what it felt like to die.

A rending of bones, an eruption of dust, was accompanied by a screaming burst of death's utter blackness, coupled with a soul burning light, as a cobalt gaze that seethed with both raw power, and even rawer fury loomed greater and even greater now before him...

Darker than any darkness ever could be, he'd erupted from nothing, gaze burning into the soul of the human and monster watching his mate die. They looked up,they screamed...

The darkness swallowed them, before the holy blade could even slice them through. Death had killed, mortal blood and dust spilled to his blade for the very first time, and the EXP settled into his soul.

...Whatever death held for those two, it would be deeper and darker than any soul had known before, or may ever know again.

---

Cade could barely focus, his eyelights a haze that only just clung to existence. But for an instant, just an instant, he'd been certain his mate was there, right there, and he forced himself onto trembling hands, in a desperate bid to see for himself that it wasn't true, Solace hadn't come after him, he wouldn't die here too...

Confusion settled over his soul as he saw the looming specter of death himself turn and look at him. The true reaper... Then he was fallen to his knees, reaching out his hands, golden tears flowing freely down both cheeks...

"My little mate..."

Cade could only stare, seeing the reaper finally come for him, the one he'd feared for so long, the one who'd taken away so many in his existence...

His reaper...

His death...

His Solace...

And with his last breath, he reaches out to him, his hand falling short of his goal as all of him, all of him, falls as soft white powder to the broken ground...

All of him but the precious bit of blue, continuing forward into trembling hands. One cupped around him so, so gently, the other laying over the first, in one more attempt to keep him, just a little longer, his wings sweeping gently around...

This. This was what it was supposed to be like. Cade knew that now. He wanted that now.The world ends in his lover's arms. Exhausted beyond his limits, broken and drained, no strength left. Smiling, somewhere inside, as raven black feathers surround him again, as they should, as he always wants them to. Forever, and ever, and ever...

I love you, the thought echoes, the tenderness there so unlike the bitty he sees himself as, my Solace. I love you so, so much...

He may never have said it often enough, but his soul was lain bare with the words. He loved Solace, with everything he had left...

...He would give the Reaper, all of him.

----

#tw death #major character death #violence #injury #cruelty #angst #major angst

[dancingwiththeplanets]

Relief

Paz Vizsla x fem!reader 

     masterlist

Summary: “I know that we’re strangers but something really awful has happened to me and I need you.”

A/N: highly recommend listening to “everything i wanted” by billie eilish before reading because that is just the vibe.

Warnings: angst, ruminating, lots of dialogue, mourning the death of a parent, deals with depression and anxiety, soft!paz, a big brute with an even bigger heart

Word Count: 11k (oops)

---------------------

“Death changes people, it brings some people together, pushes other people apart...” You remember your buir’s words as if they were spoken to you just yesterday. They were the words he said on the day of your mothers funeral. “...but you and I, we do not let such things hurt us. We are stronger together, my ad’ika, we can only get through this together. Yes?”

“Okay, buir.” You said. Your wide, 5 year old eyes not fully comprehending the situation.

He nodded, pained, and whispered, “That’s a good girl,” before leaving a gentle kiss on your forehead and departing to the ceremony, your small form in tow.

He was right, death did change people. You remember seeing him in pure agony, as much as he tried to hide it from you. Your aunts and uncles would always be over, consoling him, distracting you, oftentimes just having you stay with them so your father could grieve away from your eyes.

But he never let it hurt your relationship. No, he was the best buir anyone could dream of. Your buir.

He was a proud man, respected and admired by all the warriors in the covert. Fierce, honorable, diligent and selfless. He would and did do anything for anyone. And the tribe respected him immensely. They even elected for him to be the Alor on more than one occasion, and he practically was. But he refused the title again and again, preferring to do all the work without carrying any official status. Even so, he certainly inherited the same amount of respect that the actual Alor had.

“All of the privilege and none of the responsibility.” He would tease, winking at you as the two of you would sneak out of the kitchens or any other ‘off-limits’ part of the covert, everyone turning a blind eye to your buir and ad’ika antics. Mainly just because they respected him too much to chastise you.

Truly though, he was a very respectable man. He trained the little ones, led hunts and security protocols for the covert, found lost Mandalorians and brought them home to the tribe. He dedicated his life to building the strongest and most operational covert that Mandalorians had seen in years. And he did it all for you. All so that you would have a safe place to grow up, so that you would lose as few brothers and sisters, and as few aunts and uncles as possible. So that you wouldn’t lose anyone just as suddenly as you’d lost your mother.

But he never prepared you for the day you would lose him.

The two of you were unimaginably close, so close that now you regretted ever developing a relationship that strong with him even if he was your father, because look at what it got you.

How were you supposed to go on? What was your life without your buir? What was this covert without your buir?

You look around the room, dozens and dozens of armored warriors here to pay their respects to your father, his body already having been buried.  The tears leak out of your eyes without reserve as you hold tightly to your friend's hand, scanning the room for the comfort of your boyfriend. “He’ll be here soon” She whispers, though you sense doubt in her voice, “I’m sure of it.”

------------------------

You’re not sure what time it is, only that you’ve spent yet another restless night collecting tears in your pillow. Your booted feet pad down the deserted hallway of the covert. It’s aboveground, hidden beneath the treelines of a dense forest on a nearly desolate planet. It’s beautiful, unlike most every other secret covert that exists, though very few do. It has bulletproof glass paneling all around to allow for light to peek in through the trees. It’s warm and inviting instead of cold and gloomy.

“We need a home. Not a prison.” Buir had said.

You wince, face contorting in pain at the memory of him sharing the design with you. He had a dream. He wanted to live the way he used to, on Mandalore. Embracing nature and training warriors in the traditional way. He wanted your small tribe to grow into the hundreds. And that it did, well, to just over a hundred at least.

The most recent tribe came in from Nevarro, about seven months ago. He’d managed to track them down and get into contact with their Alor. Though some members of their tribe were reluctant to merge- they always are- they soon decided to join forces with your own, strengthening your numbers. Plus, they got to move to a much more beautiful, safe, and spacious planet.  

Regrettably, you hadn’t gotten to know many members of the new tribe still. They were...different. Still pleasant from the interactions you’d had with them at least, good sense of humor and all, but they were devoted to the old ways of Mandalore, conservative, reserved, passionate. Most unusually they didn’t arrive with any women in their tribe, aside from their Alor. For some reason odd, universal reason, Mandalorian women were hard to come by. It was a troubling issue that distressed many people in the tribe, in any tribe. It felt like a curse on your people. But this tribe literally had only one. They obviously cherished and admired her immensely, they made her their Alor.

Also, their creed didn’t allow for them to remove their helmets, a drastic difference from the one you had sworn that didn’t even require you wear your armor all the time, though you and most everyone almost always did. You were still Mandalorian; Training, honor, armor...they were still as big a part of you as your soul was to your body. But everyone around here knew your face, and vice versa, even if you did spend most of your life behind the shield.

This week however, you couldn't bring yourself to put it on once. Hell, you didn’t even bother with your flight suit. You just stayed locked up in your tiny room all day and night, only leaving when you were forced out by your friends. “It’s for your own good,” they would say. You suppose they were right, but no matter how good of friends they were to you right now, their company seemed to make it all worse.

A part of you wanted Collin, your boyfriend of two years, but he seemed to disappear from sight every time you caught his eye, an action that made your friend, Brie, chase after him in a rage the last time. He had been so blatantly obvious. You were in tears, yet again, mourning your father, yet again, when you caught the flash of his grey armor slip past your crying form in the common room. The hurt you had felt was unimaginable. The betrayal. You know that your relationship was strained as of late, but this, the death of your father, how could he not be around for you? Even if just as a friend?

So here you were. Another sleepless night, another late hour gone by without the noisy comfort of the of the tribe at work. Your head was pounding from the tears, the dehydration and the pain. The kriffing pain.

This time you couldn’t do it. You couldn't stay trapped within the dark walls of your room any longer, quickly pulling on something decent to wear in the late night or early hours of the morning- you didn’t know what time it was- before mindlessly wandering the covert.

Empty. It must be smack in the middle of the night. Well, at least you could sulk freely, allow the tears to escape without worrying about what a blubbering mess you must look like. A part of you was thankful, this was...kind of nice? There was nobody hovering around you. No visors following your every move in pity or concern, waiting to catch you when you break. You did pass one or two guards patrolling the halls, but you avoided them as best you could, hoping to avoid being questioned.

You finally take a moment to sit, hiding yourself beside some phony shrub in the corner. You’ve wandered to the dining hall. You look around, hoping to distract yourself with the silent chatter of the five or so warriors lounging around, probably on break from late night duties. Your eyes finally resting on a group of three of your vods sitting around, talking. They’re from the new tribe, well, most recently new.

You don’t know any of them particularly well, least of all the heavy infantry warrier whose figure commands your attention. He spends most of his time with the higher ups or teaching the foundlings, and you fall somewhere there in the middle. But he’s broad and robust and by maker if he doesn't captivate your attention.

You listen to the quiet echoes bouncing around the spacious dining hall. There’s hardly anybody here, it must be so early. You groan, to you it just feels unbearably late.

You don’t know how long you sit here, hidden behind the leaves of the plant, hazy eyes focused on the blue warrior. You just sit, staring, he’s...peaceful to observe. His arms are crossed over his chest, leaned back comfortably against his chair.  He huffs at something one of his brothers says, you can barely hear it, but you see the shake of his shoulders before he adjusts his posture and a small smile pulls at your own lips for some reason.

You shake your head. Is this wrong? You think, averting your eyes away from Paz’s form. You feel guilty for some reason, you mind reminding you of Collin. The guilt impacts you painfully for a moment, adding to the feelings of loss and exhaustion before you shake the thoughts away.

No. You think, eyes squeezing shut at the new wave of emotion hurting your already distraught mind. I’m just people watching. Not admiring. This is allowed. This actually feels...kind of nice, it’s allowed.

You permit your gaze to return to Paz and his friends, watching them nod at another couple of Mandos who pass by.

There was something so...comforting about Paz. You don't even know how you can think that? You don’t know him.

You watch his attention shift to his boots which are sprawled out in front of him, heels resting on the hard floor. He kicks his feet out a little bit, watching them wiggle from their movements. His action again tugging the teeniest of smiles to your lips.

You feel a small and brief glimmer of warmth in your chest, though quickly replaced by a pain that pinches from your gut to the back of your throat. Tears gloss over your vision before you’re able to fight them away with slow, deep breaths. It feels as though your body is chastising you for daring to feel a degree of happiness so suddenly.

No. You cower away from the invisible being hurting you, eyes squinting shut again.

You yearn for the slight relief and warmth to return. You need it. It just...feels so damn hard to breathe like this.

The anxiety, the fear, the distress. It just won’t leave you alone.

You don’t even realize what you’re doing until you’re already out in the open. You’d abruptly stood from your hiding spot and started walking toward the source of relief, before nearly choking on air realizing what you were doing.

Holy shit, you gasp, It’s too late to stop walking. You’re already out in the open, and you’ve made it well into their field of vision. If you stop, they’ll notice you.

Kriff, kriff, kriff, kriff, kriff.

The anxiety is burning in your chest again. Your steps falter before you stop, you’re not even sure what you’re doing anymore.

What you do know is that now you’ve caught the attention of the Mando sitting next to Paz, whose visor now watches your frozen form in the middle of the hall. Your heart beating loudly in your chest as you stand there motionless, eyes wide and breathing faltering at having been detected.

You must look absolutely deranged.

But of course, it had to get worse. Noticing the stillness of their friend, the other two shift their attention to see what’s silenced him.

Three visors. There are now three visors on you. Staring down your shaky, frozen form.

You can’t walk this off, you can’t play it cool. They’re already looking at you, you’ve stood still here now watching them for now who knows how long.

What do you do?

Kriff.

You recoil slightly, crossing your now shaking hands in front of you, hoping they wouldn’t notice your trembling palms.

What the hell is wrong with you? Relax. You’re a Mandalorian, just think.

What is the least horrible way out of this?

Carry it out. Whatever it was that you were doing, whatever mission your subconscious had led you on, just execute it.

You breathe in a shuddery breath, placing one foot out in their direction and hesitating before allowing the other to follow its movements.

Geez, walk much?

It’s so quiet in the empty hall, only 5 or 6 other Mandos out on the other end, so each tap of your feet is as audible as that of a bantha on crackling ice as you make your way to them.

“Okay, vod’ika?” One of them asks kindly. You recognize the maroon helmet from up close. Ramsey?

Ramsey, you think.

You nod slightly, suddenly remembering how out of it you must look. Eyes puffy and red, lips swollen, hair in disarray. You feel even more anxious to desert the mission than before, resigning to just get it over with and face the object of your desire.

“Paz,” you say, internally groaning at how pathetic and fatigued your voice sounds. “May I please speak with you for a moment?”

Kriff, what’s the plan now, di’kut?

The question directed at him takes him aback, but his posture instantly straightens. “Of course,” He says, rising from his seat.

You blink back a little as he stands to his full height. Have you ever been this close to him? Surely not, you would remember the feeling of being towered over like this. Paz hesitates, waiting for your instruction. Osik, were you just brazenly sizing him up right there? Great, and now he must think you’re intimidated by him.

Abort, abort, abort.

He tilts his helmet at you, snapping you out of your thoughts. You move for him to follow, which he does. You try to move as far away from the others as possible without being terribly obvious in hopes that they won’t overhear your conversation.

“Is.. everything alright?” He asks once you’ve guided him a safe distance away.

“Yes.” You say instantly, eyes locked on your hands. “I-I mean, n-no.”

This is weird.

What have you done?

You force your gaze up to meet his, noticing his visor tilt in concern. He no doubt already knows what’s troubling you. Everybody in the covert knows about your father’s passing, there was a ceremony for kriffs sake. Paz was probably there.  

Your lip trembles suddenly, embarrassed, and instantly you’re cursing yourself for having put yourself through this. With everything in you, you squeeze your eyes shut and look down, the only way you know you’ll be able to ward off the tears, though you know your conduct is a dead giveaway as to what you’re trying to do.

He says your name, and there it is again, relief. Fleeting and short-lived, but making that one small breath easier to inhale than the rest.

“I’m so sorry,” You whisper in frustration. Opening your eyes to see his feet having moved closer to you than they were before.

Always concerned with the wellbeing of his tribe. You remember. That’s what this big brute is known for anyway, right? You can trust him.

“No,” He says, his tone soft spoken, a sharp contrast to his intimidating form. “Take your time.”

You take a deep breath, nodding your head at the floor before forcing your eyes up once again.

Always maintain eye contact. It’s a show of respect. And you always show your superiors that you respect them. Your dad's words remind you to keep your head level to Paz’s. Or...at least as level as it can be to Paz’s.

The reminder that you are indeed speaking to an alor’ad stirs up new nerves in your belly, you were falling apart in front of a captain. Worse, a Vizsla, Mandalorian royalty.

“Um,” you eventually sputter out, collecting your thoughts. “Well I...I kind of have a weird request.” Your murmur.

Are you going to faint? It feels like you’re going to faint.

“Okay,” He nods to indicate you have his full attention, “What is it?”

“Um,” Your voice wavers, suddenly feeling very shaky and lightheaded again, and incredibly annoyed that you didn’t just opt to put on your helmet for the sake of hiding your face. Only...it makes it really hard to breathe when you already feel like you can’t get enough air. And pulling it off every five minutes to clean your face of newly gathered tears was difficult.

He says your name again, this time slowly raising a hand to your shoulder. You exhale in relief when you’re met by his touch. “Hey,” He says, “It’s okay, what do you need?”

You take another calming breath, soothed by the weight of his hand that hasn’t left your shoulder. “Well first, are-are you busy today?”

What a stupid question, you think. He ranks high up in the chain of command, of course he’s busy. Not to mention, it’s probably, what, 5 a.m. right now? And he’s sitting in the dining hall. He certainly didn’t wake up this early because he didn’t have something to do.

“Not at all.” He assures with a shake of his helmet.

Sure.

You dismiss the obvious lie, staring his blue visor straight on. You can see your pathetic, teary-eyed reflection staring back at you in the space where his eyes would be.

He wants you to tell him what’s wrong, you remind yourself, just do it.

Using what remaining courage you have, you open your mouth to speak. “I...I know you don’t know me that well. I don’t really...know you either. I-I don't even know why I’m here asking you this right now. But, um,  my-” you choke on your words, confidence diminishing “-my dad is dead, and I’m hurting and afraid and feeling completely unlike myself. I don’t know when the last time I slept was or if I’ve eaten anything in the last couple of days. I just know that-that something really awful has happened to me and I know y-you and I we-we’re practically strangers but right now I just n-need someone and I r-really want that person to be you-”

You hadn’t even realized the flood of tears gushing down your cheeks or the defeated sobs suddenly shaking your body until you were pulled into a pair of arms, his arms.

Strong, protective, shielding arms.

You hear the gentle sounds of Paz shooshing you, his hand pressed to the back of your head and cradling you in a comforting manner.

“I’ve got you, cyar’ika.” He hums, voice light and sweet like honey.

You almost don't mind the heavy sobs racking your body for a moment.

Sweetheart. He called you sweetheart.

You feel his body stir above you, either looking around or else...motioning something to someone. “Hey,” He whispers, keeping your head tucked into his arm, “Come over here with me.”

He guides you away from the dining hall where no doubt, despite your best efforts, whoever was in there had both seen and heard you throw your fit. At the very least catching your sobs at the end.

Ushering you around the corner to an empty hallway, he helps you down on a bench, sitting next to you. Your sobs slowly subsiding to small sniffles under the gloved hand moving soothing circles up and down your back.

He doesn’t say anything for a while, allowing you time to gather yourself. Once the wobbliness in your breathing evens out to a calmer, drawn out, pace, he asks again, “What can I do, vod’ika? I’ll help you, just tell me what you need?”

You nod your head, electing not to rub the abused skin around your eyes that was being continuously irritated by tears. “Could you maybe, stay with me today?” You ask timidly.

“Yes,” He responds instantly, “Yes, of course. Wh-what would you like to do? How can we...divert your attention?” He attempts to sidetrack the word distract, acknowledging that his word choice probably doesn’t make much a difference. “Is there anything on your agenda today?”

“N-no.” You sniff. “All my responsibilities this week were redistributed to other people. I have nothing to do.”

He hums, considering your words.

“But um,” you offer, “I suppose it would be good to take a shower.” You chuckle lifelessly, tugging at the unwashed ends of your hair.

You see his form tense beside you, and your eyes widen in horror in realising your error.

“O-oh maker, no. I was kidding, cause I’m a mess and all that’s - kriff - that’s not at all what I was insinuating-” You panic, fumbling for words.

He chuckles lowly beside you, raising a hand up to ease your stammering, “No, it’s okay. I understand. Allow me to...escort you then?”

“To the-” You swallow, cheeks no doubt pinkened by the encounter, “You really don’t have to I wasn’t seri-”

“Self-care is important.” He says, rising to his feet. “It’s the start of a new day, and it’s early enough that you’ll likely have the entire washroom to yourself. C’mon,” He extends an arm out to you. You contemplate taking it for a moment, briefly, again, considering Collin.

Who isn’t here.

“Really?” You ask, stunned both by his willingness to wait outside the washroom while you shower and his consideration of your privacy.

He lifts his elbow again in response. You rise from your seated position, hand hesitantly grabbing a hold of his arm as he lowers it back towards his side, making the gesture less obvious to prying eyes.

You hold onto the crease of his elbow, your other hand mindlessly joining your other so that you practically hang onto him. He tugs you forward, and you begin walking at a comfortable pace.

“Thank you,” You say, sounding stunned again. “I...I can’t imagine that when you woke up this morning you thought you’d be babysitting a stranger.” You mumble, embarrassed.

He huffs, “You are not a stranger,” then he says your name, again. Honey, pure honey.

“You are a member of my tribe,” He continues, “Even though we do not know each other well, I still care about you.”

You blink back your surprise at his words. This man truly is honorable. Caring and considerate and selfless. A big brute with an even bigger heart. You can’t stop yourself from looking up at him, nearly gaping at his words. “You care about me?” You ask.

He hums, looking at your wide eyes staring up at him. 

“You don’t even know me.” You mutter as he looks away. You can’t possibly care about someone who you don’t know. 

“I’m observant.”

You hesitate, feeling another foreign feeling flutter in your belly. 

“Observant?” You challenge.

His visor looks back down at you, your puffy eyes swimming with curiosity. You want him to prove it. 

He takes a tentative breath, hoping you’ll allude his suspiciously observant behaviors of you with the fact that he was trained to be hyper aware of his surroundings. He speaks slowly, “Your favorite food is vegetable pie, probably because it’s a main course, but also sweet. You like to busy yourself with your hands, often tinkering with whatever small, broken objects you manage to find around the covert. Every morning, you head to the training room early to run your own drills and stretch before everyone else arrives. You have a boyfriend, Collin I believe, who you like to align your chores with so you can do them together, except for cleaning the kitchens, which you always try to switch off with somebody else.”

Your eyes stare unblinkingly at his profile. “How-how do you know that?”

“Because kitchen duty is always crossed out under your name on the chores chart, and a different chore is always handwritten underneath.” He says, unable to contain an amused laugh. He opts to only remark on the last of his observations.

You slow to a stop, feeling suddenly incredibly ashamed. “Wow,” You say in admiration. “I-”

You can’t think of anything to say in response, you don’t know anything about him. And here he was telling you that not only does he care for you simply as a member of his tribe, but he actually knows things about you.

You’re overwhelmed by his thoughtfulness, “Paz- I’m...I’m ashamed to say that I don’t even know what your favorite color is.”

He barks out a laugh, surprising you. “Are you concerned with what my favorite color is, cyar’ika?”

“Yes.” You answer, perhaps a silly amount of gravity. “Upon hearing all the things you know about me that most others don't, I mean I’m...I’m touched Paz.”

His tilts his head, visor lingering on your face a moment, and you’re sure that while it was a somewhat silly conversation, he can see the annoying little pools of water that gathered in your eyes again.

He’s silent for a moment. “My favorite color is brown,” He says.

“Brown.” You reflect.

He nods, “It’s warm, soothing.”

“Okay,” You say, hand reaching for his elbow again. “Brown. I’ll remember that.” You squeeze his sleeve in promise.

“I’m sure you will,” He smiles. Or at least you think he does. It sure sounds like he does.

You continue walking on in silence, only passing one other vod in the spacious hall. You’re fairly certain that the Mando approaching does a double take as he sees you clinging to the heavy infantry warrior, but Paz just gives him a nod as you pass in silence. It’s still terribly early. Or late, to you at least. For it to be early you would have had to have slept in the first place.

Your pace is slow, and you wonder if Paz notices the utter exhaustion plaguing your body.

Oh. He must, you think upon catching a reflection of yourself.

Kriff, you look about as good as you feel.

He stops outside your room so you could run in and bag some clothes, before you venture down to the washrooms. You walk comfortably in silence, despite having enjoyed some distracting conversation with him, it feels like the most you’ve spoken all week, and it was tiring, though not unpleasant.

“Could I, ask you something?” He hesitates, clearing his throat. Noting that you keep your eyes glued to the space in front of your feet. “Where is your...uh, Collin?”

He should be doing this. Paz reflects. Taking care of you.

You raise your eyebrows at the floor. “Sleeping I’m sure.”

“Well yes,” He says, “But why hasn’t he been, you know...around?”

His brows furrow at his own words. Well done Paz, you di’kut. First the poor girl’s dad dies, then you offend her by asking why her boyfriend hasn’t been taking care of her. Let alone the fact that you just made it known you’ve noticed his absence. That did not come out at all how he wanted it to.

He’s surprised by a little laugh emitting from your lips. Small and half-hearted and barely audible, but by maker if even then it isn’t one of the prettiest sounds he ever heard.

“Cause..” you sigh, searching for the answer. “-cause he’s an asshole.” You mutter, blunt as the truth leaves your lips.

Oh.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn't have overstepped-”

“It’s okay,” you mumble, “what’s one more thing in my life..”

Paz is silent for a moment. You’re surprised your eyes haven't welled with tears again. Lately it seems like they prefer looking through a blurry lens rather than a clear one. But maybe a part of you expected this with Collin. Your relationship isn’t what it used to be. For the last six months it seems as though his interest in you has slowly diminished. It takes having something fun and interesting for him to seem excited about spending time with you. Cause maker forbid anytime you try to just sit and hang out with him you enjoy yourselves, he’s always got some excuse on hand to get him out of it.

“No,” Paz insists, interrupting your ruminations. “I’m sorry. Perhaps he thought space is what you wanted?”

I think space is what he wanted.

You don’t answer, arriving to the washrooms. Being the only two people in at this hour, the echo of his heavy armor clinks around the wide space. You pass door after door of the enormous shower rooms. Kriff, this is weird. Why was the first thing you thought of when he asked you what you would normally do to shower? I mean sure that was true, but certainly you could have forgone this item on your agenda for the sake of being...proper?

You glance at your passing figure in a mirror and flinch.

Although.

Maybe you...need a shower.

You must have showered within the last few days, right?

“Okay,” Paz says, breaking the silence. “I’ll wait out here.” He says, standing in the communal space with sinks and benches. “You just, take your time vod’ika. Let the water...freshen you up or, soothe you or..some shit.”

Your frown abruptly turns into a wide smile as you giggle.

Victory. He thinks.

His breath hitches behind his own helmet. Kriff, you have a lovely smile. How had he never noticed your smile before?

“Thank you, Paz.” You say, retreating to a random facility and briskly closing the door.

You lean against the door once it’s shut, the ghost of a smile still on your cheeks.

He’s really just going to stand out there. Just so that you know he’s there, that you’re not alone.

“Wow.” You whisper, soaking in the warm feeling in your stomach. It feels like forever since you’ve felt that, giddiness.

You move to turn on the water, slowly stripping yourself of your clothes. You were still wearing your nightshirt from your fruitless sleep endeavors. It was nothing indecent, just a plain, black, elbow-length shirt. Luckily, you had had enough sense in you to pull on a sports bra before you abandoned any notions of sleep, lazily just slipping on some green cargo pants over your leggings before wandering aimlessly through the covert.

You look comfortable but...certainly not like a fierce Mandalorian.

You try your hardest to wash the gloom off your face, focusing your attention on the mission at hand in hopes of keeping distracted. Now you remember why you’d been putting off showering. For some reason, whenever you’re buried under the protective warmth of the loud, secluded shower, at least since it happened, you started to-

The first sniffle comes before you sense its approach, and within seconds your body is shaking in silent sobs.

“Shit.” You whisper.

Pull it together, it’s okay, just breathe. Paz is out there, you don’t want him to hear you.

Your tears blend together with the water running down your body from the shower, making it impossible to discern what is the result of your own pain and what procured it.

You let out a silent whimper, quiet enough that thankfully, you’re sure Paz couldn’t have heard.

Breathe. It’s okay, you’re okay.

No. I’m not okay.

I’m all alone.

“Stop it.” You scold yourself harshly, your soft breath echoing only in your ears.

You are not alone.

Someone is here for you.

Paz. Paz dropped everything to take care of you.

He’s right outside that door, waiting for you.

You take another moment to compose yourself, allowing the last few suds to wash down your form before turning the water off. You quickly dry yourself off and pull on your change of clothes, now wearing a blue sweater and leggings. You didn’t even bother bringing a flight suit. What’s one more day of not suiting up. But at least you’ve still got your boots.

You walk to the mirror, sighing once you get a good look at yourself.

Great.

Swollen, red, angry eyes stare back at you with a red nose to match.

Fuck. You shove all your things back into the sack, giving your hair a final few shakes with the towel before moving towards the door.

It swings open, and you’re met with the sight of Paz leaning against the opposite wall. Arms crossed, one foot propped up against the wall. His visor turns in your direction as you emerge from the chambers. He hmphs, observing your appearance.

“What?” You ask, hesitating to step closer.

“I like the color.”

You look down at your sweater, unknowingly having sported a blue in the exact same shade as his armor. You hide your gaze in your chest, mumbling a half-amused, “Oh.”

“It signifies reliability, did you know that?” He asks.

You still don’t meet his gaze, but smile. Makes sense.

“It is very fitting for you.” He finishes.

You finally look up at him. For you? He believes you to be reliable? “Oh, th-thank you.” You stutter, feeling truly flattered by his compliment.

His visor tilts silently back and forth on your features as you step up at him. He notices your freshly irritated eyes.

“Are you-”

“-it’s nothing.” You interrupt, shaking your head.

“I um,” You shift awkwardly from foot to foot, trying to lighten the mood with an obviously forced smile. “I tend to emerge from showers with angry eyes, at least, as of late.”

Paz’s hand surprises you as it reaches up, gently cupping your elbow, so swiftly you’re not even sure he meant to do it.

“Not angry, mesh’la,” He mutters, “sad.”

Your mouth gapes open slightly, not having expected such a remark from him. He seems slightly distressed by his own slip of the tongue as well, immediately tensing.

His mind is reeling, guilt flooding over him like a tidal wave in a storm. He feels as though he crossed a line. He’s supposed to be caring for you, distracting you, not calling you beautiful when you already belong to someone else.

“I’m-”

“What the hell is going on here?”

Both your gazes snap up in the direction of the source.

Standing under an archway, halfway between the entrance of the washrooms and you, is Collin.

Your breath hitches, “Collin.” You breathe out.

Paz’s hand jerks instantly from your elbow, hanging tensely by his side.

Collin says your name questioningly, taking another step towards you. He’s wearing his armor, but his helmet hangs down by his side. Blonde eyebrows furrowed suspiciously at the two of you.

“I said,” he repeats, “what is going on in here?”

“Nothing.” You say instantly, taking a step away from Paz.

Well that was a suspiciously guilty maneuver.

Collin eyes Paz for a moment, whose form hasn’t moved even an inch since Collin interrupted you both. He closes the distance between the two of you, but still stays a generous space away.

“What are you doing down here at this hour?” He questions, eyebrows furrowed tightly together.

“I..I couldn’t sleep.” You say.

“Again?”

Again? Your father died not one week ago, does he really expect you to be sleeping soundly?

“Yes it’s- been difficult to find the right headspace for rest.” You answer. “I thought perhaps a warm shower would help alleviate the uneasiness.”

His eyes flick to Paz before quickly landing back on your own, suddenly morphing his face into one of concern. His posture loosens slightly and he reaches towards you, showing you more affection than he has in months. “Well, are you okay? You don’t look very good.” Collin says.

Your frown deepens, suddenly you feel very offended. 

“Yeah? Well I look the way I feel, wise guy.” You snap, startling both of you by your outburst. His hand retreats from your space, moving to clench and unclench by his side.

“I’m sorry,” He scoffs after taking a tense breath, “Have I done something wrong?”

“Collin-” Paz’s voice breaks his role as an audience member to your discussion, polite but still warning in his tone.

“-No, I am not speaking to you.” Collin spits out, “I’m speaking to my girlfriend. My girlfriend who you were getting awfully close to in the privacy of this empty washroom.”

Your heart is thumping in your chest. He’s right, this certainly was not a good look. It was highly irregular for you to be up so early. And here you were alone at an ungodly hour with a man who wasn’t your partner. Kriff, how could you be so stupid? You should have known that Collin would stumble in here at this time, he does early morning flight training every week, today must be his lesson. It must have slipped your mind, or maybe you’d forgotten his schedule. Had he even shown you his schedule?

No. No, he hadn’t. When was the last time you even saw him? Surely a few times a day but had you even shared a moment of substance together since the funeral? You’ve gone to him for comfort yet you can’t remember how any of those interactions went. He dismissed you, or offered you a peck on the forehead before changing the subject.

Come to think of it, how dare he come in here angry with you for anything. If anything, you should be the one who’s angry. Paz was right, where has he been?

“You’re right.” Paz says, shocking you and Collin both, your gaze quickly snapping in his direction. “I shouldn't have reached for her. But I was only trying to comfort her, I swear to you that is all. Regardless, you need to relax.” He speaks calmly, the warning back in his tone.  

Collin huffs, taking a menacing step in Paz’s direction. He always was arrogant. 

Your eyes widen, “Collin-”

He rasps out his next words in with a snarl, cutting off your attempt to de-escalate the situation. “Listen here, vod-” He spits, but not before being cut off by a startling quick grab to the front of his chest plate, yanking him forward.

Collin’s heels barely graze the floor as he looks directly up at Paz’s visor, who seems to have grown another six inches, the two quite literally helm to helm.

“You do not address me as your vod in such a manner of disrespect.” Paz growls, his voice sending a harsh shiver down your spine, slightly in alarm, slightly in...something else.

Your breath hitches, frozen as you watch the scene unfold. If you’re too frightened to move, you can’t imagine how Collin feels. Although...maybe a small part of you wishes you did.

“Jare’la,” Paz scoffs, shaking his head. “I am your alor’ad. And I do not tolerate a lack of respect. If you are confused about your place, then I will gladly show you where it is. Tayli’bac, vod?” He spits the words out menacingly, challenging Collin to oppose his authority.

“Elek! Elek, alor’ad!” Collin stammers, “N’eparavu takisit!”

Paz huffs, visor staring Collin down a moment longer before releasing him, shoving him back in the process.

He stumbles to catch himself, grabbing onto the side of the sink for leverage. You’ve never seen him look so...cowardly.

He looks to you, taking a moment to gather himself. Your eyes are still wide, mouth agape as you just stare at him in disbelief. He wets his lips with his tongue, seeming to swallow down another remark, eyes darting to Paz before returning to you. “So, that’s the way it is, huh?”

You’re speechless, “I- I don’t..”

You contemplate the severity of the moment, what’s at stake. Your silence is answer enough, you decide, before opting to look down, relinquishing your chance to speak. With it goes your willingness to explain, to try and salvage whatever pathetic excuse of a relationship you thought you had had with him. “I’m sorry, Collin.” You say, unsure of the words as they leave your mouth.

