#what is his justification for going 'no let's blow the town up anyways'

[divine-motion]

aglaya: you see, bachelor dankovsky, the Powers That Be have been lying to you this whole time and set you up to fail and also burned down your thanatica. also they want to preserve this town no matter what

daniil dankovsky, pettiest and most vengeful man this side of the gorkhon: hm. interesting. sure would be a shame if someone shelled the whole town then

#pathologic #aglaya lilich #daniil dankovsky #i've made a post abt this before sort of #but REALLY #what is his justification for going 'no let's blow the town up anyways' #in clara's route #hell it seems like his own route is the only one where his thanatica burns down?? #also aglaya ily but telling him they want to preserve the town was likely a bad move

[duhragonball]

Hellsing Liveblog Ch. 45-50

This is the “Soldier of Fortune” arc.  I thought there was a song by this title and there is!    Give it a listen.

This opens with a flashback to Pip Bernadotte’s childhood, where he finds out his whole family is a bunch of mercenaries.    His grandfather confirms it, and I should point out that Grandpa Bernadotte is the most mercenary-looking dude I’ve ever seen.   He’s wearing a friggin’ beret while he tells Pip about how his dad died in some war to raise money while Ma Bernadotte was pregnant with Pip.   Was Pip’s mother a merc too? 

I guess my point is that this whole scene feels really stupid to me.   Kid Pip grew up among mercenaries, but he’s literally the last person in town to find out about it.  How do the kids at school know?   Are the Bernadottes that well-known?   I always assumed mercenaries tried to keep a low profile.   Then again, they are entrepreneurs, so maybe the kids in school found ads about the Bernadottes in the phone book.  

Even so, was Pip’s family trying to keep this a secret from him?  Because Grandpa sure wasn’t.   Not with that beret he’s got on.   It’s like he’s been waiting Pip’s whole life to tell him, so why didn’t he mention it before?  You’d think he’d want to raise the boy to follow in his footsteps, the same as Pip’s dad.  Did Pip’s mom not want him to grow up to be a mercenary?  It just seems like she should have known that wouldn’t work out.  

Anyway, Grandpa Bernadotte waxes philosophical about killing people for money, which doesn’t seem like much of a justification.   Pip was very upset about the whole thing, and I don’t think Grandpa said anything to make him less upset, and then we flash forward to the present day, where Pip’s a mercenary.

I mean, what was the point of that flashback?  Pip was horrified to find out his family kills for profit, and then at some point he got over it and joined the family business.   Why didn’t the flashback show us that moment instead?  It seems more relevant.  

At any rate, I feel like the flashback is overlooking the true point of Pip’s character arc.  He starts out a soldier of fortune like his father and grandfather, but by joining up with Hellsing he’s now fighting for a much nobler cause, ridding the world of unspeakably evil monsters.  He still seems to look at it like just another job, but it’s still important.  His defense of the Hellsing mansion is a lot more heroic because he’s fighting against daunting odds with very little hope of surviving to see another sunrise, let alone his next paycheck.  

Back to the main story, when Millennium’s forces invaded London, they sent a company to the Hellsing HQ on the outskirts of the city.   Zorin Blitz was tasked with leading this group, but she was ordered to hold off on attacking until the Major gave the word.   The Major then fired rockets at the mansion, only for Seras Victoria to shoot the rockets down... and Zorin’s zeppelin.   Now, Zorin is trying to lead a ground attack on the mansion, except Pip has turned the entire yard into a minefield.   

Seras disapproves, but Pip doesn’t care.   In this sort of conflict, he and his men, the Wild Geese, are at a complete disadvantage.   Vampires, even the weaker, artificial vampires of Millennium, are faster, stronger, and harder to kill.  He hints at some sort of vampiric ability to read an opponent’s movements, too, which might have something to do with that whole “third eye” trick Seras and Alucard use.   Against all of that, landmines are a sensible precaution, since they’re powerful enough to kill a vampire in one shot and don’t rely on a human operator with killing intent. Seras can gripe, but if Hellsing had used mines back in volume 2, the Valentine Brothers never would have made it inside.  Pip clearly read up on that debacle, since it must have taken weeks for his men to bury all these mines.

The landmines do kill a lot of Zorin’s troops, and the Wild Geese lay down heavy fire from the mansion to keep up the pressure, but Zorin won’t give up so easily.   She uses he powers to create some sort of zany illusion, where everyone sees a giant Zorin Blitz attacking the mansion.

So what the hell is Zorin Blitz, exactly?   I thought she was a vampire, but reading this manga has revealed that Rip Van WInkle is a werewolf, which led me to suspect Zorin is a werewolf too.   But the manga is silent on Zorin being one or the other.  I check the Hellsing Wiki, but it contends that both women are vampires, and the term “Werewolf” just refers to the group of officers in Millennium.   This group includes literal werewolves like the Captain and Schrodinger, but not Blitz and Rip.   

Maybe it doesn’t matter that much, but I find it a little silly to call all four of those characters “Werewolves” and then only two of them are really werewolves.   Clearly, all four of them are a cut above the Major’s other troops, and none of them show any interest in drinking blood, or any other vampire-exclusive traits.   On the other hand, this whole battle takes place under a full moon, and none of them seem to be affected by it.    Unless the Major chose this particular night to launch his offensive because he wanted them all to be at full power.   Maybe Zorin couldn’t do this illusion thing otherwise.

Anyway, the Wild Geese see this giant woman slashing at them with a scythe, and they all panic.   Seras sees it too, but she somehow intuits that it can’t be real.   Then she sees Alucard, who reminds her of her third eye.   I’m not sure if this is a flashback or Alucard is using telepathy to coach her from the deck of the H.M.S. Eagle.  

Either way, Seras uses her third eye and not only sees through the illusion but lines up a shot on the illusion-caster.  But it only grazes Zorin.   It disrupts the illusion, but it doesn’t end the threat.

And even though the illusion is shattered, it still distracted the Wild Geese long enough for Millennium troops to enter the mansion.   Seras manages to shoot them down, but there’s more where that came from.

Because the Nazi bastards figured out a way past the mines.   They just threw a bunch of knives on the ground and played hopscotch to get across.   I guess this means they can only get in one at a time, but it’s still bad news for the good guys.

So Pip adjusts his tactics accordingly.  He and his men will regroup and hold up in a defensible location, while Seras roams the building to take the fight to the enemy.   I guess the idea is to divide Millennium’s focus.   They can attack the Geese or watch out for Seras, but not both.   For some reason, Seras calls Pip “sir”, like he’s in charge, and maybe that is appropriate in this situation, but I thought Seras was in charge of their training.  

Then one of the Geese pats her on the butt and Pip steals a kiss.   I’m not sure what the hell this is about.   I guess they were trying to lighten the mood before they go to face certain death, but if my life depended on some vampire girl killing all the bad guys before they can rip me to shreds, I probably wouldn’t sexually harass her, or do anything else to tick her off.   But that’s just me.

Pip seems resigned about their chances.  He’s confident in Seras’ ability, but there’s only one of her and like... 30?  Let’s say 30, thirty Nazi Vampires heading their way.  If even one of them gets past Seras, the Geese will all die horribly.   But they took this job and the risks that come with it, and besides, there’s nowhere for them to run anyway.    He seems to accept the situation with a mercenary sense of honor.   Like, a mercenary should expect to die in some unwinnable battle, and they shouldn’t complain about it, since it’s the nature of the business. 

Anyway, it doesn’t go well.   The nature of the comic doesn’t really make it clear how the Wild Geese are operating, but I get the impression that they’re doing sort of a fighting withdrawal concentrating their forces as they give ground.    But they suffer a lot of casualties in the process.

This leads to the Geese holing up in the big conference room where Integra met with the Royal Order of Protestant Knights before the Valentine Bros. attack.   One guy panics and wants to bug out, but Pip reminds him of what I said a minute ago.   They’ve got nowhere else to go, and they all got into this for the action, so they should stick to their principles, even in the face of death.

There’s this one guy from “B-block”, who I guess was covering a certain hallway, but B-Block got cut off before they could join the others in the Round Table room.    Zorin Blitz decides to have some fun with him, so she uses her weird powers to make him see himself back home, with his dead daughter.  

This seems especially cruel, because it’s not like Zorin needed this diversion to kill one dude.   She’s just really sadistic.

Meanwhile, some other Millennium guys are eating the Wild Geese they already killed, and one of them shows off his ability to tell blood types just by taste.   It’s this really sick moment, but at the same time it humanizes the characters, which is a weird thing to say when discussing Nazi vampires, but you know what I mean.

Then Seras blows the dude’s head off, which is extremely satisfying.

So Seras is holding up her end, and growing more resolute with each kill.   She’s really improved a lot since the last time she was in action.    Yeah, these Millennium vampires probably aren’t that much tougher than the vampires she killed back in the summer, but there are a lot more of them, and they’re trained soldiers on top of that, and she doesn’t have Alucard backing her up like she did before.

By now, all that’s left of the Wild Geese are in this barricaded room, and they’ve run low on silver bullets, which means even the few shots that don’t miss will have almost no effect.   Pip is determined to hold out, confident that Seras will save them, but...

She runs out of bullets before she runs out of enemies to kill.   When she arrives to save the day, she’s still has to go through Zorin Blitz.

But Zorin doesn’t see this as a problem, and she uses her freaky mind powers on Seras, forcing her to relive memories of her days at the orphanage.    Yeah, Seras was an orphan, remember?   Alucard asked Walter about her parents a while back, and Walter said they were both dead.  How did they die?

Well, Zorin Blitz is about to find out...

#2021hellsingliveblog #hellsing #seras victoria #pip bernadotte #zorin blitz #alucard #a bunch of no-name wild geese dudes #i sometimes feel bad that i can't keep track of them all #but then i remember that kouta hirano never gave them names in the first place #so there's young commissioner gordon with the dead daughter #and the chubby faced guy who wants to run away #and the guy who cops a feel on seras #and the other guy who gets blown in half by a rocket launcher #and that's basically it

[catflowerqueen]

You know what would be kind of hilarious? If the initial choices for the Expedition were the only ones who went (meaning that Player, Partner, Croagunk, Dugtrio, and Diglett had to stay behind), but then everyone at the guild each managed to find a Time Gear during that duration.

Like--Hero and Partner got a request to explore Crystal Cave while the others were at Fogbound Lake and ended up meeting Azelf, and then Dugtrio decided to take his son out to the desert to practice burrowing or whatever and they accidentally dug through the quicksand and landed in Mesprit’s lake. 

(And Croagunk would be the odd one out because he apparently doesn’t really care that much about exploring anyways, and is more concerned with his swap cauldron)

So then each group would be desperately keeping the secret from the others--which would lead to an interesting morning briefing when people finally find out about Ditto’s Time Gear no longer being in its proper place, since everyone would be worried about it having been “their” gear that was stolen, but unable to actually ask that outright just in case it was a different on.

Cue the Fogbound Lake gear finally being stolen, and there would be many an awkward conversation when it comes out that the locations of the other two are already known. Even better if that only came out after the planning session between Wigglytuff, Chatot, and Dusknoir about where to go looking next, because what they told everyone when they sent them out to prepare was just “we’re going to look for Grovyle,” and that doesn’t necessarily equate with “we’re going to look for the other time gears,” even though that’s what the plan ended up being in the end.

Now, this wouldn’t necessarily blow Dusknoir’s cover or anything--because they were actually making plans for where the likeliest locations would be to go and search, so his justifications would still hold, in addition to that red herring about Eastern Forest... but it would still be highly amusing.

I mean--it would probably also lead to Grovyle getting caught faster because there would not be that delay when it comes to actually figuring out the secret of the quicksand that we got in canon, so Mesprit would have had more time to prepare... but the end result would likely be more or less the same, because Dusknoir still would have had to drag at least the Hero into the future with them.

Really, I think that ultimately would have been a good thing, even, because when the group escaped the future and made it back, it would just give everyone even more of a time buffer to seek out info on the Hidden Land and Grovyle might have actually gotten to hang out and relax a bit more. And/or Dialga wouldn’t have been quite so far gone yet that a fight was necessary. 

...

Also funny/interesting would have been if the hero and partner had met Grovyle during that period instead as he was wandering about and preparing to hit Fogbound Lake--because it wouldn’t surprise me if he’d gone to Treasure Town in the meantime before he was actually outed as the thief--which would have led to awkward conversations about the Hero and Partner having met him already, which might possibly lead to Dusknoir breaking cover if he started freaking out about it or being suspicious that the Hero actually does know more that they’re letting one/is lying about the amnesia.

Or if it was just the Hero and Partner who ended up finding the other two Time Gears in the meantime, leading to Uxie to question/mention it to the Guild when they show up.

#pokemon mystery dungeon #explorers of sky #what if...?

[crossdressingdeath]

Okay yes I will ask your thoughts on Anders :D

Well, to start with something simple (and I assume not particularly controversial): the sequence of events we’re given for how Anders ended up in Kirkwall makes no fucking sense. I mean, it makes sense that the Chantry would ignore the Right of Conscription and try to drag him back to the Circle, but where the fuck is the Warden in all this?! If memory serves in some piece of the canon it’s implied or outright stated that the Chantry went over their head to get Templar agents into the Wardens, but they’re still the Warden-Commander? We’re expected to believe that the Warden, someone who will in most saves count Anders and Justice as dear friends and can be adamantly against the Circle, the Templars, and the Chantry as a whole, would just let a bunch of Templars run the two of them out of Amaranthine? The Warden would permit the cat they gave Anders to be taken away from him without so much as a fight? They may have to answer to Weisshaupt but even so! If Weisshaupt was interfering in the running of the Ferelden branch that much I’d expect it to be at least mentioned! If you played your Warden as someone who cared about the people under their command Anders and Justice getting forced out by the Wardens makes no sense. Honestly even if they don’t give a shit about their people Anders has friends! At the very least there should have been some mention of how exactly this was allowed to happen (maybe the Warden and the Awakening companions minus Anders and Justice were called away for some extremely long mission or something), or preferably Anders and Justice should have been chased out of Amaranthine through means entirely unrelated to the Wardens; you could have a bit about Anders being scared that after merging with Justice he’d bring trouble down on the Wardens that they couldn’t weather, it would be good and give him an element of connection to the people we spend the entirety of Awakening watching him bond with, and most importantly a connection to the previous player character that both Oghren in Awakening and Varric in Inquisition get but he doesn’t. Like, think about that for a second; Oghren obviously already knows the Warden and Varric pretty much waxes poetic about how great Hawke is every time they come up, but Anders doesn’t even react to learning about a fucking assassination plot against the Warden! Give me some friendship points for dealing with that, at least! And when you run into Nathaniel if memory serves Anders doesn’t even ask about the Warden, who Nathaniel is presumably still serving under! He doesn’t ask Zevran about the Warden either, even if you romanced him in Origins! Basically just the fact that DA2 doesn’t acknowledge your approval value with Anders even while remembering such things as whether or not you slept with Isabella in the Pearl irks me. This is your carryover companion, Bioware! Try a little harder to remind us of that!

Anyway, moving on. Honestly so much about Fenris and Anders’s dynamic bothers me? I remember seeing a post about how maybe actually after a while they settled into actual discussion and learning from each other but Varric decided to spice it up by keeping them super aggressive in his storytelling, which I do like better, but in the canon story? I mean, they’re just playing hot potato with the misery poker at this point. And do not get me started on the guy with the spirit of justice in his head approving of selling someone into slavery. I don’t care how much he hates Fenris, Justice disapproved of having a pet cat in Awakening! And Bioware seriously expects us to believe that the guy with, again, the spirit of justice in his head would wave off fucking slavery because “mages have it worse”? I do not buy that. It makes far less sense now than it did in Awakening, where Anders had spent most of his life in a tower where elves were at least nominally on equal footing with humans and was only just getting out in a way that was likely to be permanent.

And of course, the big one: the whole thing where the narrative flattens Anders forcing a confrontation by blowing up a building that’s closed at night and only really has a couple people in it even during the day to kill the woman signing off on the mass slaughter of innocent people with the expectation that if the Templars are really interested in justice they will execute him instead of killing the mages of the Circle to just “crazy mage blows up a building and kills huge numbers of people to force everyone to go to war” pisses me off. This is a series that allows you to justify abandoning an entire town to be killed by skeletons! In this game you can sell your friend to slavers! And yet there is no serious moral discussion about Anders’s actions. It’s bad, case closed, no possible justification for it. And... other people have made this point more eloquently than me, but it seems pretty obvious that they made it a big, dramatic (and incredibly nonsensical, what the fuck is even happening with that explosion, was the point not to do it without magic, why did it look like that) explosion to set off that knee-jerk “explosion = terrorism” response that most people have; a public killing didn’t have to involve blowing up a church, now did it? I don’t believe for a second that a man who could plant a bomb in the Chantry without anyone noticing despite being a known apostate couldn’t find a way to get Elthina out of the Chantry and into a public area where she could be killed dramatically and without any risk of collateral damage from his own actions, especially with the situation reaching the point where she was having to directly interfere to keep the chaos from going too far. Hell, even burning it down would’ve been better (and honestly more satisfying I think, given how much time every other part of Kirkwall spends in flames)! Note also that in Trespasser, which would’ve been written well after 2 came out and people started talking about how Anders had a point, they have a bit where Varric talks about massive death tolls and enough rubble to change tidal patterns in a port city. The destruction of one building cannot do both those things! I don’t actually think it could do either given we’re shown that it is practically empty when it goes up, but it certainly couldn’t do both! We were not supposed to actually... think about this explosion. We were supposed to conclude that Anders was wrong because explosions are Bad and then when people didn’t come to that conclusion they crammed in a bunch of nonsensical bullshit about death tolls and tides without considering whether that made any sense from a logic standpoint in an attempt to push us to stop questioning it. And... in a series that put so much thought into complex morality in the first game, that was just a massive disappointment and step back in the complexity of the morality. And almost certainly the first step towards Inquisition’s “Well actually in this conflict where one side wants to be allowed to imprison and torture people and the other side wants to not be imprisoned and tortured both sides are just as bad as each other” bullshit, which just makes it even worse.

Basically at the end of the day Bioware took a complicated character with every reason to hate the Chantry and a brilliant plan for exposing just how uninterested the Templars are in justice (a plan that works, may I add; the Circles didn’t rebel because the Chantry blew up, they rebelled because the Templars proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that they would use anything as an excuse to murder their charges even if they had the actual perpetrator of whatever they were using as that excuse right in front of them) and flipped the narrative to “crazy terrorist mage who killed infinitely more people than logic would suggest was possible while still doing all the other shit they claim that explosion did”, and I hate that.

#dragon age #anders #rynne #asks

[primedirection]

Hopelessly Devoted

Y/n reaches a breaking point

Another several days pass without really speaking to him and it becomes somewhat routine.

Although, thanks to his insane schedule it was definitely difficult to notice. There was no time to talk or argue for that matter when Harry was in Italy, Harry was in Tokyo, Harry was in Paris, Harry was in Los Angeles—Harry was basically everywhere and with everyone but you.

On one or two occasions you did observe that he'd been in places where she was also present. But he never mentioned it of course, he never had to. The tabloid's and social media sunk their teeth into it like a juicy steak. In which he whimsically dismissed as work coincidence's.

So once again you let it slide. As they say: Pick your battles wisely!

But today you were kind of happy you did. Today was his first day back for a week long break and Anne and Gemma were in town visiting. They promised to come along for a scheduled cake testing for the wedding some time ago. And since neither of you had made arrangments to reschedule it, you would be forced to play nice, even if only for a few hours.

Picking them all up from the airport was fairly cordial but awkward nonetheless given your current limbo status. You didn't skip a beat in putting your engagement ring back on and Harry didn't either, greeting you enthusiastically with a hug and kiss. Though whether or not it was all for show you'd never know. Not to mention the enormous elephant between you two just for the simple fact you weren't sure if the wedding was still actually on. You assumed that the opportunity to discuss that would eventually come along when you were properly alone.

As the day went on and you were on your fourth cake, you realized that this was the perfect activity for bonding and not just with his family.

Despite being wedding reception centric you talked more than you had in weeks, laughed ridiculously hard at each other in what felt like ages, and shared simple trivial affection that you hadn't realized that you'd been craving. You almost cried when he thoughtlessly reached for your hand while waiting on a highly recommended red velvet cake.

It made you take notice of just how much you actually missed him. So you swallowed your pride and relayed it aloud. Genuinely professing, "I missed you."

At that Harry seems to smile with his eyes more than his lips. Interlacing your fingers and kissing the back of your hand. "Missed yeh more pet." There's a nervous flutter in your gut from the gesture and anticipation to be alone. Part of you can't help wondering if this was just an act too good to be true.

"So is anyone allowed to make a speech or toast? Or like are you keeping it limited..?" Gemma curiously asks.

Harry nervous looks to you for the answer. In which you shrug, "Everyone can say and do as they please so long as I don't have to,"

"Oh, lovie you have got to stop being so hard on yourself. Your speech was beautiful! It even made Gem cry,"

"No one was supposed to know that, but she's right. I'm still upset I missed it, if I didn't have that ridiculous conference I swear I would've been there,"

"I know," You smile sadly removing your hand from Harry's underneath the table. "It's okay,"

In the corner of your eye you spot his discomfort on the topic at hand, and it only gets worse when Anne asks, "What did you think? Didn't you love it?"

At the sudden attention Harry flushes a deep crimson from the neck up and nervously proceeds to scratch the area, "Haven't.. Em.. Heard it yet. I honestly didn't know she had one,"

Both women proceed to eye him incredulously, "Are you fucking joking?"

"Gemma!" Anne scolds at her foul and loud choice of words in the small posh cake shop.

"Sorry mum, but come on! You are joking right?" She deadpans, "I mean she poured her heart out for you just for her world to see and now the entire world has seen it!"

Embarrassed he clears his throat and shamefully admits, "I um... No,"

Gemma eyes widen twice their size completely taken aback, "Dickhead, it's a five minute video— hell less than that! All over my feed and it's still all over my feed because people wont stop tagging the three of us in it. How in the holy hell did you not see it?!"

In a matter of seconds tension has shifted, all of it negative and all of it aimed specifically at Harry. Words couldn't begin to explain the utter relief and justification you felt watching on as Harry is forced to listen to everything you felt and couldn't say, and everything you tried to say but couldn't get across clearly. Not only empathetically come from someone else, but the only two people on the planet that meant the most to him.

As much as the vengeful part in you enjoyed watching him squirm. It didn't feel right to have him bludgeoned over the head with it in order for him to get it. Most likely he still wouldn't understand the problem.

So you miraculously find yourself taking up for him with a forced smile. "It's not his fault. He's been busy, especially with this new album," Causing everyone to stare at you perplexed, including Harry.

Also making the dynamic of frustration shift towards you as well. Gemma is flabbergasted, "Please tell me you're joking now? There's no excuse on earth that is ok-"

Instantly this bothers Harry and he makes no secret of it. Irritably interrupting, "We're working on it Gem, alright? Chill out."

There aren't words to define the weird and borderline chaotic atmosphere going on and just when you think things can't get worse. For some God forsaken reason, when the red velvet cake finally arrives to your table, Harry's phone simultaneously starts to ring from his back pocket. Everyone at the table pretty much stops what they're doing just to watch him retrieve it and check the screen. Your stomach uncomfortably drops at the sight of the name 'Kenny'.

He answers it chirpier than ever, even allowing her to akwardly greet his mom and sister. All the while you remain dead silent, willing for him to just end it as soon as possible and yet things just so happen to continue on a downward spiral. As Harry mentions your location at first it spirals into him inviting her to come which is bad enough. But then it spirals further out of control when he volunteers to just meet up with her today instead.

It takes everything in you not to let the raw emotions show on your face. Though not just because both Anne and Gemma were skeptically watching you. In that moment you swear you could've kicked him between the legs.

Eventually he stands from your table before even hanging up the phone. Having already decided, "Today's her only day in town, figured we could hang out for a bit. I don't think we'll pick in one day anyway. Might have a better time picking out a dress," he not so subtly suggests.

"Well you actually have to try the cakes in order to pick one..." You happily hear Gemma retort.

It goes completely over his head anyway, "Dinner later tonight?" He asks at least being polite enough to kiss Anne goodbye. Yet he doesn't exactly wait for a reply either coming around to place a rushed kiss on your cheek. At which you stoically accept.

"You lot have fun. Well.... Not too much fun." In no time he's out the door and on the move. Forcing you into taking on his suggestion because it felt really pointless to stay.

About an hour later and a rib crushing corset deep with six more dresses lined up just like it to try on, reality starts to set in.

First off it takes awhile to even get started because you and Harry haven't even agreed to what theme or color scheme you wanted. So you had to get ahold of him to ask for some ideas and of course as luck would have it. Since he's out and about with his precious Kenny there's no way to get ahold of him. Ultimately leaving you to make something up all on your own.

Aside from the discomfort, the sight of yourself in the beautiful gown didn't feel right in the least. You're supposed to be overjoyed and excited with your bestie trying to get you somewhat drunk and your mom should've been there too. Speaking of moms, you don't register Anne announcing herself before coming inside the dressing room.

One of her hands clamps over her mouth in awe while the other holds an off white dress shirt you presume is for Harry, "Y/n lovie you are down right gorgeous!"

