#supplies and taxes) and allows you to travel and still work and also it would be fun. and i could tattoo myself so it would cut some

[webmaster365]

Simple Steps To Success In Home Business

Running a home business or starting one, can be challenging to do effectively. It takes a lot of work and planning to start a home business and after you start, there are hurdles that you did not account for. However, you don't have to think of all the answers yourself! This article provides valuable insight into various aspects of home business that will make your home business, more efficient and profitable ways.

If you need to do any driving to meet the needs of your home based business, keep detailed records of mileage and save all fill-up receipts. Any business related travel expenses can be claimed at tax time. However, you need to be sure that you're able to prove that the trips had to do with your business.

Open a PO Box to use to receive your mail for the business. Don't put your real address on the Internet under any circumstances. This can also help safeguard your home and isolate your work life.

If you have a business, then you need a budget. How can you run a cost efficient business without a budget? It is impossible, and therefore imperative that you incorporate a well devised budget into the planning process. This budget should include what your expenses are of course and it should itemize them. Make sure you are thorough and include everything so that you are not misleading yourself.

Write a business plan. Figure out whether your home business idea is workable. Even if you don't plan to apply for a loan from the SBA (Small Business Administration) or a bank, you still need a business plan. Determine whether there is actually a market for your product before putting a lot of money into it.

It is vital that you keep accurate records for your home business. If you are ever audited by the IRS or local revenue authorities, you will need to show proof of your business income and expenses. Good records also allow you to keep track of your business and how well it is doing from month to month.

When you are ready to write a business plan for your new business, get some help from experts. This does not mean that you have to spend hundreds of dollars to hire a business consultant. You can find many books in the library, containing sample business plans for every type of business imaginable. You can also find samples from online resources.

If your home business is able to produce a product that can be sold wholesale to others, search the internet for a listing of businesses that could use the item. Contact them to see if they would like a complimentary sample. This is a great way to attract new customers to your business.

Do not start your business without checking with an accountant first. No one wants to upset the IRS so make sure you have everything in line before collecting your first dollar. If your state has sales taxes, make sure to find out how you need to handle them for your business.

You are a small speck amidst thousands or millions. How can you make your home business better known? Do it through blog postings, chat rooms, even a contest. Join a business organization. Advertise in a local newspaper. If possible, publish an article in a trade paper. --but the word of mouth may be the best of all.

Supply your home business by buying used and surplus goods. Whether you are buying office furniture or manufacturing material, you can often get a much better price by looking around for used goods. A fifty year old desk may not be as attractive as that sleek glass one you have your eye on but it will work just as well or perhaps even better!

When it comes to taxes and your home business, be aware of the fact that any equipment that is used specifically for your business is tax deductible. This will help you out when you are paying your taxes. Be sure not to claim items that are obviously for personal use.

When it comes to taxes and your home business, you want to be sure that you are aware that vacations are not tax deductible, however business trips are. These business trips are fully deductible, and your meals are 50 percent deductible.

A great tip for your home business is to make sure that you create a mailing list that your customers can sign up for. This is important so that you can maintain a regular list of customers and keep them happy by providing deals and discounts specific to them.

A great tip for your home business is to make sure that you stay organized when it comes to your electronics. Not only does it look cluttered and unprofessional, but you may open yourself to safety hazards if you have cables laying around everywhere. Look into products that will contain the cables for your electronics and keep them tidy.

When running a home business, a good rule of thumb is to spend 20% of the time learning the ropes, and 80% actually doing the work. The aim is to actually make a profit, so you need to do whatever it takes to generate income.

Set up an opt-in newsletter on your home business website so you can keep people interested in the products you sell. Whether it's a service or a physical item, sending an email once a week to let your customers know of a sale, new product, or where you'll be showing up next will keep your business on their mind.

Offer a discount for the customers that you have served if they send a referral your way. If you do a really great job for one customer, you are going to want them to spread the word about your business and offering them a discount on their next service is going to encourage them to tell their friends.

Operating or starting a home business effectively, can be difficult and not everyone is successful with it. But that does not mean it is impossible and that does not mean you can't be successful. This article has shown that there are many ways to make home business not only easier, but also more profitable! Good luck!

[that-fema-corps-blog]

Day 14

August 16, 2022

Woke up at 7:00, made breakfast but barely ate any, then met at the main building at 8:00 for COVID testing. The first day on campus was the only day we had to test ourselves. Since then, some members of the staff have administered the tests; it’s a little awkward having to sit still while someone shoves a cotton swab up your nose, but it’s not too bad.

We met in the other side of the main building at 8:30 and set up the chairs. The member development associate gave a presentation on independent learning projects, specialty roles, and the like. We first did a tic-tac-toe activity where we put our home state, age, favorite hobby, and some goals on a 3×3 grid and tried matching them with those of other corps members. Then we created some goals in the SMART format: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. We signed up for Accenture and did a pre-test on career preparation and were instructed to do the first lesson on career planning later this week.

We then learned about all the specialty roles: community relations representative, health and wellness councilor, life after AmeriCorps representative, service-learning initiator, and the vehicle safety tools. The community relations representative documents what the team does and helps with social media. The health and wellness councilor runs physical training and helps with other team bonding activities. The life after AmeriCorps representative helps teammates meet career and personal goals they have for once they leave the program. The service-learning initiator coordinates days of service – especially those on federal holidays. At least two vehicle safety tools are required per team, and they are in charge of van/equipment inspections and safety talks.

We got a few minutes off, and I ate a little more and took a bathroom break. I didn’t want to run all the way back to my dorm, so I opted for one of the the portable toilets. I’m impressed at how clean everything was, though maybe that’s only because it was a Monday morning. They also had several foot-pump sinks with soap and paper towel dispensers right outside. I’d say it was an efficient setup.

At 11:00, we listened to a presentation about food and budget planning. We get $6.10/person/day for food on normal days and $15 for when we do not have kitchen access (mainly for travel). People with certain medical dietary restrictions can get a $1.50 raise to their daily food allowance, and the food budget may also be raised to $15/person/day for any team that did not have time to cook due to having to work 12 hours a day during certain disasters. Everyone’s food allowances are supplied to the team leader on one card, and the money does not roll over from one disbursement to another. We are also not allowed to spend more than $15/person/meal, even if we have the leftover funds to do so; therefore, we have to keep restaurant orders to a maximum of $12/person to be able to afford tax and tip. The team leader then has to send in the itemized receipts so the government knows that the money was spent according to policy.

Travel expenses work in a similar way. The team will receive a chunk of hotel money for the duration of the drive to the new location based on the number of team members. The money doesn’t have to be spent evenly; one night’s lodging might work out to $20/person/night, and the next one might cost $50 (though you’re not allowed to book a luxury hotel just because you have enough leftover money). The policy seems to be that each person must have a bed or a cot, and that men and women must room separately.

We broke off into teams and discussed our food budget, meal plans, and how things would work once we were in hotels. We hadn’t gotten our project locations yet, so the unit leader asked us where we wanted to be deployed. We probably won’t get a choice as to where we’ll go, but it’s worth asking.

We got off at about 12:00 for lunch. The next presentation was Behavioral Health at 13:30. It was very similar to information the Litmos virtual learning I had done before arrival. We each received a worksheet and broke into teams to discuss our stress symptoms, how we will ask for help, what others can do to help us, etc.

Then we had a Life in the AmeriBubble lecture at 15:30. My teammates took turns discussing what we were looking forward to this year, what we were anxious about, and related topics with each other. The team leader and support team leader had a talk with us about alcohol use at around 17:00, and then we were free to go.

I vacuumed my floor and did some laundry, and then it was time for dinner at 20:00. A few of us ate in the dorm game room and filled out and emailed off a couple forms while we watched TV. I added a FEMA Corps email signature from the template our team leader wanted us to use, then swapped the government computer for my personal one. I talked to some of the other corps members and messed with the computer for a while before leaving for bed at around 22:30.

#fema corps #corps training institute #onboarding #food mention

[anuharhomes]

5 Things to Keep in Mind While Buying Flats in Gated Communities in Manikonda

Every person desires to own their residence. It is a life event that all will remember. Your flat is a great spot to make memories with your dear ones. Homeownership provides security in life, allowing you to finally settle down.

Nevertheless, knowing where and what apartment to acquire is equally crucial to maximum enjoyment. This is why it is critical to examine a few factors to examine before purchasing a new apartment.

As is well-known, Hyderabad is one of India’s fastest-growing real estate markets, with residential and business properties performing well over time. Owing to its favourable state policies, the convenience of doing commerce, facilities such as the ORR, subway lines, and MMTS, an abundance of talented employees, and urban culture, the region has become a favourite destination for international IT/ITeS, BFSI, pharmaceutical, and biotechnology enterprises in India.

However, when it comes to purchasing a home in the gated communities in Manikonda, real estate professionals recommend five key factors that interested customers should consider.

See the flat’s legal documentation

People may struggle to grasp the legal language in an agreement when investing in gated communities in Manikonda. As a result, it is suggested that you employ an attorney to review all of the documentation pertaining to the flat.

This reduces the possibility of any tiny information being overlooked, which could have a negative impact on you and your possession position in the future. These papers can be used as estate tax receipts and loan releasing paperwork from the financial institution once you have cleared the entire amount owed.

Like-minded neighbours are a plus

It’s vital to consider that your neighbours share your values and are willing to work with you. This lowered the probability of future disputes. You can learn how the property works and what your role will be in one of the gated communities in Manikonda.

Added amenities

It would be best if you computed an estate’s expected value, including the parking fee, property tax, registration fee, furnishings, and so on. All of these variables require a considerable amount of money to be satisfied. Before you move into one of the gated communities in Manikonda, consider the structural and recurring costs of maintaining the acquired flat. This comprises property taxes, service fees, transportation fees, etc.

Know the whereabouts of your flat

If the property you intend to purchase is still under renovation, speak with the management team in charge. The persons in charge can provide you with crucial data concerning water supply, electricity generation, household help desirability, etc. It is also critical that your residence is not in a remote location.

Ensure good connectivity

Because of the accessibility and travel alternatives, Hyderabad’s network allows house purchasers to choose residences outside the city. According to experts, enhanced roadways and metro infrastructure result from employees living near their workplaces. Effective connectivity has also resulted in creating potential property micro-markets in Manikonda.

Summing Up

Living in an apartment building is not like living in a single-family home. It would help if you conformed to the routines of others in the complex so that you do not pose problems for them. As a result, make sure to adopt the items mentioned above to monitor before acquiring flats in Alkapur Township so that the process of procuring an apartment is simplified.

Speaking of acquiring one of the gorgeous flats in Alkapur Township, Anuhar Towers brings you the perfect blend of luxury and affordability. Head to https://www.anuhar.com/anuhar-towers/ for more details.

#flats in Alkapur Township #gated communities in Manikonda #gated communities #real estate

[njenjemedia]

Yesterday after work, I stopped by an electronics shop in the Victoria Island area of Lagos to buy a standing fan. While inside the shop, I was caught in two minds whether to buy the regular one which sold for N21,000 or the rechargeable one which sold for almost N60,000. I ended up not buying any, wanting to mull over my choice more. Today afterwork, I stopped by the shop again on my way home to pick up the standing fan for N21,000. To my surprise, the price had jumped to almost N25,000. I enquired from the sales assistant why the sudden jump in price. She explained to me that the management increased the price just this morning due to the dollar exchange rate. I didn’t need to argue. I simply paid and left regretting why I didn’t buy the fan the previous day. Anyone who has been to the shops lately, whether to buy groceries or other items will attest that prices of goods have risen sharply these past weeks. There is no corresponding increase in salaries and income. Bread which is the most common food in Nigeria is now so expensive, that it is almost beyond the reach of regular folks. Cost of road transportation has also risen. Air travel is now almost beyond the reach of many. Airlines are charging over N100,000 for one - way tickets to most destinations within Nigeria. Road travel which should be the next option comes with its own risks; bad roads and threat of kidnap. Dollar closed at over N700 today, Wednesday, 27th July, 2022. Clearly, there is danger, despair and panic in the land. If you add the insecurity challenges in the country, plus other social-political challenges to the mix, you will see that we are in for a rough season. During the drive home, I listened to one of the radio stations and the topic they were discussing was how to survive during a period of inflation. It was an interesting mix of suggestions and ideas. One lady said she had sent her two children to go and stay with her mother in-law, knowing that the mother in-law will never allow the kids to starve. Some callers said they now skip meals. One lady suggested bulk buying of items, and the presenter remarked that, that would have been a brilliant idea if power supply was regular. Other suggestions included cutting out dining out, and spending money only on essentials and necessities. No more luxuries. For workers, car sharing to save petrol costs. People going the same way could take turns in driving each other to work and back. One caller suggested saving up in dollar or other foreign currency. The presenter countered that you can only save if you have enough, and that saving was almost impossible in the present circumstances, plus that saving in foreign currency puts more pressure on the Naira. Migration featured among the suggestions too. Truly, it’s like we are back to 80s Nigeria. A period that witnessed mass migration. Filmmaker Charles Novia had earlier in the week, while narrating his joy of witnessing his daughter’s graduation in the United Kingdom, also remarked the great number of Nigerian professionals resigning, and relocating to the United Kingdom and other western countries for school or work. It is common these days to hear people talk about ‘jakpaing’. Back to the radio station discussions, a listener who sent in his contribution via WhatsApp wondered what more the average Nigerian should be expected to do in the circumstances, and why the politicians and elected government officials should sit idly and watch their countrymen and women go through so much suffering in life. He wondered what Nigerians have done wrong by being obedient and law-abiding citizens, working and paying their taxes only to still find themselves in this huge mess, due to the actions or inactions of a few individuals. What a country!

[serenityflyaway]

What are the best work-from-home jobs?

Working from home is the dream of many. When you can set your schedule and work from a quiet, comfortable space, it's easy to see why that would be appealing. But if you've been dreaming of working from home, you might have questions about what jobs are available—and which ones will be best for you. We've compiled a list of our favorite work-from-home jobs to answer those questions. They're all highly flexible, require minimal training (if any), and will allow you to make your hours—what more could you ask for?

Accountant or bookkeeper

If you're looking for a good-paying job that you can do from home, then being an accountant or bookkeeper might be the perfect opportunity. Many companies need these professionals, and they often pay exceptionally well.

You would be responsible for examining and recording a company's financial transactions to help ensure that they comply with all laws and regulations regarding reporting income, expenses, taxes owed or paid by the business. The goal is to provide everything that adds up correctly regarding salary deductions, such as insurance premiums, so there aren't any surprises later on when it comes time for tax season!

Content writer or copywriter

If you love to write and want to find work-from-home jobs, being a content writer or copywriter is the perfect opportunity. A content writer creates web content—like blog posts, SEO articles, and email newsletters—while a copywriter focuses on marketing materials like ads, sales pages, and social media posts. Both positions are crucial to any business that wants to attract new customers online. In fact, according to an industry study by Content Marketing Institute (CMI), B2B marketers who use at least one form of inbound marketing generate almost three times more leads than those who don't (read more about this study here).

Virtual assistant

A virtual assistant is a person who provides administrative, technical, or creative services to clients remotely. They help with tasks that can be done over the phone or computer, so you don't have to bring them into the office.

Some of these tasks include:

Booking travel reservations;

Ordering supplies and equipment

Filing paperwork.

Translator

Translators translate written text from one language to another. They work for companies, governments, and individuals. Translation can be done in an office or from home. Translators must have a degree in translation and teaching of languages.

Graphic designer

Graphic designers are in high demand, but you can work for yourself if you want to.

A graphic design job might be the best choice for your new home-based business if you love drawing and designing. You can work from home or join a company's office of other graphic designers.

Graphic design jobs are available on and offline—online as well as in print media like magazines, newspapers, and books. Some employers allow employees to telecommute (work from home).

Although most professional graphic designers have college degrees, some do not need formal education because they have experience in the field already through internships or freelance gigs that they may have done while still attending school. If this sounds good to you, then go ahead and try applying for one of these positions!

Photographer

Yes, being a photographer is a real job. And yes, you can work from home as one! While working for yourself can be great, it also comes with the responsibility of owning all of your equipment and being able to manage everything involved in running a business. If that sounds too much to handle while balancing life with your family and other responsibilities, consider finding work in an established studio or even as an assistant on set.

Social media manager

A social media manager manages a company's social media presence. That can include creating content, engaging with followers, responding to comments, and reporting and analytics.

The skillset required for this role depends on which platform you're using. If you're looking at Instagram or Facebook, then any degree of technical skill isn't essential. Still, it will be helpful if you understand how the platforms work to decide what content will work best for your audience. Using Twitter tools like Tweetdeck or Hootsuite would be beneficial as they allow users to schedule posts ahead of time and monitor trending topics to respond quickly during peak periods (e.g., during live events).

Client services representative

As a client services representative, you'll be the company's voice to its customers. Your job is to help them navigate their way through customer service issues and concerns and provide them with product information and support. In addition to taking calls and emails from customers, you'll also have the opportunity to work with other CSRs to resolve problems or concerns that may arise within your department or across departments. The best part? You can pick up this top-notch work-from-home job without any previous experience!

Client services representative jobs will vary depending on what industry you choose; however, there are a few core requirements that most companies look for when hiring:

Excellent customer service skills.

Ability to communicate over the phone (or via email) effectively.

Strong written communication skills.

Computer proficiency - preferably including knowledge of Microsoft Office programs (Word, Excel, Access).

Excellent organizational skills.

Ability to multitask under pressure without losing focus on quality results.

Good time management skills allow for efficiency while maintaining personal life balance (including taking breaks consistently throughout the day).

Customer success representative

Customer success representatives help customers who already have a product or service. They assist with anything that might be making their experience difficult—including their problem, questions about their account, or even just helping them get more out of using the product they already have.

Support engineer

If you have a technical background and can troubleshoot issues with software and hardware, then support engineering might be an excellent option. You'll need to be able to communicate with customers over the phone, email, or chat to resolve their issues. You'll work from home and be able to set your schedule.

Support engineers generally earn $40k - $50k annually, but this can vary depending on experience level and company size.

A lot of people work from home now!

As the world becomes more connected and the digital divide continues to shrink, more and more people are turning to a work-from-home lifestyle. The number of people working from home has increased by 30% in the last decade, and not all of them have upgraded their computer equipment or found a new job—they are choosing this option instead.

Some do it because they have no choice. Others opt for this lifestyle because they'd instead work from home than commute or want to spend time with their family instead of spending an hour on public transportation daily.

Conclusion

We hope you've enjoyed this list of work-from-home jobs and will be able to find one that fits your interests, skills, and abilities. If you have any questions or would like more information about how to find a job, please write a comment.

Read more - What is the easiest work from home jobs

#best work from home jobs #work from home jobs #work from home #jobs from home

[dugoutprison93]

Precisely what Laptop Does TCS Provide?

If you aren't wondering what laptop TCS provides, you are not alone. Many individuals don't know that TCS supplies a number regarding different laptops because of their employees. Here happen to be some with the benefits of working with TCS. Read in for more information about the work-from-home culture and technology allowance. You'll in addition learn about the particular accommodations that TCS offers while most likely in training. Work-from-home culture at TCS TCS has not but announced the everlasting work-from-home policy intended for 75% of personnel. The IT large has, nevertheless , explained that it would be open to the more flexible performing arrangement down the road. The particular company also stated that the COVID circumstance and other this kind of work-from-home initiatives have been giving it positive effects. In the very long run, it feels that increasing the particular percentage of employees who work from home would result in a 25% productivity increase. Even though many businesses are reluctant to change their work-from-home policies, typically the TCS model features proven to be a win-win proposal for both workers and the organization. For one, typically the firm has decreased costs by lowering the quantity of employees who need to travel, in addition to it is enabling more employees in order to work from residence, despite the difficulties of global warming. Inside of addition, TCS offers been able to land several deals during the recent pandemic, along with the company states it could possibly reduce the global carbon footprint by 75% by simply 2025. With over 500, 000 affiliates worldwide, TCS provides seen an enhanced demand for telecommuting, and a recent survey shows of which only five per cent of employees require to be throughout the office at any one time. The particular company intend to change to a cross model, where 25 percent of contacts work at home at any point in time and the staying 75 percent spend their time in work. While this is still not clear how much this particular new arrangement will affect its existing work environment, TCS is committed to be able to re-establishing a work-from-home culture for the majority of workers by December. It is 25 by 25 strategy announced a year ago aims to acquire a most its personnel returning to the business office in phases. Simply by this time, it will be much easier to implement their hybrid work design produce a robust sense of sociable capital, enabling a company-wide buy-in for its new insurance plan. The work-from-home insurance plan has been a major issue for that IT industry found in India. In Nov, a TCS e-mail informed employees that they would have to come back in order to their "home location" by early January 2022. This was a great move for the firm, also it could established a trend for the entire sector. As the Covid outbreak weakened, the IT industry adapted to the new type of work-from-home swiftly. Tech permitting If you are inside of school or planning to go to school, you may well qualify for a new Tech allowance regarding laptops. If a person have a restricted finances, you can question your school with regard to up to $2, 000 for the new laptop. The particular amount is limited to the amount of additional funding a person receive from a father or mother or student loan, as well as your own borrowing limit. Typically the Tech allowance regarding laptops will take care of typically the costs of typically the computer's hardware plus software, monitor, printing device, and extended warranty. The University of Arizona recognizes typically the importance of technology in the functionality of job responsibilities. Therefore, it offers a policy that guides the divisions in processing technological innovation allowances, although certain may establish harsher rules. Those positive aspects are also subject in order to withholding taxes. If you are qualified for this profit, check with your supervisor to identify the eligibility specifications. The following procedures apply to most University locations, which include satellites, extensions, and even off-campus units. Regardless of the amount of responsibility of the authorized employee, they will must use the particular laptop for business-related purposes. To get a Technology allowance, you have to turn out to be an authorized University employee. You need to meet senior authority requirements in your own department. In addition , the University's involvement will be limited to typically the allowance. Therefore, help to make sure you understand the policy on typically the usage of technology allowances. It is important to understand exactly what it covers and how it pertains to your department. Providing a tech allowance is a superb way to improve employee productivity. When computers are theoretically company assets, it is possible for them to become quasi-personal real estate. By 2008, 10% of companies can provide laptop allowances for employees. While this specific won't directly have an effect on the cost of PCs, it will help companies tighten their balance page. That's an incredible benefit for everybody! Although it's not the sole benefit. Accommodation during training Gaming Laptops Under 60000 There are usually a number associated with situations in which usually a staff with a learning disability would benefit from holiday accommodation during training with a laptop. A normal example is a great employee who may have difficulty reading detailed memoranda but is without difficulties understanding oral conversation. The employee would certainly request that the employer install a computer with speech output and that all of his supervisor's memoranda be sent to him or her via email and so that he can pay attention to them from his leisure. An additional approved accommodation is usually to have a person in the school take down their or her information for him or perhaps her. Typically, this requires a pupil volunteer to perform so. Conversion coming from touch to touchless A touchless notebook can be transformed into a feel laptop by connecting an Airbag to the non-touch version. The particular Airbag commands the particular PC with a new wire connected in order to the USB port. Once the Coussin autogonflant continues to be attached in order to the laptop, this will function because a touch screen. Here are usually some steps in order to convert touchless laptop computers to touch ones: One particular important step throughout the conversion method is to evaluate if you want to be able to use a touch screen or a touchless one. Touchscreens create some tasks faster and easier. Attracting with a touchscreen display is similar to be able to using a drawing tablet. Windows ten users can enable touchscreens in the Device Manager. Generally there, they have to install the necessary software to make touchscreens work. The software is available on Glass windows Store. After putting in the necessary software, you can after that choose kind of regarding touchscreen you'd like to employ. To convert a new laptop to touchless, choose the touch screen that meets typically the HID standard. Then, open the manage panel and double click the Enable Device button. Once this is done, just click OK to near the Action lite. Then, select typically the option titled "Enable Device. "

