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#like. i think people are too focused on the idea of a loss being terminal. if that makes sense
formashimataichi · 3 years
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"His story has just begun".
I think this is the problem of the way you're thinking about it. Because yes, objectively speaking he's a very fortunate person. He's portrayed as smart, wealthy and handsome. And his achievment in Karuta can be considered impressive for how long he practiced in comparison to others.
But the manga isn't about being smart in school or good looking or rich. Those things while make a person fortunate are completely irrelevant to the crux of the story and the struggle of the character. So they do not really matter.
Same goes for him being impressive. Sure he won games and reached some places, but in the matches that really matter, especially against Chihaya and Arata, he lost. And it's not a loss that sets up a comeback like it is for Chihaya and Arata. He just loses and that's it.
You can say well he can always grow. Yeah that's true but how does it matter? You say "his story has just begun" but the manga is ending. What you imagine happens to the character outside the manga doesn't matter, nor would it matter if the author tells you that this and that happens. It really doesn't matter at all. What matters is the journey that you go through with the characters and the challange that you see them go through and experience with them.
I'm not saying that this or that is bad or unfair, I'm just saying that your way of thinking about it prevents you from understanding why those people are frustrated and unsatisfied.
How does what happens outside of or beyond the manga not matter, though? Yes, the manga ends, but the character’s lives themselves don’t. That’s the point of so many stories, that the end isn’t actually the end, and is simply the route to another beginning. There’s even an entire monologue about it at the end of Chapter 165. And I completely understand why people are frustrated and satisfied, it’s absolutely a hard pill to swallow when Taichi has suffered a lot to get to where he is, but as I’ve said many times before, I feel like very few people want to acknowledge the fact that these characters are teenagers? Part of the genius of Chihayafuru as a story is that it centers on a sport played by people of all ages, so it demands you to look ever forward. Life doesn’t just stop for these people in high school. A huge part of the narrative is centered on the characters needing to decide what they want to do with their lives as they move from childhood into adulthood, so what happens beyond the end of the manga absolutely does matter with regards to the central plot, because in general it’s a story about growing up and finding yourself and maturing. You don’t have to necessarily see where they end up as adults to understand the value in them looking forward and upward in terms of their own fate. 
As for the idea of “he just loses and that’s it,” would you say the same for Arata when he inevitably loses to Suou, or for Shinobu when she inevitably loses to Chihaya? Their theoretically “doomed” fates are even closer to the end of the manga than Taichi’s allegedly was, so per your premise that gives even less room for them to grow from what will be a very significant loss and blow to their psyches. But it’s still very likely going to happen, and it’s going to subsequently open Arata up to the realization that he needs help and that he needs to truly let go of his grandfather before he can ever expect himself to move forward, and open Shinobu up to the realization that she can’t survive if all she does is continue to push people who could care about her away. Taichi’s circumstances are obviously different, but it’s a similar set-up. He has to think about what karuta means to him at this point and whether he wants to define himself by that loss or continue to keep striving because his love for the game is now a genuine thing. He has to decide what the support and love of the people around him means to him and means for his own passion in terms of sport, life, academia, etc. The transition into adulthood is a very daunting experience, often because we have no idea what lies beyond that precipice once we have crossed it. The decisions we make by way of that transition are very much a gamble. But obviously. . . it’s a line that we have to cross at some point or other, and that requires anticipation and preparation. I don’t think any of the characters’ stories are rendered meaningless because we’re not necessarily going to be privy to what happens to them after they cross that line; it’s important enough that they’re thinking about what crossing the line means to them and how they want to strive and survive in the world once they’re beyond it. 
#chihayafuru#*meta#like. i think people are too focused on the idea of a loss being terminal. if that makes sense#when realistically (and esp for someone these characters' age) it really isn't#and like i do get that it's hard not to have expectations esp when comparing to other sports manga#where underdogs do often win out in the end in their own way#but i feel like if you compare chihayafuru to other series you're sort of dooming yourself from the get go#bc it really does take a very different approach#one that's not necessarily all beautiful or all ugly but that's just. real#like yeah the manga is ending but esp as a series so intent on looking forward#idk how people would get the notion that what happens after is unimportant#what happens after is absolutely important. it's why so much time is put into preparing these characters for adulthood#also at least to me part of the series' realism also stems from the idea that you don't always win in high school#so many sports manga show the characters winning big by the end of high school and yeah that's great#absolutely nothing wrong with it. but is it realistic 100% of the time? not really#and ig we can agree to disagree here#but i think there's worth in a story that says sometimes you lose when you're young but it's okay#bc you can keep playing and you can win even when you're older#like maybe to some people that seems like a bleak sentiment and dooming yourself to playing with no guarantee#but again. all of the adult characters are clearly still playing for a reason and it's not just the idea of winning#it's bc they genuinely love the sport#also i realize i was sort of redundant with the closing points i made in both paragraphs of this post so sorry for that gjkfdjhlgdf#ig it's just an important point for me to hammer in lol
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musecharm-writes · 3 years
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Curiosity Killed the Cat Burglar (Tony Stark X Reader)
ANONYMOUS: You write for marvel? Awesome! Ive always wondered ehat would happen if someone tried to reverse engineer one of Tony's suits just for curiosity instead of evil or money... could you write something where Tony finds reader doing something like that? Thanks!!
Summary: You’ve been training yourself for months for this mission (not even counting the time you’d spent learning all the skills you would need in order to even make it a possibility), and now you’re finally here, so close to what you’ve been waiting for for so long…it almost feels too easy.
You’ve been training yourself for months for this mission (not even counting the time you’d spent learning all the skills you would need in order to even make it a possibility), and now you’re finally here, so close to what you’ve been waiting for for so long… it almost feels too easy.
You’d spent weeks perfecting the software that let you into the Stark Industries mainframe so you could access the blueprints of the ventilation system. You’d taken great lengths to memorise the layout; you could recreate the map flawlessly if called upon to do so. You’d made a backup plan for absolutely anything and everything that could possibly go wrong.
And now that it’s working, it just doesn’t feel right.
As you slip into the elevator, pressing the button that will take you to the floor housing Stark’s workshop with a gloved hand, you have the distinct sensation of being watched. You send an uneasy glance around the elevator and are unable to detect any cameras, but you’re well aware that means nothing; there could be thermal scanners, pressure pads, or even something as simple as hidden cameras in the walls or ceiling. Stark is as sneaky as he is clever, and you’re the last one to underestimate him.
He is your hero, after all.
--
The elevator doesn’t make a sound as it reaches the workshop floor, nor as the doors open with a smooth glide, and it’s equal parts unnerving and impressive. You don’t waste time studying the elevator, though; you leave the elevator car, creeping down the hall until you come to a wall of glass.
All that’s between you and your goal now are a keypad and a shatterproof glass door.
You pull the hacking device you custom built and programmed from your belt and attach it to the keypad. Numbers scroll across the screen until, finally, the security code is displayed in blinking green.
You grin in satisfaction and press the appropriate numbers. The door opens.
You’re in.
You stalk into the darkened shop, padding across the floor without making a sound. You reach up and pull down a pair of homebrew infrared goggles.
Let’s see. If I was a super-genius, where would I keep a high-tech, flying suit of armour?
You see some display cases on the other end of the room -- you’re unsurprised to see that Stark preserves his old suits, considering how attached he seems to be to them -- and are preparing to search for the mechanism that will open the cases, but it’s not necessary; there’s a half-assembled suit laid out on one of the work benches, as though its owner left in the middle of performing repairs on it.
Jackpot! You hadn’t dared hope you would get this lucky; the newest model of the Iron Man suit, just laying there in the open, completely unguarded? This is better than anything you could’ve dreamed of!
You approach the workbench, stepping over and around other half-complete projects that Stark has left scattered around. There are what you assume to be deactivated automated assistants, too, arm-like structures with claw shaped grasping appendages on the ends.
Under different circumstances, you would love to stick around and see what this place looks like when it’s up and running at full capacity. You bet it’s amazing.
You shake those thoughts from your head. Focus on the task at hand, you remind yourself. Your window is incredibly small.
You carefully open the faceplate of the helmet and search for a data upload terminal. Once you’ve found it, you pull your scanner from your belt and attach it to the terminal, activating it. Your heart flutters giddily. You’re so close.
And then, a voice says, “Right, I think I’ve let this go a little too far. JARVIS, lights.”
The lights slowly start to come up. You hastily remove your goggles and turn to find none other than Tony Stark standing at the far end of the room.
He smiles and waves shortly. “Hi. I’d introduce myself, but,” he swirls his finger in a circle, “seeing as we’re here, I’m pretty sure it’s not necessary.”
You’re completely dumbfounded. You have no idea what to do, what to say -- how do you explain yourself?
You came up with a plan for every scenario, except for the one where you got caught.
“Uh,” you begin, “I… I don’t… I mean, I’m not-- It’s not--”
“You, on the other hand, have some serious explaining to do. You could start with who you are, for example, and why you’re in my house, and how in the hell you managed to build a bunch of shit that neutralised my security measures.” He points an accusatory finger at you. “You hacked me. Nobody does that, nobody has ever done that. How did you do that?”
You open and close your mouth, at a total loss for words. “W-Well, um, I… I just did?” It’s a terrible explanation and you know it. You kind of want to dissolve into the floor; this was not how this was supposed to go, not at all.
Stark looks incredulous. “You… just did. Huh. Okay. Well, I just thought I’d let you know I went along with this little charade because, if we’re being honest, I found the concept of someone smart enough to hack Stark Industries enticing. I figured I’d just wait and see where you were going with it. But, since you were just after the suit -- totally boring motivation, by the way, that’s been done like a thousand times by now, what is it, money or power? -- I’m gonna have to see you out now.” He pulls out a wafer-thin, see through card and taps on it. “Jay, let Happy know we have an interloper on sublevel--”
“Wait!” You cry out. “Wait, please don’t kick me out!”
He looks at you, quirking a brow. “And why should I not?”
You fidget awkwardly, feeling a little stupid in your thief getup. “I… I didn’t want the suit to sell it, or weaponise it, or whatever. I just wanted to see if I could… If I could make one better,” you admit, your face reddening.
Stark is silent for a moment, which you aren’t sure is a good thing. Then, he says, “Huh. Okay,” and the way he says ‘okay’ turns it into a four-syllable word. “So, you broke into my house, disabled all my security, and entered my private workshop without permission… because you were curious?”
You nod, a little embarrassed. “Yeah.”
“Curiosity killed the cat, you know,” he says, with a hint of a smile. “Not so sure about the cat burglar.”
“But satisfaction brought it back,” you retort.
“And you’re feeling satisfied with yourself, are you?”
You shrug, starting to relax as you settle into the rhythm of the banter. “I could be. Depends whether or not you’re planning to call the cops on me.”
The hint of smile turns into an outright grin. “And ruin this thing we’ve got goin’ on? Now, why in the world would I do that?”
You laugh. “...Does this mean I get to look at the suit after all?”
Stark makes a show of considering your request. “We can work up to it,” he says. “After you show me what you’re really capable of.”
--
You spend what must be hours down in the workshop -- Tony Stark’s workshop! -- shyly explaining how your devices work, and then you move upstairs to the living room and spread out schematics across the table, trying valiantly not to explode on the spot when the guy you’ve had a crush on since you were, like, ten tells you your craftsmanship and code are just about as good as anything he’s ever seen, which is really saying something.
You’re so focused on trying to seem like you don’t care that much about his approval that when he says, “So, hey, how about next week, we meet up somewhere for a little intellectual conversation over coffee?” you nearly miss it. (‘Nearly’ being the operative word, of course.)
“I… What?”
“Unless you don’t like coffee. We could do lunch,” he continues, and somehow, he almost seems as nervous as you were just a moment ago.
The idea of Tony Stark being nervous to ask you for coffee or lunch -- you, of all people -- is laughable, so much so that it sends all your nerves running for the hills.
“Yeah,” you say. “No, I mean, coffee’s fine. I love coffee.”
He nods. “Good. Good, I’ll see you then. Hopefully this time you won’t break into my house beforehand.”
You fluster immediately at that, stammering, and he waves it off.
“Kidding,” he says. “I let you get in, remember? You’re fun, you’re a good,” he waves his hand as if trying to summon the words from nowhere. “Conversationalist. You grok me.”
You nod.
He slaps his knees and clears his throat. “Welp,” he says, standing up, “it’s been fun, but as everyone in my life loves to remind me, I have a company to run, so as much as I would love to spend the rest of the day talking about fun stuff, I sorta can’t. Walk you to the door?”
“Sure.”
He sees you out, reminding you not to forget about your “little rendezvous next week, I’ll pick you up and take you someplace swanky, my treat.”
You don’t feel nervous about it at all. You just met your idol, and all you had to do was break into his house and try to steal the plans for his top-secret superhero suit.
You can’t wait to find out what he wants to talk about next week.
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echo-bleu · 3 years
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take me back to the start (2)
 Chapter 1
Read on AO3
For @moonlight-breeze-44 More angst! And a lot of Magnus in this chapter. Huge thanks to @jeanboulet for betaing this. [Specific warnings: suicidal thoughts (mentioned), terminal illness/poisoning, internalized ableism]
Magnus curses when he feels his wards being breached. It’s someone his magic registers as a friend, but it’s still nearly midnight and he was ready for bed. He’s spent fewer nights at Pandemonium recently, discovering that he’s not in the mood for dancing and hooking up with strangers.
He’s trying to breeze through life like he’s always pretended to do, but there’s something missing. He doesn’t know what. It’s like there’s a hole in his life whose shape he can’t quite make out.
Or can he? His dreams have been filled with bows and arrows lately. And Shadowhunters. He glances at the box still on his nightstand, that he can’t seem to stop staring at every night, idly wondering what it contains.
With a wave of his hand, he changes his outfit for something more socially appropriate and unlocks the door of his loft. Which of his friends would have come at this hour, unannounced? It can only be an emergency.
“Magnus! Please, we need your help!”
It’s not a friend at all, it turns out – Magnus will have to figure out later why his wards would let any Shadowhunters through. It’s Jace Herondale, of all people. His voice is tense and scared. Magnus takes a few more steps into the living room to see him, and finds him and Isabelle carrying a barely conscious Alec between them. They’re followed by a fourth person, one that immediately makes Magnus’ blood boil. Maryse Lightwood.
Magnus entertains the thought of just throwing them out, briefly, but he can’t. He’s not the kind of person to refuse to help someone who needs it, even if that someone is a former enemy turned – whatever it is they are, after the Angel summoning the other week. And his eyes are undeniably drawn to Alec’s trembling form, as Jace and Isabelle lay him down on the couch.
He has a vague memory of another man on this couch, years ago – Luke, with Clary hovering and—
It slips away.
“What happened?” he asks.
“He was wounded by a Pervious demon a while ago,” Isabelle answers, nervously pulling at her hair as she turns away from her brother and looks at Magnus.
Magnus’ stomach drops. “There’s no cure for that,” he says. “Their venom spreads through the body until it’s destroyed all of the organs.”
“We know, but Catarina said… She slowed it down, he was supposed to have more time. But he’s been like this for three days, and we can’t reach her.”
“Catarina Loss healed him?” Magnus frowns. “Why—”
“She’s Alec’s friend,” Jace says coolly.
Magnus files that away for later, coming closer to Alec to take a good look at him. He doesn’t look good. His face is pale, bordering on gray-toned, and he’s sweating profusely. He’s restless, in the throes of a high fever. “She’s held up at the Spiral Labyrinth,” Magnus says. “I’m not a healer.”
“We didn’t know who else to go to,” Isabelle breathes.
Magnus runs his hand over Alec’s body, letting his magic confirm that the venom has spread through his nervous system, and his organs are failing. Magnus swallows. There’s nothing left to save. It’s too late.
Unless…
He eyes the prominent rune on Alec’s neck, then Jace, with his pure angel blood. The power Magnus recently inherited is the power of a fallen angel. Here on the Earth plane…
There are very few limits to what it could do. Magnus isn’t used to the idea yet, and he’s more than a little scared of what it means, what it would be like in the wrong hands, but it’s a truth he will have to face.
Maybe Alec is already too far gone, but if there’s anything in the world that could help him now, it’s Asmodeus’ power. And if it gives Magnus a little more time to understand why his throat knots up and his eyes tear up at the thought of Alec dying, then it’s for the best.
“I can’t promise anything, but I will try to help,” he says slowly, stepping back. “He’s very ill, and it’s probably too late already, but maybe I can...give you some more time, at least.”
He doesn’t have to like the Lightwoods for the sliver of hope mixed with despair on their face to be heartbreaking. Isabelle immediately thanks him. Jace takes Alec’s hand in his own like it’s a lifeline. They’re not ready to let their brother go.
And Maryse… She looks vulnerable, more than Magnus has ever seen her before. This isn’t the high-and-mighty Shadowhunter who once stood opposite him on a battlefield. Her neck is strangely bare of runes, and she looks small, defeated.
But she’s still Maryse Lightwood.
“I don’t want this woman in my apartment,” Magnus points at her.
Maryse straightens up a little. “Magnus, I know we have history, but he’s my son.”
“Mom, it’s okay,” Isabelle gently takes her arm. “You need to go take care of Max. We’ll take care of Alec. It will be okay.”
Maryse hesitates, her pleading look going from Isabelle to Alec on the couch, and finally to Magnus. Magnus gives her a hard stare back.
“Okay,” she murmurs. She takes a step forward, and Magnus stops her with a raised hand. “Magnus—” she starts.
“That’s Warlock Bane for you,” Magnus growls.
Maryse flinches, despite Isabelle’s hand still on her arm. “Warlock Bane,” she corrects herself, her voice almost breaking on the last word. “Please let me say goodbye to my son.”
Magnus hesitates, his skin crawling at letting someone like Maryse Lightwood into his lair, but he relents. He knows too well the pain of loss, and the loss of a child must be… Even he can feel some compassion for her.
She kneels down by Alec’s side and brushes his hair off his sweaty brow. “Alec.”
Alec stirs a little in his delirium, half-opening his eyes. “Mom?”
“I love you,” Maryse murmurs, leaning down to kiss his forehead.
She stands back up, staring down at him with her back to Magnus and her other children for a moment. When she turns around, there are tears running down her face. “I know my pleading won’t mean much to you,” she tells Magnus, her voice raw. “But please save my boy.”
“I will do my best,” Magnus promises. “But I won’t do it for you.”
Maryse nods and flees the room, only stopping to squeeze her children’s hands. Even with the door closed behind her, there’s no mistaking the sound of her sobs, and Magnus swallows bile.
“No Robert?” he asks.
Jace makes a pained grimace. Isabelle looks away, tears in her eyes, and Magnus can see that he touched a sore point.
“He died five months ago,” Jace says. “In Alicante, at the same time as Alec got hurt.”
Magnus just nods and kneels by Alec, who turns half-lidded eyes to him. “Ma’nus,” he murmurs. There’s a desperate relief in his eyes, and he seeks out Magnus’ hand, Magnus only hesitates minutely before he squeezes Alec’s hand in his.
“Tell me more about what happened,” he says.
“He was poisoned through a deep cut in his side,” Jace says, not letting go of Alec’s other hand. It makes their positions awkward, so Jace moves to the side of the couch, at Alec’s head. “It spread rapidly, but we got him to the hospital just in time. Thankfully Catarina was there and she slowed its progression. She did some kind of ritual to keep it contained, but she said it would keep leaking until—” he chokes on his words, making a helpless gesture with his free hand. From up close, he looks terrible. He has dark circles under his eyes, and a slight sheen to his brow that tells Magnus that he’s probably running a low fever himself.
“He’s been having bouts of fever,” Isabelle takes over, standing behind Jace. “He’s in a lot of pain, but it’s hard to tell if it’s only from the venom, because his hip is bad too.”
“And the fever hasn’t come down?”
“Not in a little over three days. Catarina gave him a year, but I think the angel summoning made it go faster. That’s when he really started to get worse.”
Magnus nods and slips his hand out of Alec’s. He gathers a magical probe into his hand and runs it over Alec’s body once more, deeper this time.
“If we leave him like this, I’m not sure he’ll make it through the night,” he murmurs, standing back up. “I don’t know if I can do anything more than contain the venom again, and even if I manage it, there a chance that his organs won’t be able to take the shock,” he warns.
“Do it,” Jace says. “We’ve got nothing to lose.”
“It will be extremely painful for him. And there’s no guarantee that it will help.”
“Please, Magnus,” Isabelle says. “We’ll pay anything you want.”
“It’s not about the money, not when it comes to saving a life,” Magnus shakes his head. “Though I’ll be sure to send my bill. But you need to be certain that this isn’t just prolonging his suffering. That this is what he would want. I don’t think he’s lucid enough to make the decision himself.”
Isabelle nods to Jace, still prostrate over Alec’s trembling body. “Jace is his parabatai,” she murmurs. “Their souls are connected, and Jace already lost Clary. I fear if we lose Alec, we’ll lose them both.” She swallows a sob. “Please just try.”
“Alright,” Magnus nods.
He kneels by the couch again and takes a moment to center himself. He can’t afford for his father’s magic – his magic, now – to spin out of control. Magnus has been testing it, step by step, but he knows he’s not ready for such a large expenditure. It could go horribly wrong.
He doesn’t think he could get Jace and Isabelle away if he tried, whatever the risks. He’ll just have to make sure that if he destroys something, it’s only furniture.
He focuses on his magical core for a while, doing what he can to prepare himself. When he opens his eyes, neither Isabelle nor Jace have moved.
“I’m going to need your strength,” Magnus tells Jace on a hunch. It’s not strictly true, but Jace’s connection to Alec could make things smoother, and serve as an anchor. And it will give Jace something to do other than wait and pace. “Isabelle, you better make yourself comfortable. It’s going to take a while.”
Isabelle bends down to stroke Alec’s cheek, her lips moving as if she’s praying. “Hang on, big brother,” she murmurs. “Just a little longer.”
Alec is too far gone to even acknowledge her. He’s shaking violently, his teeth chattering despite the fact that his skin is far too hot to the touch. He lets out low moans of pain every few moments, curling in on himself further.
Jace offers Magnus his hand, palm wide open. Magnus nods at him gravely and takes it, placing his other hand on Alec’s chest. Isabelle steps back, curling up in one of the armchairs to wait.
“Let’s do this,” Magnus murmurs to himself.
He doesn’t draw strength from Jace right away. He starts slow, searching for the edges of Alec, of the spread of the venom inside him. It’s a magical venom, coursing through his nervous system rather than his blood, and it’s everywhere. For the first few minutes, Magnus can barely find where it ends and where Alec begins.
He pushes it back, slowly. He prods at the magical signature of the demon and pushes until it recoils away from him. Alec’s body arches on the couch, and he cries out, while Jace lets out a groan of pain. Magnus barely lets them recover before he pushes again.