You have to force yourself to smile back at her and utter a strained, "Thank you," not because of how depressed you feel but for some reason you literally felt like you couldn't breathe.

"I don't know what we're going to do with that boy.. Do you know what color shirt is going under his suit? I reckon this colo-" The curiosity on her sweet face easily morphs into concern at the sight of you panicking, "S'wrong lovie?"

Instantly your hand shoots up to stop her from approaching any further because the the room felt small enough as it is. Hoping that with a little time that the feeling would blow over. Though the more time that passed the more over heated you felt. The tip of your ears on fire and the rest of your skin flushing just the same with it. At some point the nude colored stall even begins to shift around you to the extent that you stumble around to grab onto it in order to steady yourself.

Anne's voice floats in and out of distortion and so do the other's in the distance. Somehow you catch her soothing, "Y/N lovie just stay calm. Let's go to the main room for a bit yeah?"

You shake your head, unable to move, suddenly overwhelmed with intense grief. But you force yourself to answer her initial question anyway because it bothered you the most, "I don't- I don't know... anything these days. It's like- it's like... I could have a gun to my head... and he still wouldn't care." You gasp and cry.

"Don't cry hun, it's alright shh," Anne finally eases close enough to hold your trembling hand steady and attempts to comfort you but you only feel worse.

"It's really... not, I- I-... I put him off somehow and it's not how it should be. He's always running off.... with k-" You stop yourself realizing that she didn't need to know that, "It's like... he can't be far enough."

While you talk Anne uses that as a distraction to usher you out of the fitting rooms and into the main area, "That's not true, lovie. It's okay, you're okay breathe!" She reassures slowly but surely getting you to a chair just in time, just before you feel the need to collapse. Gemma and the sales woman are hovering around worried too but you physically can't even begin to focus on them. 'Is she okay' and 'panic attack' seems to be the topic of conversation.

"God I don't know what else I can do to keep up. I- I can't- I can't go through with this." You shamelessly cry out to Anne.

Who's retrieved something from the sales woman that you come to find out is a hand held fan. Anne wastes no time waving it back and forth quickly to blow bigger and stronger wafts of air. Cooling and calming you down all at once. You start to assume that she keeps you talking to keep you distracted, "With what? The wedding? Lovie I'd be worried if you didn't have cold feet."

Your head shakes in denial, unable to find humor in what honestly has been stressing you out the most. "No... be with him..." You gasp out, hating to admit it aloud. Nonetheless in front of his mother, and at the sight of her very own shock. Immediately you wished that you'd never said anything at all.

After awhile something about that confession finally made the deep inhalation part of you your lungs start working again, and slow to follow was everything else. The room stopped spinning and you were able to take in the terrified expressions of Gemma and the sales woman. Going back and forth on whether or not to call an ambulance and eventually they decided not to.

But even worse than the tabloid articles that were bound to come out about this, was none other than Harry Styles making a reappearance. Apparently Gemma had called him and unlike you, actually got through.

He dropped to his knees right between yours, "Came as fast as I could, thank God we were only down the street,"

"It's fine— I'm fine," You immediately lie, loathing the spectacle that this was becoming. You just wanted to go home, "I think I just... overheated."

Wait... We?!?! You pause to look over his shoulder and low and behold there she is. Kendall fucking Jenner standing next to Gemma and she has the audacity to look concerned.

Harry grabs your cheeks to redirect your focus on him obviously worried, "Alright? S'wrong? What happened?"

He's a little breathless as he probably ran inside. But you manage catch the smell of his breath through the gusts of air as he speaks and the close proximity. It reeks of beer and once you realize that the more glossy his gaze is.

"Are you- are you really drunk right now?" You feel like you're gonna cry yet you somehow manage to ask it angrily.

"What?" He's unsurprisingly confused. Possibly a symptom of his haze.

But you're too angry to care, roughly tearing his hands away from your face and standing on numb legs, "You left... You fucking left me to go drinking?!"

Harry frowns still thrown by your reaction, "Will you calm do-"

"No! What the fuck are we doing Harry?!" You cry overwhelmed and over emotional. "Today was supposed to be about our wedding! Does that not mean anything to you?"

"Y/N, lower your voice," he pleads grabbing onto your wrist and uncomfortably glancing at the audience around you.

"No no, don't!" You yank away and stumble a bit from the force. Completely forgetting the restrictive gown you're in, "I am so sick of this shit... I'm done— I am so fucking done!" Frustrated, you gather up the skirt of the gown and rush towards the dressing room to get out of it.

Even then Harry follows close behind until Anne and Gemma protectively intervene, "Just give her a minute to cool down H."

"Jesus Christ," he groans irritated, dragging his hands over his face. Unable to properly formulate what the hell he just walked in to.

He needed to talk to you before you did something irrational. Because right now he got the feeling that the clock was ticking.

(An: I hope y'all like this one let me know)

Final Part

#Harry styles angst #Harry styles imagines #Harry x reader #Harry styles #one direction imagines #Harry Styles one shot #One direction one shot #harry styles drabble #harry styles fanfic #harry styles fanfiction #all me #I write I guess

[popculturebuffet]

Jake Reviews Stuff: Amphibia: Marcy at the Gates

Marcy arrives! The Plantars make it to Newtopia but first have to deal with a slight ant problem and a new addition to the family, as we finally meet the adorkable Marcy. Legs in two months under the cut. 

So as you could probably tell by the tone the last few weeks, doing this has weighed on me a bit. While I do love talking about this show week after week, as well as having a recurring series here to bring in readers, the split quality of the Season thus far has been a challenge. Now when I say split I don’t mean like star vs season 3 where it was either really damn good and some of the show’s best writing or “oh god what have they done to marco’s character this time”, it’s more either really good standout episodes ore more forgetable average ones. See a good episode I can gush about, dive into big charcter stuff, motviations, that sort of thing. I defintley will with owl house at some point and have with other shows. A bad episode can be taken apart and taken to the cleaners, which I haven’t done much of but probably should and if you want any taken to task yourself, I do comissions. But self promotion aside, the point is a meh episode just dosen’t leave me with a lot tot alk about and hte recaps became really dry as a result as I just couldn’t find a lot of jokes, and having a busy few weeks on top of that didn’t really help, nor did the antipciation for this week and the intersting setting of newtopia. 

Thankfully a combination of a really good few days, a better sleep schedule, and a really good episode this week, and a pile of scary go round collections for a dollar have reinvgorated me, so hopefully I can get back to doing what I love: Overanalizing children’s cartoons. So with that we can dive right into the episode. The keithdavidpocalypse is upon us! Pitter Patter! We open with Spring and Anne in the cart. Their close to newtopia, but Anne is worried they never found Marcy, while Sprig isn’t because her last friend turned out to be “Evil”... which Anne harshly rebuffs. And both sides are understandable: To Anne, Sasha was her friend.. a manipualtive and bossy friend sure but one who genuinely cared for her, she just may not know how to deal with people. To Sprig, Sasha is some asshole who abused his friend, tried to murder his Pop Pop, and works for a guy who tried to murder his whole town. It’s really understandable he woudln’t have the same warm fuzzy feelings Anne has.. insert your own Sashanne joke here.  We also get our first actual look at Marcy who to my suprise, rather than be another form of manipulative.. is simply an awkward nerd, constnatly playing video games, reading books , cataloging shit, and trying to get her friends to play d and d. So me if I knew what d and d was in high school. 

Anyways, the family finally DOES make it to Newtopia, impressive as you’d expect when the guard won’t let them see the wizard no way no how. Antique references aside, the guard at the gate actually has good reason for not letting them in as they have a tiny barbari-ant problem. A species Hop Pop is, in a nice touch, unfamiliar with due to the Valley not having them. We quickly see them in action as one approaches the plantars, basically a giant ant with ant-lers. Yes I used a pun there sue me. Anyway, our heroes ward off the ant they do find with some really cool team manuvering, and Polly showing she has spiked teeth. It’s a cool sequence. However they quickly find themselves outgunned, outplanned, outnumbered and outmanned. They gotta make an all out stand. Their gonna need a right hand man. Also I finally saw the film version of hamilton, as you can tell. Utterly magic. 

Said Right Hand Man, er woman, er tween comes in the nick of time as a cloaked Marcy sprays some black goo and sets it ablaze, scaring the ants off, snatching a stalemate from the jaws of defeat,  then rappeling down on a rope shot from a crossbow, also making polly want one because of course. She then.. Faceplants. Still a solid 8/10 entrance Marcy.  Marcy is played by Haley Tju who you may remember from such shows as The Loud House. And that’s all I know her from but given Stella’s one of my faviorites and Haley’s performance is part of that, so it’s unsuprising she’s great here. Also fun fact I learned by looking at her trope page: She actually played a younger version of London, brenda song’s character, on the Suite Life I Pray for Death but Death Won’t Come.. or On Deck for those who’ve never watched it. But I like the fact two londons are now on the same show together.. and an actually good noe at that! Horay. But yeah Haley is a great VA and what little i’ve seen her in and a welcome addition.  Marcy and Anne happily reunite once htey both realize who the other is, and hug and etc, before Marcy decends on the plantars, talking on and on and on about geeky stuff and how she likes the found family trope. ... I may really relate to this  mediums sized child, as I too am a huge nerd with no filter and was probably a lot like her at that age. It’s also clear she very transparently sees this as a combinaton of a video game and a d and d session, but said skills have actually benifited her as rping a rogue allowed her to easily bluff her way into the kingdom’s good graces and now she’s a sworn agent of the king as we’ll find out.  She quickly wins over the Plantars, measuring hop pop’s head, gushing over him being a farmer (which he almost instantly adopts her over and asks to point blank later), and then noticing Polly’s legs are about to come in and giving her the note seen in the review image, my faviorite gag. Sprig however is more out and out hostile and has his reasons we’ll get to in a second.  Marcy escorts her new family and sorta girlfriend to the makeshift war room set up by three scholoary newts who quickly resolve their planning disagreements by beating the piss out of each other. Just like real politics.. and that’s not a cheeky jab between the actual caning in the sentate that happened once and the various duels in the revolutionary and early america eras.. yeah the only reason the preisdent hasn’t been shot for challening one of hte many people he hates for a duel without realizing he really can’t see through that squint too good is that it’s now illegal and not the kind of illegal he can hide like usual.  Anyways after the Newts scoff at our heroes, but Marcy vouches for them and reveals that the ants are getting closer because i’ts gotten warmer....

Marcy has a plan though: Spread scentshrroms around that will release a pheremone which will drive them off, having throughly studied Amphibia’s various flora and fauna and thus knowing how to deal with them. I’ts something I like about the character and how she adds to the other huamns group dynamics. Alll three deal with issues diffrent ways; Anne has plans, but rarely thinks them through, Sasha does think hers through and is a master manipulator while Marcy is a ballance between the two: She does throughly think things out and have well thought out clever plans.. she just also tens to rush into things or go forward with a nose in a book or without a thought to how dangerous soemthing is. She’s prepared, she’s just not very aware of her surrondings, which is amood. 

But Anne is nervous about her coming along as is sprig which sets up both’s conflicts with her for the episode: Anne wants to protect Marcy, since she just got her back and her only other remaning friend now clearly wants to stab her and she has a better option now love interest wise. However Marcy convinces Anne, 2nd capefire this episode nonwithstanding, she can handle herself. She also calsl her annabannna which is fucking adorable.  The other conflict is that Sprig dosen’t trust her.. he has no rational reason not to give she’s a sweetie, but is a bit gunshy about another human girl working for a dictator popping up in their life. And while he’s probably wrong, while I think Marcy isn’t working for the best people probably she’s likely too oblivious to genuinely relaize she’s doing crimes if they have her doing them or was given a fake justification. I could be wrong, and will gladly eat crow. Metphorically i’m not going to bake a real crow. I don’t have the right seasoning. And i’d also be cursed but eh I doubt I can get poorer. But it’s understandable he has reservations, especially since while he dosen’t say it he’s likely worried Anne will get hurt again. He’s a good boy, he’s just being paranoid over probably nothing.  Anyways onoto the plan: The plantars and new girl marcy are gonna:

Okay phermone them whatever, the point is they head into the Ant Hole, witht he conflicts continuing as the plantars progress; Sprig is naturally suspcious and Anne is worried about her precious gurl. The group fight some more ants, and Marcy seemingly wonders off.. only to instead BLOW THEM A FUCKING TUNNEL with some chemicals from some flowers she found, then instant sprout a plant cage.. and accidently trap polly. NOOOOO.> Thankfully she frees her and tosses some plants on the ants, which is fun to say.  We then get to our climax. OUr group find the queen who ihs horrifying.. a good mom as sprig points out but horrfing. Nice design though i’m just.. not an insect guy and sometimes this show leaves me in abject terror. this is one of those times. Our heroes plant the mushrooms, phrasing I know but this review is late as is and i’ve already used up my archer refrence for the day.  Anne dives to Save a seemingly oblovious Marcy.. whose mad at Anne over it.. while Anne is udnerstandable Marcy wants her , NEEDS her to understand...

No not that erik. That, much like Anne herself, Marcy’s grown and changed over these past three months. She can handle herself now and she needs her ot see that. Also sprig gets attacked by an ant baby, which not only wakes up the queen, who can hear but can’t see but now knows something’s arry, but causes said queen to unleash a hoarde of ants.  Marcy however naturally has a plan: She’ll dive into the queen’s belly and get sprig, the plantars will hold them off and Anne finally trusts her lady enough to fiht off. I don’t have a lot to say I just really like this character arc and Marcy’s character: She’s a bit oblivious, ab it obessed with nerdy things which again relate.. but when push comes to shove she’s also clever, a master planner and has clearly studied her ass off about this world and knows it well. She’s throughly likeable.  And that likeablity finally gets through to sprig when she gets him out and swings him. Trust earned, anne’s faith in her gained and the mushrooms go off and send the ants running. Misson Complete.  With the mission complete our heroes finally enter Newtopia and meet the mysterious Lady Olivia, whose been sending Marcy on her missions, and is likely her spymaster. Not that i think Marcy realizes that but Marcy’s love of midevil fantasy means she blends in well with thier courty apperance and introduces anne and co to her.. Olvia isn’t impressed but is cordial about it at least.. even with Sprig breaking shit. And yeah , Amphibia has a king over all of it, as Hop Pop puts it “We aren’t savages”. It does make sense it woudln’t come up every day though, it’s not as if the king really cares about the valley... but more on speculation about him in a minute. Hop Pop wisely gives the two “Friends’ some alone time, and the two talk things over: Anne explains how she found sasha.. and it didn’t go great, and Marcy vows that the two of them can go their own way now. Maybe iwth tounge. we dunno. The two then look over anne’s phone while anne recounts her anne-tics.. and we get to the king. And it’s KEITH DAVID BITCHES AS WAS PROHPISED A FEW WEEKS AGO. And he has myserious plans and wood carven figures of both our heroines and possible gaybies. “The game can finally begin. “

Final Thoughts: This was a really damn good episode. Whiel I summarized more than usual , both conflicts were great, all the plantars got to shine, there were gags a plenty, an intriguing new member of the main cast and a mysterious new antagonist. I mean given it was revealed the Newts were behind Toad tower a few episodes back, I figured Andidas wouldn’t be a good guy, even if he’s played by upstanding gentleman and god among men keith david, , but it’s a question of what his end goal is, how the girls got here, and what his plan ofr them is that i’m curious to see play out as the season goes on, as well as see if Marcy is a pawn or not. Newtopia also looks intresting and i’ts nice to have a new solid setting to build on now we’re here, as well as new mysteries to unlock> Ther’es also the honest possibliity marcy, who claims to have found bubkuss, might simply want to stay in a world where she gets to live out her dreams and isn’t picked on or bullied. Again we’ll see all speculation but this episode was damn good. For now this is the clear highlight of the season and i’tll be intresting to see where it goes from here. Until next time courage. 

#amphibia #anne boonchuy #marcy wu #hopidiah plantar #sprig plantar #polly plantar #marcy at the gates

[agent-cupcake]

Beastie and the Bard

Fire Emblem Three Houses - Dimitri x Reader (Chapter 3)

A symphony has four parts so does this, but it’s split because I’m lazy and didn’t anticipate the minuet to give me so much grief. Sorry for the wait, life is a lot all the time all at once, you know? 

Symphony Vittoria Opus 3, No. 1 I. Allegro A whooping shout echoed across the canyon, catching like fire upon a pile of dry leaves as the joyous sound spread across the triumphant troops. The bandit chef had fallen to Professor Byleth’s blade. The Blue Lions had won the battle of Zanado.

You felt dizzy, mentally dampened, and a bit confused at first.

“We won?” you asked nobody in particular, voice raised above the din of a few dozen voices talking at once. The man closest to you was smiling, nodding, speaking. You were slow in catching up, but you managed to make out his answer after a moment of focusing. Won, you had won. And then your ears were filled with the deafening sound of relentless noise and rushing blood, a roar of excitement that grew from within your own self.

You had won!

It didn’t happen in a steady turn, but in a sudden, jolting twist as all your focus and combat oriented energy changed to a joy for victory. It made you giddy, practically drunk on jubilance as the tension left your frame. Your head spun with a tipsy sensation of dizziness, a disconnect between mind and body. Some of it must have been the fatigue casting a haze over your mind as you emerged from the focused state of fighting. Past the overwhelming joy, you were aware that exhaustion had crawled deep into your muscles in a way it hadn’t during the practice battle, or even through your vigorous training exercises. It left your limbs in a loose and rubbery state, but not yet burdened with the aching pain you’d undoubtably face later. It made every sensation you experienced spark with particular interest to your racing thoughts, voices made that much louder and the blow of a cool breeze through your sweaty hair that much cooler.

It was similar to the high you felt after managing a difficult piece of music or finally pulling off a tricky sword technique, a swell of pleasant and overwhelming joy. A feeling too big to be contained within your limited body. A wild giddiness.

Oddly, the sun had barely descended past its watchful position straight above. It seemed impossible that hours hadn’t passed since you set out upon the canyon considering all that had happened. Then again, your mind recalled the entire battle as nothing more than a blur, a flurry of sword strikes and shouted commands slipping by in a matter of minutes.

There had been the cold and prickling anticipation as Professor Byleth performed his final inspection and gave orders, a shuddering dread as you lined up against the bandits with weapons that had never tasted blood, the fluttering anticipation when the charge was called, and then a surge of energy, strength filling your body as all you had learned in training took over and you fought your first battle with everything you could.

And now, victory.

You didn’t think about what to do next, sheathing your sword and beginning to move contrary to the tide of men. Towards the front line, searching the dissipating crowd for familiar faces. Or, really, just the one familiar face. Your expression split into a bright smile when you saw him, heedless of the exhaustion. Dimitri’s blond hair was messier than you’d ever seen it, even while training. It caught every drop of sunlight, shining gold even when sticking to his head with sweat, several bits swept away at chaotic angles. There was blood on his armor, his cheeks were spotted with a red flush from exertion, and his expression was a bit worn. But, most importantly, he was unharmed.

Right then, in your half mad mindstate, you felt a blind rush of affection. Excitement. Victory. Skipping on feet that felt lighter than air, you rushed past the few scattering ranks of your small force. Dimitri saw you, opening his mouth to say something, but you cut him off by throwing your arms around his shoulders, tilting onto the tips of your toes. Luckily, he was used to moving with a spearman’s firm stance, which was the only thing that stopped both of you from toppling to the ground. The recklessness of the action hardly registered. Impulsive and excited and bubbly with the vigor of life itself, you pressed a kiss to his cheek. It happened so quickly that the sensations barely registered; a whiff of the musky masculine scent of his sweat, the smooth warmth of his cheek against your lips, your hand brushing the back of his hair when your arms met around his neck; and then you were dancing away, smiling with a mouth on the cusp of releasing a bout of delighted laughter.

“We did it!” you said, uncaring of the childish sound of your victorious words. The fact that you had fought and won was more than the victory of battle, serving as solid proof that you were meant to be among the knights and students, that you were right in choosing your own fate. It meant that your father had been wrong. It meant you were supposed to be here. At Dimitri’s side, maybe. “I can hardly believe it. I was so nervous at first, but we did it! I did it!”

“That you did,” Dimitri said in a slightly stiff voice, a measured contradiction to your manic excitement. He had pressed his hand to his cheek, right over where you had kissed him. Was that displeasure you read in his widened eyes, or disgust? Maybe surprise, being attacked was an awfully good reason to lose composure. And more, was his face that red before, or had the color darkened his fair complection further? His hand dropped, being used in a casual gesture towards you. “And with energy to spare, I see,” Dimitri teased. Although he still seemed a little flustered, his blue eyes twinkled with laughter.

You giggled in response, a giddy and nervous sound. The situation was beginning to sink in. Firstly, it probably broke a dozen different rules of etiquette to have thrown yourself at him, and that was before you factored in the unspoken rules of friendship and boundaries his status afforded him. Not to mention the battlefield you stood upon, or the uncomfortable weight of the gazes of the remaining soldiers who lingered, or the fact that Professor Byleth stood nearby speaking to a knight, or that not even a dozen feet away laid the unceremoniously fallen corpses of the bandit chief and his main guard in puddles of drying blood-

No. You forced yourself not to look at them, unwilling to consider the dead in conjunction with the way you felt now. Instead you focused on Dimitri and the thread of enthusiasm that had brought you to him, refusing to allow embarrassment or doubt to make you fold now that you had already committed.

“I’m just so happy that we won!” you said as way of justification. “I never thought that I’d be able to do something like this… And I wouldn’t have been able to do it without your help so I wanted to thank you because if it hadn’t been for all that training I think I totally would have choked, but because of you I didn’t, so...” You let the thought drop there, your disorganized words rushed together just as badly as your thoughts. And then, what else was there to say? The jittery excitement was still thudding in your heart and making your hands shake. You wanted to apologize, but you also didn’t feel sorry, so you chose instead to settle for the middle ground. “Anyway, I… I should probably go back and help.” You gestured vaguely behind yourself, smiling like a fool for all that you should have at least tried to feel shame. “Um, see you, Dimitri! And you, Professor!” you called with a jaunty wave before turning on your heel. If eyes followed you, or if either responded, you didn’t know, and you were far too shy to check as you hurried up the steps to the top of the canyon where  the horses and knights were all congregated.

Embarrassment was easy in coming, but found little traction in the thrill that filled you as well. Victory was exciting in a way no song had ever properly described. Maybe more than any song could. And then there was the way your body buzzed, the warmth tickling your lips, and the way your heart pounded when you thought of how bold you’d been.

Victory truly was sweet.

Symphony Vittoria Opus 3, No. 2 II. Adagio

Victory, as it turned out, could hurt.

When Lord Lonato fell, it was with an awful, hollow stillness that came in the stead of fanfare or glory. This did not feel like victory, or at least any sort of victory you could be pleased with. Ashe waved away any of your attempts to console or help him, returning to the town alone to find his brother and sister. Even though you desperately yearned to, you didn’t dare follow him alone, knowing that you would be rejected as the enemy.

In the eyes of the townspeople, you were the enemy.

So you watched Ashe go, heart heavy and aching. It wasn’t Ashe’s rejection that stung, not exactly. What hurt the most was the knowledge that you, right then, were useless to him. Nothing you did or said would be able to help him, your words would fall on ears made deaf as they strained to hear the voices of the dead. Nothing you could do would ease his pain or set his world back to rights.

Just like your mother. You could picture her clearly right then, standing in a beautiful black dress above your father’s grave. Weeping because of her true, singular love for the man and the gaping emptiness in her heart that would never be filled without him. Like Ashe, your mother hadn’t wanted your help. To her, you had been nothing more than a reminder of what she could have had, what she was going to have before he died. That day, you lost your mother, too.

Would Ashe be the same as she had been? Would you be a symbol forever reminding him of the death of the man who raised and cared for him? Would he stay in a state of frigid misery, bound by the lingering hold of the dead and unable to move forward? You had only known him for a few months, yet the idea made your eyes hot and teary, a terrible feeling clenching in your chest.

No. You would figure out a way to prevent that from happening, you would not fail again.

Or so you swore to yourself, right then.

Turning away from the empty forrest road and that tremulous silent promise, you set out to find Dimitri. You didn’t know why. Certainly not to ambush him with a hug and kiss on the cheek as you had at the end of the last battle, or anything resembling any sort of excitement. For comfort, maybe. Maybe to ask for advice about Ashe. Then again, you weren’t sure you really wanted to supply a reason for desiring his company. More and more you’d begun seeking it out unprompted. You were friends, and that was definitely sacred and worth pursing. He shouldn’t have been special beyond that, but he was. And you didn’t like to think of exactly why that was, so you didn’t.

The knights were all packing up to make the return trip to the monastery, not losing a second of daylight in their meticulous routine. It struck you as horrifically callous. The church with all their men and might will come to kill your fathers and brothers and then leave within the hour, leaving naught a trace behind. But that was foolish, a childish fancy given teeth as you tried to reconcile what had happened with what you wished would have happened. It was kinder and more pragmatic to leave as quickly as possible and allow the people to grieve in private.

That was the reality.

You were better off with the indignant stance that Lord Lanato was the one at fault for the deaths. His own foolishness was at the cost of the men you had killed. But in the same breath of that scorn could you smell the blood, feel it flaking off of your hands like flakes of rust.

No.

