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ibijau · 4 years

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Part 2 of That Age Reversal AU

warning for canon typical violence, and for, like, all of Nightless City :)

Bent over some ancient maps of the region around Nightless City, Nie Huaisang barely noticed his brother entering his tent.

The Sunshot Campaign, so far, was going decently but not great. It had been easy in the warmth of summer to make war, but now that winter was settling in, new difficulties were encountered on their side. Nie Huaisang, useless as a commander of men and a tactician, at least participated in the effort by organising supplies lines so they wouldn't run out of food and medicine.

It wasn't the most glorious of tasks, and Nie Huaisang knew he would get out of that war without a title, no matter how important his contribution. It suited him just fine.

Still, he would have liked for some of the other sect leaders to cooperate with him a little more. They were all always begging for supplies, yet refused to contribute money or any goods from their territories, not until he sent Nie Mingjue to threaten them for it.

And now Nie Mingjue had returned from the Langya front, hopefully having obtained something, if not from Jin Guangshan himself, then at least from one of his allies.

"So, how are things over there?" Nie Huaisang asked, never looking up from his map. It was so ancient, from back before Qishan Wen had risen to such prominence, but it was the only one he'd found in their library and he was trying to compare it with his memories of past travels to Nightless City.

When his brother remained silent too long, Nie Huaisang finally looked up his way. He instantly worried at seeing Nie Mingjue so sombre.

"Did something happen?"

Nie Mingjue hesitated. Instead of answering, he came closer and pulled Nie Huaisang into a hug. It happened more and more these days. The initial glory of fighting for freedom was melting away, and Nie Mingjue was starting to realise what messy affairs wars were. It had become even worse since Meng Yao's departure, with Nie Mingjue’s temper rising too easily sometimes. Nie Huaisang tried to make him meditate as often as possible and closely monitored his spiritual energies, still traumatised by the memory of their father's death.

"You're so quiet tonight," Nie Huaisang complained lightly, as if this weren't anything more than a mild annoyance. "Come on, say something. If you don't want to talk about the war, give me news of Meng Yao. Did you get to see him?"

Nie Mingjue tensed, and the hug turned so tight that it was nearly painful.

"I saw him," Nie Mingjue muttered. "They made him a foot soldier, like any normal recruit."

Nie Huaisang sighed, and patted his brother's back. Of course he had expected that, knowing Jin Guangshan, but Nie Mingjue still held illusions about fairness and justice.

"It's their loss," Nie Huaisang said firmly. "And Meng Yao is too clever to stand for it very long. It's good for him to see first hand how the Jins are, so he gets over his obsession with his father. That way, when he comes back to us, he'll know…"

"He's not coming back," Nie Mingjue snapped.

"Is he dead?" Nie Huaisang gasped, unable to see any other reason why their friend wouldn't return to them. Meng Yao knew they valued him the way Jin Guangshan never would. Aside from death, what could keep him from them?

"He's not dead," Nie Mingjue hissed. "But he's also not coming back. He's made his choice."

Relaxing a little, Nie Huaisang once more patted his brother's back, then rubbed little circles into those tense muscles. Of course, it was normal for Nie Mingjue to feel a little betrayed once he realised Meng Yao had really left them. And Nie Mingjue was only seventeen, with a heart too big and a mind still too soft, he felt everything so intensely. Whatever he said now, Nie Huaisang was certain his brother would welcome Meng Yao with open arms when he came back to them, and help organise his courtship with Lan Xichen.

It would be so nice when things fell into place.

"Da-Ge, you really like Meng Yao a lot, don't you?" Nie Mingjue asked.

"I do."

"Weren't you disappointed when he left us?"

Nie Huaisang grimaced.

"A little, but you and Xichen were so excited about doing this for him, and… He needed to make that mistake to understand. I know he's a good and serious young man though, and ultimately he'll make the right choice. And when we have him back, we're not letting him go again! Not unless a great beauty comes begging to marry him."

"He's not coming back," Nie Mingjue stubbornly insisted, making his brother roll his eyes.

Ah, teenagers could be so stubborn! This would be a lesson, not just for Meng Yao, but for Nie Mingjue as well. And when they had both learned it, they'd all be happy together again.

Quiet wasn’t a word Nie Huaisang would have ever thought of using to describe the Unclean Realm, but upon returning there after the war, it was the only one that fit. Those high, thick walls felt safe in a way they hadn’t in years. The disciples making noise during training seemed peaceful compared to what Nie Huaisang had heard during the war. There were no more battles, no more wounded to care for, no more dead to bury with what little respect they could manage when they needed to be so hasty about it. Nie Huaisang’s office, a cramped room that saw little sunlight, felt like the height of comfort after so many months in a draughty tent where he always ended up getting mud on his clothes.

More than that though, the Unclean Realm felt safe because finally the elders had all been forced to accept that Nie Mingjue and him weren’t just foolish children playing at ruling. Nie Mingjue had proved an amazingly competent leader of men whose troupes adored him, helped in this by the fact that they had never lacked in any of the supplies they needed thanks to Nie Huaisang’s careful organisation.

Nie Huaisang wasn’t so foolish as to think he no longer had enemies, not after so many years of fear, but for the first time since his father’s death he felt certain that he had more allies than opponents.

It was an odd thing to feel safe again in his own home.

All Nie Huaisang needed to be happy was for Nie Mingjue to finish recovering from what he had suffered at the hands of Wen Ruohan, and then all would be well.

It really was the only stain on the many victories they’d obtained during the war. The fact that Wen Ruohan had managed to capture Nie Mingjue, that he had hurt him… But it was in the past now. Nie Mingjue was better, almost entirely recovered, and arguing daily with the healers for the right to get out of bed. Another week, the healers said, and so that morning, as he walked out of his brother’s room, Nie Huaisang privately gave it about a day before Nie Mingjue became too bored and ignored their orders.

With this consideration in mind, Nie Huaisang headed to the training ground to give some orders to the masters in charge. He couldn’t stop Nie Mingjue from doing as he liked, but he could at least make sure others would keep an eye on him and mind he remained reasonable during practice.

It was there, in the main courtyard, that Nie Huaisang discovered Lan Xichen. The young man, who was following his first disciple toward the building that contained his office, smiled brightly when he spotted him, and immediately walked his way at a pace so quick it came rather close to running.

“What a pleasure to see you, Lan er-gongzi,” Nie Huaisang greeted him. “Ah, no, my apology… it’s Zewu-Jun now, right?”

“Please don’t call me that,” Lan Xichen begged, blushing and wringing his hands. “It’s embarrassing, and we’re friends, right?”

“I just don’t want to be disrespectful to a great war hero. Mingjue is very keen on letting others people call him Chifeng-Zun, it’s getting to his head a bit. He’s such a brat. And I suppose you’re here to see him?”

Surprisingly, Lan Xichen shook his head.

“Hopefully I’ll talk to him later, but first I wanted a word with Nie zongzhu, if possible? I need your help with something that concerns your brother.”

“Then I cannot possibly refuse,” Nie Huaisang replied. “Let’s go somewhere more private, Zewu-Jun.”

“Nie zongzhu!”

Nie Huaisang laughed at the younger man’s outrage and embarrassment, glad to see that even after everything they had all gone through, at least this remained the same. It really was such fun to tease Lan Xichen.

A few moments later, the two of them were in Nie Huaisang’s office, and Lan Xichen finally explained what his problem was.

“Nie zongzhu, you know that your brother and Meng Yao… that is, Jin Guangyao have had something of a falling out during the war?”

Nie Huaisang nodded. Nie Mingjue had refused to give him any details, but apparently the two had had an argument of some sort, shortly before Meng Yao left to become a double agent at the court of Wen Ruohan. Nie Huaisang had some vague suspicions that the argument might have been about that very decision to act as a spy, something which Jin Guangshan now claimed to have ordered. Knowing Jin Guangshan and Meng Yao both, Nie Huaisang rather suspected that the young man had gone off on his own in a new attempt to gain his father’s attention, which had sadly worked.

“They were such good friends,” Lan Xichen sighed. “And I like both of them so much, it really pains me that they cannot seem to reconcile. A-Yao really wants to, you know! And he’s so sorry for what he had to do while pretending to work for Wen Ruohan. I know that Mingjue is angry at him for it, but he really had no choice, it was the only way he could save him.”

Nie Huaisang nodded again. This too, his brother refused to talk about, and so he had only heard it from Lan Xichen. But apparently, after Nie Mingjue and some of his men had been captured, Meng Yao had killed those Nie disciples to amuse Wen Ruohan, all while waiting for a chance to kill the tyrant. Yet Nie Mingjue had only seen this as a betrayal, and would have killed Meng Yao if Lan Xichen had not pointed out that their friend had saved him.

Nie Huaisang, who would have slit open anyone’s throat, even his own or Lan Wangji’s, if it could have saved Nie Mingjue, simply failed to understand why his brother remained so stuck on this. It was sad, yes. He would have preferred for their disciples to make it alive, because they were his too, certainly. But sacrifices had to be made sometimes, and ultimately Nie Huaisang cared for nothing but his brother’s well-being.

For saving Nie Mingjue, Meng Yao had Nie Huaisang’s eternal gratitude.

“Mingjue can be a little stubborn,” Nie Huaisang said, which they both knew to be an understatement. “I don’t think there’s anything we can do about this situation.”

Lan Xichen smiled nervously, twisting his fingers.

“I have an idea, but I’m not sure Mingjue will like it. If I had your support, though… he listens to you and values your opinion so much, if you support it, I’m sure he will agree!”

“You overestimate the power I have over my brother,” Nie Huaisang chuckled. “I’ve never even gotten him to eat his vegetables. But go on, tell me your idea, Zewu-Jun.”

Lan Xichen bit his lip, and closed his eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath.

“I was thinking Nie Mingjue, A-Yao, and me could become sworn brothers,” he announced. “That way, they’d have a better chance to spend time together and reconcile! And it would be good for A-Yao to have friends outside of Lanling Jin. Even if Jin zongzhu has recognised him, I don’t think any of them really see his worth. But if he’s sworn brother with a future sect leader and with the brother of another sect leader, then they’ll have to treat him with more consideration, right?”

He sounded so innocent and hopeful, Nie Huaisang wanted to lean over and pinch his cheeks like he would a child. Lan Wangji really had the best little brother, and Nie Huaisang envied him to have someone like that at his side, instead of a wilful brat. If things had been different, Nie Huaisang really would have tried to steal Lan Xichen away.

“It’s not a bad plan, but it’s not exactly a good one either,” Nie Huaisang pointed out. “Nie Mingjue is too stubborn to accept this. And besides, if you swear brotherhood with Meng Yao, won’t it make it awkward later down the line when you marry him?”

Lan Xichen, always perfect and elegant even in the middle of battle, gaped at him with an expression of mild horror so ridiculous that Nie Huaisang couldn’t help laughing.

“Sorry, was that supposed to be a secret? Your brother kind of spilled the beans.”

“My brother told you I want to marry Jin Guangyao?” Lan Xichen gasped, the horror on his face getting worse.

Nie Huaisang grinned, and waved his hand.

“Something of that effect. He told me you had a person in view, and of course I’ve seen how you are with Meng Yao, so it was easy to draw a few conclusions. I can only wish you great happiness, although I will say that I’m upset you kept it secret from me. I thought we were friends, Lan er-gongzi.”

Lan Xichen gaped some more, opening and closing his mouth a few times, much like a very pretty goldfish. He then closed his eyes and, like before, took a deep breath before speaking again.

“Nie zongzhu, although he is very dear to me, I have no such intentions toward Jin Guangyao,” Lan Xichen proclaimed in a pinched voice.

“But there is someone,” Nie Huaisang teased, still a little pained that his friend had kept such a secret from him. “Come one, tell your Huaisang-ge about the boy you like. Is it someone I know? Does he like you back? I know it’s a boy, Wangji said as much, but he wouldn’t say more.”

“Brother talks too much,” Lan Xichen muttered, a heavy blush spreading on his face. “I haven’t said anything because I thought Nie zongzhu had enough problems on his own without being burdened with this. When we wrote to each other about my brother and Wei Wuxian, didn’t you always say you had no time for that sort of things yourself?”

Nie Huaisang waved his hand. “My case is different. Who can think of romance while raising a brat like Mingjue? I refuse to consider it at all for the moment, I’m too busy. Maybe when he’s sect leader, I can think about that... But that doesn’t mean I can’t make a little time for gossip now,” he added with a mischievous smile. “Zewu-Jun, tell me about your boyfriend. I need to make sure it’s someone worthy of you. Obviously Wangji thinks he is, or he’d have put an end to it, but Wangji has awful tastes so that doesn’t say much.”

“Nie zongzhu, please stop teasing me,” Lan Xichen begged. “You really don’t know?”

He looked so distressed that Nie Huaisang, for a moment, truly felt sorry for poking fun at him like that. At the same time, his curiosity was piqued. If both Lan brothers thought it obvious who Lan Xichen liked, how could he have missed it? Even with Lan Xichen being a kind and sweet boy who treated everyone warmly, including an old man like Nie Huaisang himself, there had to have been signs which he had missed.

Nie Huaisang told himself it was just that he saw Lan Xichen as another little brother and so the idea of him being in love was mildly unpleasant, but even that didn’t sit quite right. After all, he’d been delighted from the start by Nie Mingjue’s angry little crush on Jiang Cheng, while the idea of Lan Xichen liking anyone just displeased him.

Maybe it was just that nobody could ever be good enough for this boy who smiled like the sun.

“Let’s make a deal, Zewu-Jun,” Nie Huaisang offered with a devious grin. “If you tell me about your boyfriend, I’ll support you when you tell Mingjue about your idea of becoming sworn brothers.”

Lan Xichen inhaled sharply and pinched his lips, looking as if he might cry.

“Nie zongzhu, that’s not fair. The two things have nothing to do with each other!”

Nie Huaisang nodded, his grin growing wider. “Zewu-Jun, life is unfair.”

Lan Xichen looked down at his hands, fidgeting nervously. It was the most anxious Nie Huaisang had ever seen him, and as the silence between them started to stretch, he found it worrying. Lan Wangji clearly approved of the match, meaning it couldn’t be an awful one, nor an impossible one, so what could have made Lan Xichen so fearful to reveal it?

Nie Huaisang, feeling the other man’s anxiety be passed on to him, was about to call off the deal when Lan Xichen took a deep breath. He then looked right into Nie Huaisang’s eyes and spoke with new determination.

“I cannot give a name,” he explained, his voice trembling slightly. “This person isn’t free to be courted at the present, and I do not wish to add to his troubles. But I… I like him very much, and I have hopes that he at least likes me a little. It will be a few years before he is free to live his life as he pleases, but when he is… when he is, I will do my best to make him fall in love with me.”

“Isn’t it troublesome to have to wait like that?” Nie Huaisang asked, surprised by that dedication. “I remember being nineteen, I wouldn’t have had the patience to wait for anyone.”

“This person is worth it,” Lan Xichen replied vehemently, his face the brightest shade of red Nie Huaisang had ever seen. “He really is, and I really hope I can convince him to let me have a chance when the time comes.”

He sounded so hopeful and determined that Nie Huaisang couldn’t help being touched. For a reason he couldn’t quite name, he also felt envious of this mysterious man. His own experience with romance had been people attracted by his status as sect leader, or people trying to trick him into letting his guard down to plot against him and his brother. Hopefully he might get a chance at something a little less tainted once he was finally free to step down in favour of his brother, but even then he didn’t expect to ever provoke the sort of passion that Lan Xichen apparently felt.

“That man would have to be a fool to not fall for you,” Nie Huaisang stated, trying not to sound too bitter. “But if he is a fool, come to your Huaisang-ge for comfort and we’ll see what to do. Maybe I’ll decide to seduce you and keep you here in the Unclean Realm. That way you can at least become Mingjue’s brother, and we have much better food here than the Cloud Recesses.”

Lan Xichen quickly looked down. “I would very much like to be Mingjue’s brother, yes,” he whispered.

Nie Huaisang could only laugh at his quiet eagerness. He leaned over the table to gently tap Lan Xichen’s burning cheek.

“You really are such a sweet boy, I’m glad my brother and you are friends. Now, there’s an easier way for you to become his new big brother, so let’s go talk to him about your idea. He won’t like it, and I’m not sure it’s a good idea anyway, but I promised to help and so I will.”

Before Nie Huaisang could move his hand away, Lan Xichen grabbed it in both of his and squeezed it gently. To make matters worse, he then smiled that beautiful, bright smile of his, the one that really did make Nie Huaisang want to steal him away from his sect.

Maybe it was for the best that Lan Xichen wasn’t his little brother, because Nie Huaisang would have let him get away with too much, even worse than he already did with Nie Mingjue.

That night, when everyone had gone to bed, Nie Huaisang heard a specific knock on his door. Even recognising the signal, he grabbed his sabre on the way to greet his guest, but as expected it was only Nie Mingjue, alone and looking calmer than he had that afternoon when Lan Xichen had presented his plan.

Nie Huaisang couldn’t help smiling. That was just like his brother to act like that, exploding with emotion at first, only to later give things a more thorough consideration once he had calmed down. He silently invited his brother to come in, and quickly closed the door behind him.

While Nie Huaisang went to sit crossed legged on his bed (heavy conversation could be had in comfort), his brother decided to remain standing awkwardly in the middle of the room. He’d grown so tall, and yet he still looked like a little boy sometimes, shy and uncertain about what to think about complicated situations until he had checked his emotions and thoughts with his big brother. Nie Huaisang was going to miss that, the day Nie Mingjue realised he didn’t need him at all to make his mind about things.

“Do you really think I should do it?” Nie Mingjue asked. “What Jin Guangyao did was… it was really bad. I know he saved me, but I didn’t want to be saved like that.”

Nie Huaisang gave the question some serious consideration, now that he wasn’t distracted by Lan Xichen’s infectious optimism.

“It would put you in a delicate position,” he admitted. “Since you’re the youngest, you’d owe him respect, which you can’t seem to give to anyone except Lan Xichen.”

“And you,” Nie Mingjue protested.

“Only when it suits you,” Nie Huaisang corrected with a shrug. “But Meng Yao would also have a responsibility towards you, to be a model and a guide. And if he fails to act in a way that fits your sense of justice and decency, it would be easier to confront him if he’s your sworn brother. Otherwise, he’ll just be the member of another sect, one we don’t even get along with all that well, so you would have no right to say anything about his behaviour unless Jin Guangshan too condemned him.”

“Which he won’t,” Nie Mingjue bitterly grumbled. “But I don’t know if I can trust Jin Guangyao at all, not anymore. He’s not an honest man.”

“Neither am I,” Nie Huaisang reminded them, both of them knowing to what extremes he had gone in those terrible early years. “A-Jue, sometimes… sometimes the world forces us to make choices that we don’t like. I’ve made those choices, and I would make them again, because you matter than much to me, and I cannot regret them. This will be your choice. I won’t force you to go along with Lan Xichen’s idea, and I won’t even ask that you try to be on good terms with Meng Yao if it is so unbearable to you. But he will remain my friend, and I will remain grateful to him for saving you, no matter what choice you make, and I believe the same goes for Lan Xichen. Do you understand that?”

Nie Mingjue somberly nodded.

They dropped the conversation that night, and did not speak of it again in the days that followed. But in the end, Nie Mingjue agreed to the sworn brotherhood, saying he wanted to keep an eye on Meng Yao and that seemed the best way to do it.

It started slowly, a few light drops announcing a storm none of them could have predicted.

On the whole, Nie Huaisang felt little interest in Wei Wuxian’s actions and methods. The boy’s insolence amused him at best, because it infuriated so many of those stuffy sect leaders who had made his own life a living hell whenever they had dismissed him. He was perhaps a little sorry for Jiang Cheng who clearly didn’t know what to do with such an unruly shixiong. And he definitely felt very sorry for Lan Wangji who would never get to marry that chaotic boy now, but he was certain Lan Wangji was reasonable enough he’d recover from it with a little time. In fact, Nie Huaisang was already trying to come up with a list of available ladies of good birth and good cultivation that might suit him better than Wei Wuxian ever would have, anyway.

As for the rest, it really did not concern Nie Huaisang. He had maintained his grip on Qinghe Nie by staying resolutely outside of all those quarrels that other sects enjoyed so much. Nie Mingjue often berated him for staying so neutral, but it was simpler than trying to keep up with all the arguments that were happening all the time.

It was not his problem when Wei Wuxian, at a Night Hunt on Phoenix Mountain, alienated almost everyone present by showing off his methods. All Nie Huaisang cared about was that Nie Mingjue, using only legitimate skills and methods, easily took down half of the preys present that day, reminding everyone that the future leader of Qinghe Nie would be a man above all else.

It did not concern him when Wei Wuxian, on a whim, decided to further antagonise Jin Zixun and steal some war prisoners from him, even turning one of them into a fierce corpse of apparently unprecedented power. Nie Huaisang watched those events unfold, and felt very glad that neither those Wen nor Wei Wuxian were in his charge.

Perhaps it should have caused him surprise when Wei Wuxian seceded from Yunmeng Jiang and established himself with his evil cohort in the dreaded Burial Mounds of Yiling. But at nearly the same time the renewed engagement of Jin Zixuan and Jiang Yanli was announced, which was a topic worthier of Nie Huaisang’s attention. He ordered new robes, and commissioned a new guan for the occasion. It was a lovely wedding, and he spent most of it chatting with either the Lan brothers or Meng Yao, which was the most pleasant use of time Nie Huaisang could think of.

There were rumour of unsavoury characters gathering at the feet of the Burial Mounds, horror stories about the Ghost General that reached the Unclean Realm, causing Nie Mingjue to worry… but more importantly Jiang Yanli was going to have a baby, and who would have thought Jin Zixuan of all people would be the first in their generation to not only get married but also become a father? It made Nie Huaisang tease his brother about getting on with it already, or else someone else was going to snatch Jiang Cheng right in front of him. Nie Mingjue grumbled something about pots and kettles but refused to explain himself.

Then, for young Jin Ling’s hundredth’s day party, it became rumoured that Wei Wuxian had been invited, and Nie Huaisang felt comforted in his decision not to become involved. Everything was going to sort itself out, as it usually did. So Nie Huaisang enjoyed the party, playing at making Lan Xichen blush, until…

Until someone came in running, saying that Jin Zixuan was dead, that Wei Wuxian had used his Ghost General to murder him in cold blood.

After such a crime, even Nie Huaisang couldn’t refuse to get involved anymore. When Jin Guangshan called a gathering of all the sects in Nightless City to declare war against Wei Wuxian, Qinghe Nie had no choice but to come. To do anything else would have been to side with the Yiling Patriarch, and neither Nie brothers felt any inclination to do so. Wei Wuxian, whatever else he was once, had become a menace to be taken down and eliminated.

But perhaps, just perhaps, Nie Huaisang should have kept his sect out of this mess after all.

Because Wei Wuxian heard about their gathering, about the burning of his two closest accomplices.

To say he was unhappy about it would have been quite the understatement.

Very early on, Nie Huaisang lost track of what was happening around him. All he knew was that there were a great number of fierce corpses attacking them, more powerful ones than his cultivation safely allowed him to fight against. He was forced to stick close to Nie Mingjue, shamefully hiding behind his little brother when it should have been him protecting the younger boy. All he could do was weakly guard his brother’s back, and warning him whenever enemies drew closer.

The fight went on for what felt like hours, bringing wave after wave of relentless fierce corpses that never tired even though the living did. Nie Huaisang became convinced that they would all die there if Wei Wuxian couldn’t be stopped. He begged and begged Nie Mingjue to fly away while he still had the strength for it, so that at least he survived, but Nie Mingjue, pig headed brat that he was, refused to abandon their comrades, refused to act dishonourably even to save his own life.

But at last, after an eternity and a half, the number of fierce corpses diminished, letting them regain the upper hand. Nie Mingjue and Nie Huaisang, who were among the few still standing, were left facing a scene of utter desolation beyond anything that even the Sunshot Campaign had brought. Corpses fresh and old surrounded them, and everywhere all they could hear were the moans of the dying and the wounded rising in the most horrible sound Nie Huaisang had ever heard.

“Mingjue, take care of our people,” Nie Huaisang ordered with an empty calm he hadn’t felt in years, not since his father died before his eyes in a fit of murderous madness. “Do not squander your spiritual energy trying to heal them, but send a message home so those who stayed behind come help us. Leave the dead where they are for now, we can’t do anything for them, but gather everyone who is wounded and can be moved safely. If anyone is well enough to help, make them help. No spiritual healing! We don’t know if Wei Wuxian won’t be back.”

Nie Mingjue nodded numbly, looking lost and small for all that he was so much bigger than Nie Huaisang now. It was tempting to go hug him, to tell him that things would be fine, but Nie Huaisang couldn’t be sure of that, and they had no time for sentiment until they knew what had become of Wei Wuxian.

“Get to it!” Nie Huaisang shouted. “We don’t know how much time we have!”

His brother startled at his tone and turned to obey, but quickly stopped to look again at Nie Huaisang.

“Da-Ge, are you also going to look for survivors?”

“I’m going to look for the Lans and the Jiangs,” Nie Huaisang announced. “They were closer than us, they’ll know more about what’s going on.”

“Then I’m coming too,” Nie Mingjue decided. “I’m not leaving you alone. If he comes back…”

“You will do as I say and help our people!” Nie Huaisang hissed. “Find them, help them, protect them. That’s all you have to worry about for now!”

“But Da-Ge!” his brother protested, stepping closer, only for Nie Huaisang to stop him with a gesture and a hard look.

“For once in your life, you’re going to obey the order I give you, Mingjue. Now get to work! We don’t know how much time we have!”

Nie Mingjue, wilful brat that he was, knew better than to insist. He walked in one direction, while Nie Huaisang hurried into the opposite one, calling out for Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng. If anyone had managed to keep an eye on Wei Wuxian it would be these two idiots who didn’t know when to give up on a lost cause.

Nie Huaisang walked among the dead, shouting and screaming and crying for whoever would hear him, increasingly hopeless to be heard when all around him were nothing but dead and dying people. Then, at last, he heard a voice calling him back.

“Nie zongzhu!”

It was a familiar voice. Too familiar, in fact. Nie Huaisang found himself running on wobbly legs until he reached the young man calling for him, a white shape stained with red. Falling to his knees next to him, Nie Huaisang gathered Lan Xichen in his arms, cradling him close against his chest.

“How are you feeling?” Nie Huaisang asked as he touched the other's cold face, already preparing himself to use what little spiritual energy he had to help the younger man if necessary. “Where are you hurt?”

“I’m not,” Lan Xichen sighed, clinging to him like a terrified child. “It was just so much, I needed to rest, I just needed to rest, but now I can’t get up anymore. What about you? Did they hurt you?”

“Mingjue protected me,” Nie Huaisang admitted, ashamed that he still had the strength to run around when Lan Xichen had fought to exhaustion. “What about your brother? Is he fine? When did you last see him?”

Lan Xichen tensed at the question, clinging to Nie Huaisang so hard that it hurt, hiding his face against the older man’s shoulder.

“He’s gone. He’s gone!” he sobbed. “He left us, he just left us! I thought that he was going to go over and kill Wei Wuxian when he collapsed, but instead he… Huaisang-ge, how could he choose him over us?”

Nie Huaisang cursed. He had thought that Lan Wangji had gotten over this, now that Wei Wuxian had shown his true face. The very fact that the Lans had been there in Nightless City had felt like a proof that Lan Wangji had truly understood there really was no hope for his one sided crush.

Instead, Lan Wangji had only been waiting for a last chance to join the man he loved.

“Xichen, what happened exactly?”

“He ran when Wei Wuxian collapsed, and… we were all so tired, but Brother still had some strength and he flew away with him. Huaisang-ge, what are we going to do?”

“Our best,” Nie Huaisang hissed.

It took some effort to get back on his feet, especially with Lan Xichen leaning on him so heavily, but Nie Huaisang managed, driven by a newly found hatred for the man who, until moments ago, he would have called his best friend.

“Xichen, do you think anyone else saw this?”

The younger man, trembling in his arms, managed to shake his head.

“I don't know. I don't know! I think... Just me, some Lans… there were still so many fierce corpses, I don’t think anyone was paying attention. Huaisang-ge, how could he do this? He’s our sect leader, he’s supposed to be righteous, he’s supposed to be an example, how could he choose that man?”

“He’s an idiot, like his father before him,” Nie Huaisang retorted, pulling the younger man closer to him. “Xichen, listen to me. Nobody can know what your brother did. Nobody except you, your uncle, and whoever your uncle chooses to trust. You hear me? Don’t tell Mingjue, and no matter what you do, don’t tell Meng Yao. It has to be a secret. If anyone knows, they’ll ask for Wangji’s head.”

Still leaning hard on Nie Huaisang’s side, Lan Xichen nodded weakly.

“We’re going to find your uncle now, and we’re going to tell him what happened,” Nie Huaisang whispered, which got him another nod. “And then, you two are going to save Wangji from himself, and nobody will ever know what happened. Can you walk, Xichen?”

“I think I can,” Lan Xichen mumbled, only to nearly collapse at the first step he tried to take.

It broke Nie Huaisang’s heart to see him like this, wounded and exhausted more than he had ever been in the war, betrayed by his brother. More than ever Nie Huaisang wanted to steal Lan Xichen away to the Unclean Realm so he could be kept safe and happy, among people who would never choose a murderer over him.

But he couldn’t do that. After what Lan Wangji had done, Gusu Lan would need its Second Jade more than ever. They did not deserve him, but they would need him, and Nie Huaisang knew too much about that to really consider this silly fantasy of his.

What he could do, however, was pick Lan Xichen in his arms, the younger man too exhausted to resist the indignity, and help him look for his uncle. There was an odd sense of rightness to it, to holding Lan Xichen so close against his chest, the younger man's arms tight around his neck, like a bride carried into bed, or a child cradled by their mother. If Nie Huaisang had not been so distressed over everything that had happened, he might have questioned it.

But right then, none of that mattered. All that counted was getting Lan Xichen back to his uncle, and then returning to his own brother to check how he was doing. And perhaps when he found Nie Mingjue again, Nie Huaisang would hug him tight, just because he could.

Just because between the two of them, there could never be such a betrayal as what Lan Wangji had just committed that day.

#nie huaisang #lan xichen #nie mingjue #mdzs #xisang #this time digging a little more into the xisang even if someone is very stupid about it #also lwj wtf dude #everyone makes bad choices that will bite them in the ass: the chapter #the current place is for this to have four parts btw #unless it ends up with more lol #Jau writes #age reversal au

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notoriousjae · 3 years

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Love is a Little Box (For Home to Lay Inside) || Edeleth Fanfic (1/?)

Chapter Title: A Heart

Pairing: Byleth Eisner (F)/ Edelgard von Hresvelg

Rating: M

Chapter Description:

She’s read about Happiness: it’s the thing people lose in war; the emotion that sparks up the edges of their lips into a smile, or fills them with contentment when faced with something they’ve done that’s good ; it’s the emotion that everyone fights for and searches for as desperately as love, just as elusive and fickle, or so it seems in books and operas and plays.

Chapter 1 (Current) | AO3 | Below:

It's a peaceful day in Garreg Mach.

The sun catches along the lightly swelling waves of a familiar pond, wrinkles in blue caused by the light winds dancing Sothis’ fingertips along its surface. It’s hard to know whether Sothis was a Goddess but it’s easy to imagine that contradictory carefully carefree smile full of restraint and curiosity as small hands skimmed along the ripples of the pond in the heart of Garreg Mach, feeling moisture beneath palms--learning what water might feel like, again, for the both of them.

You need to experience things, Sothis would say and Byleth would experience them, because she had never known to experience them, before.

Or maybe Sothis would just...hover behind Byleth’s shoulder as she watched a line bob for an hour before she yawned, disappearing into the cold of a tomb she’s made in a baby’s chest that became the casket nestled in a woman’s.

It’s easy, too, to understand why people think Sothis is everywhere , because Byleth feels her, still. In the air...and the wind...and the water--

They were both familiar with the pond at Garreg Mach and a sense of... something--easy; warm; familiar?--stirs quietly in Byleth’s chest as she watches the pond and thinks of green eyes and hair and soft fingertips before she hears paper rustle a little behind her.

The feeling transforms a little like that tomb had.

“You know, Edelgard,” Byleth hums, chin dipping over her shoulder to watch her--a rare moment where both of them happen to actually be in the same place without a need for something sharp and pointy (or a strategic exit). “Fishing is a tactician’s game.”

