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ramp-it-up · 3 years

Text

...And Forever

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Enhanced!Reader; Bucky Barnes x Enhanced!Reader

AU: MCU A/U, after TFATWS

Warnings: 18+ Only, Minors DNI. SMUT! Read at your own risk. Alternate MCU facts/timeline, lies, cursing, angst, oral, (F, M receiving) fingering, spit play rank kink, size kink, unprotected sex (wrap it up!), sex on a pool table, semi-public sex, a special surprise, stalker-ish behavior, almost Dark!Steve? Not Beta’d. All errors my own.

A/N: I am an MCU nerd but not a timeline detail gal. Please forgive me if the timeline is off. This is an alternate universe and a work of fiction. Please have fun with it! This is the second part to Always. Enjoy!

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

You opened your eyes to see that you were in what looked like a break room. There was a coffee machine, a round table with five chairs, a row of lockers, two Captain Americas, and a Winter Soldier.

There was some strange conversation going on.

“Then who gave me the shield at the lake…?”

Sam was questioning Steve, but he stopped talking when you started moving around. You must have still been in the wedding venue, because you saw the name of the historic building on various items in the room.

You scowled up at Sam, Bucky and Steve.

You moved to sit up and Steve was at your side. “Easy…”

“Sweetheart, are you okay?”

You squinted at Steve. His hair was shorter and he was clean shaven, but he was still gorgeous. Those blue eyes were full of concern.

You raised your hand, and he held it, holding it and caressing it as you raised it to his face.

“Is it really you?”

Steve smiled ruefully at you. “Yeah, it’s me.”

You held his cheek and looked at him, bringing your other hand up to the other side of his face. He smiled at you.

You grabbed him and hugged him hard, and then pulled back again as he held you in his arms. He moved back and pursed those ruby red lips.

You had this irresistible urge to...slap the shit out of him. And so you did.

The sound reverberated in the room. Steve just stared up at you, with that fucking beautiful face, and then smiled, rubbing his jaw as if it hurt.

But you knew it didn’t. And you were tired of the bullshit.

Sam and Bucky moved to calm you down, but you were too quick for them, pacing to the other side of the room.

“All of you can stay the hell away from me. Y’all have some fuckin nerve. Especially you, Steven.”

Your Houston accent was shining through with your anger.

“Wow, Sweetheart, that was harsh. But I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

You pointed at Steve.

“Fuck you.”

You were seething, especially when he raised his eyebrow at your comment. But he quickly fixed his face when he saw the rage on yours. You looked at Sam, who just looked down, and at Bucky, who looked like he was in pain.

Fuck thier feelings.

“I deserve your anger. I didn't tell…” Steve tried it.

“You don’t deserve a got damn thing. Not even my anger.”

Steve was stone faced at your vitriol. You were shaking, trying to control your emotions and not cry. You were so hot. You fought to keep your voice steady.

“I thought you were dead.” It came out as a ragged whisper. But you knew everyone heard you.

Your voice was low, even, and scary. Bucky looked at you with wide eyes. Your own were brimming with tears.

“I thought you were dead and that they didn’t want to tell me.”

You waved your hand at Bucky and Sam. And you waited until Steve looked you in the eyes again.

“I thought you were in prison, that someone, on some alien star, forced you to play some sick gladiator games. Or that HYDRA was still around and they turned you into an agent for them. Or that you lost your memory in the blip. So many scenarios played in my mind, Steven.”

Steve knew better than to talk. This was his time to listen.

“But I never ever once thought that you chose this. Never thought it was your choice to leave and to stay away.”

“Listen…” Sam started speaking.

“Shut the fuck UP, Samuel.”

If you had Bucky’s knives, all of them would be seriously injured right now.

“You knew that he was alive and you didn’t tell me. Despite me begging for any kind of information.”

Sam just pursed his lips and returned your glare. You were right.

You went and stood in front of Bucky.

“James…”

He looked at you, those pained eyes making your stomach flip.

“How could you? You knew?”

He just stared at you. Retreating into not speaking.

Steve spoke up.

“Yes, I left. Yes, it was my choice. I thought I could… Well, let’s just say that hindsight is 20/20 and you can’t ever go back. I swore Sam and Buck to secrecy and I asked them to take care of you. This all just got out of hand. Didn’t it Buck?”

You watched Steve in disbelief and you swiveled your head toward Bucky and Sam again.

“You both lied to me. And Sam. Did you tell Steve to come back and ruin my life?”

Sam scoffed, offended. “No. I didn’t. S.H.I.E.L.D gave Steve quarterly updates. You and Bucky happened so fast…”

You ignored his explanation.

“But you knew exactly where he’d gone.”

“Yes.” Sam was cornered.

You turned back to Bucky.

“I asked you a question earlier. Did you know?”

He nodded, imperceptibly. “Doll… I…”

“James Buchanan Barnes. You knew?” Your heart was breaking even more than it was.

“Yes, but it’s complicated. He didn’t come back, at least not the way he left, and I thought it was a done deal. I thought he found…”

You interrupted him.

“What. Happiness?”

You turned back to Steve. “Is that what you were looking for, Steve? Happiness?”

“Sweetheart, you made me happy, I just had the chance to finally settle some unfinished business.”

You nodded.

“So James here took advantage of your little vacation to get with his best friend's girl while you explored your other options. Cool.”

It was not cool.

“Do you remember when you asked me if you could trust me, Steve?”

He just gave a little smile and came to stand before you, looking down at you in that way of his. He was trying to shake you. You were unshakeable. You raised your chin and looked right in his eyes.

“What you don’t understand is that you can’t pick and choose the pieces of life that you want, Steven.”

You moved away from all of them. Steve stepped toward you, but stopped when you held up your hand.

“I’ve lived my life for everyone else, for this country, for as long as I can remember. I deserve a little piece of life, Sweetheart.”

Steve really believed what he was saying.

“What about me? Do I get a choice?”

Steve looked around at his two best friends, who were now best friends, and his best girl.

“You’re right. I think you should. You should choose.”

Your mouth hinged open. You spoke at the wall, then looked at Bucky.

“What about you, James? Do I need to choose?”

Bucky walked in front of you

“No Doll. You don’t have to choose.”

You looked up into his eyes. Damn, he looked so handsome in his bespoke grey suit that he chose for the wedding. And the tie that you gave him set off his eyes.

“I just…. I just wanted a piece of happiness too. I knew you were Steve’s girl.” He took both of your hands in his.

“I don’t deserve you. When Steve didn’t come back, and you and I connected, I couldn’t help it. I was just going to keep an eye out, but…”

He gave you that cute little side smile of his. And then he kissed you. It was short and sweet and oh so hot. You looked up at him, shook to the core. And then he ruined it all.

“I love you Doll. It was nice while it lasted.”

Bucky was giving up.

You nodded and backed away. Not believing this situation.

“Ok. I’m making my choice.”

You raised your chin and looked at Steve and Bucky.

“I’m not some fucking marble that you pass around, play with, and trade with your friend.”

You took a deep breath. “I choose me.”

You were gone in a flash, before they could even register it. And although they ran, they couldn’t catch you before you were out of reach.

-----

Three months later, you walked through the late August soup of Houston heat to the bar, pausing when you thought you heard footfalls behind you. You used your speed to zip along to Willy’s; you were safe there.

You were back sharking with the best of them. But your training was put to good use. You never got burned and you never got caught. You were making a good living.

There were a jumble of misfit super humans who had gathered there with you. You were a leader now. And you were doing well on your own. It was a life.

You already knew he was coming, and maybe that’s why you moved to the back room to play.

You were prepared, but when you felt him, you still lost your breath. But you recovered quickly, straightening your spine, despite the fact that he was standing so close to you.

You looked at the dartboard on the wall across from you and chalked your cue.

“Don’t you have other things to take care of? Other wheres? Other whens maybe?”

You learned more about time travel since you’d left New York, and you understood more of what happened.

The Avengers had access to time travel. If only you could go back… but no. You were stronger than those men. You could live with your decisions. And move forward.

“No. What I need to take care of is right here. Right now.”

His deep growl stirred something inside you, and you fought your body, which was becoming moist at his proximity.

You bent over the table, super soldier dick poking you in the ass before you drew your pool cue back sharply into his stomach. Abs of steel met the cue and nearly broke it. He just stepped aside and shook his head at you.

You turned your head to look into his aqua blue eyes and you fell in love all over again. Shit.

You gave up and turned around, leaning back against the pool table, because he wasn’t giving an inch, not moving from your space.

You scanned the room and your people were watching, but keeping your distance. They all knew who he was, and your history. They gave you space, but wouldn’t let you be hurt without a fight. You nodded at them and they all went to the front, giving you more privacy.

He nodded in their direction.

“People fall under your spell fast, I know that all too well. They trust you.”

You lifted your head. “I’ve never done anything to make them not trust me.”

He sighed. “Point taken.”

“Why did you come here? I know that you’ve known where I was. Sam must have told you.”

“I’ve known where you were. How could I not? I didn’t need Sam to tell me. It’s not like you were trying to hide.”

He cocked his head at you.

“But the reason that I’m here, now, is that I’ve always been slow at math. And I just put two and two together.”

You smirked up at him. “You’re right. This is home. A leopard doesn’t change her stripes.”

He just chuckled at your evasion.

“You wanna play a game?”

His eyes followed you, undeterred by your challenge.

You walked around to the other side of the table, leaned over and gathered the balls to be racked.

You held two in one hand and looked at him. He smiled and the electricity at the small of your back was everything. He slowly walked around to you as you racked them.

He took in your form (including your ample cleavage) as you bent over the table and your mouth as you said the word, “Break.”

“I’m tired of playing games, Doll. I’m just here to win you back.”

You turned around and faced him, looking up at him, now aware of his smell. You closed your eyes and inhaled leather and metal. You opened them again and his eyes were blazing.

“James.. I”

Bucky grabbed your face, hands gently cradling your head, and cut you off with a kiss, his lips gentle at first. Then his hands moved to your hips and lifted you onto the table. He slotted himself in between your thighs, your bodies separated by the same brand of black denim.

His lips and tongue seemed determined to possess you. Bucky kissed and felt your body like he hadn’t in a lifetime. His hands roamed you like they were starved from touching you.

Your hands were on his neck and in his hair, relishing the feel of him. You’d missed him so fucking much. You drew apart, and his breath fanned your face as you two panted together, his forehead resting on yours.

“I am never going to let you go again.”

“James…”

“Hold on Doll, I’ve got to say this.”

He smiled and gave you another quick peck. You nodded, solemn.

“I said the wrong thing back in Brooklyn. I don’t care that you were with him first. I don’t care if you think that you might want to be with him. When I fell for you, I fell harder than I ever have. Even from the train.”

He was whispering the words you wanted to hear months ago, causing you to cry. But a lot of things caused you to cry lately.

Bucky smiled at you, his eyes crinkling in that adorable way that you loved. You opened your mouth to speak and he kissed you, silencing you again. You responded with a smile. He continued.

“I know that you think that I folded and just gave up on you on our wedding day. I was just thinking that I don’t deserve you. Especially next to Steve. I mean, you won’t find a better man. But in the time since, I’ve realized, even though it’s hard. I’m a good man too.”

“You are, James…”

“You helped me come to terms with everything that’s happened. Sam has helped me deal with everything I did...and I’m not perfect, and neither are you, but we can be perfect for each other.”

You nodded, smiling a little.

“I’m in love with you and I deserve you. You deserve me. We deserve each other. And I’m not saying this because I think you saved me. But you are the strongest woman I know, enough to be with me when I am weak. I figured out that I can be strong for you too. I have to be now. I am so sorry that I let you walk away. But I’m not going to let you out of my sight now, even if you don’t want to be with me. But I am asking you, again. Be my family. Make one with me. Choose me.”

You shook your head as tears fell from your eyes.

“James Barnes, there was never ever any choice. It’s you. It will be you. Forever.”

Bucky let out a sigh of relief and started kissing you all over your face, down your neck and into your cleavage.

“I was scared shitless, Doll! I love you so much,…”

You kissed him now, your hands under his jacket, slipping it off his shoulders. Next, you went under his shirt, feeling his nipples, playing with them as he shuddered. Then your hands went up to one cold shoulder and one warm, grasping them as he ground his hard jeans covered crotch into yours.

“Too many clothes.”

You ended up helping him pull his shirt over his head. You trailed your hand back down his abs to the button on his jeans.

“I missed you James. My hormones are going crazy, Baby…”

His eyes got wide as you popped the top button and bit your lip. Bucky moaned. He was about to explode just being near you.

“Th-that’s what we need to talk about…”

“Talk later. Fuck. Now.”

Bucky looked over your shoulder to the other room. To his surprise, the door was now closed.

“Wow, they…”

You hopped down from the table and got on your knees in front of him.

“You gonna let me suck your dick or not James?”

He looked down at you smirking up at him and could feel himself leaking in his jeans. Three months of his hand had been torture, thinking of you.

It seemed as if he unfastened and pulled himself out without knowing. For a moment he feared mind control.

But it was just love and lust.

You grasped him, testing his girth and admiring how your fingers did not meet around his cock.

“Mmmmmmmm,” you moaned while you thumbed his tip, collecting the pre-cum and lubricating him as you pumped.

He stared at you, slack jawed and sexy as he watched you. He reached down and put his hand in your hair, massaging your scalp.

You commanded him. “Eyes on me, Sergeant.”

Bucky locked eyes with you and watched as you licked your lips, opened your mouth, and spit on his cock.

“Fuck.”

You pumped him a couple of times before you opened wide and took him as deep as you could, relishing the feel of his wide, smooth, hard unit in your mouth. You pulled off of him with a pop.

“Damn I missed this dick.”

Then you deep throated him again, making Bucky have to hold on to the side of the pool table as he held your head while you spluttered around him.

“And I missed your pretty little mouth, Doll. Damn.” He watched as you did it a few more times.

When you looked up and he saw your ruined face, Bucky went feral.

He pulled you up by your shirt, pulling it over your head and wiping your face with it. Then he kissed you.

“Fucking love how you do that, Doll.”

He started kissing down your chest, pulling your breasts out of your bra, pinching and rolling your nipples gently, a little more carefully than usual. He looked at you knowingly as you squirmed in pleasure.

“I’ve been doing my research.”

Then, he leaned down and suckled them with that mouth until you almost came, writhing in his arms. Bucky unbuttoned your pants and pulled them down, kneeling, and staring up at you as you leaned against the green felt table.

You stepped out of your jeans and panties and watched as his flesh hand glided from your ankle to your ass, palming it and then sliding back down as he lifted your thigh on his shoulder. You shuddered as you could feel his breath on your cunt.

“I’ve been dreaming of this.”

His eyes held yours as he leaned in for a kiss, then a long wet lick of your cunt. You grabbed his brown hair as his blue eyes hypnotized you and as he ate you out. When his metal fingers came up, whirring, you started begging.

“Please, James…please…please…..”

He laughed, mouth still fucking your pussy. He pulled away, chin glistening with your juices. His fingers began pumping inside you, the vibration driving you up the wall.

“Are you begging me to stop, or to continue, Doll? Talk to me.”

“Unnnh, unnnnh, oooohhh shittttt. Don’t ever stop.”

And then you came all over his face, Bucky slurping it up happily. He stood up, taking you with him and maneuvering you so that you could feel his thick tip at your hole before it breached you.

Bucky’s cock stretched you out and made you see stars as you slid down his thick pole while he was standing up, pumping inside you as he deposited you on the table.

You wrapped around him like a vine as he held you, cock pounding from the feeling of being inside you again. He pulled back to kiss you again. He was grunting in his throat as he tried to speak.

“Fuck you feel so good...Fair warning, Doll. I’m not going to last. Been too long.”

You let go of him, and leaned back on the felt, arms braced behind you as you replied, “Just fuck me James.”

Bucky took in your body, from where you were connected up your torso to your breasts and the beautiful fucked out look on your face and started moving.

“Fuck, fuck, fuckkk.” You took him, looking down to see the impossible stretch.

“Yeah, look at that. Looks and feels so damn good, doesn’t it, Doll? How the fuck are you so… so… fucking… tight….?”

“Yes, fuck, James, FUCKKKKK.”

All nerves were in your cunt as you went down to your elbows, and then to your back flat on the slate table, pool balls going everywhere.

Bucky pulled your hips off the table and really started digging in, hips snapping at a frenzied pace as his metal hand slid down your body. You could tell that he was almost there.

“Cum with me Doll.”

When that metal thumb touched your clit, it was over. You came as soon as you felt his white hot ropes of cum drench your walls. You closed your eyes for just a second, and then opened your eyes wide.

‘Why am I curled up on a pool table after being fucked by my 106 year old fiance? What is life?”

Bucky laughed as he pulled his shirt over his head and helped you off the table. He looked around, going to get you a bottle of water from the vending machine.

“You good?”

Bucky eyed you as you got your clothes together. He leaned next to you as he watched you drink the water.

“Baby okay?”

You ducked your head, smiled and grabbed his hand, putting it on your slightly rounded stomach.

“Yeah. I can feel him moving around. Can you feel that?”

Bucky just stared at his hand, then at your face.

“Not really… Him?” He was astounded.

“That’s normal. I’m gonna be able to feel him before you can, And yeah, Him.”

You turned more fully toward Bucky and he took you in his arms.

“I had all kinds of tests, to make sure that he was okay. I wanted to know if… if what they did to me would affect…. “

You shook your head, then smiled up at Bucky.

“He’s healthy. I’m 20 weeks. I figured we’d call him Jamie?”

Bucky beamed at you and nodded.

“How did you know?”

“Well, I figured out that you didn’t faint at the wedding just because of Steve. Why didn’t you tell me, Doll?”

You rolled your eyes.

“Are you really asking me that question?”

Bucky blanched and you decided not to be salty.

“Well, At first, I didn’t want you to feel trapped. I was so happy that you asked me and didn’t know.” You beamed at him. “ But then…” Your smile faded.

“I’m an idiot, Doll. Forgive me. It’s me and you. And Jamie. Forever.”

You two shared the kiss you missed at the altar. It was going to be okay.

“Now, let’s go get some food. I know you’re hungry.”

You laughed as you punched his arm.

“Ass. But you’re right.”

You two walked down the street to Ninfa’s Restaurant hand in hand. Bucky turned his head and gave an imperceptible nod as you two passed by an alley/

Steve returned the greeting as he stepped out and watched you and Bucky make your way down the street.

“That’s okay Sweetheart,” he whispered. “Buck’s a good man. But I know you’ll choose me. In another time.”

He walked to the quinjet, which was pointed toward New York.

-------

Did Reader make the right choice? What do you think about the surprise?And what the what is Steve thinking? Let me know if you liked it by commenting or reblogging!

Tagging:

@olyvoyl @summerofsnowflakes @sillyteecup @riiyy @honeysucklechocolatedrippin @theselilwonders @lonelydance @chattykathysquietsister @anh1020 @nissameta1782 @afriendlyblackhottie @betterkeepmewetterthanabayou @jbrizzywrites @stilltoyou @donutloverxo @my-soulmate-is-mycroft @kiwisa @food8me @aiikaa @marvelfansworld @london-grunge @pheebsyells @thesecretlifeofdaydreams-bl-blog @douxtille @ximaginexx @fofisstilinski @bertieandberries @ladystrawberry @bit-of-a-timelord @chesca-791 @calimoi @fangirlfree @bbaengtan @karolsboo @aliceforbes @insertpithyusername @sickknik @photmath @whorekneebrain @anacrcarvalho @iconicshit @spicybibimbap @fineanddandy @olyvoyl @chaoticsteverogers@txtsfromyourex @sadthotsonlylove @ikatieebabyy@nerdymugsharkempath @maroonsunrise83 @curlyhairclub @spookyparadisesheep @keepingitlokiii @weaselbeedisneygeek @toofab4utheatrediva

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ganymedesclock · 3 years

Note

These are questions I've had for some while and it's hard to find someone who'll answer with grace. This mostly relates to disabilities (mental or physical) in fiction.

1) What makes a portrayal of a disability that's harming the character in question ableist?

2) Is there a way to write a disabled villain in a way that isn't ableist?

In the circles I've been in, the common conceptions are you can't use a character's disability as a plot point or showcase it being a hindrance in some manner. heaven forbid you make your villain disabled in some capacity, that's a freaking death sentence to a creative's image. I understand historically villains were the only characters given disabilities, but (and this is my personal experience) I've not seen as many disabled villains nowadays, heck, I see more disabled heroes in media nowadays.

Sorry if this comes off as abrasive, I'd really like to be informed for future media consumption and my own creative endeavors.

Okay so the first thing I'm going to say is that while it IS a good idea to talk to disabled people and get their feedback, disabled people are not a monolith and they aren't going to all have the same take on how this goes.

My personal take is biased in favor that I'm a neurodivergent person (ADHD and autism) who has no real experience with physical disabilities, so I won't speak for physically disabled people- heck, I won't even speak for every neurotype. Like I say, people aren't a monolith.

For myself and my own writing of disabled characters, here's a couple of concepts I stick by:

Research is your friend

Think about broad conventions of ableism

Be mindful of cast composition

1. Research is your friend

Yeah this is the thing everybody says, so here's the main bases I try to cover:

What's the story on this character's disability?

Less in terms of 'tragic angst' and more, what kind of condition this is- because a congenital amputee (that is to say, someone who was born without a limb) will have a different relationship to said limb absence than someone who lost their limb years ago to someone who lost their limb yesterday. How did people in their life respond to it, and how did they respond to it? These responses are not "natural" and will not be the same to every person with every worldview. This can also be a great environment to do worldbuilding in! Think about the movie (and the tv series) How To Train Your Dragon. The vikings in that setting don't have access to modern medicine, and they're, well, literally fighting dragons and other vikings. The instance of disability is high, and the medical terminology to talk about said disabilities is fairly lackluster- but in a context where you need every man you possibly can to avoid the winter, the mindset is going to be not necessarily very correct, but egalitarian. You live in a village of twenty people and know a guy who took a nasty blow to the head and hasn't quite been the same ever since? "Traumatic Brain Injury" is probably not going to be on your lips, but you're also probably going to just make whatever peace you need to and figure out how to accommodate Old Byron for his occasional inability to find the right word, stammers and trembles. In this example, there are several relevant pieces of information- what the character's disability is (aphasia), how they got it (brain injury), and the culture and climate around it (every man has to work, and we can't make more men or throw them away very easily, so, how can we make sure this person can work even if we don't know what's wrong with them)

And that dovetails into:

What's the real history, and modern understandings, of this?

This is where "knowing the story" helps a lot. To keep positing our hypothetical viking with a brain injury, I can look into brain injuries, what affects their extent and prognosis, and maybe even beliefs about this from the time period and setting I'm thinking of (because people have had brains, and brain injuries, the entire time!) Sure, if the setting is fantastical, I have wiggle room, but looking at inspirations might give me a guide post.

Having a name for your disorder also lets you look for posts made by specific people who live with the condition talking about their lives. This is super, super important for conditions stereotyped as really scary, like schizophrenia or narcissistic personality disorder. Even if you already know "schizophrenic people are real and normal" it's still a good thing to wake yourself up and connect with others.

2. Think about broad conventions of ableism

It CAN seem very daunting or intimidating to stay ahead of every single possible condition that could affect someone's body and mind and the specific stereotypes to avoid- there's a lot under the vast umbrella of human experience and we're learning more all the time! A good hallmark is, ableism has a few broad tendencies, and when you see those tendencies rear their head, in your own thinking or in accounts you read by others, it's good to put your skeptical glasses on and look closer. Here's a few that I tend to watch out for:

Failing the “heartwarming dog” test

This was a piece of sage wisdom that passed my eyeballs, became accepted as sage wisdom, and my brain magnificently failed to recall where I saw it. Basically, if you could replace your disabled character with a lovable pet who might need a procedure to save them, and it wouldn’t change the plot, that’s something to look into.

