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carewyncromwell · 3 years

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“I am the one voice in the cold wind that whispers, And if you listen, you'll hear me call across the sky... As long as I still can reach out and touch you, Then I will never die.”

~“Remember,” by Josh Groban

x~x~x~x

By the early 1940′s, the Dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald had paralyzed all of Europe in terror. While the Muggles fought their own second world war, Grindelwald used the chaos in the Muggle world as a perfect excuse to attack anyone of non-magical blood with no possibility of repercussions. He’d amassed hundreds of thousands of followers across Europe of varying degrees, whether active blood purists, political figures who stupidly thought to use him to achieve their own personal ambitions, or just people too cowardly to stand against him. It had gotten to the point that even the British Ministry of Magic couldn’t look the other way, even if Grindelwald had yet to permeate their shores -- and so, quietly, they set about sending aid to those countries opposing Grindelwald, with help from intelligence provided by individual agents. One of those such agents ended up being the vampire who the occupants of Hogsmeade village and Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry called Bat Varney.

Bat Varney -- or as he was known when he was human, Robert Harker -- was unusual among his kind. Unlike most vampires who tend to stay away from humans and live in vampire colonies, Bat resided in the attic over the Honeydukes sweet shop and, in the evenings, was frequently seen walking the streets of Hogsmeade village, providing services to those witches and wizards requiring information on anything from dragon breeding to Quidditch strategy.

From the moment he first caught wind of Grindelwald’s rise, Bat took an immediate interest, not just because he himself was a Muggle-born, but because he feared for the safety of those humans he’d grown attached to in the last forty years -- the Honeydukes clan; Ann Smith @danceworshipper; the Selwyn-Ellison family, Adelia, Teddy, Violet, and Bertie @that-ravenpuff-witch; Hogwarts’s current Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, Danny Gibson @catohphm, and his wife Victoria @hphm-brooke; and Hogwarts’s previous Defense Against the Dark Arts professor and Bat’s closest companion, Atticus Grimsley @cursebreakerfarrier. Although the vampire knew full well his life-span would more than exceed theirs, just as it had those of his wife Loretta, daughter Irene, and ex-best-friend Cecelia, Bat was determined not to let anything prevent his found family from living the full and happy lives they deserved...and so he offered all of his encyclopedic knowledge, cobbled together over the last hundred and sixty years, to help the British Ministry and other European Ministries tackle Grindelwald. But soon enough, the cat came out of the bag, and Grindelwald learned the identity of the British agent who had been so instrumental in the growing movement against him. When he did, the Dark wizard decided to take decisive action.

In December 1941, Grindelwald came ashore to the United Kingdom for the first time in forty years, and when he did, his first stop was the wizarding village of Hogsmeade. Never in the wizarding village’s history had it ever been attacked, and yet thanks to Grindelwald, it was in flames. Christmas garlands were set ablaze, windows had been smashed, and people fled screaming -- the overcast sky was soon darkened further with smoke and ash, effectively blocking out the sun. This is the only reason why Bat Varney was able to leave the safety of Honeydukes’s attic to confront Grindelwald himself. After instructing the Honeydukes family to head straight to Hogwarts for their safety, the once-veteran attacked the notorious Dark wizard with nothing but a knife and his own fangs and fists. He couldn’t use magic anymore, but there was no way in Hell Bat was going to sit back and do nothing, particularly when he was much more able to shake off a mortal injury than the average person.

As fate would have it, retired Auror Teddy Ellison had been in Hogsmeade that day himself doing Christmas shopping, and he helped rescue and protect the residents of Hogsmeade from their flaming town as best he could. Meanwhile, at Hogwarts, professors Danny Gibson, Adelia Selwyn-Ellison, and Albus Dumbledore were among the first to hear of the trouble in Hogsmeade. Although Dumbledore looked unusually pale and terrified, the witch and the two wizards all quickly raced to the village as fast as they could.

When the Transfiguration, Potions, and Defense Against the Dark Arts professors arrived, however, they found the town largely burned to ash and Grindelwald gone. In the center of the cobblestone street was Teddy Ellison, shaking from head to toe as he struggled to disperse the crowd of townspeople who had gathered in a huddled mass in the center of the street. Adelia and Danny immediately rushed over to Teddy, demanding to know where Grindelwald was, where Bat was -- and Teddy’s eyes flooded with tears as he recounted what had happened.

Grindelwald had only attacked Hogsmeade, it seemed, to go after Bat. When the vampire had shown his face, Grindelwald had immediately set about attacking him -- blasting him off his feet, slamming him into the ground, crushing him with pieces of buildings, and beating him within an inch of his life. He even used the Cruciatus and Killing Curses, all the while proclaiming to the surrounding citizens of Hogsmeade that this is the proper justice for someone who places the safety of Muggles and their brood over pure wizarding blood. And yet despite all this, Bat couldn’t die and, more importantly, he wouldn’t stand down. His eyes consumed with red, Bat fought back, even managing to injure Grindelwald multiple times by punching him in the face, stabbing him in the leg with a knife, and taking a bite out of his shoulder with his own fangs. At last Grindelwald had only one option left to him to try to destroy Bat -- he Transfigured part of a lamp post into a quasi-stake and hurtled it straight into the vampire’s chest. The force of the metal puncturing his heart threw Bat completely off his feet and into the ground, making him choke as blood stained the front of his chest.

Racing forward to try to help Bat, Teddy shot a wide array of Stunning spells and Blasting Curses at Grindelwald, but the Dark wizard soon overpowered him and quelled the middle-aged man with a white-hot, blazing Cruciatus Curse. Teddy had only escaped because Bat -- still staked through the heart -- ran up behind Grindelwald and slashed at the Dark wizard’s wand hand with his knife. With a bellow of pain, Grindelwald dropped his wand; Bat tried to overpower him by putting him in a headlock, but he was too encumbered by the stake in his chest and his weakened state due to blood loss and the vampiric blood lust that accompanied it. With a rage unseen by man, Grindelwald somehow was powerful enough to call his wand back to his hand and, in an instant, he’d blasted the vampire off of him. As Grindelwald bore down on Bat, his eyes blazed with hatred.

“You are a troublesome leech, Bartholomew Varney,” he said in a soft, dangerous whisper. “Now it ends.”

Despite the pain in his internal organs, the weakness of his limbs, and the throbbing of his head, Bat nonetheless was somehow able to pull himself up onto his knees, his lips curled up in a smirk as his sclera-less scarlet eyes bore into Grindelwald’s face.

“I don’t fear death, Grindelwald,” he rasped, and there was no question that he meant it. “I am not the sort of fool, as you are, who’d chase after the Deathly Hallows.”

This final taunt, peppered by the knowledge that Bat had sussed out the secret he’d fought hard to keep under wraps and may have exposed it to others, was the last straw for Grindelwald. Within three seconds, he’d used a violent, flaring violet curse to rip off Bat Varney’s head.

The death of Hogsmeade’s well-regarded vampire scholar devastated both the village’s residents and the neighboring school’s faculty and students. The loss of his surrogate uncle, coupled with the opening of the Chamber of Secrets that same year, prompted Danny Gibson to retire from teaching all together. The Selwyn-Ellisons were also heartbroken at the loss of their “Uncle Bat” -- their Christmas that year was the gloomiest it had ever been, for none of them had the heart to celebrate Bat’s favorite holiday without him. Worst of all, though, was Atticus Grimsley. The retired professor had come to grips with the fact that he would die first, as Bat had...but with the opposite having come true instead, Atticus was beside himself with grief at the loss of the man who’d been the closest friend he’d ever had -- the person who’d made him feel happier, more loved, and less alone than he’d ever been in his life.

It was this despair in response to a tragedy so close to home that finally pushed Albus Dumbledore over the edge and forced him to finally accept what a threat Grindelwald really was to the Wizarding World. Within days of Bat’s death, Dumbledore started his own moves to fight back against his old flame, and within four years, the Transfiguration professor had defeated Grindelwald in combat and taken the Elder Wand for himself.

Within a year of Bat’s death, the Honeydukes family, with some financial help from Bat’s many friends, mounted a gold plaque on the bricks just in front of their shop window that read --

In memory of Robert Harker, otherwise known as Bartholomew “Bat” Varney:

A Vampire with the mind of a teacher, the soul of a soldier, and a heart braver than most men.

b. 1 July 1761 / d. 13 December 1941

In 1946, after Grindelwald’s fall, a statue of Bat Varney was also placed on the inside of the archway into Hogsmeade village. Although it was placed in the shadows and so very often could be overlooked by passerby, it kept a diligent watch on everyone who entered the little village like a silent guardian for many years to come.

#hphl #hogwarts legacy #bartholomew varney #tw: blood #tw: gore #tw: death #tw: murder #my art #my writing #gellert grindelwald #teddy ellison #danny gibson #albus dumbledore #atticus grimsley #ann smith #adelia selwyn #*exhales heavily*#this took a lot out of me #but when I heard this song I just...I had to get the feelings out #now that this angst is out of the way maybe I can get back to happier things with bat #at least he went out like a hero and didn't have to watch even more of his loved ones die...?#...oh who am I fooling I'm still sad #yes dumbledore got the little 'hint' from teddy's recollection of bat's last words that grindelwald had the elder wand #that was all the more reason for him to know he couldn't stand aside anymore #now that he knew grindelwald had the so-called 'deathstick #bat lived exactly 180 years :<#and...yes when he died he was wearing both the silver-gorget-neck-clasp from his friend barty's uniform #and the poinsettia brooch that was a present from grim when they first became friends #</3 #excuse me I need to go stare at the wall for a while

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jjba-hell · 3 years

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Fate and Fortune

Part 8

Part 7- only linking the part before the current one from now on. All the earlier pieces are under the Fate and Fortune tag ^ω^

Content warning: violence, blood, Vera talking about her past and presumed death- ya’ll know the deal

Moots (^з^)-☆: @risottoneroo @fyre23 and @rat-makes-stuff (anyone else wanna get tagged, lemme know)

Part 9 being published right after this- yes, I would hate to see ya’ll in suspense so the follow up is already there.

Also this one is HELLA long

When they landed in Singapore, Vera wasted no time in guzzling down an ungodly amount of water and then crawling into her hotel bed to sleep off the remnants of her nausea- the peculiar thuds coming from the Frenchman next door not enough to deter her from her slumber.

“Mr Joestar apologizes for your luggage issue but I think he’s compensated well enough.” Avdol placed a clip of Singapore dollars onto her bedside, walking around to peel the blockout curtains open- as by her request.

“What will you be up to today?”

“I’m going to be with Mr Joestar, attempting to see Dio using Hermit Purple.”

She looked up at her guardian, smiling at the frustration softly bubbling at the surface of his facade. “I wanted to ask how he realized his stand works with pictures- more specifically smashing Polaroids.”

He gave a huff of laughter. “He informed me of his ability- I never suggested such a thing, in fact I was convinced a crystal ball would have been enough but essentially he beat me to it. We are about to try a television now, however.”

“Godspeed, Avdol.” She laughed as he exited her room.

Vera had just closed her room door when Noriaki called from down the hallway in the elevator. “Good morning, Vera.”

She strolled into the empty elevator he held open for her- extending the same greeting before watching the door close. “What’s our plan for today?”

“Define ‘our’.” She had initially only playfully teased but when he answered with “You and I.” it was her qeue to blush. “Oh, well-“ she cleared her throat. “I’ll be replacing most of my clothing today so unless you like shopping...”

“Oh you don’t have to worry about me- your sparkling conversation is more than enough thanks for me.”

She laughed to herself, rolling her eyes at him. “You are such a charmer!”

He tilted his head to the side, smiling slyly. “Pardon my assumptions, Vera but I truly don’t see you as someone who’s helpless under a charmer’s words- begs the question doesn’t it?”

“Ahh you think I want to be charmed.” She stepped out of the open elevator, Kakyoin trailing after her.

“Without a doubt.”

To Vera, being with Noriaki felt natural- he fell in step with her effortlessly, as effortlessly as the conversation flowed and her hand found his when there was a crowd. Being close to him- it felt right. Or was it safe? It was hard to tell sometimes.

“Well, now that we’ve come to the end of our journey- allow me to thank you for accompanying me.” She pushed her hotel room door open and put her bags down inside before closing it again and leaning her back against the closed door.

“Your company was all the thanks I could ask for.”

She smiled her most genuine smile and reached for his hand. There was rarely protest when she did this- his hands were surprisingly rough but warm- Vera chalked it up to his artistry being the reason.

She made him close the gap between them, pulling him closer until his shoulder was leaning against the door. “And you call me a charmer.” He commented, quietly, as if that little space just outside her door was for them and them alone.

Her heart was admittedly racing in her chest- the analogy of butterflies in your stomach always made her laugh but now, standing there so close to Noriaki- so close she could smell the shampoo in his hair and admire the slight silver streaks in his eyes... it made sense.

Vera assumed the feeling she was feeling was affirmative as she reached up a bit and brought her hand to the back of his neck. Noriaki obliged, of course, bringing his face closer to hers.

The gap only seemed to get smaller, her other hand moving up his arm- naturally trying to get on her tip-toes to help gain some height. By the time she closed her eyes, their noses were almost touching and then she waited, just the sound of her own heartbeat in her ears.

All at once- but not violent in the least- Noriaki’s lips brushed gently against hers and his other hand landed on the other side of her other shoulder- essentially caging her against the door.

The one action brought her excitement... but was painfully tainted by the fear that shot up through her spine at the other action. Her head turned away from him, the hand behind his neck moving to grip his wrist beside her.

“I’m sorry.” The words came from him, her eyes opening and gazing up at him. His hand moved away from the door- slowly and carefully, like moving too quickly would scare here off. Noriaki’s brows were knitted together in concern,

“It’s not you.” She tried to say- her voice failing her miserably in volume. That soft expression on his face didn’t falter, a small smile spread over his face. “You don’t have to explain anything to me, Vera.”

His hand moved to hold hers, squeezing softly as he stood a bit taller once again. “You’re shaking.”

She peered down at where their hands were connected- noting how her hand was shaking in his. “Oh.”

“I won’t hurt you.”

Her gaze shot back up to him. “I’m not thinking that.”

“I know. But I figure it was something you needed to hear, right now.”