#Best Laptop Under 60000

[chairshirt4]

Places Providing Chinese Language Visa Facilitation For Candidates Inoculated With Covid

Vaccinated passengers travelling to China by air will nonetheless want to indicate negative checks as beneath current rules, overseas ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian stated, based on an official transcript of a daily briefing. The transcript didn't provide additional particulars on how visa purposes could be simplified. Please be noted that the applicants eligible for the above-mentioned visa facilitation are still required to supply negative COVID-19 nucleic acid check and serum antibody test results for boarding. After arriving in China, please abide by Chinese laws on quarantine and observation. Glyn Wise, who had been teaching English literature at a world faculty in Shanghai, was in a place to get a piece visa from the Chinese Embassy in London in October. But the agency that helped put together his utility advised him later that Chinese border officers would not acknowledge the visa. Mr. Style, the proprietor of the electric car elements company, said that the Chinese visa course of now favored huge corporations that contribute a nice deal of tax revenue, not start-ups like his business. He said he had settled down in the United States — his wife is American — and didn't plan to return to China any time soon. The authentic and a photocopy of a legitimate British visa or other proof of authorized keep, residence, employment or study in the U.K.. No overseas vaccines, such as the Pfizer/BioNtech shot or AstraZeneca’s, have been approved yet. In any case, it may probably not help China when it comes to restarting inbound journey, given its prime sources for foreign visitors embody South Korea, the US, and Japan, none of whom are utilizing the photographs. The US has already organized for all of the doses it wants from Pfizer/BioNtech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson. These requirements may vary barely relying on the individual’s circumstances. Also, individual cross holders who had been vaccinated overseas may even be required to take a serology check to verify their vaccination standing after serving their SHN. Official Website Of The Consulate Basic Of Nigeria In Big Apple Siam Legal offers complete authorized services aimed at ensuring you a hassle-free entry with Thai visas. Get in contact with us now and get began in your Thai visa software. Government offices will be closed December 6-8, 2021 and January 6, 2022. Generally, reduced staffing during the year-end period is predicted to delay processing instances, especially on December 24 and 31, 2021, in addition to January 5, 2022. Plan to submit your visa application well upfront of your supposed departure date. Contact your nearest U.S. embassy or consulate for a current time estimate and suggestions. The U.S. passport has a mobility rating of 166, meaning holders can go to 156 international locations with out the necessity for a travel visa. In order to apply for a travel visa, applicants must have a sound passport as the visa is often stamped or glued into the passport. In the case of eVisas, the visa is linked to your passport number in the country’s travel database. There are a quantity of kinds of work visas that depend on the character of the work and length of keep. For example, working holiday visas permit people to briefly tackle employment whereas travelling by way of the country. A visa is an official doc that allows the bearer to legally enter a overseas country. The visa is normally stamped or glued into the bearer’s passport. Usually, a family visa can be issued to any minor kids you or your partner have. All guests will need to have an approved Thailand Pass to enter Thailand. https://www.chinavisa.com.tw/china-visa/ will be thought of by a committee within the Ministry of Interior and Municipalities of Lebanon. Applicants can appeal the selections of the said committee within a month from the time they are legally notified of such decisions at the tackle they specified of their purposes. Schengen Visa Charge Documentation identifying the character of the non-public affairs ought to be supplied as required by the consular officer. The applicant should submit relevant certification in accordance with related rules, and meet the related requirements of the competent authorities of the Chinese government on high-level skills and individual with special expertise urgently needed by China. ROC abroad missions shall promulgate the fees and equivalent amount within the local foreign money. However, ROC abroad missions could also be exempted from promulgating the charges underneath particular circumstances after approval from the Ministry. Any quantity paid by the Client to the relevant government department or authority in respect of the relevant application providers . 2.four To release and transmit information about Chinese visa coverage in accordance with the necessities of the Embassies and Consulates in a timely method via web site, info desk, phone, fax or e-mail. The government of the People's Republic of China allows holders of ordinary passports issued by some international locations to travel to Mainland China for tourism or business functions for as a lot as 15, 30, 60 or ninety days without having to acquire a visa. Visitors of different nationalities, as nicely as residents of Hong Kong and Macau, are required to obtain either a visa or a permit previous to arrival, depending on their nationality. 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#台胞證

[monsterywriting]

Thenerius - pt 1

masterlist

word count: 4,555

male tiefling x female reader

AN: this is planned as a two-parter, like Adam, just super long because i want to make “shorter” (i.e. not a bunch of parts) stories so i can keep up better.

The Deep was a small inn with an attached tavern overlooking the ocean about an hour’s ride from the nearby port city of Alfore. The location was not entirely by accident, or so your boss claims, and it definitely was not a miscalculation of Alfore’s outward expansion when purchasing the land.

Nevertheless, against all odds, Mr. Thistle’s business managed to prevail despite the city’s outer limits remaining largely unchanged for the better part of a decade. His secret to paying his taxes on time was largely thanks to his clientele, taking in those not traditionally welcome within the city limits. To put it bluntly, pirates.

It was your second year working at The Deep but your entire life had been spent within it’s pine walls, your mother having worked here before you. Though you weren’t quite used to being a worker there, there was one thing of which you were certain: you have made more gold in these two years than you had with the salary of a scribe for the capital’s archives in five.

Whenever a pirate crew blew in with the with the sea breeze, the drunken tips of coin and jewelry of dubious origins were almost worth the whirlwind of destruction left in the wake of their days-long benders.

But at present, that period of prosperity was still months away and you were currently struggling to clean the tavern when all you wanted was to curl up in front of the fire on the far side of the room.

There weren’t many guests staying overnight this time of year, whatever handful of travelers entering Alfore by land were willing to stop so close to their destination, but the tavern was never truly empty.

You relaxed slightly as you approached the fireplace, taking your time dusting the mantel as the heat thawed your freezing body.

It was about two-thirds of the way into your third straight shift, the night before having started off promising. A rare merchant ship’s crew stopped by the tavern for the evening at the end of your first trip, but the tips hadn’t been impressive so you had agreed to stay and help the morning shift expecting the clean up to be worse than it actually was.

With over an hour left in your shift, everything was spotless and you had little else to do but pretend to dust as close to the fireplace as you could.

A tap on your shoulder nearly made you topple over the old trinkets on the mantel, Lenora giggling at your reaction behind you. She was a pretty young woman, clearly descending at least in part from the sea, though you never asked her any specifics.

“I hope winter ends early this year,” she sighed, setting down an armful of cleaned mugs on the bar counter, “I hardly got any tips last night, and those assholes ran me ragged filling their ales! Even the pirates would at least leave a gold coin a piece for that!”

“Tova willing,” You snort, slipping behind the bar and stowing the mugs away in their place underneath the counter, inclined to agree with Lenora before a yawn escaped you, your hand quickly covering your mouth as you were unable to contain it.

“You should go sleep in my room for a bit,” she suggested gently, wiping down the wet spots where the mugs had been with her rag, “We’re pretty much finished and you had a long night.”

“I’m fine,” you replied tersely, unwilling to admit how tempting the offer was, “my shift’s almost over.”

Before Lenora could argue with you, Thistle poked his head out of his office and called you into it.

By the time you entered the cramped room - once an extra supply closet - he was already behind his desk, writing something furiously that you couldn’t see over the towering stacks of papers surrounding him

Mr. Thistle was a halfling, the only one you’d ever seen even among all the people at the port. You didn’t know much about them, other than what you observed from your boss. Despite his youthful appearance, you knew for a fact he was much older than he appeared. And, in his case, his personality very much fit his namesake, his tongue and wit both sharper than perhaps was wise.

“What are you still doing here? Your shift ended an hour ago,” Mr. Thistle didn’t look up from his paperwork, his voice sounding almost bored, though you had known him long enough to recognize that it wasn’t a rhetorical question.

“You agreed to let me take on more shifts last month, Mr. Thistle,” you answered.

“You have been here for twenty-four straight hours,” Mr. Thistle frowned, “Rose will kill me for overworking you once she’s well enough to visit.”

You swallowed a growing lump in your throat, shaking your head emphatically, “Please, sir, at least let me finish this shift. You know I’ll work hard and I need the money…”

“Sir? When have you ever called me that?” He spat, but you knew him well enough to know he was cracking, “Fine, finish your shift. But you’re out of here by noon! And I don’t want to see you again until next weekend.”

“Thank you!” You said as you walked out the room, deciding to get one last word in over your shoulder before slamming the door shut behind you, “You’re the best god-dad, sir!”

Just as you returned to the bar with a new vigor, the bell hanging above the tavern entrance rang as it was struck by the opening door.

You and Lenora glanced at each other before turning to see who had arrived at such an odd time of day and season.

“Thenerius!” You cried out once you saw exactly who was ducking down to pass through the entryway without his horns knocking into the doorframe, exaggerated cheer masking your shock at seeing the pirate captain in the middle of winter.

He smirked as he strode up to the bar, his purple hand lifting to dig around his breast pocket for a bag of gold he dropped on the counter for you to take. You quickly hand it off to Lenora to put in the inn’s safe, ignoring her not-so-subtle wink at you and practically skip into the kitchen to help pass out the first round of ales.

You weren’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth, all too happy to greet any customer you knew had gold and play the part of eye candy for them.

Any boredom or exhaustion you felt from your back to back shifts vanished as the solution to your stress magically appeared before you.

Thinking ahead, you save Thenerius’ table for last and no sooner do you set down the four pitchers of ales you’d been carrying is the tiefling pulling you down to sit on his lap. You quickly slide off to sit at his side, allowing him to keep an arm around you. You feel a bit self conscious, knowing you probably smell worse for wear after three straight shifts, but he doesn’t seem to mind as he downs his first mug of ale.

Glancing around, you note that the other crew members didn’t look nearly as jovial to be here in the snow as their captain did. It was definitely dangerous to be navigating the waters this far north this time of year, the winds less reliable and ice tending to form bergs out where there was no hope for rescue, not to mention that pirates tended to stick to the beaches in the south while they waited for winter to pass.

“What are you doing here so early?” You ask, unable to hide your curiosity at how two out-of-season crews managed to stop at the inn, this one more surprising than the merchants.

“The winds were favorable,” Thenerius beamed down at you, though that still didn’t answer the question of why they’d want to leave the south now of all times. Seemingly sensing your dissatisfaction with the answer, he flung an arm around your shoulder and pulled you close, his voice lowering to a hushed whisper that tickled the shell of your ear, “and I simply had to come see my treasure as soon as I could.”

You giggle and pretend to turn your head in a bashful display, inwardly cringing at the nickname. You’re all too happy, however, to accept Thenerius’ hand slipping into your skirts and feel gold pieces clinking together as he drops the coins into your pocket. You accept his flirting and flirt back yourself, tolerating his occasionally hand fondling as he laughed and drank all night. Well, that made it sound more lecherous than it actually was.

Thenerius was obsessed with your hands, feeling the pads of your fingers and rubbing circles on the back of them. You had asked him why when he first asked you if he could hold them, having stared at them constantly before then. He said because they were soft, and you understood. Your hands were no dainty things, the beginnings of some callouses here and there, especially where you held your pen, but they were like a newborn’s in comparison to his, roughened from working on boats his entire adult life.

He also demanded a lot of your attention, constantly keeping conversations with you going when you wished nothing more than to just sit there and fall asleep from his ministrations. Nevertheless, you’d complement Thenerius and look impressed as he recounts the harrowing adventures he’d experienced in the past year and dutifully feel his new scars on his already scar-riddled body in feigned awe.

The man had an ego the size of a small island, an easy enough thing to stroke in order to get a better haul of tips at the end of it all. Other’s also provide company as you are, you even catch Lenora’s eye with a smile as she leads a minotaur into the inn portion of the building. You resist the urge to shake your head, unable to believe she was turning in so early in the day. Mr. Thistle definitely wouldn’t approve, but you were no snitch.

Though, you never let Thenerius get that close to you, drawing the line whenever the tiefling attempted to push the envelope of acceptable public behavior, acting coy when you needed to and sometimes only narrowly managing to avoid his attacking lips by keeping his mouth busy downing more ale.

He was even more clingy than the ones who just wanted to fuck you, but dealing with Captain Thenerius of the Red Night was second nature to you now, well worth the flirting game you two have played for the past two years. Just keep him company until he was piss drunk, and then it was easy enough to extract yourself from his grasp and actually help the others run the tavern. He was by far the customer with the loosest purse strings, always throwing gold around like he were some purple holiday saint.

The constant boasting and drunken attempts at kissing were turn-offs even with his admittedly handsome features when sober. But, he was about as harmless as you were willing to think a pirate, never demanding more of you in the carnal sense, and he was constantly slipping you extra coins, so you remained pleasant.

Realistically, you knew the gold was more likely than not blood money, given his occupation. However, it made no difference to you where the money came from so long as it ended up in your pocket, and the tiefling only ever sought you out when he visited.

You coo at Thenerius’ virility as he flexed before you, your hands on his bicep and nodding along with whatever he told you, both of you ignoring how his crew was gagging and groaning at your cavity-inducing display.

You truly had one person to thank for your position as the pirate captain’s favorite in The Deep: Paloma, a former worker at the tavern herself before she fell pregnant and got married. Once she knew she would no longer be working at The Deep, she had introduced you.

Frankly, the tiefling had shown no interest in you at first, his eyes never straying from Paloma as she worked bringing out supper. It had been awkward - you had barely started working at the inn after emerging from the archives where your only contact with another soul had been through books written by long-dead authors. You had not yet perfected the art of flirting with customers, and you definitely weren’t one to fight for a man’s attention.

It was by pure luck you happened recognize the origin of one of Thenerius’ rings, and even more luck that his attention had actually been on the on the table shuffling a deck of cards when you commented on it, the ensuing conversation what finally got you on his radar.

However, even as you grew comfortable falling into the role of companion for the pirate whenever he blew into town, you were never so foolish as to fall for him or any of the other pirates from different crews that took a shining to you, as some of the other girls were prone to do.

You held no illusion that the Thenerius that would cuddle you like a child would their favorite toy after a few pitchers of ale was born out of anything more than loneliness from a pirate who was likely holding his first warm body after months at sea. And who knew whose body he held after months going back to the other side of the world.

Even if the visits were like clockwork, it was only a few weeks out of the year and their free spirits and lifestyles only spelled heartbreak for those whose lives were spent on land.

And even you could appreciate the fun of the pastime. It definitely wasn’t torture; Thenerius was on the handsomer end of the pirate spectrum, meticulously looking after his appearance and general health even on long stretches at sea. It was hard to tell how much older than you he was, his appearance both rugged from the sea and boyish from his mannerisms, and his choice in outfits were… colorful, to say the least, always wearing the most expensive fabrics he acquired during his travels - which somehow always tended to be the gaudiest.

Though you would never allow yourself to fall for him, maybe you would have at least bedded him had he not ended every night shitfaced, though that bit was partially your doing.

After an hour, and Thenerius is relying on the wall to stay upright more than himself, you try to slip out of the booth as quietly as you can. However, just as you’re about to stand, arms suddenly snake around your waist and pull you ungracefully back down. An undignified yelp escapes you, and it takes all your willpower to not let your instinct to fight against your captor win.

Once you turn, he is staring quite intensely at you, though he fortunately makes no attempt to kiss you. Involuntarily, you begin to turn red at his scrutiny, knowing pretty words won’t placate the tiefling on the rare occasions he goes completely silent like this.

“My shift is almost over,” you whisper, awkwardly pulled an arm out from Thenerius’ hold to pat his cheek gently, “I have to go.”

To your surprise, Thenerius actually lets go on the first try. However, he also rose to his feet and followed you out the tavern and to the stables. He was silent as he watched you ready your horse, so quiet you may have forgotten he was there had you not felt his stare upon your so sharply. Just as you passed him leading your horse out into the courtyard believing Thenerius to just be drunk, he calls out to you.

You stop in the courtyard, looking up at the tiefling in curiosity as his hand dove into his coat pocket to pull out a beautifully intricate golden ring with emeralds encrusted along the braided band.

Normally, your weren’t a fan of such gifts, preferring more liquid assets over something so valuable that you were expected to keep and wear in front of the giver. However, you found yourself making an exception as the ring was so breathtaking you needed to put on no act as you thanked Thenerius and took it carefully from his calloused fingers.

“I love it,” you smiled, trying the ring on each finger until it slid snugly down your right index. You presented the ring to the pirate captain, laughing as you watched his tail swishing behind him and the way his entire expression lit up seeing you wear his gift.

“Actually,” Thenerius cleared his throat, sounding almost nervous as he took your hands in his before you could climb onto your horse, and you cursed your heart for leaping into your throat as his thumb stroked lazy circles over your knuckles.

You manage not to wrench your hands out of Thenerius’ sudden grasp, watching as his thumb and forefinger slowly pull the ring off your right hand. The confusion must be apparent on your face as he chuckled and whispered reassurances as he transferred the ring to your left hand, the fourth finger before your pinky.

It took you a moment of staring to register what was happening, your body only kickstarting into action when Thenerius was in the process of kneeling before you, “I was hoping to do this tonight in front of my crew, but if you’re leaving now-”

Like an automaton finally kicking to life, you took in a gasping breath and closed your fists around the collar of Thenerius’ coat, not caring how you appeared as you pulled him back up before his knee could touch the dusty ground and there was evidence of what was about to transpire.

He fought against you at first, but when you growled out a stern “stop!” he allowed you to haul him back to his feet.

“What’s wrong?” Thenerius had the nerve to look hurt as you yanked the ring off your finger and shove it back into his hand.

“What’s wrong? You’re proposing to me, damn it!” You nearly shouted, managing to curb your temper despite doubting anyone inside would be able to hear you.

You were teetering a dangerous edge, yelling as you were at a pirate of all people, and who knows what he did to get the damned ring, but you were too caught up in your own anger to care that he could easily kill you where you stood. You were too busy feeling as though your world was crashing around you. Things were good. Why did he have to go and ruin it all by doing this? Why couldn’t he just… continue your game in perpetuity. It wasn’t the first proposal you’ve gotten at work, but it was definitely the one that hurt the most.

“I love you,” Thenerius croaked, “I thought-”

“Love? You must be out of your damned mind,” you scoff in disbelief, “You’ve only seen me three times in two years. less than four weeks total. And you’re proposing? You love anyone who bats their eyelashes at you for gold?”

“That’s not true,” Thenerius said, appearing so stricken by your episode you had to avert your eyes to the sheer pain in his own, “You didn’t do it for the gold. You care for me as deeply as I care for you.”

You turn to your saddle, pulling out a burlap sack from your bag and forcing it open. You pull out a tangle of jewelry, necklaces, earrings, even a ring or two.

“I needed the gold, that’s it.”

Thenerius stares blankly at you, and you take his distraction as an opportunity to jump on your horse and ride off.

You don’t slow until you knew The Deep was far behind you, finally allowing your mare to walk the rest of the way home once you’re confident you put enough space between you and the pirate. You didn’t relax until you saw the familiar barn roof above the treetops ahead.

“I’m home!” You called from the doorway, immediately struck by the stillness of the house as unease settled deep in the pit of your stomach.

Pushing back the unpleasant thoughts, certain it was rooted in what had transpired at work, you ventured deeper into the cottage, making your way to the bedroom.

“Mother?” Your call goes unanswered as you enter, smiling softly when you saw her still wrapped up in the bed.

The fire on the far side of the room was burning low, so you threw another log in it before going to sit on the chair at the side of the bed to remove your work clothes.

Just as you were about to crawl into bed, you notice the open book still by your mother and walked around to grab it. It was an old book you immediately recognized, the hand-drawn illustrations and worn pages all too familiar from your childhood. You carefully mark her place with the torn piece of paper she always used and set it on her bedside table.

Glancing at your mother, now closer, you couldn’t help the uneasiness that crept back to the forefront of you mind as you realized how peacefully she was sleeping.

No rattling breathing, no tossing or turning, none of what had plagued your mother’s nights since she first fell ill. A chill ran up your spine as you reached out a tentative hand to brush against her cheek, relief making your legs weak when she grunts at your disturbance and rolls over onto her back.

“What is it?” She yawned, starting to emerge from her blanket cocoon.

“Nothing, I just got back,” you whispered, smoothing back her hair from her eyes, “Have you taken your medicine today?”

She nodded, already drifting off again. You sighed, any thought of sleep gone from your mind from the scare.

You decide to spend the rest of the day outside, finishing all the chores that had piled up while you were gone. First, you had to clean your horse’s hooves, then feed the chickens and gather their eggs, milk your goats and finally take the cured meat our of your small smokehouse.

It was still strange being home, even after so much time had passed since leaving your life at the capital. You had once swore you’d never return to the tiny cottage, leaving to make your own way in this world.

But circumstance led you back home, despite making many offers to have your mother move in with you at the capital. She insisted, however, that she preferred the peace and quiet the country offered her, though you knew in truth she couldn’t leave the home your father had built, the memories and perhaps some buried hope that he may one day return for her keeping her firmly rooted.

By the time you were able to turn in for the day, you were completely drained of all energy. In truth, your exhaustion had begun to catch up to you once you went into the barn to bring your horse out, but you had persevered to finish everything that needed to be done.

Rather than immediately knock out as you wanted, you sat at the table and counted your coins from your past few shifts.

“That’s a lot more than I ever made in two days,” your mother hummed, glancing over your shoulder as she made her way from the kitchen to set two plates filled with steaming food in front of you.

“It was a busy couple days,” you smile. If she notices how strained it is, your mother makes no comment, “I’ll have enough to buy enough medicine for the next few months.”

“I hope that means you’ll finally take some time off,” she huffed, “I’m beginning to forget I don’t live alone anymore.”

