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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 2 months

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1968 [Chapter 1: Ares, God Of War]

Series Summary: Aemond is embroiled in a fierce battle to secure the Democratic Party nomination and defeat his archnemesis, Richard Nixon, in the presidential election. You are his wife of two years and wholeheartedly indoctrinated into the Targaryen political dynasty. But you have an archnemesis of your own: Aemond’s chronically delinquent brother Aegon.

Series Warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, character deaths, New Jersey, age-gap relationships, drinking, smoking, drugs, pregnancy and childbirth, kids with weird Greek names, historical topics including war and discrimination, math.

Word Count: 5.7k

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Let’s begin with a definition.

Disaster is a noun derived from Ancient Greek: dus, a prefix meaning “bad,” and aster, or “star.” In the time when humans worshipped Zeus and Hera, Hephaestus and Aphrodite, it was believed that tragedies resulted from the inauspicious positioning of celestial bodies: a volcano erupts because of Jupiter, a returning comet brings with it a flood. There is a certain helplessness inherent in this mythology. There is predestined suffering that lies in wait until all the jewels of the sky have malignantly aligned.

Have you ever met someone who made you ache to change the stars?

~~~~~~~~~~

Gunshots explode through the lobby of the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida; you feel the wind of the bullets as they clip by, fragmented metallic rage. Aemond is on the marble floor, blood pouring down his face, blood all over the white shirt beneath his navy blue suit jacket when you rip it open, tearing a button loose. He’s reaching for you through the jostling and the screams, leaving crimson handprints on your mint green dress. And you think: He just won the Florida primary. He’s not supposed to die. He’s supposed to be the president.

“What happened?” Aemond murmurs, his right eye dazed and only half-open; the left has vanished beneath a cloudburst of gore. Perhaps ten yards away, people have caught the assailant and pinned him against one of the vast Venetian windows until the police arrive. They’re roaring at him in red-faced fury, their closed fists strike his ribs and his cheekbones, their knuckles paint him scarlet and indigo.

“You’re alright, you’re alright.” You brace both palms over the maroon stain spreading rapidly across Aemond’s chest and press down as hard as you can. Your fingers are drenched in seconds, warm fading life. He’s bleeding to death. You shriek through the turmoil: “Criston?!”

“Is he okay?” Aemond asks faintly. He means the baby; you’re six months pregnant with his first child, his greatest treasure, his Atlantis, his Holy Grail. Aemond has already decided that it’s a boy. Sometimes you fear what will happen if he’s wrong.

“Yes, honey, the baby’s fine, don’t worry. Criston!”

Aegon is here instead, sweating out rum and ruin like he always is, hair too long, veins full of pills, colliding with you and pawing at his dying brother with untrustworthy hands. “Aemond?!”

You shove Aegon away, splattering him with blood. “Get back, he needs air!”

“Where’s he shot?! Let me see—”

“I told you to get back!”

“Goddammit, you don’t own him! He’s mine too!”

Criston has battled his way to you and is yanking Aegon back by the collar of his frayed olive green army jacket, stolen from Daeron when he visited home after basic training, a uniform of embittered revolution worn by a man who’s never fought for anything. “Aegon, make sure someone’s called for an ambulance, then meet the paramedics at the door and help them find us.”

“But—”

“Go!” Criston yells, and Aegon scrambles to his feet and is lost within the crowd. You can hear Otto bellowing at journalists and hotel employees to make space for the fallen senator; there are flashes of cameras and prayers shouted aloud. Above your head are crystal chandeliers and a vaulted ceiling hand-painted by 75 Italian artists in the 1920s; swimming in your skull are visions of Jackie Kennedy in the pink suit filthy with her husband’s brains. It’s just before midnight on Tuesday, May 28th. Upstairs in their oceanfront Imperial Suites, nannies will be shaking awake the absent adults of the Targaryen dynasty, who retired with the children before Aemond made his victory speech in the hotel ballroom: Alicent, Helaena, Fosco, Mimi.

Criston’s hands—larger, stronger—replace yours over the gushing wound in Aemond’s chest. What did the bullet hit? His lung, his heart? He’s not speaking anymore, his right eye is closed. His bloodied hands rest open and empty on the floor. “Criston, he’s dying,” you sob.

“No he’s not. We’re not going to let him.”

“What’s the closest hospital?”

“Good Samaritan is just across the bridge on the mainland.” It’s Criston’s job to know these things, though he had been thinking of you when he plotted his meticulous notes in his day planner: in case you eat a bad cheeseburger, or trip on the stairs, or catch the flu and start burning up with fever. Aemond worries about the baby. Aegon has five children, Helaena has three, and Aemond will feel that he has been robbed of something if he does not swiftly procure a family of his own. He needs you on the campaign trail, but still, he worries.

Across the lobby, the police have arrived to arrest the aspiring assassin. He puts up a fight when they try to handcuff him and earns a nightstick to the gut, an elbow to the nose. He is choking on his own blood. Perhaps he is drowning in it. Good, you think.

“Don’t kill him!” Otto booms at the officers. “I want him alive for trial! I want him to ride the lighting up in Raiford, you keep that son of a bitch alive!”

“Aemond?” You thread your fingers through his blood-soaked hair. What happened to his left eye? Is it somewhere underneath all that carnage, or is it gone? “Please wake up. Please stay with me. We need you. The baby and I need you.”

“He’s going to live,” Criston promises, both hands still clamped over the bullet wound to slow the hemorrhaging.

“Aemond, please…” How can he be the president with only one eye?

An old woman in a yellow striped skirt suit is lumbering close with a homemade prayer rope clenched in her fist. “A komboskini for the senator!” For his last rites. For his soul.

“He doesn’t need it!” Criston says. “He’s not dying! No one is dying tonight!”

Still, you take the komboskini from the lady, each of the 100 knots a prayer unspoken. She is a devotee of Aemond, and you must show her gratitude. “Efcharistó, aderfí. O Theós na se evlogeí.” They are some of the few Greek words you’ve mastered; you’ve used them often since Aemond announced that he was running for president. Thank you, sister. God bless you.

The paramedics arrive, splitting the crowd like a laceration, white uniforms and a stretcher to ferry Aemond away. People are wailing, cursing, swearing vengeance. Aegon has returned and is peering down at Aemond with those large, glassy, muddled eyes, afraid to ask. “Is he…is he still…?”

“He has a pulse,” Criston replies. He helps the paramedics drag Aemond onto the stretcher and strap him to it. Your husband’s shirt is now drenched in red like garnet, like cinnabar, like the poppies that commemorate the boys butchered in World War I, like the wasted blood being spilled in Vietnam, men reduced to memory. “Good Samaritan?” Criston confirms with the paramedics.

“Yes sir,” the most senior one agrees. And then to you, with great deference, with compassion that transcends what somebody can harbor for strangers: “Ma’am, there’s a place for you if you want it.”

“I do,” you say, tear-streaked face, hands bathed in blood. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

The ambulance is idling outside the main entranceway of the hotel. Criston grasps your hand to steady you as you step up into the back, and you take a seat on the red leather bench beside the stretcher. The paramedics are placing IVs, holding an oxygen mask to Aemond’s face, muttering urgently into their radio, abbreviations and code words you can’t understand, a secret language of organic calamities. High above the stars are crystalline and radiant in a clear sky. In your own chest—unshredded by metal, unpierced by rage—your intact heart is pounding.

The lead paramedic turns to you again and says: “We can fit one more person.”

It’s your decision. You are the senator’s wife; you were supposed to be the next first lady of the United States. You look through the ambulance’s open doors. Aegon stares back expectantly, his hair falling in his face, his arms thrown wide, petulant, combative, useless, drunk. “Criston.”

“Bitch!” Aegon hisses at you as Criston climbs into the vehicle. The doors slam shut, the engine rumbles, the siren squeals as the ambulance races westbound on Breakers Row towards County Road, which connects with Flagler Memorial Bridge and the mainland.

Through the rear window you watch Aegon as he stands in the white-gold hotel luminescence, becoming smaller and smaller until he vanishes, and all you can see are streetlights, and all you can smell is blood.

~~~~~~~~~~

Every story needs its cast of characters. Here are the major players in the summer of 1968.

President Lyndon Baines Johnson is in the White House watching the clocks tick towards November 5th, when his successor will be ordained. He has chosen not to seek reelection. Since his ascension upon Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, Johnson’s domestic focus has been unprecedented civil rights legislation and his War On Poverty, yet what has infected the media like blood poisoning is the war in Vietnam. On the television are napalm bombs incinerating Vietnamese peasants, caskets draped with American flags, riots being beaten down by police, college students torching draft cards and chanting “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” Now the president is sick in body, in spirit, in heart, and this is not a metaphor: he suffered a near-fatal cardiac arrest in 1955 and another shortly after John F. Kennedy was murdered in Dallas, Texas. He will die almost exactly four years after leaving office. Had he sought another term, he would have been unlikely to survive it. The public eye is something like a snake bite; it sinks its fangs in and you hope the venom burns clean before it can curse you with clots or hemorrhages or paralysis, before it can drown you in the dark waters of infamy.

In the void left by President Johnson’s surrender, four factions have emerged within the Democratic Party. The old guard—the same labor unions, congressmen, and local political machines who have steered the platform since the days of Franklin D. Roosvelt’s New Deal—has flocked to current Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Humphrey is competent yet uninspiring, a mid-fifties Midwesterner who flinches at the unpolished fury of antiwar protests and sedately lectures Black Power activists on the dangers of “reverse racism.” He is not a threat. He is a sheep in sheep’s clothing, and this is the time for wolves.

Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota is unapologetically opposed to the Vietnam War, a moral crusader, a reluctant warrior, a man who wears his lack of taste for the presidency like a badge of honor. He feels compelled to run, but he does not crave it. He thinks this makes him a saint; but Joan of Arc was burned at the stake and Saint Lawrence was roasted alive. Like Halloween candy plunked into a child’s neon orange plastic pumpkin, McCarthy has collected his own coalition, college students and posh urbanites who believe themselves to be the future of the Democratic Party. In 2016, people will conjure McCarthy’s ghost when drawing comparisons to a controversial left-wing senator from Vermont named Bernie Sanders.

If McCarthy is the future and Humphrey is the past, then former governor of Alabama George Wallace is downright archaic. He is the candidate of choice for Southern white supremacists, averse to Republicans since Lincoln and still reverent of Depression-era New Deal programs that kept them from starving to death. Wallace is best known for his promise of “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” and pledges to end the chaos that has besieged America through strict law and order. Provided he loses the Democratic primary, Wallace plans to run in the general election as an Independent, hoping to peel away enough support from the major party candidates to force the House of Representatives to declare the winner and then leverage his votes to negotiate an end to federal desegregation efforts in the South. His devoted wife Lurleen just died of uterine cancer, a diagnosis which Wallace kept hidden from her for years; doctors are in the habit of informing husbands of their wives’ ailments and giving them carte blanche control over the treatment plan, which unfortunately in Lurleen’s case was nothing. She was 41 years old.