Edelgard chuckles quietly to herself but looks up from her book all the same. Edelgard having time to read is probably rarer than them sharing time together, at all, and pulling her from it makes Byleth feel--

Hmm…

Her chin tips up in thought. It makes her... feel …

Edelgard interrupts.

“Is that so?”

Byleth nods, serious, and watches the way red fabric shifts as Edelgard turns to listen to her--to watch her--with the same rapt attention she had as a student, and still keeps to date in the war council.

“They say it’s chess, but that’s not the case.”

“They say that because chess is the tactical routing of an opponent. It’s meant to mimic a battlefield.” The Emperor practically quotes from the tactician’s guide and Byleth watches the breeze skirt over the surface of the water and wonders if Sothis would have fondly chuckled, but the only sound she hears is the water and the idle, far-away chatting of a few soldiers.

How would Edelgard feel, knowing a Goddess was so fond of her?

Byleth shakes her head.

“How many battlefields have you been on, El?”

“Countless.”

“How many battlefields resembled the neatly-drawn lines of a chessboard, where everyone took turns and you could predict your opponent’s attacks with statistics and math?”

“...none.” Edelgard looks pained to admit, begrudging, sighing as she tucks her book at her hip.

“Chess is just…” Byleth’s head tips, “...the memorization of strategies. You’re not creating anything new. When you’re facing someone in chess, you’re...just applying the most appropriate thing you’ve memorized that you can think of for that moment for the situation in front of you and hoping it works.”

“Alright.” And Edelgard stands, then, setting her book upon the bench, armored boots clicking as she walks along the stone towards the pond with that same studious look, hands settling on hips. Maybe one of these days they’ll both be comfortable enough fishing and reading and relaxing to do it without wearing armor. “Then what is fishing ?”

“Fun.” At Byleth’s amused look, Edelgard tutts and steps closer, obviously not having appreciated being baited over to the pier. She likely also wouldn't approve of the pun a little too similar to Alois' (and Petra's, lately) so Byleth keeps it to herself. A little more serious, “Are you sure you want to know? You don’t enjoy fishing. But I'm always okay teaching you.”

“You are currently the most renowned tactician Fódlan has ever seen. It could be argued you are a key point in elevating the war campaign into a rousing victory. If I have a chance to learn how that wonderful mind of yours ticks, I’d be remiss not to take it for the betterment of the Empire.”

“...you could have just said yes.” Brows knit, head barely tipping to the side--no longer teasing--and Byleth cuts off Edelgard’s undoubtedly annoyed reply. She doesn’t have to divinely intimate it’s coming to see it on parted lips, “Not everything needs such a complicated reason, El. If you’d like to learn, let yourself learn. You don’t have to explain your motivations just because people have questioned them in the past. And you don’t always have to do things to make you better , it’s fine to just fish. Although," A thoughtful look, "You’ll probably learn something in the process, anyways.”

Maybe Byleth has spent too much time answering the notes in the confessional.

“You’ll teach me to the end, won’t you?” It’s fonder--softer. Edelgard purses lips before letting the criticism settle, nodding. “Then...yes, Byleth.” Byleth smiles and Edelgard’s shoulders visibly lose the last of their tension when she quietly smiles back. “I...suppose I would like to learn. Especially since it’s something you take such an interest in.”

Edelgard slowly unhooks gauntlets about wrists, setting them to the side, white gloves underneath catching the sunlight like melted snow.

“Fishing,” Byleth nods before reeling in the line. “Is a real battlefield. It’s long moments of waiting followed by sharp, tense moments of excitement. Everything is planning. You find fish like you scout your battlefield--” Once the line is reeled, she hands the pole to Edelgard, whose nose wrinkles only a little at the feeling of her gloves getting wet.

Unlike most nobles, after all, Edelgard doesn’t mind dirt and muck and mud--she had been covered in them for years. Battlefields weren’t glamorous.

(Neither was fishing).

And so Byleth feels her chest swell with... something as the other woman totes up the rod, ready to learn, like she had picked up a lance in lessons. Not proficient with it, but willing .

A challenge.

“So we scout our enemies--what do you see in front of you?” Byleth steps behind her and scans the horizon over her shoulder.

“A pond. I see a ripple in the corner--” A true general starts, “The wind is shifting the current towards me, so I’ll likely have to adjust how I throw my line in order to hit my target.” Her chin tips backwards and looks to her professor, who nods, encouraging. “The light is hitting the right side of the pond, and will fade across it in an hour, creating warmth for the fish, and they’ll likely follow it. They’ll stay below the surface because they’ll want to avoid predators. Or my professor’s infamous rod and net, which catches anything under its shadow.”

“You approach things like a soldier.” There’s a knowing praise on her lips and Edelgard straightens just a little beneath it, “And a leader of troops. You’ve noted some important things, Edelgard, which are good to trap the fish in this moment...but we need to think of the bigger picture. What else do you see? What do you hear? What do you smell?”

Light brows knit as an Emperor once more takes in the blue, glistening pit that’s become her battlefield.

Byleth leans forward to gently wrap fingers around her wrist, guiding the shorter woman backwards so that she can mimic her eyes with her own, listening to the faint gasp of breath that catches on lips before Edelgard seems to focus, determined, now.

A professor settles her chin on Edelgard’s shoulder, far more familiar in touching this student in particular, these days.

Rare, but...familiar.

And the way Edelgard eases just a little into her reminds Byleth that sometimes the rarest of things are welcome.

“What matters to people on a battlefield?”

“The same as what matters to people founding cities: food, shelter, water, and safety.” Edelgard immediately replies.

“So what matters to fish? Your goal is to trap the enemy and reel them in--what might stand in your way of that?”

“I see…” Realization floods that calm voice, Edelgard’s head moving about as she takes in the pond in a seemingly new light. “The monastery. It’s...four o’clock, coming into five, and that path on the left will be tread by the church service let out. They’ll be noisy and their footfalls will probably disturb the pond. The squires like to come here to throw rocks on Wednesdays, and the washing happens in the corner. They’ll be pushed into the middle of the pond, even though the light will be on the West end of it. And I smell…” Edelgard’s nose wrinkles. “...fish soup? How is that relevant? Are they scared of their fate?”

It’s... nice to hear Edelgard joke.

“Rain.” Byleth offers knowingly. “You can taste the condensation on the air, if you can't smell it.”

“How could you smell that over the kitchens?”

Byleth shrugs, stomach idly grumbling because she does smell the kitchens.

“Is this...how you look at everything?” Edelgard is looking over her shoulder, now, close enough that Byleth smells far more of her hair than the rain and it’s a welcome change. She could smell the clouds over the food, but Byleth isn’t sure anything but Edelgard could ever fill her lungs, in this moment. “Is this how you see battlefields?”

“Yes.” Hands curve gently over the rod, raising fingers to paint a grid in the pond where Violet eyes can follow, “It’s real chess. You’re good with strategy when you’re expecting it. You can plan in advance and are great facing adversity on the battlefield as a soldier--you’re always quick to react--but a battlefield is never as clean as chess. We both know that.”

She feels fingers flex beneath her own, gripping the rod not out of being corrected, but vigor.

“I see.” And Edelgard has always been good with critique--with that infinite urge to strive further --and there’s that tightness in Byleth’s chest, again. Warm and soothing, pressing herself against the flat of Edelgard’s back.

She hadn't thought holding someone could be so comfortable.

“You shouldn’t be...picking a strategy to go up against whatever opposing strategy you think you're seeing on the battlefield, hoping the one you picked is better."

“I... should be thinking of how they respond, and naturally taking in the world and their needs. You’re saying I shouldn’t just assume they’ll react tactically--but...naturally and true to themselves?”

“Exactly. Everyone has a primal urge--it’s true there’s...math and statistics, and we can always take two strategies and see which path people will be most likely to take, because the truth is that most people are just as skittish as these fish. If I toss a rock into the pond, they’ll flee to the other side, because we know they’re scared of it--it’s something they’ll avoid. But not everyone is as scared as a fish.”

“Many enemies are...noble. Are fighting because they believe in the opposition of your own wants and desires.” Edelgard quietly agrees and Byleth nods.

“So if you identify your enemy’s needs and desires--what they think is important, whether the rain will make them move, whether the light will keep them warm, whether the noise will scare them--you’ll know which way they’ll go, and you’ll know what they do. And then you go fishing.”

“I see.” Edelgard repeats, quieter, now, watching the pond for a moment before she asks, “Is that why you--” A rare pause and it sounds like she might think over the question before redirecting, or maybe rewording. It’s interesting enough for Byleth to lean back and watch her, fully. “...spared Flayn?” A moment passes before she continues, “We were surrounded by soldiers with the city on fire and I trusted you, I never hesitated to accept your choice in sparing her, but I didn’t understand, then, that it might have been…” She shakes her head, and this is one of those moments where she wonders if there’s a question behind the words. Edelgard is full of layers, she’s found, and while Byleth has learned so many of them, she feels there’s so many more to be found. A woman of secrets, all tucked away in a hidden box Byleth has yet to fully find. “Was it a tactical decision?”

A bare hand comes up to rest on Edelgard’s shoulder in thought, still pressed against her back as she thinks--lets the question settle before nodding.

“Yes. And no. Our enemies aren’t the only fish.” Byleth offers, “Flayn...didn’t have to die. Neither did Seteth. The best battles are the ones where you minimize casualties on both sides,” Her head dips to the side, remembering the heat on her shoulders. Her back. Remembering the way she had barely cupped Edelgard’s palm in curling fingers after the fighting in a rickety war tent on the outskirts of the battle, the puckered flesh of hands beneath gauntlets singed through and burnt along the metal of Aymr in the flames. The healing waves from Byleth’s fingertips had turned them into slivers of scars beneath red grieves--two more to match thousands that litter ivory skin.

She remembers the way Flayn had coughed, the smoke settled in both their lungs, fingers curled and bloodied into the tuft of a Pegasus’ quaking wings, matted with soot and blood. Both of them panting wisps of heat. Weak.

We’re family , she had said once, but looked at Byleth with nothing short of sadness, then. Not betrayal, just...sadness.

Perhaps that’s what family filled in people: hope, sadness, and loss in equal measure. That’s how Byleth remembers Jeralt. It's how she remembers Sitri.

It's how she remembers Rhea.

Byleth mulls over the words--the odd...ache that the memory fills in her chest--the worried gratitude that had settled on Edelgard’s features, after the fight. A look she’d seen several times, over the years, when Byleth had chosen Edelgard and life over a church’s firm thumb.

The Emperor of Fódlan, cloaked in red and black and on her knees in the soot, didn’t want the world to die (despite what some apparently claimed) and the moment Byleth offered someone might be spared, Edelgard always took the chance with equal parts relief and trepidation.

Just because war had been the only way didn't mean death truly was.

This thought, it-- feels--

“They needed an escape route. They needed to know that our battle was righteous, not wicked, I guess. To use...whatever words the Church probably used. If we took them, we took the battle, and we would demoralize the troops. But it isn’t always about killing. If we killed Flayn, Seteth would have been...inconsolable. He would have become a danger to fight, and he was already dangerous--we didn’t need to fight him. Some fires are better to...put out quickly, than let them burn and spread. Some fires are supposed to burn, but...not that one.”

Her brows knit and she’s surprised when Edelgard turns Byleth’s chin towards her own, something unreadable in her eyes.

And Edelgard waits, simply holding her for this brief moment, like she knows there’s more, because there is.

“ And I didn’t want her to die.” Byleth says simply, only to her--only in this safe quiet of a courtyard--and the woman who she intends to spend all days like this with, who nods as fingertips curl beneath Byleth's chin.

“How did you know they wouldn’t retaliate when you let them go? That they wouldn’t go back to Rhea?” Edelgard quietly presses.

“I didn’t, I guess...but I know my fish.” Byleth looks back towards the pond.

“Which is why we won.” Edelgard surmises. “Our initial strategy was outmatched when we arrived. And your responding strategy on the battlefield to split up and focus our forces around the fire--sparing key combatants... that’s what won.” And she sounds almost praising when she says, a little in awe, “You didn’t just choose a strategy or response, you...went fishing.”

“A tactician’s game.” Byleth’s voice skirts along her ear and Edelgard eases backwards against her enough that she can wrap an arm fully around a slim waist, now.

This information seems to cement Edelgard's drive.

“What do we do next?”

“We take all of that into account and cast the line.”

And so Byleth shows her the technical aspects of fishing--of how to throw and cast and reel in, despite the elements of noise and wind and heat. Shows her how to tactically assume where the fish might try to escape upon being caught on a line--how to pull it and unhook it without harming it and kill it the quickest way possible. She tells her about bait, and how to read shadows, and how to choose a fishing spot--

“So you just...stand here and wait for it to bite?”

“Like waiting for a charge on a battlefield. See? The anticipation--” Byleth lightly tickles her stomach and Edelgard chuckles and bats away her hands and Edelgard listens to every word, until she stands on her own and reels in a smacking fish that flops against her knee with no guidance, a few hours later.

Ever the quick study.

The warmth spreads through a chest still so unaccustomed to it and settles in her lungs and fills her so deeply that Byleth has to pull away to look at the happiness on Edelgard’s face.

Proud. Edelgard looks proud.

This feeling is...startling.

“I’ve forgotten how marvelous you were at teaching, Professor. Unorthodox, as always, but still so phenomenally proficient.” Edelgard hums , careful to unhook the fish exactly as shown, shaking away water and the scent from her fingertips before slipping back on gloves. And then turns her attention up to said professor. “You look yalms away.” It’s softer and Byleth slowly looks up from fingertips to familiar eyes, that warmth pressing against her chest...consuming. Distracting.

Her face contorts in confusion and she shakes her head.

Does she look far away?

“...I’m sorry--”

“Are you alright?” It’s even gentler, barely heard over the wind and the soft sound of the rain starting to gently patter about their feet and the fish in its bucket full of water in deep plops, and the pond where the fish scatter from its cold intrusion. Edelgard steps closer and Byleth nods.

“I’m...fine.”

“What is it?” It’s an invitation and Byleth must visibly hesitate because Edelgard steps closer, still, careful--

“I…” A huff of breath through lips, feeling-- feeling -- “I just... felt something, is all.”

“What do you mean?” Edelgard is rare with her affection on the grounds but fingertips raise up to gently brush ragged bangs from Byleth’s eyes. This is the closest she’s felt all month, even a moment ago in her arms, and an ache churns in Byleth’s stomach. It’s a testament to how much a student changed over the years, because she asks instead of assuming she knows the best recourse: “Are you in any pain? Do you want me to call for Manue--”

“No. No, it’s nothing like that. I felt--” Brows still knit and, words failing her, Byleth gently takes Edelgard’s hand and lowers it to her heart, where its weak thud aches (and aches) up towards the warmth of familiarity. Presses a palm of white against the black-cloaked, hidden place that used to be so still. It stirs like coal simmering beneath ashes, vibrating fingertips and her chest and her throat. It beats so steadily that Byleth might think it would scare those fish away. “I felt something. New.”

“Oh.” The realization settles deep in widening violet.

“Maybe not new , just...different. It all feels…”

Different.

Edelgard’s fingers splay over heart and Byleth’s breath catches, looking away.

“Do you know what it was?”

“No. It felt...like--” A tongue darts over lips before she tries-- “I’m still--” It feels so odd to say--to admit --out loud.

“You can tell me.” El promises, leaning closer so that it’s just them standing in the soft, gentle rain, neither of them minding. For the moment, at least, their voices barely heard over the sky’s gentle cry. Byleth hesitates. “My teacher…” El whispers in her ear, “They’re our problems, remember? You’ve taught me so much, the least I can do is help you untangle this.”

“I’m…” Byleth eases tense muscles beneath Edelgard’s fingertips, wordlessly lifting up her cloak to shield them from the rain, “I’m still learning what all of them mean. It’s like...waking up and trying to remember a dream. I’ve...I think I’ve felt these things before. I’ve just never felt them so...” Her head tilts to the side, “... strongly.”

“And what do you feel now?”

It’s started to rain a bit more, gentle, graceful drops. The kind that makes the grass smell like dew and hides the scent of enemies in a battlefield, even if it helps make their tracks clearer due to the mud their boots will sink into after it's settled, trapped.

The kind that makes Edelgard’s hair stick to her chin, if they’re out in it long enough, framing the curving edges of her smile on the unlikely occasion it’s only them en route to a mission or a skirmish or a battlefield.

Or fishing by a pond in Garreg Mach.

Byleth pulls up her cloak enough to block out the rain from Edelgard's eyes.

“I don’t know.”

“Alright.” Edelgard pulls enough away to see her in the shadows of the black cloak surrounding them, looking thoughtful and determined for a moment before she tries, “Then what...did it feel like ? What were you thinking? What did you want, in the moment?”

“I don’t know.” Byleth admits, trying to sort it through, calm and methodical, “...it was... good .” A little more certain, mulling it over before she repeats, firmer: “It was good.”

“Good.” El sounds relieved in a way likely only Byleth and Hubert would be able to hear of it in her voice.

“Warm. I was watching you fish and I was thinking of how much you’ve grown as a person, and into who I knew you could be, and how...” Her head tips upwards, thinking of the way Edelgard had looked at her own catch, realizing: “...proud of you I am.”

El blinks, rain tickling down cheeks to Byleth’s chin before she quietly...smiles. Beautiful. And the warmth is there but different , again. Spreading. Aching .

“You felt proud of me?”

“I...yes. I feel ,” Byleth settles on, a little more sure--a little more confident and sturdy--meeting Edelgard’s eyes with her second resolute nod, “ Proud of you.”

Byleth has read about pride. It’s the emotion that precedes arrogance in novels--the emotion that can heat someone’s palms to war; It’s the emotion that swells up in a lover’s chest when they watch the eye of their heart succeed, or a mother when their child writes a song and defies them to sing it to a nation; it’s many people’s downfall. Heroes. Villains. People.

It’s Byleth’s success, as a teacher. And...the woman who feels for Edelgard as she does.

“Byleth…” El softens and beneath the thin weight of Byleth’s coat, which must seem like safety enough from prying eyes and the scattered fish, she leans up to kiss her cheek, near the edge of lips, and the breath rattles in an Emperor’s lungs before it pushes out between them, steady and warm. Her voice rumbles like quiet thunder in the distance, but Byleth's never seemed safer beneath it, “Who I am, today, is because of you, I think you have reason to be proud.”

“You’re giving me too much credit.” Byleth murmurs, dismissing, and Edelgard kisses her again, near the other edge of barely curved lips, the sound of a fish flopping in the bucket next to them missed beneath the rain.

“My love,” Edelgard doesn’t laugh, but she does smile in her wry amusement, and that warmth burns and burns and burns in Byleth’s cool chest, “You don’t give yourself enough.”

Pride

Byleth knows this word, but didn’t understand its meaning.

Not until Edelgard taught her.

“Next time you feel something new, you should tell me,” El offers, “We can sort it through, together. However confusing it might be, certainly it’s no rival for our combined wits.” Byleth thinks on it for a long moment before she nods and looks down towards Edelgard's first catch. “For now...why don't we cook tonight's dinner?"

The cloak lowers as Byleth pauses, an almost shy smile tucking up the edges of lips before it smooths into something calm, "Sure. We'll cook it together."

There's many things Edelgard rouses pride in her Professors' chest. Her passion and compassion--her intellect and deduction--her triumphs and the way she's learned humbled, and with dedication, from her failures--her fishing and, perhaps, most of all...her smile.

Edelgard seems determined to add her cooking to that list and while Byleth has a staunch feeling that today will not be that day, she finds herself...excited(? Hopeful? Pleased?) at all the days they can spend finding out.

(Even if she always makes sure the Head Cook sets aside a separate meal for them, just in case).

Byleth leans over to pick up a small little wooden box off the bench and later that evening, slides Edelgard's first hook inside.

----

In truth to their vows to each other in the Goddess Tower, they become a unified front. Although Byleth is unsurprised by the fact that this means not much changes in their lives (outside of winning a war) because they were a unified front, before.

In strategy, battle, and tactics--in facing their enemies and their friends--but maybe... some things are different.

Like the nearly shy looks Edelgard sends Byleth’s way when no one is looking--or their moments, after the long days have set to night and the war counsel empties to two, that they sit and discuss what future might await them on the horizon, just out of reach but growing closer by the day.

‘I’ve always wanted to go to Albinea’ , El’s wistful hum is lost in the quiet of the room, echoing around them as she leans up against the table they once had lessons on. Byleth’s arms cross as she leans next to her, their hips resting comfortably side-by-side as they have for the past two and a half years.

Byleth wouldn’t be surprised if El insisted the past eight years.

Time has passed, since the war, but she’s learned it doesn’t stop. Not anymore. Then again, it never stopped for Byleth--it only ever folded backwards in on itself like a rumpled shirt or sifted through her fingertips like sand she’d intended to throw into the eyes of an attacker, but lost to the ground, instead.

‘Me too.’ Byleth’s hand idly scratches nails along her chest and she lets out a small breath when she feels Edelgard’s fingers barely skim along the inside of her wrist, both of them hovering over her heart. ‘Maybe we can go there, when this is all over with.’

‘Let’s.’ And El smiles and that feeling... blooms and Byleth’s hand stills along her heart and Edelgard stills along with it. A curious look must have settled on Byleth’s face, because the next thing she knows--

‘...perhaps you’re feeling...hopeful.’ Edelgard boldly offers, shifting a little closer and Byleth’s eyes flick down to her lips.

‘Is that what I feel?’

‘That’s up to you to say.’

‘Hopeful.’ She tastes before the summoning bell rings above them and they pull away.

Edelgard’s fingers linger in her own before they untwine, walking down the hall hip-by-hip towards the tower, their knuckles brushing with each step.

The moments are still rare, but they seek them out, now, the light from the sky catching along Edelgard’s ring before a glove is slid over fingertips.

Hope.

(Maybe not all futures must wait until after the shadows are scattered by light).

And hip-by-hip is how they tackle a professor’s removed, textbook examination of her own heart with Edelgard’s life experience (what she has of it), slowly sorting out the feelings that have begun to stir in Byleth’s chest.

They’ve both been removed from emotions for so long, maybe it’s nice for Edelgard to find them, too.

What is this feeling? Byleth learns to murmur in the air by Edelgard’s ear, and they’ll arrive at a conclusion, together.

‘Contentment’ in the early morning as Byleth sets tea down on the soft, rustling white cloth in the gardens, watching the steam curve around Edelgard’s smile like hair caught around her cheek in the rain, their wrists creeping towards each other beneath the chipped porcelain that’s survived far more than a war--something soft and settling like fresh linens on a bed Byleth is still getting used to sleeping on;

‘Disappointment’ in the moments their fingers touch and are pulled away by duty, the sound of their quiet laughter lingering throughout the stone halls similar to how the cathedral used to catch Dorothea’s voice as it rang throughout--aching and quiet as Byleth watches Edelgard’s smile fade into something serious and resolute;

‘ Amusement ’ Edelgard wryly comments as Lindhardt successfully spars Caspar by continuously ruffling his hair with a sleepy grin and a yawning, batting hand--fluttering like a bird’s wings against her ribcage, bouncing about bars waiting to break free;

‘ Sadness ?’ She asks Edelgard in a guess when the Emperor finds her in the courtyard overlooking a great chasm, her father’s and mother’s gravestones stalwart bastions against its empty void, as if they’re holding Garreg Mach’s penetrable walls of stone and lost faith from falling into the endless dark gravel below--muted and constant, a dull ache. It lessens, somehow, when Edelgard’s rare open touch skirts along her hip and rests along her stomach, guiding Byleth backwards against her chest.

Soon, Byleth has experience to back the names of emotions she’s read about and dully felt and Edelgard, ever one to rise to a challenge, has stepped behind her professor without a second thought, trying to answer the questions of a quiz before her.

“Joy?” Edelgard tries as Byleth’s fingertips run along the edge of a flower, blue hair spilling over shoulders and head tilted to the side in thought as she calmly regards El’s determination.

Thinks it through. No. It doesn’t sound right.

“I don’t think so.” She shakes her head, fingers curving beneath the edge of a flower, not wishing to disturb the small bird fluttering around the surface, lips barely pursing in thought.

She’s been in the Greenhouse for an hour, or so, watching this small little blue bird bat from leaf to leaf of a plant she’s been growing, fingers scratching thoughtlessly at her heart.

Byleth hadn’t asked what the emotion was, but Edelgard took it upon herself to find out, regardless.

“Contentment.” Edelgard tries again, brows furrowed in deep thought, herself, the leader of a ruthless strike force and a now-impervious Empire. It’s a tactical strategy--Edelgard had initially tried to talk it through with Byleth to see what she was feeling, what it reminded her of--

‘It’s a bird. I just see a bird , Edelgard.’

‘That’s not exactly helpful, Professor.’

--before talking through some of the more base aspects of what was stirring in Byleth’s chest.

‘ Well...is it positive?’

‘It’s...good, I think.’

When nothing else followed, Edelgard had sighed.

And then did what any leader might do: try to find a solution regardless of adequate facts, because it simply had to be done.

Peaceful? No. Nostalgic? No. Analytical? No. Joy? No --

And finally, contentment , which like the ones before it, is met with a shake of the head.

Edelgard frowns, the crease of it barely indenting between brows as she lays a hand against Byleth’s back, easing forward to look at the bird, herself.

At a loss and not admitting it, probably. Now that makes Byleth feel amused . That fluttery little bird in her chest, far warmer than it had been watching Caspar and Linhardt.

Most things are far warmer when she’s with Edelgard.

A cat by the doorway meows with what might be agreement and fingertips thoughtlessly curl around the stone of the planter’s box.

El hesitates before almost guiltily suggesting: “...hungry?”

“Hunger isn’t an emotion.” Byleth pauses, chin tipping up to look for Edelgard’s counsel, “It’s a need, isn’t it?”

“Hmm, I suppose it is. And I might be disturbed if you wanted to eat a swallow you found in the garden.”

“Mercenaries don’t have many choices, so I probably could. But if I had to eat anything here, I’d rather have that squirrel up the tree.” Byleth’s lips barely tip upwards and the leader of Fódlan looks up towards the tree as if taking in the squirrel for the first time with a barely wrinkling nose.

“And I’m still disturbed by your sense of humor , my teacher.” But Edelgard smiles all the same, a hint of her competitiveness ebbing in light of the softness of the air in the garden as Byleth turns from the bird to brush a strand of hair from violet eyes--it had been tickling Byleth’s shoulder, given their close quarters, and was a little annoying, but she doesn’t want it blocking Edelgard’s vision, either--fallen from a curving braid, tucking it behind that attentive ear.

“Maybe some emotions don’t have names.” Byleth’s head tips to the side, palm warmed by the soft blush along Edelgard’s cheek from the gentle touch of fingertips as she leans into a cupping hand like it is both thoughtless and a very conscious choice, all in one.

Warmth spreads from a clenching stomach to beating chest to curling fingertips, resting against El, who gently circles Byleth entirely in her arms, a little bolder every day.

Warmth.

Is this contentment? Maybe it is.

“Well...do you feel differently, now? Or is it still the same?”

Byleth’s head tips to the side, thinking it through before she leans close enough to taste El’s breath, wanting to be closer , somehow, which makes no sense since arms are wrapped around her and there’s no real way to get closer, is there? Or maybe there is.

Oh, she thinks there is.

Bergamot. Edelgard’s lips smell like the tea Byleth had brewed for her in the early morning, fingers curling around the ivory of a cup as a humming Emperor inhaled it through nostrils before taking a long, slow sip. The same tea likely sipped even when it grew cold throughout the day for a reason Byleth’s not certain of, and still doesn't feel the need to ask, because there's a certainty to the knowledge. This fact. That Edelgard is more than capable of brewing her own tea, but always seems to favor Byleth’s pot long into the afternoon, even after it grows cold.

Bergamot.

It’s not the first time Byleth’s had the urge to kiss Edelgard and it probably won’t be the last. Even though they’ve tackled everything together, they haven’t had much time like this, alone. Fleeting moments for months--

“I think I feel…” Byleth smiles--a little wider, however small it might be in comparison--gently guiding Edelgard closer as that blush spreads. “...distracted.”

And that quiet laugh tastes as nice as it sounds and it dances up into the air like the flutter of the bird's wings below them and it fills all of Byleth’s lungs with it until that content breath spreads through her and between them.

Edelgard's laugh is as beautiful as her smile.

Bergamot, she decides, is a good scent.

“Oh, are you, Professor? What by?” A light tease despite that flattering blush, gloved fingertips smoothing out the rumpled collar of a dark cloak; work that’s ruined the moment Byleth’s other hand raises up to gently settle in the small of El’s back, pressing her up closer, and those gloves fist in fabric until suddenly white is engulfed by the shadows spread over shoulders.

“What...do you feel right now, El?” It's a murmur--curious and soft, letting out the smallest flutter of a breath when one of those tangling hands falls down to her chest and rests a palm against the skipping beat of a heart. It’s...soothing, now, how Edelgard holds her. It's been so seamless, how hesitation has slowly morphed into...familiarity. How Byleth's body seems to expect it as much as her mind might, heart pattering like soft rain and shoulders easing like knots of a ship that have been unmoored into calm waters.

“Maybe...some emotions don’t have names,” It’s a breathless recall, leaning just a little further up into Byleth until their noses brush and the words sink onto parting lips like a welcome drink of water. “But...if this one did, I suppose it would be--”

“Lady Edelgard.”

Both of them tense, twisting around to see Hubert’s impassive face and devilishly twinkling eyes, voice monotone as Edelgard huffs underneath her voice--

“ Annoyance .” To Byleth’s quiet chuckle, before she says much louder, “ Yes , Hubert?”

Surprisingly, Edelgard doesn’t pull away, although she does give Byleth a far more apologetic smile as those white gloves once more smooth out the wrinkles they've caused in fabric before facing Hubert and leaning into the palm settled in the curve of her back for just a moment more--just a moment more--before Byleth’s hand dutifully falls, facing the familiar stoic vassal, as well.

“There’s word on the Slither’s movements on the outskirts of Hyrm.”

Both of them straighten their spines, then, tender could-have-beens once again tabled for another day. Another tomorrow, brighter than the day before.

They both have higher priorities.

“They’re heading towards Morfis?” Edelgard surmises and at Hubert’s nod, the Emperor sighs up towards her tactical counsel, something far more serious taking root in features. “It appears you were right, Professor.”

Neither of them take pleasure in this fact.

Those Who Slither in the Dark were not just slithering in Fódlan.

“But unfortunately there’s been even more...unnerving developments than just Morfis.”

The war room is full within the hour after Edelgard and Byleth have both been briefed, their heads bent and hushed whispers bouncing along the high stone walls.

The map sits stalwart upon the table, crisp and loose around the pins keeping it stapled to the large desk centered in the room, holes widened from half a decade plus of wandering hands shifting it about as eyes took in a war front.

In the center of the map still sits proud Garreg Mach, whose conversion these past six months following the Won War from a Monastery to a genuine officer's school has not changed its current occupancy of forces. It's true that many hearts' hatred eased with each and every day of Emperor Edelgard von Hresvelg's steady, firm rule--more compassionate than they had been lead to believe through the mayhem and tragedy that consumed houses for neigh a near decade--but not everyone was pleased.

While The Great Beast (as she's come to be called within the troops, propaganda and pamphlets continuous and circulated, still) Rhea was felled and Dimitri, Deluded King (a term Byleth frowns at in its use every time), put to rest, there is still upset in much of Fódlan. Uprisings and spattered, enraged, frightened villages fighting back against who they view as an evil conquering force, taking away their land and religion, combined with the nobles who clutched desperately to their power and riches and crests, insistent that equality threatened their livelihoods.

“Perhaps if your excess of...livelihood cannot exist with equality--if you believe you require the lesser futures of the men and women you swore to protect and serve as their noble leader to maintain it--then you do not understand the worth of human life, at all, and are not fit to hold your position over them, von Gideon.”

Edelgard had been cemented in history as a fierce leader, but her rousing speech at a large estate set ablaze by righteousness in the North East of what was beneath the Lions Snare, where a noble had tried to fight the Black Eagles by using his peasants for fodder, would likely go down as a key quote to attest to it. There wasn't a scribe in sight as Emperor Hresvelg held a glowing axe to the last noble nephew of Gideon's neck underneath his mansion's towering stone pillars, the disgraced man scrambling backwards in the muck he'd fallen into from the gallop of his dismayed horse, cowering on his back with sniveling pleas as his flee from battle was thwarted...but the story has been told time and time again by every soldier and in every tavern Byleth's been to since.

All with such a great dramatic flair and liberty to storytelling that she wouldn't be surprised if Alois wasn't the first one to tell it.