It’s a long process. Alec’s whole body is overrun by the venom, and Magnus is honestly impressed that he’s held on for so long. He should be dead already, by all rights. Magnus wonders if he hung on by pure willpower and if so, why. Was he thinking of Jace, of Isabelle in his fever? Of his mother?
Of someone else?
Magnus feels himself sagging. The process of cleaning up every inch of Alec’s body is exhausting, and his own physical body is feeling the strain. He struggles to keep himself up and leans on Alec’s body, until he feels a strong physical presence anchoring him. Jace.
“Take my strength,” Jace urges.
“Thank you,” Magnus murmurs, drawing some energy from Jace to keep his head up. He opens his eyes briefly. Jace has moved to kneel behind him and support him, though he still has one hand on Alec. He has tears of pain running down his cheeks, but his expression is steely, determined.
Magnus’ magic is far from depleted, the expenditure barely making a dent – once, it would have been the end of his reserves – but his body is still half-human. The magic that courses through him, using him as a vessel, takes a toll.
Magnus leans back against Jace, allowing himself one deep breath before he goes at it again. But this time, it feels different. Jace’s strength leads him in, connected to Alec in a deeper way than Magnus anticipated. He knows little about the parabatai bond. It’s a soul bond, but it has a physical component, Magnus can feel it.
Of course – the rune. The runes all over Alec’s body. Magnus can use them. He can wield angelic power, so he can use the runes to strengthen Alec’s body as he works.
“Isabelle,” he calls.
Isabelle is kneeling at his side in a fraction of a second. “What can I do?”
“Activate his healing rune. As many times as you can.”
“It will be stronger if Jace does it,” Isabelle says.
Magnus focuses on Jace briefly. The pull on his energy is clearly making him lethargic, and he blinks like he’s struggling to follow their words. “Then help him,” he tells Isabelle.
He tunes them out as Isabelle puts a stele in Jace’s hand and uncovers Alec’s stomach. He can feel the healing rune – iratze, was it? – working as soon as it’s activated, sending a pulse of magic through Alec’s body. Magnus rides on its wave, going in deeper.
He’s fairly sure it takes hours before he can actually reach Alec. His soul, the part of him that’s still trying to fight back.
Alec’s angelic core is weak, too weak. It’s barely pulsing. Magnus tightens his hand on Jace’s and follows the parabatai bond straight into Alec’s soul. Unlike any mundane venom, the demon venom has its claws there, too, ripping it bit by bit until there’s nothing left. Magnus isn’t sure that there is still time to save it. And while Alec’s body will die if the venom reaches his heart, a crisis that Magnus has at least averted for now, Alec’s soul is just as necessary for his survival.
Magnus begins the tedious and taxing work of removing the venom. He coils himself tightly around Jace’s part of the soul, that’s still open and untainted. That’s what Alec is protecting so hard, Magnus thinks. His brother. The rest of Alec’s soul is wispy, barely there.
Alec trembles all the way, muttering unintelligibly. His face is scrunched up in pain, and Magnus can feel the tension in his body.
Magnus hacks away at the venom tendrils. The first time his magic fully touches Alec’s soul, the part that’s only him, he’s almost ejected out in surprise. Maybe partly fusing with Jace is what takes him this far. He sees flashes – memories.
It’s just Alec and Jace, at first. Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee. The foundation of their soul bond. Magnus sees them as teenagers, taking the oath to always be there for each other. Then again as adults, Jace murmuring the words over a feverish, ill Alec – is that recent? Magnus glimpses other people, but the memory only lasts a second in his mind. It’s not his to keep.
Magnus frees Alec’s soul from another trail of venom. Isabelle jumps out at him, hugging her brother tight, training with him, sleeping in his bed at night, curled up against him. Alec’s love for her is self-evident, permeating every moment of the memories.
Magnus wants to pull out. These memories aren’t for him to peek at. He’s a skilled mind traveler, and he’s even dabbled in mnemopsionics, but he knows how dangerous this branch of magic is. Who knows where Clary would be now if Magnus had never messed with her mind?
Besides, that’s not what he’s here for. He just needs to focus on the venom.
But Alec’s soul doesn’t let him. Magnus pulls harder at the venom tendrils, with a desperation born out of exhaustion, and finds himself yanked back inside Alec’s mind.
He’s in Pandemonium, staring across the room at an Alec with a bow in his hand.
He’s in his loft and standing over a pentagram, an electric jolt going through his body as he links hands with Alec.
He’s kneeling in his living room, pulling energy from the hand in his, stumbling back against Alec’s lean and muscular body, exhausted.
He’s holding up his glass and toasting with Alec, whispering words, flirting.
He’s watching Alec train, shirtless, swallowing back his desire and trying to find the words to say how much he wants him.
He’s standing in a corridor, hurt and heartbroken, Alec turning his back on him.
He’s storming into a wedding, and Alec is striding toward him, kissing him—
No.
Back up.
Just like that, he’s back into his own body. The shockwave sends him backwards against Jace, who only avoids hitting his head on the edge of the coffee table thanks to his Shadowhunter reflexes. Magnus breathes hard under Isabelle’s concerned gaze, as she hands him a glass of water.
“Sorry,” he says. “I’m almost there.”
But he can’t go back in there. What were those memories? Memories of him in Alec’s mind, and his love, his deep, untouchable love that’s not supposed to be there because there are no matching memories in Magnus’ mind. When did this happen?
Magnus’ thoughts stray toward the box on his nightstand. Memories. Memories he’s erased, that are still in other people’s minds. Jace and Isabelle’s familiarity with him, Alec’s—
He erased them for a reason, he reminds himself. But his heart tells a different story. It yearns for Alec so much it hurts.
“Can you save him?” Isabelle asks quietly.
Magnus swallows several times, the water failing to erase the taste of bile. “I’ve almost contained the venom,” he explains. “But that won’t save him. It will give him another few months, maybe, until he’s back in the same place.”
Isabelle hangs her head, and Magnus’ heart constricts even more. He can’t let Alec die. Not now, not in a year. If it’s in his power to save him…
It might be. No one has ever been cured of Pervious poisoning before, but there’s a first for everything.
“I’m going to try to overwhelm the venom with my magic,” he says. “But it’s going to be dangerous. It could kill us both, and you with us. You should get out, come back when I’m done.”
Isabelle and Jace visibly hesitate. “Are you sure?” Jace asks. He’s still weak, swaying a little where he kneels. Magnus doesn’t feel much better.
“At the very least, Alec wouldn’t want you to risk your life needlessly. Go. I’ll call you as soon as it’s done.” If it goes well, is the unspoken subtext.
“Alright,” Jace murmurs.
Isabelle supports him as he stands up. They both touch Alec lightly before they turn away and leave.
Magnus observes Alec for a moment. He looks better. He’s still sweaty and feverish, but his skin has lost the gray undertone, and it’s flushed instead. Magnus takes his clammy hand in his own.
So Alec was, as he was starting to suspect, the lover Magnus erased from his memories. The one who broke his heart so badly that Magnus couldn’t stand to remember it.
What is he supposed to do now? Now that he knows? He can pretend that he doesn’t know, but that wouldn’t be fair to either of them. He knows how it started, but not how it ended. What could have been so awful that Magnus chose to erase all trace of him from his life?
Or did he fall in love so deeply that the breakup itself, the simple thought of living without Alec, was unthinkable?
There’s only one thing clear in his mind: he needs to save Alec. He can’t stand the thought of him dying.
Magnus hangs on to that thought as he throws himself into Alec’s core again, ripping apart the contained venom with all his power. He breezes past his former limits, where he would once have collapsed from magical depletion, and keeps going, deeper and deeper. The venom is not sentient, but it resists all the same, deeply entrenched into Alec’s body and core. It’s woven in with his angelic magic, where no demon energy should ever reach. It won’t just leave. It can’t.
Magnus gathers his magic into his fingertips, now resting on each side of Alec’s neck, and pushes. It’s the strongest magic he’s ever yielded, the full force of his father’s fallen angel magic. It sweeps into Alec, and for a moment, Magnus is afraid that it will overwhelm not just the venomous energy but also Alec’s core. But it doesn’t. Instead, it coils around Alec like a cat, filling the wounds left behind by the venom.
Alec’s mouth opens in a silent scream, and he seizes, his body arching and his head hitting the arm rest of the couch repeatedly. But the venom has finally released its hold.
Magnus collapses against Alec, spent. He uses the last of his energy to check that Alec is breathing properly and to text Isabelle to come back, then he lets himself slide down to the floor.
His work is done.
*
Magnus comes to with a pillow under his head and a blanket over his shoulders. He’s still lying between the coffee table and the couch, the rug barely providing a buffer between his body and the hard wood floor, but someone’s been here to take care of him.
“We didn’t know if we should move you,” comes a voice.
Magnus hoists himself up onto his elbow, with some effort. Isabelle is sitting in one of the armchairs on the other side of the coffee table, looking at him curiously.
“How long has it been?” he asks. He sits up fully, finding himself face to face with Alec, who is still sleeping – unconscious? – on the couch.
“About two hours since you texted me,” Isabelle answers. “We tried to wake you up, but you wouldn’t move. Alec seemed better, so we decided to wait.”
Magnus doesn’t try to check on Alec magically – he probably couldn’t light a fire right now if he wanted to. “The venom is all gone,” he says. “He’s probably going to need a lot of rest for a while as his body recovers, but he’ll live.”
Isabelle gapes at him. Her face morphs into a slow smile as she processes it. “Magnus, that’s incredible! You did it! Jace! Alec is going to be okay!”
She plops down from her armchair and crawls around the table to hug Magnus, who is too stunned to stop her. “Thank you,” she whispers in his ear. “Thank you so much.”
“You fixed him?” Jace asks, coming from the kitchen. He has a tea pot in one hand and a bunch of mugs in the other.
Magnus nods in confirmation. Jace calmly puts down what he has in his hands on the coffee table before he lets himself drop onto an armchair, staring at Alec, almost in shock.
“Thank the Angel,” he murmurs, tears welling up in his eyes in relief.
“In this case, thank the demon,” Magnus says as Isabelle helps him up and into the other armchair. She sits down on the corner of the table.
“You used Asmodeus’ power, didn’t you?” Isabelle asks. “Your father.”
Magnus starts. “How do you know he’s my father?” He doesn’t tell that to just anyone. In fact, the only people who know have been his friends for a long time. How does a Shadowhunter—
“You told me yourself, Magnus,” Isabelle sighs. “A few months after you told Alec.”
Magnus closes his eyes. If she’s telling the truth, then whatever memories are in the box are worse than he thought.
Or maybe they’re exactly what he thinks they are, and he just doesn’t want to admit it to himself. The heartbreak would have had to be agony for him to decide to erase his memories. Camille-level of agony. No, worse: he never erased Camille from his memories.
And Alec was at the center of it. Was he abusive? Did he hurt Magnus so badly that remembering it was unbearable?
Magnus looks at him, vulnerable in his sleep, his face still lined with pain. It seems impossible. But it happened. It must have.
Magnus shakes the thought out of his head. “Yes, I used my father’s power. I inherited it when he died.”
Jace nods. “We saw it happen,” he says in a low voice. “We didn’t know then that you’d—erased your memories.”
“You saw it?” Magnus frowns. “Tell me what happened in Alicante.”
He knew – he felt – that a major magical event happened in Alicante that day, that coincided with his father’s death, but no one has been able to tell him what, exactly. Idris is closed to Downworlder, and even the Spiral Labyrinth researchers aren’t good enough to see through its wards.
“Jonathan – that’s Valentine’s son – opened a rift into Edom, just over Alicante,” Isabelle starts. “The sheer number of demons overrode the demon towers quickly and we couldn’t do anything. There were too many to fight off. Then Lilith came through.”
“Lilith,” Magnus murmurs to himself.
“We thought it was over,” Isabelle says. “We saw Dad go down trying to protect Max. Our little brother,” she explains at Magnus’ confusion, with another of her sad looks. “He’s okay, he got to us eventually, but Dad—” she makes an aborted gesture, swallowing. “Lilith was ready to destroy everything, but she was stopped.”
“By Asmodeus,” Magnus breathes, the pieces of the puzzle coming together in his head. “They’ve been rivals for forever. He was already on this plane... Of course he would see it as an occasion to finally get rid of her.”
“Yes,” Isabelle confirms. “They fought over Alicante for a while. It was...terrifying. We were just running for cover as they destroyed building after building, and it was still swarming with lesser demons. Alec must have gotten bitten at some point, but we didn’t realize it.”
“How did it end?” Magnus asks.
“They obliterated each other,” Isabelle says. “When their powers met on this plane, it didn’t just kill them and send them back to Edom, it made them stop existing entirely. And since your father was King of Edom and it was tied to him somehow, it imploded in the process. The blast took out a whole chunk of Alicante and killed everything in its path.”
“How did you make it out?”
“Clary,” Isabelle says. “She has—she had a special ability thanks to her angel blood, she could create new runes. She made up a shield rune so powerful that it protected all of us. But Alec was weakening and he was a bit too slow to get to cover. He wasn’t entirely behind the shield and his leg was shattered. It’s more than what iratzes and Catarina’s magic could heal.”
Magnus nods. “I saw he was struggling to walk. That requires delicate healing rather than brute force magical strength, so I’m afraid I can’t help with that. If Catarina couldn’t do anything, I won’t be of any use.”
“You did so much already,” Isabelle shakes her head. “You saved his life. We thought—” her voice breaks.
Magnus reaches out to squeeze her arm. “The last few months must have been hell for all of you,” he says sympathetically.
“You have no idea,” Jace mutters. There’s more than a little resentment in his voice, but Magnus chooses to ignore it.
“Ma’nus?”
Magnus starts and looks over at Alec, who is stirring, weakly searching around with his hand. His breathing has picked up, and he’s frowning in pain. Isabelle, who is the closest, gives Magnus a look and catches Alec’s hand in her own. “Alec, it’s Izzy. Open your eyes for me.”
Alec seems to struggle for a moment, then his eyes open a fraction. He looks around the room blearily, settling first on Isabelle, then on Jace, and finally on Magnus. “Ma’nus,” he repeats, the word slurred but unmistakable.
Magnus makes an aborted move to stand up, but Jace stops him with a glare. “Don’t give him hope he doesn’t need,” he says through his teeth. Magnus swallows and relents with a gesture.
Isabelle looks torn, and she bites her lip as she turns back to Alec. “We’re all here,” she says. “Magnus healed you. Now I need you to wake up properly so we can celebrate.”
Alec chuckles, though he’s obviously confused. “’kay,” he murmurs. He closes his eyes again and his breathing evens out, though the lines of pain remain on his face.
“The pain will fade with time,” Magnus says, trying to reassure the Shadowhunters. “At least the one from the venom,” he adds, remembering Alec’s other injuries.
“We’ll get back to the Institute as soon as he’s awake enough to move,” Jace says. “We’re truly grateful, Magnus, but we won’t take any more of your time.”
Magnus shakes his head. “I’m not throwing you out.”
“Maybe not, but I don’t think staying here is good for Alec. We only brought him here because we were out of options.”
“And I’m glad you did,” Magnus says.
“But we can’t stay. He’s...vulnerable, right now.”
“You think I’d take advantage of him?”
Isabelle winces. Jace sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “No offense, Magnus, but you made your choice. Maybe it was to protect yourself, but we need to do our job and protect Alec. And right now that means keeping him away from here. From you.”
Magnus stands up forcefully, overwhelmed by the need to go. To be alone with his thoughts long enough to figure this out. He hasn’t processed the things he saw in Alec’s mind, or the feelings that keep arising in him every time he looks at Alec. He doesn’t know what to do with the near-hostile guardedness in Jace’s posture, the sorrow in Isabelle’s eyes. He doesn’t know what he did – or didn’t do – to deserve them, only that they know more than him about his own life, and his entire being is screaming that it’s not safe.
He flees to the kitchen, where he spends several minutes riding out a near panic attack.
What is he going to do now? Now that he knows something of the memories he’s missing, something more than whatever his mind could conjure to fill the holes and the little Catarina deigned to tell him, how can he go back to normal? He was doing just fine, before these damn Shadowhunters barged into life!
No, that’s not true. Magnus may be an expert at deceiving other people, but he doesn’t lie to himself. Or at least he didn’t use to – he feels like he’s been doing it a lot, recently. He’s not doing well. He’s going through the motions, but nothing in his life feels complete, feels right. He knows what depression looks like.
Can he pretend that he doesn’t crave whatever memories are in that box? The brain isn’t made to suddenly lose a part of itself like this. The neural pathways that have ruled Magnus’ emotions for however many years he erased are still here, and he doesn’t know how to fulfill them anymore. He’s physically and mentally craving something that isn’t there.
Maybe that’s why the glimpses he got from Alec’s mind have left him shaking and yearning.
Yes. It’s all a physical reaction from his brain. It’s an addiction. He just needs to treat it like any other addiction: wean himself off. Stay away.
That means staying away from Alec. At least he can agree with Jace on that. However much it will hurt, Magnus needs to remove himself from this situation.
When he walks back into the living room, hiding his trembling hands behind his back, Alec is awake and mostly alert. He’s sat up partially on the couch, propped up on the arm rest, and Isabelle is quietly talking to him. The tea has finally been served, and the three siblings are each holding a steaming mug, a fourth one awaiting Magnus on the table.
“Magnus,” Alec says when Magnus gingerly sits back down in his armchair. His voice is stronger than before, and his tone is no longer hopeful and confused, but pained. “Thank you, for saving my life. We owe you a debt beyond what we could pay you in money.”
Magnus takes his mug in his hand, trying to draw comfort from the warmth. “You don’t,” he says. “I was glad to help. And…I don’t know exactly what we...what happened between us that I’m missing, but it would be better for everyone not to keep score, wouldn’t it?”
Isabelle chokes on her tea. Alec just looks infinitely sad. “Okay,” he murmurs. “Whatever you want, Magnus.”
“Drink your tea,” Magnus says, feeling guilty for no reason he can understand. “Then I’ll make you a portal to your Institute.”
Alec nods. “Thank you.”
Playfully, Magnus leans over the coffee table to clink his mug with Alec. Alec meets his eyes and swallows. “To us,” he murmurs.
Magnus tilts his head, the words echoing strangely in his mind. “To us,” he repeats.
Alec looks away, letting out a small wounded sound. Magnus retreats, trying to give him space. He doesn’t know what he did wrong, but it obviously has to do with the memories he’s missing. Besides, he promised himself to detach himself, and he’s already getting too close again.
They sip their tea in silence, until Alec gives some kind of invisible signal and Jace hoists him to his feet. Magnus doesn’t say a word, a knot in his throat, as he throws open a portal and stands aside to let them through.
He already feels bereft, before the portal is even closed.
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Just Another Pretty Face (Part 3)
Summary:  Modern AU. Ahsoka Tano, Anakin’s sister and your student, insists that you would be perfect together. But whether it’s stubbornness or fear, the two of you deny it and go about your lives. However, the universe has other plans and ends up pushing you together, which results in you meeting in random places. (AKA the 5-ish places you run into Anakin)
Pairing: Lawyer!Anakin Skywalker x Writer!Reader
Words: 3.9k
Warnings: Anakin and Obi-Wan being lawyers (bare minimum), a guy being a creep, FLUFF, cussing
A/N: I’m still not used to writing such a purely fluffy series, but I love it. It’s a nice practice and a nice change. I hope you guys are liking it too! All lawyer shit I talk about is the bare minimum I know about lawyer shit, OKAY? 
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Sunday
That same Sunday night, you found yourself unable to sleep. You were tossing and turning, hit with a bout of insomnia. There were different parts of your brain demanding attention, trying to get you focused on a million things at once. You’d think about your novel, and then Ahsoka’s list, that cute guy in the leather jacket, any bills that were due. It was a waking nightmare, until you were struck with an idea.
Rather, it was a piece of dialogue, a fraction of a scene between the main character and the love interest. But it was enough to keep you hanging on to it. You had to write it down.
You jumped out of your bed, to your desk and opened up your laptop to the document with your novel. You stared at it warily, before labeling the next chapter, and starting to type out the idea. It was word vomit at first, but at least you were writing, clacking away at the keys once again. 
Once you got it out of your brain, you thought that would be enough, but you couldn’t just leave it that way. You couldn’t just let it be a fragment, so you wrote the part leading up to it, then the part after, and before you knew it, you were staying up until 3am, writing a whole chapter. And your body was aching for sleep, but you fought against it to get it done.
Thankfully you saved it a million times, before passing out with your head right next to your laptop.
You woke up the next morning, drooling all over your arm, and with an aching back. You barely remembered how you even got there, but upon seeing your laptop, you knew. You scrolled through the document, feasting your eyes on the new chapter, evidence that your writer’s block had gone away even if just for a night.
Despite the very few hours of sleep you got, the knowledge that you had actually written something, filled you with excitement and hope. And had you thinking that maybe taking some time for yourself, really was having some kind of positive effect on you.
***
Monday
“How’s Ahsoka doing?” Obi-Wan asked from his desk. He was in a grey suit, blue patterned tie over a white shirt, his eyes scanning over the pages of one of the many files sitting before him.
Anakin was sitting at the edge of the futon in Obi-Wan’s office, rolling up the sleeves of his white button up as he read the file on the floor in between his feet.
“She’s doing great. She’s made a lot of friends at school, which isn’t surprising. And she’s getting good grades, at least that’s what she tells me.”
“That’s good. Did you tell her we have a spot reserved for her on the team when she graduates law school?”
Anakin sighed, resting his elbows on his legs. “Yeah, but she’s got her sights set on immigration law. I don’t blame her.”
“It is a noble cause.”
When Anakin looked up at him, his partner was still looking at his file. Multitasking at its finest. He could never fully distract himself from his work when he was in the office. The brunette, on the other hand, allowed himself to lean back against the futon with his arms spread out against the back, and take a small break.
It was a day of poring over files at Skywalker & Kenobi. Both men had a new case defending their new client, Barbara Johnson, against some corporate assholes who had wrongfully terminated her. So, it was integral for their case to get as much dirt on them as possible for the upcoming court date. 
“She keeps insisting that I need a girlfriend,” he chuckled in disbelief. “She’s practically got girls lined up all the way out the door.”
“I’m surprised you don’t agree. You’re one of the most hopeless romantic people I know. You know, beneath the arrogance and hot-headedness.”
Anakin scoffed, but found himself unable to disagree with any of the points his friend made.
“I’m not as hopeless as I used to be.”
“You mean like when you were with Padme?” Obi-Wan teased.
Anakin’s lips pressed into a thin line at the mention of his ex-girlfriend. The reaction wasn’t as bad as it was when the break up was fresh, but it never failed to make his insides turn.
