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butwhatifidothis · 3 years

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Tumblr is starting to VERY MUCH dislike how long the other reblog chain is getting, so this will be Reblog Chain 2 of my jotting down notes of this fic. Here is the first reblog chain for Chapters 1-20

But it appears as though I was correct in sleeping off Chapter 20, because Chapter 21 is. Hm. bad. Very. Not good.

Chapter 21:

Transcript under the cut:

Chapter 21: It's Called Scars so it Gonna Be Ass

- To be blunt, the constant need to reaffirm that yes, Edelgard went through terrible experimentation and that yes, they were very horrific, is tiring. This is chapter 21. The experiments occurred in chapter 2. Every single chapter between now and then have, at some point, mentioned that INDEED, Edelgard DID in fact go through horrific trauma. It is tiring to the reader to constantly have to reread the same thing - we know it happened. We know it was terrible. There's no need to constantly say so; we already understand as readers.

- "Every time the spark of life broke through Byleth’s blank face, it brought a flickering hope to the Flame Emperor’s heart." ->

- Firstly: Awkward use of the Flame Emperor epithet (its usage is on and off with how appropriate its been - this is off).

- Secondly: Once again, Byleth's face was rarely if ever blank. She was never the Ashen Demon, as even the last chapter showcased. The author is mistaking reservation with emotionlessness, which is simply wrong

- "There had been so many empty days and nights, without friendship, love or joy. With nothing to hope for, except someday, the peace of the grave." -> Suicidal tendencies: another trait that Edelgard doesn't have... (strikes against canon: 89)

- ...but Dimitri does. Counter: 12

- "Dimitri, too, was troubled by the thought, grasping the side of his head and frowning. As the spasm passed, he turned to Edelgard and smiled warmly." -> It seems a little callous to so casually toss Dimitri's symptoms into his interactions with others when such things simply don't occur in the canon interactions. It's not impossible, or strictly against canon, but it does not feel natural; it's more as though the author is shining bright neon signs that say DIMITRI HAS MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES than a genuine attempt at writing Dimitri's mental health issues. This is not the first time this sort of seemingly thoughtless showcasing of symptoms has happened (Noted separately: Dimitri having drastic mood swings)

- "No, this world must be ruled by humans…not cruel gods who ignored the prayers of little girls." -> This statement follows Edelgard internally chastising the actions of not gods, but the Children of the Goddess. This is a weaselly attempt at dodging Edelgard's racist beliefs that Nabateans should not be allowed positions of power by shifting the belief to apply to miscellaneous gods instead. While not inaccurate per se - she does also canonically believe that gods should have no power in human affairs - it is not honest

- "Byleth nodded with childlike simplicity. “We should all try to get along.”" -> Again describing Byleth as childlike and/or innocent. Counter: 3

- For those curious: yes, the rat scene is implemented, yes it is sloppy, yes it is out of character for Claude - so much so that it is being noted separately - and yes it is forced to all hell

- What will be noted here, however, is that this is yet another instance of a man being demeaned/humiliated for the honor of a woman. See quote: "Byleth was on him in an instant, a tempest forming in the sea of her blue eyes. “That isn’t funny.” She crossed her arms sternly. “Jokes are about bringing people together...about making them smile. Right now, the only person laughing is you.”" with Claude reacting awkwardly. Once again, Man Bad Woman Good

- In a showcasing of a complete lack of self-awareness within the fic: "“Maybe if you’d have taught the Deer instead…but since you seem to have no ambitions outside of cleaning up Edelgard’s messes…”" -> This is Claude being portrayed as the bad guy, not the one being completely and utterly right

- " She slapped Edelgard on the back, and smiled heartily. “I agree, Dimitri!” Edelgard grimaced, trying to hide the fact her teacher had just struck the wound she had received during the mock battle." -> As well as where undoubtedly countless scars would be, yes? Scars that still cause Edelgard pain? In fact, Edelgard has been slapped on the back by Byleth and Jeralt numerous times before, and yet expresses no pain or discomfort.

- Another thing, that I had not noted though ought to have: Edelgard, a victim of sexual assault (in this fic), rarely seems to mind people touching her. She gets a little surprised if someone tries to get her attention with touch, yes, but Byleth's constant unprompted and random touching of Edelgard is never said to do anything but bring warmth and joy and comfort to Edelgard. It seems as though Edelgard suffering through sexual assault is just another source of trauma for the author to dump onto her for nothing more than pity points

- This is incredibly harsh to say, yes, and I would usually refrain from attributing such harshness onto a piece of text, but remember that Edelgard's scars only cause her pain when it's convenient, that she only experiences headaches when it's convenient, that she experiences PTSD episodes (when Claude mentions the rat) when it's convenient (note that in this fic he does it outside of battle, where her getting triggered wouldn't compromise her chances at victory). Edelgard not being touch averse and being a victim of sexual assault are not inherently something bad - survivors react to trauma differently, after all - but it is another in a steadily longer line of instances where Edelgard is simply given trauma for the sake of making her pitiable to the reader and the love interest, not something that Edelgard genuinely has to struggle with.

- "As Claude and Dimitri looked at their classmate expectantly, Edelgard was wracked with another bout of guilt. Deep in her soul, the princess knew these peaceful days would end soon. When that happened, no feast or vows of friendship could make up for the chaos and horror she would unleash. It would be better to pull away, close off her heart, rather than fuel the flames of her inevitable betrayal." -> Aka, "Feel bad for me, I feel guilty for planning to cause the death and ruination of countless innocents' lives all because I convinced myself that my way is the only way to get things done my way without ever actually trying to see if more peaceful ways could have worked. I'm going to orphan children, force families to fight each other, have the land be rampaged by banditry, and overall bring chaos onto these days that I ADMIT ARE PEACEFUL all because I feel that my way would be better. Wah wah pity me but I don't wanna be pitied I promise wah wah."

- "Byleth shrugged with a characteristic blend of innocence and spirit. “I guess I just like winning.” She began to blush and grabbed Edelgard’s hand. "It's so exciting! I’ve never had anyone other than Papa to celebrate with before!”" -> Byleth = innocent/childlike. Counter: 4

- The fic likes to reaffirm again and again that Byleth is "now" only acting like this due to Edelgard's presence in her life. Note also these statements written previously: "Every day, [Edelgard] was watching the person she loved grow and change. Become who she always was supposed to be." This, perhaps unintentionally, again enforces the "Lesbian Love is Pure and Innocent" trope; these wlw are only allowed to be their good girl, innocent selves - who they were always supposed to be - due to the pure lesbian love they have found with one another

- Count Bergliez didn't know of the experiments initially, but he eventually found out and did nothing to stop them, fleeing from a young and tortured El who was pleading for him to save her - Unnecessarily painting Count Bergliez as a spineless coward too afraid of Duke Aegir to save a child in pain

- Once again, a man fails to save a woman and further traumatizes her

- It should be noted that Bergliez is fearful not for his own life, but for that of his children, who were the ones Duke Aegir threatened. He, very similar to Ionius, cannot save Edelgard, except Bergliez (unlike Ionius) has a tangible, physical, explainable reason as to why he couldn't, and yet it is him who is painted as the bad guy, not Ionius. He is worthy of Edelgard's scorn and hatred, but Ionius only receives a begrudging feeling of betrayal from Edelgard that she feels guilty for harboring, even though he failed her far more than Bergliez failed her.

- "Daughters must always be loyal to their fathers" trope

- "No decent person thought the things Edelgard did. Just as her body had been twisted and shattered by the experiments, her mind bore terrible scars. Scars that the monster kept hidden, so she could walk in the world of men." -> Dehumanizing oneself as a monster as well as having violent thoughts (that specifically stem from trauma) one feels guilty for harboring are not traits Edelgard shows in canon... (strikes against canon, 90, 91)

- ...but Dimitri does. Counter: 13, 14

- "world of men?" Did the author perhaps mean "world of man," as in mankind? Keep note of

- The reason as to why Bergliez is said to have witnessed young El's tortured state and did nothing to help her is revealed: in canon, he dislikes her. It is blatantly and objectively said that he and Edelgard share a mutual displeasure in the other's company. What this fic had him do will be used as an excuse as to why he doesn't hate her, since no one is allowed to dislike Edelgard on the "good" side

- Edelgard, upon being asked if revenge is the reason she is doing what she's doing (reuniting Fodlan): "“No.” Edelgard put her hand to her chin thoughtfully. “I think for a long time, it was…but after a while, I realized that revenge wouldn’t satisfy me.” She looked at the blue sky above. “After you go through that much suffering…when you beg for help, day after day, and no one cares...you realize that nothing will ever truly make you feel safe again. The only thing I want is for this madness to end.”" -> This is internally inconsistent. See chapter 15 note: ""You know why they created me in the first place.” / “To reunite Fódlan,” spat Hubert. “It was all my father talked about.” / “And I will give it to them. "" This directly connects Edelgard's want to reunite Fodlan to the wants of her tormenters (as this states she is doing it out of spite). Note how Hubert spits at the idea of reuniting Fodlan, and how it was all his father - portrayed as a villain - talked about. This is not what this Edelgard wants, at least not of her own independent want. Earlier in this very chapter, Edelgard internally states a want to hurt Bergliez for leaving her behind. To say that she now no longer thinks vengeance would satisfy her, or that none of the reason that she is doing everything she does is out of a want for revenge, is ridiculous

- Edelgard to Bergliez, upon being asked what will happen to him and his family should Edelgard rise to power: "“All those who distinguish themselves will be rewarded. Given your history, I have little doubt you will be among them.” She nervously played with her white gloves. “All I ask is that when I seize back control of the throne, I can count on the military’s support.”" -> Yes, all who distinguish themselves to Edelgard, for Edelgard's cause, that Edelgard can see and/or know of. How likely is it that a poor farmer who is exceptional at fighting will actually be noticed by Edelgard and be given the credit he deserves, when others who may not be as meritable but do have some merit have the connections to show themselves directly in front of Edelgard? What means will Edelgard give the poor soldiers (that she or Byleth aren't already friends with, notably Dorothea and Leonie) that will allow them to be able to be seen by her and have their merits recognized? Edelgard is the one who says who gains power after all, so it is her they must prove themselves to, but how can they realistically do that?

- What about professions that are not immediately beneficial to Edelgard's cause, such as the arts? How will they fare in Edelgard's society, when their works and talents yield no tangible, objective results (such as, say, farming)?

- Something the fic will address?

- Edelgard does not nervously do anything in front of those she is trying to negotiate with in canon, not even Thales. Strikes against canon: 92

- "[Bergliez] could only laugh in response. “I think we’re going to get along rather well, my lady…and the other?”" -> Except Bergliez and Edelgard don't get along well, ever. Pre ts they are stated to dislike each other, which continues even onto post ts with Bergliez being the only noble Edelgard couldn't bring to heel. Strikes against canon: 93

- As predicted: No one is allowed to dislike Edelgard on the "good" side

- Literally forgot Hubert was with Edelgard and Bergliez lmao

- Ionius tried to consolidate power to be rid of the consort system due to his unending love for Anselma -> A ridiculous idea, plain and simple. Ionius was Emperor. If he wished to be rid of the consort system there was no need for him to try and take away all power from the other Imperial houses.

- If Ionius truly loved Anselma, why did he allow her to be exiled from the Empire? Why didn't he step in and use his influence as Emperor to help her?

- Edelgard, when she is Emperor - passed down a supposedly empty crown, at that - showcases the all-encompassing power the title of Emperor truly holds to one willing to use that power. That Ionius supposedly wanted to do all of these reforms and yet nothing at all was done, ever (save for ruining Houses Hrym and Ordelia, something even this fic has as canon), if Ionius did want to make these reforms, means that he was too spineless and cowardly to truly go through with trying to pass them. This again unintentionally showcases how awful a ruler and weak-willed a person Ionius was when he had power when trying to paint him in this righteous light.

- Lambert was stated to be trying to pass reforms before he died in canon, not Ionius. From parents to the children, the author is attributing traits from Lambert onto Ionius just as he (author's confirmed gender is male) attributes traits from Dimitri onto Edelgard

- " Her father and mother…she had thought their romance a fairy tale-a story from her father to make a motherless child feel valued. But…they truly had loved each other." -> Edelgard does believe Ionius when he told her of the story of when he and Anselma (supposedly) met each other. There is nothing to indicate that Edelgard thought it to be a lie: in fact, in canon: "But I choose to believe there was genuine love between them." Strikes against canon: 94

- It seems as though finally, after around 18 chapters, Edelgard's scars will finally cause her genuine inconvenience due to her complex about them as well as her trust issues. She has a gash on her back from the Battle of Eagle and Lion, but will not have it treated if Manuela isn't the healer, and yet the woman is occupied dealing with the rest of the students who were injured. How will this fic deal with this?

- Ingrid, referring to her and Sylvain: ""We just switched from Felix lecturing us all day to listening to Edelgard moralizing, didn’t we?"" -> The author is trying to compare a childhood friend whose friends have had years to get used to their barbed tongue to a stranger that directly insults the dreams of one of them. Something which Ingrid canonically hates having be done to her, even from Felix, a childhood friend. Once again, Ingrid being so casual about Edelgard being so disrespectful of her dreams is out of character. Strikes against canon: 95

- "Sylvain shook his head knowingly, ignoring Felix’s truly alarming scowl. “You should have seen his face, Edelgard. Dimitri would go on and on about this girl he met when he was a kid…and Felix would complain about her for hours!” He looked at Felix and smiled. “For all his whining about the “Boar,” nobody loves Dimitri more than him.”" -> Oh? A romantic gay male relationship presenting itself within the fic?

- Another vision of SS experienced by Edelgard. Word from a nameless guard: "The woman, Byleth, leading their forces... She’s not human! She killed half my battalion with one swing of that sword of hers. She didn’t speak, she didn’t shout, she didn’t even change her expression!” The panicked man was teetering on the edge of hysteria. “All those people rallying around her, and it’s like she doesn’t care at all. Like she's a walking corpse!"" -> Obviously saying that Byleth becomes the Ashen Demon if not allowed to be with Edelgard.

- Unintentional statement: Byleth can't be the pure innocent (lesbian) woman without Edelgard's (lesbian) love granting her purity, reverting her to a monstrous, corrupt demon incapable of humanity

- See chapter 20 note: "Implying that choosing SS - aka, choosing the Nabateans - makes Byleth less human. Intentional?" Confirmed to be intentional. Also false: in canon, even when accounting for CF's lesser chapter count, Byleth emotes far more on SS than on CF, which matches with CF having Edelgard call Byleth detached in their A support. Strikes against canon: 96

- The same nameless soldier, same context: "And those Faerghus kids…” / Edelgard leaned forward in her chair. “Ingrid…Sylvain…what of them?” / “They…they were animals. Screaming and ranting about revenge for the King.” -> Is the author really demonizing Sylvain and Ingrid for (potentially!) being mad at Edelgard for murdering one of their childhood friends? Is that really the depths the Edelgard worship will sink to, that friends becoming enraged at a friend's unjust murder from a warlord is being portrayed as something sad for the warlord? Just what else should Edelgard be pitied for?

- "The scared girl desperately tried to drown out the thoughts that reverberated incessantly. / They’re going to despise us…it’s destiny. And how could they not? If we were truly good, the Goddess would have saved us…protected us. But She didn’t. The Goddess took Mother. She took our family. And soon, She’ll take everything else we love. She hates us. / It’s what we deserve." - Now confirmed that Edelgard hears multiple voices in her head tormenting her. That trait that, once again, Edelgard does not have... (Strikes against canon: 97)

- ...but Dimitri does. This is the third time this chapter that this has happened, and far from the only chapter to display such baffling characterization of Edelgard via Dimitri's traits. It is nonsensical.

- " Why had [Edelgard] even been born at all? Nonexistence would have been preferable to watching every faint dream be dashed, to suffering alone over and over. She was just…so tired of being alive." -> Once. Again. Suicidal tendencies/thoughts is not a trait Edelgard shows in canon... (Strikes against canon: 98)

- ...but Dimitri does. The fourth! The fourth time in one chapter the author desperately wanted to just write Dimitri!

- If the fic wanted to take Edelgard in a different direction than canon does and has her display some of these traits, it would be more passable, but this fic is under the delusion that it is in any way following canon closely, especially in regards to Edelgard, and so this can only be seen as a desperate attempt from the author to have Edelgard be sympathetic by donning the skin of an actually sympathetic character such as Dimitri

- "Edelgard looked at herself in the mirror. The back of her academy uniform was stained red, the rhythmic, soft dripping of blood assaulting the princess’ ears." -> And no one commented on this? No one was worried? Not Ingrid, Sylvain, and Felix, who were sitting right by her? Not Lysithea, who saw her take the blow to her back and never get it healed? Not Dimitri, who delivered the blow? It just so happened that literally no one at all noticed this?

- Byleth literally slapped Edelgard on the back earlier? Wouldn't her hand come back red with blood if it were seeping through the uniform?

** The scene that follows the previous note is too long to quote, despite how truly terrible it is. Long quotes, even extremely long quotes, have been presented in these notes before, but the length this quotation would be if the full extent of it were written here would be a mess, and quite frankly, at that point it would do one better to simply go to the fanfiction itself and read the text from there. With the context received from these notes, if one wishes to see the words for themselves, go to chapter 21 of The Emperor and the Goddess, enter Ctrl + F (or Find in Page on mobile devices), and enter the phrase "Byleth crossed her arms, clearly frustrated" verbatim. The following note will not be quoting the entire scene from the fic (merely summarizing it), though context is needed to understand how truly bad the scene is. **

- To have hope in this fic performing anything correctly is proving to be a fool's dream, for it has yet to do anything right; that includes the aforementioned gash upon Edelgard's back. As stated, it did not draw the attention of those who were sitting around her nor did it draw the attention of the one who witnessed the injury itself, nor of the one who delivered the injury itself, so no one commented on the gaping, bleeding wound Edelgard was "hiding" from everyone as she turned her (bleeding) back to them and left for the baths to clean up (it must be heavily stressed: immediately after leaving it is revealed that the blood is seeping through her uniform). As she was washing - naked, of course - Byleth just so happened to step into the baths with only a towel wrapped around her "for modesty," much to the horror of Edelgard, for she does not want Byleth seeing her scarred body. A slight argument arises between the two over Edelgard getting her injuries checked, before Byleth warns Edelgard that she will go to Rhea and force her to go to the infirmary should Edelgard continue to refuse treatment, which drives Edelgard past the brink. She raises her arms from the bathwater and presents her scars (""Fine!... If you want to see so badly, here!""), to the horror of Byleth ("Byleth Eisner was not a woman given to strong emotional reactions, but she staggered back, hands over her mouth."). Edelgard cries in hysteria, fear of her beloved teacher running away in disgust over her ugly, mutilated body overwhelming her. But Byleth, childlike in her innocence, shared that she too is scarred in strange ways, and that she too is scared of failing those around her - that she has no ambitions save to help and protect those around her. Byleth reveals that it is Edelgard whom Byleth looks up to for always being so strong and always moving forward, and shows that without Edelgard Byleth wouldn't know how to handle the pressure everyone else puts on her. The exchange ends with Byleth reassuring Edelgard that she is beautiful and not the monster she thinks she is.

- There is no nice way of putting this: this is a classic example of how not to write someone opening up to another about something. Edelgard views herself as weak, ugly, repulsive, a monster, shameful, but it is Byleth's love and affection that gives her comfort and warmth, that gives her hope of something more. It forces Byleth to behave wildly out of character (the author can try to excuse this with "well she wouldn't normally behave like this!" all he wants, it doesn't matter when it goes against the base, canonical Byleth. Strikes against canon: 99) in order for Edelgard's scarred body to be seen as something that is repulsive, that is ugly, that is stained, so much so that the pure, childlike, innocent Byleth couldn't stand to see something so tainted. And yet it is that same pure, childlike, innocent Byleth's pure, innocent, childlike love that pushes away the pain of Edelgard's scars for just that moment. Other characters become suddenly blind and/or forgetful of Edelgard's obvious, bleeding wound so that it is Byleth who can be the one to save Edelgard with her pure, innocent, childlike presence and her pure, innocent, childlike uncertainty about her own insecurities (but only when it is convenient for Edelgard, as even Byleth didn't noticed the gaping, bleeding wound until she was alone with Edelgard where no one could interrupt their bonding moment). This scene is inorganic and forced, ham-fisting Edelgard and Byleth in the same room - the wash room, where both are either naked or nearly naked - so that Byleth is the one to find Edelgard, no one else. No one was worried enough about the sudden exit Edelgard took from the conversation she was having to follow her and make sure she was alright, and Byleth just so happened to enter the baths right after Edelgard. The scene is, to be frank, insulting.

- There have been a couple of joking references to a book titled Stones to Abigail in these notes, but in all seriousness, this scene plays unsettlingly similar to a scene in said book, where a scarred girl who is naked reveals her "ugly" and "revolting" scarred body to the love interest, who goes on to soothe and comfort the naked girl as best they can. The resemblance is uncanny

- Byleth described as childlike/innocent. Counter: 5

- Edelgard, in canon, never expresses feeling herself to be ugly, or repulsive, or a monster. Strikes against canon: 100

- Again, Edelgard's scars are only important when they are convenient - this time, in helping develop the romantic relationship between her and Byleth

- There are ways in which scars can be utilized without being problematic, but certainly not when this much focus is placed on them and yet they are only truly present when they cannot hinder Edelgard.

- Perhaps particularly insulting is this phrase from Edelgard: "Did she actually love Byleth at all, or just being saved by her?" Yes, Edelgard, you do simply want to be saved by Byleth, because that is precisely what the narrative has been drilling into the reader's heads ever since Byleth showed herself. Byleth is Edelgard's light, Byleth is Edelgard's hope, Byleth gives Edelgard back her humanity, Byleth is Edelgard's one source of joy, Byleth is Edelgard's entire life, and nothing, absolutely nothing in this fic has shown this to ever be a bad thing. This dependence on Byleth to bring Edelgard joy at the near complete expense of everyone else has been propped up as something romantic, and yet it's now, 21 chapters and over 85K+ words in, that we're supposed to believe that this was actually Edelgard being unhealthy? Even though the author himself said that this was what he enjoyed about their relationship, how much they found each other in each other? Even though we see what the author thinks would happen to the two of them should they separate - Edelgard, lonely and afraid without her beloved teach, and Byleth, the Ashen Demon who cares for nothing without her beloved student - in her visions of SS? This is a joke

- It cannot be overstated that Byleth came to the bathhouses completely independently of Edelgard. She did not come to specifically see her because she followed her out of worry for Edelgard due to her injury - she only knows that Edelgard's injured in the first place due to seeing bloody bandages that Edelgard removed in the bathhouse, before Byleth arrived.

- Author's notes: "On Bergliez, we find out very little in-game, but he 1) offers himself for execution so his men can go free in SS and 2) seems to be actually competent at his job. I thought a nuanced portrayal was more interesting, since I've been writing Aegir as the absolute worst person in the world." -> Note: this is what the author believes to be a nuanced take on someone. Someone who likes Edelgard entirely and does nearly whatever they can to help her, but they did one thing that's morally gray (leaving a child behind to save his own children from the same fate) that is portrayed as objectively bad, so now they are nuanced. While perhaps this sort of character would be truly nuanced in better hands, as it is with his actions being portrayed as something that is obviously so completely and utterly wrong and him someone who deserves complete and utter condemnation - and yet Ionius, who does far worse for far less understandable reasons, gets a comparative slap on the wrist - it causes confusion as to Edelgard's lines. Bergliez seeing her the one time and never helping her is enough for her to want to hurt him as she was hurt, but her father repeatedly coming to and "being forced" to watch her actively be tortured and doing nothing does little to invoke similar depths of resentment? Even granting the idea that "she gives more slack to her father," Ionius is objectively and far worse than Bergliez, down to doing hard things to protect their children, and yet it is only Bergliez who is shined in this unpleasant a light

- To be clear, Bergliez's decision was not a good one, but understandable. It is a gray decision to make. But notice how he is called "gray" and "nuanced" and yet Ionius is nearly completely innocent, as described by the author himself, despite their being no given explaination as to why "he was a figurehead" should be a good enough reason to wash him literally standing there and watching as his children - some of whom aren't even teens yet - get slowly tortured and killed.

- "There are many localization changes I understand (Byleth wanting to get drunk after the battle is one of them), but Treehouse's decision to remove Ionius' entire reason for power centralization (eliminating the consorts) was a big, big mistake." -> Given the history of this author's grasp on the Japanese language, this needs to be checked, as he cannot be trusted as a source as to whether this is true

******* Notes of Claude mischaracterization: Chapter 21, section 1, paragraphs 1, 21 & 23, 27 *******

#o captain my captain #is the Cap'n's name fuckin' Greg holy shit #this chapter was baaaaad #b-but hey maybe i'm just being overly critical?

67 notes · View notes

the-str33tz · 3 years

Text

I’m doing just fine

Jotaro Kujo x AFAB Reader

This fic was written while listening to the Boyz II Men song “Doin’ Just Fine”

Summary: Years after leaving you to raise your daughter by yourself, Jotaro Kujo comes back with one thing in mind; wanting to be a father and husband.

Content warnings: Angst, pregnancy, arguing around children.

Your grip on the flimsy pregnancy test tightened as you glanced over the results. Positive. Maybe looking it over again will give you a different result. Positive. Blink a couple times. Positive, positive, positive. Your world came to a halt as you shiver while sitting on the toilet. What were you going to do? You weren’t ready for a child at your age. What would you tell him?

Thoughts of your boyfriend wave and crash in your mind. Jotaro Kujo, the silent and cold man from Japan who you had fallen in love with. In just a bit over year you both had become each others rock. He had walked into your life when you thought everything was lost, and it seemed like it was the same for him too. He didn’t talk too much about it but you could piece it together. He had gone through a traumatic experience as a teenager that left people that he knew dead. You didn’t question him too much, letting him come to you when he was ready.

This was going to crush him as much as it was going to crush you. Jotaro had brought up how eventually he’d like to have a family; have a successful career in marine biology and have multiple sons. But right now you were both in college, living off whatever you can get your hands on. He’s definitely had an easier ride than you but he always helped you without expecting anything in return.

You start to think back to a couple weeks ago when you had sex, an activity you both partook in regularly. There was something different that night, he was out of condoms but you both agreed that he’d be able to pull out in time. It seems that he pulled out a bit late. Embarrassment heats up your neck and up your face. A headache begins to take over when you hear a knock at your apartment door. It has to be Jotaro you think. He was clued in to your scare earlier today so he must be here to see the results.

You quickly clean and dress yourself hearing harsher and faster knocks. He was never the most patient. Running over to the door and greeting him, he lets himself in to walk to the bathroom. You try to catch up to him trying to talk but fumbling your words. You walk into the bathroom where he’s leaning over the counter, hands in fists. He looks over at you with a look in his eyes that you had never seen before. Fear.

You stay where you are, keeping your distance. You never liked too much physical attention and were grateful that he was the same. You can feel your forehead crease with your eyebrows, your eyes beginning to sting from keeping your eyes open at him. “What are we going to do?” You cough up while shaking. He loosens his fists, “We now have a responsibility as parents, but I can’t do this.” And with that he pushed you aside and started to head out the door. You lean against the door frame finally letting loose all the tears that refused to come out moments ago.

Seven years later you live in a small home with your daughter who you named Jolyne. She is the apple of your eye, your sunshine that motivates you everyday. She has green eyes that she got from her fathers side of the family but she looked like you in every other way. You had given up your education all those years ago but seeing your daughter run to you everyday after school made you think that you’d do it all over again if you had to. You make your way up the walkway of the tiny primary school, strain in your ankles from a long day of work. Thoughts of dinner swirling your mind before you stop in your tracks. Jolyne hugging her teachers leg looking away while a tall man with a ripped cap talking to the teacher knocks you into reality. There’s no possibility right? He wouldn’t have the balls to try to sidestep you to see your daughter. But you were proved wrong after you jog up to the teacher.

“Jolynes mother should be here soon I do not know of Jolyne having a father.”

“I’ll wait here to talk with her.”

You catch the end of their conversation, going in to pat your hand on Jolynes back. She turns to you and immediately grips your leg yelling, “Mommy this man says that he’s my dad, is that true?” You look up at the man and you’re immediately taken aback. Turquoise blue eyes are staring you down with the old frown that you used to love. “You really suck you know that?” You scoffed, kneeling down to take Jolyne in for a hug. Her black hair tickling your chin as she nuzzles into your neck. “Yes baby that’s your father like in the pictures remember?” You coo into her ear.

“I came to see you.” He states in his familiar deep voice. You stand up, taking a light grip on Jolynes tiny hand. You give him the strongest glare that you’re able to muster up, snapping, “You probably already know where we live so why did you come here? Forget it, just follow me. We live about a block away.” He grunts and nods at you, allowing you to walk in front of him with your daughter in hand. You thank the teacher for taking care of your daughter before you begin to stomp off.

Jotaro lets his eyes wander down your figure, watching how you walk. He can’t help but feel his chest tighten looking at you hand in hand with his child. This was a sight he had always wanted but he never let himself indulge in it until today. He lets you lead him into your tiny home; two bedrooms with a shared bathroom, a small living area, and a kitchen with little to no counter space. You kneel down again to talk to Jolyne, telling her to go do her homework and to let the grownups speak. She gives Jotaro a small glance before running in her room.