Edelgard's amused face as they sat on a carriage heading back towards Garreg Mach a month later after quelling another uprising was well worth the bumpy ride and sitting next to a skew-eyed pegasus.

'--that's not how it happened at all! Edelgard beheaded him on the spot after he spat on an orphan boy that was working for him!'

'Oh, is that so? I had heard him jailed 'n Enbarr with the rest of the noble filth, waitin' judgment.'

'Oh, yeah--yeah--had a friend there, took his head clean off! He's not jailed, he's a yalm under!'

'You don't have friends, Jaspard.'

Normally, they ride proudly, but given the Slithers’ spies having eyes in every hill, it would be better not to be caught unawares by a trap. It was wiser to sneak into a caravan than to take the entire group across the border when Ferdinand would already need to head Northwest and Petra and Dorothea South. At least, that’s what Byleth suggested off-hand to Hubert’s sighing assent, all of them breaking off to go separate directions in common clothes.

Which is why Hubert sets across from them looking unnervingly threatening towards a Pegasus that’s just licked his jaw in the back of a rickety, open-top caravan for the next three days. Byleth and Edelgard have settled next to each other far closer than they might have been were anyone else there.

This, for some reason, does not seem to improve Hubert's always dour mood.

‘I’ve never had roast Pegasus before. I wonder, is it a delicacy on the outskirts of the mountains?’ Hubert's smile is something reminiscent of the tales told of Byleth, herself, in the taverns: devilish .

Definitely not improvement. If this is how Hubert’s doing, Byleth can only imagine Ferdinand’s fear at riding in the back of a straw-filled cart.

Maybe he’ll think it’s an adventure. Caspar certainly looked excited.

'It seems this new Emperor wants the best for all people in Fódlan.' Edelgard pipes up underneath a particularly rough bump, a hint of red that might be indignation or amusement creeping up her neck and Byleth is just glad the farmers didn’t hear Hubert’s dry musing.

The men look back from their conversation and tilt their heads, appraising, and ultimately nod.

'Y'know, lady...you might be right.'

Byleth's sword easily tips underneath her nails to dig out the dirt, casually shrugging with a serious nod, stilling it underneath the next bump. 'She usually is.'

The red was certainly not ire, now, spreading further upwards and that same, amused smile twisting up Edelgard’s lips as lips brush along the dirt-scuffed cheek resting upon a sword's hilt, paying little mind to the weapon...or to Hubert’s heavy sigh across from them, it seems.

Byleth offers a smile, shifting to hold Edelgard beneath the next jostling bump so that she might steady herself against it. Out of the corner of an eye she catches t he Pegasus nosing beneath Hubert's chin as if trying to lift his scowl.

It's not a surprise it doesn't work.

'Oh, Hubert, we're just traveling companions. Wouldn't you say, Jaspard?' Edelgard's voice is practically sing-song over her shoulder and Jaspard, once more paying them notice instead of squabbling with his own companion about just how many nobles Emperor Edelgard von Hresvelg has beheaded, furrows brows thicker than the stray dog that wanders Garreg Mach's coat.

'Uh...yeah, sure?'

The pegasus licks Hubert's cheek and Byleth's head tips to the side, calmly noting:

'I think it likes you.' A thoughtful hum, 'I think you would make a good Pegasus Knight, Hubert.'

Hubert's scowl...thins. And maybe it's a trick of the eye--maybe the trees above them filter out the sunlight until it blinks--but she swears, just for a moment, she might see the hint of a smile.

Or, at the very least, Hubert no longer threatens to cook the pegasus for the remainder of the ride to town.

And thus thanks to word of mouth, the uprisings caused by nobles have been easily dealt with, and few nobles could find villagers to bolster their claims of outrage, these days.

Edelgard was fighting for them, not against them, and they were starting to understand that.

The uprisings regarding religion were...trickier, and Edelgard’s interference usually led to worse outcomes than if she hadn’t shown, at all, something she’d been reluctant to admit, but nodded after their last quelling of an insurrection led to every member of a church being toted away in chains.

Even now, Byleth is aware that had it been Rhea, the insurrectionists in the church likely would have been dead, instead of sitting in a jail, but the indignation of being locked up for ‘believing’ was gaining far too much traction to not be taken a serious threat.

‘It’s my job to lead--we’ve spilled enough blood, perhaps someone else might have a solution.’

‘I agree.’ Mercedes looks hesitant in the corner, but hardly meek. They all agree there’s been too much blood spilled. But Mercedes ultimately looks away before Byleth steps forward, eyes set on a girl she knows well.

‘...I think there’s a solution.’

All eyes expectantly look up save for Mercedes, who nervously watches Edelgard.

At Byleth's quiet insistence, these uprisings have been dealt with with the head of the New Church, Mercedes von Martritz, who has ended many of them before they started, establishing several Churches underneath Edelgard's cooperation , not banner. An organization subsisting within the Empire--alongside, not over.

So far, the most radical uprisings where Mercedes has not been successful in quieting them, Jeritza has settled them shortly after.

They’re thankfully far less prominent.

'I might hate this false Goddess and 'religion', but people still have a right to it, Byleth. Why would they think I would--everything I have done has been to protect them!' A rare frustration is as clear as a scowl upon lips, highlighted by the flickering candles that fortify the long spindles burning within a restored Cathedral. It paints Edelgard’s features in a soft, passionate glow, but also showcases the dark circles beneath sunken eyes. ‘They’re only prolonging their own suffering.’

'Maybe,' A shrug, gently stepping up behind tight shoulders to gently curl fingers around them. 'People are...protective over things that matter to them.'

‘That is true, isn’t it?’ Edelgard murmurs, shoulders tensing before they relax beneath scarred palms. ‘I suppose I am protective, as well. I am protective of everyone here--I’m protective of all of them. No one else has to die, if they would just--’

Byleth’s fingers skim along a cheek that clenches and eases just as shoulders had--dip down a neck that swallows and bobs--before wrapping around Edelgard's waist, guiding those sharp muscles and edges the rest of the way against Byleth's chest. A welcome embrace.

Edelgard sags against her like a sack of flour that’s been cut open, all the air in her lungs puffing upwards into the sky.

Because here, it seems, just like her muscles, she can hold on only so tightly before letting go. It's a feeling Byleth...can understand, now.

‘All you can do is...lead people, El. You can’t make their choices for them.’

Fingers hesitate for only a breath before they smooth along Byleth’s wrists along hips, pulling the taller of them closer so that arms wrap fully around her, twisting to raise her own arms around a craning neck before El's own head falls to rest there.

El fits so nicely here, like the proudest token nestled safely inside a box.

‘Then I’m glad I have you by my side. What are you protective over, I wonder--’

Edelgard’s chin tips backwards and Byleth holds her until a messenger comes shortly after with an updated report on Ferdinand’s slim hold in the Northwest.

It hasn’t gotten better, the two months since.

The war room is full of a tense silence after the news is shared, all eyes in the room focused upon the map of Garreg Mach, and the pins of their strongholds littering its aged surface. To the southwest, a few weeks’ journey away, lay a new pin.

A plague has started to take root in Hyrm, on the outskirts of Ordelia, much to Lysithea’s worry, similar to what had overtaken Remire but far worse. The stronghold borders what used to be the Leicester Alliance and the Empire’s hills--a key position against the annoyed nobles rebelling in the East looking to ride towards Enbarr.

The plagues’ spread is showcased by black pins trending a noted path upwards, adorned by the clean parchment quill of Ingrid’s handwriting.

Names.

“It’s spreading to the nobles with crests who sided with the Empire.” Ingrid concludes, face pulled downward as if a string had tied to her chin.

Sided with the Empire’s successful insurrection , as many people in Leicester would still claim.

“How could a plague attack someone with crests?” Caspar frowns, eyes flicking up towards the few empty chairs of their usual Black Eagle Squadron. Two notable absences with crests missing: Ferdinand, who has been dispatched to the Northwest of what used to be House Kleiman, whose strategic tactical position near the coast of the continent will be invaluable if Byleth’s hypothesis of the Slithers’ outreach stretching to their neighboring continents held true. Leonie rides with him, crestless. And the other was Petra, who had returned to Brigid to mend relations between the Empire and her country while assuming rule.

Dorothea, of course, was with her, but bore no crest, as well, and Byleth’s chin tips downward in thought, fingers tucking beneath a working jaw.

“Technically a plague infects, it doesn’t attack. But I suppose those who bear crests do have unique blood.” Hanneman offers thoughtfully, carefully cleaning a monocle with a handkerchief he tucks back inside his pocket. “It is likely attacking the unique signature of the blood that makes crests so extraordinary.”

“And if it’s attacking the blood , the options we currently have to treat it are, oh... nonexistent .” Manuela pouts in the corner, clearly disturbed, knuckles resting beneath her own chin as she takes in the map.

“Hmm...yes,” Linhardt perks upwards, either clearly deep in thought...or clearly deep in sleep, “Fascinating, really. It would have taken a good bit of experimentation on live blood samples of someone bearing a crest to create a strand of plague that could infect crest-bearers.”

Byleth’s eyes skim over Lysithea’s pale features before settling to her left on Edelgard’s stoic ones.

“Indeed.” Edelgard agrees, darker than any of them know. “Which can serve as a reminder of how dangerous they are--and always will be--until they’re wiped from existence. They’ve ruled by fear and oppression for so long that they don’t seem to know how to fight a war with any other tool. I fear this was likely their contingency plan from the start.” The discontent waters of violet flick up towards Byleth before once more settling on the board.

“So...if they’re going to worst case scenarios--” Sylvain rubs the back of his neck, scowling.

“It means we’ve got ‘em on the ropes!” Caspar pumps his fist and Linhardt sighs at the mere insinuation of probably how much effort it all sounds like but it’s Ingrid who steps closer.

“I think we should be cautious.” Ingrid sports furrowed brows and tense lines about lips but she’s grown so much since Byleth first met her.

They all have, judging by Bernadetta in the corner, quiet but present.

“Agreed.” Hubert nods, “They’re cunning beasts who have not yet revealed themselves to Fódlan for a reason. I would advise against underestimating them.”

“I concur, as well.” The Emperor herself agrees before leaning up from the board. “I believe you all know your roles. This changes nothing from our current effort to solidify our defenses in key strongholds. Cementing our hold over the continent and against opposing forces by sea is a high priority not for just putting out lingering opposition from the war, but from defending all of Fódlan. We need to keep an eye on our future as well as our present, my friends. The True War is still upon us. Be that as it may, Hubert, I’ll need you to notify Petra and Ferdinand of this immediately. We do not need to cause panic, but they need to be aware of the situation at hand in case it escalates. I do not want to send anyone to Hyrm until we’re positive the plague cannot be contracted by someone without a crest.”

“As you wish, your Majesty,” Hubert, with his ever-deep bow, departs shortly after.

“Manuela, Hanneman, Linhardt--”

“Fine, fine,” Linhardt yawns , “I suppose looking into this will at least be interesting . Let’s go ahead and solve it so that I can go back to bed.”

“Not everything has to be about a bed with you two,” Hanneman huffs and Manuela scowls, hands settling on hips. Indignant.

“ Excuse me--”

“Oh, that’s not what I meant and you know it, Manuela. I simply meant you were late to this meeting because you were--”

“Alllllright. Let’s stop shoving our feet in our mouth squabbling and go kick some butt!” Caspar, surprisingly, is the one to shoo them out, much to everyone else’s relief.

The meeting that lasts after is another few hours before the light that had graced the garden has fallen and started to rise, once more, faraway on the horizon but close enough somebody might be able to touch the ephemeral warmth of it if they became one with the shadows on the edge of its reach.

Soon enough, it’s just Edelgard and Byleth left in the thick of those shadows, candelight flickering above the edge of a map that’s slowly been stained red by blood and determination and time. White gloves had been replaced by a lightly-armored counterpart given the generals and commanders sifting in and out of the room and Byleth walks behind her, now, watching the way the light touches the dips of them and disappears in the red bend of knuckles above the map before calmly shifting.

Knowing fingers slowly undo the left gauntlet, its ply metal creaking loud enough to cover Edelgard’s surprised gasp for any ear but her Tactician's, who’s close enough to feel it warm the air. Fingers run over the scarred ridges of fingertips--and knuckles--and a wrist--before she does the same with the right, fingertips tracing a map she wishes she were far more familiar with than the one of Fódlan and the Empire below them.

Edelgard’s nose dips down, head hanging as shoulders barely shake and with a rattling, heavy breath. She leans back into Byleth’s arms, sagging just enough for those undressing hands to skim up fingertips to hips to arms to the other woman’s heart, nose brushing along the high rise of an Emperor's cheek.

She can feel an Emperor sift like that sand of time into a woman left behind in the steady beats of her heart, strong and certain below Byleth's palm. Rhythmic. Soothing. Like a war drum. Like the bob of a fishing line against water. Like the sound of footsteps walking alongside her in the hall.

Edelgard unwinds a little faster against her, these days.

And Byleth quietly kisses the ring on Edelgard’s finger and wishes it was Edelgard, herself.

“I realized what it was, looking at the bird.” Byleth quietly offers in her ear, knowing Edelgard has never been content with mysteries and secrets unless they’re woven by her own hand. “During the counsel.”

“And what was that?” Barely a murmur, the tension still pulling that smooth voice as taut as the string on Bernadetta’s bow, thin and sharp and deadly. But shoulders ease a little more as one of Byleth’s arms wrap around her stomach, gently twisting in a slow dance to press Edelgard’s hips against the table and hold her up within the certain strength of her own arms.

Byleth isn’t Hubert--she has no intention of taking Edelgard’s burdens solely upon her own shoulders so that she won’t feel them. Assuming her future wife is not capable of bearing the weight of her own life seems... undermining , somehow, after all Edelgard has accomplished and faced. No, Byleth is well aware of the Emperor’s strength.

Which is why she lets them stand together, instead, hand on a heart raising up to cup a cheek, instead.

“Protective.” Byleth offers, thoughtful and quiet. “I had seen a cat out in the garden--I’ve been feeding it, so it followed me. I’d forgotten about it, because I stayed with the bird for...an hour, before you came, and it didn’t feel like it mattered. But it did.”

It’s funny, that way. The strangest things cause emotions.

“Oh,” Edelgard’s features soften and it’s now that she seems to hesitate before she gently tucks her head in the crook of Byleth’s cheek, resting on her shoulder fully, once more. “You’ve always been far more compassionate than anyone knows. You have a habit of protecting little birds, don’t you? Animals--children-- students --”

“I know the bird can fly on its own, and it’ll see the cat coming.” Byleth wraps her arms a little tighter around Edelgard, then, whose hands smooth up the front of her shoulders, but this time they sneak boldly underneath the black of a cloak, flattening over biceps until the fabric puddles around scarred wrists. “But I couldn’t help but…” Brows knit as she tastes the word that follows, “...worry . I guess even though I had fed the cat, and I like the cat, and the cat is just...hunting. I understand the cat’s motivations--” Byleth closes eyes and feels Edelgard settle in her arms and--

And it’s...warm.

It spreads through her and settles and eases the tension she hadn’t known existed in her spine.

“You’ll fight for the bird, even against the cat. That’s...not the first time you’ve felt that way, is it? It’s a little bit of a heavy-handed metaphor, my love.” Edelgard murmurs, pulling away enough to look at her.

Byleth's read about protection: it's the desire to safe-keep something from harm; it's the emotion that wraps around shoulders like a hug, fierce. Loyal. It's a knight, like Jeralt used to be, if a person could be an emotion.

What emotion would Edelgard be?

“I know you can fight your own battles.” Byleth nods, determination settling in, “But I’d rather fight them with you.”

“As would I, Byleth.” El’s voice is quiet and her eyelashes flutter against Byleth’s palm, leaning...closer.

Until her scent once more fills Byleth's lungs and her warmth spreads through fingertips and palms and a clenching stomach and suddenly all she can feel is Edelgard.

“What’s...this emotion?” A breath, leaning down to rest their foreheads together, brows knitting as Edelgard’s fingers hesitantly raise to brush over her cheek--her neck--push up through her hair, as if she’s careful of it.

It’s the first time someone’s ever been careful of touching Byleth, outside of Rhea.

(Byleth has a feeling Edelgard wouldn’t appreciate the comparison).

“Hmm…” A thoughtful note sounds in the back of her throat as Edelgard leans closer in the earliest hours of the rising sun, light starting to creep up their bare hands and scarred necks and El’s soft, loving smile. “Anticipation,” Teeth tuck lips, “I would think.”

“Anticipation.” Byleth tastes with a smile and feels the thud of Edelgard’s heart in her throat and the shifting air between them and the feeling of fingertips growing a little bolder in their curl about her own craning neck, before leaning down and kissing her.

Love--

El’s gasp parts locked gates against lips and Byleth’s heart and the beating bird within as her fingers tangle in her hair and mutter ‘finally’ against her before they inelegantly clatter against the table and knock half of the scrolls off the top of it, the map tearing a little at one of the pins, both of them giggling and chuckling and--

Embarrassed and Happy and Giddy and Light--

--as they clean up the mess before Edelgard’s teeth tuck her lips and she blushes as she brings Byleth closer, once more. This time guiding her far away from the long table into the corner, sheltered from the kalleidoscope light of the stained glass windows in this shell of a building full of used to be’s and slowly heralding will becomes.

Neither one of them have had much practice at this, but love is something they can learn together, as well.

“Let’s try again.”

--Love--

Byleth hums as she kisses El again and again and again underneath the warmth of the sun until both of them part with flushed cheeks and knowing smiles and fingers that link until they’re forced to go their separate ways, a little more disheveled than they had been an hour before.

Love through tense weeks and months and half a year of a slowly spreading plague and continued fights. Love through stolen moments and kissed rings and emotions offered up into the air and caught by Edelgard’s lips.

“ Love ”--Edelgard vocalizes and offers, herself, as they lay in the grass by the gardens months and months later, tucked away in a corner where no one would think to look save for Hubert (because anyone who would look isn’t nearly as bold). Her finger gently, fondly tracing down the line of Byleth’s cheek like a painting, eyes bright and bashful as she leans above her.

“Is that what you feel?” Byleth asks, leaning into that fond finger and wrapping arms around her waist. It’s the first time Edelgard’s offered an emotion of her own instead of being asked--or implying it with an answer of Byleth’s.

They’re parting ways in a few hours--Edelgard to Enbarr and Byleth to the outskirts of Kleiman to help Ferdinand secure the territory after a surprising uprising in the Southeast of the fortress, near the coast.

A little too close to the coast, and a little too close to the spread of the plague that they’ve been monitoring since word of it rose. It’s convenient in the worst of ways that they’ve both come to expect, and it’s the wisest decision to send a tactician over the Emperor, however Edelgard desires to be on the front lines.

It was smart to send Byleth, they all agreed.

It’s funny, how time can move so quickly . She finds it hard to believe Ferdinand has been gone so long.

‘Let me go fishing’ , Byleth had murmured against the curve of Edelgard’s neck above mussed sheets and biting lips before everyone had arrived a week prior, hand curving over her hip and Edelgard’s fingers falling down to her chin and her neck and her heart as she hovered above her, hair cascading like a waterfall of moonlight. It was the decision that made the most sense.

‘I hate this --’

‘...I'm sorry.’

‘I hate this, Byleth--’

A blink, coming back to the present. Do emotions always do this? Are they always so...heavily tied with memories and moments and the flutter of violet eyes like a blue bird’s wings?

“Yes.” Edelgard looks away--unusual, given she’s the type to tackle problems head-on--and Byleth shifts upwards on her elbows.

Byleth’s read thousands of books and nearly half of them mention love. People were fascinated with love and...Byleth was too, in a way. She’d never felt it, and never understood it, and could never quite grasp its importance. On a battlefield she had watched people kill for it and die for it and live for it--

It’s something so complex to capture that it doesn’t have such a simple definition like the other emotions might--it’s like a...box. A wooden, rickety box tenderly made and nailed, full of emotions that are so cluttered and many that they all have to be contained so that they aren't spilled and lost and forgotten.

A box. Maybe this...cluttered thing made out of the wood of her chest filled with a dozen--a hundred--a thousand other emotions inside of it, carefully latched and closed and carried about in a rucksack from campsite to campsite, safely stowed. Hidden.

Yes, a box. This brittle wooden thing with love written on the outside of it. Love...written in an elegant pen by a white-gloved hand. Signed like a letter--like a name--because Byleth would know that hand anywhere it pressed, branding wood and ink and life beneath its touch. A thousand keepsakes of happiness and hope and anger and a million other things Byleth knows the definition to but has only recently fully understood tidied within its cramped confines. Love. Some people throw the word around so carelessly--

Manuela, who loves another person every week

--or have never quite found what was nearby them--

Dorothea, whose letters to her professor list Petra more than anything else

--or have never found its purpose--

Felix, who loves training, he claims, but loathes the taste of battle before sniping that Sylvain will waste away if he doesn’t join him

--and Byleth watches the way Edelgard says it as her chin dips. Certain and careful--like the word means more than she might know how to explain, herself, and Byleth thinks of the poems and the operas and the novels she’s read and imagines each of them on El’s lips before she leans up a little further, safely tucking the other woman against her chest.

She watches the sun dance along her cheek as Edelgard looks up at her through long lashes, blush and nerves tucking up a thin smile.

When Byleth was as tall as his knees, her father crafted her a box, and she thinks Love might be like that.

“El…” Byleth reaches down to curling hand and untucks a glove where a ring has settled for nearly a year, now, hidden away safely out of sight like so many things are. “I asked you to spend your life with me.” She reminds, lips brushing over it in a quiet ceremony. “We’re engaged. You don’t need to be nervous.”

The blush deepens and when Edelgard tries to turn away, Byleth catches her chin.

"I--"

“Is it...so hard for you to imagine I love you, too?”

Edelgard is unusually silent for a long moment before her hand raises up to Byleth’s chest, resting over her heart. And she smiles. This broken, hopeful thing that reminds Byleth of the night she had returned from half a decade of sleeping, or something close to it, something she doesn't quite understand yet buried deep in those eyes.

“If you do, then it won’t be difficult for you to promise me you’ll do everything in your power to come back to Garreg Mach. Promptly. In a month’s time, not five years. No more sleeping .”

“It’s not difficult for me to promise that.” Byleth immediately offers, voice calm, watching the way Edelgard’s features twist and contort beneath their own calm veneer like a fish beneath the pond's surface. “As long as you promise to keep up with your training in Enbarr. I would hate to have to come sooner to whip you into shape. No fighting is no reason for your axe work to get sloppy, Edelgard."

“ Professor ,” Edelgard gripes, though there’s a hint of a smile in her eyes, “I’m being serious . You honestly joke at the worst momen--”

Byleth kisses her, feeling tense shoulders ease beneath her touch as Edelgard’s fingers wind in her hair, pressing them both down into the red quilt they’d stolen from a student’s bed, its hue vibrant and harsh above the green grass that resembles a Goddess's eyes.

“...I love you, too.” Byleth whispers when they pull away and sees Edelgard’s conflicting shock and contentment in equal measure--her happiness and nerves-- but her smile seems to make the whole world feel...unimportant, just for a second. A moment.

An instant and five years, all in one.

"Then I expect you to return to me...my Empress." Quiet so only Byleth might hear, Edelgard's knuckles skim down Byleth's cheek and the empress lets out a rattling, soft sigh.

All of those books had made love seem so complicated, but it tasted right the moment Edelgard had offered it.

But Byleth doesn't have to ask what this feeling is. They're both far too familiar with war.

An afternoon later, Edelgard’s fingers lingers in her own amongst the troops as their hands clasp to part--their eyes meeting and staying before they can't, anymore--and the Emperor sees her advisor off towards Kleiman, her own convoy heading the opposite way to Enbarr, a box tucked in her bag and a dagger on Byleth's hip. She leads the charge on a horse at the helm, never one to shy away from the front lines, Hubert’s look knowing and calm next to her.

"Until we meet again, Professor." Hubert offers before turning about his own horse, both of them disappearing into the light cast off of the mountains as Byleth turns towards the darkness behind her, the beast she rides neighing appreciatively as she dips into the quiet shadows left by cascading trees into the sky.

“You look happier, Professor.” Ferdinand casually mentions offhand, the sound of their horses hooves sinking into mud accompanying them during the daylight. He had met her halfway towards Kleiman, their intent to set up another outpost on the outskirts hopefully not heard by anyone else in the Monastery.

There were shadows in every corner, after all. Or at least that's what Hubert liked to enigmatically drawl knowingly every time they talked about the Slithers having spies.

“Do I?” Her head tilts to the side, remembering her father once saying the same, long ago. She hadn’t realized emotions could ease the knots of muscles until something softer could be seen underneath. Not until Jeralt had mentioned it. She’s getting a little more used to the idea. “And your hair is getting even longer. It suits you.” It's pointed out in kind and Ferdinand preens at the observation, offering a dazzling smile as he sits straighter on his horse.

“Ah, yes. I had initially thought it was unbecoming of a noble to keep it unmaintained, but I find I like it far more.” His chin tips upwards towards the sun--command looks good on him, as well, their battalion following behind. Well-led and proud. “Edelgard, though my judgement would have been sound without her commentary, did also state that it complimented my eyes, a few years ago, and made me seem more approachable to commoners.” Byleth doubts those were Edelgard’s exact words, “It spoke great volumes that we both were of the same thought. There’s many things I never would have assumed I would have enjoyed outside of the nobility. Who knew hair could provide such a cautiously freeing sense of enjoyment? So I've let it grow longer.”

“I’ll help you brush it once it reaches your hips.” Byleth helpfully offers and Ferdinand laughs, surprised and shaking it over shoulders.

“That will not be necessary, Professor.”

“It can be very difficult to maintain.” Byleth seriously continues, pointing towards it off-handedly, “In a battle the last thing you need is a handle for someone to grapple you to the floor with, especially from your horse.”

Ferdinand scratches at his chin in thought, humming.

“Ah, I had not seen that angle, Professor. Perhaps freedom does come with its costs.” He seems plagued by this for a moment before Byleth nods.

“Dorothea arrives next week, we’ll have her cut it for you. She’s cut mine, before.” After pouting that Byleth had let it turn into a mess, anyways. Which is strange because Byleth’s hair has always been this way.

Was it messy?

‘Edie can’t run her fingers through a raven’s nest, Professor.’

‘I have no idea what that even means, Dorothea.’

‘ Oh, hopefully you two aren’t too thick-headed to find out.’ Dorothea’s sigh could push mountains to the edge of Fódlan. 'No wonder why she never gives me any of the good stuff in her letters.'

'What?'

'Nothing~~'

"She can keep it long but still manageable. Then you have both freedom and functionality."

Ferdinand perks upwards. “She does seem to have a great amount of experience needing to cut her own hair and not having someone to do it for her.”

Byleth sighs.

He’s making progress , perhaps that’s the best they can ask of him.

Fondness --she can hear Edelgard murmur in her ear, a phantom’s touch as her smile might skirt along her cheek.

A smile, soft and quiet, graces Byleth's lips, in kind.

“It suits you, as well.” Ferdinand offers and Byleth tilts her head to the side to regard him, a little distracted in her thoughts as they continue on. “Happiness.”

Ferdinand just smiles and Byleth nods after a long moment, realization donning.

Happiness is the word she thinks her father would have liked the most to hear she learned.

Happiness. It’s a word Byleth knew the definition to, but never quite understood.

Not until Edelgard gave it to her.

Love suits me, El --she can imagine humming along her shoulder, because for now the only emotion she can imagine settling in that sanded, shaped box labelled ‘love’ is the rattling, large one named happiness.

#edeleth #edeleth fanfic #fe3h fanfic #fic #mine #catch me coming back to tumblr just in time to make cruddy graphics for questionable fics :')#well #coming back to my personal tumblr #>.>#this fic was longer than ever expected #but they always are #I know the fandom isn't dead on ao3 now #I hope it's not dead on here because woo boi I'mma bout to follow a lot o blogs about it #no ragerts

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theculturedmarxist · 3 years

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The Israeli newspaper Haaretz has run a fascinating long report this week offering a disturbing snapshot of the political climate rapidly emerging across Europe on the issue of antisemitism. The article documents a kind of cultural, political and intellectual reign of terror in Germany since the parliament passed a resolution last year equating support for non-violent boycotts of Israel – in solidarity with Palestinians oppressed by Israel – with antisemitism.

The article concerns Germany but anyone reading it will see very strong parallels with what is happening in other European countries, especially the UK and France.

The same European leaders who a few years ago marched in Paris shouting “Je suis Charlie” – upholding the inalienable free speech rights of white Europeans to offend Muslims by insulting and ridiculing their Prophet – are now queuing up to outlaw free speech when it is directed against Israel, a state that refuses to end its belligerent occupation of Palestinian land. European leaders have repeatedly shown they are all too ready to crush the free speech of Palestinians, and those in solidarity with them, to avoid offending sections of the Jewish community.

The situation reduces to this: European Muslims have no right to take offence at insults about a religion they identify with, but European Jews have every right to take offence at criticism of an aggressive Middle Eastern state they identify with. Seen another way, the perverse secular priorities of European mainstream culture now place the sanctity of a militarised state, Israel, above the sanctity of a religion with a billion followers.

Guilt by association

This isn’t even a double standard. I can’t find a word in the dictionary that conveys the scale and degree of hypocrisy and bad faith involved.

If the American Jewish scholar Norman Finkelstein wrote a follow-up to his impassioned book The Holocaust Industry – on the cynical use of the Holocaust to enrich and empower a Jewish organisational establishment at the expense of the Holocaust’s actual survivors – he might be tempted to title it The Antisemitism Industry.

In the current climate in Europe, one that rejects any critical thinking in relation to broad areas of public life, that observation alone would enough to have one denounced as an antisemite. Which is why the Haaretz article – far braver than anything you will read in a UK or US newspaper – makes no bones about what is happening in Germany. It calls it a “witch-hunt”. That is Haaretz’s way of saying that antisemitism has been politicised and weaponised – a self-evident conclusion that will currently get you expelled from the British Labour party, even if you are Jewish.

The Haaretz story highlights two important developments in the way antisemitism has been, in the words of intellectuals and cultural leaders cited by the newspaper, “instrumentalised” in Germany.

Jewish organisations and their allies in Germany, as Haaretz reports, are openly weaponising antisemitism not only to damage the reputation of Israel’s harsher critics, but also to force out of the public and cultural domain – through a kind of “antisemitism guilt by association” – anyone who dares to entertain criticism of Israel.

Cultural associations, festivals, universities, Jewish research centres, political think-tanks, museums and libraries are being forced to scrutinise the past of those they wish to invite in case some minor transgression against Israel can be exploited by local Jewish organisations. That has created a toxic, politically paranoid atmosphere that inevitably kills trust and creativity.

But the psychosis runs deeper still. Israel, and anything related to it, has become such a combustible subject – one that can ruin careers in an instant – that most political, academic and cultural figures in Germany now choose to avoid it entirely. Israel, as its supporters intended, is rapidly becoming untouchable.

A case study noted by Haaretz is Peter Schäfer, a respected professor of ancient Judaism and Christianity studies who was forced to resign as director of Berlin’s Jewish Museum last year. Schäfer’s crime, in the eyes of Germany’s Jewish establishment, was that he staged an exhibition on Jerusalem that recognised the city’s three religious traditions, including a Muslim one.

He was immediately accused of promoting “historical distortions” and denounced as “anti-Israel”. A reporter for Israel’s rightwing Jerusalem Post, which has been actively colluding with the Israeli government to smear critics of Israel, contacted Schäfer with a series of inciteful emails. The questions included “Did you learn the wrong lesson from the Holocaust?” and “Israeli experts told me you disseminate antisemitism – is that true?”

Schäfer observes:

The accusation of antisemitism is a club that allows one to deal a death blow, and political elements who have an interest in this are using it, without a doubt… The museum staff gradually entered a state of panic. Then of course we also started to do background checks. Increasingly it poisoned the atmosphere and our work.

Another prominent victim of these Jewish organisations tells Haaretz:

Sometimes one thinks, “To go to that conference?”, “To invite this colleague?” Afterward it means that for three weeks, I’ll have to cope with a shitstorm, whereas I need the time for other things that I get paid for as a lecturer. There is a type of “anticipatory obedience” or “prior self-censorship”.

Ringing off the hook

There is nothing unusual about what is happening in Germany. Jewish organisations are stirring up these “shitstorms” – designed to paralyse political and cultural life for anyone who engages in even the mildest criticism of Israel – at the highest levels of government. Don’t believe me? Here is Barack Obama explaining in his recent autobiography his efforts as US president to curb Israel’s expansion of its illegal settlements. Early on, he was warned to back off or face the wrath of the Israel lobby:

Members of both parties worried about crossing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Those who criticized Israeli policy too loudly risked being tagged as “anti-Israel” (and possibly anti-Semitic) and confronted with a well-funded opponent in the next election.