 Padme was his last girlfriend, and the only real relationship he had ever had in his life. They had been high school sweethearts, and he was a lovesick puppy when it came to her. They even talked about getting married, but then they grew apart. He became a lawyer and she was more into politics, and the person he thought was the one, was not.
It took him a long time to get over it.
“Yes, that’s what I meant,” he uttered through clenched teeth. 
“Still a touchy subject? After all these years?”
“I just don’t like talking about her, is all,” he said, very clipped. He didn’t talk about her any further. “I guess I just want to wait for the right person. I’m tired of just going out with anyone on endless dates that are all the same. If I meet the one, I’ll know when I meet them, you know?”
Obi-Wan regarded his partner with amusement. “Oh, and that’s not you being a hopeless romantic?”
Anakin rolled his eyes, “Shut up. So what if I am?”
“There’s nothing wrong with it. What about that girl you talked to me about? The one you met at the movie theater?”
The brunette perked up at that. The girl that he talked to in the snack line, and how beautiful she was. He was convinced that he’d never see her again, and yet he couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was strange. He hadn’t felt that way in a long time.
“What about her?”
“Did you feel something? You did say you’d know if you met the one,” Obi-Wan pressed on, mostly to humor him.
For once, Anakin was at a loss for words, and stumbled over anything he tried to say.
“I-I don’t know. I….I thought she was very beautiful, but I feel like that doesn’t mean anything.”
“But did you feel something?”
“Uh…..” He thought a lot about that brief exchange. It was nothing in the grand scheme of things, but he did find himself liking you despite knowing nothing about you. “Maybe…”
***
Amidst the work and the tutoring you had to do, you managed to get more done on your book. Even if it was just a little bit, it was enough of an accomplishment for you. You even tried getting out of the house to write more, and visited the Starlight Cafe frequently when you felt like you needed the chance to get out (and the excuse to splurge on coffee). 
Unbeknownst to you, you always came in right after Anakin and Obi-Wan got their daily morning coffee. Ahsoka had midterms to worry about (as did the rest of the kids), so she was more focused on that rather than trying to get you on a date with her brother. Although you were sure if you brought it up, she’d be more than happy to oblige. However, of course, in your own obliviousness, you were more caught up in your novel and the hot stranger you talked to at the theater.
As per the list Ahsoka gave you, you pampered yourself in the evenings when you felt the need or had the time. You bought some bath bombs and some face masks, and even did your own nails. Although it wouldn’t solve any underlying problems, you felt like a new woman by the end of the week.
You already had plans to go out on Saturday to the Natural History Museum as your next solo date. It meant you’d have to take a few trains, but you convinced yourself that it was part of the fun.
So, come Saturday, you got yourself a little more done up than last weekend. You put on a cute dress you had been meaning to wear for months, and some comfortable, but cute shoes. And took your small backpack filled with snacks, water, and all the essentials. With enough excitement to get the day going, you left your apartment for the highest recorded time ever, and headed off to the subway.
***
Saturday
It was Saturday yet again, and it went as usual for Anakin: Dress in casual wear, get his coffee at The Starlight, see Ahsoka, and walk Artoo at the park. Except whereas the rest of these days he’d try and take the day off, relax at home, or go to the gym, he chose to take another day of work.
This case was starting to snowball into something good, and the next step was to talk to an old coworker of their client’s, who was also apparently terminated under unusual circumstances. His name was George Jackson, and if they could find out the whole truth, and even get him to testify, it would help them with their case.
It was Obi-Wan who had found out this bit of information from their client, and passed it onto Anakin that Saturday morning during his walk. Today, George was set to work at a construction sight across town until 4pm, where he had been working for the past month. 
In the end, it was Anakin’s idea to go find him and talk to him immediately so as to not waste time. He had no better plans anyway. And despite the sigh from Obi-Wan, the one that said he wanted to enjoy his weekend, couldn’t help but tag along with his partner. He knew he’d end up going by himself anyway, and unless it was necessary, he rather they present themselves as a team.
They both suited up, a requirement for their professionalism, and agreed to meet at the subway station by the office. 
***
You boarded the train car, and took one of the remaining seats lining the windows. Some of your favorite, upbeat music played in your headphones, creating an invisible bubble of comfort and safety for you. The doors hissed closed after the rest of the people from the platform filled in, and the train began to trek onward, to its next destination. 
Knowing that you had quite a few stops before you had to get off, you pulled out a book from your backpack, and attempted to read on the way there. 
By the next stop, the car got even fuller, and more people were standing up against each other, holding onto the railing as there were no more seats left. You kept to yourself, engulfed by the little world that your music and book created. That was, until you were completely interrupted.
A finger tapped you on the shoulder, and with complete confusion, that was very apparent on your face, you tore your eyes away from your book. Standing above you, was a complete stranger, wearing cargo shorts and a tank top, who looked to be around his mid to late 20s. He waved at you and smiled a little too exuberantly for having just burst your personal bubble. Despite your wide eyes he proceeded to motion for you to take out your headphones.
Why? Why me, God? Doesn’t this idiot know that if you’re wearing headphones, it means, ‘fuck off’?
And yet, you found yourself hesitantly taking out your headphones, just to hear what this complete and total stranger had to say. Because women are trained to be nice to men right? And you’re in a packed train, all alone, and, you know, didn’t want to die later.
As soon as you took the headphones out and gave him a weak smile, he said, “Hey, I’m Andrew!”
“Hi….Andrew.”
“What’s your name?”
“Ummmm…” you hesitated, but then quickly decided to flat out lie, “Mare.”
“Nice to meet you Mare. You’re beautiful, by the way. Can I say that?”
“Uhhh, thank you?”
“I know this is out of the blue, but I saw you from across the way and I just had to talk to you.”
Did he think that was going to make me swoon?
He motioned to your headphones. “Whatcha listening to?”
“Catfish and the Bottlemen.”
“Eh I’ve never heard of em. But hey, you should listen to….”
You zoned out as he listed a slew of bands he swore were god’s gift to the earth, as well as his opinions on how he used to like this one band but they sold out or something. 
“Where ya headed?”
What the fuck did he care? Still, you were nice as you lied.
“I’m going to visit my grandma,” you nodded, as if that would sell it. You looked around desperately at the people around you, signaling to anyone else to talk to you, or to give him a hint that you were uncomfortable. 
“Oh, nice. Say, do you have a boyfriend?”
Oh God.
And before you could come up with a lie you were obligated to give, the voice from an angel came from the right side of the car.
“Hey, is this guy bothering you?”
You turned your attention to the source of the voice, who was a large man in a black suit, pushing past a group of people to get to you. Upon seeing his face, you were at a complete loss for words.
Long brunette hair, intense brown eyes, scar on the right side of his face. Except this time, instead of being in a leather jacket, he was in a sharp suit. An outfit that would’ve made you fall over if you weren’t already sitting.
Oh, that is so unfair.
The guy from the movie theater.
You?
***
Anakin and Obi-Wan stepped into the train car, which was getting fuller as it went on. They each gripped onto a handle to steady themselves as the train moved while they stood up. 
The two men were amidst a conversation about what questions they might ask George, when to his left he heard someone talking a little too loudly. Normally he would’ve ignored it, but his gaze naturally drifted in that direction, to the seats on the other side of the car. And there, is where he saw someone he swore he’d never see again.
His eyebrows lifted in shock as he angled himself to get a better look past the group of people in his way. He was completely ignoring Obi-Wan at this point, and it was obvious to his partner. But Anakin couldn’t be bothered, because right there, within his line of vision, was you, the girl from the movie theater.
What he also noticed, was that you were looking up at someone who was talking to you. He craned his neck to see that it was some guy who was standing a little too close. And based on your body language, the way you clutched your book, the way your eyes were wide, and how you smiled uncomfortably….you weren’t happy that he was talking to you.
Anakin narrowed his eyes. He was probably some creep who didn’t know anything about boundaries. And guys like that always pissed him off, always made him feel a sense of overprotective anger. Maybe it’s because he always thought about what he’d do if it was Ahsoka, or maybe he just hated creeps in general. Probably both.
“Anakin, are you even listening to me? What are you ogling at?” Obi-Wan piped up.
With a look over his shoulder he uttered, “Hold on, I’ll be right back.”
“Anakin, I know that look. Anakin, don’t...”
But his words fell on deaf ears as Anakin was already making his way over to the other side of the car. He wasn’t going to fight the guy, not if it didn’t call for it, but his gut often led him to speak up, maybe a little too aggressively, in times like this. It went against the usual, “Mind your own business” rule of the city, but he was never good at following rules. Unless, of course, they were under the court of law.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” the guy asked as Anakin pushed past a couple.
You were about to answer him when Anakin interrupted the very one sided conversation.
“Hey, is this guy bothering you?” he asked blatantly.
You looked up at him, and the expression of discomfort turned into one of genuine surprise. As you locked eyes, a look of recognition passed between you. The guy, however, wasn’t too pleased with Anakin’s choice of wording, or his interruption.
“‘Bothering’? I’m not bothering her, we’re just talking,” he said defensively.
Without tearing his eyes away from you Anakin spit out, “I wasn’t asking you.”
The other guy looked at you and pointed at Anakin questioningly, “Do you know this guy?”
You looked between them for a split second before nodding assuredly, “Yes, I do.”
Anakin motioned with his head to the other man and asked, “Do you know him?”
“No.”
“Is he bothering you?” he reiterated, all aggression saved for the third party and not you.
She shot the guy a wary glance, who was waiting expectantly. With a look of annoyance at him, she nodded.
That was enough for Anakin. Now, he looked at the man in a tank top and cargo shorts dead on and shrugged.
“You heard the lady. You’re making her uncomfortable, now piss off.”
The guy glared at the two of you, before waving you off and whispering, “fucking bitch,” as he walked away.
It took everything in Anakin not to pull him by the back of his shirt and punch him in his stupid face. Although he did fix him with a sneer of his own.
***
The beautiful brunette shot a sneer at Jeremy as he went off to another part of the train.
You couldn’t believe that he was here, right in front of you, yet again, and saved you from that terrible encounter no less.
When he looked back at you, his face softened. A smile pulled at his lips.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, that was just...weird. He came out of nowhere. As did you. Thank you for that, by the way.”
“No problem,” he smirked, which made your heart flutter. “You’re the girl from the movie theater, right? The one who snuck in the candy?”
You snorted and looked down at your book before confirming, “Yeah, yeah, that was me.”
“I knew I recognized you.”
The fact that he remembered you filled you with giddiness you had to repress.
You motioned to the very neat and very expensive looking suit he was wearing, “I almost didn’t recognize you in that suit. You clean up nice.”
He inclined his head in a shrug. “I kinda have to. It’s part of the job.”
You quirked up an eyebrow. The way he randomly mentioned that piqued your curiosity.
“And that job would be…?”
“I’m a lawyer.”
Now you had two raised eyebrows. For some reason, you hadn’t pegged him as someone who would have such a serious job. At least, not the first time you saw him. Maybe it was because he looked so young, or he had an air about him that didn’t scream “lawyer”. Now that he was in a suit, it was pretty damn obvious. That showed you for thinking men in leather jackets were of a different personality type.
The corners of your lips turned downward in an impressed frown.
“Wow. A lawyer.”
He chuckled, “I know, I know, I get told I’m too young, but I promise I passed the BAR with flying colors.”
You giggled, “I’ll take your word for it.”
“What about you? What do you do?” he asked.
“Oh, nothing that impressive,” you tried brushing off, humbly.
“Come on, I’m sure it’s something interesting,” he egged on.
You sighed, and hesitantly admitted, “I’m a writer.”
You weren’t a published one, technically, unless you counted the stuff you wrote as a freelancer. Still, you always felt like being a writer meant you needed to be successful in order to earn the title, so you were always hesitant to admit you were one when you weren’t even done with your first novel yet.
So, you were happily surprised when he enthusiastically uttered, “Nice! So...are you published in anything yet, or…?”
You scrunched up your nose at the dreaded question. “I’m trying to be.”
“Well, I’m sure you’ll get there.”
You smiled shyly, trying to hide any indication that the way he looked at you flustered you.
“Thank you, I hope so.”
The two of you smiled at each other, locking eyes in one of the least romantic places in Coruscant, and yet something was shared between the two of you. Something different than you’ve ever felt.
Suddenly, the train came to yet another screeching stop, and the announcer over the speaker said, “Yavin Ave,” which was your stop. At the sound of the doors opening, you tore your eyes away from the lawyer and jumped up from your seat.
“Shit. This is my stop.”
You gathered your backpack, book, and phone with headphones. The very attractive lawyer stepped out of the way to let you pass. You headed for the doors, but not before turning around to say goodbye to him.
He beat you to it.
“It was good seeing you again,” he called out.
You smiled and waved, “You too!”
Before the doors could slam shut without you going through them, you dashed onto the platform. With a big dumb smile on your face, you stuffed all of your things into your backpack. You felt like a schoolgirl with a crush, but you didn’t care.
He remembered you, and stood up for you when he didn’t even know anything about you. And he talked to you, and was so sweet. He was a lawyer?? He was...He was….
Shit. What was his name?
You whirled around only to have your hair swept up by the leaving train. Not that you would’ve had time to go back in there and ask, but you didn’t get a chance to ask his name. You didn’t even think to do so.
“Shit.”
***
Anakin put his free hand in his pocket as he watched you go, and then the doors close behind you. He stared, maybe a little too long and a little too hard out the window, until the train started moving again, and everything became a blur.
His partner and friend, Obi-Wan, finally came to join him after having witnessed the strange encounter from afar. He regarded his friend with furrowed brows.
“For a moment there I swore I was going to have to get you out of a fight again.”
Anakin hummed, “Me too. That guy was a creep.”
“What was that all about?” Obi-Wan asked. 
“That was the girl, the girl from the movie theater.”
Obi-Wan looked towards the doors, as if he was going to find you amidst the blur the train left behind.
“Really?” he asked in genuine disbelief.
“Yeah. I didn’t think I’d see her again.”
He thought what he felt was all in his head, what he felt a week ago, but after seeing you again, there was no denying it. He was so taken by you, it was otherworldly. And it hit him like a wave every time he saw you. Maybe Obi-Wan was on the right track when he asked him if he felt like he felt something.
“Did you get her number?”
Anakin deflated at the question. “No.”
“Did you even get her name?” Obi-Wan raised his voice.
Now, he closed his eyes and hissed through his teeth. He mentally kicked himself for not even bothering to ask the simplest of questions. He knew your job but not your name. How was he ever going to find you again?
“Shit.”
***
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aboutcaseyaffleck · 3 years
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Casey Affleck Gets Philosophical About Life, Time & The Whole Damn Thing
“Time,” reflects Casey Affleck, “is something I have been thinking about lately. It is ironic how the older you get, the better you are at being patient. With less time left, people become better at waiting. But this year, I feel much older and a lot less patient. I guess you’ve got to accept that time is never wasted? That doing is no different than not doing? That you can’t kill time no matter what you do, and that no matter what you do you can’t prevent the opposite from happening either? I don’t know. It’s a double-edged sword.”
It’s a Wednesday afternoon in early January, and Affleck and I are doing the Zoom thing, ostensibly to discuss his two new movies, the recently released indie Our Friend and the upcoming 19th-century period drama The World to Come. Yet our virtual tête-à-tête has become far more interesting, jumping wildly from his love of trains and travel to weightier topics like family, the future and the search for something more, something meaningful.
“I like the idea that time is an illusion. That past, present and future are all happening at once. I like it even though I can’t totally get my head around it. But either way, the me in the mirror gets older every day.”
Like most of us, he’s not only had plenty of time on his hands in recent months, housebound in L.A., but he’s tried to use his downtime wisely. “I tried to use this year of quarantine constructively,” the 45-year-old Oscar winner says. “I tried to see it as a winter season for shutting down and restoring something inside, but I just couldn’t. I’m not that evolved, I guess. I didn’t take up a new hobby or learn an instrument or get better at ‘self-care.’ If anything, I let my better habits and routines fall off. It was all I could do to keep my head above water and help buoy my friends and children when I could.”
As a guy with two teenagers at home — Indiana, 16, and Atticus, 13 — it hasn’t been easy, but he’s doing his best. He tried taking his sons on their annual camping road trip over the summer, but it was short-lived. Instead, he’s been focusing on making a happy home. “My kids don’t get to see their friends a lot, so I’m doing a lot more stuff with them, coming up with activities for the three of us, which they mostly hate, and I mostly let drop. And then I try again with the same outcome 90 percent of the time.”
While trying to create innovative plans to sustain his boys, he came up with one he thought might do some good, too. In June, he launched Stories from Tomorrow, a social-media initiative focused on creative writing by kids.
“At the beginning of all this last March, the first thing that occurred to me was that the quarantine would have a big impact on young people’s emotional well-being — the disruption they’re going to feel is really going to affect their mental health more than anyone else,” he says. “When I would sit down to write creatively, I felt better. But I couldn’t get my sons to journal or do creative writing much. I didn’t want to twist their arms about it. So I was like, ‘I’ll make a social media platform that inspires young people to write creatively, because it is such a good way of working out difficult feelings. And the way I will do that is have well-known people read the kids’ writing publicly.’ I knew that hearing your own writing read was exciting. I thought it would be really inspiring, that creative writing would be a great outlet for kids stuck at home.”
He enlisted some of the biggest names in Hollywood, including Robert Redford, Matt Damon, Don Cheadle, Jon Hamm, Matthew Broderick, Kyle Chandler and Danny Glover, as well as two current costars, Vanessa Kirby and Jason Segel, and arranged for donations made through the program to go to children’s hunger nonprofit Feeding America and Room to Read, which supports female education. He reached out to schools in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Haiti, hoping to create a global community.
Affleck was excited to make progress, to have done some good, but the initiative didn’t take off as planned. “In the end, an Instagram account for creative writing by tweens just couldn’t possibly compete with the quintillion bytes of daily data generated online. I don’t know. But I tried! And anyway, since then lots of other organizations started doing basically the same thing, and they are more organized than I am, and they have done a better job. So be it.”
Yet, adults have been disrupted, too, including Affleck himself, who is aware that, relatively speaking, he has gotten through mostly unscathed. “Am I happy? I mean, I’m relatively okay. It’s been a hard time to find balance and to keep it. I would say it’s been a hard time in my life, but I know that it’s been harder for other folks. So far we haven’t lost anyone, and we haven’t lost our house. And I rediscovered that when you’re feeling bad, there’s nothing better to do than to try to help other people. Being of service not only helps others but is a great way of getting outside of yourself. Also — and I really believe this — I think this time will be remembered as one when our country made leaps and bounds in the right direction; we are changing and growing and it’s uncomfortable, but we will be much, much better. I wish I could see the next couple hundred years. It’s going to be amazing.”
At the end of the day, it’s family that’s keeping him going. “Having my kids around and being able to spend so much time with them has been amazing. It is the brightest silver lining in all of this. They are what gives me the most joy. They are funny and smart and interesting and interested. They are just the best company ever,” he says. “Anytime I try to parent out some ‘teaching moment,’ I find they are two steps ahead. They help me make sense of stuff just as much I help them, if not more. I don’t have any answers, but batting the questions around, back and forth, is a good way of coping.”
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CALEB CASEY MCGUIRE AFFLECK-BOLDT feels he is luckier than most. Although he and many of his peers have gone jobless for a full year, he spent 2019 working hard. He had not one but three films done and dusted prior to the start of the pandemic; the last one wrapped a week before mandatory quarantine. Two of these have back-to-back release dates: the tearjerker indie Our Friend came out in January, and sweeping period drama The World to Come will be released February 12. Thriller Every Breath You Take is slated for later this year. “I am so, so, so glad I spent 2019 working that much. It is what kept us afloat all through 2020,” he says.
The films themselves are radically different, but there are a few common threads. In both of his winter releases, Affleck plays a man who has lost a family member and whose marriage is in shambles. In both, he is a man in pain.
In the LGBTQ masterpiece The World to Come, which revolves around the love that blossoms between two married women on the mid-19th-century American frontier, his character, Dyer, says very little but manages to convey a wealth of emotion with his eyes alone. He may seem stoic, but he is suffering.
“The World to Come is a story about a couple who have lost a baby. They’re dealing with the grief in totally different ways and having a very hard time coming together again,” he explains. “My character wants to heal that by having another, but his wife [played by Katherine Waterson] is coping in a different way. She is severing all emotional attachment to him because it triggers more and more grief. She [only] seems to come alive when she is with their neighbor, a woman on the next farm [played by Vanessa Kirby]. He wants his wife happy, but he also would like her to love him. To me, this is the story of how couples can have their relationship shattered by a sudden loss. And it’s definitely a beautiful story about two women who feel that they have to hide their love and find the courage to love each other anyway.”
Affleck likes layers. He himself has many, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that he’s drawn to roles written as fully formed characters, not caricatures. With Dyer, that’s abundantly clear. “Crisis is fun to play, [and Dyer] is in an interesting crisis,” he says. “I think he’s a really good person — a really decent, solid, loving person — which is what I loved so much about playing him and what I love so much about the writing. It’s more interesting when there’s no bad guy, just a conflict of circumstances and feelings that get so complicated that it drives two people apart.”
In Our Friend, a different set of circumstances drives the leads apart. Affleck and Dakota Johnson take on the true story of Matthew and Nicole Teague, whose imperfect marriage was strained by his long absences and her affair, neither of which seem at all important when she’s diagnosed with terminal cancer.
“To me, Our Friend is really a story about how petty grievances between people can divide them and then be forgotten when a gigantic tragedy is dropped in their laps. [Matthew] was wronged, it’s true — his wife cheated on him. On the other hand, he wronged her in a bunch of ways; [they] were just more passive and not quite so salacious. He wasn’t around. Matt got to be a dad and he got to travel the world as a journalist. He left her to take care of the kids. She wanted to have a life too, she had dreams of her own — she wanted to be a singer, she wanted to work — but she didn’t get to do that. She just got to be a mom. She was left holding the bag, and it wasn’t fair.”
He spent a fair amount of time immersing himself in the journalist’s life while filming in Fairhope, Ala., in 2019. (The film’s title is taken from Teague’s award-winning Esquire essay, “The Friend: Love Is Not a Big Enough Word.” The friend in question — played by Jason Segel — is a man who puts his life on hold to help the family during their darkest days.) But he did not become Matt Teague, which is an important distinction. “[Director] Gabriella Cowperthwaite asked that we not portray the personality traits of the real people. No accents, no mannerisms. [But] I did steal his style, because I had never seen someone nail the dad look any better than Matt. I say that with affection.”
As for the dreams Nicole gave up for her family, Affleck says, “If you were to ask Matt, I’m sure he would acknowledge that he was neglecting his role. He was neglecting her dreams, and that is a part of marriage, supporting what the other person wants. Like all relationships, it was complicated.”
