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laylarevengers · 5 months

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dress. manjiro sano x fem! reader. series. angst —> happy ending. tomen —> bonten. this is long. last part!! (slightly suggestive.)

part one. part two.

kakucho, a well-dressed man, poured a generous amount of fancy champagne into your glass, which made you feel out of place in your casual attire. as a doctor, you had a well-paid job, but your busy schedule offered you little time to indulge in luxuries. kakucho’s question caught you off guard, "you knew mikey?" you hesitated to respond, unsure of what to say. koko, noticing your hesitation had intervened, "stop instigating. she’s already sitting with a bunch of criminals, let her be. if you want to know something, go ask the boss yourself."

“ask me what?”

the scene was reminiscent of a sudden jolt, like a whiplash, as everyone in the room rose quickly to greet him. sanzu was quick to curse under his breath, expressing his frustration at the early arrival that wasn't expected for another week. as he spoke, the sound of his voice was both familiar and yet different, with a new depth and gruffness that seemed to come with adulthood and perhaps even a hint of criminality. the sound of his voice echoed in your ears, stirring up memories and emotions from the past.

rindou greeted his boss with a wave of his hand, a hint of amusement apparent in his tone. "hey, boss. when were you going to tell us about your romantic exploits?" he teased, patting manjiro’s shoulders. you couldn't see manjiro’s face due to sanzu and koko standing between you, but you could imagine his eyebrows scrunching up in confusion as he responded with a childish "huh?" It was a moment that made you want to laugh to yourself and think, ‘wow, some things never change.’

as manjiro stood in the room, his gaze wandered between rindou and sanzu. he seemed to be in a hurry, but rindou’s presence was not helping his mood. frustrated, he pushed rindou away, who responded by giving him the finger. manjiro then approached Sanzu, his eyes filled with irritation and fatigue. his voice was low and quiet, but the tension in his words was palpable. "what are you hiding?" he demanded, his tone making it clear that he was not pleased.

"ran got hurt," sanzu replied in a hushed tone. "i had to seek help from someone who was smart enough not to report it to the authorities." sanzu glanced at koko, who seemed to understand his cue to move away. meanwhile, manjiro found you standing up, your arms crossed and your face serious. you had enough time to pull yourself together upon seeing him for the first time in years, but manjiro didn't. his eyes widened in surprise, and the glare he directed at sanzu spelled out a clear message of anger and a desire for retaliation.

as you approached manjiro, you couldn't help but notice the tense atmosphere. with a deep breath, you spoke up, "you should tell your men to be careful." the utterance was perhaps ill-advised, but you couldn't help yourself. manjiro’s gaze fixed on you, scanning you up and down as he tried to comprehend what was happening. you quickly crouched down, picking up your bag, and nodded at sanzu. "i’ll leave. mouth’s shut. don’t want any trouble." you raised your arms in surrender, hoping to defuse the situation. your attempt at sarcasm didn't go unnoticed, and it elicited a laugh from rindou. despite the brief moment of levity, you couldn't shake the feeling that things could turn ugly at any moment.

manjiro’s sudden question, "when did you arrive?" caught you off guard just as you were about to leave. it tugged at your heartstrings, as it had been so long since he had spoken directly to you. you didn't let on the impact it had on you, and neither did he, but deep down, you both knew. glancing back at everyone, you nonchalantly replied, "around four."

manjiro’s sudden outburst of "fuck" caught everyone's attention, leaving them confused. he turned to sanzu and began to criticize him for his occasional stupidity. as you turned around to see what was happening, you saw ran barely able to stand and still half asleep. you immediately urged her to go back to sleep, fearing that she might hurt herself more. it was as if there were two different versions of you - one who was angelic and protective while dealing with his executives, and another who was cold and harsh while talking to manjiro.

"if only you guys weren't so fucking noisy," ran exclaimed, glancing at everyone except for you. manjiro noticed your hand resting on ran’s shoulder and interjected, "you can't just walk away. if you had been more cautious, you would have noticed those bastards watching your every move." he directed his words towards sanzu. "why do you think i arrived early? he’s targeting all of our crucial areas and eliminating our comrades." as manjiro carried on, you couldn't help but feel perplexed. who is this person he's referring to? what have you gotten yourself involved in? and what has jiro gotten himself into?

on the morning after, you found yourself waking up in a lavishly furnished bedroom located in a luxurious penthouse. as you tried to piece together the events of the previous night, manjiro, a person you thought you knew, kept talking in a language that you struggled to comprehend. despite the euphuism barrier, it was clear that all the executives present in the room were in agreement about not leaving you alone.

from what you understand, you have always beena prey, right from your days in toman, where you have been since the very beginning. It seems like you have been used as a pawn to get into manjiro’s head. however, you are not sure if this is the reason why he left and started bonten. you are also unsure if it would have been better if you had gone away with him, where you would be safe by his side. you didn't know. the uncertainty of the situation is making you feel helpless since, you truly, genuinely and irrocevbely do not know anything.

yet you woke up in manjiro’s home and you’ll get your answers.

you pounded your hands on the pristine kitchen counter, exclaiming, "what on earth is happening?" manjiro appeared caught off guard, yet he nonchalantly proceeded to light his cigarette. it felt strange witnessing him engage in such behavior. although both of you had once indulged in rebellious acts of smoking and underage drinking, this situation seemed different. it appeared to be a lasting issue, not just a passing phase. as he gazed into your eyes, a wave of emotions overwhelmed you, and tears threatened to spill.

he inquired, "what are you trying to say?" you were seething with frustration, overflowing with anger. swiftly, you grabbed the cigarette from his lips and extinguished it on the pristine white marble of the countertop. weary, he glanced at the mark left behind, then met your gaze once again. with a fiery determination, you stormed around the barrier of the counter and positioned yourself directly in front of manjiro, who sat on a stool. your faces were now inches apart.

it was impossible to recognize him. absolutely impossible. even if you stared at him for hours, there was something different about him. the beautiful blonde hair that you used to play with was gone, and his boyish smile, the one that always made you smile back, seemed to have vanished for years. and his eyes, oh, manjiro’s eyes. they were always dark and almost devoid of emotion, but you loved them, adored them. yet now, they appeared completely emotionless. he had bags under his eyes, and he looked so thin that it was impossible not to worry.

“it’s as if you're intentionally avoiding my forgiveness. it’s as if you couldn't care less," you were aware that you were burdening him, provoking him. however, you needed reassurance. the fear and disapproval evident in his eyes confirmed something, "i do care. all i do is care about you. don’t. don’t say i don't." you scoffed at his response. you didn't attempt to argue with him when he walked away twelve years ago, so why now? it it a result of pent-up anger?

“if i was in danger from some crazy motherfuckers all those years then why was i not living here, hm? why was i not by your side like i always used to be?”

“because it’s—“

"—‘it’s better this way.’ go fuck yourself, manjiro!" you said with a bitter tone. you had never spoken to him like this before, not in such a serious manner. "i’ve waited for so many years, and you've never once approached me. all i got was some lousy flowers on my birthday and crazy fucking sanzu following me everywhere!" deep down, he knew you were lying. he had gotten you wisterias, your favorite flowers, and you really liked sanzu, but that wasn't the point at this moment. he allowed you to vent, just like before. you were furious with him, but he couldn't help but feel a sense of nostalgia, as if he was fifteen again, standing next to his motorcycle while you sat on it, wearing his tomen jacket on your shoulders.

“i can't believe it... you never even said "i love you" back when you left! It haunted me every single day. why couldn't you say it? don’t you love me anymore?" manjiro closed his eyes and let out a deep sigh in response to your words. you looked so familiar, with your messy hair from just waking up and the way you were arguing with him. it reminded him of all those old bickering sessions you used to have. suddenly, he gently cupped your face, causing your words to fade away on your tongue.

his eyes darted back and forth between your gaze and your lips, repeatedly, as he uttered those three words, "i love you." your lips brushed for a moment before you withdrew and playfully punched his shoulder. "you can't just say that now and expect me to forget everything," you said. he shook his head, "no, i don't expect forgiveness. I just wanted you to know." you muttered a curse under your breath and tugged him closer by his black shirt. clothes were discarded, and the intensity quickly escalated, yet it felt like pure perfection. things had changed, manjiro had changed, but then again, maybe he hadn't.

the way he held your hand the whole time, the way he whispers sweet nothings like he isn’t a maniacal criminal, the way he refuses to let your mind wander and focus on anything that’s not him, the way he doesn’t let himself feel too good until you have. everything was the same, but it just was not, and maybe that was okay.

it all felt right when you agreed to accompany him to some work party. you wore a dress so similar to the one you wore during your first date, only more mature in its design and on your features. you were foolish to come back into this life. but it was manjiro. you’d always choose manjiro sano even if it meant having your comely dress on the floor and the risk of being his girl again. but you were taking the chance because something told you he won’t leave this time.

and you were right. he redeemed himself. you forgave him. things sometimes got rocky, but he didn’t run away this time and that was all you wanted.

#manjiro sano #manjiro sano x reader #mikey x reader #sano manjiro #sano mikey manjiro #the invincible mikey #mikey tokyo revengers #tokyo revengers #tokyo revengers sano manjiro #tokyo revengers x reader

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furiousgoldfish · 1 year

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Hi, just a little reminder to everyone who has attempted to message me or talk to me, and didn't get a reply or didn't get a reply they wanted.

I often have people messaging me expecting instant friendship and emotional support and talking to me as if we already knew each other. I don't think this is done with ill intent, but I do want to gently remind everyone that we are complete strangers when interacting online, and that I cannot grant anyone instant friendship; to me you are a person I don't know. I will talk to you as a stranger would. Even if you've been reading my words and taking solace and imagining a friend telling them to you, to me you are someone I've never met or known, and I cannot function as an emotional support on a personal level to strangers. It ultimately is not helpful for you to convince yourself that a stranger on the internet is your personal friend, or to push that stranger into trying to act the part; I am unable to fulfill this role. I am not emotionally well myself, and I do not have a support system, so being put in a situation where I'm expected to be one for a stranger feels unhealthy.

Another thing I'd love for everyone to remember is, that I don't have all of the answers. I love to help where I can, but ultimately I am a person in a lot of distress, trying to deal with multiple disorders without any access to therapy or even friends who understand what I'm going thru. I am isolated and posting on this blog is often all I have. If I knew how to get rid of trauma, how to deal with disorders, how to not be sick or in pain, how to evade abuse or how to feel okay, I would use this advice to fix my own life. But I am sadly, lost like the rest of us.

There are times where I am in too much distress to talk to anyone, if you sent me a message and it went unanswered, it is very likely that I was in a state so bad I could not communicate. I will usually recover from it within several weeks, but by that time I feel bad even reminding someone they've sent me a message, it feels asinine to try and reply so late. And it reminds me of the period where I felt bad looking at the message, unable to respond. I'm not ignoring messages on purpose. If you try again some time later, you're likely to get a reply, if I'm in a good state of mind.

However, if you send me a big number of messages at once, start talking about your issues without asking if it's okay first, send several messages without a reply and then keep sending them and demanding a reply, put pressure on me to communicate with you, try to guilt me into giving you an answer you want, or assuming I'm maliciously ignoring you, you've made me uncomfortable and I have to listen to my instincts and stop talking to you.

I am sensitive to anger, aggression, ranting, swearing, slur-use, and doing that in a conversation with me it will make me feel threatened. Because we're strangers, and any stranger acting like I'm an acceptable target to take their anger at is dangerous. We are not friends, and dealing with angry strangers is terrifying. In that situation I have to do what I would advise anyone else to do - leave the conversation.

The last issue is with people attempting to trigger me on purpose, pretending they need help then defending abusers, trying to convince me that all of my resources are harmful and doing nothing but damage, or trying to get me to delete my content, change my posts, advocating for abusers, siding with my abusers, telling me I'm a monster, insisting they're victimized by me unless I personally disprove my smear campaign to them, and generally trying to get me to lash out in order to post it online to claim I should be cancelled. That is the worst thing you could be doing to a traumatized abuse victim. I am a person, of course I sometimes say something wrong and not well thought and put out. That doesn't mean anything I ever do to help others is worthless and should be erased. And you will not convince me that my blog is useless or harmful. It helps me. And I am someone too.

#furiousgoldfish #why messaging me will sometimes have bad results #parasocial relationships #communicating with strangers forgetting they're strangers #i am scared of strangers online it is scary to be interacting with others #especially when trying to help you end up getting hurt and you just don't understand why it got so bad #that happens so often #and i have to be wary and have boundaries #and escape whenever i feel uncomfortable #even if it means someone will feel slightly bad #i don't have to bend my life so nobody ever feels slightly bad because of me #i need to feel safe #and i generally feel bad because of people who don't care how they're making me feel #because i only exist to get their needs met in their head #but i exist for me

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kyndaris · 3 months

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Artisaint? Arti-Hell no!

On my quest to find a possible romance partner, I've met a range of different people. Some have been nice. Most are far too nervous. And then there are a few who fail to pass muster. While I usually like to get to know someone before meeting them face-to-face, I'm not too opposed to go on a blind date once in a while if it's for coffee in the middle of the day and at a public place. So, when my grandmother's friend, who runs a dating agency, told me about a man she thought it would be good for me to meet, I said 'Sure, why not?' After all, the whole dating experiment is meant to be about testing compatibility and seeing if we could be together in a romantic sense.

Long Black - the codename for this particular individual - didn't really chat to me much via text message but was keen to have a coffee. In the end, he suggested the Artisaint cafe at Burwood. I readily agreed. It was, after all, a nice in-between location filled with a ton of people.

Unfortunately, I was late to the date. Due to a few personal circumstances, I had to take my grandmother to the bank in order to reactivate her debit card and set a pin. Then there were the groceries to purchase as well as a few household chores that needed to be done. By the time I left my place, I knew I would be late and summarily texted Long Black the situation. He seemed understanding about the fact.

Open communication. One of the first tenets to the establishment of a long-term relationship.

Trying to be the good Samaritan that he thought he was, Long Black did ask me if he ought to order anything for me and was kind enough to send through a copy of the menu. As I was driving, I couldn't respond to him but by the time I parked, I informed him I didn't drink coffee and it wouldn't be a problem for me to order when I got to the cafe.

I arrived at Artisaint twenty minutes after the assigned time - something which bugged me because I dislike being late at the best of times - said 'hello' to Long Black and quickly perused the menu. In no time, I'd ordered an ice chocolate and a spaghetti bolognese as I'd not had the time to enjoy lunch. As I ate, Long Black peppered me with questions about my interests and life. He zeroed in on murder mysteries, after I mentioned studying criminology at university, and began asking about good shows.

There were a few other questions like my job, my family make-up and a few of my hobbies. Long Black was especially quick to say 'me too' if he agreed with anything I said. While these were all good and fine, considering we didn't manage to go over shared interests during our very short-lived text conversation, it did feel like I was being interviewed.

But, dear readers, let me first paint a picture of our Mr Long Black.

On the profile he submitted to the dating agency, he provided a photo where he was out on a cliff overlooking the ocean, advised he had studied computer science and that his hobbies included singing. The man I met was a nervous introvert. While the photo showed him in jean shorts and a nice black shirt, the man I met wore a baggy black t-shirt with 'Tradie' written on it in big block letters. He also had on a pair of grey sweatpants and white tennis shoes. He'd also done a poor job at shaving, with patches on the right side of his face. I later learned he'd only studied computer science to secure himself a permanent resident visa and that he was now working in a warehouse catering to eBay.

To say I was disappointed was an understatement.

In fact, by the time I finished my spaghetti bolognese, I was looking to leave. Mr Long Black simply wasn't cutting it for me. Especially as he seemed adamant to speak in English although I'd told him (and demonstrated my ability) to speak in Mandarin. He also expressed some views that I found a bit narrow-minded, without much potential for growth.

I don't like to speak ill of the people I meet but there was an air of desperation to him. Or maybe it came from the fact he kept sipping from his coffee cup (which already looked half empty by the time I arrived). Whatever the case, he reminded me of a high school friend of mine whose girlfriend had brutally broken up with him during their overseas trip and had lost hope of ever finding someone.

Coupled with the fact that Mr Long Black didn't like his job but wasn't making any steps to changing his situation, I had the feeling he was a man looking for a woman who could encourage him out of his shell and to force him to try new things. An extrovert who didn't mind 'fixing' him, if you will.

This, of course, is not me.

If you've read my post about Stray Gods, you know Apollo didn't much appeal to me because he was just a sad boi. I would prefer a manic pixie dream boy/ himbo golden retriever, or a power mummy who will step on me.

Okay. Well, maybe they don't have to be those archetypes (especially if they're an actual flesh and blood human), but I'm definitely not someone wants a problem project of a human. And after trying to 'fix' the one ex-friend I had, who also lived an incredibly sheltered life and has only now discovered gender fluidity at thirty because of their lack of exposure to basically everything, I don't need or want to fall back into old habits.

Although, to be perfectly honest, I think I do have a type. Shout out to my friend Redoubt asking me about this during our Christmas/ New Year party at the end of 2023. But honestly, I think my type might be women. Their the ones who can draw you in because they're energetic and bubbly and you don't feel silly around when you goof up. And while their laughs can be loud, it's also endearing?

I know! Revelation after revelation!

I was reading A Man Called Over for my work bookclub and while I'm not as good with my hands as Ove is, I'm definitely the more curmudgeonly type of individual. As I've told quite a few people, I'm the grump who needs a sunshine to brighten up their days. The one whose nose is booped when they're being stubborn.

So, what I need is the Enid to my Wednesday. The Harley to my Ivy.

In any case, I didn't stay long with Mr Long Black, feigning an excuse to leave after an hour and a bit in his stomach. Given I'd also ordered more than he did, I also paid for the bill. In this age of equality and feminism, it seemed like the decent thing to do despite his objections (Long Black was seated on the cushion-y seats inside the booth while I sat outside).

Afterwards, I took a gander around Burwood Westfield before heading home, retreating once more to the comfort of my books and video games.