Corbyn, it seems, has found an unlikely ally in former US President Obama. In his new autobiography, he writes of the Israel lobby's power: 'Those who criticized Israeli policy too loudly risked being tagged as "anti-Israel" (and possibly anti-Semitic)' https://t.co/tKmy8q3Cws

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) November 26, 2020

When Obama went ahead anyway in 2009 and proposed a modest freeze on Israel’s illegal settlements:

The White House phones started ringing off the hook, as members of my national security team fielded calls from reporters, leaders of American Jewish organizations, prominent supporters, and members of Congress, all wondering why we were picking on Israel … this sort of pressure continued for much of 2009.

He observes further:

The noise orchestrated by Netanyahu had the intended effect of gobbling up our time, putting us on the defensive, and reminding me that normal policy differences with an Israeli prime minister – even one who presided over a fragile coalition government – exacted a political cost that didn’t exist when I dealt with the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, Canada, or any of our other closest allies.

Doubtless, Obama dare not put down in writing his full thoughts about Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu or the US lobbyists who worked on his behalf. But Obama’s remarks do show that, even a US president, supposedly the single most powerful person on the planet, ended up blanching in the face of this kind of relentless assault. For lesser mortals, the price is likely to be far graver.

No free speech on Israel

It was this same mobilisation of Jewish organisational pressure – orchestrated, as Obama notes, by Israel and its partisans in the US and Europe – that ended up dominating Jeremy Corbyn’s five years as the leader of Britain’s leftwing Labour party, recasting a well-known anti-racism activist almost overnight as an antisemite.

It is the reason why his successor, Sir Keir Starmer, has outsourced part of Labour’s organisational oversight on Jewish and Israel-related matters to the very conservative Board of Deputies of British Jews, as given expression in Starmer’s signing up to the Board’s “10 Pledges”.

It is part of the reason why Starmer recently suspended Corbyn from the party, and then defied the membership’s demands that he be properly reinstated, after Corbyn expressed concerns about the way antisemitism allegations had been “overstated for political reasons” to damage him and Labour. (The rightwing Starmer, it should be noted, was also happy to use antisemitism as a pretext to eradicate the socialist agenda Corbyn had tried to revive in Labour.) It is why Starmer has imposed a blanket ban on constituency parties discussing Corbyn’s suspension. And it is why Labour’s shadow education secretary has joined the ruling Conservative party in threatening to strip universities of their funding if they allow free speech about Israel on campus.

Disturbing to learn from this article that Labour backs threatening funding to universities to bully them into adopting the IHRA re-definition of antisemitism – a definition that protects Israel from criticism and would ban most forms of solidarity with Palestinians on campus

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) December 8, 2020

Two types of Jews

But the Haaretz article raises another issue critical to understanding how Israel and the Jewish establishment in Europe are politicising antisemitism to protect Israel from criticism. The potential Achilles’ heel of their campaign are Jewish dissidents, those who break with the supposed “Jewish community” line and create a space for others – whether Palestinians or other non-Jews – to criticise Israel. These Jewish dissenters risk serving as a reminder that trenchant criticism of Israel should not result in one being tarred an antisemite.

Leading Palestinians warn: 'The fight against antisemitism has been increasingly instrumentalised by the Israeli government and its supporters in an effort to delegitimise the Palestinian cause and silence defenders of Palestinian rights' https://t.co/Shu1Z7XYM1

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) December 1, 2020

Israel and Jewish organisations, however, have made it their task to erode that idea by promoting a distinction – an antisemitic one, at that – between two types of Jews: good Jews (loyal to Israel), and bad Jews (disloyal to Israel).

Haaretz reports that officials in Germany, such as Felix Klein, the country’s antisemitism commissioner, and Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, are being allowed to define not only who is an antisemite, typically using support for Israel as the yardstick, but are also determining who are good Jews – those politically like them – and who are bad Jews – those who disagree with them.

Despite Germany’s horrific recent history of Jew hatred, the German government, local authorities, the media, universities and cultural institutions have been encouraged by figures like Klein and Schuster to hound German Jews, even Israeli Jews living and working in Germany, from the country’s public and cultural space.

When, for example, a group of Israeli Jewish academics in Berlin held a series of online discussions about Zionism last year on the website of their art school, an Israeli reporter soon broke the story of a “scandal” involving boycott supporters receiving funding from the German government. Hours later the art school had pulled down the site, while the German education ministry issued a statement clarifying that it had provided no funding. The Israeli embassy officially declared the discussions held by these Israelis as “antisemitic”, and a German foundation that documents antisemitism added the group to the list of antisemitic incidents it records.

Described as ‘kapos’

So repressive has the cultural and political atmosphere grown in Germany that there has been a small backlash among cultural leaders. Some have dared to publish a letter protesting against the role of Klein, the antisemitism commissioner. Haaretz reports:

The antisemitism czar, the letter charged, is working “in synergy with the Israeli government” in an effort “to discredit and silence opponents of Israel’s policies” and is abetting the “instrumentalization” that undermines the true struggle against antisemitism.

Figures like Klein have been so focused on tackling criticism of Israel from the left, including the Jewish left, that they have barely noted the “acute danger Jews in Germany face due to the surge in far-right antisemitism”, the letter argues.

Again, the same picture can be seen across Europe. In the UK, the opposition Labour party, which should be a safe space for those leading the anti-racism struggle, is purging itself of Jews critical of Israel and using anti-semitism smears against prominent anti-racists, especially from other oppressed minorities.

Extraordinarily, Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, one of the founders of Jewish Voice for Labour, which supports Corbyn, recently found herself suspended by Starmer’s Labour. She had just appeared in a moving video in which she explained the ways antisemitism was being used by Jewish organisations to smear Jewish left-wingers like herself as “traitors” and “kapos” – an incendiary term of abuse, as Wimborne-Idrissi points out, that refers to “a Jewish inmate of a concentration camp who collaborated with the [Nazi] authorities, people who collaborated in the annihilation of their own people”.

In suspending her, Starmer effectively endorsed this campaign by the UK’s Jewish establishment of incitement against, and vilification of, leftwing Jews.

The aggressive purge of Jews from the Labour Party under the repressive rule of @Keir_Starmer marches on.

I haven't seen a sustained campaign of overt anti-Semitism quite like the effort of Labour centrists to create lists of Good Jews & Bad Jews and purge the latter. https://t.co/wVwnu47QJP

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 3, 2020

Earlier, Marc Wadsworth, a distinguished black anti-racism campaigner, found himself similarly suspended by Labour when he exposed the efforts of Ruth Smeeth, then a Labour MP and a former Jewish official in the Israel lobby group BICOM, to recruit the media to her campaign smearing political opponents on the left as antisemites.

In keeping with the rapid erosion of critical thinking in civil society organisations designed to uphold basic freedoms, Smeeth was recently appointed director of the prestigious free speech organisation Index on Censorship. There she can now work on suppressing criticism of Israel – and attack “bad Jews” – under cover of fighting censorship. In the new, inverted reality, censorship refers not to the smearing and silencing of a “bad Jew” like Wimborne-Idrissi, but to criticism of Israel over its human rights abuses, which supposedly “censors” the identification of “good Jews” with Israel – now often seen as the crime of “causing offence”.

Ok, we've now officially moved from Alice Through the Looking Glass into the Twilight Zone.

Ruth Smeeth, ex-Israel lobbyist for Bicom and a key player in outlawing solidarity for Palestinians in the Labour party, is the new CEO of free speech group Index on Censorship! https://t.co/UmHXbTQETS

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) June 15, 2020

Boy who cried wolf

The Haaretz article helps to contextualise Europe’s current antisemitism “witch-hunt”, which targets anyone who criticises Israel or stands in solidarity with oppressed Palestinians, or associates with such people. It is an expansion of the earlier campaign by the Jewish establishment against “the wrong kind of Jew”, as identified by Finkelstein in The Holocaust Industry. But this time Jewish organisations are playing a much higher-stakes, and more dangerous, political game.

Haaretz rightly fears that the Jewish leadership in Europe is not only silencing ordinary Jews but degrading the meaning – the shock value – of antisemitism through the very act of politicising it. Jewish organisations risk alienating the European left, which has historically stood with them against Jew hatred from the right. European anti-racists suddenly find themselves equated with, and smeared as, fledgling neo-Nazis.

If those who support human rights and demand an end to the oppression of Palestinians find themselves labelled antisemitic, it will become ever harder to distinguish between bogus (weaponised) “antisemitism” on the left and real Jew hatred from the right. The antisemitism smearers – and their fellow travellers like Keir Starmer – are likely to end up suffering their very own “boy who cried wolf” syndrome.

Or as Haaretz notes:

The issue that is bothering the critics of the Bundestag [German parliament] resolution is whether the extension of the concept of antisemitism to encompass criticism of Israel is not actually adversely affecting the battle against antisemitism. The argument is that the ease with which the accusation is leveled could have the effect of eroding the concept itself.

The Antisemitism Industry

It is worth noting the shared features of the new Antisemitism Industry and Finkelstein’s earlier discussions of the Holocaust Industry.

In his book, Finkelstein identifies the “wrong Jews” as people like his mother, who survived a Nazi death camp as the rest of her family perished. These surviving Jews, Finkelstein argues, were valued by the Holocaust Industry only in so far as they served as a promotional tool for the Jewish establishment to accumulate more wealth and cultural and political status. Otherwise, the victims were ignored because the actual Holocaust’s message – in contrast to the Jewish leadership’s representation of it – was universal: that we must oppose and fight all forms of racism because they lead to persecution and genocide.

Instead the Holocaust Industry promoted a particularist, self-interested lesson that the Holocaust proves Jews are uniquely oppressed and that they therefore deserve a unique solution: a state, Israel, that must be given unique leeway by western states to commit crimes in violation of international law. The Holocaust Industry – very much to be distinguished from the real events of the Holocaust – is deeply entwined in, and rationalised by, the perpetuation of the racialist, colonial project of Israel.

In the case of the Antisemitism Industry, the “wrong Jew” surfaces again. This time the witch-hunt targets Jewish leftwingers, Jews critical of Israel, Jews opposed to the occupation, and Jews who support a boycott of the illegal settlements or of Israel itself. Again, the problem with these “bad Jews” is that they allude to a universal lesson, one that says Palestinians have at least as much right to self-determination, to dignity and security, in their historic homeland as Jewish immigrants who fled European persecution.

Keir Starmer needs to listen to the 'proudly pro-Israel' Americans for Peace Now. They reject the IHRA definition for 'weaponising' antisemitism and allowing 'McCarthyite witch hunts' of Israel critics. Only those living in a 'black hole' could support it https://t.co/mNCj0LqCky

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) December 6, 2020

In contrast to the “bad Jews”, the Antisemitism Industry demands that a particularist conclusion be drawn about Israel – just as a particularist conclusion was earlier drawn by the Holocaust Industry. It says that to deny Jews a state is to leave them defenceless against the eternal virus of antisemitism. In this conception, the Holocaust may be uniquely abhorrent but it is far from unique. Non-Jews, given the right circumstances, are only too capable of carrying out another Holocaust. Jews must therefore always be protected, always on guard, always have their weapons (or in Israel’s case, its nuclear bombs) to hand.

‘Get out of jail’ card

This view, of course, seeks to ignore, or marginalise, other victims of the Holocaust – Romanies, communists, gays – and other kinds of racism. It needs to create a hierarchy of racisms, a competition between them, in which hatred of Jews is at the pinnacle. This is how we arrived at an absurdity: that anti-Zionism – misrepresented as the rejection of a refuge for Jews, rather than the reality that it rejects an ethnic, colonial state oppressing Palestinians – is the same as antisemitism.

Extraordinarily, as the Haaretz article clarifies, German officials are oppressing “bad Jews”, at the instigation of Jewish organisations, to prevent, as they see it, the re-emergence of the far-right and neo-Nazis. The criticisms of Israel made by the “bad Jew” are thereby not just dismissed as ideologically unsound or delusions but become proof that these Jews are colluding with, or at least nourishing, the Jew haters.

In this way, Germany, the UK and much of Europe have come to justify the exclusion of the “wrong Jew” – those who uphold universal principles for the benefit of all – from the public space. Which, of course, is exactly what Israel wants, because, rooted as it is in an ideology of ethnic exclusivity as a “Jewish state”, it necessarily rejects universal ethics.

What we see here is an illustration of a principle at the heart of Israel’s state ideology of Zionism: Israel needs antisemitism. Israel would quite literally have to invent antisemitism if it did not exist.

This is not hyperbole. The idea that the “virus of antisemitism” lies semi-dormant in every non-Jew waiting for a chance to overwhelm its host is the essential rationale for Israel. If the Holocaust was an exceptional historical event, if antisemitism was an ancient racism that in its modern incarnation followed the patterns of prejudice and hatred familiar in all racisms, from anti-black bigotry to Islamophobia, Israel would be not only redundant but an abomination – because it has been set up to dispossess and abuse another group, the Palestinians.

Antisemitism is Israel’s “get out of jail” card. Antisemitism serves to absolve Israel of the racism it structurally embodies and that would be impossible to overlook were Israel deprived of the misdirection weaponised antisemitism provides.

An empty space

The Haaretz article provides a genuine service by not only reminding us that “bad Jews” exist but in coming to their defence – something that European media is no longer willing to do. To defend “bad Jews” like Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi is to be contaminated with the same taint of antisemitism that justified the ejection of these Jews from the public space.

Haaretz records the effort of a few brave cultural institutions in Germany to protest, to hold the line, against this new McCarthyism. Their stand may fail. If it does, you may never become aware of it.

The fraudulent 'Labour antisemitism' controversy has empowered the most thuggish elements in the organised British Jewish community.

Case in point: the Campaign Against Antisemitism effectively calls for Professor David Feldman to keep quiet or be sacked. https://t.co/QWvNg84c2E

— JamieSW (@jsternweiner) December 4, 2020

Once, the “bad Jews” have been smeared into silence, as Palestinians and those who stand in solidarity with them largely have been already; when social media has de-platformed critics of Israel as Jew haters; when the media and political parties enforce this silence so absolutely they no longer need to smear anyone as an antisemite because these “antisemites” have been disappeared; when the Jewish “community” speaks with one voice because its other voices have been eliminated; when the censorship is complete, you will not know it.

There will be no record of what was lost. There will be simply an empty space, a blank slate, where discussions of Israel’s crimes against Palestinians once existed. What you will hear instead is only what Israel and its partisans want you to hear. Your ignorance will be blissfully complete.

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snowwhitelass · 4 years

Text

I’m pleased to be here today to discuss who I’ll be supporting for president, and why.

It was the honor of my life to represent my state, Arizona — my family’s home — in the United States House and Senate for eighteen years. I am a conservative. I’ve always felt that my conservative beliefs and values were best expressed in the Republican Party. I was a Republican long before the president ever called himself one, and I will be a Republican long after identifying as such is no longer useful to him. Principle does not go in and out of fashion, does not chase ratings, or play to the base, or care too much about polls. And principle is the provenance of no one party. That is one of the things I am here to talk about today.

The other thing I am here to talk about is the future — both of my party, but more importantly, the future of our country.

I was raised on a cattle ranch in Northern Arizona. Goldwater country. When I was a kid, the Republican Party under President Reagan was brimming with ideas, full of purpose and principle. It was coherent, and inspiring, and idealistic. So much so that it awakened the imagination of a kid from the town of Snowflake, and a whole generation of other kids just like him. Made us think big thoughts, and of our place in the world, and of what it meant to be an American in America, the shining city on a hill.

With Reagan, a conservative’s vision of America as the indispensable nation was benevolent and big-hearted, a beacon to the striver and to the subjugated and those locked behind an ideological wall that divided the world into free and oppressed. It was morning in Reagan’s America. It wasn’t perfect, but it was always getting better. We were the sum of our goodness, not our gripes — of our resolve, not our resentments.

I got into public service believing that for our politics to be healthy, the American government needed people who believed as I do, but also people who believed differently from me. This has become somewhat of a novel idea. But it is the genius of our founders that the Constitution forces compromise. Governing is hard. Democracy is hard. Decency shouldn’t be that hard, but apparently it is. You know what’s easy? Name calling. Demagoguery. The politics of vengeance is easy. Dehumanization requires very little talent.

By raging at each other, our minds vacant of reason and reeling with ill-will and tinfoil hat conspiracy theories, we have given in to the horrible tribal impulse to first mistake our opponents for our enemies… then become seized with the conviction that we must destroy that enemy… seemingly oblivious to the fact that not only are we not enemies, we are each vital organs in the same body.

It’s as if in order to save itself, your brain decided to destroy your heart. That’s about the level of care we are currently bringing to the proceedings. There is a sickness in our system, and we have infected the whole country with it.

We’re all old enough to remember when we elected presidents who spoke to our highest ideals and aspirations as a nation, not to our darkest dystopian fears. I can remember when, once an election was settled, a new president would reach out a hand to those who had opposed him, and pledge to do right by all Americans, not just those who were loyal to him.

That’s the way presidents once sought to lead and govern. In fact, it is the way every other president in the modern era, Republican or Democrat, tried to conduct himself in office. Each possessed a keen awareness that a president’s principal role is to serve not himself or his interests or the interests of his clan, but the people of the United States. That was once the American way.

Those of us of a certain age in this country have also had the rare good fortune of growing up and into adulthood not having to think too much about the consequences of our votes — or even whether we vote at all in a given election.

For our entire lives, through some very fractious political periods, we have taken steady self-governance for granted, and that is a luxury that so many of our fellow human beings living in other countries have never had for a single day of their lives.

But the story of the past 3 ½ years is the story of the power that we vest in the presidency, and the consequences when a president does not use that power well. And these times prove the folly of taking anything for granted.

In 2016, one candidate running for the Republican nomination described our current President as a “chaos candidate” and if elected he would be a “chaos president.” Can anyone now seriously argue against this proposition?

Of course, in 2016 the President was a private citizen, and thus was unaccountable for the chaos he caused. And these traits of the man who would become the standard bearer of my party were bad enough when exhibited by a mere candidate for president.

In 2016, it was bad enough when for months in advance of the election, the Republican nominee for president claimed falsely that the coming election would be rigged. Now, as president of the United States, he has said, and I quote: “The only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged.” What kind of president talks like that? What kind of American leader undermines confidence in elections in his own country, as part of his strategy to hold power? This is extraordinarily dangerous to a free society and it stands to inflict lasting damage to our democracy.

It was bad enough when as a candidate he attacked a federal judge because of his heritage, saying that Judge Gonzalo Curiel couldn’t preside fairly over a certain case because Curiel’s parents were from Mexico. As President, he has only intensified his attack on judges. He has interfered in cases involving his friends and threatened jail for his opponents, demonstrating how little he knows or appreciates about the independent administration of justice in America.

In 2016, it was bad enough for a mere candidate for president to sweet talk the Russian dictator, calling Vladimir Putin a “strong leader for his people,” as if “his people” had a say in the matter. Watching that man as president stand with Putin at Helsinki and take the dictator’s side, defying his own intelligence community and denying the ongoing Russian attacks on our elections — was shocking and appalling. In that moment, and in so many other inexplicable moments of deference to dictators, a president of the United States degraded his office and diminished America’s role as leader of the free world.

It was bad enough in 2016 when as a candidate he resorted to calling his opponents childish names. That behavior in a president — which has only gotten worse, is an embarrassment to the office. Do any of us want our children to emulate this behavior?

I could go on, but the litany is all too familiar. It is apparent by now that the president’s behavior has not and will not change, whatever hopes we Republicans might have entertained about the office changing the man.

Some of my conservative friends will say, yes, we don’t like his behavior, but he governs as a conservative. Here, today, I will say to my fellow conservatives: Whatever else you might call the behavior I have just described, it is most assuredly not conservative. Indifference to the truth or to the careful stewardship of the institutions of American liberty is not conservative. Disregard for the separation of powers — the centerpiece of our constitutional system — is not conservative. Governing by tweet is not conservative. It’s not even governing.

And to the refrain — Well, it’s all about the Supreme Court, I say: To fall back on Supreme Court appointments as the last remnant by which we define a once vibrant conservative movement should offer little solace to conservatives.

Three conservative principles have defined and animated the Republican Party over the past several decades. A belief in limited government, a commitment to free trade, and a recognition that strong American leadership around the globe makes America a more secure nation and the world a better place.

So, how are we doing with these principles?

Well, we were running trillion-dollar deficits even before the coronavirus hit us. We have destroyed foreign markets for our goods and services. We have threatened security agreements that have kept the peace for nearly three quarters of a century. We have offended allies who we will desperately need to face China and other long-term threats to our security and prosperity. For no good reason.

Can any of us stand here today and claim that our party has remained faithful to conservative principles during the President’s time in office? No, we cannot.

If we are honest, there is less of a conservative case to be made for reelecting the President than there is a blatant appeal for more rank tribalism. And further division. And more willful amnesia in the face of more outlandish presidential behavior.

I cannot and will not be a part of that. There simply is no future in it. To my fellow Republicans who, like me, believe in the power of conservative ideas — ask yourself: Will we be in a better position to make a conservative case for governing after four more years of this administration? I think we all know the answer.

So here we are today. During the 2016 election, given what I had already seen during the campaign, I knew I could not vote for the President. Like many of my colleagues, I chose to vote for a third-party candidate. Today, given what we have experienced over the past four years, it is not enough to just to register our disapproval of the President. We need to elect someone else in his place, someone who will stop the chaos and reverse the damage.

Putting country over party has a noble history here in Arizona. In 1992, Mr. Republican, Barry Goldwater, endorsed a Democrat running for Congress over the Republican he felt would not represent the party well. Goldwater hadn’t traded in his conservative credentials. Far from it. He simply believed, in that case, that the conservative cause would be better served over the long term if the Democrat prevailed.

And that is what I believe today, in this election. And that is what a growing number of Republicans believe and are declaring today as well.

I have never before voted for a Democrat for president. But I’ve been asked many times over the past four years if I, as a conservative, could vote for a Democrat for President. “Sure,” has been my ready answer, “if he or she were a Joe Biden-kinda-Democrat.

Well, the Democratic Party just nominated a Joe Biden-kinda-Democrat, whom I am confident will approach his constitutional role with the reverence and dignity it deserves. I know that he will reach across the aisle, because that’s what he’s done his entire career.

After the turmoil of the past four years, we need a president who unifies rather than divides.

We need a president who prefers teamwork to tribalism.

We need a president who summons our better angels, not a president who appeals to our baser instincts.

That’s why we need Joe Biden.

If we have learned anything over the past four years, it is that character matters. Decency matters. Civility never goes out of style. And we should expect our president to exhibit these virtues.

I have known Vice President Biden for two decades now. I served with him in Congress for much of that time. He is a good and decent man. I haven’t always agreed with him, and there will be many policies on which we will disagree in the future, and that’s okay. The steadiness of leadership, and the health and survival of our democracy — those things far supersede any policy issues on which we might disagree.

And this much I know: With Joe Biden as president, we will be able to preserve the civic space wherein Republicans and Democrats can go back to merely disagreeing about issues of policy, without fear of revenge or reprisal.

That day cannot come soon enough.

And so, it is because of my conservatism, and because of my belief in the Constitution, and in the separation of power, and because I am gravely concerned about the conduct and behavior of our current president that I stand here today — proudly and wholeheartedly — to endorse Joe Biden to be our next president of the United States of America.

America’s best days are ahead. Go Joe.

Thank you very much.

27 Prominent Republicans endorse Joe Biden for President.

#politics #joe biden #us elections 2020 #endorsement #republicans #jeff flake

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rootbeergoddess · 3 years

Text

Owlson for Mayor

Owlson runs for mayor of St. Canard. Does she have what it takes? Commission for @weirdkev27

Owlson couldn’t believe where her career had taken her. She had thought she would end up as a pencil pusher for some big company. She became CEO of a multitrillion-dollar company, and now, she was running for mayor of St. Canard. Working with Glomglod had proven to be too taxing, mentally and psychically. Owlson also wasn’t an adventurer, and it seemed like working with Glomglod meant adventure would usually follow.

Hopefully, being a mayor would be less stressful.

“Roxanne Featherly here and today, I have a special interview for you all,” Roxanne said. “Zan Owlson, former head of Glomgold Industries, has decided to run for mayor of St. Canard. Today, we will be asking her some questions about her campaign. Thank you for coming today, Zan.”

“Thanks for having me,” Zan said. “I’ve been looking forward to this. I have a lot I’d like to talk about.”

“Really? Like what?” Roxanne asked.

“Well, first, I wanted to talk about my billionaire adventure protection plan,” Zan said. “I know you and many others have experienced destruction at the hands of two famous Scottish billionaires.”

“Oh yes,” Roxanne said. “And what is this plan you have?”

Zan launched into her plan about protecting people from adventuring Scottish billionaires and then went into her plan for schools. The interview went well, with Roxanne being rather polite and listening intently to everything she had to say. When they had finished the interview, Roxanne shook her hand.

“You know, I wasn’t sure you had the chops to run for mayor,” Roxanne said. “But honestly, if you can handle Glomgold, I think you can handle anything.”

Zan took Roxanne’s hand and smiled. So far, so good. Next up was a public forum where voters could ask Zan questions. This was something Zan knew she could handle with ease. Talking to people and understanding them was her specialty. Even though she had trouble with Glomgold, she still had managed to handle him. Speaking to ordinary people was child’s play compared to what she used to do. “Alright, the first question,” The moderator said. “Let’s start with you, young lady.”

“Miss Owlson, I know you’ve experienced some supernatural beings in your life. How do you plan to keep St. Canard safe from magical threats?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Zan said with a smile. “I was concerned about this matter, so I asked Scrooge McDuck for help seeing as how he’s one of the leading experts in magical defense. I will be doing everything in my power to make sure St. Canard has the perfect defenses against the black arts.”

People in the audience started to murmur and nod their heads. The young woman sat down, and a man stood up.

“What about crime? What if the Beagle Boys try to move to St. Canard?”

“I have a plan for that too,” Zan said. “I will not just strengthen the police department, but I will give them the proper tools to handle villains like the Beagle Boys. St. Canard will be a safe place.”

More people started to murmur and nod, filling Zan with a sense of accomplishment. She really couldn’t believe how well this entire thing was going. The rest of the forum went very well. There were no schemes or capers, just people asking questions. Zan wished she had done this sooner. “So what do you think?” Phillianne held up the poster.

The poster was bigger than Owlson had thought. Phillianne was helping her with advertising herself. Zan preferred to focus on what her campaign would be and how she’d change St. Canard. She was more business than creative. Phillianne decided she would be in control of advertisements. The only stipulation was that Zan didn’t want to do any commercials bad-mouthing her opponents. That was something Glomgold would do, and she was not him. “Does it have to be so big?” Zan asked. “And are you sure yellow is the best color for the background?”

“Darling, you have to trust me on this,” Phillianne rolled up the poster. “However, it seems like something is on your mind.”

“How could you tell?” Zan asked.

“Let me make you some nutmeg tea, and we’ll talk it over,” Phillianne kissed Owlson’s forehead.

Zan wished she was better at being open with her feelings. She was lucky that Phillanne was so understanding and patient. Sighing, Zan stood up and headed to the living room. She felt exhausted; her joints hurt, her feet were sore, and she was surprised she hadn’t passed out yet. She closed her eyes, listening to the kettle whistle.

“Here you are, dear,” Philliane handed her a cup. “So, what’s worrying you.”

“I guess I’m just letting my mind get the better of me,” Zan admitted.

“Let me guess you’re thinking about Glomgold, aren’t you?” Philliane asked.

“I can’t help it,” Zan sighed. “That man has given me so many headaches and breakdowns. I’m terrified he’ll ruin this somehow.”

“He’s all the way in Duckburg. You’ll be fine,” Philliane kissed Zan’s cheek. “You need to focus on yourself and what you want to do.”

“I know, it’s just hard sometimes,” Zan said. “I have a meeting with that school tomorrow. I’m hoping I do well.”

“I think you will,” Phillianne said. “You’re doing really well. I looked at your polls. You’re up ten percent.”

“That’s good,” Zan said. “I hope it’ll go up.”

“It will,” Philliane squeezed Zan’s hand. “You’ve got this. I know you can do this.”

Zan smiled and leaned against Phillianne. At least someone was here to be her rock. Going to the school had been the right choice.

Zan liked being around kids. They were the future, after all. They were also curious, and she always loved listening to their ideas. “Miss Owlson,” A girl raised her hand. “My name is Molly. One day, can I run for mayor just like you?”

“Of course you can, Molly,” Zan smiled at her. “Anyone can run for mayor.”

“Even though I’m a girl?” Molly asked.

“Anyone can run for mayor,” Zan repeated. “It doesn’t matter if you’re a girl, a boy, or non-binary. All that matters is that you want to do well for your city.”

“Ha, in your face Bobby!” Molly turned around and stuck her tongue at the boy behind her. “Girls can be the mayor!”

“But how?” Bobby asked. “My dad said only men should be politicians.”

“I’m sorry to say this, Bobby, but your father is wrong,” Owlson said. “Think of this. You have female teachers, male teachers, and some teachers who are neither. Does that change how they teach you? No, of course not. They’re all doing their jobs. They may do a few different things, but they’re still all teachers. The same goes for politicians. What matters is how we do our job.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Bobby said.

After a few pictures, Owlson was ready to head out to another debate. She grabbed her purse when little Molly ran up to her. Owlson was shocked when the young girl gave her a huge hug. She smiled as Molly looked up at her with huge, round eyes.

“When I grow up, I wanna be just like you!” Molly said.

Owlson felt like she would melt. Smiling, she got down on her knees and placed a hand on Molly’s shoulder.

“Well then, I hope to see you at one of the debates one day,” She said. Owlson felt like she was on cloud 9. That one small interaction with Molly had renewed her self-confidence. When she got home, Philliane was sitting on the couch, looking at her tablet. Owlson snuck up behind her and gave her a kiss on the cheek. Phillianne chuckled as Owlson sat down next to her. “You’re in a good mood,” Phillianne grinned.

“Phillianne, those kids really helped me realize that I’m doing the right thing,” She said. “I keep thinking I’m not cut out for this, that I can’t do this. But those kids gave me the push I needed.”

“That’s my girl,” Philliannesaid. “If you liked that, wait until you see this.”

Phillianne held up her pink tablet. It was a video of Scrooge McDuck. Phillianne pressed play on the video.

“Hello, Owlson,” Scrooge said. “So I heard you were running for Mayor of St. Canard. While we haven’t always seen eye to eye, I respect you greatly. Anyone who can manage Glomgold Industries, pull it out of the muck, make it a real company, and manage to make Flinty behave is okay in my book. So, I’ll be endorsing your campaign and, to help you out, sending you $500 million. Good luck and----DEWEY, STOP MESSING WITH THAT!”

The video cut off at that moment.

“$500 million? To me?” Owlson gasped. “But---why?”

“You heard him,” Phillianne said. “He believes you. He’s also right. If someone can handle Flintheart Glomgold, the world’s worst immature rich person, you could handle anything.”

“You know, I think we should celebrate,” Owlson said. “How about we go to dinner tomorrow?”

“Oh, you are in a good mood,” Phillianne said. “Where should we go? That nice little Chinese buffet?”

“I have a better idea,” Owlson said with a grin. “Two hotdogs with all the fixings,” Pedro handed the food to Owlson. “And a side of my famous cheese fries.”

“Pedro, the fanciest restaurant in town has nothing on your food,” Phillianne slipped a few five-dollar bills into his tip jar. “Agreed,” Owlson said. “Thanks, Pedro.”

“How can I say no to my two favorite customers and the future mayor?” Pedro said. “I can tell everyone that the Mayoreats at my humble, little establishment. You’ll never forget me, right?”

“Pedro, where would I get my mango ice cream?” Owlson asked. “You’re irreplaceable.”

Pedro waved them off as Zan and Phillianne found a table. The beach was almost empty, with only a few stragglers. They sat at a table that gave them the perfect view of the sunset over the ocean. Owlson took a bite of her hotdog, glancing at the gorgeous sky. She couldn’t believe how well things were going for her. She had been waiting for something to blow up in her face like they usually did when she worked for Glomgold. But here she was, getting close to achieving her dream.

“You know I’m proud of you, right, dear?” Phillianne said suddenly.

“Really? Why?” Zan asked.

Phillianne wiped away some chili from her girlfriend’s beak.

“That’s a silly question,” Phillianne said. “You’ve worked hard. You’re also not being intimidated. There are so many people who think a woman has no place in politics.”