“Mr. Thistle banned me from going back to The Deep until next weekend,” you chuckle, feeling a small bit of tension release from your shoulders at how your mother’s face lit up at the mention of her old friend.

“Oh, how is Aedan?” She asked excitedly. She was the only person brave enough to cll Thistle by his first name, or at least the only one he allowed to live afterwards.

“You know, we’d all feel better if you moved into the inn,” you said, not looking up as you deposited your final coin into your purse, knowing your mother’s response before she even spoke.

“For the last time, I’m not leaving my home and neither you or Aedan are going to convince me any different,” she said, her voice rising until a coughing fit overtaking her.

You grimaced as you watched her body curl in on itself, her entire frame shaking with the coughs. Still, you made no move to help, knowing she would only wave you off.

You bit back everything you wished to say, fighting the urge to shake her and tell her the man who abandoned both of you was never coming back, that it was dangerous for her to stay here by herself.

“I’m going to bed,” you say instead, taking your half-eaten plate to the sink and dropping the rest into the scrap pile for the chickens.

As you lay in bed, you turn your head to look at the book your mother had been reading. It was a collection of fairytales, the same book she used to read to you to sleep as a young child. You had loved it back then, the stories of a wily pirate crew’s adventures in far off lands.

Once you grew older and could read the dedication on the blank space of the cover page, you’d refused to listen to the stories any longer, though your mother would still stay up late to read its pages alone.

It had been a gift from your father to you as a baby, before he stopped showing back up. He couldn’t resist the call of the sea, a pirate at heart, your mother had said, but he would return to the two of you one day. You scoffed.

Reaching over, you pull the book onto your lap, flipping the cover open in the lamplight. You stared down at the elegant ink script, the looping cursive rivaling that of even the senior scribes in your prior occupation but remaining as secretive as ever.

You once wondered what your father thought as he wrote the small paragraph, if he knew he would leave your mother at the same time he professed his love and hope for you. Now, you had too many other things to worry about to remain bitter over someone who may well have long since forgotten you.

You mind wanders for a moment, a purple face with lovestruck eyes crossing your consciousness for a moment you quickly stifle, an underdeveloped question cut short before it could fully form and haunt you. You place the book back to where your mother kept it, finally able to keep your eyes closed once your head hits your pillow.

Would he leave, too? And then, nothing.

part 2

#exophilia #reader insert #tiefling boyfriend #tiefling

[sasa-gay-yo]

Maybe (Levi Ackerman x Female!Reader)

Request / Summary: I was wondering if you could write about female y/n being taller than Levi (he's 5'2" and y/n is 5'7"). Sharp, rational mind, she's the new quartermaster and in charge of the supplies... she was asked to cut unnecessary orders. So she terminates the tea supply contract... Levi's not happy and confronts her about it. It takes several arguments to convince her to conclude a new tea supply contract... VERY annoying... but damn, he likes her wit.

Timeline: Season 1 - 2 ish 

Warnings: some swearin’

Art Credits: AoT (I think?)

“Budgets are very important to adhere to when you’re trying to fight against a never-ending force of titans, Captain Levi. I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do.” You sing-songed those last words, finding happiness in the sheer annoyance that graced his face after. This was power.

“And who gave you the order to cut my tea supply?” His hands turned into fists, keeping his distance so he didn’t have to stare up at you. You noticed this and made sure to take a few steps forward to look down at him. On an everyday basis, you were below him in rank, but this situation made you feel so powerful. Erwin had approved this budget right in front of him, so it was funny to see him so upset over his precious tea that he, himself signed away.

“I did. Does your tea have the same ability to feed the entirety of the Scouts for an extra week? No, it does not. It was either bread from all, or tea for one. I think we all will appreciate your sacrifice, Captain.” He grit his teeth and you could see, physically, how irritate he was with you. While it was a bit scary, your new status as quartermaster made your training sessions almost disappear with how busy you’d become. He couldn’t discipline you if you weren’t able to be present. 

Also, it wasn’t like your decision was wrong. If he went to Commander Erwin to talk about it, he’d probably say the same thing. He definitely knew that. That’s why he was spending so much time here arguing with you, rather than going directly to the higher ups. You smirked at that thought.

“You were asked to cut unnecessary orders, Cadet. The tea supply is a necessity.” You held up your clipboard to his face and he glared at the paper as you used your pencil to explain to him the budget.

“Your tea supply cost the same amount as three bags of flour and yeast. As I said before, food is a necessity, Captain. I can’t, in good conscious, let my fellow comrades go hungry while you have a cup of tea every night. Also, it’s Quartermaster (Y/L/N) now, hence the ability for me to cut your tea supply from the shop in Mitras. If you’re able to find me a cheaper and closer shop to buy from, then all means… Captain.” He didn’t like the way you sneered his name and he wanted to make you run laps out in the hot sun instead of standing under this tent causing him mental anguish, yet he couldn’t think of an argument against yours. He just wanted his tea. No, he needed his tea. The caffeine was what allowed him to stay up and not fall into his nightmare’s grasp. The caffeine was what allowed him to function after a night of no sleep. He needed to convince you to put that back on the list, even if that meant the brats didn’t have bread for a week.

“You’re dismissed, Cadet,” he said, walking away from where he came to find you. You laughed at his actions when you thought he couldn’t hear you, seeing how ridiculous the Captain was acting after not getting his specific and expensive artisan teas. You saved so much money from cutting the export taxes alone, that it was worth the little grumpy short man and maybe a few more laps around HQ. However, you would apologize to the new cadets who were definitely going to get the brunt of his anger. If it got really bad, you could just give him a bit of your “commoner’s” tea.

The next time he confronted you was two days later at dinner. You didn’t know he was behind you, but you were telling the new cadets all about Captain Levi’s attitude. They were complaining how harsh he was towards them, and the older Scouts, like yourself, were all recollecting stories of your first time meeting the Captain.

“The first time I interacted with Captain Levi, I flirted with him and shorty made me run laps until sunset. He was probably just flustered, you know. Captain Shorty doesn’t know how to react to pretty women, I guess.” You didn’t notice the kids freeze up when they saw who approached behind you. You just kept on going, probably digging yourself in a bigger and bigger hole as Levi stood behind you, arms crossed and ever so irritated.

“One time when he was disciplining me I reac-”

“Quartermaster (Y/L/N), unless you want to run laps again till sunrise, I suggest you stop telling such ludicrous stories to the new cadets.” You smirked, turning around with the cup of tea you had in your hand. You’d taken the liberty of using your own stash, as a drinker of the liquid yourself, and now you were going to flaunt it in front of him. You took a sip before talking back. 

“Captain Levi, I didn’t see you there! Do you want to talk about your tea supplies with me? I have a meeting with Commander Erwin next week about next months orders…” You trailed off, sipping at your tea, but not hiding your smirk. You now had something over the Captain that was worth far too much for him to annoy you or dish out a punishment. He knew that. If he made you run into the sunset, the tea was going with you. There would be no mention of it at your next meeting with Erwin. Gripping his fists behind his back, he made sure his face was that normal, annoying look when glancing at you out of the corner of his eye.

“No, (Y/L/N), I just came here to tell you that I do, in fact, know how to handle pretty women. That’s why I made you run. Have a nice dinner.” The new cadets snickered behind you as you gripped the teacup hard. 

Oh no, forget about dangling it in front of his head. There was no way you were going to let him have it after he insulted you in front of everyone like that. You turned around and glared at Jean who was laughing the loudest out of the others. That tea was gone now.

You let him know it, too.

As you were walking out of the Mess Hall, you made an effort to stop at the officer’s table in front of the Commander. He smiled up at you while Levi’s glared was evident to your left.

“Commander, do you have time tomorrow or the next day to push up the supply meeting? I think that with the winter coming soon, shipping lines are going to be cut off by impending snow. Ordering a week earlier would be most beneficial, especially since our supplies are already dwindling.” Erwin agreed with you, noting that this foresight is why he assigned you to the position that was vacated by the other Quartermaster (who was killed by a titan).

“I can meet with you tomorrow after lunch, Quartermaster (Y/L/N). Just come to my office!” You smiled back at him and turned your attention to Levi. As you walked by, you mumbled something under your breath, but you knew he heard you. Payback was served to the cocky man you hated ever since you stepped foot on the Scout HQ grounds.

“You’re never getting your tea back, Levi.”

And at the meeting with Erwin, you did just that. He agreed with your plans completely, signing off on it without any protests. You would be excused from training the next day, and would be riding into Trost to set up the order with Reeve’s Company. You might even make a day out of it, needing a fresh haircut and maybe a relaxing stroll through Trost. Then, Erwin called out to you before you could walk out through his office door.

“Oh, by the way, (Y/F/N), Captain Levi will be personally accompanying you to Trost tomorrow.”

-       

You hadn’t talked at all. You just sat next to each other in the cart while the horses pulled you along towards Trost. He made you do all the work too. You hitched up both horses, tied them to the cart, and you were now holding the reigns to make sure they stayed on the pebbled path. He just sat there the whole time is his normal position, one leg up and blank expression. It made you extremely annoyed and he could feel the anger radiate off of you as he sat, which made him smirk. Getting the upper hand on you was one thing that Levi found recently brought him joy.

“Permission to speak freely, Captain?” You had enough. He wasn’t shocked at your request, but he wasn’t sure he’d let that upper hand go. If you said something out of line, he’d jump at the chance to punish you… but he allowed it because he was curious. Besides, he was excited to see what useless insults left your lips today.

“Permission granted.”

“Why the fuck are you here?” It almost surprised him, the tongue you had on you, but he also knew the cadets you were friends with. You’d even taken some of the new ones under your wing, Jean and Connie. Levi has punished them various times for their filthy mouths, and he’s heard it millions of times, but never towards him. You should feel honored that he let you say that to him.

“I just wanted to take a trip, Cadet. Besides, a woman shouldn’t be travelling by herself in a world like this.” You gave him an annoyed look and rolled your eyes. Again, you should feel honored he’s gracing you like this. If any cadet did that to him, he’d kick them off the cart right away and discipline them. Again, he was just curious.

“I thought you didn’t give a damn that I was a woman, Levi.” He put his arms behind his head, closing his eyes. You were making this too easy for him. It was when your anger got the best of you that your insults were sloppy and uncalculated. He’d also made the same assessment when it came to your fighting. Perhaps that’s why he’d always insult you before fighting drills, knowing he could get the upper hand. Still, it was going to an easy day for him if you acted like this. 

“With a mouth like that, how could I consider you one, (Y/F/N)?” You scoffed, but a thought popped into your head. He said speak freely, so you were going to do just that. You couldn’t let him win, not when you were going to be stuck with him all day.

“With height like that, how could I consider you a man, Shorty?” You felt him freeze next to you, now instantly regretting his permission. You knew how bad he wanted to kick you, and the tone of his voice hardened.

“Permission rescinded. Say something like that again and you’ll be locked up for insubordination and be punished.”

“You know I don’t mind punishment, Captain. Especially with you.” He scoffed, closing his eyes again and making sure that you didn’t see his flush. How nasty was this woman he was sitting next to? You just laughed at his reaction. When you were a new cadet, you gained the brunt of Levi’s punishments, simply because you didn’t give him the legitimacy the others did.

Everyday, you would find some way to make your presence his problem. At first, it was openly flirting in front of him, trying to get some reaction, only to be punished by running or cleaning. Next, it was besting your partners, just so you would have to fight him. Levi usually didn’t struggle to fight with new cadets, but you would give him a run for his money. You never won, but you’d get so devilishly close that you knew it slowly frustrated him. The last thing would be questioning his orders, which he hated the most. While you knew to never do it out in the field, it was fair game during training. Why should we hold our ODM gear this way when you don’t, Captain? I don’t think that’s the best formation, Captain, why did you choose that? He would physically punish you then, which gave you fuel. Perhaps it was the way he led others with insult, or the fact everyone bowed to him without question that pushed you to never listen. Slowly and surely, you were wreaking havoc in his mind, but nothing permanent to really stick it to him.

Then, you were given the Quartermaster position by Commander Erwin. As insubordinate you would be to Levi, you knew who and when to rub up to others. Besides, you liked the other officers. Erwin discovered your experience with supply work and inventory at your family restaurant, so he put the job up to you. When you saw that Captain Levi had personally requested to break the rules and order five personal items instead of one, you knew it was your turn to punish him. You didn’t know how much joy it would bring you to erase the tea order off of the inventory chart until he came marching into the supply tent.

“You would be a better soldier if you listened to authority, Cadet.” It seemed the only way he could recover with you was to insult you back into submission. His voice was softer then, calmer and more composed: normal. To you, he seemed to be more serious, but it made you roll your eyes again. You didn’t care if he caught you.

“I am a good soldier, Captain. You don’t put worth on my fighting skills, but on my ability to listen to you.”

“If you listened, you would be an officer by now.” Levi knew you were a good soldier. You would rush out on the field and sacrifice your life or horse or swords for any comrade, regardless how they treated you at dinner the other day. The only time you would listen to Levi without question was on the field, too, and you would execute his shouts with speed and precision. He knew that the new cadets looked up to you, too, after saving many of their assess on the first expedition with Erwin’s new formation. If only you were the same off, then you would be on Levi’s Squad at least, if not in the officers’ cabinet.

You knew that too. You heard the others’ praise your skills and critique your behavior. You wouldn’t let anyone tell you what to do unless they had legitimacy in your mind. Erwin was amazing at strategy and kind to anyone, Hange was extremely intelligent and didn’t care who you were, and Miche was just soft and wouldn’t hurt a fly unless they threatened his squad. Levi was an amazing soldier, but it seemed that was the only thing he had. You didn’t give appreciation to those with bullied others with their brawn.

“I don’t want to be an officer, Captain. Quartermaster is the farthest I’ll go.” He frowned, knowing that one day you’d probably be promoted due to someone’s death. Maybe even his. You had to have known that.

“Why?”

“Papers please! Where in Trost are you- OH! Captain Levi!” The Garrison member bowed only once, seeing Levi’s annoyed face as he cut him off. You handed the papers, smiling, and was permitted into the district, turning right away to get to Reeve’s. You had no intention of answering his question, and he didn’t press anymore as the horses galloped up to the depot. When you hopped out, you smiled at all the workers, knowing they’d give you some extra supplies if you buttered up to them. It worked last time, but you were alone last time.

“Flegel! How are you today?” He looked directly at Levi, not even caring that you just greeted him. You just rolled your eyes again at the two and went to work, picking up the things on the list and signing. Levi didn’t get out to help once, he just sat in the cart, looking down at you like you were an ant. At one point, you stood next to the cart, noting that you were almost equal to his sitting height. You straightened up to make sure he realized it too. 

“I thought you came here to help, Captain.” He scoffed and sent another glare at Flegel who was shouting at some worker.

“I thought the Commander was clear in that I’d be accompanying you. I have no intention of doing heavy lifting.” You leaned back on the edge of the wood, marking off the rush supplies they put in the cart. The only thing that was left was the heavy bags of flour that three people needed to carry. You wondered if Levi would order you to go back right away, or he’d let you go off and do errands of your own.

“You’re right, he didn’t say. You probably couldn’t carry any of these things either, they’re a bit heavy… Captain.” Before he could say something back, hearing your insults, Flegel couldn’t help but join in. He’d told you on your previous supply run that he disliked the short man more than anyone in Trost and it stemmed from an apparent mess up and fight over Levi’s tea order. Go figure.

“Some of these packages are taller than you, Captain Levi. We can’t have our strongest soldier getting hurt by some wood, can we?” His question was directed at you, hoping you would jump in and support him, but after feeling the anger radiating off of Levi behind you, you knew it was better to not indulge him. Flegel was the easier target in this situation.

“I’ve never seen you carry any packages, Shorty.” He paused in his tracks, now noting that your insults were not on his side. They’d never be on his side. You stood up to your full height, trying to tower over Flegel as you handed him the list to sign. He was mumbling something under his breath, and you wouldn’t let him breath.

“What was that? Speak up, I can’t hear you from up here, Flegel.” With that, he walked away without saying goodbye, and your smile was the largest Levi had seen it. In fact, Levi was also satisfied with the way you put the fat boy in his place. Only a little bit surprised, though, that you defended him after insulting him yourself. It seemed to put him in a better mood and he even offered to buy lunch to take back.

You took the cart outside of Trost, letting the horses rest and eat in a meadow before the heavy ride back. Levi and you were on the grass eating, him leaning against a tree. He’d bought pork buns and you noted that it seemed to be his favorite food. You noticed his change in mood, which was probably the reason he’d bought you the buns, but didn’t press it. You also realized this was probably the first time you’d talk to him at length without getting reprimanded or into a fight.

“Is that fat boy always like that?” You huffed in laughter at the nickname he’d given Flegel.

“No, usually he tries to get me to eat dinner with him and I always deny.” Levi could imagine it in his head. If the way you acted in front of him was restrained, he wondered what you would say to the boy once you were all alone. Maybe he’d come again just so he could witness you insulting someone other than him. He had to admit, it was funny, and he wondered if that’s what it looked like to others as well.

“How do you deny him?” This answer might get rid of his good mood.

“I tell him I don’t go out with men shorter than me.” He just rolled his eyes and took another bite. Of course that was your answer. You’d do something daily to remind Levi that you were taller than him.

“Why did you come again? You could’ve saved yourself the time and insults.” You looked up at him from your seat on the grass, having eaten all the buns. He was a slow eater.

“To get my tea back. I saw it in the Reeve’s storage room. What a waste.” You laid back on the grass, looking up at the sky. It was getting colder, and you could tell by the heaviness of the clouds that your prediction on early snow was going to be correct.

“All officers get only one personal item per request. Erwin’s is a leather-bound journal, Hange’s is glassware for experiments, and yours, if we list them all off, are cleaning supplies, tea, a new broom, extra milk, and a fresh linen shirt. When I went to Erwin about it, he just told me to get rid of the most expensive thing and let you have the rest. If anything, yell at him, and stop bothering me about it.”

“I don’t need the linen shirt. Take that off and give me back the tea.” You laughed at him again, and it made him pull back the annoying look. His good mood was quickly leaving.

“Your tea supply is equal in price to the cleaning supplies, broom, and linen shirt. I can only let you have the extra milk and tea. We’re in the middle of a famine and supply shortage, Levi.”

“Captain,” he warned you, and you knew the mood of your previous conversation had flew out the window. You sat up, giving him your best glare. He wasn’t thinking rationally about this at all.

“Look, Captain. I’m given only a specific amount of money per month and have to balance out needs over wants. The Scouts need food, water, and winter clothes, that’s without question. Then, because you’re an officer, you’re supposed to get one thing with the excess money. Even the Commander has given up his leather-bound journal this month because of the recent inflation, and we weren’t about to have any left-over money for budge room. Like I said, it was either your tea or the Scout’s necessities which you also use. Even so, you’re still getting an unequal four other items. For someone who’s so stuck on me following the rules, you really like to use your position to break them.” He looked like he was going to kick you right then and there. You were at the perfect height for him to do it, too.

“I need the tea.” He crossed his arms, trying to forget what you just said. He knew he was being selfish, but it was never a problem before, or rather, the previous Quartermaster was afraid to call him out on it. Maybe that’s why Erwin promoted you out of the blue, knowing you weren’t afraid to tell him.

“So, you want me to cancel the orders for cleaning supplies, the broom, the shirt, and the milk?” You saw his jaw clench. No, he didn’t want to lose those either.

“I use the tea so I can recover from lack of sleep.”

“And if you didn’t drink the volume of tea you did, you would be able to sleep. You seem to be doing just fine without it.” You gestured your hand towards him, and his eyes followed.

“Do you know why I don’t sleep, Cadet?” His voice was lower now, and it made you draw back your hand, thinking he’d probably attack that first. You’d seen him some nights when you couldn’t sleep, just sitting alone in the mess hall drinking a cup or two. Seeing his state at night, dark eyes and dark circles, you didn’t feel like it was morally right to bother him then. It always had a dark tone, whenever you looked at him at night. His head was always hanging low and his hand had a death grip on the teacup. You had an idea why he didn’t sleep.

“Is it nightmares, Captain?” You saw his hand grip the last bun hard, his movements stopping. You knew you’d gotten the right answer, but he wasn’t actually looking for you to answer. Now, he’d had to brace himself for whatever words came out of your mouth next. Were you going to call him weak? Laugh at his pain? He wouldn’t put it past you, yet you just sighed.

“If you can find me someone in Trost, I can set up a contract with them. The tea’s export tax sends the budget over. It would also be better if you permanently got rid of one thing. You could steal a broom from the supply closet, no one but me will notice.” Levi didn’t buy it.

“And then you’ll report it to Erwin again? Announce it to the cadets that I’m stealing from the closet?” You could hear the anger in his words. Who did he think you where? Sure, you’d make fun of him for other things, but not for something he couldn’t control. He could control being an asshole, but not his nightmares.

“No, I won’t, but if you keep protesting my goodwill, the deal’s off the table, Captain.” You stood up to get the horses ready to leave. He still found it annoying that his tea supply hinged on your favor, but this deal seemed much more open than the last.

It took him another month to show up in the supply room as you were auditing. The weather had gotten extremely cold, always being able to see your breath as you went outside, and you knew that it had to be a special occasion for Levi to come outside since he hated the cold. When you turned around to see him, his eyes were bloodshot, and the black circles were the thing most evident on his face. Since the blizzards came, there was no training or expeditions, so you hadn’t seen him for a while, and you wondered what he’d gone through to look like this. Was it the nightmares?

“I found somewhere in Trost that is up to my standard. Here.” His voice was tight was he thrust the contract into your hands. The signature was empty, waiting for you to put your name down, but you were about to ruin his day even more. The blizzard was eating up supplies like crazy, and firewood was quickly running out. Unable to go out and cut down trees, the supply closet’s surplus was bring used up hourly. Moreover, a group of mice had gotten in and eaten through food and clothing, causing you to make this random audit to see the damage. There wasn’t going to be any leftover money this time for him to bargain a tea contract. You almost felt guilty for having to tell him this after personally giving him the option.

“I’m sorry, Captain.” Levi noted this was the first time you’d apologized to him, but he didn’t want to take it. The nightmares got worse as the sun faded from the sky earlier and earlier. He’d run out of all the tea he could find, and now he was forced to fall asleep and wake up in a cold sweat at three or four in the morning, just to stare at the wall before he fell asleep again. When he had tea, he could get up and drink it, not afraid to fall asleep again. He needed tea, any tea.

“I’ll give up everything like you said.” You almost dropped the pencil when he said that. You’d never seen him so desperate for something and you wanted to give it to him so bad, but it was something that couldn’t be done. Not this month. No officer would be getting their personal requests.

“I’m sorry, Levi, I can’t. Not this month. No one is getting their personal requests because of the mice mishap and the snow. I-I can try next month?” He just sighed and ripped he contract out of your hands.

