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zvaigzdelasas · 4 months

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International recognition has been a long-sought goal for Somaliland, a region in northern Somalia that has enjoyed de facto independence since 1991. But the groundbreaking agreement has created shockwaves in the region and fury in Somalia, which views it as a hostile violation of Somalia’s sovereignty.[...]

While Somaliland insists that recognition has already been agreed upon and settled, Addis Ababa has been reluctant to firmly address the matter of statehood. In a published communique, the government said it had yet to formally recognise Somaliland. But social media posts by Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs official Mesganu Arga this week appear to support Somaliland’s interpretation of the deal.

The ambiguity of the messaging continues to fuel speculation. A draft of the agreement has yet to be published, but all indications suggest that it would all but nullify a 2018 tripartite treaty cementing ties between Ethiopia, Somalia and Eritrea, details of which were similarly never made public.[...]

Domestically, conflict with Faro militiamen in Amhara and unrest in Oromia has weakened key support bases for Abiy. Failure to make payments on Ethiopia’s eurobonds at the end of 2023 has also heightened pressure on the prime minister.[...]

There are also domestic woes in Somaliland, which has known relative stability for decades. The enclave is struggling with an uprising by local clan militia who pushed its forces out of the disputed town of Las Anod in August.[...]

Diplomatic ties between them date back to the 1980s when Ethiopia supported Somaliland rebel fighters who helped win its de facto independence in 1991, the same year Ethiopia became landlocked after Eritrea’s successful war of independence. Ethiopia continued to use Eritrea’s Red Sea ports until the two states severed ties and fought a 1998-2000 border war, which killed 70,000 people. Since then, Ethiopia has used Djibouti’s port as its main trade conduit, but the billions Djibouti is believed to charge Ethiopia annually in port fees has had it exploring alternatives in Sudan, Somaliland and Kenya since the mid-2000s.

Agreements between Ethiopia and Somaliland over the use of its Berbera port date as far back as 2005, but issues including logistics and potential harm to relations with Mogadishu have prevented Addis Ababa from implementing a wholesale shift from Djibouti. In 2017, Ethiopia acquired shares in Berbera port as part of a deal involving Emirati logistics management company DP World to expand the port and turn it into a lucrative trade gateway catering to the needs of 119 million Ethiopians. At the time, Somalia denounced the deal as illegal. Ethiopia did not follow through on commitments and eventually lost its stake by 2022.[...]

After Somali independence in 1960 and until the end of the Cold War, the status of Ethiopia’s Somali region, its second largest by area, has been hotly contested between the two countries. The region, also known as Ogaden, is home to ethnic Somalis, who make up about 7 percent of Ethiopia’s population. It has witnessed numerous conflicts. One was the Ogaden War from 1977 to 1978, which killed tens of thousands of people before Ethiopia, with the assistance of Soviet military advisers and Cuban troops, reasserted dominance over the land.

Under the governments of Ethiopia’s Mengistu Hailemariam and Somali President Siad Barre [supported during the war by the US], both countries supported rebel factions in each other’s countries, which would go on to weaken and eventually lead to the overthrow of both leaders by 1991.

Somalia has never regained the stability it knew during the Barre era. [...] A considerable segment of Ethiopian troops has been part of the African Union peacekeeping mission mandated to fight the rebels in Somalia. Their semi-permanent presence in the country since 2006 has fuelled further resentment.[...]

“It’s possible that the UAE, which has cordial relations with both Ethiopia and Somaliland, may have encouraged the parties to proceed with the deal,”[...]