Zan thought about little Molly and her question. Zan knew that sexism existed everywhere, but she had never focused on it. It wasn’t that it wasn’t an important issue. She just felt it was better to push forward and show those who doubted you wrong. That is what she was doing. Thinking about this made her feel proud of herself.

“I never thought about it that way until today, honestly,” Zan said. “That little girl looked at me like I had just helped her figure out the meaning of life. I don’t know if I’m a hero or anything, but I am happy that me just being mayor will inspire little girls.”

“Look at you, being a hero to millions,” Phillianne teased, nudging Zan. “Of course, you were my hero first.”

“Now you’re just being mushy.”

“Hush, you love it,” The news had hit Zan like a truck.

There was always the fear in her mind that there could be a miscount or someone stole the votes. What if some monsters from ancient times wanted to duel her for the right to be mayor? No, nothing like that happened. A few days after the election and all the votes were tallied, Phillianne shook her awake.

“Zan, the news!” She said.

She pulled Zan along to the television, where a vast picture of Zan was being displayed with the words ‘New Mayor: Zan Owlson.’

All her work had paid off, and she had gotten what she had wanted. It didn’t seem real for a second. It felt like a dream. Phillianne kissed her repeatedly, gushing about how proud she was. Zan was silent for a full minute before she was able to speak.

“I won?” She asked.

“Yes, you did!” Phillianne squeezed her. “Oh, darling, you did! You’re the new mayor of St. Canard! I knew it, I knew you were going to win. I’m so proud of you.”

“I won?” Zan repeated.

“Oh dear, I think the news has broken you,” Phillianne said. “Come along, I’ll make you some breakfast, Madame Mayor.”

Zan let herself be led to the kitchen, and she sat down. This was so surreal to her. Yes, this was what she had wanted, but she just couldn’t believe it. She was now mayor. A smile appeared on Zan’s face as realization started settling in. Phillianne hummed as she worked on a breakfast for Zan.

“I won!” Zan shot up, laughing. “Phillianne, I won!”

“That’s right, dear, you did,” Phillianne smiled at her. “Amazing, isn’t it?”

“I can’t believe it,” Zan said. “There was a chance that I’d lose. I just can’t believe it. This is like a dream.” “It’s real, dearest,” Phillianne brought over a plate. “Sit down and enjoy your first breakfast as the mayor.”

“You know I couldn’t have done this without you,” Zan said. “Oh, and I need to thank Scrooge.”

“You know who else you should possibly thank?” Phillianne poured some coffee. “Glomgold.”

Zan was about to say Phillianne was crazy, but she paused. As much as she had hated working under Glomgold, she had learned a lot. She learned to be resourceful, to be patient, and when to put her foot down. While she never wanted to work with him again, Zan realized that her short time at his company had made her who she was today.

“Maybe I’ll send him a fruit basket,” Zan mused. “As much as I despise the man, you are right.”

“I’m not saying you have to adore the man,” Phillianne said. “I’ve met him several times, and I honestly don’t understand how he’s still alive.”

Zan chuckled. It was surprising how Glomgold had managed to survive this long. Maybe spite was his motivator, and it added to his long life. Zan didn’t know, but she did have to admit that working with Glomgold had helped her.

“I still can’t believe it,” Zan smiled. “I’m Mayor.”

Phillianne kissed Zan’s cheek as she sat down.

“I’m so proud of your sweetie,” Phillianne smiled warmly at Zan. “You’ve worked so hard. Those long hard nights paid off.”

“Yeah,” Zan leaned against Phillianne. “Thanks for everything. I don’t think I could have done this without you.”

“Oh, I don’t believe that.” “No, I’m serious,” Zan looked at her. “Ever since I’ve met you, your confidence has rubbed off on me. I can’t thank you enough for all you do.”

“You can thank me with a kiss.”

And that is precisely what Zan did.

#Rootbeer Writes #Ducktales #Zan Owlson #Disney

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missnmikaelson-main · 4 years

Text

National Anthem

6. October 22, 2020 🌶

Voices whispered around her, bombarding every inch of Belmont University’s auditorium with an anxious hum of energy. She had a pretty decent seat, all things considered. Most of the journalists sat scattered around the place with views that ranged from abysmal to ‘is-that-him-behind-the-pillar’. She got the coveted spot reserved for candidate family and team members so she could see everything and it only came with a single drawback.

Being backstage meant her view was from the side, and the view she wanted, the image of Kol in his clean cut suit - the one she wanted to peel off piece by piece - was blocked by a man she really didn’t want to see.

“He’s doing a good job,” Cami mused from beside her, “open and engaging. That’s excellent.”

“Open and engaging, and witty are only gonna get him so far today,” Elena breathed. She would rather gauge her eyes out than look at his opponent, but she had to admit he possessed many of the same qualities. “Damon Salvatore can be just as charismatic.”

“I gotta believe people can see through the show,” Cami sighed, tapping her foot against the floor. She tossed her hair over her shoulder as she glanced around the backstage area. In the corner she spotted Marcel talking in a low voice on the phone jammed between his shoulder and ear while his hand took quick notes.

Elena followed her look and gritted her teeth.

Which of course, Cami saw.

Stupid psychologists.

“Are you going to be angry at him forever?” She hooked her finger under her watch chain.

“He ripped my world apart,” she inhaled sharply, exhaling in a controlled rush. “He took everything I knew about myself and scribbled it out with a red pen.”

She licked her lips and sniffed, dropping her eyes to her lap. It had been months since she found the file, months since her heart shattered to pieces and she relived her teenage grief.

She had told Caroline after a few days, and Rebekah, and her brother. The memory of that lunch when the campaign bus swung through Mystic Falls still made her emotional.

And it was only partly because Kol deliberately altered their course of travel to give her that moment with her friends, and with Jeremy.

Everyone who mattered knew, and that went a long way to fixing the damage done.

She was adopted, but she had been loved.

She was adopted, but she had her friends.

She was adopted, but she had her family.

Her friends had squealed happily when she showed up for the unexpected lunch and told them she had something to tell them. They had sat on the edge of their seats while she picked over her burger and fries then poked at a slice of apple pie. When she took the deep breath that came before her admission they both fell silent, but she got the sense her words weren’t what the girls had been expecting.

Jeremy had declared loudly and with particular vehemence that it changed nothing. She had always been his annoying big sister. She always would be his annoying big sister.

They loved her.

She was still her.

She was still Elena Gilbert.

Later, on the bus, she had marvelled over Caroline refraining from asking about what she witnessed with Kol. And after Kol admitted none of his brothers mentioned it she had to conclude that for once Caroline had kept her mouth shut.

Maybe she was waiting until it was clear she was better before dropping the bombshell that would have Rebekah climbing down her throat. If that was the case then Caroline had a new record for keeping a secret: four months.

“He broke me and left a giant question mark over my life,” she came back to the present, rising from her chair.

“For what it’s worth, Elena,” Cami pushed her hair behind her ears, “I’m sorry for my part in this. I all but confirmed you were together when I said you two were cute, and set Marcel on his hunt.”

“Thank you,” she crossed her arms, hugging her elbows. Her fingers tugged gently at the indigo sleeves of her sweater.

“And for what’s it’s worth, knowing what you know shouldn’t change anything.”

“I know,” Elena nodded. “It took me a little time to get there, but I know. I’m still me, but that doesn’t erase the giant question that nobody, not even Marcel with his vast resources, seems to be able to answer.”

“I guess her name was pretty common,” Cami crossed her legs.

“Fourteen of them across the country near enough to the right age when you take in alternate spellings,” Elena murmured, leaning against a pillar to get a glimpse of Kol cutting a remark towards Damon. “Half of them grew up close enough to fit the bill of teenage runaway.”

“Marcel will find her,” she watched him talking on his phone. “He’s really good at what he does.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Elena caught Kol’s eye when he glanced in her direction. She offered him a small smile that grew bigger when he went back to slapping Damon down in the debate. She couldn’t wait to get him alone.

“Elena?”

Her heart skipped a beat and she jumped, spinning towards the voice at her side.

“Stefan?” Her brows rose, though why she was surprised she couldn’t say. His brother was on stage.

“I thought that was you,” he smiled, tilting his head. “But I couldn’t be sure when I saw you from the other side,” he gestured with one hand to the other end of the stage.

“What are you doing here?” She swept her hair behind her ear.

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” He smirked, eyes sparkling.

“I meant over here,” she laughed, shaking her head and lowering her voice to a whisper, “this is the opposing side.”

“So, just because Damon’s my brother I have to support his political party?” Stefan lifted a single brow.

“Does that mean you don’t?” She mirrored his expression. Outright detestation from family probably wouldn’t work in Damon’s favour.

“Are we on the record?” He countered, leaning a little closer.

“I’m not here as a reporter Stefan,” her stomach shifted with the admission. “I’m here as a friend.”

“Well, its not a friend to Damon,” he stole a quick glance on stage, catching Kol’s attention for a split second. Taking half a step closer he whispered softly. “Did you know he cracked three of my ribs?”

“Damon broke your ribs?” Her brows rose into her hair line.

“No, not Damon, Kol,” he held her gaze, “a few days after you and I broke up. It was at that start of summer party and everyone was drinking. I think I was flirting with someone, might have been Valerie, and suddenly Kol was there. Didn’t say anything. Punched me once, hard, right here,” he gestured to his side.

“You never said anything,” her brows lowered.

“I always thought you knew,” he shrugged. “I got the sense he did it because of you.”

“What do you mean?” She leaned a little closer.

“I mean,” Stefan whispered, “that anybody who dated you learned quickly to never break your heart, especially when he was around.”

“Still, opposition would have loved to get their hands on that scoop,” she ducked her head, feeling a slight flush stain her neck.

“Who hasn’t gotten in a fight in high school?” Stefan chuckled. “Besides if I’d come forward with that it would have come out why he did it, and then I never would have heard the end of breaking up with you two days before your birthday through a text message.”

“My birthday cake tasted like tears,” she pushed her tongue between her teeth.

“I knew we weren’t working out and I didn’t handle it very well,” he said by way of apology. “I assume you told Rebekah all about what a jackass I was, and then she told her brother, or he overheard, but somehow he found out about it and took revenge on your behalf.”

“You probably got off easy,” she huffed a laugh, “if I’d found you flirting with Valerie a couple of days after dumping me I probably would have kicked and ensured the Salvatore line ended.”

“You’re forgetting Damon,” he winced.

“What woman in her right mind is gonna have kids with him?”

“Fair enough.” Stefan nodded, smiling as he turned around. “Anyway, I just wanted to come and say hello, since I haven’t seen you in so long.”

“If I absolutely had to converse with a Salvatore today, I’m glad it was you,” she frowned towards the stage.

“What exactly happened with you and Damon?”

“It’s not what happened with me,” her eyes narrowed, “and it’s not my story to tell.” She turned fully to face him. “It was nice to see you.”

“Likewise,” he nodded.

The air thickened with awkward tension then and Elena resisted the urge to fidget.

How were you supposed to say goodbye to the person that took your virginity? A handshake felt too informal, and a hug way too intimate.

Luckily Stefan felt it too and kept his departure to a short nod and kind smile.

As the debate wound down she stepped back from the crowd of people coming forwards to offer congratulations. She had her own celebration in mind that had absolutely nothing to do with a crowd of people. That was one fantasy she never felt the need to experience.

Plus a sex scandal less than two weeks before the election would not be good.

She could wait.

Slipping down a side hall she stepped into a restroom and examined her reflection in the mirror. Her lipstick had worn down, so she reached into her handbag for the tube. After replenishing the dark red she pulled the hairpins so the pinned locks tumbled around her shoulders and went about pulling them into a loose ponytail she could already feel him wrapping around his hand.

The restroom door opened behind her. She thought nothing of it until she heard the click of a lock and caught the reflection in the mirror.

“I’m pretty sure this it the ladies room,” she caught his smouldering eyes in the mirror.

He was on her in a second, spinning her around and crashing his lips to hers in a kiss so punishing and hot that she felt a rush of arousal and feared there would be a dark stain on the crotch of her skinny jeans. It only got worse when his tongue forced its way into her mouth.

Not that she had a thought to stop him.

She was too busy trying to keep up with every bite and suck. And what exactly had she done to finally draw the rough side out?

She kind of liked it.

She felt him push her sweater down. It caught at her elbows.

That was when he had to breathe.

“You’ll really do it anywhere won’t you?” She panted.

“Stop talking,” he growled, ripping open her white blouse.

She might have protested then, because dammit she liked that blouse and now it was in tatters, but he yanked down her bra cups and savagely sucked her nipple into his mouth.

“Fuck, Kol,” she arched, pushing her breast further into his mouth. His teeth nipped down and she cried out grasping the back of his head.

“That’s right,” he growled, switching breasts, “say my name.”

“Kol,” she whimpered, gladly obliging.

He popped open her jeans and shoved his hand into her underwear, rubbing hard at her little nub.

She moaned, clutching at his suit jacket, scrabbling at the fabric, wanting it off, not wanting to be the only one half naked and going crazy. He refused to oblige her desperate attempts so she settled for palming his bulge, squeezing him through his trousers.

He pushed at her hands.

She got the message and set them on the bathroom sink. Her breasts glistened with his saliva when he leaned back to stare at her.

“Moan for me, Elena,” he moved his hand further. The tightness of her jeans meant when he pushed a finger into her wet cunt his palm pressed down on her clit.

She wasn’t sure how he did it, but somehow his palm rubbed her perfectly while his finger fucked her.

“Kol,” she moaned his name, “more, please?”

“You want more?” He growled, pinching her right nipple with his free hand.

“Yes,” she gasped. His rough treatment had her so close to the edge. She was ready to tumble over it and he had only begun touching her.

He tugged hard, twisting her nipple so her entire breast rose. She came with a scream that he muffled with his mouth. She whimpered, slumping against the counter.

Her body shuddered with her release.

Thank goodness her jeans were dark and her sweater long.

“We’re not done yet,” Kol pulled his hand from her pants. He spun her quickly, smearing her juices over her hip.

A hand on her throat forced her chin up so she could see his reflection. The lust in his eyes held her in place when he bit at her ear.

“I’m gonna make you come so hard right here, over this sink, until you’re writhing with pleasure.” He released her throat and ripped her jeans down her legs until they caught on her knee high boots. “I’m gonna fuck you so hard,” he tore her thong from her body, dropping it on the counter, “and so good, that you forget everyone else because they could never bring you the ecstasy that comes from our coupling.”

Metal clinked as he removed his belt.

She looked back when his pants hit the floor, watching as he pushed his boxers down to his knees and fisted his hard cock.

A hand on the small of her back pushed her down.

She braced her hands on the mirror for balance.

“You might feel the need to scream your pleasure,” he bent slightly and bit her shoulder.

Her breath caught. She pushed her ass back into his hands, desperate for friction.

“Someone will hear me,” she whimpered, closing her eyes.

“Then I shall have to gag you,” he snatched up her discarded panties, shoving them into her open mouth.

Her own arousal coated the dark material and she moaned at the taste, sucking to get as much of it as possible.

Kol flipped the end of her sweater and ruined blouse up, exposing her to his gaze. With the fabric in one hand and his cock in the other he pushed forward, sheathing himself in one hard thrust that months of near constant intercourse made possible.

The sudden intrusion made her scream into the gag.

He set a punishing pace, pushing in and out with every ounce of strength he had.

Elena tried to keep her eyes open, but it was difficult when he was fucking her so hard. With every deep thrust his balls slapped her clit and her thighs hit the counter.

He hooked his arms around her front, bringing one hand up to further muffle her screams as the other palmed her bouncing breasts.

“That’s it love,” he sucked at her throat. “Moan for me. Scream into my hand. Because you’re mine.”

The possessiveness of his growl went straight to her cunt; she throbbed around him, tightening until he hissed.

“Damn,” he pushed in and out, groaning when she gripped him like a vice. “You’re so bloody tight like this. So bloody tight,” he shut his eyes, rotating his hips when he was seated inside of her. “So bloody tight, and all mine.”

Unexpectedly he ripped the panties from her mouth and curled his fingers lightly around his throat.

“Who’s are you?” He snarled, squeezing gently.

She arched into him as her vision started to blur and her body shook.

“Who’s are you?” He repeated.

“Y…” she wheezed for breath. “Yours,” she choked out. “I’m yours.”

“That’s right.” He released her throat. He could feel a layer of sweat adhering the back of his shirt to his damp skin. “You’re mine, darling, only mine…”

Stars exploded behind her eyes, turning her vision to a blinding white as blood rushed in her ears, blocking out all but the possessive growl of ‘mine’.

Her forehead rested against the cool glass.

She felt the first spurt of his release hit her cervix before he pulled his cock from her body. Warm seed streaked across her ass and lower back while her juices rolled down her legs.

He took her shoulders and moved her, dropping her until cold linoleum hit her butt and hot cunt. The floor ground the mess into her skin.

She lifted her eyes and saw his erection in line with her face. Her fingers shook, closing around his length and pumping.

“Who’s are you?” He grabbed her ponytail, forcing her to lift her eyes up and meet him.

“I’m yours,” she swore breathlessly, suspecting she had a drunken expression on her face. “Mark me.”

He swore as the last of his release coated her breasts.

He sank to his knees when he was spent and just stared at her as he caught his breath. And she was sure she made quite a sight in her torn clothes with pants around her knees and his cum covering her chest.

She scooped up some of his cum form her nipple and popped her thumb into her mouth.

“Fuck, that’s hot,” his hand curled around her ankle. “Stop.”

“Why?” She sighed, letting her eyes drop to his soft cock. The sight of him coated in her made her heart flutter; he had marked her, but she marked him in turn.

“I want you to leave it all,” he crawled up her body. “I want you to button up that sweater and hide the ripped blouse, and then I want you to go to dinner with my cum on your tits and ass. I want you to feel it on your skin whenever some man or woman flirts with you tonight. I want you to remember who you belong to.” He hovered over her body, staying clear so he kept his shirt clean. “Because you are mine darling. And when Stefan or Damon look to you in that restaurant and you feel me clinging to you, you’ll remember that I alone can bring you pleasure so great you’re reduced to a quivering mess in a public restroom.��

And then just to prove what a mess she was he pushed a finger between her legs. The quick contact with her clit brought her a mini orgasm that made her melt after the way he took her.

After a moment she managed to grasp at a train of thought.

“Wait a minute,” she pushed at his chest. “Are you freaking kidding me? I’ve been trying for months, tormenting you at every corner, to make you bend me over and take me like that. For months I’ve done everything I could think of to illicit the kind of desperate fucking that leaves me like, well,” she waved a hand to her loose body, “like this. And you’re telling me all that I had to do was have a discussion with an ex?”

“If you still remember him,” Kol growled playfully, pushing on her clavicle to make her lay down, “then we’re clearly not done.”

“Oh we’re nowhere near done,” her eyes glittered, “but we are done in here. People are bound to notice we’re missing and I don’t even want to think about how many people have walked on this floor today.”

“I’ll just have to banish him from your mind after dinner,” he smirked, “or maybe in the restaurant bathroom when I follow you to admire this handiwork,” he trailed his fingernail between the valley of her breasts.

“I won’t wash off your claiming mark until we get back to the hotel,” she promised, “but you can’t wash off mine either.”

“Counter offer,” he cocked an eyebrow. “When we get to the hotel you and I will take a nice hot bath in the suite’s garden tub I know you’ve had your eyes on, and we’ll wash each other. Maybe enjoy some wine and a second round while we’re at it.”

“Mm,” she nodded, “that sounds like a plan. Oh, and uh, if I smile at anyone while we’re out feel free to construe it as flirting.” She kissed his cheek. “Cause I think I like jealous Kol,” she winked as she stood, “the sex is hot as hell.”

@kol-and-elena-fanfiction @elejahforever @elejah-wonderland @cry-btch @geekofmanyfandoms @morsmornte @xanderling @bellemorte180 @iw1shiknew @blndbandt

#kol mikaelson #Elena gilbert #kolena #kol x elena #stefan salvatore #Damon salvatore #Camille O'Connell #marcel gerard #national anthem fanfic

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hadenodom · 3 years

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On Last Week’s Incident in the Capitol

It isn’t often that I write a long, detailed opinion piece, but I feel like this time in particular is a time in which it is my patriotic duty to speak up.

Sometime late in 2019, I remember coming across an op-ed by a political commentator whose name I cannot remember. This opinion piece highlighted the growth of extreme movements within the United States - namely AntiFa and The Proud Boys and related groups on both sides of the political spectrum - and how they’d become more bold in their violence in recent years. It then dug back into the kind of messaging that was being boosted by Russian and other foreign intelligence agencies on social media during the 2016 election - and in this piece, the author discussed something that is often overlooked: the social media messaging portion of Russia’s efforts during that election weren’t focused on boosting a single candidate’s campaign or even with reaching on side of the political aisle. The messages they were boosting were, across the board, pushing rhetoric to inflame and provoke the extreme elements of both sides of our political divide and to widen that gap. The author finished the op-ed by offering his analysis that these efforts had been effective, and that our country was in the process of being torn apart by divisive and hateful rhetoric - that Americans had been turned against Americans, and that this was going to have a destructive effect on our democracy.

I remember reading that op-ed and being skeptical. Sure, things had reached a fever pitch in 2016, but in 2019 it seemed like everything was calming down. The economy was doing alright, there hadn’t been as much chaos or violence in the news, and the doomsday of Americans turning on each other over political differences seemed far-fetched. I came away thinking that the Russians’ efforts to divide us had been in vain, and that our country was past the pains of that particularly fraught period. We would elect someone other than Trump in 2020, and our troubles would pass.

I didn’t have 2020 vision. I didn’t forsee the economy tanking due to a virus, streets erupting in protests over racial disparities once again, AntiFa and Anarchist elements openly looting and rioting in the unrest, and then, following a chaotic election, Trump’s supporters taking to the streets and getting violent, and then eventually descending on the capitol, fully invested in a conspiracy theory that the election had been rigged. I didn’t forsee QAnon getting an outsize following and inserting themselves into this whole storyline. I didn’t forsee a large portion of our society swallowing an outright lie about election fraud and refusing to believe that our democratic system worked. I didn’t forsee any of this, and I feel like I’ve awakened in the midst of a national nightmare.

Put simply, the situation is dire. The potential consequences are dire. Our nation’s population has large factions that actively believe that their opponents are *Un*-American. The diehard Trump supporters believe that Democrats do not have the best interests of the country at heart, and most Democrats (and most Independents that aren’t leaning right) believe that Trump supporters are fascists, Nazis, traitors, and bigots. The political rhetoric coming from both the White House and from those with large media followings has stoked these tensions and gotten them to where they are today - with a little help from Russian Social Media operations way back in 2016, which seems like a distant memory now.

Making matters worse, these factions seem to have adopted separate realities with separate sets of facts- in one reality, the election was rigged: Covid-19 was either fake or not a serious threat: there’s a cabal of pedophiles orchestrating our government, and some guy named Q is an inside guy telling us the truth when the media won’t; Trump is either not a racist, or is only as racist as their lovely grandparents and their grandparents can’t be *that* bad. In the other reality, the election was thoroughly secured, had a verifiable paper trail, and has been investigated to death -- and Joe Biden won by a large margin; Covid had the capacity to overwhelm hospitals and cause hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths if we didn’t take the proposed measures seriously; A Pedophile ring running our government is as patently ridiculous as the day is long; And Q is an obvious bullshitter who moves the goalposts every time his predictions and ‘insights’ fall flat; and finally, that Donald Trump is demonstrably racist and bigoted.

Working on these separate sets of facts, both of these factions have come to believe that the other is everything wrong with their country - that their opponents (including everyday working-class people who support their opponents) are not patriots, are against what America stands for, and are worth lashing out at violently in the streets.

These factions aren’t leaving with Trump, and they proved it in the Capitol last week. They threatened for weeks to unleash violence on the Capitol. They posted detailed plans about how they were going to intimidate our representatives - our elected voice in Congress - with violence, well in advance. They repeatedly used phrases on social media before the attack, and shouted these kinds of phrases during the attack: “We will not go quietly” - phrases that all but indicated that they weren’t done just because pesky Democracy had denied their candidate a victory.

What, then, is our course as a country as Trump leaves office in a couple of short weeks? How will our leaders unite us? Personally, after much reflection, I believe our elected leaders do have a duty to attempt to unite us - or to at least refrain from provoking these tensions - but I believe the real duty is upon all of us.

It is incumbent upon all of us to remember that our fellow Americans are not our enemies - they are our neighbors, and most of us all share the same kinds problems and burdens in life. We all look to some political philosophy that tries to meet these challenges and address them, and seek political leaders who espouse these pet philosophies. If someone’s going through the same struggles as you and has a different idea of how to fix those problems for his or her country, they are not your enemy. Sure, certain things aren’t up for good-natured debate - racism, xenophobia, and bigotry can be excluded. But we should be able to discuss our problems as a country with our neighbors, and discuss differing ideas of how to solve them, without descending into vitriol and animosity. We should be able to understand each other. I feel that the only way to fix that is to make the effort to reach out and talk to those we disagree with. I have neighbors, family members, and coworkers who hold vastly different political ideologies from me, and for too long, when I hear them discussing politics, I shy away from joining the conversation, because I feel like I’d be inviting that kind of vitriol and bickering into my life. It can be uncomfortable and awkward to arrive at that stage of a conversation, where someone things you a radical leftist or a bigot simply because you dared to offer a slightly differing opinion from theirs. Social media amplifies this, because that’s the kind of response it has conditioned us to expect - the kind of response that would come from anonymous shitpostsers on the other side of a keyboard. But I’ve found that when I do, in good faith, step in and have those difficult conversations - and really have a conversation, rather then try to insert my opinion over their - when I sit down and listen to my friends, family, coworkers, or neighbors tell me about their issues and what they care about politically, and I then carefully consider their ideas and offer my own - I’ve found that experience vastly rewarding. I’ve found myself able to identify with people who I’d otherwise completely disagree with, and I’ve even found that those conversations can end with a mutual understanding and even a slight change of heart on one side or the other, or simply a mutual respect. It turns out, we’re all (the vast majority of us) interested in seeing our country and all of its people flourish and thrive, safe and secure, and passing on a better country to the next generation of Americans.

Therefore I’m making an effort to get out of my shell and have those awkward conversations again. We’ve all allowed ourselves to wallow in echo chambers, neither exposing ourselves to differing opinions or exposing our opinions to others. This pandemic, combined with social media’s tendency to be a “build-your-own-echo-chamber” kit, has amplified this in 2020. But in 2021, let’s all resolve to have those difficult conversations and to really listen to each other. If you do it for no other reason, do it to save our Republic from being destroyed from within.

I’ll finish this opinion piece with a quote you may be familiar with, one that I heard repeated on the radio recently and that has resounded infinitely with my soul in recent days:

“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature”

-- Abraham Lincoln

That is from Lincoln’s inaugural address in 1861. We, as a country, failed to listen to Lincoln then. The Civil War occurred, and it took our country centuries to recover. You might argue that it was necessary to eradicate the institution of slavery and that slavery, as an institution, could not have been eradicated as quickly without the civil war. I will not disagree. But I will disagree on the idea that a coming civil war is necessary or beneficial - if we come to that point now, History will remember us as violent and shortsighted fools who destroyed their country, the global bastion of liberty and human rights, from the inside out.

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radramblog · 3 years

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Top 5 Games, ever...?

This was sort of on my mind, considering the recent GOTY post I made. Come explore the hyperfixations that managed to stick around long enough to be my top 5 list.

5. Uhhhhhh

So turns out I haven’t figured out what number 5 is yet. I suppose instead I’ve got to split it among the honourable mentions, huh.

Kirby Super Star Ultra is probably the best game from the GBA/DS era of the series and is just a blast to play. It introduced Masked Dedede, and all the banging music and memes that come with it, and probably deserves a spot here just for that.

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth removes all the awkward Flash Stuff from the excellent original, and adds so, so much more content- the game’s final expansion still isn’t out yet as of writing but even now there’s just so much to unlock. While some aspects of the game can be pretty unforgiving, you probably aren’t going to be exposed to the worst of it unless you get into it pretty hardcore, and if you do, you’ll get used to it. It’s a roguelike, after all.

Speaking of roguelikes, FTL: Faster than Light is chaotic yet serene, brutal but fair, and a bunch of other pretentious dichotomies wrapped into a neat little bow. It takes some getting used to the mechanics, but once you get the hang of it, building your little ship up and up in the face of all odds is extremely satisfying. Have fun dying hopefully not too many times.

SPEAKING of permadeath, Realm of the Mad God gets a spot here just out of sheer hours I’ve spent with it. After a messy few years with a not-so-great owner lead me to dropping the game, it seems finally to have recovered and has devs and community that actually freaking care about it, which is nice. Also, it’s free, and the recent transition to unity has the game looking better and playing smoother than 12-year-old me could ever have dreamed of.

Terraria isn’t just 2D Minecraft btw, its actually more of an RPG/Metroidvania thing, you probably know at this point, but its pretty good hey. Still haven’t fully dove into 1.4 but considering I thought Red was done at 1.1 I’m not complaining with what I have played.

4. Fallout: New Vegas

(...ish??)

I’d argue that between the primitiveness of the original Fallout games (I’ve tried to get into them, but I just can’t) and how…meh… the other Bethesda ones are, New Vegas is the only one in the series to stand up strong. Obsidian’s excellent writing and tweaks to the gameplay of 3 make New Vegas feel like an actual world, rich and characterised, which was something I found lacking in previous open-world RPGs I’d played up until that point (which admittedly might just have been Skyrim). It’s a game that challenges you to make choices that actually matter for more than the mere moments of an altered dialogue tree, both in dialogue and character building, which helps make the game actually replayable. It is also the first game in a long time that really sold the idea of DLC on me, seeing as each of the game’s 4 expansions adds an entire new region of world with its own stories and unique gameplay, tying together with the main plot but standing on their own. I am excluding Gun Runner’s Arsenal from this for obvious reasons, though it isn’t like GRA is a bad DLC or anything- on the contrary, the sheer scope of modifications and munitions makes playing a repair/science-based character incredibly fulfilling- but it just isn’t at the same scope as the other 4 (Courier’s stash barely counts seeing as its just oops! All preorder bonuses).

New Vegas is one of the few games I have actually 100% completed, achievements and all, but I’m still pretty sure there are bits I’ve missed, paths I haven’t taken, characters I haven’t talked to. Despite its inhospitability, the Mojave is always a comfortable place to return to.

3. VA-11 Hall-A

(Hey look, my phone background)

Vallhalla is a masterclass in storytelling, atmosphere, and aesthetic. Like all good cyberpunk dystopias, you get themes of class and transhumanism and artificial intelligence, but they aren’t the point of Vallhalla. Through the window and lens of cyberpunk and PC98 nostalgia is focussed a surprisingly human story centred around the protagonist, Jill, which through multiple replays still hits me in the feels just so. Of course, Jill’s story is not the only one being discussed, as every single patron of the bar has their own life going on, and the glimpses we get imply a rich, often interconnected, world. Glitch City is, frankly, a shithole, and it’s not like you don’t get some assholes coming into the bar while you’re working it. The first patron you serve, in fact, is a great example of this- Donovan D. Dawson, essentially a parody of J. Jonah Jameson, is a colossal prick and knows it- but its clear he has his own system of morals and it is mentioned that he’s excellent at his job, much as he gripes about it. He’s rude and more than a little sexist, but frustratingly charismatic and authoritative, and he’s just one of many people who show up throughout the game. Vallhalla is the perfect game to sit down, grab your preferred beverage, and just relax with.

2. Total Annihilation

(This image is on the steam page for this one, despite blatantly not being from vanilla TA)

I think I actually need to explain this one. Total Annihilation was a game released in 1997 made largely by Chuck Taylor, who would later go on to produce spiritual successor Supreme Commander. It’s an RTS game featuring exclusively robotic units with a fairly chunky aesthetic, allowing the visuals to age better than some, and a fully orchestrated soundtrack by Jeremy Soule, who would later go on to do work on a whole bunch of stuff, most notably Skyrim.

Total Annihilation is an intensely nostalgic game for me, being one of the first games I ever got to play as a kid outside of edutainment stuff, and I’d argue still holds up today (especially with the excellent Escalation mod). What it lacks in story (it’s pretty basic, but functional) it makes up for being miles ahead of its time mechanically, being the first (?) RTS to function in 3 dimensions- heights of things actually matter, hills exist and certain units climb them better than others, shooting down airplanes is difficult without anti-air but possible if you aim *just* right. While appearing pretty similar and having largely analogous units, the two factions of Arm and Core are well fleshed-out in terms of aesthetic and playstyle- Arm preferring fast and cheap equivalents to Core’s slow but powerful- and the unit variety is sufficient that strategies can vary wildly based on the map. Both campaigns as well as those from the game’s expansions are challenging, but satisfying, limiting the units you can produce to force exploration of different playstyles.