“Nevermind. Forget what I said.” You wanted to stop him from walking away to see if you could work it out, but he was too quick. His cape swished in the winter wind as you watched him walk back to the castle, only to be submerged in the white snow. You felt guilty that you couldn’t give him what he wanted. He was suffering, and you could see it on his face too. He probably thought you were denying him the tea just to see him suffer even more. The next few days he snapped so easily at everyone that your daily insubordination completely stopped. You would just stare at him in the mess hall, willing him with your eyes to come back and talk to you. He never looked back at you, but he knew you were staring.

“You have to get the audit done by the end of this week. It seems we’ll only have a day window for you to get to Trost and back before a big storm comes again. Can you do that with the budget?” You looked down at the list of items you procured, only for Erwin to tell you that the budget was cut down again by the Royal Government. You’d have only a day to rethink the items needed.

“Yes Commander, I can redo the budget tonight.”

It took hours to do, but you did it. Instead of outright buying new jackets, you pushed back the spring supply, and just ordered patches to be sewed on. Then, you go to work figuring out how you were going to do it. If you allotted certain funds to different types of flour, cheaper versions, and you were able to receive beans instead of meat, you could get protein without the added shipping and cooling costs. As soon as you got to the number you needed, you let out a shout that echoed through the empty mess hall. Finally!

“What are you doing up, brat?” You seized up, turning around to see him, this time in pajamas and tossed hair. He looked even worse than the other day when he came to see you.

“I could say the same to you.” You didn’t add your usual insult at the end, knowing he wouldn’t be able to stand it. It looked like he was already fighting some other demons.

“Oh, you know, slowly dying of exhaustion thanks to the Quartermaster. Nothing new.” You held in the urge to roll your eyes at him, knowing what you’d just written down on the order sheet. He wouldn’t be saying that soon. If you stayed in this room, you would probably revert back to your old ways and start a fight with him. You’d only be able to do that after the shipment came in the next two weeks. Oh, how you longed for the day you could insult him in front of the cadets at training again. 

“I’ll leave you then, Captain.” His eyes seemed to light up a bit as you started to get up from the bench. He also noticed how your attitude towards him changed after your trip to Trost. Although there weren’t training sessions for you to sass him at, you would bow to him in the hallways and not talk back when he said something to egg you on at dinner. Sometimes he would catch himself missing it; discipling you just to hear your new insults the next day. While it was annoying to no end, it was refreshing. He needed to be refreshed.

“What, no snarky comment? You wouldn’t let me say something to you like that before, (Y/F/N).” You knew what he was trying to do, but you also knew the dangerous line you walked on. He was looking for something to punish you for, perhaps. Now that he knew he wasn’t getting tea, he had nothing to lose and a person he usually takes his frustrations out on right in front of him.

“No, Captain. I have to deliver this to the Commander.” You walked past the door and he grabbed your arm, making sure you didn’t leave. You looked into his eyes and for the first time in your Scouting career, you were scared of what would happen next. 

“I can give it to him for you.” He looked down at the paper and you pulled it back so he couldn’t see what was on it. His bad attitude was going to ruin your surprise. He took this action as your anger. 

“No, Captain. It’s fine, go get some rest.” His hand didn’t leave your arm and you glared down at it. His grip was starting to hurt and that smirk on his face was getting really annoying. 

“I can’t get rest, Miss. Quartermaster, because of you.” You ripped your arm out of his grasp and his smirk grew. There it was. That’s what he was looking for. You knew you’d lost the game of keeping in your temper. 

“If you keep acting like this, pretty soon you be able to walk either, Captain. Now if you’ll excuse me!” When walking to Erwin’s office, you almost erased that tea order right off the list, but you held yourself back. When Erwin went over the list to approve it, you saw him smirk over the last item, and maybe, just maybe, that made all the trouble you just went through worth it. 

“He finally convinced you?” It was the first time you’d crossed your arms in front of the Commander, but it just made him laugh. He was happy you finally obliged Levi because he was almost to his wits end hearing the Captain complain about your new appointment. Hopefully, next week, he would have a happier, more alive Captain.

“No, he was just too annoying to handle anymore, Commander. I pray he won’t notice that I took off everything else he ordered, because then we’ll be back to square one.” Erwin nodded and signed the paper, making you take a breath of relief. You could go to bed and sleep in tomorrow before you’d put in the order.

“I’m sure he’ll appreciate having a tea supply back, (Y/F/N).” You just sighed and dismissed yourself to your quarters. When walking to the showers, you saw the glow of a candle still coming from the mess hall. Levi was sitting there, drinking something, scowling down at the table. It was the same scene you’d seen over and over.

You threw the small package you had at him, narrowly missing his head. He grabbed the paper, snapping his head to look at his attacker. When he saw it was you, his smirk increased. He guessed it was too tempting not to come back and torment him. At least it was something to do.

“Since the Commander even complained about your whining, you can have the rest of my tea. It’s probably not up to your high standard, Captain, but I don’t think you’re in the position to choose.”

“And I don’t think you’re in a position to have that tone with me, Cadet.” You just rolled your eyes, having a mutual understanding that he wasn’t actually going to do anything to you tonight. He saw the clothes and towel you had in your hands, and you saw how tired he was. If anything, you should be telling him to go to bed again, but you knew that he’s probably afraid to fall asleep. The tea would help tide him over till the next delivery.

“It’s Quartermaster. I swear, even if I get promoted, you’ll still call me cadet.” You turned to walk to the showers, but his next insult disappeared at your statement.

“Why don’t you want to be promoted?” He asked you outside of Trost, and you didn’t answer him. It bothered him a bit, but not enough to ask you until now. You were a perfect candidate for a leadership position in Erwin’s eyes, and Levi knew that. He just wanted to know your reasonings, that’s all.

“I don’t want to have to be in meetings with your sorry ass, Captain.” He glared at the back of your head, and you could feel it as you walked away. He even thought about throwing the tea sachet back at you, but it was too precious. He had a terrible nightmare, so he was not very excited to fall back asleep, and you basically gave him a cure all. If he was smart, he could use this tea for at least a week and maybe take a personal trip to Trost and get more. Either way, he was grateful for your change in attitude towards him, even if you’d still sass him around HQ with your words. He’d take that over nightmares. He even dismissed the idea of punishing you tomorrow for swearing at him. 

Once the shipment of supplies came in the next week and you handed everyone their rations, you had your sights set on Captain Levi’s office. You knew he had a meeting with Erwin in the afternoon, and it would be easy to sneak into his office and leave the box of tea on his desk. Once you got inside, you decided to leave him a note. One last thing to piss him off before he’d see you at dinner. You’d give him a smug look all night, too, maybe even going to sit at the officer’s table and pretend to talk to Hange. No, you weren’t giving him this tea to make a point, but you still wanted him to know he’d have to be thankful to you for once. Maybe you’d even make a visit during his nightly mess hall tea break, just to emphasize your point.

Shortie,

Remember that night you bruised my arm? This is what I was doing. I expect you to bow at my feet during dinner, but it shouldn’t be hard since you’re already close to the ground.

You’re Welcome,

Quartermaster (Y/L/N)

When he found it, he smirked at the note, opening the box to see the tea he requested from the company in Trost. The note was annoying, but he couldn’t stop staring at your handwriting. You were fucking annoying too, but he couldn’t stop staring at you during dinner either, sipping a cup of tea. You’d chosen the perfect spot in front of Hange, making it easy for him to look at your features. Little did you know, he was enjoying your presence while you were trying to rub into Levi that you saved him.

“Hange, you have no idea how hard it was to get everything ordered within budget. I stayed up till three trying to figure out the math!”

“If you had half a brain, then maybe you wouldn’t have had to stay up that late, Quartermaster.” Your gaze snapped to him, glaring, but not missing the fact he called you your proper title for once.

“If I remember correctly, you were up too, Captain.” 

Hange cut in, making sure that both of you atoned for how annoying you were. Every time you two were together, the constant bickering made others listening develop a headache.

“If I remember correctly, I found you two flirting in the mess hall!” She made sure to yell that out loud so that the other cadets looked at the scene she created. Everyone heard her loud and clear and Levi was about to kill her. How dare she make such accusations?! 

“As if!” You crossed your arms, glaring back at Levi.

“Flirt with her?!” Hange could feel the animosity between you two, but she also noticed how red both of your faces had become.

“He’s the most annoying person I’ve ever met!”

“I am?! Have you heard yourself speak, (Y/F/N)?” You stood up, huffing in anger.

“I don’t date men shorter than me.” 

“And I don’t date stuck up brats.” You gripped both of your fists and realized that if you stayed any longer, your face would get incredibly red and you’d have to throw hands with Hange, so you left with everyone watching you. Levi was now in recovery mode, glaring at all of the cadets so they would turn away in fear.

“How can you not see how annoying she is, Hange?” He took another sip of the tea that you had given him. Maybe, he’d grown to prefer whatever brew you gave him that night in the mess hall. It was minty. He liked mint. 

“Mhm, Levi, sure.”

Maybe, he’d have to catch your annoying ass later tonight and ask you to order whatever personal blend you’d given him.

“Don’t look at me like that, four-eyes. Go oogle at some titans.”

Maybe, he’d catch you and start another little fight about the tea order, or force you to tell him why you didn’t want to be an officer.

“Oh, like you were “oogling” at (Y/F/N) tonight?”

Maybe.

xx this one took a LONG time to write haha I hope you like eet xx

#levi ackerman #levi ackerman x reader #attack on titan levi #levi ackerman scenario #levi ackerman x you #attack on titan #aot x reader #AoT requests #AOT headcanons #aot levi #attack on titan x reader #snk levi #snk #Captain Levi #shingeki no kyojin #shingeki no kyoujin levi

[mechawaka]

Spring in Derdriu

A commission for @artsytardis​

Words: 11.7k

Fandom: Fire Emblem Three Houses

Pairing: Claude/Byleth

Rating: Teen

Mood music: Roses & Revolutions - Dancing in a Daydream

Summary: Five years after the war, Claude is the king of Almyra and Byleth is the queen of United Fodlan - but neither of them had the courage to propose at the Goddess Tower. When Byleth comes down with a sudden fever, they might have another chance.

---

They couldn’t possibly name Derdriu the new capital of United Fodlan, Lorenz had declared the very day after Byleth’s coronation. It would ‘imply things,’ he’d said, aghast that she would even suggest it.

Lo and behold, Ferdinand and Sylvain had expressed similar worries about Enbarr and Fhirdiad, respectively, and what ‘things’ their hosting would ‘imply.’

And Garreg Mach was also out of the question. Archbishop Seteth, recently crowned himself, wanted to keep the reformed Church of Seiros as far removed from political power as possible. Byleth couldn’t make her capital there, he’d insisted. The implications!

So which will it be? her newly appointed cabinet - four representatives from each geographical region, with twelve in total - had prodded, each sect adamant that theirs couldn’t possibly be the permanent home of the new government.

And Byleth, already exhausted despite only being in charge for a grand total of one moon, had replied:

All of them, then.

That day, United Fodlan’s migrating government, colloquially known as the Wandering Court, had been born. Byleth spent one season in each capital - spring in Derdriu, summer in Fhirdiad (on which she was insistent), and winter in Enbarr. In the fall, she and the entire cabinet gathered at neutral Garreg Mach to conduct any business which required everyone’s presence at once.

For five years, the system had worked perfectly. There had been some inevitable pushback at first, mostly from anti-Imperial factions who were upset that Byleth had adopted the old Empire’s ministerial structure, but they had gradually quieted down as the continental economy stabilized and flourished under its guidance.

Moreover, Byleth liked being on the road. She was raised in tents and on horseback, always moving between destinations, and the frequent travel helped soften long days of paperwork and political debate. 

It also let her document certain supply and infrastructure problems firsthand; to this day, Byleth fondly remembered a tiny village on the Rhodos Coast whose inhabitants had sent in an official request for a new bridge - and had been shocked senseless when the queen herself, in transit from Fhirdiad to Garreg Mach, had shown up to build it.

(Petra had put her personal stamp of approval on that one; you only rule what you can see and touch, she’d written of the event.)

Today, though - this season, this cursed spring - the system was not working.

Oh, it had started normally enough. Byleth, once settled in the palace at Derdriu, had taken up her usual duty of hearing the cases which had passed since her last time in residence and breaking any tied votes. 

It wasn’t until her ministers were tying up the season’s work that a heavy rain swelled the Airmid, causing flooding in four different territories and knocking out a siege-battered section of the Great Bridge of Myrddin. Suddenly, they were swamped with petitions: drowned fields, lost livestock, choked roads. All with less than a moon remaining before the court’s transition to Fhirdiad.

In short, Byleth hadn’t slept in almost forty-eight hours.

Her head was a splitting fissure of tectonic activity, rumbling in the background of every meeting, every hearing, and roaring to life at random intervals that left her gritting her teeth and glaring at Lorenz, wherever he was in the room.

Oh, we simply can’t stay in Derdriu permanently, she mocked him mentally as, again, a searing wave of pain spiked behind her drooping eyes. It would ruin everything, or whatever.

“- and with that in mind, the Merchants’ Association asked us to move the boundary twenty feet down the riverfront,” Marianne recited from an open ledger. She, like all the other ministers, was dressed in a smartly cut, floor-length robe of office that bore the seal of United Fodlan, with her hair gathered neatly at the back of her neck.

“Ministers Victor and Goneril voted in favor of the merchants, while Minister Gloucester and I voted in favor of the fisheries. How do you rule?” Marianne looked up from her record and across their round discussion table. Her eyes were bright and serious at first, but they creased with worry upon taking in Byleth’s pinched expression. 

“Are you feeling ill, Your Majesty?”

This garnered the other ministers’ attention as well. Ignatz pushed his glasses up his nose to study her better, staring in that perceptive, sympathetic way that said he’d already identified all the faults in her appearance. 

Hilda, who’d been twirling a quill pen between her fingers, glanced up and gave Byleth a detachedly brutal once-over, indicating with an arched, sculpted eyebrow that she disliked her findings.

Lorenz, meanwhile, simply regarded his queen with a dry, ‘I told you so’ stare.

“No, no. I’m fine,” Byleth asserted, avoiding everyone’s concerned faces, and especially Lorenz’s. He had warned her against overworking only a week prior, and here she was zoning out like a bored student. She’d get an earful from him later, no doubt, about a ruler’s responsibility to their subjects extending to self-care and time management.

“My apologies. Minister Edmund, please recount the case again.” Byleth pushed herself up, ignoring the pounding rhythm inside her brain. She often paced the length of the room for difficult petitions, anyway, and maybe movement would help ease the pain - but she took one step and the world went sideways.

She swayed dangerously on her feet, catching herself on the edge of the throne. Her legs were soft and wobbly as a dessert jelly; her vision swam with blots of darkness and intense color at random. 

In a hushed, grave voice, she whispered, “Oh, that’s not good.”

“Quite,” Lorenz agreed curtly, having materialized at her elbow to aid in stabilization. He turned to the others, lips pursed and demeanor supremely unamused. “I believe Her Majesty is finished hearing cases for the day. All in agreement?”

Byleth barely registered the other ministers’ responses; her ears were suddenly full of cotton, dampening all incoming sound. Even Lorenz’s voice, so close at her side, was fuzzy and jumbled. She could only nod and follow him out of the throne room, vaguely aware that Marianne had joined them.

When had her headache gotten this bad? It must have been a slow progression, she reasoned as the trio headed toward her chambers, building in intensity during the meeting. She vaguely recalled an old medical lecture of Manuela’s about blood vessels in the brain, and how moving suddenly after a stationary period could cause...something. Something bad, probably.

Not for the first time, nor even for the hundredth, she wished she’d paid closer attention to the other teachers’ seminars back at Garreg Mach.

Lorenz politely turned around while Marianne helped Byleth out of her heavy court mantle and into her gigantic bed, busying himself by preparing a teapot at the dresser.

“I’ll be fine by tomorrow,” Byleth professed as she collapsed onto her mattress, allowing Marianne’s white magic to flow over her in a soothing current. “We can re-convene at first light.”

With his back still turned, Lorenz scoffed. “I highly doubt that.”

“I’m sorry, but he’s right,” Marianne corroborated, ceasing her spell and pressing the back of one hand to Byleth’s forehead. “You have harvest fever; you’ll need to rest for at least a week to let it run its course.”

“A week?” Byleth demanded, sitting straight up again. “But I leave for Fhirdiad in two!”

Lorenz brought the teapot over on a wheeled cart, putting his hands on either side and warming it magically. “Then perhaps you shouldn’t have taxed yourself to infirmity, hmm?”

At that, Byleth shot him an impotent - and, in all likelihood, given her state, pathetic - glare, but the mere action of tensing her forehead muscles worsened her headache and she fell back onto her pillows, defeated. He was right, damn him.

“Byleth,” he continued, exasperated, dropping all formality as he always did in the absence of prying ears. “Just rest. We designed this government to run in your absence - let us handle things from here.”

Marianne echoed the sentiment with a soft smile, pouring some strong-smelling medicinal tea from the pot. “We’ll see that Ordelia and Hrym are well cared for,” she said, holding out the teacup like a peace offering.

Byleth grudgingly took it.

---

Lorenz squinted down at Byleth’s sleeping form, sprawled and content amongst her blankets, and sighed. No one had ever prepared her for a life of leadership and politics, but she’d risen to the challenge admirably in the last five years. Perhaps too admirably, if situations like this were any judge.

Her problem, he’d decided long ago - and informed her whenever the chance presented itself - was moderation. Temperance. Byleth Eisner tackled every problem with a single-minded determination that, while remarkably efficient during the war, had tended to cause a variety of problems in peacetime.

In that regard, she was quite similar to him. To Claude. And speaking of Claude -

“We had two guards and a trio of footmen at our assembly today,” Marianne observed, keeping her eyes on the bed, but her message was clear.

“Indeed.” Lorenz tapped the heels of his polished boots restlessly against the floor. He could practically hear the wagging tongues from here; he could picture the story of their fainting monarch billowing out from the palace like blood in water, ripe for scenting - and there was one particular green-eyed shark always circling for a whiff.

He forced a long, resigned breath out through his nose, and said dismally, “I’ll direct the staff to prepare the guest wing at once.”

---

Thanks to whatever was in that tea, Byleth slept straight through the next few days. Even when she woke, she was groggy and mostly insensate to the world around her; she recalled Marianne’s visits to administer medicine or urge a few sips of water, but other than that - nothing. Only light and color and sound, all indistinct and running together.

The fever itself wasn’t so bad. She was being treated by the most studied healer in the region, and the rest was good for her, as much as she resisted the notion.

No, what had her itching for freedom, for an escape, had nothing to do with the sickness and everything to do with her own shoddy mental compartmentalization. Byleth had a single unbreakable rule, and it had kept her safe and stable for most of her life: don’t slow down.

Her friends - formerly students, and now United Fodlan’s new ministers - had always struggled to understand what went on in her head, and Byleth had to confess that it was often a confusing place for her, too. That was why she spent as little time there as possible. If she was solving governmental disputes or plotting a route through the Oghmas, she wasn’t thinking about her problems - and for someone that had attended the Jeralt Eisner school of “don’t confront your problems until they literally confront you first” coping strategy, that suited her just fine.

But these hours cooped up in her bedchamber were slow, and Lorenz had taken great strides to ensure that nary a tax report breached its threshold. And when there was no work to do, no roadblock for her mind to chew on, it drifted to contemplation, to nostalgia, and then, inevitably, to Claude.

What would he think of the stalemate between the merchants and the fisheries? That one was easy. He’d find a third option, something neither of the institutions had proposed but that benefited both, and dazzle them with its presentation. He’d find a way to spin the conflict so that it wasn’t about competing guilds, but about the betterment of the city as a whole.

She wondered if he looked different now compared to when she’d seen him last, at the Alliance Founding Day celebration the previous Horsebow. They only ever saw each other in formal wear these days, painted and decorated and utterly without privacy. Had he let his hair grow over the winter like she had? Was it curling near the base of his neck, thick and wild?

Oh, here we go, she thought, rolling her eyes and then squeezing them shut. This was why she kept herself preoccupied; any lapse in activity brought these sorts of ideas to the forefront, and they always turned to indulgent fantasy. Only Claude brought out that side of Byleth - and it made her so paradoxically angry, and afraid, and lonely.

Angry because she hadn’t intended to let him in; he was just there one day, snugly by her side, a few months after she’d joined the faculty at Garreg Mach (and she would always lament, at least a little, that Rhea hadn’t put her with the students instead). Even after he’d admitted his ulterior motives in getting close to her, Byleth never had the heart to be mad at him for it. He was so damn endearing.

Afraid because, as easily as he’d attached himself to her, he’d un-attached. Byleth could admit to herself, alone in her darkened bedroom, that most of her mental evasion strategies centered around one specific memory: that early morning conversation they’d had right before her coronation, in which Claude had spontaneously announced his departure from Fodlan.

(“There’s something I need to do,” he’d said up at the Goddess Tower, and she had been so sure he’d wanted to say more, but instead he’d just...left.)

Lonely because their friendship had never been the same after that. They were both so busy, now, and with so much responsibility - and she missed him. Missed their easy conversation and matching drive; missed the academic dissections of famous battles and the late nights spent comparing various cultures’ names for the constellations. 

Her remaining friends were certainly a balm, and she wouldn’t trade them for the world, but none of them were him. She’d never filled that spot at her side. Couldn’t fill it. Nothing and no one else fit there.

But she also couldn’t ask him back. He was the king of Almyra now, fulfilling everything he’d wanted and worked for and talked about with stars in his eyes - and Byleth could never begrudge him his lofty and admirable goals. Never. Instead, she’d had to accept the possibility that the grand arc of his ambitions no longer included her in its trajectory.

She sprawled out sideways on her bed, letting the warring emotions flood her body. Maybe this was good for her. Maybe, like the fever, she just needed to let them run their course. Maybe these were the natural consequences of escapism and denial.

And it wasn’t like she’d be able to get away from herself any time soon.

---

“Of all the - absolutely not,” Lorenz stated, planting himself in the center of the hall that led to Byleth’s bedroom. “There are procedures, Claude. Royal protocol. You know this!”

But Claude had already danced around him, utilizing that foot speed the mages never needed to master. “Come on, Lorenz, I’m not some Srengan diplomat - we’ve all seen each other covered in mud and guts. What’s a little illness between friends?”

To his credit, Lorenz didn’t ask how Claude had come by that knowledge. Nor were his protestations very vigorous, as if the man had foreseen this exact scenario - and for that, Claude was proud of him. 

That pride wouldn’t keep him from his goal, however. He’d saddled up his wyvern as soon as the words “queen” and “sick” had left his spymaster’s mouth.