In his short-lived castle of red corridors like the marrow rivers of bones, President Johnson hides from the hippies who jeer and spit; Humphrey frowns at them, McCarthy tries to appease them, Wallace says the only four-letter words they don’t know are “w-o-r-k” and “s-o-a-p.” But Aemond climbs down from podiums to meet them like old friends. He is young, only 36. He has a brother serving in the swamps of Vietnam. He is focused, determined, insatiable; he devours every scrap of news that is printed about him and writes his speeches by hand. As the self-admitted runt of the Targaryen family, Aemond knows what it is like to be underestimated. He wants a better America, and he wants to be the president, and he wants these things in equal, relentless measure, each fueling the other until these ambitions become inseparable. He has grown up hearing slurs against Greeks and consequently has no tolerance for discrimination, which he contends is antithetical to the American Dream. He attends civil rights marches in labyrinthian cities, antiwar protests on college campuses, union meetings in coal mining towns of West Virginia and Kentucky and Wyoming, music festivals crowded with long unwashed hair and braless women, fundraisers flush with the deep pockets of the Northeastern elite. Aemond’s coalition grows each day, bleeding away strength from his rivals like a Medieval surgeon. Their flesh turns cold and anemic, while Aemond’s heart pumps scalding torrents of blood.

If Aemond wins the Democratic primary at the convention in August, his opponent will almost certainly be the Republican frontrunner Richard Nixon of California. Nixon wants the White House just as badly, and he’s much smarter than he looks. He was Eisenhower’s vice president for eight years in the 1950s and lost to the ill-fated John F. Kennedy in 1960 by a whisker; some say he did not lose at all, but instead was cheated out of 100,000 votes by Kennedy’s mafia connections in Chicago. But with the Democrats divided and their incumbent president floundering, Nixon’s timing has never been better. He was once a poor boy with two dead brothers who earned a scholarship to Duke Law. Now he will become whoever he needs to be to win the presidency of the United States.

1968 is the year of wolves. The fangs are sharp, and the bellies ache with hunger.

~~~~~~~~~~

A local deli has opened early and sent sandwiches to Good Samaritan Medical Center for the family and friends of the senator from New Jersey: ham and Swiss, cucumber and cream cheese, tuna salad, egg salad, pimento cheese, BLTs, Cubans. The lobby is filling up with bouquets of flowers and handwritten notes. You pace and count the knots of the komboskini over and over again as you wait; Aemond has been in surgery for hours. The nurses periodically bring you Styrofoam cups of hot chocolate, scalding watered-down sweetness to distract you from the fact that some surgeon is currently rooting around inside your husband’s ribcage.

Alicent—a convert to the Greek Orthodox faith just as you are, though far more zealous, far more sincere if you dared to admit it—is pleading for God to save her son as she clasps her own prayer rope. Helaena is seated beside her, eerily calm. Helaena’s husband Fosco is wandering around boredly and inflicting small talk upon the nurses, ogling out the third-story windows, playing with his red Duncan yo-yo. Otto is making a series of calls using one of the phones at the nurses’ station. Criston is there too, leaning over the countertop and speaking with Otto in low conspiratorial whispers.

Aegon is sitting alone and glaring at you. He takes a rattling bottle of pills—prescriptions that doctors are too afraid not to write for him when he asks—out of a pocket on the front of his green army jacket, spotted like a leopard with your bloody handprints. He opens the amber-colored, cylindrical container and pours two, no, three tiny white tablets into his palm. He tosses them into his mouth and washes them down with a swallow of his own mediocre hot chocolate, still glaring. You ignore him.

“How could this have happened?” Mimi says again from where she’s slumped in her chair. Aegon’s wife has a Snow White sort of beauty, but with a perpetual ruddiness in her nose and cheeks from the gin she sips constantly. You suppose it would make anyone a drunk, being married to a man like that. Her maiden name was Marina Marceline Leroux, but everyone has always called her Mimi, even the press on the rare occasions when she makes an appearance. Her children—Orion, Spiro, Violeta, Thaddeus, and little Cosmo, only five years old—are all back at the Breakers Hotel with the nannies, the same as Helaena’s. Mimi blubbers to nobody in particular: “How…? Who…? Who would want to hurt Aemond…?”

Someone needs to sober her up. You fetch a BLT off the platter of sandwiches and offer it to her. “Here. Eat.”

“I’m not hungry. Who on earth could be hungry at a time like this? I’m absolutely nauseated, I’ll never want food again—”

“Mimi, eat the sandwich.”

“Fine, fine,” she slurs morosely, then takes an unenthusiastic bite. She listens to you, all the women do. They listen to you, and you listen to Aemond, and the circle is closed and complete.

Criston is walking over now. You turn to him, needing good news, bad news, any news. “It was a Wallace supporter,” Criston says. From his seat, Aegon is watching Criston with his slow drugged gaze, listening intently. “Some bell pepper farmer from up by Jacksonville.”

“He’s been taken to the local jail for holding?” you ask, and then add: “Alive?”

“Yeah, and he already has a record. Assault and battery. His brother-in-law is apparently a Grand Dragon in the Klan.”

“What the hell is a Grand Dragon?”

“Well, it’s higher than a Goblin, but not as illustrious as an Imperial Wizard, does that answer your question?”

“Perfectly.” You smile at Criston, a pained, wry smile. He returns it and places a palm over your belly. You are still wearing the mint green dress Aemond picked out for you this morning, before he won the Florida primary, before he was shot twice by the disciple of a political adversary and laid at death’s doorstep. You are still covered in your husband’s blood.

“You’re feeling alright?” Then Criston smirks, knowing how ridiculous he must sound. “You know. All things considered.”

“We’re both fine. The baby’s moving around, I can feel it.”

“You can feel him, you mean,” Criston teases, knowing Aemond’s preoccupation with his unborn son; but you can’t bring yourself to appreciate the joke.

Aegon says to you suddenly: “How the fuck did you let this happen?”

“What?” you answer, stunned.

Aegon stands and approaches, lurching, raging. “You always have to be right beside him, in the photographs, in the headlines, in the soundbites, but you let some psychopath run up and shoot him? Twice?!”

“I thought he just wanted to shake Aemond’s hand, or maybe get a quote for an article—”

“You didn’t notice the gun?!”

“Aegon, sit down,” Criston orders.

“It happened in seconds,” you say. “You think you would have done better? You and your Valium, and your Librium, and your Percodan? You think your reaction time would have been so superior to mine?”

“Please,” Alicent moans, mopping tears from her pink cheeks with a handkerchief. “Please, don’t fight, not now…”

“We are all friends here,” Fosco adds in his thick Italian accent, yo-yoing by a window.

“You want to be the first lady so bad but you can’t handle it!” Aegon shouts, his voice echoing through the lobby. “You’re not some prodigy, you don’t have all the answers, you’re just a girl who stitched yourself to Aemond and then you let him get shot, he’s being operated on right now, maybe he’s even dying, and you still act like you’re so fucking perfect—”

“You’re mad because you know that everybody here is thinking the same thing,” you tell Aegon, cold and cruel. “That if someone had to get killed tonight it should have been you.”

Aegon’s mouth drops open; he stares at you with that slippery, opaque, stoned woundedness, pathetic, infuriating, illogically childish. Everyone else pretends they haven’t heard you. Alicent sniffles into her handkerchief. Fosco begins humming I Want To Hold Your Hand. Mimi chews sluggishly on her BLT. From the nurses’ station, Otto says, holding the phone to his chest: “It’s George Wallace. He’s calling for Aemond’s wife.” Then he waits to see if you’ll agree to take it.

Of course you will. You have to. You are acting in your husband’s stead. You go to the nurses’ station and grab the handset when Otto passes it to you. “This is Mrs. Targaryen.”

“Ma’am, I just wanted to offer you my sincerest condolences.” He has a pronounced drawl, born and raised in what he has praised as the Great Anglo-Saxon Southland. You animal, you think. You braindead bigot. “I do hope the senator makes a hasty recovery. I sure would like to beat him at the ballot box, but I have no stomach for anarchy. An act like this is repugnant to me, as it should be to any red-blooded American.”

“It was one of yours, do you know that?” you say, dripping venom. “One of your hateful ghouls.”

“I have no such knowledge. But if the shooter does turn out to be a supporter of my campaign, I disavow him utterly. He deserves a nice long sit in Old Sparky and then to meet his maker.”

“You inspire men to commit violence, and then you renounce them when they spill blood. I’m still wearing my husband’s. It’s on my hands, it’s on my dress, and I will not absolve you of blame. You are a gardener of discord. You grow it like roses or wheat. You tend to it until it blooms.” Otto is studying you, bushy eyebrows raised. “If you’d truly like to repent, perhaps dropping out of the Democratic primary would be a good start. And then you could find something useful to do, like drowning yourself.”

From whatever office he’s currently lounging comfortably in, his shoes kicked up on the desk, Wallace chuckles. “Aemond is very fortunate to have as ardent a defender as you, my dear.”

“Yes, a devoted wife is such a treasure. It’s a shame you killed yours.”

“Ma’am, once again, I just wanted to express how terribly sorry I am for your family’s hardship. I would never wish for an incident like this—”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be emboldening white supremacists then!” You slam the phone as you hang up.

Otto looks at you. He says: “Did it go well?”

The heavy double doors leading to the operating theater swing open, and a surgeon steps through them, still drying his hands with a dark blue towel. He has changed his scrubs and washed his skin, but you notice a spot he missed: a fleck of half-dried blood up by his temple. That’s Aemond, you think. That’s a piece of him.

Everyone rushes to gather around the doctor, even Mimi; she lists like a ship taking on water as she walks, gnawing at all that remains of her BLT, just a sliver of white toast crust.

“The senator is alive,” the doctor says, and Alicent cries out in relief. Criston rests a palm on her shoulder. “But we could not save the eye.”

“He’s half-blind?” you ask. There’s never been a half-blind president. There’s never been a Greek one either. And the only reason this is stuck in your mind is because you know it will consume Aemond’s.

The doctor nods. “We had to remove it. The bullet that struck Senator Targaryen in the head, fortunately, was more of a graze. It ricocheted off his skull and didn’t cause any trauma to the brain, but his eye was…” He hesitates, trying to find a more polite word than shredded, macerated, pulverized. “Destroyed.”

“You stopped the bleeding?” Aegon says, astonished. “He’s okay? He’s really okay?”

“The second bullet pierced the thoracic cavity and was lodged less than an inch from his heart. He was very lucky. We repaired the damage to the best of our ability, and I am optimistic that the senator will make a full recovery. He’s resting comfortably now, but he should be awake soon.”

“Oh, thank God,” Alicent says, glistening dark eyes raised to heaven. The salient points gathered, Fosco wanders off again, his yo-yo dangling from its string.

Otto asks: “When can he resume campaigning?”

The doctor is caught off-guard; it takes him a moment to answer. “That will depend on the senator’s stamina as he regains his strength. If he chooses to stay in the race at all.”

Otto scoffs. “Of course he’ll stay in. This is what he lives for. You really can’t give me a ballpark figure?”

The doctor is determinately impassive. “I would estimate a month or two before he can withstand the rigors of the campaign trail again.”

“California is June 4th,” Otto recalls, counting off dates on his fingers. “Illinois is the 11th, New York is the 18th…”

“Look, there are people outside!” Fosco announces excitedly as he peers through one of the windows. “Hello! Hello everybody!”

“Fosco, you idiot, stop waving,” Otto snaps. “Go sit down.”

“But they are cheering.”

“Not for you.”

Fosco, somewhat deflated, grabs an egg salad sandwich off the platter and plops into a chair to eat it. He’s dressed in a green plaid sport coat and tight white trousers, very chic, very European. You’ve never been able to imagine Fosco and Helaena being passionately romantic with each other. They’re both a bit too doll-like for that, closer to Barbie and Ken than flesh and blood, blank stares and vague ambitions.

“Someone should talk to them,” Alicent says softly. She means the crowd that is forming in front of the hospital: journalists, cops, local politicians, mutilated veterans, college kids, farmers, fishermen, women and children, the future and the past. Everyone turns to look at you.

“I’ll do it,” you volunteer. You will, you must. Aemond could have chosen a hundred similarly suited women to be his wife, but he chose you, and when he did your vows became a blood oath.

Criston accompanies you downstairs to where the crowd has gathered just outside the front entrance of Good Samaritan Medical Center. The night air is warm and humid, the stars bright. You had thought of so many things to tell these people as you’d stood in the elevator as it descended, but now your mind is empty, fearful. There are photographers with blinding camera flashes and apostles waiting with famished eyes. From the depths of injustice and poverty and war, they have come to pay their respects to the man they believe is destined to save not just themselves but their world. What should I say? What would Aemond want me to say?

“I am very pleased to share with you all that Senator Targaryen is out of surgery and regaining his strength.”

There are cheers and applause and prayers; you are still clutching the komboskini that the old woman gave you in the lobby of the Breakers Hotel. You see more prayer ropes in this flock, and rosaries too, Bibles and dog tags, copies of The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Joanne Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

“We would like to thank you for your heartfelt support. Aemond and I are so very grateful, and he is looking forward to being back on the campaign trail soon.”

More clapping and whistling, and then the crowd waits. You aren’t sure what they want to hear as you stand in the glow of the hospital luminance; your hands are trembling wildly, so you clasp them together as you hold the komboskini. Criston glances over at you, concerned. You settle on the truth.

“The man who tried to kill my husband tonight is a supporter of former Alabama governor George Wallace and an avowed white supremacist. Any ideology that advocates for violence and prejudice is a threat to our bodies, our nation, and our souls. We will not surrender to it, not even when our lives are in jeopardy. We will not concede that hope for a better world is lost. We will press ever onward with the knowledge that God is on our side, and that the future of this country is worth fighting for.”

You are bathed in flashbulb lightning; your ears ring with the thunder of the applause. You are shaking hands now, nodding, beaming, Criston following you like a shadow as you move through the congregation. You stop to listen to a middle-aged woman in a floral dress who wants to give you marriage advice: never get bossy, don’t become selfish, remember that you are his safe harbor in the storms of life. It is your job to gift her your momentary veneration. You have beauty, but she has wisdom; or at least, that is the bargain that has been struck, that is the presumption everyone agrees upon. She must have some advantage over you, otherwise the decades she has spent in service of her parents and husband and children have been wasted, she has carved away pieces of herself to feed hungry mouths until she vanished like the doomed nymph Echo. In return, she tries not to envy you too much, not to dismiss you as foolish or frivolous or lustful. Sometimes you think that women are filled with such vicious, relentless self-loathing that it feels good to direct it at someone else for a while, to pick apart another body, to tally up the deficits of her spirit.

“Aemond is so lucky to have you,” the woman says. You can barely hear her over the roar of the crowd.

And you smile as you dutifully reply: “I think it’s the other way around.”