You hear only the sound of heavy breathing. Two sources of heavy breathing, and neither of them are coming from you. Then, a sound akin to that of a growl. You look up to face him again, only to see his focus on the man beside you. Paz looks back at him, unmoving, domineering, daring him to overstep.

Was Collin challenging you, or Paz?

Was Paz simply defending you or...challenging Collin? And for what?

You feel another spike in anxiety, suddenly feeling as though you were observing a mating duel, a challenge over possession of a lioness, a female...not...terribly uncommon in Mandalorian culture, though nonetheless offensive.

“That’s enough.” You whisper, though with enough exertion to be heard by both males.

You see Paz’s visor turn to face you out of the corner of your eye, but you don’t move, keeping your gaze averted to Collin.

He stares Paz down for another moment before meeting your eyes, saying your name with a stiff nod, and uttering a “Goodbye,” before briskly leaving the room.

You let out an exhale once he’s rounded the corner, catching your breath. That was it.

You’ve lost him.

You stare at the empty door, at the ghost of the shadow where he once stood, waiting for the tears to fall. You feel heavy, you feel distressed, but perhaps not anymore than you already had. There’s not a swirl of emotion in your gut nor rising in your throat that compels tears to swim in your eyes again.

You hear your name being called once, twice. The third time, you look up, much higher up than you’d expected to, at the imposing figure now standing directly above you.

“Are you alright?” He asks softly.

You hold his gaze, watching your reflection blinking up at him. He doesn’t move, waiting for your response to his question. Your gaze drifts down slightly and to the side, staring at the plain wall behind him, before reconcentrating your focus.

“What um,” Your voice comes out somewhat both hoarse and mellow, quiet as you continue, “What should we do next?”

------------------------

“Are you sure you’re alright?”

Paz was guilt ridden. Surely he could have let the little brat mouth off to him one time to spare you from getting hurt. But no, he just had to go and threaten the kid right in front of you. It was just instinctual. He would have done it without restraint any other time to any other member stepping out of line, but upon reflection, maybe the whole thing was his fault. Collin had walked in on you two nearly close enough to embrace. Of course he was pissed. And then, he degraded him, ordering him into submission right in front of your eyes.  

You didn’t blame him. Not in the slightest. I mean, what did Collin expect? He straight up challenged the alor’ad. It was foolish and insulting, and quite honestly Paz wouldn’t have been out of line to clock him then and there. But you suppose he was holding himself back for the sake of your wellbeing, not wanting you to watch your boyfriend - ex-boyfriend - get pounded on while you were already in such a state.

“Yes.” You say, emitting a heavy exhale. You really were.  

The halls have started filling with armored warriors, the covert finally beginning to come to life with a sunrise shining through the trees and early risers popping up.

“Vizsla!” Someone shouts, the two of you turn to see Stephan jogging towards you.

“Hey,” He says, walking once he reached a comfortable earshot, “We missed you on that perimeter run. Was surprised you didn’t show up, is everything-?”

His voice trails off, visor finally ticking in your direction. He seems a little taken aback by your presence, or rather that you were within Paz’s company.

“Vod’ika,” He finally says. “What are you doing with- uh, I mean, how are you?”

“What am I doing with Paz?” You smile, “You don’t think I could handle a perimeter run, Steph?”

His helmet ticks back in surprise at your banter, “N-no, vod’ika.” He says, looking at Paz and huffing in amusement. “We’ll gladly have you join us on the next one.”

“Sure.” Paz nods.

“So…” Stephan continues with uncertainty, “How-how are you?”

Couldn’t make it thirty seconds in without having that question thrown out at you.

You hesitate, the frown slowly returning to your face. Should you answer truthfully? Lie? How are you? 

“I’m…”

You seem stuck on the word. Did you choose a word? What word are you even looking for?

You’re still talking. You remind yourself.

Shit, now you look like you’ve shut down.

You feel a hand rest on your back, blinking forward from your gaze that had somehow been drawn down towards Stephans boots.

“We were just heading to the kitchens.” Paz responds, you tilt your face in his direction without raising your eyes, keeping them glued to the space in front of you, ashamed.

“Okay, yeah.” Stephen says hastily, “Well, uh, Jay made some really good morning muffins, vod’ika, and they’re still warm I bet.”

You nod your head in acknowledgement, offering a pitiful smile, “I’m sure.”

Poor Stephan, it’s not his fault you were like this. He’s just checking in on you, and here you are making him feel bad for asking about your wellbeing. It’s just a question.

Kriff, why are you so weak?

You conceal yourself back in your thoughts, sure that you look absent with glazed over eyes. But you can't bring yourself to care. That’s the weird thing about feeling so desolate, you just don’t have the energy to hide it sometimes.

You hear the foggy exchange of words between the two warriors, simply choosing to retract yourself from the conversation and instead focus your attention on the gloved hand rubbing soothing circles on your back.

Stephan’s modulator rises to a more upbeat tone before stepping forward and offering Paz a light slap on the arm as he passes, evidently dismissing the two of you to carry on with your business.

Paz’s form shifts to watch Stephan leave before turning to you. “Okay?” He asks.

“Okay.” You nod.

He hums, sounding unconvinced as he lightly nudges you forward again, letting his hand drop from its place on your jumper.

No... come back.

You walk side by side in silence, trying to get him to walk a step ahead of you so you can follow. But anytime your step falters purposefully to give him the lead he slows his own, silently insisting you walk side by side. Instead, he steers your direction with fleeting contacts. A hand pulling your arm, his gloved fingers tapping your shoulder. You’re happy to let him guide you, appreciating the delicate touches in direction.

Feeling a sliver of life breathed into you at each one.

The touches stop far sooner than you need them to upon arrival to your destination. You notice you’re heading towards the mess hall again, feeling discomfort at the idea of seeing more of your vods, or worse, having a repeat of your public meltdown you’d had just a few short hours ago.

You’re more alert now, having picked up on the light buzzing from the dining hall. There’s probably quite a few people out there now. And you’re not sure you’re ready to face another wave of concerned and attentive brothers and sisters.

“Paz-” You say, ready to object, but not before you’re steered off to the side, scarcely missing exposure to the hall full of bustling Mandalorians.

Instead, Paz opens a door and gestures for you to walk through, which you do.

Oh. The kitchen.

You’ve been in here many times, but not often during the day. Jay keeps a tight lockdown on the kitchen, only allowing his apprentice to be in here during the working hours of the covert. He’s got a considerable number of Mandalorians to feed, yet he prefers to tackle the challenge alone. Usually kicking anyone out who pops in to help, scolding them for messing up his rhythm.

He has no problem allowing people to make their rounds of kitchen duty though, but that only consists of cleaning up the space once it’s shut down for the night. Mopping, washing, organizing...he tends to lock up all the good treats and hide away the key, making the task totally not worthwhile for you.

Of course, being the daughter of the unsanctioned Alor and all, you had special privileges. One of them being you could hang around the kitchen without Jay kicking you out every time. He still did, but he gave you more leeway than the others if you stayed out of his way and only snacked on the scraps he wasn’t saving.

The door swings shut behind you and you round the corner, the clink of your armored warrior just behind you.

Whoa, whoa. You stop yourself. Your?

You catch sight of a red Mandalorian viciously attending to something on the stove. “What are you two doing in here?” Jay shouts over his shoulder, turning back to his frying.

Paz looks around the empty kitchen, “I heard a rumor about morning muffins.” The deep rumble of his voice saying the words prompts a breathy giggle from your lips, catching his attention, before he continues to glance around for the treats.

Jay huffs, motioning with his wooden spoon to the corner, “Over there. Take one and get out.”

“Thanks,” Paz says, his hands lightly resting on your shoulders from behind and nudging you forward. “Nice attitude.” He mumbles for your ears, an amused smile still lingering on your lips.

“Nice signet.” Jay scoffs, evidently having heard, “Or lack thereof.”  

“Nice apron.”

“Okay- get out of my kitchen.” Jay says, looking up from his dicing.

You surprise yourself by letting out a lively laugh. Paz’s hands tighten over your shoulders at the sudden sound, feeling damn near enamored by Jay for having caused it.

He looks to Jay and gives him a grateful nod, who nods slightly in return, so as not to be caught by your gaze, before returning to his work.

You make your way to the tray of muffins in the corner, boldly sitting down on the couch in front of the fire. Exactly where you and your dad would sit and enjoy the freshly baked cookies or cake made by Jay that morning, the small area being off limits to everyone else in the covert.

Paz is certain Jay would have snapped at them to get away from his personal space if it weren’t for you. You’re sat next to him, gazing at the fire that Jay lights every morning to warm the frigid kitchen.

“For you.” Paz says, handing you a small muffin with a napkin wrapped protectively around it.

You smile at him, accepting the gesture, just allowing it to slowly warm up your fingers in your lap. The movements of the fire captivating your attention as the flames dance in the soft lighting.

“Cyar'ika.” He says softly, the word sending a shiver down your spine. “You really ought to eat something.”

You look to your side again, taking in Paz��s appearance on the tiny couch. Its small size having forced you to sit right up against each other. The leg closest to you is propped up and over the other comfortably, his knee resting elevated slightly above your own.

You wonder if you clink your knee against his own if his hand will slip off it and land on yours.

A silly thought, you think, amusing yourself.

His tilting visor alerts you that you’ve been shamelessly gawking at him. Twice in one day.

“I- um,” You stutter, averting your gaze. “I’m not terribly hungry, Paz.”

He hums, “Well it’s a good thing you’re not terribly hungry because all you’ve got there is a teeny muffin.”

“Yes, it would appear so.” You smile, still making no movement to eat it.

Paz breathes in a slow, contemplative sigh. Guilt starts to flood your senses again, he’s done so much for you today, why can’t you just do this one thing for him?

“Tell you what,” he offers, your eyes rising to meet his visor, “You eat that muffin, maybe have a little bit of tea, and I’ll tell you about the time your vod and I went to Jabba’s Palace.”

Your eyes widen, and you boldly swing your hand down to grasp his arm as you straighten. “The Hutt story?” You choke. “You’ll tell me the Hutt story?”

Paz’s modulator rumbles as he chuckles, knowing he’s got you entrapped by a golden exchange.

He nods, “I’ll tell you the untold and widely sought-after story about the time Devin and I went to visit the Hutts-”

“-Deal!” You squeeze his arm, still gripping tightly from earlier.

“Yeah,” Jay utters, his looming figure now standing directly behind you both, “Kriffing deal.”  

“Get out of here.” Paz huffs, shoving Jay back over the arm of the couch. He doesn’t argue, but you see his retreating form adjust the volume settings on his vambrace.

Paz shifts back cheekily with his arms spread around the couch. He gestures to the uneaten muffin on your lap, waiting for you to uphold your end of the deal.

You sigh, unwrapping the baked good. But the thrill of getting to know the story that caused such an uproar in the covert shoo’s away the discomfort, replacing it with a slightly giddy feeling.

You take a bite, looking at him expectantly. He just scoffs, gesturing again to the tiny muffin in your hand. “C’mon, that thing is like the size of a whistle bird, you finish that before you get the story,” He says, with much emphasis on the “before.”

Fair.

You down the muffin faster than you thought you could, much too excited to finally hear the secret tale. You were going to have bragging rights around this place forever. Paz shakes his head at you, lightly laughing, “So that’s all it takes, huh?” He nods to the empty napkin in your hand.

You ignore him, knowing he knows full well the value of this information. Whatever it was that happened when those two visited Jabba’s Palace, Devin had come back damn near afraid of his own shadow. It took months for him to pull himself together. Your vod would literally jump at the sound of an egg cracking open, reaching for his blaster and slipping up on his grasp. It was kriffing hysterical to you and everyone else in the tribe. And you assumed you weren’t really being malicious. Paz had been there too and returned unscathed, and laughed all the same. And even though he teased Devin to no end about it, he swore he’d never tell a soul what happened, so up until this point, nobody knew what it was. But here you were.

Paz turns over his shoulder, “Hey Jay,” He says politely. “How about a cup of tea for your vod’ika?”

“What am I your maid?” Jay retorts.

“You are the cook.”

Jay mutters something under his breath, but you don’t pay him any mind, having heard him fill up a pot of water immediately upon Paz’s request.

You avert your gaze from Paz’s helmet as soon as he turns to face you again. You look to the fire, biting your lip as a smile slowly grows on your face. It crosses your mind that you feel not only okay in this very moment but actually...happy. The fleeting moments of relief you’ve been feeling all morning, small moments of peace jumbled in with all the sadness and the anxiety, were all because of him. This man who you did not even know three hours ago. Who let you cry in his arms, who stood guard outside the washroom while you showered, who defended you, called you sweetheart, made sure you knew he was always there with you. The same man who now sat next to you on the couch you weren’t allowed to sit on in a kitchen you weren’t allowed to be in. Your smile grows wider, and in your peripheral you’re very aware of his visor still staring at you.

“What?” Paz chuckles.

“Nothing.” You giggle, tears gathering in your eyes. But for the first time today, first time all week, forming not in pain but in relief.

“What is it?” He insists, still playful in his tone. His knee nudges you as if to prompt a response.

A tear slips down your cheek and he leans forward instinctively, his hand finding yours in your lap without hesitation. “Mesh’la, what is it?” He asks again, this time void of all silliness, concerned.

You shake your head, your small smile still present, but certainly reflecting more of the emotion you were feeling.

You place your other hand on top of his own that covers yours, trapping his gloved fingers in your two hands, before looking up at him.

“Just, thank you Paz.” You say, admiration and gratitude dripping from your voice.

------------------------

He likes your voice, he decides, it sounds so sweet, like pure honey.

His eyes are lost in yours behind the visor, watching another tear slip down your delicate cheek. He can hear the relief in your voice. The pure relief and admiration. Admiration? Do you feel admiration for him? He sure hopes you do, otherwise you might find it weird that he’s staring at you for so long. Kriff, he should stop staring at you. But look at those eyes. Those wonderfully expressive eyes that aren’t looking angry or sad or pained, but warm. He feels ensnared by your gaze, a light smile trailing your features, a sprinkle of tears sliding down your cheeks. He watches one slip down the shape of your cheek, rounding your nose and lips before forming a teardrop on your chin. He watches it glisten, unable to bear letting it fall. Mindlessly, he raises a gloved finger to catch it.

Your breath hitches at the contact, and his finger hovers under your jaw before sliding up to catch another.  

Your eyes flit back and forth along the dark shade of his visor, searching, wondering what his eyes look like, head tilting unconsciously into his glove.

He takes the gesture as permission, slowly lifting his thumb, his palm, his whole hand up against your cheek.

You both feel suspended, his hand frozen caressing your cheek. Your eyes have dried up now, carrying a glow of wonder in them. His head tilts slowly and unknowingly to the side, almost like he can’t hold up the weight of his helmet a second longer.

The sound of approaching footfalls brings you back to reality, Paz’s hand drops from your cheek and your faces turning towards the source that dared to interrupt your moment.

“Geez, no need to cry about it, I’ve got your tea.” Jay quips, perfectly deescalating the tension of the moment. Making it a point to show you he was minding his own business.

“Um, thank you.” You mutter, still coming back to the present.

“It’s sleepytime tea.” Jay says, “Ground with dandisonyl.”

“Dandisonyl?” You ask, more alert, “That stuff is rare and expensive.”

“And strong.” Paz huffs.

“And expensive.” You insist again, looking down at your tea. “Jay, why would you waste this on me?”

He leans down against his forearms, now looming over your shoulders. His smug nature radiating off his posture alone, “Now, and this is just an observation, but you look kriffing tired. And that there,” He gestures to the cup of earthy smelling tea you’ve placed on the table in front of you, “That’s sleepytime tea. And you, vod’ika, of all people, look like you need some serious, quality, sleepytime.”

His statement ends with a pinch to your cheeks, and it’s your turn to aggressively shove him backward, causing Paz to let out a sweet laugh.

“Paz,” You say, looking to the only superior present, “He wasted good, expensive herbs on me. That stuff can be used medicinally.” You say with reprimand in your voice.

Paz surprises you by shrugging, “He kind of did use it medicinally.”

“Oh, alor’ad.” You chastise, using his official title to remind him of his role here.

He shrugs, using his whole body for the movement, before picking up your cup and placing it back in your hands. “I suppose you’re right, alor’ika.” He teases, “So you’d better drink it all so as not to let it go to waste.”

You roll your eyes, taking a sip of the tea. With your nose nestled into the cup you miss the silent exchange of approval Paz gives Jay.

Readjusting your position so that you’re facing the fire again, you turn your head towards Paz, taking another sip of your tea, it is surprisingly good. “Get on with the story then.” You command, grinning at your victory.

“Okay.” Paz says, grunting as he adjusts himself to sit comfortably once again on the small couch, opting this time to keep one arm swung over behind your head. You smile in content, looking down sheepishly at your tea and having a bit more.

“Well, it all started on the ship. I mean before we even got to Tatooine. Devin, being the utreekov that he is, forgot to bring the kriffing-...”

You listen intently to his story. He’s using his hands as he talks, passionate and perhaps a little dramatic. He’s taking extra care to include all the details, probably indulging in the fact that you and, undoubtedly, Jay, are paying him your absolute, undivided attention. You sip at your tea, the taste warm and comforting alongside Paz’s sweet voice. Your eyes are getting heavier, and you blink at the burning feeling stinging your eyes from the light of the fire, deciding that you’ll be able to listen better with your eyes closed, and gently placing the empty mug on the table.

“So, finally we get to Jabba’s palace. And Devin’s already a nervous wreck after that encounter with the Trandoshans, and-”

His voice carries a hint of thrill in it. You wonder if he feels exhilarated in finally getting to tell this story. Your lips twitch slightly, content that he’s trusting you with it. 

Feeling heavier on one side, you allow your head to swing slightly in his direction, snuggling more into the embrace of the couch.

You notice his words trailing off, realizing you weren't paying much attention. Hearing only the sounds of the crackling fire in front of you, you slowly force your eyes open.

Paz’s head is turned down as much as it can in his position. And though you can’t see his visor, you’re certain he’s staring at you.

“Keep talking.” You mutter, resting your head back again.

You hear the sweetest breath of a chuckle sound from beneath his helmet, which you suddenly realise you're very near to. “Close your eyes again.”

“No, I wanna listen to the story.” You mumble, your low energy blending the words together.

“You can only evade sleep for so long sweetheart.”

“We’ll see.” You challenge, eyes fluttering closed against your will.

“Yes, we will.” He whispers. He’s silent another moment, admiring you and your peaceful expression with a smile on his face before carrying on with the story, speaking much more softly than before. The light humming of his voice is soothing, and you notice it growing quieter and quieter, yet the feelings of security and warmth and relief all stay with you.

Paz looks towards the fire as he speaks, trying to draw out the story as long as he can. He feels the light weight of your head resting against his shoulder, not daring to move a muscle and disturb your peaceful slumber.

It’s still early in the morning. Behind the fireplace and through the density of the thick wall, Paz can hear the covert coming to life. And while their days are just starting, yours has finally come to a peaceful end. He listens to your serene breathing through the long pauses he takes in his story, knowing that really, he’s only telling it to Jay now, who notably moves through the kitchen swiftly and with as little clicking and clanking as he can muster.

“-And so, that’s what happened on Tatooine.” Paz whispers, looking at your parted lips and lightly closed eyelids.

The fire casts a harmonious glow on your face, making your features look warmer, livelier, serene.

You look utterly angelic.

He remembers how you crumbled in his arms not five hours ago, pained and distressed and lonely. You sought him out even though you didn’t know him, not knowing how much he’d admired you from afar. To see your normally light and radiant face masked with such despair, he couldn’t bear to see it again.

He watches your sleeping form take a staggering breath, your body relaxing into its position, nudging your face further into where it fell on his shoulder. He dares to let the arm wrapped around the couch lower slightly, so that it rests comfortingly around your form.

“Sleep, cyar’ika,” He whispers. “I’ll be right here when you wake up.”

He hopes his silent promise is enough to soothe your sleeping form, listening to your breathing even out to a more peaceful rhythm.

“I’ll be here for as long as you need.”

---------------------

Translations:

Alor - chancellor Vod’ika - little sister Osik - shit Di’kut - idiot Jare’la - stupidly oblivious of danger / asking for it. Alor’ad - captain Tayli’bac, vod? - Do you understand, mate? (menacing) Elek! Elek, alor’ad! - Yes! Yes, captain! N’eparavu takisit! - I’m sorry (lit. I eat my insult) Alor’ika - little leader Utreekov - fool, idiot (lit. emptyhead)

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a/n two: They both think the other person’s voice sounds like pure honey.. 🥺

also we need more Paz x reader content on Tumblr my dudes. 

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Taglist: @wandsmith​ 💖

#paz vizsla #Paz Vizsla x reader #paz x reader #the mandalorian #soft!paz #mandalorian x reader #angst

[luvbotclub]

stay — part one: mark lee.

it’s not me, it’s you— you had a change of heart. what kind of change of heart was that and why didn’t feel it? or in which mark doubts himself as an idol, a boyfriend, and a person.

content warning for angst, i’m sorry markzens. 4,867 words.

this can be read as x reader or x oc since i didn’t give mark’s girlfriend a name (this applies to the other parts as well). the other parts may be a little delayed since i’m working on some other fics as well, but i’ll try my best to finish this series! i hope you will enjoy reading this one :D

the sun was shining outside his window. the sunlight seeped through his silk curtains, and for some reason, mark lee didn't feel like sliding them aside and welcoming the april warmth with open arms today, or any other day to be honest. he didn't bother getting up and cooking himself some delicious breakfast, nor did he get up and at least fix his appearance a little bit. he was so disheartened to do anything ever since she left.

but mark has been feeling less like... well, mark nowadays, so there was no question as to why he was acting the way he is. but who could blame him? almost five months has passed and he has made close to no progress with moving on from her. her departure and the demise of them has impacted mark in the worst ways there is to exist.

mark has managed to go out with taeyong and jaehyun for some coffee two days prior to this unfortunate saturday morning without somehow making everyone around him feel burdened by his troubled presence.

mark hated that feeling the most ㅡ the feeling that he’s slowly becoming a burden to the people around him. and perhaps he is, indeed, starting to become a burden to the people around him.

he's tried. he's tried so hard. but it hurts, so so much. the feeling of her warm embrace and the sound of her laugh and the way she smiles are all fucking imprinted in his mind. there was no escape from her torturous murder. the poison she uses is cutting into his skin… slowly, leaving a trail of rotten memories behind.

maybe if she hadn't left him so harshly, mark would've dealt with her farewell a lot better than he is doing right now. maybe, just maybe, if she hadn't been so cruel enough to just tell him straight in the face that it's not me, it's you, you had a change of heart; mark would've forgiven himself faster. his chest would have been filled with something other than guilt and confusion to what he's done wrong, why did she leave, who made her leave, what kind of fucking change of heart was that and why in fuck's name didn't he feel it.

mark has tried to spend more time with her. he really did try, but success came for his group faster than nct and sm entertainment had expected, and he trained longer in the practice room for six days per week for their tour and comeback to make a bigger impact than before. but, in the end, when he's back in their shared apartment, it feels like everything he did wasn't enough. the awards he won, the effort he put into dancing, each lyric he sings out every blurred, sweaty night just for millions to hear. they weren't enough to make her smile reach her eyes. they weren't enough to make her satisfied with him.

they weren't enough for her to stay.

sometimes, mark would think. maybe he's really the one to the blame. maybe he should have just taken more breaks and spent more time with her ― cook lunch with her, cuddle with her on the couch, give her massages while she ranted and ranted about the rude customers at her workplace, the marais. maybe, instead of sweating and singing his heart out, he could have stayed home. maybe he should have been a better boyfriend. maybe he wasn't good enough.

for the past few days, mark's mind has been filled with maybe's and what if's and i'm never going to be good enough's. it was strange. he felt all this remorse ― he even blamed himself because he was doing what he had been wanting to do for a long time ― and all this confusion because of a girl who has sent his friends snapchats of her playing just dance with her workmates a day after she said goodbye, because of a girl who left him on a living room floor with a heart that fell into pieces and the echoes of his pleas for her to please stay with me in each corner of the room ㅡ haunting him, crawling to his skin like the remnants of a bad dream.

it was selfish for mark to think, nor to say aloud, but a despicable part of him wished she felt somewhat guilty for leaving him behind in the dust like this ㅡ or even be concerned about his well being. but no. she left in the first place without a care ㅡ why would she care about whatever’s happening in mark’s mind, now that she has a great life without an idol boyfriend who's always dragging her down?

but today. today. it felt like the day to start living his life again, to live like mark lee who could make people smile just by the sound of his laugh alone. he's disappeared for exactly two weeks from television appearances, family dinners, and friendly get-togethers ㅡ even company parties, he couldn't attend. he was in the stage of denial in the first week, like he was mourning over a death of a loved one. fans have left comments, questions as to why he disappeared all of a sudden all over nct’s twitter and instagram pages and they’ve started to worry whether mark was doing okay or not. his family grew concerned for his well-being, so did his fellow members. they sent him food with stupid little hearts taped to the lunchbox (taeil once sent him naengmyun, along with a paper heart with a classy dad joke and his well wishes scribbled on it). they sent him encouraging messages almost everyday ― the fans, his family, his fellow members. they're all there for him, because they knew that mark isn't okay.

mark decided to get up from his bed an hour after he finished the piece of toast and cup of coffee he both made in a haste. he didn’t even bother putting anything along with the toast, and it was burnt. everyday, his breakfast gets worse. but he needed to put something in his stomach ― he's not going to be in this state forever and he still needed to take care of himself.

mark's grip on the plate was tight, knuckles white as he rested the ceramic plate on the sink. he turned his head after washing his hands and saw the shoe and coat rack by the front door. it was strange to see her newly bought pair of nikes and her ivory coat gone from the racks ― they were her least favoured articles of clothing. maybe she could have left them with him, so he could have something that reminds him of her presence.

but, no. that's way too cruel, isn't it? she did mark a favour of not leaving a single trace of her behind, even as little as a speck of dust from her belongings or a smear of her red lipstick on his favourite white mug. she knew she was practically death itself to him ― her name a lethal spoken curse, her scent a guilty pleasure, her voice a melody so deadly. to love her will be a death wish, but he feels and loves her without a single trace of fear that it'd harm him one day. he loves her. every inch, every night spent watching stupid random shows in the tv, every kiss, every parent joke they've cracked together. he misses them. he misses her. and sometimes he didn't even care if it were his fault or hers ― because either way, she'll still leave an empty shell in his chest, a shell that longed to be filled with her love again.

mark lee never thought it was possible for his heart to ache for someone so much.

he closed his eyes and breathed out a heavy sigh, wanting nothing more than to scream out his frustrations and drink some good fucking coffee right now. but the coffee maker was broken, and mark didn't feel like going out to town and buying a new one. it might sound like it was a stupid reason and he knew perfectly well of the fact, but he doesn't want everyone to see him like this... whatever he is right now.

is he even human at this point? he feels like someone ripped half of his body and soul and he just feels the opposite of the caring mark everybody adored. he feels like he doesn't even have a heart beating right now as his eyes are closed to the darkness — just an empty chest and an empty head.

mark wants to be somewhere else other than this damn apartment. it was way too depressing and he finally got sick of being burdened by it all — it was way too exhausting to be so burdened all the time, to have your head weighed down by thoughts of what could have happened. maybe he can go to a clear field with a nice, baby blue sky, or the coffee house in town where soft jazz played. he didn’t even like jazz. maybe anywhere, just to get away from this place. even the recording studio sounded inviting right now.

the roar of mark's ringtone ripped through the silent room, and it took him a few seconds to recover from the small jumpscare he got before he grabbed his phone that was in his sweatshirt pocket. mental note: put your phone in silent mode next time.

it was a text from jeno.

[jeno]: hi hyung. you up for coffee later with jaemin later? XD

mark suppressed the urge to roll his eyes at the emoticon. jeno could be really ridiculous (and cringy) sometimes, yet he couldn’t ignore the letters that were practically glowing at his eyes, screaming for his reply to be fuck yes i am up for this, but as mark was somewhat in mid reply (and it was an awfully nonchalant yeah, sure with no stupid emoji to support his message), his fingers stopped typing.

would it be worth it, though? he doesn't even have the mental energy to go out and buy his own food, let alone go out for coffee (even though he's succeeded once...). a small part of him felt bad for jeno. all the boy wanted was to drink coffee with his members, but mark's fucking sadness is stopping him. it's not even jeno's fault mark turned out like this these past few weeks.

after a few seconds of contemplating, mark continued typing his message, feeling a little afraid of making jeno think he was uninterested.

[me]: yeah, sure. 😃 can you pick me up?

he tapped the send button, instantly regretting that he added the smiling emoji at the end (because now he sounds so enthusiastic to go, even if a part of him really did) and the fact that he just asked his friend to do him yet another favour. mark felt bad for jeno, he really did, but he didn't even know where the coffee shop was, and, knowing mark, he gets lost sometimes because the boy had no sense of direction whatsoever. jeno's response came a few seconds after, which amazed mark for a bit since jeno was never the fastest replier.

[jeno]: geez, hyung 😒

[jeno]: i'll be there around 1, jaem had to run some errands so he’ll be a lil late. see you later!!!

feeling relieved jeno didn't pry any more into the subject, mark locked his phone and put in his sweatshirt pocket. he felt more fresh, somehow, he felt like his steps won't be heavy and that his life will actually improve today. like an imaginary weight has been lifted off of his shoulders. maybe he should treat jeno and jaemin with lunch one day, if the day went well.

after a few hours of sitting in the sofa and listening to a bunch of songs taeyong has sent him over the past few days, mark went to take a nice, warm shower and changed into his “outside” clothes (...which were the same as his stay-in clothes) and waited for jeno and jaemin outside his locked home, foot tapping on the pavement out of habit.

as promised through his text, jeno arrived at mark's place at the same time when the clock in mark's phone read 1:00 pm. mark felt like grabbing jeno and giving him the biggest hug he's ever given to another member once he jumped off of the black van he arrived in ㅡ the boy's done so much for him ㅡ sending lunchboxes, agreeing to meet up with him in 3am nights where mark couldn't sleep at all, and, now, agreeing to pick mark up right on time even if he probably had million of things going through his mind right now, with nct dream's comeback slowly approaching them.

“hey, hyung,” greeted jeno, brown hair swept to the side messily. after a very long time, there was a genuine smile on mark's lips ㅡ he was happy to see a familiar face in the midst of this chaos. “you ready to go?”

mark gave the younger man a nod, and pocketed his phone in his pants.

a few minutes of catching up led them to full time story-telling, which is totally typical of the parent-like pair of friends. mark was smiling the whole time, because, again, he was with a familiar face and he hadn't been able to speak his mind to another person for a few days, constantly insecure of what others would think of him and his thoughts.

they were overcome with surprise when the driver pulled up on the pavement since they were too caught up in their conversation to pay attention to their surroundings, signalling that they've arrived in the said café. it seemed like the other cafés he's visited before. it had treats and specials lined up by the baby blue tinted window, ranging from strawberry cream puffs to the manager's favourite mushroom pizza. mark looked at the café’s exterior in astonishment and glanced back at jeno. jeno had good taste.

mark looked at the café one more time. he still had a few moments before they went inside; jeno was taking too damn well to adjust his facemask. it was perfect ㅡ black tables at the patio with white chairs as a contrast, fancy little plants lined up just by the café's entrance.

it was all fun until his eyes darted over to the shop's logo, etched in a fancy script font and a mighty golden colour. the light in mark's eyes faltered and the smile plastered on his face dropped in desultory, as the letters made his throat go dry.

the marais.

singing is a stupid thing now. he doesn't feel like singing a bunch of twisted words just for millions to hear. no. he doesn't feel like doing anything. getting scolded at for not singing a note properly is getting tiresome. constantly redoing certain parts because the producer didn’t like it is getting tiresome. thinking of her at any given opportunity is getting tiresome. doing this, whatever it is... it's tiresome.

“i hope you’re happy today,” came the soft muse of donghyuck through his headset. it was strange that mark felt something strong snap in his chest just because of these words. they were going through the songs in the album and mark didn’t know why he was even required to be here for that — he wasn’t even in make your day.

when he heard his dongsaeng’s verse, he felt like crying again. he’s gotten so bad — this was just all so fucking tiring. all he can think about is the way she looked that day in the café, stunned to see the two tall idols in her sight and soon seeing jaemin rush into the shop without much care if he was causing a ruckus or not. she didn’t think that she would see him ever again, thinking that she’s ran away from all of that, the exhausting world of mark lee and being constantly shoved to the side.

“i'm ― i'm sorry," his voice is weak. the words were strained coming out of his throat. he couldn't breathe, but he had to do this. “i can’t do this. not today, no.”

am i really doing this?

mark's heart skipped a beat. yes.

he removed his headset quickly, the song cutting off just as jaehyun’s part began. mark grabbed his cap and mask from the table and put them on. he felt no feeling of hesitation or remorse from his actions as he stared at the producer and members, all staring back at him and obviously stunned. mark shook his head and turned his back on them, ignoring donghyuck’s tired and annoyed stare burning at the back of his head. he really tried to be okay for one day, but he can't do that. the closure she gave wasn't enough — well, was there ever any closure in the first place? he had to give his own closure, or else he'll explode from all these feelings burning his insides with guilt that he didn't even have to feel in the first place if he just became a better boyfriend, a better person.