Disability activists speak often about infantilization, and this is a big thing of what they mean- a lot of casual ableism considers disabled people as basically belonging to, or being a burden onto, the able-bodied and neurotypical. This doesn’t necessarily even need to have an able neurotypical in the picture- a personal experience I had that was extremely hurtful was at a point in high school, I decided to do some research on autism for a school project. As an autistic teenager looking up resources online, I was very upset to realize that every single resource I accessed at the time presumed it was talking to a neurotypical parent about their helpless autistic child. I was looking for resources to myself, yet made to feel like I was the subject in a conversation.

Likewise, many wheelchair users have relayed the experience of, when they, in their chair, are in an environment accompanied by someone else who isn’t using a chair, strangers would speak to the standing person exclusively, avoiding addressing the chair user.

It’s important to always remind yourself that at no point do disabled people stop being people. Yes, even people who have facial deformities; yes, even people who need help using the bathroom; yes, even people who drool; yes, even people whose conditions impact their ability to communicate, yes, even people with cognitive disabilities. They are people, they deserve dignity, and they are not “a child trapped in a 27-year-old body”- a disabled adult is still an adult. All of the “trying to learn the right rules” in the world won’t save you if you keep an underlying fear of non-normative bodies and minds.

This also has a modest overlap between disability and sexuality in particular. I am an autistic grayromantic ace. Absolutely none of my choices or inclinations about sex are because I’m too naive or innocent or childlike to comprehend the notion- disabled people have as diverse a relationship with sexuality as any other. That underlying fear- as mentioned before- can prevent many people from imagining that, say, a wheelchair user might enjoy sex and have experience with it. Make sure all of your disabled characters have full internal worlds.

Poor sickly little Tiffany and the Red Right Hand

A big part of fictional ableism is that it separates the disabled into two categories. Anybody who’s used TVTropes would recognize the latter term I used here. But to keep it brief:

Poor, sickly little Tiffany is cute. Vulnerable. How her disability affects her life is that it constantly creates a pall of suffering that she lives beneath. After all, having a non-normative mind or body must be an endless cavalcade of suffering and tragedy, right? People who are disabled clearly spend their every waking moment affected by, and upset, that they aren’t normal!

The answer is... No, actually. Cut the sad violin; even people who have chronic pain who are literally experiencing pain a lot more than the rest of us are still fully capable of living complex lives and being happy. If nothing else, it would be literally boring to feel nothing but awful, and people with major depression or other problems still, also, have complicated experiences. And yes, some of it’s not great. You don’t have to present every disability as disingenuously a joy to have. But make a point that they own these things. It is a very different feeling to have a concerned father looking through the window at his angel-faced daughter rocking sadly in her wheelchair while she stares longingly out the window, compared to a character waking up at midnight because they have to go do something and frustratedly hauling their body out of their bed into their chair to get going.

Poor Sickly Little Tiffany (PSLT, if you will) virtually always are young, and they virtually always are bound to the problems listed under ‘failing the heartwarming dog’ test. Yes, disabled kids exist, but the point I’m making here is that in the duality of the most widely accepted disabled characters, PSLT embodies the nadir of the Victim, who is so pure, so saintly, so gracious, that it can only be a cruel quirk of fate that she’s suffering. After all, it’s not as if disabled people have the same dignity that any neurotypical and able-bodied person has, where they can be an asshole and still expect other people to not seriously attack their quality of life- it’s a “service” for the neurotypical and able-bodied to “humor” them.

(this is a bad way to think. Either human lives matter or they don’t. There is no “wretched half-experience” here- if you wouldn’t bodily grab and yank around a person standing on their own feet, you have no business grabbing another person’s wheelchair)

On the opposite end- and relevant to your question- is the Red Right Hand. The Red Right Hand does not have PSLT’s innocence or “purity”- is the opposite extreme. The Red Right Hand is virtually always visually deformed, and framed as threatening for their visual deformity. To pick on a movie I like a fair amount, think about how in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the title character is described- “Strong. Fast. Had a metal arm.” That’s a subtle example, but, think about how that metal arm is menacing. Sure, it’s a high tech weapon in a superhero genre- but who has the metal arm? The Winter Soldier, who is, while a tormented figure that ultimately becomes more heroic- scary. Aggressive. Out for blood.

The man who walks at midnight with a Red Right Hand is a signal to us that his character is foul because of the twisting of his body. A good person, we are led to believe, would not be so- or a good person would be ashamed of their deformity and work to hide it. The Red Right Hand is not merely “an evil disabled person”- they are a disabled person whose disability is depicted as symptomatic of their evil, twisted nature, and when you pair this trope with PSLT, it sends a message: “stay in your place, disabled people. Be sad, be consumable, and let us push you around and decide what to do with you. If you get uppity, if you have ideas, if you stand up to us, then the thing that made you a helpless little victim will suddenly make you a horrible monster, and justify us handling you with inhumanity.”

As someone who is a BIG fan of eldritch horror and many forms of unsettling “wrongness” it is extremely important to watch out for the Red Right Hand. Be careful how you talk about Villainous Disability- there is no connection between disability and morality. People will be good, bad, or simply just people entirely separate from their status of ability or disability. It’s just as ableist to depict every disabled person as an innocent good soul as it is to exclusively deal in grim and ghastly monsters.

Don’t justify disabilities and don’t destroy them.

Superpowers are cool. Characters can and IMO should have superpowers, as long as you’re writing a genre when they’re there.

BUT.

It’s important to remember that there is no justification for disabilities, because they don’t need one. Disability is simply a feature characters have. You do not need to go “they’re blind, BUT they can see the future”

This is admittedly shaky, and people can argue either way; the Blind Seer is a very pronounced mythological figure and an interesting philosophical point about what truly matters in the world. There’s a reason it exists as a conceit. But if every blind character is blind in a way that completely negates that disability or makes it meaningless- this sucks. People have been blind since the dawn of time. And people will always accommodate their disabilities in different ways. Even if the technology exists to fix some forms of blindness, there are people who will have “fixable” blindness and refuse to treat it. There will be individuals born blind who have no meaningful desire to modify this. And there are some people whose condition will be inoperable even if it “shouldn’t” be.

You don’t need to make your disabled characters excessively cool, or give them a means by which the audience can totally forget they’re disabled. Again, this is a place where strong worldbuilding is your buddy- a handwave of “x technology fixed all disabilities”, in my opinion, will never come off good. If, instead, however, you throw out a careless detail that the cool girl the main character is chatting up in a cyberpunk bar has an obvious spinal modification, and feature other characters with prosthetics and without- I will like your work a lot, actually. Even if you’re handing out a fictional “cure”- show the seams. Make it have drawbacks and pros and cons. A great example of this is in the series Full Metal Alchemist- the main character has two prosthetic limbs, and not only do these limbs come with problems, some mundane (he has phantom limb pains, and has to deal with outgrowing his prostheses or damaging them in combat) some more fantastical (these artificial limbs are connected to his nerves to function fluidly- which means that they get surgically installed with no anesthesia and hurt like fuck plugging in- and they require master engineering to stay in shape). We explicitly see a scene of the experts responsible for said limbs talking to a man who uses an ordinary prosthetic leg, despite the advantages of an automail limb, because these drawbacks are daunting to him and he is happier with a simple prosthetic leg.

Even in mundane accommodations you didn’t make up- no two wheelchair users use their chair the exact same way, and there’s a huge diversity of chairs. Someone might be legally blind but still navigate confidently on their own; they might use a guide dog, or they might use a cane. They might even change their needs from situation to situation!

Disability accommodations are part of life

This ties in heavily to the previous point, but seriously! Don’t just look up one model of cane and superimpose it with no modifications onto your character- think about what their lifestyle is, and what kind of person they are!

Also medication is not the devil. Yes, medical abuse is real and tragic and the medication is not magic fairy dust that solves all problems either. But also, it’s straight ableism to act like anybody needing pills for any reason is a scary edgy plot twist.

(and addiction is a disease. Please be careful, and moreover be compassionate, if you’re writing a character who’s an addict)

3. Be mindful of cast composition

This, to me, is a big tip about disability writing and it’s also super easy to implement!

Just make sure your cast has a lot of meaningful disabled characters in it!

Have you done all the work you can to try and dodge the Red Right Hand but you’re still worried your disabled villain is a bad look? They sure won’t look like a commentary on disability if three other people in the cast are disabled and don’t have the same outlook or role! Worried that you’re PSLT-ing your main character’s disabled child? Maybe the disability is hereditary and they got it from the main character!

The more disabled characters you have, the more it will challenge you to think about what their individual relationship is with the world and the less you’ll rely on hackneyed tropes. At least, ideally.

Ultimately, there’s no perfect silver bullet of diversity writing that will prevent a work from EVER being ableist, but I hope this helped, at least!

#disability #writing ruminations #readmore

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writing-in-april · 3 years

Text

Dressed in Crimson

Spencer Reid x Female Reader (Royalty AU)

Summary: Spencer is a stable boy with a passion for learning and Reader is the princess of the palace that he serves in. They’ve been in a secret relationship, the two grow restless about not being able to be out in the open.

A/N: Guys I’m so excited for this one I really really loved writing it- it’s my fourth fic for my 30 fics in 30 days for April and it’s also written for @omgbigfluffwriting !!! I kinda immersed myself into this quite a bit- and it’s my longest oneshot I’ve ever written 🤭The specific historical period theyre in is not specified and the world that they’re in is entirely fictional and not based on any specific point in history- if you’ve ever watched Merlin that’s kinda the vibe I was thinking of just without the magic lol (please still ignore that the gif does not have an accurate clothing choice from Spencer I just wanted a good shot of his hair that I thought of while writing this) i feel like it’s becoming so obvious how much I love historical fiction lol 😂 I’d like to hear from you guys also so if you want to drop me an ask here! It can be about anything 🥰 hope y’all enjoy!!!

Warnings: 18+, Reader has a horrible Father, subtle hints about sexism, Classism, Period typical clothing, Reader and Spencer fight for a little bit, Smut, Dom Spencer, Fingering, Handjob, Unprotected Sex, Day dreaming about fucking in public, Spencer’s possessive as hell, Ignoring the potential consequences of a creampie

Main Masterlist Word count: 4.7k

My day started out like any other with my corset made of whalebone being cinched tightly around my figure with my chemise underneath of course. Every time the ends of the laces were pulled taught on my body I thought of the days where I could get away with not having this wretched piece of clothing cutting off my breath. Those days had been so long ago, when I was just a small child, almost so long ago that I had to strain my memory to recall it. It wasn’t even until I was done clutching my mother’s skirts before I started to be forced into the confines of the worst invention in history. I would have rather muck in the mud in pants like the men, unless there was a reason for me to actually want to wear a dress.

Today, I had chosen a crimson colored gown, one of my only favorites. The front of the bodice was adorned with embroidery, one embroidered with a glistening gold thread. The sleeves were long and ever so slightly off my shoulders, ending just at my wrist. It had been perfectly handcrafted just for me, a seamstress being hired to slave away at each detail with precision. If it had been up to my father the seamstress would have been paid little to nothing for this masterpiece, but you had your own coins stashed away from your allowance to give extra to anyone that gave you goods and services.

The dress was my favorite almost solely because of someone else’s appreciation for the lush fabric, no one needed to know about that though. I did like to look nice on certain occasions, but only special ones. There was no special occasion scheduled for me to have a reason for wearing it, well none that the greater majority of the court would know about.

Only my maid Emily knew what my excursion would be today, why I dressed up so nicely. There was no feasible way for me to hide my dalliances from her, especially the one I was about to go to as it required some higher levels of stealth to be able to evade my father’s guards.

His name was Spencer, one of my father’s stable boys. I loved him more than anything, definitely more than any potential match that was arranged for me.

I gifted him whatever I could without raising suspicion, though I often hid my purchases if someone asked by excusing them as more frivolous in nature, such as a new dress. Spencer had no real need for pretty things as he’d said before, except from myself- those were his past words not mine. And, he did express to me how much he loved the dress I was wearing right now, which was tied to how we had first met.

When I first met him I had been looking for a fabric in the market stalls. I hadn’t really wanted to, I was content with all the dresses that I owned right now, they had no ornament on them, just how I preferred. However, my father demanded I get something fancier for some sort of frivolous ball that was coming up that undoubtedly had no reason to take place besides bleeding everyone else dry.

I brushed hands with him for the first time as I was looking for the material I wanted, something just fancy enough to appease my father. The stall filled with fabrics bordered one that had stacks of books, I would have much preferred to be looking at that one. My hand had gotten close to the edge while I was inspecting a fabric and it had bumped into a man who was looking at one of the books.

When I had looked up to see who had brushed my hand I was met with frantic eyes filled with apology. His stuttered apology had covered my attempt to assure him that it was fine, it had taken me grabbing both of his hands to steady him for him to listen to my reassurance.

When he had introduced himself to me after I asked it flowed into a long conversation. I could have talked to him forever, I would be content to never talk to anyone else. For a stable boy he was exceptionally smart, which I learned was from his mother who had made sure he was educated even in poverty, specifically through having him read anything she could get her hands on. From then on our blossoming friendship had flourished, and had eventually developed into more.

I slung a shawl over my shoulders made out of a fabric of similar color to my gown and also grabbed a purse filled with coins with a smile due to my reminiscing . It wasn’t cold enough for one of my velvet cloaks just yet and most of the walk down to where Spencer was housed was indoors.

The walk from my rooms in the main part of the castle to the stables on the lower floor towards the East end was longer than I would have wanted. Truthfully, I wished I would not have to live in a castle at all, I’d rather live in the small house that Spencer lived. It was just past the castle grounds at the edge of the surrounding village adjacent to the stables so he did not have to walk far for work in the mornings.

My feet tiptoed down the corridors carefully, I was lucky that I had figured out to be somewhat light on my feet otherwise I’d be caught swiftly for sure. I passed by the rooms of most of the lords and ladies staying at court, I always wondered why some chose to stay here, it was positively suffocating here. The door I used to go outside was through the kitchen, that had a myriad of breakable things strewn about that I had to stealthily avoid. Luckily, I knocked nothing over that would have woken up the cooks who slept just a room over. Turning the handle of the door had to be a slow process so no one would hear the creak of the knob while it was turned, but I did successfully make it out with no disturbance.

Beginning the stretch of my journey that was outdoors was perhaps the most risky. Guards were stationed around the perimeter of the castle in greater numbers compared to the ones indoors which were only stationed by important rooms. I weaved my way through, in some aspects it was even more confusing than the inside of the castle. Hiding behind each of the pillars was the most effective way to avoid them, the construction of them making a series of small blind spots. I had just snuck behind one of the last ones when one of the guards nearest to me moved forward a little. I stopped breathing immediately, holding it tight in my chest while I plastered myself as close as I could to the back of the pillar. My nails dug into the stone of the pillar in fear, if I was ever to be found sneaking out at night or worse in the presence of Spencer, I would either never leave my rooms again or be whisked away into marriage even earlier than planned.

When the guard did not move to investigate further I let go of the breath I was holding, still making sure to let go of it slowly so he could not hear me. Moving swiftly forward after I had taken a breath was a bit of a challenge, my knees had gone weak with fear. I pushed myself to take each step even with the weakness in my knees, there was no way I could linger any longer.

Finally I was no longer walking on stone, I was walking on the muddy earth now. It was nice to feel the ground under my feet instead of the harsh stone, it told me that I was now only a handful of strides away from Spencer’s home.

The leaves littering the ground mixing with mud crunched under my feet even as I tip toed carefully. The guards may be in the distance now, but I didn’t feel keen on testing how good their hearing may potentially be.

Passing the stables was the last marker for my journey, then I would be able to see his home too. As I passed the sleeping horses by anticipation began to replace the fear inside me. It had been a while since I had been able to come see him, making me yearn for his touch even more.

His home came into view, even in the dead of night I could make it out if I squinted my eyes hard. My pace picked up exponentially when I landed my eyes on his humble abode. It was a quaint home, fallen into disrepair as he could not afford to fix it on the meager salary that my father paid him. The purse of gold that I had brought with me was exactly for that, the repairs. He would most likely protest the gift just like any other thing I had tried to gift him. From my experience the most effective way to get him to accept anything was to leave it there with no conversation about it. I think it made him feel less guilty even though in my opinion he was owed the money in the first place, no one should have to live in squalor when they did their job every day without question or complaint.

When I finally was at the entrance of his home I entered through the door swiftly, too impatient to wait or knock. Stress melted from my shoulders when I caught sight of him, hunched over one of the books I had given him, candles strewn around to give him enough light to read.

The candles he had lit to be able to read in the night illuminated us both with a glow. He would always compliment me whenever we found ourselves in similar lighting such as this, but in my opinion there was no rivalry. Each time the candle flickered it brightened up every highlight of him, letting me see his wild curls, brown eyes deeper than any others I had ever seen, and a body that I had no doubt was crafted to perfection illuminated in a beautiful glow.

I went to compliment him just as he always did with me, but I became mesmerized when he stood up, then moving his way closer to me.

“It is nice to see you, it feels like it’s been an eternity.” It may seem dramatic for him to say that it felt that long, but I echoed his sentiment willingly.

“It is nice to see you too, Spencer. I agree it’s been far too long.” I was sure it had been at least a full moon cycle since we had the pleasure of being alone with one another, our duties to my father keeping us separated.

It had been painful whenever I would go out for a ride on my horse, to see him hand me the reins of my mare and be unable to reach out to touch him. There had been one day, about a week ago, that I had let my hand brush against his own for a moment while he handed the reins to me. It was an innocent brush of a touch, that also had a barrier in the form of my leather gloves. To anyone else it had meant nothing, but to me and him, it meant everything.

His eyes were blown wide with desire, as I suspected mine were as well. We let ourselves take in the sight of each other for a minute longer before Spencer broke the silence with a request,

“Drop your shawl, so I may see you better.” A stable hand commanding someone of such a stature such as I would’ve seen him whipped if it was any other person before him. His boldness was not unexpected, it had taken a while for him to grow so comfortable with my company. In truth, he had been quite scared when I had first met him. It was perfectly understandable considering his employer was my father, who was not known for his kindness. And, even then after his fear had faded he still had a shy exterior for a while, it only had been lifted when we began to become extremely comfortable around each other. We were each other's only form of solace in this world, we could only escape our reality when we were together.

Instead of having malice in my voice like other nobles would I simply pulled the shawl more taught around my shoulders and teased, “Why should I?”

The expression on his face was one of the ones I loved seeing on his face the most, a sly smirk. He came closer to me, with careful steps as if he was waiting for the right moment to pounce. We were so close together when he stopped moving, but still not touching. He was playing a game with me, not touching until I obliged him. As he leaned in to speak into the shell of my ear he was careful with the way he tilted his body forward so I could only feel his breath on the small portion of my skin, “Because you like it when I look at you.”

My arms fell to my sides releasing my shawl to fall from my shoulders onto the floor at his words, as they rang true. I did want him to look at me and also, of course touch me.

“You wore your favorite dress.” He observed, still not quite touching. I didn't need to answer the statement he made with the thought in my mind ‘I wore it for you’ because I knew he had already figured that out. His observational skills were keenly honed in by his constant reading whenever he had the chance, often reading books that I had gifted to him. He even sometimes read well into the night, straining his eyes in the darkness when the candle was almost merely a wick. I had found that out the first- and sadly, only time I had the opportunity to stay overnight. Since then I had pushed him to get more rest as I knew how hard he was worked to the bone during the day, courtesy of my father.

His eyes were staring at my dress, pupils blown wide, his mind seemingly off in another world maybe thinking about all the things he wanted to do to me.

“Please, touch me.” I didn’t need to speak loud, only a soft whisper for him to hear me because of how close he already was to me. So close, yet so far.

He raised his large hands, calloused from working so hard day in and day out. My own hands were soft from the expensive creams I had been pampered with since I was just a small child. I liked his hands better, they showed the hard work he used everyday to cultivate his beautiful mind and body.

I subtly licked my lips in anticipation of his touch, wanting to feel every inch of his hand roaming my body, from the tips of his fingers to where his palm met his wrist.

His fingers then started to trace over the top of my corset, just a hair away from touching the swell of my breasts. My chest was rising and falling with each breath, each inhale pushing it slightly closer to his fingers. With each fall of my chest I felt the need to quickly let go of my breath, so I could once again inhale and be brought closer to his touch.

“Please touch me.” I repeated, breathless from forcing myself to breathe into his touch.

“I am touching you.” His fingers still did not move to touch my skin, only the crimson accented in gold. It was his turn to tease me now, I was at his mercy, ready and waiting for it.

I could beg again, though quite obviously I could not convince him with it. As he was running his fingers over the cloth for what felt like the millionth time, still not touching me, I teased him back instead of begging, “No you are touching my dress.”

A mere ghost of a touch from his fingers then floated across my skin. What should have calmed my heaving chest from my gasping breaths only served to make my breathing even heavier. The slight touch was still not enough, only making my desire for his hands to roam every inch of my body even more severe.

“Perhaps I should take your corset off, to help you breathe better.” He said, as if he read my exact thoughts.

“I like your thinking.”

I was then spun around so my back was pressed into his chest. It soothes my desire for his touch some, but we both had barriers of cloth preventing me from fully feeling him. I could feel some of the warmth that was hidden underneath his shirt, which was made up of a much billowing white linen that compared to his trousers.

If my skirts were not so large I wondered if I were to push back if my behind would come in contact with his cock and whether or not his desire would be as prominent as the slickness dampening the bottom layer I was wearing. I’d have to find a way to find a pair of trousers then, sometime soon, so I could try to grind into him at a later date. There was no doubt that we’d surely find ourselves in a similar position again.

As his hands started to undo the laces of my corset with care, despite both of our desperation, a thought slipped out from his lips that I’m sure he intended to keep to himself, “I wish I could call you mine in public.”

“My father would kill you!” The taste of my voice would have been bitter in anyone’s mouth, quickly spat out in the same way I said those words. Perhaps my quick anger to his innocent thought would be insane to some, most would probably consider it a sweet thought. However, he knew from previous conversations that when those sweet thoughts were expressed that all I could feel was a heavy sadness sitting inside me, instead of desire.

Tears clouded my vision, so much so that I did not see Spencer’s arms come around me to envelop me in an embrace. I flinched a bit at first, but then melted when I realized it was him. We held each other for a while as I sobbed softly into his billowy white shirt.

He stroked my shoulder with his large hands that I loved, but the corset he had not taken off fully yet was blocking me from feeling his touch the way I wanted.

“Take it off please.” I begged softly, I wanted to feel his skin on mine, and not just his lips or his hands. I wanted to feel every inch of him.

The laces of my corset were already half undone because of his previous attempt at getting it off of me. He finished the job, pulling the corset off of my body, tossing it down to the floor. He may have loved the dress, but he was showing me through his actions that he loved what was underneath more.

Turning me around was his next step, so he could properly kiss me. The pressure was soft at first, as if he was testing the waters to see how I would feel. Feeling his soft lips on my own just made me want to pull him in further, and I did so. My fingers tangled into his curls as the kiss devolved into pure passion, we were both throwing ourselves fully into it, trying to express our feelings nonverbally.

His own hands moved to cup my breasts as he backed me into the cot he slept on every night. I did not let him push me down on the bed so he was on top of me like normal, this time I wanted to be on top for a while. When I straddled his hips the first thing I felt was his cock straining in his pants. I unbuckled them so I could wrap my hands around his cock, I wanted to feel his thick and heavy length in my hands. Precum was already dripping down his hard cock as I pumped his length with my hands. My own arousal was dampening the underneath of the skirt I still had on. Spencer confirmed it himself when he snuck his fingers underneath the fabric to play with my pleasure spots. We both groaned as his fingers entered inside me while he rubbed circles into my swollen pearl.