You didn’t want to think about that, you couldn’t let yourself. A knight didn’t weep for those they killed if it was necessary. Those words were a lesson from your sword teacher in Fhirdiad, a knight who had retired after partaking in one too many of the ugly skirmishes that had popped up in the wake of King Lambert’s death. His eyes were haunted when he told you that it was important to know when to care, and when not to.

Another thought that was best left alone.

So you focused on your search efforts. Unfortunately, while dodging through the collected chaos you realized that Magdred Way’s tree lined paths weren’t great for visibility, even without that supernatural fog. Not only was your heart heavy with thoughts you cared little to entertain and you couldn’t find Dimitri, but everybody looked so sad as well. Your friends who should have been proud of themselves for achieving victory without any casualties were wearing grave masks and curled postures with slumped shoulders, the knights grim faced and terse. Professor Byleth was the only one seemingly unaffected by it all, pointing you in the right direction to find Dimitri without expression or comment, trailed by an especially and uncharacteristically severe-looking Catherine.  

Probably, you should have been concerned by that sight alone. But you weren’t, not really, because once you knew where to look Dimitri was easy to spot. He was tucked in the shadow at the edge of the trees, sitting on the convenient seat of a rock with his head bowed and hands folded in something like reverence. The cheerless image brought you up short, the words you had intended to use to call to him dying on your lips.

Pain clung to him, weighed him down with something more than than the cheap sorrow you’d been fighting off. You could easily recognize the way it crowned his head in invisible lead and sank deep and heavy into his bones. It was, after all, a familiar sight.

Holding completely motionless a yard or so away from him, you briefly considered turning around and leaving Dimitri be. People who looked like that had never fared well with your intervention. But you couldn’t. He just looked too sad and lonely. So you approached him with soft steps, feeling the hesitancy of regret before you even spoke.

“Dimitri?” you asked softly, uncertain. “Are you all right?”

He tensed up at hearing your voice, his posture straightening out with a snap as if to cover for the momentary weakness. Red rimmed his eyes, although you thought it was more of an effect of fatigue than tears. It complimented the bluish shadows beneath.

“Yes, of course. I was just resting a moment,” he told you, his expression and voice carefully controlled. “Did you need something?”

Any person in the world would be able to tell that he was feigning indifference. Pain was stretched thin in the forcibly casual tone of his voice like pottery held too tightly, seconds away from cracking. It hurt, strangely, that he would put on an act around you, but you didn’t dare think too hard about that sharp stab of pain or why you’d feel it. More than anything, you were worried, your heart set aching anew as you realized that his sorrow far overcame your own.

“No, I don’t. You looked...” Despairing. Agonizing. Like the weight of the world was crushing you and I don’t understand why. “Upset,” you said lamely. An underlying awkwardness edged your voice, created by your influx of emotions you suddenly had no idea what to do with. “I can… I can go if you want to be alone.”

“It’s not that-” Dimitri began with more false pretense, only to cut off whatever else he was going to add and let out a heavy breath, rubbing a hand over his face and allowing his posture to relax. “I’m sorry. I’m fine. I wanted a moment to collect my thoughts.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?” you asked.

“No,” he said firmly. Then, a moment later in a softer tone, “I don’t know.”

“This battle was… It was hard,” you said, an understatement if there ever was one, but Dimitri seemed to understand all the same.

“It was, and I know that what we did was necessary, but... I can’t help but wish that we could have handled that differently, that there was a different way to settle things without such violent measures.” His voice lowered even further, head bowing. “But if it wasn’t necessary, then what we did...”

Dimitri allowed the silence to speak for him.

“I think I understand,” you said, although you weren’t quite sure if you did. A part of your mind rebelled at the idea that violence wasn’t a way resolve conflict, although another wondered what such peace would look like. “But… We just have to keep going, don’t we? Maybe there’s another way, but this… We can’t let it define us, we just have to keep going forward and try to do better in the future, right?”

“Don’t you find it wrong?” Dimitri asked, his question given passion and intensity as he suddenly stood. The louder voice as well as the dramatic physical shift pulled you up entirely short, sending you a step back. “Does it not bother you to indiscriminately take the lives of those opposing us without even questioning if we could achieve the same goals without death?” All of the dispassionate pain you had seen before was gone, lit to a blaze in the soft blue of his eyes.

“I… I hadn’t thought very much about it,” you answered. The words came honestly in the face of being so startled, along with the pang of guilt that hit you from the accusatory nature of the question. “If it’s asked of me and my loyalty… No-” You hesitated, trying to think of a better way to phrase your thoughts, a prettier way. “If something I’m doing is protecting the lives of those I care for, I… I believe that it’s right,” you told him carefully. But, beneath the searching weight of his gaze, you wondered if that was only something to say. Like a poem or song. In truth, you hadn’t given the nature of battle or what you did to your enemies any sort of deeper thought. You didn’t want to. A hero couldn’t be a killer, even if they killed. And wasn’t it the same for you? For him? You had to believe that.

“What if the enemy believes the same?” Dimitri pushed urgently. “If all they’re doing is defending the people they care for in a conflict they have no say in?”

That gave you further pause, your eyebrows furrowing and chapped bottom lip retreating between your teeth as you tried to find an answer. You saw his argument, felt it just as clearly in the conflicted pain in his eyes. Doubt was poisoning him. Comprehension was sharp in that moment, an understanding of something you had been missing in the months you had known him. Dimitri’s capacity to care, something you admired so much, was a double edged sword. Great strength and great vulnerability. Of course it was. You’d seen it before, the agony of caring just a bit too much.

“I’d be glad,” you finally responded, slightly indignant in your desire to stand against his questioning. “If I died because of something I believed in, I would not regret it. I hope that anyone I fight feels the same.”

“And the ones they leave behind?” Dimitri asked, his voice softer, the rigidity of anger gone from this question. You met his eyes. Pure, perfectly pigmented powder blue. The color of reliability and honor, but also the color of melancholy and cold. Now they were needful. Looking for an answer you didn’t have, that probably didn’t exist. “What of them?”

You had heard that question before.

Any and all desire to argue against him bled out of you, leaving the overwhelming swell of post-battle exhaustion and anguish to hit you in full force, so stark it was nearly physical. “I don’t know,” you answered, your voice even softer than his own.

Dimitri’s eyes closed as he turned away, dissatisfied with your answer. “There really is no answer, is there?”

“Maybe there is,” you said, a weak attempt at hopeful optimism against his stormy despair. Dimitri didn’t disagree, but he didn’t have to do anything other than allow the words to deflate and disintegrate in the relative silence of your little bubble on the edge of the trees. And with them, an argument you couldn’t help but feel you had lost terribly.  

“We should return to the others. Professor Byleth will want to speak to us all when we return, disturbing news had been discovered.” Dimitri said, his eyes opening and posture straightening out. The voice he used now was firm, but empty. Closed off once more. He did not wait for an answer before brushing past you, or look to ensure you were following.

“Right,” you agreed reluctantly, uselessly, following him on wooden legs.

#dimitri alexandre blaiddyd #fe dimitri #FE3H #dimitri alexandre blaiddyd x reader #dimitri x reader #dimitri #my writing #like i said i never anticipated to this monastery pre timeskip stuff but if i'm writing it i have to bc these ideas #still exist #anyway i have class in like two minutes i shouldn't be posting #but yeet #beastie and the bard

[lynnafred]

Villainy! Chapter 1

So after a lot of edits and even more peer pressure encouragement from my irl besties I am ready to throw Chapter One, in its semi-complete glory, into the ether! It definitely needs another future round of editing, but this is the closest it’s ever been to me being happy with it. That’s a win as far as I’m concerned!

(Also, yes, Bagel Bob’s is a real place, and while I’ve only been to the one on University Place, their bagels are wicked fucking good and I recommend going to either location if you’re ever in NYC!)

CW: mentions of sex (that one participant regrets having,) some swearing. 

“What the hell were you doing in my apartment?”

The voice caught him off guard. It was barely six in the morning on a rainy Saturday morning. He shouldn’t have run into anyone on his walk back to his apartment, and certainly not so soon after starting his walk back.

Yet, here he was.

He turned to where the question had come from. A woman, soaked through her designer trench coat, blocked his access to the stairs with her arms crossed over her chest like a disappointed parent. Her curly brown hair—also soaked through, he noted—was mostly held out of her face by a headband, but sent rivulets of water down the side of her face. This wasn’t the kind of conversation he wanted to have first thing in the morning. After the night he’d had, this wasn’t the kind of conversation he wanted to have at all. He just wanted to get back home and hide until the shame wore off. “This is your apartment?” The question sounded stupid even to his own ears. “I was told it was his apartment.” He made a pointing gesture at the door, not that it made his case look any better.

The woman in front of him looked unsurprised and sighed. “So, this was Tony’s idea, huh?” The way she said it, barely above a mumble, he knew this wasn’t the first time this had happened to her before. “Man, I go out of town to catch one good break, and this is what happens.”

“I can make this worse, you know.” He found himself saying it before he could stop himself.

“It can’t really be any worse.”

He tapped the pocket of his jacket. “Want to take that bet over a bagel?”

To his surprise, she had accepted, and before his brain could catch up to his actions, he found himself sitting across from her at one of the only tables that Bagel Bob’s had to offer.

She raked her hand through her hair. “Okay, before you make this worse, I have to know who the hell you are and how you ended up in my apartment.”

“Start off with the hard questions, why don’t you?” He ripped a piece off his bagel and popped it into his mouth. Did he give her a fake name? That wouldn’t work. He supposed it was time to come clean. Honesty being best, and all that. “The name’s Vincent, that’s not a fake name, and he picked me up at a club last night. If I’d known the guy was already in a relationship, I wouldn’t have followed him.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah, I’m not a homewrecker. Anyway, what about you? You said you were out of town to ‘catch a break?’ You a reporter?”

“Freelance right now, but yeah. I’m a reporter.” She sipped her coffee before she continued, “Eventually I’d like to be a news anchor, but right now I’m chasing my own leads and doing all my own fact-checking. It’s fulfilling, and it pays pretty well when I get a good story, but it’s hard, and it keeps me away from home a lot.” There was a beat of silence before she finally said, “Which is how I get into situations like this.”

“Well, you’re really going to have a field day with this, then.” He reached into his pocket and slid a small stack of three phones across the table. “I don’t know if you know which one is Tony’s, or if you know what his unlock code is, but you’re going to want these.”

“Why do you have three of them?”

Vincent looked into his bagel. He couldn’t make eye contact with her. His voice was barely above a whisper as he said, “Well, when I left there were still three people in your apartment, so… Yeah.”

“Th-three?”

“Four including me.”

“Three.”

“More than two and less than four, yeah.” He took a chance to look up at her and the fury he saw in her eyes was understandable, but still hard to fathom.

She picked the top phone off the pile and turned it over in one of her hands. “And these phones have some kind of incriminating evidence on them, I take it?”

Vincent winced; he could feel his face burning with embarrassment. One of them certainly did, he knew. That’s why he had taken them. Had he known what he was in for, he wouldn’t have gone. Had he known what he knew now, he never would have ended up there, or at this bagel shop with this woman, or any of it. “Please…” He hated himself for sounding so mall and fragile. “Don’t broadcast what’s on there. Use it as justification to dump that guy, but don’t let it get out of your hands.”

“What happened last night?” When he looked at her again, the fire in her eyes was gone, replaced instead with—not pity, but something else. Concern? He certainly wasn’t expecting sympathy from someone who’d just been horribly betrayed by her partner.

“I don’t… I don’t really want to talk about it. It wasn’t exactly what I signed up for and I can’t take it back now, but please don’t let what’s there get out.”

The woman across from him reached across the table and gently grabbed his hand. “That’s a lot of trust to put into someone you’ve just met.” She gave his hand a squeeze.

“Yeah, well… Better than you getting lied to about it, I guess? I was just going to wipe the phones clean and dump them somewhere. If you can get into the one that has the video file on it and get rid of it, that works, too.” He reached out and pulled a phone off the stack. “I think it’s this one, but I could be wrong. They all look kind of the same.”

She looked the phone over. “This one’s Tony’s.” She sounded certain. “It’s got a crack that makes the touch screen almost unusable and he’s too broke to replace it.” She turned the phone on and tapped in a passcode before opening the camera gallery.

“Make sure the volume is muted,” Vincent mumbled through another bite of bagel. He felt sick just seeing how many photos the guy had taken last night.

The reporter’s face paled as she skimmed over the photos, and her finger hovered over the video before outright deleting it off the phone. “Jesus, I don’t even want to watch this,” she said. “These are bad enough.”

Vincent let out a breath he’d been all too aware he’d been holding. It was a weight off his shoulders, in a way, because now he didn’t have to worry about the video.

Now, he found himself wondering about the few hundred photos instead.

“Don’t worry, I’m getting rid of these, too.” She hadn’t even looked up at him. Was she some kind of super, or something? Could she read minds? Before he could ask about it, she changed the subject on him. “What even brought you to that club last night? I know which club he likes to hang out at and, really, it’s not a nice place.”

Maybe she could read minds and was deflecting his question with one of her own. “I…” He looked up at her, down at her hand, and back up at her face again. This was too much honesty for a Saturday morning. “I had been waiting on some news for a job. I was really looking forward to it, you know? But it wasn’t what I had expected. I was disappointed and pissed off and I just needed to blow off some steam, and that was the closest club I knew of. I didn’t really expect anything? I really just wanted to go grab a few drinks and have a good time.”

“Yeah, he’s the kind of guy who swoops in and sends you through a whirlwind.”

Vincent found it hard to look her in the eyes again. “That’s exactly what happened. I’m sorry.”

She gave his hand another squeeze before letting it go. “I’m sorry. I apparently need to keep him tied up outside if I’m ever going someplace.” She took another sip of her coffee. “You’re… You’re not hurt, are you?”

“Just my pride.” And he wasn’t, really. That wasn’t a lie.

“That grows back eventually.” She gave him a small smile that he didn’t feel deserving of. Her way of trying to make him feel better, he realized.

They finished their orders in relative silence after that, light small talk filling the gaps until Vincent didn’t feel quite so bad about himself and the reporter didn’t seem quite so disappointed and angry.

“Thank you again for being honest with me,” she said as she tossed her coffee cup. “You’re sure you don’t mind me taking these?”

Oh, he did mind. He minded a lot. But it was a risk he was going to have to take. “Yeah, take them. Just, please—”

“My eyes only, then they’re gone. You’ve got my word.” Then, like she was reading his mind again, she asked, “You’re worried this’ll mess up your career, right? Don’t worry about that. As someone else who needs reputation to get by, I get the feeling. What happened last night isn’t going to leave these phones.”

It was still pouring as he watched her turn away and head back to her apartment. He knew he should get back home as well; his roommate was probably worried sick about him for not coming back last night and not touching base at all that morning, but he called after her one last time. “Hey, uh, I never got your name?”

She looked over her shoulder and smiled at him. “I thought you were never going to ask. It’s Naomi.”

He took the long way back to his roommate’s apartment. It meant he got soaked, sure, but it also gave him some time to think of what he was going to do once he got back. With any luck, Anthony would still be asleep, and he could dry off, change into something else, and get a nap before heading out for the day. If he were lucky, he’d be able to even avoid any questions about his assignment.

He was soaked by the time he finally made it back to his roommate’s apartment. Naomi’s promise still rang fresh in his ears as his key skid into the lock. He hoped he could count on it.

He hadn’t even made it in the door yet when he heard, “Where the fuck were you all night? We were all waiting for you!”

Today wasn’t a day with any semblance of luck in it, it seemed.

“Hey, Ant.” He dropped his keys in a bowl inside the door and kicked his shoes off. “I was having a bad night, which evolved into a worse night as it got later.”

“Did it blossom into a really bad next day?”

“It blossomed into a mortifying next day, in all kinds of ways.”

Anthony stole a glance at his clock. “Vin, it’s not even seven-thirty.”

Vincent replied with a nod before making his way to the bathroom to grab a towel. “So, you know how I had decided—like a fool, I know now—that I was going to go back to the Academy to get my assignment before going to the grad party?” He walked back towards the living room as he peeled his soaked clothes off himself and dried himself off.

Anthony was skimming news on his phone. “Yeah, told you to wait, just in case your assignment was bad.”

“Well, the assignment isn’t the problem, but the rest of it is. So, I was really pissed off about it, so I decided to go out to a club—”

“The one by the Academy I kept telling you was shit?”

“—and blow off some steam, and I didn’t want to travel halfway across the city just to go to a club, right? So, yeah, I went to that one you were always telling me not to go to.”

Ant put his phone down and looked at Vincent, concern playing over his face. “Are you alright, man? Did you get hurt?”

Vincent chuckled as he pulled a clean shirt over his head. How many people was he going to worry today? “Yeah, I’m fine. I’ll be fine. I’m not hurt, just got surprised with more than I could handle.”

He heard his roommate sigh. “Dude, what’d I tell you about being so reckless all the time? We were worried sick that something had happened to you, and for a change, we weren’t all that far off the mark. Why didn’t you say anything?”

“It’s not like I could text you in the middle of something. It’s not like you could have done something about it.”

“I’d have left that grad party in a hot second and you know it.”

He knew it wasn’t a lie. Anthony would have scoured every apartment building in the neighborhood until he found Vincent if that’s what it took. He sighed as he pulled on a dry pair of pants. “I didn’t want to fuck up everyone else’s good time. I’d already fucked up my own good time, you know?”

Anthony clicked his tongue in disapproval at him. “You’ve gotta open up to me, man. We’re friends. Fuck it, we’re roommates, even though I don’t have anything better for you right now than my couch, and you actually needed an assist. You’ve gotta start doing something a little healthier than just finding some random fling whenever you’re having a rough night, or else you’re going to end up in even bigger trouble one of these days and none of us are going to know where the hell to find you. We’re going to find your dumb ass in the Hudson a month later.”

Vincent made a weak grumble. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t mean to harp on you after a bad night. I’ve just been worried about you.”

“You didn’t actually stay up all night and—”

“Yeah, I did. I wanted to make sure you were actually going to be alright.”

Vincent stilled. That wasn’t the answer he expected, and now he felt even worse for not checking in with Ant the night before. He flopped on the couch beside him and sighed. “Sorry.”

Anthony let the silence between them linger for a few seconds before slapping him on the shoulder. “Come on, let’s go grab something to eat. My treat, and you tell me about your assignment and this really horrible villain name of yours.”

Vincent fidgeted. “I don’t know, Ant,” he started.

“No isn’t an answer. It’s your payback for blowing us off and making me worry last night.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “And I’ll tell you about my shitty assignment, too, I got it this morning as soon as the Academy opened at six.” He reached his hand out to Vincent, a clear invitation to follow him. “What do you say?”

Vincent considered it for a moment before taking the offered help off the couch. The position wasn’t very comfortable, anyway. “Sure, I could use some breakfast.”

They settled on the same place they always did: Waverly Diner, which was more expensive than other diners in the area, but Anthony maintained that they had the best pancakes, and Vincent constantly talked about how they never messed up an egg. They laughed through the rain the whole way, telling jokes and trying to steal the other’s umbrella.

The diner would have been quiet if it hadn’t been for Anthony’s cacophonous laughter.

“Anthony,” Vincent groaned, “you’re going to get us kicked out of my favorite breakfast place in the city.”

“I’m sorry,” he choked between laughs. “This is just too good, you know? Come on, say it one more time, like they taught us in Villainous Introductions. Be really fucking—” he laughed again, “—be real campy with it, man.”

Vincent rolled his eyes. If Anthony wasn’t such a good friend he’d have kicked him. Taking a deep breath, Vincent straightened his posture and looked Anthony directly in the eye as he said, “Prepare to meet your demise, hero! For I, Bad Guy, am here to stop you!” He punctuated his introduction with a flourish of his hand, pantomiming the sweep of a cape across his figure. “And I will not rest until you are defeated!”

Anthony’s responding laugh was so hard, so loud, that Vincent thought for sure he was going to get them both kicked out. Instead, he choked on his mouthful of pancakes when he finally decided to try breathing again. “Oh man, that is too fucking good, dude. They named you Bad Guy, I can’t believe it.” He chugged half of his glass of orange juice before he asked, “Who did you piss off?”

Vincent shrugged. “No idea. But damn if I didn’t make someone mad on that administrative team. I didn’t even get the assignment I wanted.”

“Which was?”

“As far away from New York as I could get.” Vincent paused to shove half of a fried egg in his mouth before he asked, “What about you? Where are you getting shipped off to?”

“Butt.”

“Butt?” Vincent laughed. “Do you mean Butte? In Montana?”

Anthony shook his head. “Man, I know how it’s pronounced, but I meant what I said when I said ‘Butt.’ Living there is going to fucking suck. The Academy really dropped the ball when they made my assignment.” He looked at Vincent with a smirk. “Do you think that there’s even any other black people living there? I’ll never be able to get out of my costume, I’ll be noticed too fast.”

Vincent laughed. “Think there’s any Mexicans living up there? Maybe I’ve got a better shot at blending in; you want to switch?”

“Are you kidding? And deprive Staten Island of the perfect pool boy? Nah, I’ll take my exile to Butt.”

He took a sip of his coffee as he rolled his eyes. “I can’t believe you’re still talking about that pool boy thing. That was one time,” he laughed, “like, two years ago!”

“Come on, you say that like you’re not the perfect hot Hispanic pool boy? You’d be some rich white lady’s—”

“Don’t say it, man,” Vincent interrupted.

“—cute little piece of dulce de leche.” He waggled his eyebrows for emphasis.

Vincent made a show of groaning and looking disturbed before he laughed. “Man, that’s so gross. Why are you so gross?”

Anthony smirked and ignored him. “I’d bet money that your uniform would be… a black Speedo.”

Vincent cocked an eyebrow. “And what else?”

“Nothing else!”

A beat of silence fell over the table before Vincent snickered once and the two of them burst into laughter again. It was too hard to be annoyed with Anthony; he was only trying to cheer him up, after all. And, honestly, it was working. “Thanks, this is exactly what I needed after last night. I’m really going to be bummed out when you ship off to Butt.”

Anthony waved him off. “Can’t move out to Butt until I get my first stipend from the Association to help me move. Bussing tables and tending bars just won’t get me out there.” He gazed into the remainder of his pancakes before he asked, “What about you? Where are you getting your first stipend sent to?”

“Well, they wouldn’t let me pick it up, and they wouldn’t let me use my PO Box, either,” he sighed, “so I had to use your address, if that’s cool? A little late to change it now, though. Cass terminated her lease on her apartment before she moved, so there was no way that I could get it sent to her place. Not that I’d have been able to pick it up there, either. So, your place was really the only option for me. Sorry, Ant.”

“No worries. You can use my address. You practically live there, anyway.”

“I know, I just don’t want to overstay, you know?”

“You’re not overstaying! Told you that already.”

Vincent grinned. “You won’t be saying that when I leave a perfect imprint of my ass in your couch. Then I’ll have overstayed.”

“Nah, you should! Then I’ll just have something to remember you by. I’ll make new friends and be all, ‘Hey man! Don’t sit there! That’s my bro Vincent’s place, can’t you see his ass?’ And all my new friends’ll be like ‘Ah hell yeah, that’s a sweet ass.’”

“You’re going to tell all your new friends about my sweet ass? That’s a little weird, Ant.”

“Well, not like, right off the bat. You gotta ease up to that kind of conversation.” Anthony grinned at him, barely containing his laughter. “You gotta, like, make sure your new friends are ready to hear about your best friend’s sweet ass.”

Their waitress cleared her throat and it was only then that Vincent noticed her standing there. She dragged her glare from Vincent to Ant as she asked, “Do either of you want more coffee?”

Anthony broke out into laughter again. “Nah, ma’am, just the check, please.” Once she’d left, he looked back to Vincent. “I’m going to leave her a really good tip to compensate for listening to us talk about your ass like that.”

Vincent finished his coffee. “Hey, you’re spreading the truth. My ass is fine.”

“You can leave the payment on the table,” the waitress said as she dropped the check off.

#Villainy! #chapter 1 #writeblr #Lynnafred writes

[sailor-cresselia]

Copper compounds, when ignited

I got a bit distracted by ideas for Zero One yesterday, so... I wrote a thing. Whoops.

(Title is from the method used to color fireworks.)

---

Isamu has to bite back a groan when he sees Hiden and his HumaGear walk into the restaurant. It’s his day off, damnit, and he’d really hoped that he wouldn’t have to deal with any Magia today. But experience has long since taught him that about 2 out of 3 times that they run into each other, a battle’s bound to follow.

Damnit.

Hiden nods in his direction, and Isamu reluctantly nods back. They aren’t friends, or allies, or anything of the sort, but they’re in public, and he’s not a total ass.

He doesn’t mean to overhear anything. He’s just waiting for his food, really, and they were seated next to him.

“Seriously, Izu, you can sit down, I don’t mind!”

The HumaGear assistant tilts her head at Hiden, in that way she keeps on doing. “President Aruto, being seated is not a requirement that I have. I am intended to be ready to accommodate your requests at any moment.”

Hiden laughs a little. “Well, right now, my request is for you to sit down. It makes my legs hurt for you just watching you stand all the time.”

She blinks, seemingly processing this. “I do not understand. How can a human feel pain because someone else is upright?”