“mark, come back here,” taeyong’s tired drawl came, echoing through the halls. mark stopped walking but didn’t face his hyung. “you’re really going to skip a recording just for a girl who doesn’t even want to see you anymore?”

taeyong’s words stung, but mark swallowed and gave a firm, “yes.”

as he walked down the hallways and ignoring the incredulous burning stares of the crew, wondering why the hell he was out in the hall instead of being in the recording studio like his schedule declared so, mark thought of all the things he'll say. they need to make sense or else skipping a recording session will all be for nothing and the scolding from taeyong would make him feel even guiltier for the rest of his entire life. i love you, you heartless prick. no. that's way too blunt. i love you, and i don’t need you to say the same thing. i just want you to say goodbye one last time.

that’s all mark ever wanted.

that’s all mark ever needed.

he called a taxi and immediately got in, telling the driver his destination which was the marais. a frown was evident on the young idol's face as his phone vibrated text message after text message, all either from taeyong or taeil telling him he has the next two hours to get his ass back to the studio or else they were telling the ceo about it. it was tiring. he was debating whether to ignore them or reason it out like the adult he was, because he was feeling annoyed at their lack of understanding and at the same time he just wanted to be mature with them.

both of mark’s options sounded too far out of his reach when the taxi driver suddenly stopped his car and told him they were already at his destination, and he was forced to lock his phone instead, ignoring the constant vibration of the device.

he started shaking as he gave the driver money, and his hands became sweaty when he exited out of the car and slammed the door shut. mark walked over to the café with a heavy heart, his legs wanting nothing more than to retreat to the studio and spare his ego the embarrassment, but he was here now. there was no point in turning back. he’d embarrass himself anyways if he came back to the studio, he could practically hear donghyuck cheekily saying “i told you so” and the small knowing smirk on the younger’s face. mark shuddered at the thought.

as he went through the door of the shop, he instantly got a whiff of the strong coffee they were brewing — their bestseller and the same coffee she used to bring home for mark to drink. the boy only swallowed the fear in his throat and shook the memories off.

he walked up to the counter, legs still shaky as the employee working the cashier looked at him with a bright smile, “um, hi. i’m looking for someone who works here? is—”

“mark?”

mark looked up at the sudden voice, his words cut off halfway. if his heart was already beating fast even before he'd seen her, mark was pretty sure it’d jump right out of his chest as he made eye contact with the woman who got him into this predicament in the first place. he exhaled heavily and bowed his head to the employee behind the cashier, apologizing for the interruption before walking over to her who was standing just by the kitchen door and dressed in the white coat she hated so much. the sight made mark want to go home for some reason.

“what are you doing here?” she laughed nervously as he came closer. “aren’t you busy? i heard you guys are having a comeback?”

mark shook his head, ignoring the urge inside of him to tell her i skipped a recording for you. he knew it wouldn't matter to her anyways. “i’m not busy at all. i just want to talk to you about something. is that okay?”

she nodded yet the look in her eyes clearly said she really didn’t want anything to do with him at all. “sure, do you want to step out for a bit?”

mark only noticed the stares of the customers at the pair of them when she glanced around the room, and he immediately nodded. the last thing he needed was for someone to recognize him and spread rumours (even though he knew that was practically unavoidable at this point—people were already starting to point). she took hold of his hand and led him out of the coffee shop, ignoring the incredulous whispers of everyone.

once they were outside, mark was the first to pull his hand away from her grasp in such a haste. he almost apologized when he saw the brief shock emerge in her face at the brash action, but at this point, he didn’t have time for games anymore — figuratively and quite literally, since he only had an hour left before taeyong and taeil will call the ceo on him.

“so what is it that you want to talk about?”

“i wanted to talk about us,” mark exhaled, finally feeling a weight being lifted off of his shoulders. he saw her face contort a little, obviously displeased at the topic. “i just — you gave your closure. but i didn’t.”

“mark, it’s been months,” she laughed, the sound coming out as breathless. “you still haven’t moved on?”

“how could i do that?” mark started laughing too, albeit humorlessly. he ignored the pang in his chest as he realized that she found the entire situation funny. “everything i see, everyone i talk to. everything reminds me of you. i can’t even do anything right, i can’t even live normally anymore, because i keep thinking, why? why did she break up with me? was i a bad boyfriend?”

“mark— no,” the smile on her face dropped. “you weren’t a bad boyfriend. i just—”

“then why did you tell me i had a change of heart?!” mark was enraged. he didn’t want to be angry. he didn’t mean to raise his voice like that. he didn’t mean to let his tears cascade down his cheeks. he probably looked so pathetic right now, practically seething at the image of himself, tears falling and eyes pleading for an answer, for anything. “i didn’t. i didn’t have a change of heart. if i did then i would have been the one who ended things. if i was such a good boyfriend, then why did you leave me? right when i needed you most?”

mark didn’t even let her open her mouth before he spoke up again, the pain in his voice raw. “i tried so hard. i’ve always tried so hard but you made me feel like i didn’t. i’ve always protected you from everything and everyone. i’ve always defended you. you made me feel like everything i’ve ever done, for myself, for you ­— they weren’t enough for you. i always thought that maybe i wasn’t good enough to make you stay. i guess i was right, wasn’t i?”

“i was scared,” she answered calmly. “i fell out of love with you and i didn’t want to admit that. it was my fault. all of it. i only said that so i wouldn’t feel terrible about leaving you but i didn’t realize it was too harsh of me to say that right away. i’m sorry, mark, for everything. please stop blaming yourself.”

mark only nodded, wiping at the tears that were on his cheeks and blinking away the ones that threatened to fall. he got what he wanted. he got the truth. he gave his closure. so why did it still hurt? why did it still pain him to see her, looking at him like he was the saddest, most pathetic person to ever exist? the pitiful stare she was giving him made mark feel so sick in the stomach that he had to look away so that the feeling won’t resurface.

“just know,” mark breathed out shakily, fingers trembling and aching to brush the stray hair that fell on her face aside. he bit the inside of his cheek to stop the urge until he tasted blood. “i still love you and i don’t think that will ever change. even if you hurt me. even if you broke my heart so bad to the point that i didn’t know if i’ll be fine by the end of it all. you became a part of my life no matter how bad it got in the end.”

“i love you too, mark,” she smiled warmly and mark knew she was lying straight to his face right now. but he didn’t care. it felt good, strange almost, to hear those words tumble out of her lips again. “i don’t want to leave you like this but i have to go now. i made some plans with a friend. maybe we can hang out together soon? i can call you?”

“it’s okay,” mark shook his head. “i’ll be busy anyways. enjoy your day. thank you for everything.”

he was pretty sure his friends had already deleted her number from his contacts (it was either johnny or donghyuck who did it). after this, he was going to back to the studio and suffer the consequences of his actions, he’d have to put up with the hyung line staring at him with disappointed glints in their eyes during the entirety of the car ride back home and donghyuck bombarding him with questions about what happened once the younger boy has cornered him somewhere in the dorm. but he wasn’t bothered or even annoyed that he’d be experiencing these things soon.

mark was about to turn away and find a taxi when a tall man approached them, his long arms soon snaking around her shoulder and pulling her into an embrace. mark was quite surprised but shook his head — he was going to stop caring about her from now on. whatever business this man had to do with her, he didn’t care.

“who’s this, babe?” the nickname caught mark off guard.

“hyunwoo,” she mumbled under her breath, obviously uncomfortable at the current situation. “this is mark. remember? i told you about him.”

“oh, the idol?” ‘hyunwoo’ turned his head to mark and the shorter boy nodded. “nice to meet you! i heard you’re quite acquainted with my girlfriend here. she told me a lot about you.”

“oh, girlfriend?” mark was surprised at the cool tone of his question. “well, yeah. i used to be quite close with her.”

“we’re not dating or anything,” she tried to laugh off, but the nervous glint in her eyes screamed otherwise. “i’m just friends with hyunwoo. it’s like what it looks like, mark—”

“it’s okay,” mark smiled warmly, looking at her then back at hyunwoo. “i don’t care who you date. it’s not like you owe me an explanation of any sort.”

“i—yeah, of course,” she mumbled to herself, looking down at the ground before looking back up at mark. “it was nice talking to you. we’ll get going now. keep in touch, okay?”

mark nodded and the warm smile on his face didn’t falter even for a second. after the two had walked away, mark stayed in the same spot. he didn’t miss the way the two shared a short kiss before hyunwoo opened the car door for her and helped her inside before hopping in the driver’s seat and driving away. once they were gone, mark’s phone began ringing, calls from taeyong flooding his missed calls.

mark only smiled to himself, pressing the call button on taeyong’s number while his eyes were still fixated on the spot where hyunwoo’s car was previously parked.

i’ll forget about you, someday.

#mark lee #mark lee imagines #mark lee prompt #mark lee angst #nct imagines #nct prompt #nct angst #nct #nct series #( writings ) #out of all the parts i think mark's is the least sad #but it's still sad nonetheless

[hannahindie]

At the End of All Things: Chapter 1

Characters so far: Dean Winchester x Jo Harvelle, Sam Winchester x Amelia, Bobby Singer x Ellen Harvelle, Castiel, Garth Fitzgerald, Ash Word Count: 2,662 Warnings: Nothing but a little bit of language, but there will be eventual gore, violence, more language, angst, major character deaths, adult situations, the whole nine. Author’s Note: This is an AU/Crossover between Supernatural and Walking Dead. I’ve brought some characters back from the dead since it is an AU, and it’s going to be chock full of ships. This is the first time I’ve written an AU or a crossover, so bare with me while I work out all the kinks. lol I’ve always wondered how the Winchesters would make it in a world full of walkers, so this is my take on it. Thanks goes to @trexrambling and @pinknerdpanda for jumping on this crazy train and beast of an idea, and helping me me maker it better. You guys are the best and I love you.  I hope you enjoy! As always, tags are at the bottom, and if you’d like to be added or don’t see yourself, please let me know!  If you do not like The Walking Dead, AUs, or crossovers, please let me know and I can remove you from future tags. Any feedback is welcome. :)

The end. That's how this story begins. Because truthfully, the end of the world was the start of something else. A whole new world where the living met the dead with a clash of teeth against skin, metal against bone. The world that was supposed to be saved, the one where Sam said no and the battle between Lucifer and Michael never happened, the one that should have been saved from the Croatoan virus, had found itself being destroyed by something else entirely.

At the end of all things, when the dead outnumbered the living and everything seemed lost, the Winchesters once again took it upon themselves to save the world. Although it seemed like a doomed mission from the start, powered by false hope in less than reliable information, the rest of the ragged group they called their family refused to be left behind. What they didn't realize was that they would meet an equally tenacious group along the way.

Sam and Dean Winchester were about to find out that the world had changed far more than they could have ever imagined.

Dean woke slowly, the sun coming through the partially open blinds warm on his face, and groaned as he stretched out. The soft figure next to him stirred gently as he moved, her long hair cascading over one bare shoulder as she shifted closer to him and slipped a slender arm across his waist. He blinked away sleep and looked down on the still sleeping woman, and a small smile turned up the corner of his mouth. He ran his thumb down her jawline, then carefully tucked a rogue strand of hair behind her ear. She smiled in her sleep and nuzzled into his shoulder.

“For the end of the world, this ain't a bad way to start the day,” he thought to himself as he watched her slowly begin to wake up; her eyes squeezed shut tightly, her legs stretched out first and her toes curled, and then it seemed like the rest of her unrolled as the stretching moved up her body. He planted a gentle kiss on her forehead and her eyebrows drew together as her nose scrunched up and she finally opened her eyes. “Good morning, beautiful,” he said quietly, and she smiled as she closed her eyes again.

“Good morning to you too, handsome. What time is it?”

Dean glanced over at the beat up clock that they'd somehow managed to keep ticking, although whether it was actually accurate remained to be seen, “7:30.”

She sighed, “I'm supposed to work on laundry today. I need to get up.”

Dean moved his hand from her neck slowly down to her breast. “Aww, come on, we can lay here a little bit longer, can't we?” he asked as he lazily swirled his finger around the pebbled flesh before tweaking her nipple playfully.

“Dean Winchester, that's how we got in this trouble to start with.”

Dean grinned as his hand wandered further to land on the small bump at her waist, “I don't think it was any trouble.” He kissed her gently on the neck and smiled against her as her laugh echoed in the quiet room.

“Joanna Beth Harvelle! Quit foolin’ around with that Winchester and get out here and help your mother!”

Jo sighed and sat up as she grabbed her shirt from where it hung on the bedpost, “Duty calls.”

Dean grabbed Jo by the waist before she could stand and kissed her stomach, “Tell that woman the mother of my child should get to sleep in longer.”

Jo shoved him playfully and stood to pull her jeans up, “You tell her that and see what happens.” She bent down and kissed Dean on the forehead. “Everyone's gotta pull their weight, even baby Winchester.”

There was a faint knock on the door, followed by a muffled voice, “Dean, it’s Sam. We need you outside.” Dean groaned and fell back against his pillow. Jo opened the door and Sam smiled at her. “How're you doing, Jo?”

She smiled back, “Good, good. What’s going on that you need Dean?”

Sam shrugged, “Could be nothing. Chuck said he had something he needed to talk about. You know how Chuck is.”

Jo laughed, “Yea.” They were interrupted by Ellen yelling for Jo again and she rolled her eyes, “I better go before she has a coronary. See you later.”

Dean sat up and watched as Jo wandered down the hall and turned the corner, then looked back to Sam, “What's going on?”

Sam was quiet for a moment, then took a deep breath before answering, “Garth and Ash are back.”

“Explain it to me again. Like I'm five.”  Dean leaned against the counter, his arms crossed.

Garth smoothed out the map, then pointed to where they were currently located, “This is us. Alexandria is about a six day walk from here, D.C. maybe a half an hour north of that. We made it to about here before we had to stop.” Garth pointed at an area close to Alexandria.

“If it's only a six day walk, why in the hell were you gone for so long?” Dean asked gruffly.

“It's a six day walk if you go straight at it. That ain't what we did. We meandered a bit, stayed as close to cover as we could. I don't know if you've met us, we ain't exactly you and Sam. Not to say I couldn't kick some ass, know what I'm sayin’?” Ash flipped his long mullet from his shoulder. Dean narrowed his eyes but remained silent. He had a lot of respect for Ash, but there were moments he could throttle him.

Ash must have noticed and cleared his throat, “Anyway, just in case you missed it the first time, this what we think the compound in Alexandria looks like.” He motioned at Garth to hand him a marker, then slid over a piece of wax paper he'd had Jo bring to him earlier. He carefully laid the wax paper over the map and began tracing over what he and Garth had found. He stopped, leaving one side of the box open.

Sam pointed at the open side, “What about that?”

Garth shrugged, “We don't know for sure. There was an...incident. Not sure what exactly happened, sounded like they lost a couple of their people, and so we followed them home after. We had to be careful, so we stayed on the outskirts and tried to map out how big of an area it is. It rivals ours. They seem like good people, but we were afraid if we let them see us, they wouldn't let us leave. They kept that side heavily guarded, so my guess is that's where the actual entrance is. We got as close to D.C. as we could after that, but between the weather and it just being us...we couldn't risk it.”

Ash tossed the marker on the table, “I ain't gonna lie to you, it's rough out there. I honest to God don't know if ol’ Dick is up there working on a cure or not. My guess would be no with all those biters everywhere, but if we are gonna try to find him, we’re gonna need more than the two of us. That lab is right in the middle of biter central.”

Sam sighed and looked at Dean, “What do you think?”

Dean stood quietly as he stared at the map, his arms still crossed and eyebrows furrowed. Sam knew that look. It was the look Dean got when faced with an impossible situation that would likely get them both killed, but in the end would be for the greater good. So when Dean looked up at him, still silent but saying so much with just his eyes, Sam squared his shoulders and said the one thing he always said to Dean in this kind of situation.

“When are we leaving?”

“Absolutely not! You don't always have to be the one that fixes things, Dean!”

Dean ran a hand over his face, “Jo, if this cure exists we have to make sure it gets distributed. Dick Roman is...well, he's a dick. He'll take advantage of this as much as he can. Me and Sam can stop it-”

“Why? No one expects that! What they expect is for the two people who hold this damn group together to stay here. We don't know that that cure is real, we don't even know if that lab is up and running. And you heard Ash and Garth, something bad happened to those people in Alexandria. You're wanting to go right towards it!” She absent mindedly rubbed her bump, and Dean sighed. He slowly walked towards her and pulled her into him.

“Jo…”

She shook her head, “No, Dean. This world is dangerous enough as it is. You are going to be a father, you can't be as reckless as you were before.” She pulled away from him and stopped in the doorway, “I love you, but you're an idiot. Find someone else to go.” She went outside and slammed the door behind her.

“I take it that didn't go well.”

Dean turned to see Sam standing in the doorway to the kitchen, “You could say that,” Dean scoffed, “How'd it go with Amelia?”

Sam shrugged, “About the same. Didn't have the baby card to play against me, though. Although I'm not sure I would put it past her.” Sam sighed and sat down at the table, his eyes on the map that Ash and Garth had left behind.

“Why are you even with her, Sammy? Because where I'm standing, it seems like you're just putting up with her because you don't want to be alone.”

Sam’s jaw clenched, “Do you think the lab is even a real thing?”

Dean rolled his eyes, “Alright, ignoring our feelings, check. Don't say I never tried.” Dean sat across from Sam and leaned his head into his hands, “I don't know, man. I know it's been years...that rumor could have been from the beginning of the turn. But I don't see how we can just ignore it. And if we can stop this, if we can save the world for my kid and everyone after us...isn't it worth it?”

Sam nodded, “Yea...it is.” He ran his hand over the outline that Ash had drawn, “What if we can get these people to help? That could double our force if we were able to make it work.”

Dean sat up and stared at the black outline of Alexandria. It was iffy, getting that group to help them. Especially if they had trouble of their own. But if they were willing…

“I don't know, Sammy. Who knows if we can trust them, and even if we can, whether they'd be willing to do it is a totally different story. It could be worth a shot though.” Dean stood and shoved his chair in, “We need to talk to Ash and Garth. Maybe we can get a couple others to go with us.”

“What about Jo?”

Dean sighed, “She's just gonna have to understand. I'm doing this for her. I'm doing it for our kid. I'd do anything for them, even if that means risking my life for an uncertainty if there's even a fraction of a chance I could keep them safe.” He paused, then looked over his shoulder at Sam, “What about Amelia?”

Sam shrugged, “She’ll come around.” They both moved toward the door to leave, and Sam paused with his hand on the door knob, “It's not because I'm scared of being alone. She needed someone, and there wasn't anyone else. I'm just...I love her. It's just different than you and Jo.” He threw the door open before Dean could answer, but immediately stopped and Dean ran into him.

“What the hell…” Dean trailed off as he saw the group of people standing outside his house.

Ellen and Bobby were at the front of the group, and Bobby took a step forward, “We've got some words for you idjits and you're gonna damn well stand there and listen. You ain't goin’ on some wild goose chase all by yourselves. If you go, we all go. Family don't end with blood, boys. And if that ain't gonna work for ya, you ain't goin’.”

Dean opened his mouth to argue and immediately shut it. Jo walked over to Dean and grabbed his hands, “Where you go, I go. If it's important enough to risk your life, it's important enough for us all to try. You need the manpower, you've got it.”

Dean shook his head, “I can't risk you, Jo. I can't let you go…”

“Let me? Since when have you ever ‘let’ me do anything? I can take care of myself, but you know I'd be safer with you anyway. You know I'm right.” Dean looked at Jo, then to Bobby and Ellen, and his gaze finally rested on Cas, who was surrounded by an entourage of women as he leaned against a tree with his arms crossed. Cas nodded at him, a grim smile on his face, and Dean looked back at Sam who nodded once and raised his eyebrows.

Dean kissed Jo on the forehead and pulled her close, then surveyed the rest of the group who were looking at him expectantly.

“Well, I guess we'd better get ready. All of us.” He felt Jo tighten her arms around his waist and he hoped that the decision he'd just made didn't get them all killed.

Read Chapter 2 HERE.

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#Supernatural #The Walking Dead #fanfiction #crossover #au #Walking Dead x Supernatural #hannah writes stuff

[justauthoring]

Feigning The Connection (7/?)

Prompt:  You seem so invincible. But just touch you and you’ll wince. You have secrets and trust no one. You’re the perfect example of betrayal. Because anyone you’ve ever trusted broke you. Thrust into a new world, will you be able to stay alone, or will Bellamy work his way in.

PART ONE - PART TWO - PART THREE - PART FOUR - PART FIVE - PART SIX

A/N: Thank you all again for the feedback. i am absolutely so excited to write this series, and have future parts planned already. It’s just so much fun to write and I thoroughly enjoy being able to look back at the first seasons. As well as with season four ending, i’m gonna need some 100 still in my life and this is the perfect way to do so. I also made this chapter SUPER LONG, three episodes mainly for you guys and the long waits between chapters but also because I want to finish off the season by combining the two finales.

I have about fourteen or so more days of school and then some finals, after that I will able to post much more on this account in general. More parts and more requests! :)

I hope you all enjoy this chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it. Send me a little comment in the ask section or leave it below on what you thought of this chapter. It doesn’t have to be long, I appreciate every single comment I receive and telling me just helps inspire to write it more frequently.

AGAIN, remember if you’d like me to continue this series, just leave a little comment or an ask letting me know. I will NOT continue the series if no one wants me to.

Based off of: The 100 01x09, 01x10 and 01x011

Warnings: mention of violence. 

“My friends, this is a historic unity day. Every year we mark the moment our ancestors of the twelve stations joined to form the Ark, but this time is the last time we do so aboard her. Next year, on the ground.”

“Right, after we did all the work.” Standing beside Raven, you looked over at Miller and rolled your eyes at his snarky remark. Though the whole of it was true, that didn’t stop the fact that you were happy the Ark was being sent to the ground. Kane… not so much. But you were happy that the civilians of the Ark are being given a chance. “Someone shut him up.”

“You shut up Miller.” You snapped back, crossing your arms. 

“No one’s forcing you to watch, Miller.” Raven backed you up. Turning to her, you sent her a grateful look for having your back. She only smiled, her eyes gazing back on the live-feed of Jaha. 

“For ninety-seven years, we have eked out an existence hoping that someday our descendants would return to earth…” 

“Didn’t peg you as the type to be supportive of Unity Day.” Raven commented from beside you. Tearing your gaze from the video, you let your eyes fall on Raven who was a few inches taller than you. You smiled shyly at her, shrugging your shoulders. 

Truthfully with your past, you most definitely shouldn’t love Unity Day or want to celebrate the beginning of the Ark. The Ark nor anyone on the Ark has ever given you the hope or the admiration of the Ark to do so, but there was something so amazing about the way the day lifted spirits. 

“I shouldn’t.” You complied, looking back at Jaha. “I definitely shouldn’t actually. But when I was a little girl, my father stressed and I mean stressed that I be one of the pageant kids. He had it set up that i’d be the one to give the speech, it was the most fun i’ve ever had.” You laughed lightly at the memory, a fond look coming over your face. Life at that moment was so wonderful. “My mother actually had been the one to dress me up and sit with me while I rehearsed my lines.”

You didn’t hear Raven respond, confused you turned to her only to be faced with the brightest smile you’ve ever seen on her. “That’s so cute.” She gushed and you blinked, blushing slightly. Suddenly serious, she turned curious eyes on you; “are you excited for your family to come down?” She asked, pointing to the sky. 

A frown crossed your features. Thinking back to your mother, a image of your father popped up in your mind. “No… I-I” You turned to Raven, only for all excitement that had previously been there to be absolutely disappeared. Concerned etched onto your features, and furrowing your brows, you leaned into her view and followed her eyes where you found Finn and Clarke. A solemn look crossed your features.

“Raven-”

“I’m fine.” She interrupted, touching your arm lightly. You gave her a questioning glance; “I’m fine, Y.N. I promise.”

“Whoo! Yeah!” Jasper’s cheering echoed throughout the camp. Looking over the crowd of people you saw him with again the brightest smile on his lips you’ve seen for days and he held a container over his head. “Monty strikes again! We’ll call this batch Unity juice! Who’s thirsty?” You let a smile slip over your lips as the crowd of people huddled around Jasper, all cheering for some moon-shine. 

You followed the crowd, making your way over to Finn who looked unimpressed. Turning your head, you saw a figure run by and squinting you discovered the figure to be Octavia. Seeing her run out of camp, you furrowed your brows in confusion until you realized that Lincoln had somehow escaped previously. 

Looking over at Finn, he made eye contact with you; “did you see that?”

“Yeah.” He responded, eyes squinting. “Yeah, I did.”

-

You hadn’t seen Octavia since she left, and apparently Finn had been as curious as you when he tried to get you to help him follow her. Though you’d declined because of the fact that you thought nothing of it. You had seen the way Octavia had looked at the grounder, Lincoln, and you could tell by the way he didn’t hesitate to save her. They loved each other, or at least they really cared for each other. 

If she wanted to sneak off and see him, you definitely weren’t going to stop her. You admired the kind of dedication they had for each other.

Plus, why would you wanna miss the party that had started. Looking around you, a bright smile graced your features as you stared at the litter of children stand around, drinking, talking or playing games. It was a rare sight to see everyone so relaxed and care free.

It almost made you love Unity Day even more. Looking around, you caught sight of Bellamy standing watch, your eyes also caught a head of blonde leaving his side. You walked passed Clarke, as you still felt slightly peeved at her for what she had done. Though you offered her a small smile when she sent you a hesitant one. You knew you didn’t have a right to hold a grudge at her, but you hated the way she had dug into your life which clearly wasn’t hers to meddle in. 

Shaking your head, you continued your way on to Bellamy. When you reached him, you sent him a soft smile. “Hey, why aren’t you partying?” You asked teasingly his way. He smiled, taking a bite out of his apple as he shook his head.

“Like I told Clarke, i’ll have my fun when the grounders come.” He smirked. You shook your head, swallowing the lump in your throat; “what did she want anyway?”

“Nothing much, i just told her to have some fun.” Bellamy explained, his eyes fell on you and letting his gaze fall across you. “Which you should as well.” He reprimanded teasingly. You laughed, bringing the can of water to your lips, peering over the tip of the can. You shook her head, “nope.”

He raised an eyebrow, “no?”

“I’m not a fun drunk.”

“Oh? And you’d know this… how?” He asked, his eyes falling on the sky in thought. “Haven’t you been in solitary for like three years?” He asked, shaking his head at you. 

“Four.” You corrected, giving him a look. “But you don’t know the trouble I use to get into on the Ark. Let’s just say, nearly set my room on fire.”

Bellamy’s gaze fell on you, with a unconvinced look he looked curious at you. “Really? You?”

You smiled wildly, remembering that day. “Yup.” You nodded cheekily, “I was a trouble-maker.”

“Hmm,” he grumbled. A quizzical look on his face, after a moment of silence he suddenly chuckled. Tossing the apple in the air, he easily caught it and sardonically looked your way. “What a rebel.” You openly gaped at him, surprised that he could actually be so teasing, you had to hold in your laugh. Feigning hurt, you reprimanded him; “don’t mock me. I was a real badass.”

He shook his head, “oh. I’m sure.”

“Hey!” You yelled, slapping his shoulder. Your laughter died down slowly as you both looked fondly over the crowd of people. Sighing, you moved to walk away but not before looking back at him and smirking teasingly at him. “Well I think i’m gonna go see if Raven needs my help. Don’t watch too hard.” You slyly commented. He rolled his eyes, “don’t work too hard.” He replied honestly. You nodded half-assed before walking off and making your way to Raven’s tent. 

-

“Hey. Hey! There you are.” Looking up from the bullets, you turned your head to the entrance only to see Jasper. He wobbled slightly on his feet and was obviously at the least tipsy. “And Y/N! Awesome, i’ve always wanted to see you out of the professional facade.”

“What are you talking about Jasper?” You asked, cutting his drawl short. Setting down the bullet you’d been working on, you fully turned to the drunk boy and gave Raven a look. She shrugged her shoulders, shaking her head in frustration.

“Alright, listen. We’e playing drunkball. I bet Monroe my teams gonna win the Unity Day title,” smiling he set down a cup of alcohol in Raven’s hand. She sent him a tight-lipped smile and you had to bite your lip from smiling wildly. “I know you zero-g mechs had crazy hand-eye coordination skills, so, huh?” He offered, smiling wildly at Raven he turned to you; “and i’d just love to have you on my team Y/N.” He smiled cheekily at you.

You shook your head amused at his ‘smooth’ ways, “what do you think?” He asked, his eyes falling on the bullets before you two. Raven turned to set down the cup he’d offered her and you followed her, turning back to the table. “It’s gotta be more fun then what you’re doing.” 

“We’re checking the gun-powder in these rounds, so that if the grounders try to kill us all maybe we get a few shots before hand.” Raven explained, you silently nodding along with her. 

“Hmm. That’s intense.” Jasper commented. You laugh lightly at his comment, sending him a look that told him he wasn’t wrong. He shrugged his shoulders at you, and you shook your head before turning back to the table. “You sure you know what you’re doing?”

“Pretty sure, Jasper.” You responded. Sudden, a small explosion echoed beside you, with wide eyes you turned to Raven yelled damnit out in pain. You opened your mouth in shock, moving to help her but she gently shoved your hand off. 

“You guys maybe need a hand after you know, nearly blew one off?” Jasper asked, walking more closely to the both of you. You sat back down in your seat, letting Raven take this one. You didn’t know much about what you were doing, you were mainly just following Raven’s orders and once she told you you were a natural, you just continued to help.

You weren’t much of a partier as you told Bellamy, so keeping your hands busy was a more sufficient way of keeping away from boredom.

“No one’s a better mechanic.” Jasper explained holding up his hands. You focused back on their conversation when his eyes fell on you. He smiled cockily, “but this requires a chemist. How’d you do in chemistry class Raven?” She sighed, rolling her eyes. Jasper smiled brightly; “mmm well the fates are smiling upon you today, my friend. I was great in chemistry.” Defeated, Raven handed Jasper over a bullet. You watched curious as he brought it up to his nose and sniffed. “Oh! Nope. Oh, this is gassed off. Pretty sure it’s acidic smell means gunpowder’s degraded.”

You sighed, placing your head in your hands as you sighed frustrated. “Better start a dud pile.” Raven commented, dropping the bullet away.

“You know, when my parents get here, they can mix us up some new gunpowder.” Jasper started reminscing. You watched with a hint of jealousy as he looked onward fondly at the memory of his parents. “My dads gonna flip for this scrap metal. “My kingdom for a soda can,” heh. That’s what he always use to say. What about you guys? Got any family?”

Your smiled fell and falling silent, you watched as Raven shook her head, looking down at the table. “Nope. Just Finn.”

“You? Y/N?” Looking up, you found Jasper’s eyes on you and you realized he was asking you. Biting your lip, you sighed heavily. “Not really. Mom’s… d-dead. Dad doesn’t like me very much.” You explained, the sudden realization that besides the little bit of information you’d told Bellamy you’d never really talked about your family before. It was always something you hated to talk about, but there was something about the people you were around that made you feel as if you were in a safe place to explain.

“Well…” Jasper started, the clear awkwardness he felt evident in his voice; “we’ve all got each other now, right?” You looked up at him, smiling. 

“Yeah… yeah we do.”

“Jasper, you’re coming with me.” A sudden deep voice entered the tent. Turning you found Bellamy making his way in, a small smile on his lips when he found you. You immediately noticed the gun in his hand, and with wide eyes listened closely to his conversation. 

“I am?” Jasper asked.

“You handled yourself well in the cave with the grounder.” Bellamy moved forward, lightly pushing past Jasper to grab some bullets. Grabbing his wrists, you stopped his effectively as his gaze fell on you. “If you’re planning on shooting anything, you better think twice. We haven’t check those yet.”

“Give me some bullets that work then.” Bellamy responded, you ignored the way he responded so quickly and rather quite rudely. “What do you need them for?” You were quick to respond, looking up at him.

“Her boyfriends being an idiot.” Bellamy explained, nodding his head over to Raven as he turned to her. You let go of his wrist, leaning against the table as you listened closely to the conversation. Raven grabbed some working bullets, smacking them against his chest, “i’m coming with you.” She declared.

“We should get Clarke.”

“Clarke’s… with Finn isn’t she?” Raven asked. Bellamy didn’t exactly respond but with the look he gave you all, you figured Raven understood. They all stood up, filing out of the tent. Reluctantly, you looked at one of the guns, thinking over. You didn’t want to leave your friends if they were to be in danger or if they were already in danger and you’d never strayed away from helping your friends before. Sighing, you grabbed the gun, quickly catching up to Bellamy and co.

Once he realized that you’d followed behind, he stopped, turning to you and grabbing your arm. You looked up at him, confused as he stared down clearly concerned for you. Bellamys eyes fell on the gun in your hand as you tried not to shake it. “You don’t have to do this.”

“I’m not gonna leave our friends, you, to die.” You stressed, pacing on your feet nervously. “I’ve got this. I’ll-I’ll be fine.”

-

“Ground princess looks pissed.” You commented.

“Our princess has that effect.” You ignored the stab that seemed to hit you, as you couldn’t describe exactly what you felt at the mention of his nickname. Shaking your head, you lifted your gun and using the view-point you watched nervously as Clarke seemingly chatted with some sort of leader of the grounders. 

“Oh, no. This is bad.” Jasper suddenly panicked from beside you. Placing wide eyes on you, you asked; “what?”

Bellamy turned towards the both of you as well as Raven and whispering in a slight hush, he spat at Jasper; “what the hell are talking about?” He repeated your question. Jasper raised his gun to his eyes, looking around the forest around you all; “there’s grounders in the trees.” 

“What?”

“Where?”

You all raised your guns, but you furrowed your brows when you found nothing. Turning to Jasper, you shook your head. “Are you sure?”

“I don’t see any.” Bellamy commented, and you nodded mindlessly. You watched Jasper once again as he looked around the forest, suddenly his face contorted into panic and you were a second too late when he lurched forward and suddenly yelled; “there gonna shoot Clarke! Run!” He screamed aloud, alerting everyone of your guys presence. 

“Run!” He repeated, raising his gun as he started shooting. Your breath left you as the bullets fired and trying to keep calm, you tried to call his name in order to stop him. He didn’t listen though as he continued to shoot. Bellamy and Raven were quick to follow as they begun shooting. Bellamy’s eyes fell on your for a split second, and shaking your head you felt him give you the encouragement you needed in order to step out of the cover of the trees.