“She’s not well. You’ll be interrupting her convalescence - Claude,” Lorenz said sternly, holding his friend by the elbow and fixing him with a soul-searching gaze. “She cannot receive visitors in this state. What’s gotten into you?”

For an instant, Claude’s happy-go-lucky mask slipped. He’d been too pushy, so much so that even Lorenz got a glimpse of the panic underneath - the cold terror that had driven him across the continent and still gripped his heart. He knew it wouldn’t let up until he could confirm Byleth’s condition.

But he was a consummate faker, and so the mask slotted deftly back into place. “Why don’t you go ask her, hmm? I’m sure she’ll be positively overjoyed.”

---

When Lorenz walked in, Byleth was still in the same position, all spread out and despondent. 

“How are you feeling, Your Majesty?” he asked pointedly, and his use of her title - coupled with his formal position near the door - should have clued her in to what he was really asking, but Byleth was far too addled for nuance.

She tilted her head in his direction and flatly, shamelessly said, “Fine.”

Lorenz’s disciplined expression soured a fraction. “Well, that is wonderful news -” his ironic lilt suggested that this news was anything but wonderful, “- because you have a visitor.”

He stepped back to clear the doorway, giving Byleth a look that said she deserved everything that was about to happen. “May I present King Khalid ibn Riegan of Almyra.”

Claude poked his head in much too casually for Lorenz’s theatrical introduction. “Byleth! I brought you some -”

He paused, staring at her depressed-starfish pose. Byleth, in the blink of an eye, sobered completely and experienced all the stages of grief in quick succession.

“- fruit,” Claude finished lamely. Behind him, Lorenz pinched the bridge of his nose.

---

“Claude,” Byleth intoned, dredging up her ‘serious teacher’ voice for the occasion. She’d bathed and changed her clothes since his impromptu arrival - Byleth had never possessed a single modest bone in her body, but, again, he just incomprehensibly brought it out in her - and now she sat on the edge of her bed while he occupied the bedside armchair.

“It was so nice of you to drop in,” she continued, folding her arms across her chest.

Claude laughed anxiously, holding a woven basket full of fruit in his lap half like a shield and half like an offering to an angry deity. “Okay, why do I get the feeling you’re mad at me?”

“I’m not mad at you,” Byleth said icily. It wasn’t a lie; it was more like she was mad around him - mad at the space surrounding his stupid, handsome head - mad that he’d shown up, as if summoned, right when she was feeling so sorry for herself about him.

But that was far too complicated to explain, so instead she asked, “What’s your business in the city?”

He brightened a bit, perhaps relieved to divert the topic. “Thought I’d tour the Goldroad - see what travel is really like there outside the official inspection dates.”

Byleth cocked her head to the side, staring out her west-facing window. He referred to the winding trade route that now spanned the Throat, starting at the Locket and ending at a similarly sized fort across the border in Almyra - but that was over a day’s travel from Derdriu.

Following the path of her eyes, Claude went on quickly, “And, you know, I was in the area, so why not visit my very best friend?”

She wasn’t sure she’d classify a seventeen hour wyvern flight as ‘in the area.’ Byleth narrowed her eyes, looking from his rigid smile, to his posture, to the basket he carried, then back to his face, waiting for the actual answer.

“- All right,” he confessed, exhaling deeply. “My spies said you were sick, so I came to check on you - how are you still so good at that?”

She smiled despite herself and pointed at the basket, which he promptly handed over. Popping a dried date into her mouth, she asked coyly, “At what?”

Claude laughed heartily, reaching over to get one for himself, and that simple action propelled them effortlessly into a comfortable, familiar rhythm, dispelling their outer veneers of royalty. 

They traded stories about travel, about new friends, about insufferable opposition; Claude told her about one of his subordinate satraps - which served a similar function to Byleth’s ministers, but with more concentrated local authority - who had threatened to raise an army in his territory over the price of grain, and then panicked when Claude had called his bluff and negotiated a lower price.

(“Did he even have an army?” she asked, completely absorbed in the story and eating sour cherries by the handful.

Claude, with a wide, gleeful grin, replied, “Not a chance.”)

In return, Byleth told him about last year’s failed rebellion in eastern Faerghus, in which a group of Blaiddyd royalists had tried to rally the region’s former aristocracy under the banner of House Fraldarius - and how Felix himself had ridden out to personally disband them.

(“Oof. Embarrassing,” Claude commented, making a face like someone had punched him in the gut. “What did he say to make them listen?”

Byleth snorted and modulated her voice to match the prickly swordsman’s. “‘This is not happening. Leave.’”)

As the afternoon wore on, servants brought in tea service and then dinner - and Byleth’s temporary surge in vitality upon seeing her dear friend started to fade, replaced by the fever-aches she’d come to know so well. Her movements grew slower and her answers shorter, overcast by brain fog.

Claude watched this change in her with considerable worry, helping her back under her blankets after they’d finished eating and re-situating the pillows around her head.

“Oh, stop it,” she chided, swatting away his hands. “I’m not completely helpless.”

He backed off, smiling easily, but stayed within range to aid her again if needed. “I don’t know about that,” he teased. “You know what they say about people who catch colds in the summer.”

“It’s spring,” she insisted, wrinkling her nose, but he didn’t laugh. In fact, there were no traces of mirth left anywhere on his face.

Byleth sat up straighter. “Claude, it’s only harvest fever. Marianne said it should clear up in a few days.”

He dropped back into his chair, resting his elbows on his knees so he could bridge part of the gap. “But what if it’s not, though?”

A nearby Church of Seiros’s evening bells rang out across the palace grounds. The brassy sounds changed with each echo, reaching her bedchamber as ghostly distortions.

“What, you think Marianne got it wrong?” Byleth asked, pulling her blanket up subconsciously.

“No, just -” Claude ran a hand back through his hair, pushing it even further out of its usual style, “- what if it’s related to...whatever Sothis did to you after the siege?”

He’d spoken so quietly that Byleth had to lean forward and slow her own breath in order to hear it. The concern in his tone - the restraint in his clasped hands; the uncertainty in his eyes - made her take a second pass over everything.

She no longer saw a casual check-in made by a concerned friend. Claude had traveled here with speed and intent, and now she knew why; just like their parting words at Garreg Mach had stuck with her, her long and mysterious slumber had probably stuck with him.

(The realization, while illuminating, didn’t hit her as hard as it should have. She thought some version of that truth, formless and undefined, must have been swimming around in the back of her mind for a while. It explained so succinctly why Marianne had insisted on treating Byleth herself, and why Lorenz stood vigil so often outside her room, even though the two had comparably little free time.)

Now that she thought about it, the long-term consequences of merging with a goddess should probably be a bigger concern of hers, too.

“I haven’t heard Sothis’s voice, nor felt her presence, in six years,” Byleth explained calmly, striving for an affect that would put him at ease. “And I’ve been in perfect health, besides.”

Claude gave her a long, lingering look - one that took in not only her face, but her long, mint-green braid and her customary wardrobe, unchanged from her days at the monastery - as if he wanted to commit her current state to memory. Byleth returned it with a confused frown, ready to comment on the odd behavior, but then his usual smile returned in a flash.

“You’re right,” he acquiesced with a little shrug, standing and straightening his riding harness. “It’s probably nothing serious. A few days, you said?”

Byleth’s confusion skewed into suspicion. Claude never let anything go that easily. “Yeah,” she answered slowly, searching his face for signs of duplicity. “Marianne said I’m already over the worst of it.”

“That’s great,” Claude enthused in the exact manner he’d use to win over his enemies, and Byleth’s misgivings quadrupled. “You should get some rest. I’ll see you in the morning.”

He was out the door in a flourish of his royal half-cape, paying no mind to the official etiquette of departure. (Byleth didn’t care about such things, but Lorenz was surely fuming about it in the hall.)

She let herself fall, warily, back onto her bed, pondering what Claude could possibly be up to - because he was up to something. It was only after she’d started to drift off, her head nestled warmly in one of about a dozen pillows, that the implications of his parting words struck her.

---

Ignatz rushed down the administerial wing’s main corridor, clutching a stack of accounting ledgers in one arm and several sheaves of operational business licenses in the other. Sunlight was just starting to peek through the hall’s windows, painting slowly elongating bars of yellow on the opposite walls; nobody would be in their offices yet, but if he could deliver his cargo before breakfast, he’d be able to get a head start on his own day’s work -

Thus distracted, he pushed his slipping glasses back up the bridge of his nose - using an occupied hand. Fifty business licenses, previously sorted alphabetically and geographically, drifted to the ground in a fluttering cloud of failure.

“Oh, no,” Ignatz muttered, dropping to his knees and gathering up the papers as best as he could without dropping the ledgers. If he didn’t deliver his cargo before breakfast, that would delay all of his tasks by at least an hour, thereby pushing back tomorrow’s tasks as well, to say nothing of his meeting with the merchants’ guild - 

A head of shaggy brown hair and a pair of leather-gloved hands bent to organize the papers into a messy but holdable pile, then helped to situate it more snugly in Ignatz’s grasp.

In his haste and immeasurable relief, Ignatz threw a grateful, “Thanks, Claude!” over his shoulder as he resumed his flight down the corridor.

At the threshold of Hilda’s office, though, while balancing both stacks with one hand so he could turn the doorknob, he froze and shouted back the way he’d come, “Claude?!”

---

Instead of the usual morning sounds - like the rustling of Marianne’s skirts or the trundling of a breakfast cart - Byleth woke to singing. It originated somewhere to her right, winding and unhurried, and she knew this gentle melody; Claude had taught it to her during the war.

So he really was still here, then. He’d really stayed. 

She opened her eyes just a hair, hoping for a chance to observe him before he noticed that she was awake.

It was still early. All the curtains were tied back and the windows cracked, letting in pale, diffused light and a sea-salt breeze off the bay. Claude stood at her personal writing desk, which Marianne had turned into a makeshift apothecary, weighing a small pile of freshly ground coriander. He was dressed more casually today, having discarded his courtly attire and riding leathers in favor of a belted Almyran-style tunic; his hair was bound in a simple but flattering tie at the nape of his neck.

Byleth watched him work - watched him thoughtfully consider the ratio of coriander to ginger to water, his hand hovering over each as he deliberated. All the while he sang that soft tune, so beautifully laden with memory and affection. 

When he’d finally settled on a mixture, he reached into a pouch at his belt and uncorked a vial of honey, adding a spoonful to the mug. She tried her best to hold it in, but a tiny, breathless laugh escaped her; that rich wildflower honey was a signature of Claude’s home-brews - a sweetener to make his questionable concoctions more palatable.

He jumped and whirled at the sound, his cheeks darkening somewhat at being caught unawares, but Byleth just shook her head slowly, reassuringly, and hummed the next few bars of his song. At once, his embarrassment morphed into a wide, slanted smile, and he turned back to put the finishing touches on his creation.

“What are you still doing here?” Byleth asked, pushing herself up to a sitting position. Her hair must have been a mess, but she had to settle for a quick smooth-down.

Claude chuckled and sat on the edge of her bed, holding out the mug of steaming medicinal tea. “Really? No ‘Good morning, Claude, and thank you for taking such good care of me?’”

She took the cup and shot him a faux-scowl. “Who’s running your country, though?”

“Oh, it basically runs itself.” He waved a flippant hand, staring out a window in the direction of the Throat. “Our scholars say, ‘A king is a great ship’s rudder.’ It just so happens that my ‘great ship’ has a good heading right now.”

Byleth regarded him doubtfully. She knew this proverb, and its wisdom was definitely not intended to excuse literal flights of fancy.

“What?” he asked, rolling his head to the side playfully. “If anything happens, Nader knows where I am. Besides, aren’t you happy to see me?”

Her stern facade - only performative, anyway, since Claude never failed to disarm her - softened. “I’m always happy to see you,” she said quietly, hiding her vulnerability with a big sip from her mug. (It was delicious, of course, after being assembled so skillfully.)

The curious look he gave her in response lasted a little too long, probed a little too deep for comfort, so she followed it up with a nervous, “Where’s - where’s Marianne?”

Claude, ever-insightful, let the moment pass without remark. “She allowed me to perform her caretaking duties in exchange for a little, ah...discretion...on my part.”

That was easy to imagine. Her ministers had enough on their legislative plates without the obligatory fanfare that would accompany an ‘official’ royal visitation - so the last thing they needed was King Khalid, the former leader of the Alliance, showing his highly recognizable face all over Derdriu.

“We’re both locked up, then,” Byleth said plainly. That explained his wardrobe; a casual observer might think him no more than a member of the staff. As long as he didn’t linger in unfamiliar company, he could move freely about the palace.

“Yep.” Claude smiled contentedly, like he’d gotten the best possible end of this deal. (Byleth begged to disagree.)

In a comically professional, woefully unconvincing physician’s voice, he asked, “So, how are you feeling today, my liege?”

Byleth choked on a sip of her tea, cough-laughing and beating her chest to clear her airways. “Much better, doctor,” she spluttered, setting down her mug to prevent any spasm-related accidents. It was true; her head and body aches had been fading with each passing day, and the fever was low enough that she didn’t feel like a boiling crab leg anymore.

“Good, good,” he mused, looking far too pleased with himself. “Then what do you say to a bit of chess on the balcony?”

She gave her sternum a few more good thumps to really get all the spicy ginger out of her lungs, using the extra time to examine Claude more closely. He knew he couldn’t beat her at chess; what was this about? And was it related to - to whatever inscrutable scheme he was currently enacting?

“Sure,” she said, knowing he wouldn’t give up his plans if asked. (Not until the most dramatically poignant moment, anyway.) If she was going to figure it out on her own, she’d need more opportunities for candid observation, and chess should do nicely.

His face split into a grin immediately. “I saw a board in Lorenz’s office. Meet you back here after lunch?”

“Yeah, it’s a date,” she agreed lightly, and didn’t miss the way it tripped him up on the way out. 

---

“You’re still here,” Lorenz observed with the same sort of weary derision one might direct at a persistent rug stain. He stood in the doorway to his office, holding a tea tray and projecting an aura of disappointment.

Claude, who was currently inside said office and in the midst of burgling a marble chess board, hastily clicked all its pieces back down and clasped his hands behind his back. “I am! Very astute of you to notice.”

Lorenz’s eyes flicked pointedly from his uninvited guest to his now-askew board, then he calmly strode around both to reach his polished mahogany desk. “Well, then. Would you join me for tea, Your Majesty?”

The way he gestured to the opposite chair spoke clearly of interrogation, but Claude sat anyway. It wouldn’t be polite to steal a man’s gaming paraphernalia and refuse his company.

“Why, thank you, Minister,” he answered, exaggerating his friend’s formal air, “we are simply delighted by your invitation.”

Lorenz’s poker face had improved over the years, but Claude still caught the subtle tightening of a jaw and the slightest arch of a brow; dead giveaways that he’d still snap at a piece of bait like a Brigidian piranha. Good to know.

“All right,” Lorenz said, clipped, like he’d come to a decision at the end of a long internal debate. “What are you doing here, Claude?”

Claude blinked, taken aback by the suddenness of the question. “Uh, well, Marianne and I -”

“I quite understand the generous arrangement which Marianne has afforded you,” Lorenz cut in quickly, pouring out two cups of tea. He handed one over the desk with the gravitas of a commander handing down orders. “What, precisely, are you here to do?”

Faking affrontation would be a moot point here, Claude thought. Lorenz was chasing down a specific answer, and from the set of his brow, he’d probably figured out most of it.

And that was fair. Despite their rocky interactions, Lorenz was one of the few people that Claude would say he trusted, and he knew that Lorenz felt the same (even though he had a peculiar way of showing it).

However, while Lorenz looked confident in the answer to his question, Claude didn’t even know where to start. How could he sum up this whirlwind?

Should he begin with the primal fear of hearing that Byleth had collapsed? With the breakneck flight to Derdriu, imagining all the worst possibilities in his head? (The mild shock in her eyes as she toppled backward into the chasm; her ensuing five-year absence, silent and absolute.)

Or at the boundless relief - the sheer, joyful knowledge that she had not, in fact, been re-afflicted with Sothis’s ancient sleeping sickness?

Or, should he skip straight to the certainty that he wouldn’t survive another such scare, and the unwillingness to be apart from her for even a second more, political repercussions be damned? 

In the end, holding a steaming, fragrant cup of bergamot, Claude - in one of only a handful of occasions thus far in his life - couldn’t find the right words.

Luckily, Lorenz, who must have witnessed his friend’s rapid expression shifts, found one instead. Gently, and with more sympathy than expected, he asked, “Still?”

Ah, so he had figured it out.

Claude raised his teacup in a silent toast. “Still,” he confirmed, then downed it in one gulp.

“Hm.” Lorenz paused to serve out refills and scones, and Claude knew exactly what his friend was remembering.

(For five years during the war, Claude had periodically returned to Garreg Mach, even though everyone else had given up the search for Byleth. As the visits persisted in the face of increasing danger, one by one, and with varying levels of understanding and acceptance, his friends had all come to the same conclusion: their leader was in love with their former professor.)

“I can’t say that I’m surprised,” Lorenz said curtly, but not unkindly. “You have a plan, then? - Oh, what am I saying? Of course you do. The Master Tactician wouldn’t have shown up without a plan.”

Claude, who had been trying to decide if Lorenz was mocking him or not, visibly fumbled his cranberry scone at that final comment.

Instantaneously, Lorenz’s face went from invested concern to mortification. “Goddess above - you don’t have a plan.”

Claude didn’t have the heart to say that his “plans” often sprung from gut feelings like this; that, very often, he was building a bridge to his goals and walking it simultaneously, trusting that there would be another plank when he reached back for one.

In this particular instance, his bridge took the form of an impromptu and extended stay at the palace while he figured out the world’s most diplomatically sensitive marriage proposal. He wanted to tell Lorenz that, actually, he had several possible scaffolds in place, he just hadn’t chosen one yet - but Claude could see the foundational flaws in all of them, and still hovered at the juncture, unsure where to lay the next plank.

“- No, I don’t,” he finally admitted, steepling his fingers on the desk. “I’m taking suggestions, though, if you have any?”

Lorenz took a slow, calculated sip of his tea, giving Claude one of his patented ‘how did you manage to become the leader of anything’ looks. “Marianne assures me that Byleth will recover in a matter of days -”

“I know,” Claude interjected miserably. His timetable was tragically inadequate.

“- And, while your presence here is temporarily acceptable on the basis of friendship, it will become much harder to justify after the palace returns to its normal operations -”

“I know, Lorenz,” Claude said, letting his forehead fall onto the points of his fingers. The pain, he thought, was well-deserved. “Sheesh, you don’t have to rub my nose in it…”

Lorenz laughed softly. “Apologies. I’m simply savoring the moment; it isn’t often you need my strategic input.”

With his face downturned and concealed, Claude grimaced. He supposed he’d deserved that, too.

“But,” Lorenz went on, “I do have a suggestion. Given your limited available time and lack of direction, we should enlist outside support.”

Claude raised his head incredulously. “Your solution is to have more people laugh at me?”

“Yes. Hilda and Marianne, to be precise.” Lorenz smirked and crossed his legs. “And they won’t laugh - in fact, Hilda will be delighted.”

His tone of voice was too amused for the answer to be anything good, but Claude still asked cautiously, “Why?”

“Oh, because I owe her quite a bit of gold, naturally - I thought it would take you and Byleth far longer to act on your feelings, and my money was on her acting first.”

---

Byleth loved the balcony off her bedchamber. It was on the same side of the palace as the throne room, only higher, with a wider perspective of the canal below and a down-angle view of the opposite block. Sitting on it and looking out, with the stone railing acting as an artificial horizon, she really felt as if she were floating above Derdriu; the city sprawled off endlessly to her right, while its great network of canals spilled into the bay on her left, all set in miniature from this height.

A tangy sea breeze teased through her hair, rustling the many and vibrant plants - in pots, hanging from the roof, and mounted in window boxes - that scattered the area. They were in perfect health, she noticed, despite the rarity of her visits, and Byleth wondered if it was some palace staffer’s entire job to maintain luxurious spaces like these, even though some busy official might seldom use them. 

She privately resolved to appreciate the balcony more often.

It didn’t take long for Claude to come whistling through her chambers, bearing a chess board like a server delivering a high-end meal. He put it down on a small, circular table where Byleth’s own board was already set up, then carefully aligned their edges to create a double-long playing field.

(They’d invented this game early on at Garreg Mach after discovering that neither of them felt challenged enough by the base rules. It had gone through several name changes before they’d agreed to just keep the original; after all, if either of them ever mentioned the game to the other, they both understood which (clearly superior) version was being referenced.)

“So, you managed to get Lorenz to part with it,” Byleth commented as he arranged his pieces and sat down opposite her. “What’d it cost you?”

Claude made a face like he’d just licked a lemon. “Oh, nothing much. Just my reputation and dignity.” He laughed it off, but there was a distinct, hollow ring of truth to his words. “Anyway. Sixty-point game?”

She cocked her head, intrigued. Their special rules allowed for custom “armies” to be built from the standard chess units, each with an individual point cost. Byleth personally liked to run an army without pawns - high risk, high reward (usually reward).

“Not forty?” she asked mildly, picking out her standard array plus an extra frontline of knights. Claude would regret handing her such an aggressive opener. “Are you trying out a new strategy?”

He grinned and laid out his own army, which seemed to focus around his sovereigns - and, as usual, contained a robust line-and-a-half of pawns. What he sacrificed in speed, he made up for in defensive surface area.

“I am. I think you’ll really like this one,” he said, playing his first (highly predictable) move. 

That was the thing about Claude, though. Byleth thought his move was predictable right now, at the beginning, but he was a highly intelligent improviser. The long field between armies meant that most of the game was based on ranged path speculation. 

Was a cluster of pieces actually heading toward her left flank, or would it divert to threaten other units at the last second? She’d have to put a metaphorical shield in place for the first possibility, and a sword for the other - and with Claude, it was impossible to tell ahead of time which he would actually pick. 

But, despite the chaos his playstyle caused, its spontaneity was also what made him such a compelling opponent. The tactical element never got stale.

“It’s bound to be more exciting than your rook phalanx idea,” Byleth teased, starting her knights off on their long journey.

Claude gasped like she’d just insulted his mother. “Hey, that was not my fault - it was a good attack pattern in theory!”

She made a tiny sound of agreement to humor him, but remained privately unconvinced.

As usual, they lapsed into silence for the first phase of the game, each trying to dissect the other’s overall strategy. Of course, at this stage, it was largely conjecture; there would be many, many reactive and counter-reactive moves before any two units actually engaged.

The quiet was nice, though. Ships’ bells echoed in from the piers, mingling with street noise rabble and the shrill cries of bay gulls. There was no one to demand her ear or her time - a rare commodity. She could tell Claude enjoyed it, too, by his easy smiles and relaxed posture.