“Called it!” Anne’s voice called from the end of the hall and like a spell had been broken they separated back to their casual distance as Jotaro came down the hallway.

“Called what, kid?” Vera regained a bit of her voice back.

“You two are the couple.”

“Why does there have to be a couple, exactly? Y’know what nevermind- I got you some better travel clothes while I was out, can you just go try them on?”

“What are you? My mom?”

Vera only raised an eyebrow as she opened the door and let the kid in.

It was pretty quiet on their way to Calcutta- she supposed that she had become somewhat accustomed to the swaying of the sea- although it really didn’t help her getting any more sleep.

“Why are you always up at this hour?” Jotaro grumbled as he came to join her for a smoke break- once again at the dead of night.

“We really have to stop meeting like this- it’s become the only time you seem to talk to me.” She joked, offering him her lighter.

He didn’t respond- she figured he wouldn’t so she filled the silence for him. “I’m up at this hour for the same reason as you.”

Vera got nightmares of her parents’ deaths, it only seemed logical that Jotaro suffered the same fate because of Holy.

“Do they go away?”

“I don’t know. I’ve only been struggling with them for about two years now...”

He scoffed, standing up a bit straighter. “I don’t know how you handle it.”

“What? The sleep deprivation or the insatiable grief?”

Jotaro’s hand moved over hers, much like she had done with his before- the words that followed however seemed to pain him to say. “Quit fooling around. I’m serious.”

It wasn’t often she met someone who’d explicitly ask her to be serious. He may not have had to look her in the eye when he asked but she got the message- drop the sarcasm.

“I really don’t know.” Her voice started softly. “I just distract myself, I guess. I’d rather fill the silence with sarcasm than let my own thoughts consume me. I’m not so good at doing that when I put my head down though...” she gripped the railing under her hand tighter- fighting hard against the tears sliding down her face. “I feel so weak.”

Her vision blurred and right then she moved off- turning away from the conversation but Jotaro caught a hold of her wrist. His grip was firm but not crushing, subtly pulling her back.

The tears continued to flow as she looked over her shoulder at him, the smile on her face forced painfully to avoid more tears. “Unless you’re gonna hold me, I suggest you let go.”

Jotaro snapped them together like magnets- pulling her snug into him, her head on his shoulder. The shock delayed her thoughts for a moment- a barrage of ‘is this a joke? A stand attack? Is this even Jotaro?’ But when she finally accepted and hugged him back, her thoughts melted away.

How long had she gone without being held like this? Why did it feel like the first time in months her mind was quiet enough to release all the tension she held in her body? A heavy sigh followed as she practically melted into Jotaro’s firm embrace.

He separated them gently, standing up straight to peer down at her once more the hand he had first held, now properly entwined with his fingers. “Stop with the ‘weakness’ crap- got it?”

With her eyes dried she could give him that sarcastic grin once more. “Or what?”

He leaned in low, their faces almost touching. “Fuck around and find out.”

And with that he started walking back below deck- Vera trailing behind him. “Oh no, is Jotaro actually gonna tell me what he actually thinks about me?”

“Yare yare, woman- you know how I feel about you.”

“On the contrary- I wasn’t sure you felt anything at all, up until this point.”

In front of her room he sternly told her to go to bed and wake him up if she had a nightmare but she only shrugged it off- thanking him regardless. “And miss the opportunity to enjoy a cigarette on my own?” Was how she played it off.

Regardless she’d gotten a few hours of sleep in before they docked in Calcutta- more than she could say she’d had in a while.

“And you, Vera? No concern for the culture shock?” Polnareff had asked her as they waited for the ship to be free to leave.

“Well I took a round of birth control and an oxybutynin*... so I guess I’m not scared because I’m just well prepared.” She answered with a painfully wide grin.

Jean’s face dropped just in time with the door for their exit and immediately she stayed with the elder men- taking Mr Joestar’s extended arm to push through the crowd.

“Is this common occurence?” Noriaki asked as they all squeezed together on a crowded bus.

“Well I may be dependent off of Mr Joestar and Avdol’s movement but the chances of anyone bothering me are low. Did you get your wallet back?”

He laughed with a nod.

At the restaurant Vera went to change back into her traveler’s set- asking the table to order for her.

She’d long known to watch her own back in life but it would be a lie to say she was waiting for the knife to her throat the second she stepped out of the bathroom stall door.

Whoever or whatever it was clasped their hand over her mouth to stop her from screaming. Her frantic gaze fell towards the floor length mirror facing the stall door.

It’s breath huffed hungrily in her ear as she struggled. She knew her attempts in that moment were useless but she wasn’t trying to fight for survival, she was trying to stop their escape.

Mirrors.

Jotaro said something about mirrors.

It was probably the worst gamble she had ever taken but hey- Fortune was on her side wasn’t it?

She sent Fortune out to close the curtains of the window- plunging the room into darkness. The grip on her mouth and the painful prod at her throat loosened- her qeue to attack.

She sent Fortune towards her back where she guessed the perp was holding her from. Through Fortune, she could feel a successful hit but not without the cost of a few weak lashes at her arms. The barrage of attacks coming to a stop when Fortune grabbed hold of its head and shoved it into the wall beside her- the soft crack under her palm hopefully being an indicator of good news.

For a moment she had thought she was winning until the blood stain dripping down her neck over her clothes was too prominent to ignore. Had the adrenaline allowed her to ignore the lightheaded ness? Was she bleeding out?

She let Fortune hover closer to her to heal up her neck just enough to stop the bleeding but it didn’t change the fact that she had lost too much blood to be comfortable with.

“Goddamit I took the birth control to avoid blood!”

The light ruffle of the curtains had her bring a very translucent Fortune back for a fight but when there was silence and she couldn’t see anything in the mirror she deemed herself all-clear.

Where was that ringing coming from? Vera stumbled through the hallway back to the table where she only then noticed that she was having trouble swallowing.

Avdol’s jaw dropped as he saw her first- nearly leaping out of his seat to prop her up over his shoulder. “What happened?”

With a lot more strain than was quite fair she spoke. “Mirror attack. Stand.”

Jotaro was the one to get up and pick her in a princess carry. “We need to get to a hospital- now.”

For a moment she was about to joke about how much she enjoyed being carried but the searing pain in her neck had her nearly convulse straight of his arms. Jotaro’s grip on her tightened as she fought against him, the pain being the worst she’d felt in years.

“I’m sorry- I had to cauterize it.” Avdol’s face came into view for a second just before her vision started to swim.

“That really fucking hurt.” She hissed, feeling Jotaro start moving, her swimming vision going dark.

When she woke up she was in the hospital, with Jotaro and Kakyoin outside her room, catching her as she dragged the IV along the hallway with her.

“Well rested?” Mr Joestar had asked as they got into the taxi to the hospital.

“Somewhat. Where’s Avdol? At the hotel?”

There was a strained silence that followed.

“Polnareff left to go after the stand user that attacked you both- his sister’s killer.” Kakyoin answered.

“And Avdol is making sure he doesn’t get himself killed.”

If it wasn’t for her exhaustion, she’d have taken offense that Avdol chose to make sure Polnareff would survive and yet she laughed at the idea that he thought she was capable enough to take care of herself.

“Sounds like a tomorrow problem.” She grumbled as she tipped her head back and rode out the rest of the way to the hotel.

A few hours later she found herself treading through the streets in search of her guardian. He hadn’t called in a few hours and her gut feeling was telling her there was some kind of trouble brewing...

A part of her had to laugh at the irony. Avdol often veered her away from any possible dangers but was front, line and center to go after an idiot like Polnareff who didn’t know any better than to take a bait on an emotional whim. Unsurprisingly the others had felt that same premonition and had spread out to help find the two.

The longer she walked the deeper her stomach dropped until her worst nightmare came to light.

A bloody Avdol lay in the middle of street.

* oxybutynin is a medication that lowers the frequency/ need to urinate (yes, I felt for Polnareff- that shit’s nasty)

#jojo's bizarre adventure #jojo no kimyou na bouken #JoJo part 3 #jotaro kujo #Noriaki Kakyoin #Joseph Joestar #Muhammed avdol #Jean Pierre Polnareff #Fate and Fortune #OC content #OC Vera

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wroughtbetwixtfanfic · 4 years

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A Place To Call Home, Ch 2.

Fandom: Rosewell, New Mexico.

Summary: A canon divergent take on Roswell, New Mexico, and the relationships between Isobel, Noah, and Rosa; later parts will shift the focus to Michael and Alex, as well as Michael and Noah. What is it like to share a body with another alien? Can broken trust be mended? Do the ends really justify the means?

Rating: M.

Tags: Canon divergence, minor character death, not really character death, body sharing, polyamory, hurt/comfort, addiction problems, sickfic, revenge, fix it, friends to enemies to lovers, lovers to enemies to lovers, Noah is complicated, cw: dubious age stuff for a little bit considering Nasedo/Noah is who-the-hell-knows how old.

Word Count: 2723

It was his favorite daydream.

He was walking free, bathed in sunlight with the heirs at his side. They were faced with those terrible people from so long ago. The heirs pinned them down as he surged forward, grabbing the leader of their army by the head; he'd dive into the Earthling's mind, tearing through it like the storms Nasedo sometimes heard rolling overhead. He would gift the Earthlings their worst nightmares, castrating their minds before searing through their brain with the killing power in his palms. Each and every single one who had ever harmed his people, each Earthling that even dared think to raise a finger against them, would burn. They would die howling for mercy that wouldn't come.

But then Nasedo realized the screaming in his daydream was real. A scream in his head, desperate and panicked and afraid. One of the heirs. Nasedo struggled against his prison, trying to get out. They needed him. They needed protection. Damn it all, what good was he if he couldn't do what he'd been born to do? Unless...

Nasedo closed his eyes and focused. It was a skill he hadn't practiced much as a young one, and oh how he regretted it. The ability to project into the mind and even flesh of another was a skill inherent in Protectors, but he hadn't needed it. He'd always been better at hand to hand combat. But his charges needed him. If they died, then he had failed, and all of the suffering would be for nothing. He would never escape, he would never get revenge.

Unacceptable.

Suddenly, he opened his eyes, and he could see. Everything was blurry, as if he was staring through a haze, but he could make out a young one. Blonde, fair of skin, a slim but tall frame. She was struggling against an Earthling, a bigger and older one who had hands around her mouth and wrist, dragging her through the dirt. Nasedo didn't need much power to know his intentions.

I'm here, Nasedo whispered into the young one's mind. I'm here. Let me in. Let me help you.

The young one's mind opened to him with unexpected ease, a single question among the spinning thoughts. Who are you?

I'll explain later. I can save you. I can protect you. Let me in.

In an instant, he was there, inside her body as well as her mind. Isobel. Her name was Isobel, she was fourteen years old, there on a camping trip with her brothers Maxwell and Michael. Nasedo settled into her form, jaw setting in determination. Sleep, Isobel. It'll be over soon. Isobel drifted into the back of her mind, asleep, safe. Nasedo focused on the attacker, trying hard to fight. He hadn't anticipated that the weakness of his own form would impact Isobel's well being. He hadn't anticipated just how difficult it would be. He snarled, lashing out and biting, but it did little good. Damn it, damn it.

The attacker was blown back out of nowhere. Nasedo fell to the ground, gaping up at two forms rushing to his-- her, their-- side. The tallest-- Max-- was saying something, but Nasedo couldn't understand it. He just closed the eyes, leaning against the comforting warmth of another living body and shivering from fear and adrenaline. Tired. So tired. But then the one holding them was moving, and Nasedo heard the sounds of struggle.

He could hear Max cry out. He smelled blood.

Nasedo looked to Max, sending a brief flash of an image. A hand on the chest, glowing. On fire. Burning out the life inside the Earthling that dared harm them. Max followed the action perfectly, howling as power surged through his young body and crushed the life beneath him. His first kill. Nasedo smiled inwardly as the other, Michael, effortlessly dug a grave with telekinesis. Oh, they were young, but already so powerful.

It was a few days before Isobel woke. Nasedo kept quiet, playing along as Max took them back to the Earthling family. He bit back his hatred as doctors poked them, prodded them, checked them for injury. He watched, learning the language of the Earthlings as the days went by. English, primarily. They called themselves humans. They were in the city of Roswell, the state of New Mexico, the country of the United States of America. Isobel Evans, the minutes-younger twin sister of Maxwell Evans, adopted by Ann Evans and her husband. Insufferable people, the parents. They didn't know about the young ones' powers. They had no clue how to raise such children. Still, Isobel's memories of them seemed... physically harmless, if not emotionally barren.

No one questioned the body's silence. Trauma, a doctor murmured, often took time to recover from. Max tried to be close, tried to get his sister to talk. Nasedo didn't know what to do. He withdrew, focusing on taking care of Isobel and basking in the Earth's sun, strange and wonderful music piped directly into his ears via something called an mp3 player. Soon enough, Isobel started to stir. Her voice, faint but growing closer, echoed through their shared mind.

What happened?

Nasedo wanted to reply, but couldn't. His hold on the body was slipping, and he was unable to speak; within seconds, he woke in his own body and his own mind. The pain came flooding back, and for the only time in his memory, he wept. To have a taste of freedom, even if it was through another, was almost worse than none at all. To think he'd never again feel the warmth of the desert upon his face... But then it happened again, and kept happening.

The second time he was drawn out, it was without warning. Nasedo woke up in Isobel's bed. It was nighttime, and the body was sweating. Shaking. Heart pounding. A... nightmare? He got up, wandering to the bathroom and gently dabbing Isobel's face with a cool, damp towel. The anxiety wasn't his, though he felt it, and that distance was enough to help calm the body back down. He brought her back to bed just as she came back into her mind; once again, he returned to his prison.

It happened rarely at first, in quick little moments when Isobel was afraid or overwhelmed. Once every few months, at the most. Nasedo wondered if Isobel even realized what was happening. Not that it mattered. It was only five, ten minutes that Nasedo used to glimpse the outside world while he cared for Isobel and soothed her mind. Max didn't understand it, and Nasedo never felt obligated to explain. Michael... Michael was different. He would watch silently, sitting nearby without speaking or attempting to touch Isobel's body. Sometimes, he would offer a cold drink, help Nasedo find a quiet place if they were at school when it happened, or scroll through Isobel's mp3 player to find the songs he knew would be calming. Michael didn't ask questions, so perhaps it was for that reason that Nasedo liked him more.