Raising your own gun, you ignored the way your hands shook and begin pressing down on the trigger. You managed to hit one grounder as they fell to the ground. You ignored the way your heart sped up rapidly, you hadn’t had to kill anyone since… Taking one moment of shock was a mistake, when an arrow flew past your leg and lightly grazed your calve. You grunted, dropping your gun as you grabbed your leg in pain. The edge of the arrow caught in your leg and biting your lip you were quick to pull the arrow out of your leg, grunting softly in pain. 

You fell back into the cover of the trees as you looked at the blood that covered your hand, you were lucky you realized that it hadn’t actually pierced your skin and it had only managed to peel your skin apart. 

You tried to get up on your own, wanting to be able to follow the rest as they began running away. You let out a sigh of relief when two arms wound around your waist and you were hefted against someones side. Turning your head, you looked at Bellamy who sent a reassuring smile your way. “Thank you.” You panted against him.

“We need to run and fast. Can you help me?” Bellamy asked, you nodded, picking yourself up as you began to pick up the speed in your legs.  

You all continued to run, holding on tightly to Bellamy. You ignored the pain in your leg as you noticed Finn, Clarke and Octavia catch up to you all. It wasn’t long before you all reached the gates of your safe-place. Panting you softly pushed away from Bellamy, nodding a thanks but he only shook his head tightening his grip on you as you nearly stumbled over in pain. Shaking your head, you reluctantly let him help you.

Your gaze fell on Finn when he glared up at Bellamy, Bellamy seemed to have noticed as well as he turned onto Finn. “You got something to say?”

“Yeah. I told you no guns!” Finn yelled, stressing his point as he pointed to all of your guns.

“I told you we couldn’t trust the grounders, I was right.” Clarke defended.

“Why didn’t you tell me what you were up to?” Raven asked, yelling.

“I tried but you were too busy making bullets.” Finn yelled at her. Suddenly angry that he would yell at her like that, you moved forward, Bellamy quick to help you as you turned angrily on Finn. “You’re lucky she brought that! Or else you and everyone you decided to put in danger would be dead!”

“You don’t know that!” He shouted back at you, “Jasper fired the first shot!”

“You ruined everything.” Octavia commented. Mouth gaping openly, you turned to her shocked as she turned around heading to the gate but not without shooting you a glare on her way. Baffled by her turn of feelings on you, you couldn’t believe what you were hearing. You didn’t want to kill them but they were clearly there to kill your friends. You hated death but you’d rather have them dead than have your friends dead if there’s no other way.

You shot Jasper an sympathetic look when he yelled; “I saved you!” Shaking his head, he laughed begrudgingly and walked after Octavia. "You’re welcome”. 

“Well if we weren’t already at war, we sure as hell are now.” Finn sighed, turning to Clarke, “you didn’t have to trust the grounders. You just had to trust me.” He walked off and shaking your head, you looked at your leg, moaning suddenly when a shot of pain travelled through your foot. “Woah. Y/N, you okay?” Bellamy asked, grabbing your waist as you nearly toppled over.

“Okay. Okay. Let’s get that bandaged.” A sudden explosion sounded and all three of you turned up at the sky as an object seemingly flew down. You looked up, your face twisted in pain as you all watched the ship fly down with curiosity.

“The exodus ship?” You asked, confusion evident in your gaze. 

“Your mom’s early.” Bellamy commented, smiling down at Clarke. You ignored the gaze and looking up, you followed the exodus ship thinking your father is definitely on that. A hopeless feeling filled within you as you shook your head, you didn’t want him down. Though you were somewhat happy Clarke’s mom was able to come down, the dread that filled within you overpowered.. 

“Wait. Too fast. No parachute?” Clarke suddenly asked, a panicked echo coming over her voice. You stepped back in pain but watched as the ship flew down and suddenly an explosion echoed beside you. Opening your mouth in utter fear, you watched the smoke evaporated from where the ship had crashed. You let your gaze fall on Clarke as she gasped in distress. She took a step back in shock and with wide, guilty eyes you looked up at Bellamy.

He only shook his head.

-

“You don’t really know what you’re made of until it’s kill or be killed. And there’s nothing between you and the tip of the spear.” You rolled your eyes at Jasper surrounded by a group of some of the hundred as he told his ‘hero’ story of how he saved everyone. You appreciated Jasper and you felt bad for him after everything that happened the day before but this was near too much.

It was amusing. But what was he gonna do the next time someone needed his help and he froze? You had faith in him but setting himself up this high is a dangerous and risky move. Turning your head to Monty, who you sat beside, you sighed; “okay. This has to stop.” Just as you went to jump down from your seat, Monty grabbed your arm, stopping you as you turned to him in confusion.

“C’mon.” He gestured over to Jasper; “let us have this.”

Furrowing your brows, you looked over at Monty. “Us?”

“Look at him. The boy is a folk hero. They even gave us a bigger tent.” Monty smiled as he looked over at Jasper proudly. Looking at him, you decided not to move but your heart sped up when a sudden clatter echoed. This time you actually did jump off onto your feet, quietly groaning when you landed on your bandaged leg wrong. Monty’s hand fell on your arm again, “woah. Y/N be careful.”

“Somebody hit the trip wire!” Connor yelled. You turned to Monty giving him a reassuring smile as you headed quick to the gates. Octavia fell in beside you and with guarded eyes you watched her gaze fall on something, you followed her line of vision when you found a flower. You shook your head. 

Gun shots fired and you turned your head to the two men on watch. “Think i got him.” One of them said, “let’s go.” Connor ordered, you stepped forward quick to follow behind them. 

“Lincoln.” You heard Octavia whisper, and with narrowed eyes you turned to her. She stepped forward as if to follow you three out but you placed your hand on her shoulder. “I think you should stay back.”

“Oh? And who are you to-”

“Because I know why you want out there and i’m telling you, it isn’t him. Lincoln isn’t stupid enough to be caught on one of our trip wires.” You explained, looking at her. She finally looked at you, her gaze softening when she realized you were right. Stepping back, she eased and you quickly caught up to Connor as they exited camp through the gates.

You ran up ahead of them, concerned on who it was. You weren’t sure why, but you knew the people you lived with now and even if they were your friends they didn’t hesitate one bit to kill or be ruthless to those they thought untrustworthy. At least this point, if the person you found deserved even just a chance then maybe you could help convince your people do so. “Hey, slow down!” Connor called behind you, his feet picking up speed as he tried to catch up to you; “Y/N be careful!”

Coming to a tree, you could see a faint figure on the ground. Though you weren’t sure who it was yet, it was very clearly a male, and by their stature and how he laid on the ground in seemly pain you felt your heart sped up in worry. Taking slow cautious steps, you crouched down ever so slightly, your hand coming out before you to touch the man, though when you did he immediately flinched, jumping away.

You squinted trying to see who it was, then as you deciphered who the figure was, you felt your breath catch in your throat and your heart practically stop. You never thought you’d see him again and you certainly didn’t want to. “Murphy?”

-

“Where is he?” You barely paid mind to Bellamy’s voice behind you, instead your eyes stuck on Murphy who was curled into a fragile position. Your eyes were set into a glare and your lips stuck in a grim line, you weren’t sure what to make of him being back here.

Suddenly, being pulled from your thoughts you heard Bellamy’s footsteps echo beside you as he stopped just next to you. You glanced at him but your eyes almost subconsciously flew back to Murphy, you still weren’t trusting of him. “Everyone but Connor, Derek and… Y/N out. Now!” Bellamy ordered, you didn’t really pay mind to his order because even if he hadn’t ordered you to stay, you would’ve.

“He claims he was with the grounders.”

“We caught him trying to sneak back into camp.”

“I wasn’t sneaking. I was running from the grounders.” Murphy’s quiet voice finally spoke, looking up at you. You glared at him, memories flooding your mind as you remembered when you’d first gone down to earth and how rude and disrespectful he’d been to you. Though you knew he didn’t deserve the punishment he had received for a death he hadn’t even committed, you still held a certain resentment towards him.

“You see grounders, Y/N?” Bellamy asked, turning to you. Looking up at him, you shook your head giving him his answer.

“Well, in that case-”

“Hey, what the hell is wrong with you?” Finn interrupted, his hand shooting over towards Bellamy as he slapped the gun out of Bellamy’s hand. You silently agreed that maybe shooting Murphy wasn’t the best idea, but you said nor did anything and rather continue keeping your eyes on him. There was something fishy about the way he’d come back. He was clearly with the grounders, the marks and scars on him proved so, but what you just couldn’t understand was why they let him go.

“We were clear what would happen if he came back.” Bellamy argued, raising his gun again. Suddenly, a realization came to mind and jumping in front of Bellamy’s gun, you held your hand at your sides. “Wait.”

“Y/N please don-”

“No. No. I don’t trust him Bellamy, but if he was with the grounders, he might have information that can help us.” 

“Help us?” Bellamy asked, shaking his head in shock at you. “We hanged him. We banished him and now we’re gonna kill him. Come on Y/N, get out of the way.”

“No Y/N’s right,” Clarke defended you. Stepping forward towards Murphy. 

“Like hell she is,” Bellamy argued, raising his voice; “Clarke. Think about Charlotte.” 

“I am.” She spat back, crouching near Murphy. “But what happened to Charlotte is as much our fault as it is his.” She mumbled, picking up Murphy’s hand and viewing the bloody hand. “He’s not lying. His fingernails are torn off, they tortured him.” 

“If they had him. If they were torturing them, why the hell did they send him back?” You asked, stepping forward. You couldn’t believe anyone hasn’t thought of this yet, there must be an alter-motive. “I mean, we’re at war. They could’ve used him as leverage.” You explained, though your people may not care for Murphy, they wouldn’t have known that. 

“Yeah. We’re at war. What did you even tell them?” Bellamy asked, looking at Murphy. You sighed as they ignored your question. Turning to Murphy, you waited for his reply, hesitant to hear his answer.

“Everything.”

You took a deep breath inside, you almost felt like your heart would leap out of your throat. Turning to Bellamy, you stood so you were just before his chest, slightly off to the side. “Once he’s better, we figure out what he knows, and then he’s out of here, okay?” You asked, looking Bellamy in the eye.

“What if he refuses to leave? What do we do with him then?”

“Then we kill him.”

-

You felt ill; nothing felt right at all. But you ignored it best you could as things needed to get done. With the new presence of Murphy and the grounder’s declaring war on you all, there wasn’t anytime for you to be lazing around because you felt a little under weather. 

Turning to the fire, you wiped the sweat off of your forehead and dropped a log into the fire. It was only day time, but you all needed to keep warm. Despite the sweat you felt littering your forehead, your arms and body felt unusually cold. You put more pressure on your right leg, as your left leg was still bandaged because of the wound. 

Pressing your jacket tighter against you, you tried to stay stable on your feet as the world grew wobbly and you felt as if your feet couldn’t hold your weight. You took a step back, stumbling slightly as you tried to stay focused.

“Y/N!” Bellamy’s voice echoed behind you, turning faster than you meant to, you panted when you saw Bellamy running towards you. He ran towards you, stopping just short of you as he grabbed your shoulders and his eyes searched your face. His eyes scanned everywhere and in bafflement you furrowed your brows, confused as to what he was doing. “Bellamy?” You questioned lightly.

“Murphy brought in a sickness with him, a battle tactic. How do you feel?” Bellamy asked hurriedly and you meant to answer, but you felt it suddenly too hard to speak. You felt your head and eyes grow heavier as Bellamy was the only thing keeping you stable. “Y/N?” He asked concerned, you blinking. “Y/N, your nose.” Bringing your hands up to your nose, you looked back to find blood. Staring at Bellamy with sudden fear you sob, “Bellamy…”

Suddenly all strength left you and you felt your body falling, Bellamy was quick though as he slipped his arms underneath your knees and back. He hefted you up, quickly making his way over to the drop-ship.

He brought you in, Clarke already beside you. Quickly, with wide panicked and concerned eyes, Bellamy set you down on a makeshift hammock. He let go of you gently but fell beside you as Clarke grabbed a clothe to wipe the blood from your nose. You looked over at her with a vulnerableness she’d never seen in your eyes before, and smiling reassuringly she brushed your hair back. “You need to rest.” She reassured, turning to Bellamy. He nodded.

“I’ll watch after her.” Clarke handed over the wet clothe to Bellamy, him setting it down against your forehead. Dread filled his gaze as you looked over at him for support. “Bell…” Despite the moment, he stared baffled at the nickname that slip passed your lips. You hadn’t realized what you said and panted; “Bell… i’m scared.”

He hadn’t seen you so frightened since that day at the depot and he wished he’d never have to see that look of fright on your face again. Smiling softly at you, he nodded; “you’ll be okay. You just need to sleep.” He went to stand up; “I’ll grab you some water. Then I need you to sleep okay?”

“Wait.” You called in panic, grabbing his hand. He froze at your touch, his head turning back to you. With trembling lips and a pale face, you held fast onto his much larger hand. “Bellamy. I-I need to tell you something.” He remained silent, thinking over his decisions, before he kneeled back down next you. Nodding at you, he held your hand back. “Kane… Marcus Kane is my d-dad. I’ve been too afraid to tell you, since he’s the man who ruined your life b-but… please. I never meant any harm to you.”

Though the new information took him by surprise, Bellamy didn’t falter in his reassurance and instead continued to rub his thumb over your clammy hand. “It’s okay, Y/N. Like I said, you’re not a murderer.”

-

“When I get better, if you’re still he-”

Standing up from your seat with renowned strength, you made your way over to Murphy and Bellamy. Kneeling next to Murphy, you sent a small smile his way, still quiet nervous around him and grabbing the cup of water from his hands you said; “here. I’ve got this.”

Murphy complied, handing you the cup and standing up. You sat beside Bellamy, your hand stretching over and handing him the cup of water, he easily accepted it compared to when Murphy had offered. “You feeling better?” Bellamy asked, his eyes scanning over your fragile body.

“Yeah.” You whispered, smiling small and nodding. 

“That’s good.”

Hugging yourself, you leaned into yourself more, leaning your head against your knees. “You seen Octavia?” He asked, thinking back you realized how much she done throughout the night and with a reassuring glance you explained; “she was up all night helping people. Murphy gave her a break.”

“Don’t tell me you trust him.” Bellamy mumbled, looking over at you.

“Trust? No,” you were quick to shake your head, stunned that he would even think that. “I do believe people deserve second chances though.”

“It’s almost dawn.” He stated and you remembered of the mission that everyone not sick had been given. You wished you could’ve helped instead of being helplessly sick and inside the dropship all day. But you had faith… well slight faith at least. More like hope. “We better get everyone inside. If we lock the doors, maybe the grounders will think we’re not home.”

“Not everyone’s sick.”

“Sick is better than dead.” Bellamy snapped back.

“You don’t think Finn and Jasper are gonna pull it off.”

“Do you?” Sighing, you realized that he was right. You gave him a cold look, shaking your head. You should really learn to have more faith in your friends but maybe some other day. Clapping your hands against your knees, you straightened out, heading towards the drop-ship door. “I’ll get everyone inside.”

-

“Hey! Bellamy!” You called, running towards Bellamy. Upon hearing his name, he turned around from whatever he had been doing, his face softening when he saw it was only you. Reaching him, you stopped just next to him, panting slightly, your eyes fell on his gun that was strapped to his side and then across those around you who also held guns at their side.

You had yet to grab one yourself, though Bellamy had many times told you to do so over the past few days. After healing from being sick and your leg wound sealing up again, you’d learned, thankfully, that Jasper, Finn and Raven had been able to complete the mission for the bridge. Ever since then, the knowing fact without even having to say it, that the grounders were coming. But despite the fear and despite the nagging, you refused to carry around a weapon.

You’d use it if need be, but you wouldnt flaunt around with it.

“Your leg any better?” Bellamy asked, looking over at you.

“Uh- yeah. Any sight of the grounders?” You asked, concern etching into your features. Bellamy shook his head no, a focused look on his face, crossing your arms over your chest, you sighed. This whole situation was just sucky, for lack of better word, and there wasn’t a day where you didn’t live in fear. “Who would’ve thought, when we came down that we’d be fighting our own people.” You shook your head, dread filling within you.

A hand fell on your shoulder and snapping your head up you saw Bellamy smiling somewhat reassuringly at you; “it’ll be okay.”

You laughed dryly, “I find it hard to believe that.”

“We’ll defeat them. Jasper may be able to create new gunpowder and with that Raven will be able to create landmines. I only wish she could make about a thousand more of those bombs and I could set loose on their land.” Bellamy remarked, sighing frustrated. Upon your look of disagreement, Bellamy shrugged. “It’s what they’d do to us.”

Reluctantly, you nodded. “I know… it’s just… we’re on our own for this. No ones coming down to save us.” You whispered, anxiously shaking your head. Bellamy said nothing but looked down to the ground, silently agreeing with your statement. Suddenly, remembering the secret you’d shared with him just a few days ago, your eyes widened. “Bellamy…”

“Yeah?”

“About my father-”

“Y/N we’ve been through this. It’s fine.” Bellamy responded, “I do not care who your father is.”

“But my father was the one who arrested your mother…”

Bellamy’s eyes widened, and shocked he looked over at you. No one but he knew of the fact that your father was the one who put the handcuffs on his mother, “how do you?”

“Because I was there…” You whispered. Terrified of his reaction, you hesitated looking at him but you regretted the minute you did so. Betrayal etched into his features, as he stared down at you in bewilderment. You, immediately reading his facial expression, you panicked and reaching your hand forward to grabbed his shoulder. You jumped, startled when he pushed your hand away. “Bellamy,” you started. “You have to believe, I didn’t want, I-I didn’t know-”

“Whoa! Guys fire!” You heard in the distance, Bellamy’s attention was immediately brought upon the camp. You tried to grab onto his arm but he ran forward, and sighing, knowing you’d screwed up, you ran forward as well, his widening when you saw the wild fire that had started in the meat house. Shaken up, you watched as Bellamy grab Octavia and pull her away from the fire.

You begin helping out by shoving buckets of water on the fire. 

“This is all your fault.” You head Murphy grunt, standing up as he stalked towards one of the hundred. “We told you it was too much wood.”

“Get the hell away from me!”

“Whoa! Whoa!” You called, running towards Murphy. Grabbing him, you tried to pull him away but he only shoved you back. Grunting, you stumbled over your feet but caught yourself before you fell. You stared in bafflement at Murphy’s back. 

You watched Bellamy run by you, effectively able to stop the fight. Turning to Murphy, Bellamy called: "save it for the grounders!”

“Well, now what the hell are we gonna do?” Octavia suddenly bellowed, catching Bellamy’s attention. “That was all our food.”

-

“Each group takes someone with a gun.” Holding a gun close to your chest, you stared at the file of the people walk by as they sorted themselves in groups. After everything with Bellamy, you realized you didn’t really have anyone to go with. “And they’re for killing grounders, not food. We don’t have the ammo. Use the spears for hunting. Get what you can, be back by nightfall. No one stays after nightfall.”

You stared pitifully at those around you, suddenly realizing how singled out you were in this group. Suddenly, a hand fell on your shoulder, and startled, you turned to find Clarke. You held back an eye roll as she smiled at you. “Got a partner?”

You went to decline but looking around at the people around you, all ready to go. You sighed. “no.”

She smiled; “great! I’ll get some gear.” She said, walking forward. You watched with curious eyes as Finn walked beside her. You stayed slightly behind, thinking that they would like to go by themselves. You sighed once again, turning to walk away before a hand grabbed your wrist. Turning you found Clarke again.

“Where you going?” 

You looked back at Finn, who awkwardly stood at a distance away from you both. You hadn’t really talked to him or gotten along with him since the whole grounder shoot out thing. It felt tense. “I was about to go, I thought you’d like to go alone with Finn.”

“I asked you, remember?” She reminded you, falling in step beside you. Finn stayed slightly behind and you turned to her, confused on why she was so intrigued with going with you. Seemingly catching what you were thinking, she looked over at you, smiling ever so slightly. “I want to apologize, about the whole thing with your father.”

Nodding, you remained silent. Thinking back to that moment, despite the anger you’d felt this entire time, you knew it was such a silly thing to get so upset over. “So, i’m sorry.” She whispered, leaning in closer to you. Turning to look at her, you sighed when you saw her give you the best smile she could and shaking your head slightly at the desperate look on her face, you held down a laugh. 

“It’s all good. It was a stupid thing to get so upset about anyway.” Her smile brightened further, and bumping you slightly she laughed.

“Okay. Awesome.”

-

“Found something?” You asked, looking down at the crouched figure of Finn. He didn’t turned back, instead opting to continue tracing the tracks that they had discovered. “Yeah. Boar.” He replied.

Holding the gun tighter in your hands, you looked around the forest, cautious of grounders. Being out here was extremely stupid and dangerous but you knew that you guys needed to find food. You would’ve stayed back, you weren’t a hunter and you definitely didn’t like having to hold a gun, but anything was better than staying back at camp when Bellamy was upset with you.

You should’ve never told him that you were there when they arrested his mother. It wasn’t as if you’d done anything yourself, but you knew that it would hurt him to know that at one point you had even maybe been like Kane. Before everything happened, there was a possibility that you had been. Kane was trying to teach you the ways of the Ark and going around, helping him enforce the law was just one of those ways.

You felt bad, but he needed to know the truth. No matter how long Bellamy decided to stay mad at you.

“What is it?” You heard Clarke ask Finn in concern. Seeing them both crouched down, you followed after them as they had stepped away and looked down at the tracks before you.

“These tracks.” Finn explained, baffled. 

“They’re perfect.”

“Too perfect.” You commented, holding your gun higher as you stared around you in panic.

“We’re the ones being hunted.” Standing up, you held your gun up to your face, using the gun to look around. You furrowed your brows when you found nothing but trees and vast open spaces, you had a good feeling they were there, but the question was where.

“I don’t see anything.” You report to them, not setting down your gun and instead continuing to look around you.

Suddenly, before you could even do anything to defend yourself, there was a sharp pain in your shoulder. You grunted, bellowing out in pain and you fell back to the ground. You saw a arrow fly by your head as you fell but could only pay attention to the pain you felt in your shoulder.

You let go of your gun, your hands falling to your shoulder as you squeezed the wound painfully. “Y/N!” You heard Clarke yell your name, as she almost immediately fell to your side. With tearful eyes, you looked over at her desperate. “It hurts…” You whispered, your hands clenching against the wound. Clarke grabbed you trying to help you before Finn fell to her side. “Clarke, come on, we’ve got to leave her.” Finn ordered.

Your heart spiked at the mention of them leaving you, but knowing the situation, you couldn’t blame him for going. Clarke’s tearful eyes fell on you, and shaking her head, she swallowed desperately. “No. No. She only came because of me!”

“Come on Clarke!” Finn yelled, grabbing Clarke’s shoulder. 

Swallowing down the pain, you grabbed the hand that she set on you, and smiled weakly. Nodding, you told her; “go.”

“Y/N…”

“Just go!” You screamed, wanting them to leave before they died too, before you eyes. You couldn’t handle another dying because of your weakness, and shaking your head, you watched Finn grab her and yank her off of you. You closed your eyes before you could see the rest, panting in pain as you bit your lip from screaming out in pain. 

Your eyes became too heavy and you felt yourself losing consciousness, panting you tried to stay away but it became to hard.

-

“Y/N?”

Groaning, you opened your eyes, turning to your side as you saw blurry figures before you. You blinked, trying to squint and figure out who it was. The figures came closer and you flinched in fear before you saw Raven’s familiar face. Turning you saw Octavia.

“Oh my god… Y/N.” Octavia whispered, setting down her gun and scooting closer to you. Raven fell beside you, grabbing your shoulder and bringing you closer to her. You grunted in pain, biting your lip from screaming as you held the arrow in your shoulder tightly. “Y/N I was so worried.” Raven panted next to you, checking your body for more injuries.

Despite the pain, you smiled up at Raven, “wasn’t I hit by an arrow just the other day?” You joked, a laugh grumbling out before it turned into a cough. She shook her head at you, slightly amused as she shushed you. You swallowed a lump in your throat and suddenly another figure fell over you, looking up you saw Bellamy.

“Bell…” You whispered in pain.

“Y/N, Clarke and Finn where are they?” She asked you, her voice coming out in a panicked urge. You grunted, “I-i…” 

“Where are they?”

“Grounders took them…” You panted, “i’m sorry.”

“Take it easy.” Bellamy interrupted the conversation, pushing Raven out of the way gently. He grabbed your shoulder, looking down at you, “we’ve got to get her back to camp.”

“Bell, what about Finn and Clarke?”

Bellamy didn’t respond and suddenly you were lifted into his arms, much like the day you’d fallen ill. You grunted in pain as he lifted you up, but soon you felt comfort in his warm arms. You felt his hands tighten it’s grip on you, as he nodded at you, “Raven, i’m sorry.” You heard him say as he began walking away with you.

“I’m sorry.” You whispered in a daze, your head falling back. Bellamy leaned down, bringing your head forward so you were looking up at him again. His eyes found yours, and leaving no argument he whispered; “it’s not your fault. You’re not a murderer.”

“Thank you for finding me…" 

“I’m gonna get you home okay?” He whispered, smiling down at you in fear. You found only concern in his eyes and despite the pain you felt and the fear of the fact that you’d almost been killed or left to die, you found comfort in his gaze. Comfort you hadn’t seen since the night at the depot. You smiled weakly back up at him, nodding. “You’re gonna be okay. I’m gonna keep you safe.”

Part 8?

#the 100 #the 100 characters #the 100 imagine #bellamy blake imagine #bellamy blake #bellamy blake x reader #the 100 bellamy #bellamy imagine #bellamy x reader #bellamy #blake #feigning the connection #the 100 series #series #drabble #drabbles #prompt #prompts #imagine #imagines #request #requested

[immedtech]

Motorola's smartphone Mods weren't the game-changers we hoped for

Two years ago, Lenovo-owned Motorola embarked on a grand plan to build modular smartphones that weren't cumbersome. It worked. Moto Mods are accessories that magnetically attach to the company's Moto Z smartphones, and they let people easily expand their phones' feature sets. And later this week, we're expecting Motorola to unveil what might be its most ambitious Mod yet: a 5G modem for high-speed data. (Never mind the fact that, as of this writing, there are no commercially accessible 5G networks in the US.) The brand's execs first started talking about the possibility of a 5G mod in late 2016, and the idea of adding next-generation wireless performance to an existing smartphone is as enticing as ever.

Here's the thing, though: that 5G mod has clearly been in the works for a while. In some ways, the idea belonged to a very different company. And in the time since the idea was first floated, Motorola seems to have grown less interested in building novel experiences through Moto Mods.

Remember its ambitious $249 projector? Or the full-on replacement camera Motorola built with the folks at Hasselblad? Those were pricey niche accessories that debuted alongside the very first Moto Z phones, and they spoke to the very real potential of the Moto Mod concept. The phone you bought might very well get better over time. Since those early days, however, we've seen Motorola either stumble or fall back on more conventional (though potentially more lucrative) accessories.

You can stick a Moto Z into a game controller (because no one has ever done that before). You can also turn a Moto Z into an Amazon Echo of sorts, but, considering its $149 asking price, you're better off buying something like an Echo Show. (Or, you know, five Echo Dots.) Most recently, Motorola saw fit to make its own versions of existing battery and speaker mods, presumably to rake in cash it otherwise would've had to share with partners like JBL and Incipio. There's nothing wrong with a smartphone brand focusing on accessories that most of its users would find valuable. It's just that the grand ambitions that seemed to fuel the Moto Z's heady early days have given way to pure pragmatism.

For what it's worth, Motorola insisted to Engadget in an interview earlier this year that, between its in-house efforts, partnerships with existing accessory makers and third-party development, new Moto Mods will continue to hit stores. While those partnerships continue to bear the occasional fruit -- last year's Polaroid Mod was actually pretty cool -- developers have learned that bringing such accessories to market can be tricky.

Consider Livermorium Labs, the makers of a physical QWERTY keyboard Mod that hearkens back to the glory days of old smartphones. I played with it for a bit at CES earlier this year and, despite some pre-production flimsiness, it seemed to get the job done. Fast-forward a few months and the challenges of building a Mod became apparent on the company's Indiegogo page. In additional to the usual difficulties that come with producing new hardware from scratch, founder Liangchen Chen pointed out problems in the company's relationship with Motorola: the original Moto Mod team Livermorium worked with "changed completely" in April, and it took Moto a few weeks to re-establish its support for the startup. For a while, things looked grim.

Chris Velazco/Engadget

"We did not take a penny from Moto to develop this product," Chen wrote. "And now we could not even get any sales support, for the product that we put a whole year's efforts and time." While the situation was eventually resolved, Chen's string of updates speak to the trouble that small organizations sometimes have when dealing with huge entities like Motorola and Lenovo. Crafting hardware is difficult enough, and it becomes even more problematic when you've got this many hoops to jump through.

And Livermorium wasn't alone. Motorola put together a "Transform the Smartphone" Mod competition with Indiegogo last year, and a company called Digiframe was one of two companies chosen to receive up to $1 million in funding from Lenovo Capital for its secondary e-ink display concept. The team continued to make progress through at least July 2017, but Digiframe had to discontinue its work because of "slow/no reaction from Motorola and Lenovo to provide further funding for development."

Motorola's approach to modular smartphones is the most elegant I've seen, but elegance isn't nearly as valuable as vision, execution and commitment to its partners. I hope Moto continues to stick it out with its Mods, but who knows. As promised, Moto has built an ecosystem of Mods for three generations of smartphones, and I couldn't blame the company if it decided to finally pull the plug on its grand experiment.

- Repost from: engadget Post

#ITlive #engadget #Motorola's smartphone Mods weren't the game-changers we hoped for

[wildflowerfiction77]

The Scribe

The Scribe

By Daniel Vera

8/10/2019

 The Dead

 I am five years old.  I am from a decimated people, living in a generation of incarceration.  I see my family living in alcoholic dreams and government given drug illusions.  I am ten years old.  I see my cousins running as fast as they can, being swallowed by metal machines and microwave t.v. dinners.  I watch cartoons of cowboys killing Indians and Ronald Reagan eating money.  The schools tell me I do not exist.  I am fifteen years old.  My father overdoses on hate and my mother is bought by John Wayne.  I wave goodbye to the cemetery of stone crosses that house the dead and living dead that were people I once knew.  I am twenty years old.  I have been incarcerated by devils, red and white.  I watch the water drip from the ceiling cracks from broken cell walls.  It is a slow drip.  It echoes across the chambers of the forgotten and unloved.  I sit in the darkened square.  I write down the story in my mind, one day at a time.  I am the Scribe.

The white devils sailed their ships to the lands of my ancestors.  They brought the winter death with them.  From their pigs, cows, rats, goats, horses, chickens and black plague, we were sent to hibernate for 500 years.  In our slumber, they raped our women, enslaved our men and stole our children.  They told us that we were wrong, and they were right.  They told us they were strong and we were weak.  They told us that we did not exist and that they were God.  They changed our stories and then changed them again.  We believed them.  The fire has become cold.  The souls of the living have been isolated to the corners of nothing.  We all bleed in nothing and breath in the ashes of truth: a plastic and metal world.  

They asked me if I killed her.  My own cousin.  They found me in the field where she was lying dead.  I had the knife that pierced her bloodless body.  They did not believe me or did not want to believe me.  Either way, I sit in this cell waiting for death like many ancestors before me.  I once had a dream.  I once had a hope to change this world.  The ones that like the world the way it is, made sure I wouldn’t.  From small town to big city, they are the devils that walk the earth.  They consume everything in their path.  They feed upon the souls of the weak.  They separate the families of the chosen and strong.  The ones gifted with the destiny to bring in the new season are in danger from the trolls of the Golden Kingdom of TAR.  I have been given the gift of sight.  The ability to travel through realities.  To live in the future and the past at the same time.  I do not fear death.  I have already died.  I write this story down for others to understand.

   Vision Quests

 I find visions in the day.  I see the blurry lines of happiness.  Families running across open lands.  Fields of many bright colors under a shining sky.  The bright fluffy clouds float slowly above  as a reminder that we are a small part of mother earth.  The scent of Spring flowers that fill the air are carried by soft winds.  The rivers flow mightily and the animals roam the earth linking the circle of life as it was created to be.  In life and death we find meaning.  

I awake in a cement street.  The warmth of the sun still smolders in the tar filled ground.  The smell of metal garbage bins, empty bottles of booze and old fast food linger.  They mix and ferment in the stagnant evening skies of another city.  I hear people walking, cars driving, sirens howling.  The chatter of groups of people in rooms fade in and out.  A dog barks in the distance.  A woman yells in a drunken stupor.  A roaring of machine motorcycles criss cross.  Money exchanges hands.  

In the dirt, my people live in tin cans and rusted bowls.  The drug dealers scurry and feed.  They leave trails of blood and tears.  The eyes are sunken, the pupils are dilated.  The lips are dry and cracking.  The noses are dripping.  The bones are showing.  The diapers are unchanged.  The T.V. channels are stuck on static.  The sink is full of weeks of dishes.  The empty wallets and bank accounts are mixed with filled ashtrays and casinos.  We fight with each other.  We hit each other.  We scream as loud as we can.  We break glass and dry wall.  Most importantly, we break each other. 

There are the healers.  They try the best they can.  They try to make peace.  They give their time to listen.  They give their hearts to love the unloved.  They give their hands to lift the others from off the ground.  They can only give so much.  They are tired.  They have lost their voice from pleading to God every night and day to give mercy to his children.  To hear the prayers of the reservations.  For 500 years, God has let the snow fall.  It is a cold winter and fever has taken many lives before their time.  The healers still work feverishly.  The warriors are drunk and burdened.  The wise are sleepwalking and are speaking incoherently.  Only the thieves thrive.  Only the cowards survive.  They thrive and survive from the blood of their brothers and sisters.  It is winter.

I then see a light.  At first it is just a glow in a far distance of space.  A flicker.  As the light strengthens, it grows in brightness and size.  The light breaks through the dark clouds like the sun over mountains in sunrises, filling landscapes and eyes.  We can see each other and ourselves.  From the slumber we yawn and stretch.  Gathering consciousness and cleaning ourselves in daily rituals, we move into works for community and greet each other for first times.  Many eyes and feet cross the green earth.  Many mouths drink of pure water and breath fresh air.  Many hearts are opened and born or reborn.  