“Where have you been? Why are you here now?”

“I just got back from a trip in Japan for work. I wanted to come back to see how you were doing. I also need to apologize, I made a big mistake. I shouldn’t have walked away from you all those years ago.” Jotaro takes off his white hat letting his hair dark hair fall out of place. You can feel yourself tensing up, you really didn’t want to have this sort of conversation with Jolyne in the house. She doesn’t know everything that happened with Jotaro and you didn’t want her to hear any arguing or yelling. You sigh, “Why did you think showing up at my daughters school was appropriate? You could have called me and we could have spoken in private. I know Jolyne is also your daughter but you haven’t been around as a father, not even when I took that test when we were both twenty one.” You motion for him to sit on the old couch in your living room. One that was on clearance at a rent center years ago when Jolyne was only a year old.

He sits down causing a big dip and creaking. His face goes solemn, looking down at his black and white boots. “I never meant to take your love away like that. I wasn’t ready to be a father and I wanted both of you to be safe.” He looks up at you with disappointment dripping off his features. You sit down next to him, smoothing out your work clothes and relaxing your ankles. “I know you weren’t ready to be a father but you know what Jotaro? I wasn’t ready to be a mother either. You left me alone, I had to leave university so I could raise my baby the way she deserves. You got to finish your education and seem to be doing well, I don’t know why you think making a tired apology will do you any better.” You whispered close to him. His eyes hadn’t left yours, listening intently to what you had to say. He leaned close to you acknowledging, “I am aware of the sacrifices you made for our daughter, I didn’t allow myself to be the proper father I should be. Please allow me to be a part of her life. I know you’ve most likely moved on from our love but I’ve thought about you everyday since then. I sat in my dorm, refusing to leave because I didn’t want to have to go out. I didn’t want to see you walk by and breakdown. Please understand that I’ve wanted to be the father and husband that you both deserve but I thought that I’d bring you nothing but danger. I need to be here for both of you, I want to give you a better home and a better life. Let me take care of you.”

You could feel tears wanting to spill out, why did he think he would be too dangerous to be around both of you? Could it have something to do with what happened to him when he was a teenager? “It may seem hard to believe but I’m doing just fine. We’ve been getting along very well without you. Time has made me stronger and you’re not longer on my mind.” That bit at the end was a lie, you thought about him everyday like he had about you. You had a picture of him in your wallet and in one of the drawers in your bedroom. He placed a hand over yours, covering it completely and squeezing lightly.

“You are my earth, my number one priority. You were the last woman I gave my love to, and I plan for it to only be you. You could ask me to do anything and it’d be as good as done.” Jotaro moves his other hand up to lay over your shoulder, wrapping it around your back. You sink into his white coat letting your tears waterfall down your face. He soothes your back warmly while wrapping his arms around you, squeezing you into his chest. “I really needed you Jotaro I really did. You let our love fall apart and I really want to say that you no longer have my heart and that I’m doing just fine. I haven’t had too much time to worry about myself because I’m everywhere doing everything.” He lets you ramble on against him.

You pull back after a while, looking back into his turquoise eyes, “I’ll only allow you back if Jolyne is okay to have you around. I want her to have the choice to get to know you but if she doesn’t want to, I won’t force her.” He nods, squeezing your hand again before letting his thumb rub across the back of your hand.

#jjba x reader #jotaro imagine #jotaro x reader #kujo jotaro #jotaro kujo #kujo jotaro x reader #jjba imagine #angst #jjba angst #jjba part 4 #jojos bizarre adventure #cw: pregnancy #cw: arguing around children

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moiraineswife · 4 years

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Jasnah - The Facade Meta

Today we’re going to discuss the stormlight of my life, your life, your cat’s life: Jasnah Kholin. Topics of discussion include (but will likely not be limited to): the face she wears, the effect her childhood and what we know if it has had on her, madness, her mother, her perceived invincibility, and whatever else strikes me as relevant in the midst of this chaotic clusterfuck of yelling tarted up as character analysis.

Now. To business:

Let us begin at the beginning (of what we know) and talk about Jasnah’s childhood illness, and what this has done to her in terms of her relationship with her mother, her outlook on life, and her perception of, well, perception…

“It’s your daughter,” Dalinar guessed. “Her lunacy.”

“Jasnah is fine, and recovering. It’s not that.” (OB, 49, Born Unto Light)

Peppered through Dalinar’s flashbacks in Oathbringer are small hints at the dark side of Jasnah’s childhood. We’ve had hints before that Jasnah’s life has not always been...entirely typical for a princess.

Her existence as a radiant was a hint itself, as it's implied most of them are ‘broken’ in some way.

The others are more obvious: Kaladin’s depression, Shallan’s PTSD, anxiety, and DID, Dalinar’s repressed memories, and alcoholism etc,etc.

With Jasnah, you know it has to be there, but it’s harder to see. To use Shallan’s metaphor, she’s like a cracked vase, but the cracked side has been turned to the wall, so the outside world sees only smooth perfection.

This flashback comment is the most obvious indication at what caused Jasnah to break. A fairly shocking one for a reader as 'Jasnah' and 'lunacy' seem to match as well as chasmfiends and tea parties.

It also provides some rather awful context for this segment a few chapters earlier:

“Something stirred deep within her. Glimmers of memory from a dark room, screaming her voice ragged. A childhood illness nobody else seemed to remember, for all it had done to her.

“It had taught her that people she loved could still hurt her.” (O, 47, So Much Is Lost)

We know, given Shallan’s research into Taln at the behest of the Ghostbloods, that the current treatment for madness involves confining the person in darkness.

It seems like far too much of a coincidence that Jasnah, diagnosed with lunacy, would have memories of screaming herself hoarse in a dark room that could somehow be unconnected to this.

Based on my shoddy maths, she was around 11 or 12 at this point, which is marked by many, especially Navani, as a turning point in her life. There was a profound change in how she acted with those around her following this.

“She wouldn’t let me be a mother to her, Dalinar,” Navani said, staring into the distance. “Do you know that? It was almost like . . . like once Jasnah climbed into adolescence, she no longer needed a mother. I would try to get close to her, and there was this coldness, like even being near me reminded her that she had once been a child. What happened to my little girl, so full of questions?” (WoR, 67, Spit and Bile)

It seems like too much of a coincidence, again, to assume that Jasnah’s childhood illness and her confinement had nothing to do with her reluctance to allow Navani to mother her any more.

Jasnah herself reflects that her imprisonment, for lack of a better word, taught her that people she loved could still hurt her. It seems very likely that this refers to Navani and Gavilar, as they would have allowed this treatment to continue. It’s also likely the reason for the change in their relationship afterwards.

Navani's presence didn't remind her she had been a child; it reminded her of what had been done to her.

Navani’s little girl was branded insane and locked away in a dark room with her parents' consent. This removed her ability to trust in Navani to mother and protect her. She kept her distance, she kept herself aloof and removed from everyone, and that’s something that hasn’t changed over twenty years later.

She takes no wards, an expected thing for a woman of her rank. She's unmarried, well past the age she should be. She has no friends, the closest she has are both "pen pals" she communicates with via spanreed.

Jasnah, of all the characters in Stormlight, is the one least emotionally connected. She clearly loves her family, and is devoted to them...But again it's from a distance.

She works in the shadows with assassins to protect them. She studies the end of the world a world away from everyone she loves.

When we see her in Kharbranth for the first time with Shallan, she’s alone.

The servants she uses seem to belong to the Palaneum. She travels alone, she researches and works and bears her burdens alone.

The sole exception is Ivory and she doesn't really have a choice with him BUT to have him with her.

I am NOT suggesting that Jasnah doesn’t actually care about her family/Shallan - we see repeatedly that she absolutely does.

Poignantly, the first thing Renarin’s visions predict that turns out to be false is the lack of love that Jasnah has - they claim she will choose logic and kill her cousin, but she chooses to save him instead.

It’s clear that Jasnah cares very deeply...but she also deliberately distances herself, both physically and emotionally, from other people.

(continued below)

Jasnah is so independent that it’s almost a flaw. She’s an interesting opposite to Kaladin, in this regard.

Kaladin defines himself so much by those around him, his family, his men, those under his care and protection, that that almost becomes a flaw in him. He destroys himself to protect them, and every failure wrecks him.

Jasnah keeps everyone away. She operates alone, in secret, and she clearly struggles to let people get close to her.

The reasons for this are twofold, I feel.

The first one is assassins: Jasnah has been ‘killed’ by one such assassination attempt, has survived another, who made multiple attempts on her life in the form of Kabsal, and has almost certainly experienced more beyond that.

Her casual expectation that Kabsal is trying to use Shallan to get close to her, likely, though she doesn’t say it, to kill her - which turns out to be true.

She knows firsthand how easy it is for someone with enough money and influence to place spies and assassins into a setting- she does it herself all the time. And it resulted in the death of her father.

In a lot of ways, she’s as paranoid about assassination as Elhokar is - she just expresses it in a far more subtle/rational way. Where Elhokar rants and panics, Jasnah blocks up air vents and rejects rooms in the 90000 foot, lost for centuries, tower with balconies because they're a security flaw.

The second reason for her emotional isolation, I believe, is what caused her initial withdrawal from Navani.

Being believed mad, locked in a dark room, screaming for help and being ignored, and knowing that your parents, the people whom you went to with questions and looked to for safety and protection are at least partially responsible, all at the age of eleven is...fairly damaging.

Jasnah hides the effects of her trauma far better than Kaladin or Shallan. This is probably partially because she’s older and has been dealing with it for longer.

By this point, her trauma reactions (which went, by her own admission, unaddressed by her family after what happened, which is traumatising in itself), have melded in with her personality/are brushed off as simply Jasnah being Jasnah.

“I know what people say of me. I should hope that I am not as harsh as some say, though a woman could have far worse than a reputation for sternness. It can serve one well.” (TWoK, 8, Nearer the Flame).

As a matter of fact, we know full well that Jasnah ISN’T as harsh or stern as she’s claimed to be. Shallan repeatedly affirms to Kabsal, and to a reader, that Jasnah is not what she expected - a stern, harsh mistress. She also notes that Jasnah believes herself to be one - likely due to everyone else perceiving her that way.

I think the perception of Jasnah is one that she’s cultivated deliberately - a stern, aloof, even harsh person. Not one anyone would want to be close to. Also not someone anyone would associate with weakness, or needing to be cared for or protected.

More than assassins, I think Jasnah fears people who love her with good intentions, and the ability to assert those good intentions upon her, because it's "for her own good".

When she was a child it led to her imprisonment, something which still triggers traumatic flashbacks over ten years later. She fears having people she loves hurt her. And so she keeps them away, and cultivates for herself a presence that doesn’t need to be cared for, that almost doesn’t need or want to be loved, so that can never happen again.

She rejects, most notably and strongly, her mother, and any implication of a husband. This has led to speculation about her sexuality - maybe she’s gay - though it seems fairly acceptable in Alethkar for a person to be gay (they don’t even have to fill out social reassignment forms!). I

It might be more frowned upon in noble society, due to the expectation of forming political marriages, and while I don’t necessarily doubt it (give me queer Jasnah, Brandon, I beg of you, I’m a starving lesbian and I need this) the only commentary we have from Jasnah on the subject sems to suggest a different, sadder, motive:

Jasnah relaxed visibly. “Yes, well, it did seem a workable solution. I had wondered, however, if you’d be offended.”

“Why on the winds would I be offended?”

“Because of the restriction of freedom implicit in a marriage,” Jasnah said. “And if not that, because the offer was made without consulting you.

[...]

“It doesn’t bother you at all?” Jasnah said. “The idea of being beholden to another, particularly a man?”

“It’s not like I’m being sold into slavery,” Shallan said with a laugh.

“No. I suppose not.” Jasnah shook herself, her poise returning.

(WoR, 1, Santhid).

This is the only time, after an entire book of content in which Jasnah, amongst other things: Soulcasts three men into oblivion, is almost assassinated repeatedly, is betrayed by the first person she’s taken in and trusted in a long time, and is researching the literal end of the world, that Shallan notes Jasnah looking nervous/uncomfortable in discussing anything.

And it’s about marriage.

Jasnah views marriage as being a ‘restriction of freedom’ and finds it distasteful because it encompasses the idea ‘of being beholden to another’.

Anything that even implicitly binds her to another or puts them in her power is something she wants nothing to do with. And, legally, if she were ever to be accused of lunacy again, the two people most likely to have the authority to make a decision on her treatment/send her back to the ardents would be either a parent, or a husband.

The first she’s distanced herself from in pretty much every way since the first event, and the second she’s refused to entertain for years, to the point that high society whispers that she must be gay.

I also think she's uncomfortable because she sees what she did here - setting up a betrothal, which she views as a restriction of freedom - for Shallan, without consulting her, as the same thing that was done to her as a child.

A restriction of freedom for Shallan’s own good. The same justification that was used to imprison her. It's obviously not the same, but Jasnah views marriage as a kind of imprisonment. So in her mind it is.

Jasnah also has huge trust issues. She just covers them with what appears to be personality traits - of being independent, and aloof - but that’s largely just a cover for her own insecurities, and her fear of ever having her freedoms restricted again.

This idea also gives a little bit more of a twist (or dramatic gut punch, thanks Brandon), to her advice to Shallan about perception and power:

“Power is an illusion of perception.”

Shallan frowned.

“Don’t mistake me,” Jasnah continued. “Some kinds of power are real—power to command armies, power to Soulcast. These come into play far less often than you would think. On an individual basis, in most interactions, this thing we call power—authority—exists only as it is perceived.

“You say I have wealth. This is true, but you have also seen that I do not often use it. You say I have authority as the sister of a king. I do. And yet, the men of this ship would treat me exactly the same way if I were a beggar who had convinced them I was the sister to a king. In that case, my authority is not a real thing. It is mere vapors—an illusion. I can create that illusion for them, as can you.” (WoR, 1, Santhid)

Jasnah is talking here with Shallan about being more confident, assertive, and being able to have people do what you want (Something Navani later notes Jasnah is very good at doing).

But I think Jasnah uses this same idea - the power of perception, as a defence mechanism against her trauma, a way to protect herself.

We dismiss her isolation as aloofness. We dismiss her lack of emotional reaction as a cornerstone of the "strong female character" trope. But I think it's deeper than that. Because Jasnah isn't ACTUALLY like that deep down. It's a perception she works very hard to achieve.

Jasnah uses logic in a similar way to how Shallan uses art and drawing, or how Kaladin uses training with the spear. It’s a distraction, a grounding technique, something she can calm herself with. It’s an anchor and a crutch all at the same time.

Jasnah is logical to a fault, to the point that it makes others see her as a monster lacking empathy. I don’t think, at any point in the last few books, we’ve seen Jasnah genuinely distressed/angry/displaying emotion to the point she’d be considered out of control.

Almost all the other POV characters have had moments of weakness/breakdowns/extremely poignant emotional displays. But not Jasnah. All we ever see from Jasnah is the controlled, cultivated perception that she wants us to see. Something which I think is rooted in her trauma.

Logic is the antithesis of lunacy. Rational thought is the direct counter to madness. If the whole world sees Jasnah as logical, utterly in control of herself, if that is the perception she has everyone believe at all times then she can’t be accused of madness again.

Madness, at least in Jasnah’s mind, is an outburst of excessive, uncontrolled emotion. It is the opposite of logic. It’s acting impulsively, without thought, based purely on emotions. Ivory supports this idea:

“Ivory, you think all humans are unstable.”

“Not you,” he said, lifting his chin. “You are like a spren. You think by facts. You change not on simple whims. You are as you are.”

She gave him a flat stare.

“Mostly,” he added. “Mostly. But it is, Jasnah. Compared to other humans, you are practically a stone!” (O, 39, Notes)

Even Ivory, who has been closer to Jasnah in recent years than anyone we know of in the series so far, characterises her this way.

She rejects this idea, telling Ivory that:

“You call me logical,” Jasnah whispered. “It’s untrue, as I let my passions rule me as much as many.” (O, 39, Notes) I think this is true, she does let her passions rule her, but she doesn’t let anyone, even Ivory, see that from her.

That's deliberate. She deliberately makes herself out to be this logic-driven robot, with no feeling or passion.

To the world, Jasnah Kholin is the consummate scholar, the eternally logical thinker, untouched by empathy or feeling. This is how she wants them to think of her.

We know that it’s not true. We know that Jasnah is driven by emotions - her guilt at feeling like she failed Gavilar, her fear for what’s coming for the world, her love for her family, her true passion for scholarship and knowledge.

This is particularly notable when set against a character who exemplifies the opposite in so many ways: Kaladin.

“Yes. The answer is obvious. We need to find the Heralds.”

Kaladin nodded in agreement.

“Then,” Jasnah added, “we need to kill them.”

“What?” Kaladin demanded. “Woman, are you insane?”

“The Stormfather laid it out,” Jasnah said, unperturbed. “The Heralds made a pact. When they died, their souls traveled to Damnation and trapped the spirits of the Voidbringers, preventing them from returning.”

“Yeah. Then the Heralds were tortured until they broke.”

“The Stormfather said their pact was weakened, but did not say it was destroyed,” Jasnah said. “I suggest that we at least see if one of them is willing to return to Damnation. Perhaps they can still prevent the spirits of the enemy from being reborn. It’s either that, or we completely exterminate the parshmen so that the enemy has no hosts.” She met Kaladin’s eyes. “In the face of such an atrocity, I would consider the sacrifice of one or more Heralds to be a small price.”

“Storms!” Kaladin said, standing up straight. “Have you no sympathy?”

“I have plenty, bridgeman. Fortunately, I temper it with logic.” (O, 39, Notes)

Ah, the old ‘punt the Heralds back to Damnation to buy us time’ argument. Lovely.

Jasnah and Kaladin are at two different ends of the sympathy-logic spectrum and it was kind of inevitable they’d clash. But I think it makes Jasnah’s assertions more...Stark and shocking, when she pitches them to Kaladin.

What she suggests IS logical. And it’s actually the same sort of logic that led the Heralds themselves to abandon Taln to Damnation in the first place: “better that one man should suffer than ten.”

It’s a cold, harsh, brutal logic, and it’s very typical of how Jasnah likes to present herself when she’s speaking to others.

The killing of the footpads in Kharbranth is another prime example - it’s all cold, dissected logic when she reasons through it with Shallan afterwards. (Though I imagine if we saw Jasnah’s POV of it in the moment, it would be very different than what she presents).

Because what I find most interesting about the Heralds argument is that we get Jasnah, just Jasnah, away from anyone who has to view her performance of perception, reflecting on the situation. And her internal thoughts/her private reactions are very different from those she displays in public.

“These words trouble you,” he said, stepping up to her again and resting his jet-black fingers on the paper. “Why? You have read many troubling things.”

[...]

Something stirred deep within her. Glimmers of memory from a dark room, screaming her voice ragged. A childhood illness nobody else seemed to remember, for all it had done to her.

It had taught her that people she loved could still hurt her.

“Have you ever wondered how it would feel to lose your sanity, Ivory?”

Ivory nodded. “I have wondered this. How could I not? Considering what the ancient fathers are.”

“You call me logical,” Jasnah whispered. “It’s untrue, as I let my passions rule me as much as many. In my times of peace, however, my mind has always been the one thing I could rely upon.”

Except once.

She shook her head, picking up the paper again. “I fear losing that, Ivory. It terrifies me. How would it have felt, to be these Heralds? To suffer your mind slowly becoming untrustworthy? Are they too far gone to know? Or are there lucid moments, where they strain and sort through memories … trying frantically to decide which are reliable and which are fabrications…”

She shivered. (O, 39, Notes).

In an ironic (fuck you Brandon) twist: I think Jasnah knows EXACTLY what she’s suggesting they do to the Heralds. She’s also probably the person in that room who has the most experience with/has contemplated most what they would be condemning them to, and who therefore empathises with them the most.

It’s STRONGLY implied in this passage that Jasnah has experienced some sort of hallucinations in the past. Possibly this is connected to some kind of neurodivergence. I think this more likely than the alternative - that she was seeing into Shadesmar, because I believe that her imprisonment was what caused her to ‘break’ and enabled her to form her spren bond in the first place. But it’s possible.

Regardless of what’s happened in the past, now, Jasnah’s mind is her sanctuary. If she only ever knows one thing it’s her own mind. She’s a rationalist. She puts her faith in things that she can know intuitively, via logic, like maths - things that exist independently of god, that cannot be doubted. Their truth is tied to their very existence. All that's required to know it is to know her own mind and reason. Losing that is quite literally the worst thing she can think of.

And honestly? Taln’s story probably really fucks with her. Because what he went through is what she went through, too, as a child.

Taln was dismissed as a madman, because no one believed what he said, even though it was true. Truth doesn’t matter; not when it comes to being perceived mad. Nor does being right. Taln was telling the truth. Taln was right. Taln was a goddamn Herald. And they still decided he was mad and locked him away in a dark room, alone, the same way they did to her.

Jasnah knows what that feels like. Jasnah empathises with Taln and the other Heralds more than probably anyone else. But she speaks of condemning these people to that fate, to the greatest hell she can think of, calmly, and rationally. But that’s absolutely not what she really feels/thinks. There is...Such a stark difference, when you really sit and think about it, in the Jasnah that she lets everyone see, and the Jasnah that exists only behind closed doors.

She could see Jasnah’s face, hand against her temple, staring at the pages spread before her. Jasnah’s eyes were haunted, her expression haggard.

This was not the Jasnah that Shallan was accustomed to seeing. The confidence had been overwhelmed by exhaustion, the poise replaced by worry. Jasnah started to write something, but stopped after just a few words. She set down the pen, closing her eyes and massaging her temples. A few dizzy-looking spren, like jets of dust rising into the air, appeared around Jasnah’s head. Exhaustionspren.

Shallan pulled back, suddenly feeling as if she’d intruded upon an intimate moment. Jasnah with her defenses down. (WoR, 6, Terrible Destruction).

The text itself characterises Jasnah’s mask as a defence. A defence against being known, a defence against being seen as anything other than perfectly logical. Having this mask so firmly and so constantly in place is a lot of work. It’s almost a compulsion for her at this point - the refusal to let anyone else in, the strict adherence to logic, regardless of her own feelings or how it makes others see her. Better to be emotionless and in control, utterly, unquestionably sane and rational, than to ever go back to being considered mad.

This, ironically, isn't rational behaviour. It's a trauma response. I'm stating this, the idea that being emotionless/always rational prevents anyone viewing her as insane again (though, again ironically, this is exactly what Kaladin accuses her of being (OUCH)). But I think these are facts in Jasnah's mind? It's her coping mechanism. It's a really bad one. But that's what it is.

As an interesting side note - I think the only time we ever see Jasnah draw emotion spren is when she’s on her own (or assumes she’s on her own, as in this passage, or too exhausted to keep them away entirely - like the single fearspren she draws later in this chapter).

This feels notable because every other character who features in the books, even minor side characters, draws emotion spren of one sort or another at some point in the text.

Jasnah, for all that she’s on screen, draws very little. This may be a function of her ability to tap into Shadesmar, to keep them away, remove any trace of emotion spren from spawning around her. That or she just has such a tight hold on her emotions that she doesn’t draw them.

Either way, I think it’s (another) sign that her behaviour isn’t entirely natural. Spren are everywhere on Roshar, you draw them when you feel a powerful emotion - that’s a natural day-to-day occurrence there.

Unless you’re Jasnah.

Maybe that’s straying a little too far into the realms of what’s reasonable, but I do still think that Jasnah’s output, especially when it contrasts, often very strongly, with her internal feelings, is a coping mechanism/a response to the trauma she endured as a child.

Madness is a fairly strong theme in Stormlight, a few of the characters discuss it/experience it. Syl asks Kaladin fairly directly what it is:

“What is madness?” she asked, sitting with one leg up against her chest, vaporous skirt flickering around her calves and vanishing into mist.

“It’s when men don’t think right,” Kaladin said, glad for the conversation to distract him.

“Men never seem to think right.”

“Madness is worse than normal,” Kaladin said with a smile. “It really just depends on the people around you. How different are you from them? The person that stands out is mad, I guess.” *(TWOK)

Dalinar’s TWOK arc deals very strongly with madness and the ability to trust your own mind. Taln is, as has been noted, locked away for being mad. Several of the Heralds and the Fused are described as mad after what they've been put through. It's something I expect to be explored further as the series progresses.

Jasnah, I think, is the character who tries so hard never to seem that way. Never to be unhinged, or unbalanced, or affected by what's happened to her. But of course we know that she is.

I think, though, that it’s easy to write off Jasnah's trauma. The other characters all have flaws that are very obvious/things that make them obviously ‘broken’ in terms of their spren bond and the oaths they need to speak.

Kaladin suffers from depression, and from crippling guilt, and taking on too much responsibility. But also with his anger, and his hatred towards those who have wronged him, and how that can push him to blame them/avoid responsibility for what’s happened to him. Basically, his inability to let go or move forwards.

Shallan has the opposite problem, and an inability to look back/face the past. She repressed memories of trauma, and wove lies over them to protect herself, which she had to overcome to progress.

Dalinar had his alcoholism, and prior to that, his ‘addiction’ (which I think is absolutely how it’s written/the parallels are pretty obvious) to The Thrill. He had to accept responsibility, and guilt, and grief, and pain. He had to acknowledge that he had been a bad person, who was not worthy of Evi, but also that he’s capable of change, and improving himself, and becoming a better man.

Their trauma responses are loud, and obvious, and messy. They're aware of them, a reader is aware of them, the other characters are aware of them. "They stand out" if you like.

Jasnah does everything she can to ensure the effects of her trauma never stand out. To the point that other characters fairly consistently characterise Jasnah as perfect/an ideal woman.

I’m NOT saying that the text ACTUALLY presents Jasnah as being perfect/without any flaws (that’s...that’s kinda the point of this entire meta) but the characters gloss over these things/her flaws are perceived as good things?

She’s seen as so aloof, so unflappable, so commanding, and in control. She’s highly intelligent, she’s beautiful, she’s a cunning tactician and politician. Shallan claims that she’s almost always right, which Renarin backs up. Dalinar trusts and respects her, and wants her back at the war camps to aid them. She’s a highly revered scholar, respected, and brilliant. She is, in a way, almost beyond human, let alone being flawed or broken like the rest of them.

Jasnah grimaced at the thought. Shallan was always surprised to see visible emotion from her. Emotion was something relatable, something human—and Shallan’s mental image of Jasnah Kholin was of someone almost divine. (WoR, 1, Santhid).

Shallan reflects that seeing her as divine is a weird way to consider a heretic, and we’re kind of led along into that thread. But it’s also very...Othering?

It’s a “positive” kind of othering: she’s divine/superhuman, that’s great! Only it’s...It’s not? It’s so easy to see Jasnah as beyond human, and that makes us forget what she’s endured, and ignore the walls she’s put up and the profound effect that it’s had on her. And the fact that this is not healthy at all.

It's so unhealthy to be put on a pedestal this way. And it's unhealthy to cultivate a persona that makes the only response to you one that sees you as beyond human/without typical human reactions and emotions?

Shallan can be a bit whimsical and can romanticise/idealise people, but even Navani, another deeply scholarly, rational, and logical thinker, categorises Jasnah in a similar way.

She’s dismissive of the idea that Jasnah can have died. Even when others (like Adolin) start getting worried about the ship’s delay, Navani is sure that Jasnah is fine.

Part of this is, I assume, due to the fact that Jasnah is a radiant and, as the Diagram predicts, they survive when they should have been killed - so Navani has had this idea reinforced with empirical evidence over the years, which is noted in the text.

However, when Shallan first brings her the news of Jasnah’s death she refuses to believe it. Even after Shallan tells Navani she watched Jasnah stabbed through the heart, Navani still refers to her as being ‘unconscious’ (which...is actually correct, in this instance) but that is besides my point: regardless of reason or logic, people presume that Jasnah is beyond such mortal, trivial, human things like death:

‘Though Jasnah had been away for some time, her loss was unexpected. I, like many, assumed her to be immortal.’

If she’s beyond death, she’s certainly beyond something like trauma, or being broken, or damaged.

“You’re still human,” Shallan said, reaching across, putting her hand on Navani’s knee. “We can’t all be emotionless chunks of rock like Jasnah.”

Navani smiled. “She sometimes had the empathy of a corpse, didn’t she?”

“Comes from being too brilliant,” Shallan said. “You grow accustomed to everyone else being something of an idiot, trying to keep up with you.”

[...]

How surreal it was to imagine Jasnah as a child being held by a mother. (Wor, 77, Trust).

More ‘othering’, less positive than the divine, but it clearly categorises Jasnah as something other than human, and in this case, it fixates on her lack of (perceived) emotion.

Jasnah has so defined herself by her lack of emotional response to things that even those closest to her -her ward and her mother - view her as emotionless, like a rock, a corpse, dead. Ivory also says this in a previous quote “you are like spren” / “you are practically a stone.” Jasnah is categorised as strong, invulnerable to emotion, beyond human, something other.

Though Jasnah, as she herself admits, makes decisions based on emotion.

For all that she says about pursuing the footpads in Kharbranth as purely an act of logic/civic duty, I think you can sense the emotion in that moment.