So ended a not so successful date.

But who knows, maybe I might have found a spark as I've been travelling overseas. By now, @bleachpanda and I are probably in Japan and will be making our way back home to Australia in a few short days. True, we'll miss out on the cherry blossom season but there's always next time!

#personal blog #dating #artisaint #spaghetti bolognese #the food was great #so was the ice chocolate

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rose-from-ashes · 11 months

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I want to say a thing, on the note of one of my take on Zodiark and the original Final Days.

In Shadowbringers, the spectre of Hythlodaeus tells us of the sacrifices to Zodiark, the first to stop the final days, the second to restore life, and the third, much later, planned to return those who were lost in the initial sacrifices, all of them agreed upon by the convocation.

In Endwalker, the scene we get from Venat's point of view tells a different story, of Amaurot still in flames, a group of non convocation deciding on their own to sacrifice themselves to bring back their loved ones and the life of before in a combination of the second and third sacrifices described before, prompting Venat to sunder the world.

I decided on my take in a combination of the two, discussion below.

I'm not sure if the scene in Endwalker was intended to retcon, or was intended to be a faulty, heavily summarized scene, but either way, I... kind of prefer it? I know that Emet and the other convocation members were definitely not the best people, especially after the final days, but I prefer the idea that though they made flawed, hasty decisions in the aftermath of the final days, it wasn't until after the sundering that they really, truly decided to sacrifice the lives of the now to restore the lives of the past.

I also tend towards more negative depictions of Venat/Hydaelyn, because they interest me more than the idea that she was purely good. Lastly, I've seen various takes on how willing everyone truly was to sacrifice themselves to Zodiark, since one of the recent scenes in the Pandaemonium questline implies that the convocation had some hand in deciding who was sacrificed and who wasn't.

As such, here is my interpretation of the original events: The choice to sacrifice oneself was wholly voluntary, but the convocation did make recommendations. There was an overall encouragement to join the sacrifice, and there were also stages of choosing individuals, where the convocation would figure out who might be the best choices, would send out messages to those individuals, and then simply chose someone else to replace those selected who did not want to sacrifice themselves. No one was forced. That said, there was more pressure on some than others, depending on the officials in any given district and such.

The first sacrifice, to stop the final days, was wholly as described, and it was necessary. The second, to restore life and nature's natural order, was planned, and in the process of moving forward, but unlike the original sacrifice which was largely agreed upon, the second was more controversial, and it was this one that my Azem at least stepped out due to- they might have eventually come to be okay with it, but it was being rushed, and they didn't like how the convocation didn't pause to consider other methods of rebuilding first. Emet remained within the convocation, believing that if they were unhappy with the decisions being made, then now was the time to remain and argue those points rather than leaving.

The third sacrifice, to bring back those lost, was never the convocation's intention- Emet, alongside other members, fully intended to use Zodiark as a temporary emergency measure until they could find and address the root cause of the final days, at which point they planned to simply take apart Zodiark as safely as possible and attempt to preserve and return the souls inside to appropriate vessels. The third sacrifice was a bad idea, one that could destabilize Zodiark via pulling out it's original members, and it was not at all considered remotely worth the risk by the convocation. However, that didn't stop a decently sized group of civilians from forming with this ill advised plan in mind regardless.

Venat saw this and misunderstood, believing it to be a decision by the convocation, and thus she and her allies responded to it as a much, much bigger and more serious sign of corruption and failure than it was. It was the hopelessness of a group who were frightened and did not yet understand what was happening, but she thought that it was a decision on the part of the world's leaders, reflective of the beliefs of the world at large, to make pointless sacrifice to maintain a so called perfect world and turn a blind eye towards their own suffering. This in combination with what she learned from us in Elpis resulted in the sundering.

#please do not reblog #lore; fathoms #c: azem #c: emet selch

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engbergeurovacay23 · 10 months

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Thursday, Travel Day! France to Spain to Germany

With the shutters down in the Ax-les-Thermes place, it was hard to know when it was daylight! I don’t love them all the way down, but I seem to be in the minority in my family. Anyway, I slept quite well, although Rowan has been getting up overnight for a few days, blowing his poor nose. He does not seem to feel otherwise ill, but the nose-blowing has been persistent. When he gets up in the night and blows his nose in a place with stone floors, it is an echo-y situation. Anyway, we didn’t have anything planned for Thursday morning, other than getting all of our stuff together so we could leave the Airbnb by 11-ish.

I have amply mentioned the fact that the Ax-les-Thermes Airbnb came with no toilet paper, which they did eventually provide, but it also featured the coveted “no hot water” effect for about the last 18 hours of our stay. It was so odd. I mean, it was a really nice place, but the hostess seemed a bit aloof, with her “we forgot” with the toilet paper inquiry and this failing of the hot water, which in our messages back and forth about check-out, I mentioned. She never responded to any of my messages near the end of our stay, so she did not address the “no hot water” situation, either. So odd.

We left Ax-les-Thermes on a beautifully sunny Thursday, at about 11:30 a.m. We has plenty of time to make our way south to Barcelona, to catch our plane to Munich (which left at 6:30 p.m.). The scenery was incredible, as you should be able to guess by now, and the Pyrenean peaks and valleys just awed us all along the way, for quite a bit of the journey. Once we passed through a long tunnel about 45 minutes outside of Ax-les-Thermes, we were very close to the French/Spanish border, and started to see houses flying Catalonian flags. You’d think that after a very long tunnel through a mountain that you’d be to Spain again, when there are mountains at the France/Spain border. But, actually, the border is not right on one side of the mountain. Anyway, the town right near the Spanish border that we stopped in is called Puigcerdà; it was –and I almost hate to say it, because it makes me sound like a non-liker of France, which I am not—kind of a breath of fresh air to be able to speak Spanish again and be understood. And it was sunny and cheerful and just a very lively town right near lots of mountain outdoor activities, since it is near La Molina ski area and lots of camping, equestrian activities, and biking opportunities. Puigcerdà seemed very cool. If we ever come back to Spain to ski at La Molina (since, as I established, it is cheaper than much skiing in the U.S.!), then staying in Puigcerdà would be a smart choice.

So, we stopped briefly in Puigcerdá because the kids were hungry and we went into a supermercat and they were having some “spin the wheel” promotion when you left; and Cece got to spin the wheel! The lady, who was super nice, overseeing this promotion let Cece spin three times until she won something that was appropriate for her age; rather than a bottle of wine or a can of tomatoes, Cece won a bag of chips. We all enjoyed these winnings all the way to Barcelona! We surmised that maybe this spin-the-wheel thing was to celebrate the grand-opening of the store?

There’s not much more to report about our drive. We arrived to the Barcelona airport and returned our car and then went through security for our flight. Even though we all just came with a ”personal item” (i.e. backpack) plus a roll-on suitcase, we were advised in an email from Lufthansa that we might need to check our roll-aboards. We waited in the check-in line for a little bit, but, I don’t know what it is about major European airports, but there is always a massive line to check luggage. Also, there are no set ticket counters for each airline. There are screens that change to tell you what airline is now using that spot; it is a very different “feel” than an American airport with the check-in procedures we’re used to (which, don’t get me wrong, are still very annoying). The European check-in halls are always super chaotic, with a “stockyard” kind of feel, like, cattle moving every which way, in very long queues--in a gargantuan building typically with lots of glass and high celilings.

We decided, because the Lufthansa baggage/check-in line was so long, we’d roll the dice and take our bags through security, and, if we had to gate-check, so be it. We still had several hours before our flight, so we went to an airport lounge (Eric is king of the “airport lounge shuffle,” as I call it, as a result of all of his credit card maneuvering, which he tracks is a surely very impressive spreadsheet). The Barcelona lounge we visited was a really exceptional lounge. (If you’re not hip to the airline miles game, there is lot to learn, and I stay out of it. But sites like One Mile at a Time and Frequent Miler can get you up to speed pretty quickly on which lounges and programs and credit cards have the most advantages.) At the lounge, I immediately noticed there were some professional-cycling-looking people moseying about. Some wore Jumbo Visma shirts and some UAE Emirates shirts. So, sitting right next to us were two UAE Emirates riders. We looked up the team roster (because we’re not as thoroughly immersed in pro cyclist names and faces as we once were), and sitting next to use was Brandon McNulty! He is a young guy from Phoenix who is U.S. time trial champion! He was chatting with his team mate and we could overhear some topics about their training and what happened in the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France. We were at our table forever since we had so long to wait and at one point, Brandon’s teammate got up, so he was sitting there alone, and we chatted with him a bit – but really tried to not bother him. He was super nice. Eric looked up his “palmares” (which is a cycling term for his list of achievements) and he has been doing so well! I mean, I think he’s 25, and to be a prominent rider on the team he’s on—with some really well established, frequently winning guys!—is such a big deal and means he’s probably been living a pretty unique life for several years, living in Europe (he lives in Girona, actually), and traveling hither and yon for races and training.

So, we eventually got to go to our gate and I asked the gate attendant whether we needed to check our bags and she said, “oh, you’re traveling with kids? Stay here. You can board early.” Now, we don’t try to do this very often anymore, because the kids are 8 and 10, but she offered! Who were we to refuse? We do actually benefit from more time, because Eric lifts all of our roll-aboards on and our kids are, well, a lot ;) We got in our seats and we were getting settled in and Eric was putting the bags up and the Lufthansa flight attendant literally screamed at him, I mean, like screamed, because he was putting one of the roll-aboards in with the wheels the wrong way. She kept saying “TURN IT!! TURN IT!!” and she was like, very briefly, furious! It was so crazy. If she had simply said “wheels in, handle out,” there would’ve been no problem. It was just crazy how she just lost her cool entirely for a brief moment.

So, the flight was pretty uneventful. And, get this, there were more professional cyclists sitting behind us! There were members of two additional teams: Jayco and Ineos. So, turns out, everyone is flying to compete in the Tour of Poland. When we were about to de-plane in Munich, we talked briefly to the rider sitting behind Cece, the like five-time time-trial champion of Ethiopia--Tasbu Grmay! So, there are not a lot of cyclists of color in the professional peloton, and I could dive into here why that is (reasons related to socio-economic factors in cyclists’ home countries, the infrastructure for development programs, the needs of the team sponsors to sell their products via a cyclist's wins to folks who live in a country where that advertiser has a big presence and people with ample disposable income can buy their products, etc. etc.). This Ethiopian rider was super nice. He is a climber and Cece told him that daddy enjoys climbing most but does not enjoy descending because he finds it scary—and this rider said he feels the same way ;) I don’t know who the other riders in the row behind us were, but we are now always going to cheer for our Ethiopian plane-mate!

Once we arrived in Munich, we made our way to the Sixt car rental counter. We’d reserved a Tesla Model Y, but the very jauntily-dressed (they have a wide array of really pretty amazing work attire at Sixt) employee said, well, “what kind of car do you want?” I mean, they had like every luxury car you could want; it’s like that is all they had. So odd. It is very odd in Europe, and Germany in particular (I’ve said this in previous years), that there are just so many BMWs, Audis, and Mercedes on the roads; there are other brands, too, but these car brands are commonplace (a high percentage of taxis in Munich are butter-colored Mercedes). Anyway, Eric really wanted the Model Y, so we stuck with that. It is so fast, and has such powerful acceleration that I am thinking it’s really a bit much.

I’d booked us a hotel with parking on site, in the city center, for one night, so we could spend part of Friday sightseeing in Munich. It was a Holiday Inn and check-in was smooth, and since we’re Platinum members (they’re a member of the IHG hotel group and it’s another mileage perk of Eric’s that we have this status), we got two free drinks upon check-in! The kids were so tired that, despite some typical night-time hi-jinks, they fell right to sleep. Eric and I took our drinks into the bathroom, where we wouldn’t disturb the kids while talking, and we chatted for about 45 minutes. Classy!

So, Friday was going to be a half-day of Munich-adventures and then some driving, and then our arrival to Lehen, Austria, for four nights!

Oh, I meant to mention, have you noticed Rowan’s fanny pack in some photos? He was really excited to have a “kit” of note-taking supplies always at the ready. He’s been writing down the names of all the places we go in to shop or eat and all the names of the airlines that are new to him that he sees. He’s been very diligent with this! I hope he enjoys looking back at his book (which he has now color-coded, even) for many year down the road.

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mobpsychoheritageposts · 2 years

Note

the concept of you'r blog detracts from the comedic value of every mp post ever made. you are not a fan, you are just here to kill the buzz in exchange for attention

I'm glad you got to get that off your chest, but you sorely mistake the purpose of this account I'm afraid

#sorry you find the captions annoying #to be honest with you my intention was to get ppl more excited abt mp100 again by helping rmr fun posts #and my friend inspired me to do that by making an acct like this #i know it's ill advised of me to respond to a message like this but it's honestly a concern ive had before #regardless though i think accounts like this have nothing but fun intended behind them #at least for the most part #like why would i spend hours some days just going through long since abandoned blogs if i wasnt a fan? i do that anyways #i like the sense of community these kinds of accounts bring and wanted to have something like that for mp100 #you're free to remove the captions from any posts that you like. i do when i reblog to my main lol #this is a side account i rlly don't check the notifs. just like giving new enjoyers of the series a chance to see some funny posts #and letting older fans rmr the fun stuff #ask

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mymelodyheart · 3 years

Text

Save The Date Chapter 11 ~What’s Brewing Claire?~

picture credit

Previously in Stramash ...

Jamie pulled back to look at her face and tipped her chin up to survey the cut on her lips. "He did this?"

She could only nod as fresh tears rolled down her cheeks.

Jamie turned the gun in his hand and marched towards the door, shouting at the police ushering Jack out to wait. Before Claire could scream for him to stop, he brought his forehead down on Jack's nose in a head butt before handing the weapon to a nearby officer. The sound of cartilage crunching echoed in the tiny room, making Claire wince. Jack fell onto his knees with a loud thud, holding his bleeding nose, shouting improprieties muffled by his hands.

"Now, that was uncalled for, Fraser," an officer clucked, but his grin and the amusement in his eyes implied he wasn't too bothered over Jack's injury. "Now go and get some rest. I'll handle the paperwork and delay the statement for tomorrow morning. You both have done enough to save the day."

If you wish to read this on AO3, here is the link.

If you wish to read this from the beginning:

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Jamie studied Claire. She lay relaxed on the examination table, going through her phone and reading messages. She looked untroubled and seemed to have recovered from the ordeal this past weekend. The only tell-tale sign left of that hellish night was the tiny scab on her lower lip and bruising on her right cheek where Jack Randall had struck her. She was whole and safe, and yet here he was, having trouble letting go of that incident.

When he'd helplessly watched Jack shoved a gun against her neck and dragged her away from his sight, he'd felt the full gravity of her vulnerability and his inadequacy to secure her safety. But how Claire had handled the situation was nothing short of mind-blowing, albeit heart-stopping. She'd kept her presence of mind, aptly keeping Geneva talking while the tech specialist monitored the audio listening device. The moment they'd identified the voice on the phone, the administration in Broadmoor had been immediately alerted to make sure Geneva didn't go anywhere until the police arrived.

Geneva and Jack were in jail now, awaiting trial and most likely would stay there for a very long time. He really needed to stop fixating on what could have gone wrong and focus on the matter at hand, like their baby's condition and Claire's health.

He puffed out a breath and sprung onto his feet. "Ye comfy, Sassenach?"

"I'm good," she replied, without looking up from her phone screen.

"Ye ken, we can cancel the baby reveal for another day."

"I know, but I prepared so much food already."

They were having his family and closest friends over for afternoon tea to share the news of their baby. Claire had insisted on a celebration to invalidate the ordeal Geneva had put them through, determined not to allow recent events to cast a shadow over their upcoming nuptials. Jamie had thought it was too soon, but Claire had pressed that the sooner they moved forward from the incident, the better.

So last night, she'd spent the entire evening preparing shortcrust pastries, scones batter and making Victorian sponge cake. Apparently, she'd taken some lessons in baking and cooking from Mrs Fitz so that she could host parties like Jenny and his ma. It was as if her work, all the travelling she'd been doing, preparing for the wedding and recovering from trauma wasn't enough. She also needed to put up a brave front.

Though the doctor had given Claire an all-clear in London after a routine checkup, Jamie had insisted on another examination when she'd complain of spotting last night. He hadn't a clue what that had meant, but the concerned look on her face was enough for him to push her for another doctor's appointment. To his relief, she'd hardly put up a fight, and he'd immediately arranged a consultation with a private practice to speed things along since the NHS hospitals were notorious for long waits.

"I just want ye to be certain, Sassenach. That's all. I dinnae want this tea party putting a strain on ye."

Claire put her phone down and glanced up at him. "I'm pregnant, Jamie, not incapacitated. I know you're worried about the spotting, but I'm quite certain pregnant women gets them sometimes. I don't feel ill, but here we are, taking precautions."

Sighing, he moved to her side and took her hand in his. "It's just that I'm bothered about that bruise behind yer back. It looks vicious. I ken bruising looks a lot worse than it is, but I cannae help but wonder if the baby has been harmed when ye banged yer behind on those shelving units after Jack pushed ye. I'm concerned about any delayed complications. Or if the doctor in London overlooked something."

She squeezed his hand. "Your worries are valid, Jamie. The odds of miscarriage or complications might be highest in the first trimester, but I haven't had any issues." She shrugged. "Oh, well, except for the tiny spotting last night. I'm sure everything's fine. Try not to worry."

Easier said than done, Jamie thought. How could Claire sit there looking so calm? Now that she's pregnant, the world was suddenly full of threats: unpasteurised juice and dairy, soft cheeses that she loved so much, fish high in mercury, saunas and hot tubs, secondhand smoke, changing Adso's litterbox. Not to mention aunt Jocasta's bloody stories of baby-abducting fairies. He really needed to stop reading too much pregnancy information; otherwise, he'd go insane.

Claire gave him a look that said she could tell he was overthinking things.