   Love and Hate

 Growing up in a small town next to the city, my siblings and I would play in the fields.  I had two brothers and two sisters.  I was the middle child.  I learned how to be tough and sensitive at the same time.  The town was a farming town in which life was relatively slow.  Fighting each other in the neighborhoods was a daily ritual.  My parents moved here to leave the reservation.  We would visit it often to see our relations and to hold ceremonies.  Most of that changed when drugs and alcohol became another family member.

The late nights were filled with brutal fighting after nights of drinking gatherings.  I would often find cut straws on small mirrors next to the dozens of beer bottles left on the table.  My younger brother and sister would eat cereal while us older three would clean up.  Our father would sometimes leave for weeks.  The change was gradual, but it became another tragic story of the red man.  No one could have believed that my older brother, Warren, would have met such a tragic death.  Our family was never the same after that. 

They said it was suicide, but some of us had our doubts.  Warren and I would play football every day.  His dream was to be the all star running back for the Red Skins.  He would always work at any odd job that would help him achieve this goal.  The neighborhood stores, paper routes, at the school, mowing lawns and walking dogs.  He was an inspiration.  He made enough extra cash every month to pay his way to the school functions to be part of the football teams.  When they finally gave him the starter position, he became the star of the town.  They called him the red lightning bolt.  By his senior year, scouts from colleges and even the NFL were coming around and talking to his teachers and our parents.  

Something went wrong though.  The better he did, the worse my father became.  As soon as Warren had gotten his first paper route, our father and him stopped talking to each other.  He never told me why, but we all new that they had gotten into an argument about something.  My mother tried her best to keep the family together, but that’s when the party was brought to our house nightly.  My parents were getting extra money, but it was something that we ignored.  Mayra, the oldest said this had something to do with Warrens death.  I wasn’t sure, but I noticed that he had started dating a girl, Julie.  Her ex was affiliated with one of the larger Mexican gangs.  I’m not sure how they were connected, but Warren wouldn’t snap under pressure.  He worked too hard to achieve his goals and his dreams were all coming true.  

That year was when he was offered a full scholarship to the State University along with a stipend for rent and food.  He was set.  The one thing that he did sacrifice was his education.  He had poor reading and math skills.  That’s how he and Julie met.  She was a blond girl from “The Hills”, where the rich people lived.  She must have been a trouble maker with her family, since she liked dark skinned guys.  Warren and I went to different High Schools since he was able to get into the one with the better football team.  Mayra and I were happy at the school we were at.  She was somewhat of a teachers pet, and I was fine just hanging out with my group of friends.  We were into cars and would spend most of our time between working on them and playing video games.  

   Into the Unknown

 I listened to the sirens as they got closer.  I was home alone watching some Twilight Zone marathon for Christmas.  My mother had taken the family to Granny’s for dinner.  Warren had went to his girlfriends house to meet her parents.  I don’t know where my father was, until the cops knocked on the door.  They asked if I had seen him.  I said no.  They wouldn’t tell me what it was about, but told me to have my mother call them when she got in.  They were staying the night to open presents in the morning.  I figured my Dad was in the drunk tank or did a robbery.  Either way, I was used to the dysfunction that has become my family.  This was a mild night.  I decided to play my guitar while the T.V. played reruns of the episodes I already watched from the year before.  

It was around 2am when I heard some rustling in the living room.  I heard my brother and father talking.  I didn’t feel like dealing with it, but listened just in case things started to escalate.  Before anything happened, the front door slammed and I heard Warren’s car drive off.  I didn’t hear anything else until the next morning.  Warren was at the dinner table eating some cereal.  He seemed like he was in a normal mood.  I asked him about Dad, and he said it was the same old thing.  He had just stopped by to get some stuff.  I told him that the cops were looking for him, and he looked surprised.  After that, his mood became pensive.  I could tell it was a good time to leave him alone and not push any buttons.  I went along my day and noticed that Warren used the last of the milk.  We had just bought some Coco Puffs and I wasn’t gonna eat them with water.  Since my bike had a flat, I made Warren drive me to the store before he took off to his girlfriends again.  On the way I decided to ask him about his new girl.  

He told me about how they met and how nice she was.  I guess she was a cheerleader and her Dad was the Mayor.  That was kind of weird, but he seemed to really like her.  I guess his football status had made him eligible to hang out with the elite.  I was glad that he and I had the opportunity to finally talk.  It seemed that so many things had been happening in our family that started getting in the way of actually spending time together.  I told him about a girl I met in class as well.  She was a Mexican girl that just transferred to the school.  She started hanging out with our group and we were hitting it off.  After he dropped me off at the house, that was the last time that I saw him. 

Mayra had told me that night about mom and dad splitting up, and dad had moved out to go live with a girl he was shacking up with on the Rez.  Truthfully it was better than having to hear them drunk fighting at night.  Maybe this way, life will get better in the long run and there might be some hope for the last two to have a somewhat normal life.  Jauna and Bennie were the rug rats.  They were the twins that couldn’t have been more different.  Jauna was passive, yet devious and Bennie was hyperactive, yet an honest and simple soul.  They gave my mom plenty of trouble to deal with.   Mayra helped her out when she could, but spent most of her time studying at the school library or hanging out at one of her after school clubs, like student government.  I didn’t understand her.  How are you going to work for free?  We got the call on Christmas day.  

   The Library of Dreams

 It was a hot summer night.  The trees were swaying with the mid west wind, taking the edge off the humidity.  Just right for some beers and lake night swimming as we passed the bottle of tequila around and a joint.  There were five girls and five guys in our group, most of us native or at least half native.  Maria was the Mexican girl that had moved to town and became my girl.  We had been seeing each other for about a year now.  My life had changed a lot.  I look at the stars and see faces. I used to look at the sky and see just opened air.  I kiss Maria and we all take turns singing as loud as we can.  We howl at the moon.  We sleep under the night sky and I have a dream.  

I have the same dream over and over.  I am running on the water, until I notice it and then begin to float in the air.  I am calling my brother to throw me the football, but he doesn’t answer.  I see my family gathering around a casket.  They are dressed in dark suits and black dresses.  They are crying.  I try to talk to them but I can’t speak.  I can’t focus on the faces nor who is in the casket.  Then we are in the graveyard and I am clawing at the dirt.  It is my brothers grave and no one is there but me.   The red and white flowers fill the floor, but I still claw until Maria touches my shoulder and guides me away.  She tells me to find the road.  I don’t understand what she means.  And usually I wake up about now, but tonight seems to be different.  We start to dance in wedding clothes.  At first it seems like family and friends are gathered around at our wedding.  Then I notice the faces of the people.  I do not recognize them.  Some of them look like police men and politicians.  Maria also changes.  She turns in to Julie and I seem to be Warren.  I see us dancing and eating cake.  We have children and a house on a farm.  

I am running.  This time it is a football game.  It seems so real.  I can feel my breath in the cold morning air.  I can hear the crowd in the stands cheering.  The collisions like thunder around me, as I break free over and over again.  I have the football in my arms as the sky throws down rain and lighting.  A red lightning bolt hits the field and I awake.  

   Talking in Receivers

 I have lived past Death Row.  Somebody wanted me dead.  Somebody set me up.  Somebody killed my brother.  Somebody has killed my cousin.  Somebody has left many dead bodies in their fight for power.  Somebody has let the dead travel to the world of the living.  I am the dead here to find that somebody.  I am the prayers of a million people that have died waiting for the scales of justice to balance itself.  I cannot sleep the long sleep.  I am only here for a short time.  My soul remembers all the pieces left for me.  Now my hands must put them together.  

The beginning of the hunt starts at the reservation.  This is where we were betrayed.  Someone here bloodied their hands, and tried to wash them clean with more blood.  Here is where I find my prey that has preyed upon my family.  His name is Marco.  He is the seller of Meth.   He is the white mans dog.  He is the stealer of souls.  I know him too well.  He lives at every gathering of lost souls.  He lives at every gathering of the weak and unloved.  He fattens his belly with the misery of the community he lives in.  He takes and takes, and even though his sins are small compared to the sins of his maker, I begin with him.

There was a trail that he has left.  It is still smoldering and burning.  I smell the blood and begin crawling through the dark souls that live in the night.  They are gathered at the tavern to share and take from each other.  The music fills the dirt and rusted metal and old wood surroundings.  The drunken laughter and loud callings of the people inside run and run to find each other.  Like always, the pack of vicious wolves on motor cycles claim their territory.  He is among them.  They all grow fat from the blood of the reservation.  Later I will find the corrupt Tribal leaders that allow these monsters to feed, but for now, death will be satisfied with ten more and hell will have its doors open.  I can feel the evil before I walk in.  

I am dressed in ancient regalia from a people long ago.  I am the prayers of my bloodline from over 500 years.  We call out.  These lost souls will find redemption when they are released from their earthly prison.  Two await for me at the door.  Their bodies burst sober and skin turn ice cold when they see the monster they created emerge from the shadows.  Silently the bodies fall to the floor as my ancestors blades drip crimson.  The rest of the party begins and we dance.  

Guns fire and bats and chains break upon my sun gold skin.  I travel from the after world and re emerge in shrouds and corners of shadows.  I use the power of the sky, water, fire and earth to make death rain.  Lightning and tidal waves leave these lifeless bodies at my feet.  I see Marco.  I ask him who gave the orders.  He sits in a state of shell shock and then reaches for his 9mm.  I let him shoot.  He does until it is empty.  He then begins to mumble something that sounds like prayers and repentance.  It is too late for repentance from me.  That is not my job.  I am only here to collect and tell this story.  The story of the loveless and heartless.  He gives me a name I recognize.  I take his heart.  The spirit of the wolf comes to me, and we leave to cross the plain of the living to find answers from the waters and leave alms for the receiving dead.  This is our duty for the balance must be met, even by us.  We are joined by the other venturing spirit animals as they surround me.  They give me their power as we meet in the place between life and death.  

  Mailbox

 Braxton Mahohn Jr. was the Mayor of the small town.  The cattle ranches and farming industry were overcasted on this August night.  A young woman quietly whimpers and sniffles salty tears that have dried out from the weeks of grief and heart broken pain.  She has lost someone whom she didn’t mean to love, but couldn’t help fall for the proud, strong soul and energy that he gave to everyone that knew him.  She thinks upon his kind gestures when he was courting her.  She remembers their late night phone calls and how he would always promise to write her name in lights in the Hollywood night sky.  She loved movies and one day wanted to move to California to become an actress.   A foolish dream, she knew, but when around him, people felt that they could do anything, and their dreams were only steps away.

She lays her golden locks in her tear drenched pillows.  Uncaring, she lays for hours and days.  In her hands she clenches the locket that he gave her at their first anniversary.  A golden heart with the simple word inscribed; love.  They would go on long car drives to watch sunsets and night skies.  She was caught up in his magic, even though she wasn’t supposed to.  When he died, she couldn’t believe it.  Since then, she hasn’t been the same.  Her father has brought in doctors to oversee her mental health.  They give her a new drug to help with her anxiety attacks.  Little round blue pills... they look like pearls.  

Being the only child, she was used to being overprotected and living wiht strict rules.  This was part of the reason she rebelled in the first place.  She was attracted to the dangerous life when she started High School.  She would hang out with the troublemakers, often giving them access to places they wouldn’t normally have access to.  She learned their ways and adapted to the wild life.  When she met Warren, she was supposed to ruin his reputation and get in trouble with the law.  She never agreed to help kill him.

Her father looks through a slightly opened door into the room at the broken girl.  He lightly closes the door without making a sound.  As he walks down the hallway accompanied by his servants, he gives the order to double her medication dose for the remainder of the week.  He will have important business to attend to and doesn’t want her to get into any trouble while he is away.  The mother overhears this and in her pill induced haze, summons the strength to protest with a flying cocktail glass across the room.  It nearly connects to the mans head, but his military training has not failed him, even in his later years.  He orders the same for her, except they secretly supply her a daily dosage in her drinks.  Even with the current state of his family, he still loves her, although he finds his pleasure in other ways.

As he readies to leave, he enters the limousine and verifies his appointments.  One is to ensure his pleasure packets in Indonesia and Chicago.  His young Italian assistant, Stephano, shows his jealous disapproval, but restrains himself and verifies that all things are in order.  The phone rings from the President.  He does not pick it up and simply says that he will see him when he gets their to Indonesia, and proceeds to his flight and consumes a pill himself.  It is a new world, yet an old world.   The Scribe writes down a new dream while he dreams.  In it are many faces known and unknown, some friends and some foes.  He sees his brother and Maria.  He sees fire and water clashing.  He awaits in the clouds, in the night sky, in the rivers, in the blood of the earth.  He waits.

[repwincoml4a0a5]

Wag The Dog -- How Al Qaeda Played Donald Trump And The American Media

Once upon a time, Donald J. Trump, the New York City businessman-turned-president, berated then-President Barack Obama back in September 2013 about the fallacy of an American military strike against Syria.  At that time, the United States was considering the use of force against Syria in response to allegations (since largely disproven) that the regime of President Bashar al-Assad had used chemical weapons against civilians in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta. Trump, via tweet, declared “to our very foolish leader, do not attack Syria – if you do many very bad things will happen & from that fight the U.S. gets nothing!”

President Obama, despite having publicly declaring the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime a “red line” which, if crossed, would demand American military action, ultimately declined to order an attack, largely on the basis of warnings by James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, that the intelligence linking the chemical attack on Ghouta was less than definitive.

President Barack Obama, in a 2016 interview with The Atlantic, observed, “there’s a playbook in Washington that presidents are supposed to follow. It’s a playbook that comes out of the foreign-policy establishment. And the playbook prescribes responses to different events, and these responses tend to be militarized responses.” While the “Washington playbook,” Obama noted, could be useful during times of crisis, it could “also be a trap that can lead to bad decisions.”

His “red line” on chemical weapons usage, combined with heated rhetoric coming from his closest advisors, including Secretary of State John Kerry, hinting at a military response, was such a trap. Ultimately, President Obama opted to back off, observing that “dropping bombs on someone to prove that you’re willing to drop bombs on someone is just about the worst reason to use force.” The media, Republicans and even members of his own party excoriated Obama for this decision.

Yet, in November 2016, as president-elect, Donald Trump doubled down on Obama’s eschewing of the “Washington playbook.” The situation on the ground in Syria had fundamentally changed since 2013; the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) had taken over large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria, establishing a “capital” in the Syrian city of Raqqa and declaring the creation of an Islamic “Caliphate.”  American efforts to remove Syrian President Assad from power had begun to bar fruit, forcing Russia to intervene in September 2015 in order to prop up the beleaguered Syrian president.

Trump, breaking from the mainstream positions held by most American policy makers, Republican and Democrat alike, declared that the United States should focus on fighting and defeating the Islamic State (ISIS) and not pursuing regime change in Syria. “My attitude,” Trump noted, “was you’re fighting Syria, Syria is fighting ISIS, and you have to get rid of ISIS. Russia is now totally aligned with Syria, and now you have Iran, which is becoming powerful, because of us, is aligned with Syria... Now we’re backing rebels against Syria, and we have no idea who these people are.” Moreover, Trump observed, given the robust Russian presence inside Syria, if the United States attacked Assad, “we end up fighting Russia, fighting Syria.”

For more than two months, the new Trump administration seemed to breathe life into the notion that Donald Trump had, like his predecessor before him, thrown the “Washington playbook” out the window when it came to Syrian policy.  After ordering a series of new military deployments into Syria and Iraq specifically designed to confront ISIS, the Trump administration began to give public voice to a major shift in policy vis-à-vis the Syrian President.

For the first time since President Obama, in August 2011, articulated regime change in Damascus as a precondition for the cessation of the civil conflict that had been raging since April 2011, American government officials articulated that this was no longer the case.  “You pick and choose your battles,” the American Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, told reporters on March 30, 2017.  “And when we’re looking at this, it’s about changing up priorities and our priority is no longer to sit and focus on getting Assad out.”  Haley’s words were echoed by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who observed that same day, while on an official visit to Turkey, “I think the… longer-term status of President Assad will be decided by the Syrian people.”

This new policy direction lasted barely five days. Sometime in the early afternoon of April 4, 2017, troubling images and video clips began to be transmitted out of the Syrian province of Idlib by anti-government activists, including members of the so-called “White Helmets,” a volunteer rescue team whose work was captured in an eponymously-named Academy Award-winning documentary film. These images showed victims in various stages of symptomatic distress, including death, from what the activists said was exposure to chemical weapons dropped by the Syrian air force on the town of Khan Sheikhoun that very morning.

Images of these tragic deaths were immediately broadcast on American media outlets, with pundits decrying the horrific and heinous nature of the chemical attack, which was nearly unanimously attributed to the Syrian government, even though the only evidence provided was the imagery and testimony of the anti-Assad activists who, just days before, were decrying the shift in American policy regarding regime change in Syria. President Trump viewed these images, and was deeply troubled by what he saw, especially the depictions of dead and suffering children.

The images were used as exhibits in a passionate speech by Haley during a speech at the Security Council on April 5, 2017, where she confronted Russia and threatened unilateral American military action if the Council failed to respond to the alleged Syrian chemical attack. “Yesterday morning, we awoke to pictures, to children foaming at the mouth, suffering convulsions, being carried in the arms of desperate parents,” Haley said, holding up two examples of the images provided by the anti-Assad activists. “We saw rows of lifeless bodies, some still in diapers…we cannot close our eyes to those pictures.  We cannot close our minds of the responsibility to act.”  If the Security Council refused to take action against the Syrian government, Haley said, then “there are times in the life of states that we are compelled to take our own action.”

In 2013, President Barack Obama was confronted with images of dead and injured civilians, including numerous small children, from Syria that were every bit as heartbreaking as the ones displayed by Ambassador Haley. His Secretary of State, John Kerry, had made an impassioned speech that all but called for military force against Syria.  President Obama asked for, and received, a wide-range of military options from his national security team targeting the regime of President Assad; only the intervention of James Clapper, and the doubts that existed about the veracity of the intelligence linking the Ghouta chemical attack to the Syrian government, held Obama back from giving the green light for the bombing to begin. 

Like President Obama before him, President Trump asked for his national security team to prepare options for military action.  Unlike his predecessor, Donald Trump did not seek a pause in his decision making process to let his intelligence services investigate what had actually occurred in Khan Sheikhoun.  Like Nikki Haley, Donald Trump was driven by his visceral reaction to the imagery being disseminated by anti-Assad activists. In the afternoon of April 6, as he prepared to depart the White House for a summit meeting with a delegation led by the Chinese President Xi Jinping, Trump’s own cryptic words in response to a reporter’s question about any American response seem to hint that his mind was already made up. “You’ll see,” he said, before walking away.

Within hours, a pair of U.S. Navy destroyers launched 59 advanced Block IV Tomahawk cruise missiles (at a cost of some $1.41 million each), targeting aircraft, hardened shelters, fuel storage, munitions supply, air defense and communications facilities at the Al Shayrat air base, located in central Syria.  Al Shayrat was home to two squadrons of Russian-made SU-22 fighter-bombers operated by the Syrian air force, one of which was tracked by American radar as taking off from Al Sharyat on the morning of April 4, 2017, and was overhead Khan Sheikhoun around the time the alleged chemical attack occurred. 

The purpose of the American strike was two-fold; first, to send a message to the Syrian government and its allies that, according to Secretary of State Tillerson, “the president is willing to take decisive action when called for,” and in particular when confronted with evidence of a chemical attack from which the United States could not “turn away, turn a blind eye.”  The other purpose, according to a U.S. military spokesperson, to “reduce the Syrian government’s ability to deliver chemical weapons.” 

Moreover, the policy honeymoon the Trump administration had only recently announced about regime change in Syria was over. “It’s very, very possible, and, I will tell you, it’s already happened, that my attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much,” President Trump told reporters before the missile strikes had commenced.  Secretary Tillerson went further: “It would seem there would be no role for him [Assad] to govern the Syrian people.”

Such a reversal in policy fundamentals and direction in such a short period of time is stunning; Donald Trump didn’t simply deviate slightly off course, but rather did a complete 180-degree turn. The previous policy of avoiding entanglement in the internal affairs of Syria in favor of defeating ISIS and improving relations with Russia had been replaced by a fervent embrace of regime change, direct military engagement with the Syrian armed forces, and a confrontational stance vis-à-vis the Russian military presence in Syria.

Normally, such major policy change could only be explained by a new reality driven by verifiable facts. The alleged chemical weapons attack against Khan Sheikhoun was not a new reality; chemical attacks had been occurring inside Syria on a regular basis, despite the international effort to disarm Syria’s chemical weapons capability undertaken in 2013 that played a central role in forestalling American military action at that time. International investigations of these attacks produced mixed results, with some being attributed to the Syrian government (something the Syrian government vehemently denies), and the majority being attributed to anti-regime fighters, in particular those affiliated with Al Nusra Front, an Al Qaeda affiliate.

Moreover, there exists a mixed provenance when it comes to chemical weapons usage inside Syria that would seem to foreclose any knee-jerk reaction that placed the blame for what happened at Khan Sheikhoun solely on the Syrian government void of any official investigation. Yet this is precisely what occurred.  Some sort of chemical event took place in Khan Sheikhoun; what is very much in question is who is responsible for the release of the chemicals that caused the deaths of so many civilians.

No one disputes the fact that a Syrian air force SU-22 fighter-bomber conducted a bombing mission against a target in Khan Sheikhoun on the morning of April 4, 2017. The anti-regime activists in Khan Sheikhoun, however, have painted a narrative that has the Syrian air force dropping chemical bombs on a sleeping civilian population.

A critical piece of information that has largely escaped the reporting in the mainstream media is that Khan Sheikhoun is ground zero for the Islamic jihadists who have been at the center of the anti-Assad movement in Syria since 2011. Up until February 2017, Khan Sheikhoun was occupied by a pro-ISIS group known as Liwa al-Aqsa that was engaged in an oftentimes-violent struggle with its competitor organization, Al Nusra Front (which later morphed into Tahrir al-Sham, but under any name functioning as Al Qaeda’s arm in Syria) for resources and political influence among the local population.

The Russian Ministry of Defense has claimed that Liwa al-Aqsa was using facilities in and around Khan Sheikhoun to manufacture crude chemical shells and landmines intended for ISIS forces fighting in Iraq. According to the Russians the Khan Sheikhoun chemical weapons facility was mirrored on similar sites uncovered by Russian and Syrian forces following the reoccupation of rebel-controlled areas of Aleppo. 

In Aleppo, the Russians discovered crude weapons production laboratories that filled mortar shells and landmines with a mix of chlorine gas and white phosphorus; after a thorough forensic investigation was conducted by military specialists, the Russians turned over samples of these weapons, together with soil samples from areas struck by weapons produced in these laboratories, to investigators from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for further evaluation.

Al Nusra has a long history of manufacturing and employing crude chemical weapons; the 2013 chemical attack on Ghouta made use of low-grade Sarin nerve agent locally synthesized, while attacks in and around Aleppo in 2016 made use of a chlorine/white phosphorous blend.  If the Russians are correct, and the building bombed in Khan Sheikhoun on the morning of April 4, 2017 was producing and/or storing chemical weapons, the probability that viable agent and other toxic contaminants were dispersed into the surrounding neighborhood, and further disseminated by the prevailing wind, is high.

The counter-narrative offered by the Russians and Syrians, however, has been minimized, mocked and ignored by both the American media and the Trump administration. So, too, has the very illogic of the premise being put forward to answer the question of why President Assad would risk everything by using chemical weapons against a target of zero military value, at a time when the strategic balance of power had shifted strongly in his favor. Likewise, why would Russia, which had invested considerable political capital in the disarmament of Syria’s chemical weapons capability after 2013, stand by idly while the Syrian air force carried out such an attack, especially when their was such a heavy Russian military presence at the base in question at the time of the attack?

Such analysis seems beyond the scope and comprehension of the American fourth estate.  Instead, media outlets like CNN embrace at face value anything they are told by official American sources, including a particularly preposterous insinuation that Russia actually colluded in the chemical weapons attack; the aforementioned presence of Russian officers at Al Shayrat air base has been cited as evidence that Russia had to have known about Syria’s chemical warfare capability, and yet did nothing to prevent the attack.

To sustain this illogic, the American public and decision-makers make use of a sophisticated propaganda campaign involving video images and narratives provided by forces opposed to the regime of Bashar al-Assad, including organizations like the “White Helmets,” the Syrian-American Medical Society, the Aleppo Media Center, which have a history of providing slanted information designed to promote an anti-Assad message (Donald Trump has all but acknowledged that these images played a major role in his decision to reevaluate his opinion of Bashar al-Assad and order the cruise missile attack on Al Shayrat airbase.) 

Many of the fighters affiliated with Tahrir al-Sham are veterans of the battle for Aleppo, and as such are intimately familiar with the tools and trade of the extensive propaganda battle that was waged simultaneously with the actual fighting in an effort to sway western public opinion toward adopting a more aggressive stance in opposition to the Syrian government of Assad. These tools were brought to bear in promoting a counter-narrative about the Khan Sheikhoun chemical incident (ironically, many of the activists in question, including the “White Helmets,” were trained and equipped in social media manipulation tactics using money provided by the United States; that these techniques would end up being used to manipulate an American President into carrying out an act of war most likely never factored into the thinking of the State Department personnel who conceived and implemented the program).

Even slick media training, however, cannot gloss over basic factual inconsistencies. Early on, the anti-Assad opposition media outlets were labeling the Khan Sheikhoun incident as a “Sarin nerve agent” attack; one doctor affiliated with Al Qaeda sent out images and commentary via social media that documented symptoms, such as dilated pupils, that he diagnosed as stemming from exposure to Sarin nerve agent. Sarin, however, is an odorless, colorless material, dispersed as either a liquid or vapor; eyewitnesses speak of a “pungent odor” and “blue-yellow” clouds, more indicative of chlorine gas.

And while American media outlets, such as CNN, have spoken of munitions “filled to the brim” with Sarin nerve agent being used at Khan Sheikhoun, there is simply no evidence cited by any source that can sustain such an account.  Heartbreaking images of victims being treated by “White Helmet” rescuers have been cited as proof of Sarin-like symptoms, the medical viability of these images is in question; there are no images taken of victims at the scene of the attack. Instead, the video provided by the “White Helmets” is of decontamination and treatment carried out at a “White Helmet” base after the victims, either dead or injured, were transported there. 

The lack of viable protective clothing worn by the “White Helmet” personnel while handling victims is another indication that the chemical in question was not military grade Sarin; if it were, the rescuers would themselves have become victims (some accounts speak of just this phenomena, but this occurred at the site of the attack, where the rescuers were overcome by a “pungent smelling” chemical – again, Sarin is odorless.)

More than 20 victims of the Khan Sheikhoun incident were transported to Turkish hospitals for care; three subsequently died. According to the Turkish Justice Minister, autopsies conducted on the bodies confirm that the cause of death was exposure to chemical agents. The World Health Organization has indicated that the symptoms of the Khan Sheikhoun victims are consistent with both Sarin and Chlorine exposure. American media outlets have latched onto the Turkish and WHO statements as “proof” of Syrian government involvement; however, any exposure to the chlorine/white phosphorous blend associated with Al Nusra chemical weapons would produce similar symptoms. 

Moreover, if Al Nusra was replicating the type of low-grade Sarin it employed at Ghouta in 2013 at Khan Sheikhoun, it is highly likely that some of the victims in question would exhibit Sarin-like symptoms. Blood samples taken from the victims could provide a more precise readout of the specific chemical exposure involved; such samples have allegedly been collected by Al Nusra-affiliated personnel, and turned over to international investigators (the notion that any serious investigatory body would allow Al Nusra to provide forensic evidence in support of an investigation where it is one of only two potential culprits is mindboggling, but that is precisely what has happened). But the Trump administration chose to act before these samples could be processed, perhaps afraid that their results would not sustain the underlying allegation of the employment of Sarin by the Syrian air force.

Mainstream American media outlets have willingly and openly embraced a narrative provided by Al Qaeda affiliates whose record of using chemical weapons in Syria and distorting and manufacturing “evidence” to promote anti-Assad policies in the west, including regime change, is well documented.  These outlets have made a deliberate decision to endorse the view of Al Qaeda over a narrative provided by Russian and Syrian government authorities without any effort to fact check either position. These actions, however, do not seem to shock the conscience of the American public; when it comes to Syria, the mainstream American media and its audience has long ago ceded the narrative to Al Qaeda and other Islamist anti-regime elements.

The real culprits here are the Trump administration, and President Trump himself. The president’s record of placing more weight on what he sees on television than the intelligence briefings he may or may not be getting, and his lack of intellectual curiosity and unfamiliarity with the nuances and complexities of both foreign and national security policy, created the conditions where the imagery of the Khan Sheikhoun victims that had been disseminated by pro-Al Nusra (i.e., Al Qaeda) outlets could influence critical life-or-death decisions.

That President Trump could be susceptible to such obvious manipulation is not surprising, given his predilection for counter-punching on Twitter for any perceived slight; that his national security team allowed him to be manipulated thus, and did nothing to sway Trump’s opinion or forestall action pending a thorough review of the facts, is scandalous. History will show that Donald Trump, his advisors and the American media were little more than willing dupes for Al Qaeda and its affiliates, whose manipulation of the Syrian narrative resulted in a major policy shift that furthers their objectives. 

The other winner in this sorry story is ISIS, which took advantage of the American strike against Al Shayrat to launch a major offensive against Syrian government forces around the city of Palmyra (Al Shayrat had served as the principal air base for operations in the Palmyra region). The breakdown in relations between Russia and the United States means that, for the foreseeable future at least, the kind of coordination that had been taking place in the fight against ISIS is a thing of the past, a fact that can only bode well for the fighters of ISIS. For a man who placed so much emphasis on defeating ISIS, President Trump’s actions can only be viewed as a self-inflicted wound, a kind of circular firing squad that marks the actions of a Keystone Cop, and not the Commander in Chief of the most powerful nation in the world. 

But the person who might get the last laugh is President Assad himself. While the Pentagon has claimed that it significantly degraded the Al Shayrat air base, with 58 of 59 cruise missile hitting their targets, Russia has stated that only 23..

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Wag The Dog -- How Al Qaeda Played Donald Trump And The American Media

Once upon a time, Donald J. Trump, the New York City businessman-turned-president, berated then-President Barack Obama back in September 2013 about the fallacy of an American military strike against Syria.  At that time, the United States was considering the use of force against Syria in response to allegations (since largely disproven) that the regime of President Bashar al-Assad had used chemical weapons against civilians in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta. Trump, via tweet, declared “to our very foolish leader, do not attack Syria – if you do many very bad things will happen & from that fight the U.S. gets nothing!”

President Obama, despite having publicly declaring the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime a “red line” which, if crossed, would demand American military action, ultimately declined to order an attack, largely on the basis of warnings by James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, that the intelligence linking the chemical attack on Ghouta was less than definitive.

President Barack Obama, in a 2016 interview with The Atlantic, observed, “there’s a playbook in Washington that presidents are supposed to follow. It’s a playbook that comes out of the foreign-policy establishment. And the playbook prescribes responses to different events, and these responses tend to be militarized responses.” While the “Washington playbook,” Obama noted, could be useful during times of crisis, it could “also be a trap that can lead to bad decisions.”

His “red line” on chemical weapons usage, combined with heated rhetoric coming from his closest advisors, including Secretary of State John Kerry, hinting at a military response, was such a trap. Ultimately, President Obama opted to back off, observing that “dropping bombs on someone to prove that you’re willing to drop bombs on someone is just about the worst reason to use force.” The media, Republicans and even members of his own party excoriated Obama for this decision.

Yet, in November 2016, as president-elect, Donald Trump doubled down on Obama’s eschewing of the “Washington playbook.” The situation on the ground in Syria had fundamentally changed since 2013; the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) had taken over large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria, establishing a “capital” in the Syrian city of Raqqa and declaring the creation of an Islamic “Caliphate.”  American efforts to remove Syrian President Assad from power had begun to bar fruit, forcing Russia to intervene in September 2015 in order to prop up the beleaguered Syrian president.

Trump, breaking from the mainstream positions held by most American policy makers, Republican and Democrat alike, declared that the United States should focus on fighting and defeating the Islamic State (ISIS) and not pursuing regime change in Syria. “My attitude,” Trump noted, “was you’re fighting Syria, Syria is fighting ISIS, and you have to get rid of ISIS. Russia is now totally aligned with Syria, and now you have Iran, which is becoming powerful, because of us, is aligned with Syria... Now we’re backing rebels against Syria, and we have no idea who these people are.” Moreover, Trump observed, given the robust Russian presence inside Syria, if the United States attacked Assad, “we end up fighting Russia, fighting Syria.”

For more than two months, the new Trump administration seemed to breathe life into the notion that Donald Trump had, like his predecessor before him, thrown the “Washington playbook” out the window when it came to Syrian policy.  After ordering a series of new military deployments into Syria and Iraq specifically designed to confront ISIS, the Trump administration began to give public voice to a major shift in policy vis-à-vis the Syrian President.

For the first time since President Obama, in August 2011, articulated regime change in Damascus as a precondition for the cessation of the civil conflict that had been raging since April 2011, American government officials articulated that this was no longer the case.  “You pick and choose your battles,” the American Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, told reporters on March 30, 2017.  “And when we’re looking at this, it’s about changing up priorities and our priority is no longer to sit and focus on getting Assad out.”  Haley’s words were echoed by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who observed that same day, while on an official visit to Turkey, “I think the… longer-term status of President Assad will be decided by the Syrian people.”

This new policy direction lasted barely five days. Sometime in the early afternoon of April 4, 2017, troubling images and video clips began to be transmitted out of the Syrian province of Idlib by anti-government activists, including members of the so-called “White Helmets,” a volunteer rescue team whose work was captured in an eponymously-named Academy Award-winning documentary film. These images showed victims in various stages of symptomatic distress, including death, from what the activists said was exposure to chemical weapons dropped by the Syrian air force on the town of Khan Sheikhoun that very morning.