My skirt was bunched up in his hands, pulling up all the way to the tops of my thighs. He soon got fed up with the skirt being in the way though and maneuvered me to shuck it off of me as fast as possible. Being bare before him did not make me wither in self consciousness, it made me lean into his touch even more.

He leaned up to kiss me again while I grabbed his length and restraddled him. I was definitely wet enough to have him enter me, my separation from him making me desperate, it had been so long since we had the chance to be together like this.

I then sunk down on his length slowly, it was for me to adjust to his size and to relish in the feeling of him sliding inside me. I stilled on top of him as the back of my thighs hit the top of his, he filled me with perfection. Spencer only let me be still for a little while before his hands gripped my hips and started to guide me to roll my hips. The pace I set- well Spencer was the one who set it, was slow and deep, I was languidly rolling my hips while he thrusted up into me at a similar pace.

My face twisted in pleasure as his thrusts became more powerful, still at the same pace but with more force behind them.

“Fuck- I want everyone to know that you’re mine!” It was the exact same thing he had spoken to me earlier that had sparked anger and melancholy inside me. This time it caused a spark of pleasure instead, making me think about him fucking me in front of everyone claiming me as his.

“My father would kill you.” This time when I said it it was gasped into his mouth with little to all anger disappeared from it.

My words made Spencer growl which was swallowed by a possessive kiss. He then flipped me over roughly, my back now pressed into the cot. A high pitched squeak had escaped my lips unintentionally in surprise, it was quickly changed into a moan when he entered me again. This time the pace did not start off slow as I did not need to adjust to him inside of me.

“I don’t care.” His speech was agitated as he pounded into me, holding my legs open with both hands spreading me out for him to see everything, “No matter what anyone says or does, you’re mine.”

Pleasure sparked through me at his possessive words, I grabbed desperately at the cotton sheets trying to hold onto something as my finish was fast approaching. When the cotton sheets were not enough of a stabilizer for me I lifted my hands up to wrap around the back of his neck and pull him close.

“Come on I know you’re close, I’m close too baby.” My nails dug into his neck and back during the latter half of his sentence causing him to slightly wince. I knew he enjoyed it though because of the question that he groaned out next, “Can I cum inside you?”

Biting my lip hard was painful as I nodded my head in response to his question that had me falling over the edge. The consequences of him finishing inside me danced in the back of my head, I chose to ignore them as he did. I did not care as he filled me and I rode out my release, even if I was to somehow get pregnant because of our recklessness it did not matter. I’d gladly have his child, even if it meant I’d have to go on the run.

Instead of falling on top of me directly after finishing like I’ve heard most men do with their wives he gently removed himself from my entrance and laid down beside me on the cot. Bliss was mingling in the air between us, both unburdened by any of our problems that would become a reality as soon as I left for the night. For now we would just hold onto the bliss until it was cruelly snatched away from reality.

Spencer had a solution as always to our problems, and seemed to be thinking about the same thing I was with his next suggestion,

“Run away with me.” We were both covered in sweat that had cropped up from our activities, a contrast to the chilly air outside and in the castle. It was nice to feel warm every time I was in his arms, It was hard to resist being greedy and deciding to stay in his arms forever. It had crossed my mind more than once, but there was always something stopping me from going through with it fully. I opened my mouth to point out all the reasons why that would not be possible when he added, “And, before you say no I want to ask- what’s stopping you?”

His reasoning was sound, as it often was. My mouth opened and closed, struggling to find a reasoning before I accepted that he was right. The only potential downfall was my father’s forces searching everywhere to find me, but it would be worth it. We could also easily cross the border into nearby lands ruled by someone else that was not in alliance with him. I already felt lighter thinking about being free from the confines of the castle- and hopefully my corset. Though I would have to keep the crimson dress I wore today, even if I only wore it around him, It was his favorite and it symbolized the day that we met. He glanced over at me just as I did the same, looking right into his eyes as I spoke,“Alright.”

The light that sparked in his eyes made my heart soar, I could feel just from his gaze how ecstatic he was to spend his life with me. I didn’t need any words to know how much he loved me.

We basked for a moment in the presence of our love, Spencer broke the silence again when he started planning,“You need to go pack!”

I moved myself to sit up even though my limbs protested, wanting to sleep after our post coital bliss. A soft smile was exchanged between the two of us, “I’ll pack light, only the stuff I need.”

The purse of gold I had brought for him would no longer be used to fund his repairs, but to fund our life together. I climbed on top of him again leaning forward to capture him in a kiss that was much more chaste than the ones earlier in the night.

“I. love. you.” He whispered in between kisses making my eyes wet with tears. They weren’t born out of sadness, but of happiness that I had someone to love me as much as Spencer did.

“I love you too, I will see you soon.” I pulled myself away from his lips even though I did not want to, I then got up to leave reluctantly. Though it was easier than previous departures as I knew that it would be the last one that I would have to complete. My whole being was lighter and happier than I had ever felt before as I snuck back with a spring in my step. The only hint of what I was about to do, where I was about to go, was the mud stained at the hemline of my crimson dress.

Ask me anything

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All MGG characters: @muffin-cup @willowrose99

Spencer Reid/CM: @calm-and-doctor @destiny-tsukino @safertokiss @slutforthegubes @onlyhereforthefanfics @jareauswifey

Dom Spencer: @rainsong01 @evlfknb @jakobsdump

#spencer reid #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid smut #spencer reid fanfic #matthew gray gubler x reader #criminal minds #criminal minds x reader #criminal minds smut #mgg #matthew gray gubler #mgg x reader #mgg smut #matthew gray gubler smut #30 fics in 30 days

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aellynera · 3 years

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Goddess (Orestes x Reader)

GODDESS

(Hi. I wrote an Orestes story - it started as a joke about the way Apocalypse says “my goddess”, and then I was like “oh man I want Orestes to call me his goddess” and then as usual, I don’t know how, but this happened. It’s rather different than most things I write, but I quite enjoyed writing it and I hope you like it. Comments, likes, and reblogs always appreciated!)

Word Count: ~4400

Summary: Orestes is a constant in your life and has a particular way of constantly reminding you.

Warnings: Mentions of character death (briefly described but not graphically.) Implied female reader. Definite probable historical inaccuracies taken for poetic license and dramatic effect. ANGST (I made myself cry while I was writing this.) Christians doing morally void but historically accurate things. Fictional timelines.

When you are four years old, your parents leave everything they’ve built in Rome - their jobs in the palace, their lives in the city, your father’s position on the council -upon the orders of the Emperor and move to Alexandria. Your father’s new role is to assist in turning that city into a bastion of the Empire, to help strengthen the government and support the supremacy of Rome. Your mother is to be a gentle guide to the women, in hearth and home and higher society. And because you are theirs, you go with them.

They meet with the prefect upon your arrival and he welcomes your family. He is bright and cheerful, yet loud and pompous and booming, stern but wise, and while he is a kind man, his volume frightens you. You cower behind your mother’s skirts, steadfastly clinging to her and refusing to join in any pleasantries.

Another woman suddenly appears, a small boy with curly hair and bright dark eyes holding her hand. The boy regards you curiously and asks why you won’t come out and say hello. His mother tells him you’re shy, while your mother encourages you to release your death grip on her gown. Finally, after much coaxing, you relent and she pushes you gently towards the little boy.

His mother says you should go play in the garden while the grown-ups talk, and he reaches a tiny hand out to you, wide-eyed and smiling. His name is Orestes, and he is six.

And when you take his hand with a shy little smile, his voice comes out as a whisper and tells you he thinks you’re a goddess, and he drags you towards the garden to show you the little blue flowers that dot the grass, and you believe him.

***

When you are eight years old, one day you finish your chores early and decide to spend your extra time in the yard, weaving some wildflowers together into a chain while the mid-afternoon sun warms your shoulders.

You are quite happy to be alone and not around the grown-ups for now; they’re so loud, sometimes too loud. You crave the quiet, seek it out often, and you bask in it.

Until a rush of dark curls and bright eyes tears past your house, into your yard, and grabs you by the hand, knocking your flower chain carelessly to the ground. He insists you come play with him on the hill nearby and with a squeal of indignation, you let yourself be dragged along behind him.

Your ire over the discarded flower chain is soon forgotten as your squeals become laughter as you roll and roll down the hill together, grass and dirt sticking to your robes and tufts sticking to his unruly curls.

When you tell him he looks silly, he tells you he doesn’t, and you insist that he does and he protests that he doesn’t. And so it goes back and forth and back again, until you push him or he pushes you or someone pushes the other and you both go tumbling down that hill, end over head over feet, your descent only stopped by a patch of mud at the bottom.

He might be the son of the prefect, and he might be your best friend, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t an enormous brat sometimes.

For a minute you’re both panting and red-faced and near tears, until he starts to giggle and you can’t help but join in, and only laugh harder at his outraged gasp when you hit him square in the chest with a chunk of mud.

And on the way back to your house, when you’re worrying your bottom lip thinking on how to explain to your mother why you’re covered in dead grass and damp bits of dirt, your robes most likely ruined, he tells you with the kind of confidence only possessed by a boy of ten years that everything will be fine, because you are a goddess and brave and strong, and you believe him.

***

When you are twelve years old, you hear of the school that Hypatia is running, because Orestes tells you about it when he starts going. You don’t like that he’s doing something without you. You don’t like being left behind and left out and you want to go to this school too.

Your mother would easily say yes, but your father is reluctant, and it’s not that he thinks a woman shouldn’t learn philosophy and how to read and do arithmetic; it’s more that enough other people in the city do think like this and he is convinced it will not be safe for you.

You care little for your safety. All you want, all you desire, is to be part of this group of scholars and to go to this school and learn. And what danger can possibly be there, when a woman is the one in charge?

So you beg and plead and bargain with your father, until a boy - now a young man - with curls like nighttime and eyes nearly as dark and twinkling with stars, steps in and says he’ll watch over you during your classes, and your father gives his permission. And so you start attending Hypatia’s school.

And when the older boys, boys who were nearly men and should know better, start to bully and deride you for desiring knowledge, when they taunt you and steal your scrolls and yank the ribbons from your hair, he steps in and tells them in no uncertain terms to leave you alone. Neither of your fathers, especially his, are particularly thrilled with the tussles he gets in on your behalf, or the black eye that one petulant snipe Cyrus gives him when he connects a punch when Orestes isn’t properly paying attention.

You frown at him as he sits in a chair next to the washbasin, a clean wet cloth clutched in your hand. He winces as you clean the blood from his cheek and gingerly probe the bruise swelling around his eye.

And when you softly ask why he’d do such a stupid thing, he tells you that even a goddess needs a hero to protect them sometimes, and even though you think him entirely ridiculous and heat comes unbidden to your cheeks, it makes you giddy to believe him.

***

When you are sixteen years old, you watch the boy with the wild ebony curls and liquid chocolate eyes fall in love with a girl. Only it isn’t a girl, it’s a woman, and you realize he’s been doing it for years.

Ever since your first day in the new city, he has always been by your side and you by his, an inseparable duo. You thought that would never change, but here you are, finding yourself forced to watch your best friend slowly but surely let his heart be ensnared by your very own teacher.

All he can talk about now, it seems, is Hypatia and her philosophies; Hypatia and her scrolls and the amazing things she is currently reading; Hypatia and her outlandish theories on the universe and the stars. Always Hypatia, all things Hypatia.

You never knew you could hate someone as amazing and wonderful as Hypatia.

It doesn’t seem to matter that his attentions are not equally returned, that she never fully indulges his lovesick whims and overreaching attempts to gain her attention. She continues to treat him as a student, and outside of class possibly even as a dear friend, and he continues to pine.

One afternoon you’re among the stacks of scrolls at the library, trying to find the parchment necessary to complete an assignment Hypatia has given you. You honestly would rather not find it and not even bother finishing your assigned work right now, and you must have some kind of look on your face because he takes the scroll you’re clutching from your hand and leads you to a mostly hidden nook in the room. And he stops talking about Hypatia for a moment to ask you what is wrong.

You want to tell him you miss him, that you want him back, that he’s making a mistake, but you can’t, you don’t. It takes a bit more coaxing, but you finally tell him you’re lonely and you wish there was someone you could find, someone you had to love as much as he had his person, he smiles and tells you that one day you will, because you’re a goddess and the right person will be pulled to the love and light you always emit. You smile back weakly and blink and look away and you want nothing more than to believe him.

***

When you are twenty years old, the library at Alexandria is destroyed.

It happens on a sunny afternoon not unlike so many others that have passed before, when suddenly the doors are broken down and the Christians rush in and the chaos ensues.

You’re sitting at a table with a quill in your hand, carefully writing your thoughts on a piece of parchment, when you hear the shouting in the entryway. And before you know what’s going on, shelves are being knocked over, papers tossed into the air like so much confetti, scrolls being thrown left and right. The air is beginning to smell acrid; you can see a few people setting small fires in some of the stacks.

The windows above you shatter as others throw rocks and even a chair, and you look around wildly for a way out. You don’t know which way is the right way to go, or even if there is a right way to go.

Everything is madness.

A pair of arms suddenly shoot out and grab you around the waist and your scream pierces the air like the horn on the top of the lighthouse trying to guide a ship to shore. Instead you realize you’re trying to drive this ship to its ruin, to free yourself from its depths with wildly swinging elbows and kicks, until you hear a familiar voice shouting your name over the ruckus.

You take in your assailant, all frantic curls and impossibly wide, dark eyes, and collapse into him in relief. Orestes tells you that you need to go, you need to get out, and to find both your fathers in the nearby council chambers and they’ll know where to go, where it’s safe. You ask him to come with you, but he shakes his head.

He tells you he needs to help save as many of the books and scrolls as he can, and you tell him to give you all you can carry and when you run, you’ll take them with you. So he loads your arms full to bursting, and when a rock flies by inches from your face and you drop the items at the top of the pile, he ignores that and pushes you roughly in the direction of the side exit. He says you must leave now, and he’ll be behind you before you know it.

He presses his lips to your temple ever so briefly, spares you a pained smile, and says you’re a goddess for the small bit of assistance you are giving.

As you run for safety, or what might be further peril, you spare a glance over your shoulder and see him helping Hypatia grab as much of the library’s contents as they can, and you don’t have another second to spare on deciding whether or not to believe him.

***

When you are twenty four, it’s your wedding day and everyone tells you this will be the most joyous day of your life so far. Your mother helps you dress in the softest, most expensively beautiful gown you’ve ever owned, and one of your sisters weaves a crown of laurels for your hair. Another sister makes a chain of wildflowers to wind around your wrist. You have never felt as beautiful as you do on this day.

Your father comes to the door of the chamber where your preparations are taking place, to let you know that the guests have all arrived and the groom is nearly ready, and it is almost time. He gives you a kiss on both cheeks, a gesture not common from him, and tells you he will be waiting out by the garden gate when you are ready. Your mother and sisters each kiss your cheek and leave as well, giving you a moment to yourself to gather your thoughts and emotionally prepare for the ceremony.

The door opens again a few minutes later and you turn to face the person behind it, Your eyes go wide, confused, as you take in the man before you. His dark curls are smoothed back and elegantly styled, his robes are regal and dashing, and his eyes are bright and nervous.

You tell him he shouldn’t be here.

He tells you that he knows, but he can’t help it, he has to see you. That he has been thinking of you all morning, wondering how beautiful you look, how happy you must be, and he just had to see you before you walk down the aisle to take your vows.

You bite your lip and tell him, again, that he shouldn’t be here and you can’t stop your voice from shaking. You turn your head away and look anywhere but at him.

And he repeats that he knows this, and he knows it’s wrong, it goes against all protocols, but he can’t help himself, can’t stop thinking that this is the last time he’s going to see you, see your smile and maybe hear your laugh, might be the last time your eyes can gaze upon each other and the last time he can hold you in his arms as his best friend.

You can’t think of a single thing to say to him, and even if you could, you’re certain your body will not cooperate.

Because he is not the one you are marrying. No, this marriage was arranged by your father and the Emperor, and there is the overwhelming chance that you must go back to Rome, and if you and your new husband leave Alexandria it is not likely you will ever return.

This might be the last time he can tell you that you shine with a light brighter than all the heavens, that you are beautiful and he hopes you will be happy, and you truly are a goddess among mortals.

And so Orestes does. He kisses you softly on your forehead, staying there a bit longer than propriety suggests, and quietly slips from the room. And you can’t see for the tears swimming in your eyes, and you want with all your heart to believe him, but you can’t help but find his words hollow and realize this will be far from the greatest day of your life.

***

When you are barely turned twenty-five, there is a knock on your door in the middle of the night. Perhaps knock is not the correct word, it’s more of an insistent pounding, and you swear under your breath at what could possibly be so important to rouse you out of bed at this unacceptable hour.

You pull a robe over your nightdress and open the door, and all the air leaves your lungs.

Four centurions are standing on your stoop, with a man who looks vaguely familiar; is he a general, maybe, or a captain? You can’t remember where you’ve seen him before, but it doesn’t matter, when he greets you solemnly and begins to speak, and tells you that your husband will not be returning from the front.

You did not return to Rome, as had originally been decreed. You stayed in Alexandria after your marriage because skirmishes had broken out along a few of the empire’s borders, and your new husband was called to action to fight for his ruler and the kingdom. Deep down, you could not have been more glad of it, for though you were born there, Rome had not been your home for over twenty years, and starting a new life there with a new husband would not have made it any more so.

Your knees give out from under you and you consider for a moment that you should be crying, but you aren’t really sad and it strikes you as odd, but you can’t force the tears to come. You love your husband, in a way, but you’re not sad that he won’t be coming home. You’re relieved, and the instant that thought hits you and sends a jolt through your body, you start to laugh. The general, or captain, or whoever he is and his guards look at each other, then at you, and back to each other in utter confusion as you continue to giggle.

It all happens in mere seconds, and you’re sinking to the stone floor beneath, and a very familiar voice, one you have not heard since the day you were wed, tells the guards to stand aside and strong arms catch you before you can tumble completely.

His hair is wild and curly like he was just pulled out of bed himself, and his dark eyes shine with worry and compassion, and he asks you if you’re alright, and this is what finally breaks you from your laughter and brings wetness to your eyes.

Orestes holds you as you cry into his chest and you don’t see the pointed look he gives to the captain and the guards, nor do you see them pull back enough to close the door and wait outside.

You don’t know how long you sit there on the floor in the front hall, or how you’ve possibly gotten his robes that soggy, but eventually you calm and the thoughts roll through your brain again. You are crying because someone has died, you realize this is true even if you’re not so very sad it was your husband. You’re crying because it was your husband and now there will be the mourning period you must dutifully attend as a grieving widow. And now that you’re a widow, eventually you will be expected to take another husband, if one even dares to want you.

And you’re crying because the one reason you were glad to stay in this forsaken city - in the Alexandria which had become your home - the one reason you hoped every day to lay eyes on again and every night resigned that you never would, was suddenly here, his arms wrapped around you and his voice whispering words of comfort into your hair.

You’re not sure when he picks you up and carries you back to your bed, carefully laying you on your pillows and pulling the sheet up to cover your shoulders. You’re not sure how long he stays, holding your hand and brushing stray tendrils of hair from your face. And you’re not sure how long you drift in and out, emotional exhaustion finally catching up and pulling you into nothingness, but before you fade out completely, you feel his thumb gently brush the remaining tears from your cheek, and feel the soft press of his lips on your forehead as he calls you a goddess and tells you to rest.

And as you finally give yourself to the twilight, you aren’t sure if you imagined it, but you choose to believe him, and you cling to it.

***

You’re not sure when it happens, to be honest. Time starts to blend together after that, you just know that you’re older and that it happens, and it isn’t right and it isn’t moral and it isn’t fair. Not to anyone involved, not to the city, not at all.

Hypatia has died, been murdered in the temple at the hands of those who profess themselves to be righteous saviors, brutally stoned and ripped apart as she stood there, proud and defiant to the end. How anyone could do such a thing to another human, especially one such as her, is beyond your comprehension.

It only gets worse when they burn her corpse on a pyre in effigy in the middle of the agora.

Word comes to you of the horrible events, and your first instinct is to find him, the way he found you, came to you when word of your husband’s death made its way back to the city. You set down the parchment you’re scribbling on the desk in your room and grab a dark cloak, partly to conceal yourself and party to ward off the slight chill from the wind.

You make your way to the prefect’s palace but you’re turned away at the gate by pair of surly-looking guards, and giving your name, and then your father’s name, and then the fact that your father reports directly to Rome makes no difference to them. They have been told to let no one in, and let no one out.

No one except the person you’re looking for, apparently, because somewhere in the aftermath you discover that Orestes is nowhere to be found.

No one knows where he’s gone, and no one knows when he left, just that it was sometime between Hypatia being murdered and the fake funeral pyre. He had words with Cyril, someone told you, and then after that, no one knows.

And the Christians take over the city, much like the library so many years ago, and more people are burned at the stake, more people are murdered, more progress is halted, all in the name of what is right and what is true.

They will kill you, too, if they find you, or find out you’re looking for Orestes. It’s been years since you’ve really been in his presence in anything but the smallest of ways, especially in public, but you know there are still enough people who know how close you were. And if they know you used to be close, you know they won’t hesitate to come after you the same way they came for the philosopher.

So you make inquiries as discreetly as possible, ask the gossips that litter the merchants’ stalls in the most innocent way possible, like you’re just a curious citizen asking what’s happened to the rule of order in the city. You even ask your father, once, but he doesn’t reply and his stony gaze makes you certain to never ask again.

And you bury yourself in scrolls and reading, in star charts and theories; in anything, really, that will take your mind off everything that is happening and your lost prefect. Your lost friend, your best friend.

The man you truly love, even if it’s taken you years of self-doubt and missed chances to fully realize and admit it, and now, perhaps do something about it.

One day as you’re sitting at your desk, quill in hand and head in the clouds, you think of something. Something that may be nothing, but it comes to you in a flash and you have an idea of where to go, where to find him, somewhere that few others might know.

You carefully pack a bag with some clothes and supplies, and a crudely drawn map that you sketch from memory and hope you’ve gotten right. It’s been so long since you were there but you’re fairly sure you remember the way. You know that Orestes would remember.

A long day’s journey and a fitful night’s sleep take you into the next day, and the afternoon turns into dusk when the hillside comes into view. It is not the same hill you tumbled down more than once when the two of you got into a scrum, but it’s the one that you would go when you could both sneak away and no one would notice for a few days, and you’d stare at clouds by day and the stars by night.

There is an outcropping set back from the hill, in the base of the mountains nearby, that a person wouldn’t see if they didn’t know where to look. You’d found it one day during a particularly vicious thunderstorm and taken refuge in the cave there, and you’d both commented on how someone had clearly found it once before you, for it was somewhat set up as a living space, with some mats and blankets and a few rations left on makeshift shelves. Anytime you were on these excursions and it would rain, or you simply wanted to be out of the sun, that was where you would go.

And you hope against hope that this is where your answer lies.

You crest the hill and make your way to the foot of the mountain and you can’t help but smile, just a little, thinking this is where he would have gone, should have gone, as his name means of the mountains. In his abandonment, his escape from the city, could he have taken it literally? You’ve known him so long and it feels like the kind of thing Orestes would do.

The hovel comes into view, and you drop your pack, because he does too. Tending to a fire at the mouth of the cave, his back turned slightly to you, his curls a glorious disaster, and he’s grown a beard since last you’d seen him. It’s a look you’ve not seen on him before, but you quite like it, although you consider for just a moment you’d like any look on him at this moment, because he is real and he is standing right in front of you.

The sound of the pack hitting the ground makes him turn, and his dark eyes shine in the firelight, and he looks at you for long moments but doesn’t say anything. Orestes just stares at you, disbelieving, like you might be some kind of mirage or a trick of the light or even some kind of wicked spirit sent to torment him, and so he just stares.

Until you breathe his name.

