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louisianaspell · 3 years

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A Friend For The Desperate

Pairings: Bucky Barnes x fem!Reader, Bucky Barnes x Steve Rogers (kinda)

Summary: You meet Bucky on the worst day ever

This idea (meeting someone on their worst day) was taken from a writing prompt I found on Pinterest, but I’m an idiot and I forgot to save it.

Warnings: hospital setting, medical inaccuracies, mentions of medical procedure, mentions of a hate group and violence, guns, shootings, mention of severe gunshot wound, mentions of death

Word Count: 3,198

AN: Once upon a time, I posted a snippet of this fic. I’ve worked on it off and on, and now I feel like it’s done. I thought about waiting until October, but knowing me I’ll end up forgetting to post it or have second thoughts about posting it. So here it is before I second guess myself. Enjoy!

This is not beta read or really proofread, please forgive any errors

Bucky paces the small hospital waiting room like a caged wild animal, from the receptionist’s desk across the entrance, where every ten minutes he asked for an update on Steve’s condition, to the double doors leading back towards the exam rooms. Back and forth, muttering to himself as he paces the room.

“Fuck this is bad.”

“It’s my fault.”

“I should’ve spotted the shooter.”

“It should’ve been me, why wasn’t it me?”

Those are the only thoughts that endlessly run through his panic stricken mind. Phone calls have already been made, protocol has somewhat been followed and now there is nothing left for Bucky to do but wait and hope for another miracle. He knows it’s a miracle that Steve even survived being shot in the head and it was another miracle that Bucky was able to get him to the hospital as fast as he did, now he prays that there are a few more miracles left because the world wasn’t ready to lose Captain America and he couldn’t lose his best friend.

This was a last minute mission, they were only assigned this mission just over fifteen hours ago when the town’s sheriff had contacted S.H.I.E.L.D. about a local group of white nationalists that were planning to use stolen alien weapons in a series of attacks. They both thought it would be a fairly easy mission since the local police did most of the groundwork, so Bucky thought they would be back home in a couple days, a week max. A few hours later Steve and Bucky found themselves in what seemed like a quiet little town in the middle of nowhere under heavy gunfire where everything in the universe aligned and a bullet found its intended target.

It takes Bucky a full minute to realize that his name is being called, he turns towards the voice and sees the exhausted face of the surgeon standing in front of the large double doors, he stands up and watches the surgeon walk towards him. Bucky shakes her hand as they sit in the uncomfortable chairs while she introduces herself as the doctor overseeing Steve’s care.

“Sergeant Barnes, I’m going to be very honest with you. Captain Rogers is extremely lucky to be alive, while I’m by no means an expert on the serum given to you and Captain Rogers, I think it would be safe to assume that the accelerated healing is playing a huge role in his survival.”

Bucky lets out a sigh as he runs his hands through his hair while she continues talking about Steve’s injury and the surgery that was required. Thanks to Tony, the doctors treating Steve have been consulting with Dr. Cho via facetime. That’s where the good news ends. Steve’s condition is still far too unstable to transfer him to a larger hospital or back to New York, and so Tony and Pepper were trying to move heaven and earth to bring Helen, her team, and equipment to Steve.

“I know Captain Rogers' case is very unique, but usually with his type of injury there is a high chance of there being brain damage. We won’t know if that’s the case with Captain Rogers until he wakes up, but you should prepare yourself just in case.”

There are so many questions on the tip of Bucky’s tongue when the sound of a pager going off, “I’m sorry, I’ve gotta take this.”

“When can I see him?” Bucky manages to ask right before the surgeon leaves his side.

“He’s still in recovery, so it’ll probably be a few more hours before he can visitors.”

She walks away, leaving Bucky by himself with his panicked thoughts. He spends the time either glued to his phone as he updates everyone on Steve’s status or once again obsessively pacing around the waiting room.

It’s hours later and Bucky is finally led to Steve’s hospital room, the attending doctor is telling Bucky what to expect when he sees Steve but in all honesty, nothing the doctor is really registering, his mind is too busy panicking and thinking of all the ways he’s let Steve down.

There’s nothing they could’ve said that would have prepared Bucky for the sight that awaited him when he was ushered into Steve’s hospital room. Bucky feels like he’s going to be sick as his mind starts to take in the sight before him of Steve in a hospital bed, his head bandaged, tubes and wires everywhere, the sounds of the machines filling the otherwise quiet room. It’s too much for Bucky to take. This is far different and far worse than any sickness Steve had suffered from before the serum

Somehow he makes it outside and Bucky collapses onto the cold sidewalk, his head between his knees as he tries his best to ground himself. He tries his best to remember the technique his therapist taught him to help with these panic attacks.

Five things he can see...cars in the parking lot, a couple walking towards the entrance, pigeons moving around, a bench several feet away, and you standing nearby smoking.