Total Annihilation isn’t something I tend to binge play for hours anymore, but I’ll pick it up for a bit every so often, and I don’t see that stopping for a long time (especially due to the recent steam release).

1. Pokémon Emerald

(At the top, where it belongs)

Yeah, this was inevitable. Pokémon is my favourite series ever; Emerald is my favourite in the series. Go figure.

Emerald, being the final game for the franchise’s days on the Game Boy, reflects everything Game Freak had learned in the first 3 generations of the series’ history. The game’s balance is challenging but fair, never spiking so tough that it is insurmountable but never holding your hand either. The AI opponents are throwing odd combinations of mons and moves at you from every corner, double battles are everywhere but rarely mandatory, and the variety of available mon both before and during the postgame is excellent. The added features on top of Ruby and Sapphire are great- Battle Tents serve to replace 3 of the contest halls (they should have all been under one roof to begin with) and provide a taste of what would later be available in the Battle Frontier. The Frontier is probably the single most expansive and challenging postgame in any Pokémon game, providing the game with a longevity that is sorely needed due to the inaccessibility of Pre-DS multiplayer. The game also manages to tie together the plot of both Ruby and Sapphire into something that feels natural, and provides the series’ first ever actual cutscene, which felt a lot cooler at the time than it sounds now. The return of animated sprites gives the Pokémon a level of life far beyond the static sprites of RSFRLG, and in my eyes wouldn’t feel the same until Black and White several years later. The return of the Pokégear phone in the form of Match Call, as irritating as it is to some, makes the world feel alive in a way that Sinnoh and Kanto probably never will, in addition to making grinding a fair bit less tedious and more beneficial. It is, altogether, probably the perfect Pokémon experience, and in my opinion only one other game comes close (its Platinum).

Oh also, they got rid of the font from Ruby and Sapphire, thank fuck, that shit is atrocious.

#ramble #video games #pokemon #retro games #lists

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qqueenofhades · 4 years

Note

the reason people prefer bernie over warren isn't that she used to be a republican, most people genuinely believe the positions she holds now. it's just that those positions A) aren't going to get her elected in a general election, because she comes across as wishywashy on medicare for all, which is much more popular among most americans than centrists think, and republican are GREAT at exploiting the wishy-washy B) isn't gonna cut it with us lefty dems either. bernie polls better against trump.

Hello there! Thank you for your contribution! *

As most people who follow me know, I am not a Political Discourse ™ blog in the usual course of things, and despise Discourse in general. Time is short, lives are precious, and usually arguing with people about politics on the internet is about the most unproductive use of such ever devised. But because you did arrive in my inbox with this opinion, which perfectly exemplifies the dangerous thinking that I was referring to in this post, which I presume is the reason for the pleasure of your company, we’re going to have a chat. I’m going to keep the snark to a minimum, because I am really not a fan of stoking Democratic tribalism or “my candidate is better than your candidate and I can’t vote for anyone else” pissing contests. That being indeed precisely what I was arguing in the above post, and the point of which, alas, you seem to have grasped but dimly. I am therefore going to go through this, because it needs to be deconstructed, and while I may make no impact on you, because I suspect your mind is made up, I am fortunate enough to have a decent following on this blog and maybe someone else will benefit from it. Who knows. The other option is Trump.

So.

Let’s take this one at a time. See for example your first claim, “Elizabeth Warren comes across as wishy-washy on Medicare for All.”

Well….

Have you tried going to her website (elizabethwarren.com) typing in “Medicare for All” and being redirected to the following document? It took me approximately eight seconds to find. It is also not just an attention-grabbing header. The full strategic plan below, when pasted into Microsoft Word, runs to an impressive goddamn 19 pages and almost 8,000 words. It outlines exactly what she will do to achieve this and concludes:

Medicare for All is the best way to guarantee health care to all Americans at the lowest cost. I have a plan to pay for it without raising taxes on middle class families, and the transition I’ve outlined here will get us there within my first term as president. Together, along with additional reforms like my plans to reduce black maternal mortality rates, ensure rural health care, protect reproductive rights, support the Indian Health Service, take care of our veterans, and secure LGBTQ+ equality, we will ensure that no family will ever go broke again from a medical diagnosis – and that every American gets the excellent health care they deserve.

Hmm. Focusing specifically on African-American maternal mortality rates, rural health care, protecting reproductive rights, support for Native Americans, vets, and LGBTQ people? I understand, however, that this can’t cut it with “us lefty Dems,” which you proclaim with the proud assurance that you and the Twitter circles of your acquaintance are in fact the only ones. I’m also… not entirely sure which candidate you’re confusing Warren with, since there are two (2) progressive candidates in this nightmare of white no-name and/or billionaire milquetoast male moderates. Their names are Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. And every single Warren fan I know is willing to vote for Sanders if he gets the nomination, including me. I made a public pledge to vote for the Democratic candidate even if it’s Goddamn Joe Biden. You can see it here. If you are going to demand miles of receipts for Warren before you consider voting for her (and when her positions are similar to or in several cases, particularly for women, MUCH BETTER than Sanders, yes I said it), then you’re really not going to like what it looks like for the other candidates in this race. Also, are you asking these questions for Sanders, your own preferred nominee?

Next, you…. you do realize the privilege that is dripping off this ask, right? The exact thing of which I also addressed in the previous discussion:

The modern American Republican party has become a vehicle for no-holds-barred power for rich white men at the expense of absolutely everything and everyone else, and if your rationale is that you can’t vote for the person opposing Donald Goddamn Trump is that you’re just not vibing with them on the language of that one policy proposal… well, I’m glad that you, White Middle Class Liberal, feel relatively safe that the consequences of that decision won’t affect you personally.

That is…. at least as presented in this ask, exactly what’s happening here. You’re saying that you (and this mythic America/Lefty Dems ™ of which you grandly extrapolate) can’t vote for Elizabeth Warren because you’re just not vibing with her on the language of a policy proposal which she enthusiastically supports and has written a detailed 20-page manifesto on how to achieve? You really, really believe, deep down in your Bernie Bro Internet Politics bones, that you cannot vote for the smart, fearless, extra-qualified Democratic woman opposing the bankrupt reality star rapist who is literally a Neo-Nazi white supremacist whose administration is wrecking the planet and putting children in cages at the border? To name just one of the Scandal-A-Days that this nightmare administration churns out? Because the Lefty Dems (and please do not lump me and the other active leftist Democrats I know into whatever you’ve got going on here) just won’t stand for that?

Do you even hear yourself?

Did we learn nothing at all from 2016???

I’m going to guess that I’m older than you. I’m not sure whether that matters, but there’s that. It means I remember 9/11, the Bush years, the financial crash of 2008, and how this already went once before. I have also just moved back to the United States after almost half a decade in the United Kingdom, which is currently experiencing its same slow-motion disintegration into hard-right economic isolationism, xenophobia, and late-stage capitalist oligarchy. I’m also a professional historian. So it means that I, for better or worse, have a certain perspective on this, the overall patterns, the way the world has stumbled into this destructive consumerist capitalist 21st century, and what it’s doing to us.

We do not have much time left to fix any of this. I don’t care if it sounds alarmist, it’s true. If you are younger than me, this is also going to become disproportionately your generation’s problem. Rigid intellectual purity tests are exactly the thing that is preventing the left from mobilizing behind one candidate to get Donald Fucking Trump and his cabal of shameless criminals out of there before they kill the lot of us. And I’m not going to back down from saying that mindsets like the one perfectly exemplified in your ask are far more helpful to the Republicans than they are to any of us.

I have said it before, I’ll say it again: I will vote for, donate money to, and raise awareness about whoever the Democratic nominee is. If it’s Sanders, I’m going to friggin’ become a Bernie or Buster. Because at that point, his opponent would be Trump!!! If I am living in a state where it would remotely make a difference in November 2020, since at the moment I’m in Bumfuck Red State Nowhere, I would consider canvassing or volunteering for the campaign, and I am a severe introvert with social anxiety who hates talking to people when I don’t have to. And if I am willing to do this, and you and Lefty Dems ™ of your hallowed intellectual proclivities are sitting on your backsides and bitching about how Warren seems wishy-washy on Medicare for All, well then. One of us is more the problem than the other one, and it isn’t me.

(Also. once again, Bernie Sanders is eighty years old and just had a heart attack. Sorry. That remains an issue for me. There’s a year to go of grueling non-stop campaigning before the general, if he wins the primary. I’m not convinced.)

In conclusion, I have recently adopted a policy of donating a few dollars to Elizabeth Warren every time someone appears in my inbox or notifications with a comment like this. So when I thanked you for your contribution at the start of this post, I was in fact thanking you for your extra-generous donation today, December 10, 2019, to Elizabeth Warren for President:

Peace.

#politics for ts #excuse me i just need to go over here for a second #anonymous #ask

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cbwalive · 3 years

Text

SUPER ESTRELLA Ep. 2

Super Estrella, Christmas Eve Bash

Thursday, December 24, 2020

Live on Univision

We start the show of the recap from last week when @TheEyeOfGibson and AuZZtin won the tag titles and Head of Creative John Schneider saying this is far from over.

Here comes @TheEyeOfGibson strutting down to the ring.

Gibson has his own fan section. About a dozen women in their mid- 50’s. One woman has a sign that reads, “Gibson Rats 4 Life”.

Roberto acknowledges them and blows them kisses off his butt before taking the mic.

The Eye starts off by saying “you know last week felt pretty damn good. For the last 5 weeks I didn’t know what I was going to do -- yeah sure living in my van in Pensacola was great but I’m full of steam - I’m a fighter and also a lover ain’t that right Ladies?”

Gibson’s Rats start screaming “I knew I had to get back in The CBWA and when Schneider called me out of the blue to help him in his War Games match.

I knew something was up so I made him sign a stipulation which says if I showed up to Time to Pay PPV and help Schneider’s team, then I will get my shot, my rightful shot at the CBWA World Heavyweight Title”

@gator_AuZZtin music hits to a huge pop.

AuZZtin grabs the mic “Listen Bobby we all know the damn story so quit boring these people to death.Even the Gibson’s Rats dried up during your story.

One of the Gibsons Rats yells, “I’m never dry baby”, AuZZtin looks rather disturbed.

The fact of the matter is I helped you win these damn tag titles.

Roberto stops him and says “you helped me? Correct me if I’m wrong but who kicked The Fiend out cold?”

AuZZtin says, “it doesn’t matter you followed my lead and look here we are the tag champs, something you and buddy Ricky couldn’t do”.

Roberto snags the mic “you leave Morton out of this, he’s still in the hospital and no one knows who took him out, maybe I’m looking at the SOB right now”

AuZZtin grabs the mic “like I said last week if I wanted to take out little Ricky Morton, I would do it in front of his pretty face so he can see who’s whooping his ass, how do I know I’m not looking at the sob that took him out?”

Roberto looks disgusted by that remark “are you kidding me? Now you’ve gone too far thinking I would take my friend of 40 years out”

It looks like they are about to go to blows when John Schneider’s music hits.

John comes down to ringside and interrupts both men “excuse me gentlemen I don’t mean to break up this love fest but I have important business to attend to both of you, starting with you AuZZtin.

Now I imagine you wanna whoop somebody’s ass, so tonight you will go one on one with BS Service member @BrayWya29193609.

Now as far as you go Gibson, you can take your so called disgusting ring rats over there and take them back to your van because you have the night off as a matter of fact you are banned from the arena.

These nice fine Bogota Security guards will see fit that you exit the arena with no problems”

The guards start to make their way to the ring and ask Roberto to come on down. The guards enter the ring, AuZZtin turns one of the guards around, flips him off a stunner, the other guard tries to get AuZZtin but is met by a super kick by Roberto.

Schneider angered tells more guards to get them, bam one stunner another super kick, more guards this time it’s around 6 or so of Bogotá’s finest, tasers are out and Roberto puts his hands up and is getting cuffed -- The same with AuZZtin.

They’re both exiting the ring when all of the sudden, The Miz comes out and nails a handcuffed AuZZtin.

We need to take a break - we’ll be right back folks.

We are back.

Backstage we see Roberto being put in a police car and AuZZtin into another.

John Schneider comes to the cars and says “big tough guys huh? Big tough guys.” He goes to the window where Roberto is and says “I hate your stinking guts and you have no idea how much joy this is to me right now seeing you where you deserve to be, you and your partner over there better start following orders around here or I swear I will make both of your lives miserable”

He then tells the Bogota cop to take this bum out of here, the car drives off as Gibson laughs hysterically in the back. .

Schneider then goes to the car AuZZtin is in, “now as for you, I’ll get you out of the car but you lay one finger on me and you will join your bum partner.”

He tells the cop to get him out, AuZZtin tells Schneider as he is being handcuffed “tell your boy Miz one way or another I’m going to get his ass tonight.”

Schneider says “You need to worry about @BrayWya29193609 because it is now a no disqualification match and Foot Von Erich is going to be the special ring announcer.”

We’ll be right back.

Welcome back to CBWA Super Estrella, let’s go down to the ring.

UNDERFAKER vs BOGOTA BRAWLER

We go to the ring lights go out and it’s @UnderfakerBL.

His opponent, The Bogota Brawler looks terrified.

The bell rings and Underfaker starts to walk slowly to his opponent, uppercut thrust to the throat, whips his opponent into the ropes, flying closeline, picks his opponent up and scoops him up for the tombstone piledriver, this one is over 1, 2, 3.

The Underfaker gets on one knee and holds his arm up towards the entrance.

There’s smoke -- and here comes a long black hearse.

The hearse pulls right up to the ring and out comes Bogota Blake from Ox Rent-A-Car.

@BogotaBlake holds up and urn and summons the Underfaker.

The Underfaker leaves the ring and crawls into the back of the Hearse. Bogota Blake backs up and almost takes out a section of the crowd but is able to regain control of the wheel.

We’ll be right back.

We’re back and we see a sit down interview set up with Kenny Resnick and he’s joined by @FrankConverseMO and his alleged son @BoltsyAmsterdam.

Welcome back to Super Estrella, I would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas.

“I’m here with the former CBWA World Heavyweight Champion @FrankConverseMO and a former champion and Hall of Famer himself @BoltsyAmsterdam.

Frank you asked me to get this together because you have something to say and wanted to be sure your alleged son @BoltsyAmsterdam was here, now that he is the floor is yours.

Frank says “thank you Kenny and a Merry Christmas to you and your herpies.

I wanted this gathering here today because I have something to say, you know the last 6 months of my life have been up and down, a lot of ups, I got in the best shape of my life, I won the CBWA World Heavyweight title from a Hall of Famer. I was featured in Action Hollywood movies, but there were also a lot of downs.

My bestfriend Claude Akins Gibson has been busy campaigning to become the next Mayor of Bogota and that meant that I was constantly alone.

I spent all my money -- I blew it on booze and drugs. I pawned a brand new CBWA World Heavyweight title belt Mr. Schneider made for me, but the lowest I was is when my son, my flesh and bone @BoltsyAmsterdam refuses to talk to me because of the shame he has for me.”

Boltsy cuts him off, “what are you talking about son? Boltsy gets up to leave, “for the last time you idiot, I’am not your damn son!!!!! I hate your guts because of the human being you are. You’re a bum, but one thing you are not is my father.”

Kenny steps in and says, “Boltsy, now Frank is admitting a lot of stuff here tonight but why would you say he is not your father?”

Boltsy screams, “because he’s not!!! I know who my father is.

Frank says, “it’s ok Kenny, the one thing I want everybody to know out there and especially my son” -- Boltsy yells again, “I’m not your....”

Kenny cuts him off, “let him talk.”

Frank says, “I just want everybody to know that you are looking at a new Frank Converse. I will no longer rely on drugs and alcohol but only rely on love from my son.” Boltsy whispers “you gotta be F’n kidding me.”

Frank continues “2020 was a great year for me but also a terrible year for me but 2021 will be the best year yet.”

Kenny jumps in and says, “Wow Frank, I’m very impressed with you and coming out with all your issues and recognizing it and having your alledgedson here to hear this is the topping on the cake.

Frank and I wish you nothing but the best, Boltsy do you have anything to say?”

Boltsy obviously irritated at this point says, “are you guys high right now?”

Frank says, “no son that’s the old me.”

Kenny says, “Boltsy I don’t understand -- I thought you would be thrilled to hear that your alleged dad is getting his life together and back on track for you.”

Boltsy says, “I don’t even know what to say at this point, this man is not my father, I grew up in Pittsburgh - he was in LA and we don’t look alike.”

Kenny cuts in, “I’ll have to disagree with that one.”

Boltsy gives Kenny a stare of death, “shut your face, look Frank if you’re going to change your life around and go down the straight and narrow then good for you, I hope you really do it, because you have burned a lot of bridges and I hope you can mend them.”

Frank says “Thank you son that means a lot, would you like to go play catch?”

Boltsy gets up and leaves….

Kenny then says, “well there you go a father and son’s relationship, I believe has been mended. Good luck Frank and we’ll be right back after these messages.”

We are back.

We’re inside Mr. Schneider’s office where it looks like The BS Service is having a Christmas party.

The Miz comes in and starts gloating that he whooped the so called, toughest S.O.G (son of a gator) AuZZtin’s ass and he’s about to do the same thing later tonight when he faces Greg Gagne.

Bolin interrupts and says, “Gentlemen let’s raise our champagne glass and toast the man that brought all of this to us and in the future the leader that will lead us all into dominance, Mr. John Schneider.”

They all toast.

Back in the ring --

The Masked Assassin vs The CBWA Intercontinental Champion Hot Stuff Eddie Gilbert

The bell rings and he locks up with the Masked Assassin and whips him into the ropes. Gilbert delivers a beautiful drop kick followed by the Hot Stuff piledriver, 1, 2, 3. Easy work for the IC champion.

WINNER: @HotstuffINT007

Gilbert is at the interview table with Kenny Resnick. Please welcome the man with the longest winning streak in CBWA history, Hall of Famer and the new CBWA The Intercontinental Champion -- Eddie Gilbert.

Eddie says, “Thank you very much Kenny. It’s great to be back in Bogota. It’s great to be a champion again. I fought hard to win this belt again, I went through some of the very best that The CBWA can offer and I can promise you I will be a fighting champion, as I’ve always been.”

At that moment, Hollywood Foot Von Erich walks out, “you know baby you say you went through the best but never faced the best because you are looking at the best baby” and points at the belt and walks off. Eddie laughs and Kenny throws it to break.

We are back and we are outside of the Bogota Mayor’s mansion.

Kenny Resnick is at the front door and @BigBubbaBogo answers.

Bubba tells Kenny to beat it. “The Mayor does not want to talk to anybody.”

Kenny said “well he asked me to be here for an exclusive.”

Bubba says, “well maybe you should check your emails because his assistant has rescheduled it for next week, now beat it before I have the hounds released on you.”

Kenny tells the camera man we better leave.

THE SOUTH AMERICAN CHAMPION MIZ vs GREG GAGNE

We are back in the ring and here comes Greg Gagne. All the little boys and girls are super excited to see Greg.

Gagne is feeling the Christmas spirit as he is gives each kid an exclusive Greg Ganja action figure which you can also pick up on the CBWA online shop!

Next, here come the CBWA South American Champion The Miz.

Miz takes one of the action figures that Ganja gave to one of the kids and breaks.

The Miz starts mocking the kid, and throws the pieces into the crowd.

This match is NOT for The CBWA South American Championship, which you can also purchase your replica South American Title belt at http://CBWAshop.com.

The bell rings and Miz starts mocking Ganja with the crybaby face but wait -- wait -- it’s AuZZtin.

He is behind The Miz and Miz has no idea, Ganja sees AuZZtin and tells The Miz to look behind.

The Miz all of sudden knows what’s coming, he turns around and AuZZtin flips him the bird and starts whooping on The Miz. He goes for the stunner but Miz escapes and runs away.

Ganja extends his hand at AuZZtin and receives a stunner.

All of a sudden, Bray Wyatt’s music comes on and here comes @BrayWya29193609 with @FootVonErich.

The fans are letting them have it.

It’s Bray vs AuZZtin right after these messages.

We are back and it’s main event time.

BRAY vs AUZZTIN

Foot grabs the microphone and starts announcing Bray Wyatt but is cut off by a vicious closeline by AuZZtin and here we go. AuZZtin stares down Bray but Bray is trying to play peek a boo with AuZZtin.

AuZZtin says ok and plays peek a boo back with a middle finger and starts whooping Bray in the corner, stomping a mud hole and walking it dry.

He grabs Bray by his dreadlocks and is about to set him up for a stunner but The Miz comes out and delivers a low blow.

Referee Nick Patrick calls for the bell and Foot Von Erich comes in its 3 on 1.

Mr. Schneider then comes out with the rest of the BS Services.

The Prototype, Bob Lashley, Rico and Renee Dupree.

John grabs the mic and says, “You see what happens when you don’t fall in line? Let this be a lesson to anyone in the back to not cross the boss.”

All of a sudden, Santa Clause music hits and it’s jolly old Saint Nick himself.

He’s giving all the boys and girls toys and candy, and he stops off at the Gibson Rat’s section and hands out sexy lingerie.

Mr. Schneider addresses Santa, “Hey Fat man, this is my arena who the hell do you think you are? Boys get him.”

The BS Service starts making there way to Santa Clause and all of a sudden --

Goldberg’s music hits -- It’s the CBWA World Champion

Goldberg hits the ring and he spears The Miz!

He spears Foot Von Erich and he spears Bray.

Schneider is looking scared the rest of the BS Service tries to stop Goldberg but is met with a spear.

Goldberg grabs Bob Lashley and picks him up for a jackhammer and down goes Lashley.

My god what strength.

Schneider cant believe what he is seeing.

He is now face to face with Santa Clause.

Santa takes his beard off and it’s @TheEyeOfGibson

He tries to swing at Santa Gibson but Santa ducks and nails him with a super kick.

OMG Schneider is out cold.

As the camera pulls back from the ring, we see Santa Gibson, AuZZtin and Goldberg celebrating with some cold ones.

WAIT -- The Miz is back in the ring and -- AuZZtin STUNS HIM!

From all of us at the CBWA -- We wish all of you all a Merry Christmas!

Next week it will be the CBWA Super Estrella New Years Revolution

Plus find out more about The Great Bogota Bash coming in January 2021.

We’ll see you next week folks, Merry Christmas from Bogota.

#wrestling #bogota #wwe #cbwa #aew

1 note · View note

owlespresso · 4 years

Text

Tremble, Duck & Weave

It's a cold night when Aymeric de Borel trims the unnecessary fat from Ishgard's governing body and seizes that power for himself, but the day that brings you into the city is surprisingly warm.

Reader is the Warrior of Light. This is an AU.

The pairings are as follows: Urianger Augurelt/Reader, Aymeric de Borel/Reader, Haurchefant Greystone/Reader, Estinien Wyrmblood/Reader. Also on my ao3, which can be found HERE.

The archbishop summons him at an unfathomable time of night. The office is dimly lit, the wrinkles of the man’s gaunt face illuminated by a lamp rested in the corner of his room. The door creaks as it gently clicks closed behind him. He looks the same as ever, beard and face much too long, eyes sunken. Aymeric, in the back of his mind, wonders if he too will look this way, when age drains him of his beauty like the dark of night drags the sun below the horizon.

“Aymeric,” Thordan VII smiles and his face shifts grossly with it. He was never meant to smile, Aymeric realizes for the umpteenth time, “Mine apologies for calling for you at this time of night.”

“It is no trouble at all, Father,” he stands spine straight, shoulders squared, expression soft but impassive. How he’s been carefully molded and taught to stand, to look, to be, “I have faith that this matter is of the utmost importance. My sleep can wait.”

“Thank you for your understanding,” Thordan VII replies, as though he doesn’t constantly demand it, “We’ve received news from Coerthas—” he erupts into a string of spluttering coughs that he muffles first into his hand, and then into his sleeves. The bitter cold has never done him any favors. Especially not now, when it’s started settling in his bones and tearing its teeth into his soft, wrinkly hide, “The Warrior of Light is on their way to the city gates.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. A meeting they attended with their cohorts in Ul’dah went awry. From what I understand, a military coup or something of the sort was staged and they were caught in the crossfire, injured near terribly. They are accompanied by an elezen boy named Alphinaud. I believe you’ve met him? Child of Louisoix, member of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn. They are coming to seek succor. They’ve proven to be our shield against the Dravanians, so I am granting them asylum,” that made Aymeric’s eyebrows raise. He had turned in reports on his meetings with the vaunted Warrior and their companion, but never had he expected his father to actually read them.

Never had he expected his father to pay attention to something he had painstakingly tracked and hand crafted.

“I presume you would ask me to give them shelter?” his meetings with you had always been between times of great strife and the subject matter usually revolved around whatever opponents you would be thrown at next. As far as he was concerned, it was a relationship that revolved purely around business.

You were used as one might wield a spear or sword, tossed in the way of whatever monster or god saw fit to threaten Eorzea’s city states. It was a pitiful existence, he believed, to be used so mercilessly by people who couldn’t defend themselves or do anything to assist you.

“Heavens no,” Thordan VII huffs in amusement, “The Fortemps bastard has their full trust and will be taking care of them. I wish for you to keep a careful watch on them. The Scions are renowned for their campaigns against our Ascian allies, and I will not have them get in the way of the plans I have labored over since I took up the honorable position of archbishop.”

“Ah,” Aymeric says, recalling the dozens of meetings where those ominous, robed figures flanked his father on either side, wearing their crimson masks and wry, smug smiles, “Is that truly wise? I’m sure you’re aware of the Ascians… unfortunate track record with the way they treat their allies. The Garlean’s Baelsar is testament to that.”

His voice is smooth and stable. His gaze is steeled as it always is when he steps foot inside here, this office which feels more like a gladiator’s arena than an office. Yet, his stomach tosses and turns because never has he dared to argue with his father. His father, who has towered like a giant over him for his entire life. It’s not something he regrets, not even as silence lapses between them and fills the air.

“Should all go according to plan, no longer will we need to live in fear of them,” Thordan says slowly, exploratively, “All I do is in the name of Ishgard’s liberation, Aymeric. I thought you would have understood that by now.”

“I understand you enough to know that you are… overestimating yourself,” the words claw themselves out of Aymeric’s throat, his mouth, and they feel like sandpaper.

Then Thordan VII’s eyebrows nettle into a scowl at his meager defiance. It makes his blood boil. How long has his father gone unchallenged? How long have his suggestions and commands only been met with a chorus of resounding yeses?

“I’ll not hear that from the pitiful welp I raised, the child who has never stood in my shoes,” his voice raises, face gnarled with offense. His calm, patient veneer finally lapses, exposing the ugly, festering mess that lays underneath his skin. Long has Aymeric waited to agitate him this way, and the satisfaction outweighs the trepidation of breaking free from all he’s ever known.

The floorboards behind Thordan’s desk creak. The aged elezen jolts and whips around, another series of coughs rattling his form as a figure, clad in inky black and deep crimsons steps into the dim light. The newcomer clutches a slender, freshly-sharpened glass. The tangy scent of blood and metal hits the air.

“Bold words for a man within striking distance,” Estinien’s voice rumbles deep and low, armor clanking with each slow, purposeful step.

“What is the meaning of this!?’ Thordan VII grips the arms of his chair as he thrusts himself to his feet, stumbling, hands resting flat against the table’s surface as he whirls around and attempts to scramble to the side. His eyes are wide, the fluster that had dusted his cheeks twisted into something terrified. The visage of a cornered animal.

Aymeric’s eyelids lower as he feels his idee fixe finally culminating. He sees himself, briefly, in lessons on etiquette and literature and all subjects in between. He sees himself knocked to the ground for the umpteenth time as he spars, his father staring down at him from across the courtyard, perched on the marble stairs with nothing in his eyes. He recalls a lifetime of pressure, of watching his father make poor life choices and being told what he should be rather than receiving praise for what he already was.

“You were there for the citizens of Ishgard when they needed you,” he begins and tries to find some words to convey the macabre collage of emotions and experiences, but ultimately fails. His words will never reach Thordan VII, his father, in the way he wants them to, “But now they require someone with a more delicate and refined touch. They need me, father, and you’re standing in the way.”

Thordan VII spits out a bitter laugh that descends into a deep, wailing cough, stumbling over his own ornate robes as Estinien backs him into a corner. Swathes of red and black aether swell around the dragoon’s form, a fantastic phantasmagoria that’s never failed to fascinate Aymeric.

“If you think I’ll just stand idly by and—” Thordan’s beady eyes stare up, his fear betraying him. Estinien smells it and his nostrils flare.

“I know,” Aymeric says and Estinien shoves his lance forward. Simultaneously, as though their minds are perfectly wound together and connected. The metal eats into and slices clean through the flesh. He briefly recalls watching a local butcher dismember a recently-slain boar whilst his father’s servants spoke to a merchant, eyes wide with awe and fascination as living matter was broken down into subsistence.

Blood splatters against the polished wood, fortunately missing the carpet. Aymeric remembers the price of that carpet.

“Beautiful work, Estinien,” he says softly, stepping over to Thordan VII’s body and kneeling. His palm lights with sacred blue energy as he works to seal the incision that the spear had so accurately made, the corpse clean of the evidence.

The archbishop’s eyes are still wide with fear. There is nothing better Aymeric would like than for as many people as possible to know the man had been helpless in his last moments, but it won’t do to have suspicion cast upon them. He does his father a final favor and shuts his eyes for him, just as Estinien sweeps back across the floor, to the window here he had entered. A frosty breeze sweeps into the room as Aymeric bundles Thordan VII’s body in his arms.

“The evening watch should be changing by now. They won’t see you,” he informs his companion helpfully, rewarded with a grunt as the dragoon heaves himself over the sill and jumps into the night sky, leaving not a trace behind him. Fitting. Estinien has never cared for their quibbling little politics. He answers to whoever promises to sate the hunger of his steel, to whoever waters his crops with draconic blood.

When he leaves, he takes his warmth with him. Silence settles over the room. He feels as fragile and trembling as the icicles which cling to the gutters.

He could linger in this space, Aymeric realizes, cling onto the normality that existed a mere half-hour ago. He could pretend Thordan’s responsibilities hadn’t just been hoisted upon his shoulders, allow his status to stand still if only for a precious, few moments.

But Ishgard is outside these gold glazed halls and he won’t keep them waiting for another moment. He nudges the door open with his arm and steps into the corridor, seeking the first chirurgeon he can flag down.

The news of Thordan VII’s death floods the streets mere hours later. Perished due to the sickness that had held him in its clutches for the past sixth months. He fought valiantly against the virus until he could no longer, and left ser Aymeric de Borel, his sole son, as his heir.

The sunlight streams in through the window, the curtains bunched to their sides.

He had slept a mere four hours, barely able to shake off the clinomania in order to clamber out of his bed. Nobles and servants flanked him left and right, the entire city sent into a buzz over the news of his ascension. Only now, when the sun was beginning to touch the city, did he get a moment of peace.

“Milord?” or not. He opened his eyes to look at the timid servant who peered into the room. The meager sunlight caught off her flaxen hair, which was tied into a tight bun. Stray strands dipped down to her forehead, “The Warrior of Light is here, and they are… grievously wounded. Several chirurgeons—”

“Have ser Augurelt attend to them personally,” he ordered, voice gentle yet resolute. She blinked, but nodded quickly and vanished, gently shutting the door behind them with a resounding “yes sir!”

Again, he was left to his silence. He shut his eyes, willing the tension of the night and fear of the upcoming day away for just a moment. Having Ishgard’s head astrologian tend to your wounds would send a message to the citizenry and the nobility who were aware of your presence. You were a valuable resource, an individual worth protecting. He would not see you harmed whilst within the city’s walls.

And anyone who defied that firm, incredible message would have to answer to him.

#aymeric #aymeric de borel #estinien #estinien wyrmblood #ffxiv #Final Fantasy XIV

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shortnotsweet · 5 years

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Ooh, have you possibly entertained the idea of Prince(ss)/Knight AU with Fiveya? I think either in the roles would be very cute and the whole situation thinking they both have unrequited loves on each other due to their own duties/honor really tugs on the heartstrings!!