Like life itself, really. This is why he can identify with both sides. He understands Nicole’s pain about the deference of her dreams as well as Matt’s desire to escape through travel — especially now, when Affleck himself has been completely grounded. Since the age of 17 he’s taken 20 cross-country road trips. His love of driving is secondary only to his enthusiasm for trains: Amtrak is his jam. He even fantasizes about owning his own train car one day.
Immersing himself in each location — whether it’s the sleepy Alabama town of Fairhope or the more exotic locale of Romania, which served as a stand-in for the East Coast of the U.S. in The World to Come — is actually one of the most desirable parts of the acting life, he says. “One of the things I love about working as an actor is that you go to some brand-new place and the community invites you in in a way that they don’t usually if you’re a tourist,” he confides. “You get to see what it’s like to really be there and imagine yourself living there.”
And he has — over the past ten years he’s spent so much time in cities including his hometown of Boston; Vancouver, British Columbia, the location of Light of My Life; Atlanta, where he shot the 2016 action flick Triple 9; Argentina, where he made Gerry; Dallas, for A Ghost Story; Calgary, Alberta, where much of the epic western The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford was filmed; Our Friend’s Fairhope set; Cincinnati, for The Old Man and the Gun; and Braddock, Pa., where he filmed the 2013 drama Out of the Furnace. “I have loved moving in and settling down and living a character’s life and then moving on. But I feel most at home in places that are struggling to get by. It reminds me of the neighborhood I grew up in. I feel lighter in those places, more relaxed. I feel like myself. I fit in.”
For him, the where is almost as important as the who — immersing himself in the place is imperative to understanding his character. This is part of what makes him such an accomplished actor — he and most of the parts he plays merge. I draw a crappy analogy about how the characters are like a coat, which he very obligingly works with. “You have to build the coat from all of the scraps and pieces of yourself; all these characters are made up of little pieces of me,” he says, noting, “Obviously, sometimes they can’t be. Sometimes I have no connection whatsoever, and those are the jobs I look back on and I either feel nothing for, or worse. But sometimes you have to take the job that is available, like most people in the world. You know? I don’t think my dad wanted to be a janitor. But he did it.”
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He’s won an Oscar, a BAFTA, a Critics’ Choice Award, a Golden Globe and an Independent Spirit Award, among others, and appeared in films that run the gamut from box-office juggernauts like the Ocean’s 11 franchise and Tower Heist to indie darlings like brother Ben’s directorial debut Gone Baby Gone and Manchester by the Sea. He has even written and directed, most recently 2019’s Light of My Life, a bizarrely prescient movie about raising children in a pandemic. At this point in his career, he should have his pick of parts. “Not really,” he says. “There are a lot of people out there who have done good work, who are driven, and who have something to share. I have never been someone studios embraced as a ‘movie star,’ never knighted. I have always had to fight for the parts I have gotten. And you know what? That’s fine. Let me fight. It’s how I cut my teeth, and it is how I will keep them sharp. You can’t ask for more than a chance to be in the ring. Also, movies and TV aren’t all I care about. Sometimes I think, ‘Well, jeez, I have to work, and there are two jobs available to me, and the one that isn’t as good is the one that is close to home and I can see the kids, so I guess I am doing that.’ I love movies and really try hard to make them good. I really bust my ass every day when I get the chance to make one. I care more about my family than any movie. It’s not [always] the job I love, but this is the reality of my life. But maybe life will be long enough for a few more chapters.
The forward momentum of his future is an interesting topic. At the moment, he isn’t so much planning for the future as he is exploring it, because Affleck is not someone who likes to live with regret.
“I guess [at the end of the day], regret should be reframed as a reminder to be different,” he observes. And so, with this in mind, he embarked on a personal journey several years ago and decided to go back to college (at the Simon Fraser University in British Columbia). He had completed two years at Columbia University, but he never graduated — his film career kept getting in the way.
“I went back to school because I hadn’t finished, and I wanted to think about new things in a way that school can help you do,” he says. “I couldn’t go in person, so I found a strong online school and got started. You know, I’m 45, and I just thought, ’This is halftime. This is where you hit the locker room and think about how you want the rest of the game to go.’ You know what I mean? Like, ‘Okay, we went out, we played our best, we didn’t know what the other team was going to be like, we made some mistakes, we are in the game, so let’s adjust like this.’ Also, I’m not sure I want to be an actor forever. I had made a small pivot from acting into directing, and into producing more. And I like to direct movies. The most satisfying creative experience I’ve had in a long time was being a director. But ultimately it wasn’t quite enough. So I wanted to go study some of the things I was interested in. I wanted to do more with my life.”
Although he needed general credits to graduate, he found an unexpected passion for juvenile justice along the way, with a particular focus on alternative accountability programs. “I don’t know where this will lead me, or why I am so interested in it, but finding and implementing better systems for addressing harm and conflict among kids, adults too, but mostly young people, is something I care about. And the work that I have done so far has been fascinating and deeply rewarding.”
When I ask if this stems from his own experiences as a troubled kid growing up in Cambridge, Mass., with Christine, a single mom — his parents divorced when he was 9; his father, Timothy, an alcoholic tradesman, checked into a rehab facility in Indio, Calif., when Affleck was just 14 — he muses thoughtfully, “I love my parents and think they both did the very best they could and cared a lot. Period. Did I get into some trouble as a teenager? I got into some trouble when I was a kid, and I struggled a lot through high school with depression and substances, yes. Much of it I didn’t even know wasn’t normal. I don’t know if I was ‘troubled.’ Either way, as an adult, I’ve come to see that, regardless of how I compare to anyone else, I want less conflict in my life. That might be part of the reason why I’ve been so interested in learning about better ways of resolving conflicts, both with children and with grown-ups. It isn’t something they teach in school for some reason. Man, there is a lot they don’t teach you in school, huh? A lot you’ve got to learn on your own.”
And on this journey, mistakes will be made. That’s par for the course, and Affleck is no exception. “I have made so many mistakes, but life is the time for mistakes. I do believe people should hold themselves accountable and repair harm they have caused. That is important to me, and I try hard to do that whenever it is called for: apologize for mistakes and repair them,” he admits.
This is when our conversation, as such conversations are wont to do, comes full circle. Before we say goodbye, Affleck remarks, “You know, I heard Bono talking on Howard Stern’s show, and he said something about Frank Sinatra that was interesting. He said that he heard two versions of Frank singing ‘My Way.’ One version was recorded when Frank was young, and the other version was recorded when Frank was old. Each had the exact same words, same arrangement, same everything. But when Frank was young the line ‘I did it my way’ sounded proud, and when Frank was old it sounded humble. Whatever else time does to a person, I think it also does that.”
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one-shall-rise · 4 years
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STUDY: Optimus Prime.
tagged by: @heligooddeals (WE ARE GETTING CLOSER) tagging: steal it.
—    basics.
▸     is your muse tall/short /average? Since there are multiple universes, I should pretense that all responses will be Aligned-only.
As Optimus Prime, he stands quite tall in comparison to the rest of the Autobots and even most Decepticons. As Orion Pax, he was somewhat average, only standing a few inches taller than most in Iacon. But compared to the denizens of Kaon, Orion was quite short. His stature truly depended on his current location.
▸     are they okay with their height? Yes and no. As Orion Pax he normally did not like to catch too much attention, so he preferred to blend into the crowd. Standing taller or far shorter than his surroundings usually worked against him. As Optimus Prime, he has long since grown over that anxiety, but occasionally he finds himself wistful for his previous frame if only because he feels his height sets him further apart from his comrades.
▸     what’s their armor like? Predominantly red with accents of blue on his helm, and a mixture of silver and blue plating for his legs. Despite being a warframe, he is not as heavily armored as the likes of Megatron. His physique leans more into flexibility and durability rather than weight and power.
▸     do they spend a lot of time on their appearance / grooming? No. He finds it wasteful with how limited their resources are at the moment but does not see the harm in his subordinates indulging on the occasion if it assists their mental and emotional wellbeing. But he prefers not to.
▸     does your muse care about their appearance / what others think? Not in the manner of impressing. The role of Prime is a heavy burden to bear and sets him apart from his Autobots and friends by mere title alone. Combined with the change his frame has gone through after receiving the Matrix, Optimus now stands even further distanced from his peers and occasionally mourns it. He never wanted to be a weapon.
—    preferences.
▸     indoors or outdoors? Indoors. ▸     rain or sunshine? Sunshine. ▸     forest or beach? Forest. ▸     precious metals or gems? Gems if he must. ▸     flowers or perfumes? Flowers. ▸     personality or appearance? Personality. ▸     being alone or being in a crowd? Being alone. ▸     order or anarchy? Order. ▸     painful truths or white lies? Painful truths. ▸     science or magic? Science, though he enjoys the idea of magic. ▸     peace or conflict? Peace. ▸     night or day? Night. ▸     dusk or dawn? Dawn. ▸     warmth or cold? Warmth. ▸     many acquaintances or a few close friends? A few close friends. ▸     reading or playing a game? Reading.
—    questionnaire.
▸     what are some of your muse’s bad habits? Optimus’s worst habits truly only make themselves known when he’s around a particular warlord. He can be stubborn and self-righteous (even if others may not perceive it as such), even brutal at times when he is in the throes of combat. But his stubbornness has two sides, not only in how he perceives what is right and just but also in what he sees as redeemable. He cannot deny that he has contributed to the length of the war with his resolute determination to bring Megatron back to his senses without killing him. He also cannot deny that this has caused countless lost lives not only amongst his own people but other worlds, with his refusal to terminate his long-time enemy. But it is a burden he will bear if it means bringing back his friend. One could say he is being selfish.
▸     has your muse lost anyone close to them? how has it affected them? Megatronus. Alpha Trion is perhaps the greatest personal loss that Optimus has suffered. Alpha Trion was Orion Pax’s mentor and served as a somewhat sire-figure for the young archivist. After becoming Prime and Megatronus, now Megatron, igniting a revolutionary war, Alpha Trion was Megatron’s first critical victim. The loss came shortly after his ascendence but before he recovered the Matrix, leaving a young Orion Pax deathly alone in unknown territory that he was expected to navigate by his followers. With none to confide in and having lost both of his mentors, Orion closed in on himself and focused only on keeping his head above the water. Everything else had to be cast aside.
▸     what are some fond memories your muse has? Despite how much trouble he got into for it, he did enjoy the many pranks that he and Ariel committed under Alpha Trion’s tutelage. One, in particular, is the time that they jigged Alpha Trion’s desk by adding a couple of centimeters of metal blockage underneath one of the legs. The desk wobbled every time it was used and frustrated Alpha Trion to the point he refused to return to work until it was replaced.
His first time training with Megatronus is also a fond memory. It did not go well at all, Megatronus was not used to teaching and Orion had no combat experience, but the two of them had great fun in learning together. Orion went home very bruised and beaten up that day, but no less energized from the workout. He had never done anything so physically demanding before and it gave him a sense of accomplishment being able to keep up with Megatronus over time.
The first time he was able to bring Megatronus to the Hall of Records in Iacon. While their initial tour of the city left Megatronus none too impressed, Orion knew that the gladiator would become fond of the knowledge hidden in the halls of this particular institution. He had never seen Megatronus so quiet and enamored before. They spent the entire day together simply reading while discussing their works of interest, and Orion finds that he misses his friend all the more with this memory.
▸     is it easy for your muse to kill? No life will ever be easily taken.
▸     what’s it like when your muse breaks down? He isolates himself for the most part. Optimus Prime cannot be seen grieving and folding under the pressure. But Orion Pax is still part of him, is still who he is despite the changes, and he grieves an ocean of regrets and pain. He will try to compress what he can, but if it builds up too much and too quickly, he will struggle to stay still or to stand and will simply shake in silence while trying to hold back the tide.
When pushed to that point, it is rare he succeeds.
▸     is your muse capable of trusting someone with their life? Yes. And there is one that, despite everything, he finds he will still always trust when their word is given.
▸     what’s your muse like when they’re in love? He adores small moments of affection in public, as long as they are not embarrassing (but even then he enjoys them, he just acts irritated). He prefers handholding where possible, and exchanging notes with each other when they must be apart. He’s also more likely to act inappropriately when he is with someone he adores because of his comfort with them and can be more easily convinced to do otherwise... naughty things he would have never done before.
He smiles more often when he is around them. He is particularly defensive of them as well, even if he knows they are in the wrong and will go out of his way to keep them out of trouble. It can be very tiring depending on who it is. But he will also be more prone to arguments, not feeling the need to acquiesce to the view of what a Prime should be when he is in a personal relationship. He’ll be more comfortable revealing his true thoughts and feelings in disagreements than he would have been prior.
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arcticdementor · 4 years
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There is, as happens so often these days, a spectre haunting the imagination of the western left. That specter is most commonly dubbed ”strasserism”, though it has other names, such as ”redbrownism”, ”nazbolism”, or more unwieldy names like ”Angela Nagle leftism”. When I came into the left at the beginning of the last decade, these terms did not exist in any meaningful way. As far as me and the people I knew were concerned, ”strasserite” was an incredibly obscure term used exclusively by online neo-nazis is their petty, internicine conflicts. None of us paid them or their silly ideological totems any heed.
At the beginning of the first half of the 2010’s, the left I was a part of was finally starting to feel hopeful again, after the disorientation and loss of direction that came with the fall of actually existing socialism. During the long winter years of the 90’s and early 00’s, people either hopelessly and bitterly clung to a prophecy that everyone else had now fully discarded, or they tried finding new boutique causes to replace the ones that had failed. To take my native Sweden as an example, two of the more significant new causes were opposing the neo-nazis and opposing globalization. There were some victories – or at least, people liked to think so – but the idea of actually achieving political power was dead in everything but name. The left mostly came to accept the role as the social conscience of liberalism, or in the case of antifascism, fancied itself as the Batman protecting end-of-history Gotham City. The streets of triumphant liberal society might have been gritty, the politicians corrupt and undeserving, but antifascist Batman still rose out of bed every night to protect the craven and the low from monsters lurking in the shadows. Or so they liked to think. Most of the time, they just hung out and drank beer.
All the details of the intervening decade are beyond the scope of this essay, but it’s fair to say that the left today is more broken and politically defunct than at any point since the fall of the Soviet Union. In fact, a case can be made that the crisis facing the left today is more serious than the crisis of the late 80s and early 90s. ”Left populism” as a political model has failed. Jeremy Corbyn has presided over the worst labour party showing in nearly a century. The ”Sanders moment” is over, and there’s no sequel to any of these failed left projects anywhere in sight. This decline is likely terminal and irreversible, because unlike the decline in the 90s, the left no longer has any significant working class support. In fact, with each new ”left revival” a la Corbyn, the constant bleeding of working class support only seems to accelerate. Comrade Bhaskar at Jacobin magazine touts the (in)famous AOC as the next new great presidential candidate and hope for global socialism, but anyone with an IQ somewhere north of the melting point of water – or at least, anyone who doesn’t have a paper he’s eagerly trying to sell you – knows that this is a truly desperate flight of fancy that will never come to pass, not in a million years.
We first begin with the obvious. Strasserism does not actually exist. Nobody reads the Strasser brothers, not even the neo-nazis who threw accusations of strasserism at each other decades before anyone else. Nobody outside of Russia – and for that matter, nobody inside of Russia – cares about the intellectual output of the National Bolshevik party, if such an output were to be shown to exist. The reason the term strasserism has been brought out from the dustbin of history by the contemporary left is because said left is currently in the middle of a social and political panic, and this panic has at least two central functions. Firstly, panics such as these are one way for a group of believers to deal with a situation where prophecy fails. For the left, the only thing it knows today is constant failure. Like any religious cult, the failure of prophecy can only be redeemed by shedding the blood of those members identified as polluting the faith. The price of social cohesion is the turn toward constant purges.
Partaking in this ritual of self-depreciation does not mark you as an outsider. It is only if you break the rules of the game, only if you acknowledge the man behind the curtain, only if you point to the basic truth hidden behind this outer layer of ironic self-mockery that you become one of us, one of the so-called strasserites. This truth is a fairly simple marxist truth. Classes have class interests, and so the idea that you could have a political movement – the left – that was well and truly dominated by one class, yet still wholly committed to the class interests of another class, but also just too bumbling and out of touch to ever do a good job of looking out for the class it supposedly ”really” cares about is, to put it extremely mildly, a dubious idea. It is much more likely that a political movement dominated by one class will also be more or less entirely dedicated to pursuing the class interests of that class, while also being unable to take any strong action that goes against the interests of its dominant class.
There was a socialism before Marx, and it was utopian and based on human reason and moral progress. There are good reasons for why this brand of socialism fell out of favor, but within its context one can definitely hold the view that a small class of enlightened and educated well-to-do people, acting out of the goodness of their own hearts, will eventually bring about socialism by lifting up the poor, racist and/or stupid proles. You don’t have to agree with it, but it fits together.
A central premise of marxist, materialist or scientific socialism, on the other hand, is that classes simply cannot act this way. Classes pursue their own interests and act politically not out of greed, or generosity, or any other personal bit of sentiment, but due to historical and economical pressures. It is this very simple fact that makes the ”materialism” of someone like Bhaskar Sunkara at Jacobin magazine, and of most leftists of his stripe in general, so incredibly contradictory. For it to work, there has to be an unstated agreement among the faithful to never seriously use the tools of marxist analysis on the left itself. Any and all self-examination must remain on the level of personal discussion (”can person so and so really be a socialist, when her parents are so rich?”). The punishment for transgression against this agreement, for breaking the most sacred code of Omerta the modern left has, is swift and severe: you will get cancelled for this, and you will be added to the ever growing list of ”strasserites” and ”secret nazis” who tried to lure the faithful away from the true path. What happened to Angela Nagle is instructive in this regard; her article, The Left Case Against Open Borders, was an attempt to argue against unrestricted immigration from a class-based, materialist perspective. It’s quite likely – and also quite amusing – that she would probably have recieved less sustained hate online if she had written that immigration shouldn’t be allowed as long as non-white people talk funny and smell bad.
I bring my own example up not to relitigate old battles but to underline the point that the sin that earns people the label of ”strasserite” or ”chud” or ”redbrown nazi” has nothing to do with racist animus, or even the issue of immigration more generally. Conjuring up the threat of racism and the ghosts of Nazi Germany is not done because it is true, but because it is necessary. In my case, having a father who came to Sweden to work from central Africa proved to be an embarassing but fairly minor speed bump on the way to declaring me a fighter for aryan blood purity. There is nothing foolish or irrational about any of this; our esteemed comrades are simply doing the only thing they can do, faced with a contradiction they are unable to resolve and a movement that is rapidly falling apart.
While I don’t pretend to speak for anyone other than myself, I would claim that the ”strasserite” class-analysis of politics in the west and the role of the left today has a few central features. To start: as the economies in western countries have shifted over the past decades, a new sort of class of people has sprung up and grown in social and political importance. In the united states, the most common name for this class is PMCs; the professional-managerial classes. Their name is less important than their function and political trajectory. To brutally simplify things for the sake of brevity, the notable feature of many PMCs as political actors is a blend of political liberalism and cultural progressivism, merged with a political project aimed at increasingly subsidizing their own reproduction as a class, ideally by means of state transfers. The state should forgive student debt. The state should dabble in reparations. The state should hire ”ideas people” to write up reports and thinkpieces about reparations. The state should create new racial justice commissions, or just generally create more jobs that can employ people who by dint of belonging to this class feel that them taking a job at Walmart means that capitalism has failed and it’s time for a revolution. The most radical, put-upon and economically insecure parts of this class today naturally gravitate toward the left, because the left is – no matter what leftists delude themselves by saying – a fairly focused, competent and credible class project. When Corbyn came out of nowhere and became Labour party leader, it was a real grassroots movement that brought him there; a grassroots movement of students and people who either have ambition to move up the ladder or a legitimate fear of looming proletarianization, of falling down the social and economic ladder and finding themselves joining the proles.
The particular form of ”pro-worker” rhetoric these members of the PMC use mostly boils down to a sort of charity. Vote for us, and we’ll give you higher benefits and free broadband, Labour recently tried to tell the recalcitrant workers of the north. It didn’t work. This mode of ”charity” is hardly selfless – it would be a free ”gift” from these PMC activists given to their precious salt of the earth proletarians, and like all gifts it would be reliant on the goodwill and generosity of the giver. Its main function would also surely be to feather the ever growing number of nests for this class of comfortable, university-educated administrators. And when some leftists start seriously debating why ”racists” should be denied medical care from the NHS, one starts getting a sense of just how much hierarchical domination their future ”worker’s paradise” promises to deliver to the working poor.
The point here is not a moral one. After Labour lost, one exasperated member and activist despaired over how blind the workers were, how easily fooled they were by tory propaganda. ”Don’t they see how evil capitalism is? How brutal and unfair it is?”, this activist wrote: ”I have many friends with good grades who are stuck working at grocery stores, stocking shelves”. Anyone who pretends to be some sort of materialist cannot in good conscience make fun of sentiments like this; it is completely rational for someone in that position to think that ”the evils of capitalism” are somehow laid bare for the world to see when their friends are forced to stock shelves like a common peon in order to pay the rent. That the other workers at the grocery store probably find this way of thinking completely ludicrous and arrogant is obviously besides the point.  Politically speaking, the fury and energy that proletarianization engenders should never be underestimated, because it causes political explosions. Jeremy Corbyn successfully challenged the political cartel that had been running Labour on the back of such a political explosion.
We should not make fun of an activist who despairs at the state of the world when good, solid middle class people with solid middle class grades can no longer achieve the middle class lifestyle they were promised. It is however a basic political truth that a worker’s movement consisting of people who are angry at the prospect social and economic ”demotion” – in other words, people who are fighting against the cruel fate of having to become workers – cannot ever succeed. Promising free broadband, or unlimited Space Communism, or some other stupid fantasy world where getting angry at having to work like a normal person is acceptable because nobody has to work won’t really change that.
The grand political divide that sundered the house of modern ”socialism” boils down to the question of which class should have its interests taken care of in the first instance. It is all well and good to talk about ”doing both”, or try to soothe workers by saying that once socialism wins, nobody will work, so they’ll all be taken care of then.  A century ago Joe Hill mocked the preachers who tried to placate starving workers by promising them there’d be plenty of pie up in the sky after they were all dead. Today, Aaron Bastani does an even more pathetic job within that vaunted political tradition, promising the british working class asteroid mining and fully automated communist holodecks once The Revolution(tm) succeeds. Until that day comes, though, it can’t really be helped that they’ll have to stay under the thumb of – and fight the battles for – the downwardly mobile professionals, huh? After all, who will build all those fancy asteroid miners if little Junior suddenly has to work at Starbucks like a common plebeian?