Meanwhile, Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip has had a ripple effect, including most recently, Houthi rebel attacks on ships in the Red Sea, impacting the strategic Bad al-Mandeb Strait [just off Somaliland's coast]

4 Jan 24

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evesaintyves · 1 year

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The Night of the Brown Bananas

@hinnyfest prompt #11: Nightmares

Harry/Ginny, Rated T, 2973 words, domestic fluff and domestic angst

Ginny and Harry finally move into their first flat together, but their new life isn't exactly what Ginny expected. A postwar Hinny slice of life.

i started this as a gift for the lovely @hinnyfied (hbd), but it got a bit out of hand 🫠 read it here (it's long lol) or on AO3 💛🤎🖤

All that was left was Ginny's old canvas school satchel and her overnight bag. She stood next to them in her empty room, chewing her thumbnail. She and Harry had wrestled her old trunk and her cardboard boxes downstairs together by hand, which had earned Harry a snivelly hug from Mum and an equally-snivelly handshake from Dad. Ginny was sure she was in for a whole rainstorm of crying when she showed up downstairs with her bags on her shoulders.

Strange how much bigger her room looked without all her things in it. A spiderweb waved loose in the corner where it had once been attached to her desk lamp. Dark shapes on the walls where pennants and posters had shielded the wallpaper from the sun. Those were all in a box now, rolled into neat cylinders by a charm and a funny whipping motion of the tip of her mum's wand. Mum had tried to teach her how to do it but Ginny had only been half-listening so eventually Mum had done that frustrated little huff of breath through her nose and rolled them all up herself.

The place on the baseboards where Ginny had once, seven years old, scratched I HATE FRED AND GEORGE was still there. She thought about charming it away so her mum and dad wouldn't see it—she even took her wand out—but it felt like erasing a memory. Fred and George had transfigured her Harpies scarf to show a bad word and she'd gone to three errands with mum before anyone noticed. Her mum had been so red that even her dad had seemed alarmed at her fury. She'd sent Ginny and the twins to their rooms, even though Ginny hadn't even known what the word meant (until Fred and George, delighted, had explained it to her over breakfast the next morning).

Harry pushed the door open with a slow creak and Ginny hid her bitten thumb behind her back.

"Ready?" he said. "I've got everything set up outside so we can just grab it and apparate."

He always stood in the hallway unless he was invited, as if they weren't about to be sharing a flat, a bedroom, a bed.

"Yeah." Ginny gave him a faint smile. "Just give me a minute."

He lingered there for a few seconds like he wasn't sure if he should go, then turned and clomped down the stairs.

This was the last minute she'd still live in the house she'd shared with her brothers. The next time she came she'd only be visiting. That felt like it should make her feel something, but all she had were sore arms, the buzz of excitement in her stomach, the prickly emptiness where some deeper feeling should be.

She shouldered her bag and went downstairs to face her mum's stupid tears.

-----

That first night in their little flat, they were too tired to do anything but flump down on their too-hard new mattress and fall asleep. Ginny dreamt she was signing a contract with the Kestrels, big ridiculous ceremonial quill in her hand, the fluff of it tickling in her nose, eyes watering from all the sports-reporter flashbulbs. She touched the quill to the big scroll of parchment and signed her name.

Good evening, my dear, the contract wrote back. It's been such a very long time. Are you still wondering if you'll ever learn to do a Cuban Eight on your broomstick? Is your brother still nasty to you about it? I know—

She woke with a hiss of breath and cramps shooting up her calves. Panic hammered through her veins—dark. I'm hurt—until she remembered where she was and that she'd made about twenty trips up and down the stairs with boxes yesterday, thinking it'd be nice to get a leg workout in before tryouts.

She rolled on her side, rested her head on the crook of her arm, bit down on her middle fingernail and watched the slow swells of Harry's breathing. They hadn't hung the curtains yet and the bare bedroom wall was stained with the swapping colours of the traffic light outside: green, yellow, red. She took a breath and held it to slow her heartbeat. Tonks had taught her how to do that. She crammed that useless thought down into the dark cellar storage inside her, along with the sick lingering unease of the dream.

This view of Harry, the narrow shoulders in silhouette and that mess of black hair against the pillow: she'd seen it before, but today in their flat it was exhilaratingly new. This was going to be her every morning, this was going to be her middles-of-the-night. She was going to get used to it. How absolutely mad.