A Witch, a Prince and a Princess

Even as a child, Vanya yearns downwards, down the spiralling view from the castle she would have long since abandoned had she any choice in the matter. It’s tall and grand, the grandest in the kingdom, but it’s become shriveled, an empty shell, like a ghost that has not lost its bones. Up in the turrets, the clouds are gritty and stifling, and the ground below and the land beyond are much more appealing, so much so that she dreams of riding a white horse past the borders of the kingdom and into the line where the sky sinks to meet the earth.

For a steed like that, she’d have to be a knight, or something of the sort. Higher nobility owns the best horses, ones that aren’t thin and sickly, or packing mules, but Vanya’s no princess, and she’s certainly no knight. She’s just a servant, one who was born just outside the borders of the kingdom, within the green outskirts of the King Reginald’s reign.

Even as a child, Vanya knows not to speak of her origin of birth - sorcerers haunt those woods, or so the whispers say. Demons lurk within the trees, and when night falls, it brings with it magic, and naked women dancing under the full moon, casting spells and disturbing all that is holy, sacred, and good. Besides, magic is outlawed in Reginald’s kingdom, and exists freely only outside its borders - after a ten-year long campaign to purge his lands of witchcraft, the filthy stuff, (and a decade of rolling heads, fresh from the executioner's block, of limp bodies swaying under mottled necks, feet drifting above the ground, of the night air saturated with broken shrieks as the flames of the pyre grew taller and hotter) Reginald had finally established prosperity and unquestioned political strength amongst the Five Kingdoms, cementing his place at negotiation tables.

No one dares speak of the Sixth Kingdom, lost to the world, its remains scattered throughout the rest of land.

Vanya is a mere twelve when she meets him first - she’s mimicking the knights dueling on the training grounds, wielding a stick that’s not too thick, not too short, and imagining rows and rows of opponents being felled. They’re not too far from the crops, effectively dwarfed by the field of tall dry grass and hidden from sight. She sees only the sky above her, gaping and huge, until she notices him crouched close to the ground, eyes bright with something she can’t place.

“Who goes there?” she shouts, whipping around, still in character, and he emerges good naturedly from the grasses. He’s a boy around her height with dark hair dark eyes, not unlike herself, but when he grins, dimpled and slightly lopsided, Vanya notices his teeth, white pearls against his gums.

He has good teeth, she thinks, numbly.

“Just watching,” he says, cocky and charming in a way that only twelve-year-old boys can be.

“Well - do you want to play?” she asks, because Pogo may be her uncle and not her real father, but he raised her right.

“What’s the game?”

“I’m a knight,” she says, “and you can be the damsel, if you want.”

The boy frowns. “I’m not a damsel. I’ll be the knight - I can rescue you, then. It’s less work,” he adds, as if to entice her. Vanya wrinkles her nose. “You’re the girl, anyway, don’t you know how it works?”

“That’s stupid,” she says truthfully, because she was playing first, he only just showed up, so of course she would know how to play. His face twists in clear annoyance.

“Do you know who I am?” The boy advances, petulant, and Vanya’s makeshift sword shoots out to rap him across his skinny chest, preventing him from coming any closer. Instinctively, his hand comes up to catch the tip, and he glares at her from the other end.

“You’re a stupid boy,” she snaps. “What do you know?”

He bares his white teeth at her. “I know you’re just a servant waving a stick around,” he snarls. “What would you know about being a knight?” When you’re just a serving girl, and always will be goes unsaid, but it’s the smug gleam in his eye that Vanya clenches her fists around, knuckles whitening in her anger.

“More than you!” Vanya shouts, vision blurred by hot tears that roll steadily down her cheeks. Her throat feels tight, uncomfortably so, and her head is light and ringing - it’s as if she’s fevered, not thinking straight.

“I’ve been training to be a knight my whole life!”

“Oh? And how long have you been training to be a prat?”

Outraged, the boy’s face begins to turn a curious shade of red as he sputters, “I’d watch my mouth, you dimwit, I’m the crown prince!”

Without thinking, Vanya gives a loud, unladylike scoff and leans forward to poke him hard in the chest. “My mistake. How long have you been training to be a royal prat, my lord?”

It slips out quick, too fast for her to anticipate, too angry for her to snatch back. The second the words escape her, Vanya stops dead, heart in her mouth and eyes wide on her face. She can see him better now: he’s well-groomed, with a clean face and dark hair, with fine clothes that can’t belong to a stableboy - stableboys don’t wear silk. With blood rushing in her ears and pounding in her head to the drumbeat of a death march, she instinctively backs away, feeling both incredibly small and suddenly enormous, like a target.

The crown prince moves toward her, reaching out a hand, a small gesture that’s hardly threatening, but Vanya reacts anyway, winding back her fist and sending it as hard as she can into his nose.

She doesn’t stay to inspect the damage. Instead, she runs.

He’s left staring after her, blood streaming down his face and onto the collar of his shirt. Five, twelve years old and set to inherit one of the greatest kingdoms in the land, falls in love for the first time of his life. He doesn’t know, not yet.

It’s been two weeks she’s spent sulking around the castle. Her Uncle Pogo is an advisor to the King and the castle’s appointed medic, and it’s a wonder she’s never seen the prince in person before - it is, Vanya reasons, a big castle, but she should have known better. No issues for her arrest and execution have reached her ears, or her Uncles, so perhaps the prince had forgotten about the event (or he was biding his time, waiting to strike).

It’s the latter, but she doesn’t know that, not yet.

The evening is setting into the sky, and her uncle has already retired to his chambers, leaving Vanya to her own devices.

Vanya ducks into the armory, looking both ways before dashing in and between the rows of gleaming metal shapes that she can barely make out in the dark but could attach a name to in a heartbeat. She reaches a tentative hand out to touch a spare breastplate hung on the wall, eyes wide, when someone clears their throat behind her.

Vanya turns, and dark eyes bore through the darkness. A white smirk flashes down at her, and she backs slowly toward the door.

“I’m sorry, your highness, I was just - looking.”

“Wait!” the prince calls out quickly, a hand outstretched. “Don’t go - I’m not - I’m not upset.” She hesitates, wary, and he steps closer. “What were you looking at? The armor?”

Vanya nods. “That’s - that’s good. Knowledge of weaponry.” The prince scratches the back of his head, eyes shifting around. “That's useful. For a knight.”

“Right,” she agrees, and he smiles, oddly gentle, as if he’s afraid she’ll shy away and bolt. “Was your nose alright?” she asks after a moment, inspecting what she can make of his face. It looks alright, with no bruising or deformations, and his grin only grows sharper.

“It was fine.”

“That’s good, your Highness.”

“Five.”

“What?”

“It’s Five,” he says. “Only the servants and visiting nobles call me your Highness, and it gets awfully formal after a while.” Vanya cocks her head.

“I am a servant.” After another significant pause, “your Highness.” She gives him a short courtesy, eyes on the ground, and hurries past him and out of the armory.

From then on, it seems that she can’t get rid of him. He doesn’t catch her in the courtroom, but everywhere else, from the stables to the kitchens, she thinks she catches him lingering in her peripheral, ducking out of sight before he becomes tangible. It’s his castle, so he can go wherever he wishes, but Vanya would really appreciate it if he’d only leave her alone and put her out of her misery - she hasn’t been sent to the stocks, but when his face lights up after running into her on the stairs, she hurries away anyway.

Five finally catches her climbing an apple tree near the woods, and she knows that he had to have ventured out on his own - he has no escort, not even a manservant with him, and from the way he was craning his head, it was clear that he was looking for something. Seeing as he’s the crown prince, Vanya thinks, it probably wasn’t apples.

“I can see up your skirts,” he calls up to her in that unabashed way of his, demonstrating a devastatingly poor choice of wording that he won’t grow out of for a long while. “You should be careful, you never know who could be walking by,” Five tells her helpfully.

“It’s a tall tree,” she says defensively, readjusting her footing. Five only regards her skeptically.

“Rapists can climb,” is his response, and she can only gape down at him, bemused and startled by his impropriety. What a weirdo, Vanya thinks.

He finds her again by the creek, and she ends up pushing him in. After he doesn’t resurface for a good minute, Vanya jumps in herself, horrified, wading through murky water and shouting his name.

It’s a mistake, and she finds herself wishing that she’d killed the crown prince after all, when he only grabs her wrist and pulls her further into the water, laughing all the while.

They return to the castle covered in mud, half-drowned and extremely pleased with themselves.

King Reginald was not pleased, and the rest of the servants weren’t either, due to the tracks of mud painting the corridors.

He’s started training with the actual knights, and the next day, Vanya pulls him into the grasses and demands that Five show her everything he learned.

Five gives her an empty scabbard, promises he’ll get a sword next time, and she hands him fresh bread swiped from the kitchens. She’s good at sneaking around unnoticed, particularly at night - recently, she’s noticed a change. Vanya has more energy at night, like the moon gleams brighter, like the sounds of the dry grass dancing under the sky get louder, like the wind turns sweet and speaks to her.

It feels like magic, sometimes, but she doesn’t mention this to Five. Magic is outlawed, anyway, and Five may be Five, but she’s still a servant, and magic is still punishable by death.

The next week passes, and her thirteenth birthday passes along with it.

He finds her on the surface of the lake, drifting along on her back. The pale veneer of her small clothes cling to her like a second skin, and she looks nearly drowned, with her eyes closed, a white body against the dark of the lake. She’s a lovely, half-dead creature, and he doesn’t want to pull his eyes away from her, but he does, if only for propriety’s sake.

“What are you doing, swimming alone at an hour like this?” he calls down instead, and her eyes snap open, startled. Vanya twists around, losing her careful buoyancy and slipping below the surface for just a second - when she comes back up, spluttering, he’s laughing at her.

“It’s one of the Seven Points of Agilities!” Vanya coughs out. “I thought you, of all people, would know about knighthood.” He sobers, for just a moment. Vanya’s dark hair is plastered to her face, and his mouth twitches.

“Women aren’t supposed to know how to swim,” he tells her carefully, rolling his sleeves up to his forearms, looking torn: should he wade in to help her out, or wait for her to clamber up herself? “It’s a sign of witchcraft.”

“Witchcraft!” Vanya exclaims, amazed, but Five only shakes his head.

“If you’re a witch, they’ll have you burned, you know.”

“I’m not a witch,” Vanya hisses. You prat, she nearly adds, but he is the crown prince, so instead she resigns herself to half-heartedly splashing lake water at him.

On Five’s fourteenth birthday, Queen Grace convinces his father to throw a grand celebration. The feast is full of things he loves to eat: game, beef, and pork sit in steaming piles down the tables, and slabs of venison are stacked next to sweet wine. The hall is singing, glowing warm against its stone walls, and Five looks utterly miserable seated at the high table. He catches her by the eye, pouring drinks for the knights, and beckons her over with a finger. Vanya looks both ways and makes her way towards him through the throng of people, hesitant, but just before she reaches him, a voice stops her in her tricks.

“More wine, girl,” one burly knight barks out at her, and she freezes, apologetic. Vanya averts her gaze and turns away. Five frowns.

“It - it felt wrong.” he confesses later.

“What does?” Were my clothes too drab, too plain, even for a serving girl? You’ve already seen me covered in mud, it shouldn’t matter to you, Vanya thinks.

Five’s brow wrinkles, and he speaks slowly, as if he’s working something and his mind is moving faster than his mouth. “Seeing you.” Her heart stutters, then plummets, but he plows on. “You’re all - docile, and quiet, and -” and you won’t look at me, not in the eyes, he doesn’t say, but he means it.

“That’s how I am, Five.” Vanya feels more exposed than she was that day at the lake, smallclothes dripping wet and clinging to her skin, and she cringes at the feeling, gluing her eyes to the floor. “You’re just a servant waving a stick around,” he’d said all those years ago, and even when she’d punched him in the nose and run away, she knew even then, deep down, that he was right. “That’s what I am,” Vanya finishes in a whisper. Except when I’m with you.

Five doesn’t look like a boy anymore, he looks like he’s going to become a man.

“Maybe someday a frog will kiss you, and you’ll turn into a handsome prince,” Vanya deadpans one afternoon. He’s escaped his guard, again, and they’re perched on boughs of the apple tree again, passing one red fruit back and forth between them.

“You think?” Five asks, chagrined. Vanya smiles and nudges his shoulder.

“Seeing as magic’s outlawed, that’ll probably never happen,” Vanya says carefully, and feels a rush of relief when he only tips his head back and laughs. He doesn’t look like a boy anymore, he looks like a prince, and the other servant girls giggle about his crown and the broadness of his shoulders and the way he’s shot up like a vine these past few summers, a head above Vanya herself, but her eyes linger on his jaw and his eyes and she marvels at how he’s changed so much and he’ll keep changing, but some things, she prays, will stay the same.

She doesn’t know what he sees when he looks at her, but a part of her hopes that will stay the same, too.

Vanya spends her fourteenth birthday alone and terrified, huddled against the wall of her bedroom.

From the forest, the druids watch.

Aelwen is rising.

On Five’s fifteenth birthday, he participates in his first tournament, armor and everything. He meets her eyes from across the grounds as servants secure his helmet, and even after the visor flips to obscure his face, she can still feel his gaze.

Vanya watches him from the stands and ignores the way her heart rises in her chest when one knight gets in a lucky hit, sending a mace crashing into Five’s chest. Five hits the ground and Vanya screams, and the crowd shouts with her, outraged, but he’s back on his feet in a second despite his smashed breastplate.

“I never got a favor,” he tells her later, after he’s subdued his opponent and rests in his tent, waiting for the next round and sweating like a dog in his armor. Vanya’s just a servant tasked with bringing the crown prince water, but he looks up to her anyway, reaching up for the pitcher.

Vanya hands it to him, watches as he drinks straight from the rim, water dripping over the sides of the pitcher, down his jaw, and into the neck of his armor.

“Just for luck, then,” Vanya murmurs, pressing her plain white handkerchief into the hand of his gauntlet.

He smiles.

“You’re getting betrothed?”

“Not yet. It’s...in the works. Her name is Dolores - oh, don’t give me that look. She’s well-read, respectful, and an incredible dancer. She also comes with a large plot of land and wealth, and Father - what?”

“What else do you know about her?”

“I just gave you a list, Vanya.”

“She’s an asset to the court. Beyond that, you make it sound like she’s a doll, like she comes with - with benefits, instead of character traits. Does she have a personality? Dreams? Hopes? Fears?”

“I - well, I don’t suppose I've ever asked,” he says, taken aback.

“She’s been staying here for three months.”

“I’m busy.” Five says with a shrug. Busy with you, he doesn’t say. Vanya plucks at the strings of his latest gift: a violin made of pale wood, a foreign gift he’d never himself had use for but kept because he could appreciate the music it made - he’d just never had time to learn it.

“Too busy to spend time with a potential queen?”

Prince Five doesn’t marry Princess Dolores. Dolores, having her own hopes, dreams, and fears, doesn’t mind all that much, and the next week passes easily.

“It’s the last of the agilities,” he murmurs against her ear. Vanya pulls back from his grasp to look at him, puzzled.

“What?” It’s well into the evening, and Five doesn’t usually stop making sense to Vanya until mid-morning, at least.

“Dancing.”

Oh Vanya, asks the moon, since when are you a romantic?

Since always, she replies.

Vanya’s gathering roots when she meets someone in the forest that isn’t Five.

“There a prophecy, you know. A lot of them, actually,” the boy tells her. His eyes are lined with kohl, and his hair is a mess, but his solemn face is both dignified and kind. The boy is skinny and covered in a black cloak made of gleaming feathers. His name is Klaus, and he speaks of the future. He speaks of death.

“Death?” she whispers.

“I see it. I know it.” Klaus taps his temple, and smiles at her. “You can, too.”

“I don’t understand,” Vanya pleads. It’s a lie, but the dread in her voice isn’t, and Klaus only kindly shakes his head at her.

“The moon is rising, and so is Aelwen, the White Witch prophesied to free the druids from their exile and lead the Six Kingdoms into its Golden Age.”

“I’m just an ordinary servant.” Vanya insists, but Klaus only takes her by the hand and gestures upwards toward the gleaming moon and back to her hand, which is white in the dark, ethereal against his own flesh. Her eyes widen; she’s seen opals and diamonds and all sorts of finery, but she’s glowing.

“Aelwen, you’re extraordinary,” Klaus says, and for one moment, Vanya believes him. It’s fleeting, but it’s enough.

“Five!” she calls, and it travels through the courtyard as if carried by the wind itself. From the distance, Five whips around and looks up, craning his neck to squint at her in the heat. I’m going to miss you, she says with her eyes, but she only smiles and waves.

He waves back.

Hope, Vanya knows, lives on the same road as Despair.

On Vanya’s fifteenth birthday, someone tries to kill the king, and Vanya hones in on the sound of the dagger whipping through the air to send it right back at the assassin, embedding it in their chest. King Reginald is alive, but his glass monocle cracks down the middle, a result of the blast of energy Vanya releases into the air, built purely from sound.

The monarchy is saved, and a witch is set to burn at dawn.

“You lied to me.”

Silence.

“How long, witch?”

“Not for long.” I promise.

“‘Not for long’?” The words are spat through the bars of her prison with a broken kind of fury, and she flinches. “What does that even mean? Why wouldn’t you - was any of that real? The entire time, were you - did you -”

“I saved his life!”

“You lied to me!”

“Of course I lied, you prat! You were my best friend, and you were perfectly content with me as a servant, but suddenly I’m not, and now - now you’re going to kill me.” She glares up defiantly at him in the darkness, face lit by the torches.

The flames burn smoothly, warping the line of her jaw and illuminating the gleam of her eyes, which are glinting - not supernaturally, he realizes, but with tears. He looks back at her through the bars of the cell from where he’s sunk against the floor again, looks at her free anger, sees her finally set ablaze, and wonders who’s truly imprisoned.

Five closes his eyes for a moment, imagines dawn breaking the sky, Vanya’s head rolling across the courtyard, eyes unblinking. He envisions her waterlogged corpse, waxy and painted with veins that creep up her face like vines, drowned by a barrel. He sees her engulfed on a pyre, her screams rising into the sky like the shriek of birds fleeing to the west.

The Prince will pursue her on horseback - she is an escaped prisoner, after all and a dangerous witch to boot. He’ll take some of his best men, from Sir Luther with his legendary strength, to Sir Diego, one of the most skilled knights in the land. He’ll search for weeks, because a witch hunt doesn’t end easily. She must’ve used witchcraft, the sorceress, because there was no open window for her to escape from, not unless someone handed her the keys to her cell door and ushered her through the hidden tunnels of the castle and away to freedom.

You told me once that I was just a servant girl, and I would always be just a servant girl, she thinks, and waits for some vindictive pleasure to surge up inside her (because he was wrong, and all she’s ever wanted to do was to prove him wrong, just once, and there’s no moment more opportune than this). It doesn’t come.

(It was a long time ago.)

Klaus takes her hand, firm but not unkind, and gently pulls her away, until they’re running, tearing through the long grasses and towards the woods, and they begin to recede into the darkness of the trees, and the castle becomes but a shape in the distance. Before the forest closes its arms and takes her, though, Vanya tugs from Klaus’s grasp and whips around for one last look - this glimpse, of the kingdom where she fought and nearly burned (and very nearly, very possibly fell in love), will have to last her.

She turns to take the plunge, a white shadow against the trees.

It will be a long three years.

King Reginald dies quietly, without a fuss, an incredible feat for a man so cruel. He’d be rolling in his grave, though, if he knew of the prophecies that were whispered throughout the kingdom, of the Druid uprising, led by their own prophesied princess, Aelwen, the White Witch. The ban against magic was lifted within the second year after King Reginald’s death, and ever since, signs of magic and its people have evaded the borders of the kingdom. She’s coming for the kingdom, whisperers the baker. She’s not here to attack, says the midwife. She comes to avenge, the blacksmith suggests. No, confides the wise man, she comes to unite.

They meet just outside the borders of the kingdom, within the green outskirts of the King Five’s reign. The tall dry grasses sing and dance around them, and he takes in her proud, dark eyes, small mouth, heavy, dark hair, and white cloak draped over her small shoulders. He drinks it up like a dying man.

“I request an audience,” the Sorceress says, “with the king of these lands.”

“I’ve been waiting for you,” the King says, and leads them to his horse.

“At night,” the King says slowly, “I dream. I dream about the future. Do you know what I see?”

“No.”

“The sun hasn’t set yet, you know. I could still have you burned.” Five suggests.

Vanya tilts her head, considering, then nods solemnly. “You could,” she concedes.

“But…?”

“But I am extremely powerful. I could kill your kingsguard and set your entire kingdom ablaze before you even had the chance to gather wood for the pyre,” Vanya confesses, and Five crosses his arms.

“Ah.”

“And, of course, burning me would nullify any impending treaty. My people are rather averse to witch burnings.”

“Are they, now?”

“We’re very progressive these days.”

“It’s a good thing, then, that I am too.”

“It’d also look rather bad on your part, having been crowned merely days ago, pledging to start a reign of peace and tolerance, to immediately start another decade-long war.”

“Indeed, it would. I am so fully committed to decades of peace, in fact, that I am appalled that you would even suggest such a thing.”

Vanya turns to the window, to the courtyard below. The sun washes the pavement yellow, illuminating the bustling crowd like an open field of dry grass. “Anything else?”

“I’ve also been told that I’m a huge prat,” Five says mildly, and leans down to press his mouth to hers.

She kisses him back soundly, as if in agreement.

end

Seven Points of Agilities” – riding, swimming and diving, shooting different types of weapons, climbing, participation in tournaments, wrestling and fencing, long jumping and dancing – the prerequisite skills for knighthood

I know nothing about medieval times. This was strongly inspired by Merlin and The Swan Princess, so historical accuracy? Who is she?

Aelwen, “fair browed” in Welsh

@maradeur thanks for the ask, and sorry for taking literally a month to respond. I have a few more prompts and I do intend to get to all of them, I just want to explore them properly, and I’d feel bad giving some prompts 2k words and background research and other ones like, half a paragraph, but I do read all of them and love everyone who asks so keep it up y’all

#fiveya #the umbrella academy #vanya hargreeves #five hargreeves #tua #mini fic #honestly merlin was the best show ever #lots of subtext to unload there #the prompt was challenging and i did it wrong but its all out now #vanyas a witch and a princess #ask me anons

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shan-joed-blog · 4 years

Text

Wisdom from Years of Android Development

Source of Information: Android Classes In Pune

I still keep in mind that day back in 2014 once I chose to begin Android growth, and this was among the greatest decisions I required in my entire life. It's been approximately two and a half a year today and that I had the opportunity to understand and un-learn a good deal of items in Android.

Originally when I began, I did not have a mentor or someone who could direct me to do things the ideal way. I have done a LOT of errors and wasted a great deal of time later rectifying them.

Afterwards, after one and a half a year, I have the opportunity to use some really gifted and expert Android programmers, who advised me and allow me to shape matters in a far greater manner. Both these stages helped me find out a hell lot of stuff in the tricky way.

It's been quite a while I have been attempting to assist other programmers in a sense possible for me personally, indirectly and directly.

In the following guide, I'll be sharing a few of the gems I have gathered lately. It may help a person to get started quicker rather than repeat the mistakes which I did.

Disclaimer: I could largely be focussing on Android plus a few notions of product and programming development within the following guide, so if you aren't acquainted with some of them, you may rather not read any farther. Others, just dip. :--RRB-

Do not Reinvent the Wheel

Originally I had a lousy notion of not utilizing open-source libraries. Whatever I wanted, I only wanted to make it . It has was severely a terrible thought.

When you've got a problem whilst creating your program, and if this problem was solved by another person earlier and in a fantastic way, why don't you use this? You may save yourself a good deal of time.

Focus on the core business logic of your program. If you wish to create network calls on your program, you do not have to earn a Retrofit yourself.

Bonus: Android Arsenal keeps a record of nearly all of Android libraries made. Go take a look.

Pick Libraries Wisely

You will find lots and a lot of open-source libraries out there in Github that you use at no cost. But do not get too excited and begin using libraries .

Assess the amount of celebrities that library gets, the greater the better. Assess whether the writer of the library also have established some other popular libraries too. Verify the topics (both closed and open ), which may provide you a clearer idea of how powerful and secure the library is in creation.

If you're able to spend the time, then you ought to dip into the code of the library and assess yourself whether its really worthwhile.

You only wish to make certain that the code you're likely to use is dependable, bug-free and high quality.

Pro Suggestion: Try any library hosted straight from the command line with Dryrun.

If you aren't doing this, START today.

Whatever code you're in a position to write now is simply because you've read and heard something, somewhere, someday. It is only a manifestation of what you know. You may just grow and improve your self by studying and learning from other's work.

The fantastic thing about Android is the fact that it's an entirely open-source platform. Dive in the code and assess how they've implemented the frame. There are hundreds and hundreds of open minded libraries in Github. Simply select a library and find out the way the programmer have employed it.

Bonus: here's a curated collection of a few of the greatest libraries and here's a list of nearly all accessible Android programs out there. You're welcome:--RRB-

Should you compare coding together with composing, then coding criteria is similar to your own handwriting.

Since you'd be studying more of the others code, other folks are also studying a great deal of your code and you do not wish to frighten the shit from these, do you really? And if you're working within a business and cooperating with other programmers greatly, do take particular care of it.

Write brief, readable and clean code which you and people reading your code will like thoroughly. Your code should read as a narrative.

Do not complain if you compose a bit of code along with your coworkers do not speak to you for a couple of days.

You Want ProGuard, YesYou Want It!

ProGuard not just minifies your code, but it also obfuscates your code which makes it tougher for reverse-engineers to comprehend, replicate and control it.

Its free and comes bundled with all the Android SDK, and there's simply no reason for you to not use it.

I've observed many developers releasing their program in the marketplace with no ProGuard. It shouldn't require more than a couple of hours to get a not-so-skilled hacker to control an the program published without Proguard.

Pro Suggestion: But if you'd like top-notch protection, then ProGuard is just like a cardboard at the same time you want a secure, and here it's, DexGuard.

Use a Suitable Architecture

You may thank yourself for choosing a suitable structure in the first location.

It's possible to utilize MVP (Model-View-Presenter) structure that may decouple your code to various easy-to-manage layers thereby enhancing code flexibility and significantly reducing maintenance period.

There's a good demo job for you to begin. And if you're having trouble grasping it, here's a thorough guide for the novices.

Bonus: Do provide a check out this, this and most significantly this. Every one these can help you in executing MVP on your undertaking. User Interface Is just like a Joke, Should You Need to Explain It, It Is Bad

Should you work for any company playing the use of"only" a Android programmer, you likely won't have to be overly concerned about that, since there really are UI/UX designers to look after this.

However, if you're a single programmer, you have to get this directly in your mind. I've seen programmers creating really great programs with good performance, however, the UI looks horrible along with the UX makes it a hassle to use.

Layout a clean, easy and gorgeous interface that's easy on the eyes. You shouldn't just think as a programmer, instead you need to focus on igniting the concealed designer in you.

Attempt to make a lasting impression in your customers by designing a gorgeous UI, so they return to your program more frequently than others and often convert more (purchase your premium variant ( possibly ).

You ought to find a kick by eliminating elements from your own design, instead of adding. Keep it minimal and clean.

And there's this book you probably would really like to see if you want to know more about design.

Analytics Is Your Very Best Friend

If you would like to produce a really amazing program, then you have to heavily rely on analytics programs to assess the operation and utilization of different sections of your program.

By analytics, I refer to both the collision reporting and program usage monitoring and you want both of these.

Anything you do, you can't ever make something ideal. When actual users will begin using your program on various Android apparatus and on different Android variants available, you may also find a few of the greatest written code to drop flat on the floor.

Crash reporting programs can allow you to monitor and fix themone crash at one time.

You also will need to begin thinking like a marketer and also examine the use of various elements of your program. This is what's going to allow you to bridge the gap between what you've created and what your customers' actually desire.

Pro Suggestion: I strongly suggest looking for the crash reporting tool in Instabug. You're going to appreciate it.

Make a Marketing Ninja If you're a single programmer, you need to consider beyond being"a programmer" and need to understand marketing too.

I've observed great products fail because of lack of suitable marketing, and also the not-so-good ones become hugely successful only because of fantastic advertising.

If you're seriously interested in your work and need it to reach a huge audience, you want to spend your time and cash in properly advertising your program. But prior to beginning your marketing and advertising campaigns, make certain your program is totally stable with all attributes prepared. You need maximum conversions out of each penny you pay, right?

Spend some time exploring who your opponents are and how you can overcome them. Identify the ones you're able to compete quickly as well as also the ones which you need to keep aside for a long term struggle.

Pro Suggestion: This is an inexpensive market evaluation instrument, I really like to use.

It Is Time to Boost Your Program

This is something which the majority of us don't do, however, you need to and you want to.

Write code which runs fast, takes less memory and absorbs less apparatus storage.

An unoptimized program works well under ordinary conditions, but when placed to various stressful circumstances, it may show you its true colours.

Bear in mind, a very small leak can sink a large ship. Spend some time on knowing how the Garbage Collector works in Java, produce heap dumps and examine your live items.

Pro Suggestion: Use Leak Canary to discover your memory flows. It can save a great deal of time by accomplishing this job for you.

Save Over 5 Hours Each Week with Gradle Builds

It is very very possible that you're utilizing Android Studio to create Android programs and utilizing Gradle as your own build platform. Gradle is excellent but its slow and it becomes much thinner than a snail as soon as your job size begins to increase in proportion.

I recall the countless hours I've wasted just sitting and awaiting the Gradle assembles to complete. On hefty workouts, I wasted around one hour just Gradle assembles and that is like 5 hours each week draining the gutter.

However, there are ways to speed this up too.

It is possible to stick to this and this article to greatly enhance your construct rates. My construct time fell from 4 minutes to less than 30 minutes following appropriate optimization.

Evaluation, Evaluation and When You're Finished, Test Again!

There isn't anything more significant than testing. This is something which needs to be on very top of your list.

Test your program as completely as you can. Create various stressful scenarios for your program and see whether it can endure.

I'd formerly made the mistake of publishing my program from rush and did not spend appropriate time analyzing it. I had been waiting for my customers to confront bugs, report it and then I'd go and mend them.

You may spare a day, or 2, or per week by cutting time from studying, but will most likely have to spend over double afterwards.

Make a visionary. Sow today, reap afterwards.

There are a massive assortment of all Android devices with different display sizes and hardware specifications from plenty of different apparatus manufactures that personalize the OS for their heart's content.

Added to this are the a variety of Android variants at which Google adds/removes API performance from nowhere to raise your workload further (an example here).

By way of instance, not just one Android programmer has completed a program without using SharedPreferences API. It is so common, however it had been broken up in Samsung Galaxy S using Android 2.2 (bug report ).

Spend additional time creating different designs for different screen dimensions. Evaluation on various apparatus, having different variations, different specifications and from various OEMs.

Never presume something could work, simply as it appears so.

Start with Git, Now!

If you're still not utilizing Git, go right ahead and begin using it straight away.

Once I began Android advancement, I was unlucky enough to not understand exactly what the fudge Git was. I used to replicate my whole project regular and keep 1 backup in my hard disk and another from the cloud. Seems foolish? Yes, it was.

Git can radically enhance your workflow. If a person asks me to mention a tool I use everyday and can not quit using? It is Git and Git each time.

And likely after using it for a couple of days you'd fall in love with it and wish to understand how Git works tirelessly, so here it's prepared for you.

And after some time, you'd be starting a large project your self and get confused about how you should keep a suitable branching model, so that you go.

Bonus: If you're only starting out and can not manage to pay the monthly subscription fee for keeping private repositories from GitHub, it is possible to attempt BitBucket which permits you to do this free of charge.

Make It Hard for the Hackers

The open minded nature of Android is exactly what makes it susceptible to attacks.

You do not need it to happen for your program, right?

You ought to be aware of how to safely store API keys everywhere on your program. If you're managing sensitive information from those consumers, then you have to understand how to encrypt themwhat algorithm to select (secure yet quickly ).

It's also advisable to keep the encryption keys safely in the host or locally (if desired ). If you're storing sensitive information in the database, then think about obfuscating it.

If your program includes a premium version that gets cracked and has published at no cost. You'd incur a critical reduction in company, right?

There are many things you can do to stop your program from becoming tampered. There's not anything like 100% safety. Any proficient and recognized hacker with the proper tools, patience and tools may crack your program.

Whatever you need to do is make it hard, rather very tricky for the hacker to decode it.

A luxury apparatus will hide a great deal of flaws while creating your program. Suppose you're doing something from the UI thread that makes its way to get a laggy UI, however onto a potent device, you might never ever observe that.

A classic, low-end apparatus, dumped with a lot of programs makes it perfect for a development apparatus.

That is an investment which will pay you eternally.