Why had they ever stopped doing this? It dawned on Byleth that it had been years since their last game.

“- Hey, Claude,” she said at the thirty-turn mark.

He didn’t look up from his spread. “Hm?” “What in the world are you doing?”

His green eyes, which had been bouncing between forward pawns, flicked up to her face. “Setting up my midgame?” he half-asked, gesturing to his formation like the answer was obvious. “Why, what are you doing?”

Byleth narrowed her eyes at the board. He’d split his pawns into two staggered ranks with his sovereigns in the middle, like some sort of sandwiched convoy, and the outer ring of mid-tier pieces looked to be guards.

“Your brilliant new strategy is to hand-deliver your king to my army?” she contended, tracing his column’s trek down the board with her hands, then opening them wide, fingers hooked, to mime the pieces being eaten by a sharp-toothed monster.

Claude laughed confidently. “You’ll see. The king and queen together are unstoppable.”

It was certainly an unconventional approach. By virtue of its novelty, it tripped Byleth up several times in the early game - one might even say, around turn sixty, that her opponent had the advantage. But the sheer speed and maneuverability of her knightly vanguard eventually prevailed, and by turn ninety, she had his entire escort block surrounded. 

“Multi-point threat,” Byleth declared, moving in on his rear line. “This was an interesting idea, but I do believe your king is in mortal peril.”

Claude, who’d been standing for the last dozen turns, paced to the other side of the table. (He loved to do that - to see the situation from all angles, like he would in a real conflict. Unfortunately, that expanded perspective could do little for him here.)

“No, I think - listen - he still has his queen.”

Byleth examined the setup again. “Uh-huh, he sure does,” she drawled, trying to understand how that might change their fates.

“I’m just saying,” he went on, crouching so that he could view the board at eye level. “Look how far they’ve already come. Look at all they’ve been through together - it’s not like a little opposition could stop them now, right?”

She crossed her arms, a bewildered smile tugging at her mouth. “Are you seriously trying to Nemesis me right now? My bishops have them both in four.”

Claude gave a frustrated sigh. “No, this isn’t a scheme - well,” he amended, scratching pensively at his chin scruff, “okay, it is a scheme, but -”

I knew it, she thought, vindicated, and grinned accordingly.

“Ugh, forget it.” Claude toppled his king. “You’re right, it was an ill-fated venture that clearly needs outside support.”

Byleth frowned. “What? I didn’t say that.”

He waved his arms like he was dispelling the entire conversation. “Never mind. We’ve still got plenty of light - how about another game?”

---

Later that night, after Byleth and most of the palace had retired, Hilda’s raucous laughter rang out through the entire administerial wing.

“You tried to tell her with chess?!”

She, Claude, Marianne, and Lorenz all sat around a table in one of the meeting rooms, passing around a bottle of strong Faerghan whiskey.

“No wonder she didn’t get it,” Hilda continued, wiping tears from the corners of her eyes (in a delicate manner that spared her makeup). “You know how Byleth is!”

Lorenz refilled his glass, nodding emphatically. “Agreed. Subtlety will get you nowhere in that arena, my friend.”

“I thought it was sweet,” Marianne disclosed quietly.

Claude propped his feet up on an unused chair and dipped his chin gratefully. “Thank you. I also thought it would be sweet. And successful.”

He took a long swig straight from the bottle, much to Hilda’s amusement. “But you were right, Lorenz, okay? So -” he slapped the tabletop in invitation, “- go on. Advise me.”

Perhaps sensing that their friend was already punishing himself enough, no one pushed the teasing any further. Lorenz and Hilda shared a look - one that said they’d already discussed the matter privately - and then everyone got straight down to business.

“First of all, we should discuss the legal ramifications of your union,” Lorenz said, indicating the palace walls. “It’s true that anti-Almyran sentiment has died down greatly since the war, especially here in Leicester, but I fear widespread confusion - how much power would the king of Almyra suddenly have over their territories? Their livelihoods?”

Claude recoiled from the intensity. “Whoa! She hasn’t even said yes - aren’t we getting a little ahead of ourselves, here?”

(In truth, he had the same worries about his own homeland; it wasn’t like xenophobia was exclusive to Fodlan. His current plan - if she agreed - was to introduce her presence like he’d introduced his own: aggressively and unapologetically, with hopes that the Almyran public would regard it with the same eventual respect.)

The other three gave him bland looks.

“You really, honestly think she’ll turn you down?” Hilda asked in angry disbelief.

Claude gritted his teeth. “I don’t know - I mean, that’s Byleth’s whole deal, right? Unbeatable strategist? You never know what she’s thinking?”

“Oh, Claude,” Marianne said, patting him on the arm. “You should have more confidence in yourself.”

Hilda snorted into her tumbler.

“- Regardless, I don’t want to discuss the politics without her. If she says yes,” Claude emphasized with a stern glance around the table. “I have to get to the actual question first, okay? Lorenz. Ideas. Go.”

The man in question raised his eyebrows. “All right - well, Leonie proposed to me during a horseback ride. She’d painted all of her mounted archery targets with one word each, and in order they spelled out a question...oh, it was very romantic,” he said, his tone warming as he spoke. He then promptly cleared his throat. “But, ah, Byleth isn’t in a physical state for riding, hmm?”

Hilda propped her elbows up on the table and cradled her chin in her hands, recounting dreamily, “Marianne took me deep into the forest at night and professed her love under the light of the full moon. How could I have ever said no to that?”

Marianne hid behind her glass, her face beet-red. “I don’t, uhm, think there are any full moons coming up soon, though,” she managed to squeak out.

“Yeah, you have to do something quick.” Hilda pointed at him with her glass. “Let’s see - we already know it can’t involve winning something, so that’s out.”

Claude laughed sarcastically into the bottle.

“A grand display would not be diplomatically feasible, either,” Lorenz added.

Yeah, that made sense, Claude thought. A single plant in the throne room had brought word of Byleth’s illness to him in under three days - and he wasn’t the only one with eyes here. 

“You should do something that’s meaningful to both of you,” Marianne suggested, her face returning to its usual pallid shade. “Something simple but significant. Byleth would appreciate that, I think.”

Simple but significant.

Claude swirled the idea around in his head at the same time he swirled the contents of his bottle. Significant he could do - had been doing - but simple was another story. Maybe that was his problem; maybe he just needed to go back to the basics.

“And don’t get her a ring,” Hilda said. “I never see her wearing jewelry unless the tailors insist.”

He chewed on all of that, taking slow, measured sips of whiskey. Something meaningful to both him and to Byleth - something memorable, but uncomplicated. No rings, he added mentally. That was fine; as an archer, he disliked having obstructions around his hands, anyway. (And while they were out here breaking traditions, who cared if it was one or one hundred?)

“Hey,” he began, doing some quick calculations around wyverns’ seasonal nesting habits. “How quickly could I get something down the Goldroad?”

Lorenz’s brows knit together. “From the capital to here, I presume, and with the use of your royal seal? Within the week. Why? What do you need?”

Claude grinned, luxuriating in the rush of a good plan coming together. “All right, listen to this -”

---

If she could’ve had her way, Byleth would have chosen to remain in those last days of her fever forever. Her symptoms were mild and unobtrusive, she didn’t have to do any paperwork, and Claude was there; simply put, it was the ideal situation.

They spent four whole days together playing games, mixing various drinks, going for (short and supervised) walks around the garden, and reminiscing about old times - but Marianne’s medicines were effective and all things, even good things, must end.

On the morning of the fifth day, she knew she was cured. Her mind was clear and her body strong, if a little feeble from the bed rest. Everyone else must have been on the same page, too, because Marianne came to greet her after breakfast in Claude’s stead.

“So that’s the end of the arrangement, then?” Byleth asked, trying to keep her voice even and normal.

Marianne smiled softly and pressed the back of her hand to Byleth’s forehead. “Yes. Claude will be returning home this evening, as I’m sure he has many decisions waiting for him there.”

That makes two of us, Byleth thought dejectedly.

“Your temperature is perfectly normal,” Marianne reported. “Do you have any lingering fatigue? Dizziness?”

“Nope. Nothing,” Byleth said, heaving a reluctant sigh. “I suppose I should head down to the audience chambers.”

She really, truly hadn’t meant to sound like a pouting toddler bound for punishment, but that was exactly how it had come out.

Marianne laughed. “Yes, you should - tomorrow.” To answer Byleth’s questioning stare, she pointed across the room. “I think you’ll be too busy today.”

Right on cue, something large impacted outside the windows with a dull, cracking thud. Without thinking, Byleth whirled, ready for some sort of threat - (her sword belt was hanging next to her bed, easily accessible for such emergencies) - but it was only Claude on the balcony.

Rather, it was his massive white wyvern, Sahar. She’d perched on the railing, her sharp claws gouging long scrapes in the stone, and he was mounted on her back.

“Don’t worry, I’ll pay for that!” he called, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Good morning! Care for a ride?”

Byleth burst out in surprised laughter, too endeared to be mad about the property damage. She looked back, confused and curious, but Marianne just shook her head.

“Go,” she said, gesturing outward. “Have fun. You have my official medical clearance.”

That was all the permission Byleth needed to throw open the doors and run out, barefoot and grinning, to leap at Sahar’s saddle. The seaside wind blasted her hair back and Claude opened his arms for her arrival, bracing in his stirrups to absorb the impact.

They’d performed this maneuver many times during the war; since Byleth preferred to do her fighting on foot, Claude would often sweep down to reposition her more quickly. Even after five years without practice, they executed the pick-up without a hitch: she landed knees-first at the front of the saddle and Claude anchored her, wrapping both arms around her midsection.

In combat, the move had been utilitarian - the fastest way to mount up. Right now, though, it felt more intimate; with no armor, no weapons, and no urgency, they were basically just hugging on wyvern-back.

Byleth quickly turned herself around, hoping he hadn’t seen the blush rising up her neck. 

“That eager to get out of there, huh?” he teased, helping her get situated.

She rolled her eyes and cinched a pair of flight straps around her waist. The fit was snugly familiar, securing her to both the saddle and her fellow rider.

“You know the answer to that,” she replied, glancing down the tall outer walls of the palace. A few people in the canal-side gardens had looked up at the spectacle; they were too far away to see much detail, but this was clearly the queen’s bedchamber. “This isn’t the most discreet escape, is it?”

Claude scoffed, turning his mount skyward with a nudge. “Oh, it’s fine. Not many Fodlanese know about the white wyvern thing. Besides,” he said mischievously, testing the knots on her straps, “didn’t Marianne tell you? Our arrangement is done.”

With that, they were off. Sahar spread her massive wings - leathery and smooth, delicate and powerful all at once - to catch the current, pushing herself off into it and raining stone chips and dust in her wake.

Byleth yelped at the sudden lurch, falling back against Claude, who gladly supported her while they gained rapid altitude in the midday sky. Sahar’s rhythmic wing beats took them high above the notice of anyone in the city, down the palace’s canal and out into the bay.

She watched it all fall away as they climbed. The great trade ships shrank to the sizes of beetles in their lanes; the flocks of gulls that chased them, to mere specks. The ocean itself became an undulating cobalt tapestry, shot through with threads of white and gray.

When they leveled off and the wind died down in their ears, Claude spoke, “Remember when I taught you to fly?”

A series of images flashed in her mind: wrangling a saddle onto an impatient wyvern; losing straps and buckles under flapping wings; falling before she could even take off - so, so much falling.

“I remember when you tried to, sure,” she said, cringing at the memories. Even Leonie, who never gave up on anything, had declared Byleth’s flying skills unsalvageable. “Why?”

Claude laughed a little too hard, like he was recalling the very same foibles. “Nah. You just needed more time - we couldn’t spare any in the war. But now?”

“Are you suggesting,” Byleth said, throwing him a flat look over her shoulder, “that I fall on my ass repeatedly in front of the entire court? It was bad enough when it was just jeering students.”

“No, no, my point is -” Claude directed her attention back to their view of the bay, “- you could come out here whenever you wanted. Get away from it all.”

So he’d noticed her restlessness. Well, of course he did, Byleth admonished herself. He’s Claude.

“That would be...nice,” she admitted, giving him a half-smile. “It’s different, isn’t it? Leading during peacetime?”

He relaxed his hold on the reins and let Sahar go where she would in the open sky; she took full advantage of the freedom, floating into various air currents and skirting low, wispy clouds.

“Yeah, it is.” Claude’s tone was sober and diminished. He prodded gently, “How have you really been, Bee?”

The nickname brought unexpected tears to her eyes; he hadn’t used it since they parted at Garreg Mach five years ago. She’d forgotten how fond and welcoming it sounded - how warm - coming from his mouth.

Byleth faced straight ahead, glad he couldn’t see her expression. It must have been just as regretful and conflicted as her mind.

“I never expected to be here,” she murmured, and in her heart she finished the thought: without you. Her voice barely carried over the wind, but she knew Claude had heard it; he scooted closer to her in the saddle, whether consciously or not. “Everyone around me is so certain of their place, and I’m...not.”

Her thoughts strayed to Edelgard and Dimitri, to their twin drives that - even misguided and corrupted as they were - strove for a better world at their roots. Byleth, who held no grand vision for the future, couldn’t help but feel unfit for the mantles they’d left behind.

(Truthfully, that was one of many reasons why Derdriu was her favorite capital, and spring her favorite season. Fhirdiad’s and Enbarr’s thrones still felt like someone else’s seats to her - someone else’s dreams.)

“I don’t think anyone expected to be where they are now,” Claude said, matching her volume. When Byleth shot him another ‘quit your bullshit’ look, he chuckled and corrected himself, “Okay. Maybe I did, but nobody else did.”

“Lorenz thought he’d be leading the Alliance, hitched to some noble lady. Hilda didn’t think she’d be doing anything.” Claude put up one finger for each example. “Marianne wanted to keep her head down. Ignatz thought he’d be barred from his passions.”

He rested his chin on the top of Byleth’s head. “Expectations and reality don’t always match up. Are you unhappy with where you are, Your Majesty?”

I’m exceedingly happy where I am, she thought, easing herself back to rest against him. And that’s the problem.

“No,” she answered simply. “I’m not.”

Claude, perhaps sensing the dishonesty in her words, hummed doubtfully. The sound rumbled deep in her chest. “Well - if you ever were unhappy, you know I’d help, right? No matter what it was.”

“I know,” she said, tilting her head to smile up at him. “And - I think you’re right.”

He shifted to accommodate her better, crossing his arms over her lap to grip the saddlehorn. “Oh? About expectations?”

“No, about flying.” She settled into their pseudo-embrace, resolving to enjoy it while it lasted. “I should learn.”

Claude made a small, happy noise in his throat. “I’ll teach you. It’ll be great.”

They drifted down the Edmund coastline in a comfortable quiet after that. If not for the Throat looming in the distance - a constant reminder of the hourglass hanging over their flight - Byleth would’ve been perfectly content. The longer they went, the more she wished he would just keep flying straight over the mountains - but the sun continued on its inexorable path through the heavens, and all things, even good things, must end.

Still, though, when he wheeled them around and began the journey back, Byleth thought she detected a resonant note of hesitation in him.

By the time they’d reached the bay of Derdriu, the sun hung low and the sky had turned to vibrant oranges and indigos; the frothy crests of waves, the metal fixtures on ships’ masts, and even the scaly tips of Sahar’s wings shone golden in the rich evening light. 

The palace’s white marble exterior reflected sunset-colors onto the streets and canal below. In any other instance, she’d find it beautiful, but right now it was no different than the Throat: an ominous, prohibitive barrier.

Claude guided Sahar to the balcony again, wincing as her claws ground fresh holes into the railing.

“- I’ll pay for that,” he reiterated sheepishly, then hopped down to offer Byleth a hand.

She took it, letting him assume her weight while she scrambled much less gracefully to the ground. The stone tiles, quickly cooling with the onset of night, chilled her bare feet on contact; she shivered, looking back wistfully at the evening sky. 

When she turned around again, Claude was watching her intently. Unreadably. 

“Did you enjoy the ride?” he asked.

“I did. Thank you.” She tried to match his tone, to hide her sadness - to appreciate the time they’d had together instead of mourning its conclusion. “I suppose you need to get going, then?”

“Mm, not quite yet,” he replied with a secretive smile, wrapping Sahar’s reins around her saddlehorn. He muttered a phrase to her in Almyran, to which the great wyvern nuzzled into his hand and took off in the direction of the aviary.

“Let’s get you warmed up, first.” He strode past her to the open balcony doors, jerking his head toward it encouragingly when she didn’t immediately follow. “Come on, it’s okay - I have time.”

Byleth trailed after him, instantly suspicious. He was using his ‘false sense of security’ voice again, like he had on the first night. “Claude, what are you planning?” she called out warily, stepping into her darkened bedchamber.

A spark struck in the hearth, setting the tinder inside ablaze and silhouetting Claude in a red-orange halo. “Why do I have to be planning something?” he countered, overly defensive, as he stoked the fire. “- You looked cold, is all.”

She gave him a skeptical once-over, then turned to grab a cloak from her wardrobe - and there on her dresser, shining in the firelight, was a lacquered ebony box the length of her arm.

It was decorated with glittering gold leaf along its edges, clearly meant to hold something valuable. Byleth whipped around to fix Claude with an accusing glare, but he just shrugged innocently and motioned for her to open it.

He had a long history of bequeathing strange gifts to his friends, always seeming to enjoy the reactions a little too much. Byleth wasn’t aware of any current holidays, though, either in Fodlan or Almyra.

She sighed and lifted the lid. “I swear, if this is another apron -” 

The breath caught in her throat. It most definitely was not an apron.

Nestled in a bed of burgundy velvet, only slightly smaller than the box itself, laid a porcelain-white wyvern egg dotted with flecks of pearlescent ivory. 

This time when she glanced back, it was in affectionate curiosity. “So this is why you were pushing flight training,” she said, gingerly touching the warm shell. “But - aren’t white wyverns only given to members of the royal family?”

Claude moved to stand next to her, drained of all his earlier mirth and bravado. In its place was a tense energy she hadn’t sensed in him since they’d last met at the Goddess Tower.

“Well, yeah, that’s the idea,” he said with a nervous laugh. “I was hoping you’d, uh, well - I wanted to ask you, since -”

He stopped and grunted, looking disgusted with himself. “Let me start over.”

Byleth nodded, absolutely baffled. What in Sothis’s name was he trying to say?

Claude ran a hand back through his hair and took a deep, steadying breath. “We both didn’t have the best experiences with family growing up. I mean, you had Jeralt and I had my mom, and they were great, but other than that it was…”

“Lonely,” she offered. They’d discussed their respective childhoods many times before - commiserated in the shared wounds of alienation and neglect.

Delicately, he took her hand and squeezed it. “Yeah. Lonely. And if I’m reading this correctly, so were the last five years, right?”

Byleth swallowed a lump in her throat and nodded again.

“Yeah,” Claude repeated softly. “For me, too. So, I thought - maybe neither of us has to be lonely anymore.”

His meaning dawned on her like a sunrise, blooming heat high in her cheeks. Her embarrassment fueled his, in turn, and they were left staring at one another in stunned silence; from an outside perspective, they must have looked - fittingly - like a pair of panicked deer.

“Claude,” she pronounced thickly, needing to verify her theory, “are you asking me to…?”

“Mhm,” he confirmed, a portion of his usual confidence flickering back to life in his smile. He tipped her chin upward with his index finger. “I want to be your family. I want you to be my family.”

Byleth had spent the first part of her life without adequate modes of expression. Before meeting Claude, she’d gotten by on curt gestures and a flat affect - and now, in the face of overwhelming emotion, she regressed right back to that state.

All she could do to communicate her answer was to jump and reach for him, just like she was leaping onto his wyvern - and, predictably, protectively, his arms closed around her. Anchored her.

Like always, she thought. A perfect catch.

“Woah - I’ll take that as a yes, then?” Claude asked, tentatively hopeful, laughing and stepping backward from the unexpected force.

Byleth buried her face in his shoulder and nodded, unable to speak; hot tears spilled from her eyes, soaking into Claude’s tunic collar, and her wrists trembled where they were clasped at his neck. Her heart had never beat, yet now it was overflowing, filling her chest with something happy and potent and home that she’d never dared to covet before.

In the glow of the hearth, to the crackling of logs and the faint rush of a sea breeze outside, Claude rocked them back and forth at a measured, soothing pace. He kissed her forehead, her temple, her cheekbone, wiping away her tears with his thumb and whispering in a shaky voice, “It’s okay, Bee. We’re going to be so happy, I promise. I promise.”

---Epilogue---

Lorenz understood the severity of the Airmid flooding - really, he did - but he did not understand why it needed to translate into a six-in-the-morning assembly. Anything the ministers discussed there could be handled just as easily, and with more lucidity, during their regular working hours.

Still, he trudged diligently up the stairs to the meeting rooms. If there were emergency measures to enact, then, by the goddess, he’d see them enacted. The peoples of Hrym and Ordelia had already suffered enough for several lifetimes.

He was just inside the threshold, blinking and stifling a yawn, when he saw them: Byleth and Claude, seated side by side at the head of the meeting table, the former digging into a plate of food and the latter grinning like a madman.

Lorenz’s yawn cut off abruptly; his jaw snapped shut with a click.

“You’re still here,” he grumbled, sliding into a chair on an empty side. “Somehow I doubt this is about the floods.”

Hilda and Marianne, who were sitting opposite him, giggled quietly together, their hands clasped on the tabletop. (Frankly, it made him jealous. Leonie hadn’t wanted to touch the office of royal minister with a ten-foot lance.)

“Nope,” Byleth said, pointing at Claude with her fork. “This is about the legality of our marriage.”

Hilda clapped frantically with excitement. “Congratulations! Ooh, this is going to be the biggest wedding ever - can you imagine the guest list? We’ll be curating it for months.”

“I think I’ll exclude my paternal cousins,” Claude mused. “Just to watch them squirm.”

Marianne nodded. “They deserve it.”

“Wait. Hold.” Lorenz slapped his daily ledger down on the table like a judge calling for order, and it worked just the same. The rabble died down, all eyes turning to him. “First of all: congratulations, you two. You’ve made me a marginally poorer man.”

Hilda snickered triumphantly.

“Second: this is going to be a legislative nightmare - and don’t you tell me differently, Claude von Riegan,” he added, holding up a finger when it looked like Claude would cut in. 

“I’ll abdicate,” Byleth suggested, stabbing into a sausage.

“No -!” all three ministers shouted in unison - even Marianne, who’d also half-stood from her chair, hands braced on the table.

(Meanwhile, Claude simply watched his new fiancee with moon-eyed adoration; Lorenz was sure he’d humor anything she said right now.)

“That - that won’t be necessary,” Lorenz said, clearing his throat and smoothing down his ascot. “I only mean that it will take time and collaboration. Claude, I insist that you stay another week while we draft something for you to take home. I’ll write to Nader.”