Four things he can touch...the cold sidewalk beneath him, the brick of the building against his back, his hair that’s fallen in his face, and your hand on his shoulder

Three things he can hear...the opening and closing of the automatic doors, birds chirping, and your voice asking if he’s okay

Two things he can smell...your cigarette and your perfume

One thing he can taste...the pink lemonade that you offered and that he sips as he starts to calm down.

Bucky can feel the warmth of your body as you sit beside him on the cold sidewalk, he returns the bottled drink back to you and watches as you put the cap back on it and place it in the small space between you.

Neither one of you says anything, you just sit quietly beside one another as the world around you continues going about their day like Steve Rogers wasn’t fighting for his life just a few floors above them.

Minutes pass slowly and silently before Bucky finally decides to speak, to explain why he’s sitting on the sidewalk outside of the hospital while having a panic attack.

“My friend, he’s up there hooked up to all sorts of machines after doctors cut open his head and poked around and I’m down here freaking out. I’m a fucking joke.”

“Tell me about him,” you respond as you light another cigarette.

“We were on this job when,” he starts.

“No, tell me about your friend,” you shake your head interrupting him, letting out a plume of smoke. “How’d you meet, what’s he like, that kinda stuff.”

Bucky isn’t sure what it is about you that makes him wanna trust you with his darkest secrets while still keeping you at arm’s length. Whatever it is, he opens up to you in a way that he hasn’t with anyone else other than Steve. He tells you all the memories he has about his friendship with Steve; the first time they met in the schoolyard, the first time Bucky had to step in and rescue Steve in a fight, up until the present day and the numerous times Steve has risked everything to rescue him. He tells you everything about their friendship, the good, the bad, and ugly.

You just sit quietly listening to Bucky, letting him tell his story in his own words while occasionally flicking the ashes of your cigarette onto the ground. There wasn’t a moment that Bucky ever doubted that you were listening, he just felt it somewhere deep inside of him that you were hanging on every word.

“How far are you willing to go for him?” You ask before taking a long drag of your cigarette, he turns his head to face you, he focuses on the way your deep red lipstick stains the filter.

Bucky doesn’t respond right away, he stares at you trying to figure out why you would ask such a question.

“What would you give to make sure that your friend in there is okay? Back to perfect health, as if this little incident never happened and all of that.”

“Anything,” Bucky responds without hesitation. He knows that nothing he could ever offer could ever repay Steve for everything he did and had given up to help Bucky.

“Well, then,” you take a final drag from your cigarette before dropping it on the sidewalk and crushing it beneath your shoe, “have I got a deal for you.”

Bucky is speechless and caught off guard as he watches your eyes shift to an unsettling shade of red.

“I’ll tell you what, why don’t we discuss this somewhere a little more private?” You smirk as you snap your fingers and suddenly you and Bucky are sitting in the middle of an upscale bar.

The bartender, seemingly unfazed by the mysterious appearance of two new patrons sitting at his bar, quietly makes your drinks and sets the two whiskeys in front of you and Bucky.

Bucky’s normally quiet brooding is gone as questions begin to pour out of him; what are you? Where are we? How did we get here? Where’s Steve? What the hell is going on?

“Aren’t you a curious little kitten,” you chuckle before taking a sip of your drink. “You know exactly what I am, you remember from all those Sunday mornings, when your dear sweet mother would make you put on that horrendous hand-me-down suit from your cousin Bobby and that hypocrite of a preacher would stand in front of the congregation, ranting and raving about the sheep who stray too far from the flock and the wolves waiting for them in the darkness.”

“No, no. This can’t be real, this is..”

“Oh, so aliens can exist and that’s perfectly fine, but the existence of demons is too much?” You scoff, cutting him off, “may I remind you that your team employs an extremely powerful witch. Oh, and let’s not forget about that talking raccoon and his tree friend.” You roll your eyes.

“We’re not here to debate the existence of supernatural beings, Bucky. We’re here to talk about how I can help Steve and what you’ll give me in return.” The smile on your face unsettles Bucky.

“You can fix Steve?”

“Sweetheart, I can do more than fix Steve. I can make it so that the world will never have to be without her beloved first avenger, for the right price.”

Bucky stares into his glass of whiskey, his mind racing with thoughts of what the world would be like without Steve. He doesn’t think about how losing Steve would affect the team or how their enemies would react, instead Bucky is selfish and thinks of what his life would be like without him and after everything they’ve been through Bucky isn’t ready to live in a world without Steve.

“He’d still be the same?”

“Yep, he’d still be the good ol’ righteous Steve Rogers that we all know and love.”

Bucky lets out a sigh, “what did you want?”

“That a boy, Bucky,” you smile, patting him on the back. “Now, because I really like you and I think the little ‘will they, won’t they’ thing you guys got going on is so adorable, I’m willing to give you a very generous offer of healing Steve and twenty five years to spend however you see fit, all for the low cost of your soul.”

“My soul?” Bucky scoffs, shaking his head, “sweetheart, I doubt my soul is worth anything after all things I’ve done.”

“Oh, don’t sell yourself short, baby. We are all very aware of your past and I have it on very good authority that your soul,” you trace your finger along his heart, “is not as dark as you think, otherwise I wouldn’t be here offering you this once in a lifetime deal.”