With a small groan, Hiden leans forward. Isamu kind of wonders what face he’s making - the CEO is facing away from him. “It’s not a… literal pain, really. It’s a sympathetic sort of thing; when you see someone doing something that you would find uncomfortable, sometimes it can make you feel like you’re feeling what you would feel if you were the one doing it. Does that make sense?”

She simply blinks at him again, before acquiescing. Huh.

The guy does have a way with words. It’s always weird seeing him treat HumaGears like they’re human, but he is running a company revolving around them. Isamu resolves himself, once again, to the fact that he will never actually understand Hiden.

A little while later, Isamu has received his food, Hiden has ordered, and the assistant has gotten weird looks from about half of the people here, which Hiden has summarily ignored. It’s none of his business, why is he paying so much attention?! He’s just bored, and it’s a habit from work. That’s all. Nothing about wondering if he’s going to crack a joke, or when the next threat will show up, or wanting to understand the guy.

the waitstaff start up a song, carrying a cake over to a family a few tables away. It’s some kids birthday, looks like, and when the candles are lit at the table, turns out his family sprung for some fancy novelty colored candles, those things that have all the different colored flames. Cute.

As the song intends, most of the restaurant looks up to see what the fuss is… and since Hiden is right in between Isamu and the little party, it’s clear that he looked up from his phone to see, too.

But when the candles were lit, Hidens phone dropped to the floor, and he stopped moving.

That’s unusual. Even when he’s being interrogated, the guy is always moving at least a little. But he’s frozen - except for how his shoulders are shaking.

“President Aruto?” The HumaGear tries to get his attention. “Is something the matter?”

It’s not until the kid blows out the candles that Hiden responds. “Izu. I have to go. Do you mind paying for me, and getting the meal boxed up and getting it into the office fridge for me?”

A blink, and then she nods. “As you request, President Aruto.”

“Thank you.” Shakily, he picks up his phone, and quickly leaves.

…Isamu waves down a server - an increasingly rare human one, at that. “Can I get my bill?”

---

He’s not worried, not at all. But it’s weird. Hiden never goes anywhere without that HumaGear, and he’d specifically told her to go to the office. Implying that he’s not going back there, himself.

Isamu is not following him because he’s concerned, and the little voice in his head saying otherwise can shut up, thank you very much. He was already done, and happened to be going in the same direction. That’s all.

Except that Hiden is going into a residential area, on a bicycle, and decidedly away from where Isamu knows any Hiden Intelligence offices are.

…Actually, Isamu lives a few blocks from here, himself. …Wait, is this where Hiden lives?! He’d expected that the CEO would live, you know, somewhere fancy. Because he’s a CEO.

The apartment that Isamu very definitely does not check the name label of reads Hiden, A.

…huh. Well, nothing to it, then. Isamu waits a little while, to see if he comes out on his own. But when fifteen minutes go by, with no sign of life - or of the lights going on - knocks at the door.

“Hiden? You in there?”

No response.

“Hiden? I… saw you at the restaurant. Is everything alright?”

There’s a moment of silence, and Isamu is about to call out again - or maybe shoot out the lock - when Hiden replies. “The door’s open. Just come in.”

…Oh.

The small apartment is kind of a mess. There’s no dust, so it looks like he’s still been living here this whole time, since taking over his company. It just looks like a normal bachelor pad.

He hadn’t expected that.

All told, Hiden’s apartment isn’t what Isamu would have expected from the CEO of a company. In fact, the only sign that the resident is anyone but an average person is the suit jacket tossed haphazardly on a side table. He has to fight the urge to pick it up and fold it.

As for Hiden, he’s in one of the hoodies he always has under that jacket - and Isamu’s never understood that, either, but it’s not his place to criticize his clothing, just his business. But he’s laying on his stomach, on a battered couch, scrolling through something on his phone.

“Hiden?”

“Which school did you go to?”

“…I’m sorry, what?”

Hiden doesn’t look up as he talks, just keeps scrolling. “In Daybreak Town. Which school?”

“…(***). What does it matter?”

“Helps me pinpoint some stuff. Thanks. So, you're a couple years older than me, then, and must've been in some club or other, since you were at school when everything happened.” Hiden shrugs. “It’s weird. You were a lot further out from the epicenter, but if the HumaGears were rampaging both before and after the first explosion… I have to wonder what actually stopped them…”

Isamu narrows his eyes. “Did you have some sort of revelation about that day while at a restaurant?”

“Heh, I wish.” He makes a few quick selections, and when he points his phone at the wall, the image he was looking at is projected up onto it. It’s two maps of Daybreak Town, pre-disaster and post-disaster. “Your school was here-” he highlights a section in dark blue on both maps “-and this is the area where the initial explosion was.” He highlights another section, this time in a brighter blue. “I… was right over here.” He places a yellow mark about midway between the explosion and Isamu’s school.

…Wait. “Hold on. You were there?!”

Hiden nods. “I don't remember it well, since I was 10 and all. But that first blast… the flames were bright blue, even after the explosion. The rubble burned bright blue.” He sighs. “I don’t remember much after that. Seeing the HumaGear version of my father laying there, after he shielded me from the blast. His synthetic skin was torn away in places, and he was barely able to talk anymore, before he died - or, stopped functioning, I guess. I don’t think I really got that he was a HumaGear up until then. Most of ‘em didn’t have the skin substitute, y’know? It was still experimental.” He laughs dryly. “Only the best for the chairman’s grandson, I guess. No matter that the law about replicating people’s appearances had been passed two years before that, when it was just a hypothetical possibility. The technology wasn’t there yet, not readily. So, that gives me yet another unanswerable question about what the hell my grandfather was doing the past number of years.” He glances at Isamu. “Would you sit down, already? Yeesh. At least Izu has a justification.”

“Hiden-”

“Aruto.” He smirks. “If you’re going to follow me home and check in on me, I think we can use our names at that point.” The smile fades a little. “I do appreciate it, though. Did anyone else there notice me freaking out?”

Isamu shakes his head as he takes a seat in a stiff chair, that seems here more for completion than for any other purpose. “Aside from your HumaGear, no, not that I noticed.”

“Good. …Good.” He lets himself fall forward into the couch. “Thanks, Fuwa.”

“Isamu.” He smirks. “Like you said, might as well use our names at this point.”

“Hah! Isamu, then. Thank you. For noticing, and for showing up to check on me. I appreciate it.”

“Well, seeing as we wind up in firefights together so often, I figured it would be reasonable to ensure that you were alright.”

Hid- Aruto grins. “Awww, you do care!”

“Sh-Shut up! Why are you even living here, anyway? I’d think that you could afford somewhere better.”

Aruto doesn't answer for a bit. “…If I moved somewhere more ‘suitable’ for a CEO, it’d be like lying. I didn’t get this job because I wanted it, or because I earned it, or anything. One of the many, many things to ask my grandfather’s ghost about is why he insisted, in his will, that I take over the company. We hadn’t spoken in years, so… it doesn’t make sense.”

“And yet, there you are.”

“And yet, there I am, after turning it down. Being Zero One-” He waves his driver in the air “-was part and parcel with taking the job. I forgot about that little detail when I had Izu hand me the belt at the dreampark.”

Isamu scoffs. “So you were there, after all, you stupid grasshopper.”

“Hey, I had gone to try and get my job back!” Aruto laughs, before calming. “But I couldn’t let Taro - that was the HumaGear’s name, before he was turned into a Magia - I couldn’t let him hurt anyone else. He had to be stopped… so I had Izu hand over the belt.” He shrugs. “After that, you basically know the rest. I put the belt on, got my mind uploaded to the satellite for the tutorial on how to use said belt, woke back up, transformed, and fought the battle.” He shrugs. “I suppose you and miss Yaiba were dealing with the trilobites, right?”

“We were.” Isamu nods, before doing a double take. “Wait, what was that about having your mind uploaded?!”

Aruto props himself up. “Did… that not happen for you?”

“NO!”

They stare at each other for a minute before Aruto scrunches his face in a frown. “Okay, I’ve got a proposal. We learn to summon ghosts, summon my grandfather, and interrogate the hell out of him on what the hell is going on.” He pauses. “At this point, I wouldn’t be entirely opposed to punching him to get the info, either.”

Hesitating, Isamu tries to think of an argument against this, but he can’t think of anything that would actually help a case against summoning and punching an old man… especially since he also wants to punch said old man for possibly kicking all of this off in the first place.

“Are you serious, though? About that?”

“Not really, but you have to admit, it’s kind of tempting, right?”

#kamen rider zero one #i apologize for nothing #i will ride this inspiration train until it runs out of track #i lost track of where i was going a bit while writing this but i had a heck of a time #my only regret is that i could not find a good way to mention that Aruto absolutely has a roomba in that apartment

[droory]

May I contribute to the Isaac trend with Bloodstained Clothes?

for the @badthingshappenbingo​! Send me a GS character or characters or a ship to hurt :) now it’s really time to let Isaac rest lmao

People often kept a distance from Isaac whenever he stopped into a town on his quest. The most he ever spoke to someone was perhaps the exchange of coin for an inn bed, armour, or herbs. Beyond that however the villagers didn’t speak to him.

Isaac was not lonely however, he had the company of his sword and the voices that guided him after Felix and the Jupiter Star. The taunts from them were much less frequent since he had embraced them, the whispers and noises seemed eager to help him on his quest, eager to help him spill blood and slay whatever monsters got in his way, monster or human, it didn’t matter.

Isaac smiled as he looked into a mirror in Contigo, shadows seeming to dance about his body, as he straightened out his once-blue tunic, now stained a deep purple for many months. He didn’t have time to stop and wash his clothes of the gore he spilled in battle, and frankly leaving it seemed to make the voices more co-operative.

He lightly dragged the flat edge of his sword against his tunic, hearing the whispers sigh their thanks and encouragement to him, urging him to hurry to Jupiter Lighthouse to stop Felix and the others. He didn’t need many words from them to already be out the door and cutting his way through the Atteka plains to the storm covered Lighthouse to the north.

The Lighthouse itself was oppressive, thankfully Felix’s group had unlocked the seal and allowed him access, and Isaac could feel his temper growing as Jupiter’s power pressed on him from all angles. Just another reason he couldn’t let Felix succeed, bringing this sensation to all the people of Vale was heinous.

Fools.

They let us in.

Now they can’t stop us.

Isaac easily fought his way higher up the Lighthouse, fresh blood splashing across his clothes and face with every slice of his now ecstatic blade. The Venus Adept was practically dripping with gore, his fighting style having become so much more fierce and self-indulgent with the guidance from the voices, by the time he found himself on a walkway on the outside of the Lighthouse.

Watch out.

Jump.

Don’t fall.

Isaac was quick to heed the advice and narrowly missed the floor falling out from beneath his feet, tumbling to a landing on the opposite end of the walkway where two figures awaited him.

“More skilled than I thought.” A feminine voice, taunting, coated in hatred.

“Still just a boy.” Masculine, gruff, unimpressed.

Isaac readied his stance and held his blade up to the two, strikes of lightning illuminating their features briefly. Proxian, like Saturos and Menardi. No doubt another pair seeking to destroy the world.

They made to speak again, but Isaac cared not, the voices urging him to strike and strike quickly. He lunged and slashed, earning surprised yells from the pair as they dodged. The three of them fought in circles, sparks from blades and Psynergy both flying off of them in continual flashes in the darkness of the storm.

The voices were frantic in Isaac’s mind, dealing with two opponents so skilled was rare and their instructions were fractions of a second apart, almost to an overloading degree.

DodgeSlashLungeParryBlockRollStabSidestepRollSlashBlockWatchOutHealStab-

Isaac did his best to keep up, and keep up he did, but no matter how well he did the Proxian pair landed a few strikes, drawing blood from him that made the voices in his head giggle with glee. But for every cut Isaac suffered they too suffered slashes and cuts that they tried to heal.

An opening!

The man had stepped back to summon Psynergy and Isaac lunged forward stabbing him through as a flaming dragon erupted from where Isaac had just been standing.

“Agatio!” The woman yelled, but Isaac had already wrenched the blade from out of the man’s gut and delivered him a swift kick.

His body tumbled off the Lighthouse, just like Saturos and Menardi’s had.

The woman screamed, rushing at Isaac with her scythe and swinging madly.

Angry.

Clumsy.

Blind.

Isaac parried her strikes away, she was bringing them down heavier and more fiercely each time, meaning each parried blow left her open for longer.

Toy with her.

Make her bleed.

Have fun.

Isaac did exactly that, slashing cuts across her and making blood drip from her arms and legs in steady streams. Eventually her strength gave out and she collapsed in front of him, panting from the exertion of the fight and the injuries she had suffered.

Again, just like with the last pair of Proxians Isaac had dealt with; he swung his blade quickly, separating the woman’s head from her shoulders.

Her body crumpled while her head careened across the walkway to land at the feet of five new figures on the scene.

Felix and his group.

“Isaac… what did you…”

“It’s over now, Felix,” Isaac said calmly, wiping the woman’s blood from his blade and onto his sleeve. “The Proxians are dead and the world is saved. The Lighthouses won’t be lit.”

“You don’t understand,” Kraden spoke up, “the Lighthouses are-”

“Not going to be lit.” Isaac repeated sternly, still advancing on the group. “Give me the Jupiter Star, Felix.”

The five of them backed up, words were coming from them, but Isaac was barely paying attention.

They are lying.

They’re holding you back.

Just like Garet.

Just like Mia.

Just like Ivan.

Just take the Star from them.

They can’t stop us.

The voices were right, of course. Everyone in Vale knew that if Alchemy was returned Weyard would destroy itself. He didn’t care what justification Felix thought he had.

He darted at them quickly, blade raised.

Felix barely had time to parry him away. Though he was now against twice the opponents the difficulty was hardly as much, they were not as skilled as the Proxian pair he had just felled.

The Mercury Adept fell first, run through with Isaac’s sword, earning ecstatic screams and horrified yells from the voices and his opponents respectively. Psynergy began to fall upon him, lightning and fire, as he pulled his blade from the man.

Isaac yelled from both the pain and the anger, the voices in his head giggling at his pain, as he summoned his own Psynergy in response.

Spires erupted out across the walkway in waves, shattering against armour both Psynergetic and metal, with only a single Spire finding a victim. Isaac never cared much for Kraden anyway, advancing on his opponents as Kraden gasped over the stone protruding from his torso.

Isaac tried to step forward to swing at Sheba, only to find his feet stuck to the ground. Before he could register the ice quickly freezing his legs in place he found the air forced out of him as a shard of ice burst from his chest.

“Foolish boy.”

Isaac tried to breathe, a hand reaching up to clutch the icicle sticking out from his chest as Alex stepped around him, quickly helping Kraden off of the Spire and healing him.

The voices in his head were laughing madly, delighting in the taste of Isaac’s own blood being spilled.

“Isaac… what… what happened to you?” Jenna didn’t dare approach him, he still clutched his sword tightly in his hand and was ready to lash out at anyone within range.

“He played with toys he couldn’t control,” Alex answered, working Psynergy through the wound in Kraden’s body. “Cursed weapons, for instance.”

Isaac roared, hearing the voices return to their form from Crossbone Isle oh so long ago. Mocking him, delighting in torturing him, abandoning him after all they had done together.

“Isaac put down the sword.” Jenna pleaded, tears streaking her eyes at the sight of Isaac like this.

Isaac could and would not hear her though. He yelled again, almost bestial in his behaviour, swinging his sword at shadows and the mocking voices in his mind.

“It’s too late.”

It’s too late, Isaac.

You really were too weak.

We were wrong to trust you.

You shouldn’t have killed your friends.

Maybe if you’d been stronger you could have done it without them.

But you weren’t good enough with just us.

You know what to do.

You know the answer.

It’s our turn.

With a yell Isaac pulled the ice from his body, blood spilling from the wound and onto his blade, before he thrust the weapon deeply into his own body.

The voices screamed in ecstasy, glad to have finally claimed their host after so long.

Isaac didn’t hear his previous friends scream from him.

He only heard the voices mock him more and more as his blood spilled down and stained his tunic and the ground below.

He was glad the voices would end soon.

He was glad it would end.

 …

…We’ll find a way to claim them all…

…

#golden sun #badthingshappenbingo #droo post #droo writes #droo ask #droo answer #isaac done did some shit #waifujuju #look what you did juju

[badwolf-in-the-impala]

~Welcome to the Neighborhood -- Ch.8~

Moodboard made by me @badwolf-in-the-impala. None of the pictures are ours, just editing.

A/N: Sorry we suck and keep forgetting to post on Monday’s...Life has been crazy lately. But anywho, here’s chapter 8 of @jacksonroth and mines SOA Collab! I hope you guys are enjoying, and if you would like to be added to our taglists, just let us know! Happy reading!

Disclaimer: There is some Spanish used in this chapter. So we would also like to add that this is a second language for both of us; one that hasn’t been used since High School...So we did our best to do the research to make sure things we as close as possible to accurate. So if it’s not the best/correct, we do apologize. Any helpful pointers or tips would be appreciated. But please, no rude comments. <3

Warnings: Mentions of gunshot wounds, violence, angst, voluntary kidnapping? More angst...So much angst.

Word count: 5,651

|| Previous Chapter ||

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

While Chibs stitched Kacey up, Harper managed to calm down enough to be allowed back in to see her, as Chibs was finishing up with her leg. Kacey sat still as a statue now, completely void of any pain or emotion as she held onto the hands of her sister and Opie. Both positioned carefully, one on either side of her as they let Chibs work. The room falling into an uneasy silence as Kacey’s stomach tied itself up in knots, knowing fully what was about to come next as the door to the Chapel was thrown open and Clay stormed into the room; Jax, Tig, and Bobby following behind.

“Either one of you two care to tell me what the FUCK is goin’ on, here?!” Clay bellowed as he pointed between the two sisters who exchanged a brief glance. “Our shit with the Mayans has been good, straight, and then you two Wonder Twins show up -- actin’ all paranoid when Alvarez came around, and now this shit?!” He gestured out the Chapel door behind him in reference to what just went down.

“Clay, take it easy--” Jax tried to butt in, in an attempt to help, but Clay simply talked right over the top of him as he continued to address the sisters. “I want an explanation. Now...and it better be a Goddamn good one.”

Harper made a move to speak up as she stood, but stopped, her gaze falling to her sister’s when she felt Kacey’s grip tighten on her hand and pull her back. Harper’s eyes filled with concern as she watched her sister shake her head and say softly, “This is on me…”

“Care to elaborate?” Clay’s icy blue gaze was now fixed solely on Kacey as he waited for an answer.

“Before Charming...Before the Club.” Kacey gestured around the room at the guys who now listened carefully to what was about to unfold. “We were involved with the Mayans, and by involved, I mean romantically.”

“Jesus…” Clay ran a large hand over his face but stayed silent otherwise, as Kacey held up a hand of her own, gesturing to let her continue.

“It started out innocent. We were just a couple of hang arounds lookin’ for a good time, but after a while, Harp got together with Alvarez’s nephew, Nico, and I got involved with his best friend, Bastien...It wasn’t exactly the best situation, for either of us. But they aren’t the kind of people you just turn down an offer on being with…” Kacey winced a little as Chibs pulled another stitch through her arm. “We had no idea what the hell we were getting ourselves into at the time, but we rolled with the punches anyway. They said jump, we asked how high…”

“They treated us like fuckin’ shit most of the time, but it was roof over heads and hey; who were we to complain, right?…We put up with their shit for 3 years, until about 9 months ago when I walked in on my ex, Basiten, fuckin’ some other chicks brains out. And I just fuckin’ snapped. I was so tired of never being good enough for him, tired of him treating me like his Goddamn pet that I lost it. All I saw was red, and I beat that bitch without a second thought as to who she might be.”

“And lemme guess, she was someone you never should’a fucked with?” Tig chimed in briefly before Kacey continued; answering his question.

“Sara Alvarez...Nico’s sister--”

“And Alvarez’s niece…” Clay finished for her, Kacey nodding as a round of collective groans filled the room.

“I messed her up good...busted her fuckin’ jaw, put her in the hospital.” Kacey chewed her lip lightly as she glanced at Harper out of the corner of her eye. “That’s when shit got real bad...Not so much for me, but for Harp. Beatings from Bastien, while few and far between, were like second nature to me. I could fuckin’ take it, and most of the time I’d give it right back to him. Nico on the other hand? He had never laid a hand on Harper. But after what I did to his sister? That was my punishment. To watch him make my sister suffer for my fuckin’ mistake. Knowing she didn’t deserve any of it.”

Kacey drew in a shaky breath, wiping at her face quickly to catch a few stray tears that tried to escape as Opie gave her hand a reassuring squeeze; she continued. “It wasn’t long before I’d finally had enough of it, of everything...So Harper and I worked out a plan. It took us weeks to scrap together enough money -- along with some help from our cousin -- to get out. But not before I got the bright idea to try and make a point, by shooting up Bastien’s car; blowing it to shit. Marcus found out it was me that did it, thought Harper was involved too and basically exiled us from Mayan territory in Oakland...After that, Charming just so happened to be the one place far enough out of Mayan territory we could afford that we thought would be safe. But I promise you, we never intended to get involved like we have-- Please, Clay, this is my doing, this is all on me...Don’t take it out on Harper.” Kacey’s eyes were brimmed with tears as she looked up at her sister, who was trying to hold in her own emotions as she reached forward and pulled her into a gentle hug, being mindful of her arm that was almost done being stitched.

“Christ…” Clay sighed as he leaned his forearms onto the back of the nearest chair, pinching the bridge of his nose as he shook his head. “You didn’t think to maybe mention any of this, before now?”

“We didn’t know how we would be accepted if we told anyone...And we couldn’t afford at that point to be run out of town by another MC. Besides, we never actually intended on staying in the first place.” Kacey finished, biting her lip nervously as she glanced up at Ope who reached out to caress her cheek gently. “I know sorry doesn’t even begin to cover it, but it’s the best we have to offer...And you have to believe me when I say that we never intended for any of this to happen. We never wanted anyone else to get involved, or worse, to get hurt because of us.”

Clay sighed heavily as he straightened up, rubbing a hand across his chin as he paced back and forth, momentarily absorbed in thought before turning to Bobby and Jax. “Start makin’ calls, we’re goin’ on lockdown, effective immediately. Everyone in, no one fuckin’ leaves without an escort.” He stated firmly before turning his attention to Tig. “You, get Alvarez on the phone...this shit gets sorted, and it get sorted now.” ~  

As it was, there was no need to make any calls to Alvarez, because he was the one who called Clay directly in a matter of hours, once Kacey was stitched up and resting. He pulled everyone into chapel, making Opie and Jax leave the sisters, as they took the call. Once the doors were shut and everyone sat down, Clay put the call on speaker and set it on the table.

“Alright, Marcus. We’re all here…” Clay said, leaning on one arm of his chair, running a hand over his chin. Jax sat forward, arms resting on the table as he listened.

“Listen, Clay, I want you to know I didn't order that attack on you tonight. Nico and Bastien will get their punishment, but...Man, I can’t say they were wrong.” Marcus said. “Harper broke the rules. She was in Mayan territory after we threw them white girls out.”

Clay glanced over to Jax, who merely shrugged. It could have been true, but for all they knew, Nico and Bastien were lying to have some justification for the attack. When Jax shrugged, Clay sat forward and said, “And, uh, you saw Harper in Mayan territory?”

“Nico and Bastien said she was at some auto shop just outside. When she left, she crossed the line. Listen, Clay, I don’t care how far in she went, she still crossed into our territory, cabrón.” Marcus said. Clay sighed and rubbed his face. “If I had known they were runnin’ with you, I would have called and we could have talked it out. But now? Shit, ese, now they’ve gone too far. I’m sorry if anyone took a bullet, but we need to meet…”

“Why? What do you want?” Jax asked, unable to keep the disdain from his voice. There was a moment of silence and for a minute, the club thought Alvarez had hung up. But after a while, he spoke up and said, “We want the girls.”

Opie stood and started pacing, Piney trying to calm him down while Alvarez was still on the line. Jax covered his face and sighed.

“I’m afraid we can’t do that, Marcus.” Clay said. “They’re with us now and we’re not just gonna hand them over on your say so. Maybe...Nico pushed her into Mayan territory and used that as an excuse?”

“Are you calling my nephew a liar, Clay?! We’ve had a good thing going for a while now and these white bitches have screwed with my family one too many times! Either you meet us at LKQ in Lodi tomorrow and we talk terms, or this truce is over!”

With that, this time, the silence that filled chapel was accompanied by the monotone of the dial tone as Alvarez hung up. Jax sat back and sighed. He looked at Clay and before he could say anything, Opie did it for him.

“We’re not handing them over, Clay! I don’t care! We’re not doing it!” Opie shouted. Piney managed to get a good grip on the leather sleeve of Opie’s Kutte and yanked him down, back into his seat.

“Will you shut your goddamn mouth and sit down?!” Piney gruffed at him. Opie shrugged off his father’s hand, readjusting his Kutte as Clay said, “No one here is talking about handing them over, Opie. From what we heard from the girls,” Clay stopped and looked to Jax and added, pointing his finger at him, “By the way, I want full details on what the fuck happened in Oakland from Harper.”

Jax nodded as Clay continued, “From what we heard from the girls, Nico and Bastien are just out for blood. They’d do or say anything to get them on Marcus’ bad side so they can get what they want. Bobby, call T.O. and see if him and some of the Bastards can cover us. I don’t want any surprises.”