~~~~~~~~~~

There is a television mounted on the wall in Aemond’s room. The news coverage, the volume turned way down low, oscillates between his own near-assassination and the stalled peace talks in Paris. Representatives of the United States and North Vietnam cannot agree, and so each day more body bags are flown home to return the bones of the nation’s sons and fathers to Missouri, Alabama, Idaho, Maine, Wisconsin, Maryland, Arizona, California, New Jersey, everywhere else. Someone has to end it. Aemond will end it.

“I dreamed I won Florida,” your husband mumbles, and that’s how you know he’s awake, here in a hospital bed and wearing IVs like strings of Christmas lights around a pine tree.

“You did,” you tell him, gently smoothing back his hair from his forehead. His left eye—where his left eye used to be—is bandaged; his words are soft and labored. “Humphrey was second. Wallace got third. But you won. And you’re going to be okay.”

“McCarthy?”

“It seems you’re devouring his coalition.”

Aemond’s lips slowly curl into a grin, triumphant. “It is God’s will.” And this is what he always says. It is God’s will that he survives, it is God’s will that he wins the presidency, it is God’s will that you give him sons.

“Yes,” you agree, lifting his right hand to kiss his knuckles. Then you press the komboskini you’re still carrying into his weak grasp. It means more to Aemond than it does to you. “Yes it is.”

Aemond sinks into unconsciousness again, morphine and dreams that blur with reality. There will be pain soon, and plenty of it, but he is free from that impending truth for now. You rise from your chair to tell the rest of the family that Aemond is beginning to wake up. Alicent and Criston will want to speak with him.

When you open the door, Aegon is standing there: an eavesdropper, a trespasser. He glares at you with his large wet ocean-blue eyes, hazy with pills, glinting with resentment. Reluctantly, you step aside to let him in. Aegon wobbles as he passes you and has to grab onto the doorframe to steady himself, scrabbling like a trapped animal.

“You’re a disaster,” you say, caustic like acid, biting, repulsed.

Aegon whirls and jabs his index finger against your chest, bloodstained mint green wool bouclé by Chanel. “You’re a vessel. You’re a cow. And one day he’ll be done with you.”

You feel something hitting you like a bullet, cracking ribs, piercing lungs, tearing muscles and ligaments. Your lips have parted, but you can’t fathom words. Aegon has said many things to you—bitter things, belittling things, things in mixed company, things when you’re alone—but never this. For the first time since you met him two years ago, he has won one of your sparring matches. He has the upper hand. He has wounded you.

Aegon can see this, certainly. But he doesn’t seem pleased with himself. He looks a little shellshocked, like he can’t quite believe he said the words, like maybe if given the chance again he wouldn’t take it. But the moment is over now, and you can’t get time back, it is a thread that unspools until every inch is gone, spent, tangled in a thousand webs.

Aegon staggers into the hospital room. You flee from it. Out in the lobby the phone at the nurses’ station is ringing again. They’ll all be calling now to give their requisite sympathies. Humphrey counsels prudence, McCarthy prays for peace, LBJ offers the empathy of someone who has felt the cold gaze of Death in his own doorway, Nixon praises Aemond’s resilience and quotes the ancient philosopher Seneca: “There is no easy way from the earth to the stars.”

#aegon ii targaryen #aegon targaryen ii #aegon targaryen #aegon ii #aegon targaryen x reader #aegon x reader #aegon x y/n #aegon x you #aegon targaryen ii x you #aegon targaryen x you #aegon targaryen fanfic #aegon ii x you #aegon ii x y/n #aegon ii x reader #aegon ii targaryen x reader

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mrs5sn0w · 6 months

Text

Serenade of Shadows

I : A Dance of Shadows -> II : Whisper of Deceit -> A Symphony of Heartbreak-> IV : Fractured Reflections -> V : Shadows of Allegiance -> VI : Echoes of Decent

Series Masterlist

Young!Coriolanus Snow x Fem!reader

warnings: Arranged marriage, MILD ANGST, unrequited love, friends to enemies, enemies to lovers

Reader's surname : Flare

Time frame : Before, during and after tbosbas

synopsis: In the events of Panem's political dynamics and the 10th annual Hunger Games, Coriolanus Snow and her find themselves entwined. Standing at the brink of an enforced union, 6 years later, their mutual trust unravels amidst a damaging misinterpretation, prompting Coriolanus to believe the wrong. As the glacial barriers guarding his emotions begin to melt, a revelation of profound feelings unfolds, initiating a sprint against time for redemption.

The grandeur of the Capitol unfolded like a tapestry of opulence on the day Coriolanus Snow and her were bound in matrimony. The air was heavy with the scent of roses, and the opulent venue shimmered in the soft glow of chandeliers. The Capitol's elite had gathered to witness the union of the President of Panem and the Flare family, one of the most prestigious families in the whole Panem, their wedding was a spectacle that rivaled the most extravagant of royal weddings.

As she walked down the aisle in her resplendent gown, a vision of ethereal beauty, the weight of the ornate veil seemed to mirror the heavy burden on her heart. Coriolanus, standing at the altar in a meticulously tailored suit, wore a mask of composure that hid the turbulent emotions within.

He did not want to be there. He does not want to marry her.

The ceremony unfolded like a symphony of obligations, the vows echoing through the grand hall as if scripted by Capitol decree. Her eyes, shimmering with unshed tears, met with his cold and indifferent eyes. The congregation, unaware of the loveless undertones, erupted in applause as the Capitol celebrated the union of the two.

As the reception commenced, Snow and her navigated the intricate dance of social formalities. In front of the Capitol's watchful eyes, they exchanged pleasantries and smiled for the cameras, their every move orchestrated like pieces on a strategic board.

In a quiet corner, away from the prying eyes, she summoned a smile that barely concealed the turmoil within.

"Corio-"

"It's Snow." He reminded her not to call him by what she called him years ago.

"Snow, we are the talk of the Capitol today," she remarked, her voice carrying a hint of wistfulness.

He nodded curtly, his gaze fixed on the swirling dancers. "It's expected. our union of significance, a merging of legacies."

A fragile smile played on her lips while Coriolanus' eyes remained impassive, a fortress against the vulnerability she tried to breach.

"Sentimentality has no place in our world. Our duty is to uphold the Capitol's ideals. I'm just doing my duty by marrying you."

He then continued

"Don't get ahead of yourself if you think you can have a chance. Everyone may have forgotten what you did, but not me."

"Cor- Snow, I did what I had to do, to protect you-"

"protect me ?" He scoffed

"The only protection you did was throw my future away"

"But you're here now" she argued

"You still did it to me. It will never change." he demanded

He still believes that she did it.

but until this very day, he did not know the whole truth of what she did.

As the night wore on, the facade of marital bliss cracked in the shadows. She resplendent in her gown, felt the weight of isolation. She approached Coriolanus with a delicate grace, her eyes seeking a connection amidst the artifice.

The reception continued, a lavish display of decadence, but in the hidden recesses of their shared existence, the echoes of unspoken pain reverberated. She was once Coriolanus Snow's closest classmates, and she found herself as a stranger in his indifferent world.

"Snow," she began, her voice tinged with both sadness and defiance,

"do you ever wonder what our lives could have been if things were different?"

He looked at her, the coldness in his eyes softened by the moon's gentle caress. "Wondering is a futile endeavor. Our reality is the only truth we know."

"The only thing i wished to be different is that I didn't have to marry someone like you"

"Anyone but you"

Before she could respond, the distant strains of music heralded their return to the festivities. The grandeur of their wedding, an illusion of splendor, concealed the fractured emotions beneath the surface.

As the night waned and the Capitol reveled in the spectacle, Coriolanus Snow and his wife danced through the shadows of their union, a poignant duet of obligation and unspoken regret.

Snow's wife would always remember this day as the day she gave her life up to be stuck in a loveless marriage.

It didn't matter to her, as long as she was married to the person she loves even when he hates her with every beat of his heart.

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slippinmickeys · 7 months

Text

Proof of Life (7/8)

1. The phone trills from his pocket, startling him. He hasn’t yet received a call on it, and he hadn’t taken to carrying it with him until recently, when the urge to maybe move on again was starting to take root. Only one person has the number.

“Langly,” he says into the receiver. “Everything okay?”

“Are you near a television?” Langly asks him, dispensing with formalities.

Mulder turns on his heel, he’s on a street about a block from a hotel.

“I could be…” he says. The thought of going into a hotel again gives him the briefest pause.

“Turn on CNN,” Langly says. “Right now.” He disconnects.