Byleth let out a rare exuberant gasp; beside her, Claude glanced down the table and gave Lorenz a sly, conspiratorial wink. 

“- Oh, try to act professionally about this, would you?” he insisted, but an infectious smile was already spreading across his own face. 

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

Author’s Notes

candidates for game names:

byleth: better chess (rejected - judgmental)

claude: long chess (rejected - misleading)

hilda: chess 2 (considered but ultimately rejected - legality)

lorenz: tactician’s chess (rejected - boring)

#mega writes #fe3h #claudeleth #images are free to use and sourced from pexels pixabay and unsplash

[antisocial-af]

Title: A Chance at Forever

Gift for: @brightasstars

Chapter: 1/2

Square Filled: Time Travel (For @shadowhunterbingo​)

Raiting: T

Wordcount: 1355

No Major Archive Warnings

SFW, Angst with Happy Ending, Time Travel, Good Friend Ragnor and Catarina. 

Summary:

Magnus receives the key to keeping his husband with him forever after a year of looking. But a misstep from the past has caused Magnus his forever. Or has it?...

Read on Ao3

Story:

Magnus looked over to his desk and sighed as the ingredient list taunted him. He snapped his fingers and refilled his wine glass. The frustration of past carelessness had closed another door for him. If he had stored his ingredients better, he wouldn’t be in this mess. 

“Are you just going to glare at it?” A voice broke his spiraling thoughts. Magnus turned and looked at one of his closest friends and colleague, Ragnor. 

“I messed up, my dear cabbage,” Magnus mumbled through the pain. “I ruined my only chance.” 

Magnus observed as Ragnor moved to the apothecary’s desk and picked up the simple list. 

“Cat came and delivered it this morning after Alexander left for work,” Magnus recalled, placing his glass down to join Ragnor. “I understand why now she knew I wouldn’t be able to retain one of the ingredients and didn’t want Alexander to see me upset.” 

“One vial of Unseelie blood willingly given,” Ragnor read off with a gruff, and his face pinched in an annoyed fashion. “Where’d you even obtain such a thing?” 

“After you almost got Will exiled for a bet, Tessa asked me to take him out instead of letting him run around wild with you,” Magnus smirked for a moment. “It was during one of the usual rounds that an Unseelie joined in. Everything was underground, so no one made a fuzz. If you had the stuff to bet,  then they wouldn’t turn you away. I lost quite a few things because of this, but it wasn’t till the final round that it mattered. The Unseelie had put up a few rare items, but then when the pool got more interesting, they offered a vial of their blood for the last round. Back then, I just knew it was rare and could be used as an ingredient or a trade of something I needed.”

“What did you do with it?” Ragnor asked, setting the potion list down and crossing his arms.

“I put it in one of my safe houses, but during the Uprising, I had used that house as a sanctuary for Downworlders,” Magnus explained, running his hands over his face as he replayed the memories. “It was found and burnt down with everything inside by some of The Circle in the 90s.” 

“It’s gone then,” Ragnor summarized and kept looking at Magnus. “Was that the last place it was at?” 

“Yes, Ragnor, my only chance at forever with my husband was burnt to the ground,” Magnus bit back, trying to control his anger. He knew that Ragnor was not trying to provoke him. “I kept the vial stored in the St. Albans safe house. Valentine’s Shadowhunters demolished it in 1990. At the time, I didn’t think anything of the loss. Just things happen, oh well. I didn’t have a plan for it.” 

“So say in 1989 in May it would still be there?” Ragnor asked as he started to undo the cuffs on his coat and roll them up. 

Magnus squinted at his friend and started to feel Ragnor’s magic pulling itself together.

“Yes, it was undisturbed before The Uprising,” Magnus cautiously answered as he started to grow concerned at the vast amount of energy Ragnor began to siphon from the ley lines. “Ragnor?” 

“What I am about to do will never be replicated or spoken of again,” Ragnor sternly stated as he held Magnus’ gaze. “Do you understand, Magnus?” 

“What exactly are you doing?” Magnus questioned while still trying to keep his composure. “Ragnor, you are going to set off the Institute’s alarms if you keep pulling!” 

“I’m sure your husband will cover for us once you give him the immortality potion,” Ragnor waved off as he closed his eyes and tried to center himself. “You above most know of my fascination with dimensional travel, and while researching those theories, I stumbled onto a warlock’s abandoned work.” 

“That’s great and all, Ragnor, but what does it have to do with this moment at all?” Magnus pushed as he started to get worried. He heard his phone go off on the desk and knew it must be Alexander with questions. 

“I finished the work. It was complicated, and it took three decades, but I was able to complete the time travel spell. It will only allow you an hour max; the magic is too volatile for me to stabilize any longer than that. If you stay longer, I can’t guarantee that I will be able to pull you back to the present. I don’t know what will happen if you do end up getting stuck in the past, though,” Ragnor kept going as he snapped his fingers and summoned his supplies. 

“Wh-,” Magnus was trying his best to keep up with him, but he still didn’t understand anything Ragnor was saying. “Ragnor, are you okay? Did you hit your head? Time travel spell?” 

“There it is set!” Ragnor declared as he finished the intricate circle on the apothecary’s floor. 

Magnus looked down and noticed it was a stabilizing circle. Usually, younger warlocks used this the first few times they tried summoning spells or any high-class spell. 

“Keep up, Magnus,” Ragnor sighed and pulled Magnus towards the middle of the circle. “Just need you to stand here, and I can send you back. Remember only an hour.” 

“Send me back?! What do you mean, Ragnor?” the slight agitation in Magnus’ voice was growing with every pull from his friend. 

Ragnor stopped and looked at Magnus straight on with a determined demeanor. “I can send you back to get your ingredient, my friend. I can give you a chance at forever.”

Magnus gulped but nodded. He didn’t know if Ragnor could actually send him back, but if he could, Magnus would have the last piece to keep his happiness for a long time. 

“I trust you, Ragnor,” Magnus nodded and stepped into the circle. 

“Of course you do! Who else has smuggled you out of 3 countries cause you partied yourself into felonies and jail time?” Ragnor teased as he started to push his magic to force the portal. 

“Hey, I only remember 2!��� Magnus protested, watching the unstable-looking tear starting to form. 

“Remember is the keyword in your statement,” Ragnor chuckled and pressed the last of his magic into place. “Just like a normal portal, you need to think of the place you are going, but you also need to think about the time period of the place. It works off intent; if you aren’t clear, I don’t know what will happen.” 

“Why do I feel like you are also using me as an experiment as much as you are doing me a favor?” Magnus grumbled and closed his eyes. He tried to remember the rose bushes he had planted outside.

“Magnus, listen, if it weren’t you, I wouldn’t be offering to use this magic.” Ragnor sighed as he activated the stabilizing circle. “It is extremely taxing and can leave me drained for a month.” 

“Then why!?” Magnus asked, shocked and fingers already inching for his cellphone to call Catarina. 

“Because Magnus, if anyone deserves a do-over, it’s you.” 

Magnus held Ragnor’s gaze and gulped at the weight of his best friend’s actions. “Thank you.” 

“Just get in the middle and hurry. I wasn’t kidding when I said that this would take most of my magic for a while, and I can already feel it consuming it,” Ragnor grunted as he watched the portal finally stabilize enough for entry. “Go.” 

Magnus nodded and readied himself. He would go in, get the vial, and back through. He knew the layout intimately, and he could maneuver it blackout drunk. Hell, he might’ve done it a few times. 

“MAGNUS!?” 

Magnus turned around to see his husband before cursing as he tripped and fell head-first into the open portal. Magnus focused on his destination and felt a set of familiar arms wrap around him tightly as the portal’s magic started to push them through to the other side. The warlock held a firm grip and wrapped his magic around his Shadowhunter to protect them from being separated on the journey. 

#antisocialaf #shadowhunterbingo #shbingo #malec fanfiction #Magnus Bane #Alec Lightwood #Ragnor Fell

[jeanjauthor]

What’s the duties of a duke of his household in peacetime?

The duties of a Duke are the same as any noble, baronet, baron, viscount, count, earl, margrave, duke, grand duke, and of course the other gender versions, baronetta, baroness, viscountess, countess, marchioness, duchess, grand duchess... But whether or not a noble *followed* those duty expectations is, of course, up to the individual, whether they’re a genuine caring person or an entitled douchebag asshole. (Pardon my language but honestly...yeah.)

Anyway, the original premise of nobility vs. common folk was that because they could afford things like weapons and horses (which made combat easier), they were to protect their immediate neighbors in exchange for being given a bit of support in terms of food, goods, funds, etc.  This literally goes back thousands of years in Europe, all the way into the days of prehistoric civilizations (think of the grand burial mount civilizations, for example; archaeological finds have showed that those who could afford to keep & ride horses were given higher status, and were far more likely to have weapons buried with them).

By the time it becomes officially stratified in the records with various levels of nobility, baron to duke, etc, the primary job of protecting the people still exists, but the *method* has now varied.  Depending on culture, era, nation, etc, dukes don’t necessarily *have* to personally lead troops into battle.  (Please decide this for your created cultures in advance.)  This could still be done via raising a levy of home troops, seeing that they’re trained (mandatory monthly training weekend?), and drilled, and ready to fight...but it’s not always necessary.

By the era where nobles are stratified into dukes vs counts vs barons, etc, most of the time standing armies did exist (if small and padded with conscription during times of war).  This often meant the duke (or whatever rank) could negotiate for paying for part of those army forces via tax monies that could be used to pay the soldiers or pay for provisions, or products from their craftspeople (leather goods, clothing, weapons, vehicles, etc, and/or produce from their farms (actual produce like grains, vegetables, preserved meats, or living animals such as horses and oxen for pulling supply wagons, etc).

Now that we now what wartime possibilities are like, we can set that aside and focus on peacetime.  They would still be responsible for being able to provide goods and services and funds for any standing army, paying taxes to their sovereign, etc.  They might even (depending on the culture, think England and its longbowmen, yeomen) still have to maintain a yearly quota of trained fighters (in this case longbow archers).  There was a long period of time when, by law, all able-bodied males in England had to train with a longbow for X amount of time a month.  A conscientious noble--regardless of gender--would see to this, and see that there would be an adequate supply of well-crafted longbows, and a plethora of arrows.

This training would extend to the members of their own household.  In a typical keep / castle, there would often be a bow in every single room with windows or window slits facing to the outside, along with a supply of arrows, so that anyone within that room during a time of battle or even siege could pick up the weapon, string it, and use it to defend against invaders.  This means that there would be an expectation of anybody who could physically draw a bowstring would spend at least some time every week practicing those skills.  A good noble would ensure that all genders could do so, even in times of peace.

Moreover, a duke, et al, would have a trained force of guards to patrol the roads within their domain, to try to keep them free of bandits, scout for raiders or unusual incursions from a neighbor’s own armed forces...because war with your neighbors was not uncommon; resources were fought over, herd beasts were rustled, taxes would be “demanded” by the greedy from peasants who weren’t in that noble neighbor’s demesne (domain), etc.  It didn’t even have to be outright warfare to require constant vigilance.

And of course there would be the need to enforce certain laws.  Sometimes it was stupid classist gatekeeping bullshit like sumptuary laws (at one point the only fur commoners could wear was squirrel fur, which made winters hellaciously difficult to survive, and much of the Middle Ages did experience a Little Ice Age, so such laws were doubly punitive, and I hope those who created such laws suffered horribly from the diseases of the day)..  Sometimes it was a genuinely good law, like no you cannot beat your wife to death without it being called murder.  (Seriously, I would not last long in the Middle Ages, because I’d be too damn feminist to be “allowed” to live...)

Anyway, aside from the need to keep the roads clear for commerce and travel, to watch for neighbors slipping into raiding, to uphold the law, etc, technically a good noble’s next and utterly non-combat-associated duty would be to use their plenty, their excess, their ability to be generous and charitable with their extra resources...to be generous and charitable.  There was a long-standing tradition of expectations that a noble would take care of the poorest within their domain.  Cottages and daily meals for the elderly & infirm, help for those families devastated by illness, extra food in times of famine, and of course if they owned any of the buildings their tenants lived in, it was expected that they would maintain those structures at their own expense.

Furthermore, it was expected that anyone who worked for them, from the lowly scullery boy and/or goose-tending maid, all the way up through to their seneschal (person who actually managed a particular manor and its lands whenever the noble wasn’t there visiting) got a certain amount of money and a certain number of sets of clothes every year.  (Cloth is VERY expensive to produce, pre-industrialization, btw; it could take 12-20 spinners just to keep one weaver at the loom full time.)  They would also be expected to be provided with tools for their trades, too--leather and metal for animal harnesses when plowing the fields, plows for said plowing, chisels for a woodwright or a stonecutter, etc--when doing work for the noble.  At least, a good noble would help support their craftspeople, providing good scythes at harvest time, etc.

A truly good noble would actually pitch in, too, during heavy labor periods, especially in harvest season when the weather is looking iffy.  They’d pull in their soldiers and assign them to work the fields, and even work themselves to get all the pulses (peas, beans) harvested, all the corn (medieval term for seeds of grain such as oats, wheat, rye, barley, etc) harvested, and of course properly dried and threshed and stored...in exchange for a certain amount to be given to them as taxes, to feed for said soldiers and workers, and to pass some along in the form of either food or money from sales to their higher-ups on the fealty chain.

...Of course, as time went on, most nobles considered themselves entitled to all of those items and produce and goods without pitching in personally.  This of course has lead to the GOP insisting upon holding as much power as possible without giving a damn about the common American in the modern era...but this has happened over and over and over.  The French had a little head-chopping Revolution thing about it, in fact.  Not a good look for nobles, tbh, but they really were that entitled and uncaring in their attitudes toward commoners.  (Isn’t it fun the parallels we can draw between then and now?)

One thing people in this era don’t realize is that after the Black Death swept through and wiped out 1/3rd of Europe’s population (it actually swept through several times, but this was like COVID-19 to the common flu, back then), there was such a labor shortage that the nobles were literally enticing serfs in someone else’s domain to come work for them, for twice or even three times as much pay, benefits, gifts, etc, because they needed the harvest to be brought in but didn’t have enough living people, period, to get it done without poaching their neighbors’ residents.

The Black Death ended serfdom, the custom of people being essentially bound by law to a particular patch of land as a sort of pseudo-slavery--the phrase “year and a day” was used when a serf ran away from their home patch of ground to a freely-held (not beholden to any noble) city.  If they could live there for one year and one day without being caught and dragged back, they would be considered freed...but when the Black Death hit, if you survived, you had a LOT of leverage against the nobles.  It really shifted the balance of power and the balance of wealth in Europe, because the commoners could demand a lot more in funds and supplies and equipment, etc.

(It’s like how businesses are shutting down because their workers are tired of being exploited; if these businesses won’t pay an actually livable wage...well, we’re not serfs, not boung by law (yet--watch out for the GOP, since they want to reinstitute such things bit by bit, if you read between the lines of what they’ve been attempting to pass in state and federal congressional sessions) to have to work for starvation slavery wages for our (corporate) masters...  Instead, we have a great deal of power and leverage to demand better working conditions, just as our European survivor-ancestors did post-plague.  Anyway!)

Wise nobles treated their commoners well, giving them extra pay, better living conditions regardless of how much they needed the work.  They sacrificed a little bit of their own personal wealth to ensure that their entire demense (domain) prospered.  Those that did not, often caused far more misery than humanity should have allowed...such as the so-called Irish Potato Famine.

There was NOT a famine in Ireland at the time.  English colonizer nobles who had seized the land, etc, demanded that all the good food that was growing be reserved for -their- needs, to be sold elsewhere or fed to the local animals.  The Irish had to subsist on what little of the potato harvest and a few gathered wild foods or personal tiny vegetable garden goods they could grow...and when the potato blight hit, it hit HARD, and the vast majority of the potatoes were taken up--just like all the other foods--by their English overlords, maliciously causing the actual farmers, the actual people creating & growing & tending all that food, to literally starve to death...or be imprisoned for daring to eat the food they produced, because it “didn’t” belong to them.

So when we talk about the obligations of the nobles to their households in times of peace...we have to stop and think, what kind of culture do these nobles in general promote, and what does the individual noble and/or their immediate family promote?

Because the time you get around to having stratified nobility (baronetty through duchy), you’re probably going to have a lot of people who believe they have unassailable privileges and callously inhuman entitlement rights, UNLESS there are a lot of checks-and-balances on the culture to prevent such things.

Like what, you may ask?  Well, we can look at the corporate culture of Ben & Jerry’s, the ice cream company.  I don’t know if it’s still in their bylaws, but at least for a long while, last I heard, the CEOs & board of directors could not be paid more than 7x what the lowest paid employees in the company got.  By investing their money in their employees, the company was ethically using the labor of said employees, paying them back for their hard work.

Nobles who invest in their peasantry, improving their wages, their homes, their lives & ability to do their livelihoods, will have a similar ROI, Return On Investment--they’ll be beloved, they’ll be fiercely defended, they’ll have people wanting to work for them.  We know this worked in the medieval era because when the Black Death destroyed serfdom, those nobles who “shared the wealth” with their laborers got even more prosperous, because everyone who survived wanted to work for them.

One last thing, the higher up in rank a noble is, the more lands & crafts, etc, they probably oversee...and that means the less time they have to know everyone in their domain...which can lead to them “not being in touch with the common people.”  UNLESS they make a concerted effort to get to know and stay in touch with those people.  They can do this through conscious personal effort, a family culture of careful coaching & teaching, by not having primogeniture but instead a law of picking the best heir to take over (aka not the privileged entitled asshole types who only take & take, but the ones who genuinely care and give & give), or even by laws, “Nobles can only use X amount of what they have for their personal needs and must reinvest Y amount in their demense (lands, peoples, buildings, herds, etc).”

If you’re writing an historical novel with a duke, you’ll want to research the era in which they’re set, to see what the chances of a good guy duke versus a bad guy or uncaring guy duke might be.  (There are always exceptions to the rules, but maybe they’re just unaware their policies are asshole-ish...or maybe they really are English prejudiced against the Irish, considering the Irish to be moronic animals that have opposable thumbs...really seriously, the whole potato famine was the fault of the English nobility and their goddamn colonizer attitudes...but I digress).

If you’re writing a created culture, however...you can work things to turn out differently, either by culture, by expectation, law, etc, so that it’s different from what happened in Europe (and other locations).

In my fantasy romance DestinyVerse books, mages have a great deal of power, and often end up in positions of nobility because--like having horses and weapons--a strong mage has the ability to protect a lot of people from incoming threats...but at the same time that they’re asked to protect those around them in a position of legal & cultural power... they’re expected to swear magic-binding oaths to protect the people they rule over, so that their magic literally prevents them from violating the terms of those oaths.  They have to protect the people they’ve sworn to protect from various oath-bound threats.  That’s a guarantee that Medieval Europe (or China, or India, etc) did not have...though a cleverly worded oath can still allow a mage to be an asshole in many respects.

I hope all of that helps!

#WhatDidDukesDoInTimesOfPeace

#NobleObligations

#answers

[sailing-elitsha]

WE DID IT!!!!!!!!

Our first ocean crossing is a fact!!

The last miles were draining. Running with constantly changing winds, crossing waves and without spinnaker is not funny. I was not seasick this time, but caught an ear infection, which I thought will be okay after a while, because I got antibiotic from Doctor Josephine in St Helena for my leg infection. Without consulting a doc in St Helena again, we left. The crossing waves and light wind made me nauseous because my ear was blocked. The night watches drained but the spirit of the crew, Dick and I, maintained unbroken positive and happy. We caught a tuna and a barracuda. The swordfish, when we finally had him close to Elitsha, went back to the sea. The line broke and he is now the coolest fish in the South Atlantic with a hip piercing on his sword nose. The barracuda, I caught on my watch. Dick was sleeping and I got him close, which was not easy, but then I saw his teeth, I knew, this I won’t do on my own. Together we got him in.  Even though I was not feeling well, I baked several breads, cooked tuna curry, and did my watches. Dick took the more difficult watches and let me sleep a little bit longer each night. I rest much more then he did. So, you can imagine, we both looked forward to having a good sleep after arriving in Fernando. Bob the aircraft engineer was close to us, but they wanted to continue their way to the Caribbean straight forward. Going ashore in Fernando de Noronha was not allowed, so all Yachties skip the island. We were hoping on getting water and to be allowed to just sleep 3 nights at the anchorage and continue sailing afterwards.

Immensely proud and happy on Friday the 30th of April at 5 am after having sailed 1812 nautical miles we arrived at Fernando de Noronha, a small Island and Nature Reserve at the Brazilian Coast. Dick and I were both a bit emotional: WE DID IT!!!!!! Its always special to arrive after a long sail. First you hear and see birds, then lights, then the shape of land, then you smell something different……… But this time is was special special. We arrived at the other side of a very very big and deep (4000+ m deep) ocean.

40 meters of anchor chain and we lay in front of a beautiful beach in a beautiful bay. This Island is a Nature Reserve and so so beautiful. We were the only yachties. Nobody is allowed to enter the island from sea. we could smell the cocktails, but were nut allowed to grab them.....made our owns though....Due to humanitarian reasons they have to allow us to buy fresh supplies and water, which we needed to continue the rest of our voyage. After we arrived, our yellow Checkers cloth and the Brazilian flag went up the mast. Nothing happened. Dick was swimming with zebrafish and sharks in the meantime. After half a day waiting and asking harbour control again and again on the radio we finally got an answer. At 3 o clock we got picked up and the harbour master welcomed us together with the police. The police would escort us to the shops and the next day we have to leave. Zora pictured out a scenario of Dick and I in handcuffs in de shops grabbing 5 l canisters of water and apples under supervision of the police officers, when we told her. (There is a photo of Alex, the police officer, faking to arrest Dick. That photo was especially taken for Zora.)

But it went differently. We were very fortunate to meet Alex, a Brazilian federal policeman from Brasilia, the only English-speaking person on this island. They all try google translate, but internet is a crime here. So Alex was the solution. He told us that the extra days of sleep could only been allowed if I would get a doctor’s attest and then he drove with us to the hospital, translated, then to the Pharmacia, then to the harbour again to explain that I was even sicker than I thought, and the doctor wants to see me every day till Monday. He and his colleagues wrote reports, spoke to their boss, to make it happen for us to stay longer. This way we not only were allowed to stay 3 nights, but we were also allowed to explore the island. The police brought our 60 l water and fresh supplies to the boat and gave us very valuable tips for sightseeing, bus routes, the best bars and best meals of the islands: platter federale ( a seafood food platter the chef  always creates for the federal police men and Caipirinha pinto. They gave us a branche with well 12 coconuts on it. Uii, lekker.  We ate a special bean soup with quail eggs…….. Alex was and still is our hero and became a friend. We had a very special time at Fernando de Noronha. Again, everybody knew us, helped and was friendly. 