He promptly kissed her on the lips. "Aye, I guess ye're right," he conceded. "I'm sorry for over-reacting."

The door suddenly opened, and in walked a friendly-looking middle-aged female doctor. "Hello, Claire! Dr Fiona Innes. How are we feeling today?"

"I'm good, just a bit nervous about the spotting," Claire breathed.

"Understandably." Then the doctor turned to Jamie. "And ye're..."

"James Fraser. The one who got her up the duff," he replied, taking the doctor's outstretched hand and giving it a firm shake.

"Jamie!" Claire gasped, her face crimsoning profusely.

The doctor laughed. "Hah! I like that! A good sense of humour will get ye through anything." She dragged the ultrasound monitor closer to the exam table and pulled up a stool. "So, let's get started so we can put both yer mind at ease, shall we?" She proceeded to put gloves on and prepare the probe that Jamie had the unfortunate luck of knowing already what it was for. "Now, Claire, I want ye to lie back and place yer feet in the stirrups."

Claire did as she was told while Jamie helped her ease down. He winced when he heard the sound of latex snapping over the probe. He looked away and took Claire's hand in his.

"Is this your first ultrasound visit, Mr Fraser?"

He glanced over his shoulder, thinking the doctor must have noticed the strain on his face. "Aye and no."

Dr Innes arched an eyebrow.

Jamie pointed at the probe and tried not to grimace. "I've seen a doctor used that thing on her when she was hospitalised a few weeks ago. I hadn't known what was going on then, so I walked away and let them get on with it."

"I see." The doctor refocused her attention back to Claire. "Now relax for me and big deep breaths," Dr Innes advised as she put lubricating gel on the blunt tip of the probe. "This will be a tad bit uncomfortable."

Claire shut her eyes and took a deep breath while Jamie whispered all sorts of nonsense in her ear. When her grip clenched into a tight vice, he pressed his lips on the top of her head.

A few seconds passed, and that's when he heard it. He stilled. It was loud, clear and steady. The unmistakable sound of a heartbeat coming from the monitor. It was their baby's. He let out a sharp exhale, realising he'd discovered something powerful in the tiny, vulnerable life form growing in Claire's womb.

His ma once said that the heartbeat was the first music that a child heard and that every bairn was born knowing the rhythm of their mother's song. To Jamie, this was the sound of their child's soul, the unspoken words already speaking volumes. It was as if it was saying, I'm alive and well, can you hear me?

"Weel, that sounds like a strong and healthy heartbeat there," Dr Innes remarked. "See right there?" Jamie and Claire stirred in their positions to take a better look at where the doctor was pointing. "That's yer baby."

Releasing Claire's hand, Jamie stepped closer to the monitor and tipped his head to the side, adjusting his eyes to discern the grainy image on the monitor. When he finally figured out the shape, mixed emotions began to bombard him in all directions. He felt the complexity of love at seeing a piece of himself and Claire on the screen, inspiring fierce protective instinct to kindle within him. Words like elation, joy and sobering responsibility were too meagre terms and did not give justice in describing how visceral all his emotions were.

"T-that ..." Jamie pointed an index finger at the image, swallowing the lump in his throat. "Is that a ..."

"It's not what ye think, Mr Fraser. That's the foot," Dr Innes responded briskly. She shifted the probe at a different angle to capture another image. "As far as I can see, everything seems to be in perfect working order. I can safely say ye have a healthy, strong baby, so ye can both rest easy."

Jamie continued to stare at the monitor, still trying to wrap the idea of impending fatherhood around his head. "The baby is no' missing any parts, is it?"

"The baby has everything it should have at this stage of the pregnancy," the doctor replied, amused. "Though I think we'll need another few weeks to be able to tell the gender."

"Thank you so much, doctor," Claire said gratefully, pushing herself upright. "We were worried about the spotting and thought it might have had to do with the stress and trauma of what happened last weekend. It was mad, really. I nearly got abducted and had a gun pointed at me."

The doctor threw the probe's latex into the waste and began peeling off her gloves, seemingly unaffected by what Claire had just revealed, making Jamie think physicians were used to hearing such stories. The doctor gave them both an understanding look. "Having a gun pointed at ye is quite jarring, so I understand why ye're both concerned. So how are ye coping mentally?"

"I try not to dwell on it and carry on as usual," Claire shrugged. "So far, I'm dealing with it fine."

The doctor looked at Claire curiously, her expression full of empathy. "Sometimes ignoring it isn't as cut and dried as you think. Try and get some counselling. Ye're going to deal enough with all the hormones impacting yer physiological, physical and mental well being. This is the time to be enjoying this exciting time in yer life, so counselling is just taking a precautionary step to ensure you are in a good place and prepared for what the next few months will throw at ye."

Jamie locked eyes with Claire, and a silent agreement passed between them. They both understood the impact of a traumatising experience, and he wanted to take the doctor's advice on board.

"I'll make sure she and the baby are well taken care of," he reassured the doctor, patting Claire's thigh.

"I'm sure ye will," the doctor smiled, pressing buttons on the monitor.

"Let's just hope he won't go over the top," Claire added. "He has a tendency to do that."

The doctor pulled out copies of ultrasound images from the printer and glanced up at Jamie. "I can understand the need to protect, but just bear in mind, us women are more resilient and stronger than we look," she pointed out. "And pregnant women aren't as frail as society perceives them to be."

Jamie laughed. "There's no question about that. After all, my wife-to-be here achieved what twenty-four specialist firearms officers could not."

"Oh?" Dr Innes looked surprised. "And what was that?"

"She single-handedly took down a maximum-security prisoner escapee, helped led the police to his psychopathic accomplice and in the process saved an innocent mistakenly imprisoned," Jamie explained. "I ken it was a foolish move with her being pregnant and all ..."

"It might have been foolish, but I happen to believe Claire's response is inherent in all mothers and mothers-to-be, and it's something almost impossible for the human brain to override."

"Och, aye?"

"It's called maternal instinct, Mr Fraser, and it's as old as life itself." Dr Innes got up and handed him an envelope containing the ultrasound images. "So woe to anyone who dares a mother-to-be or new mother harm because they're utterly more ferocious than any man wielding a gun when it comes to defending their nest." She looked between him and Claire and smiled. "Anyway, congratulations to you both on your coming parenthood." Then she faced Jamie and patted him on the shoulder. "And as for ye, congratulations on yer newly acquired bodyguard. Ye can sleep well tonight."

..........

Jamie walked in and placed the last of their shopping bags onto the kitchen counter. "Is there anything else ye need, Sassenach, before I go?"

Claire felt him approach and busied herself, placing apples in a large bowl and then lemons in another. "Umm ...I think I have everything I need." She felt his eyes boring into her back but tried her best not to get distracted. "Shall I make a sandwich to take with you?"

"No, I'm no' hungry."

"Oh, alright ...I guess I shall see you later then."

"I have a few minutes to spare. Want to talk?"

"Talk about what?"

"What ye're feeling. Ye haven't said much all morning ...since we left the clinic. And ye hardly talked to me while we went food shopping."

She took out a knife and honing steel from a drawer and went through the motion of sharpening the blade. "Oh ...I guess I must have been preoccupied with my mental to-do list. That's all."

A long silence ensued, and after what felt like an eternity, he let out an exasperated sigh. "Sassenach, can ye stop what ye're doing for a minute and look at me?"

Hot tears suddenly settled behind her eyes, but she fiercely blinked them back and breathed deeply, swallowing down conflicting emotions and refusing to let them fall. She didn't want to be the type of woman who cried at the littlest and inconsequential thing. She'd never been a crier before, and she wasn't about to become one if she could help it.

"I'm busy, Jamie."

"Please."

Bracing herself, she placed down her utensils and faced him. "What is it?"

"This ..." Jamie waved his hand at the shopping bags on the counter. "I ken what this is. Ye havenae sat still ever since we came back from our trip. Ye've decluttered our bedroom and cleaned out all the kitchen cupboards. And now an afternoon tea party? I ken what ye're doing. Ye're keeping yersel' busy to forget what happened in London instead of talking about it."

"No." She shook her head. "It's not that."

Jamie impatiently rubbed a hand on the back of his neck. "Weel, what is up with ye then?"

"Hormones."

"Hormones," Jamie echoed. "Why did you no' just say so?"

She felt her face heat up. "I don't know. Maybe I didn't know it at the time. Or perhaps, because it all seems so silly that I'm getting all worked up for nothing."

Jamie stepped closer and braced her cheeks with both hands, a calloused thumb tenderly swiping her lower lip. "Listen to me very carefully. Whatever ye're feeling or going through, hormonal or not, is never silly. Everything ye have to say is important to me. Trust me on that. I always want to know if something is bothering ye and be able to help ye fix it. Yer body is going through many changes, and it's normal yer emotions are all over the place. So no more self-deprecating thoughts about yer feelings. Am I making myself clear?"

She pursed her lips and nodded, tamping down the urge to cry.

"Very well then, tell me what's going through that mind of yers. At least we can clear the air between us before I go, and my whole family comes and start noticing that something isnae right. Today is supposed to be a celebration of our baby. I dinnae want anything to ruin this day in as much as I think we should delay this for another time."

"Fine." She shut her eyes to search for the right words, but no matter how she formulated them in her head, it didn't sound right. Saying it out loud would only make her appear pathetic. But there was no way around it once Jamie set his mind in extracting something from her.

"Sassenach?"

Her eyes flew open. "Yes?"

"Yer face is getting redder by the second. I'm beginning to worry."

"Very well, if you must know ..." She blew out a breath. "You haven't touched me since that night in London, that's what," she blurted out. "I feel like you're avoiding me. Every time it was time for us to go to bed, you always had some excuse, like you haven't walked the dog or you need to check the emails." Unable to hold it back any longer, she suddenly burst out crying. "I know it's hormones talking, and I'm acting silly. But I can't help but feel the way I feel because I'm hormonal and horny. That's why I'm keeping myself busy, so I will not overthink things. Because if I did, I'd start believing you don't want me anymore, even if logic says it's not true. Happy now?"

He blinked rapidly as if his brain was short-circuiting.

"Yeah, just the reaction I knew I was going to get. See what I mean when I said I was acting silly?"

"No," he groaned out loud. "Sweet baby Jesus! Ye cannae say things like horny when I have to go."

Claire slapped Jamie on the chest. "Jamie! You wanted to know what was wrong! Now that I've said it, you can't blame me for it!"

"Cancel the tea party, and I'll tell Willie I'll be late!"

"No!"

"Why no'?"

"Because!"

With a deep groan, he grabbed her neck from behind and gave her a hard kiss. There was nothing tender or playful about it, just a desperate act of trying to get his fill. He let out a frustrated moan as his tongue swept in her mouth, and a hand cupped her breast, his arousal hard and thick against her belly, letting her know how much he wanted her. When he finally broke the kiss, they were both gasping for air. He pressed their foreheads together, breathing harshly into her face. "How could ye think, even in yer hormonal state, I dinnae want ye any more? Damn it, Sassenach, I've been aching for ye these past few days."

"Then why didn't you touch me?"

He shook his head as he attempted to even his breath. "That night in London, after I took ye back to the hotel, I wanted to bury myself deep inside ye so I could remind myself that ye're really alive and back in my arms. But when I saw that bruising behind yer back and knowing what ye've just been through in yer pregnant state, I thought if I took ye right there and then, I might cause ye irreparable damage, physically and psychologically. I wanted to make sure ye're properly healed first and that our baby was safe. God, all those nights I was away from our bed, I've been doing push-ups to release all those pent-up frustrations of not being able to make love to ye."

"So you did want me all along ..."

He tapped her nose. "Aye, ye silly goose."

"Oh Jamie," she sighed. "You still don't get it, do you?" She placed a hand against his face and smiled for the first time that morning.

"Get what?" he asked, looking suddenly confused.

"You should know by now, lovemaking is the best stress reliever. I thought you knew that."

"Weel ..."

"Remember the times when you were all worked up and conflicted, and how much better you felt after sex?" When he nodded, she pressed on. "Whenever you and I have sex, whether it's fast, hard, long or a quickie, it always came from a place of love. And we've talked about this before ...love heals. The most wonderful thing about our lovemaking, it puts us in that intimate space where we can better connect, heal, open us to those hard conversations, helping us in the process to find closure and release. If sex worked for you to ease your stress, why should it be any different for me? I needed you most after that horrendous night, Jamie. I needed your body to ground me. But I understand now why you didn't touch me that night."

Jamie stared at the ceiling and sighed before looking at her with a mixture of wonderment and torment. He let out a pained laugh. "Weel, right now, I'm under a lot of stress and pressure." He took her hand and placed it on his bulging arousal to make a point. "How about we continue this in the bedroom and let off some steam? I'm stressed, and ye're horny. Ideal combo! Ye can use my body anyway ye want."

Claire clucked her tongue and planted a quick kiss on his lips. "Oh, no, you don't, you sneaky, Scot! You're running late as it is." She placed both hands on his chest and began pushing him out of the kitchen. "How about you let me get on with food preparation, and you finish what you need to do so you can come home as soon as you can in time for the tea party?" she proposed.

"How about my stress levels?" he grumbled.

"Your stress levels are fine!" She turned him around and smacked him on the bum. "Now go. Mrs Fitz will be here any minute to bring the Battenberg cake I ordered."

At the mention of Mrs Fitz, Jamie didn't need any more prodding. He gave her another quick kiss and left the cottage, muttering something about getting a new house before slamming the door behind him.

..........

The rest of the morning and early afternoon passed by quick, and something in Claire lightened even though she was a nervous wreck hosting her first traditional English tea party.

She looked at the kitchen counter laden with several tiered plates displaying the delicacies she'd meticulously prepared. She was ready, and everything looked perfect.

She'd made four different tea sandwiches to be on the safe side: pear and stilton, cucumber and cream cheese, egg salad, and smoked salmon and dill. And then there were scones, lemon curd tartlets, fruit tarts, and shortbread and Linzer cookies she was looking forward to gorge on. On the other end of the counter were Mrs Fitz's Battenberg cake and Claire's pièce de résistance, Victoria's sponge filled with jam, berries and double cream. Her teabox was neatly packed with Darjeeling, Earl Grey, and Assam, and the pitchers of lavender and elderflower lemonade were cooling nicely in the fridge.

Perfection!

She was about to wash the sink when she heard a rap on the window. She looked up and saw Jenny waving at her. Letting her in through the kitchen back door, she was surprised to see her carrying a stack of real estate pamphlets and magazines with its pages tabbed with colourful sticky notes.

"Jen! What's all that?"

Jenny shrugged. "Weel, after what happened to ye in London and with everything going on at the moment, I thought I'd make yer life easier." She plonked down her load on a nearby stool and picked up a magazine, leafing through the pages. "I heard from Willie ye and Jamie are looking for a bigger place. So I decided to grab all these. It has listings of every available property for sale in the surrounding area. Ma and I saved the pages we thought ye and Jamie might like."

"Oh, Jen!" Claire gasped, her hands flying to her mouth.

Jenny waved a hand. "Think nothing of it!"

Feeling emotional, Claire gave Jenny a big hug. "That's very thoughtful of you. Thank you so much." When she finally broke away from their embrace, she noticed deep furrows on Jenny's forehead. "Jen? What's wrong?"

Jenny's usually brilliant blue eyes suddenly looked serious as they landed on the bruising on her cheek. "Does that still hurt?"

Claire touched her cheek. "Oh, this? No, not at all. It looks worse than it is. Poor Jamie getting all these weird looks when we're out and about. He was even accused by some granny of being an abuser. I can understand why but I had to step in and explain to the old dear."

Jenny wrung her hands and gave her a small smile. "Actually, I -I came early because I wanted to talk with ye. Just us two."

"Oh, do you want a drink first?" Claire offered, jerking a thumb in the direction of the fridge. "I have some lemonade ..."

"No! Please! I need to get this out before anything else."

Claire nodded. "Alright then, I'm all ears."

"I-I want to apologise for ..." Jenny's chin crumpled, seemingly attempting to blink back her tears. " ...for what happened to ye in London."

"Wot? Oh, Jen! Why are you apologising? That wasn't your fault."

Jenny raised a hand, which told Claire to let her talk. "It was in some ways my fault, Claire. Geneva was my friend, and I tried to push Jamie and her together. I shouldn't have told her last year there was a vacancy in the village, and then she wouldn't have come back and pursued her interest in my brother. I honestly had no idea she was capable of such horrid deeds. If I'd known, I wouldn't have taken her into my circle of friends and family."

Claire shook her head. "No one could have known, and no one knew. Even her work colleagues and peers were shocked when they found out what she's done. She's a master manipulator, Jen, and she probably manipulated you too under the guise of friendship."

"Still ..." Jenny insisted. "If it wasn't for my meddling ..."

"Stop right there!" Claire wagged a finger at Jenny. "We've locked horns on the subject before and moved on from that already. Alright? Past is past. We all make mistakes. The most important thing is we learn from it. So no more mention of Geneva."

This time Jenny's smile reached her eyes. "Fine! Just dinnae tell Jamie we talked about this."

"Whyever not?"

"Jamie has given everyone in the family strict orders, not to mention about London today."

"Really?"

Jenny nodded. "He didn't want to ruin today's celebration rehashing what happened. Unfortunately, I had to in order for me to apologise, but enough of that now." She clapped her hands. "So, how about that drink. I'm parched." She whirled around and stopped, her eyes widening when she saw the spread Claire had prepared. Walking over to the kitchen counter, she took in everything with a smile. "Goodness, did ye make all these?"

Claire smiled with pride. "I did. Except for the Battenberg cake. Mrs Fitz made it."

"Ye said, ye didnae know how to bake," Jenny said almost begrudgingly.

"Now I do, thanks to the wifey Bootcamp I attended, also known as Mrs Fitz's kitchen."

"These all look scrumptious. It's been ages since I had a proper English afternoon tea." Jenny glanced up at her and grinned. "So, what are we celebrating?"