He blinks once, and his face is suddenly full of hope and relief, all the tension and disbelief of the previous moments falling away, and your heart soars to the heavens and thumps ever so boldly in your chest, and your smile threatens to crack your lips, and the tears fall freely as words finally leave his mouth.

“My goddess.”

~end~

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#orestes #orestes x reader #orestes x you #orestes fanfic #orestes fanfiction #agora fanfic #agora fanfiction #my writing

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oficmag · 2 years

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Contributor Spotlight: Kitsey (Kits)

Now that Issue #1 is live, we at OFIC Mag are excited to shine a light on some of the amazing contributors from our inaugural issue. We hope you all love them as much as we do!

Today’s spotlight is on Kitsey (Kits) | @smallwifery (18+ only), who wrote “to drown me out” for Issue #1.

Tell us a bit about yourself!

I'm a historian, a knitter, and a certified Sad Girl™️; I like Phoebe Bridgers, Taylor Swift, and really big hoop skirts. I'm also a Scorpio, as will become immediately apparent when you read any of my work.

How did you find fandom?

I've always had an obsessive and addictive personality: when I was in elementary school I cycled consistently between Star Wars, Twilight, and that one series of wizard books written by an anonymous author with no public political opinions. I dressed up as Princess Leia on a regular basis and made my best friends run around at recess casting spells with twigs. You know, the usual. But I really discovered fandom, in its online incarnations, with BBC Sherlock in 2012 or so. It's all been downhill (or up?) from there.

What fandom are you in now and what brought you here?

The Terror, AMC's 2018 limited series about the lost Franklin Expedition. I first watched the show in 2019 because it was my partner's current fandom; we rewatched it in the summer of 2021 and I fell completely in love. I'm now more obsessed with it than she is. (Sorry, babe.) I just think that if all those guys are gonna be stuck on boats in the Arctic together, they should at least kiss about it, you know?

What’s your favorite book of all time and what do you love about it?

This is technically cheating, but I do own all three books bound in one copy, so: the Regeneration trilogy by Pat Barker. It's the most incisive, wrenching, and historically accurate account of the First World War I've ever encountered in fiction, and it also happens to be queer. Barker's writing has had a huge impact on my own; I aspire to her ratio of maximal devastation in minimal words.

What projects are you working on right now?

Oh, man. In theory, the proposal for my master's dissertation; in practice, a large and ever-growing number of quick-and-dirty Terror one-shots, with working titles like "jfj loses a bet (erotic)" and "champagne problems redux." I have a couple of longer fics waiting in the wings but they've really not been happening for me lately. I am still trying to convince myself that this is fine.

What are your aspirations as a writer, big picture or small?

I want to write novels. I've dabbled in creative nonfiction and playwriting and I'd be happy to do more of both, but what I want most is to be a novelist.

If you could give one piece of advice to beginning writers, what would you tell them?

Be kinder to yourself. My biggest problem is "should"-ing the hell out of myself: I should be writing. This should be perfect even though it's a first draft. Try to let go of some of that! Do you need to be writing right now? If no, do you want to be? If the answer to both those questions is no, you may, as I often do, end up paralysed and terrified and overwhelmed with guilt. Needless to say, this is not conducive to writing. Relax. Take your time, and take care of yourself. It'll be there when you're ready.

THANK YOU FOR BEING A PART OF THE OFIC FAMILY, KITSEY! WE’RE SO THRILLED TO SHARE YOUR WORK WITH THE WORLD.

#writeblr #book blurb #fanfiction #original fiction #creative writing #issue 1 #spotlight

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usergreenpixel · 3 years

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JACOBIN FICTION CONVENTION MEETING 1: La Seine no Hoshi (1975)

1. Introduction

Well, dear reader, here it is. My first ever official review. And, as promised, this is one of the pieces of Frev media that you have likely never heard of before.

So, without further ado, sit down, relax, grab drinks and snacks and allow me to tell you about an anime called “La Seine no Hoshi” (The Star of the Seine).

“La Seine no Hoshi” is a children’s anime series made by Studio Sunrise. It consists of 39 episodes and was originally broadcast in Japan from April 4th to December 26th of 1975.

Unlike its more famous contemporary, a manga called “Rose of Versailles” that had begun being released in 1972 and is considered a classic to this day, “La Seine no Hoshi” has stayed relatively obscure both in the world of anime and among other Frev pop culture.

Personally, the only reason why I found out about its existence was the fact that I actively seek out everything Frev-related and I just happened to stumble upon the title on an anime forum several years ago.

So far, the anime has been dubbed into Italian, French, German and Korean but there is no English or even Spanish dub so, unfortunately, people who do not speak fluent Japanese or any other aforementioned language are out of luck ( if anyone decides to make a fandub of the series, call me). That being said, the series is readily available in dubs and the original version on YouTube, which is where I ended up watching it. The French dub calls the anime “La Tulipe Noire” (The Black Tulip), which could be an homage to the movie with the same name that takes place in the same time period.

Unfortunately, while I do speak Japanese well enough to maintain a basic conversation and interact with people in casual daily situations, I’m far from fluent in the language so the version I watched was the French dub, seeing as I am majoring in French.

So, with all of this info in mind, let’s find out what the story is about and proceed to the actual review.

2. The Summary

(Note: Names of the characters in the French dub and the original version differ so I will use names from the former since that’s what I watched)

The story of “La Seine no Hoshi” revolves around a 15-year old girl called Mathilde Pasquier - a daughter of two Parisian florists who helps her parents run their flower shop and has a generally happy life.

But things begin to change when Comte de Vaudreuil, an elderly Parisian noble to whom Mathilde delivers flowers in the second episode, takes her under his wing and starts teaching her fencing for an unknown reason and generally seems to know more about her than he lets on.

Little does Mathilde know, those fencing lessons will end up coming in handy sooner than she expected. When her parents are killed by corrupt nobles, the girl teams up with Comte de Vaudreuil’s son, François, to fight against corruption as heroes of the people, all while the revolution keeps drawing near day by day and tensions in the city are at an all time high.

This is the gist of the story, dear readers, so with that out of the way, here’s the actual review:

3. The Story

Honestly, I kind of like the plot. It has a certain charm to it, like an old swashbuckling novel, of which I’ve read a lot as a kid.

The narrative of a “hero of the common folk” has been a staple in literature for centuries so some might consider the premise to be unoriginal, but I personally like this narrative more than “champion of the rich” (Looking at you, Scarlet Pimpernel) because, historically, it really was a difficult time for commoners and when times are hard people tend to need such heroes the most.

People need hope, so it’s no surprise that Mathilde and François (who already moonlights as a folk hero, The Black Tulip) become living legends thanks to their escapades.

Interestingly enough, the series also subverts a common trope of a hero seeking revenge for the death of his family. Mathilde is deeply affected by the death of her parents but she doesn’t actively seek revenge. Instead, this tragedy makes the fight and the upcoming revolution a personal matter to her and motivates her to fight corruption because she is not the only person who ended up on its receiving end.

The pacing is generally pretty good but I do wish there were less filler episodes and more of the overarching story that’s dedicated to the secret that Comte de Vaudreuil and Mathilde’s parents seem to be hiding from her and maybe it would be better if the secret in question was revealed to the audience a bit later than episode 7 or so.

However, revealing the twist early on is still an interesting narrative choice because then the main question is not what the secret itself is but rather when and how Mathilde will find out and how she will react, not to mention how it will affect the story.

That being said, even the filler episodes do drive home the point that a hero like Mathilde is needed, that nobles are generally corrupt and that something needs to change. Plus, those episodes were still enjoyable and entertaining enough for me to keep watching, which is good because usually I don’t like filler episodes much and it’s pretty easy to make them too boring.

Unfortunately, the show is affected by the common trope of the characters not growing up but I don’t usually mind that much. It also has the cliché of heroes being unrecognizable in costumes and masks, but that’s a bit of a staple in the superhero stories even today so it’s not that bothersome.

4. The Characters

It was admittedly pretty rare for a children’s show to have characters who were fleshed out enough to seem realistic and flawed, but I think this series gives its characters more development than most shows for kids did at the time.

I especially like Mathilde as a character. Sure, at first glance she seems like a typical Nice Pretty Ordinary Girl ™️ but that was a part of the appeal for me.

I am a strong believer in that a character does not need to be a blank slate or a troubled jerk to be interesting and Mathilde is neither of the above. She is essentially an ordinary girl with her own life, family, friends, personality and dreams and, unfortunately, all of that is taken away from her when her parents are killed.

Her initial reluctance to participate in the revolution is also pretty realistic as she is still trying to live her own life in peace and she made a promise to her parents to stay safe so there’s that too.

I really like the fact that the show did not give her magic powers and that she was not immediately good at fencing. François does remark that her fencing is not bad for a beginner but in those same episodes she is clearly shown making mistakes and it takes her time to upgrade from essentially François’s assistant in the heroic shenanigans to a teammate he can rely on and sees as an equal. Heck, later there’s a moment when Mathilde saves François, which is a nice tidbit of her development.

Mathilde also doesn’t have any romantic subplots, which is really rare for a female lead.

She has a childhood friend, Florent, but the two are not close romantically and they even begin to drift apart somewhat once Florent becomes invested in the revolution. François de Vaudreuil does not qualify for a love interest either - his father does take Mathilde in and adopts her after her parents are killed so François is more of an older brother than anything else.

Now, I’m not saying that romance is necessarily a bad thing but I do think that not having them is refreshing than shoehorning a romance into a story that’s not even about it. Plus most kids don’t care that much for romance to begin with so I’d say that the show only benefits from the creative decision of not setting Mathilde up with anyone.

Another interesting narrative choice I’d like to point out is the nearly complete absence of historical characters, like the revolutionaries. They do not make an appearance at all, save for Saint-Just’s cameo in one of the last episodes and, fortunately, he doesn’t get demonized. Instead, the revolutionary ideas are represented by Florent, who even joins the Jacobin Club during the story and is the one who tries to get Mathilde to become a revolutionary. Other real people, like young Napoleon and Mozart, do appear but they are also cameo characters, which does not count.

Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI are exceptions to the rule.

(Spoiler alert!)

Marie-Antoinette is portrayed as kind of spoiled and out of touch. Her spending habits get touched on too but she is not a malicious person at heart. She is simply flawed. She becomes especially important to the story later on when Mathilde finds out the secret that has been hidden from her for her entire life.

As it turns out, Marie- Antoinette, the same queen Mathilde hated so much, is the girl’s older half-sister and Mathilde is an illegitimate daughter of the Austrian king and an opera singer, given to a childless couple of florists to be raised in secret so that her identity can be protected.

The way Marie-Antoinette and Mathilde are related and their further interactions end up providing an interesting inner conflict for Mathilde as now she needs to reconcile this relationship with her sister and her hatred for the corruption filling Versailles.

The characters are not actively glorified or demonized for the most part and each side has a fair share of sympathetic characters but the anime doesn’t shy away from showing the dark sides of the revolution either, unlike some other shows that tackle history (*cough* Liberty’s Kids comes to mind *cough*).

All in all, pretty interesting characters and the way they develop is quite realistic too, even if they could’ve been more fleshed out in my opinion.

5. The Voice Acting

Pretty solid. No real complaints here. I’d say that the dub actors did a good job.

6. The Setting

I really like the pastel and simple color scheme of Paris and its contrast with the brighter palette of Versailles. It really drives home the contrast between these two worlds.

The character designs are pretty realistic, simple and pleasant to watch. No eyesores like neon colors and overly cutesy anime girls with giant tiddies here and that’s a big plus in my book.

7. The Conclusion

Like I said, the show is not available in English and those who are able to watch it might find it a bit cliché but, while it’s definitely not perfect. I actually quite like it for its interesting concept, fairly realistic characters and a complex view of the French Revolution. I can definitely recommend this show, if only to see what it’s all about.

Some people might find this show too childish and idealistic, but I’m not one of them.

I’m almost 21 but I still enjoy cartoons and I’m fairly idealistic because cynicism and nihilism do not equal maturity and, if not for the “silly” idealism, Frev itself wouldn’t happen so I think shows like that are necessary too, even if it’s just for escapism.

If you’re interested and want to check it out, more power to you.

Anyway, thank you for attending the first ever official meeting of the Jacobin Fiction Convention. Second meeting is coming soon so stay tuned for updates.

Have a good day, Citizens! I love you!

- Citizen Green Pixel

#review #french revolution #anime #history #television #frev media #Jacobin Fiction Convention #marie antoinette #French Revolution anime #la seine ni hoshi #la tulipe noire dessin animé #la tulipe noire

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nyxocity · 3 years

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Fic Writer Questions!

Thanks to @redmyeyes for the tag!

1) How many works do you have on AO3?

82, although that's not even close to my actual total. There's a bunch on LJ that have never been transferred (all shorter works)

2) What’s your total AO3 word count?

1,780,805 (over 2mil on LJ)

3) How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

Mostly three, plus a couple dips into a few other pools. X-Men Comic Book fandom, Buffy & Angel fandom (they kinda count as one since it's the same universe), and Supernatural & SPN RPF. Dips have included Dragon Age, Firefly, a tiny bit of TVD, a Sons of Anarchy crossover.

4) What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

This is tough if I go by numbering. Homework Verse has the most kudos scattered across all parts, but Stranger Than Fiction has the most as a single story. Anyway...

Homework Verse (J2 RPF, 200k+ words) - My very first RPF fic, Supernatural or otherwise. Two of my online fandom friends basically TOLD me I was going to write Teacher/Student J2, and I kept protesting that I drew the line at RPF. They didn't care. 200k later, here we are. This story was a game changer for me; it made me fandom famous. I still love those boys with my whole heart, and they still talk to me sometimes.

Stranger Than Fiction (Sam/Dean, 50644 words) - This story idea took root immediately following the episode The Monster at the End of This Book. I quit the Big Bang I'd already begun writing for that year (which was Who Watches Over Me, which I finished and posted for BB the following year) to write this story. It just took hold hold of me and took over. I wrote it in 6 weeks and it was easily the most fun I ever had writing anything--I cackled like a madwoman most of the time.

Who Watches Over Me (J2 RPF, 96591 words) - This story was, at the time, the toughest thing I'd ever written. Little did I know that would become the norm and not the exception, as I began to write more complex stories. It was by far the longest story I had ever posted all at once in its entirety (rather than chapter by chapter) and I had no idea if people would like it. Fortunately a lot of people did.

Like Staring Into the Sun (Sam/Dean, 23243 words) - Ah, my very first hardcore Wincest fic. I remember writing the first chapter of the story (meant to be a one shot honestly), and just sitting there, at 5am, being terrified to post it. It was twisted, dark and intense and SO porny I was scared people might think I was weird. There wasn't anything like it out there at the time. As it turns out, people loved it so much I ended up writing eight more parts.

Like a Fish Out of Water (Sam/Dean, 59498 words) - I have a lot of love for this story. It didn't come to me easily, but it was fun to write. I remember smiling a lot and just having a nice, warm cozy feeling the whole time. I had no idea if anyone was interested in reading this many words of what amounted to a dramedy curtain fic

Of course there are other stories that I feel deserve love, but I can't argue with these.

5) Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I do. And by that, I mean I try. I don't always succeed in answering them all, but I answer as many as I have time and energy for. Life is busy and there is writing to do as well. I read every comment I get (multiple times) and I feel guilty for all the ones I don't answer, because they mean SO MUCH TO ME. Like you took time to leave this beautiful, well thought out comment, or even a keysmash, or a heart, in response to something I wrote. That means the world.

I WISH there was a reaction function for comments on Ao3, so I could heart things, or laugh in response. Replying with emojis without words feels weird. So yeah, a reaction function would be amazing. But in the meantime, I do my best.

6) What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

Hmm. Probably A Touch of Evil. Interestingly, it's also a HAPPY ending, so there you go lol. It's a serial killer love story with a happy ending that comes at an exorbitant price.

8) Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you’ve written?

I'm not sure why the OG post skips from 6 to 8 lol . So, yes, I have written a few minors crossovers. Mostly Faith in the SPN verse with the boys, nothing too crazy, because she fits right in. But for long stories, I have written all of ONE crossover. It's Dean Winchester/Jax Teller (SPN / Sons of Anarchy). My crossovers so far have tended to make sense to crossover, so I don't think any of them are crazy.

9) Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Yes. I got some hate on a Buffy/Xander fic back in the day. I got really excited and had fun with it. Like yeah, now I'm SOMEBODY! You're no one til someone hates you lol Most of that was people who were haters of the ship, or were like, gross, they're like brother and sister (they weren't, they were FRIENDS). I've gotten nasty comments here and there on some of my SPN fic. My favorite was the person who accused me of having a "Top Dean Agenda". I STILL laugh about that one. I don't respond to that crap.

10) Do you write smut? If so what kind?

Have you MET ME? LOL If I ever post a story without smut just put me out to pasture, because I'm done. And all kinds. Het, Gay, PWP, Plotty porn, mostly super kinky but some vanilla (but intense). I used to challenge myself regularly to see if I could up my kink game--like hmm, but could I write THIS? I haven't written really kinky sex in a long time, though. Might be time to do that.

11) Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Several times. Who Watches Over me was stolen by someone and converted to One Direction Lourry fic. Literally just did a name change. Someone else stole a bunch of my one shots and passed them off as their own. I know there were a couple other instances but I only vaguely remember. I never got too deep into it, most of the time the people who discovered the theft already told everyone else too, and the plagiarist had been hammered by them so hard that I didn't have to step in before they took it down.

12) Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes. I used to get requests so often that I just posted my usual response in my profile for people to read instead of replying. Definitely into Russian and Chinese for most of the stories listed with most kudos above.

13) Have you ever co-written a fic before?

A few times on one shot fics. SO MUCH FUN. I love co-writing with people.

14) What’s your all time favorite ship?

Sam/Dean. Easily. Hands down. I just love their unique relationship, bond and love so much.

15) What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

Well I finally finished A Touch of Evil after posting 3 chapters in 2009 and never touching it again until 2017. And I never thought I'd finish that. So never say never, I say. That said, there's the third and final part of my X-Men comic book epic that remains unfinished by about five (shorter) chapters, and it HAUNTS ME. But I don't think I'll ever finish it.

16) What are your writing strengths?

NOW we get to the hard questions. I'm really good at dialogue, bouncing banter back and forth between characters, and I have a sense for how long a scene should be. I just KNOW when it's going on too long, even if there's more that needs to be said, and I try to tighten it up in that case.

A friend of mine once told me "Porn is my gift". I don't write as much of it as I used to, but yeah, I shine in that area.

17) What are your writing weaknesses?

So I always reach a point after writing so many words in an unpublished fic where I'm like, I have no idea if this is even any good/makes sense/hangs together etc. Beyond that, I've been writing for so long that I've had so much practice that I've strengthened a lot of my weaknesses. I'm sure I still have some, but I don't FEEL them like I used to anymore. That said, there are things I simply will not write. Like historical pieces. Because I would research the fuck out of every detail trying to get it perfect and then I would still doubt myself completely.

18) What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I mostly try to avoid it, because there's no way I would ever get the language correct. I usually write it in English and then explain that they're saying it in another language. Like, "What are you doing?" the man asks, speaking in Chinese. Then reiterate in the continuing dialogue in various ways that they're speaking in Chinese.

19) What was the first fandom you wrote for?

X-Men Comic Book fandom. I was reading a lot of Remy/Rogue fic back in 1996-1997, and one day I was like, you know what? This person did a pretty good job on this story. It's not great, but it's pretty good, and if they can have the guts to put it out there, then I can do it, too.

20) What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

This is a tough question. I don't love all my children equally, but I love them all a lot in different ways lol

Remembering favorite is different than which one I think is BEST... Homework Verse is probably my favorite. I was learning so much about writing then, I was really growing, and discovering, and pushing my limits. Those characters lived and breathed in me, I swear they spoke through me from some alternate universe. They feel so REAL to me. There's so much of what I've learned in life in that story, like really, big, life changing ideas and understandings that happened to me that I put into that story. There's so much of me in that story, and yet there's so much of THEM, too. It's their story, but it's also mine. It's raw and not entirely perfect and it feels like home to me.

So that's it, that's my piece. I feel like EVERYONE has been tagged since it took me 3 days to have time to do this, but I'm basically tagging any of you writers out there who haven't done this yet!

#my stories #about me #writing #on writing

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growingstronglikeahighgardenrose · 3 years

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Anti-blackness in 19th century England, why Queen Charlotte wasn’t black, and why it doesn’t matter in Bridgerton

I’d like to start by saying Bridgerton is a very amusing piece of absolute fiction. From the dresses to the music to the fanfic tropes it uses and the books it’s based on. It doesn’t even start to pretend it’s realistic. And being a piece of modern historical fantasy made by a woman born in this age, it is alright for the showrunners to give it a modern vibe. If you want, you can trace the lineage of every duke of Hastings there has ever been and know exactly who they were and what they looked like. Everyone knows there was never a black duke of Hastings, meaning there is no harm nor a deliberate attempt at “changing history” by the showrunners. They’re not pretending they’re portraying real events and real people of 1813. Therefore I accept that in this “alternative reality regency” it is fine for people of all ranks, including Queen Charlotte, to be black. I loved Golda Rosheuvel’s portrayal, I loved her looks, her acting and I tolerate her half-ishly accurate outdated wardrobe (for those interested in fashion history: look up “regency era court gowns”, old styles were worn but Charlotte would wear normal dresses day-to-day). I’m thrilled to watch her in the second season as well.

However, I will screech if I see people claiming Charlotte was black in real life. There were black people in Europe during all periods of history. They could be very influential and wealthy, and yes, they could even be nobility in some rare cases. There is a growing field of research tracing the steps of black people in Europe throughout time, revealing the often overlooked presence of black people. However, Queen Charlotte isn’t one of them. And I say this because claiming her to be black, would mean the British Monarchy, way ahead of its time, was accepting of black people. it would also mean the British people, who were more than a bit racist, generally accepted a (partially) black woman. Rather than Charlotte being black leading to her being described as black, I believe the confusion about her being black stems from people back in the day using racially ambiguous terms to make clear Charlotte looked ugly (because in a racist colonial world the best way to insult someone is by saying they look like a slave).

Being a historian, I do believe I have to give evidence for my claim. I’ll be using her ancestry, written descriptions and paintings. However, buckle up because you’ll be getting a lot of side information on other POC in art and literature. So if you’re interested in learning a bit about the relationship between the concepts of race and beauty in the 18th and 19th century, here we go. (note: if I use any offensive terms without direct citing someone, do let me know I will change them as soon as possible)

1. When did these rumours start

During the Regency Era, when the world was still a very colonial one, Queen Charlotte was described by some as having a big nose, full lips and an ambiguous complexion. However, her race was never debated, until academic discussions picked up around the 1940s.

2. Queen Charlotte’s family tree.

The Portuguese royal family definitely has Moorish blood in it. No one can contest that. Muslims and Europeans lived together on the Iberian Peninsula for 800 years. The question is whether that means that royals with a Portuguese ancestor can be called “people of colour”, and how far down the line people can still claim to be people of colour. Almost all royal households of Europe married into the Portuguese royal family at some point, yet of few royals it is said that because of that heritage, they are people of colour. That argument is only made for Queen Charlotte (imo that probably has a lot to do with the fact that the world is dominated by the Anglosaxon countries and that because of their worldwide tentacles and their language being the most universally spoken, the British Royal Family receives the most interest from everyone all over the world. Other royal families don’t get as much attention).

Note that I used the word people of colour, that is because the root of Charlotte’s supposed African heritage is not necessarily black. Let’s take a look at her family tree.

According to historian Mario de Valdes y Cocom — who dug into the queen’s lineage for a 1996 Frontline documentary on PBS — Queen Charlotte could trace her lineage back to black members of the Portuguese royal family. Charlotte was related to Margarita de Castro y Sousa, a 15th-century Portuguese noblewoman nine (!) generations removed.