Traveling during Corona is not easy, but at the same time very special. People are happy with every single tourist; it is not full and overcrowded. Covid in Brazil is hectic. In Fernando they have not one case. Its so normal to sanitize and wear masks. Fortunately, we will not get a Brazilian stamp in our passport, which is good. This stamp could close some borders for us. So, we visited a little piece of Brazil, met a lot of Brazilians from Brasilia, Sao Paulo, Recife and other Brazilian Cities, and got information and a little bit of insights in the culture.

 We ate delicious Brazilian food, but officially we have never been in Brazil. How is that?Traveling in the Caribbean with a South African flag is a problem we were told, because of the racist history. That was one of the reasons why we choose a German registration. But sailing with a German flag in Brazil was also a thingy: 7:1, the water taxi captain said when he saw the black/red/gold. I apologized and promised, that we (the Germans) would never beat them (soccer WC 2014) again in a semi-final in their own country with 7:1. That was good, then.

Even though it was great and relaxing. It was quite expensive to stay on an Eco Island. For 3 days we paid 200 dollars. When we wanted to go to a beach at the other end of the island today, they wanted us to pay another 100 dollars (a 9 day valid ticket for three beaches). We rather went back to the for-free-harbour-beach with the bus again and saw turtles, lemon sharks and a lot of other beautiful fish. Wrong!!! Dick saw them. I am not allowed to snorkel. Grrrrrr. My ears!!!! So, we didn’t need a 100-dollar beach. From here we could even see Elitsha waving towards us. 

 From Elitsha we see dolphins around us spinning in the morning, zebra fish all around and the trumpet fish from St. Helena followed us to Fernando. 

Our last water taxi was a luxe motor yacht with fancy leather seating. Dick and I felt like Crockett and Tubbs in Miami Vice. So funny. 

Last evening at Fernando. Tomorrow we lift our anchor and off we go again. The doldrums are waiting for us and then the north east trades to lift us to Suriname. Can’t wait to explore the rainbow forest that side. 

A big thank you to our shore captains, Anneke, Zora and Holger, who make harbour arrangements for us, inform us about the weather and much more; to Wiek, our fishing coach, for telling us afterwards what we caught and have eaten, hahaha and to all our friends and supporters who react and encourage us all the way of our journey. Its fantastic to be in touch with you. 

Believe us, we enjoy every single second and moment of our journey with each other and are so so glad and happy that we are doing this with the two of us. Don’t forget to donate for the nautical miles we are sailing. 

Lots of loveDick, Sylke and Elitsha  ��  

Questions for the Elitsha competition:

1.       What is the capital of Brazil?

2.       Where is Fernando de Noronha?

3.       What is a sea mountain?

4.       What kind of shark, did my husband dive with?

5.       How does a trumpet fish look like? (and don’t tell me: like a trumpet, hahaha. I want to see a photo.) 

All participants will receive a price!!!!!!! 

For the ones who want to take part in our sponsor sail: We have sailed 1812 nautical miles. You can donate a cent, a Rand, a Euro or whatever per nautical mile. We are sailing for these amazing schools: every nautical mile and each Rand counts. To UBUNTU for Africa, German NGO.                                                                                                                                                                          The money will go to the UBUNTU for Africa projects: after care at Hout Bay Primary School and the music project at Silikamva High School. This organisation I started 12 years ago (www.ubuntuforafrica.com) Of course, you will receive a tax certificate. 

Ubuntu for Africa-Kinder-, Jugend und Familienhilfe in Südafrika                          Volksbank Boenen e G                                                                                            IBAN: DE91 4106 2215 0054 5799 01                                                                  

For South Africans and others, who want to donate directly to South Africa (also with tax certificate): please donate to Kronendal Primary School (www.kronendalprimary.com). I worked for 10 years at Kronendal Primary as a school counsellor. This school struggles financially due to the consequences of the Covid Pandemic and deserves our support.                                                    KRONENDAL PRIMARY SCHOOL trading as CUIM (“the account holder”) holds the following account with                                                                                        First National Bank, a division of FirstRand Bank Limited (“FNB”): Account Type BUSINESS ACCOUNT Account Number 53452884035                                           Branch Code 204009                                                                                         Branch Name HOUT BAY 345                                                                               Swift Code FIRNZAJJ                                                                                                                                                             WE DID IT

[noodlecupcakeswritings]

Ownership - Chapter 18 (A Kylo RenxOC AU)

Cora Ardmore and Kylo Ren work for rival companies, but they don’t know that until after they spend the night together. Once their identities are revealed to each other it’s a question of who will cave first?

This fic is mostly porn, pure kinky porn.

Please leave comments, kudos and reblogs if you like it. If you would like to be tagged, let me know.

Warnings: Language, Plot, Phone sex, Dom/Sub Relationship, Masturbation, Dirty talk, Alcohol, Snoke being a creep

Chapter 18

Kylo Ren

I had half an hour before lunch break was over, half an hour to psyche myself up to confront Snoke. Cora was right. If I wanted this story to get out to the public, I needed to get Snoke to trust me more. But it wasn’t her ass on the line. If I went in accusing him, there was no doubt he would return in a hostile manner. I had to do this calmly, as if I’d come across the anomalies and was making him aware of them. With my appetite gone, I replaced the lid on my takeout and pushed it away from me. Picking up my notebook, I decided to get this over and done with now instead of waiting around where I would only freak myself more. Exiting my office, I headed to the lift and took two floors up. Of course, Snoke had the entire top floor to himself. Whereas Armitage and I had to share.

The lift dinged, the metal doors sliding open to reveal the plush waiting area. His assistant, Martha, sat at her desk and gave a soft frown. I didn’t have a fucking appointment. “Mr Ren, there’s nothing here in his schedule that says you’d be visiting,” she said with a false politeness. “Surprise visit. Something really important I need to tell him.” “Well, he’s currently with Mr Tarkin and Mr Krennic until one pm. Your welcome to take a seat and wait. He may have five minutes to spare between meetings, but you really should have called ahead.” “I’ll bear it in mind for the future,” I gave her a fake smile before taking a seat. I didn’t like the fact he was meeting with Tarkin and Krennic, probably plotting god knows what.

My nerves were getting the better of me, my leg bouncing as I glanced at my watch every minute. Finally the door opened, Krennic and Tarkin leaving. Snoke stood by the door and his gaze fell to me, a smile spreading across his face. “Kylo, I wasn’t expecting you,” he spoke, “come in.” Following him inside his office, I waited to see where I would be allowed to sit. Either at his desk, or the couch, or the little table and chairs he had in the corner. Snoke took us to the couch, and I sat on the expensive leather. “You look like you could do with a drink. Whiskey? Scotch? Bourbon?” Snoke offered. The kinder and accommodating he was, the harder it seemed to go about this. But I had to keep reminding myself that what he was doing was wrong.

“Whiskey, please.” I answered. It would help calm my nerves and make it easier to talk. Snoke pulled a bottle from the bar and poured until the two glasses were half full. Handing me my drink, he sat down next to me. “What troubles you? I know that look,” he asked, taking a sip. Drinking a mouthful, I let the warmth of the alcohol settle in my stomach before finally speaking. “I didn’t want to have to bother you with something like this. It’s probably nothing, but I just wanted to be sure. I found some anomalies in the stock count folder from last year and I found a few companies that don’t exist,” I explained. Snoke nodded, his eyes dropping to my notebook, “did you write them down?” Opening the notebook to the marked page, I handed it to him. Snoke scanned the list with interest before handing it back to me.

“You always were so clever. I was a fool to not have you on board sooner. I have been selling supplies to other business partners. Smaller groups that are unlisted for a reason,” he confessed. Whilst this was going well so far, if I didn’t tread carefully, this could still go wrong. “When you say smaller groups, do you mean…” I trailed off. “What others would deem terrorists. Yes. I know that may seem very conflicting for you Kylo, our job is to provide security and defence for the country. But what about other countries that don’t have the same level of security and defence as us? If they are willing to pay for a product, then I’m not going to turn them down. Frankly, half of them pay better than our American customers.” “I understand. It’s just a lot to take in.”

Snoke smiled sympathetically, “I want you on board Kylo. I saw something special in you when we met, and I still see it now. You’ve always been such a valuable asset to the company.” “What would be required of me?” “You are always such a good businessman; you know exactly to strike a deal and get people to agree to the terms-“ “I think your mistaking me with Armitage,” I joked, “I know the two of us don’t see eye to eye all the time but when we put aside our differences we do work well together.” “You do. If you agree to be on board, I would also want Armitage on board. Both of you would be unstoppable and the pay rise you’d both get would be well worth it.” “I can talk to him, if you’d like. I don’t think he’d take much convincing.”

“I have a free half an hour later, I’ll do it. I’m glad you’ve agreed to be on board Kylo. It’ll be a great opportunity to progress like you’ve always wanted, you’ll be able to travel the world on the company’s expenses too. It’s a win-win situation. However, you’ll need to open a new bank account. I have a few open in Puerto Rico, that way I can’t be taxed even more. The money you make from this work I’ll deposit in that account.” Tax evasion. Another thing to add to the list of offences. “Right, you think with how much we donate to charity they could cut us some slack,” I joked. Snoke chuckled at that, which made me feel better about the situation. That I wasn’t being suspicious. “I would recommend going this weekend, the sooner its open, the sooner we can start really working together,” Snoke suggested.

The weekend? Cora and I hadn’t spent the weekend apart since the beginning of the relationship. Whilst I didn’t like the idea, I knew it had to be done. She wouldn’t be happy about it either, but she’d understand. “Sure, I can do this weekend,” I agreed. “Good. Leave everything to me, I’ll send you the details tomorrow. Is that everything? Or was there something else you wished to discuss?” “No. That’s everything. Thank you for giving me another amazing opportunity. I really don’t know where I’d be now if I hadn’t met you.” I finished my drink, and Snoke, then led me to the door. Once completely out of sight in the elevator, I breathed a heavy sigh of relief.

I couldn’t quite believe I’d gotten away with it. I knew better than to completely trust the situation though and let myself get comfortable. If Snoke wasn’t watching me like a hawk, I knew Tarkin or Krennic would be. Pulling out my phone, I sent Armitage a quick heads up text so he could prepare himself for Snoke later. Now I just had to break the news to Cora tonight.

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

Later around 9:30pm I got ready for bed and slipped under the sheets. Grabbing my phone from the nightstand, I called Cora and waited for her to answer. “Hey, it’s about time you called me. I was starting to get worried that I needed to send the cops round for a wellbeing check,” Cora answered, the relief obvious in her voice. “You don’t need to worry, I’m okay. Snoke brought it and I’m in.” “That’s great. That’s really gonna help speed things along. I also found a few things today that might help.” “Oh?” “Armitage sent me something earlier. Theres a recorded break in at The First Order warehouses, but there’s no police report. Two crates of supplies were taken. Only the records doesn’t list any damage to the building and the alarm didn’t go off. So to me, it seems someone let them in and take what they wanted.”

I frowned, “Armitage sent you that?” “Yeah, I was just as surprised as you are. But it’s very helpful. I also did my own research. Last year the state of California made an arrest for suspected terrorism. I’m going to pull a few strings and see if I can get an interview.” I didn’t like the sound of Cora going to a maximum-security prison to interview someone on her own. But I couldn’t go with her now that I was ‘in cahoots’ with Snoke. “You’re not going on your own,” I replied, firmly. “I mean, I was probably going to take Finn or someone else with me. I’ve interviewed criminals before, I’ll be okay.” I still didn’t like it, but I didn’t have the energy to argue with her.

“I’m not gonna be able to do this weekend,” I finally broke the news to her. “Oh? Is everything okay?” “Its fine. Just Snoke wants me to travel and open a new bank account. Preferably overseas.” “For tax evasion purposes?” “Yeah.” “Are you going on your own?” “I don’t know. He’s organizing the whole thing. He also mentioned how he’d get Armitage on board too. So if that’s the case, we’ll likely be going together.” Cora laughed softly, “try not to kill each other during the flight.” “I’ll try not to. I’m going to miss you, Kitten.”

There was a pause on Coras end for a few seconds, “I’m gonna miss you too.” “What are you gonna miss more, Kitten? My tongue or my cock?” “Hmmm, that’s a very hard question,” she purred. “That’s not the only thing that’s hard right now, Kitten.” My cock was already half hard just from thinking about her perfect pussy. Putting my phone on loudspeaker, I placed it next to me on the pillow. Slowly I stroked and teased my cock through my boxers, the fabric getting tighter around my growing cock. “Are you going to touch yourself for me, Kitten?” I asked. “Yes, sir.”

“Put the phone on loudspeaker so I can hear how wet your pussy gets.” I could picture her biting her lip at that, her cheeks tinging a soft pink. There was a rustling sound, likely Cora undressing and getting herself comfortable. “Tell me how wet you are right now,” I ordered. Coras breath hitched as she stroked herself, “not quite dripping, Sir but I’m sure you can change that.” I chuckled, taking my boxers off, “your right about that, Kitten. Fuck, I’m so hard for you right now. Rub your clit for me, Kitten.” Cora inhaled sharply as she did as she was told. She whined softly, likely bucking into her own touch.

“That feel good, Kitten?” I asked, stroking my cock at the breathy little noises she made. “Yes, sir. Not as good as your fingers though.” “Bet my tongue would feel even better. I’d eat you out until you were shaking for me, Kitten.” My mouth watered at the thought of her dripping wet pussy, how good she always tasted. Gripping my cock tighter, I gave it long slow strokes, pre-cum beading at the tip. Cora moaned as she continued stroking her clit, the sound making my cock twitch. “How bad do you want my cock, Kitten?” I asked. “I need it, sir, I’m aching to be filled.” “Then use your fingers, Kitten. Fuck yourself open for me.”

Cora moaned louder as she likely pushed two fingers into her greedy pussy. Speeding up my own pace, I groaned at the mental image of Cora naked on her bed, her body flushed red and writhing in pleasure. “Still want my cock, Kitten?” I asked, my voice breathier than before. “You know I do.” “Make yourself cum for me. I want to hear you come undone, Kitten.” Cora cursed, likely curling her fingers against her hidden spot and rubbing her clit with her free hand. “Fuck, Kitten, I miss the feeling of your perfect pussy wrapped around my cock. When I see you next, I’m going to fuck you until neither of us can move,” I growled.

She could only moan in response as she continued to take herself closer to the edge. Her moans came more frequently, her breathing shallow. I continued giving words of encouragement, desperate to hear more of her moans. By now, I was fucking my fist, chasing my own climax. “Fuck! Kylo!” Cora cried out as she reached her peak, moaning my name over and over like a mantra. Cora moaning my name was exactly what I needed to tip me over the edge, cumming into my fist and across my belly with a guttural groan. I continued to stroke myself until the slight pain of overstimulation set in. “You better make good on that promise next weekend,” Cora giggled softly. “Don’t I always make good on my promises, Kitten? This one’s no exception.”

Taglist: @sweetfictionalworld​​​​​​, @sweetsec-93​​​​​​, @cltex84​​​​​​, @jana-banana-fana​​​​​​, @dark-night-sky-99​​​​​​, @little-laamb​​​​​​, @jynzandtonic​​​​​​, @neeharlow​​​​​​​

#kylo ren #kylo ren angst #kylo ren fanfiction #kylo ren fic #kylo ren fanfic #kylo ren fluff #kylo ren smut #kylo ren au #kylo renxoc #ben solo #ben solo angst #ben solo fanfic #ben solo fic #ben solo smut #ben solo fanfiction #ben solo feels #ben solo fluff #ben solo au #ben soloxoc #star wars #Star Wars fanfic #Star Wars Fic #star wars fanfiction #star wars fluff #star wars feels #star wars smut #star wars angst #star wars au

[iceflame14rulez]

Here's an idea, and, it may sound crazy, so bear with me... why don't we have an electoral debate where ALL the candidates for presidency are able to participate? There were at least four people up for presidency, not two in the 2020 election. There are at least four parties, if not more, in the United States, not two. Trump and Biden were up for presidency, obviously, but there were more people on the ballot.

To those of you who don't know, the libertarian candadate, Jo Jorgensen, had this platform, which the media covered very little of.

-----------

Healthcare and social security

Jorgensen supports a free-market healthcare system financed by individual spending accounts that could keep any savings, which she believes would increase healthcare providers' incentive to compete by meeting consumer demand for low-cost services. She opposes single-payer healthcare, calling it "disastrous".

Jorgensen supports replacing Social Security with individual retirement accounts.[25] In the final debate of the primaries, candidate Jacob Hornberger accused Jorgensen of "support[ing] the welfare state through Social Security and Medicare". In response, she called Social Security a "Ponzi scheme" and said she would allow people to opt out of the program on her first day in office. But she emphasized the constitutional inability of a president to unilaterally end the program without Congress's support, as well as the need for the government to fulfill existing Social Security obligations. Under Jorgensen's plan, those who opt out would put 6.2% of their payroll taxes in individual retirement accounts and receive prorated Social Security benefits for existing contributions as zero-coupon bonds for retirement.

Criminal justice and drug policy

Jorgensen opposes federal civil asset forfeiture and qualified immunity. She opposes the war on drugs and supports abolishing drug laws, promising to pardon all nonviolent drug offenders. She has urged the demilitarization of police.

Foreign policy and defense

Jorgensen opposes embargoes, economic sanctions, and foreign aid; she supports non-interventionism, armed neutrality, and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from abroad.

Immigration, economics, and trade

Jorgensen calls for deregulation, arguing that it would reduce poverty. She supports cutting government spending to reduce taxes.

Jorgensen supports the freedom of American citizens to travel and trade, calls for the elimination of trade barriers and tariffs, and supports the repeal of quotas on the number of people who can legally enter the United States to work, visit, or reside. In a Libertarian presidential primary debate, Jorgensen said she would immediately stop construction on President Donald Trump's border wall. During another primary debate she blamed anti-immigration sentiment on disproportionate media coverage of crimes by immigrants. She argued that immigration helps the economy and that the blending of cultures is benificial.

COVID-19

Jorgensen has characterized the U.S. government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic as overly bureaucratic and authoritarian, calling restrictions on individual behavior (such as stay-at-home orders) and corporate bailouts "the biggest assault on our liberties in our lifetime".

Jorgensen opposes government mask mandates, considering mask-wearing a matter of personal choice. She argues that mask-wearing would be widely adopted without government intervention because market competition would drive businesses to adopt either mask-required or mask-optional policies, allowing consumers the freedom to choose their preferred environment. Jorgensen has invoked the analogy of dollar voting to argue that consumer preferences would shape businesses' policies on face masks in the absence of a government mandate.

-------

The Green party's candadate, Howie Hawkins, was ALSO up for presidency. This was his platform.

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

COVID-19 EMERGENCY MEASURES FOR THE DURATION OF THE CRISIS

Medicare to Pay for COVID-19 Testing and Treatment and All Emergency Health Care. Defense Production Act to Rapidly Plan the Production and Distribution of Medical Supplies and a Universal Test, Contact Trace, and Quarantine Program to Safely Reopen the Economy. An OSHA Temporary Standard to Provide Enforceable PPE Protection for Workers. $2,000 a Month to All Adults Over Age 16 and $500 per Child. Loans to All Businesses and Hospitals for Payroll and Fixed Overhead To Be Forgiven If All Workers Are Kept on Payroll. Moratorium on Evictions, Foreclosures, and Utility Shutoffs. Cancel Rent, Mortgage, and Utility Payments; Federal Government Pays Those Bills; High-income People Pay Taxes on this Relief. Suspend Student Loan Payments with 0% Interest Accumulation. Federal Universal Rent Control. Aid to State and Local Governments Sufficient to Keep Essential Services Running. A 10-Year, $42 Trillion Ecosocialist Green New Deal for Economic Recovery through a Just Transition to 100% Clean Energy by 2030. Universal Mail-in Ballots for the 2020 General Election.

PEACE POLICIES

Pledge No First Use of Nuclear Weapons. Unilaterally Disarm to a Minimum Credible Deterrent. Negotiate with Nuclear Powers to Enact the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. End the Endless Wars—US Troops Home. Cut the Military Budget by 75%. Invest the Savings in a Global Green New Deal. Use Diplomacy and International Law to Promote Peace, Human Rights, and Democracy.

ECONOMIC BILL OF RIGHTS

Job Guarantee. Guaranteed Minimum Income Above Poverty. $20 Minimum Wage. Affordable Housing for All through Universal Rent Control and Public Housing. Medicare for All—A Community-Controlled National Health Service. Lifelong Free Public Education—Pre-K through College. Secure Retirement—Double Social Security Benefits

POLITICAL DEMOCRACY

Ranked-Choice National Popular Vote for President. Proportional Representation in Congress. End Party Suppression—Fair Ballot Access. End Voter Suppression—Restore the Preclearance Provision to the Voting Rights Act. Right to Vote Constitutional Amendment. Automatic Voter Registration. Voting Rights for Felons. Auditable Paper Balloting. Full Public Campaign Finance. We The People Amendment to End the Corporate-Personhood and Money-Is-Speech Legal Doctrines. DC Statehood

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Had i known about this, about them, I would have proudly voted for Jorgensen or Hawkins, because, instead of being "the lesser of two evils", they actually sound like someone we genuinely need right now. We need to stand up for the people not getting their voices heard. I want a presidential election that has EVERYONE'S voice heard. To those of you who have been oppressed, beaten down, and learned to cope with being ignored just because someone didn't like what you had to say, you need to help the other candidates get their voices heard in the future. I don't know about you, but I want a United States that is concerned about the true freedom of speech, one which is fair and actually willing to hear what all our people have to say.

It's a dream that even Martin Luther King Jr. had. He saw the oppression of African Americans, and spoke out about having a dream that everyone could be heard.

When our country was founded, we were all immigrants. Everyone came from another place, even those we call Native Americans. Why is it that today, people are being rejected simply for needing to take refuge from a government abuser in some other country? We have lost sight of what our great nation is all about. We need to have our voices heard.

The next time there's a government position to replace, remember what I had to say. We are not sheep, who are to be headed toward the majority just because it's easy. We are human beings. We need to stop this suppression of the people's voices. We need to stand up to the government, to the media, to let everyone be heard.

Our nation is on the verge of a civil war, in part due to the oppression of the people. If you want to be heard, you need to stand up for what you believe in. Violence isn't necessary, but your right to free speech is. DO NOT LET THEM SUPPRESS YOUR VOICE.

EDIT: I would like to add, that in order for our POLITICAL voices to be heard, there is still something we need to change. If you would like to hear what is needed, there's a list of videos on the subject. If you really want to have your voices heard, we need to start here, with ranked voting. For more information, click this link.

#politics #human rights #free speech