Claire nearly blurted out the baby news, but she quickly caught herself. Sliding an arm around her soon-to-be sister-in-law, she walked Jenny to the end of the counter to show her the sponge cake. "Today, we're celebrating love, friends and family."

Jenny poked a finger into the clotted cream and licked. "I like the sound of that. That'll always be a perfect excuse for a celebration or a proper afternoon tea party."

Claire smiled. "I couldn't agree more, Jen. I couldn't agree more."

..........

Jamie came home from work and noticed all the sandwiches, tarts and cakes laid out on the kitchen counter. He was mildly astonished that Claire had been able to prepare so much in the nick of time. He glanced out the window and spied her and Jenny in the garden, busily arranging tablecloths on the long wooden table. Looking at his watch, he realised he had about fifteen minutes to get ready before their friends and family started arriving.

But first things first.

Stepping out into the backyard, he snuck behind Claire and wrapped his arms around her waist, planting a soft kiss on her neck. "Mmm, ye smell of berries, lemon and lavender," he whispered, running his lips on her bare skin and ignoring Jenny's mumbling about getting a room.

Claire turned in his hold and smiled up at him. "And you reek, mister. You won't be served tea smelling like that."

"Fancy a shower with me then?" he suggested, feeling mischievous. "Jen's here to look out for guests."

"Nice try, but I had a shower already, and Jen is our guest today."

He leaned down and nibbled her earlobe, making her squeal.

"Jamie, you're going to get my dress dirty. Oh, fiddlesticks ..." She suddenly stilled mid-laughter and made a face, her hand covering her nose. "Urgh ...what's that smell?"

Jamie let her go and took a whiff of his shirt. "Oh, it's just a bit of wood stain I was working with. It'll come off in a wash."

Her face suddenly turned pale. "Oh, God, I think I'm going to be sick. Tell Jen I'll be right back ...and you ...you go have a shower before your parents arrive." With that, she spun around and ran back to the cottage.

Stunned, he watched her disappearing form and whistled under his breath. "What just happened?" he muttered, even though he knew the answer had to do with the dreaded pregnancy sickness. She'd been doing so well so far he almost thought morning sickness was nothing but a myth, even though Claire had revealed, she couldn't stand the smell of aniseed, star anise, fennel, and liquorice.

"Maybe, she's pregnant and suffering from sickness?" Jenny replied, walking past him with an armful of wildflowers to put into the empty vases dotted on the wooden table.

He hadn't realised Jenny had returned from wherever she'd disappeared to. He needed to be careful not to reveal their baby news too soon, or the surprise would be ruined. Jenny was simply someone who couldn't keep a secret.

"Ach, I should have known chemical smells always make her nauseous," he explained, not wanting to give too much away to his perceptive sister.

Jenny twitched her lips from side to side as she trimmed the bouquet's stems with pruning shears. "Aye, that will be right!" she smirked.

He glared at his sister. "What's that supposed to mean?"

She shrugged and gave him a knowing look. "Nothing! Now go have a shower, and I'll take care of things here until Claire feels better."

Jamie was about to say more when he heard the sound of a car parking in the driveway. As Jenny made a move to take a look, he quickly made a beeline back to the cottage before anyone saw him, hoping Claire had already recovered from her bout of sickness.

..........

Jamie leaned back on his chair and glanced around. It was a perfect summer late afternoon, and everyone seemed to be having a great time and enjoying the food Claire had prepared. The sun warmed his face and bathed the garden in dazzling light, making the different shades of green and the profusion of wildflowers more vibrant and alive. The chatter was lively, and funnily enough, no one complained about the lack of alcohol which was highly unusual for a gathering in Scotland. But, he suspected his godfather must have a flask of whisky or something similar tucked away somewhere as he was getting louder and more boisterous as time went by.

He took Claire's hand in his, and she turned his way and smiled. Her face looked pale, but there was an aura of tranquillity radiating from her that told him she was happy and content. Though her plate was full of food, it remained untouched, and if anyone had noticed, no one said anything. "How are ye feeling, Sassenach?"

She took a huge deep breath, held it in for a few seconds and then relaxed. "I'm fine," she sighed. "It's a lovely day, isn't it?"

He knew she was valiantly fighting back the sickness that must be creating havoc in her body but was too stubborn to give in to it. "Shall we tell them about the surprise so you can finally have a rest?" he suggested in a low voice, so no one would hear. "It cannae be comfortable sitting here when ye feel so unwell."

She shook her head as she gulped in more air. "I want to wait for uncle Lamb. He'll be here soon."

Quentin's plane from Athens should have arrived four hours ago but was delayed because of some mechanical issues. Jamie hoped for Claire's sake Quentin was on his way and wasn't dilly-dallying somewhere, like planning a grand entrance. Jamie kissed her cheek, hoping to sweet talk her to giving up this charade of wellness. "I'm pretty sure ye're uncle will understand once he finds out about yer condition."

"I know," Claire murmured. "But I want today to be perfect and complete. I want to see uncle Lamb's face when we announce it."

"But it's already perfect."

"Not without uncle Lamb."

Jamie prayed for patience and tamped down the urge to haul this beautiful but infuriating woman in his arms and carry her to bed. He squeezed her hand and yielded to her request, knowing this get-together was important to her. "Whatever ye say, Sassenach. Just let me know if ye need anything."

"I will," she replied between sharp intakes of breath.

Jamie decided not to press anymore. He knew this was one battle he couldn't win without creating a scene in front of their friends and family. But if Claire thought she was pulling this act off, Jamie was convinced, his perceptive family had already caught on with what was passing. Claire was a terrible actress, and she couldn't even lie to save her life.

Fortunately, their intimate tea party was animated and loud, and it diverted the attention from Claire. Directly opposite them, Tom and Willie were discussing the merits of owning a mini campervan for spontaneous weekend trips around the Highlands. On one end of the table, Murtagh passionately ranted and raved to Brian and uncle Duncan about the Tories and how SNP was the solution to Scotland's political future. Next to Claire, Annalise showed Ellen and aunt Jocasta how to work the Instagram app while Jenny, Mary and Geillis cackled over some celebrity gossip they've probably read somewhere. Grannie Annie had meanwhile fallen asleep in her seat with Adso in her lap and Rollo at her feet. At the far end of the garden, Finlay, Geillis' boyfriend and Ian were having a go at playing badminton but kept hitting the shuttlecock over the hedge to both their frustration.

Though Jamie was happy the tea party had gone as planned, he couldn't relax, too worried about Claire predicament. If it got to the stage where Claire lost any more colour to her face, he was sure no one would be able to blame him for whatever course of action he would take next.

"Right, does anyone want some fresh cuppa?" Claire suddenly announced, getting up from her seat.

Annalise immediately jumped to her feet. "I can do that."

Willie got up too. "I'll put the kettle on."

"I'll clear up the empty dishes," Geillis offered, already grabbing an empty tiered plate stand. "We dinnae want this stunning antique piece being knocked over, now do we?"

Ellen reached over to Claire from her seat and patted her hand. "Everything was lovely, dear. I couldnae decide which was my favourite. And that lavender lemonade was refreshing."

"Aye," Murtagh piped in as he got up and sat directly opposite Claire. "I bet it will taste even better with gin or vodka."

Brian frowned at Murtagh. "The lavender lemonade tastes good as it is. There's nae need to spoil it with alcohol. Besides, it's good for ye to give yer poor liver a wee break. If ye're no' careful, yer gene pool will soon have a swim-up bar."

"I dinnae drink that much," Murtagh grumbled.

"Aye ye do," Aunt Jocasta pointed out. "Dinnae think for one minute I didnae notice ye've been spiking yer tea."

Before Murtagh could retort, Geillis came back in time with a steaming mug and placed it in front of Claire.

"Ooh, what's this?" Claire asked, looking into her drink.

"It's ginger and turmeric tea," Geillis declared. "It's good for ye. I brought it with me from Glasgow. It's organic, and thought ye might like it."

Jamie couldn't help but smile to himself. He knew ginger tea or any form of ginger were effective in reducing nausea. Claire probably knew too because her eyes lit up and gave Geillis an appreciative nod. If he wasn't a hundred per cent certain earlier, everyone knew about Claire's condition, now he's more convinced than ever they were playing along. Jamie appreciated the gesture, but this had gone on too far. Where the bloody hell is Quentin?

"I'm back!" boomed a voice, waking grannie Annie up. It was as if Jamie's thoughts had conjured Claire's uncle from thin air, and there he was making a grand entrance as Jamie had expected. "I hope there are some leftovers. I'm famished."

Claire laughed, twisting around on her seat to watch her uncle approaching. Ellen got up and started plating some food for Quentin.

"There's plenty of leftovers," Annalise assured as she placed another platter of sandwiches on the table. "Claire made enough for the entire village."

Quentin gave Claire a quick kiss on the forehead before greeting the rest of the party, who'd gathered back around the table. "Sorry for the delay," he apologised, finally taking a seat next to Claire. "Our plane was stuck on the tarmac without any air conditioning. We had no choice but to sit there and stew in the heat while the engineers fixed the plane."

"Well, I'm glad you're here now," Claire said, looking adoringly at her uncle.

Quentin stared at the bruising on her cheek. "I don't like the look of that. It looks ..."

Sounds of several throats clearing ensued, a signal to Quentin not to pursue the London topic any further.

"Very well," Quentin nodded in understanding. "I'm glad too that I'm here."

Claire smiled. "Alrighty, so now that everyone's here, Jamie and I have an announcement to ..."

"Hold that thought, sweetheart," Quentin interrupted as he bent down to retrieve the holdall he'd placed at his feet. "I brought a souvenir."

Jamie bit his tongue at the interruption.

"I hope it's not another ceramic plate," Claire groaned, unaware of Jamie's frustration.

"No. I got something better." Quentin waggled his bushy eyebrows as he unzipped his bag and proceeded to rummage through its contents. "Wait for it! Wait for it!" Suddenly he yanked out a bottle and held it up for everyone to see. "I got Ouzo!" he announced with satisfaction.

"Yesss, ya beauty!" Murtagh cheered happily, banging a hand on the table. "I love Ouzo."

Aunt Jocasta scowled at Murtagh. "Ye like anything alcoholic. Ye'll drink Listerine if it was placed in front of ye."

"What's Ouzo?" Claire asked as she stared curiously at the offering. "I mean, I've heard of it before, but I've forgotten what it is."

Jamie was about to fill in the information and tell her she wouldn't be able to stand the smell of it when Quentin expertly uncapped the bottle and held it under Claire's nose. Oblivious to Jamie's hitch of breath, Claire pressed her nose closer to the opening of the bottle to take a better whiff. Ah, shite!

"It's an anise flavoured liquor," Quentin described. "Mostly served as an aperitif in Greece.."

Jamie watched in awe as Claire's head jerked back and her face contorted when her senses registered the smell, and a low, gurgling sound came from deep down in her belly. He winced, half expecting any moment now a horrific scene of projectile vomiting, and the recipient would be none other than his godfather sat opposite her. But Claire jumped to her feet, startling everyone, and her hand immediately clapped over her mouth, golden eyes bright and tearing up. Quick thinking Jenny, grabbed a sprig of mint she'd put in the vase, macerated it in her hands and offered it to Claire. Everyone gasped and watched in fascination as Claire took the green leaves and stuffed her mouth with them, and began to chew, jaws working overtime, reminding Jamie of a cow feeding in the fields. Nobody said a word, waiting for the next scene to unfold or for someone to offer an explanation.

Swallowing audibly, Claire finally untensed and slumped back down to a loud hearty burp. And as if nothing had happened, she calmly drank a good measure of her ginger tea, put the mug down and then smiled. "Sorry about that. So where were we again?"

Eyes bulging almost out of his head, Quentin sputtered before he managed to string a coherent sentence together. "W-What the bloody hell was that? Was that some kind of weird side effects from what happened in London that I have no idea of?"

Claire looked at Jamie, looking suddenly exhausted. "Can you please tell them?"

"Tell me what?" Quentin bristled.

Jamie dropped his head on his folded arms resting on the table and allowed it to bounce once. Twice. Thrice. God must have taken pity of him because when he glanced up, everyone shouted in chorus. "Claire and Jamie are having a baby!"

Dear Readers,

Thank you all for the response and feedback I received for my previous chapter. I know it got a bit crazy; therefore, today's update is more subdued to allow everyone's breathing to go back to normal. Nevertheless, I hope you've enjoyed reading it as much I've enjoyed writing it for you.

Anyway, I hope you're all keeping safe and taking care of yourself and mostly taking the time to enjoy the last days of summer. Keep up the good vibes and be well. X

#melodyheart #wonderwall #savethedate #claire beauchamp #jamie fraser #claire beauchamp/jamie fraser #outlanderfanfic

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scripttorture · 3 years

Note

What would you expect from the public, including minors, when torturing someone in public is done, especially when it's a public spectacle and people actually come to watch. Is liking to watch torture a thing in this case? My story is a medieval/steampunk fantasy by the way.

Well Anon, this does still happen today. It happens in the country I grew up in and consider my home. So… my first suggestion is to throw out the implication that this is a weird historical thing the world doesn’t have to deal with any more. Because it is still very real. And if you get any kind of success with your story there’s a good chance some of your readers will have experience with this.

It’s also significantly more complicated then ‘liking’ or ‘disliking’ so let’s unpack this a bit.

I’ve never actually seen anyone maimed or executed. But as a kid of around 9-10 I knew kids my age who had. We used it as a sort of… pissing contest basically. Kids would brag about it to show how hard they were, in the same way we’d stuff chilis into our mouths and see who could last longest.

It’s one of those bizarre kinds of ritualised self-harm that you end up performing in order to cope with awful things.

Because witnessing this kind of stuff is harmful, to adults and children. It can leave people traumatised and displaying some of the symptoms I write about here.

But, however old the characters, if they grew up somewhere where this is the norm then I absolutely guarantee they understand showing opposition is dangerous. They know their responses to these displays of brutality and power are used as a proxy for their loyalty and worthiness by the state.

And boy if you are in any way outside the norm, if you are queer or the ‘wrong’ ethnic group or faith, then the pressure to conform here is so much more intense.

I lived in Saudi, my home town is Dhahran. My parents are from opposite ends of Europe and they tried to raise me Christian. I still spent a lot of my teenage years unpacking stuff I’d absorbed about public executions, amputations, whippings etc.

From the kids I knew growing up (anecdotal evidence no matter how empassioned) I’d say the ‘normal’ responses to witnessing this kind of state violence are varied. Kids would get nightmares, start showing signs of mild anxiety disorders or depression. They’d become moody, angry and generally unhappy. Which they’d sometimes take out on other people.

But I can’t remember anyone ever explicitly linking it to what they witnessed. They’d try to hide this stuff. Some of them would double down on justifications for state violence (seemed pretty common.) They would, above all, deny there was a problem.

Because admitting to mental illness made you ‘weak’ and admitting to doubts about state violence made you a ‘traitor’. Which is a pretty risky thing to label yourself (even by implication) when you live in a state that publicly mutilates and murders people. (Note the author’s bias as a committed pacifist may be showing.)

As you may have noticed Anon, I still carry a significant amount of anger on this particular subject. This bottled vitriole is not directed at you or your story idea but at the states and politicians who make sure this brutality continues. It’s about the fact that I can remember a nine year old girl matter of factly talking about beheading at a birthday party.

Stepping back from the personal side of things for a moment we know from studies of PTSD and trauma survivors generally that witnessing violence can lead to lasting psychological symptoms. Including PTSD.

PTSD specifically is more likely when an individual is directly effected (ie physically hurt). But repeated exposure to traumatic events, including witnessing violence, makes the manifestation of long term symptoms more likely.

So a character that has seen dozens of these attacks is more likely to develop a long term mental health problem then a character who has seen only one. Regardless of age.

We can’t predict which individual symptoms an individual witness will develop or indeed when a witness might develop them. We just don’t know enough about how these things happen yet.

Having said that, the possible symptoms for witnesses are pretty much identical to the possible symptoms for torture survivors (link above.) I’d advise against using chronic pain for witnesses unless you have a clear idea of an underlying cause; it seems (anecdotally) to be more common in people who directly experienced violence.

If you decide to use insomnia there’s a masterpost on sleep deprivation here.

For mental health problems like depression, anxiety etc remember there are physical symptoms as well as symptoms related to mood. Characters who are trying to deny they have a mental health problem might focus overly on physical symptoms. Depression can cause nausea, vomiting and tiredness/lack of energy which might be mistaken for disease. Anxiety can cause chest pain and shakes.

Circling back let’s talk about some of the phrasing in this question for a moment. Because ‘choose to watch’ misunderstands the way states use these public displays of violence.

Attendance and witnessing of public executions and torture is often enforced. Sometimes overtly and sometimes more tacitly. Because the point of these displays is to hammer home the power of the state. That doesn’t work if people can easily choose not to go.

Here’s an example of what that overt and tacit enforcement looked like back home.

Tacit enforcement came from the timing and placement of executions and amputations. They took place on weekends, when almost everyone was off work. They were carried out in major towns and cities, where the population density was higher. The venue was typically on a main thoroughfare close to important sites. Which ensured a high volume of people would be in the area when the execution took place, whether there was due to be an execution or not.

So picture the town or city this is taking place in, in your story. When are the public holidays? Where are the markets? Where are the most popular religious venues? At what time will the most people be in these areas?

All of that will tell you where an execution or public torture is likely to take place. Because if you set this shit up in eye sight of the place most people buy food, at the time when the most people are out, you get witnesses.

Whether they want to be witnesses or not.

Overt enforcement, on the low end of the scale, means having officials among the crowd pushing people towards the scaffold. At home this seemed to be targetted towards children and people who were judged as ‘other’. Different races to the majority, people who might have been read as a different religion, people who might have been read as queer etc.

This is because the message is ‘This could be you.’

I know practices in other countries have sometimes gone beyond this. Police or armed officials will sometimes go out and gather a crowd of witnesses by just… approaching people on the street and demanding they attend.