With time, the shifts in control became more frequent. Lasted longer. What had once been five or ten minutes a few times a year became a weekly habit of an hour or more. Maybe it was because of the stress of High School, maybe it was because Isobel chose the most catty and upsetting human friends possible, maybe it was because their connection deepened as Isobel's powers grew stronger. Nasedo didn't know. What he did know was that nearly two years after the first time, he was drawn to Isobel when he felt her crying. Upset. He glanced around as he came to, wondering what had happened.

They were in Isobel's room, at her desk. A journal lay open in front of them. Nasedo tilted his head, glancing at the writing.

I love her. She's older than me, and my parents whisper about how she's trouble. They don't know how I feel. I'm ashamed. I know Michael is bi and it's no big deal for him, but it's different for me. I have a lot of friends. I'm supposed to be perfect. Everyone expects me to be the homecoming queen with a jock boyfriend, but that's not what I want. I want Rosa.

Oh. Oh, dear. Nisedo shut the journal and slipped it into Isobel's secret hiding place. He mulled that information over as he wandered to the kitchen, drumming his fingers on the fridge door as he hunted for something to eat. Rosa. Rosa... Ortecho. He remembered her, faintly. She had been hanging out with Michael, once, when Isobel had an attack. She'd stood guard with Michael over them. She seemed sweet, warm, with a quick laugh. As far as humans went, well, she was acceptable. But--

"What's up?"

Max's voice made Nasedo jerk their head up. "Just looking for a snack," he said, his voice perfectly imitating Isobel's inflections. He'd been practicing. "Why?"

"We just ate." Max frowned. "I thought I heard you crying."

"Hormones, I guess."

"Didn't need to know that."

Nasedo rolled his eyes as Max made a face and walked away. Men. Such babies. He grabbed a fork and what looked to be a leftover box of vegetable lo mein, and headed back to Isobel's room. It had been two years, and he hadn't spoken to Isobel himself since that fateful night, but he contemplated changing that now. He wasn't sure he could speak to her without losing control, but... Well, there were others ways, weren't there? He nibbled at the food as he fished out Isobel's journal again, picking up a pen and thinking. If he did this, he wouldn't be able to take it back.

But nothing ventured, nothing gained. Right?

Isobel, when you read this, I want you to know that you're not imagining things. I don't know if you remember me from that night, at the camping trip...

It was a short note, just a page. If it worked, if she accepted him, he could always write more later. He frowned, glancing at the journal entry Isobel had written.

... And just so you know, Isobel, you never have to be ashamed of who you are or who you love. - Nasedo

Nasedo felt the world spin as Isobel began to come back to her body. Just in time. He sighed, closing his eyes and hoping for the best as he relinquished control. It wasn't long before he was called back, days at most. When he opened his eyes, he was at school and in the cafeteria. Shit. He forced a smile at her friends, excusing himself from the table and rushing outside to the bleachers. Her next class was gym, and there was no way he was going to be able to handle it. Being in Isobel's body sapped her strength, and he wouldn't risk hurting her. Instead, he rummaged around her backpack looking for astronomy homework. That, that he could do.

His hands landed on a notebook, and he noticed something that made him freeze. His name was written on the front, in tiny letters. Blinking, he opened it.

I remember you.

His heart hammered in his chest.

I thought I was crazy. I never told anyone what happened. Not even Max or Michael. How does this work? Who are you? Why did you save me?

Nasedo grabbed a pen, hope fluttering to life inside his being.

I don't know how it works, exactly. Some of our kind can project themselves into the bodies of others. Especially Protectors, like me. I take control when you need me, and leave when the danger passes. Your mother ordered me to protect the three of you, just after the crash. I protected your family before, on our homeworld. I saved you because I knew you, once.

The next time Nasedo came back, a week later, there was a reply waiting for him.

So that's why I can't remember things? That makes sense, now. You knew our mother? What happened to her? What was she like? What was our home like?

Smiling, Nasedo scribbled in his reply. He told Isobel as much as he remembered. Tales of a beautiful, blonde woman with warm heart and a sharp mind, opinionated yet compassionate. Tales of a plant similar to Earth, laid to waste by greed and power-hungry zealots. Her mother, he noted, died in the crash. A lie, but a soft one. He didn't want to tell her that her mother likely died in pain, gunned down by hateful military men.

They wrote back and forth for ages, and finally, Nasedo felt he had a chance at life. A life in bits and pieces, in stolen moments, but a life all the same. Maybe he could be content, sharing the body with Isobel. She was a beautiful soul like her mother, though less confident and more fearful. Well, that would change with age and experience. Especially with his hand to help guide her. She seemed to welcome his presence, and the connection between them only grew stronger as their third year together began. Isobel made sure to take detailed notes of her classes, homework, things that had happened between her and others. Nasedo, in turn, took notes of things that had happened while he was in control.

Things seemed to be heading in a bright direction. Isobel blossomed into the popular queen bee that she was meant to be, and Nasedo took the wheel when things got to be too much for her. They shared their hopes, their dreams, their deepest secrets; it kept him distracted, busy... happy. Isobel was almost eighteen when, late one night, their minds managed to brush together at the same time. They were conscious at the same time, and they both laughed at the giddiness of the moment.

"We're strong together," Isobel mused. "If we could exist this way, always..."

Nasedo chuckled. "You wouldn't want me around all the time, I'm sure."

"Why not?" "Rosa?"

Isobel pursed her lips. "You said that we can't trust humans. Any humans."

"Well, maybe I was wrong."

It stunned Nasedo to admit it, especially out loud. It had been so long since he'd thought of revenge, that he'd almost forgotten it. Almost. Still, it felt right. He saw the way Isobel looked at Rosa, and he knew what was in her heart. He couldn't deny that connection any more than he could deny their own.

"She's different, isn't she?" "Maybe. Too bad she's high half the time." "And you're not?"

Scoffing, Isobel's mind nestled in and eased into sleep. After that night, it was easier to operate together. Not simple, not flawless, but easier. Blending their lives together gave Nasedo a new sense of freedom, and he gave to Isobel a self assurance that she'd rarely experienced before. Enough self assurance that she finally began to flirt with Rosa on her own, once Isobel was 18 and Rosa had graduated. Not enough self assurance, Nasedo noticed, to tell her brothers their secret.

"I enjoy having you to myself," Isobel said when Nasedo pointed it out. "Besides. They'll think I'm nuts."

Having you to myself. The concept was... strange. He'd never belonged to anyone. Not on their homeworld, and certainly not since. He'd led a secluded life, focusing on his studies and then on his duties; deep friendships had only been a distraction, in his eyes. Now, Nasedo pondered the idea. Friendship. Maybe even love. How would such things even work? Would he be content to exist alongside Isobel, with her friends being his friends? With her love being his love? It was an entire world he'd never considered.

"I can't tell what you're thinking," she added softly.

"What if I can never escape? What if I never have my own body again?"

Isobel shrugged. "What I have is yours." "You won't be able to tell the ones you love about your secrets." "You said yourself, Rosa is different. Maybe... I don't know, maybe there are others out there who are different, too. Maybe the good people outnumber the bad." "I doubt it."

She couldn't touch him, of course, but he felt affection from her directed at him, and it felt almost like an embrace. "At least we'll have each other."

On that, he agreed.

Regardless of what happened, Nasedo would protect Isobel. No matter the cost.

#roswell new mexico #roswell nm #roswell #roswell new mexico fanfiction #roswell new mexico fanfic #roswell new mexico fic #roswell nm fanfiction #roswell nm fanfic #roswell nm fic #roswell fanfiction #roswell fanfic #roswell fic #isabel evans #noah bracken #rosa ortecho #wroughtwriting

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lemon-writings · 4 years

Text

Hamish Update Pt. III

Genre: Literary fiction // Word count: 77,037

Here we are! Chapters VII-IX! I’ve written these chapters really recently, so I can go a little more in-depth with the process. The second half of this book (and specifically this particular trio of chapters, for some reason) is definitely the part I’m most proud of. Writing everything coming to fruition is just so satisfying. Is this what people who write books with actual plot feel like? Because it makes me consider writing books with real plot.

But in all honesty, I really enjoy writing this part of Hamish. I’m super happy with how everything’s turning out. One problem I do have with the latter half is that it is super depressing to write all the time, especially with the amount of rain we’ve been getting in Ohio right now (we love depression), so it is taking me a little longer to write than normal, since I keep sidetracking with random projects to try taking my mind off the deeper things. But when I am working on it, the words just flow. It’s beautiful.

Chapter VII

Epitaph: “I’m a strange new kind of inbetween thing aren’t I? Not at home with the dead nor with the living.”-Anne Carson, Antigone

Here is what’s been building this entire time: the funeral. That, and everything funerals entail, with the Celebration of Life and whatnot. The first time I wrote this, I read the funeral scene to my mom in full detail, and she started crying, because it reminded her of her father’s funeral. I, personally, loathe funerals, for what boils down to the fact that I am greatly horrified by being in the same room as someone who I once knew to be alive. That, and the crippling fear of death most people experience at least once in their lives.

There’s also a lot of Horacio’s... fantasies. There’s something deeply personal about the way I write him, sometimes, that makes rereading certain parts difficult. Horacio, in his darkest moments, feels he deserves bad things happening to him, nearly craves them, and he hates himself for it. The amount of self-loathing in this work is high.

Excerpts:

Horacio, as always, is concerned about Hamish’s state of being alive, because that man always looks halfway dead, and at times, he’s more ghost than living person

The question of if you were dead or alive laid on my tongue, begging to be asked. Maybe I should’ve asked you. Maybe I should’ve checked your pulse. Maybe I should’ve laid my head on your chest and listened to your heartbeat. Maybe I should’ve left with you then and there and avoided the trap Leon kept guiding us to.

Hot take from a Farm Child: broken machinery is one of the most haunting things you can ever see. I could probably wax poetic about how terrible their beauty is, but I really don’t think anyone wants to hear about farm machines for three hours. (On a completely serious note, my uncle’s coat got tangled in a grain auger yesterday, and he could have died. Be safe around farm machinery. Please. It can be really dangerous, even if you’ve been around it for 60+ years.)

Leon’s descriptions are always some variant of men thinking being tall is intimidating.

Leon bared his teeth once more, the animalistic beauty of it all making me wonder where Leon ended and his rage began. Primal is often used as a way to pull down others, to say you are not advanced the way I am, but Leon’s rage seemed like an advancement of humanity, a way of saying I have advanced my own humanity through my anger. He was gorgeous in the same way broken tractors on the side of the road are, monolithic kings taken over by the passage of time, their steel teeth rusty and eternal.

Did I reference “Father” by Warsan Shire? Yes. Yes, I did. Hamish is a huge Warsan Shire fan, because, like, it has his vibes.

You recited a poem about fathers, about death, about life, speaking it as if it were scripture. When you finished, you began again. Or perhaps you never ended, speaking this poem forwards, then backwards, then repeating cyclically.

Yeet.

Chapter VIII

Epitaph: “I could be a wolf for you. I could put my teeth on your throat. I could growl. I could eat you whole. I could wait for you in the dark. I could howl against your hair.”-Catherynne M. Valente, “The Red Girl”, The Bread We Eat in Dreams

There’s a lot of plot stuff that happens in this chapter, so unfortunately, I do have to be a little shorter when it comes to this summary, but let it be said that I am not meant to be a thriller/action author. Do I enjoy watching Indiana Jones and Star Wars? Yes, I do. Should I be writing anything close to that? Absolutely not. It takes a lot of effort to do, and even with that, I would say that any sort of action scene I write is... not exactly “half-baked”, but most certainly not up to par with the rest of my writing. I’ll need to edit this chapter heavily the next time I go through Hamish.

That being said, there are moments in this chapter that I am proud of. Horacio and Ofelia’s interactions in this chapter are some of my favorites, just because they’re some of the only characters in this book who don’t violently hate/distrust each other.

Excerpts:

When I mentioned kudzu to my mother, she mentioned it was an invasive species she’d seen a lot of during her time in the south, which just confirmed that it was a great metaphor to use. That’s always a sign, right?

I looked down at the flowers, then at her, wiser than anyone I’d ever met, the freedom ripping open her seams like something terrible and sharp, the parts of her that were so carefully cultivated spilling out of her like kudzu.

Horacio feels like he’s the only real person in a world of ghosts. The disconnect between Horacio and the people around him is heavily based upon the first time I disassociated. We watched the Blue Man Group in Chicago on a music/Spanish department trip, and the second I walked out of the building, I thought I was a freaking ghost. I had my first panic attack at 14 because I didn’t know if I was actually experiencing life. It was a wild experience.

Next to Ofelia, I looked out of place. Ofelia was hazy and magical in her presence, looking more like a dreamy memory than a real person, as if I touched her, my hand would touch only air. I was the solid type of real, unfortunately. Tall and unnaturally skinny, with a gritty, starving look to myself, the two of us next to each other were like a pastel-covered, out-of-focus impressionist painting next to a photograph of childhood labor in Industrial Revolution-era factories.

There’s also a confrontation with Leon that has some, um, spoilery moments. Leon is an asshole. I kind of love him.

Chapter IX

Epitaph: “[Grief is pain internalized, abscess of the soul. Anger is pain as energy, sudden explosion.]”-Lauren Groff, Fates and Furies

Again, there’s a lot going on in this chapter. A lot. Marcus the bodyguard makes another appearance (underappreciated character of the book) and acts as a guardian angel. Bless Marcus. Seriously.

This chapter is more introspective than the last, so I enjoyed writing it a bit more. Or... a lot more, actually. I was not created to write action scenes, and I accept my fate. Horacio’s musings on fate are long-winded and beautiful and what I’m meant to write. It’s just a chapter of him reflecting, pining, and wishing he was in a different situation. Which. Fair.

Moments like this make me realize I am a cruel god who treats her characters terribly.

Excerpts:

Starting this chapter strong with the true weighted blanket: death.

Death cloaked me like your blanket.

As I said before, Marcus? Underutilized character. I use him as much as I can, but the plot makes it difficult to use him as much as I wish. He’s the man we deserve.

Marcus was smart, was good at playing the game we all played without making it apparent that he was playing it. He knew what he was doing. “I want the best for Hamish,” Marcus said. He looked into my eyes. “You do, too.”