Bucky can’t help but roll his eyes as he removes your hand from his chest, “I murdered innocent people for over seventy years, how could I of all people have a soul worth anything.”

An annoyed sigh leaves your lips while you check your watch, “fine, think what you will, but you should know that this deal does have an expiration date.”

Bucky looked over at you with a furrowed brow

“I’m not the only one excited about getting the soul of a super soldier.”

Bucky feels sick to his stomach when he realizes that it’s not his soul that you’re referring to.

“No, no,” he says shaking his head, “he made it through surgery, the doctor said the serum was helping him heal. She said he’s gonna be okay. You’re lying.”

In the blink of an eye, Bucky once again finds himself standing down the hall from Steve’s hospital room, the scent of the hospital not helping the nausea he’s currently battling or the panic that’s causing his heart to race. He doesn’t notice you taking a switchblade from your pocket and his mind barely registers you dragging the blade down your finger, Bucky can feel your finger and blood against his forehead. It feels intimate, especially when you press a kiss on his forehead, he leans into you as his vision clouds for a moment before returning to normal.

He notices there is now a crowd gathering outside of Steve’s hospital room, at first glance they could almost be written off as curious bystanders hoping to catch a glimpse of the legendary Captain America until Bucky watches as several nurses walk through the group, turning the watchers into a cloud of mist before returning to their previous form.

“What are they?” Bucky asks the first of a thousand questions running through his mind.

“Reapers, each one hoping to be the one who collects Steve’s soul.” You answer, leaning against a wall. “I told you, I’m not the only one interested in the soul of a super soldier.”

“The doctor said he’d be okay.”

“Oh, bless your heart. There are forces out there that are far more powerful than the words of some surgeon, James.”

He watches other reapers floating in and out of other rooms, floating down the halls.

“What’s happening? Why can I see them? I didn’t see them before.”

“I’ve lifted the veil so to speak, now you can see the world for how it really is, warts and all.”

The figures continue to try to enter Steve’s hospital room, each time being thrown back by an invisible force. Bucky looks at you with a confused look on his face.

“It’s warded, like a magical lock that is keeping them out, but it only lasts for so long.”

Bucky knows that Steve wouldn’t want him to take the deal and he’d tell Bucky that it’s okay to let him go, but it’s hard to think logically when he sees that death is literally at Steve’s door. How can he say no when he could have twenty five more years with Steve? Bucky wants to be selfish and he knows that twenty five years may not sound like a lot of time, especially when an entire lifetime was stolen from them, but Bucky deserves a chance at being happy and he knows that chance is with Steve by his side.

“I’ll do it, I’ll give you my soul in exchange for you saving Steve.”

“Such a good friend,” you praise him with an unsettling smile on your face. You take his right hand, turning it so his palm is face up and with some more blood from your finger, you draw another symbol on his hand.

He tries to pull his hand back as the symbol begins to glow a deep red and burn into his flesh, but by the time you release his hand the symbol has disappeared.

“What the hell was that?” Bucky asks while looking at the palm of his hand, searching for any trace of the symbol that was just burned into his flesh.

“It’s a part of our contract, it binds us both to our agreement and marks your soul as mine,” you answer, walking alongside him towards Steve’s hospital room.

Bucky watches as you walk through the group of reapers, as if they weren’t there, Bucky on the other hand hesitates for a brief second before following you into the room, a cold chill runs down his spine and a fleeting feeling of uneasiness in his chest before quickly disappearing as he crosses the threshold.

Steve’s condition was unchanged, he had yet to wake up and was still connected to various machines. Bucky was scared and angry that he sold his soul for nothing since death was still at the door trying to find a way in.

Before he can voice his annoyance and anger, you pull him in by his jacket to kiss him. It was unlike any other kiss Bucky has ever had in his long life, there’s no feeling of love or lust, instead he feels a sense of emptiness, a kiss that was devoid of all feelings.

Still processing the kiss, Bucky just stared at you while he tried to process what he felt, you smiled and wiped your lipstick off his bottom lip with your thumb.

“I’ll see you in twenty five years, soldier,” you say before disappearing in a cloud of black smoke.

Moments after your disappearance, Helen and her team show up and take over Steve’s care and for the first time since he brought Steve to the hospital, Bucky feels relief that everything will be okay.

It started with a confession to Steve about the feelings he’s had since they were kids, he felt what can only be described as pure happiness when Steve kissed him and told Bucky that he felt the same way.

They stole a page from Tony’s happily ever after, and spend their retirement in a house they built far from the city lights and surrounded by an endless forest, where they could make up for all the years they lost. Steve takes up gardening while Bucky put his knife skills to good use and took up whittling. It’s a good life and Bucky loves every moment, there is never a day that he regrets his decision to save Steve. Every moment with him is worth an eternity of damnation.