This is not a question of left incompetence, or Brexit suddenly wrecking everything, or something that Bernie woulda, coulda, shoulda done. The left is bleeding working class support everywhere. The left is picking up support among the more affluent and well-to-do stratas everywhere. The left is merging with greens and liberal ”progressives” everywhere. This is not incompetence, or cowardice. It is not personal, nor can it be fixed by the actions of individual persons; it is a vindication of historical materialism, and it is playing out right before our very eyes.
It is time for the ”socialism” of the professional and managerial classes and the socialism of the working classes to part ways. The former is moribund and a historical dead-end. The latter, I think, still has a case to be made for it. More importantly – and personal experience from outside the left bears this out  – it still has an audience that is willing to listen to it.
Workers aren’t stupid. They’re not evil. They haven’t been ”tricked by the media”. They need no false shepherds to guide them, no well-paid moral commissars to teach them to not randomly slaughter their neighbors because of muh racism. They have abandoned the left parties because the left parties have abandoned them, not ”culturally” as some proponents of identity politics would like you to think, but materially. They know their own class interests, and they know that the left is inimical to those interests. This is good news, at least for those of us with the courage and political will needed to help them free themselves from their so-called ”betters”. Let the Labour activists of London lament over how ”disappointed” they are that the working class has stopped following orders. We will not be like you. We will not promise new masters and new yokes to live under, new aristocracies and ”vanguards” to subsidize, new cadres of people selling them moral sermons and sensitivity courses. We will promise them a chance at revenge.
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esttian · 5 years
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Attire
@ironstrangehaven ‘s gift exchange.
Summary: After saving half the universe from the Mad Titan, Tony is sent to recover to Kamar-taj under Stephen's watch. There, Tony discovers his affinity to magic and raises in the ranks exponentially quickly. As he obtains the title of Master, the arrangement for Tony's personal robes are tasked to Stephen.
Notes: I signed as a pinch hitter for the Ironstrange gift exchange. Rating: Mature
Prompt: Stephen teaching Tony magic/showing him around the sanctum/dressing him up robes
For @sondercurse  (I can’t tag them) Hope you like it.  Read in AO3
A length of carmine cloth floats along his left side hip, like a smooth river kissing his skin in its wake. The material twirls around, caressing along his lower back, to circle over to his front and up his chest, making him squirm slightly as he tries to contain the laughter trying to erupt.
“Stephen,” Tony calls out, fisting his hand against his sides, trying his hardest not to squirm. Cladded only in his boxers on top a circular pedestal, an inch or two high, making him look taller than Stephen for once.
Rolls of different colored fibers dancing around him in a magic show should be disconcerting, but his attention was focused on a bigger issue other than his naked state, which he didn’t mind, or fairytale dress up. What ticked Tony off was the detached and uninterested look on the ex-doctor’s pale blue eyes, his gaze shifting from cloth to cloth floating over them, nonchalantly touching one before turning to another, looking at everywhere but Tony.
Tony wasn’t pouting. He was not.
“I don’t need a dress for the ball,” he teased, seeing another meter of cloth a shade darker of Stephen’s annoying cape (It’s a cloak, Tony) pass his side. He almost confused the floating material for the sentient ca-cloak. It wasn’t around it’s master, perhaps jealous of the attention Stephen was giving to all these cloths. Tony could relate.
The sorcerer merely provided Tony with a tiny noise, as if that was enough to make note that he was somewhat paying attention to him. But not enough. Almost as if reading his thought, Stephen extended his reply: “You have reached the level of Master, Tony. Every single Master wears their uniquely designated robes. As the Sorcerer Supreme, and the only one willing to deal with your attitude, I will see that your robe is agreeable to your taste.”
“How noble,” Tony mumble dripping with sarcasm, trying to get Stephen’s usual reaction, the start of a small bantering, but the same upset feeling came back when Stephen gave him his back as if to shut him up. Ignoring him.
Tony was sulking now.
Yeah, sure. Ironman was not at the peak of his ripe years anymore and maybe, the years had been harsh with him; alien invasions, a Terminator menace, civil wars and a nihilist grape titan could do that to you. But he would call himself still quite eye-catching.
He worked out almost daily, Captain made sure of that. His lungs were not what they used to be, years of smoke and alcohol taking their toll. But his body was better, his skin had faded scars, but the visible muscles and lines that framed him were enticing.
Either way, Stephen refused to linger on him no more than the necessary. As scarred fingers beckoned a maroon cloth over, Tony glared at the sorcerer. “Even if you try, you can’t set me on fire with your scowling, Tony,” Stephen brushed him off, voice loud in his ear at the silence and small space, without even looking.
“I can certainly try,” Tony quipped back. Stephen’s luscious lips pulled up into a small smile, his cheekbones standing sharper in the soft light of the room. His features seemed dangerous and more defined beneath the illumination, turning the already sharp bone structure into a truly breathtaking angle.
Stephen let the roll of cloth float up with the others. His moment was slow, like a musician singing off the notes of his symphony onto existence for the world to relinquish in. There had been a moment where Tony didn’t believe such a man could exist. He wondered if Thor lied to him when they presented Strange, and he was the god amongst men. He truly acted as one.
His body shivered when those piercing galaxies turned to him, calculating and sizing him up. The mirth in them making those eyes hooded with delight.
Finally.
Tony perked up internally at him, those bluish greens ran down and up his body. He felt acutely aware of the gaze and ever inch of tanned skin it skimmed over without shame. It left him tingling, making his heart pick up its pace, his mouth and throat suddenly dry and a growing heat settling on his ears and nape. Stephen didn’t move, he merely watched him.
 The Sanctum was warm, he had felt the room warming up slightly for him when he undressed from his suit, perhaps to sooth his vulnerable state. But right now, he felt too hot, his blood boiled, his guts were amid a war under the Sorcerer Supreme’s gaze. His chest raised and got abruptly stuck, forgetting how to function for a second when Stephen stepped closer.
Like a trapped animal. Defenseless at his mercy.
Shit. Fucking erotic.
“Don’t,” was Stephen's only command, his voice low and dangerous, and Tony wanted to move just to see what laid after that threat.
But, didn’t.
He didn’t want to break this spell. Exhilarating and so goddamn good.
Stephen circled around him humming in thoughtful manner, Tony held his breath until Stephen was back in front of him, at arm reach, so close he could extend a hand, grip that tunic and drag him over to slam their bodies together. He wanted to feel Stephen towering over him with that handsome smirk on his face, shading him from the light and world with his broad lithe body, and relieve the maddening heat coiling inside him.
“Tony”
Tony snapped out of his feverish thoughts, his brown eyes looking up from the floor to Stephen’s eyes that crinkled to the genuine fond smile that ignited many unwilling responses in his body. “What-” Tony asked breathless with a loss for words, stolen by Stephen.
“I said,” Stephen prompted finding Tony scattered self rather cute instead of rude, the jerk knew very well he was the reason, and that made him attractively smug. The bastard. Thin lips tugging at one side with amusement. Tony’s heart skipped a beat. “Turn around. I will take your measurements.”
He raises an eyebrow at that. Why not simply walk around him like before? Stephen seemed to like that very much, like a predator playing with his next meal, ready to pounce him. Still, he complied. Forcing his tense muscles to move, his legs felt heavy, Stephen sole focused on him now. His brown eyes opening slightly in surprise at the sight of his reflection.
A full-size mirror floated in front of him, not moving a lot besides a little swaying. He could see his blush running down his neck, his shaky breaths as his ribcage raised slowly, the scar at the center pink and nostalgic, but most of all, he can see Stephen behind him. His dark hair looking ebony black, contrasting his silver strikes at the side more intensely, crystal sea foam eyes catching his chocolate ones with that smirk. Oh.
Tony had been an active lover in his youth, he got the title -playboy- for a reason. He was open to any and every experience, trying to grab and eat all the world could offer in his life span. But, becoming Ironman and saving earth, the universe, and sometimes, reality; took away that part of his sexual life. Tony Stark’s libido had been tucked away forgotten in a chest with several locks, not by choice, but there was always something to do, he had people to save and alien’s asses to kick.
He was alone, no one was going to come interrupt them, all the time in the world with a sexy wizard behind him, holding each other’s eyes with electricity coursing through. The locks are rattling.
Click
“Is there a problem, Mister Stark?” Stephen mused, his voice a tone too low to be called appropriate. Back at that donut spaceship, Stephen had mentioned in their argument how he didn’t work for him. At this moment, he would love Stephen as his personal assistant. He could imagine him wearing an expensive suit, provided by yours truly, just to please his boss, saying those professional word in a lewd and enticing manner. He would love to comb those soft black and white locks back, looking sharp enough to kill a man; Tony would order a pair of reading glasses with framed royal blue edges to compliment those ice-cold cyan eyes.
Imagination was a dangerous thing, Stephen started taking his measures as his mind wandered. Being Stephen’s boss, an office affair, Tony was too much into roleplay, but he could just imagine the possibilities. Stephen cornered against his desk, pointing how this was a very bad idea but still summitting to his ministrations. Tony would sooth his worries, he would whisper sweet promises to ravage him while wearing the suit he bought him, because Stephen was his to reverent and enjoy. He would enjoy ripping those layers of expensive cotton off his body, to reveal the tender marble skin underneath, asking to be marked and claimed. Watching Stephen look outraged at the way he discards the suit, that most likely, would cost a year salary for some.
Clank
Tony felt a hand grazing his hips, to cup them, thumbs rubbing circles in his lower back. His mind was so far away that the touch made him jolt and send shivers down his back and right into his crotch, which was already strained by his line of thought. Stephen hummed, ignoring the delightful noise he managed to rip from Tony when he pulled him back so his naked back pressed against his clothed chest.
“Where did you go?” Stephen asks softly into the shell of his ear, lips crushing against the skin with each word. Tony let out a whimper, throwing his head back, trying to get closer to the body behind him. Stephen chuckled, the motion allowed him to let feathered kisses down his neck, each managing a shudder out of the smaller man.
“Thinking…” Tony said in a breath, his mouth opening to let out a long sigh of pure heat. Stephen hummed in question, moving his attention back to Tony’s ear, nipping tenderly on the earlobe. Tony gasped, clenching his teeth as his whole body trembled at the assault.
Stephen allowed Tony to breath for a second, letting the ear go, “You must be tired,” Stephen said, his words teasing and husky, smiling when Tony grumbled at him. He could stay like this, holding Tony by the hips, feeling him heated warm from pure attention against him, exploring the ripples and tides those muscles created that had been tempting him since the moment he laid eyes on that sun kissed skin. But he could do all that in the confinements of his room.
Later.
“Your robe is ready,” Stephen told him after a moment of self-indulgence. He stepped back, basking on the angry groan of complaint Tony made when their bodies separated, before chanting lowly the spell.
Tony gasped as soft warm robes appeared, covering his body from head to toe. The chest cut resembled Stephen's, but he had a hoodie hanging on his shoulders. The Robe fell gracefully around him, the edges barely touching the floor. The knee boots and pants were exposed since the robe opened in the front to allow mobility. No sleeves, he was wearing gloves though. The gloves reached his elbow, the fingers were cut at the first knuckle and they felt sturdy, packing a punch. He flexed his fingers, testing them, seeing how some sparks glimmered on the knuckles. Magic gloves, of course.
Tony liked it.
It was an array of reds he could barely identify, shades of maroon and carmine. The belt that held his robes was golden, and there was an opening for his arch reactor on his chest. The length may have been too much, but he enjoyed the sway when he moved his hips, and if Stephen’s stiff clenched jaw was any indication, so did he.
Tony smiled at the sorcerer, stepping down from the pedestal to be chest to chest with Stephen. Leaning up on his toes to land a chaste kiss on his jaw and whispers on his pale skin, “Thank you, Godmother”. Stephen grunted, Tony could feel the rumble on his hands over Stephen’s chest, making him laugh. Stephen looked down at him with a small smile and he replied with his own.
The Sorcerer Supreme lowered his head, warping his arms around Tony’s waist, and pulling them flush together. Tony shivered, the heat on his guts coming back, asking, begging and yelling for relief that could only be obtained by the man who conquered his heart. Stephen kissed his cheek before moving his lips to his flushed pink ear, as if to share a secret even though they were alone. “Allow me to show you how to remove them,” and Tony let out a moan, the words went straight through him and he couldn't do much but nod, eager and needy. Already breathless, he managed to make out one word, one word that crumbled Stephen's control.
 "Please "
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archivistsrock · 5 years
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I finally got to see Papi Chulo this weekend! I never thought the day would come! lol. I swear, it's been like a million years since it first was at TIFF.
Here’s the trailer for the movie:
youtube
General impressions: I really liked it! It was playing at a theater that was over an hour away from me, so I didn't want to ask any of my friends to go (they aren't Matt fans. I mean, that makes it sound like they don't like him, which isn't true...they're just not FANS). So I dragged my mom with me LOL. She's a trooper. Anyway, because I dragged my mom there, I was a little preoccupied the whole time wondering/worrying if she was bored. I really need to just go to Matt movies alone so I'm not focused on the enjoyment of the person I'm with. I worry too much.
But anyway, it was good! It was sweet and sad and funny. It was a little slow-paced, I would say. But not necessarily in a bad way. There are a few things that are revealed during the movie that makes things more impactful. I knew about them beforehand, bc I'm a slut for spoilers ha, but probs would have been more impactful if I hadn't known.
Matt is really good in it. I adore his character (Sean). He's just a really nice guy. Well-intentioned. Obvs has some flaws, but who doesn't? It's nice to have a movie where almost every scene features Matt. <3  Alejandro Pitino was also great in it. And Janet from The Good Place is also in it! lol.
To be honest, I don't really see it as a "buddy movie," which they seem to kind of be marketing it as. Mainly because the friendship is really one-sided. Ernesto maybe "gets along" with Sean, but I think it's a big stretch to say they're friends. The movie is much more about dealing with loss and loneliness than about friendship, and of the importance of real human interaction. By nature of Ernesto being an immigrant, the movies touches on some issues related to that, as well...but I don't see them as nearly the main focus.
I had kind of stopped reading reviews about the movie bc, tbh, I was just super annoyed that I couldn't see it. After viewing it, I went and read the more critical review on The Wrap [x]. And honestly? She's not wrong. I think some of her critiques are a wee bit harsh, but overall I can't really argue against most of her points. That said, I definitely don't think the movie is OFFENSIVE. But I do get the criticisms and why some people may not enjoy it. But I really did.
Okay, now I'm going to get really detailed and spoilery by request, so stop reading if you haven't seen it and don't like being spoiled! I warned you!
Okay, here's a run-down of the movie -- as detailed as I can get, considering I saw it 4 days ago and tbh my memory kind of sucks. It starts out with the clip we've all seen of Matt doing the weather forecast and having a breakdown on air.
Go to 6:35 to see that clip below:
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He tries to claim it was "gastro" related, but obvs no one buys that. They force him to go home and take a leave of absence to figure things out and get better (istg they later refer to this as "gardening leave" and is that a thing in some places??? Like, you get leave to work on your garden?? OKAY I just looked it up and LOL it's just a term for someone still getting paid after they're suspended or on leave or terminated. It seems to be a British term. Must have come from the director, who's Irish. Or have other US-folks heard this term?). Anyway, back to the movie.
So he's at home. Nice house. Good view of LA. Lots of coyotes howling at night.  He's arranged to have a couple people come by to pick up this rare tree that's on his deck, that belonged to his ex-boyfriend, Carlos. He keeps calling Carlos and leaving voice messages. "Hey, just letting you know I'm getting rid of your tree." Etc. So they drag the tree away and we notice that when Carlos painted the deck, he didn't bother moving the tree, so there's a big unpainted circle in the middle of the deck. "Typical Carlos..." So Sean drives to the small hardware store to get supplies to fix this.
Outside the hardware store, there are a bunch of Latino immigrants/laborers hoping to get hired by people to do...home improvement/handy man stuff. Sean sees Ernesto and seems preoccupied/interested in him. Ernesto, as you know, is an older more burly Latino guy. Sean goes into the hardware store are talks to an employee about paint for his deck. "I just need a small amount to cover a little spot on the deck." "Aren't you going to paint the whole deck so it blends in?" "Haha, I see what you're trying to do there. No, just the tiny-ass sample can please."
So he gets home and starts painting in the circle, and it's painfully obvious he'll need to redo the whole deck, since all the rest of the paint has faded. So he drives back to the hardware store and is like, "Yeah, so I know I ignored your advice before. Sorry, I'm dumb." He buys more paint and a bigger brush. So he drives home with all his stuff, again passing the laborers and looking at Ernesto.
Once home, he checks his email and there's messages from his friends about how he's doing -- presumably since his break-up with Carlos. He's been avoiding his friends, and they're telling him he needs real human interaction and should talk to someone. He has kind of a light bulb moment and drives back to the hardware store and pulls up alongside the Latino laborers. He's like, "Hey, I need someone who can paint." A bunch of them are kind of in his face about it, wanting to be hired. Ernesto is just hanging back, quiet. Sean points to Ernesto and asks if he can paint. He's like "Yes. $20/hour." "Great!" (although Ernesto speaks little English and Sean speaks little Spanish, so it wasn't that easy). So Ernesto gets back in the car and they drive to Sean's house.
He kind of reminds me of me during this part, because he hired Ernesto to work for him, but when they're getting out of the car and Ernesto gets the bag of paint, Sean is like, "No, no! Let me get that!" They go back and forth a bit, but Ernesto ends up carrying it. Anyway, I always feel weird having people do things for me, even if I'm paying them. So he shows Ernesto the deck and we get the other scene we've seen before. The "more than one day" scene. "Mas que un dia."
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Sean is all like, "Do you want water? Food? Are you okay?" etc. Ernesto is kind of amused but also just like...leave me alone and let me work. This is weird. I don't understand anything you're saying.
Sean goes and gets lunch and  brings it back and yells out to Ernesto, "Lunch!" Ernesto is like...okay. Time to eat, I guess. And sits down on the deck and takes something wrapped in tinfoil out of his bag. Sean is like, "No! Inside! I brought lunch for us!" And it's like this whole big spread. Some type of Asian cuisine. I can't remember which, but Ernesto picks up an eggroll and is like, "Taquito!" lol. You can tell Ernesto is a little uncomfortable with everything, but he's also just like...rolling with it. Okay, you're paying me. I guess we're eating lunch.
Then Sean convinces him to leave with him and they go to a park and Sean wants to go out in a rowboat. Sean wants to row, but Ernesto is like, "Yeah, I'm not going in there with you unless I row." So he ends up rowing. Please note, that all this "conversation" is not as smooth as I'm writing it! Ernesto really doesn't get much of anything Sean says. Anyway, Sean treats the rowboat ride like he's in therapy. He just starts spilling his feelings and issues out to Ernesto. Ernesto just nods like, "Yeah, okay." At one point, I think he does say something like, "I don't understand anything you're saying." Sean is like, "I feel so much better just saying this stuff out loud!" He falls asleep in the boat, and Ernesto calls his wife and is like, "GUESS WHERE I AM?? IN A FUCKING ROWBOAT WITH THIS GUY." His wife is like, "Ha! He's gay and he totally digs you." Ernesto is like,"Yeah, he's gay. But he doesn't like me. I'm old. I'm fat. Why would he like me?" His wife is all cute and is like, "I'm a woman. I know these things. He's into you." Then Sean wakes up so Ernesto hangs up the phone.
They get back to the pier and the rowboat operator guy says, "I like this whole "Driving Miss Daisy" situation you guys have going on!" Sean gets pissed and is like, "What do you mean?? We're friends. Why would you say it's like "Driving Miss Daisy"??" The operator guys gets all uncomfortable and is like..."Umm...because he's rowing you around....?" So Sean is pissed that the guy assumes he paid Ernesto to row him around. But also like...it's true. As much as Sean is annoyed that the man is making that assumption, they really aren't friends. The only reason they're there together is because Sean is paying Ernesto. So he then drops Ernesto back off at the hardware store at the end of the day and is like. "Tomorrow? Here at the hardware store?" "Okay." Then he pays him the money he owes him and they part ways.
I don't recall exactly the timeline here, but at various points throughout the movie, Sean is scrolling through Grindr, or whatever hook-up app it is he's using. He's also shown lying in bed at night and is tortured by the sound of coyotes howling.
He picks up Ernesto the next morning and is like, "We're hiking. Not painting." So he takes him to Runyon Canyon to hike. On the hike, Sean keeps talking talking talking and Ernesto is still like, "Okay, I have no idea what you're saying." At a scenic viewpoint, they're looking out at the city. Sean casually asks where Ernesto lives, and this kind of freaks Ernesto out. Like "Why do you want to know??" Sean's like, "Oh, I'm just curious!" Anyway, he points and says the general area (I can't remember which town/neighborhood it was). While they're standing there, one of Sean's friends sees them and comes over. He volunteers to take a pic of the two of them, and when he does, he says, "Cute couple!" Sean starts to correct him but then doesn't. Ernesto doesn't say anything, obviously. The friend then invites Sean to a party he's having the next evening. Sean does learn a little about Ernesto throughout the few days together. He learns he's married and has kids. He sees a pic of them. Honestly, that's about it.
Ernesto calls his wife from here and again is like, "Guess where the fuck I am now?? HIKING. Yeah, it's pretty." But he actually feels guilty for getting paid to go on hikes. His wife is like, "Whatever. He's paying you. Cool beans." Sean then takes Ernesto to a health market and wants him to try a shot of some gross health drink. He takes a sip and is like, "No. This is disgusting." Sean's like, "Yeah, you're right. It's horrid. But it's healthy and I'm drinking it bc it cost a shit ton." Oh, while Sean was buying the drink, one of the store employees went up to Carlos and handed him a bunch of boxes because he thought he worked there. He got him mixed up with another Latino guy working there. Awkward. White people are dumb.
Sean drives Ernesto back the hardware store and is like, "Okay, tomorrow. Meet you here. Also, we're going to a party later that night."
I don't remember the next day very well. I assume maybe Ernesto did some work? Not sure. Anyway, they then go to Sean's friend's party together. It a big party of all gay men. Ernesto gets kissed on the mouth (not in a sexual way) by one of Sean's friends. He obvs feels a little uncomfortable. Mostly bc he doesn't know any of them and I assume can't communicate with them. He doesn't seem to have a big issue with gay guys. Whenever Sean's friends see Ernesto, they're all like, "Oh, I get it." We later see Sean's phone contacts and a pic of his ex Carlos, and he is also an older, burlier Latino man. So clearly, Ernesto reminds Sean of Carlos. Now we understand his...obsession? Fixation? Attachment?