Horacio takes a moment to think awful, rage-colored thoughts about the people around him, which are, of course, one of my favorite things to wax poetic about. He’s a salty man, and he has all rights to be, because this entire work is just “things to be salty about, the novel”. Poor Horace. He just wants to live in a gay daydream, but he’s stuck in a nightmare.

(Not to sound too Midwestern, but OPE, the shade.)

These people played their sick, twisted games like gods, forcing everyone to play along for their survival while they watched and knew exactly what they were doing to the rest of us mortals around them. In that moment, I was filled with the type of righteous anger that made me understand why people were drawn to religion. I wanted a higher power to strike them down, to make an example of them all, to say don’t do this, or you’ll end up like them.

I sounded like my parents, like all the religious nuts I’d ever met, the ones who said that those who didn’t fall their doctrine were inferior, were going to die, and suffer for being different. Is that how it begins? Is anger the true root of all cruelty?

That last line, is anger the true root of all cruelty? was probably my favorite line when I first wrote Hamish. It’s sort of become a thesis statement for Horacio’s past and the way he sees the world.

Lastly, of course, we have

The Jams

We have a fine selection of songs here, a lot from my Lucy playlist (Lucy has one of my favorite playlists I’d ever made).

Oh No!!! - grandson

Temple Priest (feat. Paul Wall & Kota the Friend) - MISSIO

Destroy Me - grandson

BTSTU - Jai Paul

Seven Devils - Florence + The Machine

Pretty Little Head - Eliza Rickman

That’s the tea, y’all. If you’re interested in this and hearing writing updates for Hamish, then ask to be added to the tags list!

#wip: hamish #writing update #amwriting #writeblr #writers on tumblr #ayyy we're in the home stretch y'all!!!

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annewithagee · 5 years

Text

Know Love When You See It (3)

“I can’t do this, Gil. I can’t open this door. What it it’s too late? What if we came all this way only to find it was all for naught, because she… she…“ A story in which Gilbert’s health remains perfectly fine, but that’s not enough to bring Anne peace. Alternate ending to AotI. Shirbert.

fanfiction.net / AO3

Chapter 3 Two Kindred Spirits and a journey of four steps

In the years to come Anne’s thoughts often wandered back to that fateful afternoon, playing with the question of who had proven to be more unrelenting on that particular time of misery and hurt, never quite able to give a certain answer to her query.

Was she the one in the lead, with her astonishment and disbelief that had naturally followed Gilbert’s sudden offer and then the protest that had derived directly from them in turn? Or had the palm of victory been his, as he had so obviously ignored both, standing resolutely by his proposition, deaf to the reasoning she had so desperately thrown at him back then?

She had always known him to be stubborn, and to a degree that could only be rivalled by herself; so how could she be surprised to see him act like this that day?

“For the last time, Anne, this isn’t about either of us being comfortable or not,” he had told her then, depriving her of her last argument. “I can easily imagine that you’d rather go back with Stella or Priss, but you know that it won’t work this time and I know that you’re not going to delay your return only because my company is less pleasant than theirs.”

She had protested to that, too, telling him frankly that this particular aspect of their journey had been the least of her concerns, but accepted his general plan eventually.

It was agreed upon that Gilbert should come to Patty’s Place shortly before eight the following morning and that they should set off to the Kingsport train station together from there. Again, Anne wanted to oppose – this time, however, she would have had to battle all four of her friends, who undoubtedly would emphasise the advantage of such solution most resolutely – and she was certain that at this point she could not successfully battle one.

She agreed and then she excused herself when only she thought it appropriate, explaining that she should pack before it got dark and that more than anything, she needed a proper rest before her trip. She found Gilbert’s eyes and, unable to think of words that could express the enormous gratitude she felt, she gave him one, lasting gaze, praying to the Heavens that he could understand the message it was supposed to carry.

He did; he answered it with the weakest of smiles and a silent promise that he would be there for her, for as long as she needed him to.

And now here she was, dressed up in her old grey travelling dress, standing by the gate of her second home, waiting. The morning was bright, the sun shining down on her, its beams warm and gentle against her pale, freckled skin. It was a fine morn, a beautiful morn; and yet, for the first time in her life, Anne could not feel appreciate it at all.

She noticed Gilbert come down the street with a small satchel and immediately felt guilty as she thought of her own suitcase, so much heavier than the little bag he was carrying with him. She knew he would take her ridiculously big luggage as soon as he arrived at the gate and that she could never find a way to talk him out of it.

She sighed with exasperation. Sometimes she wished that Gilbert Blythe hadn’t been such a consummate gentleman all the time.

As she mused over the matter, the young man in question reached his destination, having come to a stop right in front of her. He offered her a smile and pushed the gate open.

“You are up early,” he said in lieu of a greeting, his voice void of astonishment. “I am fairly sure we weren’t supposed to meet for another quarter at least.”

“Well, in that case we are equally ill-bred,” Anne retorted readily; it was disconcerting to think how easy it was to fall into this kind of banter with him, so many months apart and at the time so unfavourable as this, yet at this point, she was far too tired to worry about that, too.

Gilbert chuckled lightly. “I must ask you not to repeat this to my mother, Miss Shirley. She pales at the very thought of me behaving inappropriately, she might end up with a heart attack if she ever heard that I did.”

“As long as you don’t betray me before Marilla,” Anne answered in the same blithe tone, before realising to whose judgement she had just referred. She looked away, abashed. “I’m sorry, Gilbert. I’m afraid I’m not going to be the most amusing companion today.”

“I never expected you to be,” he assured her candidly as he stepped closer and bent to take hold of her suitcase. “This is a terribly small baggage, Anne. Are you sure you’ve got everything you need?”

Anne smiled at him sheepishly. “I was afraid I had taken too much, actually, seeing how all you’ve got is a satchel.”

“Well, seeing how I don’t need to worry about petticoats and corsets, it’s quite natural that my baggage is smaller – I should be worried if that wasn’t the case.” He finally straightened up to his full heights and looked squarely at her. “So, is that really all? Are you ready to go now?”

Anne nodded in confirmation and after giving the little cottage one last wistful glance, she finally left the dear place behind.

As they strolled up the street in silence, Anne was once again reminded that even though she herself made a terrible travelling companion, Gilbert did not. He didn’t bore her with unnecessary talk, mindful of her worries that must take precedence over whatever he might have wanted to discuss… and making sure she could still sense his supportive presence at the same time. One minute it was a glance meant solely for her to see; in another it was a word, a thought voiced for no other reason than to rouse her from her musing when he saw it was growing too morbid to do her any good.

Beside that blissful day of Diana’s wedding, it was the first time in over two years when he was not a stranger, passed on the street with nothing more than a courteous nod, nor the one that would pass her in such manner. She didn’t dare to call him her friend, even if his readiness to help her seemed to prove that her that he still considered himself one – but she realised with joy that he had remained the same Kindred Spirit she had recognised in he so many years ago.

The one to whom she had already owned so much.

Her thoughts wondered towards Phil and the conversation the two girls had had shortly after Gilbert had left their little home last night. Anne hadn’t been surprised by the impression he had made on her friends; they had always considered it their duty to bring up his many virtues, especially when Anne herself was there to listen, as if she hadn’t been aware of them for a much longer time. Yet, there was something about what Phil had said that night that had stuck in her memory particularly.

“I hope you’ll thank him properly tomorrow, Queen Anne,” she’d scolded her then. “Just because Gilbert would walk around the globe and back for you doesn’t mean he does not deserve to have his work acknowledged.”

Then, she had only smiled at her friend, too weary to say that if there was anyone for whom Gilbert might want to walk the Earth, it was Christine Stewart, not her – now, as they walked together she realised just how unfair her judgement had been.

Gilbert Blythe would have walked the globe and back for anyone who needed him to – and then he’d refuse to receive as much as a ‘thank you’ for doing it.

Anne felt a sudden pang of uneasiness when she thought he might have missed the thankfulness that seemed so obvious to her. He had appeared to understand her quiet messaged the previous eve – and yet, how could she be sure?

I suppose there is only one way to find out, she thought gravely to herself, and out loud she asked, “Gilbert?”

He responded with a hum and a curious glare in her direction but said nothing more. Anne drew in a deep breath.

“You know how grateful I am for this, don’t you?” she inquired eventually in a hushed voice.

Gilbert’s eyebrows rose as soon as she’d uttered the question.

“Anne, you have nothing to be grateful for,” he opposed gently.

“You know that’s not true!” she contradicted him in a much firmer manner, looking away and gritting her teeth. “I know you weren’t planning to go back for another week – more than that, if the rumours about the Cooper Prize winner’s obligations hold any truth to them. And still, you disregarded all that to help a girl to whom you had hardly even spoken for the previous two years and who had treated it you in the same, if not worse, way. I am thankful, Gil; you can’t even imagine how much. And it hurts me to think that I can never repay you for doing all this so please, at least let me thank you.”

“If that’s what you need,” he answered somewhat absently, after a pause so long that Anne had begun to believe that he would make no answer at all. But then he turned towards her again and with all of his usual zest, he continued, “But Anne, I really don’t want you to think of it in this way, in terms of some heroic deed I have made for your sake. I saw a person in need and I did the only thing I could think of. It wasn’t heroic; it was decent, that’s all.”

“Oh, but that only makes it worse!” Anne bristled at his response, throwing her arms in the air with despair and thus missing the smile that appeared on Gilbert’s face at the sight she gave. “Really, Gilbert – couldn’t you, just for once, put your own needs before someone else’s? Especially when it’s about someone you shouldn’t care about in the first place?”

“I can think of more than a few times when I put my need before yours, Carrots,” he answered patiently. “And it never resulted in anything good; same goes for my relations with other people. And as for those whom I choose to help – why can’t you just assume that what I’m doing right now is simply about aiding a friend, so the most natural thing in the world?”

Anne sighed a little too wistfully for her own liking. “Would you still call me that?”

Gilbert’s face grew serious in an instant, as he looked at her and responded to her enquiry in a most solemn tone. “Forgive me Anne, I thought I had made myself clear on that matter. I was obviously talking about Marilla here.”

Too such a statement Anne could not remain indifferent. At first, she was too surprised to do much more than blink in shock; a piercing, somewhat pained glare followed as she brought herself to look at her companion after another while. Her grey eyes searched his in hope of an answer as she knew she could not trust her lips to speak; but for all this time, Gilbert’s countenance remained unchanged,

And then he broke into a grin, the widest and most sincere she had seen him wear in months. Her eyes widened in astonishment – Gilbert’s smile turned into the softest of chuckles.

Once again, Anne Shirley found herself at loss for words.

And how was it that it was almost always him to make her feel so?

“I’m so sorry, Anne, but I simply couldn’t pass a chance like this,” he apologised immediately, even though his voice was rather lacking of the remorse he was supposed to feel. “And of course I still consider you my friend; I know we haven’t been on the best terms lately – I still haven’t quite forgiven you for that dance at the Convocation, mind you – but it doesn’t mean you can no longer count on me. Besides, were the roles reversed, I’m sure you would do just the same. And you wouldn’t want my gratitude, either.”

Anne blushed slightly at his statement.

“I wish I could be this sure,” she said hesitantly. “Not to mention, I can hardly imagine you needing my escort back home at any point.”

“True, but what if my mother fell ill and I for some reason could not go to her? Wouldn’t you look after her for me?”

“Of course I would! That is…” she faltered again. “I would, if you both wanted me to. I don’t believe Mrs Blythe would welcome me as her nurse.”

“My mother adores you, Anne,” Gilbert said seriously. “And she has always cared for you deeply, I know she has – I guess she just can’t help caring about her son more. And… she doesn’t know, doesn’t understand everything… no one does. But if she has ever said anything that hurt you -”

“She has said nothing that I didn’t deserve,” Anne interrupted him with the same determination ringing in her voice. “Although the truth is, she hasn’t spoken to me much lately – but again, I cannot blame her for it. And it’s not even close to what I had in mind.”

Gilbert glanced at her questioningly. “What is, then?”

“The fact that I’m not sure I would be brave enough to offer you my help. I would give it to you if you asked – but I can’t promise I’d be bold enough to suggest it myself.”

“Well, then I suppose it’s Providence work that it is you needing my assistance, seeing that I am as bold as ever,” came Gilbert’s even answer, to which Anne could not respond with anything more than a nod, before she looked away to hide the tears that had sprung to her eyes at his comment. Gilbert scolded himself quietly for his tactlessness and almost as if lead by the same Providence he had mentioned before, he reached out for Anne’s hand and squeezed it gently. “She will be alright. I know she will and more importantly, I think you know it, too.”

He let go of her hand as quickly as he had taken it and for a moment Anne wondered whether he had made the gesture at all – or whether it was a trick of her mind, another daydream summoned in order to ease her pain as it had been so many times before. She shook her head discontentedly.

Gilbert was very much real; his kindness was real, too. She had no reason to doubt either.

“I really don’t know what I’ll do if she isn’t,” she admitted at last, her voice barely a cracked whisper despite the best of her attempts. “I tried to imagine it once or twice, but Gil, I just can’t.”

“And I don’t think that you should,” he opposed again. “I mean it, Anne. It won’t change the situation in any way and it certainly will not help you get through it. If anything, it will tire you even more; and what’s the point in you coming to Green Gables in such state? If you want to nurse Marilla back to health, you’ll need every ounce of strength you can muster, so I suggest you don’t waste it on pondering over things that are not going to happen. Not to mention, Mrs Lynde will never let you anywhere near Marilla’s bed unless she’s convinced that you came back from Redmond with your own condition unscathed.”

“I know all that!” Anne cried out impatiently. “But I can’t just stop worrying, either. Oh, this is such a vicious cycle!”

“My own experience tells me that in such cases it’s usually the best idea to forget of both parts and focus on something else entirely; preferably the matter at hand. Now that would be to get you safely to Green Gables, as soon as possible. What do you say that we focus on that first and worry about the rest later on?”

Anne nodded in agreement and picked up her pace as they neared the Kingsport station. The rest of this part of their journey passed in an almost perfect silence, with neither of them feeling the need to sustain the conversation, nor bumping into friends who might try to strike up a new one; even though it did seem for a moment that they had seen Charlie Sloane’s hat flicker between the others.

“Don’t worry about this one,” was all Gilbert had to say on the matter. “There I no way in this world that Charlie would be up so early in the day.”