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky x reader #bucky barnes fanfic #bucky barnes fic #bucky barnes #bucky barnes au #bucky barnes angst #sebastian stan fic #sebastian stan fanfic #marvel fanfic #marvel fandom

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chayacat · 3 years

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Devil’s Sweet Star (34)

Fandom: Dead by Daylight

Ghostface x Female Reader

Rated M for Violence, Language and Smut

***

Damn it, he can't wait to stop having to play that role. He was starting to get tired of it. this double game took him so much to the brain that at night he no longer dreamed. He was discussing... with himself. This is the only place where you can find Jed and Danny in the same place, at the same time. And we can say that the conversations are... wild. Like that night.

“Hmpf. Do you intend to reprimand me for every f***ing discussion we have?” said Danny with arrogance.

“And do you intend to act like an asshole at every discussion we have? You know very well that one day it will lose you.” responds Jed.

“Compared to you, I am real. You are only an identity, a name, and you will disappear soon.”

“I find that for a simple identity, a simple name, I served you well, right? It's not you who had to socialize with people in every city, it's me. You have just taken up your life, at night, to commit your "masterpieces". How long has it been going on between us? You're not tired of it like me? Don't you want to just have a normal life? You've never been caught! If you stop now, no one will ever know that you are Ghostface! Do you think that's what Carla would like?”

“SHUT YOUR F***ING HOLE. Never talk about Carla, don't even utter her name in front of me. If this bastard had cared for her, if he had done what it took to save her, we would not be where we are today. Only he let her die...”

“And you kill him. it could have stopped there. But you wanted to continue. And look where we are today. And you're going to kill again. The worst thing about all this is that you managed to get (y/n) into it.” replied Jed.

“I stop you right away, she's the one who ended up asking me to kill Hoggins. I only offered her a deal, she could have refused, I didn’t put the knife to her throat. But she agreed, sooner or later we end up doing things that we never dared to do before. Put that in your head.” responds Danny.

“You're toxic. You're twisted. And one day, you'll regret it.”

“That day, I would be too old for anything to happen to me. And you will be gone long ago. See you later "JED". If you still exist outside.”

It was with this conversation in mind that Danny woke up in the morning. You were still sleeping, clinging to him like a Koala to his tree. It was difficult to get out of your grip and to leave the room for lunch. He looked at his phone, to see if there were any messages. And indeed, there were. From Melina, Mattew, boss, and Wilhelm. The latter wanted to see him in order to get his version of the facts about last night's assault.

He didn't want to be there, but really not. Having to talk to this guy, who is going to ask his questions all the time, even though he already knows what happened. But the procedure is the procedure. But in a sense, Danny and Wilhelm have been talking to each other for days and days, cooperating. And Danny had to admit that he could have made a good inspector. That it could have been better than being a journalist. But after a while, he would have spotted himself, because compared to a journalist, a cop sees his file transferred from police station to police station.

He had breakfast quietly, even if it is already 9:30 a.m., sipping his coffee while watching the news on TV. Hoggins will pay. Not just for wanting to kill Danny, but for paying these guys to kidnap you as well! He seriously believes that you will fall into his arms by being sequestered in his home? He really believes, even hope that you will be affected by Stockholm syndrome? Asshole, the only thing you're going to receive at home is Ghostface's knife. And not just once. You're going to look like a real cheese at the end.

“I will disfigure you so much Hoggins, that no one will recognize you, they will all have vomited on your corpse before they know that it’s you. No one touches my girlfriend. No one.”

He finishes his breakfast before going for a shower. Today was quite a hot day, it would be better to put lighter clothes. Fortunately, he had passed by his house before joining you at the apartment last night. And that he had consulted the weather too. He left you a note, next to your breakfast, saying that he was going to the police station to make his deposition and that he comes back right after. Knowing you, if he hadn't, you would be in panic and harassing him with message.

He went to the police station for his statement. Wilhelm had not yet arrived, so the policeman made Danny wait in a rest room and pick him up as soon as the inspector arrived. He took the opportunity to review the notes he had taken. Or rather that JED took. He couldn’t believe that his plan worked perfectly. And the best thing is that Hoggins provides enough to fuel suspicions about him! He has hired people, threatened McKellan and he does everything to suppress Danny, even if it isn’t for that reason. The inspector arrived 10 minutes later, and asked Danny to follow him to his office. The latter sighed slightly before following him into his office and sat in front of him.

“So... I really have to repeat everything? You know what happened last night.” ask Danny.

“You know that this is the procedure. If I could do without seeing your face for even one day... that would be the dream.”

“And mine.”

The deposition lasted about 1 hour, during which Wilhelm asked several questions to which Danny answered clearly. He knows that it was Hoggins who hired them, one of them made that clear. Or at least he didn't deny it. Wilhelm finished writing Danny's deposition before closing the file and putting it on the side. Then he got up to serve himself a coffee and handed Danny one.

“If you weren't a little asshole journalist, you would make a good partner, Olsen.” said Wilhelm.

“And if you weren't an annoying, and a cop bastard, you'd make a good colleague Wilhelm.” Responds Danny.