Ernesto calls his wife from the party is is kind of freaking out about it. "A MAN KISSED ME ON THE MOUTH." But his wife is like, "Dude, have fun." So he seems to have a decent time. Then they leave the party in a Lyft and there's a pretty great scene where Madonna's "Borderline" comes on the radio and Ernesto is like, "Hey, I know this song!" So they drunkenly sing it together in the back of the Lyft. The Lyft stops at the hardware store, and they're both sitting in the back of the car looking at each other. Sean looks a little confused as to why Ernesto is sitting there looking at him. He then leans in to kiss Ernesto, but Ernesto is like. "No! I'm waiting for my money." The Sean's like, "OMG yeah. Sorry." And he pays him and Ernesto gets out. Then the Lyft takes Sean home.
We then see Ernesto make his way home. He has to take a couple buses. He finally get home and we see his house and his wife. It's a pretty nice house. Normal, I mean. Not Sean-level nice. His wife is awesome. Ernesto is like, "Honey, you were right. I am irresistible." "I told you I knew!" Then they go to the bedroom to presumably have sex.
The next day, Sean drives to the hardware store but none of the Latino guys are out there. He's confused and asks someone driving by where all the men are, and the guy's like, "It's Labor Day, you fucking idiot." So Sean drives home. He gets drunk and ends up inviting a guy over from Grindr. He quickly gets in the shower (shower scene!), and ends up falling in the shower while holding a glass and cuts himself a bit. Then the doorbell rings so he gets out. He answers the door clothed, but wet. The hot guy is like, "You're wet." "I just showered." Sean invites the guy in and asks if he wants a drink. "Not at this hour." (early) "No, no...just like...water?" Sean turns to pour a glass of water and hot guy strips naked in the kitchen. Sean turns and sees him and is like, "HOLY SHIT!" and drops his glass. He goes down to pick up the glass, and pops back up all bloody. His head is cut, his hands are cut up. The naked guy is just like.."Are you okay?? Are you drunk?" And is kind of legit concerned for him. Sean is like, "No! I'm fine!" Naked guy is like, "Um, I got naked because I assumed we were going to...?" Sean is like, "Listen, can we just talk?" Naked guy puts his clothes on and is like, "You need to get your shit figured out. Only you can make yourself happy." Then he leaves.
At some point...today? Tomorrow? Yesterday? I don't know, but at some point he goes back to the news station to be like, "Hey! I'm ready to go back to work!" His boss shows him the video of his breakdown that's on youtube. AWKWARD. And they're like, "It's been 4 days. Leave." So he does.
He calls his ex Carlos to say...something. But instead of getting his voicemail, he gets a message saying that the number has been disconnected. He freaks out and calls someone and asks the lady on the phone why the number was disconnected. "Why wouldn't we disconnect it? Carlos has been dead for 6 months." :O So now we learn that Carlos isn't an ex...he actually died 6 months prior. So this is why Sean is having such a hard time. There's then these flashback scenes from previous moments in the movie. We see Sean in the rowboat talking, but he's alone. We see him hiking and talking to no one. At first I was like, "Did Sean make Ernesto up??" But no, that's not it. I think this was just supposed to represent that Sean was using Ernesto as a stand-in for Carlos. He felt so much better those two days talking to "Carlos," but Carlos wasn't really there. He was still alone. Ernesto isn't his lover, isn't his friend. Just a guy he hired. [I think? Anyone else have other interpretations of this?]
The next day he goes to pick up Ernesto and he's not there. He tries asking the other men where Ernesto is, and they're basically making fun of Sean. "Hey, I'll go on a boat with you!" Word has got out that Sean is having Ernesto do all this weird shit. I think Ernesto's wife was talking. Sean seems to frantically need Ernesto. He drives to the town where Ernesto said he lived (population of like 60,000) and just starts asking people if they know Ernesto. Some kid steals his phone and whacks him over the head with his skateboard. Sean goes into a bar and gets wasted. He then sees a guy go into the bar that he recognized as Ernesto's brother-in-law from a pic Ernesto showed him. So he follows him to a house, and there's a Quinceanera going on. I guess Ernesto's daughter?? But I didn't remember him having daughter that age, so I could be wrong. idk. Anyway, Sean drunkenly crashes the party. They dump him in one of the kids' bedrooms where he passes out. He wakes up later and slinks out.
Time has passed during the next scene, and Sean is back at work, but makes an announcement that this is his last weather report. He's leaving. We don't know where or for what. But we had learned earlier while he was talking away with Ernesto that he doesn't even like being a weatherman and he actually hates the weather in California. So it seems he's moving on. He seems much healthier. He write Ernesto a letter apologizing for crashing the party, saying how ashamed he is and that he was going through a tough time.
Sean's at home and the doorbell rings. He goes to the door and it's Ernesto's son (like 8 years old??). Ernesto comes out of the truck with painting supplies. The kid acts as an interpreter. They go up to the deck and Ernesto starts working. Sean is like, "You don't need to do this! Why are you finishing the deck?" Ernesto is like, "Because you sent me $200 with the letter." Sean is like, "No, not to finish the deck! For room and board!" He sent him the money as an apology for crashing the party and for them letting him sleep it off in their house and for some food they left out for him. Anyway, they start sanding the deck together (Sean is a terrible sander). Ernesto is like, "You're not paying me!" They laugh. Movies fades to black.
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matriarca-inodora · 5 years
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Baldr, Sickness and Death
One aspect that has always intrigued me about the whole myth of Baldr’s death is, well… his death, and what we could take it to mean. 
This goes back to the issue of what Baldr really represents to begin with. Is he beauty, youth, an idealised perfection, or maybe summer? Is he daylight, or healing, or hope, or bravery, maybe life itself, in that warm essence so clear in the early morning? Quite frankly, it’s hard to say based solely on historical records, and my personal interpretation tends to group many of those things together. And well, what about his death, is it an allegory for seasonal change? Or is the story trying to tell us that perfection is unreachable? Could it be that it tells us hope, even when dead, is not really gone? Is it trying to tell us that youth, beauty, purity… none of it is meant to last?
Well, arguably any of these interpretations are valid, and that’s the beauty of having tales like this one.I intend to talk some of these other interpretations, eventually. Still, there is still another way to see it, and that’s what I’ll be focusing on right now. Bear in mind, this is really just my personal interpretation, so don’t take this to be an academic text. If anything, this is a post I needed to make in order to collect my thoughts.
I’ve been going through a personal journey to accept death. I won’t go into details here, but let’s just say the idea of an upcoming period of mourning has been very present in my mind for several months now, if not more than a year. Death is unavoidable. It’s been so since we know ourselves as humans, and it will likely remain so for a long time still.  Upon thinking about it, I realised there was something else to the Baldr story that I had never thought about. I get the feeling we as a whole, especially in the Western World, don’t see death as much as we used to, or at least, not up close. In daily life, it has become something abstract, an uncomfortable thought we’d rather avoid. Sure, people still die, but it takes longer than ever before, if we’re talking natural deaths and even sickness. It’s still unpleasant, for sure, but it’s nothing close to how things were a thousand years back. 
Death was definitely much closer back in the day. So many things could get you killed in an instant. People used to die young a lot more often, and this harsh reality really is present in Baldr’s myth, if you think about it. In the end, he, too, cannot avoid death. And let’s just take a moment to remind ourselves that he is described as the best of all the gods (whatever that might mean), and that Frigg, his mother, is said to have a deeper understanding than most. Even then, death came, and we are all left with this ending.
And yet, even nowadays there are still times when death reveals itself as the unavoidable destination it is. I’m specifically talking about sickness, and terminal or near-terminal conditions, but it can also be applied to different situations in life. I’m just focusing on my own experiences, honestly.
Not unlike a bad dream, this scenario throws itself upon us, and we are left with the clear notion that the end is there, sooner or later to come. As much as we do everything we can, and talk to everyone and look for every last piece of hope, in many cases we cannot avoid the worst. Of course, this is not to say we shouldn’t try to.  I really don’t want to make it seem like it’s simply a question of accepting things as they come. Things are much more complicated in real life, and I certainly wouldn’t want to go around telling people what to do in hard situations like that as if I knew better. I really don’t.
However, upon facing the scenario of an upcoming death, I currently see myself turning back to this myth, and I somehow find comfort in it and in the harsh truth it tells. Yes, sometimes death and loss cannot be avoided. Sometimes, mistletoe, in whichever form, will find its way, and there isn’t much we can do about it. What then? Where is the comfort in that, you may ask. It’s not the type of thing that leaves you filled with happiness, not at all. Maybe the comforting part is precisely accepting that this is part of life, without neglecting hope. To me, it has to do with the fact that this truth is the same for all of us. We all know that feeling of loss or sadness, in one way or another. And just not being alone in it, just having a story to express it, that brings me comfort. That comfort, which does not negate sadness but makes it somewhat tolerable... that, to me, is Baldr, too.
Hope doesn’t die, not entirely. And neither does life truly end with death. It might be gone for a long time, it might feel like it’s terminal. And yet, no matter how long it takes, something suddenly wakes again. I know you might be saying, that’s a very optimistic way of viewing things. It’s just how I am, and you have all the right to think it foolish. And in case you were also thinking, yes, this has a lot to do with the seasons, and with the never-ending cycle of birth, death, and new birth (I might eventually get into why I wouldn’t call it rebirth). I really believe it’s in our nature or culture to connect these things. 
Sorry for the really long rambling, but I’ve been in dire need to get this out of my chest.
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healthpeak02-blog · 5 years
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Deborah Eisenberg’s Short Stories Are Sharp Enough to Cut Deep
It isn’t long before an elegiac note sounds in Deborah Eisenberg’s latest book of short fiction, Your Duck Is My Duck. In the first story, the narrator begins:
Way back—oh, not all that long ago, actually, just a couple of years, but back before I’d gotten a glimpse of the gears and levers and pulleys that dredge the future up from the earth’s core to its surface—I was going to a lot of parties.
That retrospection, tinged with rueful wisdom and more than a little melancholy, is central to the collection, Eisenberg’s first in twelve years and her fifth since Transactions in a Foreign Currency heralded her arrival in 1986.
Eisenberg’s early stories often focused on a certain kind of lost girl—bright but slightly overwhelmed, a little too pliable to the people around her—trying to find a place for herself in a rudely inhospitable world. When Eisenberg was working her comic mode, the travails of these women rose to the level of modern-day screwball comedy: thinking of 1987’s “A Cautionary Tale,” a classic account of Manhattan bootstrapping, I still laugh at how the heroine indignantly admits to herself, at the low point of an impossible waitressing gig, that “This was not how she had imagined her adulthood.”
Thirty-some years later, Eisenberg’s protagonists are likely to be women of a certain age, members, however tenuously, of the creative class, and still city dwellers acutely attuned to the mores of a world that’s passing them by. (“No one met people in person any longer—you couldn’t hear what they were saying” is the most concise summary of New York restaurant culture I may ever need to read.) Most saliently, these modern selves find themselves unexpectedly alone (breakups are a recurring motif) and only too aware of the shadows lengthening all around them.
In one new story, “Cross Off and Move On,” a narrator reckoning with the death of her last surviving relative thinks, “Yes, off they go, my old allies, sailing right through the radiant shield at the edge of the universe, blending into darkness.” In “Recalculating,” a former dancer mourning a long-ago lover feels “brittleness fretting her bones, youth streaming from her in galaxies of sparkly molecules.”
These women have even more to contend with than aging and loss. Because they’re Deborah Eisenberg characters, they are also coping with what it feels like to be alive, as educated, alert citizens of a Western society, in the early years of the twenty-first century, when old-fashioned everyday anxieties have given way to something like dread. As in her previous collection, Twilight of the Superheroes (2006), Eisenberg is able to dramatize how the diabolical crawl that appeared on the bottom of TV news screens in the days after 9/11 found a counterpart inside people’s heads—and just what a toll our new normal of permanent crisis is taking on them. In the title story, a painter says to the doctor who’s prescribing her sleeping pills:
“It’s beginning to look like a photo finish—me first, or the world. It’s not so hard to figure out why I’m not sleeping. What I can’t figure out is why everybody else is sleeping.”
(This is from a story, by the way, that was originally published in 2013.)
The painter in “Your Duck Is My Duck” later meets an avant-garde puppeteer whose magnum opus, The Hand That Feeds You, is such a blunt allegory of life under terminal capitalism that it leaves the audience at its premiere, a select handful of one-percenters, momentarily speechless. The scene is bleakly funny in a way that feels just right for our present moment. But the story’s coda fulfills the puppet show’s preemptive title and then some, acknowledging how the two artists’ reliance on those one-percenters for patronage implicates them in the same system—a subtle reshuffling of our assumptions that’s characteristic of Eisenberg’s method throughout these stories.
In real life, the charge “first-world problems” became a reductive cliché almost overnight, so it’s especially gratifying in this book to see the idea explored humanely and from so many angles. Beings of conscience, Eisenberg’s characters are haunted by a suspicion that their relatively well-off lives might somehow be linked to all the hypocrisies, inequities, and worse that are the stuff of daily headlines—the stuff of our malaise, in other words. (As a character in her story “Twilight of the Superheroes” asked himself back in 2004, “Then again, how far away does something have to be before you have the right to not really know about it?”)
The theme gets its most expansive treatment in the novella “Merge,” which traces the shifting fortunes of Keith, a slippery scion of privilege headed for rock bottom after his domineering father, CEO of a rapacious multinational, kicks him out of their home. Eisenberg has long specialized in a comedy of aggrievement, and at first Keith’s indignation, his perplexity at having to fathom how ordinary people go about their lives, yield some of the funniest scenes in this book. When Celeste, an NGO worker who is also a potential romantic interest, tells him she’s about to embark on fieldwork in Slovakia, he thinks: “Slovakia? That was what she meant by Europe?”
Celeste’s trip to Europe—and points beyond, in several senses—is the hinge on which the story turns; it leads to a widening of scope that puts Keith’s struggles in a stark new light. The fascination with multiple perspectives that distinguishes Eisenberg’s later stories comes into full effect in “Merge,” whose changing points of view ask us to consider, among other things, dramatically different definitions of what it might mean to be homeless, and why some people become victims while others, heedless or even undeserving, get to flourish.
That said, even after repeat readings I’m not sure how all of the story’s thematic elements, which grow to include mental illness and theories of language, cohere into a persuasive whole. At the same time, it’s evident that a late Eisenberg story isn’t interested in surrendering its meanings too easily. A case in point here is “The Third Tower,” the outlier in the collection: set in a world both like and unlike our own, it features a young woman receiving treatment for a psychological condition that scans a lot like unfettered creativity. Something other than naturalism, the story testifies to Eisenberg’s formal restlessness, the way she regularly tests the four walls and ceiling of short-story form.
No account of Your Duck Is My Duck is complete without a mention of how gracefully this writer, tagged earlier in her career as a quintessential urban sophisticate, renders the natural world. “Recalculating” includes a beautiful description of a hurricane descending on a Midwestern prairie, and “Your Duck Is My Duck” has this snapshot of a wildfire witnessed from a great height:
Accident had selected me to observe, in whatever way I could, the demonic, vengeful, helpless, ardent fires as they consumed the trees that had replaced the crops—to observe the moment when, at the heart of the conflagration, the trees that sustained it became phantoms, the fire’s memory.
It’s typical that these lyrical outbursts are prompted by natural disasters—appropriately for a collection that regularly glances over its shoulder at environmental collapse along with every other kind of decline.
How much needs to be said about a writer who has very little left to prove? Across four decades Deborah Eisenberg has steadily enlarged her vision while refining her art. Her writing adds to our collective store of wit, empathy, and intelligence. If you haven’t read her yet, by all means start with Your Duck Is My Duck, and then waste no time in getting your hands on her Collected Stories, the chunky 2010 trade paperback that gathers the rest of her singular body of work.
FICTION Your Duck Is My Duck By Deborah Eisenberg Ecco Published September 25, 2018
Deborah Eisenberg is a MacArthur Foundation Fellow and the award-winning author of four previous collections of stories: Transactions in a Foreign Currency (1986), Under the 82nd Airborne (1992), All Around Atlantis (1997), and Twilight of the Superheroes (2006). Her first two story collections were republished in one volume as The Stories (So Far) of Deborah Eisenberg (1997). All four volumes were reprinted in 2010 in The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg (2010). She is a professor of writing at Columbia University.
Source: https://chireviewofbooks.com/2018/10/25/your-duck-is-my-duck-deborah-eisenbergs-review/
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rain0205-blog · 5 years
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Terminal State
Summary:  She tried leaving, submerging herself in work to escape the horrors she had seen. The horrors she kept seeing. She never wanted to go back to that life. But when the Empire takes her home, she’s forced to face her past. Can she move on? Can she cope? Or will she require a bit of help? still bad at summaries, still working on it. ever so slightly more than slight AU gadioxoc
Her Favour
...
The sky wept for what seemed like ages since Gladiolus and the others had gotten out of the Disc of Cauthess days ago. The four of them were somewhat defeated, left at the chocobo station while they waited for word on the whereabouts of the Regalia. The mechanic from the garage in Hammerhead, Cindy, was on the hunt for the car, however, the Shield and Ignis were convinced that it was confiscated by the Empire. So now they waited around for word but it was taking a while and he was getting a little impatient with it all. In fact, he was fed up completely. After taking on a God - which was not one of his best ideas regardless of if he had a choice or not - they were left for dead with Imperial dreadnaughts everywhere. The four of them had no idea how they were to get out of their mess but lo and behold, that strange man known as Ardyn was there to rescue them; only they had found out he was indeed the Chancellor of Niflheim himself. Ignis conceded they had no other option but to accept his help and Gladiolus was not happy with the choices presented to them, but they made it out and were dropped not too far from the outpost. Of course, they were left without their car and no real way to get back to Lestallum, or anywhere else for that matter. Noctis was unwilling to move on without it and here they were, stuck in one spot.
The stench of chocobos was starting to become so constant Gladio could hardly smell it anymore. They were staying in the camper for now until they heard some sort of word on the Regalia. Wiz, the owner, was letting them stay there for free and it was a kind gesture. Even if they had the car, blockades were being set up all over the place and made it difficult to travel anyway. Then, of course, there was this damn, never ending rain that just put most in a bad mood. There was nothing they could do, they were stranded until they heard from Hammerhead. It didn't do so well with someone who often had to take action instead of sitting around and waiting.
"Look, there's Umbra!" said Prompto, distracting them from their speculation.
Umbra was one of Lady Lunafreya's dogs. Gladiolus was used to the small animal making his appearance over the last twelve years to Noctis. It was how the two of them communicated over the distance and though Noctis didn't talk much about it, Gladiolus knew that it made the difference in the young Prince's life. The dog was usually a welcomed sight and the Shield enjoyed the happy animal even if he never did understand how the dog managed to find them all the time, especially with how far he would have to travel. Gladio didn't question it much either, magic not really his area of expertise. Umbra began to lead them a little way from of the outpost, rounding a tree and then stopped abruptly. There was a woman standing behind it, a gentle smile on her face as she observed them all. Tall and slender, with long black hair that hung pin straight and olive green eyes. Her lips were as red as the ring around them and she was dressed in her formal wear as usual. Gladiolus felt a little strange around her but knew exactly who she was. Gentiana, a messenger. When she spoke, her voice almost sounded like an echo as she delivered her message that the Oracle would be waiting for them in Altissia. Then, in the blink of an eye, she disappeared, as if she were never there in the first place.
Noctis knelt down to the dog and pulled out that book. The three other men were patient as he leafed through the book. Sometimes it would take longer than others but it was important so they didn't say anything. The Prince reached for something in his pocket, composing his reply before replacing the book back, lingering a moment longer.
"What's this?" asked Noctis, pulling something from Umbra's collar.
The young royal stood from his post as Umbra ran off, turning to the others with a confused frown on his face as he looked at his hand. Gladiolus saw something shine there, tensing as soon as he recognized it.. The object in the Prince's hand was a silver chain, dangling from his fingers and spinning, catching the little light as it did so. At the end of it was a disk that had a tree inside of it, amber orbs intent upon them as it moved.
"That's Cia's..."
Gladio's face was stiff, his face unreadable as he remained fixated on it. Prompto looked down at his feet with uncertainty and Ignis turned his face away from the Shield, also at a downward angle. Noctis looked up at his friend a little sadly, before putting his attention back toward his own hands. Glancing at his friend, he held out the chain and a small note slowly. Gladiolus met his gaze, unclenching his hands from his own arms and taking them.
"It was on Umbra's collar," said Noctis a little tentatively, unable to face him.
I'm sorry.
That's all that was written on the note. Gladiolus frowned at it before he observed the necklace. It wasn't Athenacia's writing and he was at a loss. Crushing the paper, he tossed it aside in order to better examine the necklace with the other hand. It was the first sign of her since the attack on the city and he didn't know what to make of it. Only one thing was clear, she had seen the Oracle at some point because that was the only way this would have come to him the way it did. He had been so focused on everything that happened since the trial of Titan he didn't spend much time thinking about the doctor's whereabouts. Why did she send this to him? Did she die? Did she plan on dying? Or had this happened after the city fell? There was no time to wonder about it, wrapping the chain around his wrist underneath the small sleeve he kept on his left arm. The tree disc hung out of it a bit and he tucked it back in there for safe keeping. Athenacia always wore that necklace, hardly ever took it off and Gladio swore he'd be take care of it until he finally met up with her again - because he couldn't think of the alternative, not right now anyway. Looking up at Noctis he nodded to signal that he was ready for the next step in their journey.
...
Athenacia was disgruntled. The city of Lestallum was experiencing a heat wave and it was making others grouchy. Yes, she was still in Lestallum, standing on the terrace looking out over the city and wishing she wasn't so close to anyone. It had been days and there was rain everywhere. The muggy weather only made things worse for her as she was pretty much trapped inside. She would have left by now and come back twice, however, she couldn't even if she wanted to; the Empire had put up blockades and checkpoints all over. They claimed it was for safety but she wasn't so easily fooled. They were looking for someone, whether it was her, the Prince or the Oracle, or even all three, she couldn't be sure, she just knew that she was stuck here in Lestallum.
The doctor had the resolve to stay in the shadows and await the arrival of Gladiolus and the others - just to observe, she wouldn't approach the Prince with a target on her back. Then she would disappear, taking solace in knowing that they were all safe. He had informed Iris that they lost their car and were stuck until they found it. It had been several days since then and Athenacia had wanted to get out of one spot before people started to notice her, however, that wasn't the case at all so she mostly stayed in the hotel room with Iris and Talcott. Neither of them wanted to go outside in the rain anyway. The physician sighed as she went back inside. At least the terrace had an awning so that she could stay dry but there was only so much people watching she could do before she felt that she herself was being watched. Talcott was with his grandfather, Jared, getting something to eat while Iris was on her phone doing who knew what. Athenacia had really nothing to do, living mostly out of her truck and didn't pack any sort of reading material. Usually, at a time like this, she would also be on her phone reading, however, her phone was smashed in all the chaos that consumed the Crown City.