Later, in the faint blush of sunrise, Harry took a long deep breath and stretched his arms over his head. When he turned to face her, his skinny legs tangling in the sheets and that slow squinty smile spreading across his face, Ginny forgot all about the panic and the cramps and my dear and just climbed on top of him, thinking only this is how it's supposed to be, you and me, every day.

------

Ginny felt silly getting so excited for their first big shop. She was uncomfortable amongst all the muggles in the plasticky brightness of Sainsbury's, but Harry pushed the trolley down the overstimulating gauntlets of every-colour packets and tins with a bored confidence that looked weird on him.

"Yeah," he shrugged. "Aunt Petunia used to drag me along and make me carry the big thing of serviettes that wouldn't fit in the bags."

The muggle snacks were nasty-looking and there weren't even any pumpkin flavours, but Harry grabbed boxes of biscuits and crisps and assured her she'd understand when she tried them. He piled the trolley with fruit and veg, spinach and carrots and apples and bananas.

"You know I can't cook like Mum, right?" Ginny huffed.

"Yeah, I dunno—you've got tryouts and I've got the Auror Academy physical coming up—thought we could try making smoothies or something—you know—grown up, healthy—" He shrugged and ruffled his hair with his hand.

Making smoothies for breakfast with the boy who lived, in their bright little flat that smelled of his cedar trunk and soap. Ginny was stricken, for an instant, by an idea that seemed stupid but dizzyingly true at the same time—that she'd never understood before what it must have been like for Harry to suddenly find out he was a wizard when he was eleven, but maybe it was something like these last few days: the buoying relief of having survived her old life long enough to see her new one, and the unmoored thrill of all the future discoveries unknown, undreamt-of.

She pressed a kiss to the crescent of skin behind his ear as he counted out the strangely-coloured muggle banknotes, and she could feel the warm flush in his skin where her lips touched him.

------

Of course the smoothies never happened.

Harry was in meetings with Minister Shacklebolt and his transition team most days, and Ginny spent afternoons practicing for tryouts with Bill, swooping over the seaside cliffs like starlings and hurling his battered old quaffle over the peaked roof of Shell Cottage.

The spinach wilted in the cupboard and the bananas sat unbothered in the fruit bowl, mottled with brown spots. Harry and Ginny ordered pizza and ate it in knackered silence. All the singing nerves of the day they'd moved in together had subsided under the heavy disappointing drone of the neighbour's telly through the wall. Harry would rub Unknotting Unguent into Ginny's spasming back and then she'd crawl into bed and fall asleep listening to the scratch of his quill as he revised for the Auror Academy exams. It wasn't anything like she'd imagined. It wasn't anything. It was like the time just before winter holidays or her birthday, the dragging, drudging lope of days spent waiting for something exciting—but what? This was it. This was supposed to be it.

Her mum and dad dropped by while Harry was out, and while Molly managed to hold her tongue at the stack of pizza boxes next to the bin and the gnats buzzing round the fruit bowl, Ginny could see on her face that she wasn't impressed. She looked so old, all of a sudden. Arthur did too, but at least his face lit up with a boyish glee when he wandered through the flat flipping all the lightswitches. Ginny pulled the chain of the the ceiling fan for him and he giggled like a little kid.

"Has Angelina been round lately?" Ginny asked them over chipped mugs of tea. She knew better than to ask directly about George.

"She's in Freiburg, actually, consulting with Ellerby and Spudmore," Arthur said. That sounded dead grown-up. Ginny couldn't even imagine. With a cautious glance over at her mum, he added, "I gather they're on a bit of a break. George has been... in one of his moods, I think. We don't hear much."

He was speaking in that hushed, apologetic tone he'd been using ever since all the funerals.

"Oh," Ginny said.

"I've been to the Tonks house this week," her Mum cut in. Her dad pressed his lips together until they went white.

"Did you see Teddy?" Ginny asked, setting down her half-eaten shortbread. She and

Harry hadn't been to visit him in the last few weeks, with the way all their time was eaten by moving out and practice and exams and just everything, every thing.