Their time on the train was equally, if not more, quiet, with Anne gazing through the window, restlessly awaiting the sight of the harbour from which their ferry took off – and Gilbert watching her, steadily, insistently, stubbornly even, wanting to guard her when she was too disturbed to do it for herself.

When they finally reached their destination, Anne as good as jumped from the train, leaving a slightly dazed – although by no means surprised – Gilbert to hurry after her. Almost blind with her agitation, she missed a step on her way from the platform and would have fallen flatly had Gilbert not managed to catch up with her just in time to prevent that from happening.

“I’m sorry,” she muttered with embarrassment, her eyes strangely driven to his fingers, that for some reason were still squeezing her elbow, even after so many moment’s she had taken to easy her breathing. “I probably shouldn’t have rushed like this. I’m a little too giddy for it right now.”

“You are tired, first and foremost,” Gilbert contradicted her gently. “Be honest with me: when you excused yourself yesterday, did you really go to sleep as you said you would?”

Anne flushed at his question, although she couldn’t quite point out the reason why; it must have been the morning heat finally getting to her.

“Well, I did try to,” she admitted after a moment’s hesitation. “Of course, I had to pack first, but since I only needed a few most necessary things, that didn’t take too much of my time. I still managed to get to bed at a ridiculously early hour – the problem was, getting to bed and getting to sleep can be two very different stories.”

“Don’t I know it,” Gilbert said with a small, lopsided and slightly pensive smile.

“I thought I was exhausted enough to fall asleep as soon as I touched the pillow, but apparently, it was my misery that took hold of me that night. I tried to fight it – tried to think of some trifles and nonsense… but it wouldn’t do. So I got up and dressed and went out to the orchard, hoping some exercise and fresh air would help – unfortunately, all in vain.”

“I’m sorry to know that, although I can’t pretend I don’t understand. I had my share of sleepless nights, back in Alberta… And more than a few after we came back. It can be difficult to get your own body to cooperate under this kind of stress.” He paused for a moment, thoughtful. “Still, you might like to try to talk yours into resting now. It will be a few hours before the ferry reaches Charlottetown, so unless you have some great reasons against dazing off a little under my watchful eye, you should try to do just that.”

As she had done many times during the past two days, Anne opposed to the idea presented to her, proudly announcing that she could easily manage herself after one sleepless night and that she would not risk her reputation by taking a nap in a distinctly public place. Mrs Lynde would think she had gone mad no doubt; and in all of his gallantry, Gilbert had to quite literally bite his tongue to stop himself from asking his companion when on Earth had Mrs Lynde’s preaching about propriety ever stopped her from doing anything she wanted to do. Anne’s stubbornness only lasted until she reached her seat, however; as soon as she did, she sank into it, her eyelids suddenly heavier than they seemed to have been for a really long while. She fought it for a time; but her body was too tired and her mind far too troubled for that fight to be a long one.

It was the first time in her young life when she would not watch for the shoreline from the upper deck.

All through their journey, Gilbert stayed by her side, looking after his dear friend, making sure she would not wake to the horror of having drooled in her sleep as well as that no one would disturb the precious rest she was finally getting. And if at some point Anne’s head fell lower, successfully though accidentally resting on his shoulder, it was a detail he was not going to share with anyone – including her.

They reached Charlottetown; they changed their means of transportation and reached Carmody next. The trip had gone smoothly until now… Now, when, being just a step away from home, they realised that this final stage of their adventure was to be perhaps more challenging than the other three together.

“There is no carriage,” Gilbert announced grimly after returning from the stables back to Anne. “Nothing they can lend us until morning at best. I was hoping my parents would be here – I wired last evening, but I suppose it was not enough time for the word to get to them. I’m sorry, Anne, but I’m afraid we’ll have to stay for the night.”

“I can walk,” she protested at once, not for a second considering delaying her arrival for a trifle of this unimportance. “I have walked this distance more than a few times now and not always during the day. I understand if you’re tired – we can leave my suitcase in the inn for tonight and I’ll have Davy pick it up tomorrow, or you may stay here yourself and I promise I won’t think ill of it. But I am getting to Green Gables tonight.”

“Alright, now you’re just plain ridiculous,” Gilbert answered her tirade immediately, letting out a sound that came dangerously close to snorting. Anne’s eyes widened in astonishment at his highly improper comment, and she opened her mouth to tell him plainly what she thought of it when he cut her off with a simple yet resolute, “I have not come all this way here to let you wander off alone when you’re most tired. You’re not going to Green Gables on your own; but I certainly won’t slow you down by persisting on staying here.”

Surprised as she was – and a little ashamed of her clearly incorrect assumption as well – Anne nodded with understanding and gratitude and set off towards her dear old home. Rested after her nap on the ferry and fuelled by the proximity of her final aim, she had no reason to slow down her pace. It was as feverish as her tangled, dizzying thoughts; so much that Gilbert, who had at last begun to feel the exhaustion of the previous few months – and his own lack of sleep on the preceding night, which he had so conveniently forgotten to mention – found himself struggling to keep up with her.

They were both relieved to see the contour of Green Gables homestead looming in the distance before them.

When they finally reached the porch and stopped before the door, Gilbert felt fairly certain that Anne would run straight through it, forgetting his silent presence altogether as she darted past the kitchen and upstairs to greet her weakened guardian. Anne, however, did no such thing; she froze in her place, instead, raising her hand to knock and then lowering it again in an instant.

Her skin was pale and her eyes were glistening when she turned her head towards him. “I can’t do this, Gil.”

Gilbert raised his eyebrows, but she gave him not time to answer to her words in any other way.

“I can’t do this,” she repeated at once, gazing at him expectantly, vulnerable and afraid, as if she’d been trying to search for help she did not think she could find. “I can’t open this door. What if it’s too late? What if we came all this way only yo find it was all for naught, because she… she… Gilbert, I can’t open this door and hear that Marilla is -”

“She is going to be fine,” he interrupted her fiercely. “Marilla is strong, and she is stubborn and she would never leave before seeing you, pneumonia or not. And now that you’re here, you can nurse her yourself and then she’ll truly have no choice but to recover.”

He took a step forwards and for the second time in one day – and for the third in two – he took her hand in his, caressing her fingers with all the care and gentleness he had in him, before he leaned towards her and whispered, “I’ve never believed in nursing fake hope but I can’t let you lose yours just yet, either. And Anne, I know you are scared and hurt and unsure. But whatever news awaits you behind this door, the best you can do is try and face it now. And you are not facing it alone.”

Somehow, Anne found herself believing him. She nodded in agreement and gave his hand her own little squeeze.

And then she straightened up, took a deep breath and… she knocked.

##anne of green gables#aogg#anne of the island#aoti#anne shirley#gilbert blythe#marilla cuthbert#shirbert#alternative ending#books versed#friendship#romance#family#hurt/comfort

#fanfiction #anne of green gables #aogg #anne of the island #otti #anne shirley #gilbert blythe #marilla cuthbert #shirbert #alternative ending #books versed #friendship #romance #family #hurt/comfort

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very-merry-sioux · 7 years

Text

What amuses and saddens me about newer fandoms’ intense policing in content is that if you applied it to real life, it would be an obvious dictatorship. They don’t seem to realize that there are plenty of published works out there that have similar content to what they’re raging about. Pedophilia, incest, violence, gore, BDSM, and any kind of gritty, kinky thing you can think of.

Newer fictional works I can think of that has these “problematic content that makes people pedophilic incestous violent sexual devils”: Fifty Shades of Gray, Hannibal, and Game of Thrones. Even Twilight can be pedophilic with how Jacob imprints on a child.

Older fictional works I can think of: Star Wars (or did you guys conveniently forget the canon incest scene that happened in one of the movies?), Cardcaptor Sakura (had an elementary schoolgirl being proposed by a teacher, and she accepted, Sakura’s parents are a little better but not much - mom was in highschool and dad was in college when they dated, I CAN GO ON - CLAMP GENERALLY HAS WEIRDASS RELATIONSHIPS), and Harry Potter (beyond the violence, there’s also the part that you’ll symphasize with Merope, the one who drugged a man and raped him constantly until they had a child).

Let’s go older: Lolita, Silence of The Lambs, every horror film and game ever.

Let’s go even older: Oedipus Rex.

Can we get older? Yes we can: Literally any story about the adventures of Zeus’ cock, and the whole family tree of the Ancient Egyptian gods. And also their royal family.

You wanna know the reason why people would rather police works instead of actual pedophiles and sexual harrassers? Actual rapists? You wanna know why they’d rather go for an artist or writer who created something “evil”? Because it’s easier to burn a book rather than completely uproot a rapist and sexually abusive culture. They want to vent, they want to control. They’re ignorant and angry.

So fictional works that have content that is not child friendly and not safe for work? That can be gross and triggerry? That can be depraved and inhumane? They’ve always been there. Yes, it’s problematic that a lot of people online are perverts and harass others. Yes, it’s sad that filtering content is not 100% perfect in archiveofourown (ao3) and other sites most deemed evil. But newsflash: neither is Tumblr.

I’ve read posts about people saying how they encountered horrific content even though they used tags and filtering when they venture ao3, and is therefore bad. I’ve read posts about how they’re part of the Old Fandom and support this extreme policing of content because they were harassed.

If that’s the case, ignore that site and leave. You don’t burn a library to take care of a problem, you don’t shoot a writer to defend justice, and you don’t scream at a book to get what you want. The worst thing to happen to a show is when nobody watches it anymore. The worst fate of a book is when nobody touches it. It’s the same with fanfiction, especially since it’s free content. Don’t like it? Don’t read it.

I remember there was an issue about the Deadpool movie, how it was too violent and crude for children. Parents complained about it. There were two points Reynolds said about that. One, the movie is not for kids. Two, why are you bringing your kids to watch it?

It’s the same logic. If the content is not for you, stop watching/looking/reading it. Internet is more flexible than published works, true. But it was WORSE before. No safe search, no tags, little warnings, literal surpise buttsex in fanfiction, and porn galore. It’s young, much younger than the movie and book industry, so of course its warning system isn’t as perfect as the real word. The older fandoms tried and did a good job considering the messy lawsuits that appeared, what happens now is mostly on newer fandoms. And you guys have a better start since the stigma of fanfiction has lessened.

You don’t burn Fifty Shades of Gray to keep bdsm content from you, and you don’t accuse the writers of Deadpool for being evil because they wrote a Marvel script that isn’t child-friendly. You compromise, you create a system, and you try to understand why these fictional works exist.

Let me try this policing and anti logic newer fandoms have, to see if it has sense.

I’ve seen more porn blogs and bullies in this site than the amount of alpha-beta smut in ao3. I’ve had porn blogs reblog my art of a child with his guardians (for my followers, it’s my [tiny and terrifyingly cute au]). I’ve had porn blogs reblog my posts about the accounts of victims of torture from my country’s martial law. I’ve never had ao3 writers plagiarize my work for porn. I’ve seen more people attacking someone who draws fanart rather than someone who creates those disgusting blogs. From that logic, anyone who uses Tumblr must be evil.

Of course, you’d defend that not all of you are like that. You’d defend that you’re fixing it. You’d defend it’s not that simple.

And what? You don’t think people from older fandoms aren’t trying? We’re all disgusting pedophiles? You think that our problems are simple? That most of us aren’t trying to give warnings and tags? That filtering content is easy? Tumblr failed so badly in doing that!

So instead of being angry that somebody posted their works, maybe consider you’re a problem yourself. There’s a difference between reality and fiction. I don’t expect the writer of Silence of the Lambs to do cannibalism, I don’t expect Ryan Reynolds to be a red ninja assasin who’s crude. I don’t expect Anne Rice, writer of vampiric sexy times, to be evil by sexually harassing her fans. She’s already an asshole without being erotic. H.P Lovecraft was also an asshole, just so you know. He didn’t have to write gratuitous smut to do it.

I know it’s easier to judge someone based on their fics and art, but either take the time to actually know them or ignore them altogether. Never judge a book by its warnings, and never judge an author by their books.

#fandom #merry muses #I am gonna sleep #discourse #fandom culture

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nimueriesa · 7 years

Text

THE IDYLLS OF THE QUEEN → SENTENCE MEME [ 2 / 3 ]

Part two of a three part series of lines and dialogue taken from The IDYLLS OF THE QUEEN by Phyllis Ann Karr, an Arthurian murder mystery featuring Sir Kay and Sir Mordred as Begrudging Buddy Cops ™. Feel free to change pronouns or anything else to better suit your needs.

_____’s interested in justice, not revenge.

Justice, revenge --- two words for the same thing.

You’ll be all unprepared when the nuns attack.

I see your noble worships be wondering at my Beauty.

Nay then, she’s mine, free and honest.

Be ye willing to hear tale, your noble worships?

I name him in my prayers morn and night.

God and Holy Mother bless you twice over!

Someday, when I’m more of the mood to meet you in battle, I can use that slander as well as any other excuse to fight.

An hour’s combat with _____ is the safest practice a man can take with unblunted weapons.

Nevertheless, if you should end this evening killed or laid up in bed, nursing an improbable wound, do you fully trust me to continue our quest?

When you’re forty years older, you might know a little something of what you’re talking about.

A joust in friendship hardly fulfills a vow of vengeance.

And you accuse us women of over-romancing.

A man who would hang forty knights for love of a dame should have loved her enough to go back to her.

Only a guiltless man would be so willing to accept the appearance of guilt.

We know you would have offered yourself up as her champion if you had thought of these things before _____.

They don’t teach ‘em vengefulness and poison at the Castle of the Graile, lad.

Ambition may twist a man’s thoughts into strange patterns.

You’ll have to work harder than that if you want to throw the Sword in the Stone back in my teeth.

I have most of the work and none of the glory.

When you start accusing your own brothers, then it’s plain the serious talk is done.

I’ve carved this ring too large for my fingers. It may fit yours.

And will you not do something to prevent its coming true?

The reason you got into my dream is because I’ve had to look at your face all day, every day for the last four days.

I do suffer from a fascination with serpents, do I not?

It looks like an ordinary lake.

Somewhere beneath that water is a city richer than Caerleon.

Will we see the blue sky and the clouds, too? Or will we see little fishes instead of birds swimming over our heads?