Images of these tragic deaths were immediately broadcast on American media outlets, with pundits decrying the horrific and heinous nature of the chemical attack, which was nearly unanimously attributed to the Syrian government, even though the only evidence provided was the imagery and testimony of the anti-Assad activists who, just days before, were decrying the shift in American policy regarding regime change in Syria. President Trump viewed these images, and was deeply troubled by what he saw, especially the depictions of dead and suffering children.

The images were used as exhibits in a passionate speech by Haley during a speech at the Security Council on April 5, 2017, where she confronted Russia and threatened unilateral American military action if the Council failed to respond to the alleged Syrian chemical attack. “Yesterday morning, we awoke to pictures, to children foaming at the mouth, suffering convulsions, being carried in the arms of desperate parents,” Haley said, holding up two examples of the images provided by the anti-Assad activists. “We saw rows of lifeless bodies, some still in diapers…we cannot close our eyes to those pictures.  We cannot close our minds of the responsibility to act.”  If the Security Council refused to take action against the Syrian government, Haley said, then “there are times in the life of states that we are compelled to take our own action.”

In 2013, President Barack Obama was confronted with images of dead and injured civilians, including numerous small children, from Syria that were every bit as heartbreaking as the ones displayed by Ambassador Haley. His Secretary of State, John Kerry, had made an impassioned speech that all but called for military force against Syria.  President Obama asked for, and received, a wide-range of military options from his national security team targeting the regime of President Assad; only the intervention of James Clapper, and the doubts that existed about the veracity of the intelligence linking the Ghouta chemical attack to the Syrian government, held Obama back from giving the green light for the bombing to begin. 

Like President Obama before him, President Trump asked for his national security team to prepare options for military action.  Unlike his predecessor, Donald Trump did not seek a pause in his decision making process to let his intelligence services investigate what had actually occurred in Khan Sheikhoun.  Like Nikki Haley, Donald Trump was driven by his visceral reaction to the imagery being disseminated by anti-Assad activists. In the afternoon of April 6, as he prepared to depart the White House for a summit meeting with a delegation led by the Chinese President Xi Jinping, Trump’s own cryptic words in response to a reporter’s question about any American response seem to hint that his mind was already made up. “You’ll see,” he said, before walking away.

Within hours, a pair of U.S. Navy destroyers launched 59 advanced Block IV Tomahawk cruise missiles (at a cost of some $1.41 million each), targeting aircraft, hardened shelters, fuel storage, munitions supply, air defense and communications facilities at the Al Shayrat air base, located in central Syria.  Al Shayrat was home to two squadrons of Russian-made SU-22 fighter-bombers operated by the Syrian air force, one of which was tracked by American radar as taking off from Al Sharyat on the morning of April 4, 2017, and was overhead Khan Sheikhoun around the time the alleged chemical attack occurred. 

The purpose of the American strike was two-fold; first, to send a message to the Syrian government and its allies that, according to Secretary of State Tillerson, “the president is willing to take decisive action when called for,” and in particular when confronted with evidence of a chemical attack from which the United States could not “turn away, turn a blind eye.”  The other purpose, according to a U.S. military spokesperson, to “reduce the Syrian government’s ability to deliver chemical weapons.” 

Moreover, the policy honeymoon the Trump administration had only recently announced about regime change in Syria was over. “It’s very, very possible, and, I will tell you, it’s already happened, that my attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much,” President Trump told reporters before the missile strikes had commenced.  Secretary Tillerson went further: “It would seem there would be no role for him [Assad] to govern the Syrian people.”

Such a reversal in policy fundamentals and direction in such a short period of time is stunning; Donald Trump didn’t simply deviate slightly off course, but rather did a complete 180-degree turn. The previous policy of avoiding entanglement in the internal affairs of Syria in favor of defeating ISIS and improving relations with Russia had been replaced by a fervent embrace of regime change, direct military engagement with the Syrian armed forces, and a confrontational stance vis-à-vis the Russian military presence in Syria.

Normally, such major policy change could only be explained by a new reality driven by verifiable facts. The alleged chemical weapons attack against Khan Sheikhoun was not a new reality; chemical attacks had been occurring inside Syria on a regular basis, despite the international effort to disarm Syria’s chemical weapons capability undertaken in 2013 that played a central role in forestalling American military action at that time. International investigations of these attacks produced mixed results, with some being attributed to the Syrian government (something the Syrian government vehemently denies), and the majority being attributed to anti-regime fighters, in particular those affiliated with Al Nusra Front, an Al Qaeda affiliate.

Moreover, there exists a mixed provenance when it comes to chemical weapons usage inside Syria that would seem to foreclose any knee-jerk reaction that placed the blame for what happened at Khan Sheikhoun solely on the Syrian government void of any official investigation. Yet this is precisely what occurred.  Some sort of chemical event took place in Khan Sheikhoun; what is very much in question is who is responsible for the release of the chemicals that caused the deaths of so many civilians.

No one disputes the fact that a Syrian air force SU-22 fighter-bomber conducted a bombing mission against a target in Khan Sheikhoun on the morning of April 4, 2017. The anti-regime activists in Khan Sheikhoun, however, have painted a narrative that has the Syrian air force dropping chemical bombs on a sleeping civilian population.

A critical piece of information that has largely escaped the reporting in the mainstream media is that Khan Sheikhoun is ground zero for the Islamic jihadists who have been at the center of the anti-Assad movement in Syria since 2011. Up until February 2017, Khan Sheikhoun was occupied by a pro-ISIS group known as Liwa al-Aqsa that was engaged in an oftentimes-violent struggle with its competitor organization, Al Nusra Front (which later morphed into Tahrir al-Sham, but under any name functioning as Al Qaeda’s arm in Syria) for resources and political influence among the local population.

The Russian Ministry of Defense has claimed that Liwa al-Aqsa was using facilities in and around Khan Sheikhoun to manufacture crude chemical shells and landmines intended for ISIS forces fighting in Iraq. According to the Russians the Khan Sheikhoun chemical weapons facility was mirrored on similar sites uncovered by Russian and Syrian forces following the reoccupation of rebel-controlled areas of Aleppo. 

In Aleppo, the Russians discovered crude weapons production laboratories that filled mortar shells and landmines with a mix of chlorine gas and white phosphorus; after a thorough forensic investigation was conducted by military specialists, the Russians turned over samples of these weapons, together with soil samples from areas struck by weapons produced in these laboratories, to investigators from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for further evaluation.

Al Nusra has a long history of manufacturing and employing crude chemical weapons; the 2013 chemical attack on Ghouta made use of low-grade Sarin nerve agent locally synthesized, while attacks in and around Aleppo in 2016 made use of a chlorine/white phosphorous blend.  If the Russians are correct, and the building bombed in Khan Sheikhoun on the morning of April 4, 2017 was producing and/or storing chemical weapons, the probability that viable agent and other toxic contaminants were dispersed into the surrounding neighborhood, and further disseminated by the prevailing wind, is high.

The counter-narrative offered by the Russians and Syrians, however, has been minimized, mocked and ignored by both the American media and the Trump administration. So, too, has the very illogic of the premise being put forward to answer the question of why President Assad would risk everything by using chemical weapons against a target of zero military value, at a time when the strategic balance of power had shifted strongly in his favor. Likewise, why would Russia, which had invested considerable political capital in the disarmament of Syria’s chemical weapons capability after 2013, stand by idly while the Syrian air force carried out such an attack, especially when their was such a heavy Russian military presence at the base in question at the time of the attack?

Such analysis seems beyond the scope and comprehension of the American fourth estate.  Instead, media outlets like CNN embrace at face value anything they are told by official American sources, including a particularly preposterous insinuation that Russia actually colluded in the chemical weapons attack; the aforementioned presence of Russian officers at Al Shayrat air base has been cited as evidence that Russia had to have known about Syria’s chemical warfare capability, and yet did nothing to prevent the attack.

To sustain this illogic, the American public and decision-makers make use of a sophisticated propaganda campaign involving video images and narratives provided by forces opposed to the regime of Bashar al-Assad, including organizations like the “White Helmets,” the Syrian-American Medical Society, the Aleppo Media Center, which have a history of providing slanted information designed to promote an anti-Assad message (Donald Trump has all but acknowledged that these images played a major role in his decision to reevaluate his opinion of Bashar al-Assad and order the cruise missile attack on Al Shayrat airbase.) 

Many of the fighters affiliated with Tahrir al-Sham are veterans of the battle for Aleppo, and as such are intimately familiar with the tools and trade of the extensive propaganda battle that was waged simultaneously with the actual fighting in an effort to sway western public opinion toward adopting a more aggressive stance in opposition to the Syrian government of Assad. These tools were brought to bear in promoting a counter-narrative about the Khan Sheikhoun chemical incident (ironically, many of the activists in question, including the “White Helmets,” were trained and equipped in social media manipulation tactics using money provided by the United States; that these techniques would end up being used to manipulate an American President into carrying out an act of war most likely never factored into the thinking of the State Department personnel who conceived and implemented the program).

Even slick media training, however, cannot gloss over basic factual inconsistencies. Early on, the anti-Assad opposition media outlets were labeling the Khan Sheikhoun incident as a “Sarin nerve agent” attack; one doctor affiliated with Al Qaeda sent out images and commentary via social media that documented symptoms, such as dilated pupils, that he diagnosed as stemming from exposure to Sarin nerve agent. Sarin, however, is an odorless, colorless material, dispersed as either a liquid or vapor; eyewitnesses speak of a “pungent odor” and “blue-yellow” clouds, more indicative of chlorine gas.

And while American media outlets, such as CNN, have spoken of munitions “filled to the brim” with Sarin nerve agent being used at Khan Sheikhoun, there is simply no evidence cited by any source that can sustain such an account.  Heartbreaking images of victims being treated by “White Helmet” rescuers have been cited as proof of Sarin-like symptoms, the medical viability of these images is in question; there are no images taken of victims at the scene of the attack. Instead, the video provided by the “White Helmets” is of decontamination and treatment carried out at a “White Helmet” base after the victims, either dead or injured, were transported there. 

The lack of viable protective clothing worn by the “White Helmet” personnel while handling victims is another indication that the chemical in question was not military grade Sarin; if it were, the rescuers would themselves have become victims (some accounts speak of just this phenomena, but this occurred at the site of the attack, where the rescuers were overcome by a “pungent smelling” chemical – again, Sarin is odorless.)

More than 20 victims of the Khan Sheikhoun incident were transported to Turkish hospitals for care; three subsequently died. According to the Turkish Justice Minister, autopsies conducted on the bodies confirm that the cause of death was exposure to chemical agents. The World Health Organization has indicated that the symptoms of the Khan Sheikhoun victims are consistent with both Sarin and Chlorine exposure. American media outlets have latched onto the Turkish and WHO statements as “proof” of Syrian government involvement; however, any exposure to the chlorine/white phosphorous blend associated with Al Nusra chemical weapons would produce similar symptoms. 

Moreover, if Al Nusra was replicating the type of low-grade Sarin it employed at Ghouta in 2013 at Khan Sheikhoun, it is highly likely that some of the victims in question would exhibit Sarin-like symptoms. Blood samples taken from the victims could provide a more precise readout of the specific chemical exposure involved; such samples have allegedly been collected by Al Nusra-affiliated personnel, and turned over to international investigators (the notion that any serious investigatory body would allow Al Nusra to provide forensic evidence in support of an investigation where it is one of only two potential culprits is mindboggling, but that is precisely what has happened). But the Trump administration chose to act before these samples could be processed, perhaps afraid that their results would not sustain the underlying allegation of the employment of Sarin by the Syrian air force.

Mainstream American media outlets have willingly and openly embraced a narrative provided by Al Qaeda affiliates whose record of using chemical weapons in Syria and distorting and manufacturing “evidence” to promote anti-Assad policies in the west, including regime change, is well documented.  These outlets have made a deliberate decision to endorse the view of Al Qaeda over a narrative provided by Russian and Syrian government authorities without any effort to fact check either position. These actions, however, do not seem to shock the conscience of the American public; when it comes to Syria, the mainstream American media and its audience has long ago ceded the narrative to Al Qaeda and other Islamist anti-regime elements.

The real culprits here are the Trump administration, and President Trump himself. The president’s record of placing more weight on what he sees on television than the intelligence briefings he may or may not be getting, and his lack of intellectual curiosity and unfamiliarity with the nuances and complexities of both foreign and national security policy, created the conditions where the imagery of the Khan Sheikhoun victims that had been disseminated by pro-Al Nusra (i.e., Al Qaeda) outlets could influence critical life-or-death decisions.

That President Trump could be susceptible to such obvious manipulation is not surprising, given his predilection for counter-punching on Twitter for any perceived slight; that his national security team allowed him to be manipulated thus, and did nothing to sway Trump’s opinion or forestall action pending a thorough review of the facts, is scandalous. History will show that Donald Trump, his advisors and the American media were little more than willing dupes for Al Qaeda and its affiliates, whose manipulation of the Syrian narrative resulted in a major policy shift that furthers their objectives. 

The other winner in this sorry story is ISIS, which took advantage of the American strike against Al Shayrat to launch a major offensive against Syrian government forces around the city of Palmyra (Al Shayrat had served as the principal air base for operations in the Palmyra region). The breakdown in relations between Russia and the United States means that, for the foreseeable future at least, the kind of coordination that had been taking place in the fight against ISIS is a thing of the past, a fact that can only bode well for the fighters of ISIS. For a man who placed so much emphasis on defeating ISIS, President Trump’s actions can only be viewed as a self-inflicted wound, a kind of circular firing squad that marks the actions of a Keystone Cop, and not the Commander in Chief of the most powerful nation in the world. 

But the person who might get the last laugh is President Assad himself. While the Pentagon has claimed that it significantly degraded the Al Shayrat air base, with 58 of 59 cruise missile hitting their targets, Russia has stated that only 23..

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[rtscrndr53704]

Wag The Dog -- How Al Qaeda Played Donald Trump And The American Media

Once upon a time, Donald J. Trump, the New York City businessman-turned-president, berated then-President Barack Obama back in September 2013 about the fallacy of an American military strike against Syria.  At that time, the United States was considering the use of force against Syria in response to allegations (since largely disproven) that the regime of President Bashar al-Assad had used chemical weapons against civilians in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta. Trump, via tweet, declared “to our very foolish leader, do not attack Syria – if you do many very bad things will happen & from that fight the U.S. gets nothing!”

President Obama, despite having publicly declaring the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime a “red line” which, if crossed, would demand American military action, ultimately declined to order an attack, largely on the basis of warnings by James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, that the intelligence linking the chemical attack on Ghouta was less than definitive.

President Barack Obama, in a 2016 interview with The Atlantic, observed, “there’s a playbook in Washington that presidents are supposed to follow. It’s a playbook that comes out of the foreign-policy establishment. And the playbook prescribes responses to different events, and these responses tend to be militarized responses.” While the “Washington playbook,” Obama noted, could be useful during times of crisis, it could “also be a trap that can lead to bad decisions.”

His “red line” on chemical weapons usage, combined with heated rhetoric coming from his closest advisors, including Secretary of State John Kerry, hinting at a military response, was such a trap. Ultimately, President Obama opted to back off, observing that “dropping bombs on someone to prove that you’re willing to drop bombs on someone is just about the worst reason to use force.” The media, Republicans and even members of his own party excoriated Obama for this decision.

Yet, in November 2016, as president-elect, Donald Trump doubled down on Obama’s eschewing of the “Washington playbook.” The situation on the ground in Syria had fundamentally changed since 2013; the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) had taken over large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria, establishing a “capital” in the Syrian city of Raqqa and declaring the creation of an Islamic “Caliphate.”  American efforts to remove Syrian President Assad from power had begun to bar fruit, forcing Russia to intervene in September 2015 in order to prop up the beleaguered Syrian president.

Trump, breaking from the mainstream positions held by most American policy makers, Republican and Democrat alike, declared that the United States should focus on fighting and defeating the Islamic State (ISIS) and not pursuing regime change in Syria. “My attitude,” Trump noted, “was you’re fighting Syria, Syria is fighting ISIS, and you have to get rid of ISIS. Russia is now totally aligned with Syria, and now you have Iran, which is becoming powerful, because of us, is aligned with Syria... Now we’re backing rebels against Syria, and we have no idea who these people are.” Moreover, Trump observed, given the robust Russian presence inside Syria, if the United States attacked Assad, “we end up fighting Russia, fighting Syria.”

For more than two months, the new Trump administration seemed to breathe life into the notion that Donald Trump had, like his predecessor before him, thrown the “Washington playbook” out the window when it came to Syrian policy.  After ordering a series of new military deployments into Syria and Iraq specifically designed to confront ISIS, the Trump administration began to give public voice to a major shift in policy vis-à-vis the Syrian President.

For the first time since President Obama, in August 2011, articulated regime change in Damascus as a precondition for the cessation of the civil conflict that had been raging since April 2011, American government officials articulated that this was no longer the case.  “You pick and choose your battles,” the American Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, told reporters on March 30, 2017.  “And when we’re looking at this, it’s about changing up priorities and our priority is no longer to sit and focus on getting Assad out.”  Haley’s words were echoed by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who observed that same day, while on an official visit to Turkey, “I think the… longer-term status of President Assad will be decided by the Syrian people.”

This new policy direction lasted barely five days. Sometime in the early afternoon of April 4, 2017, troubling images and video clips began to be transmitted out of the Syrian province of Idlib by anti-government activists, including members of the so-called “White Helmets,” a volunteer rescue team whose work was captured in an eponymously-named Academy Award-winning documentary film. These images showed victims in various stages of symptomatic distress, including death, from what the activists said was exposure to chemical weapons dropped by the Syrian air force on the town of Khan Sheikhoun that very morning.

Images of these tragic deaths were immediately broadcast on American media outlets, with pundits decrying the horrific and heinous nature of the chemical attack, which was nearly unanimously attributed to the Syrian government, even though the only evidence provided was the imagery and testimony of the anti-Assad activists who, just days before, were decrying the shift in American policy regarding regime change in Syria. President Trump viewed these images, and was deeply troubled by what he saw, especially the depictions of dead and suffering children.

The images were used as exhibits in a passionate speech by Haley during a speech at the Security Council on April 5, 2017, where she confronted Russia and threatened unilateral American military action if the Council failed to respond to the alleged Syrian chemical attack. “Yesterday morning, we awoke to pictures, to children foaming at the mouth, suffering convulsions, being carried in the arms of desperate parents,” Haley said, holding up two examples of the images provided by the anti-Assad activists. “We saw rows of lifeless bodies, some still in diapers…we cannot close our eyes to those pictures.  We cannot close our minds of the responsibility to act.”  If the Security Council refused to take action against the Syrian government, Haley said, then “there are times in the life of states that we are compelled to take our own action.”

In 2013, President Barack Obama was confronted with images of dead and injured civilians, including numerous small children, from Syria that were every bit as heartbreaking as the ones displayed by Ambassador Haley. His Secretary of State, John Kerry, had made an impassioned speech that all but called for military force against Syria.  President Obama asked for, and received, a wide-range of military options from his national security team targeting the regime of President Assad; only the intervention of James Clapper, and the doubts that existed about the veracity of the intelligence linking the Ghouta chemical attack to the Syrian government, held Obama back from giving the green light for the bombing to begin. 

Like President Obama before him, President Trump asked for his national security team to prepare options for military action.  Unlike his predecessor, Donald Trump did not seek a pause in his decision making process to let his intelligence services investigate what had actually occurred in Khan Sheikhoun.  Like Nikki Haley, Donald Trump was driven by his visceral reaction to the imagery being disseminated by anti-Assad activists. In the afternoon of April 6, as he prepared to depart the White House for a summit meeting with a delegation led by the Chinese President Xi Jinping, Trump’s own cryptic words in response to a reporter’s question about any American response seem to hint that his mind was already made up. “You’ll see,” he said, before walking away.

Within hours, a pair of U.S. Navy destroyers launched 59 advanced Block IV Tomahawk cruise missiles (at a cost of some $1.41 million each), targeting aircraft, hardened shelters, fuel storage, munitions supply, air defense and communications facilities at the Al Shayrat air base, located in central Syria.  Al Shayrat was home to two squadrons of Russian-made SU-22 fighter-bombers operated by the Syrian air force, one of which was tracked by American radar as taking off from Al Sharyat on the morning of April 4, 2017, and was overhead Khan Sheikhoun around the time the alleged chemical attack occurred. 

The purpose of the American strike was two-fold; first, to send a message to the Syrian government and its allies that, according to Secretary of State Tillerson, “the president is willing to take decisive action when called for,” and in particular when confronted with evidence of a chemical attack from which the United States could not “turn away, turn a blind eye.”  The other purpose, according to a U.S. military spokesperson, to “reduce the Syrian government’s ability to deliver chemical weapons.” 

Moreover, the policy honeymoon the Trump administration had only recently announced about regime change in Syria was over. “It’s very, very possible, and, I will tell you, it’s already happened, that my attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much,” President Trump told reporters before the missile strikes had commenced.  Secretary Tillerson went further: “It would seem there would be no role for him [Assad] to govern the Syrian people.”

Such a reversal in policy fundamentals and direction in such a short period of time is stunning; Donald Trump didn’t simply deviate slightly off course, but rather did a complete 180-degree turn. The previous policy of avoiding entanglement in the internal affairs of Syria in favor of defeating ISIS and improving relations with Russia had been replaced by a fervent embrace of regime change, direct military engagement with the Syrian armed forces, and a confrontational stance vis-à-vis the Russian military presence in Syria.

Normally, such major policy change could only be explained by a new reality driven by verifiable facts. The alleged chemical weapons attack against Khan Sheikhoun was not a new reality; chemical attacks had been occurring inside Syria on a regular basis, despite the international effort to disarm Syria’s chemical weapons capability undertaken in 2013 that played a central role in forestalling American military action at that time. International investigations of these attacks produced mixed results, with some being attributed to the Syrian government (something the Syrian government vehemently denies), and the majority being attributed to anti-regime fighters, in particular those affiliated with Al Nusra Front, an Al Qaeda affiliate.

Moreover, there exists a mixed provenance when it comes to chemical weapons usage inside Syria that would seem to foreclose any knee-jerk reaction that placed the blame for what happened at Khan Sheikhoun solely on the Syrian government void of any official investigation. Yet this is precisely what occurred.  Some sort of chemical event took place in Khan Sheikhoun; what is very much in question is who is responsible for the release of the chemicals that caused the deaths of so many civilians.

No one disputes the fact that a Syrian air force SU-22 fighter-bomber conducted a bombing mission against a target in Khan Sheikhoun on the morning of April 4, 2017. The anti-regime activists in Khan Sheikhoun, however, have painted a narrative that has the Syrian air force dropping chemical bombs on a sleeping civilian population.

A critical piece of information that has largely escaped the reporting in the mainstream media is that Khan Sheikhoun is ground zero for the Islamic jihadists who have been at the center of the anti-Assad movement in Syria since 2011. Up until February 2017, Khan Sheikhoun was occupied by a pro-ISIS group known as Liwa al-Aqsa that was engaged in an oftentimes-violent struggle with its competitor organization, Al Nusra Front (which later morphed into Tahrir al-Sham, but under any name functioning as Al Qaeda’s arm in Syria) for resources and political influence among the local population.

The Russian Ministry of Defense has claimed that Liwa al-Aqsa was using facilities in and around Khan Sheikhoun to manufacture crude chemical shells and landmines intended for ISIS forces fighting in Iraq. According to the Russians the Khan Sheikhoun chemical weapons facility was mirrored on similar sites uncovered by Russian and Syrian forces following the reoccupation of rebel-controlled areas of Aleppo. 

In Aleppo, the Russians discovered crude weapons production laboratories that filled mortar shells and landmines with a mix of chlorine gas and white phosphorus; after a thorough forensic investigation was conducted by military specialists, the Russians turned over samples of these weapons, together with soil samples from areas struck by weapons produced in these laboratories, to investigators from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for further evaluation.

Al Nusra has a long history of manufacturing and employing crude chemical weapons; the 2013 chemical attack on Ghouta made use of low-grade Sarin nerve agent locally synthesized, while attacks in and around Aleppo in 2016 made use of a chlorine/white phosphorous blend.  If the Russians are correct, and the building bombed in Khan Sheikhoun on the morning of April 4, 2017 was producing and/or storing chemical weapons, the probability that viable agent and other toxic contaminants were dispersed into the surrounding neighborhood, and further disseminated by the prevailing wind, is high.

The counter-narrative offered by the Russians and Syrians, however, has been minimized, mocked and ignored by both the American media and the Trump administration. So, too, has the very illogic of the premise being put forward to answer the question of why President Assad would risk everything by using chemical weapons against a target of zero military value, at a time when the strategic balance of power had shifted strongly in his favor. Likewise, why would Russia, which had invested considerable political capital in the disarmament of Syria’s chemical weapons capability after 2013, stand by idly while the Syrian air force carried out such an attack, especially when their was such a heavy Russian military presence at the base in question at the time of the attack?

Such analysis seems beyond the scope and comprehension of the American fourth estate.  Instead, media outlets like CNN embrace at face value anything they are told by official American sources, including a particularly preposterous insinuation that Russia actually colluded in the chemical weapons attack; the aforementioned presence of Russian officers at Al Shayrat air base has been cited as evidence that Russia had to have known about Syria’s chemical warfare capability, and yet did nothing to prevent the attack.

To sustain this illogic, the American public and decision-makers make use of a sophisticated propaganda campaign involving video images and narratives provided by forces opposed to the regime of Bashar al-Assad, including organizations like the “White Helmets,” the Syrian-American Medical Society, the Aleppo Media Center, which have a history of providing slanted information designed to promote an anti-Assad message (Donald Trump has all but acknowledged that these images played a major role in his decision to reevaluate his opinion of Bashar al-Assad and order the cruise missile attack on Al Shayrat airbase.) 

Many of the fighters affiliated with Tahrir al-Sham are veterans of the battle for Aleppo, and as such are intimately familiar with the tools and trade of the extensive propaganda battle that was waged simultaneously with the actual fighting in an effort to sway western public opinion toward adopting a more aggressive stance in opposition to the Syrian government of Assad. These tools were brought to bear in promoting a counter-narrative about the Khan Sheikhoun chemical incident (ironically, many of the activists in question, including the “White Helmets,” were trained and equipped in social media manipulation tactics using money provided by the United States; that these techniques would end up being used to manipulate an American President into carrying out an act of war most likely never factored into the thinking of the State Department personnel who conceived and implemented the program).

Even slick media training, however, cannot gloss over basic factual inconsistencies. Early on, the anti-Assad opposition media outlets were labeling the Khan Sheikhoun incident as a “Sarin nerve agent” attack; one doctor affiliated with Al Qaeda sent out images and commentary via social media that documented symptoms, such as dilated pupils, that he diagnosed as stemming from exposure to Sarin nerve agent. Sarin, however, is an odorless, colorless material, dispersed as either a liquid or vapor; eyewitnesses speak of a “pungent odor” and “blue-yellow” clouds, more indicative of chlorine gas.

And while American media outlets, such as CNN, have spoken of munitions “filled to the brim” with Sarin nerve agent being used at Khan Sheikhoun, there is simply no evidence cited by any source that can sustain such an account.  Heartbreaking images of victims being treated by “White Helmet” rescuers have been cited as proof of Sarin-like symptoms, the medical viability of these images is in question; there are no images taken of victims at the scene of the attack. Instead, the video provided by the “White Helmets” is of decontamination and treatment carried out at a “White Helmet” base after the victims, either dead or injured, were transported there. 

The lack of viable protective clothing worn by the “White Helmet” personnel while handling victims is another indication that the chemical in question was not military grade Sarin; if it were, the rescuers would themselves have become victims (some accounts speak of just this phenomena, but this occurred at the site of the attack, where the rescuers were overcome by a “pungent smelling” chemical – again, Sarin is odorless.)

More than 20 victims of the Khan Sheikhoun incident were transported to Turkish hospitals for care; three subsequently died. According to the Turkish Justice Minister, autopsies conducted on the bodies confirm that the cause of death was exposure to chemical agents. The World Health Organization has indicated that the symptoms of the Khan Sheikhoun victims are consistent with both Sarin and Chlorine exposure. American media outlets have latched onto the Turkish and WHO statements as “proof” of Syrian government involvement; however, any exposure to the chlorine/white phosphorous blend associated with Al Nusra chemical weapons would produce similar symptoms. 

Moreover, if Al Nusra was replicating the type of low-grade Sarin it employed at Ghouta in 2013 at Khan Sheikhoun, it is highly likely that some of the victims in question would exhibit Sarin-like symptoms. Blood samples taken from the victims could provide a more precise readout of the specific chemical exposure involved; such samples have allegedly been collected by Al Nusra-affiliated personnel, and turned over to international investigators (the notion that any serious investigatory body would allow Al Nusra to provide forensic evidence in support of an investigation where it is one of only two potential culprits is mindboggling, but that is precisely what has happened). But the Trump administration chose to act before these samples could be processed, perhaps afraid that their results would not sustain the underlying allegation of the employment of Sarin by the Syrian air force.

Mainstream American media outlets have willingly and openly embraced a narrative provided by Al Qaeda affiliates whose record of using chemical weapons in Syria and distorting and manufacturing “evidence” to promote anti-Assad policies in the west, including regime change, is well documented.  These outlets have made a deliberate decision to endorse the view of Al Qaeda over a narrative provided by Russian and Syrian government authorities without any effort to fact check either position. These actions, however, do not seem to shock the conscience of the American public; when it comes to Syria, the mainstream American media and its audience has long ago ceded the narrative to Al Qaeda and other Islamist anti-regime elements.

The real culprits here are the Trump administration, and President Trump himself. The president’s record of placing more weight on what he sees on television than the intelligence briefings he may or may not be getting, and his lack of intellectual curiosity and unfamiliarity with the nuances and complexities of both foreign and national security policy, created the conditions where the imagery of the Khan Sheikhoun victims that had been disseminated by pro-Al Nusra (i.e., Al Qaeda) outlets could influence critical life-or-death decisions.

That President Trump could be susceptible to such obvious manipulation is not surprising, given his predilection for counter-punching on Twitter for any perceived slight; that his national security team allowed him to be manipulated thus, and did nothing to sway Trump’s opinion or forestall action pending a thorough review of the facts, is scandalous. History will show that Donald Trump, his advisors and the American media were little more than willing dupes for Al Qaeda and its affiliates, whose manipulation of the Syrian narrative resulted in a major policy shift that furthers their objectives. 

The other winner in this sorry story is ISIS, which took advantage of the American strike against Al Shayrat to launch a major offensive against Syrian government forces around the city of Palmyra (Al Shayrat had served as the principal air base for operations in the Palmyra region). The breakdown in relations between Russia and the United States means that, for the foreseeable future at least, the kind of coordination that had been taking place in the fight against ISIS is a thing of the past, a fact that can only bode well for the fighters of ISIS. For a man who placed so much emphasis on defeating ISIS, President Trump’s actions can only be viewed as a self-inflicted wound, a kind of circular firing squad that marks the actions of a Keystone Cop, and not the Commander in Chief of the most powerful nation in the world. 

But the person who might get the last laugh is President Assad himself. While the Pentagon has claimed that it significantly degraded the Al Shayrat air base, with 58 of 59 cruise missile hitting their targets, Russia has stated that only 23..

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Wag The Dog -- How Al Qaeda Played Donald Trump And The American Media

Once upon a time, Donald J. Trump, the New York City businessman-turned-president, berated then-President Barack Obama back in September 2013 about the fallacy of an American military strike against Syria.  At that time, the United States was considering the use of force against Syria in response to allegations (since largely disproven) that the regime of President Bashar al-Assad had used chemical weapons against civilians in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta. Trump, via tweet, declared “to our very foolish leader, do not attack Syria – if you do many very bad things will happen & from that fight the U.S. gets nothing!”

President Obama, despite having publicly declaring the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime a “red line” which, if crossed, would demand American military action, ultimately declined to order an attack, largely on the basis of warnings by James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, that the intelligence linking the chemical attack on Ghouta was less than definitive.

President Barack Obama, in a 2016 interview with The Atlantic, observed, “there’s a playbook in Washington that presidents are supposed to follow. It’s a playbook that comes out of the foreign-policy establishment. And the playbook prescribes responses to different events, and these responses tend to be militarized responses.” While the “Washington playbook,” Obama noted, could be useful during times of crisis, it could “also be a trap that can lead to bad decisions.”

His “red line” on chemical weapons usage, combined with heated rhetoric coming from his closest advisors, including Secretary of State John Kerry, hinting at a military response, was such a trap. Ultimately, President Obama opted to back off, observing that “dropping bombs on someone to prove that you’re willing to drop bombs on someone is just about the worst reason to use force.” The media, Republicans and even members of his own party excoriated Obama for this decision.

Yet, in November 2016, as president-elect, Donald Trump doubled down on Obama’s eschewing of the “Washington playbook.” The situation on the ground in Syria had fundamentally changed since 2013; the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) had taken over large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria, establishing a “capital” in the Syrian city of Raqqa and declaring the creation of an Islamic “Caliphate.”  American efforts to remove Syrian President Assad from power had begun to bar fruit, forcing Russia to intervene in September 2015 in order to prop up the beleaguered Syrian president.

Trump, breaking from the mainstream positions held by most American policy makers, Republican and Democrat alike, declared that the United States should focus on fighting and defeating the Islamic State (ISIS) and not pursuing regime change in Syria. “My attitude,” Trump noted, “was you’re fighting Syria, Syria is fighting ISIS, and you have to get rid of ISIS. Russia is now totally aligned with Syria, and now you have Iran, which is becoming powerful, because of us, is aligned with Syria... Now we’re backing rebels against Syria, and we have no idea who these people are.” Moreover, Trump observed, given the robust Russian presence inside Syria, if the United States attacked Assad, “we end up fighting Russia, fighting Syria.”