"He was having a little kip—" Molly started, but then she stopped and took a big slurp of her tea, the way she always did when she was about to deliver hard news.

A brand-new understanding thumped in Ginny's chest: that steadying tea-slurp was her mum's need to soothe herself, the way Ginny would peel off slivers of fingernail with her teeth. Somehow it was both startling and obvious. She'd been watching her mum do it for almost nineteen years.

"He's been having a bit of trouble—er, sleeping and that—" Arthur filled in for Molly with a weak chuckle.

"He won't sleep in his bed," Molly blurted out, "he's afraid something's underneath and trying to get him. Andromeda tried to make him tell her what he thinks is under there—you know, he's barely two—and all he would say was 'Mummy and Daddy'—"

Another slurp of tea. Arthur reached out to stroke Molly's upper arm.

Hours later, when Harry came home, he didn't ask why Ginny was lying on the sofa with her eyes all swollen. He just sat next to her and laid his hand on her cheek. She didn't start crying again, but it was a weird comfort to just lie there and throb with his quiet warmth at her side.

------

The neighbours downstairs had a party so loud Ginny could feel the bass vibrating in the mattress springs. She and Harry cast every muffling and white-noise charm they knew, but the beat pounded through the very frame of the building. It invaded Ginny's head like a commanding voice and made her legs twitch with electric, frustrated rage.

"I'm going to go downstairs, curse the door off the hinges and hex every single one of them and their—their muggle—music box or whatever—"

Harry turned over and squinted at her in the dark.

"You can't get arrested, they'll disqualify you from tryouts," he croaked.

Ginny kicked all her covers off and rolled in a ball on her side, clutching her stomach.

Harry managed to fall asleep with his head sandwiched between two pillows, but Ginny laid there in spiraling despair until the police came to break the party up. The curtains were still in a wrinkled lump on the bedroom floor, so the flashing lights made a red-and-blue lightshow on the bedroom wall. Harry didn't even move. When the music finally shut off, Ginny closed her eyes in exhausted relief, but it seemed like the moment she fell asleep the sun was shining red through her eyelids and the pipes were groaning with Harry's morning shower.

The browning bananas curved like a smirk in the fruit bowl. Ginny blankly spooned Harry's weird muggle cereal into her mouth. Her thoughts were the same slow pointless drip as the broken tap in the kitchen. Harry leaned down to kiss her neck on his way out the door. He followed her gaze to the bananas.

"They're getting almost as freckly as you," he murmured into her ear, smacked another kiss on her cheek, and left. Ginny sat in the abrupt calm of the flat for a moment, blinking, then threw her spoon into the bowl with a clink and flooed over to Bill's, where she slung the quaffle so hard and so wildly it broke the weather vane off the roof and sent it spinning into the kitchen garden. Fleur came running out the back door at the noise, wiping her hands on a tea towel and cursing in French. Bill pulled his broom up alongside pinkfaced, panting Ginny and gripped her shoulder with his big rough hand.

------

Harry sat up in the dead of night with a gasp like he was coming up from underwater and touched his fingertips to his scar.

Ginny sat up too, so fast it made her abs twinge. "What is it? Does it hurt?"

"No," Harry said, "not really. Only in the dream."

He sat there blinking for a moment, red traffic light painting his face, then flopped back on his side and pulled the covers up to his neck. Ginny felt suddenly very alone in their bed.

"I have weird dreams too," she whispered.

She didn't think Harry had heard her at first, but after a moment, muffled by the duvet, he said, "Do you?"

"Yeah."

He turned over to face her. "Like what?"

"I dunno," she said. She didn't know why she'd even said it, because she didn't really want to talk about it now. "Like I made it on a Quidditch team but I don't want to play anymore."

Harry was quiet for so long she thought he must have gone back to sleep, but then he slid over and rested his forehead against her thigh. It had taken him so long, when they'd first begun seeing each other, to start giving her little touches like this. She didn't suppose the Dursleys had been touchers. She wove her fingers into his hair.