The City in the Lake, ruled always by a lady --- sometimes a wicked dame, sometimes a kindly one, always a powerful one.

I think the first Lady of the Lake must have been Adam’s paramour Lilith.

They say that much of the old magic can only be taught to a man by a woman, and to a woman by a man.

You’re waxing poetic this evening.

I hardly expected ever to see this night.

What in Ihesu’s Holy Name are you talking about?

What is your plan, now you’ve brought me this far?

Damn you, ____, have you gone completely out of your mind?

I could not allow my thoughts to stagnate in an obsession with my own encroaching death.

Your brains are even more rattled than we thought.

What gave you the idea you were important enough to attract an assassin?

God, don’t you have enemies of your own to kill you in open tourney or ambush?

What truth? If you’re talking about your lunatic fancies as ‘truth’ they’re a pile of dead flies!

You risked no more than one or two lives at most.

Come out from the water and arm yourself!

Now, repeat your slander of the Queen.

Strike me quickly, _____. Now, while we’re both in the mood.

Let’s get out of here before our armor rusts off our bodies.

The King will not thank you for this.

I don’t appreciate being played the fool and goaded into attacking you like another one of your bloody puppets.

If you want to be murdered on command, you’re going to have to tell me why.

You can just lie down, drown, and damn yourself, for all I care.

I assume that a knight seeking the company of the Lady of the Lake should hail her with no less care and courtesy than one seeking admittance into a lesser stronghold.

You rely a great deal on your influence over the Dame of the Lake. Do you truly expect her to do your beck and call?

My brothers inherited the sound of life from her, I the sound of death.

I am more fully my mother’s son than any of my brothers.

Do you remember when I first came to _____’s court? I was bright and eager then, was I not? Filled with pure ideals and noble aspirations --- too noble, perhaps.

I was very young and very innocent then, aside from being in love with two or three fair dames and damsels at once.

You do not even know us. How do you know our fate?

You are the fruit of incest, heinous in the sight of God and man.

God! You’ve killed him, and he had a prophecy for me!

No doubt his prophecy for you was that you would kill me.

That would make me a fortunate knight, not an unfortunate one.

I tried to be killed in that day’s tourney --- Ihesu, how I tried!

I knew I was fated to fulfill the prophecy somehow, as surely as Judas was fated to betray Our Lord.

For the last time, I did not try to poison you.

For years I have been waiting for the stroke to fall, wondering whether they would find their chance to murder me.

If you decide you’re going to live up to some foul prophecy, that’s your choice.

How did you get there without us seeing you? Invisibility?

Why should I tell you my craft?

I watch the battles of knights, but I do not eavesdrop on their private conversations.

Would you have saved him in the last moment?

I was reasonably confident you would not strike him down.

You would not have come here, stood on the beach calling me, and threatened to throw stones into the streets of my city, if you did not intend to tell me the reason.

Oh, no --- you’re not going to walk away from us like this!

I have saved your King’s life. I have saved it three times.

I do not need to demonstrate my reliability at your command. No, not even at the command of the High King himself.

I have always known well enough when to come and save your King.

Would you prefer I hovered constantly about your corrupt court, muttering in the King’s ear?

Best go back, before you drown.

I know all that was in your head, and you should know now why I dislike gaining such knowledge. It was not pleasant for you, and it was still less pleasant for me.

To see all the private sins and passions of another in a single moment! If sacramental confession were a tenth part so revealing, no man would ever turn priest.

Next time, at least do it on dry land.

Ihesu, Dame, there must be something you can do!

We’d all have been better off without these damn prophecies.

Aren’t you going to offer us your hospitality?

My Lake? You wish to come down into my Lake and drown? Wet lodgings you would have with my mermaids, Sir Knight!

It is not my fault you wounded one another in your silly quarrel.

Poor man! Is your curiosity so hot for what you’ve been denied?

And you men put the blame on Eve and excuse Adam.

Any woman as reluctant as you to welcome guests must be ashamed of her household.

Your famous city must not live up to its reputation.

You forget he’s not aware that I know of the prophecy. Shall we tell him?

A man entering his fourth decade is old enough to choose for himself whether or not to bind his soul to a prophecy.

You must look for other safeguards against _____ than coddling him.

You might try bullying _____ into a better state of soul. That would be more your style than sweet words and soft treatment.

I suppose you can see everything that’s in my mind now?

Goodnight now, sweet knight.

You must have had a pleasant tete-a-tete. Does the Lady’s dear husband know?

Felt something like getting your brainpan stirred with a hot poker.

Well, she may search my head if she wishes. The secret’s festered long enough.

I would have been very sure of your guilt indeed if you had swapped off my head as I expected.

Dame _____ may be a chaste witch, but she need not impose her rules on all her pretty damsels.

Go to sleep. You’ll need your rest for the morning.

Your pardon, pure _____. It was the carnal appetites of my father speaking.

Not all of us can subsist on the idyllic worship of an unattainable lady.

#sentence meme #OOC┊▌❝ ˡᵉᵃᵛᵉ ᵗʰᵉ ᵗʳᵉᵉˢ ʷʰᵉʳᵉ ᵗʰᵉʸ ᵃʳᵉ ᵃᶰᵈ ˢᶤᶰᵍ ❞ ┊► ᴍᴇᴍᴇs

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personatux-blog · 7 years

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Defend !!! (cause i live for battle drabbles/rps XD ~)

▼ Meme: Drabbles! | ( still accepting, but extremely slow. ) ▼

Defend — I’ll write a drabble of my character protecting yours.

( Since I already wrote a longer one about Joker protecting Panther, which you can read here, now something more ‘normal’!)

“No! Just leave me alone!!”

HE INSTANTLY RECOGNIZED THIS LOUD VOICE, even among the masses of Shibuya. In fact he knew it perhaps even too well, immediately realizing that she was in dire need of assistance right now. Ann was this type of girl who could take care of herself, at least most of time – but the hint inside her tone told him that she was failing to handle the situation properly. Pushing his bag full of hamburgers inside his bag, ignoring Morgana’s sudden complaint, Akira instantly turned around, trying to localize the VOICE mid the crowd of people. Apparently the situation got even more intense, still hearing Ann’s voice all over the place, even though he was seemingly the only one who cared. No one else, not even one person in the crowd, seemed to care that a young woman was aggressively yelling just now. It was always like this; and also the reason why he could not ignore it. Even less when it was someone like Ann.

TURNING HIS HEAD TO DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS, following the sound of her voice, Akira eventually found her being cornered in a side street – by a whole group of guys. Actually he did not even have to listen to them to know what they were thinking; what they wanted of her. It was obviously enough if he followed her gazes leading to her long, slender legs and the short tank-top which unfortunately showed perhaps a bit too much. But this was just like her, especially in a hot summer like this – ultimately it was not her fault that these guys were preying on her now. It was all their doing, their very own mistake. Fortunately none of them were bothered to even notice him when he closed the distance to her, moving right to her side – even if that meant to also be trapped now.

‘ANN, you alright?’

AKIRA QUICKLY CHECKED ON HER before his head turned to the other guys – five in total -, immediately recognizing that the tallest one of them was probably their leader. A red cap and blonde, wild hair… Didn’t Mishima mention something like this just recently? Some gang preying on and sexually harassing girls without any company around Shibuya? In the worst case, they had done even more than that.

“Piss off, fucker!”“You should go back home and check on your mother.”

Ah, so annoying…

ACTUALLY HE HAD NEVER BEEN AN AGGRESSIVE PERSON; scarcely ever raising his voice in the PAST, turning blind to important matters – even becoming ignorant of them. Believing that he could not change them, no matter what he did. Yet this mindset had changed; and the bitter taste of injustice was the voice, the call, which made him awake from his long slumber. He could still feel the sudden pressure on his palms, the rushing thoughts inside his mind back then when he had dared for the very first time to not ignore his discomfort; when he had, for the very first time of his life, dared to show courage. No… He had pondered about it for so long – but he had done the right thing, even if that woman made a false testimony afterwards to keep herself safe. The punishment had been to enslave him to a being he truly wasn’t; it had forged his invisible chains and branded him for all eternity. Someone like him would never be fully accepted into society; a criminal record never faded. But he had accepted all of that; had accepted that he had to raise his voice and act in order to stay truthful to his own principles. The principle to help those who needed it – whether it was a friend or not. Even if the whole world turned blind to it, he never would. And thus he had awakened, no longer staying inside the shadow he had lived in for so long. It had been a faint touch of fate – and after accepting these chains, this prison inside his very soul, he was finally free. Believing. Rebelling. -- FIGHTING.

The FACE of the man… The VOICE… Why did his mind hide it from him inside thick fog? Yet these headaches… The memories were still there, somewhere. But his voice shall be heard now, louder than ever before.

AKIRA WAS WELL AWARE HE COULD NOT AFFORD to let his fist slip his control; no matter how disgusting these guys in front of him really were. Still being on probation he was honestly done for if they reported him to the police – no one would believe him even with Ann testifying; and no attorney would try to defend him in another court as well, knowing that it was already a lost case. Another assault on another person, no matter the situation, was still a crime if one already had a record for it. This was the disgusting truth of this so called justice of the adults; creating large holes for those who had the power to make them untouchable by law itself. It was an unbroken vicious circle considering that the archenemy of justice was the justice mankind had created; the law itself. Becoming a victim of it Akira knew that there was no escape from this very truth – but even then… it would not s t o p him.

STILL CLENCHING HIS FISTS NONETHELESS, he shoved his own body in front of Ann, shielding her from the guy’s sight. They did not know him – but soon they would learn how determined he was if they kept on creeping on her. This was no fucking joke to him. Ann went through enough bullshit because of guys like this already. It was enough. If there existed something which made him become pissed like this, then men like these.

‘….I see. You guys really don’t want to leave her alone, do you? I ponder what you’ll try to do once I left? Continue to hit on her with these lame lines? Really. You should learn to take a n o. Sorry, but she deserves better than any of you.’

HIS SLENDER FINGERS MOVED TO HIS GLASSES, carefully lifting it from the top of his nose. God, it was strange to not feel its weight in this moment – but the feeling was good. In fact he did not even need them; but it protected him from all the bullshit around him. It made him almost invisible in the masses – a mask he needed by now because his eyes had learned to sparkle and burn on their own. In this moment he did not need such foolish protection; this façade he lived with ever since moving to Tokyo. All he needed… was to convince them that he would not yield, even if they continued to piss on his leg. He knew people like them; all talk when they had to go against a serious threat. And he was certainly one – the one of the worst kind. It was this kind of behavior he despised the most; the attitude of not respecting the privacy and comfort of woman for their own selfish, disgusting pleasure. Just like these men. Just like any one who did not care for other people’s feelings. It was the ultimate flaw of this world; what made them all become prisoners of what they believed to be justice.

WHAT A PATHETIC JOKE. Obviously these guys did not know what was good for them – but he had not exactly expected them to retreat just now anyway. After all who was he? Some little kid to their eyes with a big, bad mouth. What a pity that there was more behind him than just that, however. And they would learn this soon enough. Their face expressions were a sweet mixture of confusion, amusement but also arrogance accompanied by unpleasant smirks.

“You little punk!! Cut that crap!!” “Think you can go against all of us?” “You can still run home, boy. Leave the hot chick to real men.”

HUH...UNLUCKY FOR THEM THAT HE HAD NEVER HIDDEN HIMSELF AT HOME. Not only for once in his entire life. Apparently he was quite an unlucky fool himself, but there were no regrets inside his mind. Now was his turn, however.

‘R e a l men…? Sexual harassment is delict, and not a minor one. I can call the police, you know. Huh… I’m just a dumb, little boy so I guess I’ll just do that now. I mean… What can I do besides that? It’s not like you did anything wrong, right? At least according to any of you. So how about we let ‘the hot chick’ behind me and the police decide this, shall we? I have the bad habit of recording with my phone after all.’

HIS LIPS CURLED INTO A CONFIDENT SMIRK whilst his stare got almost deadly, as if he tried to pierce their souls. And in fact he indeed was – attacking them there where they had least expected it. Attacking their vulnerability.

‘Or I suggest you leave her alone. And never look at her again.’

THE LAST TWO SENTENCES WERE SPOKEN WITH SUCH INTENSITY that his tone dropped lower, ice cold and sharp like a thousand knives. His hand fiddled at his pocket to fish his cell phone, just in case they had yet to see another hint.

Guess it was GAME OVER for them – soon enough.

#( okay listen - this bullshit is extremely triggering for him hence why he's so pissed )#( like the incident he was involved in was extremely similar )#( and then Ann also went through bullshit thanks to Kamoshida and the thing which happened with Shiho )#( he has NO TOLERANCE for guys like these - he absolutely despises them )#theholylight

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talabib · 4 years

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Leadership Journey: Edward Snowden

Even if you’ve barely paid attention to the news in recent years, you’ve heard the name Edward Snowden.

Sometimes this name is uttered with contempt, sometimes with admiration. Depending on whom you ask, he is either a traitor to his country or a modern-day hero. How did a young, introverted tech nerd from Maryland become one of the most important and controversial figures in recent American history?

Well, in proud democratic tradition, Snowden blew the whistle on a situation that he felt was wrong and illegal. Working as a tech specialist for the NSA and CIA, he dealt with the secret system of mass surveillance the US government developed after 9/11, which allowed US intelligence agencies to collect the private communications of any of its citizens and access them at will.

When Snowden found out that the US government was secretly spying on innocent citizens, he decided to risk everything to tell the world about this violation of privacy. This post tells the story of his upbringing and career, and the personal convictions that made him into the whistleblower he would become.

Born into a family of government officials, Edward Snowden was raised on the internet of the 1990s.

When we hear the word “internet” today, we think of Google, Facebook, and Amazon. These mega-companies have found a way to capitalize on our online time so efficiently that they have come to rule the world wide web.

But in the 90s, the internet was still in its infancy. Used almost exclusively by specialists and tech nerds, it was a place devoid of rules and full of elaborate amateur websites and forums, where people from around the world gathered to share obscure knowledge and try on different online identities. That was the internet that made Edward Snowden.

Snowden was born in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, into a family of public servants. His mom was a government clerk from a long line of military officials, and his dad was a technical engineer for the Coast Guard. When Edward was nine, his mother started a new administrative job at the NSA and the Snowden family moved to Fort Meade, a famous US army installation in Maryland. Secretive government jobs like his mother's were typical for the inhabitants of Fort Meade.