Mulder trots to the hotel entrance and pushes quickly through the double doors, wonders what human tragedy is unfolding that Langly thought he needed to witness. Mulder could be on a plane in less than three hours — two if he needs to head to a region that’s relatively popular and not beset by turmoil. He’s almost feeling like himself again, and the thought of getting back to work, while holding less appeal than ever, would at least afford him something to focus on rather than the empty place he still feels deep in his chest.

Turning a corner and into the hotel’s bar, which is empty this time of morning, Mulder locks eyes with the bartender, who is polishing glassware. He asks if he minds turning on the TV that sits black and silent in the corner of the room. The bartender nods and pulls out a remote, switching the channel to the international feed of CNN when Mulder politely requests it.

The program is coming out of a commercial, and so Mulder lowers himself into a seat nearby, asking if the barkeep minds turning up the volume.

And when the program comes back on, there is not human atrocity on the screen, nor the eruption of a volcano, nor even a child stuck in a well. There is Dana Scully, thinner even than she was the last time he saw her, but real and true, her sharply cut face looking intently at Maureen Dunshee, who is sitting across from her as if they are both in en-garde. In the top corner of the screen, there is a tiny chyron that says “pre-recorded.”

“Did the picture give you hope?” Maureen asks. They are obviously mid-interview.

“Did it give me hope?”

“When they took the picture. The Proof of Life. Did you know then that we were trying to get you home? Did it give you hope?”

They cut briefly to a full-screen image of Scully holding the foreign newspaper, him standing behind her looking stunned. It’s the first time he’s seen it.

“He gave me hope,” she says quietly, looking down. Something inside Mulder blossoms.

“Fox Mulder?” Maureen asks her. “The other hostage?”

Scully nods, then looks away from Maureen to a place just off camera.

“Yes,” she says, sitting up straighter, speaking a little louder, more clearly. “The other hostage. We leaned on each other.”

Maureen leans forward eagerly. “Why don’t you tell me about that, Dana.”

Scully meets the other woman’s eye. “No,” she says. “I don’t think I will.”

The shock of seeing her has worn off, and suddenly, Mulder wants to cheer, to outright whoop. She has startled the interviewer, and you can see the woman glance ever so briefly at what Mulder assumes to be the segment’s producers on the other side of the room. Still, the woman tries to recover.

“Okay,” she says, a little bit of the kindness gone from her voice. “Then why don’t you tell me about him?”

“If you want to know about Fox Mulder,” Scully says. “You’ll have to ask him yourself.”

“We’ve tried,” the interviewer says, cocksure. “He’s a hard man to find.”

“Don’t I know it,” Scully says, giving as good as she gets.

Watching this is like reading a whodunnit and slowly figuring out the mystery, Mulder thinks, discovering that the character you suspected was innocent the whole time.

Maureen seems to realize she’s interviewing a hostile witness, but to Mulder, Scully seems to be unfolding, coming back to life before his eyes.

“Well,” Maureen says. “What can you tell us? What are you willing to share?”

Scully looks at Maureen appraisingly before answering.

“He saved my life,” she finally says. “In more ways than one. And I don’t know how, but some day I plan to return the favor.”

“Romantic,” Maureen says. Mulder can sense distaste in her voice.

“You can call it what you like.”

“Love?” There’s a gotcha tone if he’s ever heard one, but his heart leaps into his throat.

“Yes,” Scully says with conviction. “Like I’ve never known.”

Mulder stands from his chair so fast he knocks it over. He looks around for he’s not sure what—someone to talk to, someone to tell, someone to whom he can point at the TV and say “did you hear that?”

He doesn’t know what to do with himself, with his energy, so he runs for the door.

2. When he walks through the door of Langly’s Paris apartment, there is an extra person in the kitchen and an odd, buzzy feeling in the air.

Langly and Asuka are seated at the kitchen table, across from a person whose hands are wrapped around a chunky coffee mug. All three of them look up as if startled to see him standing there.

“Mulder,” Langly says, half-rising.

But Mulder connects eyes with the third person and walks up to them until their toes are practically touching.

“Mulder,” Frohike says, his eyes wary but hopeful.

“Frohike,” Mulder says, smiling. He’s genuinely happy and relieved to see him and clasps the little man’s elbow to pull him up into a hug.

“Where have you been, man?” Mulder asks.

He releases Frohike, smiling, but that’s when he notices the steaming mug at the empty fourth seat at the small table. Byers? he thinks. These three men have not been in the same room since he met them in 1989.

And then he smells it; sun-dried linen. Eucalyptus. His blood floods with euphoric hope and he turns, slowly, so slowly toward the parlor just beyond the kitchen.

Standing in the mouth of the hall, a little tentative and unsure, is Scully.

He opens his mouth, closes it. Not a sound comes out.

Then, in the span of one breath, they collide. The kiss is dizzying. Sibylline. It is the past and the future and all the terrible, terrible things in between.

Asuka rushes everyone out of the kitchen so quickly that the mugs are still steaming when they break apart and turn to find the table empty, both of them panting, lips swollen and wet.

“I’m so sorry—“ they both say at the same time, then chuckle shyly.

“Don’t be sorry—“ she says at the same moment Mulder says, “I thought you—“

Mulder reaches out, gently puts a finger over her lips.

“Come with me,” he says, like a fairy in a forest. He takes her hand.

3. They are standing in the room Asuka has made up for Mulder; robin’s egg blue, plaster detail on the tall ceiling fine as a Faberge egg. It is not large; there is a single bed in the corner, a small antique dresser next to the door, but it has a long window that opens to a not-quite balcony looking out over a Parisian street, which is as noisy and nostalgic as a stereotype—there could be a foley operator the next room over—a truncated horn, someone shouting in French, an accordion playing two streets over.

He feels suddenly shy, but also magnetized toward her like a compass seeking true north. He could never really keep his hands off her, and now is no exception.

He grips her hand tightly, holds it between both his palms. He’s a little afraid to let go.

“I saw the interview,” he says.

“I hoped you would.”

“I’m still spinning,” he admits breathlessly.

“Me too.”

She reaches forward, thumbs the mole on his cheek. The heat of her palm feels volcanic and he realizes a little clumsily that in all the time since they’ve seen each other, not a single person has really touched him, except for a quick, tight hug from Asuka in Charles de Gaulle. He leans into her touch.

“How did you find me?” he asks.

A dozen emotions sweep over her face before she answers.

“First I found Byers,” she finally says, dropping her hand from his face.

He raises his eyebrows at this.

“I went back to the naval base,” she explains. “I traced your phone calls.”

“That was months ago,” he says, impressed.

“I’m a reporter,” she says primly, “I have investigative skills.”

“I’ve got some game myself,” Mulder says, his voice a little bit in awe. “And coming up against the Navy is like… trying to sail a ship on land. Metaphorically.”

At this she finally looks a bit abashed.

“Perhaps less so when your father is a decorated Captain.”

Mulder smiles at her. “So you found Byers.”

“I found Byers. Then I found Frohike. Then we found Langly.”

Mulder stares at her blankly, impressed and a little scared. “Scully, these men are ghosts. To the world and to each other. If they don’t want to be found, you don’t find them. Full-stop.” He knows that Langly was absolutely a rock about protecting him.

“I beat them about the head and neck,” she goes on. Shrugs. “Metaphorically.”

He continues to stare at her, one of her hands still clasped in his own.

“Frohike noticed Langly was harder to find and being less forthcoming than usual,” she goes on. “So… Asuka.”

“Scully,” Mulder says, “if the guys are ghosts, Asuka is a god. There is no Asuka.”

Scully turns tender, reaches out once again to delicately run her fingers over the skin of his jaw. She has never seen him clean shaven before, and seems fascinated by it.

“Mulder,” she says, softly. “She found us. She’s worried for you. She said you were broken.”

He closes his eyes. “I am. I was,” he amends, and reaches out to pull her closer to him. “I’m not anymore.”

She sighs contentedly.

“What about you?” he asks, his voice barely above a whisper. He thinks of her coming back to life during the interview with Maureen Dunshee.

“I am,” she breathes, placing the softest kiss on his cheek. “I was.” Another kiss. “I’m not anymore.”

He leans down until his forehead is resting against hers.

“Maybe there’s hope,” he says.

“Maybe there is.”

They breathe each other in, the sounds on the street below quiet to near nothing, as if the universe is pausing to listen.

“Tell me,” he says then. “Tell me everything.” And she does.

***

Once they have tearfully covered the events immediately following their rescue—both apologizing profusely—Mulder tells her about his days in the Marché d'Aligre, and the pictures he’s taken, about his recent, secret desire to perhaps change careers.

They are sitting on the bed, as close as they can possibly be. And Scully does something he suspects she has maybe never done. She opens up. She tells Mulder about the weeks with Ethan, when everyone pretended she was the same person she’d always been. She tells him about Murray, about Mikey. About the baby. It all comes howling out of her.

He holds her through all of it, tries to process it all; the thought of a child, their child. He’d never wanted children before, but he’s sad for what might have been.

“If I had gotten to the base five minutes before, none of this would have…” She sniffs and swipes at her eyes, presses the back of her wrist to her streaming nose. She takes a deep breath, regaining some of her composure. “I can’t imagine what you must think of me.”

He stands and watches as a flicker of apprehension flits across her face, but he reaches down and grips her hand hard.

“Come with me,” he says again.

***

She stands in the little room, walking along very slowly, following the line of the wire that surrounds it, taking in each picture individually.

“I remember you taking them,” she says. “But I…”

He hopes she understands what this all is.

He has hung the pictures chronologically. From the first photo—her standing in her oversized Press jacket, dazed, stunned—to the picture of her in front of the window when they first heard the Chinooks coming. The intimacy grows with each picture, a long, burgeoning crescendo of the artist falling in love with his subject.

“This tells the story,” she says, dawning realization. “This tells the story of what happened.”

“This tells the story of us,” he says.

4. He takes her to the Louvre. Two pyramids on top of each other, covered in plate glass rhombi. Historians believe that ancient peoples erected pyramids as an expression of the universal desire to reunite with heaven, and something about that feels right.

All around them are tourists of every stripe and nationality, as interesting as the art on display. They’re all toting cameras, some are holding hands. He and Scully fit right in.

They are standing in front of Michaelangelo’s Prisoners, those unfinished statues forever trapped in the marble from which they will never be released. One, Rebellious, writhes, struggling to free himself. The other, more flexible and sensual, capitulates to his death, expressing peace, harmony.

Scully looks them over, her eyes roving over the sinewy tendons, the unfinished feet.

They were prisoners themselves, a block of stone where an arm should be, where a heart should be, struggling for freedom, eventually surrendering to the sensual.

“I had a few people,” she starts to say, her eyes still on the sculptures. “After the interview, try to tell me that what we feel for each other is just the social glue of trauma bonding. That the link that bonds us will eventually snap. That we can’t base an entire relationship on the fact that we were both victims of the same crime.” She finally turns to him. “ Are you afraid that’s what this is?”

He thinks it is both more simple and vastly more complicated than that.

“All I know,” Mulder says, “is that when I was down, you lifted me up. When I was weak, you made me strong. I don’t see why we shouldn’t be able to keep doing that for each other.”

She is a pattern that’s been inked on him like a tattoo. Deep. You’d have to cut her out to remove her.

“That’s what I think, too,” she says, turning away.

He grabs her hand and they move on, rejoining the current of the moving throng.

“What would you do,” she asks, “if you stopped photographing conflicts?”

There is a group of goth kids in front of them, their clothes and hair all black as a raven’s wing. Scully’s russet hair among them gives his spirit a quick pop of lightness.