"I haven't felt like myself lately," she blurted out. "I mean—not just lately—but especially—I dunno—"

She took a breath and the hitch in it repulsed her.

Harry didn't say anything, but she could feel his eyelashes blinking against her leg. The light from outside turned green and painted the rumpled sheets that pooled around the both of them.

"I just—we never even made smoothies. The bananas are all rotten now. The curtains are still over there on the floor. How long is it going to be like this? How long can I not feel like myself before I have to admit that this is just how I am now?"

She shoved her thumbnail in her mouth. Warm stupid tears were leaking down her face and dripping all the way down her neck to her collarbones. She'd normally have scrubbed them away with the back of her hand and gone somewhere to collect herself, but she wanted them, weirdly, to prove how pathetic this dumb fucked-up feeling was. Mum's coppery hair was coming in white, poor Andromeda had to think about dead Tonks crawling out from under the bed, George was aching alone in his filthy bedsit, Fred was in the ground turning into something unrecognisable, and Ginny was sat here crying like an idiot over some fucking brown bananas.

Harry sat up and looked at her. "The bananas went bad?"

Ginny laughed through her noseful of snot.

"They're nearly black now," she sniffed. "Its so stupid, I just hate to waste—"

Harry suddenly swung his legs out of the bed and walked in his stiff morning way out of the bedroom.

The traffic light was yellow now. Ginny got up and followed him into the kitchen.

Harry was holding the bunch of bananas betwen two fingers. A tenacious fruit fly looped circles around them. He broke one off the bunch with a nasty squishing noise.

"I'll eat them right now," he said. "Zero waste."

He pulled the black peel back from the banana. A fermented smell came off it and stung the back of Ginny's nose. Webby strings of goo stretched between the fruit and the skin, and they caught the light from outside and shone with it like tiny filaments of neon.

"Er—" Harry started, his brow furrowing.

"You don't have to eat it," Ginny said quickly.

Harry stared at her for a moment with such intensity that she thought he might take a bite just to shock her.

Then he turned around and chucked them into the kitchen bin.

"We'll go to Sainsbury's in the morning," he said. Ginny's face was itchy with drying tears. Harry wiped his hands off on the seat of his pyjamas and brushed past her into the bedroom.

"Come on, I'll rub that stuff on your back if you want," he called over his shoulder.

Ginny didn't, but she followed him back to bed. In the morning, she woke to the quiet rustling sounds of Harry putting up the curtains. The flat still reeked of rotting banana. When she sat up, Harry turned around to look at her, grinned, and accidentally bashed the curtain rod into the window frame. Ginny felt a sleepy little flicker inside: this is it. You and me.

#hinnyfest #hinny #ginny weasley #hinny fluff #molly x arthur #harry x ginny #harry potter fan fiction #harry potter fanfiction #hinny fanfic

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moonshinemagpie · 2 months

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Movies I Watched in February

Once upon a time I only watched 3 movies a year and all of them were bad. Then I learned about Real Culture (TM), and now my life is better.

mini movie reviews from January

February's movies:

mini reviews:

Youth in Fury (1960): Masahiro Shinoda is one of my favorite directors, but I prefer his experimental stuff. Grade: C

Cría Cuervos (1976): A slightly surreal Spanish classic about childhood trauma and how we misinterpret/misremember our own experiences. Makes you feel exactly like you're back in the saddest moment of your own childhood, which, honestly, blows. Do not recommend. Grade: C

Upgraded (2024): This is not a romcom. This is a movie about a woman achieving her career goals, and a guy happens to be in like 30 minutes of it. I thought I was watching for Archie Renaux, but my bi soul must stan Camila Mendes. Grade: B

Dorian Gray (2009): Ben Barnes stars as Dorian Gray. He is very pretty, and that's really all I have to say about it. Grade: B

Viva Cuba (2005): My first Cuban film! I thought, "If I were a Spanish teacher, I'd show this to my students," but oops all the reviews online are from kids who had to watch this in class and hated it because everything that happens to you at school sucks, including all movies, but I really liked it actually. Grade: B+

Saltburn (2023): You all don't talk enough about what unironically classist conservative bullshit this movie is. Read or watch anything that inspired it instead. Grade: a middle finger

The Men of Tread on the Tiger's Tail (1945): A Kurosawa film. This was set where I used to live in Japan and I didn't know until I watched it. Wild. Grade: A

Death of a Cyclist (1955): Spanish film. One of those stories that feels like you know it already because now the narrative is a classic. Grade: A.