“Besides, men like those…” There was something in her voice, an edge Shallan had never heard before.

What was done to you? Shallan wondered with horror. And who did it? (TWOK, 36, The Lesson)

Shallan can sense it. This is the point where Jasnah’s mask is at its most strong. She defends, calmly and rationally, what she had done. But I think at this point Shallan, and the reader, gets the sense that when Jasnah is her MOST logical and composed, she’s also her most vulnerable and emotional.

She does the same thing in the scene with Kaldin discussing the fates of the Heralds - yet we actually see later, not just through Shallan, the emotions, and the turmoil, and the direct, traumatic flashbacks Jasnah is experiencing in that moment. All covered up with logic and reason.

I think what Brandon is doing with Jasnah is really clever. Because I think media has conditioned us to accept these cold, aloof characters.

Characters who have become hardened to the world, and numbed by their experiences with violence and trauma. So we accept these things more readily as personality traits/a symptom of modern media.

I think especially with female characters. The "strong female character" who isn't allowed to cry lest she be called hysterical, who can't react to trauma or she's weak, who can't have an outburst of emotion or she's mad.

With Jasnah, I think Brandon is continuing to show how trauma expresses itself differently in different people. And I think, once explored more directly, Jasnah will become a condemnation of the easy acceptance/idealisation of these kinds of traits. What she’s doing is not okay. It’s not healthy. It’s as self-destructive as what Shallan, or Kaladin, or Dalinar was doing, we've just been conditioned to accept and even praise it.

Jasnah has so much pressure piled upon her to be perfect. She’s made an illusion so believable even those closest to her can’t see through it. She comes across as divine, as something other than human, as emotionless, and absolute. She’s become a constant in the world of those around her. She’s a law of nature more than a person - like a spren.

Except she’s not.

She’s human.

And she’s broken.

And she’s suffering a trauma that makes her afraid to be even a little bit human - because then they might think her mad again, and she’ll lose everything, and she can’t handle that.

I’m FASCINATED to see Jasnah’s interactions (if we get any on-screen) with Taln and Ash. It will probably give a big insight into her character, her relation to madness/her past illness, and I think it will bring out an interesting side of her, which I’m curious to see.

But I'm also really interested to see how Brandon explores the idea of the "ideal traumatised woman' and how that's absolutely bullshit and completely unhealthy.

Jasnah is, on the surface, everything men demand from a "strong female character". She's been exposed to trauma but she doesn't "let it define her" (ie she doesn't seemingly react to it at all). She's beautiful, and she's intelligent, she's a (literal) Queen, she's a fighter/skilled warrior, she's never "overly-emotional" - she reacts to trauma exactly as she's "supposed" to - as defined by men, she's the epitome of a stereotypical "strong female character".

Except there are obvious flaws in that ideal. The first one being: she does not exist for men. Fairly obviously. She point blank refuses a husband.

Also: it's been implied, as per this meta, that this is NOT an ideal anyone should aim for. It's actually very unhealthy and self-destructive and I really, REALLY hope that when Brandon finally digs into Jasnah that this is something he explores.

Jasnah is not perfect. She is not unbreakable, and invincible, and beyond emotion. And she shouldn't be. She shouldn't be idealised.

She's a person. A human being. And she should be able to express herself and process her trauma in a healthy way that allows her to heal and grow. She shouldn't be forced into anyone's ideal of who or what she should be.

I'm just...Really really excited for Jasnah's arc and what Brandon can say through her and the harmful tropes regarding women's trauma he can explore and god...can I just have the next six stormlight books now please?

#Jasnah Kholin #brandon sanderson #the stormlight archive #the way of kings #words of radiance #oathbringer #shallan davar #kaladin stormblessed #dalinar kholin #navani kholin #wheee everyone gets mentioned #i hope this makes some kind of sense??#like it does to me but who tf knows how it comes across to y'all #i considered cutting this up into smaller chunks #but that's just not true to the taryn experience #you get an avalanche of content or radio silence for 3 months #i cannot do a balance #jasnah just fascinates me so much #and in terms of meta/character analysis she's distinctly lacking and it bugs me #i want to do a parallels meta with jasnah and kal too bc i think that would be Interesting #and i think Kal's flaws would be cool to dig into via the lens of Jasnah's perspective/contrast #but we shall see #stormlight meta #my meta #taryn writes meta #taryn writes #text post tag #long post #some day someone on roshar will get therapy and deal with their trauma in a healthy way #today is not that day

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tales-unique · 3 years

Text

MEMORIES OF THE WEST

Two days. Two long, hot days you’ve been tied to this damn tree. Your mother would be turning in her grave over how easily you’ve gotten yourself caught by the O’Driscolls, even when you knew that they were notorious for prowling the roads leading in and out of towns. Craning your head you look up through squinted eyes to look at the sky through scattered branches, calm and clear, painted a beautiful gradient of orange, red and pink as the sun begins to set. Almost three days now and you’ve had nothing to eat or drink, something that’s starting to take its toll on your body and mind. Your head pounds incessantly and your stomach growls weakly, making you twist in discomfort. The bite of the ropes around your wrists soon stops the movement though and you wince at the sharp, stinging pain left in their wake. At this point all you truly beg for is death, and maybe this time you’ll get what you ask for.

You glare at the returning party as they whoop and holler about their catch, turning their horses in circles in excitement while you stare wantonly at the deer they have. They catch you, of course, and one is quick to dismount and get right up in your face about it. “Got a problem, girl?” He’s a mean man that reeks of sweat and bad tobacco, the scent so sour you recoil as far away from him as your punished body, and the tight bindings, will allow you. “I’m starving!” You hiss, but it’s pitiful and he laughs. “Too bad. Ain't enough to go around.” “Liar! That’s a whole damn deer you got there! Please, I’m starving! I jus’ need a little!” Your hunger makes you desperate and he knows that. The grin he gives you is dirty and makes your skin crawl, twisting your body to try and get out of his reach. It’s futile, and soon dirt-smeared hands are roughly grabbing at your waist to pull you back in front of him. “Y’hear that boys?” He calls out to the others, laughing as they whistle while hitching the horses, “little thing is starving! Tell me girl, whatcha willing to do to get a meal, huh?” You turn your head away as he leans in close, fighting the urge to wretch. The feel of his hands sliding down to your backside, the heat of his breath tickling your ear and cheek, makes you want to vomit. “C’mon now,” he coos at you, “dont’cha want to eat? All I ask for is a kiss!” Despite his forceful coaxing and your limited range of movement you continue, by some miracle, to evade his crusted, cracked lips. Then, all hell breaks loose. All at once there’s the thundering of horses hooves on the dry dirt, bullets screaming through the humid air, warm splatter on your face. A hole right through your would-be rapists head, his wide eyes mirroring yours before he falls down at your feet, lifeless. You stand, rooted to the spot just as the tree firmly pressed against your back is as the others scramble to form some sort of meager defiance, but they’re no match. It doesn’t take long. Like fish in a barrel. The O’Driscolls barely had time to reach for their pistols before they, too, were gunned down. The horses, spooked, whine and stomp from where they’ve been hitched and you’re glad that they’re not hurt. One of the riders seems so too as he gets down from his own mount to inspect them. His figure is hazy from the dust but you can tell he’s tall and strong and attractive. You’re sure that he’s talking, too, but you can’t hear him. The ringing in your ears is too loud. Gunshots. Blood pumping. Adrenaline. You hazard another look down at your feet, the man's lifeless body draining out before you. His blood stains your shoes. You spit on his back. Good riddance. “Hey! Are you okay?” The voice, suddenly clear, startles you and you quickly flick wide eyes to another man approaching you. The second rider? He’s well dressed and attractive too, but you’re not about to swoon at his feet. “Get back!” You shriek, fear spiking. He stops, startled, while quickly holding his hands up in surrender. “Easy there, amiga, I won’t hurt you,” he states slowly. You don’t believe a word of it. Instead you try, in vain, to pull your hands free from the ropes so you can flee. He sees this and hurries over to you, cursing under his breath at the wounds you’re inflicting on yourself in your haste. You don’t care. You try to fight him; kick him, elbow him, even snapping your teeth at him in a bite that doesn’t quite reach. You don’t trust him. You can’t trust him. Pressure releases from around your wrists and you stumble sideways, suddenly free, the ropes cut by an intricately decorated and expensive-looking knife that somehow manages to miss your flesh. Now you’ve fallen onto the ground face to face with the dead man with a bullet hole through his head, the force of your struggling having caused your fall down. Ignoring the stinging, open burns to your wrists you quickly scramble to your feet. Hair stringy with stale sweat and fresh blood, clothes smeared and ruined, delirious with heat and adrenaline, you still try to run. Hands firmly planting themselves on your arms stop you before you’ve even started and you yell out, wanting to pull away but your body doesn’t respond properly. Short, jerky movements but nothing that actually helps. White hot panic floods your empty stomach as you realize you’re too weak and that the adrenaline isn’t enough anymore. You suck in a deep breath, eyes beginning to sting despite your best intentions. You will yourself not to cry in front of the quiet man before you, but again you fail. You whimper, trying desperately in vain to wriggle free. You babble pitifully, incoherently, with a quivering lip and glossy eyes; childish. But his dark eyes are kind, even after what he’s done, and he slowly lets you go, only to catch you when you stumble forward. “You’ve been out here too long,” he mutters, voice low and comforting, “heat, starvation, you’re weak. Come on.” He gently guides you to his horse, much to his partners annoyance. “Charles, what are you doing? We can’t take her with us!” He argues. “Can’t leave her, either,” Charles counters as he heaves you onto the saddle where you clutch at the saddle horn for dear life. The two men then lead the hitched horses, consolation prizes for the few minutes of trouble, as well as take the deer that had been caught. “Or do you want her death on your conscience, Javier?” Charles grunts as he tightens knots and secures ropes, eyeing his partner expectantly when he’s met with silence. The well dressed man, Javier, grumbles something you can’t hear and mounts his own horse, Charles following suit, coming to sit in the saddle behind you. “Didn’t think so,” he chuckles, low and smooth, and you lower your head to stare at the saddle horn gripped tight in your hands. You don’t say a word. Would it even matter if you did? It’s not like you’re in a state to challenge them, so you allow yourself to fall into unconsciousness lulled by the sway of the horse and the sounds of night insects rousing from their sleep. When you finally come to you take a look at your surroundings. Trees. Tents. Campfires. It’s larger and you feel your heartbeat quicken. You want to run but you can’t, you’re still on Charles' horse with the large man pressed in behind you, arms either side as he handles the reins. There are more people here, men and women alike, and you shrink back against Charles instinctively. “Where are we?” You ask hoarsely, throat scratchy and dry. “Home, for now at least,” Charles answers, pulling his horse over to a hitching post while Javier does the same. He barely disturbs you as he dismounts, helping ease you off the saddle and onto shaky legs. “Dutch won’t like this!” Javier grouses as he too dismounts his horse, allowing it to wander to a patch of grass to graze. Charles doesn’t answer, instead leading you towards three women sitting around a campfire. They’re having a hearty conversation when you’re put upon them, feeling awkward under their shocked gazes. They talk over each other quickly but the general consensus is who the hell are you and why are you here. “Ladies,” he lifts his hand to quiet them, the other gently squeezing your shoulder, “I hope you don’t mind taking care of our friend here? She’s had a rough couple of days.” You swallow, looking down at yourself. Bloodstained. Stinking. Traumatized. Rough doesn’t come close, you think. “Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Charles! Bring her here!” One of the women growls, ushering you to sit by the fire despite her anger. Probing hands go to touch your head, the side where your hair hangs limp with blood, but you pull away quickly. “Ain’t my blood,” you murmur and the women all share looks before the first, already stinking of whiskey, giggles with a snort. “I’d hate t’ see the other guy!” It’s an attempt to lighten the mood and you force a smile, but it doesn’t reach your eyes and they notice. “I’ll go get you something to get clean with, a wipe down will do ‘till we can get you a real bath,” another offers in a soft voice, kind and smiling warmly. You watch her put the book in her hands aside as she gets up, eyes trailing after her. “That’s Mary-Beth,” the blonde introduces, “I’m Karen and that there’s Tilly,” she motions with a half empty bottle to the young woman opposite you. “Just what happened to you, anyways?” Tilly asks, leaning in from where she sits on a log, “Yeah, you look half-dead!” Karen adds, scowling when Tilly sends a glare her way. “I...” You cough, gladly accepting a bottle from Karen and tipping it back without so much as a thank you. Manners be damned, you were so thirsty! The alcohol burns down your throat and your eyes sting with tears but by God it was a welcome flood. Karen cheers while Tilly shakes her head, rolling her eyes. As you gasp for air Mary-Beth returns with a bucket of water and a rag, setting them down by your side. She’s also taken the liberty of bringing you some food. It’s nothing fancy, a small bowl of leftover stew and a crust of bread, but you gratefully accept and begin your ravenous feast. It’s definitely a sight for them to behold, but you are starving so they can excuse your table manners. In between shoveling spoonfuls of stew you listen to the argument you’ve caused, Charles and Javier’s voices are known to you while the others are new. They aren’t happy that you were brought to their camp, but Charles argues that you were in need and he wasn’t going to leave you traumatized and starving on the roadside. You smile to yourself, thankful that at least he cares. “Dutch is always so mad these days,” Tilly whispers as she moves to sit next to you. You spare her a glance before turning to look over your shoulder. Dutch, you assume, is the leader of this band of societal misfits. He points accusingly at Charles, then over to where you sit, and back again, while others interject to add their piece. “C’mon, I’ll help with your hair,” Tilly distracts you, turning your head away from the fray with warm hands. She fishes a rag from the bucket, ringing it out while giving you a small smile. Mary-Beth is assessing your wrists, no doubt thinking up a way to ease their soreness. “It’ll be cold, so don’t squeal now!” Tilly laughs and you bite your tongue when the water drips down the side of your face when she starts dabbing at your scalp. Mary-Beth giggles behind her hand at your scrunched up face and Karen starts to sing, merry with alcohol and new company, and by the time the bickering has ceased you’re looking as clean as you can be with just a rag and a bucket of water. Done with your hair and leaving you to wipe your face and neck, Tilly starts rummaging through her chest, sizing up old dresses so that you can change into fresh clothes. Mary-Beth takes the chance to wrap up your wrists with bandages after wiping them gently with a damp, soft handkerchief, apologizing when you wince or hiss. “There! This one should fit, and the colour looks good too,” she smiles, folding the dress up, as well as some other bits and pieces for you, including a pair of shoes not stained with blood. You hastily wipe your hands dry on your ruined dress and take the offered items. They feel freshly washed and soft despite the course material, nothing like the grubby dress you wear now. “You’re too kind,” you smile nervously, half expecting this to be a fever dream and you’ll wake up any minute tied to that damn tree with crows picking at you. It’s not a dream. Tilly tells you to bed with them for the night once you come back from changing, making room on their bedrolls so you can at least sleep comfortably. You’re surprised that Dutch and the others haven’t come over yet to force you out, but she assures you that it can wait until the morning since everyone needs sleep. In truth, you’re thankful for it — that way they’ll all have clear heads when they decide what to do with you. As you settle down you spot Charles walking to his own bedroll and offer a smile when he looks your way. He smiles back and bids you goodnight with a small tip of his head, and for once since your kidnap you actually feel comfortable enough to sleep among a band of strangers.

#RDR2 #Red Dead Redemption 2 #RDR2 Imagine #RDR2 Imagines #Red Dead Redemption 2 Imagine #Red Dead Redemption 2 Imagines #Arthur Morgan #Arthur Morgan Imagine #Arthur Morgan Imagines

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trashmenofmarvel · 3 years

Text

Branded - Chapter 31

Pairing: Demon!Bucky Barnes x Reader

Summary: The memories come to an end

(This is a fan AU of Falling’s Just Another Way to Fly by araniaart . Please check out this incredible series for all of your demon Bucky needs.)

AO3

It didn’t matter that they dragged him, restrained with glyphed chains and shackles, through a glowing portal that had looked very similar to the one he’d first gone through.

It didn’t matter that their headquarters seemed to be an old manor filled with strange artifacts and old furniture.

It didn’t matter that they told him, after throwing him into a basement cell lined with glyphs, that they were a group called the Masters of the Mystic Arts.

They were HYDRA and they were going to use him like they always used him. Bucky expected Colonel Vasily Karpov to walk through the door any moment, but his only visitor was a soft-spoken bald woman. She was pale, unnaturally so, and had a very precise way of speaking. She apparently knew who he was but would only refer to him as “James.”

He hated it. Hated her sweet words given through iron bars. It was no different than how Fairbanks had treated him. Tricked Bucky with promises of hot meals, warm baths, and protection from the guards if he would just cooperate with Fairbanks’ vision.

But that’s not what the woman asked of him. Bucky didn’t know what she wanted. She would visit him, talk to him, ask him questions about his life before HYDRA. His captors had never done that before, had never encouraged him to talk about his past as a human before they managed to burn away his memories and trick him into believing he was a full-fledged demon.

It was confusing, even more so when he was moved out of the cell and into a proper room. He still had to wear the bespelled shackles that left him weak and harmless, but they didn’t beat him or taunt him or force him to feed. In fact, the woman, who called herself the Ancient One like it was an actual title, gave him a tonic that would make the hunger go away.

Bucky didn’t believe a damn word she said. He remembered the last time he’d been offered something like this from Lukin. It had been a salve that had artificially induced his next heat, and he’d been mocked cruelly before Lukin would allow his men to sate Bucky’s cursed hunger.

And now that same hunger grew so strong that eventually Bucky drank the liquid, because nothing could be worse than the agony twisting through his body. To his eternal shock, it helped. Made the searing desire in his gut vanish into a dull ache.

That was when Bucky had finally begun to believe her. This wasn’t HYDRA, and he wasn’t going to be used as a weapon again. When he’d told the Ancient One of his conclusions, she had smiled and said, “I know that must have been very difficult for you, James. I appreciate your trust.”

Bucky wouldn’t go that far, he was a long way from trusting his new captors, but when she returned the stuffed cat to him with the strange advice that he should “take care of precious things,” he was well on his way to tolerating her.

For the next few months, Bucky spent his time relearning how to be a person. He rediscovered his love of knowledge, and the Sanctum provided much of that. The books, especially. He was fascinated by the large, bound tomes that smelled like dust and forgotten time. Focusing on consuming as many books as possible was a way for him to adjust to living as a… well, as a human again.

The Ancient One had encouraged his time in the library once she trusted him with having more access to the Sanctum. The other sorcerers had wanted to keep Bucky contained in the glyph-warded cell, but she told them, “If you cage a man like an animal, expect him to act as a beast.”

Bucky was growing quite fond of her.

For the first time in a long time, Bucky wasn’t hypervigilant and waiting for the next attack, whether from HYDRA soldiers or other demons. He was healing, very slowly recovering from the decades of traumatic memories he had to sort through. It was even more confusing with the “time dilation” he’d experienced in the demon realm. Forty-eight years had passed for him when only four years had passed on Earth. It was 1995, he was in New York City, and his only acquaintances were a sect of secretive sorcerers who kept him locked up in an ancient manor.

Things could have been worse, all things considered.

Something did happen one day to dampen his spirits. It was a warm early summer day, and they were enjoying the sunshine within the Sanctum rooftop garden. The Ancient One was training him to extend his guise around his clawed feet to make them appear as if he was wearing boots. She insisted it was possible, that Bucky had already shown an affinity for magic with his ability to take away, and later they learned, share memories.

But making his demonic aspects disappear was one thing, trying to create illusionary clothing was another, and he was growing frustrated with his efforts, or lack thereof.

“Fairbanks told me my transformation was complete,” Bucky grumbled, staring at his clawed feet as if they’d done him personal wrong. “There weren’t supposed to be any more changes, but now I have to lug these things around.”

He flexed his talons to demonstrate his meaning, grimacing at the animalistic shape of them. At least with his other changes, he’d managed to guise himself enough to look human. Now, with this…

“As if I didn’t already look like a monster,” he muttered.

“Evil men lie. You know this more intimately than most.” The Ancient One seemed almost distracted, staring over the rooftop and toward the city skyline. Then she turned toward him, her smile muted in sadness. “You’re no monster, James.”

Bucky looked away, unable to look at such sincerity for too long. She really did believe what she said.

“This isn’t working.” He sat back with a huff. “I can’t do it.”

Instead of her mild chastisement for giving up so easily, the Ancient One remained silent. Bucky looked up to find her staring off to the side again, her gaze fixed on something that wasn’t there.

“What’s wrong?”

She blinked and turned back to him, giving him one of those small smiles.

“Nothing, James. Why do you ask?”

“You seem distracted.” She was never distracted. Thoughtful and meditative, sure, but never unfocused like she’d been all day.

“Mmm,” she hummed. “I thought I heard a voice.”

Bucky’s stomach dropped, mired with guilt. He’d forgotten all about his own mysterious voice. He experienced the same shade of guilt and grief whenever he remembered what had happened to Steve. Died saving the world, not long after Bucky had been imprisoned. And here Bucky was, alive and whole, and he hadn’t bothered to think about the entity, real or imagined, that had kept him from going insane in the demon realm. It had helped him remember who he was and kept at bay the devastating loneliness.

He could barely remember what the voice sounded like.

He opened his mouth to ask her to explain what she meant, but the Ancient One clapped her hands together and said, “Let us try again. You’re letting your frustration get the better of you. Focus on what you desire and shape it into the world.”

Bucky sighed and unwillingly turned back to his lessons, the weight of loneliness still lingering at the back of his mind.

***

“This isn’t working.”

You watched Bucky struggle, unable to help or communicate with him. Not like you’d done before. Trapped on the demon world, Bucky had somehow been able to hear you. Even talk to you.

You’d almost forgotten who you were in that place. It had been so easy to just be with Bucky, to sink into his mind and be so close you weren’t sure who was who. And then you’d been jostled awake when he’d had leapt through the portal. It had been agony, split in two, and you’d been torn from Bucky and forced back into your own non-corporeal state.

And that’s where you’d remained. Seeing yourself as a child lose your memories. Forced to watch Bucky feed and suffer and then be captured, but when you’d realized who had him, you’d been relieved for the first time since being trapped in Bucky’s memories.

Now that you knew the Ancient One, had witnessed firsthand how kind and gentle she was with Bucky, you were shamed by your previous jealousy. She grew on you, and after a time, you felt like you knew her just as well as Bucky did.

Perhaps that explained what happened next.

“I can’t do it.”

Bucky’s frustration was aimed at the Ancient One, but she paid him no attention. Her eyes were focused directly on the spot where you stood.

The world grew quiet and still. The wizards around you, moving to and from their tasks, were now frozen in midstride. The water bubbling up from a nearby fountain hung in the air like a glass sculpture. Bucky sat half-hunched on the stone bench, glaring at his clawed feet.

Cold fear washed through your non-spine as the Ancient One smiled.

“Ah, there you are.”

You glanced around just to be extra sure she was addressing you, but the world was still frozen. Even the air was a dead weight against your skin.

“You…” Your voice trembled, unused in so long. “You can see me?”

“Of course,” she said, addressing you by name just to make the moment more surreal. “I sensed James had a passenger. How long have you been attached to him?”

Horror, hope, terror, all of it vied for control. Your next words were a messy jumble.

“I… I don’t know. I was, we were just. He was showing me his memories, but they were the wrong ones, and I got stuck—Please, you have to help me!”

The Ancient One raised a hand, palm toward you in a soothing manner.

“It’s all right. There’s no need to be afraid. Take your time, for we have plenty of it.”

You closed your mouth and took a deep breath, allowing the tension to leech from your muscles.

“That’s better,” she said, her voice smooth and her smile kind. “We shall start with something simple. Have we met before?”

“I… no. I don’t think so.” That was something simple? “I mean, I thought you were…”

Your voice trailed off into silence. Were you supposed to tell her she was dead? Or… would be dead. How were you even able to speak to her? Wasn’t this just a memory? You couldn’t affect a memory, right?

“Ah.” She gave you a knowing look. “I see.”

Her gaze drifted down to where Bucky sat, her expression fond. She didn’t seem to be very upset with the fact she would be dead sometime in the future.

“I take it you are important to James? You must be, for him to willingly share his memories with you.”

“I… yes,” you said, following her gaze to Bucky. Even now in a strange, frozen moment, you ached to touch him again. Hell, you ached just to speak with him, for him to see you and know you again. Being a stranger to Bucky was unbearable. “He’s important to me, too.”

“I sense that is true. Perhaps more than you realize.”

After a moment of quietness, she met your eye again. Something had shifted within her, and her tone grew serious.

“To answer the question you wish to ask, this is James’ memory, but it is also your present. You are untethered from reality and trapped in a time-loop.”

“A… a what?”

“It’s very fortunate I found you at this moment, in this place,” she continued as if you hadn’t spoken. “I suspect you would have been trapped, until such a time you would have caught up to the place you had become untethered, and time would have repeated itself.”

Her eyes darkened and the smile was gone. You wanted to retreat but your feet, as they had been from the start, were unable to move.

“Journeying through time is extremely dangerous.” There was thunder in her words, quiet but frightening, and you wanted to recoil. “Who is your teacher? Surely they would not have been so negligent with your education.”

“I—“ You swallowed hard. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. A teacher? For what?”

She stared at you for a hard minute, expression never changing, and in that moment you could sense the vast, unknowable power that lingered within this seemingly frail-looking woman.

“Listen to me well, young one,” she said. “When you return to your present, seek out the Sorcerer Supreme. I will not gaze forward to see who it is, as one should not know too much of their own fate. But when you return, go to the leader of the Order, and tell them I said…”

Her gaze dropped downward, a fond smile tugging at the corner of her lips. Even though you didn’t technically had lungs, you could breathe easier now that her dark gaze was gone.

“Tell them it’s their responsibility to shape the future of our kind. No matter what tests they’ve conducted or conclusions they’ve come to, you must be taught our ways. Neglecting to do so will result in consequences like these. Or worse.”

The Ancient One clapped her hands together again, the oversized sleeves pooling at her elbow to expose her thin arms.

“Now, it’s time I send you back, yes? Oh, one last thing.”

“Oh. Uh, y-yeah?”

“When the moment comes and the obvious choice feels wrong…” She looked you directly in the eye, a piercing gaze that went right through. “…trust yourself to find a different answer. Do not doubt yourself, even while others will. Your life, and James’, both depend on it. Do you understand?”

“Uh—no,” you stuttered. “No, I don’t understand—Wait!”

Your protest went unheeded as the Ancient One moved toward you while also remaining firmly in place. A shimmering second copy of her walked across the stone, raised a palm, and shoved you hard in the chest.

Gasping and clutching your shirt, you bolted upright with a cry. You were back in your bedroom, sprawled out on your bed and panting as if you’d run a marathon.

And Bucky was staring down at you with complete and utter horror.

Next Chapter

#branded #demon!bucky barnes #demon!bucky x reader #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes fanfiction #my writing #my fanfiction

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little-wicked10 · 4 years

Text

Fragile (Unamed OFC x Negan)

Summary: It’s not everyday the devil meets a woman he wants to be gentle for.

Warnings: SMUT!!!, cursing, mentions of smut, mentions of sexual assault

Her life before the sanctuary she wants to forget. It was a time when she was more afraid of the group she was with more than the walkers. The Saviors had found her hidden away in the back of a truck, terrified, and shaking like a leaf. When Simon lent out a hand to help her out of the truck, she cowered. None of the men that had taken over the small camp could understand why she feared such a small gesture, but she did. The men in her group assaulted her. There was never a night when she was safe from their rough and invading touches. Dirty and drunk words would be slurred in her face as they roughly pawed at her body.

There were nights where she had wished they would rape her and leave her for dead; to finally get it over with and let her die. Life wasn't worth living anymore when you had been violated in both mind and body. She'd begged them once to end her suffering, but her pleas were only met with laughter and the explanation that she wasn't worth the energy it would take to take their belts off. She had lost hope after that, even after she was being rescued there was still no hope left in her body that she'd would ever feel whole again.

This fragile girl caught the attention of the leader of the Sanctuary upon arrival. Her natural beauty is what he noticed second about this young woman. She feared that caught his attention. An aura of something dark lingered around her. For him, it's easy to write it off as a fragile mind traumatized by the new world order, but how he would come to be so wrong.

When a man in a leather jacket gave her the option to marry him or work for points, she didn't know what to do. Negan wanted her to be a wife. Besides her being smoking hot, he knew she wouldn't be able to work for points with her veering away from men so easily.

"Listen, honey. I'm gonna be straight with ya. There isn't a job in this place that you could do to earn enough points to feed yourself. That makes you a target to some not-so-friendly guys that are walking around with a constant hard-on," he blatantly admitted as he sat behind a metal table. Her teeth gnawed on her bottom lip, most likely about to bleed from the nervous habit.

"Now I don't tolerate rape or mistreating women in my Sanctuary. With you, I'd rather not run the risk. Here's my offer. Marry me, and you will never have to worry about any man rubbing up on ya that you don't want to," he bargained.

She looked at him with fearful eyes, "B-but that means that you can…."

He quickly cut her off, "I don't touch a woman that doesn't wanna be touched. If you marry me, you can lounge around all the livelong day. I'd just have you around to look at somethin' pretty, but don't tell anyone else that."