“I don’t know,” he admits, swinging their arms a little. “I have a buddy who’s a wilderness photographer. He thinks I’d be good at it.”

“Sounds like it might be peaceful,” she says.

“Or boring,” he admits. “But I’d no longer be a slave to Newsweek.”

Suddenly, the crowd around them disappears, like a tide racing back out into the sea, and he and Scully are left standing alone against the backdrop of a gold-plated colonnade. Mulder, inspired, raises his camera and takes a picture. She could be a sculpture here, he thinks. She could be a painting.

She smiles at the floor shyly, and he steps into her space, his confidence of place by her side returning. He puts a finger under her chin and lowers his lips to hers.

“Didn’t I tell you,” he says. “You belong in the Louvre.”

She leans in for a kiss of her own. “Fuck Newsweek,” she mumbles into his lips.

5. He has his long heavy leg thrown over hers in the narrow bed. They are fully clothed, but tucked in toward one another like the lovers of Valdero. They can’t stop touching; the newness of being back together has yet to wear off.

“Do you think,” she starts, her fingers playing a modified thumb war with his. “We would have met if not for…”

“I’d like to think so,” he says, not letting her finish. “I’d like to think there’s a universe where nothing bad ever happens to us. Where we’re… I don’t know, FBI agents. Partners. Solving crimes by day, making love at night.”

“FBI agents?” she says dubiously, but laughing. “What would we investigate?”

“Bigfoot,” he says, invested in making her laugh again. “UFOs. Werewolves. Psychic photography.” With each suggestion, he kisses another part of her, working his way down her neck. She laughs under him, squirms in a thrilling, delicious way.

“Psychic photography?” Her dubiety reaches a level of sass he’d like to discipline out of her in a way he knows she likes.

“Yeah,” he says, canting himself up onto an elbow to look down at her. “Also known as Thoughtography. Practitioners possess an apparent ability to place images on film with their mind using psychic energy.”

She laughs. “Have you tried it?”

“I tried to imagine Penny Willmington’s breasts while in the high school dark room, once,” he says. “Didn’t work though.”

Her laugh settles into a pleasant, throaty hum.

His body responds, and he leans down to press a wet, lingering kiss into her lips.

She sighs, stretches luxuriously under him.

“I’ve missed this,” she says, a little shy.

They’ve been listing toward the inevitable for hours, and it’s not like they haven’t had sex twenty times before, but this time is different and they both know it.

Mulder puts a hand over the tight drum of her stomach, her shirt bunching slightly under his hand. The length of it, from pinky to thumb, practically spans the whole of her midriff.

“I missed it too,” he says, brushing her lightly with his thumb. “But we don’t have to do anything you’re not comfortable with.”

“I want this,” she says, levering herself up towards him.

“I want—” he starts to speak but she slides her lips over his, her eager little tongue chasing his words away.

He wants. He has so many wants.

He wants her hot little mouth wrapped around him; he wants to lick the ambrosial seep from her core. But he also wants to read next to her in bed, wants to chop vegetables in her kitchen, clean her gutters, dig his thumb into the high, aching arch of her foot.

What he doesn’t want is to run anymore, not from her.

She’s slick and hot under him, the foxy muff of her center gripping him like nothing he’s ever known. Her nails are crimped in his back, her breath a tremulous pant in his ear, her kisses so earnest it brings tears to his eyes.

They rock into each other for hours, talking, laughing, gasping in the air. There isn’t a militant pacing outside their door, and the freedom gives them an exultant, adolescent vim, and it isn’t just sweet, it isn’t just fun, it’s clumsy and solemn and pure. It’s reconnection and passion and the looping buoyant feeling of a cartwheel in the summer.

They lock eyes and they never look away.

They deserve a happy ending. They’ll get one, he thinks.

#the x-files #fanfic #my fic #msr #au #war correspondent/photojournalist AU

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nicklloydnow · 6 months

Text

“This is not an all-out war but a decentralized one with seemingly unconnected fronts that span across continents. It is fought in a hybrid style, meaning both with tanks and planes and with disinformation campaigns, political interference, and cyberwarfare. The strategy blurs the lines between war and peace and combatants and civilians. It puts a lot of extra fog in the "fog of war."

China, Russia, and Iran disagree on many things, but they all have the same goal: ridding their regions of U.S. influence and creating a multipolar global governance system and Tehran, Beijing, and Moscow know that U.S. political and military might is the only force preventing them from imposing their will on their neighbors.

(…)

When it comes to this war, the United States is asleep at the wheel. U.S. strategy has been about preparation for a large conventional war, containment, and weak deterrence. Washington has been pitifully absent in the irregular warfare field. There are almost no punishments or accountability—besides ineffective sanctions—for the nations that attack us.

(…)

Should the Biden administration continue its ineffective course, these countries will only be emboldened. Should support for Israel or Ukraine fail, China will be more likely to invade Taiwan. Deterrence is a great strategy but only works when the other side believes you will carry out your threats. You must establish that understanding by holding your enemies accountable for moves they take against you.

(…)

The Biden administration's support for Ukraine has been a rare show of force that has sent a strong message to the world. But it isn't enough. The U.S. foreign policy establishment must recognize the hybrid war being waged against it and show up on the irregular field of battle. Like it or not, the United States is the guarantor of stability in the world. By retreating from its responsibilities, the only thing Washington is guaranteeing is dark times ahead.”

“The list encompasses not just the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, but hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh, Serbian military measures against Kosovo, fighting in Eastern Congo, complete turmoil in Sudan since April, and a fragile cease-fire in Tigray that Ethiopia seems poised to break at any time. Syria and Yemen have not exactly been quiet during this period, and gangs and cartels continuously menace governments, including those in Haiti and Mexico. All of this comes on top of the prospect of a major war breaking out in East Asia, such as by China invading the island of Taiwan.

The Uppsala Conflict Data Program, which has been tracking wars globally since 1945, identified 2022 and 2023 as the most conflictual years in the world since the end of the Cold War. Back in January 2023, before many of the above conflicts erupted, United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed sounded the alarm, noting that peace “is now under grave threat” across the globe. The seeming cascade of conflict gives rise to one obvious question: Why?

(…)

The first explanation holds that the cascade is in the eye of the beholder. People are too easily “fooled by randomness,” the essayist and statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb admonished in his 2001 book of the same title, seeking intentional explanations for what may be coincidence. The flurry of armed confrontations could be just such a phenomenon, concealing no deeper meaning: Some of the frozen conflicts, for instance, were due for flare-ups or had gone quiet only recently. Today’s volume of wars, in other words, should be viewed as little more than a series of unfortunate events that could recur or worsen at any time.

(…)

Although coincidences certainly do occur, the current onslaught happens to be taking place at a time of big changes in the international system. The era of Pax Americana appears to be over, and the United States is no longer poised to police the world. Not that Pax Americana was necessarily so peaceful. The 1990s were especially disputatious; civil wars arose on multiple continents, as did major wars in Europe and Africa. But the United States attempted to solve and contain many potential conflicts: Washington led a coalition to oust Saddam Hussein’s Iraq from Kuwait, facilitated the Oslo Process to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, fostered improved relations between North and South Korea, and encouraged the growth of peacekeeping operations around the globe. Even following the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, the invasion of Afghanistan was supported by many in the international community as necessary to remove a pariah regime and enable a long-troubled nation to rebuild. War was not over, but humanity seemed closer than ever to finding a formula for lasting peace.

Over the subsequent decades, the United States seemed to fritter away both the goodwill needed to support such efforts and the means to carry them out. By the early 2010s, the United States was bogged down in two losing wars and recovering from a financial crisis. The world, too, had changed, with power ebbing from Washington’s singular pole to multiple emerging powers. As then–Secretary of State John Kerry remarked in a 2013 interview in The Atlantic, “We live in a world more like the 18th and 19th centuries.” And a multipolar world, where several great powers jostle for advantage on the global stage, harbors the potential for more conflicts, large and small.

Specifically, China has emerged as a great power seeking to influence the international system, whether by leveraging the economic allure of its Belt and Road Initiative or by militarily revising the status quo within its region. Russia does not have China’s economic muscle, but it, too, seeks to dominate its region, establish itself as an influential global player, and revise the international order. Whether Russia or China is yet on an economic or military par with the United States hardly matters. Both are strong enough to challenge the U.S.-led international order by leveraging the revisionist sentiment they share with countries throughout the global South.

(…)

Suppose, though, that the proliferation of wars doesn’t have a systemic cause, but an entirely particular one. That the world owes its present state of unrest directly to Russia—and, even more specifically, to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022 and its decision to continue fighting since.

The war in Ukraine, the largest war in Europe since World War II and one poised to continue well past 2024, is absorbing the attention of international actors who otherwise would have been well positioned to prevent any of the abovementioned crises from escalating. This case is not the same as the great-power distraction, in which the world’s most powerful states simply fail to focus on emerging crises. Rather, the great powers lack the diplomatic and military capacity to respond to conflicts beyond Ukraine—and other actors know it.

(…)

These three explanations—coincidence, multipolarity, Russia’s war in Ukraine—are not mutually exclusive. If anything, they are interrelated, as wars are complex events; the decline of U.S. hegemony contributes to growing multipolarity; and great-power competition has surely fed Russia’s aggression and the West’s response. The consequence is that others are caught in the great-power cross fire or will seek to start fires of their own. Even if none of these wars rise to the level of a third world war, they will be devastating all the same. We do not need to be in a world war to be in a world at war.

Wars were already a persistent feature of the international system. But they were not widespread. War was always happening somewhere, in other words, but war was not happening everywhere. The above dynamics could change that tendency. The prevalence of war, not just its persistence, could now be our future.”

#world war 3 #wwiii #russia #ukraine #israel #hamas #iran #china #taiwan #deterrence

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theresattrpgforthat · 1 year

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Hi! First of all thanks for running this blog, it's a goldmine. So I've been running Spire and spy fiction is obviously a major touchstone for it but I'd like to know if there are more games that scratch that itch, regardless of setting.

I have a preference for the less "spectacular" kind of spy (more intelligence-gathering and political intrigue than stealthy gadgets and action scenes) but any suggestion is welcomed :)

THEME: Spies & Intrigue

Thank you very much for your sentiments! I feel very good about the options I’ve managed to rustle up for you today.

Uneasy Lies the Head, by Adam Bell.

A cracked throne, an imploded sun, revolution at the gates: disaster looms over the realm as self-serving nobles plot and scheme to shape the world to their liking. When those visions clash, turmoil erupts and the court is thrown into chaos.

Uneasy Lies the Head is a GM-less tabletop RPG where everyone plays a member of a tumultuous royal court. Each player chooses a playbook to define their character, and weaves a web of alliance and animosity with the other players.

This isn’t necessarily a spy game, but it will give you the intrigue you’re looking for, and there are mechanics built-in for a betrayal of some kind. Each player has their own playbook with special moves associated with their role. Using resources such as tokens and dice, players will attempt to fulfill their agendas by bartering resources, making alliances, and forging deals. The game is also setting-flexible, so you could play as a space oligarchy, a feudal monarchy, or a high school lunch table! If you want social intrigue, I recommend Uneasy Lies the Head.

Shot Through The Heart, By Roll for Romance.

Go undercover and get under the covers as you take on a top-secret mission filled with danger, desire, and deception!