“hmpf. it seems to work well between you and the boss of the Nebula. It's... Is it official?”

“Yes, and how does it concern you?”

“In no way. But hey two aggressions and each time you were together. Plus, I know she and McKellan had had a little different. And obviously Hoggins has a deal with her.”

“Let's say it's more between me and Hoggins. He didn't like the way I did an interview... and I stole his bird of paradise. He imagines that he can coax her and seduce her with his money. As I told you, they did not say it clearly but they did not deny it. In addition, they also had to bring her back.”

“Be careful, Olsen. Hoggins is not McKellan. When he says something, he does it. Avoid provoking him too much and stay on guard both of you. As long as he is not arrested for McKellan's murder, he is free to do whatever he wants.”

Danny nodded, before noticing a picture that intrigued him. You could see Wilhelm with a baby in his arms. So, he has children, at least one. Who had enough courage to marry and have a child with him? After... Danny must admit that he would like to see how he behaves once he comes home from work. The baby was rather cute, but he is no cuter than the ones Danny wants to have... with you. And compared to his "father", he will be much better than him.

“Elise. Her name is Elise. She is 7 months old. That's why I'm doing my job. I want her to be safe. And as long as Ghostface is free, my little princess will be in danger. You'll understand that when you have your kids. Believe me, its life changing.” said Wilhelm.

“If you say so...Can I go now?” ask Danny.

“Yeah yeah, get out of here you little weasel. And try to stay alive, you and you girlfriend. Especially you in fact. You are the champion to put yourself in danger involuntarily.”

Danny got up and, when Wilhelm reached out to him to greet him, which surprised him by the way, he shakes his hand before leaving the room and then the police station. So Wilhelm has a kid. And that's why he insists on stopping Ghostface... Interesting. Danny thought he was doing this just to be famous. After all, he would be the one who finally caught Ghostface! Roseville's murderer! and not only from Roseville for that matter.

Danny took the opportunity to go see his boss and colleagues, just to reassure them. Mattew couldn't help but hug Danny, with Danny patting his back to comfort him. Melina sighed in relief to see that he was fine. The boss didn't let anything shine through him but Danny knew that deep down, he was worried. He asked him to come to his office for a drink, but he politely refused, explaining that he had to join you.

He left the newspaper's offices to return to the apartment. On the road he listened to the radio, the latter announcing thunderstorms arriving on Roseville at the end of the day. Great, he who wanted to take you on a walk tonight ... in the rain it's going to be annoying. You were in your future apartment when he returned. You took advantage of his absence to start doing the work, including repainting the ceilings. He joined you and landed against the front door, watching you from behind, painting.

“Need a hand?” He asks.

“Jed! How did it go?” you said, by putting down the paint roller to go see it and kiss him.

“That went well, I’ve made my deposition, he asked me his questions... The procedure in short. You should have waited me I would have helped you with the painting.”

“I know. But I could not stay at home without doing anything. And since we have to live here one day, I told myself that it was better to start as soon as possible. You can still help me if you want, I did not make the bathroom and your future office.”

“Thank you. By the way, I wanted to discuss it with you... we have to put a little thing in the right place...”

“I will not enter your office without your permission it is promised. This is your private space and I will respect it. And I know you will respect my private space.” you replied with a smile.

“Thanks, my love. I'm going to change myself and I'm coming.” responds Danny before leaving.

He returns a few minutes later with old clothes that are themselves stained with paint. Then he took a roll of paint and a jar of white paint and headed into his office to start working. Fortunately, the material is provided by the owner, it is better to avoid spending money now and save as much as possible. Because unfortunately, a larger apartment means a more expensive rent. Even with your two salaries, saving is a good idea. Hours passed, with a lunch break and, as he was painting, Danny heard a small sneer from you. He pretended not to hear anything, and as soon as he felt the tip of a brush on his back, he turned around and painted your t-shirt.

“Hey!” you said, laughing while Danny laughs too. “You'll see! you'll regret it! on guard!”

“Should not look for me my beauty. Beware I do not intend to let myself be done. On guard.” Responds Danny by putting himself in position like a fencer.

And so began a painting battle between you. And believe me, there was more paint on both of you and on the walls than on the ceiling. And despite Danny being able to dodge thanks to his agility, he took painting several times, especially in the face. You are small, but precise. But despite this, it was Danny who ended up winning the battle. he lay down on the ground, not without dragging you with him. The two laughed, which reminded Danny of the moments he spent with Carla in high school, lying under the trees to dream during the break hours.

“Can you imagine yourself here? I don’t. I can't believe that we're going to live together...” you said looking at the ceiling.

Danny nodded and placed a kiss on your forehead when you received a call. It was Amy. And when Danny saw your face decompose, he realized very quickly that something was wrong.

“What’s wrong?” He asks.

“Wait. Amy...Amy calm down. Take a breath and tell me what’s going on...What?? I coming right now!” you said before hanging up. “We have to go to the Nebula...someone broke in and did damage... Corey managed to master him but... he is wounded.”