This approach requires quite a bit of man power and is not practical or necessary in every setting. In most cases setting things up in the right place and time is enough to ensure a large number of witnesses.

What I’m trying to illustrate here is that a lot of people will see this stuff without having made a conscious choice to do so.

And making a conscious choice to see it… well it does say something about the character but not in the way you’re thinking.

Because these displays are all about the power of the state. Witnessing them, responding to them is performance and it’s a performance of state loyalty. You can’t expect someone to give their true opinion on public displays of violence when criticism or voicing ‘dislike’ could lead to them being targets of violence.

Basically if you’ve got characters going to see this stuff regularly then it’s worth asking why they feel the need to display their loyalty in this way. Sometimes it’s because they really really believe in the state. But often… they’re compensating for something.

Wrapping up I think it’s important to note there’s often a difference between what people say about this stuff versus what they actually feel. And that’s because these things are explicitly political and explicitly about the power a state has over it’s subjects.

The way individuals respond to these things in public and what they say about them in public effects how they are treated. Sometimes it comes with obvious legal sanctions. Even if it doesn’t… these displays are entirely about reminding people the state can kill them.

And it doesn’t actually discourage crime or civil disobedience but it does create a climate of fear and hostility which permeates daily life.

Think about why the state is insecure about their power. Think about how your characters live with that background radiation and whether it feeds into cultural ideas around things like martyrdom or nobility of suffering.

Remember that there is a difference between public and private life. Existing in these kinds of brutal states often means having quite a sharp distinction between them. This can create very strong bonds to those the characters trust. It can also create a big difference between private and public personas.

If you’re writing a world where public torture and executions are happening there’s more going on then just individual character’s reactions. You are saying something about the world, the ruling class and the politics of the area.

Take the time make sure you know what you want to say.

Available on Wordpress.

Disclaimer

#writing advice #tw torture #tw mutilation #tw racism #tw police brutality #execution #torture as execution #effects of torture on the public #public torture #public execution #writing torture #writing witnesses #writing symptoms #effects of torture #effects of torture on witnesses

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cant-think-of-anything · 3 years

Text

Pirate AU (Part Five)

Lucie watched Alastair gently clean his sisters wounds before bandaging them up.

Knowing how much they cared for each other, she had expected Alastair to be angry. And though he was ready to quite literally murder Tatiana, he didn’t seem mad at her. Lucie couldn’t say the same for herself.

Cordelia had gotten hurt. She could’ve been killed if she wasn’t protecting Lucie. Dragging her out of her spiraling guilt, Thomas pressed a cup of tea into her hands, warming her cold fingers. He was also watching Alastair.

“You could not have done anything to prevent this Lucie.”

Lucie stilled. Thomas had arrived with Alastair who ended up sending a message to Eugenia. The three of them had helped Lucie clean up the glass and left Alastair to address Cordelia’s shoulder since he was the only one who knew any form of medical training. When Lucie had questioned him, he responded he knew how to do many things, like baking and tattooing. She had decided not to ask if he was being sarcastic.

Thomas and Eugenia seemed fueled with purpose. Upon telling them Tatiana Blackthorn, the same woman responsible for the public marriage scandal between James and her daughter a few years back, was the one who had killed Barbra, they seemed more focused on vengeance than anything.

Eugenia snapped her fingers loudly. “Oi! Lucie, Thomas get over here.”

Alastair and her cousin had spread out a map of London they had acquired from the library. Combining the information that had come from Alastair and Lucie, they had placed that Tatiana was indeed another pirate, and apparently belonged or led one of the scariest crews to exist. Which was really just delightful for them.

After locating the ship’s docking point, Alastair had gone earlier, confirming that the ship was there and, judging by the symbol carved into its wood, the correct ship.

“We need to get in somehow,” He said quietly while studying the maps.

Suddenly, Thomas looked up. “Christopher.”

“Who?” Alastair asked, staring as if Thomas had lost his mind.

“My cousin, he makes things, if we need to break into a ship he’s quite good at making destructive things.”

And that, seemingly, was all it took. As her friends packed their items, discussing quietly, she watched Cordelia, still asleep, breathe softly in the firelight.

“I don’t want to leave her,” Alastair said, startling her. “But I trust you’ll take good care of her.”

Lucie turned her face away. “For what happened… I’m sorry.”

Alastair looked up, surprised. "You needn’t apologize for that. My sister makes her own decisions, however ill-advised they may be sometimes. She won’t blame you and nor do I.”

Before Lucie could respond Eugenia rapped her knuckles on the door to grab their attention. She watched as they left, leaving her alone with an unconscious Cordelia. Mostly alone she thought, looking at her very tall friend who was staring at the fire. She sat next to him, crossing her legs on the couch and letting her head fall against his shoulder.

“Pirates,” He whispered, shaking his head lightly.

“Indeed,” Lucie responded before adding “Thomas, darling, have you seen what they wear?”

Thomas laughed and bade her goodbye, following Alastair and Eugenia.

~~~

Eugenia thought she had met her fair share of quiet people, but being in a carriage with Alastair was like being in a carriage with a well dressed mannequin. Thomas had mentioned needing to drop by one of his other friend’s houses and promptly abandoned Eugenia.

“You found my brother.” She said, cutting into the silence.

“I did,” Alastair replied, still staring out the window.

How was it even possible for a person to talk this little? Eugenia made a frustrated noise and waved her hand in front of his face, smiling at his scowl.

“I’m trying to thank you,”

“I found your brother entirely by accident. I don’t think that’s praise-worthy.”

“Well you saved him by the sounds of it.”

“He told you?” Alastair sounded surprised. “Well I suppose I did it out of instinct. And a bit of thought went into how you would feel.”

Eugenia smirked, pretending to swoon. “He cares!”

Alastair swatted her arm before reaching into his coat. When his hand withdrew, there was a silver longsword in his grasp, the hilt littered with rubies. She sucked in a breath and reached her hand out to touch the engraved handle. She felt a jolt of surprise when Alastair gave it to her.

“All our weapons are gold anyway. It wouldn’t match. Try not to get yourself killed.” He went back to staring out the window, but Eugenia found she didn’t mind.

~~~

Thomas ducked into Christopher’s lab, cursing London’s tiny doors to find his sister and Alastair already seated there.

Christopher’s head was bent over his notebook, his hair nearly catching flame on an open fire before Alastair threw a damp towel at his head.

“Thomas!” Christopher greeted, his face lighting up.

“We need your help,” Alastair said. He seemed to hate any form of pleasantries.

“With?”

“We need to get into a… very thick wooden box,” Eugenia cut in.

Christopher’s face clouded, and Thomas could practically see his mind working. Christopher was the smartest scientist in London and that Thomas could say with entire surety. He didn’t like keeping things from him, they had been inseparable for so long but this was not his secret to tell.

He listened as Christopher told them what all he needed to create such a substance and Eugenia rose, offering readily to go to the market. Thomas thought he saw a flash of silver in her coat but she was gone before he could ask. His cousin’s face was in a deep revere of thought it seemed so Thomas left the room, Alastair close behind.

~~~

Eugenia wished the cobblestones on the ground of this godforsaken market would swallow her up whole. She quite liked the boisterous activity and the loud arguing. What she did not feel so fond of was crouching in the alleyway like a lowlife trying to avoid her own family. Matthew Fairchild and Anna Lightwood were known to frequent illegal places and as much as Eugenia loved them, she wished she could snap her fingers and make them disappear. If they found her here they would certainly tell the rest of their friends, and Eugenia couldn’t risk putting Lucie and Thomas under scrutiny now.

“Hello?”

Eugenia cursed vehemently before turning around to face whatever person called out to her.

And oh, Eugenia was going to positively faint. Someone would have to drag her out of the market and send her body home. There was a woman standing in the alleyway, a hat shaded half of her face but Eugenia knew it was just as lovely as the rest of her. The mystery woman brushed long black hair out of her dark brown eyes to study Eugenia.

“Are you all right?” The woman asked with her perfectly shaped lips moving to help her up.

No. “Yes! Of course.”

She looked amused. “Is there a reason you're crouched in a dirty alleyway then?”

“A perfectly normal, justifiable reason yes.” When the woman waited for her to elaborate she added “I can’t let my family see me here.”

“Ah,” She responded before sticking out her hand. “I’m Kamala.”

“Eugenia.”

“I came in through a back exit, I can take you through there.” Kamala hesitated then, and Eugenia realized that their hands were still interlocked. “If you would like that.”

Well she couldn’t have said no to that.

~~~

Alastair, it seemed, liked to perch on dangerous places such as the third floor balcony. Thomas was caught between the urge to join him to see the appeal or pull him off so he wouldn’t get hurt.

Thomas watched as he tipped his head back, his perfect dark hair rustling softly in the wind. Moving closer hesitantly, he placed his forearms on the railing, seeing Alastair’s eyes open from the corner of his vision.

“Are you okay?” The words slipped out on their own accord.

Thomas turned, facing the shorter boy fully. Alastair’s entire being seemed stressed and worried and while Thomas understood why, an irrational part of him wanted to see if he could fix that.

“We might die.”

“Not a pleasant thought.”

“I don’t care much what happens to me, but Cordelia and my mother can’t survive on their own.”

“Why? Cordelia seems capable enough.”

Alastair shook his head, turning his eyes away as if he’d said too much.

“Where have you sailed?” Thomas questioned, leaning back onto piller, sensing the signal for a subject change. He also couldn’t quite wrap his head around the “pirate” thing.

“Many places. All of them were better than this repulsive town.

That startled a laugh out of Thomas. “I can understand that. I wish I could leave this city too sometimes.”

Alastair leaned closer and cocked his head to the side “Where would you go?”

Thomas flushed and leaned back. “Anywhere I suppose.”

Alastair looked as he was going to respond but the door banged open. Thomas jerked away, just realizing how close the two of them had been to look at Christopher.

“Eugenia’s back.” He called, his eyebrows furrowed as he looked back and forth between them.

~~~

Cordelia felt as if someone had an iron arm clamped to her shoulder and was shaking her brain vigorously. She opened her eyes and groaned at the stabbing light.

“Cordelia?”

Lucie, she tried to say but found that she could not. She felt an actual hand wrap around hers and soft fingers brush hair from her forehead.

“It’s okay, don’t say anything.”

Slowly, Lucie’s outline cleared and she could see her lovely blue eyes hovering a few inches from her face. Suddenly it was hard to breathe for entirely different reasons.

Lucie gently laid her hands on Cordelia’s arms, careful not to disturb her wounds. Cordelia found herself suddenly overwhelmed with how close her fire-lit skin was, the hesitant brush of an escaped curl against her neck. She never wanted to pull away.

“I know you just got hurt on your shoulders,” she started hoarsely, “but I thought…”

Cordelia, finally able to find her voice said “Never blame yourself Lucie. If it were to protect you I would do it a thousand times over.”

She heard Lucie’s breathing stop before she pulled away slightly, much to Cordelia’s disappointment.

“They found the ship. We’ll find her too.” Lucie’s eyes blazed bright. “I want you to teach me, show me how you wield your weapons, set your ships on water. She took far too much already and I refuse to let her take more.”

~~~

You know that one tik tok audio that’s like- “Everyone is just who they are and who they are is just stone cold gay?” Yeah that’s this fic

ALSO someone help me out who’s taller in Joshwood?

Tagging: @adoravel-fenomeno and @barbra-lightwood (Also I didn’t say this before but I can add you if you want)

#eugenia lightwood #kamala joshi #joshwood #alastair carstairs #thomas lightwood #thomastair #lucie herondale #cordelia carstairs #lucelia #christopher lightwood #the last hours #tlh #tsc #sorry if the pov shifts give you whiplash #my writing #tw weapon

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fierceawakening · 3 years

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There's a comment I can't find that I wanted to respond to... argh.

I guess it's just that... I have enough experience to see both sides of some issues. Like...

There was another woman who asked me for advocacy help, whose first initial was also G come to think of it (hmmm I think I'll call her M?), who worked as a peer support specialist for a nonprofit that did... something for people with mental illness.

I didn't know too much about their services, but they had a reasonably good reputation locally (which will be relevant later.)

Anyway, I don't remember M's exact diagnosis much less how she described her illness affecting her, so take this with as many grains of salt as you like, but I think part of it was paranoia/heightened suspicion, from what I remember her saying.

M also from what I gather had a good reputation in local circles. Some other people spoke of her as a role model for advocacy. Again, I didn't know enough to know what this was for, but I include it to give a full picture.

She came to me saying that she'd asked for accommodations at her job and they hadn't been provided, and she was really upset because the work meant a lot to her. I asked her what she'd asked for and what had been provided, and I saw the first issue.

Again, my memory is spotty, but it was something like: I need a room with a closing door for quiet. And she was offered something like space in a rarely used hall, and this wasn't enough to minimize noise adequately.

I asked her what she wanted me to do, and she said she had an EEOC complaint meeting coming up and she wanted me to help her figure out how to present her case and concerns. And I was glad to do this, but there were a couple things I kept getting hung up on:

One was that I could readily buy that the provided accommodation wasn't sufficient. But I didn't feel at all sure she had a decent case that what they'd provided instead WASN'T ACTUALLY REASONABLE, and I wanted her to think through with me some ways of explaining why the problem wasn't just that it helped a little but not an ideal amount, but that they had clearly FAILED at attempting to address the issue. I tried to coax out of her some details about what happened after she said that wasn't enough, and whether they just told her end of discussion or tried to further negotiate. She'd grow agitated and wonder if I was willing to help. But it wasn't that, it was that I worried that she might well have a concern but not a CASE (and that it could distress her further to see a more neurotypical person pronounce from on high that what she was saying didn't officially have merit, since if you're already upset you can take that very personally.)

The second was that when I tried to ask her how she wanted this resolved, the answer was always money. "They mistreated a disabled person, so they should be forced to pay." And this was a concern for me and for my organization's advocacy director who I consulted on this, because the organization M had worked for, like us, was very small, and if there was some big fine it might hurt their ability to operate. So I tried to ask, "do you want X shut down?" and she'd say of course not, no, she just wanted them taken to task for this. But when I tried to suggest asking for something else, it was always, "no, society needs to see them literally PAYING for driving out a disabled person, as a message to the larger community."

So I had some misgivings, but of course I was advising her not deciding for her. And I go to this meeting, and the other side said something like, "We couldn't provide you with a separate room because only the executive director has that." And I don't remember the exact answer, but it was something like, but well if someone needs it for disability reasons but the ED just has it for rank reasons, they should give it up.

And... maybe that's true in a sense. But it wasn't a good, convincing argument that the lesser compromise was UNREASONABLE.

So M started crying and fled the room.

And everyone started looking at ME like, "go handle this." And I went out to try to talk with her and she refused to go back inside and left. And then told me she was in acute crisis and felt like killing herself, and said she'd need to go to mental health emergency services right away.

Which she did, and I'm glad she did! But... at the same time, I really felt the whole debacle was unreasonable. And yeah maybe the other people were not ill and didn't understand, but that didn't mean they were behaving unreasonably.

So I'm torn on a lot of Tumblr's rhetoric. On the one hand I want us all to be a little nicer, but on the other, just saying "feelings aren't actions" makes me feel a bit weird, because sometimes severe mental illness does influence actions. Hell, that's why they call it (as much as I dislike the phrase) "behavioral health."

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milfgyuu · 4 years

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BTS Reaction Request

Request: BTS members reacting to their 04′ line sister getting inappropriate messages from an older guy. (Alternatively: bts as protective big bros)

A/N: This was an old reaction request from my previous blog, but I didn’t want to leave it behind when I switched things over. Please keep in mind that this is all fictional and in good fun but yes, taehyung would stab a bitch. no cap.

Namjoon

Big brother Joonie to the rescue. He would be beyond pissed that someone was sending his baby sister inappropriate messages but he would handle it with a cool head. In front of her. He would respond to the message from her phone, telling him to back tf off in the most polite way possible before blocking him. He’d hand back the phone with a wink and tell her to come to him if it ever happened again. When she leaves the room he finds the guy online and sends him a threatening message. She’ll never hear from the guy again.

“If you even think about my sister again, I will put you in the ground, got it?”

Seokjin

If anyone would respond maturely it would be Jin. When his little sister came to him about a creepy message she received from an older guy he would be totally disgusted but advise her to not respond at all and block him everywhere. He would probably feel the need to have “the talk” with her about creepy older guys and their ill intentions like she didn’t already know, but he would want to reinforce that knowledge tenfold.

“No twenty year old wants anything good from a teenager. There is obviously something wrong with them. Don’t entertain any of that nonsense.”

Yoongi

Yoongi would be scary pissed. He would probably sit quietly through her explanation of what was said but you’d probably feel the heat radiating off of his skin. He would skip the text, opting to call the guy instead and home skillet would have peed himself. His masculinity would be in shreds. Big brother Yoongi would be terrifying when protecting his younger siblings.

“You think it’s okay for you to talk to a fifteen year old like that? What’s wrong? Woman your age don’t want you? Go fuck yourself.”

Hoseok

Hobi doesn’t like strange men talking to his older sister so you can imagine his reaction to his baby sister getting nasty messages from not just any guy but a guy several years older than her. He would be so fricking l o u d. Yelling, not at her directly but into the universe because who tf had the audacity to say those things to a young girl and think they would get away with it.

“LISTEN to me asshole, if you ever contact my sister again or any other TEENAGE GIRL, I will FIND you, and I will put you in the fucking ER.”

Jimin

Jiminie is the softest big brother but he would be red with rage over her getting inappropriate messages from some upperclassman. Since he isn’t overly intimidating on his own he would recruit local buff bunny™️Jeonggukkie for help. Jimin and JK would drive her to school everyday and walk her to class. After ruffling her hair and sending her into home room they’d find the douche bag who was messaging her, cornering him into an empty classroom.