Whilst creating large and intricate programs, you may face some common issues that have probably been solved before by somebody more capable than you, that is when designing patterns comes in to play.

Here's a Github job that shows all of the design patterns known to humanity.

Looks like a great deal? It really is not. You'll begin enjoying them after you dip in.

It Is Time to Give Back

Most of us have a great deal of assistance from folks around us and by the net. Lets declare it. When you have a issue, the very first thing you'd do is Google that and find the very first link from StackOverflow. Sometimes you're in a rush and you wind up copying and pasting the alternative in the response with the greatest votes.

Ever believed the amount of libraries you're using from Github free of charge and the way in which they have significantly reduced your development efforts and time. Its because somebody somewhere has taken the opportunity to construct it and donate to make the community better.

Recall the day, if you had been stuck in knowing a challenging idea or something that's completely new to you, and you wind up finding an wonderful blog post that made it super simple for you. Its because someone skipped a film date and wrote this post.

We're active in our work and also we find it too hard to handle time and do something for others. But try to get some time each week to donate and make this particular Android community wealthier.

I've attempted to discuss a few of the lessons I have discovered in this brief journey with Android improvement. I'll continue my trip, find out more and share more. I hope it will help somebody and makes their life somewhat simpler.

Android Course In Pune | Android Training In Pune | Learn Android Development In Pune

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Generations - Part 3

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There was no reason to delay. Kirk didn’t even have a career to sacrifice. He would rather not steal a starship, but having recently returned from the dead, he didn’t have many options.

“Computer, put me through to Admiral Brackett-” Kirk began.

The beep of his communicator cut him off.

“Wait on that,” Kirk ordered and tapped on his communicator.

It was Picard. “Jim, we’ve received a transmission from Ambassador Spock.”

Kirk’s heart leaped. “I’m on my way.” He turned off the communicator, cancelled the call to the admiral and nearly ran down to Picard’s quarters.

“What did Spock say?” Kirk demanded as the doors slid open to let him inside.

Picard was at his desk, working on the computer terminal. He turned it off when Kirk entered and answered with a smile, “He’s on his way. We’ll meet him between here and the Neutral Zone.”

It took Kirk a few moments to truly register what Picard had said. Spock was on his way. There was no need to go to Romulus. He would see Spock soon, in a matter of days. He remembered seeing Spock off like it was just a month ago, but it had been eighty years since Spock had last seen him, since their minds had touched - a whole lifetime. Kirk couldn’t imagine how much had changed in his absence.

A jittery rush of nerves and excitement spread through his veins. He couldn’t hold back a grin.

“Good,” Kirk said, “great.”

“I imagine he’ll be pleased to see you.”

“I hope so,” Kirk said, though he couldn’t really bring himself to doubt it. “Is there anything I can do around here in the meantime?” With nothing left to plan, he could easily go crazy just waiting around.

Picard shook his head. “The Farragut is over staffed as is. I’ve just been doing my best to stay out of the way.”

Kirk couldn’t help but sympathize with the captain stuck on another’s ship. “I don’t envy your position.”

“It gives me some time to catch up on my reading.” Picard gestured toward the book on his desk.

“You collect antique books too?”

“I find it makes for a richer experience.”

Kirk nodded in agreement. He glanced at the novel and exclaimed in surprise, “The Tale of Two Cities?”

“Are you familiar with it?”

Kirk grinned. “It’s a favorite of mine.”

“I didn’t realize you were interested in history.”

“I am, but that one was a gift.”

“I was curious about its portrayal of the French revolution, but it’s clearly written from an English perspective.” Picard frowned at the thought.

“You’re actually French?”

“Yes, I was raised on an old-fashioned vineyard near the border with Switzerland.”

“With your accent, it’s easy to forget,” Kirk said with a wry smile. “I have a similar interest in American history.”

“I know less French history than maybe I should,” Picard admitted. “Usually I prefer archeology; studying lost alien civilizations.”

“Sounds exciting. You’re in the right place to do it, though I was usually preoccupied with the civilizations we found.”

“That’s often the case,” Picard said with a touch of disappointment, “But occasionally I have the chance to uncover something no one has seen in millennia.”

“There’s so much out here, we can barely even brush the surface,” Kirk marveled, leaning back in his chair.

“I’m certain the admiral’s offer stands.”

Kirk waved it off. “I’m retired.” After a moment’s thought he asked, “She said something happened to the fleet?”

Picard nodded. “The Borg. They’re part organic and part machine. They assimilate sentient species into their empire - for lack of a better word. They’re adaptable and relentless, just one of their ships destroyed most of the fleet. They would be centuries away, but a powerful alien we’ve encountered a few times decided to introduce us to them as a sort of practical joke.”

“And there’s no reasoning with them?”

“No, at least not until they see us as a real threat.”

Kirk glanced away, his mind already racing far ahead of him, trying to figure out how to beat such an opponent.

“I’m sorry, I’ve brought you into a dangerous time,” Picard said, jolting Kirk back to reality. “Thankfully, we think most of their fleet is still years away, so we should have some time to improve our defenses before we have to face them again.”

“Every age has its challenges.”

Picard nodded. “I wouldn’t have wanted to get in a fight with the Klingons.”

“We didn’t fight them face to face much. It was mostly just competing over allies and resources, but they did play dirty.”

“The Klingons? They can be ruthless, but they have their honor - for the most part. The Romulans on the other hand…”

“Maybe things have changed in eighty years. We only encountered the Romulans a few times, but they seemed to be honorable in their way.”

“I’ve just read about your times, but it seemed like the galaxy was a very different place.”

“I have a lot of catching up to do,” Kirk said with a smile.

“If you want any lighter reading, you’re welcome to borrow a book,” Picard offered. “My quarters were mostly undamaged in the crash.”

“What do you have?”

Picard led him over to a small cabinet in the corner, full of books. Some were a little charred around the edges and others had been banged up pretty badly, but they all looked readable. Kirk bent over to peruse the titles. There was Shakespere, some Klingon poetry, a few books in French, and other classics from all over the galaxy, even some Vulcan philosophy.

Kirk was considering the Vulcan philosophy when something else caught his eye - “The Campaigns of Alexander, it’s been years since I last read that!”

“You’re welcome to it.”

“Thank you.” Kirk carefully drew the old book out of the cabinet and flipped through the pages, scanning for familiar names and places - in all honesty, he was mostly looking for Alexander’s loyal companion, Hephaestion.

Picard hesitated. “If you get tired of reading, I’ve been meaning to go fencing when I have the time, you could join me,” he suggested a little awkwardly.

“I’ve never fenced before, but I could give it a try.”

“I can teach you the basics.”

“Sure. Just tell me when and I’ll meet you in the gym - this ship does have one?”

“Yes.”

“It has about everything else.” More seriously, Kirk said, “Thank you.”

“Not at all.”

Kirk took the book and returned to his quarters, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to focus on reading - maybe later in the evening it could distract him from tossing and turning in bed. Instead, he left The Campaigns of Alexander on the table and made his way up to the ship’s bar. It was still bustling, but he recognized a few familiar faces in the crowd. Guinan waved to him from the bar and he spotted Riker and Worf at a table, not far from where they had been sitting when he ran into them the day before.

Kirk greeted Guinan with a nod and headed over to the table staked out by the senior officers.

“Captain Kirk,” Riker exclaimed, “I see you’re as bored as the rest of us.”

Kirk shrugged. “I’m helping by staying out of the way.”

“Those are the captain’s orders,” Worf grumbled.

Riker stood and insisted, “Have a seat.”

After much rearranging and polite apologies, Kirk ended up in a chair that had been hastily vacated by a timid ensign, who would not reclaim it despite all his protests, and promptly fled to the far corner of the room.

“Rank has its privileges,” Riker said wryly.

Kirk just shook his head.

“So, Ambassador Spock is on his way,” Riker remarked once Kirk was settled.

Kirk grinned. “News travels fast.”

“I heard you married him to keep him from being assigned to another ship when he was your first officer,” Riker said, though he was careful to neither endorse nor deny the assertion.

“No, it was for the joint shore leaves once Spock had a ship of his own,” Kirk countered.

Worf glanced between them, as though he couldn’t decide if it was worse if they were lying or telling the truth. “I thought Vulcans were supposed to be logical,” he said at last.

“But when a man is in love…” Riker trailed off.

Worf looked dubious.

“I’m surprised you decided to get married at all, or do the history books have you pegged all wrong?” Riker asked.

“Vulcans have a different idea of marriage than humans,” Kirk said, though he couldn’t say much more.

“I see,” Riker said with a grin. “And it sounds like he was one hell of a first officer too.”

“I couldn’t ask for any better. Does Mr. Data have much command experience?”

“Putting together a command team already?”

“No” - Kirk waved off the suggestion - “I was just wondering what the crew makes of him.”

“He took a little getting used to,” Riker admitted. “But I don’t think there’s anyone who’s gotten to know him that doesn’t like him.”

Worf nodded in agreement.

“What about you?” Kirk asked. “Do you have your eyes set on a first officer?”

Riker shook his head. “I’ll probably get a command one day, but I’m happy here for now.”

“Really? I was probably promoted too young, but I’m surprised you’re not ready to get out of here.”

“So am I, But I’m happier as first officer on the Enterprise than I’ve been anywhere else, and I think that’s more important than a promotion.”

“Who am I to argue with that? I accepted a promotion to admiral and where did it get me?”

“Was it really that bad?”

“For someone else, maybe not, but I don’t belong on Earth commanding a console. There’s nowhere better than the bridge of the Enterprise.”

“I’d toast to that.” Riker raised his glass and tipped it back.

“Hear!” Worf exclaimed and followed suit.

“She was a good ship. I hope the Enterprise-E will live up to the name, but I don’t know if it’ll ever be quite the same.”

“It isn’t,” Kirk said. “You were in command when she was destroyed?”

Riker nodded.

“I sacrificed the first Enterprise for a lot less. It was still worth it, but the Enterprise-A never felt like home in the same way.”

Riker finished the dregs of his drink. “Speaking of, I should probably get back to approving those transfers for when we do get the Enterprise-E. It was good talking to you, Worf, Captain.” With that, he stood and took his leave.

Another officer promptly stole the vacated chair to take it to another table, and Kirk found himself alone with the Klingon. They seemed to size each other up, neither quite ready to make the first move.

To Kirk’s surprise, Worf spoke up, “At Starfleet Academy, I read about your battles with the Klingons.”

Kirk nodded. He would have been lying to say he regretted them.

“You were a true warrior,” Worf concluded.

“I admit, I was sometimes lacking in diplomacy, but our mission was peaceful exploration,” Kirk attempted.

“But you fought well,” Worf protested.

It sounded like it was intended as a compliment, but Kirk wasn’t quite ready to take it. Instead, he asked as casually as he could, “Are you the only Klingon in Starfleet?”

“Yes,” Worf said.

“Why? The Klingons must still have their own fleet.”

“After my family was killed in the Khitomer massacre, I was raised by humans,” Worf explained, but with the way he said it, he might as well have been talking about someone else’s family.

Still, Kirk’s eyes widened in surprise. “Oh, I didn’t realize. That can’t have been easy.”

“I faced some challenges,” Worf acknowledged stoically.

“You almost sound more like a Vulcan than a Klingon,” Kirk suggested with a smile.

“Vulcans are pacifists” - Worf said the word “pacifist” with some disdain.

“That’s usually the logical course of action,” Kirk argued, “But there’s no one I’d rather have on my side in a fight.”

Worf gave him a look of disbelief.

Wryly, Kirk asked, “You’re set on being a Klingon?”

“That is what I am,” Worf insisted.

“You’re right,” Kirk said. It had been unfair of him to suggest otherwise. “How is it, serving on a ship full of humans?”

“They are not warriors, but they are good colleagues” - Worf hesitated - “And friends.”

“Good. I don’t know what I would have done if I’d been assigned a Klingon officer,” Kirk admitted. “I can only hope I would have followed your Captain Picard’s example.”

“Many Klingons still have a difficult time accepting the Federation as our allies. Most humans would not fare well on a Klingon ship - they do not understand the glory of war.”

“Some do, but they usually end up as the villains.”

“Yes, I do not understand why humans place so much value in reluctance.”

“Maybe we’re just indecisive,” Kirk suggested with a wry smile.

“That is not how I would describe my human colleagues.”

Kirk tried again - “Isn’t it better to go to war for a good cause than a bad one?”

“Perhaps,” Worf acknowledged, “But humans seem to place no value in the glory of battle.”

“No, I suppose we don’t. We’re not so fond of death and destruction.”

“You fear it,” Worf charged.

“With good reason.”

“Why fear the inevitable? At least a warrior can die well.”

“Is anything really inevitable?”

“All things die.”

“I don’t know, I’ve managed to cheat death well enough myself.”

“Your case is a unique one,” Worf admitted, “But eventually you will die.”

“Maybe, but I don’t believe in no-win scenarios. Even if everything supposedly dies, there’s no reason to surrender and let it happen.”

“You would consider charging into battle, prepared to die, a surrender?” Worf demanded.

“Isn’t it better to live to fight another day?”

“Not if all your days are spent fleeing in fear of death.”

“Maybe you’re right, but if there’s a way…” Kirk trailed off, his eyes gazed out the windows that made up the far wall.

For a moment Worf drank in silence. Abruptly, he remarked, “I don’t understand how you humans can spend days on end doing nothing but waiting.”

Kirk looked back at the Klingon with a smile. “We don’t like it any more than you do. We just try to distract ourselves.”

Worf seemed to consider the suggestion. “Maybe I will go see if the Farragut’s holodeck has a suitable calisthenics program. You are welcome to join me.”

Kirk was curious, but shook his head. “Maybe another time.”

“Very well.” Worf finished his drink and took his leave.

Kirk was in his quarters reading when Counselor Troi dropped by. She joined him at the desk, no doubt ready with another barrage of questions.

“Good afternoon, Counselor,” he said, putting the book aside. “What can I help you with?”

To his surprise, she asked, “What are you reading?”

He smiled. “The Campaigns of Alexander. I borrowed it from your Captain Picard.”

“Alexander the Great?” she clarified.

He nodded.

“May I ask why that book in particular?”

“It’s a classic.”

Troi could tell there was another reason, but she didn’t press him on it. Instead she said, “The captain told me that Ambassador Spock is on his way.”

Kirk grinned. “Yes, I know.”

“How do you feel about seeing him after so long?” Troi attempted.

“It’ll be good to see him again,” Kirk said with half a shrug, as though there wasn’t anything else to be said, but the counselor could sense a deeper turmoil of nerves and uncertainty.

She decided it was time to take another approach. Starting on more solid ground, she asked, “When did you last see your husband?”

Kirk glanced away in recollection. “It was a little over a month before the launch of the Enterprise-B - Spock could tell you exactly how long. He was on Earth for just a few days between meetings with the Klingons. He wasn’t an ambassador yet, but he was well on his way.” Troi could feel some bitterness amidst his pride.

“Did you have many chances to talk to him while he was away?” she asked.

Kirk gave her a wry smile. “A few.” Troi could tell that it was intended as a joke, but she didn’t know why.

“You spoke with him frequently?” she clarified.

“You could say that,” Kirk said with that same private bemusement.

“Is there anything you wish you could have told him before you fell into the Nexus?”

He shook his head. “If I knew I wasn’t going to be in there forever, it would have been nice to let him know, but there weren’t any secrets between us.”

Kirk was carefully keeping something out of the conversation, Troi could feel it, but she didn’t know what. Unless… She hesitated. “When I first met you, in sickbay, I sensed that you were attempting to contact someone telepathically. I am aware that Vulcans have significant telepathic abilities, did you and Ambassador Spock have a telepathic connection?”

Kirk grinned and she could feel that she was correct. “Vulcans are a very private people, Counselor.”

“I see…” she said. Delicately, she continued, “I take it you and Ambassador Spock have not been in contact since you left the Nexus?”

He shook his head. “Not a word.”

“I’m sorry. To go from constant communication to nothing must be very unsettling.”

Kirk grimaced. “We were ‘out of contact’ for a few years after Spock’s death. It was a lot worse then, but it is still unsettling.”

“How do you think your husband is feeling right now, on his way to see you?”

“He is a Vulcan,” Kirk said with a wry smile.

She just gave him a look.

Again, Kirk glanced away, out the window, in thought. “I don’t know,” Kirk admitted at last. “I know I miss him, but it’s been so long… Eighty years… It’s longer than I’ve been alive. I can’t imagine… Maybe he’s just coming here to prevent me from going to Romulus.”

“Do you actually believe that?”

“No. But it might be easier for him if I hadn’t come back.”

“Why?”

“I’ve given him a lot to worry about.”

“You seem to worry a lot about him,” she pointed out.

“While I was in the Nexus, at least I was safe. I can’t say as much about him.”

“If your connection really was severed” - Kirk winced at the thought - “He may not have known you were safe,” Troi remarked.

“I don’t know…” Kirk trailed off. He hoped the bond hadn’t been broken. Even if it hadn’t, it was probably silent on Spock’s end, but he was a proper telepath, maybe he could sense something that Kirk couldn’t.

“How do you think he feels?” Troi prompted again.

“I hope he hasn’t been too worried. Jean Luc said Spock still feels guilty for the time I spent on Rura Penthe, but I don’t even think an illogical human could spend eighty years worrying.” He gazed out the window, lost in thought. “I wonder how much he’s changed…”

“En garde!” Picard called out.

Kirk raised his sword for another attack - it was surprisingly heavy between his fingers. The stiff uniform was stifling, the helmet like a cage over his head. He peered at Picard through the mesh - not that he could see his opponent’s face - his sword bouncing in his hand.

Kirk let Picard come to him - they had barely bothered with footwork. Their swords met. He could tell Picard was going easy on him, maneuvering his blade this way and that in small neat motions that Kirk was sure left him wide open for an attack that Picard was kind enough not to take. Kirk circled Picard’s blade with his own in an attempt to replicate them, but it didn’t get him anywhere.

Finally, he threw caution to the wind and took a wild stab.

The alarm went off - the tip of Picard’s blade had caught on Kirk’s glove, winning him the match.

Picard raised his blade in a salute and Kirk only belatedly remembered to follow suit before pulling off his helmet. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath of fresh air.

“Good bout,” Picard said.

Kirk opened his eyes and accepted Picard’s gloved hand with a wry smile.

“It’s a lot harder than it looks,” Kirk remarked as he tried to shrug off the thick jacket.

“It just takes practice,” Picard said, though he looked a little smug. “Not up for another?”

Kirk shook his head. “I think I’ll stick to wrestling.”

Kirk accepted a towel from Picard, grabbed a glass of water from the replicator and let himself fall onto the bench by the wall to catch his breath. Picard soon joined him.

They sat in silence, catching their breath. Abruptly, Picard asked, “You’re married - I don’t suppose you ever had children?”

A grimace flitted across Kirk’s face. “I had a son, but I barely knew him.” More lightly, he asked, “Do you have kids?”

“No,” Picard said. “The closest thing I had to a son was my nephew, René, but he and my brother were killed in a fire recently.”

“I’m sorry. David died a few years ago - give or take a few decades - but I never really mourned him.”

“I never liked children,” Picard continued, “But René was the exception. Now, I wonder if I made a mistake not settling down and having children of my own.”

“I don’t know. I didn’t settle down either. David wasn’t really mine. I was his father, but his mother and I weren’t together; she didn’t want him taking after me and running off across the galaxy, so I stayed away. I didn’t think twice.”

“Do you regret it?” Picard asked.

“Of course I regret not being there when I should have, but I wasn’t ready then and I don’t know if I’ve ever been ready. Spock certainly didn't want kids," he added a little less seriously - though he didn’t know what Spock wanted now.

"I didn’t think I did either, but now I’m not so sure.” Picard hesitated. “That’s what the Nexus showed me - a whole family in a stately old home. I thought that was what my brother wanted, that I’d moved beyond it somehow, but maybe we were more similar after all.”

“Maybe,” Kirk said, “But it would be hard to captain the Enterprise from the family homestead.”

“True. Perhaps the Nexus merely shows us a path not taken rather than our hearts’ desires.”

“I would rather be on a bridge than that old cabin any day,” Kirk said with a smile.

“Why did you retire?”

Kirk’s smile quickly faded. “I gave up too much. Spock died because of me. He came back, but I couldn’t risk it happening again.”

“Surely it was dangerous before,” Picard attempted.

“We always made it out alive somehow.”

Picard hesitated. “I didn’t die, but I was assimilated by the Borg to be their representative to humanity. I lost my identity - part of myself. I considered leaving Starfleet, that it wasn’t worth the risk, but with more than a little help I learned to live with it.”

“You’re a braver man than I am, Captain.”

“I don’t know. Perhaps I just have less to lose.”

#v writes #Star Trek: The Original Series #Star Trek: The Next Generation #Star Trek: Generations #Spirk #Generations

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mattgambler · 4 years

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Phoenix Point and why I want it to live

No TLDR this time. I said in the past that I could write pages over pages about this. I guess its time to see how many pages we are actually talking about here. Phoenix Point is currently rather mediocre. From the soundtrack to the many bugs and rather rough implementations, the missing features that were envisioned in the kickstarter campaign, the 5 scheduled DLCS, the epic store exclusivity, the inferior graphical polish in comparison to Firaxis’ XCOM reboot, the inferior complexity in comparison to Longwar, probably even the inferior Idontknow in comparison to the very first XCOM games from way back when, I didnt play those. If you are looking for something to hate in this game, you dont have to look too hard, there is something here for everyone. The reason Ive been a determined defender of Phoenix Point is not simply because I have a different taste in games than the mainstream however, but because I feel there is a way deeper underlying problem at work here. I’ll come back to that later. Btw starting now, when I say XCOM, I mean Firaxis’ XCOM. Personally I want more games like XCOM. More games like Battlebrothers, Mordheim: City of the Damned, Invisible Inc, hell, even Bloodbowl, even though I dont dig the sports angle. Games with permadeath, nameable characters, dynamic overworld systems and missions and situations that are created ideally by circumstance, not by simply playing mission 1, then mission 2, until you reach what the devs decided to be the last one they would make for the game. I thoroughly enjoy that concept of progression and many turnbased strategy titles just dont do it for me because they are too linear, even when they are otherwise nicely crafted experiences. Druidstone: The Secret of the Menhir Forest is a nice example of this, the game looks nice, sounds nice and is very well made, but it lacks the one thing I enjoy most in all the games I mentioned earlier. Along comes Phoenix Point and the moment I look at this game I know that it is all about scratching that specific itch. Not only that, it also brings with it a variety of creative features to even improve the established turnbased squad tactics formula. I didnt lie when I said I think that it is in many ways better than XCOM. Just that... WHAT?!?! ...the overall game doesnt compare well if we look at the sum of their parts at the moment. YOU CANT BE SERIOUS!!!!! About Phoenix Point being better in many ways? Sure, let me make a list. 1) Aiming In XCOM you aim, you have an x% chance to hit, you either hit or you dont. While widely accepted because of the quality of the overall games, its a pretty simple system that becomes especially frustrating when your guns model on screen is touching the enemies forehead and you still manage to miss. Or when a flashbanged and suppressed sectoid crits you in full cover after rolling a natural 20. In Phoenix Point bullets get simulated and trace a path from the barrel of your gun to a target that they then either hit or miss. Smaller enemies in Phoenix Point are hard to hit not because the game designers arbitrarily decided so, but because smaller enemies are simply smaller. In comparison, in XCOM you roll dice. 2) Modular enemies Similar to Battlebrothers, Phoenix Point has you encounter the same brigand thug (crabmen) over and over again. The enemy itself doesnt matter as much, its more about the number of different variations you can encounter. Brigant thugs can come equipped with simple helmets and/or armor as well as different weapons that have different abilities. They also have different faces on top of that. They are by far not the only enemy in the game, but even if they were, by the time you encounter the exact same thug a second time you wont be able to tell anymore because you have seen so many others inbetween. The same goes for most enemies in Battlebrothers (with a few exceptions), it becomes way more about your opponents equipment than about his actual type or class. Phoenix Point goes for the very same approach, but falls short because of a variety of reasons. To name just one, the first time you encounter New Jericho as a faction, you fight four New Jericho soldiers and all four of them have the same armor, the same weapon and even the same face. To hammer it home the mission also always takes place on a variation of the exact same map. It is an absolute travesty. The ambition is there and in random encounters on the map you can see where it is supposed to go, with every enemy type in the game being designed in a way that allows for as many variations as the devs can think of, from paralysis tentacles and bloodsucking arms to mist generators and everything inbetween. The possibilities are endless and from the standard crab to the giant bosses every enemy is designed with this modularity in mind. In XCOM in comparison, you have a variety of different enemies, but for the entirety of the first month (what is that, 3-7 missions?) you only fight the sectoid. Or maybe the drone too, I havent played vanilla in forever. Longwar tries to spice that up by using preexisting models and assigning new abilities to them, making some models bigger and giving others new abilities, but at the end of the day the sectoid looks the way the sectoid looks. I love what it looks like btw. But modular enemies are decidedly cooler. 3) Scale In XCOM you control 4, later up to 6 soldiers at the same time. In Longwar it goes up to 8, or 12 in that one mission. In Phoenix Point you start out the same way, but to my knowledge you can bring as many soldiers to any mission as you can get there via aircraft. Meaning that as soon as you get a second manticore you can theoretically have up to 12 soldiers in a mission, or 18 with a third. Naturally you would probably want to split your forces instead and be in 3 places at the same time (and you can), but this sort of thing being possible, both the 18 soldiers in one mission as well as the 3 different squads doing missions in 3 different places of the planet, is something XCOM simply does not offer. 4) Other features Be it vehicles, giant enemies, diplomacy or the amount of control you get on the overworld map, Phoenix Point does (or attempts to do) a huge number of things that in XCOM are simply nonexistant. In XCOM you dont get to decide were to fly, missions are simply spawned in popup fashion, the skyranger is on autopilot, “diplomacy” is managed by talking to top secret bald guy representing the council and by sometimes fulfilling a councilrequest. The only opposing faction apart from the aliens is EXALT which can be regarded as more of a separate mission type with human enemies and not really as a faction that contributes in any diplomatic way. Dont get me wrong, I dont think XCOM needs diplomacy in order to be good. XCOM is already good, fantastic in fact. But if we compare based on features alone and not the quality of their implementation, then Phoenix Point is doing A LOT of things that XCOM never even touched. This is in no way me trying to trash XCOM. I love XCOM, especially Longwar. However for the sake of an at least somewhat fair comparison the only games we should compare Phoenix Point to at this Point are XCOM Enemy Unknown and XCOM 2, both at launch. Bringing Longwar into the mix is something I do for the sake of providing a third angle, not because I am blind to the fact of how ludacris it would be to compare a newly launched game with an extensive overhaul mod that was in the making for years after the vanilla game and even its expansion were already released. As I was saying, along comes Phoenix Point doing all those very ambitious things. And it gets DESTROYED. To quote Beaglerush, the probably best known XCOM streamer out there: “But honestly, for anyone with experience in the XCOM genre, anyone who likes XCOM games, and anyone particularly who likes XCOM games at a harder difficulty or likes to obviously, like, play well, I do not think it is possible to enjoy this game unless you are getting a big paycheck and you are a good actor.” To be clear, I didnt watch the entire footage that made him come to that conclusion and I dont want to comment too much on what “playing well” means, but i have played Longwar on the highest difficulty in ironmanmode for 2000 hours (without beating it, but also always with Training Roulette active) and I have beaten XCOM 2 on highest difficulty in ironman mode. I do consider Longwar as one of my favourite games of all time and I do consider myself as someone who has experience with the genre, likes games and likes to play them “well”, or at least on highest difficulty. I dont agree with Beagle (duh), but I can of course see where he might be coming from. In its current state Phoenix Point is not finished. Playable, but even for an early access game its still pretty rough, with many mechanics not or only sometimes working (leanout, aim and aimsnapping, end turn, details, you get the point), features missing, performance issues, lackluster soldier customization, lackluster diplomacy options, a rather simple skilltree, questionable balance, etc. Don’t look at me like that, if I wanted to I could jump that hatetrain any time! But if I was to do that, where would that leave us? The XCOM genre, as Beagle calls it, is a niche genre at the best of times. Not only regarding the playerbase but also regarding game developers willing to invest time and money into creating something new. Xenonauts 2 is a year or more behind its originally panned release date with not much news to speak of, Terra Invicta is a distant memory of a game that will maybe one day still be released and Im still waiting for the XCOM 3 announcement and who knows if it will even come. Especially after we, the players, completely demolish Phoenix Point to the point where I would just cancel the 5 planned DLCS right now if I was in charge of the devteam. The main reason I defended Phoenix Point was not because of what the game currently is but because of what the game could be after 5 more DLCs. Ive played every backerbuild of the game and statements like “the game is still what it was 2 years ago” are simply and factually false. Especially between backerbuild 4 and 5 there was a huge jump in quality and between 5 and the release version that same jump has ocurred again - with an entire game that is now playable and completable. Yes, it could have more voiced lines instead of text, yes, it doesnt have the sexy “alerted sectoid” animation sequence when you run into a new enemy pod (pods dont exist in PP but you get me) and sure, the epic exclusive sucks I guess and I dont care much for the soundtrack. But after Backerbuild 5, who knows where the game will be after the next DLC? And the next? If you compare XCOM Enemy Unknown with XCOM Enemy Within, the difference was breathtaking. And here we have a game that has so much work already done, so many assets created, so much code already in place, and we, the players, punch them in the face and shout “NOT GOOD ENOUGH!”. You wanna go back to the drawing board, have somebody else start fresh on something that could be better in a year or two if we are lucky? Ive been looking for a game like XCOM for literally years. Battle Brothers was the closest I found. Tens, if not hundreds of others inbetween failed hard, from “Warhammer 40k: Mechanicus” to “Legends: Viking” to “Wildermyth” and basically everything inbetween. And here we have a game that seems to have the right idea, the right amount of ambition and a good amount of the work already done and we are bitchslapping them left and right just so we can go back to getting hyped about the next mediocre linear story experience. Sure, them releasing already is a shame. But if I was the one to decide, I would give them the same amount of money again and triple it and tell them to finish the job instead of spitting in their face when they come to us and lowkey tell us that they ran out of money. And I would send them flowers and tell them that Im sorry. Anybody can polish a game with extra cash, but getting the core idea right is something that even Firaxis almost failed to do with XCOM 2, as far as Im concerned. I said earlier, that there was a deeper underlying problem here and that I would come back to it and here it is, ladies and gentlemen. Modernday gamers are an ungrateful, hateful bunch of whiny spoiled brats, who think they are entitled to only the best of the best while in fact they “deserve” nothing. The entire concept of a kickstarter campaign is that you provide funds and trust so a bunch of people can try to realize their vision. If you dont like the outcome, then that doesnt mean they betrayed you, it means you have poor judgement. Notice how I say judgement and not taste. You dont have poor judgement because you dont like the outcome, but because you gave them money in the first place. I should maybe add at this point that my anger is mostly directed towards the public reaction and the phoenix point subreddit and not towards my own viewership. (hello) Phoenix Point is not the first game that has had me feel like the entire gaming landscape is slowly spiraling out of control. 5 years ago I thought quality means sales. At this point Im worried that a high marketing budget means sales. And I dread the possibility that 5 years from now I might be convinced that a high marketing budget means quality. Some of the best games this year were literally destroyed by players. Artifact wasn’t only boykotted, but actively brutalized, with people at some point purposefully streaming porn and torture under the Artifact tag on Twitch. Pathologic 2 had the devteam almost go bankrupt after poor sales and unfavourable reviews by people that barely grasped the basics of the game. All the while people feed money to the ginormous immortal that is Magic The Gathering and praise Hideo Kojima for his “unique vision” for Death Stranding. I didnt play Death Stranding and Magic can be pretty fun, but does nobody see the smothering double standards in play here? Im not saying that Phoenix Point has no problems right now in terms of quality. Some of the issues player encounter are in fact inexcusable, at least longterm. But XCOM 2 also had a bumpy launch with long loading times and tons of bugs and then they were fixed and today there are people that think XCOM 2 is better than Longwar. Incomprehensible to me how anyone could think that, but time and some postlaunch fixes did clearly change peoples minds. I think the main reason Phoenix Point got so much hate on launch in comparison to XCOM 2 (which also released 3 DLCs ,or was it more) is because its drastically different and more ambitious in many ways, not because it is half as bad as people make it out to be. XCOM is just like Phoenix Point, just dumbed down I guess. Kappa. (I hate it when people use the term “dumbed down”. This is a joke. Ffs why do I have to explain this)

#XCOM #Phoenix Point

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