"I think you'd like my brother," said Iris without raising her eyes from her phone.
"I doubt I'll have the chance. I have to head toward the hunter headquarters once the blockade is lifted," replied Athenacia.
Iris looked sad at that, "You can't just stay to say hi?"
"Afraid not."
They were silent again, Athenacia trying desperately not to get into a deep conversation with Iris about Gladiolus. She missed him terribly but was happy that he was alive and well. At least while she was stuck here, she could keep track of him without worrying too much.
About two days later the weather finally broke and the rain let up. People breathed sighs of relief as they were able to go outside and stay dry. Three, in particular, were happy to get out of that stuffy hotel room and breath in a little fresh air. Athenacia, Iris and Talcott were aimlessly wandering around Lestallum only for the sake of being outside. The humidity was going down a bit and not only did the smell of fresh rain fill her nostrils as she walked, but also the food and she was a sucker to pass up anything here. This was definitely, so far, her favourite place to eat. The young doctor was still wearing her boots as she didn't have any other shoes with black shorts and that same pink top she had purchased days ago when she had arrived back in the city. The doctor kept that braid over her identifying scar and her face hidden as much as possible behind her bangs. Unarmed, she was a little uneasy with so many people, however, it was difficult to blend in with a weapon strapped to her back. The other thing that made her feel less complete was the absence of her necklace, the thing she had never parted with since as far as she could remember. The physician was hoping that it had safely made its way toward its destination - however Lady Lunafreya was doing it.
Athenacia still completely avoided anything to do with the hospital an although she had spotted some of her former staff, they didn't recognize her. It put her at ease to know that people she worked with didn't know her on sight. If Gin knew where she was then the woman could easily be in danger herself. The young doctor could not risk that unborn child. Hell, she was still a little uneasy about lingering in the city as long as she had been but had no choice due to the never ending blockade. Either way, there were plenty of other places to go without having to go near that building. Talcott was happily enjoying his snack as he walked in between both women. Iris was chatting away about power plant or anything else that came to her mind, eager to speak of Noctis quite often and her "date" with him when they had come to the city. Athenacia could only smile at the young girl's enthusiasm, wondering how the Prince and his Shield felt about it, or if the younger man even knew.
"What about you Tia? Did you have a boyfriend?" asked Talcott.
"Me? Oh well... Yeah, I... I did," she smiled softly at them.
"What was he like?" asked Iris.
She smiled at her own memories, "Strong, positive. Giant ego though sort of was a deal breaker."
Iris rolled her eyes, "Yeah I know the type."
The doctor sighed, "I couldn't tell you what it was but..." she shrugged, "He's just, a really good guy you know? Always so thoughtful, even when he doesn't have to be."
"That's so cute! I wish my brother was more of a romantic person."
Athenacia snorted, "You'd be surprised sometimes."
Whatever Iris was going to say was cut off by someone screaming. The doctor's attention snapped toward the commotion that was starting in the city. Her eyes widened as she saw MagiTek troopers start to sweep the area. Shit. This was not good.
"Take Talcott and go find Dustin," instructed Athenacia, voice low and eyes intent.
"What about you?" asked Iris.
"Just go," she commanded in a tone that left no room for argument.
Iris nodded, grabbing the young boy by the arm and dragged him away from the troopers. Athenacia's eyes darted toward the parking spots and noted that she was unable to get to her truck in order to grab her weapon or get away. They probably had the exits blocked anyway. She wore a scowl on her face as she tried to get an idea of what was going on around her, however, she was only pushed roughly by someone on her back. She felt a gun behind her ear and immediately put her hands on her head, following the crowd of people where they were being herded. The unmistakable shape of a gun barrel was at the back of her ear, and she put her hands up in surrender as she was led back to the outdoor space in front of the Leville. The doctor wasn't the only one there, other Insomnian refugees and some Lestallum locals were being forced into the same spot. Athenacia was pushed to her knees into the sea of people and let her arms drop after she caught sight of Iris, Talcott, Jared and Dustin on the other side of the semi-circle. Hazel hues flickered all around her, noting the troopers with guns trained on all of them and that their exits were blocked. They were completely surrounded, forced to their knees and making it hard to attempt an escape. This did not bode well at all.
People were scared, hugging their loved ones and crying in fear of what was going on. Finally, the soldiers seemed to be done herding all of them and stood, waiting. Athenacia heard footsteps and out came who she could only assume was the one in charge. The man was dressed for war despite coming into a small town full of unarmed citizens, tall, with brown hair and lines all over his face. A scowl creased his features as he looked over all of them like they were the filth under his shoe. He probably thought them to be as well. There was someone else with him, a much younger man, blond hair and an amused smile on his face. While he was dressed in armour as well, it didn't appear to be nearly as eloquent as the older man. Athenacia recognized him as Loqi Tummelt, an officer for the Empire and a thorn in her side when she was younger and training with Cor.
"The boy, do you see him?"
Loqi was whispering to his commanding officer, quiet whispers, however Athenacia was able to pick it up, straining her ears and focusing. There were times in her life that she hated she was trained for war and now was definitely not one of them.
"He's here. Find his elder, he'll know the whereabouts of the Prince," replied the older man.
So that's what this was about. They blocked everything off because they couldn't find Noctis and the others. Now they had a giant city full of people and the Prince would be none the wise until they were finished here. This wasn't right and it made Athenacia's eyes narrow in hate at them. If they were lucky, the people they were searching for had long since skipped town and these idiots would leave them all alone - before she was picked out of a crowd. The doctor saw them point out toward her friends before a grunt had gone and grabbed the person they were searching for. Athenacia tensed as soon as she saw them roughly push Jared to the front.
"You're the Amicitia steward are you not? Tell me, where is the Prince?"
The old man did not move, loyal to the point that he would get himself killed. The young doctor knew that even if Jared had any idea of the royal's whereabouts, he would not crack under pressure, far too proud of his role in life.
"I'll ask again and only one more time nicely," said Loqi, "Where is Prince Noctis?"
Everything was silent. The tension was building up as fear engulfed the entirety of the crowd. No one would give up their Prince, not a single one of them. Athenacia cringed when she heard the smack given to Jared by the Loqi, exhaling deeply in order to remain calm. Talcott was screaming and the doctor could see that Iris had taken him in his arms and held him tightly, trying to quiet him.
"Tell me where the Prince is!" demanded the man called Caligo.
Jared remained still, facing his enemy without a trace of fear on his face. It was admirable, brave, and caused tears to well in the bottom of her eyes.
"Tell me now!"
No words came from the old man, not even when he was punched to the ground violently. Jared did not remove his face from his enemy, glaring them down. He was a tough son of a bitch, that no one could deny.
"Where is Prince Noctis?!" Caligo was becoming angry now.
Athenacia's face darkened as her enemy delivered a blow so hard she was certain her sensitive ears heard bones crack. This was how the Empire operated? Preying on the old and the weak? It made her blood boil. Caligo roughed him up and Iris shielded Talcott from view as the young man cried. This wasn't right. Jared wouldn't talk though, he was sworn to Amicitia and by extension, Caelum. Didn't this idiot know that? Probably not.
"Tell me where he is or you die!" yelled Caligo, taking out his sword as he held Jared by the scruff of his shirt.
Talcott's wails grew louder as Iris began her own sobbing. Athenacia observed them from where she forcefully kept with sorrow in her eyes before her hard look returned back toward the sight before her. Everyone was silent, filled with fear of what was happening. The MagiTek troopers had their guns trained on all of them so there was no hope of fighting them off without suffering casualties.
"Nothing?" Caligo raised a brow, "So be it!"
Iris wailed as she hugged Talcott tightly and Dustin hovered over her protectively. Athenacia's tears fell, angry as she watched the sword slide effortlessly into the heart of a dear and kind old man. That only caused more screams of panic to erupt from the crowd of Insomnian refugees. The girl could feel her hand trembling, the sound of Jared's body loud in her ears as it fell to the ground lifeless. This wasn't right. His fate should have been far better than that. She saw Crowe and Tash fall to the ground just as this man did, and many other comrades that had fallen beside her. The Empire was taking everyone away and she was powerless to stop them.
"No one knows where he is! Don't you monsters get that?!" shouted an all too familiar voice.
Athenacia's heart stopped as Caligo then grabbed a ginger-haired woman out of the crowd. She was pregnant, very pregnant, wearing scrubs for the hospital here in Lestallum. Gin screamed as the hair was practically being pulled out of her head. Tears fell down the nurse's eyes while she was forced to her knees, the blade parallel to her growing womb. This wasn't right. The doctor watched in fear for the unborn child and her friend.
"Anyone else have something useless to say to me?" asked Caligo, his voice riddled with malice.
Athenacia's fist tightened at her side. What could she do? Too many would die if she tried to fight. The longer she stared into the fearful eyes of her friend the more time seemed to stop. Iris and Talcott were crying as the blood of his grandfather leaked all around him into a giant pool. Gin was next if Athenacia didn't do something. This wasn't right. Another tear fell down her cheek as the tension grew with each passing second, however, no one made a move, and it was because of the simple fact that no one knew where the Prince was. Even if they did no one would talk, no one would risk their King who was out there doing his duty to them.
"Fine, where is Iris Amicitia?" Caligo spoke in almost a bored voice, "I know she's among you!"
That sprouted whispers among the refugees. This was only getting worse and the young girl began to sob even more as Dustin kept his protective stance over her. As a Crownsguard, he would lay his life on the line for her but there were many of them and only one of him. His plan wouldn't work and if this Caligo was asking where Iris was it meant that he didn't know who she was or what she looked like. Neither did any of the refugees because none of them even bothered to look at her. Not even Athenacia, she was observing through her peripherals as she kept her eyes trained on Gin.
"This woman will die if Iris does not come forward!"
Iris let out a loud sob. Caligo pressed his blade onto Gin's abdomen and was ready to attack. Athenacia watched in horror as he was getting ready to kill yet another one of them. This wasn't right, she couldn't let this happen. She was not powerless, she could wipe them all out instantly. That's right, she could take out every single last one of them, but not here or she'd kill innocent lives. No, she would have to isolate them somehow. Caligo was about to deliver the killing blow, just as Iris was inching her way toward her feet.
"No stop, It's me!" shouted Athenacia, sprouting to her feet and gaining the attention of everyone, "I'm Iris Amicitia!"
Caligo smiled, "Finally, we're getting somewhere."
"I'll go with you, tell you everything, but only if you let these people go and leave the city," she had tears in her eyes, ready to fall.
Everyone was staring at her in horror, including the pregnant nurse and the real Iris Amicitia. Gin's eyes were wide in recognition and fear but Athenacia didn't acknowledge her, keeping her gaze trained on her enemy as she was always taught to by Cor. The silence and anticipation felt like an eternity, a warm wind blowing slightly, adding to the hyper moods already spread throughout the terrified people.
"I think that's a fair trade, don't you?"
The owner of the voice was a person that struck fear to Athenacia's very core. Hazel eyes widened as she came upon the man from Insomnia, the one that was chasing her ever since the fall of the city. He only smiled that same evil smile at her as he came into view. The fists at her side clenched tightly as she tried desperately to keep her calm demeanour. This man knew her real name and could completely spoil what she was trying to do, putting all of these people into danger once more.
"She could be lying about telling us anything, I'd rather bring some insurance," replied Caligo.
"Perhaps you sell them short. There really is no trace of the Prince here or these fine people would have told you by now. Let's take the young Amicitia and go."
Caligo released Gin in disgust. So, it seemed that she wasn't the only one who had an issue with this man. The nurse didn't move, her eyes still in shock as she regarded her friend. Athenacia's gaze remained upon her enemy, straining to keep herself from breaking right then and there.
"Shall we, Miss?" the evil man smiled, offering his hand towards her.
Athenacia took small steps toward them, her skin crawling at every movement. There were still tears in the bottom of her eyes, willed to stay, refusing to show her fear in front of this monster. Caligo dismissed his men and the troopers dropped their weapons, beginning to evacuate the area. Athenacia reached the two men of Niflheim and then looked back one last time at the pregnant nurse. She then caught the eyes of Iris and Dustin before turning her back on all of them and walking beside her most feared enemy and leaving the scene. They were safe - for now.
Gin immediately got to her feet after that, wiping her tears and wishing there was more she could do. Instead, she walked toward the young girl, boy and obvious Crownsguard with a purpose. The teenage girl was completely distraught as she got to her feet, still shielding the young boy from the body of the man that was killed in all of this commotion, however, the pregnant woman had a purpose here, had to get this out.
"You're Iris Amicitia, aren't you? Gladio's sister?" asked Gin in a hushed voice.
Iris nodded, "Yeah," her voice quivered.
"You need to get in touch with your brother right away, maybe even Cor."
"W-Why?"
Gin fixed her a level glare.
"Because the woman they just took is in fact, Athenacia Virum."
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gdelgiproducer · 6 years
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DOTV AU: An Exercise in Alternate History (Part VIII)
Parts I, II, III, IV, V, VI, and VII offer more detailed context. (To briefly sum up why these posts are happening: alt history – as in sci fi, not “alternative facts” – buff, one day got the idea that DOTV could have turned out hella different if Jim Steinman looked for a star lead in other places, decided to reason out how that might work.) This is still getting a good response, so I’m gonna keep the train rolling.
Parts of the AU timeline established so far:
Instead of stopping at recording two songs from Whistle Down the Wind on a greatest hits compilation, Meat Loaf wound up taking more of an interest in Steinman’s new theater work than he did in our timeline, and through a series of circumstances found himself volunteering to play Krolock in the impending DOTV when Jim poured out his woes to him about needing to find some sort of star to attract investors. At a loss for any better ideas, Jim accepted Meat’s impulsive proposal, but not without resistance from his manager, David Sonenberg, who proposed Michael Crawford as an alternate candidate. Through quick thinking on Meat’s part, and inspiration on Jim’s, Crawford left the room accepting an entirely different role than he walked in hoping to get, leaving Krolock still open for Meat.
There was a brief speed bump, when Meat disliked Jim’s English script for the show, but after meeting with the original German author Michael Kunze and convincing Jim to compromise, things were on the road to being back on track… at least until 9/11 occurred.
Following a brief hiatus, everyone involved met to re-assess their options. The current game-plan was to put the new script on paper, schmooze with potential investors or producers, and put together a new creative team. Preferably not all at the same time, but with the crunch on, they’d do whatever needed to be done.
Schmoozing went well, but everybody that Meat, Jim, and the crew wanted to be involved was tentative. The conclusion reached was that they needed to show them there was a working show, which resulted in a concert of selections from the score paid for by none other than Courtney Love (!) that received some in-depth press coverage.
Now we join our heroes as new wrinkles emerge in the path to Broadway.
A week after the concert of selections from Dance of the Vampires (and after Michael Riedel noting that Meat Loaf has yet to sign on the dotted line for the show), a brief story appears in Rolling Stone’s Random Notes section: “Rocker Meat Loaf announced this week that he has terminated the management services of Allen Kovac and is currently seeking new representation. Kovac, who is in the process of leaving Left Bank Management to form his own firm, issued the following statement which is believed to be a comment on the heavyset singer’s departure, though he is not mentioned by name: ‘I don’t tell artists what they want to hear, I tell them what I know to be true. When I first sign an artist I let them know that I’m not their friend. Too many artists don’t measure their manager on their performance; they measure them on how many times they’ve been invited to their house. That’s not my style. If an artist is going to be successful, you need to tell them how to run their business -- not ask them how to run their business. Does it work? Look it up: no artist has ever done better after leaving my company.’” Requests from the Vampires team to speak to Meat about what’s up are met with total radio silence.
Meanwhile, the business side of Vampires continues to shore up. Jim Steinman receives delighted reports from his manager, David Sonenberg, that Jerry Weintraub and the Weisslers are ready to commit, bumping the total number of producers thus far up to nine. “How’s it looking now?” Jim queries. “Well, remember we’re trying to raise 15 million,” says David. “I don’t mean to be pessimistic, but it will be an uphill battle.” “What else is new in the theater?” Steinman grumbles in response. “On the bright side, we can now tighten the list of how many producers we need to seven.”
The representatives from Concerts West, based in L.A., get back to them within the week. Reports Sonenberg to all parties by e-mail: “They’re interested, but only if it tours. Live touring events are what they do, and the theatrical market is something they haven’t explored; they’d be more comfortable with a national tour than a Broadway run, it’s more similar to what they do at a nuts-and-bolts level.” A decision is ultimately reached by quorum to make Concerts West’s involvement in a national tour contingent on investing in the Broadway run first, and the counter-offer is duly sent their way.
As the business side shores up, the creative side is beginning to percolate as well. Meetings are had with John Rando, the Urinetown director who attended the concert and spoke very enthusiastically about the show in Riedel’s column. He’s very excited about the chance to work on the show, both to work with David Ives again (having done numerous shows at Encores! together, he feels working with David will be really special and help focus the play) and especially to work with Meat. “I’d get to hear him sing every day,” Rando enthuses. “That’s a blessing. Can you imagine that? Every single day of your life you get to hear that voice.” He also ticks the right boxes when it comes to the commercial appeal of the piece and how it meshes with his vision for the show: “It’s such a different reality. It’s silly and fun and kind of glamorous, too. These vampires sort of pull you in and you find you’re turned on by them, too! It’s a wonderful, Gothic playground.” When asked for suggestions for a choreographer, and more specifically if they should ask his choreographer on Urinetown, John Carrafa, to be a part of the show, Rando is mildly hesitant but mostly enthusiastic. Jim is admittedly happiest when it comes to Rando’s assessment of how much creative control he should be allowed to have: “Look, Jim, what are you worried about? It’s your baby! You’ve been working on it forever! The quality, the tone, the ideas, the music... this play is all you! You’d be very much a part of it.”
More progress is made when a new set designer is engaged: David Gallo. Jim immediately likes him instinctively, when, upon meeting him for the first time, Gallo stops the interview process dead. “I have two things to tell you before we continue. Number one: I’m probably the only set designer in America who still subscribes to Heavy Metal Magazine. Number two: I bought Bat Out of Hell because I saw the album cover artwork and decided I had to have it before I even heard the music.” This is no idle compliment, considering the album cover was conceived by Steinman and executed by Richard Corben... and a sequence very similar to the events depicted on the cover forms the shape of one of Vampires’ opening scenes. His sample sketches of the sets are surprisingly atmospheric as well.
The more things shape up on the creative end, however, the more everyone on the business side of the table nervously eyes the chair where Meat Loaf should be. Since his firing of Kovac, who was more a hindrance than a help so is not really missed, he hasn’t said word one to anybody. Irving Azoff, widely proclaimed the biggest agent in the world, who attended the concert and may be interested in the show, is sending them queries about who is managing Meat now, hinting that he has his eye on Meat as a client. But nobody knows what’s going on with him. When he is finally able to get him on the phone, Jim pleads with Meat to see him, one on one if need be. Meat agrees.
The scene: Le Bar Bat, in Hell’s Kitchen on West 57th. Only 9 years prior, Steinman had conducted an interview for Bat Out of Hell II at this very establishment, celebrating his and Meat Loaf’s long-awaited reunion. Plastic bats still hang from the ceiling, and the bar is still sparsely attended. A deafening fusion group still plays a seemingly endless set. Steinman greets them, as per tradition, with a cheery “fuck off!” as they finish a tune. Meat sits alone in a booth, awaiting Jim’s arrival. He rummages through his CBS Records holdall, his shoulder juddering as if it were a pneumatic drill. His graying hair could do with a shampoo. Finally, he finds what he is seeking: a couple of throat lozenges, which he pops. “Jimmy, I don’t think I can do the show.” Immediately Jim’s heart is in his throat: “WHAT?!?” “What we’re about to do is insane! Lunatic. Totally insane. We’re just gonna go out there in front of everybody with our pants down!” Jim, searching for a way to respond, can only come out with “Think of it as a character-building experience! It’ll be amazing!”
“Have you read what your fans are saying about this on the Internet? They’re saying you should be sticking aside all the old, fat guys named after a dinner dish! ‘Get rid of Meat Loaf.’ They don’t want to see me do this!” “Now, Meat, come on. You know better than to buy into their bullshit. If I believed what I read on the Internet about anything I should do, I’d never get anything done. You’re going to be glad that you stuck with it.” “Well... we need to go out of town first. New York is the hardest when it comes to people being critical. We’re gonna be judged. A lot.” “Meat, you know we can’t afford to do that. Besides, every musical that you’ve done on Broadway has opened cold in New York. I like having the preview audience be the New York audience. There’s no BS -- they’re right there telling you what you need to fix. It’s great.”
Meat heaves a sigh: “Jimmy, I’ll be honest with you; I’m more tired now than I was when Amanda was two months old!” “Meat, listen to me. We have a lot of time. We’re gonna work very hard and very slowly. I know you’re not good at dealing with change, but you really have to stay focused and believe in the project.” “But Jimmy, it’s huge! It’s got to be one of the biggest shows on Broadway right now without even opening yet. And there’s still so much to work out.”
“What happened to Allen?” “He never believed in the show. You saw what happened when he kept the door open for Night of the Proms. After the concert, I called him to ask why he wasn’t there, and he said to me, ‘Y’know, an album and a tour are still possibilities, so why not do that instead? At least you know that will sell.’ We got into it pretty hard, and he called our show garbage. He said I did better off away from you, and that if I did this album and the tour, I could retire, or I could come back afterwards if you wanted to talk Bat III, but he was adamant that I was not doing this show. It became pretty clear to me that it was going to come down to either you or him.” Jim, touched, perhaps even a little misty-eyed: “And you chose me?” “As if I had a choice! Jim, you’re my brother. I love you... more than you’ll ever know.” 
A beat of silence, awkward, emotional, and then... “Irving Azoff liked the concert.” “Yeah?” “He keeps calling us. I think he wants to sign you, and he wants to do the show too. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a manager who was on the same page?” “...will it get him to produce if I sign with him?” “I dunno. Maybe?” “I’ll give him a call. What else is going on?” Jim proceeds to update him on everything going on with the show, culminating in the reminder that they have a meeting with John Carrafa coming up to decide his suitability to the choreographic duties. “Can I count on you to be there?” “Jim, I’m signing the contract for a year, manager or no manager.  If we’re fortunate enough to run, that’s how long I’ll be here. And then I’ll be in a nursing home, no doubt!” For the first time all night, both men laugh. A rosy future may well be in sight.
TO BE CONTINUED!
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qqueenofhades · 6 years
Note
Please please please write more steamy Garcy action!
Welp.
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The combination of this prompt and the above shot from the promo was very bad, so…. have an absolutely will-not-be-remotely-canon, total shipper trash version of Salem, for reasons. Because apparently the combination of Lucy + Flynn + Salem results in nothing but smut for my muse.