Bobby nodded and stood, flipping open his phone as he dialed, going to the otherside of the room to talk. While Bobby laid down the plans with T.O., Clay looked to Juice and said, “Juice. LKQ. What do we know?”

Juice shrugged and said, “Lodi, neutral. From what I know it’s pretty deserted. I think the owner in on the Bastards payroll so...Throw some extra cash their way and they should be able to get the place cleared out for us.”

Clay nodded and picked up his gavel as he said, “Then it’s decided. Round up what cash we have and strap in, boys.” With a bang of his gavel, Opie shot out of his chair, bursting through the doors and down to his room to check on Kacey.

Unbeknownst to the club, when Jax left Harper in his room, she waited until she heard silence and quietly snuck out, being careful to avoid being seen through the blinds, and pressed her ear to the door to listen. Once she found out where they were meeting, she quickly rushed back to tell her sister.

“Kacey.” Harper said, softly, giving her uninjured arm a shake. Kacey stirred and turned to her sister, rubbing her eyes. Harper glanced over her shoulder, making sure neither of their men would walk in and she said, “Can you ride still?”

Kacey gave her sister an incredulous look. “I took two fucking bullets, Harper. No I can’t.” She said. Harper flicked her uninjured arm and gave her a look.

“Not today, smartass.” Harper said, lowering herself to sit on the bed next to her. Kacey shifted and sighed, pushing herself to sit up, being careful of her arm and leg. “Tomorrow. Marcus just called Clay and set a meeting at LKQ in Lodi.”

“That’s that junkyard right? Where…” Kacey’s eyes widened as Harper nodded. Kacey sighed and said, “This was Bastien’s doing…He wants them to find out and the club will let them take us!”

“Hey!” Harper hissed, gripping her hand. “I promised you no one would find out about that, and no one will...Even if they did, they wouldn’t hand us over on Marcus’ say so.”

“But they’re going to bring us with them, Harper! Of course, they’re going to hand us over!” Kacey squeaked. Harper shook her head.

“No. They aren’t. You really think they’re going to take us? Jax and Opie would never let Clay do that.” Harper said. “We’ll knock out Half-Sack, Juice, Tig, Gemma, who ever they leave to guard us. We’re going to be there and make sure Nico doesn’t rub our names out and turn us against the club.”

Kacey sighed and laid back against the pillows and said, “Harps, it’s not going to work. They’re gonna have us on lockdown. There’s no way-”

“Then we find a way.” Harper said, cutting her sister off. “We always find a way, Kace.”

Kacey chewed her lip and nodded as Opie stormed in, making them both jump. When Opie saw the girls, he stayed near the door, on the other side of the room, pacing and muttering to himself.

“Ope? What is it?” Kacey asked, chewing her lip, worried that Harper didn't get all the information. Opie shook his head and sighed.

“Nothing. Nothing. Just…” Opie stopped pacing and looked at Harper. “Harp, can you give us a minute alone?”

Harper gave him a soft smile and nodded, giving her sister a quick hug, she stood and left the room, walking out to find Jax walking back, no doubt to see her. She smiled at him as he approached and slid his arms around her, hugging her. Harper leaned into the touch and nuzzled his neck.

“Is everything okay?” She whispered softly. Jax gave a sigh and kissed her softly, trying to put out his best reassuring smile, but only ended up with a half smile before he led her back to his room and shut the door. Harper bit her lip so hard, she was sure she tasted blood, now having the same doubts Kacey had, that there was some piece that she missed. Harper sat down on the bed as Jax came over to her, squatting down in front of her.

“We got a call from Alvarez. He wants to meet.” Jax said. Harper took Jax’s hands as he continued, “He said he didn't tell Nico to shoot up the lot last night, but he heard about you crossing into Mayan territory so he doesn’t think what Nico did in retaliation was wrong.”

Harper’s eyes filled with tears as she pushed his hands away, moving around him as she stood. “So, it is all my fault…” She said, softly. Jax went to her, sliding his hands over her shoulders and down her arms.

“No. It’s not. Just-” Jax sighed and turned her around, continuing with, “Just tell me everything that happened. Did they push you across the street? Drag you? Force you in anyway?”

Jax cupped her face as Harper squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. “No. No. Nothing like that. I-I mean...They had a hand in it, but...It was my fault.”

Jax took her hands and pulled her toward the bed, sitting her down. “Tell me, babe. Tell me everything. We need to know what to bring to Marcus tomorrow.” He said, reaching up a hand to wipe her tears. Harper sniffled and nodded, leaning into his touch. Finally, she took a breath and opened her eyes, looking at him.

“I-I went to Alvin’s to get a mod for Kacey for our birthday.” She started. “I know where Mayan territory is and I made sure to stay away from it. I thought Alvin’s was safe but...They must have had lookouts and someone told Nico and Bastien I was there.” She took a pause as she sighed, starting again with, “I was waiting for the guy to get my part and...They just walked in. Didn't buy anything...Nico started talking to me, saying I wasn’t supposed to be in Oakland and Marcus exiled us and shit. I told him I wasn’t in Mayan territory and I wasn’t breaking any rules.”

Harper swallowed, hard, and said, “They shook me up. Nico said they knew where we lived now and they could show up...I just wanted to get out of there and get someplace I knew was safe...I-I guess, I just got confused and my goto was always...Nico’s...So I started heading there and then I remembered where I was and I turned around, real quick, but...I guess they thought that was enough for them to have an excuse to run me off the road and threaten me.”

Jax sighed and pulled her closer, holding her tight as she sobbed softly. Through her sobs, her words muffled as she buried her face in his chest, she said, “Now I’ve gotten my sister shot and other members...It’s all my fault!”

Jax shook his head and kissed her cheek, lifting her chin to press a soft kiss to her lips. “Baby, it’s not your fault. Nico and Bastien pushed you to it. If they hadn’t shown up you never would have crossed.” He said, wiping his thumbs over her cheeks to wipe away her tears. “A few of the guys took a bullet but Chibs is working on them now. They’ll be fine. This isn’t your fault.”

Harper sniffled and rested her head on his chest for a while before they shifted, laying on the bed and Harper snuggled into his side, soon crying herself to sleep. ~ “Ope?” Kacey said softly as she scooted to the edge of the bed, her heart racing a million miles an hour as she watched him close the door and lean a hand against the wood for a moment, as the other reached up to rub at his forehead. Kacey’s worst possible fear flashed through her mind in that moment as she bit her lip to keep from crying...Having had just about enough of that for one day.  “Shit...Clay’s gonna hand us over...Isn’t he?”

Opie’s attention snapped around immediately at her words, watching as Kacey buried her face in hands to muffle a sob. “What? God, Kay, no. No one's gonna hand you over. No one's gonna take you from me. Got it?” Opie closed the distance between the door and his bed in a few strides, kneeling in front of Kacey as he moved her hands aside, replacing them with his own as he cupped her face gently and wiped away her tears with his thumbs; kissing her.

“We’re in deep shit, Ope.” Kacey whispered as he pulled away. “I don’t think we’re getting out of this one…”

“Hey,” Opie spoke up as he shifted to sit beside her on the bed, pulling her against his chest gently as he tried to comfort her the best he could. “Everything is gonna be ok...I promise.”

“You can’t promise that, Ope…” Kacey whispered softly. “Nico and Bastien will go to whatever lengths necessary to get their hands on us. It’ll be an all out war.”  

“Yeah? And they’ll have to go through me...I’m serious, Kay. I will do whatever it takes to keep you safe.” Opie stated as he pulled Kacey back a little to look down at her, his hazel eyes filled with nothing but sincerity and the love he felt for her. “I came so close to losing you today, and that feeling? It fuckin’ terrifies me.”

“I know…” Kacey said softly as she squeezed Opie’s hand. Opie kissed her temple, nuzzling her hair as he held her close, taking care not to put pressure on her wound. Kacey sniffed and wiped her face as she rested against Opie’s chest, his warm, strong arms around her helping her calm herself down. In a soft whisper, she asked, “What’s going to happen, Opie?”

Opie stared at his closed door, his mind working as he thought. He pressed his lips to her hair before he said, “I don’t know. But it’s going to be okay, Kacey. I promise you.” ~

For the rest of the night, everyone was on edge. Clay called Tacoma, SAMDINO, SAMTAZ and Indian Hills, making sure they were at least mobilized and would be there by the next night, if not there in a matter of hours. While Clay had what visiting members, who weren’t shot in the ambush, on patrol, just on the off chance Nico and Bastien wanted to come back for more, the girls managed to find sleep, Jax and Opie never leaving their sides. Gemma made sure the kitchen was stocked and made a list for the things they needed, making plans for a store run with Half-Sack, Tig and Bobby the next day. In chapel, Clay decided only he, Jax, Opie and Chibs would go meet Alvarez and Juice confirmed with T.O. that the Sons had back up from the Grim Bastards. Early the next morning, everyone started moving. Clay sent Gemma out with a few of the girls to the store, making sure Tig and Bobby knew he’d have their balls on display if anything happened to them, not needing to reiterate to Half-Sack.

By noon, SAMDINO was all set up on patrol, SAMTAZ and Indian Hills confirming they would be there by no later than 5, Tacoma there by that night. With all the protection, it made sneaking out a little harder for Harper and Kacey, especially when Clay laid down the law; Telling them they didn't go anywhere without an escort and didn't leave Charming, with or without one. After the patrol was set up, Clay and the rest headed out to meet Alvarez and Harper set her plan in motion. She managed to convince just Juice to take them home, following Harper’s truck. They made the excuse of wanting to pack some more things and once Juice took a piss break, they shot out to Harper’s bike, Kacey not being healed enough to ride on her own, making sure they were in the street before she started her bike, giving them more time to lose Juice as they got on the highway, speeding off to Lodi. ~

Clay, Jax, Opie and Chibs rolled into the empty junkyard around 3, making sure T.O. and his guys were well hidden and on patrol before Alvarez, Nico, Bastien and their VP rolled in. Jax cracked his knuckles while Opie glared at Bastien, flicking away his cigarette butt.

“Alright. Let’s all calm down and talk about this rationally.” Clay said as Alvarez and his crew turned off their bikes and made their way over. “They’re not getting the girls, so that’s not an issue.”

“Yeah, no shit. I’m not handing them over to get beaten again.” Opie snapped, itching to beat the smug little smirk that Bastien wore off his face. Jax patted his friends’ shoulder and said, “Easy, brother.”

He moved in front of Opie, half to block him and half to take his place next to Clay as Marcus and his men stopped a few feet from them.

“Where are the white bitches?” Nico asked, right off, earning a hand to the back of his head.

“Shut your mouth, ese. You’re the reason we’re even here.” Marcus hissed at him. Nico rubbed the back of his head and shuffled back a little.

“They’re not here, asshole.” Jax said, answering him anyway. “And you’re not gonna get them.”

Marcus turned back to the Sons and sighed, taking a step forward, Clay doing the same, and said, “Listen, Clay. Those sisters did a real number on this club. And they broke the rules. If I don’t punish them, I’m going to be seen as going soft on women, especially since they are involved with my nephew.”

“Well, your nephew’s a goddamn liar.” Opie said, stepping forward, Chibs jumping to him, ready to hold him back. Nico snickered and said, “Why would I lie?”

“Because if you hadn’t shown up, when she wasn’t even in Mayan territory, she wouldn’t have crossed the street, ese.” Jax said. He looked to Alvarez and said, “Alvin’s Auto is just this side of Mayan, yeah?”

When Alvarez nodded, Jax continued, “And that’s where she was. Nico and Bastien just showed up for no reason, other than she was there. If they hadn’t shaken her down, she wouldn’t have gotten mixed up and crossed the line.”

“That bitch is the goddamn liar!-” Before Nico could even get it all out, Alvarez turned to him, grabbing him by his Kutte and dragging him closer.

“What did I tell you about keeping your fuckin’ mouth shut?! I don’t give a shit if your my sister’s son, you’re gonna listen and shut the hell up! Am I clear?” Alvarez shouted, shoving Nico back, into Bastien. Nico righted himself, adjusting his Kutte and said, “Sí, Tío.”

Alvarez turned back to the Sons and said, “It doesn’t matter if it was a mistake or not. She shouldn’t have even come so close to Oakland if she didn't want to run into Nico.”

Before Jax or anyone else could say anything more, they turned as they heard Kacey cry out, being dragged along, into the lot, followed by Harper fighting off the Mayan that held her arms. Jax and Opie started for them, but Bastien and the VP both whipped out their guns, causing Clay and Chibs to do the same. The domino effect had everyone with their guns out and pointed at the opposite party. The two Mayans dragging the sisters in threw them down between Alvarez and the Sons. Harper immediately turned and spat at the man who threw her down, causing him to slap her.

“HEY!” Jax shouted, firing a warning shot between his legs. Jax took a step closer and said, “Next one goes in your fuckin’ head, dirtbag. Step back!”

While Harper’s cheek stung, she quickly scrambled over to Kacey, Opie already there, guns be damned, and helped her up. Opie held her close, tucking her into his side, as Chibs slid a protective arm around Harper’s front, keeping his gun fixed on one of the Mayans, ready to fire.

“You see? See what these bitches do?” Marcus said, pointing his gun to the sisters.

“If I’m not mistaken, amigo, it was your guys that started this. Why did they need to drag them in like that?” Clay cast a glance to the women and said, sternly, “Not that they were even supposed to be here…”

Harper gave Clay a look, turning into a brief glare, as she said, “This isn’t your fight, Clay. It’s not on you.”

“No, baby. It’s on you. You and that bitch-” Before Nico could finish, she grabbed Chibs’ gun and shot the Mayan that slapped her. He went down, screaming and clutching his leg. All at once, all Mayan guns were on her, cocked and ready to shoot.

“Say something else about my sister and the next one has you fuckin’ name on it.” Harper said, turning her gun on Nico. She gave a smirk and said, “One Shot, mi amor…”

“Alright!” Clay shouted. “Let’s put the fuckin’ guns away and talk about this!”

“No!” Harper shouted, glancing at Clay, tears in her eyes as she refused to lower the gun. “No, I’m fucking done talking!”

Harper lowered her gun and stepped forward in the empty space between the clubs. “You’re not touching Kacey ever again, Bastien. You’re going to leave her alone and forget any bad blood between the Mayans and the Sons. No resentments, no more ambushes. Truce as usual.”

Nico snorted, not lowering his gun even though the others did, and said, “Why not?”

“Because you’re going to take me and be done with it.” Harper said. There was a mix of reactions, between Kacey screaming ‘No!’, Jax’s look of shock, and Clay shouting that there’s another way and he isn’t going to allow it. Nico seemed intrigued by the offer since he lowered his gun, stepping up to her and said, “You’d give yourself up to save that bitch?”

Before she responded, Harper’s fist connected to the center of Nico’s dumb snickering face, sending him flying backwards. “I warned you, Nico.” She said, taking a step close to the Mayans. Jax stepped forward and grabbed her arm, pulling her back as Harper turned toward him.

“No! No, you’re not doing this, Harper!” Jax shouted, eyes own eyes turning red, threatening tears. “We can figure something else out. You’re not leaving with them! I won’t let you!”

Harper ripped her arm out of Jax’s grasp and shot back, “I’m not your old lady, Jax! I can do what I want! And I want to save my sister! So if this is what it takes, then I’m doing it! No one can fuckin’ stop me!”

“Harper. Harper, no, please don’t do this.” Kacey said with a whimper, struggling against Opie to get closer. Opie didn't want Bastien anywhere near where he could lay his hands on Kacey, but he ultimately lost and Kacey rushed to her, throwing her arms around her sister’s neck and sobbing. Harper took a step back, wrapping her arms around her sister as well.

“Kacey, we don’t have any other choice.” She whispered to her, struggling with her tears. “It keeps you and the club safe. I’m doing it.”

Kacey sniffled and shook her head, letting go and wiping away her sisters tears, along with her own. “No. No. There’s-There’s another way. We always find another way!” Kacey said, gripping her arms. Alvarez stepped up and said, “We’re not walking away here empty handed, Taz. Either one or both of you comes with us, or we’re all leaving here in body bags.”

Kacey glanced at him, almost pleading as her eyes teared up even more, then looked back at Harper as she listened to him continue, “Not only did you disgrace the club, you disgraced my family. A sister for a sister is agreeable with me.”

Clay grabbed Alvarez by his Kutte and said, “There’s got to be another way here, Marcus! We’ll give you more guns, more guys to move your H, something. You can’t take her!”

Alvarez shoved Clay’s hand away and said, “Clay, this only concerns you because she’s with Jax. If she’s deciding to leave him, it doesn’t concern you anymore...Not that it even really mattered.”

He looked at Harper, as she turned to him, and said, “Harper, I promise you; If you leave with us, all things are equal, all beef is settled. Truce as usual, Me cae de Mi Familia.”

Harper let out a soft sigh, a light wave of relief passing over her, were he telling the truth. She looked back at Kacey, giving her hand a quick squeeze, before turning back to Marcus and saying, “I still want to be able to lay out any fine line I have so the club and Kacey are never to be bothered by a Mayan again. Give me your word on that, Marcus...And I’ll leave with you.”

“No!” Before Kacey could claw at her sister, ready to bring her down before she’d ever let her leave. Opie grabbed Kacey and pulled her away as she screamed and cried. Jax grabbed her arm again as she took a step forward. He pulled her closer and held her tight, kissing her so deep and passionately, Harper clung to him, giving a small, soft whimper. When the kiss broke, both their cheeks were wet as they stared at each other, Jax cupping her cheek.

“You’re not staying with them, Harper. We’ll get you back. I’ll get you back.” Jax said, softly. “You’re my girl. I love you.”

Harper sniffed and said, “I love you too, Jax. I love you too.”

Bastien had enough and grabbed Harper’s arm, tearing her away from Jax. Clay, Jax and Chibs all took a step forward, but stopped short as Nico, the VP, and the third Mayan held up their guns to stop them. The men held up their hands and stepped back as Marcus patted Clay on the back and said, “I’m very sorry about this, amigo. But I gave Harper my word. The Sons and the Mayans are good again.”

Clay let out a slow breath, giving Alvarez a look as he went back to his bike, where Harper sat waiting. He gave a whistle and Nico and the others lowered their guns and went back to their bikes. Jax watched in horror as Alvarez drove off, Harper looking back until they disappeared. Kacey collapsed in the dirt and sobbed, Opie slowly lowering her down, holding her in his arms.

“This wasn’t right, Clay!” Opie screamed at him. Clay looked to Jax, a hand closing around his shoulder and said, “I’m sorry, Son. We had no other choice.”

Jax shook his head and sighed, watching the cloud of dust dissipate before turning to go back to his bike, revving it and taking off before the others.

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

TAGLIST: @jacksonroth @stacie-marie-bloom @romanchronicles @captstefanbrandt @courtrae89 @tephi101 @shieldmaiden25 @staystrongsoa @imgoldielikehawn @laketaj24 @annakay84 @grungyblonde @crazyanonymous4u

#SOA collab #Sons of Anarchy #SOA fic #SOA #SAMCRO #Redwood Original #Opie Winston #Harry 'Opie' Winston #Ryan Hurst #Opie Winston X OC #Jax Teller #Jackson 'Jax' Teller #Charlie Hunnam #Jax Teller x OC #Men of Mayhem #Motorcycle fanfiction #SOA MC #Original Characters #Fanfiction #Fanfiction Collab #Fanfic #Writing #Angst #Violence

[literalcreativeidiot]

Reset. || November 17th, 2018.

“So how’s Stink doing? I miss the little fart machine.”

“He’s fine. I’ve slowly but surely weaned him off your scent so he’ll be good eventually.”

“And Princess?”

“Wouldn’t have noticed you were gone even if I went blue in the face telling her about it.”

“That’s my girl!”

It wasn’t the first time the two—Maxine and Derrick—walked the halls of the Staples Center during an event to just have idle chatter and “shoot the shit” as it were. However, this time was different. There was a sense of comforting realization that had swept over them as they walked through the busy halls during this day.

Derrick had always had a ritual when it came to the Takeover events that came 24 hours before one of the marquee pay-per-views. For some reason, he didn’t know why, he always liked to come by and take in the atmosphere as a quasi-fan/member of the writing staff that was just there to watch the process unfurl. Gave him a new perspective and, of course, free access to catering and one of the lush seating areas to watch the show in peace without being annoyed. Weird quirk that came from him being a fan all these years that he’d wanted to take in a show in the most fully immersive way he could without being amongst the chatter. Method to his madness so to speak. This was also the first time the two of them walked the halls of an arena together since her departure.

They had talked it over for a while—her potentially leaving the company after her many years of service to go be part of something she always wanted to do. And when that opportunity came, she leapt at it, though not without a decent level of consternation. If before, she couldn’t dream of leaving then why did she jump on the first thing screaming out of town? Especially if it meant being away from her beloved. And why wouldn’t he create much of a stink about it and readily resign himself to them being, essentially, bicoastal in a long-distance relationship? Sketchy, but they never really shared the details with everyone.

“So how’ve you been? I know it’s been like...a month or so since you were out here and we haven’t really talked all that much because work but still. How are you?” Maxine said, folding her arms underneath her chest as she stood in front of him.

“Doing what I do best: working, listening to true crime documentaries and trying to figure out if I can finagle my way into tax exempt status.” Derrick joked, the corners of his mouth peeking up with a grin. “But for real, I’m good, though. Haven’t had an episode or drank too much to the point where I say too much about anything. Really, just taking shit one day at a time as per usual.”

“So basically you haven’t spiraled. That’s good to hear; makes me feel better and I don’t have to worry as much.” She said, sliding a strand of her hair behind her ear.

“I see how you dealt with things.” He said, reaching his hand out to swipe his fingers over the deep dark red-colored bangs that hung over her forehead. “Cutting your own bangs...again. Wise move.”

She shook her head vehemently as a means to move from his hand, letting out a laugh at his assertion. “What, I’m the only one who makes rash choices with their hair? I got annoyed, briefly, and did it, saw the result, freaked out for like fifteen minutes and then I decided the best course of action was to distract people from it by wearing low cut tops and tilting my head at different angles. Hats are the next option!”

“You can’t put a big floppy hat on everything and expect it to just not catch everyone’s attention. It doesn’t work that way.” Derrick responses with a chuckle, shaking his head.

“Try me, okay? It can happen.”

It was something that he admired in her, the irrational confidence she had that she could do and pull off mostly anything. Made it easier to shrug things off if and when they went awry and to celebrate when it went as planned. Method to the madness, as one would say.

“So how are things back over there? Neighbors haven’t noticed I was gone all that much?” Maxine asked as the two took a seat at an empty table in the concession area, far enough away so people wouldn’t be interrupting their conversation all that much.

“Things are fine; Halloween was a mess. One of the houses got tagged with the phrase, ‘I wouldn’t fuck her with Elvis’ dick’.” He stated, shoulders bouncing up and down as he tried to contain his laughter.

“Oh, God—was it the Johnson Twins?” She beamed with a laughter, reaching a hand out to rest on his forearm.

“Of course it was the Johnson Twins. They’re the only ones who would do something that incredibly dumb.”

There were a few beats of silence that was gradually getting drowned out by the typical mix of chatter that came from people congregating in the arena. It allowed the two of them to look at each other with seemingly pleasant expressions on their faces, taking the time to collect their thoughts.

“So….have you told anyone yet?” She asked after clearing her throat, turning her head and scratching the back of her neck.

“You mean outside of Dad, Melinda, Casey, and Kat? Nope. Not a single word. Not yet at least.”

“Derrick.” She chastised him playfully, giving him a look that could best be described as ‘what the fuck’.

“What?! I don’t need to tell everyone about everything. They’ll know when I feel the time in right.” He offered up a shrug, drumming his fingertips along the surface of the table. “Who knows; I could easily go into the New Year if I’m determined enough.”

Letting out an exasperated sigh, Maxine shook her head at his attempt at justification. She knew he had a knack for doing this sort of thing. Being evasive when he didn’t need to for reasons that were beyond her after all these years.

“So you’re just gonna not tell people that we haven’t been a thing for close to two and a half months and that’s why I moved to Burbank in addition to me getting this new job?”

“Yeah because I’m weird like that. And because I don’t wanna cause there to be speculation and hearsay. Y’know, typical high school nonsense that I’m too old for.”

The nonchalant nature of the two of them confirming their separation wasn’t exactly something shocking to either of them if the people who knew them well enough took it as any indication. Having seen each other and how they were after disastrous breakups, the fact that neither of them were on the verge of real self-destructive behavior was a sign to both of them that they were somehow at peace.

Like skipping all the prior stages of grief just to get to the acceptance stage.

“They’re gonna find out eventu—you’re totally planning on just showing up one day with a new girlfriend and act like it’s a Tuesday.” Maxine stated, remembering the last time he pulled that move back in their early twenties.

“It worked before. And as long as questions aren’t asked, it’ll work again. I know you don’t go to church but have faith.”

“Mister ‘I tell people I go commando at home’ isn’t gonna divulge who he’s been fucking? Who are you, and what have ya dun with muh Derrick?” Maxine said, peppering the last statement with the faux-concerned Southern Belle accent that caused both of them to laugh.

“What, you want me to just up and say the nitty gritty of everything? Give them the ol’ Inside The Actors Studio about my dating life? C’mon, Max.”