"W-why are you o-offering me this?" her voice unintentionally shook.

Negan looked at the woman head to toe, carefully overseeing her entire demeanor before speaking, "Because I know you've seen shit. I don't like seein' pretty girls like yourself scrounging around for points. I keep women safe in this joint."

After that meeting, they never spoke again. She agreed, and her life began as Negan's new wife.

—

It had been months, and Negan kept his promise. She never saw him unless he was picking a wife for the night or showcasing his harem to some recruits. No one knew of the traumas she had faced except her. She had no friends and kept to herself. The other wives spoke ill of her, but she didn't care for their catty nature or false accusations. The depression and anxiety that rattled in her mind kept her isolated, but it didn't keep her from observing her so-called husband.

Any time she's around him, she watched him. How he carried himself with such self-confidence and dirty humor. His over the top personality was frightening and intriguing to her all at once. Negan came off as an asshole, but it often became overshadowed by the memory of his words he'd said to her on their first meeting.

'I keep women safe in this joint.'

As far as she'd seen, he stood true to his word. She'd heard the stories from the other wives of Negan's cruel punishment for those that been caught in the act of hurting women. Information that should've frightened her, gave her a strange feeling. A feeling that hadn't been felt in some time. Safe.

—

On a particular night walking through the halls of the sanctuary, she'd heard something strange. Ragged breaths. She knew that sound and listening to it made her want to run away and hide. She about turned away when the sound of a familiar voice growling a very familiar cuss word pierced the breathing. It was Negan's voice. Logic told her to get the hell out of there, but curiosity began to lead her feet towards the door.

She's crazy for wanting to see what's happening, who he's with, what he's doing even though it frightened her to no end to see such intimacy. The door was cracked open with dim light pouring out into the hallway. Upon peeking in, she could see clothes scattered everywhere: heels, a black dress, dark jeans, and a leather jacket; a symbol of power throughout the surrounding areas.

Her eyes fall upon a scene unlike any she's seen. A woman, who she thinks was named Sherry, kneeled and bent over a couch with Negan behind her thrusting deep and powerful. Her nerves appeared and she gnawed on her bottom lip, brain processing exactly what was happening. Never before had she seen Negan like this. He's so…powerful and dominating. It frightened her at the same time that she almost wished that was her.

The dirtiest and filthiest words poured from Negan's mouth as he yanked Sherry's hair back, his mouth pressed against her ear. The anxiety began to creep its way into her body, but she couldn't bear to look away from the spectacle that was Negan having sex with one of his wives. For how much Sherry said she despised Negan, she seemed to love this side of him. The truth became clear: saving Dwight wasn't the only reason Sherry married Negan. The wives often talked about Negan's ferocious appetites for sex. A lot of how he fucked not made love to his wives, but she didn't believe it until now.

"Fuck! Take daddy's cock, baby!" Negan growled.

Sherry responded with a moan.

Negan knew she was watching. He'd seen her figure appear in the cracked door and decided to put on a little show for the wife he hadn't touched. He planned to show her what she was missing out on. Negan let loose the dirtiest things he could think of before he finally let it be known he knew she was there. Negan made eye contact with her and continued to fuck the brains out of Sherry. It didn't register with her that they were staring into each other's eyes until ten seconds later. The ego boost he felt in the moment made a smirk adorn his face and throw a devious wink her way before going back to work.

After that wink, she quickly ran away back to her room. So many feelings and emotions filled her being at what she'd just seen. Flashes of memories mixed with images of Negan fucking Sherry swirled in her head. Confusion plagued her the rest of the night causing her to be restless. She was afraid to sleep. Afraid that what she'd seen would trigger nightmares. Afraid to stay awake for fear of still hearing Negan's moans and them turning into the men's she despised. The last thing she wanted was for Negan to be like those men. Logic told her he wasn't, but the irrationality of her anxieties told her he could be. By the time the sun had risen through her window, she'd come to a conclusion: She did want Negan. She's just afraid of what might happen if she gives in.

—

"Well, my little peepin' tom, did you enjoy the show last night?" A deep voice whispered in her ear. She nearly jumped out of her skin when she whipped around, and her husband stood before her with a mischievous smirk on his face and his hands clasped behind his back. A blush of embarrassment spread from her face down her neck.

Her stammering words trying to find an explanation were halted by his words, "Come with me. We need to have a talk, dear wife."

All the wives in the room watched with utter shock as Negan led her out of the parlor. He'd never chosen her since she'd arrived. She'd most likely be interrogated by them when she got back….if she came back. The silence was almost unbearable the entire walk to Negan's room. He kept a chirper and amusing atmosphere, but stories had warned her that, that mood could change very quickly. She didn't know how Negan felt about her invading his private time with one of his wives, especially his favorite.

Negan opened the door to his room for her before walking in after her and shutting it, silently turning the lock. "Now what do you have to say for yourself, little missy? Sneakin' around late at night and spyin' on me havin' an intimate moment with one of my wives," his voice was unusually amused. She began to shake, unable to conjure up why she'd peeked in on him with Sherry. Negan watched as she stared down at her feet and bit her lower lip. He took note of her shaking hands clasped together and the tears threatening to pour down her cheeks.

"Hey now. No cryin'," he came closer to her and placed her chin between his thumb and pointer finger so she'd look him in the eye, "I just wanna know what you were doin', baby. I ain't gonna punish ya."

Hazel eyes stared into her soul. Confused feelings made her more afraid. She calmed down knowing he wasn't going to punish her for eavesdropping, but there was still the underlying feeling that something else was about to happen.

"Because I think…you want a little freaky deeky. Am I right?" he assumed.

Her mouth opened and closed, but no words came out, just stuttering.

"I think I'm right. That lil' pussy get wet last night seeing me go buck wild on Sherry?" he was unaware of the dangerous waters he was treading with her, "You want daddy to take care of it?"

She hadn't noticed he'd backed her up against the door until her back hit the hardwood. One of his hands began to wander with much dominance and aggression that was all too familiar in a terrible way. Pure, unadulterated fear gripped her being, making her lock up against him. His smile suddenly wasn't charming, it was terrifying. Memories flashed in her head. Their voices, their disgusting breath, their touches. It was becoming too much.

"P-please…d-don't," was all she could manage to say.

Negan froze, hand disappearing from her body in an instant. The gravity of her tears had a new meaning. Before, he thought they were tears of fear that she might be in trouble, but he realized they were tears of trauma. He moved away from her body slightly, giving her room to breathe. She released a shaky breath.

"What did those men do to you, sweetheart?" He finally asked.

Silence.

"Tell me," he demanded.

This was the first time someone had asked her, or cared enough to ask, what happened. She didn't believe that he cared, but the worry on his features told her otherwise. "They touched me. Said awful things to me. Made me suffer," she whispered. There was suddenly relief in her chest. Not much of one. It was slight. As if speaking it into reality, to someone that cared, began her journey to healing. She felt like she could finally speak. Now was her chance to say everything. She didn't want to lose the momentum she felt. Negan suddenly felt like a huge piece of shit. He should have known better.

"Negan,…I know I'm not exactly…whole, but you make me feel safe. You don't want anything from me. You don't want to force yourself on me. Y-you care, in your own way, for my well-being," she admitted, "Which is why…I do want you, but you probably won't want me because I can't give you what you want."

"And what do I want, sweetheart?" he asked, a bit stunned with her confidence to admit all of this.

Her blush made him want to smile, "What you had done with Sherry. I don't want that. I'm terrified of doing stuff like that. The girls say that you don't…do slow. That you just fuck."

Negan rolled his eyes at the mention of the dumb idle talk of his wives, but there was some truth. He hadn't taken it slow with anyone in a long time. A violent world made a man want the same in bed. Negan sighed before taking a good look at her. He could tell the words were genuine. Not ones she managed to conjure up to tell him no.

"I want you to touch me, but....not like they did," she added.

He'd be damned if that little statement didn't warm his heart and tickle his balls all at once.

"Are you sure, darlin'? You know I ain't about forcing women to do what they don't wanna do," he stated very clearly.

"Yes. I'm sure. You'll just have to be patient with me," she said with a small smile, trying to lighten the mood a bit.

Negan chuckles a bit, "I'm the one you're gonna have to be patient with. I ain't use to this whole slow thing."

"You mean....you're gonna try?" her voice was small but hopeful.

"I will do my very best, doll," he reassures.

Once again, her teeth found purchase of her bottom lip as she waited for something to happen. Negan had to reassess his approach. His previous one wasn't the way to go with her. He swallowed the lump in his throat and quietly approached her again. His rough calloused hand gently stroked her cheek before traveling very slowly down her body to secure itself on her hip. The rise and fall of her chest told him she's nervous, but her reassuring nod and slightly shaking hands coming to rest on his shoulders told him that she's ok with what was happening.

Negan grasped both his hands on her hips and gently brought her against his chest. Small arms wrapped around his neck, their lips an inch apart now. His breath tickled her cheeks until finally, chapped lips met soft ones in a very cautious and gentle kiss. A spark ignited in her body upon feeling his kiss and his hard body pressed against hers. It was one that she hasn't felt for some time. She assumed it had been extinguished long ago.

One of his hands came up and pressed against her lower back to bring her body flush against his. The other threaded into her hair, not daring pull a strand until he hears some sort of approval. Negan was used to taking control and being rewarded with very satisfied women, but in this small woman's case, he was going in blind. For the first time in a while, Negan was hesitant in his actions.

"You can move a little faster. If you want," she whispered.

Negan smirked against her lips, "Don't wanna go too fast for ya, honey."

She nodded, small voice approving a slightly faster pace. The sudden courage surprised even herself. Negan took the advice and carefully picked her up, making her wrap her legs around his waist so he could walk towards the bed. His boots thumped against the wood floor until he finally stopped at the foot of the bed, gently setting her down.

The innocent and fearful look in her eyes made him want to go beat those soulless sons of bitches that hurt her. They'd hurt her to the point that a mother fucker like him made her feel safe. It didn't feel right for this to be real, but it was. Negan was brought out of his trance when he noticed she'd taken her shoes off and was starting to unzip her dress. A large hand around her wrist made her stop and become fearful that she'd done something wrong. "Let me do that," he ordered. A silent nod was his only reply before he slowly got down on his knees. She felt his callused hand take her right leg, slowly going up her calf before letting his lips follow the path he'd just made.

Goosebumps appeared on her skin as his salt and pepper scruff scratched against her skin. Negan's other hand gently pushed against her abdomen, signaling her to lay down. Following his silent instruction, she gently laid back and let him do as he wished. A terrifying thought she quickly chased away with focusing on the feeling of his lips that were now on the inside of her thigh. As he alternated to kissing her other thigh, his hands began to push the skirt of her dress up. Sudden warm breath against her covered center made her shiver, and Negan smirked with approval.

'Such a slut for us, aren't you?!?'

Muscles tensed and tears pricked in her eyes, trying to close her legs at the memory. With Negan stuck between them, it wasn't possible. "P-please don't do that," she shook as her words trembled, "T-they use to bite me. M-make me b-bleed and hurt." Negan contained his growl of anger. How could someone treat a woman like this? The gentle call of her name made her look at him.

"Darlin', I'm not gonna do that. I promise it'll feel good," he reassured. Her white-knuckling the sheets told him she didn't believe him.

"Trust me," he whispered, slowly running his hands up and down her legs. Her grip relaxing on the sheets gave him the go-ahead. Negan knew he wasn't the most patient man in the world, but he didn't expect every ounce of it to disappear once he took her panties off. The sight of her glistening and spread out for him sent a primal hunger straight to his mouth and dick.

"Good God, woman," he groaned, "I've seen a lot of good pussy in my day, but this takes the cake."

He noticed her cringe a bit, and he silently cursed himself. Bad Negan.

To rectify his mistake, Negan gave her center a kitten lick. Hot damn did she taste divine. He did it again on the outer part of her clit, and she gasped as he growled at the taste. How he would love to dive in and just make her cum over and over again. His patience was wearing thin, but he didn't want to hurt her so he took her hands in his.

"Darlin'," he took her hands in his before urging her to grab onto his slicked-back locks, "You got control. Yank me around if ya like."

She looked a bit confused but rolled with it as his tongue made full contact with her center. She cried out at the foreign yet pleasurable sensation that came from his slow and painstaking devouring of her sticky sweet pussy.

His moan vibrated against her and added to the pleasure. Her whimpers, moans, and mewls motivated him to keep going. He hadn't noticed he'd sped up to a pace that frightened her until she hissed and tugged at his hair. He pulled back a bit but went ahead with his idea of teasing her leaking entrance with a finger. The feel of her hips at first moving away from his impending intrusion made him reassure her that he would take care of her. The reassurance made her relax against him, legs opening slightly to allow him more room to work. When he finally penetrated her with his middle finger, he cussed out loud at how her walls gripped him tightly.

"Christ, baby," he groaned, taking a breather himself to keep from just standing up and fucking her brains out.

She knew she was asking a lot of him to do this for her, to quiet the beast in him and try something different. Her walls burned at first when he began to finger her, but his mouth lapped at her clit and suddenly the whole thing felt amazing. Whines and whimpers escaped her lips that were better than any pornstar Negan had ever heard. He roughly shoved a second finger in her with great ferocity. The great pain Negan felt in his scalp told him his action was not welcomed.

Unfortunately, the pain mixed with the taste of her on his tongue only made his jeans more uncomfortable than they already were and increased the desire to do what HE wanted. Her whimpers of pain were what made him slap himself mentally. "Gotta bear with me, doll. I'm really tryin'," he grunted out, hooking his fingers up suddenly and coming into contact with her g-spot. The fingers locked his in hair suddenly went flying to grasp the sheets as her back and hips arched. Negan's chuckle was heard over her panting.

He stood up, fingers still locked in her, and leaned over her, "Never had a man find that spot, baby? Tell me, how's it feel?"

A strained moan was the response he got, her mind too focused on trying to comprehend the amount of pleasure-pain she was feeling. The pad of his fingers started to slowly stroke her little spot, and her legs began to shake as she grabbed a tight hold of the lapel of his leather jacket.

When his hand began to speed up, her small fingers wrapped around his wrist, "E-easy. P-please."

Negan nodded, "Alright, alright."

He could feel her walls fluttering around his fingers, but she wasn't quite there yet. With the lick of his bottom lip, Negan pressed his thumb against her clit, and the reaction was instantaneous. Her whole body shook as she nearly screamed, both hands grabbing a tight hold of him and legs closing around his hand to keep him from leaving her depths. Stars exploded behind her eyes and tremors racked her body. Never in her wildest dreams did she think that she'd ever feel something so...amazing. What helped her come back to earth was the feeling of Negan's lips delicately kissing along her face and neck.

"C'mon back, doll," he whispered, lightly (very lightly) nibbling on her ear lobe.

Her body went slack against his and released his hand so he could gently remove his fingers from her quivering pussy. Normally, he'd let his women suck his fingers clean while he praised them with all matters of dirty and filthy words, but he opted to get another taste of her sweet honey. The taste made him groan in satisfaction.

Negan felt her warm hands trail down his chest and then under his shirt, "Wanna feel you."

There was no response. He stood up, his warmth leaving the side of her body he was laid against and began to take his clothes off. When he had pulled his shirt off, she sat up. Her post-orgasm look was one he'd file away in his brain for a later jerk off session. Hands explored his chest. She lightly touched his faded tattoos, going over all his muscles before allowing her hands to go around his waist and feel his tense back muscles. Her lips connected with his neck and her fingers delicately traced the muscles, a way of trying to calm down the beast that made his chest rise and fall rapidly. Negan took this opportunity to unzip her black dress, making her pull away from his body so he could pull it over her head and off.

"Goddamn," Negan bit into his lip as he felt his hands, and dick, twitch at the sight of her completely naked before him.

She instantly hid her body from his hungry eyes.

Negan took her hands and removed them, "Ain't nothin' to be ashamed of, baby. You got a super hot body!"

His cheeky remark made her giggle slightly.

"There's a smile. You know you don't gotta do this if you don't wanna, darlin'. I'd understand," he reassured.

She shook her head, "I want this. I want you."

Even though she was frightened, the idea of Negan claiming her in the most intimate way possible made her feel so much different than before she had walked into this room. The fear was slowly being replaced with a warmer feeling. A feeling of safety and wholeness. Being in this room, with him, in this fortress made her feel safer than she had in a long time. Negan directed her to travel farther up the bed and lay down. As she did, she watched him crawl his way from the bottom of the bed to hovering over her body, jeans completely abandoned on the floor. When she looked down at his manhood, she gulped.

He must have heard it because he chuckled, "I know what you're thinking. Yes, it'll fit. No, I haven't torn a woman in half…yet."

She giggled but still felt nervous. Negan leaned down and kissed her gently, trying to distract her from her thoughts. Her fingers wove into his thick locks as one of his hands brought her leg to meet his hip. His dick laid against her womanhood. The animalistic groan that left his chest was downright sinful. The feeling of her warm wet center against his throbbing dick was heavenly. The rut of his hips against hers made her whimper. Negan wanted to ram himself home and fuck her into oblivion. He knew he could make her cum over and over again, but that would earn him a one-way ticket to the dog house. He'd feel like shit if he treated her like some piece of ass.

This one was different. Negan didn't know why. Never in all his days did someone so fragile and delicate come to him for safety. This was the first woman in a very, very, VERY long time that made him want to change, even if it was for the night. When she gripped his dick in her hand and placed it at her entrance, Negan nearly lost his cool. He growled, but stopped his hips from ramming at full force.

“Gotta warn a guy, doll, before you go around grabbin’ dicks,” he chuckled.

She blushed and released him.

“Gonna take this slow now,” he said.

She nodded and let him take the lead once again. Negan wasn’t a religious man, but he prayed he’d still have a shred of control when he got inside her. The moment of truth...grasping his dick, he started to push in. Her whimpers were accompanied by her legs tightening around him. He knew she was tight but not this tight. Negan’s grunts and groans were directly in her ear as he pushed in more and more. The sudden clench of her inner muscles and cry of pain made him come to a staggering and breathless halt. He was definitely gonna lose control.

“Baby, you wanna be on top? I don’t wanna hurt you, and I’ll lose my grip if I keep goin’ like we are,” Negan grunted.

The idea made her nervous, “I don’t know.”

Maybe she was asking too much of him?

“I’ll help you out,” Negan started to shift, pulling out of her gently and laying on his back before putting her over his lap.

She seemed a bit awkward as she was hovered over him. His hands gently ran up her body and back down to her hips, a comforting reassurance that everything would be fine. Negan took the time to help her ease down on to him. He held his dick still as she took her time to slowly push him inside of her. Her face contorted in pain as his tip stretched her open.

She went a little bit further down onto his dick before stoping and whining in pain. “Hey. Just breathe,” Negan encouraged, he himself having trouble continuing with his tip being squeezed in a death grip, “You take what you can, baby. Hell, I’d be fine with just watching you fuck yourself on my tip if that’s all you want.” She could tell he was trying to lighten the mood and help ease her mind. She knew she needed to relax.

With the way her body was so tense, it was going to hurt even worse. Her body craved for more of his touch while feared it all at once. Negan was surprised when he watched her start to take more of him, her inner muscles a little more relaxed. He moaned as her very tight warm walls encompassed him more and more. The grip on her hips was definitely going to leave bruises.

“Breathe, beautiful,” Negan urged as she continued to let herself be stretched. The urge to rush herself for fear of upsetting Negan plagued a part of her thoughts, but she pushed past it when suddenly he bottomed out inside her. Never in her entire life had she felt so stretched and so full.

Negan’s head fell back and he tightened his grip on her hips, “Oh my….fuuuck!” She was tight. She was tighter than most of the women he’s been with. How long had it been since this woman had sex? Or, had she even had sex before? He looked back at her face and could tell she was struggling with the feeling she was feeling. “Am…am I hurting you?” She stuttered. Negan let out a breathy chuckle, “Hell nah, baby. You’re just so tight around my god damn dick.”

She let out a curt giggle, placing her hands on his abdomen and trying to find some relief to the pressure she felt. Negan reacted quickly by letting his fingers work wonders on her sensitive clit. Her hips bucked making her cry out. Her over sensitivity from her first orgasm and the overwhelming feeling of being full had her arching her back. “There ya go, baby. Negan’s gotcha. Just take your time,” he kept reassuring her.

It didn’t take long for his fingers to coax her into moving, her body seeking out the pleasure it was craving. Negan could hear her holding in moans and small whimpers as her body began to find a rhythm. This little woman was doing wonders to his body. HIs dick was trapped in the warmest, tightest, wettest hug, and his eyes couldn’t stop looking at the little minx in his lap. It was better than porn. Pressing his rough thumb more into her clit made her whimper out and arch her back once again.

“Am I makin’ ya feel good, sweetheart?” his eyes dark with lust.

She nodded.

“Nuh uh. Use your words. I gotta hear ya,” he encouraged.

“Yes, Negan, yes!” she moaned while biting her bottom lip.

Suddenly she felt an overwhelming feeling. It was so intense and unfamiliar that she stopped her movements. Negan saw her fall from the precipice of probably the best orgasm she’s had and took action. “Oh hell no,” Negan suddenly flipped her over and gently hovered over her, “Baby, I’m about to give her the best pleasure you’ve ever felt.” Her eyes were a little fearful but it was quickly drowned out when she saw the genuine look in his eyes. She trusted him.

Negan took it as the go ahead and began thrusting into her, quickly bringing her back to the edge of bliss. Just as he expected, her body began to writhe against his to get away but he held her stead fast in place. “I-it’s too much!” she cried. Negan gently shushed her as he continued his thrusts and then quickly moved his fingers down and rubbed her clit.

It was as if the earth shattered for a moment. Legs shook, nails clawed into his back, and eyes rolled into the back of her head as the most mind blowing orgasm washed over her. Negan couldn’t hold it any longer and let himself drown in the pleasure and release into her. The feel of her nails dug into the skin and muscles of his back mixed with her quivering walls was all he could take. A shiver ran through him as the last of his seed was in her and he became spent.

When he had finally caught his breath a bit, he began to check on her. Her eyes were closed and her chest was heaving. She wasn’t quite back to earth yet. “You ok, darlin’?” he asked.

“Y-yeah,” she panted.

“Glad I didn’t lose ya,” he chuckled.

She attempted to chuckle but it came out as more panting.

He took his time pulling out of her overly sensitive walls and took it upon himself to get a warm rag and a glass of water for his spent wife. Returning from the bathroom, he found her still laid in the position he left her. Setting the glass aside, he gently placed the cloth against her center, but she quickly jerked, clearly too sensitive. He continued his task at cleaning up the mess he made of her and placing her under the covers.

It was rare that Negan was at a loss for words, but he found himself unable to say anything. The moment they had just shared was absolutely something else entirely. Slipping into his own bed beside her felt strange. He felt as if he should have said something, but what should he say? On the other side of the bed, she was having the same dilemma. Her brain was a bit fuzzy at the moment, but she’d never been in this position before. She was so use to being used. Her brain was having a hard time comprehending whether what just happened was good or not.

It felt better than good. Nothing in a very long time had felt even close to that. Then why was she scared that this was bad? She had let him have his way with her, be inside her. She had lain with him intimately, an act she had once swore to herself she’d never do. That there was no one in the world she could trust enough to be that intimate with, and yet here she was. Her thoughts were interrupted by a pair of arms wrapping around her waist and pulling her close. Her body was too weak to protest or even tense against Negan as he cuddled her. She felt his fingers delicately moved her messy hair aside to lay a sweet kiss on her temple.

“I hope this is ok,” he whispered.

She smiled a little, “It’s ok. I like cuddling.”

He smiled and kissed her again.

“Negan,” she whispered.

“Hm?” He answered, sleepiness beginning to take hold of him.

“Put a hickey on me,” she suddenly said.

Negan went a bit stiff and looked at her. Did she really just ask him to do that?

“Please,” she opened her neck to him more, “So people know not to touch me.”

Her pleading voice touched his heart strings. She wanted everyone to know what they had done. She wanted them know what they couldn’t do to her, that he was the only one with the privilege to do anything like this to her. He obliged. His mouth lightly fell upon her neck, delicately kissing his before latching his mouth onto the skin. She hissed and wound her fingers into his hair as his teeth nipped at her flesh. The slight pain of his mouth mixed with his scruff was a feeling she needed to remember for if they ever did this again.

After a few moments, Negan pulled away to see a large hickey in the shape of his mouth appearing on her neck. His mark was on her physically. It wasn’t permanent, but it was sure to be there for some time. Her fingers released his hair and touched her wet skin where the bruise was forming. Once she was finished inspecting her skin, she turned and nuzzled into his chest, fingers lightly playing with his chest hair.

Trapped in an embrace, the two lovers fell asleep with a strange warm and hopeful feeling washing over them both.

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petri808 · 3 years

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1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26

*Note and question for readers at the end :)

Lucy’s eyes flashed wide as her emotions swung drastically from her own distress to the blood still dripping down Natsu’s cheek. “Shit! Shit! Shit!” She scrambled away from him, stumbling on her knees to right herself as she looked quickly around the room for any fabric. She grabbed a towel off the kitchen counter and rushed back, dropping to her knees as she pressed it to the wound. Tears renewed in her eyes. “Look at what she did, this is so bad! It’s gonna leave a scar for sure! Oh god,” her eyes flit back and forth rapidly from his face to his body, “and your side too! This is so bad!” The tears flowing down her cheeks were a mixture of emotions. Lucy lifted his shirt, flinching, fingers curling into the hem in anger as she sees the jagged wound on the side of his abdomen. If it had gone just a little deeper, he wouldn’t be sitting there with her and that really set her off! “You should’a let me beat her senseless! Look at this! She deserves to be in the same pain she put you through!”

Despite the physical pain, Natsu was trying desperately to keep his girlfriend from losing it again and seeing the wound was only riling her up further. He gently moved her shaky hands away from his side to push his shirt down again. “Lucy, it’s okay, really, d-don’t work yourself up, please? What’s important is we made it.”

“But still! This wasn’t fair!”

“Shhh, baby, it’s gonna be okay...”

“No, it’s not! Stop saying that!” Lucy snapped back. She wasn’t an idiot. She could see the pain in his grimaced features which only made her even more furious. “This will never be over. Those scars won’t go away! I’m gonna have nightmares, I know it! So, don’t you tell me it’s gonna be okay!”

Her emotions were in full throttle mode as she then flailed her bound wrists at the milling officers. “And will somebody get these damn ropes off me?!?!” One of the men cut her loose as she continued to scream and cry.

“I hate her! I hate her for what she’s done! I-I’ve never hated anyone before, but right now I just wanna... I just wanna...”

Still holding onto his side, Natsu used his left arm to pull his girl into a tight hug. He knew exactly what words were on the edge of her lips, but his current priority was calming her down and agreeing would only fuel her anger. “Lucy shhh,” he cooed in a soft tone, “it’s okay, baby it’s okay...”

“It’s not! It’s not!” Once again, Lucy slumped against him as another wave of hysterical sobbing racked her body. It wasn’t okay! She’d been kidnapped and almost killed! Her boyfriend was seriously injured all because Touka couldn’t except reality. None of this was okay! She couldn’t take much more of these roller coaster emotions. Sadness, anger, relief, they continued to alternate in her mind. Leaning back and fixing him in a narrowed and pained glare. “I thought I was gonna die— Natsu I just can’t stop thinking about that! Die, do you understand?!” Her chest heaved with every word. “I was so scared... so scared—,” her hand unconsciously moved up to cup around the front of her neck as if still feeling the sensation of the knife pressed against it. “I-I don’t even know how I kept myself from losing it... I just kept thinking, I gotta get out of here, I-I gotta figure out a way to save myself. And when she raised the knife—.” Her words cut off mid-sentence and eyes drifted to the spot they’d been standing in as if her thoughts halted in remembrance.

“Lucy,” Natsu cradled her cheek, pulling her gaze back onto him, “you are so much stronger then you give yourself credit for.”

She rolled her eyes in an exasperated sob. “If I’m so strong, then why am I crying now?!”

His eyes softened. “Because you can. You did what you had to stay alive and now you can let it all go. Baby, it’s okay to let it out. Let it all out and cry as much as you need to, cause I’ll hold you for as long as you need it.”

Lucy paused her words and simply cried for several minutes against his chest. She didn’t feel strong, and how was he staying so calm?! But oh, how she needed the reassurances. Deep down she knew he was just trying to help, knew what he was saying was the truth, but even if she’d wanted to stop thinking about these things, she couldn’t. The night played out on an endless loop in her mind’s eye. What could she have done to avoid this? Was there anything she could have said to stop Touka? She didn’t know if it was her heart or her head trying to tell her no, that nothing would have changed the woman’s plans. But once the dam had broken, her mind just wasn’t ready to fully let go. It was too angry about everything, even feared just how angry this was all making her feel. Lucy didn’t like it one bit. Ugh! What was Touka turning her into?!

“I wanted to kill her, Natsu... does that make me bad just like her?”

Those words whispered out by Lucy as she rested her head on his shoulder, stunned Natsu, but he could understand the reasoning. In such a heated moment when instincts took over, it’s either kill or be killed and he could admit to himself, if he’d had the chance, he would have done so too. But Touka had proven to be a a lot tougher then she looked. Perhaps the woman was running on the same anger that now plagued his girlfriend? It was perfectly clear how both he and Lucy were going to need therapy after this if they were to get back to a normal life, but he also needed to cling to hope, to make sure Touka didn’t succeed in ruining the rest of their lives.