“So, you’re the asshole trying to get in my little sister’s pants? Disappointing. We need to chat.” *JK cracks knuckles*

Taehyung

He would start laughing. Maniacally. Maybe she shouldn’t have told him. Taehyung was fun loving and good-natured but he was also low key psychotic. He would be absolutely flabbergasted. Like who THE fuck thought they could speak to someone like this without consent? And live to tell his other shrimp-dick friends about it? She would ask him not to do anything crazy and he would smile and pinch her cheek. Still laughing. He would find the guy, because Tae had strange connections. He would have him slammed up against the brick wall of an alley, holding him there with his forearm across the guys throat and a switchblade poking at the side of his stomach. Ya know, purely for scare tactics.

“Well, Hello.” He’d say with a serene smile. “I hear you like to talk dirty to little girls.”

Jungkook

Why was he already holding a baseball bat? Big brother kookie is protection level 3000 when it comes to his little sister. He has been in more than one physical altercation on her behalf. When she told him about the older kid who lived down the road sending her uncomfy messages, JK grabbed his baseball bat from the closet and headed out the door with her running after him trying to reign in his fury. When the guy answered the door, JK grabbed him by the collar and threw him to the ground, raising the bat higher.

“You have two seconds to apologize before I bust your knee caps.”

BTS M.List | Main M.List

→ Do not copy, re-post, translate, or share any of my works on other platforms WITHOUT PERMISSION! All stories are copyrighted, Bubblebeom, 2020. ©️

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ruralurbanite · 3 years

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Lost Cat | Tips Resources Prevention | The Flyer

Have You Lost Your Cat?

Things to Know & Things to DO NOW!!

Losing a pet is a harrowing experience. Losing your pet cat comes with a host of extra challenges, and must be met with a host of extra strategies and resources. Of the complete exhaustive account of the Lost Cat Response (which i plan to write later😉), today we are just going over:

The Flyer (on the streets and on social media).

What to do at home right away.

And a great list of resources to help ground you and get you started on your mission to find you baby

BEST WISHES FOR YOUR FELINE FAMILY ❤❤❤

LOST CAT—SHOUT IT OUT!!

Today we are looking at Pet Flyers, Social Media Posts, and Actions to Take When Your Cat Has First Gone Missing

The Flyer

The Terrestrial Flyer

The IRL Flyer. The flyer you make is hugely important. It does not have to be fancy with color photo (though that would be best) a marker on a piece of printer paper will do. It is a federal crime to open another person’s mailbox. Fold the flyer and wedge it into their mailbox flag, or place it on their front door.

Other Places to Put a Flyer:

stop signs. telephone poles. (GET GOOD STRONG TAPE)

try to strategically place them at traffic points in your neighborhood/area—entrances, exits, 4-way stops.

areas that are difficult to avoid & areas that are popular (telephone pole or road sign right by the entrance to the strip mall)

neighborhood & community boards

any nearby gas-station, grocery store, general store, pet store, and vet clinic that will allow a sign.

dont back down on the first no. most places WILL say no first. (times have changed)

take a flyer to your local shelter(s)

this is key. they will see the initiative, the effort, the care for your cat. you have made their job much easier.

and now they know to keep their eyes out for a cat like yours!

Things to Consider Putting On Your Paper Flyer and/or Your Social Media Posts

1) Key Basics

Photo if Possible

Name (plus nicknames the cat responds to)

Male/Female

are they spayed or neutered?

Average Weight/Size (pounds. or S/M/L)

Age

Fur Color, Coat Pattern & Length, Claw/Declaw

Are they Microchipped? (add chip number if possible)

Were they wearing a collar?

Date/Time/Location they were last seen

2) Medication—Do they need any medication? or are they soon due for their vaccine shots?

3) Unique Traits—Are there any attributes that are unique to your cat? Anything noticeable so that a stranger could identify them?

raspy meow. a black cat with white toes. etc.

4) Personality—Describe your cat’s personality. What can people expect if they approached your cat? Also, think about what you would want someone to do if they did find your cat.

will she run away?

that will make reuniting her much harder. if so, insist that people not approach her, and contact you upon sight.

would someone be able to coax her with a can of wet cat food, or treats, & calling her name?

if so, is that something you’d like to ask people to do?

do you want to ask people to try to catch her if they see her? or to leave her be & call/text/message you immediately?

this relies a lot on the individual knowing how to read the situation and read cats.

5) A personal message of her family back home!

how much she is loved and missed

by the kids, by the dog, extra cute stuff!

how grateful you will be to have her back

THIS IS A MUST-DO. TRUST ME. FLYERS THAT SAY “LOST CAT PLEASE CALL” GET PROBABLY 10% THE ACTION OF WHAT PERSONABLE FLYERS DO

6) Personal Info—this is just that, personal. Give out the amount of personal info you’re comfortable with, but…

never give out your address

maybe start with less on the personal info. add more details if they seem needed (i.e. last initial on your flyer instead of last name. but this is totally up to you)

i eventually kept increasing what info i put out as time went on. i didn’t care, i needed random people to be able to find me. that said, i do not have kids.

remember, the street flyers have some info, Facebook has a different chunk of info (like your full name) and the lost pet sites (you’ll see these below) have another chunk. so keep tabs on what you’ve shared

7) Reward Offer—I have read legitimate source articles that say to never offer a reward. I have read legitimate source articles that say offering a reward will increase your chances of a re-union (while the anti-reward folks say it will encourage theft and ransom. maybe with a purebred registered canine, less probable with a housecat) AND HEY—ITS NOT LIKE YOU SPECIFY WHAT THE REWARD EVEN IS! (is it $20.00? is a giant bag of candy? a half used iTunes gift card? 🤣 you know it!)

my poster, which ill show them all later, says “REWARD + MY INFINITE GRATITUDE”

DO WHATEVER YOU WANT TO DO WITH THE REWARD. WHEN IT COMES TO CATS, ITS A DIFFERENT STORY.

if you can think of any other helpful things to add to a flyer; please share in the comments at the bottom of the page! ❤

Sites to Make Flyers

—they also actively reunite pets and have tons of reading material, resources, advice, etc.—

PetLink

Canva

Pawboost

PetFBI

HomeAgain

Lost My Kitty

Things To Do On The Ground At Home

!! Buildings, Structures, and Vehicles around the neighborhood/area !!

NEIGHBORLY LOVE—ask people to keep an eye out for your cat & to look in their sheds, their garages, underneath their boats, their cars, even underneath their homes. Cats can hide for days and days.

In The Earliest Days After They’ve Gone Missing, You The Pet Owner, Are Strongly Advised To:

Put your cats litterbox outside, on the front porch, or the front of the house.

Leave a window cracked or open as much as you can, for her to find you.

Put dirty clothes and/or or her bed outside.

Leave a bowl of the cat’s food & water outside.

Call for her in the dead night hours (sorry neighbors)

truly, 12-4am is best cat-callin’ time.

Walk the neighborhood at night, bring a can of wet cat food, a flashlight, and a box or a pet carrier.

walk around with a flashlight to catch a cat’s retina (eyes) glowing at you!

you might spot her in a tree or in a bush, not coming when called bc she is injured or scared

if your cat is great friends with your dog, try bringing the dog along for some of those walk-outs, he very-well may be the one that finds her!

DONT GIVE UP HOPE!!

WE JUST RE-UNITED A WOMAN AND HER CAT AFTER FIVE YEARS APART! SHE HAD MOVED TO NYC BUT HAD NEVER GIVEN UP HOPE (PROOF IN HER FACEBOOK) ! 5 YEARS LATER HER ORANGE TABBY IN the LOWCOUNTRY, SC, WAS BEING SENT TO HER! IT WAS A NEWS STORY YOU CAN LOOK IT UP! CATS NAME WAS CHARLIE.

Insanely Helpful Resources

HomeAgain | Lost Cat Article

No Kill Network | Lost and Found Pets

PawBoost | Lost and Found Pets Network

Community Cat Coalition | Lost Cats

Pet FBI | Lost Cat Action Plan

Best Friends Save Them All | Resources | Lost Cat

i hope this little bit here begins to help. my heart breaks for everyone missing their furry family member. i am in this with you, stay strong! you must!

LOVE ASHLEY

#cats #lost pets #animal shelters #pet care #pet emergency #lost pet #found pet #lost pet flyer #lost cat #missing pets #kittens

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jeeperso · 3 years

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D&D Quotes Without Context

Ravenloft, Hazlan Arc, part 1

"Killing's not working and murders all we’re good at!" "I’m good at lots of…" "And murders all we’re good at."

"Chipmunk droppings, I just got this nice cloak and my daggers enchanted. This stinks like a badger who hasn't bathed in months."

“I can do horrible. But, sure, whatever.” "I'm sure there are easier ways to get a harem for yourself, that don't come with as many strings attached."

"Wrong head. This one is much more swelled."

"Let's hope if we ignore it then it will do the same and then bugger off." “We def gonna have to kill it by end of day.” "Worse, I'd hate for us to agitate it and it turn out to be some sort of.... delivery head..." “It’s what I’d use for messages if I was a forked up Wizard.”

"You don't intimidate me." He says, clearly intimidated.

“If it makes you feel better, now I only have to roll one body into the ditch.”

"We've no quarrel with you. Stand aside, or barter like...and he ran off..."

"There we go. Nice and non-violent." “You mispronounced 'boring'.”

"I'm going to keep a look out in case someone competent tries to ambush us."

“Besides, I’m like… a free lance peacekeeping agent. For certain definitions of peace. And keeping. And all the other words really.”

"Okay, just what is that, an ogre, a hill giant, or something else?" “Can I kill this one?”

"A silver piece says Tiny is as likely to attack them as us."

"Unfortunately we were testing a modified growth potion one day and I drew the short straw."

"I figured as much. You're ill equipped, your tactics are amateurish, and you don't respond well when things don't go your way. Screams desperate with few options." "You don't have to rub it in man." “You tried to rob us. Twice. And we didn’t kill you. Even though I kinda want to.”

“I dunno, the one with horns is screaming that he’s got some cool shit we can steal.” "I am Nima Galzona, Necromancer, and apprentice to the great Hazlik." “Jonni Humantorch, genie fucker.”

"I'm...not comfortable riding inside a giant mouth. Bad experience with a dire mole once."

"Do necromancers just lose the ability to smell? Or they just get so used to the scent of decay that it doesn't bother them any more?"

"So anyone else get the feeling that 'murders' is going to be a drastic understatement about what's wrong here? I don't get the impression that a crime spree merits wizard attention."

Today however the streets are strangely sparse, as you head to where the caravan usually sets up, you find out why. “Please be fire, please be fire, please…”

Death to all witches and workers of magic, repent and pray the gods show thee mercy, for I have none. --The Witchfinder. “Oh, sweet! Someone they’ll give me money to set on fire!”

“I don’t use magic. The universe just knows I’m awesome.”

"Oh boy... shits about to get political." Jonni stops and puts the torches she was gonna start selling back.

At this point Nima turns around and unleashes a massive skull shaped fireball into the air high above the crowd. “Nice add on. 9/10.”

“Which remind me, if you cast speak with dead, and speak with plants, can you talk to chairs?”

"I threatened to pick you up like an angry poodle once, am not afraid to do it again."

"I'll go along, someone needs to make sure Jonni doesn't set stuff on fire we need intact."

"I wonder what kind of experiment it must have been to have so many people..." "I can guarantee you won't like the answer." OOC: Let's be optimistic. Maybe it was an experiment in self-sustainable farming to improve the local ecosystem. OOC: Narrator: it was not.

"Why can't we ever go anywhere nice? I can vaguely remember nice places used to exist somewhere at some point."

"Okay, who broke the moon?" OOC: Who knows in this savage land of sorcery and super science. "Wait, he can break a moon! Umm, we should avoid him for a long, long time." "This is his domain after all. That or some race of lunatic ratmen who thought it was made of Ruminating Rock."

Just a single row of normal sized bricks, about ankle height. "Its a trap, get an axe."

“Marsh, we can make you a new hand, right?”

“Shove it in.....Are we still saying 'phrasing'?”

"Goggles on, things are weird." “Here weird or 'coke party in the City of Brass' weird?”

"You know how I was wondering about why we never go anywhere nice? Well now we are somewhere nice and I don't trust it at all."

“Hey, so what are you doing after work?” Pause. "I do not have that information." “Well, this is Hell, let’s burn it down. Burn it all down!”

"Hold on, I speak attraction." (POSTER'S NOTE: As in theme park, not sex.)

"That information is classified. Please give administrator passcode." "A Wizard did it." "Passcode accepted." "I can't believe that worked." “My second guess was ‘ruminating powder.’”

"Yeah.. The others seem to be currently living-impaired.." “Let’s check my newest victim first then.”

“Hey, slim! Look alive! I wanna discuss mass burial techniques!”

"Talk! Fast! Or steam loud!”

"It is wrong to murder a defenseless mage in cold blood. It is wrong to murder a defenseless mage in cold blood. It is wrong to..."

OOC: Marshal is of the opinion we don't kill him for a long time.

OOC: So what this session has taught us is like everywhere else in Ravenloft, The Weird Wizard Wasteland SUCKS!

Gorbash: okay… so… how do we finally get out of here? Domain lord: Only the Dark Powers could let you out. Edmund: So we need to talk to them. Domain Lord: Literally no one ever has. You’d have to cause a catastrophic amount of attention to maybe get their attention. Jonni: …. My hour has come at last. "Time to kill a monster. And it is self-defense if he summons a monster intent on murdering us." “Sure. Let’s go with that.” "Hi, if you are watching this. I am dead. I assume you killed me, but that was a mistake..." "It really wasn't." "Must run faster. Must run faster. Not getting caught in another dimensional implosion. Must run faster." Escape collapsing grad thesis, first! “Yeah, let’s let Marsh calm him down while we check to see if that loser left anything interesting out here." You find a very interesting ant. The tiny, angry sun is back in the sky. "Don't make eye contact..." "That’s my purse! I don’t know you!” Jonni somehow kicks the sun in the balls. "Beware! We have fortified waffles! They can concuss at 50 paces." “Crab people. Or more fucked up Wizard experiments. 50/50 odds.” OOC: Doctors without Domain Borders. "We only want the food and clothes." "And we just want shinies.” "Money is no use to us, no one would take it from us." “Oh, you just gotta know how to talk to them. Grab em by the short and hairies first.” "As said, my waffles are well fortified. They can be used as throwing stones." "And as a professional, I would advise not swimming five hours after eating one." "Really Jonni, I don't mind the way you speak.. but it might not hurt to try to limit the goading to people who CAN'T wipe us from existence?" “Killing me only proves I was right.” “Hey, we were bonding over our opinion on casual murder!” OOC: Her two diametrically opposed sides! Her evil side! And her indifferent side! "We never truly die, this will avail you nothing." “Yeah? I bet kinda dying still hurts like a mother forker though.” OOC: Slab of iron with which I have lived, strike now one last heart of dickery… “Sorry not sorry we killed your folks!”

#dungeons and dragons #dnd 5e #quotes without context #ravenloft

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belladxne · 3 years

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i will see you where the shadow ends | chapter 8

[see notes for ao3 and ff links]

part of the put your faith in the light that you cannot see series AU: Breath of the Wild pairing: KiriBaku word count: 6,638

chapter 8: i think you should know this uncertainty has got me restless

Eijiro’s not really sure what he was expecting when he finally saw Aizawa. Inko had called him a young man—probably because, by comparison to her, he was—but she had also said he’d been one of Katsuki’s advisors one hundred years before. The end result was that Eijiro had had a completely incongruent mental image of him, something somewhere between, like, some mysterious Sheikah warrior in his late twenties, and a wizened, decrepit old sage with endless patience and kind eyes.

The Aizawa he gets is… not either of those things. Like, not even close.

Even in age, he’s neither young like Inko had said, nor as old as he logically should be if he was around a century before. If Eijiro had to guess, he’d put Aizawa somewhere in his sixties; the man seems old but not tremendously so, with a few spare wrinkles pressed into the lines of his face here and there, and hair gone white with age—only the leftover strands of black littered throughout indicating that his hair wasn’t always traditional Sheikah white.

But it comes down to a lot more than just his age. Eijiro’s kind of surprised that the esteemed leader of the Sheikah has such bloodshot eyes and disheveled… uh, well, everything. The faint, soft smile just barely tugging at the corner of the man’s lips is the only clue at all that the man’s expression is ever anything but unimpressed exhaustion, which just—isn’t what Eijiro would expect.

As his feet carry him further into the room, the man’s eyes drowsily close again and he shifts to scratch the area just below his left eye with his pinky, letting out a slow exhale.

“Judging from your silence, I’m going to assume you don’t remember me,” he says before his eyes sleepily blink back open—seriously, Eijiro has to wonder if this man has slept a day in his life—and Eijiro falters in his tracks.

“Um… no, sorry,” he shakes his head, biting at his lower lip in something like guilt. He—he hadn’t really thought before this about the fact that he probably should know Aizawa, if they’d both been around Katsuki one hundred years before. He hadn’t really sat still long enough to think about it, and now, as he studies the man’s face, for the first time thinking to look for anything familiar… he tries, but he finds nothing to recognize at all. “You’re—you are Aizawa, right? You—uh, Midoriya Inko? Said I should speak with you?”

Eijiro almost winces at how jumbled and awkwardly unsure it all comes out—but he hadn’t really sat still long enough to think about what to say, either. Aizawa’s eyebrows raise, eyes widening just slightly in surprise. Eijiro supposes that’s fair, considering— ...well. Considering.

“Well,” he says, his voice somewhat quiet. There’s something heavy masked in his tone, and he nods slowly. “I suppose that explains how you’re here. When we discovered the entrance to the Great Plateau caved in and blocked, we weren’t sure what could be done. It was too near Hyrule Field to justify an effort to clear the boulders—too exposed—and no one could put forward a more rational plan to get up to the plateau to leave you a message.”

Aizawa sighs, deep and honest, admiration and something a little more raw, more world-weary and mournful clear in his voice, “Midoriya Inko was a remarkably compassionate woman. I suppose it doesn’t surprise me that if anyone were to make a way to help you, it would be her.”