For more than two months, the new Trump administration seemed to breathe life into the notion that Donald Trump had, like his predecessor before him, thrown the “Washington playbook” out the window when it came to Syrian policy.  After ordering a series of new military deployments into Syria and Iraq specifically designed to confront ISIS, the Trump administration began to give public voice to a major shift in policy vis-à-vis the Syrian President.

For the first time since President Obama, in August 2011, articulated regime change in Damascus as a precondition for the cessation of the civil conflict that had been raging since April 2011, American government officials articulated that this was no longer the case.  “You pick and choose your battles,” the American Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, told reporters on March 30, 2017.  “And when we’re looking at this, it’s about changing up priorities and our priority is no longer to sit and focus on getting Assad out.”  Haley’s words were echoed by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who observed that same day, while on an official visit to Turkey, “I think the… longer-term status of President Assad will be decided by the Syrian people.”

This new policy direction lasted barely five days. Sometime in the early afternoon of April 4, 2017, troubling images and video clips began to be transmitted out of the Syrian province of Idlib by anti-government activists, including members of the so-called “White Helmets,” a volunteer rescue team whose work was captured in an eponymously-named Academy Award-winning documentary film. These images showed victims in various stages of symptomatic distress, including death, from what the activists said was exposure to chemical weapons dropped by the Syrian air force on the town of Khan Sheikhoun that very morning.

Images of these tragic deaths were immediately broadcast on American media outlets, with pundits decrying the horrific and heinous nature of the chemical attack, which was nearly unanimously attributed to the Syrian government, even though the only evidence provided was the imagery and testimony of the anti-Assad activists who, just days before, were decrying the shift in American policy regarding regime change in Syria. President Trump viewed these images, and was deeply troubled by what he saw, especially the depictions of dead and suffering children.

The images were used as exhibits in a passionate speech by Haley during a speech at the Security Council on April 5, 2017, where she confronted Russia and threatened unilateral American military action if the Council failed to respond to the alleged Syrian chemical attack. “Yesterday morning, we awoke to pictures, to children foaming at the mouth, suffering convulsions, being carried in the arms of desperate parents,” Haley said, holding up two examples of the images provided by the anti-Assad activists. “We saw rows of lifeless bodies, some still in diapers…we cannot close our eyes to those pictures.  We cannot close our minds of the responsibility to act.”  If the Security Council refused to take action against the Syrian government, Haley said, then “there are times in the life of states that we are compelled to take our own action.”

In 2013, President Barack Obama was confronted with images of dead and injured civilians, including numerous small children, from Syria that were every bit as heartbreaking as the ones displayed by Ambassador Haley. His Secretary of State, John Kerry, had made an impassioned speech that all but called for military force against Syria.  President Obama asked for, and received, a wide-range of military options from his national security team targeting the regime of President Assad; only the intervention of James Clapper, and the doubts that existed about the veracity of the intelligence linking the Ghouta chemical attack to the Syrian government, held Obama back from giving the green light for the bombing to begin. 

Like President Obama before him, President Trump asked for his national security team to prepare options for military action.  Unlike his predecessor, Donald Trump did not seek a pause in his decision making process to let his intelligence services investigate what had actually occurred in Khan Sheikhoun.  Like Nikki Haley, Donald Trump was driven by his visceral reaction to the imagery being disseminated by anti-Assad activists. In the afternoon of April 6, as he prepared to depart the White House for a summit meeting with a delegation led by the Chinese President Xi Jinping, Trump’s own cryptic words in response to a reporter’s question about any American response seem to hint that his mind was already made up. “You’ll see,” he said, before walking away.

Within hours, a pair of U.S. Navy destroyers launched 59 advanced Block IV Tomahawk cruise missiles (at a cost of some $1.41 million each), targeting aircraft, hardened shelters, fuel storage, munitions supply, air defense and communications facilities at the Al Shayrat air base, located in central Syria.  Al Shayrat was home to two squadrons of Russian-made SU-22 fighter-bombers operated by the Syrian air force, one of which was tracked by American radar as taking off from Al Sharyat on the morning of April 4, 2017, and was overhead Khan Sheikhoun around the time the alleged chemical attack occurred. 

The purpose of the American strike was two-fold; first, to send a message to the Syrian government and its allies that, according to Secretary of State Tillerson, “the president is willing to take decisive action when called for,” and in particular when confronted with evidence of a chemical attack from which the United States could not “turn away, turn a blind eye.”  The other purpose, according to a U.S. military spokesperson, to “reduce the Syrian government’s ability to deliver chemical weapons.” 

Moreover, the policy honeymoon the Trump administration had only recently announced about regime change in Syria was over. “It’s very, very possible, and, I will tell you, it’s already happened, that my attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much,” President Trump told reporters before the missile strikes had commenced.  Secretary Tillerson went further: “It would seem there would be no role for him [Assad] to govern the Syrian people.”

Such a reversal in policy fundamentals and direction in such a short period of time is stunning; Donald Trump didn’t simply deviate slightly off course, but rather did a complete 180-degree turn. The previous policy of avoiding entanglement in the internal affairs of Syria in favor of defeating ISIS and improving relations with Russia had been replaced by a fervent embrace of regime change, direct military engagement with the Syrian armed forces, and a confrontational stance vis-à-vis the Russian military presence in Syria.

Normally, such major policy change could only be explained by a new reality driven by verifiable facts. The alleged chemical weapons attack against Khan Sheikhoun was not a new reality; chemical attacks had been occurring inside Syria on a regular basis, despite the international effort to disarm Syria’s chemical weapons capability undertaken in 2013 that played a central role in forestalling American military action at that time. International investigations of these attacks produced mixed results, with some being attributed to the Syrian government (something the Syrian government vehemently denies), and the majority being attributed to anti-regime fighters, in particular those affiliated with Al Nusra Front, an Al Qaeda affiliate.

Moreover, there exists a mixed provenance when it comes to chemical weapons usage inside Syria that would seem to foreclose any knee-jerk reaction that placed the blame for what happened at Khan Sheikhoun solely on the Syrian government void of any official investigation. Yet this is precisely what occurred.  Some sort of chemical event took place in Khan Sheikhoun; what is very much in question is who is responsible for the release of the chemicals that caused the deaths of so many civilians.

No one disputes the fact that a Syrian air force SU-22 fighter-bomber conducted a bombing mission against a target in Khan Sheikhoun on the morning of April 4, 2017. The anti-regime activists in Khan Sheikhoun, however, have painted a narrative that has the Syrian air force dropping chemical bombs on a sleeping civilian population.

A critical piece of information that has largely escaped the reporting in the mainstream media is that Khan Sheikhoun is ground zero for the Islamic jihadists who have been at the center of the anti-Assad movement in Syria since 2011. Up until February 2017, Khan Sheikhoun was occupied by a pro-ISIS group known as Liwa al-Aqsa that was engaged in an oftentimes-violent struggle with its competitor organization, Al Nusra Front (which later morphed into Tahrir al-Sham, but under any name functioning as Al Qaeda’s arm in Syria) for resources and political influence among the local population.

The Russian Ministry of Defense has claimed that Liwa al-Aqsa was using facilities in and around Khan Sheikhoun to manufacture crude chemical shells and landmines intended for ISIS forces fighting in Iraq. According to the Russians the Khan Sheikhoun chemical weapons facility was mirrored on similar sites uncovered by Russian and Syrian forces following the reoccupation of rebel-controlled areas of Aleppo. 

In Aleppo, the Russians discovered crude weapons production laboratories that filled mortar shells and landmines with a mix of chlorine gas and white phosphorus; after a thorough forensic investigation was conducted by military specialists, the Russians turned over samples of these weapons, together with soil samples from areas struck by weapons produced in these laboratories, to investigators from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for further evaluation.

Al Nusra has a long history of manufacturing and employing crude chemical weapons; the 2013 chemical attack on Ghouta made use of low-grade Sarin nerve agent locally synthesized, while attacks in and around Aleppo in 2016 made use of a chlorine/white phosphorous blend.  If the Russians are correct, and the building bombed in Khan Sheikhoun on the morning of April 4, 2017 was producing and/or storing chemical weapons, the probability that viable agent and other toxic contaminants were dispersed into the surrounding neighborhood, and further disseminated by the prevailing wind, is high.

The counter-narrative offered by the Russians and Syrians, however, has been minimized, mocked and ignored by both the American media and the Trump administration. So, too, has the very illogic of the premise being put forward to answer the question of why President Assad would risk everything by using chemical weapons against a target of zero military value, at a time when the strategic balance of power had shifted strongly in his favor. Likewise, why would Russia, which had invested considerable political capital in the disarmament of Syria’s chemical weapons capability after 2013, stand by idly while the Syrian air force carried out such an attack, especially when their was such a heavy Russian military presence at the base in question at the time of the attack?

Such analysis seems beyond the scope and comprehension of the American fourth estate.  Instead, media outlets like CNN embrace at face value anything they are told by official American sources, including a particularly preposterous insinuation that Russia actually colluded in the chemical weapons attack; the aforementioned presence of Russian officers at Al Shayrat air base has been cited as evidence that Russia had to have known about Syria’s chemical warfare capability, and yet did nothing to prevent the attack.

To sustain this illogic, the American public and decision-makers make use of a sophisticated propaganda campaign involving video images and narratives provided by forces opposed to the regime of Bashar al-Assad, including organizations like the “White Helmets,” the Syrian-American Medical Society, the Aleppo Media Center, which have a history of providing slanted information designed to promote an anti-Assad message (Donald Trump has all but acknowledged that these images played a major role in his decision to reevaluate his opinion of Bashar al-Assad and order the cruise missile attack on Al Shayrat airbase.) 

Many of the fighters affiliated with Tahrir al-Sham are veterans of the battle for Aleppo, and as such are intimately familiar with the tools and trade of the extensive propaganda battle that was waged simultaneously with the actual fighting in an effort to sway western public opinion toward adopting a more aggressive stance in opposition to the Syrian government of Assad. These tools were brought to bear in promoting a counter-narrative about the Khan Sheikhoun chemical incident (ironically, many of the activists in question, including the “White Helmets,” were trained and equipped in social media manipulation tactics using money provided by the United States; that these techniques would end up being used to manipulate an American President into carrying out an act of war most likely never factored into the thinking of the State Department personnel who conceived and implemented the program).

Even slick media training, however, cannot gloss over basic factual inconsistencies. Early on, the anti-Assad opposition media outlets were labeling the Khan Sheikhoun incident as a “Sarin nerve agent” attack; one doctor affiliated with Al Qaeda sent out images and commentary via social media that documented symptoms, such as dilated pupils, that he diagnosed as stemming from exposure to Sarin nerve agent. Sarin, however, is an odorless, colorless material, dispersed as either a liquid or vapor; eyewitnesses speak of a “pungent odor” and “blue-yellow” clouds, more indicative of chlorine gas.

And while American media outlets, such as CNN, have spoken of munitions “filled to the brim” with Sarin nerve agent being used at Khan Sheikhoun, there is simply no evidence cited by any source that can sustain such an account.  Heartbreaking images of victims being treated by “White Helmet” rescuers have been cited as proof of Sarin-like symptoms, the medical viability of these images is in question; there are no images taken of victims at the scene of the attack. Instead, the video provided by the “White Helmets” is of decontamination and treatment carried out at a “White Helmet” base after the victims, either dead or injured, were transported there. 

The lack of viable protective clothing worn by the “White Helmet” personnel while handling victims is another indication that the chemical in question was not military grade Sarin; if it were, the rescuers would themselves have become victims (some accounts speak of just this phenomena, but this occurred at the site of the attack, where the rescuers were overcome by a “pungent smelling” chemical – again, Sarin is odorless.)

More than 20 victims of the Khan Sheikhoun incident were transported to Turkish hospitals for care; three subsequently died. According to the Turkish Justice Minister, autopsies conducted on the bodies confirm that the cause of death was exposure to chemical agents. The World Health Organization has indicated that the symptoms of the Khan Sheikhoun victims are consistent with both Sarin and Chlorine exposure. American media outlets have latched onto the Turkish and WHO statements as “proof” of Syrian government involvement; however, any exposure to the chlorine/white phosphorous blend associated with Al Nusra chemical weapons would produce similar symptoms. 

Moreover, if Al Nusra was replicating the type of low-grade Sarin it employed at Ghouta in 2013 at Khan Sheikhoun, it is highly likely that some of the victims in question would exhibit Sarin-like symptoms. Blood samples taken from the victims could provide a more precise readout of the specific chemical exposure involved; such samples have allegedly been collected by Al Nusra-affiliated personnel, and turned over to international investigators (the notion that any serious investigatory body would allow Al Nusra to provide forensic evidence in support of an investigation where it is one of only two potential culprits is mindboggling, but that is precisely what has happened). But the Trump administration chose to act before these samples could be processed, perhaps afraid that their results would not sustain the underlying allegation of the employment of Sarin by the Syrian air force.

Mainstream American media outlets have willingly and openly embraced a narrative provided by Al Qaeda affiliates whose record of using chemical weapons in Syria and distorting and manufacturing “evidence” to promote anti-Assad policies in the west, including regime change, is well documented.  These outlets have made a deliberate decision to endorse the view of Al Qaeda over a narrative provided by Russian and Syrian government authorities without any effort to fact check either position. These actions, however, do not seem to shock the conscience of the American public; when it comes to Syria, the mainstream American media and its audience has long ago ceded the narrative to Al Qaeda and other Islamist anti-regime elements.

The real culprits here are the Trump administration, and President Trump himself. The president’s record of placing more weight on what he sees on television than the intelligence briefings he may or may not be getting, and his lack of intellectual curiosity and unfamiliarity with the nuances and complexities of both foreign and national security policy, created the conditions where the imagery of the Khan Sheikhoun victims that had been disseminated by pro-Al Nusra (i.e., Al Qaeda) outlets could influence critical life-or-death decisions.

That President Trump could be susceptible to such obvious manipulation is not surprising, given his predilection for counter-punching on Twitter for any perceived slight; that his national security team allowed him to be manipulated thus, and did nothing to sway Trump’s opinion or forestall action pending a thorough review of the facts, is scandalous. History will show that Donald Trump, his advisors and the American media were little more than willing dupes for Al Qaeda and its affiliates, whose manipulation of the Syrian narrative resulted in a major policy shift that furthers their objectives. 

The other winner in this sorry story is ISIS, which took advantage of the American strike against Al Shayrat to launch a major offensive against Syrian government forces around the city of Palmyra (Al Shayrat had served as the principal air base for operations in the Palmyra region). The breakdown in relations between Russia and the United States means that, for the foreseeable future at least, the kind of coordination that had been taking place in the fight against ISIS is a thing of the past, a fact that can only bode well for the fighters of ISIS. For a man who placed so much emphasis on defeating ISIS, President Trump’s actions can only be viewed as a self-inflicted wound, a kind of circular firing squad that marks the actions of a Keystone Cop, and not the Commander in Chief of the most powerful nation in the world. 

But the person who might get the last laugh is President Assad himself. While the Pentagon has claimed that it significantly degraded the Al Shayrat air base, with 58 of 59 cruise missile hitting their targets, Russia has stated that only 23..

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[exfrenchdorsl4p0a1]

Wag The Dog -- How Al Qaeda Played Donald Trump And The American Media

Once upon a time, Donald J. Trump, the New York City businessman-turned-president, berated then-President Barack Obama back in September 2013 about the fallacy of an American military strike against Syria.  At that time, the United States was considering the use of force against Syria in response to allegations (since largely disproven) that the regime of President Bashar al-Assad had used chemical weapons against civilians in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta. Trump, via tweet, declared “to our very foolish leader, do not attack Syria – if you do many very bad things will happen & from that fight the U.S. gets nothing!”

President Obama, despite having publicly declaring the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime a “red line” which, if crossed, would demand American military action, ultimately declined to order an attack, largely on the basis of warnings by James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, that the intelligence linking the chemical attack on Ghouta was less than definitive.

President Barack Obama, in a 2016 interview with The Atlantic, observed, “there’s a playbook in Washington that presidents are supposed to follow. It’s a playbook that comes out of the foreign-policy establishment. And the playbook prescribes responses to different events, and these responses tend to be militarized responses.” While the “Washington playbook,” Obama noted, could be useful during times of crisis, it could “also be a trap that can lead to bad decisions.”

His “red line” on chemical weapons usage, combined with heated rhetoric coming from his closest advisors, including Secretary of State John Kerry, hinting at a military response, was such a trap. Ultimately, President Obama opted to back off, observing that “dropping bombs on someone to prove that you’re willing to drop bombs on someone is just about the worst reason to use force.” The media, Republicans and even members of his own party excoriated Obama for this decision.

Yet, in November 2016, as president-elect, Donald Trump doubled down on Obama’s eschewing of the “Washington playbook.” The situation on the ground in Syria had fundamentally changed since 2013; the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) had taken over large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria, establishing a “capital” in the Syrian city of Raqqa and declaring the creation of an Islamic “Caliphate.”  American efforts to remove Syrian President Assad from power had begun to bar fruit, forcing Russia to intervene in September 2015 in order to prop up the beleaguered Syrian president.

Trump, breaking from the mainstream positions held by most American policy makers, Republican and Democrat alike, declared that the United States should focus on fighting and defeating the Islamic State (ISIS) and not pursuing regime change in Syria. “My attitude,” Trump noted, “was you’re fighting Syria, Syria is fighting ISIS, and you have to get rid of ISIS. Russia is now totally aligned with Syria, and now you have Iran, which is becoming powerful, because of us, is aligned with Syria... Now we’re backing rebels against Syria, and we have no idea who these people are.” Moreover, Trump observed, given the robust Russian presence inside Syria, if the United States attacked Assad, “we end up fighting Russia, fighting Syria.”

For more than two months, the new Trump administration seemed to breathe life into the notion that Donald Trump had, like his predecessor before him, thrown the “Washington playbook” out the window when it came to Syrian policy.  After ordering a series of new military deployments into Syria and Iraq specifically designed to confront ISIS, the Trump administration began to give public voice to a major shift in policy vis-à-vis the Syrian President.

For the first time since President Obama, in August 2011, articulated regime change in Damascus as a precondition for the cessation of the civil conflict that had been raging since April 2011, American government officials articulated that this was no longer the case.  “You pick and choose your battles,” the American Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, told reporters on March 30, 2017.  “And when we’re looking at this, it’s about changing up priorities and our priority is no longer to sit and focus on getting Assad out.”  Haley’s words were echoed by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who observed that same day, while on an official visit to Turkey, “I think the… longer-term status of President Assad will be decided by the Syrian people.”

This new policy direction lasted barely five days. Sometime in the early afternoon of April 4, 2017, troubling images and video clips began to be transmitted out of the Syrian province of Idlib by anti-government activists, including members of the so-called “White Helmets,” a volunteer rescue team whose work was captured in an eponymously-named Academy Award-winning documentary film. These images showed victims in various stages of symptomatic distress, including death, from what the activists said was exposure to chemical weapons dropped by the Syrian air force on the town of Khan Sheikhoun that very morning.

Images of these tragic deaths were immediately broadcast on American media outlets, with pundits decrying the horrific and heinous nature of the chemical attack, which was nearly unanimously attributed to the Syrian government, even though the only evidence provided was the imagery and testimony of the anti-Assad activists who, just days before, were decrying the shift in American policy regarding regime change in Syria. President Trump viewed these images, and was deeply troubled by what he saw, especially the depictions of dead and suffering children.

The images were used as exhibits in a passionate speech by Haley during a speech at the Security Council on April 5, 2017, where she confronted Russia and threatened unilateral American military action if the Council failed to respond to the alleged Syrian chemical attack. “Yesterday morning, we awoke to pictures, to children foaming at the mouth, suffering convulsions, being carried in the arms of desperate parents,” Haley said, holding up two examples of the images provided by the anti-Assad activists. “We saw rows of lifeless bodies, some still in diapers…we cannot close our eyes to those pictures.  We cannot close our minds of the responsibility to act.”  If the Security Council refused to take action against the Syrian government, Haley said, then “there are times in the life of states that we are compelled to take our own action.”

In 2013, President Barack Obama was confronted with images of dead and injured civilians, including numerous small children, from Syria that were every bit as heartbreaking as the ones displayed by Ambassador Haley. His Secretary of State, John Kerry, had made an impassioned speech that all but called for military force against Syria.  President Obama asked for, and received, a wide-range of military options from his national security team targeting the regime of President Assad; only the intervention of James Clapper, and the doubts that existed about the veracity of the intelligence linking the Ghouta chemical attack to the Syrian government, held Obama back from giving the green light for the bombing to begin. 

Like President Obama before him, President Trump asked for his national security team to prepare options for military action.  Unlike his predecessor, Donald Trump did not seek a pause in his decision making process to let his intelligence services investigate what had actually occurred in Khan Sheikhoun.  Like Nikki Haley, Donald Trump was driven by his visceral reaction to the imagery being disseminated by anti-Assad activists. In the afternoon of April 6, as he prepared to depart the White House for a summit meeting with a delegation led by the Chinese President Xi Jinping, Trump’s own cryptic words in response to a reporter’s question about any American response seem to hint that his mind was already made up. “You’ll see,” he said, before walking away.

Within hours, a pair of U.S. Navy destroyers launched 59 advanced Block IV Tomahawk cruise missiles (at a cost of some $1.41 million each), targeting aircraft, hardened shelters, fuel storage, munitions supply, air defense and communications facilities at the Al Shayrat air base, located in central Syria.  Al Shayrat was home to two squadrons of Russian-made SU-22 fighter-bombers operated by the Syrian air force, one of which was tracked by American radar as taking off from Al Sharyat on the morning of April 4, 2017, and was overhead Khan Sheikhoun around the time the alleged chemical attack occurred. 

The purpose of the American strike was two-fold; first, to send a message to the Syrian government and its allies that, according to Secretary of State Tillerson, “the president is willing to take decisive action when called for,” and in particular when confronted with evidence of a chemical attack from which the United States could not “turn away, turn a blind eye.”  The other purpose, according to a U.S. military spokesperson, to “reduce the Syrian government’s ability to deliver chemical weapons.” 

Moreover, the policy honeymoon the Trump administration had only recently announced about regime change in Syria was over. “It’s very, very possible, and, I will tell you, it’s already happened, that my attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much,” President Trump told reporters before the missile strikes had commenced.  Secretary Tillerson went further: “It would seem there would be no role for him [Assad] to govern the Syrian people.”

Such a reversal in policy fundamentals and direction in such a short period of time is stunning; Donald Trump didn’t simply deviate slightly off course, but rather did a complete 180-degree turn. The previous policy of avoiding entanglement in the internal affairs of Syria in favor of defeating ISIS and improving relations with Russia had been replaced by a fervent embrace of regime change, direct military engagement with the Syrian armed forces, and a confrontational stance vis-à-vis the Russian military presence in Syria.

Normally, such major policy change could only be explained by a new reality driven by verifiable facts. The alleged chemical weapons attack against Khan Sheikhoun was not a new reality; chemical attacks had been occurring inside Syria on a regular basis, despite the international effort to disarm Syria’s chemical weapons capability undertaken in 2013 that played a central role in forestalling American military action at that time. International investigations of these attacks produced mixed results, with some being attributed to the Syrian government (something the Syrian government vehemently denies), and the majority being attributed to anti-regime fighters, in particular those affiliated with Al Nusra Front, an Al Qaeda affiliate.

Moreover, there exists a mixed provenance when it comes to chemical weapons usage inside Syria that would seem to foreclose any knee-jerk reaction that placed the blame for what happened at Khan Sheikhoun solely on the Syrian government void of any official investigation. Yet this is precisely what occurred.  Some sort of chemical event took place in Khan Sheikhoun; what is very much in question is who is responsible for the release of the chemicals that caused the deaths of so many civilians.

No one disputes the fact that a Syrian air force SU-22 fighter-bomber conducted a bombing mission against a target in Khan Sheikhoun on the morning of April 4, 2017. The anti-regime activists in Khan Sheikhoun, however, have painted a narrative that has the Syrian air force dropping chemical bombs on a sleeping civilian population.

A critical piece of information that has largely escaped the reporting in the mainstream media is that Khan Sheikhoun is ground zero for the Islamic jihadists who have been at the center of the anti-Assad movement in Syria since 2011. Up until February 2017, Khan Sheikhoun was occupied by a pro-ISIS group known as Liwa al-Aqsa that was engaged in an oftentimes-violent struggle with its competitor organization, Al Nusra Front (which later morphed into Tahrir al-Sham, but under any name functioning as Al Qaeda’s arm in Syria) for resources and political influence among the local population.

The Russian Ministry of Defense has claimed that Liwa al-Aqsa was using facilities in and around Khan Sheikhoun to manufacture crude chemical shells and landmines intended for ISIS forces fighting in Iraq. According to the Russians the Khan Sheikhoun chemical weapons facility was mirrored on similar sites uncovered by Russian and Syrian forces following the reoccupation of rebel-controlled areas of Aleppo. 

In Aleppo, the Russians discovered crude weapons production laboratories that filled mortar shells and landmines with a mix of chlorine gas and white phosphorus; after a thorough forensic investigation was conducted by military specialists, the Russians turned over samples of these weapons, together with soil samples from areas struck by weapons produced in these laboratories, to investigators from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for further evaluation.

Al Nusra has a long history of manufacturing and employing crude chemical weapons; the 2013 chemical attack on Ghouta made use of low-grade Sarin nerve agent locally synthesized, while attacks in and around Aleppo in 2016 made use of a chlorine/white phosphorous blend.  If the Russians are correct, and the building bombed in Khan Sheikhoun on the morning of April 4, 2017 was producing and/or storing chemical weapons, the probability that viable agent and other toxic contaminants were dispersed into the surrounding neighborhood, and further disseminated by the prevailing wind, is high.

The counter-narrative offered by the Russians and Syrians, however, has been minimized, mocked and ignored by both the American media and the Trump administration. So, too, has the very illogic of the premise being put forward to answer the question of why President Assad would risk everything by using chemical weapons against a target of zero military value, at a time when the strategic balance of power had shifted strongly in his favor. Likewise, why would Russia, which had invested considerable political capital in the disarmament of Syria’s chemical weapons capability after 2013, stand by idly while the Syrian air force carried out such an attack, especially when their was such a heavy Russian military presence at the base in question at the time of the attack?

Such analysis seems beyond the scope and comprehension of the American fourth estate.  Instead, media outlets like CNN embrace at face value anything they are told by official American sources, including a particularly preposterous insinuation that Russia actually colluded in the chemical weapons attack; the aforementioned presence of Russian officers at Al Shayrat air base has been cited as evidence that Russia had to have known about Syria’s chemical warfare capability, and yet did nothing to prevent the attack.

To sustain this illogic, the American public and decision-makers make use of a sophisticated propaganda campaign involving video images and narratives provided by forces opposed to the regime of Bashar al-Assad, including organizations like the “White Helmets,” the Syrian-American Medical Society, the Aleppo Media Center, which have a history of providing slanted information designed to promote an anti-Assad message (Donald Trump has all but acknowledged that these images played a major role in his decision to reevaluate his opinion of Bashar al-Assad and order the cruise missile attack on Al Shayrat airbase.) 

Many of the fighters affiliated with Tahrir al-Sham are veterans of the battle for Aleppo, and as such are intimately familiar with the tools and trade of the extensive propaganda battle that was waged simultaneously with the actual fighting in an effort to sway western public opinion toward adopting a more aggressive stance in opposition to the Syrian government of Assad. These tools were brought to bear in promoting a counter-narrative about the Khan Sheikhoun chemical incident (ironically, many of the activists in question, including the “White Helmets,” were trained and equipped in social media manipulation tactics using money provided by the United States; that these techniques would end up being used to manipulate an American President into carrying out an act of war most likely never factored into the thinking of the State Department personnel who conceived and implemented the program).

Even slick media training, however, cannot gloss over basic factual inconsistencies. Early on, the anti-Assad opposition media outlets were labeling the Khan Sheikhoun incident as a “Sarin nerve agent” attack; one doctor affiliated with Al Qaeda sent out images and commentary via social media that documented symptoms, such as dilated pupils, that he diagnosed as stemming from exposure to Sarin nerve agent. Sarin, however, is an odorless, colorless material, dispersed as either a liquid or vapor; eyewitnesses speak of a “pungent odor” and “blue-yellow” clouds, more indicative of chlorine gas.

And while American media outlets, such as CNN, have spoken of munitions “filled to the brim” with Sarin nerve agent being used at Khan Sheikhoun, there is simply no evidence cited by any source that can sustain such an account.  Heartbreaking images of victims being treated by “White Helmet” rescuers have been cited as proof of Sarin-like symptoms, the medical viability of these images is in question; there are no images taken of victims at the scene of the attack. Instead, the video provided by the “White Helmets” is of decontamination and treatment carried out at a “White Helmet” base after the victims, either dead or injured, were transported there. 

The lack of viable protective clothing worn by the “White Helmet” personnel while handling victims is another indication that the chemical in question was not military grade Sarin; if it were, the rescuers would themselves have become victims (some accounts speak of just this phenomena, but this occurred at the site of the attack, where the rescuers were overcome by a “pungent smelling” chemical – again, Sarin is odorless.)

More than 20 victims of the Khan Sheikhoun incident were transported to Turkish hospitals for care; three subsequently died. According to the Turkish Justice Minister, autopsies conducted on the bodies confirm that the cause of death was exposure to chemical agents. The World Health Organization has indicated that the symptoms of the Khan Sheikhoun victims are consistent with both Sarin and Chlorine exposure. American media outlets have latched onto the Turkish and WHO statements as “proof” of Syrian government involvement; however, any exposure to the chlorine/white phosphorous blend associated with Al Nusra chemical weapons would produce similar symptoms. 

Moreover, if Al Nusra was replicating the type of low-grade Sarin it employed at Ghouta in 2013 at Khan Sheikhoun, it is highly likely that some of the victims in question would exhibit Sarin-like symptoms. Blood samples taken from the victims could provide a more precise readout of the specific chemical exposure involved; such samples have allegedly been collected by Al Nusra-affiliated personnel, and turned over to international investigators (the notion that any serious investigatory body would allow Al Nusra to provide forensic evidence in support of an investigation where it is one of only two potential culprits is mindboggling, but that is precisely what has happened). But the Trump administration chose to act before these samples could be processed, perhaps afraid that their results would not sustain the underlying allegation of the employment of Sarin by the Syrian air force.

Mainstream American media outlets have willingly and openly embraced a narrative provided by Al Qaeda affiliates whose record of using chemical weapons in Syria and distorting and manufacturing “evidence” to promote anti-Assad policies in the west, including regime change, is well documented.  These outlets have made a deliberate decision to endorse the view of Al Qaeda over a narrative provided by Russian and Syrian government authorities without any effort to fact check either position. These actions, however, do not seem to shock the conscience of the American public; when it comes to Syria, the mainstream American media and its audience has long ago ceded the narrative to Al Qaeda and other Islamist anti-regime elements.

The real culprits here are the Trump administration, and President Trump himself. The president’s record of placing more weight on what he sees on television than the intelligence briefings he may or may not be getting, and his lack of intellectual curiosity and unfamiliarity with the nuances and complexities of both foreign and national security policy, created the conditions where the imagery of the Khan Sheikhoun victims that had been disseminated by pro-Al Nusra (i.e., Al Qaeda) outlets could influence critical life-or-death decisions.

That President Trump could be susceptible to such obvious manipulation is not surprising, given his predilection for counter-punching on Twitter for any perceived slight; that his national security team allowed him to be manipulated thus, and did nothing to sway Trump’s opinion or forestall action pending a thorough review of the facts, is scandalous. History will show that Donald Trump, his advisors and the American media were little more than willing dupes for Al Qaeda and its affiliates, whose manipulation of the Syrian narrative resulted in a major policy shift that furthers their objectives. 

The other winner in this sorry story is ISIS, which took advantage of the American strike against Al Shayrat to launch a major offensive against Syrian government forces around the city of Palmyra (Al Shayrat had served as the principal air base for operations in the Palmyra region). The breakdown in relations between Russia and the United States means that, for the foreseeable future at least, the kind of coordination that had been taking place in the fight against ISIS is a thing of the past, a fact that can only bode well for the fighters of ISIS. For a man who placed so much emphasis on defeating ISIS, President Trump’s actions can only be viewed as a self-inflicted wound, a kind of circular firing squad that marks the actions of a Keystone Cop, and not the Commander in Chief of the most powerful nation in the world. 

But the person who might get the last laugh is President Assad himself. While the Pentagon has claimed that it significantly degraded the Al Shayrat air base, with 58 of 59 cruise missile hitting their targets, Russia has stated that only 23..

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[grgedoors02142]

Wag The Dog -- How Al Qaeda Played Donald Trump And The American Media

Once upon a time, Donald J. Trump, the New York City businessman-turned-president, berated then-President Barack Obama back in September 2013 about the fallacy of an American military strike against Syria.  At that time, the United States was considering the use of force against Syria in response to allegations (since largely disproven) that the regime of President Bashar al-Assad had used chemical weapons against civilians in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta. Trump, via tweet, declared “to our very foolish leader, do not attack Syria – if you do many very bad things will happen & from that fight the U.S. gets nothing!”

President Obama, despite having publicly declaring the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime a “red line” which, if crossed, would demand American military action, ultimately declined to order an attack, largely on the basis of warnings by James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, that the intelligence linking the chemical attack on Ghouta was less than definitive.

President Barack Obama, in a 2016 interview with The Atlantic, observed, “there’s a playbook in Washington that presidents are supposed to follow. It’s a playbook that comes out of the foreign-policy establishment. And the playbook prescribes responses to different events, and these responses tend to be militarized responses.” While the “Washington playbook,” Obama noted, could be useful during times of crisis, it could “also be a trap that can lead to bad decisions.”