The Bodyguard (1992): A big dumb blond man falls for Whitney Houston?? I love this???? I love him? I love her? He eats a nectarine while beating the shit out of another man? It's a mess and I swooned and I love it!!! We don't make romance films like this anymore (see: Upgrade). Grade: A+

The Executioner (1963): Takes place during Franco's Spain. A look at a reluctant executioner that feels, wow, oomph, very very relevant to a post-COVID world. Heavy themes with light storytelling. I REALLY liked this. Grade: A+

The Two Towers/The Return of the King: You don't need me to review LoTR.

Double Suicide (1969): Masahiro Shinoda, you dirty dog, you did it again. I ^%$^*$%^*ing loved this. Wild, experimental film that combines Japanese theater with cinema. It made me feel more alive for having seen it. Grade: A+

p.s. ignore the numbering of the list. tumblr formatting is a butt.

Going Forward:

I really loved the Japanese New Wave and Spanish films I saw this month. Now I want to see more experimental Japanese stuff, dive into Indian cinema, and watch more swoony romantic movies that might get close to making me feel the way The Bodyguard did (like I had injected the best parts of AO3 directly into my veins). I also want to find where the cinematic lesbians are.

Onwards!

#films #movies #cinema #masahiro shinoda #anna's movie adventures #list challenges

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tiny-maus-boots · 1 year

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Queen of Hearts pt 16

A/N: coming back to an oldie but goodie for the moment.

The Bump

Aubrey

Aubrey paced the length of Flo’s living room with slow heavy steps as she replayed every moment of the last 12 hours. She went over every random choice and deliberate decision she had made with critical judgment just trying to pinpoint the moment she had screwed up so badly it had brought them all here to this moment. Chloe came down the hall with her head bowed and shoulders slumped, rubbing her face with her too pale hands.

“Doc…”

“I need a minute.”

The blonde woman gave a single nod and backed up a step and headed for the kitchen. She wasn’t familiar with Flo’s house but she didn’t have to search hard for what she needed. For a second she considered using one of the Cuban coffee pods arranged neatly in a display rack but figured Doc Beale would need to sleep eventually. Aubrey grabbed a couple of mugs and dropped tea bags into them.

The ritual of making tea calmed her in a way that pacing had not. Whatever she had told Stacie before had not prepared her for actually needing to pick her fiancée up at the police station. Especially after they had found Happy gasping softly for her last breaths. Pain and fury blazed hot in her chest and her hands shook with the effort to contain it all.

"Is that tea?"

Aubrey looked up with a start and nodded at Chloe. She hardly knew what to expect. If she lost Happy…

"Stacie in the shower?" Aubrey nodded again and slid a mug across the counter to the other woman. "Let's talk."

It was final sounding and Aubrey found herself almost hoping that Chloe would tell her she was out. Done. Cutting ties. And as much as she needed and valued Chloe…she would let her go.

"Is Happy going to live?"

Chloe took her time removing the tea bag from her mug and adding honey before she spoke. Her voice seemed as tired as Aubrey felt.

"Yes. But with complications. There is some nerve damage I suspect. Won't be able to tell until she's healed some and is ambulatory. And that. That's going to take time. Flo is sitting with her now."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that I don't know if she will regain use of her right arm again, or walk properly. I closed 8 distinct stab wounds. She's going to be on a cornucopia of medication and physical therapy probably for the rest of her life. She has a long road ahead of them."