Margarita de Castro e Souza herself descended from King Alfonso III of Portugal and his concubine, Madragana, a Moor that Alfonso III took as his lover after conquering the town of Faro in southern Portugal.

This would make Queen Charlotte a whopping 15 generations removed from her closest black ancestor — if Madragana was even black, which historians don’t know. That’s a lot of generations back. de Valdes y Cocom argues that, due to centuries-long inbreeding, he could trace six lines between Queen Charlotte and Sousa, which would mean Madragana’s genes were a bit more influential, but still 15 generations ago. That’s her grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grandmother.

So, let’s pretend it is true and her ancestor was black, let me be very rude. An ancestor that appears once in a person's genealogy, fifteen generations removed, represents a 215-th fraction of its descendant's ancestry. Queen Charlotte’s black ancestry would be less than 1%. In fact it'd be 0.007% (rounded up) of Charlotte's ancestry, and that's IF Madragana could be proved to be Moorish. And if Moorish was only used to describe a black person. However, the use of “blackamoor” “moorish” and “mozaraab” are not an alternative word for black. Indeed, there is no definitive skin colour attached to these descriptors.

It is generally accepted that Spanish Moors were the Muslim Amazigh (formerly known as Berber) inhabitants of the Maghreb, a stretch of land in north-Africa including parts of the Sahara, but not Egypt. During the Middle Ages, they occupied the Iberian Peninsula and other parts of southern Europe, before being finally driven out in the 15th century. The greatest period of unity was probably during the period of the kingdom of Numidia. Over the centuries, the word came to acquire a plethora of other meanings, some of them derogatory. Importantly, it cannot be ascribed a single ethnicity. Moors are not always black, this is false. They remaining people in Africa can be anywhere from Arab, to black people. But I’m not delving into north-african migration patterns and population changes. In Europe, the moors could thus be Arab, black and often mixed ethnicity, the natural result of coexisting and intermarrying with white Europeans for centuries.

http://acaciatreebooks.com/blog/royalty-race-and-the-curious-case-of-queen-charlotte/

3. Gender, Race and beauty standards

The world of the 19th century was riddled with Anti-blackness. Part of this continued from the medieval belief that white was good, and dark was bad (see white knight, fair lady, black knight, dark magic notions that still persist today). It also does not help that during the Regency Era, Greek and Roman antiquity were very trendy. Although the old roman empire was a culturally and ethnically diverse society, regency people focussed on fashion, hairstyles and looks from the classical art period of Greece. People aspired to look like the statues: elegant, slim and dainty and wanted “noble” features (straight slim nose, even face, cheekbones, etc). That’s why in the regency era people were complimented for having “alabaster skin” or a “Grecian profile” and so on. These medieval notions of fairness and the grecian beauty ideal, were juxtaposed against the medieval notions of darkness combined with deeply colonial conceptions of womanhood and race. In a world in which white people controlled other ethnicities, race soon became a weapon, a tool to be used against someone. Just like… gender. And yes, you’ll soon see how these two go hand in hand.

Throughout the nineteenth century the domestic world and the public sphere became more and more separate, with women being given less space to move and work. All women had to be dainty housewives: refined, sensitive and docile, clever but not too well read. Of course, this was an unattainable standard for most women. Only women in the top layer of society were able to lounge around and do nothing all day. Many had to work. Many things of what women were supposed to be: pale, soft hands, were direct signs that they didn’t have to do manual labour (out in the sun, using their hands). Women who could not fit in that small domestic sphere were increasingly (especially later on in the Victorian era) seen as unfeminine and unworthy of husbands. Coarse, manly, unfeminine, unrefined they were often called. Welcome to 19th century “masculinity so fragile”. Just imagining a woman working or reading made men felt threatened. They hated the idea women weren’t just lounging around waiting to please them and provide for them. https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/gender-roles-in-the-19th-century# https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/pit-brow-lasses-women-miners-victorian-britain-pants

Now look at this sketch of a female mine worker, one of many. Although the argument can be made she’s dark from the dirt, I want to point out that she’s also portrayed as scantily clad, wearing more manly clothes, being broader, wide of face and her hair appearing… quite curly.She’s the opposite of the beauty ideals, the opposite of what society wants a woman to be... and she’s suspiciously black-coded.

Pervasive and passive stereotypes of black people have come into existence since colonialism. Cruel caricatures of black people were omnipresent. Going as far as to ascribe them animal-like features with big mouths, big ears, sloping foreheads and so on. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2712263?seq=4#metadata_info_tab_contents

I could write a million essays on how race and sex have been weaponized in the past. When the “exploration travels” first started, and even much later in art, faraway lands were portrayed as sultry lazy or untamed women, waiting to be conquered and domesticated. Transforming countries into women was done to make them “controllable”. Portraying them as lazy and wild was a way Europeans to give themselves license to colonize them. Just like women at home, these foreign lands needed the guiding hand of cultured civilized men showing them how to do things and ruling them. So either men could control women which was perceived as good, or they couldn’t in which case the woman was looked down upon and hated. I don’t have an exact reference for this one, but it was a very interesting topic in my class on “Global History” at University. But for now this one carries a good part of the load.

https://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/jezebel/

It is then no surprise the female black body became a site of seduction there for the white male’s taking. They literally became their property as slaves, just like a man’s wife was considered his property. White men sexualized black people, particularly black women, a stereotype that perpetuates to this day and age. See the link above for that as well. Black women became temptresses.

White women, of course, didn’t like that. They wanted their men to be theirs. So these 19th century Karens started hating them as well. These wild temptresses were out to catch their men with their “foreign looks”. Meanwhile white men hated the idea of white women being seduced by black men. And this, combined with the resentment for working class women, gave way to a kind of language people used to describe each other. All stereotypes (medieval+ working class women looks+ black looks) were stacked atop each other: dark, tempting, coarse, black, plump, uncivilized, wild, broad-faced, thick of lip… Hair didn’t much come into play in the 18th century since most people of high society wore wigs (which in paintings can look like type 4 hair but cannot be used as an indicator of race) but afterwards “tight coils” was also added to the list of features that weren’t deemed desirable. This physical robustness not only lies in the idea that people who work are “hardened” but by describing them with strong robust adjectives, upper class white people once again fuel the idea that these people were physiologically designed for hard work, like slave labour or mine work instead of life as a wife. See also present day notions common even in doctors how black people and black women don’t feel pain as much. A devastating prejudice that leads to black death, black mothers dying, black people’s health complaints not being taken seriously and so on.

4. Black, racially ambiguous and “foreign” coding in physical descriptions

So we all know the memes of “Historians say they were friends” and so on. It’s a fun meme, but this carefulness in naming things stems from the fact that A) sources are made by people and people are subjective as fuck B) it is deemed a big faux pas for a historian to look at history through a 21st century lens. The rabbit hole that is historical epistemology boils down to the claim that a thing cannot exist before there is a word for it. You need to be careful that you don’t apply a term to an event, person or society wherein that term didn’t exist, or the meaning of the term was different. We shouldn’t draw conclusions about the past with present day notions. When a person anno 2020 is described as dark, we know they’re probably south-east Asian or black. However, we may not believe that a person being described as dark in the 17th century means this person is black. I shall explain.

Back in a time when black equalled inferior, people found no better way than to ascribe black attributes to people they disliked. It is hard to find out whether these people were actually darkskinned, since portraits were commissioned and painted to the desires of the clients (they could ask to be painted with white skin). We have no photographs of the time period to verify whether people did really look the way people described. With few people able to move around the country by carriage, as this was expensive, most people relied on letters, books and papers to give them accounts of events and people, so if one person claimed a person looked like X, others oftentimes had no choice but to believe the account, as they lived too far away to verify. Thus I shall focus on the world of literature, where there were no real people we can compare descriptions to, to prove that the good guys were portrayed as fair, and bad guys were portrayed as… racially ambiguous without them having to be black, or any other ethnicity.

Fairytales: Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. There’s literally no argument to be made at all. But just take a look at fairytales from the Brothers Grimm. Nine times out of ten, the evil stepsisters and stepmothers are described as dark and ungainly while the heroine is fair. If there are transformations, the evil people get transformed into gross animals like toads, while the heroine is transformed into a fawn, a bird or a swan. I’m being unnuanced here, there are definitely heroines with dark hair (see snow white, but she’s still snow white of skin) and the reasons for ugly-animal-transformations has to do with the character traits that have been ascribed to those animals. These stories circuled orally since the middle ages, and most trace their roots back to even before that time. Though the world was not yet a colonnial one, it is a sign that darker looks were already linked to bad people. These notions of darkness have been absorbed into the notions about black people during colonialism. People already lived with concepts of fairness for good people and darkness for bad people in their heads, it became easy to continue these concepts when faced with black people.

Jane Eyre: Jane is described as green eyed (a very rare colour, most prevalent in white people), fairy-like, skinny and pale. Although Brönte tells us she is ugly (she indeed doesn’t confirm to beauty ideals at the time) she appeals to Mr. Rochester and fits more into the stereotype of beauty than her romantic rival: Berta Mason Rochester. Bertha’s laugh is “hysterical” and “demonic”, she is dangerous and injures her own brother. “What it was, whether beast or human being, one could not, at first sight, tell: it grovelled, seemingly, on all fours; it snatched and growled like some strange wild animal: but it was covered with clothing, and a quantity of dark, grizzled hair, wild as a mane, hid its head and face.”

Dear reader, Mr. Rochester is described as being tempted into a marriage, to a wild foreign animal-like madwoman with dark grizzled hair and red eyes. Although there is no description of her skin colour (Bertha could very well be any ethnicity) there are clear parallels in the way she is described and the way POC were described. In the context of the 1840s readers would instantly attach this picture to their preconceptions about others with a similar look. Jane doesn’t even need to describe Bertha’s personality, the readers have already decided what she’s like because they understand that the author means dark looks= bad personality. Dark looks= foreign looks. Additionally: Blanche Ingram, Jane’s other rival was described as a fine beauty with a stereotypically beautiful body but had an olive complexion, dark hair and dark eyes. These were desirable traits in England at the time, but the darker beauty of Blanche comes with a bad personality and in the end, she too is rejected in favour of our pale heroine Jane.

Wuthering Heights: Heathcliff has long confused readers. It is most probable, in my opinion, given the context of the time, that Heathcliff was of roma origin as roma were strongly disliked in England at the time, and he fits best in the stereotypes associated with them. It’s also much more probable that an English gentleman would take in an orphaned European child than a black child, especially given he raised him as a son (british people weren’t that kind, they wouldn’t raise a black child as their son). However, the author, still clearly relies on a certain set of dark characteristics to describe him. “I had a peep at a dirty, ragged, black-haired child; big enough both to walk and talk: indeed, its face looked older than Catherine's; yet when it was set on its feet, it only stared round, and repeated over and over again some gibberish that nobody could understand.” “He seemed a sullen, patient child; hardened, perhaps, to ill-treatment: he would stand Hindley's blows without winking or shedding a tear, and my pinches moved him only to draw in a breath and open his eyes.” “You are younger [than Edgar], and yet, I'll be bound, you are taller and twice as broad across the shoulders; you could knock him down in a twinkling; don't you feel that you could?” “Do you mark those two lines between your eyes; and those thick brows, that, instead of rising arched, sink in the middle; and that couple of black fiends, so deeply buried, who never open their windows boldly, but lurk glinting under them, like devil's spies?” “he had by that time lost the benefit of his early education: continual hard work, begun soon and concluded late, had extinguished any curiosity he once possessed in pursuit of knowledge, and any love for books or learning. His childhood's sense of superiority, instilled into him by the favours of old Mr. Earnshaw, was faded away … Then personal appearance sympathised with mental deterioration: he acquired a slouching gait and ignoble look; his naturally reserved disposition was exaggerated into an almost idiotic excess of unsociable moroseness;” “His countenance was much older in expression and decision of feature than Mr. Linton's; it looked intelligent, and retained no marks of former degradation. A half-civilised ferocity lurked yet in the depressed brows and eyes full of black fire, but it was subdued; and his manner was even dignified: quite divested of roughness, though stern for grace.” “He is a dark-skinned gypsy in aspect, in dress and manners a gentleman”

Once again: black eyes, heavy brows, black hair. He is rough, can stand a lot of heavy burdens, seemingly indifferent to pain. He has something devilish and uncivilized about him, and is oftentimes believed dumb. Admittedly, this portrayal is more nuanced, he has a knack for studying and he does look like a gentleman. But the author is clear that it is only superficial and he is still mad within. It thus becomes very clear, already only from literature, that if you want someone to look bad, you make them look manly, workmanlike and ascribe to them black features.

For more examples of racial ambiguity, casual racism and explicit racism in English 19th century books: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/victorian-literature-and-culture/article/casual-racism-in-victorian-literature/1B4B3B0538F8B7C6B58E6D839DCFEC92.

This technique was adapted by EVERYONE. Wanted to make your enemy look bad? Then write a very uncharming picture of them attributing them with stereotypical black features. The most common remarks were: broad noses, big lips, frizzy hair, swarthy and/or dark complexians, coarse looking and unrefined. If you wanted to be really rude you could start comparing people to animals and call them wild and unhinged because “madness” was and is a very common insult. Had an issue with your wife in the 19th century? Lock her up for “hysteria” and “madness”. Got a political opponent in the 2016 presidential elections? Call her mad and hysterical. Got an opponent in the 2020 presidential elections? Challenge his mental capacities. Psychological issues and disorders have often been used to make people look bad and invalidate them. Basically everyone who isn’t reacting in a neurotypical and stereotypical male way (i.e. show no emotions and so on) was classified as “unreasonable”, thus taking away their voice. So many interesting articles and books on this.So we have an intersection between race, womanhood and mental health that are used to control and reject women.

https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/chm/outreach/trade_in_lunacy/research/womenandmadness/

https://www.jstor.org/stable/4286909?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

https://www.routledgehistoricalresources.com/feminism/sets/women-madness-and-spiritualism

https://www.amazon.com/Madness-Women-Myth-Experience-Psychology/dp/0415339286

TLDR: In literature bad characters were often described with physical attributes that were seen as ungainly. They were codified with animal-like, manly and mad. They also had black and dark attributes to signal to the reader that they were not the heroes of the story. Bonus: they often met a deathly or bad end. Writers did it, but so did real people when they wanted to accuse a rival (Karl Marx being one such asshole for example, http://hiaw.org/defcon6/works/1862/letters/62_07_30a.html ). This is why we can not always trust written accounts of contemporaries before the age of photography when a person is described with racially ambiguous looks.

5. Descriptions of Queen Charlotte:

Just like Beethoven, Queen Charlotte’s main claim to blackness boils down to one ancestor at least two centuries before her birth, combined with contemporary descriptions of a certain hair type, wide nose and bad complexion. Descriptions of Charlotte during her lifetime describe a plain and small woman, with a wide and long nose, and lips that were not the rosebud ideal. As the court became accustomed to her, however, more people started complimenting her brown hair, pretty eyes and good teeth. Much of the imagery that has fuelled claims of Charlotte’s possible African ancestry is from the first few years of her time in England. Royal brides have been ripped to pieces by tabloids, and the public also performs a horrible hazing-like ritual(see: Kate Middleton was mocked for being a party girl, lazy and from working class background. Meghan Markle was described as an opportunist husband-snatcher. Diana was a “chubby child”. The ladies also got plenty of critiques on their looks). Once the bride gets through years of being bullied, critiqued for every little part of her being, she then suddenly comes out on the other end after a few years, becoming a darling and an attribute to the royal family. Could it be that royal brides are always, especially in a gossip heavy environment like a court, under deep scrutiny? This foreign princess hobbled off a boat, seasick, unknown by the English… And she didn’t speak a word of the language! Why would the English love her? I am not saying the accounts lie but I am saying beware of the person making the comments. Are they close to the monarch and his wife? Do they like Queen Charlotte? When where these comments made and why? And why did they choose precisely these words that had by now become commonplace to use as descriptors for unpleasant people? If we know people used racially ambiguous terms to describe people they disliked, it isn’t such a stretch to imagine they might insult a new queen with such terms.

Let’s look at what was actually said about her.

Horace Walpole: “The date of my promise is now arrived, and I fulfill it — fulfill it with great satisfaction, for the Queen is come. In half an hour, one heard of nothing but proclamations of her beauty: everybody was content, everybody pleased.”

Baron Christian Friedrich Stockmar, the royal physician to her grandaughter: “small and crooked, with a true Mulatto face.”

Sir Walter Scott: “ill-colored.”

Colonel Disbrowe (her chamberlain): “I do think that the bloom of her ugliness is going off.”

Queen Charlotte herself in a diary: “The English people did not like me much, because I was not pretty; but the King was fond of driving a phaeton in those days, and once he overturned me in a turnip-field, and that fall broke my nose. I think I was not quite so ugly after dat [sic].”

What we can conclude from these remarks that Charlotte was not very pretty, she even admits to that herself. But what are her actual physical attributes? She has light brown hair (I didn’t include a description of this, but it was generally reported), she had pale eyes (as can be seen in all paintings), was small, and had good teeth.

Above I gave two accounts that reported on her skin tone. Ill-colored could be anything like bad skin, rosacea or perhaps tanned (which also wasn’t deemed becoming for ladies). There was only one person, Baron Christian himself, calling her face what he did. As mentioned above, there can be multiple reasons why anyone would ascribe her those features, she did not have to be a “mulatto” to be described as one.

Most importantly, in a society with slavery, in which black people were looked down upon, I’d say the absence of more people calling her things like: dark, swarthy, black, mixed, brown and any and all things associated with black looks, is more telling than a few accounts mildly referring to her colour.

If Charlotte were truly the first black queen, the first black person in such a powerful position, and one of the few black people in England (less than 30 000 at the time), would there not be more talk? More descriptions of her look? She was seen every day by many people. People would be shocked, enraged, surprised, fascinated and so on. In an era when many people kept diaries in which they wrote down all they witnessed, many people would have given descriptions of her black/brown skin colour. In an era with cartoons and press… Her being noticeably black would have been a very big thing and we would have seen journalists and cartoonists draw her as dark. Cartoonists and diary writers mostly write or draw their honest thoughts. They weren’t censured.

6. Paintings of Queen Charlotte:

Queen Charlotte’s most striking likenesses, or so it is believed, were painted by Allan Ramsay, a prominent artist and staunch abolitionist. In 1761, Allan Ramsay (1713-1784) was appointed Principal Painter in Ordinary to the King (1761-84). As well as being Principal Painter, his portraits have been singled out by many as depicting Queen Charlotte with distinctly African features. It’s believed this was his way of displaying his abolitionist tendencies. He was an abolitionist, that much is true, and he was also friends with the legal guardian of the very famous black Dido. However why would the royal couple approve blatant African features, knowing those would not be well liked in an English queen? They would not have allowed these images. Clearly, they saw in these images only a likeness to Charlotte, and yes, that could mean she had fuller lips and a wider nose. Anyone can have those features. Personally, I find that a slightly larger nose and larger lips in some paintings are not sufficient proof to call her black. But let’s run over some of the paintings.

Most paintings portray her as a typical light-skinned royal with nothing bad about her complexion.

In these pictures she does not look black in the slightest, indeed I’d say her eyes and eyebrows look very light even, nor do her nose and lips, so often critiqued, look big, as was claimed.

Here we can see her nose looks a bit wider, and her lips a bit bigger. But is that really a convincing argument? Although certain features are more common to a certain race, they are not monopolized by one. Black people can have light hair and light eyes. It is unlikely, but it is possible. It’s just as possible for white women to have bigger lips, a wider nose, a rounder face and even… though rarely, there are white people who have no black relative they know of, white 4a hair. I’ve met a few of them. What I also want to note is that Queen Charlotte’s natural hair could have been crimped and combed until it stood upright and was stiff with powder, as was the fashion back then. It would give her hair a more frizzy look. In the picture underneath it, you can see her hair in fashionable artificially made curls that wouldn’t work on natural type 3 or 4 hair.

However as I said before, I’m not fond of using paintings as proof since they were made-by-demand. Painters would starve if they painted their patrons unflatteringly. There are black people, indeed, even black nobles, ex-slaves, diplomatic ambassadors who had themselves painted with a dark skin colour since the Middle Ages. You can even see the distinction between people of darker-skinned sub-Saharans and North African descent in these pictures. And painters certainly knew how to paint black people for centuries (see: "The Image of the Black in Western Art" by Harvard University Press and “Revealing the African presence in Renaissance Europe”). One such example a noble who did have black heritage was Alessandro de Medici who was nicknamed “the Moor”. Moors referred to black Islamic people. His mother was Simonetta da Collevecchio, a servant of African descent. In this case the argument that many Italians are dark of complexion and have dark hair cannot be used to explain his appearance. If other Italians thought he looked like them, they wouldn’t have paid such attention to his looks because they would have deemed it normal. I’m using 3 paintings of him by 3 different artists. The first picture really is ambiguous, it is only by combining all three that we can say that yes, his looks do fit the bill. If we only had the first picture, would we really be confident to claim him? This goes to show that you can’t say someone has a certain ethnicity based on one painting.

This person was comfortable in his own skin but there were probably just as much, if not many more nobles and wealthy families with mixed blood that had themselves painted white when they were not. Who would disagree? Who would even know? Nine chances out of ten barely anyone who wasn’t from the direct neighbourhood didn’t know what they looked like, and never would. Once the POC died, all that would remain would be a very white looking painting, and no one would know the bloodline had become mixed.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/29/tudor-english-black-not-slave-in-sight-miranda-kaufmann-history

What is, then, a reliable source? An answer, for famous people, is cartoons. Just like we now attach more credibility to a paparazzi picture of Khloe Kardashian than to one of her heavily photoshopped pictures on Instagram, you can trust cartoonists to not try and make people look good. Note: cartoons are always over-exaggerations. Any physical attribute will be enlarged beyond belief for comedic purposes. King George and his wife were often pictured in cartoons. If there was anything very noticeably foreign about Charlotte’s looks, they would portray it. However, what we find is that these cartoons never portray Charlotte as darker than the other people. She wasn’t shown as being black.

Conclusion:

Queen Charlotte cannot be called black on the basis of her portraits, cartoons or bloodline. If ever there was a trace of black blood in her veins, it was so light it had become undetectable and could not have influenced her appearance. Just ask yourself this question: would you call yourself a certain ethnicity, or claim certain roots, based on one ancestor 200 years in your past? If no, then you also shouldn’t say that Charlotte had black roots or was mixed.

The case of Queen Charlotte does, however, reveal the deeply racist British society of the Georgian Era, which deemed all black physical features ugly, and deliberately used all physical traits associated to the black race as an insult. Keep this in mind, as well as rampant anti-Semitism and hatred for Roma people, every time you read a novel from the time period, or read a tasteless description of a real person from the era. People were cruelly treated based on their heritage, and even if their heritage was purely white, they could be ascribed certain racial features, just because people were racist pricks.

While that’s the unfortunate reality of the time period, I do believe we are allowed to enjoy an alternate reality as an escape, where just for once, race isn’t an issue. So continue on, Bridgerton!

Meanwhile, I’ll be here keeping my fingers crossed for the stories of real black people living in Europe, or black kings and queens in Africa, to be told in a movie or series. The entire world has always existed, it makes no sense for all period movies to keep being focussed on white people in England, Rome and the US.

#bridgerton #Queen Charlotte #Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz #british monarchy #racism in history

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tealin · 3 years

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Observation Hill

To see the post in its original format, please visit twirlynoodle.com/blog

There is no mistaking Observation Hill when you arrive at McMurdo, if you know anything about it. It is a distinct cone, right at the end of the peninsula – even if you've never seen a picture of it, its name alone tells you it's a prime lookout, and sticking out into McMurdo sound as it does, it has clear views in every direction.

I had seen pictures of it, but I was still surprised how it loomed over the station. Unlike the vastly larger Mt Erebus, it is visible from everywhere; whether you're eating in the Galley or crawling back to bed from the Crary lab in the wee hours, it's always looking over your shoulder.