It’s… hard for Eijiro to think of her as dead—weird, even with the fact that she’d revealed it herself before he left the plateau. It just doesn’t click in his mind, on so many levels. Maybe it’s that most of the time they spent together was under the pretense she was alive, or maybe it’s that it’s such a surreal notion to think that the one person he’s spent the most time around since awakening wasn’t even living, or maybe it’s something else entirely.

Whatever it is, hearing her spoken of in the past tense is unsettling and—just—feels wrong. Sharp teeth poking at his bottom lip, he nods slightly, unsure how to respond. How to even begin to express just how much help she’d been, just how kind she was. Aizawa, for his part, doesn’t seem particularly interested in waiting for an answer, though, already pulling himself back to the topic at hand.

“While your memory loss is likely going to prove problematic at some point, for now I think we should consider it a blessing in disguise.”

Eijiro’s jaw drops, incredulous. “Wha—how?” His lack of memory grates at him, constantly—an always-present weight on his mind whenever he does or doesn’t recognize anything. It makes him feel so—so—frustrated and lost; the only connection he even has to who he is is Katsuki’s voice calling to him from the castle, and he still doesn’t even remember what the prince looks like.

He’s adrift and clueless, and it’s supposed to be a ‘blessing’?

A weary huff escapes Aizawa, who levels him with his surprisingly intimidating stare. “As our crown prince was particularly fond of telling you: you, Kirishima Eijiro, have always been exceedingly reckless. I have little doubt that if you remembered everything, you would already have made an ill-advised attempt to raid the castle, without stopping long enough to listen to reason.”

Eijiro doesn’t particularly want to tell him that he already can hardly restrain himself from doing exactly that. Pouting slightly, his gaze drops a little as he mutters, “Inko told me I shouldn’t.”

“And she was able to get the advice out before you’d already charged off, a fact we can all be grateful for,” Aizawa responds. Resting both his hands on his knees in front of him, the man releases a sigh. “But more so than that, there’s the nature of your memories to consider. The Calamity one hundred years ago… the events that passed were catastrophic, and for those left who lived it, to even bear the memories of what we’d seen is an unimaginable weight. To bear what you endured, Kirishima… I wouldn’t wish it on you, or anyone.”

Inko had said something to the same effect when she’d finally begun to explain things to him—he’d been unable to hold it against her at the time, but hearing the same sentiment echoed now, he grits his teeth.

He wants to—to yell, kick things, throw a tantrum if there was half a chance it might make a difference. He has to have that right, doesn’t he? To demand why everyone thinks they can decide for him what he can and can’t handle—especially when it comes to knowledge about his own self.

It’s just—it’s not fair. None of this has been fair and he’s starting to get sick of it.

As though the man can sense his line of thoughts, Aizawa leans forward, giving him a pointed look.

“Our first priority will be helping you recover your memories, Kirishima, and I am already dedicated to helping you do so to the full extent that I am able, but for now, I think we should be grateful that any time it takes you to remember will be time you can spend bracing and preparing yourself. The horrors you experienced are not to be taken lightly.”

Lips pressing together, Eijiro’s brow furrows. His hands fidget with the hem of his tunic in irritation, but... the assurance that Aizawa will help placates him some. The frustrating truth of the matter is, he trusts Inko completely and totally, and she had thought the same of how potentially overwhelming the news of what had happened to him could be—and if she trusts Aizawa to help him, he has little choice but to accept the man’s judgment. However begrudging and incomplete that acceptance may be.

“If—then—” Not for the first time—far from the first time—Eijiro has so many questions he can’t sort through that he doesn’t even know where to start, his words halting and stumbling over each other in his attempt.

They’re distracted before Eijiro can decide where to begin, however, by a faint creaking behind them. Eijiro turns, and he and Aizawa both direct their gaze to the entryway, where the little girl stands, fingers curled around the doorway as she peeks in with wide eyes. Eijiro feels the brunt of his stressed dissatisfaction drain, slightly, now that the tension has been broken by the interruption.

“It’s all right, Eri,” Aizawa calls to her gently, inclining his head. “You can come in and listen.”

She hesitates a moment or two, still seeming somewhat skittish, before she slips past the door, moving closer to Eijiro.

“Eri, this is Kirishima Eijiro. You remember the stories I’ve told you about him?”

The little girl—Eri—nods, gaze flicking to Eijiro once more as she edges closer to him. Again, he tries to give her his friendliest and most encouraging smile despite his lingering frustration. He thinks, maybe, she seems at least a little emboldened as she continues to approach him. Little victories.

“Kirishima, this is Eri. We rescued her from the Yiga Clan not long ago, and I’ve been taking care of her since. I trust I don’t have to tell you to be patient with her during your time in Kakariko Village.”

“Of course,” Eijiro responds with a firm nod, before turning again to the little girl, beaming. “It’s nice to meet you, Eri.”

She flushes, nodding quickly and looking down at the floor as she grabs again at the hem of her tunic. The Yiga Clan… it’s another piece of knowledge that does come back to him when he thinks. They were—are—a group that splintered off from the Sheikah. His memory of history more or less seems to be intact, because he can remember, somehow, that the Sheikah clan had been scorned and shunned by a Hyrulean king thousands of years ago. Out of... fear of the advanced Sheikah technology that had since been buried, he thinks?

Most of the Sheikah had decided to give up their technological advancements and hide them under the ground, but some of them had resented the king turning on them. Those were the ones who had formed the Yiga Clan, a merciless group dedicated to bringing back All for One and bringing about the deaths of its enemies.

Which meant Katsuki, and him. He manages to avoid his expression twisting in distaste, unable to picture a clan like that as being the most nurturing of places. From what he can imagine, and what he can gather from Eri’s easily frightened nature, it’s a very good thing they’d gotten her out.

“Returning to the matter at hand,” Aizawa says, directing Eijiro’s attention back to him. “You’ll know by now that one hundred years ago, the kingdom of Hyrule was destroyed. Prince Katsuki’s last action before returning to the castle was to demand you be placed in a sacred slumber in the Shrine of Resurrection, to save you. His intention was to go alone to face All for One, and hold him off until you were healed, but Midoriya Izuku was here when he arrived.”

Eijiro nods, brows tugging together guiltily as his gaze fell to the floorboards. “Inko told me—told me he went in my place, because he was also a chosen of Farore.”

“Eijiro, look at me.” Aizawa’s voice is firm, and Eijiro has a hard time finding reason to refuse such a stern demand. Reluctantly, he presses his lips together and lifts his head, to meet Aizawa’s gaze. Some of the exhaustion there has ebbed, replaced with something a little more fierce.

“Neither of them were under the impression that Midoriya Izuku could take your place, nor did Midoriya believe he was obligated to undertake this burden due to some nonexistent failing on your part. Do you understand?” His tone leaves no room for argument, expression steely and unyielding. “They were under no illusions that even the two of them together could do more than buy time for your return, but that is a choice they both made, on their own—and it is neither your fault, nor something they bear any resentment towards you for. Those are the facts of the matter. Do not allow yourself to think any differently. It’s hardly rational to martyr yourself over this. You’ve already done more than most others could ever have accomplished.”

Gritting his teeth once more, Eijiro’s fists clench at his sides as he tries to bring himself to agree. Inko and Aizawa are both so insistent that he’d gone above and beyond, but he can’t remember that, can’t see any proof of it in the devastation of a kingdom he can’t even recall the heyday of. The only thing he has evidence of is that he’d fallen.

Before he can argue or force himself to accept Inko and Aizawa’s words, there’s a tugging at his waist, surprising him out of his thoughts. He blinks, looking down to see Eri’s hands wrapped tentatively around the Sheikah Slate, eyes wide and a little pleading.

“Oh, uh—” He lifts his head to look to Aizawa, unsure, but the man inclines his head in assent, so Eijiro shrugs and manages a smile directed down Eri’s way, helping her unclip it from his belt. “Just... be careful with it, okay?”

She nods adorably seriously, clearly taking his words as a matter of grave importance, before beginning to poke around the Sheikah Slate with so much confidence it’s like she’s an old pro. Eijiro watches, impressed, and it dawns on him in the moment that he might need to rethink his prior judgments on babies using Sheikah Slates, before the matter at hand tugs at his attention once more.

He doesn’t know if he can bring himself to really believe Aizawa, but it’s all beside the point.

“But...” There’s a furrow in his brow and an uncertain flex to his hands, no longer fisted tightly at his waist, as he tries to get his bearings. “Either way I have to help them. I’m—they’re running out of time, and I’m the only one who can do this, right? So how… if I can’t go to the castle, how am I supposed to help them? Inko said—said you’d know what steps to take?”

Aizawa nods, and Eijiro will concede that even if this haggard, overworked-seeming man is far from what he’d expect from a confidence-inspiring leader, or a trustworthy advisor, there’s something to the man’s demeanor.

He speaks as though his words are indisputable, tone almost bored in the thorough assurance that he’s voicing the only logical conclusion to be drawn from all the facts at hand. It makes it hard to question or deny what he says, and the calm, methodical way he carries himself makes it hard to panic. Eijiro can see why the Sheikah would trust him to lead them, why a royal family would trust him to advise.

“The only reason Prince Katsuki risked his life returning to Kakariko at all was to entrust me with a message for you. I’ve been holding onto the words he intended for you for one hundred years.”

Eijiro finds himself holding his breath as he waits for whatever could be such a grave message, wondering what could possibly be the kind of thing he couldn’t tell Eijiro himself. This—it has to be what Eijiro’s looking for, the thing that’s going to give him some—direction, finally.

He’s had no idea what he’s doing, what he should be doing, since he woke up. It feels like he’s had nothing to cling to but confusion and a sense of hurry up and wait—the urgency of being told that Hyrule needs him and that Katsuki and Izuku have been fighting his battle for a hundred years, and the maddening hindrance of being told he couldn’t even go do anything about it yet. If Katsuki left such an important message, he has to know what Eijiro can do now. He has to.

Aizawa seems to be examining Eijiro as he weighs his next words, but before he can finally give Eijiro the answer he’s been looking for—a small, confused sound interrupts them.

“It’s broken,” chimes a tiny, unfamiliar voice at his side, and Eijiro blinks as he looks down at Eri, realizing this is the first time he's heard her speak. It doesn’t register for another couple seconds that she must be talking about the slate still resting in her hands, as she frowns down at it.

Alarm fills him—how can it be broken? It’s practically the only way he got this far, and it’s Katsuki’s—Katsuki had said he’d need it to get around, he can’t have gotten it broken already.

Resisting the urge to snatch the device out of a literal six-year-old’s hands to confirm, Eijiro looks back to Aizawa for—for—well, he doesn’t know, but maybe some reassurance, or indication that the man just assumes Eri doesn’t know what she’s talking about, or anything. Aizawa isn’t looking at him anymore, though, and his expression is anything but reassuring. Eyes slightly wider and posture suddenly straight, in a manner that would have looked like alarm on any marginally more emotive man, Aizawa’s gaze is fixed on Eri.

“What do you mean, Eri?” he asks, managing the urgency Eijiro can just barely hear in his tone admirably—for Eri’s sake, presumably.

The girl frowns at the slate in her hands, looking first to Eijiro, and then to Aizawa with the most minute furrow between her brows. She has the runes screen open—all of a sudden Eijiro’s doubting the wisdom of letting a little kid handle a device that can make bombs—but before he can process the concern, she answers.

“Aunt Emi’s takes pictures.” She taps what looks like an empty rune slot on the screen, to the right of the cryonis symbol. There’s a spark of confusion in Eijiro’s mind, but then he almost lets out a sigh, because if that’s the only thing wrong with the slate then he still has all the things he needs—but Aizawa leans forward with a grim intensity that makes him rethink that.

“Is the album still intact?”

Eri shakes her little head, but begins operating the slate with effortless familiarity once more, switching to the map screen before confirming, “It’s not there.”

Aizawa hisses something under his breath that Eijiro has the distinct impression is a curse, and Eijiro’s eyebrows lift slightly. Aizawa runs a hand through his hair, expression drawn together in serious thought.

“Is...” Eijiro hazards, voice tentative as he glances between Eri and Aizawa again, “is that something I’ll need?”

It’s another moment before Aizawa returns his gaze to Eijiro, racing thoughts having apparently run their course. “For most parts of your mission, the album will be a frivolity that has no impact.” He pauses, and his tone leads Eijiro to expect the but. “But it serves a far more important purpose in the grand scheme of things.” Swearing under his breath once more, Aizawa leans back wearily.

“I can’t in good faith expect you to undertake any of the grave challenges laid before you if you can’t even remember for yourself the importance of what’s expected of you. If you have any desire to recover your memories, that album was meant to be your greatest asset.”

Eijiro’s eyes widen, a flash of distress sweeping through him. “Wh—but I can get my memories back without it, right?”

Aizawa’s lips press together in a tight line, and again there’s an uncomfortable pause before he sighs. Posture drooping, he drapes his forearms across his lap and all at once Eijiro gets the impression of the past century weighing physically on the Sheikah. “If we’re being rational, we have no guarantee that you can recover your memories at all. The intended purpose of the album was to aid in that process, but there are very real possibilities that you could get your memories back without it, or that even with it you may never remember at all. What’s important is not to panic.”

And it’s rich—it’s so rich of him to say that, as if that is not one of the most panic-worthy things Eijiro has heard since waking up.

“But I—I—” His words fail him, and how could they not? How could he possibly be expected to put into words how badly he wants to remember everything about a voice that isn’t even familiar to him? Maybe it’s just because Katsuki was the first contact he had after waking up, but Eijiro hasn’t been able to stop thinking about it—about Katsuki, more than any of the other blanks in his memory that plague him every second of the day.

It’s unbalanced—he’s important to Katsuki, he knows he is; he can tell just from the way Katsuki talks to him. How can he be content to know there’s immeasurable history behind every brief conversation they manage to have, when he can’t even put a face to Katsuki’s name? How can he be content doing that to Katsuki?

“Kirishima—” There’s the faintest note of impatience in Aizawa’s voice, but then he stops, seemingly catching himself, and when he continues, it’s with a tone minutely more gentle. “Eijiro. It’s pointless to work yourself up over a scenario that may not even come to pass. You won’t do yourself any favors by giving up hope just because there’s a chance you won’t remember. And as for the album, there’s still a chance it can be restored.”

Eijiro lets out a shaky breath, still trying to calm himself. It’s not that Aizawa’s not helping, not that his words don’t have any effect, but he can’t just turn it off.

“Okay,” he manages—though his voice isn’t as firm or as certain as he’d like. “Then, what would I need to do?” His gut still roils with unease, faintly, despite his efforts to let Aizawa’s words comfort him, but he doesn’t know how he’s going to deal with—with any of this if he can’t cling to his own next steps, to what he can do about it.

Aizawa nods, either acknowledging or approving of his attempt to focus his efforts, and the man swiftly seems to gather his thoughts. “You’ll need to take that slate to my colleague, Fukukado Emi, in Hateno Village. She’s been studying this technology since before the Calamity, and she knows more than anyone else in the kingdom about the slates specifically. If there’s a way to restore the album, she��ll either know it or she’ll find it.”

Okay… Okay. This is doable, if what Aizawa’s saying is true. Eri still holds the slate in her hands, so he can’t look at the map, but he tries to do the math from memory—not counting for the distractions and rest in the middle, it had only taken him about four hours on horseback to reach Kakariko from the horse stable, and Hateno had been about… maybe twice as far from the fork in the road?

If he leaves now—doesn’t let himself get distracted along the way—he can be in Hateno maybe a couple hours after sunset, give or take, he could—he could maybe even have the slate fixed by—

“You’re already getting ahead of yourself.” Aizawa’s sigh cuts through his thoughts. “While your eagerness is written all over your face, so is your exhaustion. And don’t think I’ve missed that glaring bruise on your head or the way you’ve been favoring your left leg.”

Eijiro flushes, something between embarrassment and shame, and he opens his mouth to protest—Aizawa’s already shaking his head wearily.

“I understand that the position you’re in is frustrating, but it’s better you understand now—there is no way to save Prince Katsuki in a matter of days. There is no way to save him in a matter of weeks. The task laid in front of you is too monumental for that, and to approach it sensibly will take time. With how long this will take, you will have to learn patience eventually, and it will be better for you to do it now, when your recovering body will need it most. Have I made myself clear?”

Eijiro feels his face twisting in aggravation, eyebrows drawing together and a pout tugging at his lips. There’s a few moments of silence in which he meets Aizawa’s flat, unimpressed stare, and then a huff escapes him. “So… what, then? I’m supposed to just—sit on my hands, or something? Do nothing despite what’s going on in the world?”

“You’re supposed to take the time you need,” he responds, eyes closing as he blatantly attempts to maintain his own patience. “You will have to get stronger to conquer any of the challenges put before you, and continuously throwing yourself from task to task without allowing yourself even a moment to heal from your injuries will only weaken you. Take the day to rest, get a long night’s sleep in a real bed, set out after you’ve recuperated and not before.”

Eijiro’s hands flex and clench at his sides, and try as he might he can’t make the tension drain despite his sigh. “Sir, I don’t think I can just—sit around that long.”

“Nor do I expect you to. There’s hardly a shortage of things to do in the village in the meantime. If you’re really at such a loss what to do, you can start with sitting down. No doubt you have countless questions about yourself, and the world. I’ll try to answer them for as long as I’m able.”

That—Eijiro had been so frantic to figure out what he needed to do, he hadn’t even thought of all the questions that have been threatening to burst forward like a flood since—since Katsuki had first spoken to him, really. So many that he’s never been able to figure out which to ask first, and, to be fair, he doesn’t think he’s been able to just… sit and ask them all, yet. No one’s been capable of answering them, and there’s always something else to do.

Scratching idly at the skin beneath his eye, Aizawa pushes on, offering more options to fill his day.