He kissed her temple. “It’s normal to feel that way, but you’re not a killer,” Natsu reassured Lucy in a soft tone. “That’s just not who you really are.”

His words seemed to work for the time being as the woman quieted enough for the medical workers who’d arrived to start their job. The wound to Lucy’s neck was quickly cleaned and bandaged, but Natsu’s injuries were much more severe. The EMT’s cleaned and stapled the cheek and side wounds, but he’ll need to be taken to the hospital for scans to ensure it didn’t knick any internal organs, as well as to better suture the wounds.

A flurry of more officers had descended to start an investigation, of which Gajeel took the lead. And there was a wealth of information in the apartment to document. As they’d already learned, Touka was a former schoolmate of Natsu from high school who had reams of pictures, print outs from social media, even personal information on Natsu as well as Lucy that they would need to figure out how she’d somehow obtained. The woman hadn’t been kidding about stalking the man for years.

Once the officers had arrived, everything became a blur for Lucy who felt pulled in multiple directions all at once. She was so overwhelmed by the flood of information and experiences that her mind was shutting down, body numbed in an adrenaline stupor. Medical personnel were trying to work on Natsu and attend to her superficial neck wound, while detectives were asking them questions about the ordeal. When they’d tried to separate the couple to interview them, Lucy wasn’t having it, clinging harder to the man so they’d given up.

No, she’d knocked me out, so I don’t know how she got me here. Yes, I woke up bound on the floor. Yes, she’d kept the knife to my throat most of the time. Yes! Most of the time! How long... how the fuck should I know?! She moved it briefly to think! No, I don’t know how long I was unconscious, does it really matter?!

Any strides Natsu had made at calming her down went out the window. Lucy’s whole body was shaking in anger as she cradled her head to block them out. She was seriously about to have a mental break down right then and there. “Can everyone give me some fucking breathing room?! We told you this was fucking serious, but you didn’t believe us!”

Natsu too, had grown frustrated by the pointed and emotionless questioning. Here they’d just been through a harrowing ordeal, and these police offers were victimizing his girlfriend for a second time! He snapped at one of the detectives to stop traumatizing Lucy. “The woman was seconds away from being killed, have some fucking compassion!”

That’s when Gajeel, who’d had his hands full directing everything, finally stepped in and told the other detectives to cool it for now, growling at them to remember they were the victims. “You fuckers worry about collecting physical evidence. I’ll deal with the interviews once they’re cleared by the doctors!” He then redirected back to the couple. “Levy’s gonna meet you two at the hospital, then once the doctors are done, you’ll come to my office for an interview. It’s gonna be rough, not gon’ lie, but I’ll try to make the process as easy on you as I can.”

“Thanks, man,” Natsu expressed a sincere gratitude to Gajeel who simply nodded back and directed the EMT’s to take them to the hospital.

Lucy helped Natsu to his feet and the couple are guided downstairs to the awaiting ambulance. As they pass by the other apartments, it’s obvious the whole incident had drawn the attention of residents or neighbors, who peered through windows or tracked with eyes the couple walking by. It was creepy, irritating, calling upon what little reserves she had to not stop walking and snap. She wanted to scream, mind your business! Till she realized if they hadn’t done so in the first place, maybe someone would have caught onto Touka’s behaviors sooner. Did the woman really have no friends? If anyone had visited the apartment and saw the Natsu collage plastered all over the wall, it would have raised eyebrows in the least. Or maybe... no one cared... it’s not a stretch to think any friends Touka has are just as crazy as she is. Not even the police cared enough to take them seriously. Why? Because it’s just too strange for a woman to be so mentally unstable? Probably chalked it all up to a lovers triangle gone wrong. What if?! What if?! What if?! Lucy’s mind was starting to race again with thought, after negative thought pulsing through faster then she could process them.

Her hand started tightening on Natsu’s as they sat side by side in the ambulance causing him to look over and question her. “Lucy, you okay?” His worried tone growing with each second. Her body was shivering yet tense, head shaking no, eyes wide but glassy, and breathing growing labored in rapid bursts. The EMT sitting across from them watching the events unfold, reached out to take Lucy’s wrist. She flinched but doesn’t pull it back. After a few seconds of silence, the man let go and warned that her pulse was racing.

“Miss, you’re having a panic attack.”

Question for readers below:

There was 4 more chapters planned, but depending on how things play out I may need to add more as needed. While the major things I wanted to hit upon were planned out in advance, I never know where the characters and stories will take me lol.

A question for any readers who see this note is: How much of Lucy's recovery from this ordeal would you like to see or should I delve into? It would lengthen the amount of angst, but also add to the growing relationship and bond between Natsu and Lucy.

Thoughts? Comment in the notes :)

#nalu #nalu au #nalu fan fic #nalu fan fiction #Lucy heartfilia #Natsu dragneel #fairytail #Natsu x lucy #strangers on a train #ch 22

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gateauxes · 3 years

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the war on gender terror

At this point in my life, the presence of mostly-white liberal feminism is inescapable. While I'm excited to see more people taking baby steps to a radical analysis, largely I am frustrated. On the other hand, involuntary exposure to popular feminism is the reason why I'm noticing a trend in it. Here's my report from where I'm standing: the liberal feminists don't know it, but reactionaries are trying to scare them.

Reactionary feminist projects begin the same way as any other reactionary project - concern trolling liberals over topics at arms' length from the main goals of exclusion and domination. With regard to reactionary feminists the progression of topics are well-known: women's sports & 'human trafficking', then domestic violence shelters & kinky porn, then policing gender-segregated bathrooms, defunding trans healthcare, and opposing sex work of any kind. I've been watching a pessimistic thread emerge in liberal feminist (and radical!) circles which I believe has been pushed into place by reactionary feminists. This bio-pessimism places women into a perpetual state of victimhood that can never truly end due to the essential rapacious nature of men. If this seems like the same shit the second-wave lesbian separatists were peddling, that's because it is. What I want to question is how today's essentialist pessimism differs from its initial appearance.

RADFEMS ARE OBSESSED WITH DICK

Reactionary feminists have not dispensed with a religious-conservative perspective on the power of the penis - and by extension they imagine women identically to how the rest of the right views women. The penis, apparently, is the mechanism by which rape becomes possible. Therefore, any engagement with a person with a penis is a grave risk. Vulnerability is a mistake if you might be dealing with a rapist. The MeToo movement activated an enormous public forum about how incredibly prevalent the violence is, but I now see it used as a tool for re-framing this prevalence as a biological reality. (MeToo, even without being used as a tool, was ineffective at acknowledging that violence is perpetrated by all sorts of people). An explosion of survivors talking openly about violence as an unacceptable status quo has been infiltrated by reactionary feminists who whisper that this is the fate of all women, always. The new bio-law absorbs the third wave's progress in acknowledging diversity of experience - right up to the point where it would be forced to note that sexual nature, like categories of racially-dictated nature, is a myth.

This pessimism rooted in the power of the penis is hypervigilance beyond a realistic assessment of risk. (I also blame true crime podcasts and the media in general) This is not the careful awareness of one's surroundings which comes naturally to many of us. What I'm describing is avoiding going out at all, because of statistics on sexual violence which may not even reflect the risks in the neighbourhood. This, for instance, is purchasing and insuring a vehicle for the express purpose of avoiding public transit. I frequently notice that popular discussion of domestic violence neglects to mention the disproportion of violence toward people with disabilities, asserting that all of us have identical risk. Ultimately, this is the justification for a culture of exclusion as the only recourse to the ever-present threat of men. The fortress must be defended, and the enemy could be anywhere.

BUT HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO GET LAID?

I do not want love or children, so my interest in sex is purely recreational. I have been told this is not in line with my female nature - I stand before you deviant and happy. However, anyone attracted to men must grapple with the contradiction of desire and very real risks. I support caution, and even precaution. My concern is with a bio-law that requires a baseline of suspicion if one is to survive, the assumption that one is always a moment away from violence. To be explicit, how am I supposed to have fun when I am letting the enemy penetrate my figurative fortress?

I think this is why kink is such a problem for reactionary feminists. The only way to make the horror of sleeping with the enemy worse is to find that some people like to confront, satirize, and role play the power dynamic. To choose recreational pain or literal bondage flies in the face of the notion that a woman’s lot is to be in constant pain, and to tolerate penetration as a miserable necessity. The reactionary feminist must sleep with one eye open, aware that her biology has already sealed her fate, and mitigate vulnerability by excluding the threat, since she can’t defend herself (biologically speaking). This is why trans women can’t stay at the domestic violence shelter, this is why you should worry for your life if your boyfriend watches kinky porn. As with vanilla dating, there are true risks - and reasonable precautions. But kink is about play with vulnerability - there is no room for play under the martial law of bio-pessimism. By hijacking post-MeToo popular feminism, reactionaries can reinsert the bone-chilling suggestion that it’s all rape, all the time. All the men want kinky sex, because it’s the closest they can come to hurting women the way they secretly wish to. According to this logic, the only way to safely navigate the risk is constant surveillance of men, the self, and any woman who could be a traitor. He’d better not be watching kinky porn, you’d better not be watching kinky porn, and the women in the kinky porn are either hapless victims or remorseless collaborators. Once we have arrived at this point, it’s obvious why the next step is a crusade against any pornography, and a mission to ensure that kink is understood as something men want and women tolerate.

How can reactionary feminists get this done? By linking the prevalence of trauma with the increased visibility of alternative sexuality & gender, from kink-at-pride to polyamory to transcending assigned gender. They ask, do you feel uncomfortable when you see all this change? We’ve all been traumatized - who do these people think they are, flaunting a lifestyle that feels wrong to feminists like you? You should trust your gut, they urge. Perform a little more vigilance to be sure you’re safe. If you find yourself unable to open a dating app or sit next to a man on the bus without feeling deep dread and revulsion, that’s vigilance, and realistic given the state of things. Any - and most - men mean women harm.

REDPILLS AND RADFEMS BELIEVE THE SAME SHIT

Incels hate women, reactionary feminists love a certain kind of woman. This distinction is relevant, especially since incels pose a physical threat to women in general whereas reactionary feminists only attack trans people, black athletes, sex workers, the wrong kind of queers, kinksters, child athletes... Despite their own active hostility toward many types of women, reactionary feminists hold up incels/redpillers/the far right as evidence of the threat that all women live under. There is no doubt that women face misogynist and antifeminist violence. Reactionary feminists are are far from the only ones highlighting this. What’s worth investigating are the given reasons that a target is vulnerable, and what should be done to mitigate risk in the future. In these, an incel and a reactionary feminist are in perfect harmony. Instead of a realistic assessment of risk at an individual level, or an assessment of group dynamics that allowed a survivor-victim to fall through the cracks, both parties will insist that all women are simply unsafe at all times. This notion suits a reactionary feminist’s goal of closed-rank suspicion, and an incel’s dream of terrified submission. This perspective neglects to really ask why things turned out the way they did, because that’s not the point. Whether women are innately inferior or innately vulnerable, we must travel in flocks if we want to survive. The reactionary feminist offers herself as the shepherd, having assured the flock that the enemy is close at hand. Women cannot, of course, be a pack of wolves. Members of a wolf pack work cooperatively but diverge at will.

THE WAR ON GENDER TERROR

The cumulative effect of this mindset and focus is a miserable hypervigilance, which is further hostile to any who are not miserable and vigilant. We know this scrutiny well from living inside a war on terror, which resulted in a vast expansion of state power to exclude, surveil, and punish. Because they have not abandoned their desire to dominate, reactionary feminists would like to do the same along the lines of gender law. Exclusion requires a concrete set of criteria by which a person can be marked acceptable or unacceptable, and there is trouble when a person shifts between the two. Whether you’re an immigration agent or an officer of the gender police, you’ve got to demonize those who shift, and shifting itself. Special attention should be paid to possible ulterior motives. At the overt end, this looks like the myth of the predatory trans woman and the slavery-complicit sex worker. However, these will not be widely accepted until the audience is made nervous by less ridiculous threats with a basis in reality. Sex trafficking is real, and pickup artists really do share tips online about how to pick up, manipulate, and coerce women. However, alarmist chain-mail suggesting that ‘gang members’ are stealing women off the street via box trucks does not reflect reality, but rather supposes that the threat could be any construction worker or labourer with a truck. Given the way people of colour are disproportionately represented in blue-collar work, the implications of this racially-biased hypervigilance should be obvious. The rapid dissemination of information (true or false) online is useful when stoking fear of ulterior motives. Genuine desire to spread a message that could save another woman fuels the sharing of partially-true and emotionally charged statements. Given the existence of incel and pickup artist subcultures, it seems believable that most men could have consumed advice on how to covertly film during sex, or remove a condom without being noticed. Whether that is true or not is irrelevant - the thing to do is be cautious. No matter how they seem, anyone could be concealing their motives. It begins to make sense to suspect a male social worker, or police bathrooms. Furthermore, failure to agree to this assessment of risk is evidence of insufficient solidarity with the rest of the female sex. Solidarity is imperative, given the horrors made visible by feminists who just want to protect women. Inaction could suggest complicity, and asking for a source on a claim is indicative that one does not believe victims. An avalanche of scorn awaits those who ask questions out of turn. the terror cannot end until the defenses are fortified and the infiltrators exposed. As footage of atrocities is replayed during news coverage of foreign occupations, the danger inherent in womanhood must be grimly acknowledged when we consider stepping out into the world.

WHAT IS MY POINT?

Reactionary feminists cling to the second-wave notion of sex and gender as stable categories by which most oppression can be measured. For reactionary feminist strategies to be accepted by a popular feminism informed by intersectionality, popular feminists must at least partially believe in the inherent vulnerability of women or the base instincts of men. While this sentiment was more readily at hand during the second wave of feminism, third wave feminism resists homogenizing by sex, race, or class. While white liberal/popular feminism has an embarrassing tendency to acknowledge intersectionality only out of politeness and/or use it as a cudgel, even performative acknowledgement is a ward against overt essentialist dogma. For this reason, reactionary feminists must harness movements like MeToo, incel attacks, and further misconstrue actual misogynist violence to encourage hypervigilance against terror. The war on gender terror perverts the desire to confront diverse facets of misogyny into the pursuit of covert internal threats. The war compels commitment to defending the home front. A feeling of perpetual vulnerability is the perfect environment for the proliferation of exclusionary strategy. We must feel our goodness and our weakness to the core. Fully enjoying relationships with men, sexual diversity, and private moments of peace are collateral in pursuit of remaining ever-vigilant.

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xiovelvet · 3 years

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Wanda Vision The Dangerous True

I've never really read a superhero comic book, but Wanda Vision inspired me to watch the other Marvel movies and I liked them in terms of entertainment and storytelling. While it's true, in my opinion there are a lot of linear narratives that you don't understand, WandaVision is a series that deals with a lot of psychological and emotional themes that captured my attention.

Wanda is a young woman who went through many traumatic events throughout her life. Let's start with the loss of her parents. Not much is said about them but we are given to understand that she was living in the middle of a war and her parents did everything they could to keep her and her brother from feeling the terror of living in a dreary and hopeless home. Then she loses her brother, at the hands of someone who just manipulated them. Her brother was the only blood family she had left and she lost him in the middle of another war that was not hers. Finally she lost the love of her life, her soul mate, Vision; who was a man half machine made of wires and energy brought from space that she still does not understand, who dies at the hands of an alien.

If we bring it to our three-dimensional, earthly reality, she is a girl suffering from schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. I estimate her to be about 20 or 22 years old, in short, when she decided to create this whole world in which she and the love of her life live together happily in the suburbs with two children. However, we see that there are many difficulties for it to have a happy ending, as she still does not assume the death of the only person, humanoid, who understands and accompanies her.

Personally, I understand the sense of loss; as I have personally experienced the loss of my loved one, and it is not because he died. I relate it more to an emotional one from the person I trusted the most, including friends and my karmic flame. I became distrustful of people, I didn't even trust my own family who were the ones who protected me the most. The feeling that you can no longer trust anyone but yourself, only what you truly believe in and generate is very complicated. Let's take an example: all the people you trusted don't trust you, the love of your life also betrays you, even though you didn't give him any reason. Everything goes wrong. You just want to die because you don't find meaning in your existence. Hard, isn't it? But everything has a purpose and meaning, in the long run, like the multiverse that exists in Marvel. Let me explain.

You are a person who has gone through situations of abandonment, betrayal, according to your concept. You go to a psychiatrist and they tell you that you suffer from anxiety, depression, bipolar or bordelinde, I was diagnosed with the last one, but you know that maybe something doesn't add up in your life because it feels real. I understand you and it is because many psychiatrists are only made to medicate but not to believe beyond what they see or believe, like spirituality.

I must confess that for a long time I thought I was crazy and misunderstood but Wanda Vision, even though it is fiction, has many things that apply to reality like creating realities you believe in; like living with the love of your life in happily ever after, fixing your mistakes, changing what you said or how to act. But let's be honest, deep down, we trust our sixth sense and it makes us act on impulsivity. Deep down in our hearts we trust that what we are doing is right, if it doesn't hurt anyone else.

Wanda was broken inside, like many of us, and when we act, many people around us, even strangers, are affected by our actions and create a wrong profile or idea of us. We are only humans who want to be happy in our own way and it affects them. Every time we act we have to think about others too; but who thinks about us when we feel bad? Who wonders about how we feel? We are adrift in a selfish world, where if you act badly you are judged and if you act well no one notices. Where is the emotional responsibility?

We have all been raised just to be sharks but there are many of us who are like dolphins, who only let ourselves be guided by our feelings and emotions and instincts; and if you react emotionally they make you look weak. That's when they wake up the whale, which everyone fears but in reality is not what it seems. She just wants to survive the immense ocean, full of predators and animals.

Wanda Vision is a perfect example of a broken person that no one understands and comprehends just because she is different. She talks about female empowerment, which is harmful to men, of course if they don't listen to her, and the psychological damage created by other damaged people. They call us dangerous, cruel and imperfect, according to the preconceived idea of scientists. We are sensitive humans in search of happiness and peace, with no intention of harming anyone. We only want understanding and compassion.

I want to make it clear that this publication is personal and that many times we trust people who we believe that they will always be there but for personal reasons they will always act selfishly, which is not wrong if they do not harm anyone else.

PD1: Always love each other for who you are and don't regret anything that happened to you, because everything has a reason and an end.

PS2: Never leave without giving a reason, or at least say "I love you" for the last time, we never know when you will see each other for the last time.

#loveislove #love self #egoism #wanda maximoff #wandavision #spiritualjourney

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indiavolowetrust · 4 years

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The Obey Me Boys as RPG Bosses: Frostheart

CHAPTERS: Prologue + Beelzebub and Belphegor , Asmodeus, Satan, Leviathan, Mammon, Lucifer (YOU ARE HERE), ???, ???, Endings

You are one of many hunters in a land cursed with everlasting winter. You yourself have become rime-touched after an attack by your fellow corrupted hunter, an incident that left you traumatized and lame. Even your hunter’s guild has resigned you to a life of mere cleaning and upkeep duties, and you have spent the last seven years in the depths of your guild’s archives.

Then the White Witch spirits your little brother away into her castle, taking with her the only family you have ever known. Armed with your trusty hunting knife and bow – and aided by your senior hunter, Simeon – you set off into the rime-cursed lands to find Luke and end the White Witch’s reign once and for all.

**Very loosely based on The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen.

Word Count: 802 words

TW: Blood, Violence, Gore

[LUCIFER, THE FORGOTTEN]

You can’t help but be acutely aware of the curse. Your lame leg has hardened into a crystalline substance -- not quite living, not quite dead -- and you have found that you can see far more than you ever could with your ruined eye. Then again, perhaps that isn’t quite accurate: what had once only perceived shadows and light now sees things that you would have never been able to discern with pure human sight alone. Your ruined eye sees the hunger that afflicts the simple-minded beasts. They pass you without a second thought during their nightly hunts, their quarry bounding across the tundra. It sees the curse of the rime, present everywhere in this land of everlasting winter. It sees the remnants of life in the permafrost, the frozen roots and brambles fighting to survive.

When you stumble across another human -- a sober, raven-haired man wearing a hunter’s garb -- you see what it is that draws beasts out of the hearts of men. This one carries a particularly poisonous sense of pride.

He startles to his feet when he catches sight of you, his hand instinctively reaching for his sword. The blade is drawn before you in a matter of moments. The flames of his small campfire cast long shadows against both you and him, making his sharp features even more harsh -- but you know the truth. Aside from his immense sense of pride, there is fear in his heart. A simple sense of trepidation and dread. Yet there is also an odd sense of melancholy. This is one who has lost much to the rime.

Most notably, he is just like you: not quite living, not quite dead. His heart is that of frost, and you can see the remnants of crystalline ice on his neck. If he were to cross the barrier of the White Witch’s realm and return to the human world, you have no doubt that he would turn into another mindless rime-touched beast. The fact that his clothes are of an obviously archaic style attests further to his state. While time may move strangely pockets of the White Witch’s realm, it appears to be completely stagnant here. You can only imagine just how long this man has imprisoned himself. Decades? Centuries?

“Your kind isn’t welcome here,” the raven-haired man says after a moment, his dark gaze unwavering. It flickers with a strange crimson. “Leave.”

Your kind? You point out that he is your kind, much to his irritation. You only want to know the path to the White Witch’s castle, as it is imperative that you have an audience with her. You must have an audience with her. That’s why you came here, isn’t it?

The man only continues to examine you warily. “Where’s the rest of your party? You didn’t come here alone. Not with that leg of yours.”

You assure him that you did -- because you did come here alone, didn’t you? Who else would be reckless enough to undertake this fool’s errand with you? You scour your memories, fleeting as they are, and find nothing of the sort that would contradict your answer. You have always been alone.

You can’t help but ask him the same question. What is he doing here?

“I --” he sighs, the sound sharp and strangely poignant, “-- I led my hunting party into this land to destroy the source of the corruption. It filled their heads with promises and wishes, and they fell to its whims. All of them, except for me.”

His lament is buried deep within his pride, but it wells up just enough to catch a glimpse of what you believe to be a memory. A loud, white-haired man argues with a nobleman over a sack of coins. Another hunter seems to have fallen asleep on perhaps the tallest man you have ever seen. There are others -- a fisherman-turned-hunter, a slender, rather pretty former rose-keeper, an irate blond -- but it is the image of the young woman that captures your attention the most. You know those eyes. You’ve seen her before.

You are pulled violently into your own memory, the years having little effect on its clarity. The creature that had once been Agathe had paused for only a moment, but it was enough to discern the strange intelligence in its gaze. Something had stared back at you when you looked into its eyes. Someone.

“It won’t be long until you become one of the rime-touched beasts wandering around. You’re already halfway to becoming one of them.” The raven-haired man brandishes his blade before you once more. “Allow me to grant you a small mercy, hunter.”

Unfortunately, you can’t let him do that. You unsheathe your blade -- your blade? -- and ready yourself for battle.

Tip: Press [X] to see through your rime-touched eye and predict Lucifer’s movements.

[NEXT: ???]

#obey me #obey me!#obey me shall we date #frostheart #obey me lucifer #om lucifer #om mc #obey me mc #blood tw #violence tw #gore tw

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agentrouka-blog · 4 years

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Arya and Weasel - sending your inner child off into the woods

Weasel is an orphaned, traumatized girl of around two years of age whose story is absolutely heartbreaking. We meet her in A Clash of Kings and she accompanies us for the span of three Arya chapters, which takes place over just about a month, most of which takes place off page.

We meet her at the end of Arya III, she has her first interaction with Arya in Arya IV and then tags along with Arya, Lommy, Hot Pie and Gendry in the woods until she runs off into the unknown at the end of Arya V.

I’ll follow the story and try to give some sense of time and location to justify my time estimates, simply because GRRM chooses to be so vague.

Gods, Arya’s chapters in ACOK are among the very finest in the entire book series.

Warning: Long. As always, excessive use of quotes.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ACOK, Arya III (chapter 9)

Yoren and his gang have been traveling the Kingsroad since King’s Landing. She beat Hot Pie bloody in Arya I and they had a tense encounter with goldcloaks looking for Gendry in Arya II. Now they change course westward of the Kingsroad close to the beginning of the chapter.

“We’re not far from Gods Eye,” the black brother said one morning. “The kingsroad won’t be safe till we’re across the Trident. So we’ll come up around the lake along the western shore, they’re not like to look for us there.” At the next spot where two ruts cut cross each other, he turned the wagons west.

Here farmland gave way to forest, the villages and holdfasts were smaller and farther apart, the hills higher and the valleys deeper. Food grew harder to come by.

They spend an unspecified amount of time, likely about two weeks, traveling and living off the land. Enough for two days delay to still matter but long enough to form habits, see landscapes change, have hunting adventures.

Outside a holdfast called Briarwhite, some fieldhands surrounded them in a cornfield, demanding coin for the ears they’d taken. (…)

The next day Koss came racing back to warn Yoren of a camp ahead. (…) “Might be one side, might be t’other. If they’re hurt that bad, likely they’d take our mounts no matter who they are. Might be they’d take more than that. I believe we’ll go wide around them.” It took them miles out of their way, and cost them two days at the least, but the old man said it was cheap at the price. (…)

Arya saw men guarding the fields more and more when they turned north again. (…) At one place, she spotted a man perched up in a dead tree, with a bow in his hand and a quiver hanging from the branch beside him. (…)

A day later Dobber spied a red glow against the evening sky. “Either this road went and turned again, or that sun’s setting in the north.”

Weasel’s tragedy begins when her village is put to the torch. The blaze is enough to light up the night sky from half a day’s travel away. Judging from what we see in Arya IV, the violence was likely unspeakable.

By dawn the fire had burned itself out, but none of them slept very well that night. It was midday when they arrived at the place where the village had been.

It’s butchery and desolation. Yoren goes to investigate the destroyed holdfast.

When they finally returned, Yoren had a little girl in his arms, and Murch and Cutjack were carrying a woman in a sling made of an old torn quilt. The girl was no older than two and she cried all the time, a whimpery sound, like something was caught in her throat. Either she couldn’t talk yet or she had forgotten how. The woman’s right arm ended in a bloody stump at her elbow, and her eyes didn’t seem to see anything, even when she was looking right at it.

I knee-jerk assumed the woman to be Weasel’s mother, but that is never explicitly stated in the text. For all we know, they aren’t related at all. They are not shown to interact, and even if the woman was Weasel’s mother, she is too far gone from her severe injury to be coherent, let alone care for the child.

She talked, but she only said one thing. “Please,” she cried, over and over. “Please. Please.” Rorge thought that was funny. He laughed through the hole in his face where his nose had been, and Biter started laughing too, until Murch cursed them and told them to shut up. Yoren had them fix the woman a place in the back of a wagon. “And be quick about it,” he said. “Come dark, there’ll be wolves here, and worse.” “I’m scared,” Hot Pie murmured when he saw the one-armed woman thrashing in the wagon. “Me too,” Arya confessed. He squeezed her shoulder. “I never truly kicked no boy to death, Arry. I just sold my mommy’s pies, is all.” Arya rode as far ahead of the wagons as she dared, so she wouldn’t have to hear the little girl crying or listen to the woman whisper, “Please.” She remembered a story Old Nan had told once, about a man imprisoned in a dark castle by evil giants. He was very brave and smart and he tricked the giants and escaped . . . but no sooner was he outside the castle than the Others took him, and drank his hot red blood. Now she knew how he must have felt. The one-armed woman died at evenfall. Gendry and Cutjack dug her grave on a hillside beneath a weeping willow. When the wind blew, Arya thought she could hear the long trailing branches whispering, “Please. Please. Please.” The little hairs on the back of her neck rose, and she almost ran from the graveside.

I almost inserted a long paragraph about the textual parallels to Lyanna and Sansa here. But I refrained because this is merely meant to document Weasel.

The woman and the child (and the murdered men I didn’t include in my quotes) are Arya’s first direct confrontation with the vicious of this war. She and Hot Pie are so humbled in the face of it, they forget their original enmity, their posturing. They become children again. They admit their bone-deep fear.

The human suffering is an unbearable horror and Arya, understandably, tries to block it out and get away from it.

So this tiny little girl Weasel has just watched every person she has ever known being murdered by scary, angry strangers and then spent that night and half a day among the charred ruins and the bodies. Hungry, thirsty, scared. No one shows up to comfort her until another stranger picks her up and carries her away.

It goes on:

“No fire tonight,” Yoren told them. Supper was a handful of wild radishes Koss found, a cup of dry beans, water from a nearby brook. The water had a funny taste to it, and Lommy told them it was the taste of bodies, rotting someplace upstream. Hot Pie would have hit him if old Reysen hadn’t pulled them apart.

We’ll return to this lovely image.

Arya encounters wolves as she relieves herself in the woods at night. They do not harm her, but she is clearly shaken by everything that has happened.

The crying girl travelling alonside her and the wolves prowling the woods. Two sides of Arya.

She tells Yoren she doesn’t care. She just wants to go home. The chapter ends on:

“Go to sleep, boy. Hear me?”