“I don’t mean give them the blow-by-blow analysis but yeah, tell folks so they’re not left wondering or assuming shit.”

“And to think, we could’ve signed NDA’s about this whole thing, Max.”

She shook her head in response with a laugh and a smile, noting that he really couldn’t turn that bit of charm off him even if he tried. They stayed silent for a few seconds, letting whatever laughter die down so they could ease their way back into conversation.

“....is it weird that I’m not feeling torn up inside about all of this?” She inquired, biting at the corner of her bottom lip as her eyes settled on his. It was as if she was doing her best to search in his eyes to find the answer she was looking for. Trying to get a read on him before he could say anything.

“I was gonna ask you the same thing. Makes me not feel as weird for not wanting to go into a breakup depression spiral. Is this how normal, functioning adults handle the end of their relationships?”

“No, most of them get into a bitter divorce battle that crippled them financially and makes them hate the person they professed to love in the eyes of the Lord.” Maxine answered with a shrug.

“Well, that’s a damn shame. For them anyway.”

To them, it was good that they were at least able to find a way to joke about this like it was a normal thing. It was a coping mechanism that they hadn’t grown out of since they knew each other and wasn’t something they were going to shy away from, especially during such a time of uncertainty between the two of them. Whatever small laughter there was between them had settled into another few beats of that uneasy silence most people would try to fill with witty banter or small talk.

“For the record, I’m not bitter or harboring resentment toward you.” Derrick begun to say, setting her head perk up to look at him as she had spent the last few moments blankly staring at her left hand. They never really wore their wedding rings outside of special occasions but they had both been feeling the nakedness of it not being on their ring finger for the past number of weeks. “I don’t hate you—don’t even think I’m capable of hating you. I mean if we were having this conversation six months ago, I think you and I would feel completely different than we do now and wouldn’t easily find our way to a comfort zone like we have.”

“Well, six months ago, there probably would’ve been a fight and both of us saying something we didn’t mean and accelerating the process by months instead of what we did: Try to navigate why we were feeling the way we felt until we came to the ultimate conclusion.”

“That that romantic love we once had and were running on—that flame burnt out when we weren’t looking. Sucks but it happens even if you try to stop it from happening.”

“We took the path less traveled. The one that didn’t lead into a belligerent shouting match on the front lawn of a house in a Long Island suburb. Guess that counts for something, huh?” Maxine rhetorically asked, face scrunched up with a small smile. She reached out to grab his wrist, flipping it over to reveal the matching tattoo they had gotten over a decade ago in correspondence to the one she had in the same area. Her thumb lightly grazed over the scar that his tattoo had been covering, biting at the corner of her lip. “You won’t be able to get rid of me all that easy; you know that, right? I’ll always be with you.”

“Wasn’t planning on it, Red.” He replied with a knowing smirk, uttering the same nickname he gave her when they first met. “Even though we live on opposite ends of the country, I’m still a phone call or text away. You know that. For anything: If you wanna talk about your day, tell me about some adventure you took in San Fernando Valley, boyfriend troub—well, no. Not boyfriend troubles. At least not yet; that’d be weird.”

She first responded with a laugh, shaking her head from side to side as her other hand covered her face slightly.

“No, I definitely won’t be calling you up to talk about boy troubles and likewise, I don’t think you’ll do the same with whatever girl or girls decide they wanna make your life hell. More postcards from places you visited, though. I liked the ones you sent over from Manchester. But yes, the feeling is mutual; one call or text away, like always.”

“Like always. Despite everything else, that? That won’t ever change, I promise.”

“Of course.”

They weren’t going to lie to each other. By the seemingly sudden (to people who knew them anyway) nature of their separation, things were going to change in their lives much like it did two years ago when they first got together and wanted to see what it all meant for them to give it the ol’ college try. But in the end, they found that they couldn’t fake it with one another long enough to “right the ship” as it were. In the end, it became the sobering wake up call the two of them needed.

He remembered the conversation as clear as day. Hell, they both did. A semblance of dancing around the fact that neither of them were feeling the same way they did before. That madly in love feeling had dissipated before their very eyes and they didn’t know how or what to do to prevent the slow moving avalanche from already gaining steam. Like most things, once the levees break, there’s no real chance at fixing the leak in the dam.

Tears flowed during that conversation, reminiscing about fun times they had had together that were fleeting quickly. And then, in relative silence, they worked to make the landing for each other as smooth as possible, the last vestiges of two people who loved one another beyond being husband and wife, the two best friends that had known each other for over a decade. It sucked but in many ways, for them, it was therapeutic more than anything else, really. Far more than they wanted to admit anyway.

They had both gotten up from their seats to embrace in a hug, quietly enjoying the close warmth of one another once more until they could see each other again in the future. She rubbed his back and shut her eyes, nodding as he kept his arms locked around her waist.

“You take care of yourself, alright?” Derrick uttered as he looked at her, hands resting on her hips. “If you need anything, just call.”

“Okay. I will. And you don’t worry so much. Don’t overthink shit and keep your head above the clouds, okay? Wouldn’t wanna have to straighten you up again.” Maxine uttered jokingly, shaking her head at him.

“I’ll replace all my worries with true crime factoids and even more useless information.”

“So more doubling down, eh? On brand behavior.”

With shared chuckles, they departed from their embrace—almost unceremoniously, really. There wasn’t really much for either of them to say afterwards; what was done is done and all they had left was to go on with the next phase of their lives. Her, heading to another part of the building, possibly leaving, and him going off to do his usually pre-show scrounging. And really, that’s how it had to be.

The reset button had been hit by the two of them, from once a couple back to the best of friends again, though there’s the not-so small wrinkle of the last two and a half years of their lives being so intertwined with one another. Whatever the case may be, things were different. They were different and they both went about accepting that as their immediate truth.

#(written things) #(wt: reset) #(backdated) #((I wanted to post this on saturday but my computer acted like a bitch and I didn't finish it)) #((sooooo here it is as sort of an explanation of why derrick's been weird...weirdER than usual)) #((here have fun with all this mess)) #((I used small text and cut it so it didn't clog the dash on mobile)) #((I also spoke to cyndi about this and cleared it with her so everything is all good and I'm not godmoding or anything like that)) #((anyway sorry for your thumbs kthnxbyeeeee))

[midnightluck]

Hi it's me again! So just a random thought, prompted by your fairy magic ones, what if Ace and Sabo are together on the MD, like Sabo is there for the Revs, and their both turned into kids, but plot twist they do not have any memories of being older. So the Whitebeards have feral mean child Ace AND. Sabo who while much better than he is as an adult, is still a snarky little shit who enjoys other people annoyance.

Not quite what you asked for, but it follows this and this.

Ace steps off the gangway and onto the dock. The ground is steady under his feet and it takes him a second to adjust, but the salt in the air is as familiar as ever. He glances around the docks, but all the slips are full up and he doesn’t get but a once-over before an arm gets slung across his shoulders.

“Where’re you off to, then?” Thatch asks, propelling him forward. “We’ve got ‘til they get here, so stores? Bars? Restaurants?”

Ace grins at him, then plants his back foot and ducks his head. Thatch’s arm slides right off, and Ace laughs at him and the look on his face.

“Something like that,” he says, even though his plans are nothing like that at all. “You?”

Thatch grimaces and says, “Do you have any idea how much food it takes to feed all of you, even without company coming? I’m off to the markets. I’m always at the markets. The sheer volume of food you, specifically, go through, personally offends me, and--”

Ace makes noncommittal humming noises and lets the monologue wash over him. He follows Thatch anyway, right up until town, and then he slides sideways into the trees while Thatch waves wildly and yells something about cheeses.

It’s soothing, out in the trees, in a way that no ship ever has been. There’s greenery everywhere and he can track the wind by the leaves. There’s sounds, too; there’s birdsong and quiet plant rustling, and a bit of turned earth next to marks in the dirt that he knows means a boar is around.

It’s easy to follow, big and blatant,probably because it doesn’t have much to fear on such an island as Franjibelle. It’s a mild day, pleasant out, and Ace loses an hour or so to tracking. It’s nostalgic, and by the time he catches up to the animal, he’s deep in the woods. Everything is quiet forest noises and the boar snuffling and the familiar sound of Sabo pacing his steps just out of sight. It’s like any hunt from ages back, and he falls into the pattern easy as blinking.

He always starts by going left, and he does this time, too. He falls from the branch and spooks it right. It squeals and rears enough that he’s sure it’s a female, and then turns and runs.

Ace knows this dance, though, and when it hits Sabo and he turns back left, Ace is already in place and waiting. He’s got fire now, and it’s easy enough to surround it with a ring. Then it’s a simple matter of finding the weak spot of the skull, and his eyes trace the lines from ears to opposite eyes, and then it’s just a matter of spinning his dagger hilt into the spot those lines cross.

Everything is fire and noise and danger for a swirl, and then he’s bleeding her out and making sure she stays down. He takes a second to thank her as her eyes go glassy, and doesn’t even blink when boots thud down next to him.

“The fire’s new,” Sabo says, and Ace looks up into scars and a smile he knows like breathing.

“Oh,” Ace says, and if his hands weren’t busy supporting the boar’s head, he’d probably punch that smug face. “What,” he says instead, knees in the dirt.

“Hey, remember a few days back?” Sabo asks, swinging his pipe out of the way and falling to sit next to him. “When you accidentally wished a memory-me into being?”

Ace squints over at him. “So I’m dreaming this time?” he asks. “Or just hallucinating? I don’t think I pissed off any other fae recently.”

“I don’t think you pissed one off at all,” Sabo says mildly. Ace wipes his hands off and tucks his dagger back away. “Seemed more like a favor to me.”

“You’d know,” Ace says and heaves the boar up and over his shoulder. “Being made of magic and all.”

“I’m not,” Sabo says, still sitting. “I’m actually here, Ace.”

“Of course you’re not,” Ace says, trying a step to see if he can manage. He shifts it a bit until the weight distribution isn’t throwing him off and then keeps going. “You’re kinda dead.”

Sabo finally moves, planting one palm in the dirt and using it to pivot both feet under him in a movement they both learned from Gramps. Ace turns his eyes away and glances up. He’s lost quite a bit of time, according to the sun, but they hadn’t intended to leave until nightfall anyway so he’s got plenty of time to get back to the ship and offer Thatch his boar as an apology gift.

“I’m not dead,” Sabo says, falling into step but not reaching out to help. “You think a little thing like fire could kill me?”

Ace fixes his eyes on the ground ahead of him, picking his path and not looking at the specter walking beside him. “You did kinda blow up,” he points out reasonably. “And if that didn’t get you, the drowning would have. The scars are new, though.”

“Mmhmm,” Sabo says, sticking both hands in his pockets. “Got ‘em from that time I didn’t die.”

That’s reasonable, as far as justifications go, but Ace knows better than to get his hopes up. “Sure,” he says, “but I see your hat made it through just fine.”

The fake Sabo huffs and tugs the brim of his hat. “It’s a new one,” he says, which is a blatant lie if ever Ace heard one. “You wouldn’t believe how much it cost to get it made.”

Ace shakes his head and keeps walking. He’s done arguing with the shade of his dead brother, and the fake Sabo’s silence is as comforting as the real one’s was. He even walks with his eyes turned the way Ace’s aren’t, just like the real Sabo would’ve. “How’s Luffy?” he asks instead.

Sabo lights up and talks with his hands, just like he used to. Whatever is causing this illusion, it’s really thorough, but so was the last one. In any case, he seems to know a lot about Luffy, and Ace whistles at his baby bro’s new bounty.

Not-really-Sabo shifts into a story of Luffy visiting Lougetown that takes them all the way back to the forest’s edge, finally winding it up with a quick, “--and then he got them back to ship and they tore outta there,” in just enough time for Ace to skid down a slope and land right beside the small group of Commanders standing on the side of the road.

“Hey!” Ace says cheerfully, swinging the boar around and down at Thatch’s feet. “Look what I brought you!”

Thatch stares at it, then at Ace. “Why,” he asks flatly.

Ace blinks back. “You were complaining about the cost of food. I thought I’d help.”

“So you pulled a disappearing act that gave us all heart attacks and went off into the woods without telling anyone so you could hunt a boar alone, yoi,” Marco says.

Ace looks down at it and them back up at Thatch. “Do you not know how to cook boar? It’s pretty easy.”

“Do I--” Thatch closes his eyes and brings a hand up to massage the bridge of his nose. “That’s not the point, Ace.”

“I can help,” Ace offers, reaching out a hand. “It’s better slow-roasted, but--”

“Don’t do it like that--” Sabo starts, reaching out, and Ace steels his nerves and doesn’t flinch. It’s fine; the hand’ll pass right through--

Sabo’s fingers catch on Ace’s wrist, and the world flips inside out.

--

There’s a whole bunch of strange people who are taller than him, and Ace hisses on instinct and puts his back to Sabo’s.

“Who’re you?” Sabo’s asking, and Ace tenses further. It’s Sabo who knows people, but he apparently doesn’t know these guys and that spells trouble.

“What?” one of the strangers says, leaning in to loom over them. “What just happened?”

“Sabo?” asks one with weird hair, crouching down down get closer, and then his gaze switches. “Ace?”

Ace hisses again and Sabo tenses. “Those aren’t our names,” Sabo says, taking a step back.

“Of course they are,” the first one says again, and throws his arms out. “You think we don’t recognize you?”

Ace flinches and Sabo glares, and they both back up another step.

“C’mon, yoi,” says the second, still on the ground. “Let’s get you back to the ship. Maybe Pops will know something--”

Sabo’s hand flies to Ace’s wrist, and they both turn and bolt.

“Hey!” someone yells from behind them, but Ace puts his head down and runs. He doesn’t know where they are; this forest isn’t familiar. It’s still a forest, though, and he knows those better than any stupid adult.

They make the tree line and keep going, and both make for the first big bush to break line-of-sight. It’s sitting on the edge of an incline, and Ace takes the turn too sharp and slides down just a bit..

Sabo’s hand is still on his wrist, though, and Ace pulls, scrambling upright and planting a hand on the ground to get enough momentum to turn the fall into a swing. Sabo drags him up and around as they make a hard left and keep going further into the forest.

The trees here aren’t as tall or as dense as the ones he knows, and Ace decides climbing them’ll be a pain. They probably won’t have to, though, because it doesn’t seem like anyone’s caught up with them.

They slide into a small ditch, just a shallow holler below ground level, and they stop to catch their breath.

“You think we lost ‘em?” Sabo asks, and Ace holds his breath for a second to listen.

“Yeah,” he says. “I think we did.”

Sabo nods, then starts going through his pockets. “Where are we?”

“I dunno,” Ace says, going through his own. He’s got a sharp rock, a handful of coins, a half-empty box of matches, and a band-aid--everything that he should have. Sabo’s turned up a knife and a handkerchief and some other odds and ends.

Ace squints up at the sky. “We’re gonna need shelter soon,” he says; the sun’s dipping low. “And food.”

Sabo nods. “Hunting? I don’t have my pipe…”

Ace doesn’t either, and they don’t have time to make traps, not when they don’t even know if anything around here is worth trapping. “Let’s keep moving,” he says. “There were people, so there’s gotta be a town.”

“Hunt to hunt,” Sabo agrees, their shorthand term for making towards a town while trying to find something else on the way.

They scramble out of the ditch and Ace looks around, trying to get a feel of the land. Sabo stands back and lets him. Ace knows forests better and they both know it.

Given what they ran past getting here and the pattern of the underbrush, the thicker part of the forest is back that way, so he heads the opposite way, and readjusts as they go. There were people, so there’s bound to be some kind of town or something, and chances are it’s not in the forest.

Sure enough, by the time the sun’s sunk a thumb’s-width towards the horizon, they’ve broken out of the forest and found the outskirts of a settlement just a bit away. It’s too big to be a village but not quite big enough to be a city.

Ace makes the swirl-over-eyes gesture that means scope out a soft target and Sabo nods once, sharp, and disappears down a side street. Ace sticks both hands in his pockets, hunches his shoulders, and works his way into the market area.

The crowds aren’t as big as he’d like, but he’s small and quick and knows how to be invisible.

"Gotcha!" the redhead yells, bodyslamming Ace into the ground.

He's got a couple feet and a lot of weight on Ace, but Ace has no shame and fights dirty. He sinks his teeth into the closest limb and uses his nails as claws. The man squirms and yells, and Ace gets his legs free.

It's enough, and he's scrambling away before he's even upright. There's a flash of blue on the other side of the square and he starts for it. "Sa--!"

His legs are still pumping, but he's not moving forward anymore. He's moving upwards instead, being lifted by his collar from behind.

He hisses and spits and swings both arms over his head to get his nails into the wrist supporting him. It does no good, though; he can feel flesh yielding beneath his fingers but the perpetrator just keeps him aloft. “Can you not, yoi?” the person behind him asks.

“I can kick your face in,” Ace hisses back and squirms harder. “Lemme go!”

“What’d we ever do to you?” Sabo is yelling as a moving chunk of shiny white stone stomps over to them, Sabo in hand. “Put us down!”

“After we went through all this trouble to catch you?” the redhead says, one hand over his eye. “Damn, kid; you’ve got good aim.”

Yes, yes Ace does, but he just huffs and crosses his arms. He doesn’t have to accept compliments from kidnappers.

“Why are you after us?” Sabo asks, still dangling, and oh, that’s something Ace hadn’t thought to ask. “Neither of us are worth anything.”

It’s a good thing Ace knows to let Sabo do the talking, cause he’d never sell a lie that big.

“You’re not?” the person holding Ace asks. “Neither of you?”

“Street brats,” Sabo says, grinning a sharp grin. “No money, no bounty, no ransom, no useful skills. So you may as well let us go.”

The redhead huffs. “I know you’re lying and I still can’t tell.”

“He doesn’t lie!” Ace lies, struggling again.

The person holding him shakes him, just a bit, and says, “We’ve got to get them back to the ship somehow, yoi. Anyone got any rope?”

“I’ve got cuffs,” the redhead says, stepping forward. “Not the right size, but they’ll do if we run.”

“I am not chasing them all over this island again,” the first guy says. “Cuff them.”

“No, no--” Sabo starts scrabbling at the stone arm holding him, trying it climb it to get away from the cuffs. “No, don’t, no--!”

Ace doesn’t have the same issue with handcuffs that Sabo does, but he fights just as hard for the exact same reason. “No! I’ll go quietly! I’m the one you want anyway, don’t put those on him--!”

But it’s too late. One is clicking into place on Ace’s wrist while the redhead slips the other onto Sabo’s ankle.

The moment the metal touches skin, though, the world pops in place and turns right-side in.

~

Ace hits the ground face-first, one arm over his head, and groans. He tries to ask what’s going on, but all he accomplishes is a mouthful of dirt.

There’s an answering groan, though, and Ace goes to push himself up. His hand won’t retract, though, so he tugs hard and looks up in just enough time to catch a boot to the face.

“What?” someone asks just as he yelps “ow!” and several someones laugh.

He groans and rolls over to his back. The sky is nice, at least. The sky isn’t mocking him.

“Ace?” A head pops into his field of vision. “Is that you?”

He doesn’t know the voice, but he knows the cadence, he knows the way his name sounds, and he knows that damn hat. “Sabo?!” he squeaks, sitting upright.

His forehead slams into Sabo’s chin and they both recoil. “What the hell, Ace!” Sabo yells.

“What the hell, Sabo!” Ace says back, sitting up more carefully. “Aren’t you dead?”

“Only as dead as your common sense,” Sabo snaps, and Ace goes to cross his arms and yanks hard enough that Sabo yelps and falls flat as his foot going flying. Ace looks down to see the handcuffs connecting his wrist to Sabo’s ankle. Huh.

That explains the kick. Ugh, he’s gonna have a headache all night, isn’t he? Sabo’s giving him that look and Ace groans and flops back over. “What even,” he says.

This time it’s Marco who leans in to block his view of the sky. “You okay, yoi?”

“No,” Ace says, but Sabo is here, so also, “yes,” but also he’s lost and his head hurts, so probably, “no.”

“Make up your mind,” Sabo says, but he scoots over enough to sit next to Ace and work his fingers into Ace’s hair, so he can’t be too mad.

“Are you a wish again?” Ace asks, reaching up to touch.

“Nah,” Sabo says, and gives him that small fleeting smile that means he’s truly happy. “I got a wish, too. Well, kinda.”

“I bet you got cursed.”

Sabo huffs. “I did not,” he says. “I was given a gift, just like you.”

The sun’s blocked as someone crouches down towards them. “Hey,” he says, and it’s Thatch. “So this is Sabo, all grown up, huh?”

“Pleased to meet you!” Sabo says, dipping his head. “Or, well, it’s good to see you again?”

“I’m sure it is,” Marco says, hands on his hips as he looks down at them. “Now, how about we do this somewhere besides the middle of the town square?”

Is that where they are? Ace looks around and finds that, yeah, they are, and there’s a lot of whispering and pointing going on. He sighs and bats at Sabo’s hands until he can sit up. At least the headache’s lessened.

“Don’t suppose you’ve got the key for these, have you?” Sabo asks Thatch, gesturing at the handcuffs they’re both still wearing.

“Depends,” Thatch says, producing said key. “You gonna run away again if I unlock ‘em?”

Ace very carefully doesn’t look at Sabo. “No,” he says, holding out his arm.

“Of course not,” Sabo says disdainfully, straightening his leg.

Thatch sighs but goes ahead and uncuffs them. Ace huffs and stretches, and Sabo gets up neatly. He turns to Ace and offers a hand up.

Ace meets his eyes and takes it, and his lips quirk. Yeah, they’re thinking the same thing. “You forgive me?” Sabo asks.

“I’m the one who’s sorry,” Ace replies, and Sabo pulls him to his feet, already turning.“Meet you back at the ship,” Ace says to the Whitebeards, and he takes off after Sabo.

A whole chorus of shouts raise behind them, but they duck through the people and around the stalls and are out of town long before anyone can catch up.

“Hey!” Sabo yells at him as they barrel towards the tree line. “Do you know where we’re going?”

“No!” Ace shouts back, smiling fit to catch bugs with his teeth. “Why? Does it matter?”

Sabo’s laugh is breathless but loud enough, and they keep running.

#clever-girl98 #Portgas D. Ace #sabo the revolutionary #I've sat on this since last year #sorry it took so long #i hope you like it anyway #answer in the form of a story #spare me as i'm gone au

[bredlederblog]

Capitol Hill 2021: A Response to a Commenter

Normally, I make a rule not to engage because I’ve had to deal with furious pro-police brutality and anti-immigration peeps before, and frankly I’m too old and tired to try to debate all the time. 

But I saw that someone had posted a very long response (and one other prior person) to my Capital Hill post and I need to make a few things clear: 

No, what happened to Ashli Babbit was/is inexcusable. There is literally no justification for her death--and there are too many various eye-witnesses for any of us to pretend that what the Capitol police and security had done was justifiable. 

We have one Thomas Barani confirming that she was shot by a plains-clothed police officer (so Ashli couldn’t have known if the cop was...a cop. Because he wasn’t wearing his uniform). 

Police also confirmed that there were no warning shots before Babbit was killed. 

““They shot her and then they turned around and screamed ‘Do you want to be next?'” one of the alleged eyewitnesses says on the tape. “That’s when the rest of the Capitol Police came storming in and pushed us all out.”“When she got hit, she was gushing blood out of her mouth,” another eyewitness added.“One shot and they got her,” the first man then stated.“ 

I have no clue why the commenter believed Babbit received prior warnings (and warning shots? Which granted, the four video recordings only shows during and after the incident--but where the fuck are the warning shots if none of the eyewitnesses and the police admitted it)?

I find it amazing that said commenter is claiming that I’m ‘blowing shit out of proportion’ while claiming that a woman had ‘warning shots’ which were never reported or in all four videos of the incident.

(also the commenter went on a long-as-hell post ranting about Biden, the news, and gun laws. Despite that my post was about police brutality and how clearly the people were misled and used by a politician who told people to march to Capitol Hill, because “something is wrong here, something is really wrong, can't have happened and we fight, we fight like hell, and if you don't fight like hell you're not going to have a country anymore.” 

This man claimed for MONTHS that the election was stolen (and I say for a fact that he did nothing to prevent it from happening. Remember that the 2016 primaries drew widespread criticism because 868 voting offices were removed, prompting calls for voter suppression investigation from both Republican and Democratic parties. Trump’s administration (after Mr. President told American citizens not to use mail-in votes, which my own father did anyway)  then went on to remove 1,688 on-site voting locations for the 2020 elections. 

So. Let’s pretend that I’m a politician who wants to limit any potential fraud. 

If I discover that mail-in ballots are a risk--you’d think that’d be the moment where you open up more voting locations, correct? So that none of the ballot-counters get slammed by thousands-more votes than last time, and to limit any possibility of ‘losing actual’ count (and hell, if a recount had to be made--it’s handier to separate them by town (like in the UK) than a whole county). I wouldn’t do something so stupid as to remove voting locations for places like Florence, Texas--forcing Americans to travel 10 miles to vote in person. 

So yeah--I’d appreciate it if you guys would: a) not insult a dead person, b) victim-blame a dead person, and c) claim that I was ‘blowing shit out of water’. 