But even though he enjoyed spying on his big sister Jessica through his bedroom window, young Snowden initially had no interest in becoming a government spy. His first love was technology. From the early Commodore 64 computer system his dad brought home to his first Nintendo, Snowden loved spending time playing with — and taking apart — electronic devices of all kinds.

When the family bought its first computer with an internet connection, Edward and the machine became inseparable. He spent almost every waking minute online, reading about technology and politics and playing adventure games.

On the internet, Edward found a community of people who shared his interests and were eager to answer his questions. Soon he was chatting with tech nerds from across the globe, arguing about hardware problems, cheat codes, or the death penalty. These interactions didn’t just improve his computer skills; they also helped form his worldview.

His online peers didn’t mind that in real life he was just an awkward, introverted thirteen-year-old. In fact, they didn’t even know. In contrast to today, when our online profiles have become closely linked to our real identities, the internet of the 1990s was a playground of anonymity.

Edward Snowden had only to change his username to become anyone he wanted, a useful ability for the pastime he soon picked up: hacking.

Young Snowden started hacking systems and subverting the arbitrary rules that adults imposed on him.

You don’t have to know your way around computers to become a hacker. “Hacking” just means knowing a system so well that you can exploit its weaknesses to your advantage. This system can be a computer system, but it can also be any other system of rules — like your bedtime schedule.

Snowden accomplished his first “hack” on his sixth birthday, when he decided he never wanted to go to bed again. Setting all clocks in his home back a few hours, he successfully fooled his parents into believing it wasn’t his bedtime yet– that is, until he fell asleep on the living room rug from exhaustion!

Subverting the arbitrary rules adults imposed on him by using their own logic against them became one of Snowden’s favorite hobbies.

Later, in high school, a teacher revealed that homework only accounted for 15 percent of students’ final grades. Snowden calculated that if he never did homework again but performed perfectly on tests, he would still receive a grade of B for the class. And so he traded homework time for more computer time.

But his plan to spend his nights online and snooze his way through high school was foiled when he was diagnosed with mononucleosis in his sophomore year. The infection rendered him too tired to use even his beloved computer, let alone go to class. After four months of absence, his high school wrote to confirm that Snowden would have to repeat the grade. The thought of having to go to high school even longer than he’d anticipated shook Snowden out of his sickly, depressed state. He began looking for a hack, and he found one: he applied to college.

Without a diploma, Snowden was accepted at the local Anne Arundel Community College. He would go to class two days a week, and spend the rest of his time recovering. After a few months, he was able to take the exam for his General Education Diploma, which is equivalent to a US high school diploma.

At community college, Snowden’s computer skills caught the attention of his older classmate Mae, who soon recruited him for her budding online business. From the basement of Mae’s home, the two would design websites for companies, capitalizing on the growing demand for tech-savvy freelancers and hacking the new internet economy together.

The events of 9/11 made Snowden want to serve his country — and enabled his fast rise through the ranks of government agencies.

Many of us remember where we were when we heard the news on that fateful September morning in 2001.

Edward Snowden was at the house of his friend and business partner Mae, when the two got a call from Mae’s husband. He worked at the NSA, and was calling to tell them that terrorists had attacked the World Trade Center.

As Snowden drove home to be with his family, he passed the NSA headquarters in Fort Meade and witnessed the frenzied evacuation of the building. Seeing his fellow Americans in such panic, Snowden felt a patriotic urge to help his country through this time of struggle. He decided to join the military.

But just a few months into his basic training at Fort Benning in the southern US, Snowden fractured his ankle, and his military career came to a swift halt.

Recovering on his mom’s couch, Snowden decided he could serve his country best using the skills he already had: an understanding of computers. He decided to apply for the security clearance necessary to work in a tech position for the CIA or NSA. This approval requires an extensive background check by the government that can take several months to complete.

Waiting for his clearance, 22-year-old Snowden met the love of his life — and where else but on the internet? Lindsay Mills was a photography student from another part of Maryland. Soon after they matched on a site called Hot or Not, the two started seeing each other.

Finally, Snowden received his clearance and passed the polygraph tests required to work in intelligence for his country’s government. For a few months, he worked as a night-shift security guard at the newly constructed NSA facility in Maryland that had bankrolled his clearance process. But this boring job was just a first tiny step on what would be a very steep career ladder.

Snowden’s swift rise through the ranks of the intelligence community would not have been possible prior to 9/11. But in the name of the War on Terror that followed the attack, the US government was rapidly expanding its security efforts. Intelligence agencies were constantly looking for fresh new talent to recruit, especially in the growing field of cybersecurity. If a candidate seemed promising, agencies like the NSA and CIA were willing to waive some position requirements – such as a college degree, which Snowden lacked.

That’s why, by virtue of his prodigious computer skills, Snowden would soon hold key positions at the world’s biggest intelligence agencies.

Though he still sometimes questioned the rules, Snowden’s computer skills helped him get high-level jobs in the CIA and NSA.

After his brief entry-level stint as a security guard, Snowden was looking for a better way to serve the government with his talents.

He began to attend government job fairs, at which companies like Dell, Intel and Lockheed Martin recruit talent for specialist government jobs done in their name. On paper, these contractors work for said companies; in reality, however, they often report directly to the government agency paying them.

Via a company called COMSO, Snowden landed his first contracting job as a systems administrator at CIA headquarters in McLean, Virginia. There, he was responsible for managing the agency’s private servers. After working in a lightless basement for several months, however, Snowden was hungry to see more of the world.

He decided to become an official government employee, which would allow him to live and work abroad.

To do this, he enrolled in a six-month CIA program to become a Technical Information Security Officer, or TISO. TISOs are responsible for managing the technology behind any intelligence operation, from setting up computer networks to fixing appliances. They are employed at every US embassy around the world.

During his training, Snowden requested that his first assignment after graduation be at an embassy in the Middle East — he wanted to work in a new and challenging environment. But then he made a mistake: he challenged the authority of the CIA.

Snowden and his classmates had grown weary of the living conditions in the run-down CIA training center, a converted motel where they had to spend every waking minute. Snowden took it upon himself to write lengthy emails to the school director and his superior, the director of Field Service, to complain about the situation and demand action. To his surprise, this worked: soon after, the class was moved to a new training facility.

But on the last day of training, Snowden was called into the director’s office. The director of Field Service told Snowden that by reaching out to him directly, he had disobeyed the chain of command.

As punishment for his disobedience, the CIA sent him to work as a TISO for the NSA in Geneva. This posh Swiss city was a far cry from the field experience Snowden had hoped for, but it became a great stepping stone. When he and Lindsay moved to Geneva, Snowden found himself a tech specialist in the middle of the US government’s transition to technology-based intelligence.

Preparing for a conference in China, Snowden first became suspicious of how much the US government was spying on its citizens.

It was after a few years of working in intelligence that Snowden first realized what the technology he helped build and maintain could be used for.

In 2009, he was working as a systems administrator at the NSA’s Pacific Technical Center. When a colleague dropped out at the last minute, Snowden was asked to attend a conference in Hong Kong to give a presentation on China’s surveillance of private communications. In a matter of hours, he had to read up on the technology China used to monitor its citizens’ online activity, emails, and phone calls.

While doing so, he had a thought: If China were spying on its citizens, why wouldn’t the US do the same?

He’d already heard about cases in which US intelligence agencies had overstepped their bounds. A few years earlier, whistleblowers had revealed the President’s Surveillance Program, or PSP, which allowed intelligence agencies to wiretap phone calls without a warrant. The agencies had since released a report to the public explaining the situation. Curious about the case, Snowden went looking through the NSA system for the classified version of the report — but it was nowhere to be found.

Months later, the classified PSP report landed on Snowden’s desk by accident. He was shocked; apart from the name, it had nothing in common with the document that had been released to the public. It detailed a program called STELLARWIND, which aimed for the “bulk collection” of anyone and everyone’s phone and online activities, including such intimate information as a person’s browsing history. Enlisting the help of private telecommunication companies such as AT&T, the agencies were interested in collecting the metadata of people’s conversations – when, where, and with whom they had taken place. Such metadata revealed not only where a person was at any given moment and who was with her, but also where she had been and where she was going next.

In short, STELLARWIND was a mass surveillance program enabling the US government to spy on its citizens as it pleased.

At first, Snowden tried to rationalize his discovery. Then he tried not to think about it at all. But by the time he returned to the US to work for the CIA again in 2011, he could no longer pretend he didn’t know what he knew. He grew increasingly depressed. On top of it all, he began having epileptic seizures.

Burdened by ill health and a secret he couldn’t share with anyone, Snowden decided to take a long break from the work he once loved.

Snowden set out to investigate the US government’s system of mass surveillance — and then decided to expose it systematically.

After taking some months to recover his health, Snowden took an NSA position in Hawaii. He hoped a new life living in paradise with Lindsay would improve his physical and mental health.

Financially and professionally, the job was a step down. Snowden didn’t mind, though. He used his idle time to browse the NSA’s readboards, which are internal news feeds containing all the reports coming out of a specific department. Snowden had decided that he wanted to learn everything he could about the NSA’s surveillance program. To browse more efficiently, he even built a program called Heartbeat, which compiled all new and important reports on the readboards into a single newsfeed.

One of his jobs in Hawaii was managing the NSA’s digital calendar. On Constitution Day 2012, he allowed himself the joke of leaving a printed copy of the US Constitution on the desks of each of his coworkers — printed paper was a rare sight at his workplace, as most documents were top secret. But when he reread the Constitution himself, Snowden was shaken by how clearly the Fourth Amendment stated US citizens’ right to privacy.

In the digital age, what was more private than a person’s browsing history? Snowden came to the conclusion that the government and its institutions were no longer abiding by the principle that had guided their creation: ensuring the freedom and safety of US citizens. Instead, intelligence agencies were brazenly violating people’s freedoms, and rarely making them safer. He decided that the people had a right to know.

But in order to hack the system and expose its lies, he had to act systematically. First, he would gather as much relevant information as he could without endangering intelligence agencies’ other operations. Then he would share the documents with select journalists, who could be trusted to reveal the information to the public cohesively and in context.

After a long search for journalists with whom to collaborate, Snowden chose two reporters who had already come under fire from the US government for reporting on its violations: Laura Poitras, a documentarian who had made several films about US foreign policy after 9/11; and Glenn Greenwald, a civil liberties lawyer who had reported on the NSA’s unclassified PSP report from 2009. Snowden contacted the two through encrypted emails from his home computer.

Now the only question left was, who could gather and leak classified documents to them without being caught?

To get classified documents out of NSA headquarters and into journalists’ hands, Snowden relied on subterfuge and ingenuity.

Once Snowden had decided to expose the NSA’s mass surveillance program, he came up against a problem: How do you steal top secret documents from one of the world’s most secure institutions?

With the Heartbeat program he had built, accessing documents was easy. The hard part was searching the files for the kind of information that would be useful to Poitras and Greenwald. Snowden knew that any move he made from his NSA work computer would be monitored by the agency, so he couldn’t simply go browsing through classified material. So under the guise of “compatibility testing,” he began transferring the files onto a bunch of disused computers lying around the office. On these old computers, Snowden could safely search and organize the documents.

He then encrypted and copied them onto SD cards — a process that could take up to eight hours! To get the SD cards out of the building, Snowden hid them under the tiles of a Rubik’s cube he had started carrying around. To the unsuspecting guards, he became known as the “Rubik’s Cube guy.”

Back home, Snowden copied the files onto his own hard drive, and sent them to the journalists from his car, which he drove to different places from which he could hack into strangers’ wifi.

Snowden knew that once the documents were made public, the NSA would be able to identify him, since he was one of only a handful of people with access. He considered tampering with the documents to obscure their origin, but that would have jeopardized their credibility.

He decided that the public good was more important than his personal safety, and so he sent the documents as originals.

As a final coup, Snowden asked the NSA for a transfer to the National Threat Operation Center in Hawaii. He wanted to find out more about a program called XKEYSCORE, the search engine that allowed NSA officials to access the data collected through STELLARWIND. Snowden was ordered to Fort Meade one last time, where his fellow analysts trained him for the new job and showed him how to use the system.

XKEYSCORE was even more powerful than Snowden had suspected. His fellow agents just had to type in a name or IP address to see that person’s entire online history. After a while it became clear that quite a few analysts were secretly using the database to read the emails of their loved ones, or listen in on their phone conversations. But what horrified Snowden was not that jealous government employees could now spy on their spouses from their work desks — it was that they could spy on nearly anyone, any time they wanted.

When the documents were published and the US charged him with espionage, Snowden fled into exile.

Back in Hawaii, a sense of finality befell Snowden. He knew the government would catch him eventually, and so he started preparing to leave the US — forever. The most painful part of this plan was not being able to tell Lindsay about it, because he didn’t want to get her in trouble. After an agonizing last few weeks in Hawaii, Snowden fled the country while she was on a camping trip with friends.

First, Snowden went to meet Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald in Hong Kong, where he helped them put together the articles and videos that would reveal everything.

On June 6, 2013, Greenwald’s first piece about the NSA program appeared in The Guardian. A few days later, Snowden decided to out himself as the whistleblower, beating the US government to the punch. After he’d revealed his identity, a lawyer friend of Greenwald’s offered to help get him to a safe house near Hong Kong.

Though the US has a law to protect government whistleblowers, Snowden knew he couldn’t return to the country. The documents he had leaked were top secret, and this fact alone could result in harsh sentencing if he went on trial.

Then, on June 17, 2013, the US officially charged him with espionage, and Snowden had to look for a new country to call home. With the help of a growing team of lawyers, he applied for asylum in numerous countries, but all his requests were denied — no country wanted to risk its relationship with the US. WikiLeaks editor Sarah Harrison finally organized for Snowden to seek refuge in Ecuador, which had previously given asylum to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. To avoid capture, he would fly there over Moscow, Caracas and Havana.

But during their layover in Moscow, Snowden was stopped by authorities. The US state department had canceled his passport, meaning that he and Harrison were trapped in the Moscow airport. After spending 40 nights sleeping at the airport – surrounded by journalists – Snowden was granted temporary asylum by a Russian government weary of the situation.