Rated E.
AO3.
The summer night wind pulls at Lucy’s skirt as she ismarched down the path, escorted by a pair of Pilgrim’s Progress extras in their black hats and high starchedcollars, a sea of eerie earthbound stars twinkling to every side. Of coursethey’re not actually stars, they’re torches, clutched by the fearful populaceof Salem gathered on Gallows Hill, and the rope strung from an old tree wherefive days ago, on July 19, 1692, Sarah Good, Elizabeth Howe, Susannah Martin, SarahWildes, and Rebecca Nurse were hanged. There will be another round of hangingsin about a month, Lucy recalls, until the trials burn themselves out as quicklyas they’ve started, in October. This still all seems rather academic to her.She wasn’t expecting to it to come this far, but she isn’t that concerned.She’ll get out of this.
Admittedly, she’s not certain how, and she would like tohave a few more options. She’s been separated from the boys, and she isn’t surethey know where she is, which is alarming. She isn’t sure she can pull the H.H.Holmes oracle trick to stop them – Holmes, psychotic as he was, was still onlyone man. This is a mob. Not to mention, that will serve as proof positive ofwitchcraft, and good luck fighting her way through all of them alone. Lucy’scontributions to the team are not of the brute-force and multiple-weaponsvariety. For the first time, her stomach turns over in genuine apprehension. Where are Wyatt and Rufus?
(She thinks for half a minute that the most effective one ofthem here would be Flynn, but there’s no way he’s coming.)
A low, ugly murmur is starting to rise by the time Lucy andher guards reach the hanging tree, and they come to a halt. Cotton Mather,looking more smug and punchable than ever, is standing nearby in his vicar’sstock, swelled with pride, ready to preside over another essential measure insaving the souls of Salem’s impressionable citizens. Lucy has a generous viewof the past, for the most part. Knows that it’s always more complicated thansimplistic pictures would like to paint it. Given the modern world’s irrationalbeliefs and panics and scapegoating, she’s not even about to point too many fingersat the ability of the Salemites to convince themselves that these women arewitches, servants of Satan, and their existence depends on killing themimmediately. But the faces watching her are huddled and hard and blank withhatred. Parents clutch their children close. There are kids here? Probably a vital moral lesson for them or something. Thehell. Never mind the historical relevancy and comparative morality and whateverelse. These people have problems.
Peter Puritan, on her left side, steps forward and makes aflourish at Mather. “Behold Goodwife Preston,” he booms. Too bad communitytheater isn’t a thing in seventeenth-century New England, he would be great atit. “The Court of Oyer and Terminer has judged beyond all doubt that this womanis guilty of the abominable sin of witchcraft, and – ”
“You haven’t tried me!” Lucy says loudly, earning shocked and scathing looks. “You’ve – this is a miscarriage of justice, it’s – ”
This is pathetic. Of courseit’s a miscarriage of justice, and there are still at least two monthsuntil anyone gives a shit about it. “I want to speak to Colonel NathanielSaltonstall,” Lucy plunges on. “I – I know him, he – ”
“Silence, witch!” Paul Puritan, from the other side, looksas if he’s aiming a blow at her, which Lucy instinctively ducks. Her heart isstarting to pound. All right, this is cutting it too close. She’s more thanready for Wyatt and Rufus to turn up on whatever improvised rescue missionthey’ve definitely contrived, and her eyes sweep the crowd, in case they’repulling the Will Turner trick (though a hat with a fancy feather woulddefinitely stick out). The trials do arrest a few men for being accomplices.Are they across town in some other jail?
Is nobody coming?
Lucy starts looking around, wondering if there’s a plank shecan grab or anything else to improvise as a weapon. But while she’s doing this,she’s losing time as Mather reads out whatever canned indictment Rittenhousemust have provided him with – is this thepoint, she doesn’t think her own mother will actually let her get killed, arethey going to swoop in as convenient saviors as the last moment? Is it possiblethat even Rittenhouse doesn’t know where she is? If she’s relying on them to pull her ass out of this –
“Remove your mob cap, witch,” Peter Puritan orders her. “Doyou have any last confession or recantation of your heretical views, before youface the proper punishment for your crime?”
“I’m not a witch.” Lucy’s voice isn’t as loud as she wants.“None of them are witches! You’re killing innocent women, you – ”
Unfortunately, true as this is, everyone sees the defense ofaccused and executed witches as, well, proof of witchcraft. There’s amaddeningly circular illogic to this entire thing, and the gasp that thisutterance provokes is followed by a shout. “HANG THE WITCH!”
Oh, please, Lucythinks frantically. You’ve got to bekidding me. Come on, past. I’m literally fighting to save your entireexistence. Do me a solid.
The past does not, in fact, do her a solid. The shoutspreads, quick as poison, and in that, Lucy can feel the final dam break. PeterPuritan reaches for the strings of her cap – she will be literally exposedbefore the crowd, die bare-headed and stripped of her shame and modesty – andLucy twists away, even as he pulls at the knots and jerks it off. Her hairtumbles out, as Paul Puritan grabs her and pushes her toward the hanging noose.Lucy kicks and snaps, trying to head-butt him, and feels her ear scrape as hejerks the rough hemp down around her neck. She stumbles on a loose board,briefly terrifying her that she’ll hang herself by accident like a clumsyidiot. The crowd is literally baying for her blood, Cotton Mather’s eyes aretwo piggy black sparks, and chasing Rittenhouse has made her believe in onekind of evil, but this is altogether another – she is actually going to die, and –
“LUCY!”
Her heart stops for a full beat in her chest, as the bellowrings out across the rising tide of madness and momentarily halts even Peterand Paul in their tracks. Her eyes sweep across the crowd, looking desperatelyfor Wyatt, even as she doesn’t think that sounds like Wyatt. But how – but how –
Garcia Flynn punches down a final minion trying to stop himand bulls into the middle of the mob like a runaway locomotive, charging acrossthe ground and toward the gallows. Peter and Paul recollect themselvessufficiently from their shock to try to grab him, which is a very bad idea.Flynn decks Peter with one punch and judo-throws Paul, sending himsomersaulting off the gallows with a squelchy noise. His violence is economicand brutal and effortless, almost mesmerizing – Lucy has seen it many times, ofcourse, but usually as something she has to stop or redirect or otherwiseprevent from its fullest potential. Now, for the first time she can remember,it is entirely focused on her – not as its target, but its purpose. For a wildmoment, it feels like Flynn is some strange avatar of her own rage, the way shewould fight if she wasn’t a five-foot-five history professor who had neverhandled a gun in her life until she shot Jesse James. How is he here. How is he – how is he here?
Right now, Lucy doesn’t care. Flynn reaches her in the nextinstant and practically wrenches the noose off her neck, scraping her earagain, and she stumbles forward, clutching hold of his waistcoat. The Salemiteshave been briefly and totally stunned by what looks like the wrathfulmaterialization of the Devil Himself to pluck one of his concubines from thebrink, and Lucy’s historian’s brain has a moment of wondering if this is goingto make the trials even worse. Causes and consequences, short-and-long-termeffects, all the shit she can’t stop thinking about even when her own life isat stake – but God, she was scared, she’s only realizing just now how much, andFlynn – and Flynn –
She can’t bring herself to let go of him, even as Flynnhalf-wraps her in his jacket and hauls her toward the edge of the gallows. Butat this point, Cotton Mather has – unfortunately – recovered himself. “DEVIL!”he booms. “I DEFY THEE, SATAN! I DEFY THEE!”
Despite everything, Flynn has almost a sardonic grin on hisface, just visible in the flickering torchlight, as if even this isn’t theworst thing he has been called. Mather raises his missal, bellowing what soundslike something intended to make Flynn vanish in a puff of brimstone, but whichdoes nothing of the sort, because of course not. The Salemites are confused andterrified to see their vaunted spiritual leader so utterly overmatched, andLucy’s ankle twists under her as Flynn drags her off the gallows. Mather takesa step, as if realizing that God has left him out to dry on this one and it’stime for more physical weapons. He grabs for the truncheon at Peter Puritan’sbelt. “Prince of Lies! I will not allow you to – ”
Flynn, keeping hold of Lucy with one arm, plunges his freehand into his leather jacket, removes a gun, and shoots Cotton Goddamn Matherin the head. It sounds like thunder.
Mather goes down hard, as Lucy screams and muffles it in herhand. Mather is one of history’s most unpleasant racist and misogynisticjackasses, it’s not like this is a terrible loss, and maybe with theintellectual architect of the witch trials gone, Salem will come to its senses.Or it will become convinced that he was completely right all along, with Luciferhimself in their midst, and double down. Lucy isn’t sure if Mather’s dead –Flynn didn’t get a clean hit, just a glancing one – and they have no time to besure. Flynn throws her over his shoulder, and runs, fittingly, like the devil.
He doesn’t stop until they’re well away, somewhere deep inSalem Woods, also known as the Witches’ Wood, and the noise and shout and totaldisorder of Gallows Hill has faded to a distant, dreamy clamor. Flynn stumblesto a halt, pulls Lucy down, and practically throws her against the nearesttree. She has never seen his face look like this. “Are you – did they – ”
“Stop,” Lucy chokes out. “Stop, Flynn. Flynn. Flynn! Garcia!I’m fine. I’m fine!”
This is more or less the truth – aside from her scraped ear,twisted ankle, and hammering heart, she’s physically undamaged, thanks to histimely intervention, but the mental shock is going to take longer to set in.His hands are practically bruising her shoulders, he belatedly realizes it, andloosens them a fraction. His dark hair is tousled, there’s an abrasion on hischeek, and his knuckles are scraped. He has clearly been fighting the entiretown to get to her.
Lucy, to say the least, has no idea how to react to this. Itsays something about how successfully he has convinced her that he hates thesight of her and will never forgive her that she ranked Rittenhouse a morelikely rescuer than him. But it’s him here, face frantic in the moonlight,still completely unable to put up a pretense or façade. “Lucy,” he says again,barely more coherently. “I – Lucy. I thought – ” He stops. Straining madly forhis usual brusque dismissal, he says, “How could you be so foolish as to – ”
“It’s my faultthat the place literally known for murdering slightly strange innocent womenwas about to murder me, a slightly strange innocent woman?” Lucy flares. Shecannot believe him. He has hauled her bodily from certain death and badlywounded or killed Cotton Mather in doing it, and now of course he’s going to bea dick about it. “If you actually think so, I’m happy to walk back there andlet them finish the job!”
This of course is a bluff, as she’s going nowhere near them,but it turns Flynn’s face a sick white. His grip tightens convulsively on her,her toes practically dangling off the ground, and she shoves at him until heputs her down. They stare at each other for a crackling moment. She wants toask him where Wyatt and Rufus are, but the words get stuck. He looks disheveledand frantic and still not quite able to look away from her face. He half-raiseshis hand as if to touch it, remembers himself, and stops. His chest heaves.Quieter, he says, “Don’t ever do that again.”
Lucy opens her mouth, to shoot back any of the obviousrejoinders about how she is not going to have much choice in their present lineof work, and besides, it’s a considerable shock to hear he gives a shit. Onceagain, the words don’t make it that far. It is not only the fear and adrenalineof the near-hanging and dramatic rescue that is making her heart keep up itspresent pace. His face is quite close to hers, and it wouldn’t be hard. To juststep up, and –
(Lucy feels something for Wyatt beyond any doubt. Somethingwarm and alluring and tender, something she could see turning into somethingmore, a foundation to build on, a home to come to, strong and sweet and real.She always has.)
(Lucy also feels something for Flynn beyond any doubt.Something raw and dark and hungry, something she can’t see turning intoanything but the crash of a devouring sea that would take her and drown her,pull her under. This is nothing to build on, cannot move forward, strikes likelightning and burns, burns, burns. She always has.)
The witch and the Devil in the woods at midnight, Lucythinks. It is almost surreal, the way the crickets shirr, the starlight issharp and cold, and in the distance, men who want to kill them chant like Moriadrums. Is she not a witch? She knows their future, she’s traveled here from it,she has seen and done things that defy explanation in her own time, not merelythose. They have wanted to kill her for it, but something else is surging inher now. She wants that power, in a way. And the fear. That moment when Flynnwas decking Peter Puritan, when she felt it as if it was her arm, as if he washer and she was him and both of them were two strange halves of a twisted andtorn-apart creature –
Lucy boosts herself on her tiptoes, grabs Flynn by themostly-undone cravat, and kisses him.
It’s not like kissing Wyatt. That is generous, easy, gentle,knowing she will be caught when she jumps over the edge. This is flingingherself into the abyss without a rope, with no idea what kind of reaction itwill provoke. Flynn could do literally anything, and as a rule in his life,has. But this Lucy, the Lucy who’s so fucking furious at her mother she can’tbreathe, who has spent every waking moment sacrificing for everyone else, who wants to be the one to do the reckless,idiotic thing for once, doesn’t care. This is a dangerous man, and she isn’tabout to romanticize or underestimate that. But if nothing else – if there’sanything she’s taking away from her recent near-death experience – she is alsoa dangerous woman.
Flynn, for his part, is too floored to do anything at all.His hands windmill feebly in the air, and he remains briefly inert against her,until Lucy wonders if she’s completely mistaken and there isn’t whatever there is between them, whatevershe thought there was. His mouth is a hard seam of granite, grim and ungenerousand guarded like a castle wall, just like the rest of him. Just then, for thatinstant, it feels like kissing a statue.
In the next, it doesn’t. His hands clamp onto her face,pulling her head up almost hard enough to strain her neck – well, he’s a fullfoot taller than she is, something’s got to give, something has to bridge thedistance, in more ways than one. He kisses like he punches: he takes noprisoners, he doesn’t waste time on peripheral targets, and it feels liable toknock you out if you run into it too hard. Her hands come up, clutching hiswrists, as their noses mash and their teeth scrape and they bite each other’slips, too used to conflict to come easily into convergence. Lucy isn’t evensure she is enjoying it, exactly. Just that she can’t stop.
It’s Flynn who breaks the kiss (if such a polite,sweet-sounding word can be used to dignify the proceedings) after a gasping,gulping moment. He clearly thinks the insanity of the Salemites must becontagious. “Lucy – ”
Oddly enjoyable as it is to hear her name in his mouth likethat, the way his accent sometimes thickens in moments of heightened emotion,Lucy Preston rarely gets the chance to outright do stupid things, and shedoesn’t feel like losing this one. She takes a step, grabbing his lapels, herloosened hair falling around her face, dark shadows on the paleness. She feelsa little demonic herself, breathing enchantment, whispering spells, and it’s aneven more enjoyable feeling, the tremor that runs through him, the knowledgethat she could break that desperate self-control with not much more than aflick. Witches are known to have sex with the devil, after all. It’s one of themajor features by which you can identify them. How, God knows, but Lucy isn’treally interested in the logistics. Just this. Her monster.
(He’s not, he’s not a monster, she hasn’t thought that for along time now, and yet. She hungers. She hungers.)
(Perhaps the monster is her.)
(She doesn’t altogether mind.)
They stare at each other for a dazzled moment longer, andthen Lucy’s grip changes, turns possessive, as she pulls him closer again.Flynn resists for a valiant split-second longer, and then she can feel himsnap. They are two people with, to say the least, a volatile history, who havehad some sort of connection from the start and whose chemistry has always beenundeniable, who have been spending a lot of time (at least on someone’s Garbage Lord part) insistingthey hate each other now. Of course it was going to become inevitable.
Flynn kisses her ferociously, hand curling behind her head,fingers brushing her scraped ear, but Lucy doesn’t care. Her arms tangle aroundhis neck, they overbalance, and slide down the trunk of the tree into the softmoss at the bottom. Flynn comes down heavily on top of Lucy, catching hisweight on an elbow just in time, as well as tangling in her skirts. It’s awonder anyone gets to the actual fornication part around here, given the amountof clothing, but Lucy happens to know that Puritans hump like rabbits. Don’tlet the buttoned-up religious zealot image fool you. This – sneaking off for atryst in the woods, in the ditches, in the fields, anywhere away from the whiteclapboard house and the judgment of the church – is far from uncommon. And allof that is alarming, if it’s what they’re doing, but it appears they are.
Breathless and entangled, Flynn sprawled between her legs,his head resting almost on her chest, they struggle to sit up halfway, stillkissing, grunting and whimpering between breaths, as he rakes her bottom lipwith his teeth. Lucy wrestles him into a better angle, as he puts down one handto brace himself and strokes her neck with the other, running his callusedthumb up the hollow of her throat and onto her cheek, half-tender despite theheat of their kiss. His eyelashes flutter. The look on his face is unspeakable.This is probably the first time he’s kissed anyone since his wife died. Lucywonders if he’s seeing the ghost of a dead woman in her face – or if he’s not.
It still doesn’t matter. His mouth leaves one more long,hungry brand on hers, then breaks off, venturing down her chin, the undersideof her jaw, as he tugs aside the torn white collar. Lucy shudders from head totoe, even as his free hand has successfully made it under the skirts and isrunning up the slim line of her thigh. As much clothing as Puritans wear ontop, they wear less below. Lucy has made it a policy of retaining her ownunderwear, but aside from a petticoat, there’s not much in Flynn’s way.
She shifts position, crawling onto his lap, shucking hisheavy coat and hearing a thump as it hits the ground with his gun still inside.She may regret that if they are abruptly caught by the Puritans, but then,public indecency would definitely get them arrested, so Flynn will be punchingsomeone anyway. This is insane, this is insane, this is insane, and for a moment, Lucy wonders if she’s actually beingbewitched, that the moon is rising in Salem Wood on a seventeenth-centurysummer night and she’s fallen sideways out of reality. But that is her lifeevery day now. This is something still more.
It doesn’t take long until Lucy’s skirts are hiked up aroundher hips, Flynn’s trousers have been unbuttoned, and if either of them aregoing to stop this before it goes past the point of no return, it has to benow. But Flynn’s hand has almost reached the top of her thigh, and Lucy isgoing to lose her mind if they don’t, and this is going to solve nothing at alland will probably result in their relationship being even more fraught. But it still doesn’t matter. Nothing does except him,and them, and this. She pushes Flynn onto his back, hooks her panties off herankle, and picks her skirts up. Their eyes meet, in a moment of silentquestion. It’s not entirely clear who’s asking who.
Flynn gives half a jerky nod, hands already reaching for herhips, pulling her closer, as Lucy straddles him, knees pressing into the softloam on either side of his thighs. The first intimate brush is practicallymaddening, and she reaches down, taking hold of him in her hand, stroking tipand shaft with her thumb. Then she shifts, guides him in the darkness, andslides him slowly into her, hard and hot and solid. Her fingers slip on him andher, this raw and elemental communion, like druids coupling in the shadow of astanding stone. This ritual, this old magic of man and woman, has beenpracticed for thousands upon thousands of years.
Lucy utters a faint whimper in her throat as she settlesfully onto him, opening her hips, feeling him sliding deeper and deeper untiltheir bodies are entirely given to the other. She leans forward, breathcatching, as she rolls her hips, then plants her hands on his shoulders as shethrusts. He reaches up to grab her wrists, meeting her halfway with a thrust ofhis own, hard enough to send something haywire inside her. She sees sparks. Shegulps and swears, eyes closed, sweat beading in her hair and rolling down theback of her neck. Hitches herself up, drags herself against him, and bends downalmost on all fours, riding out the long shudder of frisson and friction. Hegrips her harder. Her head comes down close to his as she fucks him thoroughly,her hair hanging in his face. He snarls and lunges for her mouth.
As they kiss again, Flynn comes up beneath her like acyclone, flips them over, and catches hold of her hands, shoving them over herhead, as he thrusts into her practically to the back of her spine. One of hishands pulls loose from hers and gets hold of her thigh instead, pushing itwider. Every time Lucy thinks the next stroke can’t keep coming, can’t be moreintense, it is, rutting and jerking. Her free hand claws at him, searching forpurchase in this mad, mad universe, when she fears she has been tipped off theedge and it is a very long way down. Bunch and burst and buck, her back presseddown into the loam, Flynn’s hips coiling and loosening for a final, wrackingheave. He has given up on any feeble denial whatsoever that he does not want todo exactly this. He mounts her once more, strong and lithe and ruthless as atiger, and then starts to lose it altogether.
Lucy isn’t sure if she orgasms, so much as she reaches apoint where her body simply cannot take a single instant more of sensation andstimulation and breathless need, the system overloads, has to call a halt andstart again. Her mouth is open, head thrown back on the leaves, gaspingfruitlessly, her body shaking and blazing. It’s like standing too close to anopen bonfire, not so much soft and pleasurable as searing and primal. She thinksthat perhaps, the Salemites have gotten their wish. She has, in fact, beenburned alive.
It is a very long moment until either of them can even thinkabout moving. Flynn is still inside her, pulsing and softening, until he jerksout of her abruptly enough to make her feel bereft. He sits back on his knees,pulling his trousers up and fumbling with the buttons. Lucy lies where she is,still not quite able to move, as he steals a brief, shamefaced look at her andreaches out to pull down her skirts, as if hiding the evidence will deny it everhappened. His hands are shaking, faintly but relentlessly. He wipes his mouth .“Lucy,”he says hoarsely, the first thing either of them have managed since thismadness started. “We should go.”
Slowly, head rushing as she does, Lucy sits up. She can’tquite get enough air, due to a combination of the obvious and never havinggotten around to taking her corset off. Her thighs are slick and her mouthfeels wet and swollen. She is going to have bruises.
“Lucy.” He remains hunched where he is. “Lucy, did I hurtyou?”
Garcia Flynn, as far as she knows, has never asked thatquestion to anyone before. Lucy doesn’t know how to answer. He didn’t, and hedid, and she feels like the white-hot anvil in the forge, and she isn’t sureher knees can bear her weight. She feels both possessed and cleansed. God,where does she even start to understand this.
(Maybe she doesn’t have to. Maybe it just is.)
Flynn is still looking at her. Waiting.
Lucy reaches up to touch his face, cupping her fingersaround his jaw. He turns his head almost reflexively, as if to kiss her palm,and to hide his eyes. She can feel a wetness that is not sweat. He shudderswith the weight of all the tears he is not remotely about to shed. But despitehimself, a few more slip out. He shakes again. He doesn’t make a sound.
Lucy leans forward and kisses his cheek, softly and chastelyafter the carnal heat and fury of their coupling, and tastes the salt on herlips. Then she puts her other hand out, and allows him to help her up. Theygrasp at each other once they’re back on their feet, struggling to steady eachother. He looks at her again. His expression is indescribable.
It’s a strange feeling to know you own a dangerous man’ssoul, but Lucy Preston will be gentle.
“Come on, Garcia,” she whispers. “Let’s go home.”
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