Without wasting a single minute, you both change and leave in the direction of the Nebula. When you arrive on site, you both notice that the windows have been broken and that the exterior walls have been tagged. Fortunately, the interior was practically intact, only a few decorative objects had been destroyed. Corey and Amy were sitting with one of the officers and as you walked towards them, Danny noticed one of the inscriptions on the outside walls of the café, at the entrance to the alley. The message was clear: bitch. one thing is for sure, someone’s going to die. The man was also taken care of by the doctors and then taken on board by the cops. The interrogation will be robust. We shall see what Wilhelm learns. Danny took you by the waist and huddled you when he heard you sobbing.

"Why me...I did nothing.” you said, sobbing.

“It’s alright Honey. I’m here.”

Even though it wasn't confirmed, Danny was sure who had made the move. At least who had commissioned it. It's time to take a little visit to this good old Hoggins. It’s time to give him a "gift". A gift that he will deeply regret...

But that Danny will love to do to him.

***

(Done! Remember when I told you that DSS wouldn't be the first and the last fanfiction that I will write? Well, that's still true. I'm thinking of writing another one but I hesitate between RE8 and The Boy (which I advise you to look at because it’s a very good movie and frankly underestimated.) I don't know when I'm going to get started, maybe when I'd be further away from finishing DSS which I reassure you won't do 1001 XD chapters. And I admit that recently I watched a let's play of outlast whistleblower and ...how to say... Eddie~ I hope you’ll like this chapter like the others ones! Well, it's time for my brain to rest! Have a great weekend to you all! See ya!)

#dbd fanfic #dbd #dead by daylight #ghostface #danny johnson #jed olsen

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rogueobservation · 4 years

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STARLET

Pairing: president!Steve Rogers x actress!OFC

Summary: Twenty years after the events of 1963, Tony Stark gives an interview for the first time about his incredibly famous wife and her affair with President Rogers.

Warnings: Angst? Vague foreshadowing?

PROLOGUE TO MY SERIES: MR. PRESIDENT.

1983

Rain-swollen clouds drifted high above the skyscrapers, blowing and shifting, teasing patches of blue sky every once and awhile before hiding it again, with the sun trying futilely to burn it all away. She would have hated today. Well, not hated since she didn't believe in hate, but intensely disliked. She survived in the sun, basked in it. A California girl through and through. Today, she would've been curled up in a chair, a blanket hiding her lower half, reading some book she'd swiped from her section of his library. The weather would have pointed her in the direction of Virginia Woolf or Oscar Wilde. The day was warm but the amp spring wind was chilly. As soft as the outer skin of a peach. At the first break of the rain, she would have gone out to sit on the terrace only to be chased back in moments later– returned sulky as a child, slightly damp. He visualized her in the doorway, pouting. In his mind, she looked like a ghost, cast in a hazy, whitish aura by the light rain that pattered the panes of the library window; a contrast against the lurid orange glow of the fire that burned in front of him; the smell of fall against the damp, cold feel of–

"Mr. Stark?"

Tony tilted his head away from the window, two fingers under his chin, and looked at the woman sitting beside him in an adjoining tall, wing-back oxblood leather chair. A stranger, an outsider. A reporter from The New York Bulletin, Karen Page gazed expectantly at him, looking for answers. Truth be told, he didn't know if he was willing to tell them to her... or the public for that matter.

"I drifted off. What did you ask me, Ms. Page?"

"Just a preliminary question, if you don't mind," she glanced down at her notepad that rested on her thigh. "My editor was wondering if you'd be willing to tell me if your daughter will be taking over for you as CEO of Stark Industries? There's a rumor going around that she will."

"A rumor based on what exactly?"

Karen looked up. "She's your only child."

“That I know of,” he japed.

She smiled at that. “The wires picked it up from a–” checking her notes– “’close source’.”

Tony couldn’t help but smirk, albeit weakly. “A close source is the journalistic way of saying assumption."

“No comment then, I guess?”

Tony sighed. “Off the record,” he shifted in his seat, wincing slightly, “my answer is yes. She will.” Better to give her something now, in case nothing comes later, he thought. The reporter was growing frustrated with him, he knew. Did she expect him to pour out the story without a little bit of a nudge? "Look, I'm used to the press being... not amicable to myself or my wife. To my family."

“You summoned me here, sir.”

“I did,” he replied. “Only because I want to do this on my terms. Not yours." There was a pause. "I'm sure you did your research before coming, but what all do you know?"

“What the public knows about it all which is barely anything. All I've found is fabrications and rumors from close sources, but, as you noted, that's assumptions mostly. The truth is too obscure even to be visible at this point," she clicked her pen. "Why haven't you talked about this before?"

“Didn’t feel the need to.”

“You feel the need to now then?”

Tony laughed. "My sixty-six birthday is coming up, Ms. Page. My time is waning and everyone, at this age, has unfinished business they need to take care of. This is mine–” he gestured between himself and her– “It just so happened that you decided to write about all this, about her. I read a few of your past articles and decided that you're genuine about what you're writing. Plus, if you are going to give her story and about what happened, you might as well get the truth about it all."