Drawing inspiration from sexy spy tropes, Shot Through the Heart is a Caltrop Core game where players are secret agents on a mission and looking for love. With 4 classic agent types, over-the-top code names, and messy interparty romantic entanglements, each agent plays a unique role in the mission. Will you play as a seductive Fatale who charms their way past danger or perhaps a Tech Specialist who has yet to see a code they can't crack?

Secret Objectives add intrigue and player vs. player dynamics that will leave players wondering if a fellow agent is a mole working to sabotage the mission or just flustered because they're secretly attracted to them.

This game is about literal spies and therefore will expect dramatic heists and stealthy conflict, but it adds a layer of personal entanglements, which will provide obstacles as they attempt to complete their dangerous heists and super-secret missions. The social aspect is highly personal, and threatened the party just as much as enemy agents. You definitely need player buy-in when it comes to the romantic entanglements, but if the players don’t mind wrestling with secret heartaches and heartbreaks, this might be the game for you!

Shadow Protocol, by Club Xero.

An ultra-lite ruleset for running espionage thrillers, Shadow Protocol is designed to fit any setting or era. Character creation is meant to be fast, stateless, and freeform.

The biggest risk in spy games is getting caught, and you’ll be fighting against that throughout an entire game of Shadow Protocol. You’ll have to do your best to avoid suspicion, manage your stress, and stop yourself to do something that brings unwanted trouble or personal harm. How much of the obstacles presented to the party are physical or social depends on both the characters all of the players decide to play, as well as the objectives set out by the GM. If you want to battle the pressure of keeping an operation under wraps, I heavily recommend this game.

The Service, by Rocket Surgeon Games.

It’s the height of the Cold War, and the world is divided into two competing superpowers. On the frontlines of this ideological conflict we find the spies and intelli- gence officers that use information, disinformation and coercion to any sordid ends their masters command.

The United Kingdom, having lost much of its for- mer influence on the world stage, still actively uses its intelligence agencies to further its national interests, even if the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) can’t compete with the KGB or the CIA in terms of budget or power.

In The Service, players take on the roles of intelligence officers working for a the UK Secret Intelligence Service. It is meant to emulate the kind of unglamorous, bureaucratic and morally grey spy fiction of Le Carré, Len Deighton or The Sandbaggers.

Your characters in this game are not high-powered, fantastic individuals, but rather special officers doing the best they can in an extremely high-stakes scenario. This game is set in a very specific time period, and uses the Powered by the Apocalypse System to purposefully emulate WWII fiction.

What I really like about this game is that the playbooks are designed to look like British passports, which immediately helps players understand what kind of game they’re playing, and also helps them immerse themselves in their characters. This game may only be in playtest, but there’s already a lot to love about it.

#asks #game recommendations #tabletop games #indie ttrpgs #spies #espionage #intrigue

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if-you-fan-a-fire · 12 days

Text

"IF YOU WERE AN ordinary person living in Canada in the winter of 1918– 19, you might well have thought that the world was coming down around your ears.

World War I had ended at 11 a.m. on Monday, November 11, 1918. Word of the armistice reached Canada in the early hours of the morning. As people heard of it, they spilled from their houses into the streets, some of them still in their pyjamas and nightgowns, congregating on street corners to toast the peace. After more than four years of war, there was a passion to celebrate. In Toronto, a pre-dawn procession of munitions workers, mainly women, paraded down Yonge Street, beating on pots and pans and blowing whistles. Towns and cities erupted in a noisy jubilee: sirens began wailing, factory whistles blew, church bells rang. Bonfires crackled on street corners and fireworks exploded. In the prairies, haystacks burned brightly in the fields. When daybreak came, work was forgotten as downtown thoroughfares filled with celebrants. Effigies of the German Kaiser were strung up and set ablaze. Civic officials hastily organized victory parades where Canadians expressed their relief that the war was finally over. Churches held special services of thanksgiving. The acting prime minister, William Thomas White (Prime Minister Robert Borden was already in England preparing for peace talks), dashed off a telegram to Arthur Currie, commander of the Canadian forces, commending their “courage, endurance, heroism and fortitude.”

But the euphoria did not last for long. Once the hangover of celebration wore off, Canadians woke up to the realization that there was no peace. Instead, everywhere in the world there seemed to be violence and turmoil: revolution in Germany and Hungary; civil war in Russia; uprisings in China and India; war in Afghanistan; general strikes in major cities across the United States. It was the Bolsheviks, people said; they seemed to be everywhere, overturning governments, seizing private property, and imposing their radical ideas. For some, these foreign “Reds” represented hope for a more just society; for others, they were a dangerous evil let loose to prey upon mankind.

If unrest was the rule around the world, why not in Canada? The war had left many Canadians disappointed and anxious about the future. The cost of living had been rising at three times the pace of wages. Working people found themselves poorer off than before the conflict began. As demobilized veterans returned home looking for jobs, a looming unemployment crisis threatened the economy. Returning soldiers were angry to find recent immigrants and people who had not put their lives at risk during the war occupying positions that they thought should belong to themselves.Conscription had opened an ugly division between French and English Canada. Under Borden’s Conservative government, political life seemed to have achieved unprecedented levels of corruption. The government and the press were engaged in a full-blown panic about the threat to the Canadian way of life posed by foreign agitators and labour radicals. Professor O.D. Skelton wrote in the Queen’s Quarterly:

The strain of war has produced a reckless and desperate temper. The world cannot be torn up by the roots for five years without destroying much of the old stability and acquiescence in the established order.

Canadians wondered what the war had been all about if the result was so much uncertainty, so much turmoil. They were proud of their country’s contribution to the conflict, but unsure about how to make it count for something. Surely more than 60,000 young Canadians had not given their lives just to preserve the status quo. The sacrifice seemed to demand a better way of doing things. A thirst for significant change cut across all stratas of society, from factory workers to farmers, from church ministers to returned soldiers to politicians. The federal cabinet minister Newton Rowell summed it up:

We cannot go back to old conditions, if we would, and we ought not to, even if we could.

But there was little agreement about what a new, improved Canada might look like. At a conference on reconstruction organized by the federal government in Ottawa, business leaders revealed their suspicion of even the most basic reforms, preferring instead a return to “normalcy,” by which they meant the way things had always been. That was the conservative, go-slow approach to post-war policy making: change if necessary but not necessarily change. What was the point of winning the war against Kaiserism, they wondered, if it led to Red revolution at home? More assertive voices for change emanated from the Protestant churches, which before the war had organized the Social Service Council to advocate for progressive social reform. The Council threw its support behind “industrial democracy” and a wide-ranging set of social welfare policies, including mothers’ allowances, unemployment insurance, and old-age pensions. The Methodists went farther still, calling for “nothing less than a complete social reconstruction” of postwar Canada.

Yet even this clarion call did not go far enough for political activists in the labour movement and the various socialist parties. They adopted the rhetoric of world revolution. Nothing would satisfy these radicals short of an overhaul of the structure of economic ownership in the country. “Are we in favour of a bloody revolution?” asked Calgary labour organizer Jean MacWilliams, appearing before a government commission in the spring of 1919. “Why any kind of revolution would be better than conditions as they are now.” In other words, what was the point of winning the war in Europe if it did not lead to revolution at home?"

- Daniel Francis, Seeing Reds: the Red Scare of 1918-1919, Canada’s First War on Terror. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2011. p. 9-12.

#world war 1 canada #world war 1 #end of world war 1 #fear of a red planet #postwar reconstruction #labour revolt #bolsheviks #russian revolution #communism #anti-communism #research quote #reading 2024 #canadian history

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boricuacherry-blog · 24 days

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Rainford Hugh "Lee" Perry was born on March 20, 1936, in the rural sugar-cane fields of Kendal, Jamaica. The third of four children, Perry grew up watching his mother perform the Ettu dance - a ceremony held to commune with the spirits of the afterlife in which the devotees enter trancelike states. At 20, according to his biography, People Funny Boy, by David Katz, Perry left his village, eventually finding his way to the teeming capital of Kingston, where he got a job running errands at Studio One, the Motown of Jamaica. Perry worked his way through the organization by writing catchy songs like "Chicken Scratch," the popular dance anthem that gave him his nickname. In 1966, Perry left Studio One and subsequently produced the song "The Upsetter," marking the birth of his incendiary alter ego. In 1969, walking by a church, Perry was mesmerized by the soulful sound of the congregation's music. Inspired, he recorded "People Funny Boy" - a track widely credited as one of the first reggae songs. Decades before "sampling" became the norm, the tune featured a baby crying, hinting at Perry's future sonic surrealisms. "Reggae is a useful exercise I created to get the people skipping," Perry says.

That same year, a young and frustrated Bob Marley returned to Jamaica from the United States, where he had been working in a Delaware auto factory. After regrouping with bandmates Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer, Marley came to Perry seeking musical and spiritual guidance. In Marley, Perry found the consummate vocal counterpart of the Upsetter sound. Under Perry's mentorship, who Ziggy Marley says was instrumental in his father's career, Marley recorded some of his early songs. However, when Perry allegedly sold the Wailers' music to a British label, the Wailers acrimoniously split from him and recorded "Trench Town Rock" as an insult to Perry.

The only surviving member of Marley's original band, Bunny Wailer, still holds a grudge. "Lee Perry did nothing for the Wailers," Wailer says. "He just sat there in the studio while we played our music, and then he screwed us. We never saw a dime from those albums we did with him. Records that other people have made millions from. Lee Perry's ignorance cost us a lot of money, and I never forgave him."

For his part, Perry says, "I'd rather not talk on Bunny Wailer - he's a miserable person."

Whatever their differences, for the rest of his life Marley would return to Perry in search of inspiration, advice and to occasionally collaborate on songs like "Jah Live." "The only person Bob worked with whom he really respected was Lee Perry," says Chris Blackwell, who would assume production responsibilities for the Wailers from Perry. Blackwell had the band re-record many of the original Perry tracks, removing some of the grit, weirdness and mysticism from songs like "Duppy Conquerer" and "Small Axe" for release in the U.S., taking Marley and reggae music into the mainstream.

In 1973, Perry built his legendary Black Ark Studio, a small backyard bunker behind his home in Kingston, and embarked on a five-year period of around-the-clock production increasingly fueled by marijuana and alcohol. Black Ark would become the birthplace of countless reggae and dub classics.

In 1976, as political turmoil erupted in Jamaica, Perry produced the classics War Ina Babylon with Max Romeo and Police and Thieves with Junior Murvin. The albums catapulted him into national acclaim. After the Clash covered "Police and Thieves," Perry worked as their producer in London, and was swept up by the punk scene. Inspired by the new sound and energy, Perry co-wrote "Punky Reggae Party" for Bob Marley. "If I want to spit here, I spit here," Perry has said. "If I want to piss there, I piss there. I am punk."

In 1978, Perry, who was always wildly eccentric, suffered a dramatic mental breakdown after his wife left him for a Rastafarian studio musician. The grounds of his property were cluttered with Rasta sycophants, and he was being extorted by the local gangs. Perry became convinced that Rastafarians were to blame. He rode through Kingston with a rotting, maggot-infested slab of pork as a hood ornament. He began to paint obsessively, covering the property with incoherent graffiti. In 1983, in the depth of his madness, convinced the studio was possessed by evil spirits, Perry set the Black Ark studio ablaze. He entered into a deep depression, and as a result blew $25000 on an antique set of silverware.

He is now content though. His one complaint in life is that he lacks rivalry. "You don't get to where you need to get without competition," he says. He has not driven a car in 30 years, but sometimes he gets restless, and will have someone drive him down to a 14th century monastery where, in hopes of unsettling the priests, he walks into the chapel with a giant snowball on his head.