His “red line” on chemical weapons usage, combined with heated rhetoric coming from his closest advisors, including Secretary of State John Kerry, hinting at a military response, was such a trap. Ultimately, President Obama opted to back off, observing that “dropping bombs on someone to prove that you’re willing to drop bombs on someone is just about the worst reason to use force.” The media, Republicans and even members of his own party excoriated Obama for this decision.

Yet, in November 2016, as president-elect, Donald Trump doubled down on Obama’s eschewing of the “Washington playbook.” The situation on the ground in Syria had fundamentally changed since 2013; the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) had taken over large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria, establishing a “capital” in the Syrian city of Raqqa and declaring the creation of an Islamic “Caliphate.”  American efforts to remove Syrian President Assad from power had begun to bar fruit, forcing Russia to intervene in September 2015 in order to prop up the beleaguered Syrian president.

Trump, breaking from the mainstream positions held by most American policy makers, Republican and Democrat alike, declared that the United States should focus on fighting and defeating the Islamic State (ISIS) and not pursuing regime change in Syria. “My attitude,” Trump noted, “was you’re fighting Syria, Syria is fighting ISIS, and you have to get rid of ISIS. Russia is now totally aligned with Syria, and now you have Iran, which is becoming powerful, because of us, is aligned with Syria... Now we’re backing rebels against Syria, and we have no idea who these people are.” Moreover, Trump observed, given the robust Russian presence inside Syria, if the United States attacked Assad, “we end up fighting Russia, fighting Syria.”

For more than two months, the new Trump administration seemed to breathe life into the notion that Donald Trump had, like his predecessor before him, thrown the “Washington playbook” out the window when it came to Syrian policy.  After ordering a series of new military deployments into Syria and Iraq specifically designed to confront ISIS, the Trump administration began to give public voice to a major shift in policy vis-à-vis the Syrian President.

For the first time since President Obama, in August 2011, articulated regime change in Damascus as a precondition for the cessation of the civil conflict that had been raging since April 2011, American government officials articulated that this was no longer the case.  “You pick and choose your battles,” the American Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, told reporters on March 30, 2017.  “And when we’re looking at this, it’s about changing up priorities and our priority is no longer to sit and focus on getting Assad out.”  Haley’s words were echoed by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who observed that same day, while on an official visit to Turkey, “I think the… longer-term status of President Assad will be decided by the Syrian people.”

This new policy direction lasted barely five days. Sometime in the early afternoon of April 4, 2017, troubling images and video clips began to be transmitted out of the Syrian province of Idlib by anti-government activists, including members of the so-called “White Helmets,” a volunteer rescue team whose work was captured in an eponymously-named Academy Award-winning documentary film. These images showed victims in various stages of symptomatic distress, including death, from what the activists said was exposure to chemical weapons dropped by the Syrian air force on the town of Khan Sheikhoun that very morning.

Images of these tragic deaths were immediately broadcast on American media outlets, with pundits decrying the horrific and heinous nature of the chemical attack, which was nearly unanimously attributed to the Syrian government, even though the only evidence provided was the imagery and testimony of the anti-Assad activists who, just days before, were decrying the shift in American policy regarding regime change in Syria. President Trump viewed these images, and was deeply troubled by what he saw, especially the depictions of dead and suffering children.   

The images were used as exhibits in a passionate speech by Haley during a speech at the Security Council on April 5, 2017, where she confronted Russia and threatened unilateral American military action if the Council failed to respond to the alleged Syrian chemical attack. “Yesterday morning, we awoke to pictures, to children foaming at the mouth, suffering convulsions, being carried in the arms of desperate parents,” Haley said, holding up two examples of the images provided by the anti-Assad activists. “We saw rows of lifeless bodies, some still in diapers…we cannot close our eyes to those pictures.  We cannot close our minds of the responsibility to act.”  If the Security Council refused to take action against the Syrian government, Haley said, then “there are times in the life of states that we are compelled to take our own action.”

In 2013, President Barack Obama was confronted with images of dead and injured civilians, including numerous small children, from Syria that were every bit as heartbreaking as the ones displayed by Ambassador Haley. His Secretary of State, John Kerry, had made an impassioned speech that all but called for military force against Syria.  President Obama asked for, and received, a wide-range of military options from his national security team targeting the regime of President Assad; only the intervention of James Clapper, and the doubts that existed about the veracity of the intelligence linking the Ghouta chemical attack to the Syrian government, held Obama back from giving the green light for the bombing to begin. 

Like President Obama before him, President Trump asked for his national security team to prepare options for military action.  Unlike his predecessor, Donald Trump did not seek a pause in his decision making process to let his intelligence services investigate what had actually occurred in Khan Sheikhoun.  Like Nikki Haley, Donald Trump was driven by his visceral reaction to the imagery being disseminated by anti-Assad activists. In the afternoon of April 6, as he prepared to depart the White House for a summit meeting with a delegation led by the Chinese President Xi Jinping, Trump’s own cryptic words in response to a reporter’s question about any American response seem to hint that his mind was already made up. “You’ll see,” he said, before walking away.

Within hours, a pair of U.S. Navy destroyers launched 59 advanced Block IV Tomahawk cruise missiles (at a cost of some $1.41 million each), targeting aircraft, hardened shelters, fuel storage, munitions supply, air defense and communications facilities at the Al Shayrat air base, located in central Syria.  Al Shayrat was home to two squadrons of Russian-made SU-22 fighter-bombers operated by the Syrian air force, one of which was tracked by American radar as taking off from Al Sharyat on the morning of April 4, 2017, and was overhead Khan Sheikhoun around the time the alleged chemical attack occurred. 

The purpose of the American strike was two-fold; first, to send a message to the Syrian government and its allies that, according to Secretary of State Tillerson, “the president is willing to take decisive action when called for,” and in particular when confronted with evidence of a chemical attack from which the United States could not “turn away, turn a blind eye.”  The other purpose, according to a U.S. military spokesperson, to “reduce the Syrian government’s ability to deliver chemical weapons.” 

Moreover, the policy honeymoon the Trump administration had only recently announced about regime change in Syria was over. “It’s very, very possible, and, I will tell you, it’s already happened, that my attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much,” President Trump told reporters before the missile strikes had commenced.  Secretary Tillerson went further: “It would seem there would be no role for him [Assad] to govern the Syrian people.”

Such a reversal in policy fundamentals and direction in such a short period of time is stunning; Donald Trump didn’t simply deviate slightly off course, but rather did a complete 180-degree turn. The previous policy of avoiding entanglement in the internal affairs of Syria in favor of defeating ISIS and improving relations with Russia had been replaced by a fervent embrace of regime change, direct military engagement with the Syrian armed forces, and a confrontational stance vis-à-vis the Russian military presence in Syria.

Normally, such major policy change could only be explained by a new reality driven by verifiable facts. The alleged chemical weapons attack against Khan Sheikhoun was not a new reality; chemical attacks had been occurring inside Syria on a regular basis, despite the international effort to disarm Syria’s chemical weapons capability undertaken in 2013 that played a central role in forestalling American military action at that time. International investigations of these attacks produced mixed results, with some being attributed to the Syrian government (something the Syrian government vehemently denies), and the majority being attributed to anti-regime fighters, in particular those affiliated with Al Nusra Front, an Al Qaeda affiliate.

Moreover, there exists a mixed provenance when it comes to chemical weapons usage inside Syria that would seem to foreclose any knee-jerk reaction that placed the blame for what happened at Khan Sheikhoun solely on the Syrian government void of any official investigation. Yet this is precisely what occurred.  Some sort of chemical event took place in Khan Sheikhoun; what is very much in question is who is responsible for the release of the chemicals that caused the deaths of so many civilians.

No one disputes the fact that a Syrian air force SU-22 fighter-bomber conducted a bombing mission against a target in Khan Sheikhoun on the morning of April 4, 2017. The anti-regime activists in Khan Sheikhoun, however, have painted a narrative that has the Syrian air force dropping chemical bombs on a sleeping civilian population.

A critical piece of information that has largely escaped the reporting in the mainstream media is that Khan Sheikhoun is ground zero for the Islamic jihadists who have been at the center of the anti-Assad movement in Syria since 2011. Up until February 2017, Khan Sheikhoun was occupied by a pro-ISIS group known as Liwa al-Aqsa that was engaged in an oftentimes-violent struggle with its competitor organization, Al Nusra Front (which later morphed into Tahrir al-Sham, but under any name functioning as Al Qaeda’s arm in Syria) for resources and political influence among the local population.

The Russian Ministry of Defense has claimed that Liwa al-Aqsa was using facilities in and around Khan Sheikhoun to manufacture crude chemical shells and landmines intended for ISIS forces fighting in Iraq. According to the Russians the Khan Sheikhoun chemical weapons facility was mirrored on similar sites uncovered by Russian and Syrian forces following the reoccupation of rebel-controlled areas of Aleppo. 

In Aleppo, the Russians discovered crude weapons production laboratories that filled mortar shells and landmines with a mix of chlorine gas and white phosphorus; after a thorough forensic investigation was conducted by military specialists, the Russians turned over samples of these weapons, together with soil samples from areas struck by weapons produced in these laboratories, to investigators from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for further evaluation.

Al Nusra has a long history of manufacturing and employing crude chemical weapons; the 2013 chemical attack on Ghouta made use of low-grade Sarin nerve agent locally synthesized, while attacks in and around Aleppo in 2016 made use of a chlorine/white phosphorous blend.  If the Russians are correct, and the building bombed in Khan Sheikhoun on the morning of April 4, 2017 was producing and/or storing chemical weapons, the probability that viable agent and other toxic contaminants were dispersed into the surrounding neighborhood, and further disseminated by the prevailing wind, is high.

The counter-narrative offered by the Russians and Syrians, however, has been minimized, mocked and ignored by both the American media and the Trump administration. So, too, has the very illogic of the premise being put forward to answer the question of why President Assad would risk everything by using chemical weapons against a target of zero military value, at a time when the strategic balance of power had shifted strongly in his favor. Likewise, why would Russia, which had invested considerable political capital in the disarmament of Syria’s chemical weapons capability after 2013, stand by idly while the Syrian air force carried out such an attack, especially when their was such a heavy Russian military presence at the base in question at the time of the attack?

Such analysis seems beyond the scope and comprehension of the American fourth estate.  Instead, media outlets like CNN embrace at face value anything they are told by official American sources, including a particularly preposterous insinuation that Russia actually colluded in the chemical weapons attack; the aforementioned presence of Russian officers at Al Shayrat air base has been cited as evidence that Russia had to have known about Syria’s chemical warfare capability, and yet did nothing to prevent the attack.

To sustain this illogic, the American public and decision-makers make use of a sophisticated propaganda campaign involving video images and narratives provided by forces opposed to the regime of Bashar al-Assad, including organizations like the “White Helmets,” the Syrian-American Medical Society, the Aleppo Media Center, which have a history of providing slanted information designed to promote an anti-Assad message (Donald Trump has all but acknowledged that these images played a major role in his decision to reevaluate his opinion of Bashar al-Assad and order the cruise missile attack on Al Shayrat airbase.) 

Many of the fighters affiliated with Tahrir al-Sham are veterans of the battle for Aleppo, and as such are intimately familiar with the tools and trade of the extensive propaganda battle that was waged simultaneously with the actual fighting in an effort to sway western public opinion toward adopting a more aggressive stance in opposition to the Syrian government of Assad. These tools were brought to bear in promoting a counter-narrative about the Khan Sheikhoun chemical incident (ironically, many of the activists in question, including the “White Helmets,” were trained and equipped in social media manipulation tactics using money provided by the United States; that these techniques would end up being used to manipulate an American President into carrying out an act of war most likely never factored into the thinking of the State Department personnel who conceived and implemented the program).

Even slick media training, however, cannot gloss over basic factual inconsistencies. Early on, the anti-Assad opposition media outlets were labeling the Khan Sheikhoun incident as a “Sarin nerve agent” attack; one doctor affiliated with Al Qaeda sent out images and commentary via social media that documented symptoms, such as dilated pupils, that he diagnosed as stemming from exposure to Sarin nerve agent. Sarin, however, is an odorless, colorless material, dispersed as either a liquid or vapor; eyewitnesses speak of a “pungent odor” and “blue-yellow” clouds, more indicative of chlorine gas.

And while American media outlets, such as CNN, have spoken of munitions “filled to the brim” with Sarin nerve agent being used at Khan Sheikhoun, there is simply no evidence cited by any source that can sustain such an account.  Heartbreaking images of victims being treated by “White Helmet” rescuers have been cited as proof of Sarin-like symptoms, the medical viability of these images is in question; there are no images taken of victims at the scene of the attack. Instead, the video provided by the “White Helmets” is of decontamination and treatment carried out at a “White Helmet” base after the victims, either dead or injured, were transported there. 

The lack of viable protective clothing worn by the “White Helmet” personnel while handling victims is another indication that the chemical in question was not military grade Sarin; if it were, the rescuers would themselves have become victims (some accounts speak of just this phenomena, but this occurred at the site of the attack, where the rescuers were overcome by a “pungent smelling” chemical – again, Sarin is odorless.)

More than 20 victims of the Khan Sheikhoun incident were transported to Turkish hospitals for care; three subsequently died. According to the Turkish Justice Minister, autopsies conducted on the bodies confirm that the cause of death was exposure to chemical agents. The World Health Organization has indicated that the symptoms of the Khan Sheikhoun victims are consistent with both Sarin and Chlorine exposure. American media outlets have latched onto the Turkish and WHO statements as “proof” of Syrian government involvement; however, any exposure to the chlorine/white phosphorous blend associated with Al Nusra chemical weapons would produce similar symptoms. 

Moreover, if Al Nusra was replicating the type of low-grade Sarin it employed at Ghouta in 2013 at Khan Sheikhoun, it is highly likely that some of the victims in question would exhibit Sarin-like symptoms. Blood samples taken from the victims could provide a more precise readout of the specific chemical exposure involved; such samples have allegedly been collected by Al Nusra-affiliated personnel, and turned over to international investigators (the notion that any serious investigatory body would allow Al Nusra to provide forensic evidence in support of an investigation where it is one of only two potential culprits is mindboggling, but that is precisely what has happened). But the Trump administration chose to act before these samples could be processed, perhaps afraid that their results would not sustain the underlying allegation of the employment of Sarin by the Syrian air force.

Mainstream American media outlets have willingly and openly embraced a narrative provided by Al Qaeda affiliates whose record of using chemical weapons in Syria and distorting and manufacturing “evidence” to promote anti-Assad policies in the west, including regime change, is well documented.  These outlets have made a deliberate decision to endorse the view of Al Qaeda over a narrative provided by Russian and Syrian government authorities without any effort to fact check either position. These actions, however, do not seem to shock the conscience of the American public; when it comes to Syria, the mainstream American media and its audience has long ago ceded the narrative to Al Qaeda and other Islamist anti-regime elements.

The real culprits here are the Trump administration, and President Trump himself. The president’s record of placing more weight on what he sees on television than the intelligence briefings he may or may not be getting, and his lack of intellectual curiosity and unfamiliarity with the nuances and complexities of both foreign and national security policy, created the conditions where the imagery of the Khan Sheikhoun victims that had been disseminated by pro-Al Nusra (i.e., Al Qaeda) outlets could influence critical life-or-death decisions.

That President Trump could be susceptible to such obvious manipulation is not surprising, given his predilection for counter-punching on Twitter for any perceived slight; that his national security team allowed him to be manipulated thus, and did nothing to sway Trump’s opinion or forestall action pending a thorough review of the facts, is scandalous. History will show that Donald Trump, his advisors and the American media were little more than willing dupes for Al Qaeda and its affiliates, whose manipulation of the Syrian narrative resulted in a major policy shift that furthers their objectives. 

The other winner in this sorry story is ISIS, which took advantage of the American strike against Al Shayrat to launch a major offensive against Syrian government forces around the city of Palmyra (Al Shayrat had served as the principal air base for operations in the Palmyra region). The breakdown in relations between Russia and the United States means that, for the foreseeable future at least, the kind of coordination that had been taking place in the fight against ISIS is a thing of the past, a fact that can only bode well for the fighters of ISIS. For a man who placed so much emphasis on defeating ISIS, President Trump’s actions can only be viewed as a self-inflicted wound, a kind of circular firing squad that marks the actions of a Keystone Cop, and not the Commander in Chief of the most powerful nation in the world. 

But the person who might get the last laugh is President Assad himself. While the Pentagon has claimed that it significantly degraded the Al Shayrat air base, with 58 of 59 cruise missile hitting their targets, Russia has stated that only 23 cruise..

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Wag The Dog -- How Al Qaeda Played Donald Trump And The American Media

Once upon a time, Donald J. Trump, the New York City businessman-turned-president, berated then-President Barack Obama back in September 2013 about the fallacy of an American military strike against Syria.  At that time, the United States was considering the use of force against Syria in response to allegations (since largely disproven) that the regime of President Bashar al-Assad had used chemical weapons against civilians in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta. Trump, via tweet, declared “to our very foolish leader, do not attack Syria – if you do many very bad things will happen & from that fight the U.S. gets nothing!”

President Obama, despite having publicly declaring the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime a “red line” which, if crossed, would demand American military action, ultimately declined to order an attack, largely on the basis of warnings by James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, that the intelligence linking the chemical attack on Ghouta was less than definitive.

President Barack Obama, in a 2016 interview with The Atlantic, observed, “there’s a playbook in Washington that presidents are supposed to follow. It’s a playbook that comes out of the foreign-policy establishment. And the playbook prescribes responses to different events, and these responses tend to be militarized responses.” While the “Washington playbook,” Obama noted, could be useful during times of crisis, it could “also be a trap that can lead to bad decisions.”

His “red line” on chemical weapons usage, combined with heated rhetoric coming from his closest advisors, including Secretary of State John Kerry, hinting at a military response, was such a trap. Ultimately, President Obama opted to back off, observing that “dropping bombs on someone to prove that you’re willing to drop bombs on someone is just about the worst reason to use force.” The media, Republicans and even members of his own party excoriated Obama for this decision.

Yet, in November 2016, as president-elect, Donald Trump doubled down on Obama’s eschewing of the “Washington playbook.” The situation on the ground in Syria had fundamentally changed since 2013; the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) had taken over large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria, establishing a “capital” in the Syrian city of Raqqa and declaring the creation of an Islamic “Caliphate.”  American efforts to remove Syrian President Assad from power had begun to bar fruit, forcing Russia to intervene in September 2015 in order to prop up the beleaguered Syrian president.

Trump, breaking from the mainstream positions held by most American policy makers, Republican and Democrat alike, declared that the United States should focus on fighting and defeating the Islamic State (ISIS) and not pursuing regime change in Syria. “My attitude,” Trump noted, “was you’re fighting Syria, Syria is fighting ISIS, and you have to get rid of ISIS. Russia is now totally aligned with Syria, and now you have Iran, which is becoming powerful, because of us, is aligned with Syria... Now we’re backing rebels against Syria, and we have no idea who these people are.” Moreover, Trump observed, given the robust Russian presence inside Syria, if the United States attacked Assad, “we end up fighting Russia, fighting Syria.”

For more than two months, the new Trump administration seemed to breathe life into the notion that Donald Trump had, like his predecessor before him, thrown the “Washington playbook” out the window when it came to Syrian policy.  After ordering a series of new military deployments into Syria and Iraq specifically designed to confront ISIS, the Trump administration began to give public voice to a major shift in policy vis-à-vis the Syrian President.

For the first time since President Obama, in August 2011, articulated regime change in Damascus as a precondition for the cessation of the civil conflict that had been raging since April 2011, American government officials articulated that this was no longer the case.  “You pick and choose your battles,” the American Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, told reporters on March 30, 2017.  “And when we’re looking at this, it’s about changing up priorities and our priority is no longer to sit and focus on getting Assad out.”  Haley’s words were echoed by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who observed that same day, while on an official visit to Turkey, “I think the… longer-term status of President Assad will be decided by the Syrian people.”

This new policy direction lasted barely five days. Sometime in the early afternoon of April 4, 2017, troubling images and video clips began to be transmitted out of the Syrian province of Idlib by anti-government activists, including members of the so-called “White Helmets,” a volunteer rescue team whose work was captured in an eponymously-named Academy Award-winning documentary film. These images showed victims in various stages of symptomatic distress, including death, from what the activists said was exposure to chemical weapons dropped by the Syrian air force on the town of Khan Sheikhoun that very morning.

Images of these tragic deaths were immediately broadcast on American media outlets, with pundits decrying the horrific and heinous nature of the chemical attack, which was nearly unanimously attributed to the Syrian government, even though the only evidence provided was the imagery and testimony of the anti-Assad activists who, just days before, were decrying the shift in American policy regarding regime change in Syria. President Trump viewed these images, and was deeply troubled by what he saw, especially the depictions of dead and suffering children.   

The images were used as exhibits in a passionate speech by Haley during a speech at the Security Council on April 5, 2017, where she confronted Russia and threatened unilateral American military action if the Council failed to respond to the alleged Syrian chemical attack. “Yesterday morning, we awoke to pictures, to children foaming at the mouth, suffering convulsions, being carried in the arms of desperate parents,” Haley said, holding up two examples of the images provided by the anti-Assad activists. “We saw rows of lifeless bodies, some still in diapers…we cannot close our eyes to those pictures.  We cannot close our minds of the responsibility to act.”  If the Security Council refused to take action against the Syrian government, Haley said, then “there are times in the life of states that we are compelled to take our own action.”

In 2013, President Barack Obama was confronted with images of dead and injured civilians, including numerous small children, from Syria that were every bit as heartbreaking as the ones displayed by Ambassador Haley. His Secretary of State, John Kerry, had made an impassioned speech that all but called for military force against Syria.  President Obama asked for, and received, a wide-range of military options from his national security team targeting the regime of President Assad; only the intervention of James Clapper, and the doubts that existed about the veracity of the intelligence linking the Ghouta chemical attack to the Syrian government, held Obama back from giving the green light for the bombing to begin. 

Like President Obama before him, President Trump asked for his national security team to prepare options for military action.  Unlike his predecessor, Donald Trump did not seek a pause in his decision making process to let his intelligence services investigate what had actually occurred in Khan Sheikhoun.  Like Nikki Haley, Donald Trump was driven by his visceral reaction to the imagery being disseminated by anti-Assad activists. In the afternoon of April 6, as he prepared to depart the White House for a summit meeting with a delegation led by the Chinese President Xi Jinping, Trump’s own cryptic words in response to a reporter’s question about any American response seem to hint that his mind was already made up. “You’ll see,” he said, before walking away.

Within hours, a pair of U.S. Navy destroyers launched 59 advanced Block IV Tomahawk cruise missiles (at a cost of some $1.41 million each), targeting aircraft, hardened shelters, fuel storage, munitions supply, air defense and communications facilities at the Al Shayrat air base, located in central Syria.  Al Shayrat was home to two squadrons of Russian-made SU-22 fighter-bombers operated by the Syrian air force, one of which was tracked by American radar as taking off from Al Sharyat on the morning of April 4, 2017, and was overhead Khan Sheikhoun around the time the alleged chemical attack occurred. 

The purpose of the American strike was two-fold; first, to send a message to the Syrian government and its allies that, according to Secretary of State Tillerson, “the president is willing to take decisive action when called for,” and in particular when confronted with evidence of a chemical attack from which the United States could not “turn away, turn a blind eye.”  The other purpose, according to a U.S. military spokesperson, to “reduce the Syrian government’s ability to deliver chemical weapons.” 

Moreover, the policy honeymoon the Trump administration had only recently announced about regime change in Syria was over. “It’s very, very possible, and, I will tell you, it’s already happened, that my attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much,” President Trump told reporters before the missile strikes had commenced.  Secretary Tillerson went further: “It would seem there would be no role for him [Assad] to govern the Syrian people.”

Such a reversal in policy fundamentals and direction in such a short period of time is stunning; Donald Trump didn’t simply deviate slightly off course, but rather did a complete 180-degree turn. The previous policy of avoiding entanglement in the internal affairs of Syria in favor of defeating ISIS and improving relations with Russia had been replaced by a fervent embrace of regime change, direct military engagement with the Syrian armed forces, and a confrontational stance vis-à-vis the Russian military presence in Syria.

Normally, such major policy change could only be explained by a new reality driven by verifiable facts. The alleged chemical weapons attack against Khan Sheikhoun was not a new reality; chemical attacks had been occurring inside Syria on a regular basis, despite the international effort to disarm Syria’s chemical weapons capability undertaken in 2013 that played a central role in forestalling American military action at that time. International investigations of these attacks produced mixed results, with some being attributed to the Syrian government (something the Syrian government vehemently denies), and the majority being attributed to anti-regime fighters, in particular those affiliated with Al Nusra Front, an Al Qaeda affiliate.

Moreover, there exists a mixed provenance when it comes to chemical weapons usage inside Syria that would seem to foreclose any knee-jerk reaction that placed the blame for what happened at Khan Sheikhoun solely on the Syrian government void of any official investigation. Yet this is precisely what occurred.  Some sort of chemical event took place in Khan Sheikhoun; what is very much in question is who is responsible for the release of the chemicals that caused the deaths of so many civilians.

No one disputes the fact that a Syrian air force SU-22 fighter-bomber conducted a bombing mission against a target in Khan Sheikhoun on the morning of April 4, 2017. The anti-regime activists in Khan Sheikhoun, however, have painted a narrative that has the Syrian air force dropping chemical bombs on a sleeping civilian population.

A critical piece of information that has largely escaped the reporting in the mainstream media is that Khan Sheikhoun is ground zero for the Islamic jihadists who have been at the center of the anti-Assad movement in Syria since 2011. Up until February 2017, Khan Sheikhoun was occupied by a pro-ISIS group known as Liwa al-Aqsa that was engaged in an oftentimes-violent struggle with its competitor organization, Al Nusra Front (which later morphed into Tahrir al-Sham, but under any name functioning as Al Qaeda’s arm in Syria) for resources and political influence among the local population.

The Russian Ministry of Defense has claimed that Liwa al-Aqsa was using facilities in and around Khan Sheikhoun to manufacture crude chemical shells and landmines intended for ISIS forces fighting in Iraq. According to the Russians the Khan Sheikhoun chemical weapons facility was mirrored on similar sites uncovered by Russian and Syrian forces following the reoccupation of rebel-controlled areas of Aleppo. 

In Aleppo, the Russians discovered crude weapons production laboratories that filled mortar shells and landmines with a mix of chlorine gas and white phosphorus; after a thorough forensic investigation was conducted by military specialists, the Russians turned over samples of these weapons, together with soil samples from areas struck by weapons produced in these laboratories, to investigators from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for further evaluation.

Al Nusra has a long history of manufacturing and employing crude chemical weapons; the 2013 chemical attack on Ghouta made use of low-grade Sarin nerve agent locally synthesized, while attacks in and around Aleppo in 2016 made use of a chlorine/white phosphorous blend.  If the Russians are correct, and the building bombed in Khan Sheikhoun on the morning of April 4, 2017 was producing and/or storing chemical weapons, the probability that viable agent and other toxic contaminants were dispersed into the surrounding neighborhood, and further disseminated by the prevailing wind, is high.

The counter-narrative offered by the Russians and Syrians, however, has been minimized, mocked and ignored by both the American media and the Trump administration. So, too, has the very illogic of the premise being put forward to answer the question of why President Assad would risk everything by using chemical weapons against a target of zero military value, at a time when the strategic balance of power had shifted strongly in his favor. Likewise, why would Russia, which had invested considerable political capital in the disarmament of Syria’s chemical weapons capability after 2013, stand by idly while the Syrian air force carried out such an attack, especially when their was such a heavy Russian military presence at the base in question at the time of the attack?

Such analysis seems beyond the scope and comprehension of the American fourth estate.  Instead, media outlets like CNN embrace at face value anything they are told by official American sources, including a particularly preposterous insinuation that Russia actually colluded in the chemical weapons attack; the aforementioned presence of Russian officers at Al Shayrat air base has been cited as evidence that Russia had to have known about Syria’s chemical warfare capability, and yet did nothing to prevent the attack.

To sustain this illogic, the American public and decision-makers make use of a sophisticated propaganda campaign involving video images and narratives provided by forces opposed to the regime of Bashar al-Assad, including organizations like the “White Helmets,” the Syrian-American Medical Society, the Aleppo Media Center, which have a history of providing slanted information designed to promote an anti-Assad message (Donald Trump has all but acknowledged that these images played a major role in his decision to reevaluate his opinion of Bashar al-Assad and order the cruise missile attack on Al Shayrat airbase.) 

Many of the fighters affiliated with Tahrir al-Sham are veterans of the battle for Aleppo, and as such are intimately familiar with the tools and trade of the extensive propaganda battle that was waged simultaneously with the actual fighting in an effort to sway western public opinion toward adopting a more aggressive stance in opposition to the Syrian government of Assad. These tools were brought to bear in promoting a counter-narrative about the Khan Sheikhoun chemical incident (ironically, many of the activists in question, including the “White Helmets,” were trained and equipped in social media manipulation tactics using money provided by the United States; that these techniques would end up being used to manipulate an American President into carrying out an act of war most likely never factored into the thinking of the State Department personnel who conceived and implemented the program).

Even slick media training, however, cannot gloss over basic factual inconsistencies. Early on, the anti-Assad opposition media outlets were labeling the Khan Sheikhoun incident as a “Sarin nerve agent” attack; one doctor affiliated with Al Qaeda sent out images and commentary via social media that documented symptoms, such as dilated pupils, that he diagnosed as stemming from exposure to Sarin nerve agent. Sarin, however, is an odorless, colorless material, dispersed as either a liquid or vapor; eyewitnesses speak of a “pungent odor” and “blue-yellow” clouds, more indicative of chlorine gas.

And while American media outlets, such as CNN, have spoken of munitions “filled to the brim” with Sarin nerve agent being used at Khan Sheikhoun, there is simply no evidence cited by any source that can sustain such an account.  Heartbreaking images of victims being treated by “White Helmet” rescuers have been cited as proof of Sarin-like symptoms, the medical viability of these images is in question; there are no images taken of victims at the scene of the attack. Instead, the video provided by the “White Helmets” is of decontamination and treatment carried out at a “White Helmet” base after the victims, either dead or injured, were transported there. 

The lack of viable protective clothing worn by the “White Helmet” personnel while handling victims is another indication that the chemical in question was not military grade Sarin; if it were, the rescuers would themselves have become victims (some accounts speak of just this phenomena, but this occurred at the site of the attack, where the rescuers were overcome by a “pungent smelling” chemical – again, Sarin is odorless.)

More than 20 victims of the Khan Sheikhoun incident were transported to Turkish hospitals for care; three subsequently died. According to the Turkish Justice Minister, autopsies conducted on the bodies confirm that the cause of death was exposure to chemical agents. The World Health Organization has indicated that the symptoms of the Khan Sheikhoun victims are consistent with both Sarin and Chlorine exposure. American media outlets have latched onto the Turkish and WHO statements as “proof” of Syrian government involvement; however, any exposure to the chlorine/white phosphorous blend associated with Al Nusra chemical weapons would produce similar symptoms. 

Moreover, if Al Nusra was replicating the type of low-grade Sarin it employed at Ghouta in 2013 at Khan Sheikhoun, it is highly likely that some of the victims in question would exhibit Sarin-like symptoms. Blood samples taken from the victims could provide a more precise readout of the specific chemical exposure involved; such samples have allegedly been collected by Al Nusra-affiliated personnel, and turned over to international investigators (the notion that any serious investigatory body would allow Al Nusra to provide forensic evidence in support of an investigation where it is one of only two potential culprits is mindboggling, but that is precisely what has happened). But the Trump administration chose to act before these samples could be processed, perhaps afraid that their results would not sustain the underlying allegation of the employment of Sarin by the Syrian air force.

Mainstream American media outlets have willingly and openly embraced a narrative provided by Al Qaeda affiliates whose record of using chemical weapons in Syria and distorting and manufacturing “evidence” to promote anti-Assad policies in the west, including regime change, is well documented.  These outlets have made a deliberate decision to endorse the view of Al Qaeda over a narrative provided by Russian and Syrian government authorities without any effort to fact check either position. These actions, however, do not seem to shock the conscience of the American public; when it comes to Syria, the mainstream American media and its audience has long ago ceded the narrative to Al Qaeda and other Islamist anti-regime elements.

The real culprits here are the Trump administration, and President Trump himself. The president’s record of placing more weight on what he sees on television than the intelligence briefings he may or may not be getting, and his lack of intellectual curiosity and unfamiliarity with the nuances and complexities of both foreign and national security policy, created the conditions where the imagery of the Khan Sheikhoun victims that had been disseminated by pro-Al Nusra (i.e., Al Qaeda) outlets could influence critical life-or-death decisions.

That President Trump could be susceptible to such obvious manipulation is not surprising, given his predilection for counter-punching on Twitter for any perceived slight; that his national security team allowed him to be manipulated thus, and did nothing to sway Trump’s opinion or forestall action pending a thorough review of the facts, is scandalous. History will show that Donald Trump, his advisors and the American media were little more than willing dupes for Al Qaeda and its affiliates, whose manipulation of the Syrian narrative resulted in a major policy shift that furthers their objectives. 

The other winner in this sorry story is ISIS, which took advantage of the American strike against Al Shayrat to launch a major offensive against Syrian government forces around the city of Palmyra (Al Shayrat had served as the principal air base for operations in the Palmyra region). The breakdown in relations between Russia and the United States means that, for the foreseeable future at least, the kind of coordination that had been taking place in the fight against ISIS is a thing of the past, a fact that can only bode well for the fighters of ISIS. For a man who placed so much emphasis on defeating ISIS, President Trump’s actions can only be viewed as a self-inflicted wound, a kind of circular firing squad that marks the actions of a Keystone Cop, and not the Commander in Chief of the most powerful nation in the world. 

But the person who might get the last laugh is President Assad himself. While the Pentagon has claimed that it significantly degraded the Al Shayrat air base, with 58 of 59 cruise missile hitting their targets, Russia has stated that only 23 cruise..

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