Though not apparent in the above photo, it is clearly visible in person that there is a large cross mounted nearly at the peak of the hill. Visitors especially from the States might assume it is just another expression of religious devotion – Christ died on a cross on a hill, so hilltop crosses are not unusual in a country which puts great stock in expressions of Christianity – but this is not another one of those things, in fact it isn't even American. This cross was erected in January 1913 by the surviving men of the Terra Nova Expedition, as a memorial to Captain Scott and the other members of his party who died out on the Ross Ice Shelf on their way home from the South Pole.

Before the ship arrived it was decided among us to urge the erection of a cross on Observation Hill to the memory of the Polar Party. On the arrival of the ship the carpenter immediately set to work to make a great cross of jarrah wood [an Australian hardwood]. There was some discussion as to the inscription, it being urged that there should be some quotation from the Bible because "the women think a lot of these things." But I was glad to see the concluding line of Tennyson's "Ulysses" adopted: "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

... Observation Hill was clearly the place for it, it knew them all so well. Three of them were Discovery men who lived three years under its shadow: they had seen it time after time as they came back from hard journeys on the Barrier: Observation Hill and Castle Rock were the two which had always welcomed them in. It commanded McMurdo Sound on one side, where they had lived: and the Barrier on the other, where they had died. No more fitting pedestal, a pedestal which in itself is nearly 1000 feet high, could have been found.

(Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World, pp.565-7)

The establishment of the cross took two days: the first, to hack a hole in the volcanic rock in which to mount it, and the second to carry up the pieces and erect them.

It stands nine feet out of the rocks, and many feet into the ground, and I do not believe it will ever move. When it was up, facing out over the Barrier, we gave three cheers and one more. (ibid., p.567)

106 years later, there is a hiking trail up Observation Hill. I had intended to make a pilgrimage since the moment I arrived, but with everything else going on, and the ongoing challenge to get enough sleep, it wasn't until quite late in my visit that I finally made it.

My first attempt was on a relatively fine day, when I thought I could get some good views. The trailhead was clearly marked on the station map, but when I got there I couldn't find a way to reach it without crossing a fuel pipeline, and I had a dim recollection from orientation that this was a big no-no. I wandered about looking for access until I started getting a headache from the fumes, and gave up.

The next opportunity came a few days later, after I'd found out from a veteran that it was OK just to step over the pipeline there. It was a thickly cloudy day, and hazy by Antarctic standards, so I wouldn't get as good a view, but that did mean I could look forward to having the hill to myself. So I stepped over the pipeline and started up.

It looks like a terribly steep climb from the bottom, but once on the slope it's not so bad, and is far less slippery than the gravel slope of Arrival Heights. Partway up I passed a mountain rescue class, but beyond that the trail was entirely mine.

Like the rest of Ross Island, Observation Hill is volcanic in origin – in fact it was once a small volcano of its own. Unlike the subglacial volcano that is now Castle Rock, which grew cylindrically through a hole it melted in the ice, Observation Hill must have been uncovered in its later years at least, because it has the classic cone shape made by molten rock running down the outside. It is a lighter colour than much of the rest of the exposed rock in the area, and in places, it gives a really good impression of being sedimentary rather than igneous.

While the climb was not as physically intense as I had feared, it did still make me very warm, and I had two pauses, not to catch my breath but to cool down. One was to watch the rescue class, the other was when, somewhere near the top, I lost the trail, and examined the terrain for a while to guess which side would be least fall-off-able. I chose the wrong one, it turns out – I didn't fall off, but I did have to pick my way over some bare rock and came out above the cross, which is mounted in a pocket of rubble just off the peak.

It's hard to tell from the photo but it is in fact quite large – I am an average sized female and I stood well under the crossbar. The inscription is still there, but over a century of blizzards have battered it, and some parts are just barely decipherable.

The names – above of the worst of the blowing grit – are still legible. This gave me one of those moments which always seems to come by surprise. I have lived most of my life, and certainly all of my career, in close proximity with fictional characters, who demand to be believed in, either out of escapist necessity or professional duty. Most of the time I am off in my own little world, and the fact that that little world is now a historical moment in Antarctica does not, necessarily, make it more real, in relation to my literal present reality, than any movie I've worked on. I know these guys were real, I have seen film footage of them, and read their handwriting, and, some of them, even met members of their families! But when I'm up to my elbows in the work, it's easy to give it the part of my brain that suspends disbelief on a production. Suddenly something will come along that jolts me back to their reality: in this case, a name carved on a physical object by someone who knew them personally.

At the same time, this physical object impressed upon me again just how much time separates their reality and mine. Originally the cross was painted white, with the incised letters filled in black. Only a little of the white paint remains in the deepest recesses of what are quite shallow letters, now. In 1960, when Silas Wright returned and was photographed up here, the wood had already been scoured clean. His visit was 47 years after the cross was put in place, and 49 years before mine. The same imagination that conflates historical realities with fictional ones can make those years evaporate, but that is still a lot of years, and erosion, unlike imagination, doesn't lie.

Cherry may have believed that the cross would never move, but it has in fact blown down twice, once in the winter of 1974 and again in 1993. Its restoration in 1994 was a significant effort: a new concrete "boot" was made for it at Scott Base and delivered to the site by helicopter, and the cross itself was relayed up the hill by teams of helpers. (You can see photos of the event here, p.44) I cannot say how moving it is to see such an outlay of resources and enthusiasm by people who never met the Polar Party, to perpetuate their memory.

The cross isn't the only thing to see at the top of Observation Hill, of course – there is everything else. It turned out to be the perfect way to end my tour of Terra Nova landmarks, not only because it was the last bit of home territory the Terra Nova men themselves visited, but because I could see nearly everywhere I'd been from up here.

As you can see, it was not the greatest day for landscape photography, what with the matte light and the taller mountains being covered with cloud. But I had not come up here to take pictures. The sombre atmosphere befitted what I had come to do, which was to remember these men and thank The Powers That Be for the blessings that had been showered upon me in the last few weeks.

The cross faces south, towards their last camp, and the Pole. This is, of course, a thoughtful and fitting aspect of the memorial. It also gives the impression of a beacon, a light in a window, a lighthouse on a headland, guiding them home. The men who erected it knew the men were dead. They are still dead. We all know this. But they are still out there somewhere, and it is not impossible to imagine some small irrational part of the human psyche wanting, in some small way, to show them the way back, and call them back by name.

Minna Bluff was covered in cloud, so I couldn't use it as a bellwether, but the wind started to pick up and was colder than before, so I thought I should start heading down again. The correct trail was obvious from this end, and I poked along it for a little way before everything caught up with me and I sat down to have a little cry.

The cross is a historical artefact, and while it is not as plum or as complex as the huts, it still requires conservation. Alarmed by the degree of erosion on the lettering, the Antarctic Heritage Trust has devised a shell to protect it from the worst of the winter winds. That will do something, but it has already lost a lot. When I was up there, I wondered why it hadn't ever been repainted, as the paint would go a long way to protecting it, and when the paint wore off it could just get repainted instead of eating further and further into the wood. The raw timber is more harmonious with the environment, and I like it better aesthetically that way, as do many others I'm sure – the white cross with black letters in Debenham's photo from 1913 is very stark and artificial in such a magnificent landscape. But it would last a lot longer.

On the other hand, generations of Antarcticans now have the cross as a touchstone, not only as their link to the history (not everyone gets to visit Cape Evans) but as a landmark in their own experience of Antarctica. It was personally important to the men who painted it white and put it up, but it is also personally important to hundreds, if not thousands, of people since then, who have never seen it white and don't know that's how it started, and might see the repainting as a travesty. If it were to be conserved, to what extent would that go? Would the letters be re-carved deeper, obliterating what remains of Davies' original work? At what point does conservation end and adulteration begin?

The alternative is to take down the original and keep it somewhere out of the weather – Scott Base perhaps – and replace it with a replica. Jarrah is still available, the letters could be carved afresh, it could be the bare wood everyone has known and loved for the last fifty years at least, and the original could be saved from the effects of weather once and for all. But doesn't this defeat the intent of the original in some way, and make it – dare I say – a Disneyland version? Do we owe more to history to keep it as it is and let the elements wear it down, or to preserve it as long as possible and do whatever might be necessary to extend the experience and historical understanding of a place, if not its authenticity?

These are all questions that curators and conservators have been grappling with for years, so I leave it to them to make the decisions. I am grateful to have seen the original, and to have a moment to myself up there to reflect on these things, and more. I hope, whatever happens with it in the future, Observation Hill is not de-crossed entirely. How else will they find the way home?

#antarctica #mcmurdo station #observation hill #conservation #history #memorial #artefacts #scott expedition #terra nova expedition #scott base

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echo-bleu · 3 years

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To Fall, There Is Death

This work was created for the @rnmbb Roswell New Mexico Big Bang 2020 event.

The amazing @slynella/Slynella was my partner for this event and created three absolutely wonderful illustrations for this story! The artworks are incredible and I love them to pieces, thank you so much Sly 💙

Huge thanks also to @eveningspirit for helping me build the plot of this and handholding through the writing. This fic was hard to write, both because I got lost more than once in the narrative and because I basically left the fandom when I was less than halfway done. But, here it is.

This fic is loosely based on both Dumas' The Three Musketeers and BBC Musketeers, and borrows some plot elements (and a few lines) from the latter, but there is no historical accuracy whatsoever and it is set in the fictional kingdom of Antar. The title comes from “Quo ruit et lethum” which is the actual motto of the Musketeers: To Fall, There Is Death. The header of each part is a chess move or a chess opening, usually with some relation to what happens in the part (and a few where I just liked the name :D).

[apparent deaths by shooting and hanging, mentions of war and injuries, canonical levels of violence, past abuse]

Read on AO3 (13k).

The day Alex died was the beginning of the end.

Liz would be hard pressed to tell when it had all started, when the pieces had first been put in motion. So much had happened to lead them there, one step away from checkmate, one step away from the end of the game.

Maybe it had started six months ago, when the King died. She remembered the funeral ceremony that gathered all of the court and so much of the city, Max and Isobel’s regal and solemn faces. Max had worn white, and knelt to receive the crown on his head. “The King is dead,” they’d chanted. “Long live the King!”

But things had been moving even before that. Maybe it had started a year ago, when Lord Michael first came to the court and challenged Alex to a duel. Alex had been injured already, barely able to stand on his feet. Liz remembered the absolute shock on his face, when Michael had pushed back his hood and revealed himself, after the King introduced him as his natural son.

Alex had lost the duel. He’d stood there afterwards, dazed and devastated, unable to take his eyes off Michael for one second, like he’d expected him to disappear again. He’d spent most of the next three weeks drinking himself to the ground every evening, just to dull the pain that never left his eyes.

So maybe the pieces had already found their place ten years ago, in that time Alex only ever hinted at, when he and Michael were engaged to be married. He’d never told Liz and Maria the story. “There was a man, once,” he’d said. “He died.” Kyle had probably known more, after all he was Alex’s friend when they were children, but he never said. In all the years they’d known Alex, though, there were always these shadows in his eyes, that spoke of a dreadful weight, a longing and a guilt that never left him.

Bishop Takes Knight

Now

The Musketeers on duty stood in line for muster, as Alex limped down the ranks and inspected their gear. Musketeers had to be dressed perfectly in every circumstance, boots shiny and blue cape draped over their shoulders, because they could be called to attend the King and the royal family at any moment. Liz was with Maria at the very end of the line, Alex’s seconds-in-command, his most trusted people. Kyle wasn’t there, because a patrol had come back injured from a skirmish with the Red Guard the night before and the surgeon hadn’t slept all night, getting a bullet out of a Musketeer’s shoulder.

Alex handed out orders for the day and dismissed his Musketeers. Liz and Maria joined him in the armory, since they were to be on duty at the Palace that day, and together they selected loaded muskets and their trusted swords.

There was nothing to indicate how horrendous things were about to get, except maybe for the slight trembling in Alex’s hands as he fit his scabbard on his belt, or the way Liz and Maria squeezed his shoulder a little tighter than usual before going to ready their horses.

They barely had time to step out of the garrison, leading their horses out of the large wooden gate, before everything went to hell.

“Musketeers!” a voice rung out, harsh and unforgiving.

Alex froze in his steps, recognizing the figure in red before any of them. There were half a dozen Red Guards scattered around the square, unmoving, watching them, and in the middle, Lord Michael, in full leather armor under his red cape. He had several pistols on his belt, and one held loosely in his hand.

“Manes,” he added with venom in his voice. “Still standing, I see. Still the Captain.”

“Michael,” Alex answered, his voice smaller and shakier than Liz had ever heard it in public. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to finally do what I’ve been waiting for for ten years,” Michael spit out. “I’m here to kill you.”

Liz fully expected Alex to take a fighting stance, bring out his pistol and defend himself, but he sagged instead, looking defeated. What had become of her friend, the war hero who went up the ranks so fast he became the youngest Captain ever? Where had Alex Manes, the fearless soldier, best swordsman in the Kingdom, gone?

She’d seen the change, of course. The last year hadn’t been easy on Alex. Ever since Michael first came to the court, he’d been different. There was a spring in his steps, at first, just knowing that Michael was alive, but with the months passing, with Michael showing his loyalty to Jesse Manes at every turn and his hatred of Alex, it had grown into a weight, a ball and chain he dragged everywhere with him.

Liz hadn’t realized that it had gotten that bad. Alex wasn’t defensive, he was resigned. It was almost like he wanted Michael to kill him. Like he felt that he deserved it.

He gave Maria the reins of his horse, and turned back to Michael, facing him.

“We can still work this out,” he said, his voice low and sad. “There are other ways, Michael. You don’t have to do this.”

“Oh, I believe I do,” Michael snarled, still speaking loudly so that everyone in the square could hear him. “You had me hanged, Alex. On the day we should have been wedded.”

Alex looked stricken. “I didn’t–”

“I was in your bed, for months. I know who you are, deep inside. Definitely not a morally uptight Musketeer. You disgust me.”

“We can settle this like gentlemen,” Alex said, hand going for his sword. “Last time I was injured, but we can duel again. The King isn’t there to stop us from dueling to the death this time. You can have your reparation.”

Michael waved his pistol around. “Damn the rules!”

“Michael!” Liz cried out. This was too much. If Alex wasn’t going to defend himself, then she would. “The King will never forgive you if you do this.”

“The King is my brother,” Michael spit. “He’ll choose me over one Musketeer. Especially one who’s been a thorn in everyone’s side for so long.”

Liz closed her eyes. She wanted to believe that it wasn’t true, that Max truly respected Alex and wouldn’t stand for this, but how well did she really know the King? Just because he liked her, because he always asked her to be his guard and they’d had a few moments together, didn’t mean she knew what he was thinking. This was a matter of politics, the King and the Prime Minister, the Musketeers and the Red Guard. It would never be a simple question of friendships and personal preference.

When she opened her eyes again, Michael had his pistol trained on Alex.

“Michael,” Alex murmured. “Please. I never wanted this. I loved you.” He had tears running down his cheeks.

Michael’s jaw was set, but he twitched at the words.

“You never loved me,” he snarled. “I was just a toy to you, that you discarded at the first occasion. How was it like, Alex, to see me hang at the end of a rope? How did it feel?”

Alex let out a sob. Michael locked eyes with him.

It all happened fast. Michael aimed his pistol just as Alex looked away, devastated. The shot rang out like a death sentence, echoing across the square.

“Alex!” Liz screamed, as her friend collapsed. She ran to Alex’s side, all thoughts of safety be damned. He was lying on his side, unmoving.

“Lord Michael!” someone cried. The Red Guards around the square started moving, rallying around Michael as the Musketeers took out their guns. But there wasn’t going to be an all-out battle, not today, not like this. Michael looked at them disdainfully and turned away, taking his men with him.

“Kyle! Kyle, come here right now!” Maria yelled toward the open gate of the garrison, joining Liz at Alex’s side.

But Jenna Cameron was already moving Alex, checking his pulse. “It's too late,” she said. “He's gone.”

Liz stayed frozen for a second, incapable of believing it. She looked between Alex’s still form and Michael, now retreating from the square without even a look behind him.

“Come back, you coward!” Liz screamed at the top of her lungs. She launched toward him, but Maria caught her across the waist and held her back, sobbing.

Michael’s steps halted for a brief moment, but he didn’t turn. He kept walking away until he disappeared down a side street.

Liz collapsed against Maria, and they both fell to their knees crying, cradling Alex’s lifeless body.

King’s Gambit

A year ago

Liz winced as Alex hit the floor hard, head first, grunting in pain. The whole court cheered, but watching it brought her no joy, no excitement. Alex was the best swordsman in the whole Kingdom, he should have easily won against a fresh-faced arrogant Lord, bastard of the King or not. But the asshole was good, and he’s provoked Alex when he was already injured, just a week out of being stabbed grievously enough that his left arm was of no use. Liz seethed in anger as he sneered at Alex from above.

“Come on, you’ve got to surrender,” she murmured under her breath. She hoped her friend would have the common sense to understand that his health was worth more than winning this ridiculous duel, even if he felt the heavy gaze of his father, the Prime Minister, on him.

Maria, beside her, was holding her breath just as much. She knew how much Alex’s abused body could handle, and this was already too much. They sighed in unison as Alex rose to his feet once again, stumbling on his boot-covered wooden leg before dropping into a fighting stance. Lord Michael goaded him openly, exchanging a few parried blow before he plunged under Alex’s guard and elbowed him hard in the temple. Alex crumpled to the floor.

Liz was almost relieved that Alex didn’t rise again, until she realized that he’d passed out. Maria rushed to his side, taking his pulse, and Liz only started breathing again when she looked up and nodded.

“Goddammit, Alex,” she whispered. Cameron squeezed her shoulder from behind.

They both sighed in relief when Alex made it back to his feet with Maria’s help, and knelt in front of the King.

“You fought well, Captain,” the King said. “But my son is an excellent swordsman, and you are obviously injured. Do you accept your defeat?”

“I do,” Alex answered through gritted teeth.

“Very well. Then I declare Michael, count of Dimaras, the winner of this duel. Michael, will that satisfy your call for justice?”

“It will for now, my King,” Michael answered, kneeling beside Alex. “The rest of my claims will be settled another day.”

Liz stared at him, wondering exactly what he had against Alex. She’d never seen him before, so it was obviously something from Alex’s past, from the time he never spoke about. Alex had that look on his face that she’d only seen on his worst days, the ones where he drowned himself in wine, or trained until he collapsed in exhaustion.

There was a story there, and it wasn’t a happy one.

It took several days for it to come out. Alex spent them in the worst mood, spending his days in the armory despite his injuries, hacking at straw mannequins until he couldn’t feel his arm anymore. His friends didn’t push him. Liz and Maria recounted the duel to Kyle in detail, of course, but they didn’t try to force the story out.

They knew their friend. Words didn’t come easily to Alex even on the best of days, but now between his concussion and his exhaustion, he could barely string together a sentence. He seemed to be in shock.

When he was finally ready, one night at the tavern, after almost a full bottle of wine, the words came out stumbling over themselves. It was disjointed, slurred, barely intelligible, but Liz understood enough. There was a boy, once. Lord Michael, before he was the King’s bastard, when he was just a street orphan. He and Alex had fallen in love and gotten engaged. Alex’s father had disapproved, and made it clear, but they were going to elope.

And one day, Jesse Manes had found them in the gardener’s shed, and he’d glimpsed the fleur de lys branded on Michael’s shoulder, marking him a thief and a convict. Alex hadn’t cared, he’d trusted Michael, but it gave Jesse the opportunity he’d been waiting for to destroy them.

He’d attacked Michael with a hammer, and then, by the authority granted to him as the lord of his lands, he had sentenced him to death. Alex had been powerless. The last thing Michael had seen before the rope suffocated him was Alex’s tears.

Except that somehow, Michael was alive. And he held Alex responsible for what had happened to him. His knight in shining armor, the one Alex had thought would steal him away from his monster of a father, had become the black bishop of Jesse Manes’ game, intent on taking his revenge against Alex.

“Ten years learning how to live in a world without him,” Alex sobbed into his bottle when he finished. “What do I do now?”

Liz didn’t have an answer. She hugged him tight until he fell asleep.

Endgame

Now

On the day of Alex’s funeral, the sun shone high and hot in the sky and it felt like it was the universe’s way of laughing at them. Liz got up early to clean her leathers and polish her boots until they shone brighter than they should have been able to, given how worn they were. She checked her uniform meticulously, taking particular care of the fleur de lys engraved pauldron that marked her commission and the expensive rapier Alex had gifted her years ago. Squaring her shoulders for the hard day ahead, she walked down the ranks of solemn Musketeers, adjusting blue capes and leather doublets as she gave out orders. Alex deserved them at their best, and she was going to make sure that they were.

The service was beautiful and heartbreaking. Commander Valenti gave the eulogy and all the Musketeers stood at attention under the heat as the casket was lowered into the ground. Alex had been a well-respected and beloved Captain, who’d always taken care of his men.

Liz felt a pang when she saw Gregory Manes, freshly returned from the war on their border, shed a tear as he threw a rose on the casket. He was the only one of Alex’s brothers that she liked, the only one who supported him. Jesse Manes stood, impassible, as people came to offer their condolences. He never even twitched a muscle, and Liz hated him for it.

She kept observing him throughout. This was the man who had had his own son killed. They all knew whose orders Michael had acted on, even if he’d pretended to do it out of revenge. Liz, whose own father was an immigrant tavern owner who’d done everything for his daughters, couldn’t understand how a man like Jesse Manes could even exist. He hadn’t hesitated to have Alex murdered because Alex threatened his position as the Prime Minister.

And now he stood there and didn’t even have the decency to show some grief. He was dressed in the black of mourning, but he looked at people with the same disdain, the same arrogance as he always did.

This was a man who thought himself untouchable.

Liz was going to prove that he wasn’t. They were moving toward the last stretch of the game, and even with Alex gone, she would make sure Jesse Manes didn’t win. She patted the stack of letters tucked into her leather doublet. One way or another, Alex would be avenged.

Zwischenzug

Three months ago

“Alex!” Maria exclaimed as Alex joined them at the long mess table in the garrison’s courtyard. Kyle moved to give Alex space to sit down on the bench, while Liz grabbed a bowl of soup for him. “Where were you? We looked for you everywhere!”

“Did Commander Valenti ask after me?” Alex asked, dropping onto the bench.

It wasn’t the first time, in the last few months, that he’d disappeared on them like this. He had done that before, but usually they found him passed out somewhere in a tavern, or occasionally curled up in bed in his room, in too much pain to move. But recently, it had changed. He rarely drank too much anymore, and wherever he went every few days, he came back looking rested and content. It wasn’t common when it came to Alex, so his friends hadn’t pushed him to reveal his whereabouts. That day, though, he seemed on edge.

“No, we just thought we might hit the tavern,” Liz answered. “Dad is making rice pudding tonight.”

“I have something to tell you first,” Alex said, lowering his voice. They all leaned in to listen. “I just came from the Palace. You’ve all heard that Princess Isobel is pregnant?”

They nodded. It was the talk of the month everywhere in the city. Princess Isobel was King Max’s twin sister, and since the death of the old King four months ago, the next in line for the throne. King Max had yet to marry, even though he was already twenty-eight, so Princess Isobel and Prince Noah’s child would be the first Prince or Princess of the new generation.

“You remember how I told you that my father will try to regain more power?”

Liz nodded. “He had the old King’s ear, but Max hates him. He’s been talking about appointing a new Prime Minister.”

“My father won’t stand for it,” Alex said. “He will move against Max soon. He knows Max won’t let him keep his position for long.”

“But what can he do?” Maria asked.