She did try. Yet as she lay under her thin blanket, she could hear the wolves howling . . . and another sound, fainter, no more than a whisper on the wind, that might have been screams.

Followed by a lovely thematic transition at the beginning of Davos I.

The morning air was dark with the smoke of burning gods. They were all afire now, Maid and Mother, Warrior and Smith, the Crone with her Pearl eyes and the Father with his gilded beard; even the Stranger, carved to look more animal than human. The old dry wood and countless layers of paint and varnish blazed with a fierce hungry light. Heat rose shimmering through the chill air; behind, the gargoyles and stone dragons on the castle walls seemed blurred, as if Davos were seeing them through a veil of tears. Or as if the beasts were trembling, stirring . . .

Arya is about to enter the warzone for real.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ACOK, Arya IV (chapter 14)

We open not too far from where we left Yoren’s merry band. They have reached the river flowing straight south from the Gods Eye.

It seemed a peaceful place . . . until Koss spotted the dead man. “There, in the reeds.” He pointed, and Arya saw it. The body of a soldier, shapeless and swollen. His sodden green cloak had hung up on a rotted log, and a school of tiny silver fishes were nibbling at his face. “I told you there was bodies,” Lommy announced. “I could taste them in that water.”

He tasted them in the brook, this is a river. Usually brooks flow into rivers, not the other way around. But not too much travel time can have passed for Lommy to make that remark. A day? Two days?

We get a location.

It was midday when the others returned. Woth reported a wooden bridge half a mile downstream, but someone had burned it up. Yoren peeled a sourleaf off the bale. “Might be we could swim the horses over, maybe the donkeys, but there’s no way we’ll get those wagons across. And there’s smoke to the north and west, more fires, could be this side o’ the river’s the place we want to be.” He picked up a long stick and drew a circle in the mud, a line trailing down from it. “That’s Gods Eye, with the river flowing south. We’re here.” He poked a hole beside the line of the river, under the circle. “We can’t go round west of the lake, like I thought. East takes us back to the kingsroad.” He moved the stick up to where the line and circle met. “Near as I recall, there’s a town here. The holdfast’s stone, and there’s a lordling got his seat there too, just a towerhouse, but he’ll have a guard, might be a knight or two. We follow the river north, should be there before dark. They’ll have boats, so I mean to sell all we got and hire us one.” He drew the stick up through the circle of the lake, from bottom to top. “Gods be good, we’ll find a wind and sail across the Gods Eye to Harrentown.”

We don’t know what hour the sun sets but it’s early autumn in Westeros and I’m guessing they’re about 7 to 8 hours from the south shore of the God’s Eye, at wagon and donkey travel-speed.

We have our first mention of Weasel among a heartbreaking instance of Arya’s remaining faith in humanity.

Hot Pie was being silly; it wouldn’t be ghosts at Harrenhal, it would be knights. Arya could reveal herself to Lady Whent, and the knights would escort her home and keep her safe. That was what knights did; they kept you safe, especially women. Maybe Lady Whent would even help the crying girl.

Sadly, we don’t hear who has been taking care of the little girl since her mother died. Arya makes no mention of it.

They reach the deserted town.

The black brother left ten to guard the wagons and the whimpery little girl, and split the rest of them into four groups of five to search the town.

There are no boats, they decide to spend the night at the holdfast. Lots of descriptions of the holdfast and the town. No mention of the little girl. Seriously, who is minding this little toddler?

When the food was ready, Arya ate a chicken leg and a bit of onion. No one talked much, not even Lommy. Gendry went off by himself afterward, polishing his helm with a look on his face like he wasn’t even there. The crying girl whimpered and wept, but when Hot Pie offered her a bit of goose she gobbled it down and looked for more.

Ah, at least someone is feeding her. Thank you, Hot Pie. Weasel is hungry, she wants to live.

Hot Pie went off and let her alone and Arya curled up on her pallet. She could hear the crying girl from the far side of the haven. I wish she’d just be quiet. Why does she have to cry all the time?

Getting some sister parallels in here.

Jeyne Poole had been confined with her, but Jeyne was useless. Her face was puffy from all her crying, and she could not seem to stop sobbing about her father.

"I'm certain your father is well," Sansa told her when she had finally gotten the dress buttoned right. "I'll ask the queen to let you see him." She thought that kindness might lift Jeyne's spirits, but the other girl just looked at her with red, swollen eyes and began to cry all the harder. She was such a child. (AGOT, Sansa IV)

Don’t like others crying around you when you’re scared, Stark Sisters, do you? There’s a Robb parallel, too.

"Rickon needs you," Robb said sharply. "He's only three, he doesn't understand what's happening. He thinks everyone has deserted him, so he follows me around all day, clutching my leg and crying. I don't know what to do with him." He paused a moment, chewing on his lower lip the way he'd done when he was little. "Mother, I need you too. I'm trying but I can't … I can't do it all by myself." His voice broke with sudden emotion, and Catelyn remembered that he was only fourteen. She wanted to get up and go to him, but Bran was still holding her hand and she could not move. (AGOT, Catelyn III)

They tend to have other characters reflect their inner emotions. That crying, overwhelmed child that they are trying to ingore: themselves.

Arya, likely through warg power, wakes up to warn the others of the imminent attack. Amory Lorch’s riders are putting the town to the torch. Arya is watching from the holdfast parapets.

Something bumped against her leg, and she glanced down to discover the crying girl clutching her. “Get away!” She wrenched her leg free. “What are you doing up here? Run and hide someplace, you stupid.” She shoved the girl away.

No room for soft feelings when you have to function to survive.

Lorch is not inclined to spare Yoren on account of being with the NW. They attack and throw torches, the barn has a secret tunnel and Yoren orders them to escape. But the barn is already on fire.

As they were running toward the barn, Arya spied the crying girl sitting in the middle of the chaos, surrounded by smoke and slaughter. She grabbed her by the hand and pulled her to her feet as the others raced ahead. The girl wouldn’t walk, even when slapped. Arya dragged her with her right hand while she held Needle in the left. Ahead, the night was a sullen red. The barn’s on fire, she thought. Flames were licking up its sides from where a torch had fallen on straw, and she could hear the screaming of the animals trapped within. Hot Pie stepped out of the barn. “Arry, come on! Lommy’s gone, leave her if she won’t come!” Stubbornly, Arya dragged all the harder, pulling the crying girl along. Hot Pie scuttled back inside, abandoning them . . . but Gendry came back, the fire shining so bright on his polished helm that the horns seemed to glow orange. He ran to them, and hoisted the crying girl up over his shoulder. “Run!”

In this moment of absolute mortal danger, Arya decides to take charge of the traumatized toddler to ensure her survival, stubbornly, violently even. Just like Yoren did with her. Hot Pie would have left her. Ouch. Gendry soon takes over, luckily.

The open trap was only a few feet ahead, but the fire was spreading fast, consuming the old wood and dry straw faster than she would have believed. Arya remembered the Hound’s horrible burned face. “Tunnel’s narrow,” Gendry shouted. “How do we get her through?” “Pull her,” Arya said. “Push her.” “Good boys, kind boys,” called Jaqen H’ghar, coughing. “Get these fucking chains off!” Rorge screamed. Gendry ignored them. “You go first, then her, then me. Hurry, it’s a long way.” “When you split the firewood,” Arya remembered, “where did you leave the axe?” “Out by the haven.” He spared a glance for the chained men. “I’d save the donkeys first. There’s no time.” “You take her!” she yelled. “You get her out! You do it!” The fire beat at her back with hot red wings as she fled the burning barn.

Even having grabbed the little girl and knowing there is a path to escaping, Arya cannot simply flee. She hands over the charge of Weasel to Gendry and proceeds to save the lives of the three captives from the black cells. Because Arya doesn’t just let people die. Not unless she wants them dead herself. A force of nature.

She gets the axe from outside in the battlezone, walks back into the blazing barn, throws the axe into the wagon and dives down to safety. The chapter ends thus:

Arya rolled headfirst into the tunnel and dropped five feet. She got dirt in her mouth but she didn’t care, the taste was fine, the taste was mud and water and worms and life. Under the earth the air was cool and dark. Above was nothing but blood and roaring red and choking smoke and the screams of dying horses. She moved her belt around so Needle would not be in her way, and began to crawl. A dozen feet down the tunnel she heard the sound, like the roar of some monstrous beast, and a cloud of hot smoke and black dust came billowing up behind her, smelling of hell. Arya held her breath and kissed the mud on the floor of the tunnel and cried. For whom, she could not say.

So that went from dire to catastrophic.

I love how this chapter was structured. It starts out quiet, the unease builds in the empty town, they create a moment of respite eating dinner in the perceived safety of the holdfast, but even there they have doomed themselves by lighting the cookfire. Then it escalates, the howling of the wolves, the phony negotiations, the blaze they saw in the distance the chapter before now comes to them, and everything sinks into cacophony, until the last second of dubious escape. Arya’s helpless tears are such a well-earned release of panic and tension. There is no safety, only momentary escape, only confusion. It’s monstrous.

She cries, like Weasel cried.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ACOK, Arya V (chapter 19)

We open to Arya high up on a tree observing a village on the Western lakeshore.

Someone’s there. Arya chewed her lip. All the other places they’d come upon had been empty and desolate. Farms, villages, castles, septs, barns, it made no matter. If it could burn, the Lannisters had burned it; if it could die, they’d killed it.

They have been traveling in the woods a while since the night of the blaze. Arya remembers them returning the next night, burying Yoren and joining up with three survivors. The route is North along the Western lakeshore.

Cutjack opened the door at Gendry’s shout, and when Kurz said they’d be better pressing on north than going back, Arya had clung to the hope that she still might reach Winterfell. (…)

To the east, Gods Eye was a sheet of sunhammered blue that filled half the world. Some days, as they made their slow way up the muddy shore (Gendry wanted no part of any roads, and even Hot Pie and Lommy saw the sense in that), Arya felt as though the lake were calling her. (…)

North along the shore, past a number of deserted rural settlings.

At the end of the day she would often sit on a rock and dangle her feet in the cool water. She had finally thrown away her cracked and rotted shoes. Walking barefoot was hard at first, but the blisters had finally broken, the cuts had healed, and her soles had turned to leather. The mud was nice between her toes, and she liked to feel the earth underfoot when she walked.

This process will have taken some time. A few weeks.

From up here, she could see a small wooded island off to the northeast.

While the Isle of Faces is not truly small, there is no mention of other wooded islands on the lake. This would place Arya less than halfway up the western shore of the lake. This would match the wagon travel speed of a few weeks from the kingsroad to the holdfast on the south shore. They are slow because they avoid roads, trudge through vegetation and mud, and because they are encumbered by injury and a toddler.

The food situation is not great.

She had broken her fast on some acorn paste and a handful of bugs. Bugs weren’t so bad when you got used to them. Worms were worse, but still not as bad as the pain in your belly after days without food. Finding bugs was easy, all you had to do was kick over a rock. Arya had eaten a bug once when she was little, just to make Sansa screech, so she hadn’t been afraid to eat another. Weasel wasn’t either, but Hot Pie retched up the beetle he tried to swallow, and Lommy and Gendry wouldn’t even try. Yesterday Gendry had caught a frog and shared it with Lommy, and, a few days before, Hot Pie had found blackberries and stripped the bush bare, but mostly they had been living on water and acorns.

The kids are on their own. Kurz the poacher was kind to them and gave them some survival training. But he died four days after they set off from an infected wound. The other two adults abandoned them directly after. Echoes of Dany with Drogo and the khalasar. Up and gone when he died, leaving behind the weak and the slaves.

Maybe Tarber and Cutjack figured they would stand a better chance without a gaggle of orphan boys to herd along. They probably would too, but that didn’t stop her hating them for leaving.

This is horrific. Four children between 14 and 9 years old, plus a little toddler. Sneakily abandoned by the two remaining adults. The Hansel and Gretel vibes are strong. Like Hansel and Gretel, they will be captured looking for food. Like Gretel, Arya will free them using cooking as a weapon, eventually. But that’s for later.

Very much of Arya’s chapters echoes Dany, actually. All from opposite sides. The violence, the abandonment, the eventual enslavement, the starving. The comparison to sheep. It all shows the bottom side of Dany’s war at Drogo’s side, and her travels through the desert with the baby dragons. Even Vaes Tolorro mirrors the Gods Eye town. Food and rest, and visitors that will lead them to another large settlement, eventually. But back to the kids in the woods.

Arya rejoins the others and we see Weasel again.

At the sound of her voice, Weasel came creeping out from the bushes. Lommy had named her that. He said she looked like a weasel, which wasn’t true, but they couldn’t keep on calling her the crying girl after she finally stopped crying. Her mouth was filthy. Arya hoped she hadn’t been eating mud again.

“Did you see people?” asked Gendry. “Mostly just roofs,” Arya admitted, “but some chimneys were smoking, and I heard a horse.” The Weasel put her arms around her leg, clutching tight. Sometimes she did that now.

So Weasel is all cried out. It’s been a month or so since she lost her family after her village was set ablaze, followed soon after by another such violent, fiery attack. She went from a stationary life in a vilage with her family, meal time, bed time, cuddles and playing, to a life of being scared, confused, hungry, dirty and constantly on the move.

Like Arya, Weasel stopped crying, like Arya, Weasel doesn’t mind mud in her mouth.

“If it’s a fishing village, they’d sell us fish, I bet,” said Hot Pie. The lake teemed with fresh fish, but they had nothing to catch them with. Arya had tried to use her hands, the way she’d seen Koss do, but fish were quicker than pigeons and the water played tricks on her eyes. “I don’t know about fish.” Arya tugged at the Weasel’s matted hair, thinking it might be best to hack it off. “There’s crows down by the water. Something’s dead there.” “Fish, washed up on shore,” Hot Pie said. “If the crows eat it, I bet we could.” “We should catch some crows, we could eat them,” said Lommy. “We could make a fire and roast them like chickens.”

I love these kids. They are hungry and grumpy and irritated and listless, in their way. They have no clue what to do and injured Lommy is the most anxious of them all. His leg was wounded and infection is setting in. He is the most helpless, and it makes him the most annoying of them. Yield, he says. Yield.

Like Yoren did to her, Arya contemplates hacking off Weasel’s hair. Matted, tangled. Like a bird’s nest, perchance?

A lovely parallel highlighting the role of privilege, with another taumatized orphan cared for by a Stark daughter:

Alayne smoothed his hair. Lady Lysa had never let the servants touch it, and after she had died Robert had suffered terrible shaking fits whenever anyone came near him with a blade, so it had been allowed to grow until it tumbled over his round shoulders and halfway down his flabby white chest. He does have pretty hair. If the gods are good and he lives long enough to wed, his wife will admire his hair, surely. That much she will love about him. (TWOW, Alayne I)

Arya is trying to care for this child, for her inner child, but she does it listlessly, no practice, no plan. She doesn’t talk to Weasel, at all. Numb.

“Whoever it is, you should yield to them,” Lommy whined. “I need some potion for my leg, it hurts bad.” “If we see any leg potion, we’ll bring it,” Gendry said. “Arry, let’s go, I want to get near before the sun is down. Hot Pie, you keep Weasel here, I don’t want her following.” “Last time she kicked me.” “I’ll kick you if you don’t keep her here.” Without waiting for an answer, Gendry donned his steel helm and walked off. Arya had to scamper to keep up. Gendry was five years older and a foot taller than she was, and long of leg as well. For a while he said nothing, just plowed on through the trees with an angry look on his face, making too much noise. But finally he stopped and said, “I think Lommy’s going to die.”

Ah.

Gendry is the “adult” in the group and he’s definitely going through his own “Rickon in tugging on my leg” phase, and presenting Arya with a variant of an offer Dany gets from Xaro in Meereen later: Abandon this doomed, starving lot and take your chances elsewhere. Unlike Dany, Arya is not actually responsible for any of these children, not even little Weasel. Unlike Dany, she is not even close to tempted.

“I’m sick of carrying him, and I’m sick of all his talk about yielding too. If he could stand up, I’d knock his teeth in. Lommy’s no use to anyone. That crying girl’s no use either.” “You leave Weasel alone, she’s just scared and hungry is all.” Arya glanced back, but the girl was not following for once. Hot Pie must have grabbed her, like Gendry had told him. “She’s no use,” Gendry repeated stubbornly. “Her and Hot Pie and Lommy, they’re slowing us down, and they’re going to get us killed. You’re the only one of the bunch who’s good for anything. Even if you are a girl.”

I am cutting out the following super hilarious exchange around revealing her identity, along with the horrible description of the village with the gibbet and the “SS rounds up the villagers for questioning and deportation” imagery.

Gendry gets himself captured and hauled into the warehouse with the other prisoners. Arya will leave no one behind. Arya will defend her pack.

Lommy and Hot Pie almost shit themselves when she stepped out of the trees behind them. “Quiet,” she told them, putting an arm around Weasel when the little girl came running up.

Hot Pie stared at her with big eyes. “We thought you left us.” He had his shortsword in hand, the one Yoren had taken off the gold cloak. “I was scared you was a wolf.”

She has her arms around Weasel, trying to comfort the child, keeping in touch with the last of her innocence. It’s her final interaction with Weasel. They thought she was a wolf. She will be.

Hot Pie glanced at Lommy, at Arya, at Lommy again. “I’ll come,” he said reluctantly. “Lommy, you keep Weasel here.” He grabbed the little girl by the hand and pulled her close. “What if the wolves come?” “Yield,” Arya suggested.

Iconic, badass quote. Heartbreaking context. Their rescue mission is unsurprisingly doomed before it truly gets going. Hot Pie “yields” at the first instance and Arya receives a terrible blow to the head. They take Needle. They are made to lead guards to Lommy and Weasel.

The man with the torch searched around under the trees. “Are you the last? Baker Boy said there was a girl.” “She ran off when she heard you coming,” Lommy said. “You made a lot of noise.” And Arya thought, Run, Weasel, run as far as you can, run and hide and never come back.

Hide, inner child. Run and hide, like Nymeria. Like the wolf.

So that is the last we see of little Weasel.

Realistically, she will be dead within days. Exposure, poisoning, injury, starvation unless she has absorbed enough from the others to gather enough bugs for herself. Or eaten by wolves. Plus the fear, the feeling of abandonment. It’s a grim picture. It becomes unbearable when you try and picture any toddler you know in the place of Weasel.

I am going to headcanon hardcore that Baby Weasel is going to be found by loving people and taken away to safety, wrapped up warm and fed and gently raised. Alternatively, she is kindly raised by the giant wolf pack. And somehow not freezing to death. *hands over ears* Lalalalaalalalalaalalala!

We end the chapter with one more death, one that we will see avenged four books later:

“Can you walk?” He sounded concerned. “No,” said Lommy. “You got to carry me.” “Think so?” The man lifted his spear casually and drove the point through the boy’s soft throat. Lommy never even had time to yield again. He jerked once, and that was all. When the man pulled his spear loose, blood sprayed out in a dark fountain. “Carry him, he says,” he muttered, chuckling.

The echoes are beautifully done.

"Well," she said, "I don't know how you'll get there, then." "You'll need to carry me." See? thought Mercy. You know your line, and so do I. "Think so?" asked Arya, sweetly. Raff the Sweetling looked up sharply as the long thin blade came sliding from her sleeve. She slipped it through his throat beneath the chin, twisted, and ripped it back out sideways with a single smooth slash. A fine red rain followed, and in his eyes the light went out. "Valar morghulis," Arya whispered, but Raff was dead and did not hear.

(TWOW, Mercy)

On the one hand, it’s poetic justice. On the other, it screams out that Arya is basically a child concentration camp survivor but the war is not over. She has had no peace, only ever more hiding, no play, only ever more working, no recovery, only ever more killing. She is in exile, still. But she will return home. And she will one day recover. But she will never ever forget.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In Arya VI, she chooses a new name herself for the first time. The concentration camp vibes are strong. Just read the chapter.

“Some farmer’s whelp, are you? Well, never you mind, girl, you have a chance to win a higher place in this world if you work hard. If you won’t work hard, you’ll be beaten. And what do they call you?” Arya dared not say her true name, but Arry was no good either, it was a boy’s name and they could see she was no boy. “Weasel,” she said, naming the first girl she could think of. “Lommy called me Weasel.”

Lommy and Weasel. Injured and young. No use. Dead and gone but not forgotten.

Ramsey names his dogs for the girls he killed. Sansa and Jon each want to name her future children for the family they lost. Arya names herself for the women and girls she cared about. Weasel. Cat. Nymeria, Nan. Even little Beth Cassel. Her kill list is one part of her. But the list of names that truly matters is another. She takes up their cause not in a hope for a peaceful future with personal happiness like Jon and Sansa but in the here and now, within the broiling whirlwind of injustices. But the very first name is for the little girl, for herself, essentially.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In conclusion:

Little Weasel is, to me, a personification of Arya’s inner child, as she struggles with her loss of innocence and the abandonment by adults. Because she shows up when they encounter their first hardcore warcrime scene. Arya tries to ignore her wailing and pays little attention to her, but attaches her to her hopes for help from Lady Whent and her Knights. She doesn’t take charge of Weasel until their adult caretakers, such as they are, become unavailable by way of being horribly murdered in battle. She is not really equipped to care for her, but she tries and she is determined not to abandon her. When she has disappeared, Arya doesn’t despair, she wishes her well, she has some remnant of faith and she attaches it to Weasel. Off into the wild, to escape certain death, perchance to survive, like she sent off Nymeria.

It is no accident that Arya names herself Weasel when she enters the concentration camp hell that is Harrenhal, and it is a truly briliant stroke that her only direct memory of Weasel after that is when Arya enters service in the House of Black and White in AFFC, Arya II, which seems more empowering but draws up many comparisons in her mind to Harrenhal. The inner child has run off, but her spirit remains hovering over Arya, never quite fading.

#asoiaf #arya stark #weasel #war crimes #inner child #gendry waters #hot pie #lommy greenhands #yoren #ACOK

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chickensarentcheap · 3 years

Text

Never Gonna Be Alone -Chapter 13

Title: Confrontations

Warnings: none

Tagging: @c-a-v-a-l-r-y, @tragiclyhip, @innerpaperexpertcloud, @alievans007

“How big does my ass look in this?”

It’s the age old question: does this outfit make me look fat? Men for centuries have been making the mistake of actually answering; aware that it’s a trap but freezing up in the moment and choosing a response instead of just a vow of silence. It’s a slippery slope. Answer honestly and find yourself banished to the couch for six months to a year, tell a very obvious lie and find your sex life become barren and obsolete for the rest of your natural born life, or say the honest to goodness truth yet have it taken as bullshit and never get to sleep in the matriomonial bed again. Tyler considers himself one of the lucky few. The question isn’t posed often and when it is, she knows he speaks the truth; believing his words and accepting the compliment and having her whole day run smoothly and happily because he’d taken mere seconds to say something nice. He’s never seen her in the negative light she often paints herself in; the extra pounds and the stretch marks, the wrinkles by the corners of her eyes and the strands of gray in her hair. It all makes her who she is; hips wider because she’s given birth to HIS children, the lines by her eyes only showing when she’s smiling and adding something even extra adorable to the mix, those silvery strands in her dark dresses sparkling in the light and making her even more attractive.

Maybe she ISN'T the same person she was twelve and a half years ago. The tiny, incredibly fit and toned little thing that had shown up on his doorstep; tattooed and pierced and full of confidence and swagger for someone so small and seemingly fragile. Walking in there like she owned the place and not even batting an eyelash at the crude and rustic living conditions or the amount of booze littering countertops and almost every open space or even the countless bottles of OxyContin sitting on the kitchen table. She hadn’t even been put off by his initial less than hospitable welcome. Ignoring both his grumpy mood and his leeriness at having a stranger in his space and serving up that beautiful, bright smile; offering an impossible small, soft hand that had been engulfed by his.

If he’s totally honest with himself, it was then that he knew shit was about to change. The way she didn’t shy away from prolonged eye contact and how their hands remained clasped a little longer than normal. When Nik had left them alone to begin the ‘getting to know your fake spouse’ process, she hadn’t been easily intimidated by either his size or his gruff nature. Laughing at his off handed remarks and not seeming the least bit nervous or awkward when he offered her a drink; downing it quicker than he’d ever seen a woman do before and not refusing when he poured her another. He’d learned in those few minutes just how deceiving looks can actually be; assuming by her petite stature and that fresh faced, ‘girl next door’ look that she was way too pure and innocent to be caught up in a world like his. What in the hell would a woman like THAT being doing getting herself mixed up in the job? Someone with so much light still remaining in their eyes; happy and bubbly despite the fucked up situation they’re so willingly throwing themselves into. He’d never come across that in the past few years as a merc; someone who hadn’t been traumatized by the things they’ve seen, heard, or done. And it had been a breath of fresh air; liking the sound of that tiny little voice and the beautiful smile and the way she’d so intently watch him and cock her head to the side while listening to him talk.

She’d been different than anyone he’d ever met. Even outside of the job. A mere thirty minutes more than enough to discover that she wasn’t a push over; feisty and headstrong as opposed to meek and mild. And that’s what he’d been the most attracted to. The fact she hadn’t been turned off by him or her surroundings in the slightest; not afraid to engage him in conversation and push him -in a very smooth and effortless way- to keep up with her. Finding himself talking more to her half an hour than he’d spoken to anyone in the past few years. His instincts had been on high alert; assuring him that she was trustworthy and accepting and that her queries and curiosity were her being genuinely interested in him, not looking for things to judge him on. And when she’d left he’d actually found himself feeling happier and lighter than he had in a hell of a long time. Anxious about seeing her again.

That had been the first moment of fear; the anticipation of once more coming face to face with her and getting to know more about her. Even an hour ago, he wouldn’t have given a shit; if a strange woman had been dropped at his feet, he wouldn’t have even bothered to feign interest and would have quickly dismissed them. But there’d been something about that cute little brunette. Those dark, soulful eyes and that sweet smile and that tiny voice. The way she’d looked at him when they’d first been introduced and how her palm had felt against his. It had been years since he’d felt any stirring of feeling towards someone else; convinced he was dead inside and that he’d live the rest of his life -if he wasn’t lucky enough to catch a bullet or drink himself to death- miserable and alone in that dusty little shack. Convinced that he was too much of a mess for anyone to take a chance on; an alcoholic hired gun with a checkered and fucked up past and pain killer addiction. Who in their right mind would want to take on someone like that? And did such a person even exist? Strong enough to deal with his shit and help him through it, yet compassionate and understanding enough not to judge him and condemn him for it?

He’d actually gone into the whole ‘fake marriage’ thing with cautious optimism. Staying completely sober for the twenty four hours until he saw her again; cleaning himself up and wearing proper clothes and suddenly feeling more confident and secure than he had in a hell of a long time. But it had all happened too fast, too soon; the feelings way too much to cope with and the fear of being a disappointment and a failure leading him to push her away that night at the hotel outside of Dhaka. He’d wanted to be with her; shocked by the amount of both sexual and emotional attraction he was experiencing towards her. He’’d come so close; mere seconds away from kissing her and giving in to unbridled lust and accepting her invitation to spend the night in her room. And it had been that same fear and worry that had caused him to react so badly on the job; grabbing her by the throat in an attempt to scare her away instead of having his heart broken when she could no longer put up with his shit and walked away.

It had been a complete and utter failure, of course. She hadn’t been the less bit scared. That had been an even bigger turn on; knowing how much she could actually take and just how strong she really was. And he’d known afterwards -both arms wrapped tightly and securely around her and her resting on his chest as she napped- that there was no chance of walking away. That no matter how bad the worry and the fear got, he wouldn’t be capable of letting her go. It wasn’t love. It was way too soon for that; it’s impossible to feel something so deep and profound THAT quickly. But he’d known he was well on his way to BEING in love with her. If he was lucky enough to live that long and get that chance.

Now, twelve and a half years later, he glances up from where he’s crouched in the front foyer, attempting to get the three littlest bundled into their winter gear. It’s an adventure to say the least; the climbing into snowsuits and boots and the constant search for hats and mittens that match. And it never fails; getting them completely ready and one -or more- announcing they need to use the bathroom. It’s happened twice already; Takota and Addie deciding they need to go and can’t wait until they get to their lunch destination. Brooklyn the lone holdout; smart enough to go BEFORE preparations to leave began.

“Be honest,” Esme says, as she stands at the bottom landing; a hand on the railing as she turns both sideways and backwards, enabling him to get a look at the ‘object’ in question.

She’s not clad in her normal every day attire; baggy sweatpants and oversized t-shirt replaced by a pair of black leggings and a charcoal gray sweater dress cinched tightly at the waist by a wide, plain black belt. Just hint of make up graces her face; nothing more than eyeliner and mascara and a tint of blush. Sides of her hair pulled back, the braided section hanging over top the remaining tresses. And when he pauses a tad too long in answering, a frown replaces the almost nervous smile. “That bad?”

“Not bad at all. I was just thinking how nice you look. Not that you don’t look nice all the time. Just you look different. In a nice way.”

“You look beautiful mumma,” Takota praises, as a knit beanie is pulled down onto his head and mittens tugged on his hands. “You’re pretty always, but you’re beautiful NOW.”

“You are the sweetest little muffin ever,” Esme declares, as steps off the landing and takes his face in her hands; pressing a kiss to each chubby cheek and then his lips. “And daddy is teaching you VERY well.”