Aubrey's heart dropped to her stomach then gave a sickening lurch. Just then Stacie's reassuring warmth settled against her back. It brought her a comfort she didn't feel she deserved to have. Stacie’s still damp hair tickled her ear when their heads came together in a silent show of support for one another.

She would fix this somehow. Whatever it took. Chloe was watching her over the rim of her mug. Aubrey raised a brow in question but the doctor held her silence without the slightest indication that she was ready to talk. Aubrey took that to mean that Doc Beale was waiting to see how she would respond to this new information.

"I need to know exactly what happened today."

Stacie untangled herself from Aubrey and reached for the blonde's abandoned mug on the counter. Her fingers traced a thin gray vein in the slab of white marble almost absently as she recalled the events of a long night that wasn't nearly over.

"I don't really know what happened Bree. It all went so fast."

The blonde acknowledged that with a nod and reached out to give the other woman's shoulder a gentle squeeze.

"It's okay. Start from the beginning and we'll figure it out together."

Stacie gave herself a slight shake to clear her head and sighed.

"Your drug guy, whoever he is, he gave the right info. Happy and I found Kodie at his place in Harborfront. It’s a pretty exclusive community which seems right for who he is but…” Stacie frowned and hesitated. Whatever she was struggling with she didn’t say. “I don’t know. It’s just a nice place, well maintained and secure. Neither of us expected any trouble.”

Aubrey knew the place. It was pretty swank and it was close enough to the port to make it easy for Kodie Grant to keep an eye on. There was no way a security guard’s salary could afford a place like that but she assumed Kodie was either using family money to pay for it or he had an off the books kind of side gig. She was betting on the latter.

“Did anything seem off to you? Anything, even if you don’t think it’s important.”

Stacie raised her head, lip caught between her teeth as she considered.

“Yeah. It was quiet. Too quiet for the time of day it was. There should have been more people around. Not even like people were in their condos but like the entire floor was empty.” Stacie shook her head. “It’s stupid. I can’t possibly know that. It was just a weird vibe I got.”

It was instinct and over the years Aubrey had learned to trust hers. She turned her head to ask Happy to run that down and find out who lived on the same floor as Kodie but she was suddenly reminded that Happy wasn’t there. It took the wind out of her lungs like a punch to the gut and just for a moment Aubrey felt lost. Chloe sensed her struggle and took out her phone.

“I’ll text Detective Mitchell and have her check it out.”

She nodded her thanks without even questioning the fact that Doc somehow had Beca’s phone number and was comfortable texting her. There wasn’t any time to focus on that but she filed it away for later, only the thoughtful look on her face giving away that she’d caught the slip.

“So then what happened?”

“It all went really fast from there. I told Happy to wait by the elevator while I got Kodie to open the door but when I knocked the door just pushed open and I saw him there on the floor. God, Bree…he was still alive.” She shuddered and Aubrey wrapped her arms around the tall woman. “I tried to put pressure, or, hold the cut closed but his neck…”

Stacie looked like she was lost in the memory of the moment and couldn’t see past the nightmare she had experienced. Aubrey gave her a gentle squeeze, reminding her that it was over and she wasn’t alone now.

“Happy must have heard me scream…I’m not really sure. My back was to the door so I didn’t see it. I just heard her and when I turned to ask for help…” Stacie had to stop and rub her eyes hoping to erase the images burned in her mind. “Some thug, Jesus Christ… he was right behind her and she didn’t even notice. I don’t know what happened after that, they fought, and he would have killed her if she hadn’t managed to get a shot off. I think. I know I heard it and his head…”

That didn’t seem right. She had checked Happy’s gear when Doc had cut it off her. She hadn’t cleared her holster and the safety was still on. There hadn’t been enough time for her to draw in that close of a struggle.

“And then?”

“And then I don’t know. Alice was there. She was all over me, I got slammed to the ground and cuffed before I could say a word.”