Snowden lives in Moscow still, and Lindsay – now his wife – has since come to join him. From exile, he has continued his activism, developing various online privacy apps. One day, he hopes to return to the US.

Edward Snowden grew up in the shadow of Fort Meade, when the internet was still a free and anonymous community. As a child, Snowden enjoyed hacking the systems around him, especially when he felt they weren’t working. After 9/11, he felt a strong sense of duty to his country, and wanted to put his computer skills into the service of US intelligence agencies. But in working for the NSA, Snowden learned how the system was spying on the private communications of US citizens, and his anti-authoritarian sense of justice kicked in once again. Snowden decided to use his hacking skills to leak classified documents that would inform the public about this violation of their privacy — exposing the US government’s system of mass surveillance from within.

#Edward Snowden

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lady-of-the-magnolias-blog · 6 years

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Beyond the Forest Edge

Fae Tale of Crown Springs

~Part 1~

He didn’t understand why Phoebes disliked when he went out for patrols of the borders, could only guess a handful of reasons – it was dangerous, it was unneeded, nothing would dare to come so deep into the forest, he was the heir to the throne and shouldn’t pull stupid stunts – whatever the case, he disagreed. Only the animals cold tell what he truly was in this form, humans would just see a demon and run away screaming, returning to their settlements and not be believed. A tale of a demonic monster living in the woods spread far and wide, no one brave enough to test if it might be false for fear of being proven wrong. He liked it this way. He had not seen a human I nearly three decades, and even then they only tried to capture his image while fleeing, most likely unsuccessful. And the borders remained peaceful, untouched by human hands. Violent human hands... He shook his head, clearing those memories from his mind. He would ponder no more on humans, nor their wars and destructions, for they were dull creatures that only took joy in bloodlust.

Breathing in the crisp cold air, his lungs filled with the smell of fallen leaves and sleepy oaks. The autumn had descended upon the deep wood not but a moon ago, but one could already feel the nips of frost in the air upon ones nose. It would be an early winter this year, though the court would never tell the difference, never leaving the boundary plagued by an everlasting spring. This was how the world should be… changing, growing, peaceful in a cycle of life and death that perpetuated itself unto eternity. An immortal life is boring otherwise, he thought to himself. Soon enough, along the edges of the wards, he came upon a rippling stream and sat down on a mossy boulder and gazed down at his reflection in the running water. This form made him tired and he longed to shed it, but at the same time he felt doing so would leave him too vulnerable. A large hand and sharp claws ran through the fur on his arms, untangling the knots where he had rubbed up against a bush earlier, and soon the brown strands were properly groomed.

Birds that had yet to fly to warmer weather sat up in the trees, a broken song flitting through the air as they huddled together. Rustling along the forest floor stirred only as he saw several deer stroll by, bowing respectfully in his direction ever so slightly to acknowledge his presence before they moved on to safe territory. He had to admit the deer were his favorite residents, as they never caused his people trouble and only ask for small charms in protection from predators, even some gifting their horns to his folk as a token of friendship. The bears in the region kept to themselves as well, but were more passive and disliked interacting with the court when they could help it. They held the same contempt for humans; some bears venturing outside the borders to attack humans and scare them away from the wards, but it was generally frowned upon by other bears to go looking for trouble. The birds and other small wildlife were content to live in the ward borders, never straying too far from their homes, some even living closer to the interior of the court to avoid large predators.

Aside from the bears though, the only other predator were the few puma that liked to roams in and out of the borders, picking off a few deer an them heading farther up North for several moon before returning. He didn’t care much for their attitudes towards the court, some threatening to break a ward and few attempting to do so once when their hunting grounds were being debated. It was a failed attempt, as nothing with such a low magical reserve could touch a ward, let alone break it, so they only received a slap on the paw and four moons of strict watch by the guards. And all was peaceful again, everything living in this rotating seclusion of the seasons, undisturbed.

Another crisp breath of inhalation. It was getting late, the sun would surely set soon, and yet he didn’t want to return to the court just yet. It was oh so quiet out here… and yet… too quiet in a way. The birds were no longer humming and the normal traffic of the forest n the leaves had stood still. He stood upon the boulder and studied the branches, searching for any eyes that could see beyond his own, luckily catching sight of a starling hopping frantically from one branch to the next, almost hiding amongst the colored foliage.

“Gracious winged one, why might you being in such a hurry this evening?” His deep voice bellowed upwards, catching the starling by surprise and nearly losing its footing. It quickly righted itself and then fluttered down, landing on an outstretched hand. Its sing-song voice chattered in a language of riddles, but not so difficult for one such as a Fae could not know.

“Oh so sorry, my dear Frey prince, for Mitri be worry, no time to dispense. Raffalin return, scare oh course, come from North. Other run ann I can’t stay, human he caught, so we fly aways.” And with those words, the tiny starling took off once more, up into the trees and out of sight. If what it said were true though… Raffalin was a puma that tried to break the wards once before, and now to chase a human into the boundary, to attempt to kill a human in the boundary? Raffalin was pushing his luck. So he took off in a sprint, heading in the direction the little bird had whence came, praying he wasn’t too late. He hated humans, but he hated more having to clean up after law-breakers. And the mountain of paperwork and meetings that incident would incur. Please, don’t be too late.

…

He tried running faster, his head whipping around in circles trying to find a clear path out of this forest, but all the boy could see were more trees in any which direction. How far had he gone into the woods? It had to be really far, he had been going for at least 15 minutes in a zig-zag pattern, hoping to lose the big cat he had after him. It was only suppose to be a hike with his cousin and her friends near town, but wandering off the path for a minute to look at a herd of deer nearby had somehow gotten him hopelessly lost. He didn’t know the area, so he just picked a direction he felt might lead to town… and somehow came across a mountain lion feasting on what he guessed was once a rabbit. He tried to back away slowly, he’d remembered once being told that large animals would usually leave you alone if you backed away in a no-threatening manner. It already had food, so it would just go back to eating when he left it alone, right?

He wanted to slap the person that gave him that horrible information. The creature just started stalking forward, pumping its shoulders as if readying a pounce. The only thing that gave him anytime to run was a small rustling in a bush that distracted the cat, a split second that triggered the boy’s flight response and he bolted across the forest, ducking branches, leaping over fallen trees, flinging himself ever-forward from those thumping steps close behind. It had been a few minutes since he’d heard any movement behind him, and a small part of him prayed he’d been lucky enough to lose nature’s killing machine, but he still didn’t slow down until reaching a small opening in the forest of a few downed trees and several boulders. He nearly collapsed against the boulder close to the center of the clearing, his heart thumping in his chest as sweat poured from his brow.

“Think, think… you have to think. Mica… idiot… fucking think.” His hands clenched at the stone, knuckles white, before he spun around and started searching the ground for large branches. Mountain lions could pick up scents, right? Even if he did lose it, it would most likely pick up his scent, right? Mica’s eyes roved over the fallen trees, searching for debris, a large branch he could use as a club to defend himself. But everything he tried to pick up was far too heavy, too brittle, too weak. A dread settled in his chest now. Would he die out here? He’d heard stories of backpackers and hikers being gutted by mountain lions and bears, the one guy whose only identifier was a severed leg they found. His hands shook in panic consuming his body. No… no… he couldn’t think like that… but… but he swear he could hear steps… Crunching of leaves.

He had to take his chances. Mica picked up a heavy branch, turned it in his hands a few times, but then heard louder crunching. He backed himself up against the center boulder, trying to get as much a view of the clearing as possible to keep from being surprised. His gaze examined the tree line, pulling the branch closer to his chest, scraping his hands with the rough bark but not caring enough to notice the pain. His arms shuttered, his breathing shaky, but the forest fell once more quiet. The sun had nearly vanished and all was silent. It was an unnatural quiet, as if the last second before the clock struck midnight was holding its breath in fear. Mica let out a stuttering breath.

And in a split second a sheering pain ripped through his shoulder, tearing upwards, and Mica launched himself away from the boulder with a cry. He turned and fell, landing on his rear, hands spread behind him to keep from landing fully on his back, the impromptu club skittering away. Mica grasped at his shoulder, seeing the fabric shredded and two slices trailing up from his chest and across the right shoulder. Gazing up, Mica saw the mountain lion poised atop the boulder, it’s bloody paw pressed on the stone and it’s back working back and forth, righting itself for a pounce. Mica knew he couldn’t run anymore, his legs wobbled as if made from jelly, and the pain echoed to hard against his mind to think of a way out again. He stared into the creature’s deadly yellow eyes and then saw the flash of the bloody maw as it launched itself forward and he closed his eyes, accepting his fate… but a moment later, there was no impact, no ripping out his throat or feeling his body being torn to bits.

Mica opened his eyes, if only a sliver, but the sight before him forced his eyes wide to take in the event. A giant creature, standing upright like a person but covered in shaggy brown fur, stood in front of Mica. It’s large and clawed fingers were curled around the mountain lions throat and lower torso, almost as if to crush the animal, but holding back. The brown creature had to be at least eight feet tall, even though Mica could swear it was taller from his spot on the ground. The creature growled at the mountain lion, a gnashing noise escaping its throat, and it dropped the animal. The mountain lion, if Mica could tell an emotion on a cats face, was filled with terror and darted out of the clearing.

A whoosh of air escaped Mica’s mouth, like he had been holding his breath all this time and he was finally able to breathe again. The throbbing pain in his shoulder brought him back to reality and he whimpered, grasping at the wound and trying to put pressure on the bloody slashes, but unable to properly do so one-handed. He scooted back, leaning up against a downed tree trunk, and stared upwards once more. His focus landed squarely on the large creatures broad back, covered in a thick brown fur but not hiding the hard muscle underneath, and it’s long limbs corded and strong. Nope. Nope… this couldn’t be real. Mica was saved by big-foot. It had to be a dream… or maybe a hallucination? Blood loss can do that to you, right? Make you see weird stuff, right? This thing standing in front of him couldn’t be real. Mica had to just be suffering from blood loss and numbing cold fall air.

But the creature’s head turned in his direction, and he saw those piercing violet almost human-like eyes, and Mica knew he wasn’t dreaming, and this was all real.

Their eyes met and a strange electricity crossed between them.

Mica stared, not in a frightened way, but filled with wonder at the sight before him.

Frey felt his brow knit together, a sense of worry he didn’t know existed bubbling up.

However, the moment was short-lived as Mica felt a shiver dash up his spine and a surge of pain down it, causing a pain filled groan to spill out and make his body curl inwards to a ball from the cold sinking in. His vision was splotchy, inky blackness lining his sight, tiredness pulling at his soul. It was coming down from the adrenaline, he knew, but at the same time he couldn’t believe the sudden exhaustion. But he wasn’t afraid, instead taking some solace in the thought of not dying out here all alone. The creature saved his life, it wasn’t threatening, but acted kindly.

Frey, his form looming over the human boy, felt a pang of guilt in his chest. He bent down, his large furry hand inching close to the human’s face, pressing against the skin of his cheek and feeling the heat in his palm. He hated humans, but at the same time… this one didn’t even flinch. In fact, his had rested further into Frey’s touch, a small sigh and groan escaping the boy’s lips. Frey was quite fascinated, as human’s always showed such fear at this form, yet this one was comforted? He couldn’t piece out how.

“So warm…” The words came out of the human and took Frey’s breath away as the human’s hand rose and pressed against his fuzzy cheek “You’re really… warm and… gentle. Not a monster… just… warm…” The human slumped over and Frey caught his body, cradling the human and now taking in the severity of the wound. It wasn’t too deep, but had already bled quite a bit with little sign of stopping – and he felt he had to do something. His hand hovered over the wound and he once more heard the word ‘gentle’ echo through his mind, a glow rising in his finger-tips and closing the wound. It would scar and still need to be treated further, but the human wouldn’t lose anymore blood like this. He turned the human in his arms, glancing down at his young features and carding his claws delicately through the sandy strands of hair out of the human’s face.

How was a human suddenly extraordinary? Had it truly been so long since he’d taken in a human form? How fragile they felt? Maybe. Without having a second thought, Frey scooped the human up in his arms, careful not the jostle the wounded shoulder, and started walking towards the forest border.

Mitri, the starling that had given him warning, came down from the trees and landed on his fuzz shoulder. It tweeted furiously, but Frey cared not to listen this time as it seemed to drone on about how dangerous the creature in his arms was, how it was an egg-eating devil. He could only laugh a little, offending the starling and causing it to fly off and gripe to its friends. Frey kept walking and walking, doing his best to keep the human warm in his arms under the freezing moonlit sky. Finally, in the distance, Frey could see lights from the town beneath the deep wood. He never came this close, had only stepped foot in the town nearly a hundred years ago, but the unconscious shiver from the package in his arms pressed him onwards.

Frey snuck as close to the border of the town as he dared in this form, coming upon what appeared to be a small house on entrance road. A wooden decking extending out from the back and lights were on inside, puffs of smoke rising out of the chimney. This was close enough, right? The human could be safe here? As light-toed as possible, Frey snuck up on the flat porch and laid Mica on a cushioned rocking bench, softly laying his head on a pillow and brushing the stray hair from his face once more. An odd human, really. He heard a laughter from inside the house and, after placing Mica’s hands across his stomach, dashed down the porch steps and hid behind nearby brush. He plucked a couple pebbles from the gravel and took aim at the side of the house.

*Plink*… *Plink*…*Plink*…

The door to the porch opened and a black-haired human woman peeked her head out, only for Frey to hear a horrified gasp and the woman to yell into the house at the sight of the unconscious human boy. She came out and took the shawl off her shoulders, draping it over Mica as a make-shift blanket until a strong-looking man came out the door. He was waving and telling the woman to do something, then scooping Mica up and taking him into their house. Frey watched all of this from the tree edge, hi hands clenched at his sides in worry. He only felt the nerve to look away and start back to the court when he heard the shrill tone of sirens in the distance growing close. The human boy was back in the comfort of his own people… yet still… Frey could hear the word ‘gentle’ flow in his mind, and from the hillside he watched a white box with flashing lights take off from the house. He wanted to just go home to the court, to shed this skin and have a warm bath, and to forget this day… but he couldn’t. He knew he couldn’t. Never could.

Ah, yes… this must be why Phoebes hated his border patrols.

They were unpredictable messes –

Both his duties and now his own heart.

#beyond the forest edge #chapter 1???#my writing

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