“Gotta start ‘em young,” Tyler reasons, then reaches for the handle on the front door. “Out. Before you start sweating. Or have to go to the bathroom again.”

“My feet are already sweaty,” Addie complains, as she yanks a purple and pink striped beanie down over her forehead. “I don’t like sweaty feet. I don’t like boots. Or shoes.”

“I feel your pain.” He pulls the zipper of her coat up to her chin. “Outside. Tell TJ and Millie I’ll be out in a second. No going outside the gate.”

“It’s scary outside the gate,” Brooklyn says, as she falls in line behind her siblings as they stomp out the door and onto the front porch. “Too many cars. And noise. And people. I don’t like people.”

“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” Esme remarks as playfully pulls her husband’s hat down over his eyes, then gives his shoulders a tight squeeze. “I wonder where she gets THAT from?”

He fixes the beanie; pushing it back off his forehead and then tending to the laces on his boots. “Why do you blame me for everything? The way they bitch and moan about the cold, the way they hate socks and shoes, this pout that they supposedly all have.”

“There’s nothing supposed about it. They all have the pout. Which they inherited from YOU.”

He shoots her a scowl over his shoulder. “I don’t pout.”

“Like shit you don’t. You DO pout. And I have more than one piece of photographic evidence, thank you very much.”

“I don’t care what any of those photos say. That is not a pout.” He grimaces as he stands, the tightness -and accompanying gnawing pain- in the knee and back a little more intense than usual. “It’s a frown.”

“It’s a pout. A very vicious one. One that says you might bite someone’s head off if they get too close.”

“It’s not a frown then, is it. If it’s mean. Pouts aren’t mean. Pouts are sad. I’m not sad if I’m wanting to bite someone’s head off.”

“We are going to have to agree to disagree on this,” she says, and smoothes down the front of his front of Henley style shirt before reaching for the zipper on his jacket.

A grin tugs at the corners of his mouth as she tends to him. It’s something he’s gotten used to over the years; her need to provide even the simplest level of care for the people that she loves. It’s the motherly instinct that runs strongly through her veins; unable to turn off the need to help and nurture, even when it comes to him.

“You know, I DO know how to do this stuff for myself.”

“I know,” she chirps, and then stands on her tiptoes to pull his beanie down further. “But I like doing it. I like taking care of you. You think you’d be used to it by now. I’ve only been annoying the shit out of you with it for the past twelve and half years. Your back’s sore?”

“And my knee.”

“Maybe when we get home you should call and get them looked at it. Better to be safe than sorry. They’ve been acting up pretty bad lately.”

“Just the cold weather. Nothing serious. You need to stop worrying so much.”

She stares pointedly up at him.

“I know. You can’t help it. But can you tone it down just a bit? I’m fine. It’s the weather. It makes the arthritis act up. Just like the surgeon said it would.”

“You realize we don’t have to come here for Christmas, right? We could save this place for getting away during warmer weather. We do NOT have to come during the winter.”

“The kids like coming here; the whole white Christmas thing. And so do you. I can deal with it. I’ve dealt with worse.”

“But you shouldn’t have to just ‘deal with it’. Your comfort is important to me, too. The kids and I would cope. With Christmas in Australia. It’s no big deal. If it’s that painful…”

“It’s not. It just acts up from time to time. More uncomfortable than actual pain. You’d know if I was in pain, trust me.”

“And you’re taking meds? You’re not trying to go without?:

“I am taking them the exact way they’re supposed to be taken. Take it down a notch, okay? I know you worry. I know you want to take care of me. And believe, I love you very much for that. But you also drive me a little fucking insane.”

“I happen to love you, you enormously stubborn pain in my ass. And if you’re that uncomfortable and it’s only getting worse…”

“Stop,” he gently orders, taking her face in both of hands and pressing a kiss to her lips. “And by the way, speaking of your ass…” Placing his hands on his shoulders, he runs them slowly down her arms. Fingertips drifting over the curves of her wrist and over the top of her hand; palms briefly settling on her hands before travelling to her butt. “...it looks fucking amazing in that outfit. And I think you should wear it more.”

She grins. “What happened to wanting me to wear yoga pants all the time?”

“Oh, those are still my favourite. But I’m okay if you wear this too.”

“Just for you, I’ll add it to my steady rotation of clothes. I’d hate to deprive you of any quality ass watching time.”

“You spoil me.” As he leans down to kiss her, she perches herself on her tiptoes and wraps both arms around his neck. Eagerly responding at first, then giggling when he brings his palms against the cheeks of her ass in sound, stinging smacks before aggressively pinching. “You do look beautiful, by the way. I mean, you always do, but…”

“Extra beautiful?”

“Very,” he confirms, and kisses her once more; longer and deeper, hands slipping from her ass in order to softly glide up and down her back. “Think I should lock the door? So we can have a quickie right here?”

“As tempted as I am, that’s definitely NOT a good idea. You’re going to have to be patient and wait for later. When everyone’s in bed."

“No sneaking into the pantry or the guest bathroom? These are some pretty shitty wifing skills on your part.”

“Just the most horrible wife ever. In the history of marriage. You poor, poor man. I am sorry you have go one day with getting one blow job instead of two.”

“That’s ground for divorce,” he teases.

“I’ve been way too good to you over the course of the last five years. You’ve come to expect these things. You don’t see me expecting to be woken up the same way every morning.”

“Bullshit. I’ve been waking you up the same way every day for nearly six years. You can’t tell me you don’t expect it. That you wouldn’t miss it if it suddenly stopped.”

“I would be extremely disappointed, actually. But seeing as you like doing it just as much as I like being on the receiving end, I know it won’t stop any time soon. I WILL make it up to you. You have my word. And I’m good on my word.”

“I have to admit, you haven’t disappointed me yet. Promise me that you’ll spoil yourself today? That you won’t buy me or the kids all kinds of shit we won’t need? I know what you’re like. I know you always plan on buying things for yourself and never do. Don’t piss me off. Don’t make me put you through a dry spell.”

“I promise that I will only spoil myself. Although I don’t see why I should bother. You do a good enough job. You’re the king of needless spoiling.”

“I spoil you because you deserve it. And because it makes me happy. That I can’t buy you shit just for the sake of buying it. Humour me, okay? Let me make up for all the times we barely had money for food and I had no idea how I was going to pay rent from month to the next.”

“Which was none of your fault,” she reminds him. “You almost died. You were in inpatient for two months. And even after you got home, you weren’t exactly well enough to work. Stop blaming yourself. It was way beyond your control. And we did fine. We managed. We didn’t have much but we were happy. All that mattered to me was that you were alive and we were together. And that our baby girl was healthy. Nothing else mattered.”

“I just like being able to give you things. Not because you need them or even necessarily want them. Just because. So shut up and let me do it, yeah? Let me spoil my wife.”

“I have a feeling this is an argument I will never win.”

“You know what? I will gladly die on this hill.”

“Speaking of hills to die on, you’ve picked a pretty big one. Taking all seven plus Alannah out at once? That takes some balls, babe. That’s some serious superhero shit. And you say you’re not brave?”

“Out of curiosity, which kids are your favorites? Because I can’t promise all seven of them will make it back. And seeing as there’s no sharks to offer sacrifices to, looks like I’m feeding them to the subway trolls.”

“You’ll be just fine. You’ve done this before; taking all the kids out at once. And you lived to tell about it. You have some serious cajones, honey. No one can ever convince me otherwise.”

“You think way too highly of me. I better go. Before someone DOES have to go to the bathroom. And if I have go through that one more time…”

“You are a brave, brave man, Tyler Rake. I don’t want to ever hear you say any different. I’d say have a good time, but we’re talking about seven kids plus an extra, so…”

“Just keep your fingers crossed my sanity stays intact. Or what’s left of it anyway.” Laying a hand on the back of her head, he pulls her into one final kiss; her tiny frame once more perched on her tiptoes as she leans into him. It’s become their ‘thing’; never leave the home without a hug and a kiss and telling the other how you feel about them. Life is just too short and unpredictable; the incident five years ago reminding them just how quickly everything can change and be snatched away from you. And he pulls her close; a forearm along the small of her back and his lips against her temple. “I love you.”

Giving his neck a final squeeze, she runs her fingernails along the nape and then brushes her lips against his cheek. “I love you. Be good. No feeding any of the children to the subway trolls. I happen to quite like all of them.”

“I’m not making any promises. Remember what I said; about spoiling yourself. And about something sexy.”

“I still think I should get a hint. About your plans for after Ovi’s wedding.”

“I told you. It’s a surprise.” He reaches for the handle on the door. “I’ll see you when I see you.”

“Yeah…” she smiles, shooting him a wink as he steps out onto the snow covered porch. “...you will.”

*****

Even a simple two block walk is an adventure with eight kids in tow. The oldest leading the pack while the stragglers and the littlest ones follow; tiny legs finding it easier to navigate unshoveled sidewalks when they have much larger footprints to step into. For the most part they are an amicable and well behaved group. Millie and Alannah with their locked arms and their high pitched giggles and seemingly endless chattering, TJ with a protective slung across Tanner’s shoulders and always ready and willing to help him to either climb over snow covered curbs or carrying him entirely. Declan and Brooklyn are the ‘wild ones’; sandwiched in the middle of the group to avoid them running too far ahead and kept in line by a stern Millie threatening to clothesline them if they dare jump into the puddles of slush. Takota and Addie are the slow pokes; tiny bodies weighed down by heavy boots and layers of clothes, always stopping every few feet to make footprints in the higher banks or to ball up snow and toss it at each other. And while the frequent stops and the repetitive -yet calm and patient- requests to just ‘get a move on’ would likely be annoying to most parents, Tyler relishes in every second he gets to spend with his kids; knowing how quick everything can be snatched away and your life altered forever. Nothing makes him smile like the sight of those little faces turned up towards the sky; eyes closed and their noses scrunched up as they try to catch snowflakes on their tongues. And there’s no sound more beautiful than those shrieks and giggles; unleashed when he picks both of them up and tosses them into snowbanks. In the end the journey and the deeper areas of snow defeats tiny legs and he resorts to carrying them; one in each arm as they tightly cling to his neck.

They’re shown to a booth at the back of the restaurant; upholstered in red leather and large enough to fit parties of their size. It’s chaos getting everyone undressed; arms flailing as jackets are yanked off and the straps of snow pants pushed down, littles complaining about their feet being sweaty and not thinking twice of kicking their boots off, hats and mitts having to be fetched when they slip out of sleeves and hoods and have to be fetched from under the table. They’ve eaten in the establishment enough to be seen as regulars. The havoc and noise going on unacknowledged by staff and fellow diners; the occasional sympathetic or amused smile being tossed in their direction, a handful of compliments revolving aroundt how cute the kids are and their ‘charming’ accents, praises on how well he’s handling such a large ‘brood’ and how brave he is for taking them all out at once. Even a comment about how not seeing many ‘male’ nannies even in this day and age.

“He’s not our nanny.” Brooklyn is quick to speak up. Never backing down from what she considers something ridiculous or rude. “It’s our dad. We’re all related. Except for her…” she jerks her head in Alannah’s direction. “..but she might as well be. We love her like she’s one of us. And she likes our house better. It’s more fun. Her parents are assholes.”

“Language,” Tyler admonishes, and lays a hand on the back of her head and gently pushes her in the direction of the booth. “And you don’t have to tell everyone our business.”

“It’s totally obvious you’re not our nanny. We all look alike. Well, maybe not Declan. He’s the odd duck.”

“Hey!” Declan objects from his place between Millie and TJ. “I look like grandma Adeline. Which was dad’s mom. So that means I look like dad. Just a red headed version. I still look like him though.”

“You don’t even have blue eyes,” Brooklyn argues, as she slides onto the bench and wriggles her way across. “You don’t look like daddy at all. Well, maybe his nose. And his ears.”

“I don’t have blue eyes either,” Addie pipes up, as she’s helped out of her coat and shoves her hat and mittens into the sleeves. “Yet daddy is my daddy. I don’t look like him at all.”

“That’s ‘cause you’re adopted,” Declan says.

“I am not! I look like mommy! Daddy says so. That I look just like her. That if mommy got put into a shrinking machine, you’d get me. That’s what you said, right daddy? That I look like a tiny version of mommy.”

“You look just like her,” he confirms, and slides the straps of her snow pants down her arms. “A little version. Her mini me.”

“Like TJ is yours, right? Only TJ isn’t so little. He’s tall and big. I’m short and wee. Why am I short and wee? Why can’t I be tall like you guys?”

“All the good genes ran out,” Millie explains. “By the time mom and dad got to you, there was nothing good left. You got the spare stuff.”

“You’re full of shit,” Addie counters, then smiles sheepishly up at her father. “Sorry. Language. I know, I know. But sometimes it just slips out. You’re a bad influence.”

Grinning, he removes the elastic from her lopsided ponytail and uses his fingers to comb through the messy dark tresses. “You’re going to throw me under the bus, are you?”

“You swear all the time. Especially in the car. When people don’t use their blinkers or they drive too slow in the fast lane.”

“Or if people come too close to us when we’re in the crosswalk,” TJ adds. “Remember last year? When we were going to see mom at the store? When someone was going to run the light when we were crossing? Dad put his foot right through their front grill.”

“And said a whole lot of bad words,” Declan adds. “For everyone to hear.”

“For the record…” he gathers Addie’s hair in both hands and resets the ponytail. “...it could have been worse. I could have put my foot through his face.”

“I would have paid to have seen that,” TJ declares. “I’m almost eleven and I still haven’t seen you mess anyone up. I feel robbed.”

“I’d like to see him hand someone their ass,” Millie says. “I’ve just heard stories. I want to see it with my own two eyes.”

“You should totally beat the crap out Jacobi,” Declan chimes in. “He totally has a crush on mum. That’s not right. That’s someone else's wife. You don’t mess with someone else’s wife. Is nothing sacred anymore?”

“Especially OUR mom,” Tanner adds, as he rummages through his backpack for his weighted lap pad and noise cancelling headphones. “Has he not seen our dad? Like, hello! He’s ginormous. And he looks scary too. All the tattoos and stuff? And he has a scary voice.”

“He only looks scary when he’s mad. And his voice is only scary when he yells,” Brooklyn contributes. “His normal voice isn’t scary. It’s just deep. Like Darth Vader. And mommy’s voice sounds like a little elf. It’s a really weird combo. But you should, daddy. Beat up, Jacobi. He tries to get cozy with mommy. The other day while you were away, he brought her a caramel macchiato from Starbucks. A venti. Do you know how much those things cost? He must be in love with her. You should for sure punch him in the face. At least once. Twice if you want him to stay down.”

“Listen pipsqueak, I don’t need your advice on how to knock someone out. And no one is beating anyone up. Jacobi’s a kid. He has a crush. That’s it.”

“Naw, it’s totally love,” Declan argues. “No one with just a crush buys you Starbucks. Dunkin’ Donuts, maybe. Not the expensive stuff.”

“You all need to relax.” Sliding into the booth, he reaches for Addie and places her on his lap. She and Brooklyn have their own calendar they’ve created; keeping a very accurate and detailed log on the dates and times each got to sit with daddy in order to determine whose turn it is and avoid arguments. “I don’t think your mom has a thing for Jacobi. I don’t think you have to worry about him ever becoming your step dad.”

“Desi might,” Takota pipes up. “He likes mummy. They always spend a lot of time together.”

“That’s mum’s best friend,” TJ informs his littlest brother. “He’s like an older brother to her. She IS not going to leave dad for Desi. She’s not going to leave dad for anyone. He’d have to be the one to screw up and leave.”

“No one is leaving anyone for someone else. You guys are too much. Just decide what you want, okay? You’re giving me more gray hair here. Let’s play the quiet game. Everyone look at your menu and pick something. And don’t talk while doing it.”

“The quiet game doesn’t work,” Tanner says, and pulls a stuffed koala from his backpack and hands it across the table to Addie. “You almost forgot Fredrick at home.”

“You’re the best, Tanny! Thank you!” She rubs her cheek against the toy’s faded and tattered ‘fur’ and then snuggles him tight to her chest.

Frederick has seen his fair share of adventures; being carted all over Australia and Colorado by a much smaller and younger Millie, and his ‘koala napping’ in Mumbai five years ago. If he thinks long and hard enough about it, Tyler can still remember the terror of that initial night; the bedroom window open and an infant Addie screaming from the discomfort of the cool air. His instincts had immediately told him to fear the worst. That it wasn’t something as innocent and simple as one of Anil’s workers opening the window and forgetting to close it. And when that bear had shown up on the doorstep of the safe house in Dhaka, his worst nightmare had been in danger of coming true. Someone with a score to settle had gotten close enough to his daughter to potentially take her right from her bed; having to reach over her and likely coming in contact with her body. In all his years on the job and as many times as his own life had been in danger, he’d never felt fear quite like that. That chill of terror that seems to take over your entire body and settle into your bones. There was always a chance of someone tracking him down out of the need for revenge; a worry that his kids could be made a target as a way of breaking him. But that was the closest anyone had ever gotten.

He’d vowed to never let that happen again. And to kill anyone that posed even the slightest bit of threat.

The silence that ensues is a welcome change; a waitress bringing coffee for him and glasses of chocolate milk for the kids and then taking their orders. TJ, Declan and Tanner watching youtube videos on the latter’s Ipad while Millie and Alannah whisper and giggle at the Instagram posts they scroll through on Alannah’s phone. The littlest busy themselves with the baskets of crayons that the restaurant had provided; scribbling and doodling on the craft paper that covers the table. All in all, they’re good kids; polite and always minding their manners, careful not to make too much noise that will bother others around them, saving the majority of their arguments and insults for the street or at home. It can’t get wild; seven little humans all talking at once and vying for attention. Christmas morning is far the most chaotic; a living room full of presents and excited chattering and squeals of joy and excitement. It’s enough to take the sting out of the memories of his past. Seeing those cute faces light up and the tears of pure happiness over receiving a much sought after item and feeling those little arms wrap around your neck and the lips that press to your cheek; those tiny voices saying thank you and telling you how much they love you.

*****

“Daddy?” Addie breaks the silence.

“Yeah?”

“Will you please help me? Will you draw a kangaroo for me? I don’t know how.”

Selecting a crayon from the basket in the middle of the table, he tends to his daughter’s request. He’d discovered at a young age that not only COULD he draw, but that he was exceptionally good at it; his mother nurturing and feeding the talent and always encouraging him by buying his pencils and sketchbooks and constantly praising his work. It was something he had enjoyed just as much as surfing or spending time outdoors, but had quickly learned to keep a secret from his father. The old man had viewed anything even remotely related to the arts as ‘girly’ and ‘pathetic’; preferring his son to pick up more manly pursuits and drilling it into his head that a ‘real man’ didn’t create. After his mom had died, his father had gone through his room and not only trashed every piece of art tapped to the wall, but burnt every sketch book and pencil in the fire pit in the backyard.

He hadn’t picked up a pencil since. Until Millie had started showing a very keen eye and skilled hand and had asked for an area in the house to be turned into her own little studio. A loft added above the new garage; a place filled with paints and pencils and easels and canvases and anything else that she could possibly need. And spending time with her in that studio and nurturing and encouraging her talent had been a way of rediscovering his own. Using it as a form of escape and relaxation when life gets too hectic and stressful or his mental health feels as if it’s spiralling out of control.

“Daddy?”

“Addie?”

“If mummy didn’t do the same job as you a long time ago, how else would you have met her?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she would have come to Australia. Maybe we would have met that way. On the beach or something.”

“Would you have still liked her? If you met her that way?”

“Why wouldn’t I? She still would have been mummy. She still would have been the same person.”

“Do you think she would have liked you? If she met you a different way?”

“I think so. I hope she would have.”

“What would you have done? If you didn’t do that job?”

He shrugs. “Maybe I would have stayed in the military. Or become a fireman. Or done construction. Or built houses. Something where I could stay busy and use my hands.”

“I think you would have been a good policeman. You would have been really good at catching bad guys. I mean, that’s what you were doing in the first place. Just you weren’t a policeman. What do you think mummy would have done? If she had a different job?”

“I’m not sure. I think she would have made a really good teacher. Or a nurse.”

“Like Auntie Riley and Auntie Shaena?”

“Yup. Just like him. She’d probably work with kids though. I think your mum is meant to be around kids.”

“I think so too. She’s a really good mummy. She always plays with us and she even does dress up and makes up different names and voices for all my dolls. She’s never too busy; to have fun with us. And she gives really good cuddles and kisses too.”

“She’s an awesome mum. I definitely picked a good one to have kids with.”

“So did mummy. You guys make a good team. And you make cute kids.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, and presses a kiss to her temple. “Really, really, REALLY cute kids.”

“I bet she would have still liked you. If she met you a different way. I mean, you still would have been daddy. You still would have looked the same. You still would have had nice muscles.”

“Is that what mummy says she likes the best?”

“She says it’s third on her list.”

“What’s number one and two?”

“Your eyes and your smile. Your voice is number four and your butt is number five.”

“She didn’t say anything about my hands? That’s weird. For your mom.”

“Your hands were number six. And your forearms were number seven. I don’t understand that one. Mum says it’s hard to explain. Why she likes them so much. She said when she first met you, she was attracted to your face. That you had a kind of a sad face. In a beautiful way.”

“She said that?”

“Yep. She said that you had kind eyes. And that she liked how they crinkled when you smiled. That you smiled at her and you made your insides go all funny. What does that mean?”

He chuckles. “It’s nothing you need to know until you’re older. What else did she say?”

“Just that you were really good looking and she liked your haircut and your beard. And that you shared the house with a chicken. Is that true?”

“It is. I did have a chicken in the house.”

“Can we have a house chicken? When we get home can we get one?”

“No. Chickens stay outside now. No chickens in the house. They poop too much.”

“Not even if I let the chicken stay in my room?”

“Not even then. Sorry, Peanut.”

“Can I have a kitten?”

“I don’t like cats.”

“How can you not like cats? Cats are cute. They’re all fluffy and sweet and purr and stuff. How do you not like cats? Can I? Get one? For my birthday?”

“How about I talk to your mum about that? She gets the last say.”

“That’s ‘cause she wears the pants in the family.”

Tyler smirks. “Did she say that too?”

“Don’t deny it, daddy. You know mum's the boss. She just let’s you think you are. Everyone knows she rules the roost.”

“I’m going to have a talk with her later. Is this good enough? Good enough kangaroo?”

“Best kangaroo ever! Looks like Charlie. Do you think he misses us? I bet he does. I bet he’s sad that we’re not there. Because no one is giving him peanut butter sandwiches and lettuce. What if he’s mad at us? That we went away? What if he doesn’t come back? I don’t want him being mad at us.”

“I had a talk with him before we left. Told him we’d be back in a couple weeks. And that we’d give him extra lettuce when we got back. And peanut butter sandwiches.”

“Was he mad? That we were going away?”

“Nope. He was a little sad. Said he’d miss you the most. That you make the best peanut butter sandwiches.”

She tips her head back to look at him; a smile stretching from ear to ear and her dark eyes sparkling. “He did? He said that?”

“He did. He said ‘tell Addie she’s my favorite and I’ll miss her and her peanut butter sandwiches’. He said he’d be there when you got back. First thing in the next morning.”

“He’s a good little Joey. I hope he never gets tired of us and that when he grows up and has his own babies, he brings them to our house too. And then we can feed them all peanut butter sandwiches and lettuce.”

Smiling, he curls an arm around her waist and pulls her tighter into him, then presses a kiss to her cheek and then the side of her head. She’s so much like her mother; the short and petite build, the dark eyes and the beaming smile and the freckle splattered nose. And their personality is shared as well; both bubbly and light hearted and willing and eager to experience new things and meet new people. Out of all the kids, she’s the one he babies; by far the tiniest and the seemingly most fragile. But it’s the similarity to her mother that drives his need to protect and coddle her the most; reminding him of Esme and everything his wife had gone through during the entire McMann fiasco to make sure Addie was carried and brought into the world safely.

Silence one more falls on the top when the waitress returns with drink refills and their respective orders. And it isn’t until halfway through the meal when he notices Millie look up from her plate of food and towards the front door; eyes narrowing and a scowl capturing her lips. She reaches behind Declan and smacks TJ upside the head; the latter growling in protest, but then following his sister’s gaze when she nods in the direction of the door.

“What’s up with you two? What’s…?”

“It’s that lady,” Millie grumbles. “The one that came to the house looking for you yesterday.”

“That’s her?” TJ’s nose crinkles in disgust. “SHE had the nerve to shit talk mum? Oh hell no.”

Tyler makes the mistake of glancing over his shoulder; greeted by a broad smile and a wave as Natalie nudges her daughter in the direction of their booth. He inwardly lets loose a string of profanities. There’d already been enough drama caused over a simple and unassuming conversation at the park. The last thing he needs is someone...especially another woman...dropping by his house and getting too close and comfortable. The women at the soccer park and on the playground are bad enough. But at least they’re not showing up unannounced on his doorstep.

“Hey,” Natalie cheerfully greets. “Imagine meeting you here.”

“My dad’s not the only one here,” TJ responds first “You do see us, right?”

“Do you mind if we join you? If everyone shoves down just a bit…”

“We do mind,” Millie speaks up. “Very much. We’re here with our dad. It’s a family thing. We don’t even know you.”

“Amelia…” he stares at her pointedly. “...settle.”

“Dad, it’s quite obvious what and who she wants. Someone has to stick up for mum. She isn’t here to beat her ass herself.”

“I said settle. Relax. This doesn’t involve you.”

“Fine,” she huffs, and leans back against the leather of the booth and crosses her arms over her chest.

“This isn’t a good time,” he addresses Natalie. “She’s right. This IS a family thing.”

Smirking, the neighbour nods in Alannah’s direction.

“She’s as close to family as it gets. So if you don’t mind…”

“I stopped by yesterday. To thank you for being so nice at the park. Met your wife.”

“Yeah, she told me. She also told me you weren’t the friendliest. Something about making fun of how she looks?”

“I wasn’t making fun. I was merely critiquing.”

“You can keep your critiques to yourself. My wife looks amazing. Just the way she is. And really don’t think it was appropriate; you showing up like that. It was small talk. That’s it. I wasn’t trying to make it seem like anything more than that.”

“I thought we had a little...connection.”

“No. There was no connection. None. Whatsoever. I was being nice. That’s it. I’m married. And not the type of married that you’re probably used to. I’m married as in I’m not interested and nothing is ever going to happen.”

“Our dad doesn’t cheat,” TJ informs her. “And our mom is way better than you. Like, a hundred times better.”

“Tyler, stop. I can handle this. I know you’re protective of your mum, but…”

“I must have misread the signals.” Natalia gives a sheepish, apologetic smile. “The way you were giving them off and the way you were…”

“I wasn’t giving off any signals. I don’t play games like that. If I was interested, you’d know. And I’m not. Interested. I have a wife. That I love more than life itself. So thanks, but no thanks. Not gonna happen. EVER. And if you don’t mind, don’t come to my house. That was way out of line. I didn’t appreciate it. There was no need for that. Unless you just wanted to ruffle feathers.”

“I never meant to cause problems. My visit was taken way out of context. I just showed up to be friendly and neighbourly. That’s it.”

“Something tells me that’s bullshit. And I’d really like it if you didn’t come around. Like I said, I’m married. Happily. VERY happily. I don’t know what kind of married men you’re used to, but I’m not one of them. So if I could get back to lunch with my kids…”

“I’m sorry to have caused you any issues. Or to have wasted your time.”

He watches her as she goes; the tightly clenched jaw and the rigid shoulders and the over aggressive way she shoves her daughter in the direction of an empty table. It’s the behaviour of a woman that is used to getting what and WHO she wants. Who isn’t used to rejection -especially public- and can’t handle being put in her place.

“I don’t know about you, dad,” TJ says, as he turns around in his seat after watching Natalie’s dramatic exit. “But I don’t trust her. She’s definitely up to no good.”

Nodding slowly, he lifts his coffee cup to his lips and takes a long, slow sip. His instincts tell him the same thing; it isn’t the last he’s seen or heard from the new neighbour. He’s witnessed that kind of behaviour before. She’s cunning and manipulative; refusing to take no for an answer and doing whatever she can to wreak havoc as a response to being shot down. But he’s faced far greater challenges and threats. Nik had learned the hard way not to fuck with his family. Being ostracized and shunned for years until she was ready to make amends for the trouble she’d caused and she’d finally moved on with Anil; getting married and having children of her own and settling nicely into a repaired and much healthier relationship with both Tyler and Esme. And if Natalie has to suffer the same embarrassing fate, he has no qualms about dealing her that particular hand.

More than ready, willing, and able to protect and defend the life he has.

#Tyler Rake #Tyler Rake fan fiction #Extraction fan fiction

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zerot0all · 4 years

Text

ɢᴏʟᴅ ᴛʜʀᴏɴᴇ | ᴍ

Stray Kids- Mafia!Bang Chan

M- vulgarity, violence & smut

word count- 1.4K

.CHAPTER FOUR.

Chris laid restless for what seemed like endless nights. Getting a few hours , maybe even minutes of sleep was an expense he couldn’t afford. He continually laid traumatized in the recent events. They found him. No matter how idiotic his idea was of starting fresh, Chris knew it was impossible. Especially from what used to be his lifestyle. Days of blood and death have been burned into his mind , seeing those he loved die around him; leaving only one man alive to run the shit show.