And also--maybe the reason why we didn’t like Trump for saying shit like ‘grabbing pussy’ was because we historically didn’t like presidents for f*cking around like Bill Clinton. Who himself was impeached for using his position to pressure and have sex with his intern and several other women. In addition: If you have a problem with Trump being blamed because ‘he didn’t tell these people to riot” note that the US judiciary system has stated that you are still guilty of inciting people even if you didn’t specifically tell them to cause damage/murder. 

Because otherwise, why the fuck did American authorities convict Charles Manson when he himself said: 

“I have killed no one and I have ordered no one to be killed. I may have implied on several different occasions to several different people that I may have been Jesus Christ, but I haven't decided yet what I am or who I am. “

That's why Trump is being criticised. Because in America,  even if you didn’t say X,  but were there near a scene of crime  and didn’t do enough to stop the situation from escalating--then you’re at fault. 

Trump had so many chances to fix last week’s situation. He could’ve stepped out to personally speak out to the crowd, but he hid behind his Twitter. He wouldn’t even go on camera, neither did he send for the National Guard (which is controlled federally) to get Pence out of Capitol Hill. 

But he didn’t. He also had the opportunity to address what happened, to go over the seriousness about last week’s incident and the people who were killed (the ones that died going into Capitol Hill, and the ones who ‘defended’ it). But instead he focused heavily on how ‘people’ thought his speech was ‘totally appropriate’. He instead just distanced himself from those people. 

The News didn’t ‘make’ him look bad. He did all that to himself. 

#Capitol Hill 2021 #a response #police brutality #also gun laws has nothing to do with this #and please for the love of fuck provide sources if you want to make some wide statements on people.

[calamitaswrath]

please go in depth on your thoughts of Echoes I care a lot

Alright then, I’m gonna put this under a cut, because spoilers and because it’s probably gonna get quite lengthy:

Okay, so first off, in general: This is probably hands down my favourite 3DS Fire Emblem game, if not favourite Fire Emblem game period. It easily blows Awakening and Fates out of the water, and beyond those, only Blazing Sword and The Sacred Stones come close - though not close enough.

As for some specifics:

Gameplay

So to start with probably my biggest gripe about gameplay, it’s that map design and enemy teams really do kinda show the age of the original, considering how many maps have just big open spaces that you don’t really use and that don’t really have any enemies in them. As for enemy teams, there really were just a few too many “all enemies on this map are of the same class” fights, but even those managed to be kind of interesting since they made me think about how best to approach enemies of that particular class.Now aside from that, I’m honestly rather fond about how simple the core Fire Emblem gameplay is in comparison to Awakening and Fates? In Awakening it was honestly just a matter of putting together strong married units and watch them tear enemy after enemy apart, with some Lunatic mode enemies with skils throwing the only real curveballs. As for Fates, only Conquest was really different from Awakening, and even there it was admittedly a bit of a bother at times that you had to keep track of what enemy had which skill and how they could be dangerous if you forgot about them for just one moment. In SoV it sticks closer to how the GBA games played and you actually have to take advantage of terrain and your positioning, and I honestly kinda prefer that.The dungeon crawling meanwhile was surprisingly fun, though I still have some gripes with them. In terms of design, most of the dungeons are honestly a bit too simple for my taste, and don’t really offer enough other than crates/pots to smash, enemies to either avoid or fight, and the odd treasure chest/stat-boosting spring. I also didn’t really like how the fatigue system played out with dungeons, because I generally prefered making offerings to Mila statues to cure that. . . but seeing as those were generally either at the very end or the very end of a dungeon, that wasn’t really an option. Still, I feel that if they refined the dungeon gameplay in a future title, I wouldn’t mind seeing it return.Other than that. . . oh yeah, the class system was also kinda nice? I actually really don’t mind that beyond chosing what class to chose for your villagers you don’t really have branching promotions or reclassing, since it means less things for me to worry about and consider (and I’m aware of the class looping thing but I didn’t try it yet). What does kinda bother me is that some classes really can’t move very far - like, having the final knight class or Celica’s promotion being only able to move four spaces is really annoying. Alm’s five isn’t that much better, either. And of course it’s rather stupid that they put these overclasses behind DLC, but since third-tier classes are already so strong, I don’t really care that much.Mila’s Turnwheel was also an addition that I really, really enjoyed - I generally always play on classic mode, so having an option to redo specific actions instead of soft-resetting an entire fight was just a huge time-saver. I think most of the time I didn’t even use it to bring someone back from the day, and instead used it to manipulate the RNG and guarantee that a unit actually gets a kill that they otherwise would’ve missed. So all in all I really hope that they bring this feature back in some capacity in future titles, just because it’s such a convenience. And let’s face it, even most hardcore classic mode elitists still reset when they lose a unit, so this thing is just a time saver on all accounts.Town explorations was also a nice touch, and honestly really helped make everything feel more alive.And that’s all I got on gameplay so let’s move on to

Characters and Story

Now this is where SoV really blows Awakening and Fates out of the water, if you ask me. I won’t deny that those two games have (for the most part) good playable characters in terms of personality and everything, but everything beyond that, from villains to the actual story and worldbuilding just falls apart very quickly. In regards to characters, I wouldn’t go as far as to say that this game has the best cast in all of FE, but it’s definitely really strong, and the quality voice acting really helps this - as does having an actual believable set of protagonists and antagonists, for that matter.To go a bit more into detail: In both Awakening and Fates, the only protagonist I really enjoyed was Lucina, and she honestly got the shaft as far as focus from the plot goes. As for everyone else - Chrom gets some hint of what could be nice character development for about the first six chapters, and then pretty much remains static for the entire rest of the game, without any real depth to him. Robin meanwhile doesn’t even get a hint of anything of that sort, with the only real saving grace there being that you can project on to them, ‘cause y’know, player character. Fates meanwhile just only really had Corrin has protagonist (I know the game kinda pretends Azura is also one, but it really fails to portray her as one), and they’re quite frankly a total mess. Alm and Celica on the other hand - they still have their problems (like their romance being kinda awkward, Celica believing Jedah so easily or Alm being so slow to pick up on him obviously being royalty, and both of them showing sympathy for some characters who don’t really deserve any), but unlike all other 3DS era protagonists (except for maybe Lucina) those don’t outweigh how well they’re all handled otherwise. They’re properly motivated, have their good moments, and play off the other characters well enough. One last major gripe I still have with them is how Alm clearly gets more focus and better portrayal in contrast to Celica (just look at the game’s Japanese title).As for antagonists. . . well, pretty much every Awakening/Fates can be described as follows: They’re kinda cool. . . but so dumb. Shadily motivated, badly written, and with even more missed potentials than the protagonists. Gangrel, Walhart, Validar, Grima, Garon, Iago, Anankos - there could’ve been so much done with them, and yet they ended up as one dimensional character that are evil just because. Now, in SoV. . . well, I’d say the villains are probably still the weakest point of the cast, but they’re still leagues better than the ones in Awakening and Fates. Rudolf is kinda good in theory, but my big problem with him is that you barely see him. Other than that, his methods are kinda ehh, and could’ve done with a better justification.Jedah overall works well enough, though like I said before, it’s rather annoying how easily Celica believes him. Aside from that, it’s also a bit annyoing that actually taking him out is optional, and even discouraged (or at least made extra hard) by the game from a gameplay perspective.Berkut is admittedly ultimately just an entitled brat, but I think as a villain he works well enough.Fernand is also a good enough villain, but I think they kinda forgot to, y’know, justify why Clive and the others were friends with him to begin with. Even in the memory that shows him in the past, he really just comes off as an ass.Villains aside, the rest of the cast is honestly pretty good in my eyes. Though to get the elephant in the room out of the way. . . Faye. I don’t hate her - she’s honestly nowhere near Tharja levels of bad, but dear god that girl needs to get some hobbies. It really just comes off as the writers not spending more than five minutes when coming up with her character, which is honestly a shame because I really like her design. Anyway, for the rest of the cast, some of my favourites include Mathilda, Gray, Tobin, Saber, Genny, Est, Mae, Boey and Conrad. For ships, I got nothing - I’ve never been much of a shipper, and this game ain’t changing that.Now, the story as a whole is just fine, which is still more than what can say about Awakening’s and Fates’ story. Both of those games I feel were just way too ambitious with their stories. SoV in contrast is a lot more simple with its story, which works just way better. The worldbuilding done by both being able to explore places and investigate them as well as the memory function certainly helps. I know that the story additions this game adds as a remake stand at odds with some of the lore established in Marth’s games, but honestly. . . I don’t care. From what I saw in FE11, Marth’s games didn’t exactly have the deepest plot in the world to begin with, so it’s not really that big of a deal with me when there’s some inconsistencies between those games (original or remake) and this game. That said, I also really hope that this memory thing also comes back in future games.

And I think that’s everything that I can say about SoV right now? At least I can’t think of anything else. I already mentioned before that I really love this game’s soundtrack, so I don’t think that there’s anything else left to mention - and if there is, then it’s probably not important.

#ask #anon #shut up cal you fool #fe15 spoilers #- #doubt that many will read THIS wall of text but eh #Anonymous

[in-the-bookish-dark]