Alex’s eyes turned stormy. “He’s ruthless. He plays the long game, and he’ll stop at nothing to get even a scrap of power. My source says that Prince Noah is his henchman, he’s the one who convinced the old King to arrange this marriage. He wants to get Isobel on the throne.”

Liz widened her eyes in shock. “By killing Max?”

Alex just nodded.

“But Isobel hates him just as much as Max does,” Maria said. “It wouldn’t change anything, would it?”

Alex bit his lip. “It looks like he has some kind of leverage on her. With that and Noah’s influence, he could get her to do what he wants. And–” he hesitated.

“What?” Kyle pressed him.

“Now that Isobel’s pregnant, he could also eliminate her as soon as she gives birth,” Alex sighed. “If he played his cards right, he’d be named Regent.”

Liz swore under her breath. This was bad, worse than she could have imagined. “How do you know all that?” she asked.

“I’m getting...inside information,” Alex answered. “That’s all I can tell you, I can’t put my source’s life at risk. But we have to stop my father.”

“But how?”

Alex ran a hand over his face, suddenly looking exhausted. “I don’t know yet. But I will figure it out. In the meantime, we’ll double up all our guard duties for both Max and Isobel. We won’t let them get hurt.”

Castling

A month ago

The convent was easy to defend, its thick outer walls ready to weather a siege, but the inside was cold and sparsely furnished. The weather was just starting to warm up, spring giving way to summer, but Liz shivered as she stared at the lime-washed walls, her linen shirt too thin to keep out the chill.

“I can't believe you slept with the King!” Alex exclaimed, throwing his hands up. He was pacing back and forth in the corridor outside the Mother Superior’s private chambers, which had been ceded to the King for the night. They’d arrived at the remote convent the night before, under fire from a host of unidentified mercenaries, intent on killing the King.

“Alex, not so loud,” Liz whispered back. She wrung her hands together, nervous. “It was special circumstances, okay? He was scared and someone was trying to kill him. He just needed some reassurance.”

“And you had to sleep with him?” Alex lowered his voice. “After what happened to Rosa? Liz, did he force you?”

“No, of course not!” Liz clasped a hand over Alex's mouth, worriedly looking at the door behind which King Max was asleep. “He didn't force me. He didn't even ask me, I offered.”

“I don't understand,” Alex said. “We're here to protect him. We spent the whole day yesterday under heavy fire because someone is after him. And he's the King, Liz!”

“I know.” Liz looked away. She hadn’t meant for this to happen. Max had looked so down, so alone, she’d just wanted to offer comfort. The sex had been a spur of the moment thing, and although she was convinced neither of them had really forgotten why it was wrong, they hadn’t cared. Max might be the King, but he was a human being just like any of them, with his own fears and desires, and Liz had felt close to him ever since he started requesting her as his personal guard more often.

“Oh my God, you're in love with him,” Alex realized. “Fuck. That's a development I didn't expect.”

“I'm not in love with him!” Liz protested, but her voice wavered. She could see in Alex’s eyes that he was far from convinced.

She was about to argue more when she saw a nun approach from the corner of her eyes.

“News?” Alex asked.

The nun, a young, fresh-faced woman who seemed nervous and shy under her black veil, pointed toward the convent’s courtyard. “Your friends are back.”

“Good. We'll be with them in a minute,” Alex said. “We'll talk again later,” he added to Liz.

“Alex?” she asked, her voice quiet.

“Yes?”

“Can we keep this quiet for now?”

Alex sighed. “Of course. The King sleeping with a commoner, be it a Musketeer, is not something we want to shout from the rooftops, anyway. Is this about Kyle?”

Liz shrugged. She and Kyle had found comfort in each other, back when they first became Musketeers. Liz had never been in love, and she liked Kyle more as her friend than whatever they had been back then, but she knew he still felt something for her that wasn’t just friendship. She didn’t want to hurt him, and knowing that she’d slept with the King, of all people, surely would.

“Fine,” Alex grumbled. “Let's go.”

He had sent Maria and Kyle with most of the Musketeer team that had traveled with them to pursue their assailants yesterday, after they had managed to make them flee. Liz was relieved that there hadn’t been a single casualty on their side, whether Musketeer or civilian. They had done their best to protect both the nuns and the King, but if it had come to it, the King would have had to be Alex’s priority, and Liz knew he would forgive himself for putting nuns in the line of fire, however willing they had been.

Their friends looked tired and dirty, but not injured. “Did you catch them?” Alex asked.

“No,” Kyle shook his head. “We almost got one, but they disappeared. Only thing we found is one of their horses.” He gestured behind him to one of the Musketeers, who lead a horse over.

“Any identifying marks?” Alex asked.

“Only this,” Maria said. She pointed to the embroidery on one of the saddlebags. Five dots, joined by a thread, making a lopsided W, in yellow thread on the dark leather.

Alex took in a shocked breath.

“What is it? Do you recognize it?”

“That's Cassiopeia,” Alex said. “That's Michael's symbol. His men are the ones who attacked us.”

He brought a hand to his throat, cupping the ever-present gold medallion and ring he wore on a chain. Liz had never asked what they were, but since Alex had told them his story, she’d assumed it was his engagement ring, and maybe a portrait of Michael. She’d seen him do this very gesture many times over the past few months, nearly any time Michael’s presence at court came up, but rarely with such anguish on his face.

“This was in the saddlebag,” Maria said, handing over a stack of what looked like letters, tied with a brown cord. Alex took them with a frown. “Nothing else?”

“No. I’m sorry.”

He nodded tightly, and ran a hand over the embroidered constellation. “I should have known my father would send you,” he muttered. “He knows where to place his pieces. What have you done, Michael? What are we going to do?”

Giuco Piano

Ten years ago

They were seventeen, and in love. The sky was full of stars above them, on a warm summer night. Alex and Michael were lying in the grass at the very edge of the Manes estate, behind the gardener’s shed. The gardener, for whom Michael worked during the day, had long retired in his house further up on the hill, and Michael had brought out the blankets he used to sleep on a straw bed in the shed.

Alex spun the thin golden ring on his finger. Michael had given it to him earlier that day, going down on one knee, a plan already formed for them to get married and escape the Manes estate and its bigotry by the end of the summer. He had made the ring himself, during the shifts he picked up at the village smithy. He’d even plated it with gold he’d saved up from the jewelry people asked him to repair.

Michael was good with his hands. He was good with everything, really. He was smart and quick-witted, and he knew the name of every plant in the estate’s garden. He’d taught himself to read and write, and he spent his night poring over thick tomes Alex snuck out of his father’s library for him.

It wasn’t fair that he wasn’t allowed to make use of all of this knowledge, just because he’d been born a commoner. An orphan. He’d told Alex about all he’d had to do just to survive, unable to even get an apprenticeship because he had no parents to sign a contract. The years of labor, from an age too young to remember. The abusive employers, the orphanages, the streets.

The jail he’d ended up in, and escaped from. Alex knew what the mark branded on his shoulder meant. It meant that Michael had been convicted and thrown in prison, at fourteen, for stealing food from the market. It meant that even if Alex’s father had been willing to let him marry a man, and a commoner to boot, it would never, ever be a criminal like Michael.

That was okay, because Alex had no intention of asking him. In a few days, he’d turn eighteen, and they would run away together.

Right now, they could enjoy a summer evening together under the stars, far away from prying eyes.

“This is Ursa Major,” Michael pointed at the sky. “It looks a bit like a frying pan. Then Ursa Minor. The brightest star is called Polaris, it's the brightest of all stars. Then Draco, the dragon, goes around it, see? A curve here, and then back. My favorite, though, is Cassiopeia.”

“Where is it?” Alex asked.

“There,” Michael pointed a little to the left. “It has five major stars. Like a W, see?”

“I think so,” Alex murmured. “Yes, got it.”

He turned to press a kiss on Michael's cheek. “I like listening to you. Keep going.”

“Cassiopeia is the prettiest,” Michael said. “It was named after a queen who thought she was the most beautiful person in the world, more even than the nymphs. She angered a god, Poseidon, and he set a sea monster on her kingdom. She had to sacrifice her daughter to appease him.”

“Ugh,” Alex made a face. “That's not a nice story.”

Michael shrugged. “I like it, I think. The daughter was saved by a hero and married him. Sometimes I wonder what my mom sacrificed me for. Maybe she's safe and happy somewhere out there.”

Alex squeezed his hand. “Yeah. I wonder that too,” he murmured. “My father would happily sacrifice any of his sons for the kingdom. Me especially. He wouldn't even blink.”

Michael sighed. “I wish that weren't true. We'll get out of here as soon as we're married, right? Then he can't touch us anymore.”

“We'll never truly be out of his reach,” Alex said. “He's the highest ranking officer in the kingdom already. He'll be Prime Minister soon.”

“Then we'll just have to go really far away,” Michael whispered.

Alex closed his eyes and let Michael kiss him, wishing that were possible.

Fork

Now

“It’s done,” Michael stated, throwing his pistol on Jesse Manes’ desk. It made a dull thud. Manes looked up and deigned giving Michael his attention. “He’s dead. I’m sure the word will reach your office soon.”

“Any clean-up needed?”

“No. Full daylight, as you specified. Dozens of witnesses can testify that I did it alone. You have nothing to worry about.”

Manes stares at him for a few seconds, then pushed the pistol away from his paperwork and put it aside. “Good,” he said, in clear dismissal.

Michael ignored the implicit order and dropped into a chair, pulling his feet up on the desk. Manes scowled.

“I thought I would feel something more than this...emptiness,” Michael muttered. “I loved him, once.”

“Are you sorry you killed him?” Manes asked him, annoyed.

“Regrets are pointless. Right now, I need help. His Musketeer friends won't let this go unpunished, and even my status will not be enough, not if they can reveal that I'm branded.”

“You're just as weak as Alex after all,” Manes sneered. “I thought you were different.”

“Weak? No. Just practical. I haven't forgotten that you're the one who gave the order to hang me, Minister. I have very few reasons to trust you.”

“You're right, you're not like Alex. Maybe I can still make something of you.”

“You can use me,” Michael offered. “Ortecho and DeLuca want revenge. They want me. Exchange me against the letters.”

“They have leverage. Why would they give it over?”

“It's become personal. Alex was the one who wanted you gone. The other Musketeers care about very little beside their wine and their petty quarrels with the Red Guards. You hand me over, they'll let the letters go.”

“What about you? Why would you even offer that?”

Michael shrugged. “I'll take my chances against them. I came to the city to kill Alex, and I have accomplished my mission. With the old King dead, I doubt Max will keep me in court much longer, and if he learns about my past, he won't take it well. My best bet is to disappear again.”

“So you think you can slip their watch and escape the city?”

“With Alex dead, I'm the best swordsman in the city. I can take two Musketeers.”

Manes shifted in his seat. “Very well. We'll offer the exchange.”

Bad Bishop

A year ago

“Careful,” Alex murmured, wincing in pain. He shifted his position until he was more comfortable on the bed, waiting until the ache in his shoulder subsided a little.

“Sorry,” Michael said sheepishly, untangling himself from Alex’s limbs. Propping himself up on his elbow, he trailed his fingers down Alex’s chest to his navel, tracing every scar.

It had been three days since the duel, since Michael had declared his feud with Alex in front of the court and then tended to his wounds and forgave him in the privacy of his chambers. Alex’s arm was still too sore to use, though he’d discarded the sling, and his concussion was just starting to clear up, so he was off duty for the time being, by Kyle’s order. Michael had found them a room in a small inn outside the city, known to be discreet, where they’d spent the night learning each other’s body all over again.

They’d changed, in ten years. Both of them had become different men, forged by hardships and age, but their love hadn’t altered. It was scarred by the wounds Jesse Manes had inflicted on it, just like their bodies, but it was just as strong.

Alex reached out with his good arm to touch Michael’s throat, which he was seeing bare for the first time. The deep rope burn there had become white with age, but it was impossible to miss without the high-collared uniform to hide it, a stark reminder of what their love had cost Michael.

Michael’s face fell, sadness replacing his prior playful smile. “It wasn’t you, Alex,” he said.

“I know,” Alex murmured. It didn’t make it hurt less. He’d blamed himself for ten years, for letting his father catch them and giving him an excuse to go after Michael, and he wasn’t going to stop now. He’d failed Michael in every way. He’d watched him hang, unable to save him from that fate.

He’d walked away, unable to stand the sight of his lover at the end of a rope, and that had somehow allowed Michael to escape.

“I love you,” Michael said. “What your father did isn’t your fault.”

Alex just sighed and let his hand fall back to the bed. Michael leaned in to kiss him, softly, and continued his exploration of Alex’s body with his left hand, the scarred, gnarled fingers brushing against his skin.

He reached past Alex’s waist and down his naked hip, to where his right leg ended just below the knee. Alex froze. His wooden leg was resting somewhere beside the bed, the stump naked and ugly, swollen from overuse. He hadn’t let Michael touch it yet, or even really look at it.

But Michael didn’t pause, didn’t recoil back in disgust. He kept touching Alex’s skin, his fingers light like a feather despite their obvious stiffness. Alex shivered as he slowly went over the scars, then back up the inside of his thigh.

“That alright?” Michael asked in a whisper, looking back up at him.

Alex nodded mutely.

“What’s this?” Michael asked, cupping the medallion that hung from Alex’s neck..

Alex blushed and hung his head. “Open it,” he murmured.

Michael’s breath hitched when he saw the tiny gold plaque inside the medallion, delicately engraved with the lopsided W of Cassiopeia.

“I had it made after you—” Alex cut himself off and swallowed, the words stuck in his throat. “I could never forget you, but I needed to remember what I was fighting for. It kept me going.”

Michael ran his thumb over the engraving, then around the clumsily made golden ring he’d once given Alex.

“When all this is over, I’ll make you a much better ring,” he said.

Alex smiled tightly. “I like this one. But we can get matching rings for our wedding, after all this is over.”

It felt weird to even dare think about such a future, after the one they’d dreamed of had been ripped away from them. It felt like tempting fate. But Alex wanted to daydream again, to stop living like he’d die tomorrow.

To stop wishing that he’d died ten years ago.

“How’s the plan going?” he asked, shaking those thoughts out of his head.

“I think he’s starting to believe me, after the duel. He knows I’m the one who stabbed you in the shoulder too. I’m still sorry about that, by the way.”

“You don’t need to say it every time we meet,” Alex snorted. “I know. I understand why it was necessary.”

Michael nodded. “We’ll need him to really trust me, though. He needs to think that I hate you enough to be willing to ally with him, and that’s not going to be easy.”

“My father isn’t an easy man to fool,” Alex contemplated. “Do you know how to play chess?”

“I’ve learned,” Michael said.

He hadn’t known, back when they were engaged. Alex remembered trying to teach him the basics, but they hadn’t had time for more. He hoped Michael’s game was solid, because they were going to need it. “My father is a master player. Beating him at his own game will be hard, but he taught me well.” Alex bit his lip. “He’d use his belt every time I lost. Which was every game, until I finally learned.”

Michael made a complicated face, full of anger and sadness but also impatience. “Then you’ll have to guide me,” he said with a playful smile. “I can be your pawn.”

“Nah,” Alex shook his head, smiling along. “You’re no pawn. You’re...a bishop, maybe. White bishop pretending to be black.”

“I like that,” Michael smirked.

“I’ll like it more when we’ve won the game,” Alex replied.

Queen’s Pawn Game

Four months ago

“Where are we going?”

“I think I’ve figured out the next part of our plan,” Michael said, dragging Alex by the hand. Alex checked that no one was likely to see them, but the place was empty for now. Princess Isobel’s private quarters were off-limits to everyone but her personal servants and, apparently, Michael.

“Michael,” he called, before Michael could take him any further. Alex stumbled a little on his wooden leg when Michael stopped brutally. “Tell me.”

“Okay,” Michael relented. “I’ve been looking for something to use against your father for months. I’ve finally found it. Something that can bring him down.”

“What is it?”

“I asked Isobel—”

“What?” Alex interrupted him in shock. “Do you know how dangerous that is? What makes you sure she won’t just throw us in jail for plotting against the Prime Minister?”

“Calm down, Alex,” Michael sighed. “I know what I’m doing. Isobel wants him gone as much as we do.”

Alex just shook his head, still in shock.

“She says she knows how to get proof that he abused my father’s confidence,” Michael said. “Look, at least heart her out. She’s my sister, she’ll never rat me out.”

“What about me?” Alex asked.

“She admires you. And she hates your father. She will help, I promise.”

“Fine,” Alex relented, though his misgivings weren’t alleviated much. He’d avoided telling even Liz, Maria and Kyle about his plan, by fear that it would somehow get back to his father’s ears. And Michael went straight to the Princess? There was no way this was going to end well.

Isobel was waiting for them in her sitting room, regally sitting on a richly-decorated armchair. She was wearing a blue satin dress with a complex embroidery along her corset and a mounting collar, with matching sapphire necklace and earrings. Her hair was pulled up with pins and braided at the top of her head.

“Captain. Michael,” she welcomed them. “Please sit.”

Alex bowed and obeyed. “Your Highness.”

Isobel didn’t beat around the bush. “Michael told me you’re looking for proof of your father’s misdeeds.”

“I’m—” Alex fumbled, looking for a way to answer that wouldn’t risk implicating him or Michael.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you for details,” Isobel brushed it away with a sweep of her hand. “I believe I know where to find what you need. There are letters. He will not have destroyed them, because they serve as his insurance policy.”

“What do you mean?” Alex asked. “Your Highness,” he added as an afterthought.

“You can drop the address when we are in private,” Isobel said dismissively. “The letters are between him and respected members of the court. They detail a plot fomented to overthrow the old King, years ago. It failed, because some of the plotters opted out at the last moment, but your father keeps the letters as proof to blackmail them into doing his bidding. And if he ever goes down, they will go down with him.”

“If you know all this, why don’t you expose him?” Alex dared to ask. This was not how he was supposed to speak to a member of the Royal Family, and he knew he was overstepping, but he had to know. “What does he have over you?”

Isobel leveled him a glare, but didn’t call him out on his impropriety. She started huffing, but her gaze grew sad instead. “He has Rosa,” she said quietly. “And that means he has me.”

Rosa. Free-spirited, beautiful Rosa. The best of them all, cast out of the court like a criminal and sent back to her father’s country, forbidden from any contact with them.

“You had her exiled!” Alex lost his temper before he could check himself. Rosa had been his best friend, the fourth of the invincible group he formed with Liz and Maria. She should have become Captain, not Alex. But she’d gotten too close to the Princess, and she’d paid the price for it.

That was why he watched Liz’s infatuation with the new King Max, Isobel’s twin brother, with wariness. He wouldn’t let the same thing happen to another of his Musketeers, to Rosa’s little sister.

“I did not,” Isobel sighed. “Your father did. She found those letters, she was going to expose him. Manes had her cast out and convinced my father the King to marry me off to Noah, who is loyal to him. He’s been dangling our relationship over my head for years.”

Alex couldn’t stop his anger now that it was out. He could only think of the tears on Liz’s face when her sister went missing, the months of thinking she was dead in a ditch somewhere. “And you think you got the short end of that stick? Rosa’s all alone in a country she’s never lived in, stripped of everything she accomplished for herself! For all I know she’s still a prisoner, too!” They’d gotten one letter, after months of silence, hand-delivered by one of Isobel’s maids. It had been upbeat and hopeful, like only Rosa could be when things were desperate, and Alex knew she hadn’t told them the whole truth.

Isobel looked away. “I know that, Captain. That’s exactly why I can’t expose your father. I can’t risk Rosa’s life, and he’s capable of having her killed if I take a single step wrong. That’s why I need you.”

“Why now?” Alex asked. “He’s been Prime Minister for eight years. What’s changed?”

Isobel sighed. “You can’t repeat this to anyone. Not even your friends, not until the official announcement is made.”

Alex silently put his hand over his heart as a promise.

“I’m with child,” Isobel said. “My marriage is...what it is, and I was willing to sacrifice many things for the peace of the kingdom, as long as my father was the King. But Max hates your father, and they’re already battling each other by way of new taxes and border strategies. I fear that it will turn into war soon. I won’t let my child get caught in the middle.”

Alex inclined his head. An expectant mother would do a lot for her child, he knew that. And Michael trusted Isobel. He could work with that. “Where are the letters?” he asked.

“Manes keeps them in his office, in a locked drawer.”

Alex exchanged a look with Michael. His father’s office was deep inside the palace, constantly guarded. Getting there without getting caught would be almost impossible.

He stood up and bowed deeply. “I will do my best, your Highness,” he said. He still had misgivings, but if Isobel was telling the truth – and why would she lie? – this was their chance to win the game. The Queen could do a lot of damage on a chess board.

“Captain,” Isobel called him, prompting him to straighten up. “Michael told me some of what happened to the both of you. Manes will not go unpunished for that.”

“He was within his rights,” Alex said bitterly. He didn’t know what to think about the fact that Michael had told Isobel about them, but he had told his friends, too. He couldn’t blame Michael.

“Maybe, but he hurt my brother. He will get what he deserves.”

Alex nodded, still doubtful. “Thank you, your Highness.”

Hedgehog System

Two years ago

Alex propped himself up with one crutch carefully as he tended to his horse. He groaned in pain when the young mare shifted her head brusquely and he had to side step, his stump brushing on his other calf. It had been just over two months since he’d been amputated, and the wound was slow to heal, his body still reeling from the infection that had almost killed him.

He wasn’t really supposed to be up and about, but most of the Musketeers were out on palace duty and he was bored. He couldn’t focus on paperwork anymore and he was too wound up to sleep, so he’d come to the stables to have something to do.

His mare moved again, and Alex barely avoided tumbling to the floor, his balance shot. Maybe this hadn’t been a good idea after all.

“Alex!” a voice called. “Where are you?”

It was Rosa. Alex dropped his brush and grabbed his second crutch, leaning against the wall of the stall. “I’m here!” he called back, making his slow way back to the courtyard.

“Alex,” Rosa sighed, seeing him. She didn’t scold him for leaving his room, which was Alex’s first clue that something was very wrong. The second was the tear tracks on her cheeks.

“What happened?” he asked, worried. He dragged himself to a bench and sat down, gesturing her closer.

“I have to leave,” Rosa said.

Alex frowned. “Leave? The garrison?”

“The country,” Rosa sighed, drying her face. “I have to run.”

“What do you mean?”

“Isobel and I...we got caught,” she sobbed. “I have no choice.”

Alex closed his eyes briefly, then put a hand on her shoulder. “Rosa, who caught you?” He knew that Rosa has been seeing the Princess in secret for months, since before he and Liz had gone to war. They’d been discreet, but Alex had found a note Isobel had given Rosa by accident once, and she’d confessed everything.

Rosa bit her lip and met his eyes, hesitating. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Isobel is engaged, and I’m just a commoner. If I don’t leave, they’ll have me executed.”

Alex hugged her as she cried, until Liz and Maria returned from the palace. The goodbyes were painful. Rosa was forced to pack light, leaving with only her horse – most of what she had belonged to the garrison, anyway. She could barely stand to tell her father, but he accepted the truth sadly, preparing her as much food as she could carry for the journey.

Liz collapsed as soon as Rosa’s horse passed the garrison gates, weeping in Alex’s arms. Rosa could never come back, now. She’d have to make a whole new life somewhere, in a country at war with their own, and it was hard to tell if they’d ever see her again.

Center Game

Four months ago

Getting their hands on the letters turned out to be easier than they’d hoped. It was once they found them that things started to go awry.

Michael had orchestrated a commotion in the palace, enough to attract the Red Guards that stood outside of Jesse Manes’ office away. Alex knew that his father was attending the King, so he picked the lock and took Michael inside. They’d both been in the office many times, and they knew where Jesse kept his confidential papers and prized possessions. The drawer was locked, but it was the work of minutes to get it opened.