"From a close source?"

Another laugh. "If you want to put it that way."

Karen’s gaze drifted to the mantel above the fireplace where an array of awards sat; three Oscar statuettes, golden exterior shining brilliantly, at the foreground. In the background, six Golden Globes, two BAFTAs, a few lesser awards. Above them, a stunning, iconic portrait of his wife done by Andy Warhol.

Stark’s art collection was, without a doubt, impressive, lined the walls of his penthouse in SoHo as a reminder that the modern era hadn't entirely escaped him. The space was a time capsule of the golden years of Hollywood; enormous by New York standards and outdated yet still retained a sense of upper class chic with monochrome interior and splashes of tan and bits of color here and there. Barnett Newman’s Stations of the Cross: Fifth Station and Now II were on display in the entry hall and Jackson Pollock’s No. 5, 1948 in the living room, but his office was different. Darker colors. More austere which was strange considering the Warhol Pop Art silkscreen was on display in here. She’d been shocked to see it. A few years ago Sotheby’s had hosted a highly publicized auction of Warhol’s paintings and among the lot had been the artist’s series on Stark’s wife including the famed Icon Diptych (fifty images of Stark’s wife based on a publicity photo from her Oscar winning film, Marionette) and the less renowned Starlet, her favorite of the lot.

The press, of course, as her husband, published that Stark was to buy the series of his wife but nothing had come from the rumor until Sotheby's released a statement that the whole lot of the artist's work had been purchased by a single anonymous buyer for a historic, record-breaking 700 million. Days later, the MoMA stated Icon Diptych was theirs on permanent loan from the buyer and a new member of their “MODERN FAME” exhibition but the outcome of Starlet along with the other ten works of the series turned into a mystery with no evidence of who had bought them.

Well, until ten minutes ago.

When the Icon Diptych was placed in the MoMA, it had turned into one of the most visited pieces of art in the world and was even dubbed by a reporter as the "western Mona Lisa." Fifty images of the actress split into two– the twenty-five images on the left side vibrantly colored with five layers of underpaint (yellow, pink, white, aqua, and orange), unified by a final layer of black paint. The twenty-five images on the right, however, were done on silver underpaint and as the images moved farther to the right, each row faded more and more. Starlet, on the other hand, was the best of both worlds: nine white, black, and pink silkscreen images. The four pink images were of her smiling while the five other black and white images had her looking less than happy. Sad, tearful, haunting even. Images taken at the worst moments of her life. The nine images were supposed to represent the juxtapose of on and off-screen; the closeted version of stardom.

Karen clicked her pen and looked back at Stark: withered, aged by time, worn by life. Although he didn’t look great, he didn’t look like the hermit the media made him out to be. Not skinny or unkempt; no long fingernails or wiry beard. His dark hair was almost all silver now, and a paper-thin hand was clasped around an elaborate golden cane that rested against the arm of his chair. His plain-gold wedding ring hung loosely on a finger that used to clasp it cozily. Lilac tinted sunglasses hid his eyes as he stared at her. No one (the press and public) had seen him in months, not since he left the White House after consulting President Reagan about the Strategic Defense Initiative; photos from that day showed him getting into a black car, looking gaunt, and when he returned to New York a few hours later, the media was waiting for him at the airport, snapping pictures of him giving his ever-so charming grin, throwing a peace sign before getting into another black car. A week after this, major American news published that Stark died peacefully at his SoHo penthouse. This wasn’t taken seriously albeit since the press had published similar stories so many times the public referred to his penthouse as “The Tomb.”

While this hadn't been true, it sparked something in Karen. An article on the extraordinary lives of Tony Stark and his famed, iconic wife. She was still in the research phase of things when, the other day, she got a call. Tony Stark wanted to be interviewed for the piece. How he heard about it, she didn't know. No one but her and her editor knew about it. Ellison, her editor, told her that it was a prank caller. “He wants to do an interview? The Tony Stark?” was his reaction before he broke out into laughter. “That had to have been some punk-kid pulling a joke. No way, Karen. Everyone’s been trying to get him for an interview since 1963.” It hadn’t been until Stark himself called and spoke to Ellison, with her as his specific choice of interviewer, that he’d taken it all seriously. “Do good and you’ll be the next Theodore H. White, but be fucking careful and do not spook him away.”

That had been two hours ago.

Suddenly, Tony cleared his throat and said: “We have to respect his children.”

“Sir?”

“Ms. Page, in my family, what my wife did is not a secret. My daughter, she knows. His children however... I don't think they really know the whole truth of it. Peggy made me promise that none of this would see the light of day while she was alive but now that...”

His voice trailed off. She understood perfectly what he was trying to say: that he didn’t want to hurt Peggy and the President’s children possibly by divulging the story. Guilt, she thought, was the expression on his face. Peggy Carter had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease five years ago and passed away peacefully in her sleep less than seven months ago. Karen frowned sadly. “I understand,” she said, agreeably enough. “I’ll try my best."