Absolution Like the Rain - RL

There is nothing about that day I don’t remember, even decades later, except for who the Cubs were up against. It was raining. It was just past five o’clock. The Cubs were playing someone I can't recall on WGN. If I thought harder about it, maybe I’d remember. Probably not, so I’ll just lie and say it was the Giants, and then move on. That’s what it was then, Cubs and Giants in a memorable match-up, one for the ages, in fact. Whoever the hell it was, I’d watch the game for a few minutes then watch the rain for a few minutes. Trucks would go by and splash muddy water right up onto the pub’s front window and I’d watch it run down again. It was going to end up a good day, I felt sure. We needed the rain. I’ve known very few farmers, but we all act like farmers on the Great Plains. We grow serious and sage and look off into the distance and tell one another how a bit of rain was a good thing, and that we were about due, and how much it was going to green-up the lawn and the shrubs. It's hard to be in a bad mood when the rains come to town. No day is good for a wake, but this was probably as close to not bad as it gets. Besides, one thing my dad and I always agreed on was that rain was good for somebody’s crops somewhere, so I’d take that as justification enough. Now and then, the murmuring of the broadcast crew would cut away to something different and I’d glance back in from the rain. A news update – Nixon shaking his head, refusing to do something or other. Then some Senate hearing room, someone looking over his bifocals, sitting at a green felt table, shaking his own head, no doubt reacting to Nixon’s head shake. Everybody saying no, and nobody doing anything. That’s what it felt like, anyway, with still more head shaking to come at the evening news. Mike called from down the bar as he rinsed glasses, "Hey, Timmy, sorry, Father Tim, you good for now?" I was good. Shot and a beer. The shot was gone in a flash, but I was still working the beer. Don’t get sloppy before they even get here, I told myself. Mike had owned the Three Rocks Pub for decades, through several name changes, maybe since the time it was a cafe. I’d known him going on twenty years, though I was only in my mid-twenties myself. My old man would bring me along with him when I was barely five or six. Back then, it was less shocking to have a kid tag along when you went into your neighborhood pub. My mom would send him on errands with me – "It’ll be good for you, some time with your son, plus I get some quiet" – and we’d hit the hardware store or the pharmacy, or take TV tubes down to the repair shop to test them. Our TV was always blowing tubes. We’d have to load them into a box and take them down to the shop, then plug each of them into the machine. One at a time we’d try them until one failed, and that’s the one we’d replace. Four months later, a pop and a flash, and it would be time to take them all down again. Each time a different one failed. Second hand TVs will do that, I guess. Anyway, after the errand, we always seemed to end up downtown, maybe stop at the news stand where he’d get a dirty paperback from the little room behind the curtains, and I’d get a fistful of comics. Then, we’d find ourselves on 3rd Street. He’d say "Hey, let’s stop in the Three Rocks for a minute" like he was surprised to find us anywhere near the place. So, Mike had been my personal bartender for something like two decades. At first, he’d hand me a piece of bubble gum and a soft drink when I came in. Then, after a dozen years, I reached that magic age where he started handing me a shot and a beer, just like the grown ups – the other grownups, I should say. Except for the time I was off at seminary, that's how it was for countless Wednesdays over the years. Except that day was Tuesday. Wednesday is - was - evening Mass instead of morning. It was also CYO night, and even if Father Manuel were doing Mass, I never had anyone to fill in with the kids. The church's schedule is my schedule. Well, was my schedule. It was almost a quarter after five. Somewhere off to the West, there were a few breaks in the clouds. Shafts of light were bouncing eastward down the street, turning lonely streaks of rain golden. The showers were moving north to south, though, so it was unlikely we’d get any more sunlight than that.  Suddenly, I was thirstier. "Hey, Mike, I wanna change my answer" I wiggled my finger at my empty shot glass. Mike swung a whiskey bottle around from the back counter. One-two-three-four count; the bottle was back on the counter before the ripples had completely settled. Two seconds later, the drinking was done, too. I went back to looking out the window, my fingers absent-mindedly but efficiently striping the side of my beer glass, sweeping away the condensation one narrow column at a time. People passed by, indoors and out. Outdoors, they would race by, pushing through to their destination and hoping to get there with some article of clothing still dry. A few glanced in with a wisp of longing draping their faces. They all knew that, in just a few steps, they could be inside, dry and slightly less thirsty. But they had to settle for just the imagining for now, dragging their eyes and attention back out the window and down the rain-splashed sidewalk. I was sitting quietly, trying to will the Cubs into action. Sure, I could’ve used my priestly powers and prayed for them to rally, but that wouldn’t have been fair.  Nor had I found that to be generally effective.  Off at the right edge of my awareness, I realized I was being watched, not an unusual occurrence. When I was young, I was occasionally referred to as Father WhatAWaste, though I’ve never been that good looking.  The stare was always for the collar, yes. Back then, we were all still wearing our blacks everywhere. It was only from the 80s on that we started dressing like civilians in public. The reason for staring at the collar varied, though. There were those who stared daggers because they were angry at the church, and truth be told, it was often justified.  Others stared out of curiosity, seldom seeing a priest out in the wild, and sometimes puzzlement, should they be surprised at the idea that a priest might find himself in a bar with a beverage in front of him. The third big group were the ones that most often came up to talk.  They wanted to ask something or they wanted to ask for something. “Hey, father, what the heck is transubstantiation?” or “Hey, father, think you could help a fella out with …” I just sat.  That’s what you do.  You don’t want to spook them unnecessarily – or encourage them unnecessarily.  I could tell it was the same woman who was at the end of the bar when I came in.  She was a little older than me, maybe early 30s, dressed up a little bit, but not like she was going to the opera.  She was downtown for a job interview and had nerves that needed watering down, maybe.  Definitely nervous.  She’d had two drinks to every one of mine so far, and was working on more. I waited, and then saw her in motion, very slowly growing in size until she was beside me. “Father …?” her hand was on the lip of the bar, where it had been all the way up to me, just to steady her a bit. “Yes?” “Are you Catholic or … the other?” “Yes, I’m Catholic – how may I help you, Miss …? I left the sentence open, but she didn’t fill it in with her name. “I … uhh … it’s about my mother. She’s Catholic. So am I, or at least I grew up that way ..." I knew that if I blinked wrong, she’d flee, so I just held myself steady and tried a calm smile.  I wished she’d leave, but, that’s not what I signed up for.  “Anyway, so, she’s having surgery day after tomorrow, female troubles, which she just found out a few weeks ago.  Is there a special prayer or something … like …?” “Like a Mass in her name, maybe? Or a novena? Does she need someone to visit her? It might be better if it were her parish priest, but I could make sure …?” I was already overwhelming her. Too many choices. I put my hand out, resting it on her steadying hand, which had turned claw like, digging into the edge of the bar for more traction.  “I’ll say a Mass for her, how about that? And I can give you a card if you need more.” “Sure, yeah – yes, I mean. That would be nice.  I could tell her.” She reached for her pocketbook. “Oh, I’m forgetting myself - how much is customary for …?” “No, please – no donation. What about you, though?” This puzzled her and she started to step back. Suddenly, she seemed afraid I wanted her soul, or something even more intimate. “Me.” Her intonation was flat. It wasn’t a question, but a conclusion. Not the first time, clearly, she’d had that suspicion of someone. “You’re very upset. Should we pray for a moment?” I took her hands in mine, expecting her to simply lower her head. I’d wing something, she’d thank me, and hopefully feel a little better, and then we’d go back to our separate concerns. She relaxed a little, but then looked furtively around the bar and then over my shoulder to the windows.  “Oh, father, that’s really not … I appreciate it, but … I’m not very …” She took her hands back. “I’ll be sure and let my mother know, father.  I know she’ll appreciate it.”  With or without my help, she’d bucked herself back up, strong fake smile on her face now.  We were done. I think she actually curtsied a little before returning to her stool, back at the barroom’s end.  After that, she kept glancing my way – or at least looking past me at the window.  I realized she’d left without my card, and was going to walk it over to her, but decided that she was probably happier without it. I wasn’t sure I’d done anything helpful. That’s part of the job, also, not just having faith in God, but having faith that you’re actually being useful, because, like God, you seldom get to see it clearly. When I was young, it bothered me more than it does now. The rest of my beer vanished pretty quickly, and Mike brought me my second, along with another shot.  “Slow,” I reminded myself, “they’re not even here yet.” Two older guys came in and lingered by the door as they shook water from their jackets. The older of the two also had an umbrella, which got shaken and stowed in the rack next to the door. I watched them, but they weren’t who I was waiting for. I was expecting two of my father’s friends, men of a punctual generation, arriving early only slightly more often than they arrived late, which was decidedly seldom. They wouldn’t likely show up until just a few minutes to six. The older you get, the more predictable your habits, and these guys were old enough to be very predictable. My eyes followed this other pair to a table off to the right, then let them go, drifting back to the Cubs game. Bottom of the seventh, Cubs ahead by three, but that might not last. Birds of despair often came to roost where the Cubs were involved. A man in a big camel hair coat shoved through the door, shaking himself and his umbrella as he pushed back through the bar as though working himself upstream. Navigating around the tables, he brushed against my shoulder. "Sorry, buddy ... father, I mean, sorry father!" Sometimes, it’s nice not being noticed. I waved a “no problem” and watched out of the corner of my eye for him to reappear as he passed behind me. He was very focused.  I turned to face the bar directly so I could see him out of the corner of my eye, and my guess was right. He was making a beeline straight toward my new friend. He kept leaning further and further to the left, and I briefly wondered if he'd started his drinking earlier somewhere else, but then I realized the truth of the matter. He was leaning left to block my line of sight. She probably wasn’t his wife or sister … or cousin, real estate agent, stock broker … Tupperware dealer … none of that.  He’d just rushed from the office to meet an attractive younger woman, dressed up a little but not too much, in a not-too-brightly lit bar at the less busy end of downtown. It only took him a few words and a gesture over his shoulder - a gesture my direction – for her to pick up her coat and gloves and head for the door, with him following.  They swung a wide arc around me, along the opposite wall. Sure, there was more room to maneuver back there, but mostly it was the distance it afforded them from me, a distance she augmented by powdering her nose and scratching her cheek as she walked, at least until she was more back than front to me, and then they were both out the door.  It was the adult equivalent of the child’s gambit of “If I can’t see him, maybe he can’t see me.” There was any number of less priestly places they might have been headed, maybe just to the nearest pub without a built-in priest. Then again, they could have decided to adjourn and move on to what was surely their final destination anyway. That end of downtown wasn't lacking in motels with casual check-in procedures, and probably still isn’t. Afterward, she’d go home to a lonely apartment, or maybe her room at her mother’s house, and he’d go home and kiss his wife on the lips and hug his kids tight. Was I judging? I suppose I was, but not so much now.  She’s probably a grandmother with her own kids and grand kids to hug, and her own husband to kiss. Like all of us, she’s got her own regrets and her own things that keep her grounded in the world.  If we’re lucky, we have the latter. I turned from that game to the one on TV. The Giants had taken a one run lead, and the Cubs had two outs left to undo the damage. The count was full with two men in scoring position. The crowd was on its feet. The reliever was starting his windup. The front door opened. Rain blew in, followed by Henry and Roy, who shook themselves like dogs, then settled quickly into a booth at the front window, but farthest from the door. I grabbed my beer and overcoat and headed to their table, leaving my empty shot glass behind.  It wasn’t going to hurt me to wait a few more minutes for the next. Since my coat was already starting to dry, I lifted Henry's from the coat rack attached to the booth and stuck mine under. Roy was the first to notice me. He stood up from the booth and gave me a big back-patting hug. "Hey, Tim. Your dad would like this, one more for old times. How ya keepin'? Holding up okay?" Ray had met my dad in high school, and they’d been thick as thieves since. I shrugged like you do for questions like that. Or you say "Eh, could be worse" or something along those lines. Why should you invite misfortune or divine retribution by complaining about the hand you’re holding? Henry reached for my hand across the table as I sat down. He gave me the once over. "You're lookin' okay, Timmy. Guess the priesthood agrees with you." I shrugged again. I knew Henry too well to throw out some platitudes about the satisfactions of doing the Lord's work. Henry had met my dad and Roy right out of high school. He and my dad went into the Marines and got stationed together. They weren’t that much alike, and Henry always set my teeth on edge, but saving my dad’s life in North Africa had earned him a permanent invitation from my dad. Even though I hadn’t seen them in years, aside from my dad’s funeral, I'd known these guys for decades, from back before time mattered to me. They were part of my dad's Wednesday night circle, usually here at the Three Rocks, but sometimes at Grey's, where maybe they'd have a slopper with their beers, or maybe Gus’.  Now and then, they went up to some dives on the mesa, or maybe one of the joints out on Northern that the steel workers would fill up at five o'clock.  Usually, though, it was right here. They’d been a quintet starting out, but Manny died of an aneurism and Kent moved to Ohio to spend more time with grandkids. "Y'know, Tim, they changed the booths out a few years back, but ... " Ray looked around, trying to recall the old layout "... when you'd come in with your dad, sometimes you'd sit with us up at the bar, but sometimes he'd park you right about here so you could look out the window." "All this time, I thought it was so I wouldn't be in the way, and so you guys could say whatever you want without, y’know, little pitchers." He watched my face for a moment, then gave a sideways shrug. "You could see it a couple of ways, I guess. That's how I always saw it, but I guess I could be wrong." I’d embarrassed him without really meaning to. I was on edge, but it wasn’t his fault. I shrugged a half-hearted concession of my own. "Hey, it was a long time ago." I don't know why I was arguing with Ray. I never had reason for a face-off with Ray. Harry Truman said one of the best compliments he could give was to say someone was alright from the navel out in all directions.  That was Ray.  Henry may have been my godfather by way of North Africa, but Ray was the one who acted like it. "And eventually you were joining us up there with the brews and the stories." He raised his glass toward me and smiled. I did the same. "Yes, indeed. My move up from Pepsi and Bazooka Joe to Boilermakers." "When I became a man, I put away childish things." I was looking at Roy, but his lips didn’t move with the words. It took a moment for me to realize that the words came from Henry. I couldn’t remember ever hearing him quote scripture before. I’d have remembered. I’d certainly have remembered if I’d heard him quote it in such a surreal context. "First Corinthians, 13:11." That was my contribution. Henry squinted like he didn’t get the reference. I moved on. With the ice broken, the storytelling began in earnest, like a long, intricate poker game. I’ll see your story about the time everyone piled into Manny’s station wagon and went up to fish at Lake DeWeese at three in the morning, and raise you a story about what happens when you drink too much at your son’s softball tournament and throw up on the trophies. Things happened that way. My dad was a good guy, with the occasional embarrassing, exuberant lapse. Glancing at the rain, I remembered a different rainy day when Angie, Bill and I had been down at the park playing. I was no more than eleven, so they were six and eight, respectively. Things got dark and it started to rain, so we took off for home.  We’d made it almost to the carport when dark turned to dark green and hail started thudding down around and at us.  By the time we were under cover, the dime-sized hail had become quarter-sized, then very quickly as big as fifty cent pieces.  We were actually getting hit by fragments of ice thrown off when the hail came down right around the covering.  Looking up was like watching a bag of jiffy pop on the burner.  The sheet metal was going from very flat to very dented quickly. We huddled closer to the car.  “Listen,” I told them.  “We might have to hide under the car if it gets worse. We can’t make it to the house right now.”  They nodded back, the fright on their faces speaking silent volumes. Then we heard our dad yelling from the front step.  “Tim! Bill! Angie!”  He got it out twice before I yelled back loud enough for him to hear above the doomsday clatter. “We’re under the carport! We’re under the carport!”  Their fears had made them mute; mine had helped me call out. The front door banged shut again, and we just looked at each other.  We were resigned to wait out the storm. What could he do?  He’d probably get killed if he came out in this. The three of us looked down at the front bumper, considering our next best option for refuge.  The hail wasn’t getting any smaller. Worse, occasionally we’d hear a very loud bang when something even larger hit the covering.  Angie and Bill’s faces were clear. They were wondering the same thing I was.  We expected any moment for the hail to start coming through, or maybe start bouncing off the sidewalk and ricocheting at us. One of the bangs sounded different, though. Duller and more distant, not from above, but back toward the house.  I looked up and around and saw our dad running out the back door, covered in the heavy quilt my grandmother had made for my parents when they married.  He must’ve had a pillow under the quilt for more protection, because the top was wide and rectangular.  When he got to the carport, we raced for him, but he said “One at a time.  Girls first – Angie!” She tucked herself under the blanket and grabbed hold of his belt and they were off. Fifteen feet to the house, and they were at the steps just as mom opened the back door. His improvised shuttle ran twice more, first for Billy and then for me.  At the last slam of the back door, all five of us were standing in the kitchen, looking a little astonished.  I looked around at everyone and started to cry. Bill and Angie followed after with their tears. I felt foolish, being the oldest kid, but the first to cry. We were safe and I was crying.  Dad came and put a hand on my shoulder, and I shook my head at my shame.  He pulled me closer in a half-hug and said, “It’s okay.  I know it’s scary sometimes being in charge.”  I didn’t realize until he spoke that that was exactly what I was reacting to.  I was only in charge and under fire for a moment, and I did okay, but it scared me how much Bill and Angie had been counting on me in that moment. After playing the whole event through in my silent mind, I told Roy and Henry the story, which was one they’d never heard before. After that, I told them about a time when I was fourteen.  My dad had just come back from visiting my mother in the hospital, and was really frustrated with how her cancer treatments were going. He came in and made sure we all had supper and were sent off to bed, then he went out in the back yard and tore half of our gazebo down until the steam was gone, his hands were bloodied, and his breathing came in sharp, hacking coughs. I watched out my bedroom window, absorbing more than watching or recording.  For my own reasons, I spent years trying to forget that story as the years passed, but it pursued me now, reminding me of the depth of his emotion, the raw side of his anger, in the face of a bitter wrong. Both Ray and Henry had come over the next weekend, along with a guy from my dad's work crew, and helped put it back in order. As far as I know, none of them discussed anything about it, sharing any emotions overtly. He asked "Hey, if you’re not doing anything Saturday, think maybe you could give me a hand?" They said "Sure." When they got there, someone said "... son of a bitch, Steve ..." and he said "Yeah, I know ..." That was the extent of their conversational therapy, and the extent of his confession. "Yeah, I know ..." Sometimes the best and the worst you can expect is "Yeah, I know." Henry changed the tone while still carrying forward the violence theme.  He insisting on telling us about the time he, my dad, and two guys both named Darren got drunk, got into a fight, and busted up a bunch of chairs and tables at La Tronicas, right in the middle of some old couple's anniversary dinner. It was a couple of weeks after they graduated high school. They were all going off to the military to “get straightened up and learn a trade,” as my grandfather put it at the time. Ray shook his head. I shook my head. Henry's head shook with laughter. I’d heard the story before, and like most of Henry’s proudest stories, it was Henry and the two Darrens causing trouble, or whoever was tagging along with Henry, and my dad getting sucked in to try to settle things. Trying to get the stories back on a more positive track, Ray reminded me how my dad pretty much single-handedly ran the Parish Bazaar at St. Leander's every year, and how people would always say "You want it done, get Steve." Or Stefano, Esteban, Stefan, etc., depending on the ethnicity of whoever was talking. We had Anglos, Italians, Hispanics, Poles and others, but mostly the first three. "And," he said, "let's not forget boy's boxing, which is what kept a skinny bookworm like you from getting beat up every week - until you got that protective collar, of course." He slapped me on the arm, then said, "Whoa. Guess you kept fit at the seminary. Boy's got a bicep like an oak there, Henry." Henry waved the comment down, taking Roy's word for it. I shrugged for what must've been the fifteenth time.  Part of the job. Priests are supposed to be humble and self-deprecating.  "Yeah, well, after a while, it became a habit.  I got used to it, so I kept up with it in the seminary.  And, it does make a pretty good workout." "Your old man was pretty tough, Timmy, almost as tough as me, maybe. Think you coulda took him?”  Henry cocked his head and made an obvious point of sizing me up. "What the hell kinda question is that, Henry?" "Ease up, Roy. It's a damn joke." Roy and I traded glances. Neither of us needed to waste our breath saying anything. Just let it die. Mike came by to welcome the guys, and to slipstream into the conversation for a moment. "This guy – he’s ‘Father Somebody’ now, but back in the day, I used to give him a pop and gum when he'd come in with his dad. Now, look at him. He talks with the bishop and he can still out drink the likes of you old ladies. His father, God rest him, would be proud." They nodded and raised their glasses, which happened to be empty, in my direction. Mike clamped a iron-like hand down on my shoulder and scooped our empties up with the other. "You know he would." he said directly to me. The refills came back on a tray. Beer and a shot, beer and a shot, another shot, then beer and something golden in a snifter. Before any of us could ask, Mike said "Benedictine" and clapped my back. "You should develop a taste for it, for when you become a bishop!" He laughed deeply, not in jest, but like he was already richly celebrating that moment sometime in his vaguely imagined future, when I might be consecrated as bishop. I wouldn't necessarily have wanted to be his pastor, but he was always "good people."  He hoisted his shot and called out "Down the hatch, boys - slainte!" A mumbled chorus replied in kind. I threw back my Benedictine as they threw back their whiskeys, then the shot glasses vanished into Mike’s catcher's mitt of a hand. Mike took himself back to the bar, satisfied that he had made a contribution to the moment. The three of us wandered through other topics, with alcohol and our wobbly conversational legs taking us in circles and tangents. I brushed aside mention of talking with the bishop - "it's nothing ... all the priests talk to him at least twice a year ..." or me becoming a bishop - "I just don't see that happening. A, I'm not a politician, and B, I've got plenty other things on my plate." We talked some about how Angie and Bill were doing.  They were both younger than me, and after mom died, they both had some rough times adjusting.  I didn’t seem to have as much trouble, but maybe I just didn’t have a lot of time to have a rough time.  I was in middle school when she got sick and a sophomore when she died, and almost immediately after I transferred from public school into minor seminary, which kept me plenty busy.  Angie was three years younger and Billy was two years back of her.  They had memories and conflicts, and maybe more time to grow together and heal each other, and I had studies. The light outside was starting to fade, going from rain grey to twilight blue. I checked my watch. Back in the day, especially in the days of Manny and Kent, these sessions usually ran upwards of three hours, but I had no idea how long this might last, whether shorter or longer. It was our own little wake for my dad, in a place that was essentially his sanctuary. It would take as long as it took, and I just needed to let go for a while, let it play itself out.  Plus, there was a conversation I’d been waiting two weeks to have with Henry, and if he was loosened up more by the time we had it, I thought maybe it would be a good kind of loose.  Once he caught up, I just kept pace with Roy, or vice versa. Henry was easily outdrinking us, having three to each of our two. I knew his liver had lots of practice, but even so, I was a little surprised. Still, sometimes things happen for a reason. Half the time when Henry drank, he’d spiral down into his own simmering pool of loathing.  This was turning into one of those times.  Already, he had gotten to the point where he was popping off about just about everything. Maybe the only people who didn't piss him off when he got drunk were himself, Jesus Christ, and Suzanne Pleshette.  I don’t know the specific reason for his attraction to her, but he had an unshakeable fixation. When he was really drunk, it was just him and Suzanne Pleshette who held his favor. When it came right down to it, I suspected it was really only Ms. Pleshette that he didn't hate. He would fill his own head, his own space, with racist, sexist, creepy questions and comments, then unleash them on the surroundings. It was that unleashing that tended to cause him the most problems - the fact that he didn't keep it at his table or in his group. Already, he'd made comments about pretty much everyone within a dozen feet, which included five tables worth of people. Women grimaced and turned away, men squinted and shifted in their seats, prepared to get up if it turned necessary. Henry hadn’t always been this bad, but I’d heard that by time my dad died, you could count on angry bystanders when Henry was drinking with you. Roy and I admittedly had left him untethered for a while. He was going to do what he wanted in the long run, and sometimes a person got tired of playing nursemaid with him. Once we started paying attention again, I tried to get him to hold it down a little, as did Roy, albeit maybe a little less gentle than me.  Still, Roy didn’t want to completely spoil things with a confrontation, and I wasn’t inclined to rush a confrontation with Henry, especially one I considered off topic.  I apologized to people he was bothering, whether face to face or with a distant gesture. Before we could even ask, Mike signaled to us that Henry was cut off. Roy and I talked for a bit about his family, while Henry stewed and threw out wisecracks, then we both came to the same conclusion.  Our time was done.  Now was the sending off.  At that point in time, our paths really hadn’t crossed much for years. Given our ever diverging lives, I knew that that goodbye could easily be the big goodbye.  I didn’t want to rush it for the sake of my dad’s memory, but I also didn’t want to drag it on and on. Also, Roy had had more than his fill of Henry. It was time for him to leave, and the sooner he could talk Henry into the car, the sooner he could drop in at his house and be rid of him for a while. After several minutes of wrangling, Henry was far from persuaded that he was ready to go. I told Roy to leave him in my hands. I'd try to get him sobered a bit, then deliver him home myself. On the plus side, Henry’s hostility curve was beginning to drop. I was hoping we'd get out of there without someone taking a swing at him, and it looked like we might have a chance. This was one of those times when having the collar was a tactical advantage.  People would say, "Well, okay, father, I’ll let you handle it.”  What they usually didn’t add, but always meant was “… for now.”  Trust in a priest’s abilities only goes so far. Roy slipped his coat on and paid his tab with Mike before slipping out into the wet night. Henry and I were alone with one another for the first time in maybe a decade. He was still in no condition to go more than twenty feet under his own power, and maybe even with an assist. I glanced around the bar. There were some unoccupied booths toward the back, near the restrooms. I figured the thing to do was get him not only away from other people, but also closer to a place he could more conveniently be sick. I helped him wobble down the length of the pub, then poured him into one side of the farthest booth. I took the other side, facing out, so I could watch. I didn’t want either of us to get ambushed by someone with a slow fuse. I caught Mike’s eye and gestured for two coffees. "You're a good kid, Timmy." Henry started nicely enough, the words anyway, but the tone was denigrating. The words themselves almost immediately became so, too. The next thing he said was that I "didn't understand the real world." According to him, it was a good thing I became a priest so I could hide from the bad things out in the real world. He said he was sure that my dad worried about right up until his death that I was too weak and kind, that he hadn't toughened me up enough. I only half believed him, and let him go on. I wanted to see how much he'd say, how close he’d get to hanging himself with his own tongue. He told some more stories about adventures with my dad, mostly when they were young, like just after the war. My dad was trying to stay in a trade school and learn tv and radio repair, and Henry was trying to hold down an apprentice carpenter job long enough to make it to journeyman. Still they'd go out a lot, and usually it was Henry causing trouble. Henry drinking too much, Henry starting fights that my six foot father had to finish for him, Henry harassing girls and getting too fresh, Henry stealing tools from his job.  Not that he put it that way, but I knew the lay of the land.  Because of the debt my dad felt he owed him, he was always within arm’s reach of Henry’s trouble. I thought maybe Henry was inching close to the particular confession I was waiting for, but not there yet. He was telling his own "war stories" now and reveling in his corrupt ways, ways he'd learned, he said, from his father, who was “a raging bull with huge brass balls,” as he put it. "... taught me everything I know” he said.  Lay end to end all of the stories I’d actually heard from Henry over the years, and my dad had probably saved his life several times over for the one time in North Africa.  There was no debt, and hadn’t been for a while. My dad had a surplus in the bank.  It was Henry running a deficit, and a pretty huge one based on everything I knew. "Now, your dad, Tim ... he was a good guy. It was good for him that he met your mother, God rest her. I'm surprised she put up with me, Miss Nancy Purepants, but ~" I reached down and grabbed his wrist to get his attention. Steely. Vice-like in fact. I shook my head at him. I wasn’t about to let him go there. He could shit on me and shit on my dad, but he was going to leave my mom out of this. He squinted up toward me, his eyes zigzagging up until finally finding my own. He knew what he was doing, and why I was responding like I was. He was intent on going for broke. "Y'know, your mom had the cutest little ~" I shifted my grip, twisting his wrist around and snapping it into an acute and painful angle, which seemed to help regain his attention and shift his focus.  "You know what makes for even better conditioning than boxing, Henry?  Ju-jitsu.  You should try it some time.” I had the table for leverage, so he wasn’t going anywhere, not with his wrist intact. He yelped and his eyes watered. He tried twisting out of it, but that only pulled him downward, bouncing his nose against the table. As drunk as he was, he had left himself few options other than surrender. "I had a special reason for wanting to see you tonight, Henry.  My dad told me a story just before he died. Kind of a deathbed confession, though it wasn't really about him. It was about you and something you did - something he let you keep secret and hidden all these years." I raised my eyebrows and waited for him to react. Would he argue, deny, plead? Cagey, even when drunk, he waited to see if I was going to continue.  When he finally looked up, he tried to read my eyes. He didn’t know what I was talking about, but not because he was innocent.  Clearly, he was trying to figure out exactly which sin I was referring to, which I’d gotten wise to. Tell me about your thing for young girls, Henry.” His face changed a little, but the searching didn’t stop.  What could he be wondering about, unless there were multiple incidents with multiple girls. Even if my dad wasn’t aware of any stories than the one he told me, it was pretty clear that Henry had plenty. I gave his jack-knifed wrist a little turn and saw heat in his eyes. His mind was drunk enough for a savage fight, given the chance, but his body was too drunk for it to end well for him. I was going to stay in control, he would confess to me, and then we’d both move on. "Tell me – specifically - about Natalie Alvarez. I want to hear her story from your mouth, and then I’ll take you home." At that, his face relaxed. It threw me for a loop momentarily, then I realized why and a chill passed through me. Natalie wasn’t the only one, and she wasn't the worst one. He had bigger, darker secrets that had nothing to do with Natalie, episodes that dwarfed whatever he had done with her. She was a minor accident that my father happened to stumble upon. Furthermore, I’d just shown him my entire hand. Not only was Natalie the only one l I knew about, but once I got his “confession” all I intended to do was drive him home. With a tight smile that bordered on a smirk, Henry began to speak, sotto voce, so that only he and I could hear, "Bless me father, for I have sinned ..." It wasn't so much the smile that did it, but when he paused at that point and winked. That was the thing that pushed my button. With a mind of its own, my free hand slapped him. I didn’t glance up, but knew some people had to have turned to look back at us at that point. After the slap, I, Father Tim, wrenched his wrist. "Start again - without the sacrilege, or I’ll break it for you right now." "There's no story, boy. I could tell she wanted it. I was going to give it to her. Your father came in and interrupted things, then got bent out of shape about it." "You're a liar. Natalie was eleven. She was quiet and shy and a year behind me at Parkview. I knew her because we both helped in the library.  Are you seriously going to try to pretend she came on to you?" "Gimme a break, Timmy. I knew the family. Natalie was on her way to being a first rate little whore, just like her mother and aunts. It was only a matter of time before she showed her colors, boy." "How did you get her alone?" "I was clearing things out of the storeroom in the parish school. I took her along to find some books that Sister Innocentia wanted while I reorganized. Trust me, she was only too happy to help. We both rummaged around a while, then I asked her come to the back of the store room and give me a hand with something else." He stopped long enough to imply that he thought the story was done. I tugged on his wrist to assure him that it wasn’t. "Don't worry, your dad turned up a few minutes after that, looking for paint rollers. All I'd done was grope her titties and get one hand in her panties. If she hadn't been blubbering and squirming so much, there’s no telling what your sainted father might have walked in on by then. I'd probably have had her doubled over one of the storage containers, and her precious little ..." he cocked his head at me, then changed tack, "... so little Father Timmy, am I getting you hard? You would've liked her, even before you became a priest. She was so cute and perky ... wait ... you did know her, didn't you?  In school together, right.  Library and stuff. Don't tell me you never thought of dipping your wick into ~" The second slap was even louder than the first, but this time, nobody bothered to turn. They had been surprised by the first. By the second, they knew that they didn’t want it to be any of their business. He lolled his head while I tried to keep myself under control.  I wasn’t sure what else I was wanting from him, especially given his state of sobriety at the moment.  I knew I wasn’t going to get any contrition from him.  That was a lost cause.  Was there anything more to tell me about Natalie?  I hoped not. As for the others … no, I didn’t know where to lead him, and didn’t expect to want to hear what more he’d have to say. It was time to go, to put this all behind me. "Listen, Henry, you're going to get up now, and step out back to get yourself together. I'm going to walk out front and get my car, and then you and I are going to leave here. I'll close you out with Mike. You’re done. Now, get up." With the help of the bench back and the coat rack, he ratcheted himself up to his feet. I could’ve helped him, but I couldn’t stand the thought of touching him. He shuffled unsteadily past the men's room and up against the alley door. Before he pushed out, though, he turned and smirked at me again. "So, you're not going to make me promise on my mother's grave to never do anything like that again? That's what your father did, guess he probably told you. Maybe it would actually work, you bein’ a priest and all. Anyway, thanks for being my confessor, padre." He slipped out the door and it banged softly behind him. I wanted to just go into the men's room and throw up for an hour or two. This jackal - laughing at my naive father, who trusted and believed him, laughing in my face and claiming me as his priest confessor. I felt like pushing him into a dark hole somewhere. I swung by Mike on the way out and said "He's sick - can I get him out of here and square both of us with you tomorrow?" "You know you can, Tim. Hey, if I can't trust the bishop's right hand, who can I trust? Am I right?" "He's very sick." I said absently. Mike glanced toward the back door and shook his head. "He is at that, Tim. A long time now. Your dad, God rest him, was a saint for putting up with him all these years."  I nodded and hit the front door. I trotted through the rain to my Olds, which was down at the far end of the block. I spun back over to the Three Rocks and whipped around the building into the alley. Henry was under the overhang at the back door, leaning against the building, out of the rain. I pulled up alongside and was about two paces away when he glanced up. I thought about taking my gloves off, in case he decided to throw up on me, but I decided that if my overcoat could take it, my gloves could. "Where the fuck you been, you little shit? I'm soaked to the bone." I kept calm while he was saying it. I really did.  I was ten feet away and very calm, very focused. I knew my objective. I'd get him in the car and home, then my hands were clean of him. That was fine for me, sure, protecting myself from getting tangled up, but I then remembered Natalie in the library, and realized I got tangled up the moment my dad confessed to me. I saw her face laughing at something silly I’d done. Now, I was trapped. I knew and had to do something.  I knew, and held their pain in my hands.  I had to say, to do something, and he would get justice for those girls all those years ago. Or … maybe there were new girls somewhere, too, a trail of violations right up to today.  He could’ve stopped on his way to the Three Rocks to molest someone, for all I knew. My head felt like it was filling with water.  I felt the pressure, and everything outside was muffled. He could’ve done it even today, but I could stop him from doing it again.  My dad didn’t stop him, though.  His naïve trust in his friends failed him, and that failure cascaded down to Natalie and all the others, whatever unnamed others there might have been. Maybe people would find out about my father knowing. Every good thing he’d ever done would be darkened and I would be powerless to protect him. From a more self-serving perspective, I wouldn’t even be able to protect my own career in the church. The alley became a river of shame, and I swam upstream, trying to reach Henry before I got swept away, before I drowned inside my own head. He didn’t realize what danger we were in, watching me with a sick sneer on his face.  I was almost to him.  I could stretch an arm out and grab his collar and drag him into the car where we’d both be safe. My left hand scraped at his coat until it reached his collar and locked on. Once I had a hold on him, though, the waters began to boil. My arm turned to flame, my neck tensed, and the tension spread down the length of my arms, flowing down into my hands, and tightening them into fists. I made a bargain with myself. I would punch him once, just once and then stop myself. With that satisfaction, I’d load him into my car, and once I delivered him home, our next meeting would be with the law between us. With a fistful of his collar, I yanked him forward, then drove the other fist full force into his stomach, doubling him over. I told myself to stop, even said it out loud. The first shot was too satisfying, though. His pained expression, the guttural sound he heaved out as he folded around my fist seemed to drive the waters back. I watched myself from somewhere upstream, repeating that first shot over and over. I knew I should intervene, but I couldn’t move myself to. A few more hits, and I managed to back myself a few feet, trying to get some real distance from the situation, wanting to regain some sanity. No sooner had I stepped back than I reached for him again. I spun him against the car and resumed flailing. As my fists pummeled his face, bending him back against the car, I asked him, "So, Henry, correct me if I’m wrong, but it sounded in the bar like you were asking to have the shit beat out of you. You were, right? You were just asking for it, right? Just like Natalie and who knows how many little girls were just asking to be fondled or raped, right? I'm sure you wouldn't want anyone to come out and get all bent out of shape and try to stop me, now would you, Henry?" Whatever his reply was, it gurgled out between gasps of air. His broken nose was leaking blood not only into his throat but down his face and over his mouth. All of that was keeping him busy enough, but he was also trying to figure out how to make his arms do something useful to protect himself. That was alright, though, because when his arms moved to cover his face, I punished his belly. When he shifted his shield down, I shifted my aim up. Easy, right? You don't have to train for fifteen years to figure that out. My arms were tired, my legs, my whole body was somehow aching.  The flood was going down, the muffled sense in my ears was being replaced by my own rasping breath and pounding pulse. A small light, a flash of awareness, entered in. I was only making matters worse.  Henry would be consumed for his sins, yes, but so would my father, and so, most assuredly now, would I. Could I even go to the police with my accusations? Would everything be tainted by my rage? Everything had become a question. Some of those questions got answered very quickly, when in the midst of moving top to bottom, I swung wild and nailed him right in the throat. Suddenly, he had a lot more blood flowing into his throat, and no good way to clear it.  His eyes rolled and his legs wobbled.  Suddenly, all he cared about was the air he could no longer have. I’d seen that before, serving Extreme Unction in the hospital. He was leaving now, and I had sped him on his way. I let loose of his body and he slid slowly to the ground, flailing about like a dying fish. I stepped away and watched the spasms diminish. There was a mile between us now, and he was spiraling still further away.  I could take him to St. Mary Corwin – or maybe Parkview was closer, but he would be gone by the time I hoisted him into the car. In fact, as I was thinking that very thing, he left, his life energies gone like a fist when you open your hand. My gloves were bloodied. I was drenched in rain on the outside and sweat on the inside, but as far as I could see, only the gloves showed blood. Henry was dying, no, already dead. I could barely connect the two inside my pounding skull – my bloody hands, his empty body. Up to that point, I’d had no idea that anything like that was down inside of me. Priests are supposed to know what’s down inside their soul, or so we’re told.  It was just the two of us out there, and that hailstorm of violence could only have been my doing. I’d planned a showdown with Henry, but this was nothing like I’d imagined, nothing like I expected that I could imagine. I waited for my breathing to slow and steady itself, watching as the rain rinsed the blood off my car. Enough time had passed. I knew I’d have to act soon, do something to make things look right, look plausible, and myself look innocent. I yanked off my gloves, then in a burst of inspiration used a thin metal bar nearby to pry a hub cap off my car and stuff them inside. Surely, nobody would think to look there. I backed the car up a few feet so it was just shy of Henry's body. I took his wallet out with my handkerchief, stuffed the money into my pocket, then tossed the rest of it over by the trash cans. I checked for a pulse, confirming what I did not doubt. When I was satisfied that there was none, I took his body against mine and dragged it just under the overhang. It seemed right.  There was now blood on my coat, blood that would make sense to a cop. All that done, I took a couple of deep breaths, then burst through the rear door, shouting for Mike to call the police and an ambulance, and for someone to come back and give me a hand. "Henry was robbed and beaten in the alley!" I added. One of the dads from earlier, the one who looked ready to give Henry a beating himself sprinted back toward the door as Mike reached for the phone. When the man, whose name turned out to be Dale, got there, he found me cradling Henry's head in my hands. He watched me check his neck for a pulse I knew wasn't there, and his eyes for movement that I also knew was absent, then surrender to the inevitable. He also heard me say, "Don't worry, Henry. I'll tell Natalie you said goodbye." It was egregious and cruel, yes, but no more cruel than Henry himself, and no more egregious than beating him to death on the suspicion that he was a serial rapist. Plus, only Henry, God, and I would get it.  Really, all Dale could suppose was that I was carrying a message to a loved one.  I dug an umbrella out of the car and asked him to hold it over Henry for me. I leaned against the hood of my car, the headlight half obscured by my overcoat.  I tried to examine my knuckles without making it too obvious.  I didn’t seem to have any hard-to-explain abrasions, though they'd very definitely be sore the next day. Dale looked at me, then looked at Henry, and then back at me. "Ain't you gonna give him last rites, Father?" "Last Rites are for the living. He's long gone by now, but yes - there is still a blessing." I shoved myself off the car bumper and knelt again next to Henry. I made the Sign of the Cross on his forehead and began "Ego facultate mihi ab Apostolic Sede tributa, indulgentiam plenariam ..." as a lone siren made its way toward us. At least as far as God was concerned, he was absolved of all his sins, despite the fact that he had just become the only person likely to be healed of the aftermath of his actions. It wasn’t my preference, but it was my job. At my next confession, I admitted to being enraged and to beating a man, but I left off the part about "to death" so by any standard, it was an invalid confession. So have been all the subsequent confessions where I inched closer to honesty, but never achieved it.  For forty years, I've told myself that we’ve all been better off without Henry all this time. The next day, I went back in to settle up the tab with Mike. I haven’t been in Three Rocks since I paid the tab. Not only that, this next December, I’ll collect my five year year pin from AA. I wished that it was true, what Henry said, that wearing the collar protected me from the real world. But that's not how it is. It wasn’t then and it isn’t now.. Nor, evidently, does it protect the real world from me. Wherever you hide, the real world finds you.