“I’d recommend acquainting yourself with the people in the village, it will be good practice; with limited travel and communication, there’s no one person alive who can tell you all of the evils All for One has unleashed in this kingdom. Speaking to those who will have had to coexist with those evils will reveal far more to you than I can, and it’s important to remember that there are problems on a lower scale than All for One itself. There is a fairy fountain on a hill that overlooks this village—it would be wise to touch base with her, in the event she can aid your travels. And if you’re truly incapable of taking it easy for an entire day, the village has an ancient shrine that you may be able to access.”

Done with his list, Aizawa blinks tiredly at Eijiro, gaze flat. “There should be more than enough to amuse you in the village for one day, but I will remind you again not to strain yourself, so I don’t have to confine you to the village for another day.”

Eijiro takes issue with that—it’s not like Aizawa can really stop him from leaving, but… “I… fine. You… you’ll really answer all of my questions?”

The Sheikah nods. “As many as I’m able, for as long as I can keep awake. The pains I took to ensure I would be alive for this day were effective, but they are, unfortunately, exhausting.”

Eijiro hesitates, curious and concerned. How much of a strain did he have to undertake on Eijiro’s behalf? “What… what did you have to do?”

“It’s hardly anything to write home about, to be frank. I thought I told you to sit down.” The last part is delivered in a slightly more stern tone, and Eijiro blinks, flushing just slightly as he hurries to do so. Seemingly satisfied, Aizawa deigns to answer in more detail. “The Sheikah have been pledged to Bakusatsuo for longer than we have been pledged to his descendants, the royal family. The result is that we’ve always had a special relationship with his first domain—time.”

With a heavy breath and the faintest hint of a shrug, the older man continues, “It’s likely I would have been alive to see this day even had I not taken special precautions; time has always been kind to the Sheikah, and not in a metaphorical sense. Oftentimes our people are blessed with exceptionally long lifespans. But there is also a sacred practice, cultivated and passed down since the first of our kind used it to aid Bakusatsuo in his first human incarnation: a meditative trance that slows our aging even further.”

Aizawa grimaces just slightly. “As I said, it’s nothing exciting, nor is it any sort of taxing process. But the meditation cuts into many of the hours that should typically be spent sleeping. I catch sleep when I can get it, so it will be best not to waste much more of my few waking hours if you’d like most of your questions answered.”

Nodding slowly, Eijiro finds himself fidgeting slightly, gnawing on his lip with pointed teeth. “I… Man, I honestly don’t even know where to start.”

Aizawa tips his head in acknowledgement, seemingly unsurprised. “That’s fine. Fortunately, we have time.”

“Oh, man!”

Eijiro jumps, slightly, at the sudden exclamation from beside him, jerking his head around to stare at its source—he hadn’t even heard anybody enter; it’s like the guy had melted right through the floor or something. It’s a little jarring, since everything about the man’s appearance is, well, loud, from his distinct posture and animated expression, to the bright blond hair he sports in an ostentatious gelled up style, to how boisterous his voice had been.

And yet Eijiro hadn’t so much as heard a door hinge or floorboard creak.

“I guess I shouldn’t bring your lunch for you, huh, sir?” he asks, cartoonishly blue eyes twinkling like he’s sharing a joke. “I don’t want to be responsible for you falling asleep with your face in your rice again!”

Aizawa’s apparently too tired to dignify that with a response.

The guy has a point, though; for the last half hour that they’d spoken, Aizawa’s eyes had drooped closed more often than not, and several times Eijiro would almost have genuinely believed he’d finally fallen asleep for real were it not for the Sheikah gesturing lazily for Eijiro to continue with whatever he was saying.

“Togata,” he acknowledges, sounding barely half awake. “I’ll eat later. This is Kirishima Eijiro.”

“Yep!” Togata responds, not skipping a beat. “Eri told me all about it.” He turns to Eijiro, then, as Eijiro rises quickly to his feet, and Togata smiles wide and offers an enthusiastic bow. “Togata Mirio! Honored to meet you.”

Eijiro’s mid-bow when the words register, catching him off guard. His cheeks heat up and he rubs awkwardly at the back of his neck as he flounders for an appropriate response. “Oh, I—I mean… I’m just a guy, man.”

“Sure,” he agrees easily. “But that just makes you even cooler, though, you know?”

Aizawa takes this moment to slump down in the haphazard pile of cushions and blankets that reside on his place of honor—not very traditional, but then, he doesn’t seem like a traditional guy—and the rustling pulls their attention, saving Eijiro from having to figure out how to respond to that.

“Togata, show Kirishima around the village. It would probably do him well to see what help the Great Fairy can offer him, as well. Just make sure he takes it easy, and if he tries to leave the village before a full night’s rest, I give you full authorization to stop him.”

“Sounds threatening!” Togata chirps, distinctly lacking any sort of hesitation as he stands up straighter and salutes. “You got it, sir.”

Eijiro takes offense to that order, glancing back and forth between the two, but Aizawa seems to have passed out the moment he finished speaking so he can’t even protest the lack of faith. Or the attempt to decide for him what he should do. He huffs, and Togata claps him on the shoulder, steering him towards the door.

“Come on, hero! Let’s see the sights.”

The sights turn out to be, well, not really much, but Eijiro wasn’t actually expecting much, to be fair. Togata walks him through the village, chattering the whole way about this and that. He’s kind of an odd duck, going on the strangest of tangents and making some of the most out there remarks, and he talks not just with his hands, but with his whole body. He seems to like to emphasize his words with an entire rework of his posture here, a full gesture with both arms there, a bizarre stance thrown in from time to time.

In short, he’s great. Weird on the disarming side instead of the offputting side, and his quirks just make Kirishima all the more comfortable chatting back, and getting fired up himself.

The first set of important landmarks, if you can really call them that, mostly gain their notability from gossip surrounding them. Togata introduces him to a Haya Yuyu standing outside an archery supplies shop, explaining cheerfully that she’d gotten the part-time job there because she’s the best archer in the tribe these days, but she can’t stand to actually work inside the shop because the owner spends all her time loudly and openly lamenting her failing marriage and the fact that her husband has abandoned his own archery.

Miserably, Haya shushes them, her voice low in pitch and volume as she laments, “It’s all day. ‘Show me your form, Haya. My husband’s form used to be like that.’, ‘Do you think you could hit that shot, Haya? My husband used to make shots like that without breaking a sweat.’.”

She sighs, heavily, then looks to Eijiro. “Look—pretend you didn’t hear this. Buy some arrows. I get paid for convincing people to shop in there, and I’m saving up to buy something cute for Nejire.”

“Ooh!” Togata chips in, “She’ll love that.”

“Oh, um.” Eijiro has no idea who Nejire is, nor has he taken a moment to count how many rupees he’d stumbled on in monster camps or hidden around the countryside. He does distinctly remember finding some hefty sums hidden in long-abandoned chests along the way. “Yeah, I’ll see! Once I check how many rupees I’ve got, I’ll make sure to stop by.”

“Thank you,” she replies, emphatically, before slumping down on the veranda that wraps around the shop. Togata gives a chipper wave, before once again steering EIjiro away with a hand on his shoulder.

The next place he shows Eijiro is the general store, where apparently you can find most goods from the town except for their famous fortified pumpkins—the owner’s husband, fond of growing swift carrots, is in an ongoing feud with the man who grows the pumpkins, and won’t let his wife sell them out of pride. It’s all very amusing, Togata assures him.

After that, he shows him the inn where he’ll be staying, points out a plum orchard apparently fiercely guarded by a sweet old lady, and then guides him to a dining area beside the general store. A girl maybe around nine is manning the cooking pot there, as Eri and another Sheikah girl who looks a little younger sit nearby. Togata introduces the two as Koko and Cottla, and merrily asks what’s cooking as he sits Eijiro down with the younger girls and helps Koko finish preparing lunch. Togata seems to be a natural at entertaining kids, wide gestures and silly expressions drawing delighted reactions from all the girls. Even Eri, who still seems reserved in company, watches him with starry eyes.

Koko and Cottla, who seem much more bold than Eri, are very curious about Eijiro and pelt him with questions he does his best to answer through mouthfuls of food, but Togata does a good job of keeping the conversation focused on all of them. He treats all of the events and concerns in the girls’ lives as just as grave and pressing as the topics he and Eijiro have to contribute, and Eijiro has to admit, it’s delightful to watch.

Once lunch is finished and Eijiro and Togata have helped the girls clean up, Togata makes sure Eijiro is aware of the small shrine to Bakusatsuo across from Aizawa’s home, the location of the armor shop, and the cucco coop now looked after by the infamous husband of the archery shop owner, before pulling them to a stop at the foot of a hill just up the road.

“Just up there’s the shrine, and past that is the fairy fountain. Y’can’t miss it!” He claps Eijiro on the back and gives him an enthusiastic shake for good measure, grinning. “I’ve got a shift patrolling for monsters and Yiga, but I’ll see you at dinnertime. Don’t leave the village or else, right?”

Eijiro shoots a glance at Aizawa’s home, muted irritation trickling back in at the reminder, but when he turns back to respond to Togata’s ribbing, he’s just gone. Eijiro whips his head around, trying to figure out where he went, but there’s no sign of him. Maybe the guy does just melt through the ground.

Regardless of how he does it, that’s how Eijiro finds himself making the trek up the hill overlooking the northern edge of the village alone. The path then winds into the hills a little further, steep inclines starting to cut off the view of the village as he passes the shrine and climbs further into a wooded area. What would a Great Fairy fountain look like? He just has to hope it will stand out as much as Togata assumed.

Eijiro yelps as suddenly two—creatures? Small, and bunnylike, and glowing blue with… antlers?—startle at his presence and bolt through the underbrush, and he thinks, You know what, yeah, okay, that kind of weird shit is probably a sign of a Great Fairy. Eyes now peeled for the strange or unusual, he picks his way through the woods and—there, a flash of pink.

He makes for that, woods parting to reveal the glimpse of pink as one of a few small, glowing fairies that scatter when they notice his presence, and—

—And what the hell is that?

There’s—it’s—he’s face to face with what looks to be the biggest flower bud he’s ever seen, twice as tall as he is, closed up tight with massive thorns dotting its outside. It’s, uh, definitely a sight he can’t miss, and though he can’t really say it looks like a fountain, he gets the feeling from the fairies that had swarmed around it and the unmistakable ramp made up of vividly orange fungus leading right up to its base that, well, he’s probably in the right place.

Hesitantly, Eijiro sloshes through the clear, pristine water that pools shallowly around the bud, testing his weight on the odd platform. It holds beneath his weight, so he takes the couple of steps to stand before the plant—fountain?—and… realizes he has no idea what to do here.

He lifts a hand uncertainly, but before he can do anything he’s startled by the sound of splashing and shifting, muffled from… within the plant? Then suddenly the seam between two of the leaves making up the tight bud before him push apart just slightly, and—holy shit, that’s an eye the size of his whole face peeking out at him inquisitively from the gap.

“You’re not Yuyu! Or Mirio. Or Eri. Well, now I’m curious!” chirps a bright, resounding voice, and Eijiro thinks, Oh, boy.

#kiribaku #bakushima #krbk #bkshm #kirishima eijirou #bakugou katsuki #kirishima eijiro #bakugo katsuki #boku no hero academia #bnha #my hero academia #mha #fanfiction #fanfic #fic

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labnegativeone · 3 years

Text

The heat of Robo-Fortune’s server room bares down on one Valerie “Valentine” ____, no noise audible in the room except for the clicks of her fingers on a keyboard. Despite the imposing atmosphere of the consciousless bodies lining the walls, Robo-Fortune’s central computer was...not particularly impressive, in comparison. Sure, it was large, but at the end of the day it was just...a big computer. The kind of thing that she’d have expected would be best suitable for....computing hundred-digit numbers. Not so much powering what seemed, for all intents and purposes, to be a largely sentient machine. As much as a certain scientist wanted to subvert that.

Her code is, truthfully, still kind of baffling to Valentine. It all makes...just enough sense for her to be able to work with it, if she needs to, but if she ever tries to truly *comprehend* it it all just falls apart in her hands. It doesn’t help that the computer keeps a backup instance of her AI running for security purposes, currently manifesting itself as a small, poorly drawn ASCII cat rambling around the screen obnoxiously. Valentine sighs. Yeah, that’s Robo-Fortune alright.

Now, to be fair, they aren’t actually medical scalpels. As for the body bag...blame Easter. It worked for her, I just mimic her style, and somehow it ends up working for me too. Who knows. As for the manual shutdown, sure, that would have been an option...but it wouldn’t have fixed the problem. That’s what I’m doing now. Brian’s at least managed to delineate where that...censorship was. Which means I can get rid of it easily enough...

...Hold on, where did that...? Oh. Right. Top of the screen here. I don’t know how I didn’t notice that. But I still...

One thing at a time.

Oh, so you all know about...that too, huh? Well. Luckily I haven’t heard from her in...quite some time, actually. I think it’s been something like two years at this point. Sure, I still want to avenge the Last Hope, but...I have something worth protecting here now. If I see her again, I’m not hesitating.

Wow, you’re really keeping them coming, Fortune. Okay, sure, whatever makes you happy. I’ve been wondering that myself, actually. I thought that setup Fortune had in her more hospitable room, where we usually gather for the asks, was the thing that was uploading these, but...clearly there’s wiggle room. Up in Lab 8, and I know I remember one with Fukua where there was nobody else around...

Ugh...Fukua...he’s really got her in a corner. It’s a shame you’re the only one here I can fix just by doing some reprogramming, Fortune.

(Surprisingly, I think I agree with that assessment, Valentine. Though I doubt we have the same ideas. Excuse me, but what are you doing, exactly?)

Hello, Brian. I figured you were going to come bother me about this. What do you want?

(...I’ll admit, you were a lot more surprised right now when I imagined this conversation in my mind.)

(Well, it’s good that you aren’t, I suppose. That indicates you don’t believe you have anything to hide. I can appreciate that...confidence, at least. So, let’s get to the point. What do you think you’re doing, Valentine?)

What does it look like I’m doing, director? I’m fixing your terrible decision. Look, I don’t know what it is that’s motivating you to do what you’re doing, but if you used that exposed brain of yours you’d realize that programming in a bunch of contingencies to keep your combat robot from functioning when the people around her are experiencing emotions is kind of a bad idea.

(What I installed, Valentine, was a filter for concepts that would be counter to her functions. If she got uppity and decided to, say, help the other two break out, that would be an obvious problem, yes? Or, if she was exposed to...certain concepts that might color the world around her in an unhelpful fashion.)

What-ugh, just listen to yourself! Pretentious-I don’t care what you intended it to be for, Brian. The fact of the matter is, it isn’t. Working. All it’s doing is shutting her down and causing problems. And this time, it was so bad that it full-on incapacitated her, because she’s realizing what’s doing it, and she doesn’t like it. I think a working weapon that might catch a case of the feelings is a bit better than one that’s slowly tearing herself apart trying to avoid a bunch of mental landmines. So I’m fixing it, director.

(And, of course, this idea has nothing to do with your softness for them, correct? I’d just be interested to know, Valentine. You can talk about doing it for her sake as a weapon, but I know you. And I’ve heard what you said to them. They’re not things you say lightly. So, I’d just like some confirmation that you’re not going to do something ill-advised, like take this opportunity to encourage her-or them-to break away from us.)

I’m not an idiot. Brian, I’m just removing that code, and just so that we don’t have to worry about her functions. You’re right, I do care about them, and that fact is part of what’s motivating me to do this, but I’d want to either way. Besides, you already took care of our escape plan. You said so yourself. Birdland isn’t going to come do some heroic rescue now either way, no matter how much Robo-Fortune is or isn’t shutting herself down.

(A good answer. But we’ll just have to see how well it holds up to scrutiny.)

*Siiigh* Whatever. Go ahead, root around all you want.

(OH, I WILL.)

.....

(....)

.....

(Come on, you have to be....)

I have to be what, Director?

(...Nevermind. I suppose you *don’t* have to be hiding something. Unless you’ve suddenly become a master of regulating your thoughts...the story checks out, Valentine. Alright, then. I suppose you have a point. Oh, but...if I were you, I would keep...hold on, scroll up. Yes, there we go. This section. That’s been there for some time now, and I assure you, it’s important.)

...And if I ask, will you explain why?

(No. No, not as of yet, at the very least. And, ideally, never, but I shouldn’t rule such things out.)

Great. Alright, sure. It’s staying.

(Wonderful. Carry on, then.)

....

((More under the cut))

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

Valentine finally releases a held breath as the director disappears. She knows he probably checked to make sure that she was going to carry out that request, as well. Of course, she wasn’t. Not in the slightest.

You know, she begins, she was a little worried about this before he got here.

There’s no response from the room, at first. Until something materializes next to her, a copy in every way save for the fact that she’s made out a gently glowing energy. Ghost removes her copied mask, a pleased, almost bragadocious grin on her semi-transparent face.

““...””

Valentine shakes her head. She doesn’t have whatever experience allows Shamone to translate Ghost’s expressions so well, but she can tell that the dead woman is obviously riding the high of her deception.

Valentine types one final command and steps back as the machinery whirs. The update is sent out. It won’t be long before Fortune comes back online. She takes a look at Ghost, just out of the corner of her eye, and nods. Thanks, she says. Ghost responds as elaborately as usual, but her expression softens. She moves forward, walking in a manner that doesn’t quite look right, as though she’s moving under some other power and is merely going through the motions in the most literal sense. She moves one hand towards the keyboard, and types out her message.

> Anything for her.

Valentine nods in understanding, before moving to delete those words. Ghost briefly seems upset by it, but one look is all it takes for her to realize why. We don’t want him to stumble onto that, Valentine explains.

““...””

And with that, Ghost disappears. Valentine takes a moment to wait. And worry. She’s not sure if this is going to work. It feels like the odds are good that it won’t. But she has to at least try. And it feels a little selfish to say, but...

She needs to see the look on his smug fucking face if it does.

#Skullgirls #Valentine #Skullgirls Brain Drain #Askblog

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