His own father.

But how does one leave that kind of life behind? How does one forget ... if it courses through your blood, you are condemned till death. And for the first time ever ... Chris didn’t want that way out. For the first time ever , he wanted to live.

Chris had sent Jisung and Hyunjin back , with news that he would think about it. He didn’t want to see his father after so many years. After taking the fall for the family that turned him in- his own family, he had felt betrayed. His hands were stained with blood that wasn’t his and Chris will never forget that. And yet, he ponders a way out. His father was looking for him, sending his men out to find him and bring him back. Little did they know , Chris wanted nothing to do with them.

His place of business had become a target , letters and packages were being dropped off by none other than his fathers people- quietly reminding Chris of his roots. It had been hell for him, and even throughout the constant threats , Chris had wondered why you had become absent. You’ve gone radio silent. No sign of you anywhere for what seemed like a week and some days. Chris had grown worried for you, immediately forgetting his own troubles. He would try his best to reach out to you , only to get your voicemail with each call. His mind ran to gruesome thoughts , ideas that maybe , just maybe they had found you too. Chris slowly began to hate himself, this was his fault. But even through all the worry, there was hope. You were smarter than him, so he thought. You were strong and able to hold your own. He tried to stay positive , ignoring the nasty voices in his head ... that is , till he accidentally saw you coming out of a grocery store one windy night.

He rushed to you. A mix of dread and excitement ran up his spine the closer he got to you. And as you carefully packed the trunk of your little car, you were lost to the world. Your mind was a mess and all you could gather was where you were going to pack the eggs. It was silly, but it kept your mind busy that you didn’t feel him. You didn’t smell his cologne as he approached. You didn’t hear his heavy breathing as he got closer. You didn’t. Because as you closed your trunk , slowly turning on your heel to head to the drivers side , you didn’t have enough time to cover up the evidence of your absence.

Chris came to a halt. His eyes growing large with surprise, then quickly furrowing with anger. His jaw clenched, his fist balled in a furious notion as he took a deep breath.

“Who did that to you?”

His voice had deepened, something you’ve never heard before but it was inevitable. It was too late now, there was no way you could cover up your busted lip and bruised eye to your business partner.

“Don’t worry about it.”

You simply replied , your voice was weak. It was impossible for Chris not to feel angered by how you presented yourself. Physical harm on a woman was his sensitive spot and he couldn’t hold back how he felt.

“Angel, who hurt you?”

He asked again, only this time he had unclenched his jaw, his nose flared but it was only because he was trying to regain his sanity. His blood boiled and even though he wanted to rip someone’s head clean off, he saw the way your eyes glazed over. He approached once more, you didn’t want to argue and he didn’t either. But his skin crawled with pure annoyance that someone put their hands on you. His hand naturally went to your face, tucking a loose strand of hair behind your ear. You had held your breath, closing your eyes in a sudden fear that something else was going to happen. You didn’t know why you did it , Chris never put his hands on you. But as time slowed , you felt his fingers brush against your cheeks. Opening your eyes suddenly, you could see him taking in your bruises.

“It was a work accident. I swear , I’m fine.” You finally stated , full well knowing he needed some sort of reassurance before he realized what he was doing and retracted his hand. His actions stirred something inside of you, woken up something that you never thought would come alive.

“Sooner or later , you’re gona have to tell me about this job of yours. Besides everything you’ve done for me , I know nothing about you. I feel like an idiot.” He spoke roughly , taking a deep breath as the moment settled. It was true. You have your secrets , as does he. But as the demons of ones past begin to come back up, you knew that the truth was going to follow. Dawning down on your life, it felt wrong. A bittersweet moment that you’ve been holding back for far too long. You’ve never encountered someone who actually wanted to know about you ... and to worry about your well being ? It was too good to be true. And even though Chris was kept in the dark, a prickle to your skin brought upon a sick reality- something wasn’t right.

Chris glanced behind you, his eyes squinted needing to see , then suddenly his brows furrowed. You were intrigued, wondering who he saw but before you were able to turn around, his hands were clenching your shoulders; keeping you in place.

“Angel, get in your car and go home. Don’t stop for anyone. Don’t talk to anyone. Got it? I’ll head over in a bit, we’re not done talking.”

The deep heavy tone of his voice made your skin burn. Heating up a sense of pleasure and fear. You saw it , clear in his eyes; he was scared. But you didn’t argue , you didn’t have the strength. So you folllowed his command and quickly left, you knew if an argument was going to happen - it would go down in your place. And that’s what you were dreading.

Chris stood strong , watching as the black Cadillac with tinted windows parked. There was no movement until Chris approached , going up the passengers window to find Jisung rolling down the glass, showing off a wide grin on his face.

“Who’s your lady friend?”

He joked, slightly chuckling with Hyunjin who sat on the drivers side holding on to the steering wheel with precaution. Chris held back his evil scorn, wanting to hurt them for even looking at you but besides the unwanted drama, Chris only rolled his eyes.

“You two are really out here following me to the grocery store? Y’all that bored or is my dad a little desperate?”

Chris bravely spoke, he was known for his dry humor but he also has a past of pissing off his own father with those said jokes. Jisung frowned , knowing full well Chris was shitting on their job, but it was hard not to clown on henchmen like them.

“Ha. Ha. Fuck you. Papa’s getting anxious. Said some shit about needing to talk to you about the family business.”

Jisung said with a smirk, as he let certain emotions run all over Chris’s face. Chris held back as much as he could but even though when the curiosity was eating at his soul, going back to his family wasn’t an option.

Not now. Not ever.

“Tell dad I’m not feeling it. I’ll come around when I’m ready.” Chris spoke confidently, stepping back from the car only to have Hyunjin drive off right on cue. He couldn’t believe it. Having his fathers men follow him around was down right ridiculous. But even as Chris stood in the empty parking lot, the night getting darker, he had other things in mind.

His little angel had some explaining to do.

✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰

Chapter 5 Is Out Now...

#admin ms #stray kids #stray kids bang chan #stray kids au #stray kids angst #stray kids smut #stray kids imagines #stray kids scenerios #stray kids one shots #stray kids drabbles #stray kids fanfiction #stray kids fanfic #stray kids jisung #stray kids hyunjin

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flemnotthun · 3 years

Text

‘Who Else Would It Be?’

Chapter 4 - ‘Don’t You Know?’

We finally get to see Kate and Steve have their hotly anticipated date. Hope you enjoy lads xx

_________________________________________________________________________________________

Four days into her stay at Central Hospital, and after much begging on her part. Kate was finally discharged. Her and Steve had got into a pretty nice routine over the last few days, texting at points during the day and chatting about nothing bed to bedside chair until visiting hours were over. They had fallen into a rather sweet, platonic closeness that despite her very real feelings for him, made Kate feel apprehensive of any change in the future. It could be the trauma voice talking, the fear of the outside world which contained men that would shoot her, that caused the concern though, because there was nothing in Steve’s behaviour that suggested any danger. He would never put her in an unsafe situation, she knew that. She knew him.

Every new touch of her hand, stroke of her wrist or enveloping hug was prefaced with an almost bashful request for permission for a number of days, until Steve got the message that she was very unlikely to turn him down. “I don’t want to take advantage of you,” Steve explained when she questioned him, “I want you to feel comfortable”. Kate smiled back at him, “thank you,” she said, gazing into his eyes as if they were jewellery, bursting with light and untold futures.

She was discharged on a Saturday evening. As soon as the salt-and-pepper haired consultant had exited the room after giving her the green light, Kate threw her arms around an elated Steve, who’d been at her side since 8 that morning. Despite her obvious excitement at being able to escape the torment of bustling nurses and being poked and prodded, she was hardly fit to do everything by herself, and couldn’t help feeling frustrated at the need to surrender herself to Steve’s care for the time being. Her side ached when she walked, which meant that getting about was a challenge. On the day of her discharge, it became clear just how much help she would need.

Steve was sat next to her in his chair, eyes deep in his emails, when he felt Kate shuffle out of bed next to him.

“Do you want some help mate?” Steve asked as she made her way towards the door of the room.

“Nah, I’m alright thanks,” Kate replied, growing weaker with every step, her upper abdomen twinging every time her right leg took a nervous step forward. Without any warning, her legs gave way under her, tipping her backwards towards the floor, when suddenly a pair of strong arms broke her fall and set her upright.

“Look, I know how annoying it is to not be able to do the things we always take for granted, believe me. But Kate, it’s just me. Let me help you.”

Kate turned to face Steve and nodded gently.

“Okay. You couldn’t just help get me to the loo door?” Kate asked shyly.

Steve put a sturdy arm around her waist, supporting her under her right arm and guided her to the loo and back, waiting outside as she washed up. While he hated seeing Kate in pain, having someone to look after was good for him. It distracted from the niggling temptation to just take more pills and separate his mind from his body. He loved seeing Kate fly, but it was nice to feel useful.

He drove them back to Kate’s flat after picking up her prescriptions from the pharmacy. She chose the music, tunes blasting from Steve’s Volvo like youths blazing through town in a white Fiesta. He caught a glance at the side of her face whilst waiting at the lights. Kate was undoubtedly a force of nature, albeit sometimes a stern one, but seeing her lose herself in this way made him burst with pride. She’d bounce back, just like the nurses said she would, albeit with a caveat, expressed to Steve in a hushed tone while Kate slept on the Thursday evening.

“Your friend may suffer with the effects of this trauma for a while. The two of you seem very close, and you’re going to need to be there for her when the triggers occur.” One of them had whispered.

Steve took Kate’s hand as the nurse explained the nature of the post-traumatic symptoms she might suffer.

“Hypervigilance, dissociation, flashbacks...”

He’d be there for her, Steve thought as he smiled sadly at his partner’s sleeping form.

After they managed to make it through the front door of his flat without incident, he helped Kate get comfortable on her plush leather sofa and set about making themselves something to eat.

“Pasta okay?”

“Yeah perfect, as long as you don’t burn it, I haven’t forgotten the last time”.

Steve let out a laugh as he remembered the event. They had only been working together for a few months, perhaps it was even the first time he’d come over and they’d ended up falling asleep next to each other on the sofa. He remembered thinking “what if?” that night, and remembered dismissing it, knowing even then that this was too important for a snap decision. He grinned at how lucky he was to have her in his life, both then and now.

They sat a safe distance apart on the sofa as they ate companionably in front of a late night rerun of the ‘Undateables’.

“Kate, you’re available!” Steve quipped as one of the show’s less attractive participants bemoaned their single existence.

The woman in question glared at Steve affectionately, giving him a light slap on the arm.

“Too soon?” Steve ventured.

Kate burst out laughing, Steve joining her in a hearty fit of giggles.

“I’m not available to just anyone Arnott” she scolded through her laughter.

“Even me?”

“Especially you!”

“And here I was, going to tell you just how lucky I am to have a date booked with you.”

“I bet you say that to all the witnesses”.

That was enough to have Steve spit out his cup of tea, Kate banging the side of the sofa in hysterics until her abdomen made it clear that the jokes had to take a backseat for at least the next few minutes as Steve pulled himself together.

“Ahhh!” Kate winced.

“You okay mate?” Steve questioned, returning back down to earth, his hand on her shoulder.

“Fine, just a murmur.”

Steve’s worried expression settled into contentment as Kate shifted to face Steve, his legs curled up on the opposite side of the sofa.

“So, this date then?” Kate probed. “Which underpass are you planning on taking me to? The one by the old cinema has a nice smell of piss that really enhances the whole vibe.”

Steve let out a huge belly laugh, which he curtailed before its time, if only to avoid his own stomach hurting let alone poor Kate’s. She was truly funny, which some blokes might be intimidated by, but Steve basked in, letting it wash over him.

“Actually, I was thinking about tomorrow night at Kudu, down the road from the Hare and Hounds?” He ventured.

“Sounds perfect, almost serious! What’s a girl done to deserve fine dining?”

“Don’t you know?” Steve answered with a sad smile, which Kate returned as her hand clasped his.

“Of course I do”.

____________________

The date felt as natural for the pair as working together. They ordered mocktails (both had very good reasons to keep things sober for now, besides, they didn’t feel the need to drink away any anxiety - it was there, but they leaned into it like a welcoming hot shower) and chatted about work, making in-jokes, the banter flowing between them in a glowing symbiosis of bright eyes and smiling faces.

“I love it when you’re suited and booted, Kate told Steve as he helped her out of her flat and into the lift. He’d nipped home from hers to change, which had the side effect of making this feel as if he was an unfamiliar suitor picking her up to whisk her away to an evening of culinary wonder.

“You look beautiful.” Steve replied earnestly.

Kate brushed him off with a laugh, indicating the scars on her face with her eyes raised.

Over the second course, he tried again.

“Kate,” he said softly.

Kate looked up, struck by the use of her name rather than the usual “mate”.

“I meant what I said, you are so beautiful”.

And with that Kate understood. Unlike some men in her past who she’d heard this line from, although it was often cancelled out by a sly dig at some other character trait later on in the relationship, “married to the job” etc., Steve truly meant it, and while the scars were less than ideal, if he could see past them, then she could too.

“And not in spite of your scars, or your injury, or your independence. You’re beautiful to me because of them.”

Kate was speechless. She felt almost uneasy as she sensed the shame exit her body with a heavy exhalation. Perhaps she no longer needed to be selective about the parts of herself she loved. It was at this moment that she was sure that her and Steve had hit on something between them that was just as special as their existing partnership.

“Thank you, Steve.” She whispered, blinking back tears.

“Ahhh I’m sorry, come here.” Steve reassured her, rising from his seat and wrapping his arms around her for a hug as the clientele of the restaurant stared. Returning to his seat, the meal continued much as before and by the time the dessert was finished, Steve found that Kate had reached out across the square, marbled table and curled her fingers through his.

________________

If they had been civilians, if they had been normal, they may have kissed outside the restaurant, one may have invited the other back to their’s, and they would have seen how things went. Maybe they would have seen each other again, maybe they wouldn’t. Instead, Steve guided his best friend back to the car. No kiss was exchanged until they were safely back at Kate’s, in this part of town, anyone from work could walk by any minute. No discussion was had, they both knew the risks of being seen together. After walking round from the driver’s side to where Kate was waiting opposite, Steve took hold of her hand and the small of her back as she met his eyes. Leaning her against the car carefully, so as to avoid putting any pressure on her abdomen, Steve asked.

“Is it okay if we...”

Before he had a chance to finish his proposal, Kate had pulled him by the shirt towards her with her free hand and pressed her lips to his. The kiss was chaste, but long enough for Steve to feel the meaning between them, and what they meant to each other. After they broke away Kate put her hand on Steve’s cheek, saying:

“Thank you for tonight, I had a great time.”

They would go no further tonight, settling down on the sofa together to watch crap telly and enjoy each others’ humming energy, neither wanting the night to end. Kate snuggled into Steve’s side as he gathered her close under his arm, tipping her head up for a kiss every now and then. Kate would look up at him, their eyes locking, and she would stretch her neck up, allowing her lips graze chin before Steve lowered his lips to hers. The pain medication was clearly having an effect on Kate, and she eventually fell into a deep sleep. Steve tuned his neck around to fix his eyes on where he’d stood in the kitchen all of 10 years ago, making that ill-fated pasta and thinking “what-if?” He thanked his younger, more impulsive self with a smile while he dropped a delicate kiss to the head of the sleeping woman under his arm.

“Thank you for waiting.”

#steve x kate #steve arnott #line of duty #flemnott #fan fiction #fanfic #kate fleming #katexsteve #vicky mcclure #martin compston

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such-fun · 4 years

Text

Fic: Closer to the Light 2/? Kylo Ren x Reader

Closer to the Light

Pairing: Kylo Ren x Reader

Summary: You rejected the Force once, but it’s pull won’t be denied.

Spoilers: No TROS spoilers. Takes place just before The Force Awakens and continues from there. Rey will feature but not as heavily.

Tag list: @babsbixby, @i-am-lokii-of-asgard, @holacherrycola90, @bookworm-nerd6, @fanofallthingsnstuff, @bulba-bulbasaur, @thomasscresswell, @vampgguk, @johnnysactualgf, @siobhanlovesfilm

Two:

Poe had felt immense relief when a stormtrooper, of all people, managed to help him escape the First Order.

He could honestly admit he had not seen that coming. From what they knew of the Order, troopers were taken as children and brainwashed into loyal servants who laid down their lives for the men and women in power who viewed them as expendable. He never thought he would meet one who could break whatever conditioning they had been put through.

Not that it was impossible to imagine, but more so that the Resistance believed anyone who the Order failed to control would have been killed on sight.

Whether Finn was just lucky or not had yet to be seen. He was no longer FN-2187, and it would take time to see if Finn could be a man that the Resistance could truly rely on. But Poe had hope that Finn would be a valuable asset, as well as someone he could call a friend one day.

That is, if he even made it off Jakku.

After they crashed into the planet that Finn was so reluctant to return to, Poe had woken alone and injured.

And annoyingly missing his favorite jacket.

The fighter looked to have split upon entry into Jakku. He couldn’t find a trace of Finn and didn’t have the means to look for BB-8 on his own.

Running into a scavenger named Naka Iit was pure luck.

Poe had turned on the charm and told the man all about his rather epic escape from the First Order. He thought Naka would be taken aback by his heroics. Instead, the man thought he was crazy.

Well, crazy, but entertaining as well. So Naka agreed to give him a ride to the Niima Outpost.

And because Poe’s life was nothing if not an adventure, they were attacked and shot at by scavengers along the way. Poe, as skilled and scrappy as ever, managed to evade their attackers and they reached the outpost in one piece, if a little worse for wear.

From the outpost he was able to charter passage to Yavin IV from a merchant. And once planet-side was reunited with his beloved X-wing.

His return to D’Qar was unexpected but extremely welcome.

He could hear the mix of surprise and relief over the transmission as he radioed in to the base, letting them know it was really him about to enter their airspace.

The last thing he needed was to get shot out of the sky. Again. And by his own friends, no less.

His movements were a little slow and the bruises and blood on his face caused worry among his fellow rebels, but they still greeted him with wide grins and gentle hugs.

The sea of people parted as the General made her way to him, a motherly smile on her face and a hint of a tear in her eye.

Leia held his battered face in her hands, pained at the signs of his torture and all the suffering he had endured. Poe raised his hands, gripping her wrists lightly, as if to physically reassure her that he was there. That he was okay.

Bruised, yes, but not broken.

“It’s good to have you back,” she whispered for his ears only.

“Wait ’til I tell you how it happened,” he smirked, with a small chuckle.

“That will have to wait, Commander,” Leia announced reprovingly, but the tiny sparkle in her eye told him she was looking forward to the story. “You’re needed in medical.”

Poe didn’t fight her, and allowed himself to be lead toward Doctor Kalonia and her eager staff of medical officers. The General didn’t leave his side.

He was seated in front of the good doctor, but aside from giving her a nod of hello, all his attention was on his General.

“What news of the map?” Leia asked firmly. Poe didn’t take her change in tone personally. This was war after all.

“I retrieved the map from Lor San Tekka,” he replied with a frown. “The village was flooded with stormtroopers in minutes. I managed to get out but they grabbed San Tekka. I gave BB-8 the map and told him to go. That I’d find him later.

“Ren was there,” Poe added softly. He had to give the General credit, she didn’t flinch at the mention of her son. “He tried to get San Tekka to talk, but he refused. They—killed him.”

Leia closed her eyes and sighed. Poe gave her a moment to process the loss. When she looked to him once more, he continued.

“I tried to stop him—them. He stopped my blaster shot in midair,” Poe shook his head. “Used the Force to keep me from running, and had me dragged onto their ship. Ren ordered the village slaughtered.

“I’m—I’m sorry I couldn’t stop it,” his voice trembled but the General dismissed his apology with a sorrowful smile.

“There’s nothing you could have done,” she consoled him, even as she knew it would not help relieve their shared pain.

“General Hux had me interrogated on their ship,” he recounted. “You’ll be happy to know their interrogators are unimpressive.” The proud smirk on his lips twitched when he thought of what followed.

“Ren came when they couldn’t get me to talk.” Leia nodded, knowing that Poe, despite his resilience and strength, would have been no match for Kylo Ren’s mastery of the Force.

“I fought, I tried to keep him out of my head,” he growled, and Doctor Kalonia paused her ministrations, waiting for him to calm before she resumed cleaning his cuts.

“How much does he know?” the General asked, her voice sympathetic and understanding.

“He knows BB-8 has the map,” Poe admitted shamefully.

“We’ll send a team to look for the droid,” she declared calmly, nodding to an officer who hovered nearby. He nodded pointedly and left to inform the rest of the council.

“General,” Poe drew her attention once more, and Leia was concerned at the anguish she saw in his eyes. “Ren—when he was looking in my head, through my memories. He—he saw her.”

Leia inhaled sharply and her hands clenched unconsciously. In a strange way it reminded him of Ren’s reaction upon seeing the girl. The poor woman, obviously traumatized, who they had now unintentionally placed in danger.

“I don’t know how they’re connected but whatever Ren’s intentions, they didn’t look good,” Poe lamented, visibly unhappy with the General’s previous decision to leave him in the dark, even if he understood her caution.

“We need to find her,” he shared a long, resolute look with the General, “before he does.”

_________________

It had been a week since you had been visited by Leia’s enigmatic messenger. And nearly as long as you’d slept.

Bone-tired, you hadn’t even managed a trek to the mines since. Rhydonium was unstable enough. Between your jittery hands and sleepy eyes, it would be a recipe for disaster. The last thing you needed to do was drop some and blow yourself up.

You hadn’t even left your encampment. Knowing your luck, you’d hop on your speeder to head into town, pass out, and end up lost in the middle of the desert upon waking. Abafar was full of utter wastelands the locals called The Void.

If anyone mistakenly wandered into the Void, there was a good chance you’d never see them again. Not alive, anyway.

It wasn’t fear that kept you up.

Poe was hardly about to drag you away kicking and screaming. And Leia, while concerned with your well being, seemed content enough to wait you out.

No, it was your own traitorous mind that kept you awake.

The first few days, it was your memory that haunted you. Not just of the massacre at the temple. Of the dead students and Luke’s desolate face. Instead it was Ben that haunted you.

Ben’s smile had always enthralled you. He was serious and understated more than not, but when you could make him laugh or smile, it was hard to resist joining him in his mirth.

He was taller than you by age twelve. Nearly a foot taller by sixteen. You could remember the crick in your neck that would develop after spending so long staring up at him.

Your mind could not seem to reconcile those memories with the man you were confronted with on that fateful night in the temple.

Even when he was reserved, you could always see Ben’s emotions at play on his face. From concentration to concern, fondness to focus, Ben was always feeling something.

It was the blankness on his face that night that spoke volumes. That was not the Ben you had grown up with, not any longer.

And it broke your heart.

You only wish you knew what had happened, what had driven him so far away from the light. If Luke and Leia knew, they never told you. And after enough time passed, there seemed no point in asking. Knowing wouldn’t change anything.

It should have been a relief when your memories finally stopped plaguing you that past night. But what followed merely confused you.

Well into the night, you had laid down once more in hopes in getting a few moments rest. They were few and far between, but all that was keeping you going lately.

Resting your head on your makeshift pillow, you closed your eyes and reveled in the blankness of your mind. The memories that had been playing on repeat granting you a rare reprieve.

And then it began. Your mind, exhausted, felt a sudden tug.

Your eyes opened blearily as you puzzled at the sensation. Rubbing your temples with the heels of your hands, you tried to ignore the strange feeling. You shifted on your bed and pulled your blanket higher up on your body.

The tug gave way to a buzzing and you let out a frustrated grunt. By now your head was beginning to hurt and you whimpered softly. You had no pain reliever in your camp and little way to ease your pain.

Tossing your arm over your eyes to block out all light, you forced yourself to relax. You took a deep, calming breath and tried to open up your mind in hopes of releasing whatever it was that was causing such tension.

It was as if a spark had suddenly ignited.

You felt a wave of emotion, but it didn’t feel like it belonged to you. It felt triumphant. And then for a moment, the feeling had a voice.

“Open your eyes…”

It felt like a whispered plea, and in your wearied state you could do nothing by comply.

Your arm fell to your side and you opened your eyes. Your gaze roamed around your simple tent and the few personal belongings you owned.

Feeling strangely unsatisfied, you turned your stare to the opening of your tent. From there you could see the rusted edge of your speeder, and the outline of the mines in the distance.

There was only so much terrain that was commonly traveled on Abafar and the mines created a distinct landscape that many used as guides and landmarks when journeying to and from the city.

Dissatisfaction turned to pleasure and the foreign emotions, which had before been inviting, turned sinister.

And then you were alone in your mind once again.

Your eyelids fluttered and you didn’t know what to make of what just happened. It had felt as if another person had crept into your mind, but you couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

You had spent so long isolated and cut off from the Force that it’s possible reappearance felt wrong and unwelcome.

If you hadn’t been so weakened, so completely drained in body and mind, you would have been alarmed. You would have jumped from your bed and hopped astride your speeder. You would have run until you could run no more.

But your body was bone-weary and worn out, and gave in to the temptation to sleep.

______________

The sun was shining brighter which told you that hours had passed.

Your head was fuzzy and light, your body still longing for sleep after being deprived for so long. But the whirring noise in the distance that woke you was persistent.

And if you weren’t wrong, it sounded like it was moving closer. Fast.

Rolling out bed, you didn’t bother with your jacket that might have protected you from the dust and sand as you stepped outside. You stumbled out of your tent in your pants and tank top, both of which had seen better days, and finished pulling on your boots as you searched the wide open terrain for the disturbance.

A speck of black caught your eye, hovering low to the ground but never touching the dunes of sand. You cocked your head to the side as you studied it.

Whatever it was, it moved quickly and began to take on a somewhat more familiar shape. Two wings, slightly curved in, circular cockpit. Your heart sped as your brain tried to catch up.

A TIE fighter. Not totally unheard of considering many pilots used Abafar to refuel. But to be so far out of Pons Ora?

You were now wide awake and scrambling toward your landspeeder. You didn’t know what the Order was doing here, and you didn’t want to know.

Left with little choice, you headed toward the mines and the cover they would provide. If the pilot wasn’t interested in you, then he would continue on ahead. If you were his target, you knew the layout of the mines undoubtedly better than him.

When the fighter shifted focus, turning to follow you, there was no doubt who they were after.

The real question was why?

It had to be that conversation with Poe. You didn’t know if someone overheard him mention the General, the Resistance. If someone had thought you were a some sort of spy or member of the rebellion. All you knew what that you needed to make it to the mines.

Your speeder, hardly in its prime, was no match for the TIE, which was gaining ground quickly. The mines were still too far off for comfort.

When the first blast hit, you nearly lost your balance as an explosion of sand and flame landed to your left.

You had no time to process the fact that the blast, while bone-shaking, was still a good distance away from you. That whoever was chasing you didn’t intend to kill you.

At least not so impersonally as a blast from his onboard weapons.

The second blast, landing just a bit behind you, sent your speeder tumbling off course and you flying off. The dunes provided a little cushion as you slammed into the ground.

You were struggling to come to your feet as the TIE fighter came to a stop. Hugging your ribs, you stumbled as the pilot descended.

You blinked, almost sure you had a concussion, confused by the sight of a man clad in black, face covered by a helmet reminiscent of Darth Vader. Smaller and sleeker than what you remembered in holograms and history texts.

That couldn’t be just another First Order pilot, and it definitely wasn’t a stormtrooper.

You tripped over your own feet as you came to a sickening revelation, falling to your knees as your pursuer came into focus. His cape fluttered in the breeze as he approached. Soon he was in front of you. Hovered above you, he silently regarded your bedraggled form.

He called himself Kylo Ren now, you reminded yourself. He wasn’t—this was Kylo Ren. Your heart was beating out of your chest, the rush of blood all you could hear in your ears. Your gaze fell to his boots, your breathing heavy and labored as he remained eerily still.

“Look at me,” he demanded, the cold, mechanical voice that now replaced his once warm and deep tones made you shudder.

Unable to do so, your eyes remained on the ground.

There was the sound of a click and brushes of movement, but you didn’t glance up until you saw his knees bend as he crouched down to meet you at your level.

“Look at me,” he repeated, and recalled the voice in your head last night. His voice.

The mask was gone. In its place was a mess of black hair, achingly familiar, a pair of full lips pulled into a slight frown and finally haltingly recognizable brown eyes.

His face, for all its familiarity, might as well been a mask itself. There was no anger, or curiosity, or happiness. It was like he was studying you. Deciding what to do with you.

And you knew this wasn’t the man you called a friend once. This wasn’t the boy you regarded with a young girl’s first blossom of love. This man was the Jedi Killer. The Commander of the First Order. And yet you still found yourself unable to stop the shattered plea that fell from your lips.

“Ben?”

His eyes narrowed and he jerked away, standing abruptly as his fists clenched. And as you waited for the pain that was sure to follow, he simply waved a hand and your world went black.

#kylo ren #kylo ren x reader #kylo x reader #reader #reader insert #star wars #fic: closer to the light #fanfiction #fanfic #poe dameron #finn #Princess Leia #general Leia organa #leia organa #ben solo #luke skywalker #general hux #bb8

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