Perry's teenage son and daughter, Gabriel and Shiva, saunter into the room. Perry has at least eight children with four women. He signals to his daughter: "She's 20, and she's a virgin. She knows what men want. She has to stay with us, forever!" Shiva shakes her head, unfazed by her father's humor. Perry also laments that he would be dead without his Swiss wife. He no longer smokes or drinks, but his wife still needs weed.

#lee scratch perry #article

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oumaheroes · 1 year

Note

Sorry if this has already been answered but what are the requirements for a nation to reset? Like it involves dying but does it require upheaval within the nation or a period of turbulence? Is it like great natural disasters and they're events that nations have to naturally go through every so often to "release pressure" but only when they incur a fatal wound/illness (like how the San Andreas fault is theoretically overdue or how some volcanoes erupt every 100,000 years)? Does it just happen whenever a nation's heart stop beating and their brain ceases activity? How often does a nation reset on average in the past then?

Does that mean that nations in this universe are even more wary of death and injuries than usual? Do some nations fear being reset? (BC even if they do survive it in a sense they have to live another life before they return to being a nation. Tho England and France in the epilogue of Reset seemed to remember their reset adventures in medieval Europe with fondness so maybe not entirely.) Do they have different opinions on it for modern day or try to avoid death more as humans live longer now and they'd be living even longer reset lives than typically?

Have there ever been instances where a reset nation became famous for something like a celebrity of sorts? Like idk if America reset and Alfred became a famous singer or youtuber or politician? Would it be awkward for the others and Alfred himself? What would happen if a country goes through political turmoil or troubles while the nation is reset or if the nation somehow dissolves during that time? Does the nation live and die permanently as a human?

Just realized I'm asking a lot ajdhjkf I'm sorry if you mind or are bothered ^^;;;

Oh God Anon, you have made me JOYOUSLY happy with this ask, you have no idea. Questions about Reset , my dearly beloved ancient son, just make my heart so happy ;u;

Warning to anyone who reads this, long feral answers ahead

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What are the requirements for a nation to reset? Like it involves dying but does it require upheaval within the nation or a period of turbulence

Yes! Resets are caused by a significant cultural change where the day to day lives of people are significantly different to those who came before them. Religion, war, language, culture influences and mindset- there are many reasons that could cause it. In essence, anything that is significantly different in humanity’s way of life that would mean that their nation would be a bit out of touch with their experiences and troubles and would benefit from seeing things from their mortal viewpoint.

Before the age of the internet and after, the Industrial Revolution and after, Post and Pre WW1- all are good cases. We today grew up so so different from people born 100 years ago.

A Reset wouldn’t be enforced though. Nations wouldn’t one day just keel over and be thrust into a mortal life. The Reset would take advantage of whenever they next die, which is what worries England so much in the fic- it wasn’t a good time to go.

Is it like great natural disasters?

If that causes a significant cultural impact! If a people’s lifestyle has been drastically altered, then yes. If it’s just a big event, then probably not.

How often does a nation reset on average in the past then?

Oh, this is a good question! Previously, on average a nation would Reset every 200 or so years, sometimes much more and sometimes a bit less depending, on what happening in their lifetimes. Really, the lives of the majority of the population wouldn’t have changed much generation to generation, it was more the religion or culture mindset which did.

These days however, with the great technology boom and the fast increase of scientific breakthroughs, ease of travel, and religious shakeups, human lifestyles are changing more rapidly than ever before. Resets will likely be more frequently needed to keep up

Does that mean that nations in this universe are even more wary of death and injuries than usual? Do some nations fear being reset?

Yes! This was explored with England’s worrying after he narrowly put his one off in chapter 8:

‘England had been in danger many times during his long life, but this time felt different. He was not scared of death, he had died too many times in too many ways for him to harbour any trace of the primal terror surrounding his own mortality, and death was not an end for their kind. Death was a mere painful inconvenience which meant that England was out of action and more vulnerable on the world stage for however long it took him to revive again. But this was the first time that he could remember where he was actively conscious of wanting to stay alive for no reason other than he didn't want to die.

Avoiding a Reset added an odd layer of humanity that he hadn't experienced before. He knew full well, of course, that if he were killed now England the nation would not die. The body housing the spirit of the English nation and his own consciousness would momentarily cease to be, but England itself would construct a new body in due time and Arthur the person would once again be aware and alive and healthy. But now he felt more semi mortal, more human- closer to that strange line between life and death- than he ever had before.

There was also the added element that if he died now, at a time when a part of his consciousness was collected and bound up by a few priceless artefacts in the hands of a knowledgeable enemy, it could affect more than just England the person, it could affect England the nation and that made dying dangerous. Knowledge was always power and the knowledge of nations was a powerful piece of information indeed; England felt uncomfortable that a human, not even one of his own choosing, was made, in a way, equal to him by knowing what they knew.’

This time, he knows a Reset is coming and, as people are currently hunting him and France because of who they are, him dying will leave both him and his nation vulnerable. That has never happened to him before, and he hates it.

Aside from this, Resets are just a part of life and can have benefits, as you mentioned with France and England reminiscing at the end.

Do they have different opinions on it for modern day or try to avoid death more as humans live longer now and they'd be living even longer reset lives than typically?

ANOTHER REALLY GOOD QUESTION. Usually they don’t know they’re coming (they can guess but they never know for sure) but they avoid dying as much as the next person. But you touched on a really good point that makes me euphorically happy- people live longer.

Before, a Reset could be over fast. Death was everywhere, infant mortality was high, and the average life expectancy could easily be in the 30’s. Now though, they live longer and it is this exact oversight which got England and France into trouble in the first place:

“'Going forwards, we can make sure this won't happen again,' England's quiet voice prodded France away from the doze he'd been about to slip into after a few long minutes of silence, 'The main issue was that I didn't consider the possibility of you-' He stopped abruptly. It was going to take some time for both of them to get used to the name changes. 'Of Francis going into a home. Every other Reset we’ve either died at home or in battle and the case was found after the Reset or the other could bring it.'

England sighed through his nose. 'The concept of living for so long never occurred to me until it happened, honestly; we've never lived that long before.'

'Our populations have never been this healthy with stability almost guaranteed before.' France reminded him, 'I assume that's why you followed m- Francis, into the home?'

England hummed in agreement, 'I didn't consider he'd last that long there. I thought I'd either smuggle the body out or I'd Reset you quick, depending on the time or day Francis died. Either way, I'd know what happened straight away and could prevent the inevitable medical nightmare. Once I was in there, of course, I was in it for the long haul.'

France felt him turn to lay on his back.

'Which, was a mistake.' England admitted. 'I was away from home for too long and if there hadn't been a problem, Francis could have lived for another five or even ten years with the right care.'

'Oh, don't say that,' France groaned, flinging an arm up to rest over his eyes, 'he was so bored. Could you not have killed him sooner?'

'Could have done,' England agreed far too easily, 'but most of our people are now going through that part of the ageing process; I thought s'probably a good idea to experience it.'”

Chapter 7

Have there ever been instances where a reset nation became famous for something like a celebrity of sorts?

Most definitely! Not in the modern era as they’ve not, aside from France, Reset so recently. But in the past? God yes. I’ll leave exactly who and what to your imagination 😈

What would happen if a country goes through political turmoil or troubles while the nation is reset or if the nation somehow dissolves during that time? Does the nation live and die permanently as a human?

You saved the best question for last 😉 For my headcanons, I think that when a nation truly dies- the culture too changed to adapt to, the people no longer connecting to the culture which came before nor the history it was attached to- they Reset one final time and then die peacefully after living one last human life. If this happens whilst they’re already Reset they just don’t come back and this is seen as the better way to go- without knowing what they’ve lost. Otherwise, they slowly turn mortal and have to live on knowing that they’re on their last go, watching their bodies finally grow older and heeding to the passing of time.

This is what I think is happening to Gilbert, explored in Reckless Mortality

Anon really, you need to know how happy your questions have made me. I’m utterly emotional and I really appreciate you wanting to know more about this fic and AU <3

#heroes treasures #reset my beloved

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gritsandbrits · 1 year

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June is usually calm but when she gets angry, she gets ANGRY.

Now she doesn't dice people with hatchets but she emanates an aura of seething that boils dust particles & melts oxygen. If you happen to stand next to an angry June, you feel the heat coming off her in waves. She's even more quiet but instead of her usual observant curiosity, it's a steel hardened cunning regarding every person as a threat to her wellbeing. She has enough self awareness not to take it out on her loved ones. But, she doesn't want them near her either.

So she busies herself through drawing, ink in gory scribbles of war. Or, as she's at the counter cutting up carrots for a snack. She isn't alone, her two bodyguards are the only other ones in the room. Hardened as they were, they respected the power of a woman scorned.

Not enough to sit next to her obviously.

They made sure to sit close to the exit in case she erupts. Viktor opts to wait out the storm. Having been married, he is all too familiar with dealing with a burned woman. Modercai is silent but inside he is in turmoil. He'd never seen her this way before. Did he do something wrong? Usually he disregarded the feelings of others either out if apathy or genuine awkwardness.

But June was one of the few people he liked. Seeing her out of her peaceful self was offputting to say the least. He wasn't used to dealing with a woman's feelings either, so he couldn't just go up to her and ask what made her hurt. Perhaps his silence was source of her anger?

Just then Rocky bounces the room. He greets the two cats (who is reluctant to his politeness) and sits at the counter. He starts chatting up to the tall heiress. She responds with a few shrugs and curt grunts. It's meager small talk. Suddenly the sharp thump of a knife hitting the wooden board makes Rocky jump. Even the two bodyguards were startled at June's little outburst. Rocky's face shrinks as he sits like an icicle.

June's voice is quiet but effective enough to make Rocky's his tail and ears drop.

"Oooookay well it looks like you're busy, I'll be back in....ever!" He quickly sprints out of the stool and would've made it to safety if Viktor hadn't pulled him aside.

"What did you do?" He asks thickly.

Rocky swallows, knowing any exaggeration he could conjure up would result in a bash on the head.

"You know hehe it's funny we were all trying to get on this ride and-" he stumble in an attempt to find the right words.

"And?"

"And I kinda told June she was...too big?"

Viktor tsks and shakes his head. "You say the one thing a woman hates to hear?"

"Well I know how she would react but I didn't know she be this upset," the eccentric feline scratches the back of his head. "besides honesty is the best policy!"

"You really are an idiot," Mordecai huffed. At least now he can be relieved that the cat of his eye isn't mad at him. Still he wished her could say something to her. He looks at her as she munches on a carrot eyeing the three of them with angry amber eyes. Rocky squeaks and skimps pathetically out of the parlor.

Mordecai sighed. Perhaps they could talk it out when they're not around any sharp objects.

#lackadaisy cats #lackadaisy oc #si x canon #catsona #june grits #lackadaisy #mordecai heller #viktor #rocky lackadaisy #snippet #writers on tumblr #fanfiction #selfship #self insert #selfshipping

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contrivedcoincidences6 · 2 years

Text

Perfectly Aligned

Happy AU day!

My contribution for today is the first chapter of a multi chapter fic I am writing that takes place in a world where Palpatine died at the end of The Clone Wars. Huge thanks to @soloorganaas who edited for me super last minute!

Read my other HanLeia Appreciation week contributions here!

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Every decision that is made has consequences and reactions. For each unique consequence and reaction a different world opens up. In most Universes Anakin Skywalker turned to the Dark Side and became Darth Vader, and in many of those universe’s Padmé Amidala died in childbirth.