Hm. Too convenient. Too heavy handed. Too…Alice. Aubrey shook her head and paced the length of the small galley style kitchen. In the back of her mind she was aware of the little things. The bright yellow curtains, the cheerful ceramic mushroom salt and pepper shakers, and dinner for two left uneaten. Happy and Flo had been expecting an entirely different end to their day and it pained her to know she was responsible for that being taken away from them.

“Alice did this. She knew we were on to Grant’s kid somehow and had to tie up loose ends. It was a trap, and I let you and Happy walk right into it. I’m so sorry Stacie, this is all my fault. I gotta think…”

A quiet unease had settled in her stomach and she wondered where the leak had come from. Beca? Or was it Lou? She and Lou Divine had a long history, longer than the one she’d had with Detective Mitchell. She had known Lou when he was still using his deadname Luz Divina and a part of her couldn’t even fathom that he would turn on her now. Not with their history. But to think that Detective Mitchell had chosen to work with Alice? That was impossible.

She hoped.

Right now she wasn’t sure who she could trust. Chloe must have sensed what she was thinking because the cold façade of clinical detachment fell and her expressive blue eyes filled with emotion.

“Someone sold us out.”

Us. Not you. Somewhere along the line Chloe stopped counting herself as outside the family. A faint smile tugged the corners of her lips but it turned grim as she remembered what was happening. Stacie moved closer and wrapped her arms around Aubrey once again.

“Do you know who?”

“I have some ideas but I need confirmation first before I seal the leak.”

“So what do we do?” Stacie gestured to herself and Chloe expecting that they would both have something to do to help. “Do we call in backup?”

The silence was long before she finally cleared her throat to speak. She wanted to tell them both to run and hide and stay away until the dust settled. Hell, a part of her wanted to run and hide too. Her dad’s voice drifted through her mind and she straightened her vest and smoothed her tie. Take the hit, kiddo, then hit back harder.

She could do that. Alice picked a fight with the wrong bully in the school yard. Again This time it was going to bury her. Perhaps even literally.

“Stay here and help Flo. She’s going to need someone. Doc, as much as I hate putting you there, you have to go back to work. So far no one else knows you’re with us, if you change your behavior now they’ll catch a clue. I’ll send Hap…”

Stacie and Chloe found somewhere else to look while she faltered again at the loss of her right hand man. Aubrey swallowed hard, willing the tremors of grief threatening to make her lose her control to stop.

“I’ll send Lil as soon as she gets back from an errand I sent her on. Just go about your business as usual. You’ll never know she’s there but I promise she’ll have eyes on you everywhere you go. Keep the burner on you, if I call you gotta be prepared to move fast.”

Chloe looked started but she nodded and wrapped her arms around herself. She had plenty of people she could send to watch over Chloe but a dozen people wouldn’t be as good as one Lilly. She needed someone she could trust to watch the Doc, someone that wouldn’t hesitate to do whatever had to be done to protect her.

“What about you? Where are you going?”

“I need to talk to Lou. He owes me answers.”

“Not alone you’re not.” Stacie’s voice held just enough alarm that Aubrey gave a nod of agreement. “Take Beca with you if she can shake Esposito.”

“Alice won’t be out for long. She’s got backing, she won’t need the local police to cooperate with her case if she thinks she can tie me to something that gives her jurisdiction. She’ll want to finish what she started here so as soon as we can move Happy we’ll get her and Flo to the safe house in Riverside.”

Aubrey lifted the leg of her trousers and took her back up piece out of the holster and placed it in Stacie’s hands. They shared a look and Aubrey desperately wished she had the words to make everything okay. But she didn’t. And Stacie wasn’t asking for any platitudes. Aubrey cupped the brunette’s face, her thumbs ghosting along the other woman’s jaw in a light caress before she kissed her with a gentle passion. Just in case it was the last one for a while.

“Don’t open the door if anyone knocks, don’t go out. If you need me…”

“I won’t. We’ll be okay, you just take care of business.”

Oh she would. She definitely would.

20 notes · View notes