There were multiple stacks of paper inside. One was an entire bundle of blank lettres de cachet signed by the old King that made Alex wince internally. His father having that kind of power didn’t sit well with him. These letters could condemn someone to death without a trial or any kind of proof of a crime – only the whim of whoever held it. It was undoubtedly how Jesse had managed to have Rosa exiled.

The second bundle proved to be the one they were looking for. Alex untied it and started looking over the letters to check that it was all of it while Michael stood guard outside.

“Michael, look at those names,” Alex pointed at the headers of some of the letters.

Michael approached and read over his shoulder. “Valenti, DeLuca… They were involved?”

“It looks like it.” Alex sighed, his excitement dropping. “If these letters implicate them, we can’t use them. I can’t do this to Mimi, or to the Commander and Kyle.”

“It looks like it’s only the old Commander, Kyle’s father, not his mother,” Michael said, leafing through the sheets of paper. “But Mimi DeLuca was definitely involved.”

“So this is all useless?”

Michael didn’t have time to answer, because there was a commotion outside. “Guards! Why did you leave your post?” It was Jesse Manes’ voice.

“Shit,” Alex murmured.

His father was too close to the door, there was no way they would be able to get out in time.

“Hide,” Michael whispered hurriedly.

Alex didn’t have time to grab the letters from where he’d dropped them back into the drawer. He stumbled to the balcony and flattened himself against the window frame, hoping against hope that his father wouldn’t notice. It was a terrible hiding place, but there was nowhere else in the office that would fit him.

“Lord Michael, what is the meaning of this?” he heard his father ask.

“I happened to pass by your office on my way to see what was going on in the north wing,” Michael answered, his voice loud and formal. “I saw that it was unguarded and opened, and when I checked that everything was alright, I was almost ran into by someone fleeing the place. I think they searched your desk. I tried to stop them, but I was too late.”

Alex heard someone ruffling through papers.

“Minister, it was a Musketeer,” Michael added. “I saw the uniform.”

Alex held his breath.

“Alex,” Jesse muttered. “Of course. Him or one of his friends. No point in trying to close down the palace, those damned Musketeers have free reign here.”

“I don’t think he had time to take anything,” Michael said.

Jesse ruffled through papers some more, then sighed. “I have to go attend the King,” he said. “I’ll leave you in charge of tightening the palace security.”

“Yes, Minister,” Michael answered. “I will see to it immediately.”

Alex heard their steps retreat, and then the door closed. He didn’t dare move, in case Jesse had remained in the office for any reason, but he couldn’t hear any noise.

Several minutes later, the door opened again. “Alex?” Michael called quietly.

Alex stepped out back inside, grumbling as his leg protested his standing on it for too long. “He’s gone?”

“Yeah, he’s with the King. I sent the guards away for now and made sure no one would notice. We can’t take the letters now, though, or he’ll know.”

Alex cursed through his teeth. “Why did you have to tell him it was a Musketeer?”

“I needed his attention off of me,” Michael said. “If he thinks it’s you, he won’t search for the person responsible any further. The plan doesn’t work if he doesn’t trust me.”

“What plan? Even if we can steal the letters at a later date, we can’t use them. I can’t do this to Mimi and Maria.”

They discreetly walked out of the office and into another corridor, entering the Princess’s wing. This was the only place in the palace where they could be reasonably certain that they wouldn’t be overheard by someone with ill-intent.

“I think I have an idea,” Michael said. “It won’t be easy, and it might be dangerous. But that’s the way you play chess, right? Take risks?”

Alex shook his head. “My father wouldn’t agree with you. He makes hard decisions, but he doesn’t take risks.”

“And you?”

Alex shrugged. “I’ve learned that playing by his rules doesn’t give me the advantage.”

“Good,” Michael smiled. “So, maybe we can’t use the letters to incriminate him, but there are other ways they could be helpful. Getting my hands on them will take some time, but it should be easy enough. He’s starting to trust me.”

“How is that useful to us?”

“He’s going to make his move against Max soon. We need him to trust me enough to ask me to do his dirty work.”

Alex blinked. “You want him to ask you to kill Max?”

“I’ll start dropping hints,” Michael said. “That I’m frustrated that Max won’t give me more power, unlike the old King, that I’ve done this kind of thing before… With my past, he won’t have trouble believing me, and if he thinks he has leverage over me, he won’t think twice.”

“So you want to what, stage a murder?”

Michael laughed. “No, just convincingly fail at my task. And once he’s asked me that, we’ll have proof that he’s conspiring against the King.”

“He won’t give you the orders in writing,” Alex said. “He’s more cunning than that. It will be your word against his.”

“That’s where the letters come in,” Michael smirked.

Drunken Knight Opening

Two weeks ago

It happened in a matter of seconds. One moment, Alex was stumbling around the town square outside the garrison, drunk and depressed, ready to collapse into bed. The next moment, he had Michael in a choke-hold, and he was holding a dagger to his throat. Michael had shown up out of nowhere, running from a back alley, and Alex honestly couldn't have explained it if he tried, except to say that his body reacted long before his mind caught up.

“Alex,” Michael let out a strangled whisper. He tried to free himself, but Alex was restraining him too strongly.

“I knew you weren't telling the truth,” Alex hissed. “You had ulterior motives. You just can't let things go, can you?”

“Alex, I don't know what you're talking about,” Michael tried.

“Alex!” Maria called from the garrison door. Alex turned to her sharply, almost driving the knife straight into Michael's neck in the process. “What are you doing? He's the King's brother!”

“He's a liar and a thief,” Alex spit out. “And my father's spy.”

“Alex,” Maria tried, her hands up to show she was harmless. “You're drunk. Free him and we can talk.”

Alex’s rage spiked, hard and unforgiving in his chest. Maria was looking at him with something like pity in her eyes, like he was good for nothing more than her contempt, a shadow of her once great capacity for compassion. Maria, who had let herself be seduced by Michael, who still defended him after Alex had told her everything. She’d probably given him information about Alex, ways to reach his weaknesses.

“You!” Alex rounded in on her, not letting go of Michael. “You slept with him! Are you in love with him?”

“You don't understand,” Maria sighed. Liz came up behind her, her face resigned and sad.

“No, I don't,” Alex said.

“I didn't know, Alex. I swear I didn't.”

They circled each other a few times, in slow steps. Alex could see Liz out of the corner of his eye, ready to intervene, Kyle and his medical kit, waiting.

“Will that do?” he murmured in Michael’s ear.

“Lots of people watching us,” Michael whispered back. “I see Red Guards coming. It should convince your father.”

He chose that moment to free himself of the choke-hold. The main gauche nicked his neck, but the amount of blood wasn’t enough for it to be a serious injury.

Alex immediately drew his sword, but he stumbled, too drunk to fight properly. Michael threw him stumbling backward into Liz's arms, a slash of his blade sending fire down his arm. And just like that, the fight was over.

Michael disappeared into the crowd, swallowed into the sea of red uniforms arriving at the scene.

Promotion

Now

“How was my funeral?” Alex asked from his seat by the window, in the shadows, where he’d been watching the garrison’s courtyard slowly fill up.

“Very emotional,” Liz said, carelessly throwing her rapier onto the bed. “Commander Valenti had a lot to say about you. Your father looked very uncomfortable.”

“I'm sorry to have missed it, I wish I'd seen that. Any news from Michael?”

Maria shook her head. “Not since he killed you.”

“You’re never going to let us live this one down, are you?” Alex asked.

Faking his shooting in the middle of the street had been a rehearsed affair, with the help of a blank pistol and creative use of cow blood. Alex’s best friends and Commander Valenti were the only ones who knew. They’d had to bring the Commander in on the whole plan, but though she’d scolded them about taking unnecessary risks, she was overjoyed to get the opportunity to get back at her long-time rival. Jesse Manes had been a thorn in her shoe for too long.

“You and your lover just faked your murder to take down your father,” Maria said. “Things don’t get much more romantic than that.”

“You read too much,” Kyle grumbled.

Liz plopped down on Alex’s bed. “What now?”

“Michael should be talking to my father as we speak,” Alex explains. “He’ll propose to exchange himself for the letters. And since my father will think that getting revenge against Michael is more important to you than blackmailing him, we’ll have the leverage we need.”

“I still think this is a needlessly complicated plan,” Maria crossed her arms on her chest.

Alex shrugged. “But it will work,” he said. “We have a few days to prepare, and I have a mission.” He pointed at Maria. “You’re going to wait for Michael to contact you, and set up the exchange. I’ll give you the details.” He turned to Liz. “Since I need to make myself scarce until then, you and I are going on a trip. We’re going to get Rosa back.”

Liz and Maria looked at each other. “You think it’s safe?” Maria asked.

“I’ll make sure it is,” Alec nodded. “Our job is to get her here. Michael will handle the rest.”

Liz’s face lit up and she got up from the bed to hug Alex. “Thank you,” she murmured in his ear. “Thank you. Dad’s going to be so happy.”

Magnet Sacrifice

Two weeks ago

“So we finally meet properly,” Michael said with a smile, shaking Liz’s hand, then Maria’s. “I feel like it’s long overdue.”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were avoiding us,” Liz joked.

Alex felt a little like his parallel worlds were colliding, his day life as a Musketeer and his night escapades with Michael. Having Michael here, at the garrison – even if they’d taken precautions and let him in through a back door, and he wouldn’t go past Alex’s office – was both exciting and terrifying. They were playing a dangerous game.

“How did it go?” he asked, cutting the pleasantries short.

“The altercation got back to his ears, as planned,” Michael said. “And he knows you have the letters. He sees you as his main threat, and me as his ally.”

“So you've convinced him that you hate me and that you're on his side?”

“Almost. Just one tiny detail left.” Michael shifted on his feet uncomfortably.

Alex frowned. “And what is that?”

“I need to kill you.”

Alex’s friends erupted in questions and protests, while Alex stared at Michael, considering.

“Eliminate a threat and collar you in the same move,” he said slowly. “That sounds like him.”

Michael nodded. “I think he wants to both be certain that I really hate you, and make sure that he has me under his thumb. If I kill you in broad daylight, in front of witnesses, then he’s the only thing standing between me and jail.”

“He probably likes the dramatic irony of it all, too,” Alex rolled his eyes. It sounded just like his father. He wasn’t a dramatic man for the most part, doing everything with military precision and very little imagination, but when it came to torturing his family, he’d always been inventive. He’d forced Alex to watch Michael be hanged, ten years ago. Alex hated remembering what he’d done to his mother until she left, but it had been ugly.

“So, can we do it? We’d have to make it convincing.”

“Wait, you’re actually going to do it?” Liz protested.

“It’s the only way to get at him,” Michael said. “If I don’t do it, he’ll stop trusting me.”

“Won’t it put a wrench in your plan? You still haven’t told us the whole plan,” Maria accused Alex.

“That’s true,” Alex admitted, raising his hands in the air. “I didn’t want to until we were sure it was going to work. I’ve told you about the letters.” He waved at his desk, where the stack of letters Michael had stolen from Jesse Manes’ office were kept under lock. “My father is very careful not to leave a paper trail. We have the letters, but we can’t use them. Michael can testify that my father had him try to kill Max, but it’s not enough unless we have some kind of confession. So Michael came up with a plan.”

“We both did,” Michael corrected. “You gave me the idea.”

“Let’s say it was a collective effort,” Alex conceded. “My father doesn’t know that we can’t use the letters. Maria’s parentage isn’t public knowledge, and Jim Valenti is dead. He’s desperate to get them back. So we came up with an exchange: the letters, against Michael’s head on a platter. We convinced him that Michael and I hate each other, first with the duel, and more recently when I attacked him.”

“Oh, so that was why,” Maria raised her eyebrows.

Alex nodded. “He’s the King’s brother, so I can’t touch him. My father thinks that I want his hide for how he ‘humiliated’ me. We’ll stage the exchange carefully, in a place where he thinks he has the superior position, and I’ll trick him into a confession. He won’t be able to resist showing me he’s won.”

“That sounds like a really complicated plan,” Maria frowned.

“He’s a master chess player. He’d see through something simpler right away.”

“But then how does it work if Michael ‘kills’ you?” Liz asked.

“It will be even better,” Michael said. “Because he won’t feel threatened anymore. I’ll kill Alex, secure my position. You’ll make the exchange, pretending that you don’t care about the letters and just want revenge. With Alex gone, he’ll think he’s untouchable.”

Zugzwang

Now

“You murderer!” Liz hissed as soon as Michael walked into the church, on Jesse Manes’ heels. Maria put a hand on her wrist to keep her from lunging at Michael.

They had chosen the church for the exchange because it would be empty at this time of the day, and it was neutral ground. Holy ground. Even Jesse Manes wouldn’t dare try something there. He’d come without guards, unwilling to trust any of them with this mission. A few coins had gone to the priest to make sure that they wouldn’t be interrupted.

“You shot him in cold blood!” Liz cried out again. She was a good actress, Michael has to give her that.

“He would have done the same to me,” Michael shrugged, lowering his collar to expose his neck, and the scar there. “He did, once.”

“Entertaining as this is, perhaps we should get down to business,” Manes said coldly. “Give me the letters, and you can do what you want with Michael.”

Liz took a step forward, and Maria let her go. She bowed her head.

“Minister, I’m sorry for you loss. I’m sure that discovering that your son was killed by one of your own men was devastating. I was surprised to hear that Lord Michael was still free.”

“He was...useful,” Manes said. “Are you aware of the contents of the letters?”

“Oh, she knows,” Michael said through his teeth.

Liz put her hand on the hilt of her sword. “Shut up, you traitor,” she spit out.

“She knows you tried to depose the old King,” Michael said anyway, putting as much contempt in his tone as he could. It wasn’t hard. He had plenty of contempt in store for Jesse Manes. “She knows you tried to kill the new one, too. But she doesn’t care, as long as her precious Alex is avenged.”

Manes hissed in shock and grabbed Michael by the collar. “You told them?”

Michael shrugged cockily, no trace of fear on his face. “I told them everything.”

“You’d murder the King, just to get your little favorite on the throne?” Liz asked, moving so that she was on Jesse Manes’ other side. “Why? Haven’t you got enough power already?”

“It wasn’t about power,” Jesse sneered.

“Of course it was,” Michael said, pushing him away. “You just wanted your own puppet. Max is too opinionated for you.”

Jesse let him go, his face reddening in anger. “You understand nothing.”

“Then tell us,” Liz said, taking the letters out of her pocket. “Tell us, and you’ll get your precious letters. Nothing will be able to hurt you anymore.”

Jesse glared at her. “The King is destroying our country. He’s emptying our coffers, ending taxes, bleeding us dry. We’re at war, you of all people should know that. We can’t win a war without money. I ordered his death because I alone will face the truths that no one else can stomach.”

Liz paused. “And the old King?”

“A youthful mistake,” Jesse shrugged. “Once we got past our differences, he was amenable to work with me. Just like Noah will be.”

“Well, wasn’t that an enlightening conversation,” a voice boomed out behind their backs.

Jesse turned around in shock as Alex walked in from behind the organ. “Hello, Father.”

“You’re dead,” Jesse hissed, eyes widening almost comically.

“Am I really? It seems that I’m a better player than you give me credit for,” Alex said, putting an arm around Michael’s waist. “You should choose your pieces better.”

En passant

Ten years ago

Alex stopped humming and jumped to his feet as he heard a horse neigh in the distance. His own horse was placid beside the stream, munching on a clump of herbs, but he perked up as well. Nothing happened for a few seconds, then Alex heard a gallop and a frightened horse passed him at high speed, jumping over the little stream without slowing down.

“Come back!” a voice called.

Alex took a few steps away from the cover of the trees and spotted a young man running toward where the horse had gone, limping slightly. His breeches were covered in mud, like he’d fallen off the horse. His outfit was made of cheap linen and rough wool, the only leather a satchel across his shoulder.

“Are you okay?” Alex asked when the boy reached him. He seemed to be about Alex’s age, with light curly hair framing his face. He was beautiful, in the unrefined way that commoner could be, all muscles from hard work and sun-tanned skin. Below your station, Jesse Manes’ voice echoed in Alex’s ears.

The boy stared at Alex for a moment, giving up on chasing his horse. “He’ll come back eventually,” he sighed. “I’m trying to train him, but he’s stubborn.”

“He’s yours?” Alex asked.

“No, he belongs to the Valenti estate. I’m just helping train him.”

The Valentis were the owners of the land bordering the Manes’ estate. Alex mostly knew their son Kyle, who was his age, though they’d had a falling out and no longer spent time together. Kyle’s parents spent most of the year in the capital, since his father was the Commander of the King’s Musketeers. Alex and Kyle had dreamed of becoming Musketeers themselves as children, though now that Alex was preparing to enlist in the Army next year, that dream seemed far away.

“I’m Alex,” he said, because it seemed only polite to introduce himself. He’d never been allowed to interact much with the inhabitants of the town besides the ones that served his family.

“Lord Manes’ youngest son, I know,” the other boy said, irreverently, his face almost daring Alex to react. “I’m Michael.”

Alex hitched to put him back in his place, but he stopped himself. It was clearly what Michael wanted, so he wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. “I’ve never seen you around before.”

“Only got here two months ago,” Michael drawled, with a hint of a northern accent. “I’m an orphan. I’ve lived in lots of places. You satisfied?”

Alex shrugged, still not rising to the provocation. “Where do you live now?”

“Here and there,” Michael ducked his head, suddenly looking uncomfortable. “In barns, mostly. I try to pick up work wherever I can.”

Alex bit his lip. Michael’s bravado seemed to stem from not wanting to be put down by rough conditions, and he could admire that. “Can you tend a garden?” he asked.

Michael nodded.

“Our gardener’s old and almost blind, he could use some help. I can’t promise you money, but there’s a shed. It’s sturdy and it keeps warmth pretty well.” Alex knew that mostly because it was where he ran to, when his father was angry enough that staying in the house was dangerous.

“Why?” Michael asked. “What do you want from me?”

Alex shrugged. “Properly pruned rose bushes? People don’t always have an agenda.”

Michael stared at him doubtfully, but he nodded. “I have to go,” he muttered. “Need to find that damn horse before nightfall.”

Alex watched him jump over the stream and take off running and stared after him for a while. He wasn’t sure what to make of this encounter. Mr Sanders would be glad to have some help, especially if it was help he didn’t have to share his paycheck with, but Alex didn’t know what had possessed him to offer the job to a boy he’d just met.

There was something about Michael. Alex couldn’t quite figure out what, but he couldn’t get his face out of his mind, as he hopped onto his horse’s back and led him back to the stables.

He tended to his horse quickly and went to change, knowing that his father was waiting for him in his study for their daily game of chess. It was the only time in the day that they still interacted, as Alex avoided coming down for meals unless they had guests. Since Flint had left the previous year, life at home had been worse than ever, and Alex spent as much time as he could outside or locked in his quarters.

His father scowled at him in displeasure when Alex slid onto the chair waiting for him, and made his first move without a word. He always played the whites. He always won.

Alex dreamed of inverting the board, sometimes. The whites played first, and that gave them an advantage. Maybe with that, he could finally beat his father – finally make him proud.

“You’re hesitating again,” Jesse said, as Alex took a minute second to choose between taking a pawn and protecting his bishop. ��You’re still not rigorous enough. There are no easy moves in chess. Whatever you do, there will be difficult consequences, sacrifices that you have to make. You can’t win without making hard decisions.”

Alex didn’t reply, and went with the risky move, that could give him checkmate in five if his father didn’t see it.

Jesse saw it. Of course he did. He played with little creativity, but a ruthlessness that was unmatched, and he had an eye for the combinations. He was always ten moves ahead. Alex couldn’t beat him.

He would beat him one day, he promised himself as Jesse waited for him to topple his king before he stood up and removed his belt. He would beat him, and he wouldn’t do it to make his father proud.

He would win, and his prize would be freedom.

Checkmate

Now

“How very cunning,” Jesse sneered at Alex. “You tricked me into making a full confession. And what use is your confession, uh? The word of a lowly Musketeer against the Prime Minister of Antar?”

“The King may not believe their words, Minister, but he will most certainly believe mine.”

Jesse Manes turned sharply at the new voice. Princess Isobel was as beautiful as ever, illuminated in the mysterious light of the church's stained glass windows. Her light green dress, an intricate work of lace and satin, almost appeared white, and so did her long blond hair, gathered above her head with jeweled pins. She didn’t smile as Jesse bowed to her, deeper than his status warranted. “Your Highness,” he said, backing away.

“General,” Isobel replied coldly, as Liz, Maria and Michael retreated out of the church discreetly, giving her the floor. “The King will hear about this. I am certain he will not have any choice but to dismiss you, and even if your status may spare you from standing trial, you’ll be exiled.”

Jesse backed away a few more steps. “Isobel,” he said, his tone condescending, switching out of formal address. Isobel’s face scrunched up in disgust. “You can’t do that. You know what will happen if you do.”

“I highly doubt that,” Isobel answered. She stepped aside, and Rosa came out of the shadows behind her.

Isobel was incredibly good at this, Alex reflected. She waited until Rosa was at her shoulder and bowed her head to her, in a clear sign of her affection.

“Yes, Father,” Alex said. “I took the liberty to have Rosa escorted back to Antar. It turns out that the King was more than happy to pardon his favorite Musketeer’s sister, once the Princess made her case. And now, I have multiple witnesses who heard you confess to your plot to kill the King himself.”

He was still tense, watching his father's every move with his hand on his sword, but jubilation at this tableau is catching up to him. They had him. Their impossible plan had worked, and his father would never hurt anyone again.

Jesse looked scared now, looking around him for support that wouldn’t come as Alex advanced on him. Alex didn’t bother to hide his limp.

“Your blinders are what defeated you, father. You think I'm weak, because I love men. You thought Isobel was easier to manipulate than Max because she's a woman. You were wrong.”

Instead of stopping in front of his father to face him, he kept walking, until Jesse had to step aside to let him pass. “I believe this is checkmate, father,” he said in a low voice, meant to be heard by him only.

His friends were waiting for him behind the church. Alex led Rosa out, signaling his men to escort his father and the Princess back to the palace. Jesse Manes was done. He might not go to jail, but as soon as Isobel told the King, he would lose his job and his standing, and probably his title and estate.

Alex knees felt weak with relief, as he walked back to the garrison. Commander Valenti was standing with Kyle by the door to her office, and Alex simply nodded at them. It’s done. Kyle whooped in joy while his mother simply smiled.

Alex turned back to his best friends.

“So we’re four again?” Liz asked, watching Rosa with hesitation in her eyes, a fear impossible to put into words.

“I don’t know if I can get my commission back, but I’ll never stop being a Musketeer,” Rosa said with tears in her eyes. She held out a hand to her sister. “One for all,” she murmured.

Liz grabbed her hand, and Alex and Maria joined in, adding their hands on top. “All for one,” they said together. They fell into a group hug, relieved tears mixing with smiles.

Alex saw Michael standing at the gates out of the corner of his eye, leaning against one of the posts and watching them.

“Go to him,” Liz told him quietly. “You’ve waited for this for so long.”

Alex straightened his clothes. “I have something to do first,” he murmured. He unclasped the chain from his neck and took off the golden ring. Taking a deep breath, he slid it onto his finger.

He swallowed back a sob, looking at his hand.

“Does that mean we have a wedding to plan?” Rosa asked with a smirk.

“Soon,” Alex promised.

He didn’t look back as he joined Michael at the gates, and linked their hands together.

“It’s done.” He smiled softly at Michael, who didn’t speak. “We’re free.”

You can read the first two parts of the series for a more detailed account of Alex and Michael's duel and its aftermath (though keep in mind that they were written over a year ago, before season 2, and I've changed a few things to the plot of this AU since, most notably my plans for Maribel). I hope you liked this! And remember to go look at Slynella's amazing illustrations for this fic and give her all the love!

#roswell new mexico #malex #malex fic #alex manes #michael guerin #rnm bb #roswell nm big bang #mine #echo's fanfiction #musketeers au

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