But there are those universes where Anakin didn’t turn and Palpatine didn't win.

In this particular universe, upon discovering the truth of who Palpatine was, Anakin fought him and in the end both fell leaving a scattered and confused Jedi Order and Republic.

In light of all that had happened and the truths that were uncovered after their deaths, the Jedi Order separated itself from the Republic politically and took a hard look at some of the traditions they’d held onto for millenia.

In all the turmoil Sabé returned to Padmé’s side and was there for the birth of the twins, to hold her best friend's hand and tell her it would all be ok. Sabé stayed to help raise the children and the two rekindled their childhood feelings.

As the twins grew in their Force abilities, Padmé and Obi-Wan Kenobi took an idea to the Jedi council, one they would not have considered before the war, before Anakin Skywalker nearly turned to the Dark Side. They proposed that familial and romantic connections were not harmful to the Jedi cause, but rather an aid in helping a Jedi grow in their understanding of the Force. They emphasized that healthy connections were important for all beings and that ignoring those needs only made Jedi more susceptible to the Dark Side.

Padmé made it clear that she was not giving her children to the Jedi and having their connection with each other severed. The Council took time to consider the proposal, spending weeks arguing and meditating on it. And finally at the age of five, the Skywalker twins were brought into the Jedi Order as the first of many initiates who would maintain contact with their family.

Despite all the changes, some things remain the same in almost every Universe and some relationships are set conclusions.

Leia Skywalker leveled her lightsaber at her former master’s chest with a smile, his own violet lightsaber just out of reach of his hand. Mace’s expression was set in stone but for the small upturn on one side of his mouth indicating approval.

“Very good.” Suddenly his lightsaber was in his hands, the blade reignighted as he parried her weapon out of her hand. “But enemies don’t always stop when cornered.”

Leia rolled away from him before he could strike and stood up with a glare. “Well if you were an enemy you’d be dead.”

Mace chuckled and put away his saber, tossing Leia her own saber through the Force. “Am I not allowed to tease you as a Jedi Knight?”

Leia rolled her eyes, but felt a familiar presence enter the room before she could retort.

“Luke!” she shouted as she ran into her brother’s arms.

As she hugged her brother she felt his Force presence surround her, comforting and familiar. He’d been gone only a few days but his mission had been dangerous: Master Yoda had foreseen a volcanic eruption taking place on the tropical moon Brun. It was not a heavily populated or important planet, but they were close enough to help and possibly get everyone out of the danger zone before it even happened. She knew from reports that the eruption had taken place not long after Luke and Ahsoka had arrived and she’d been fighting her nervousness for them.

“The last transmission we received was spotty, we were afraid you wouldn’t make it out in time! Mama has been stopping by every day for news.”

Luke pulled back from her with a smile asking, “Is she here now?”

“You just missed her.”

“Just as well, I need to clean up before she sees me like this.”

For the first time Leia noticed that his robes were covered in ash and the edges of his clothing and hair seemed singed. She tried to center herself as she realized how close a call it had been.

“That would be best. What happened?”

Luke rubbed the back of his head and said, “Things happened faster than we anticipated. We only had a few more families to evacuate when the whole mountain blew. It was incredible to see but our pilot was scared and took off when he saw the explosion. We were stranded, but luckily there were still a couple Guild members on planet with their ship. They’d been making a delivery when the volcano started to smoke and they stayed behind to help. We got everyone off planet in their ship with just a few minutes to spare.”

“I’m happy to hear it! Mom will probably offer them a reward,” Leia added with a laugh.

Luke chuckled.

“And this pilot will gladly take it I’m sure,” Luke peered behind her and proffered a slight bow saying, “Master Windu it is good to see you as well.”

Leia’s master had been standing behind her with a disapproving look that cracked a bit at Luke's formality.

“It’s good to see you safe, Jedi Skywalker,” Mace said, “Have the pilots been compensated yet for their trouble?”

“I don’t think so. Ahsoka doesn’t have the clearance for payment; we commed Masters Obi-Wan and Yoda but they were not available.”

Mace’s mouth twisted a bit at the mention of Ahsoka but he nodded and said, “Let’s go to the hangar to greet them then and I can settle up.”

Near the end of the Clone War Ahsoka had been falsely accused of a bombing that had taken place in one of the Temple’s hangars. The Masters had done a poor job of defending her and it had taken the efforts of Luke and Leia’s parents to bring the truth to light. After the dust had settled the Masters offered Ahsoka a place as a Jedi Knight, Ahsoka had accepted under the condition that she become a Jedi Wayseeker.

Wayseekers were Jedi who for various reasons wanted to operate independently of the Jedi High Council and its dictates.

This had sent the Masters into a bit of a tissy at the time. Wayseekers were rarer during the Clone War; many who had previously been Wayseekers renounced the title and joined the Order properly again. It was also unusual for a newly Knighted Jedi to take on the title so soon. In the end they’d allowed it for all that Ahsoka had been through. She had stayed a Wayseeker ever since and while most had accepted it Leia knew Mace still disapproved over twenty years later.

She and Luke shared a look of familiar exasperation as they followed behind the Jedi Master. Mace Windu had chosen Leia as his Padawan when she was still quite young. He’d not taken an apprentice since Depa Billaba and many had believed she would be his last Padawan.

The hangar had a particular burnt smell to it that Leia suspected was coming from the patched together freighter that was in the fourth dock. The ship had definitely been through a lot, but Leia wondered if any of the damage had even been from the volcano.

Four figures stood around the boarding ramp: Ahsoka, a Sullustan that Leia had seen around the hangar often named Ke, a human, and a Wookiee. As they approached Ke was shaking her head at the ship and saying it would take more than a few hours to get all systems in working order.

“We can’t sit here for two days! We’ve gotta make a living here,” the human complained.

Ahsoka brightened when she sighted Leia and broke away from the conversation to greet her and Mace.

After a long hug Leia took a look at Ahsoka and noted the same burnt robes and a few scratches and bruises, but was happy to see her Aunt Soka was all in one piece.

Ahsoka inclined her head and greeted the Master standing behind the twins. “Master Windu.”

Mace nodded back and said, “Jedi Tano it is good to see you and Skywalker safely back with us.”

The human pilot, who until that moment had been watching quietly, interjected, “Master Windu? I believe you’re who we're supposed to talk to about getting paid,” he put his hand forward and added, “Name’s Han Solo,” then pointing to the Wookiee he said, “and this is Chewbacca.”

Mace shook his hand and said, “Thank you for your assistance on Brun, it is much appreciated. As you said I am Mace Windu, a Master and member of the Jedi Council.” Mace gestured to Leia. “This is Jedi Leia Skywalker.”

Han shot Leia a bold look, already put off by the pilot's focus on getting his credits. Leia only nodded in greeting.

Mace pulled out his datapad and silently typed on the screen for a moment before looking back up at Captain Solo.

“This should be plenty but do let us know if your ship needs repairs that exceed what we have available, we will make sure it’s taken care of,” Mace said as the pilot pulled out his own data pad and looked at it with wide eyes.

“Yeah we’ll do that, thanks,” he said after a moment of staring at whatever outlandish amount Master Windu had given him.

Leia tried not to scoff at the interaction;in her opinion it was in bad taste to ask for compensation after helping someone in need, but she tried to imagine what her mother would have to say about such thinking.

‘Not all beings grew up with everything you have, Leia, it requires a certain amount of privilege to be giving.’

“I noticed that Ke has already begun working on your ship, will you need more mechanics?” Mace asked.

“Nah,” Han waved his hand, “we’ll be fine, we’re used to a small crew.”

Mace departed after a few more niceties and Leia was getting ready to follow behind him when Luke started pulling her toward the ship.

“Leia, you really need to take a look at the Falcon, it's amazing! I’ve never seen a ship like it!” Luke exclaimed as he pulled her along.

Han followed beside and added, “She’s one of a kind, made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs.”

Leia rolled her eyes at the claim and asked, “So you usually spend your time running spice?”

“Well not usually,” Han responded defensively, “but we gotta eat.”

She spun on her heel to face him then, ignoring Luke’s pulling. “Do you know how terribly the Hutt’s treat the enslaved workers there?” Leia demanded, suddenly angry by his nonchalant attitude.

Taken aback, Han just stared at her for a moment before his face twisted in a sneer and he stuck a finger in her direction and said, “Yeah I do as a matter of fact! Chewie and I helped free a bunch of them right before we did the Kessel run! But I know that doesn’t fit into whatever ideas you’ve gotten in your head about me.”

Leia felt her face growing warm but found herself unable to hold back.

“Ideas!” she started helplessly. “Like you demanding money for helping people out of a disaster zone? Let me ask you this: if Luke and Ahsoka were not there representing the Jedi would you have even helped those people? They probably couldn’t pay you!”

Before he was just irritated but now he seemed angry.

“Of course we’d help them, we’re not monsters! But our ship took a beating and we provided a service. You Jedi can afford to help us!”

“Well then thank the Force there were some Jedi there so you could get your pay day!” Leia yelled and stomped away, shaking off Luke’s arm. “Luke you should change before mama comes to see you,” Leia shouted back over her shoulder as she left the hangar.

---

That night at dinner Luke told their moms about Brun and their journey back. Luke went on and on about Han and Chewbacca and their ship, driving Leia to have an extra glass of wine with her dinner. If Luke was not already involved with their fellow Knight, Ezra Bridger, she would have suspected he had a crush on Han Solo. He was attractive enough, she supposed before banishing the thought from her mind.

Their mom, Sabé, listened intently as Luke described how Han worked with Jabba the Hutt but was sick of those kinds of jobs.

“We’ve been trying to have someone on the inside of Jabba’s operation for a while. Do you think he’d be willing to help us?” she asked. Sabé worked with various freedom groups who had taken down a couple Hutts already, but they’d never had any luck penetrating Jabba’s operation.

Luke shrugged and said, “Maybe! They definitely have issues with how Jabba runs things, I’ll ask him!”

“Be careful, he’ll take you for every credit you’ve got,” Leia grumbled.

Padmé turned to her with furrowed brows.

“Leia, you shouldn’t speak like that. He’s a pilot, he deserves to be paid for his work like anyone else,” her mother chastised.

“Mama, the first words out of his mouth to Master Windu were asking for payment!” Leia insisted, laying down her fork in irritation.

“Was Master Windu offended by it?” Padmé asked and continued when Leia didn’t say anything, “Then I don’t know why you are.”

Luke piped up, “Leia didn’t like him right away. They got into a huge argument in the hangar.”

She glared at Luke and sent him a telepathic instruction to fuck off, suddenly feeling 12 instead of 23.

Her mother turned to her, disappointment written all over her face, and said, “You should consider apologizing, Leia, he saved your brother’s life.”

Taking a deep breath she responded, “Fine, I’ll consider it. I’m going back to the temple.”

She kissed her mama’s forehead to soothe the hurt expression she got as Leia stood up.

“I’m sorry, I’m just tired and need to go and meditate for a bit before bed,” she explained as she made her way over to Sabé to say goodnight.

Back at the Temple she walked past the hangar where the Millenium Falcon was parked. The lights were all off except for a bright spotlight that shone down on the old freighter. Her captain sat on top of the ship working on something with a welding torch.

Leia found herself watching him for a moment, fascinated by his dedication to the ship. If Luke was to be believed, Han had been working on the ship since she’d left them that afternoon.

Shaking herself out of her thoughts Leia continued on to her room where she struggled to meditate for an hour, before finally going to bed.

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