"Not try. Do." His eyes looked fixedly at her. "Are you married?"

"No, sir."

"Any kids?"

“No, sir."

Tony waved a hand at her– the wedding ring on his finger twinkling momentarily in the firelight. "You're young, kid. A long time ago, I didn't think I was the marrying type– and maybe that's not your thing but back when I was your age it was strange if a man didn't have a family. I'm not too big headed to be able to admit that I was a playboy. The wayward son, my father used to call me. Never dreamt of settling down with anyone until her. Cliché, but that's the truth of the matter."

"What was your first impression of her?"

He gave a fond smile. "That she was endlessly fascinating."

"Fascinating how?"

Tony seemed not to have heard that. "Are you planning on writing about President Rogers?"

The question felt like a trap. "He's part of her story."

There was a long period of silence before he said: "My wife loved me, I know that, but even all these years later, he's the man who lives with her constantly. Do you understand? We were married. There were vows. We committed to forever together, but now forever includes him."

It almost seemed as though he was talking to himself. Like a message was hidden for her behind his words. "I'm not following–"

"Would you like the fairy tale or the truth?"

Karen didn't know what to say. "I try to give my readers the truth."

"However that's not what they want," he replied curtly. "The truth isn't as glamorous as the fairy tale they've spun in their minds. For them, my wife is either a princess or a homewrecker, but he's forever the prince that touched divinity for such a brief period yet preferred my wife over it."

"And what do you think she is?"

"I can't see it from their third person perspective, Ms. Page. She's just my wife." He looked over at the Starlet painting above the fireplace. "She's a woman who got entangled in the greatest love story of the modern ages." His voice had lost all it’s emotion; stoic, long-since pained. She saw that he had started twisting his wedding ring with his other hand. She suddenly felt sympathetic.

"How would you like to begin?"

"The only way it can." He looked back over at her, slowly removing his tinted sunglasses, his deep brown eyes blank, exhausted, and deeply sighed. "In this room on May 19th, 1962..."

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spectraspecs-writes · 3 years

Text

Korriban - Chapter 95 (Bastila, Carth)

Link to the masterpost. Chapter 94. Chapter 96.

CW: Lime

@averruncusho @ceruleanrainblues @chubbsmomma @strangepostmiracle thank you for reading, you get a tag. @skelelexiunderlord thank you for support, you get a tag.

———–

“… so it’s pitch-black, right, I can’t find my pants anywhere, and there’s something growling outside my tent.” I recount the story to Carth, both of us sitting on containers in the cargo hold. Passing the bottle of Tarisian ale back and forth. Carth laughs, as well he should, it’s a funny story. In hindsight, anyway. “I’ve got my T1 unit’s head in my lap, I was trying to upgrade its sensors so it could get a more nuanced readout to find the exact thing that was outside my tent!” He laughs again, tears starting to come out of his eyes. “My tent mate is closer to the entrance, she’s sitting there in a panic, because she knows this is her fault --”

“Why the hell did she take that egg in the first place?” he says between laughs.

“I told her it was a bad idea, but did she listen to the ecologist? Noooo - God forbid Tania ever admit she was wrong about something. But I was like, you’re a freaking anthropologist, you should have realized how taboo it was in the local culture to take one of those freaking eggs! Screw your breakfast - you’re about to be dinner! And I’m sitting there like, you are not taking me with you. But we are both frozen until we see the tent flap open and this giant nose pokes in.”

“Oh, shit!”

“Right? And I panic, I just chuck the droid head, Tania screams and ducks, but now I’m sure I just pissed this thing off even worse so we’re both screwed. And now Tania’s screams have woken not only the rest of our team, but the Mandalorians who also made a camp in the ravine. You know, the same Mandalorians she had antagonized earlier? And I wasn’t about to save her ass again - if Arus wanted to fight her, at this point, I didn’t give a shit.”

“Man, you’re heartless!” he joked.

“This was the tenth time in half as many days she had threatened my life with her bullshit - even I have my limits! And by the way, this was not the last time we were in life-threatening situations on this mission. But after this time she was far more willing to actually listen to me. But anyway, so the Mandalorians were pissed and Arus was out for blood, but first he had to take out this animal, which was too huge for even a Mandalorian to take out alone. He gathered a few of his men and they took care of it in no time. I finally managed to find my pants so I finally get out of the tent to get a good look at this thing, and it is. Huge. Arus split the meat with us and there was still way too much. Afterwards he was still a bit thrilled by the kill so Tania thought it was fine, but then she got cocky and tried to play it off, got in Arus’ face again, but he was having none of it. He looked her dead in the eye with that Mandalorian intimidation glare and said ‘I should have known you were behind this.’ And her face drops. He’s like ‘Is it your goal in life to challenge as many combatants as foolishly as you can?’ Calling her out big time. ‘And for what, this time?’ So she goes into her bag and pulls out the egg. Arus takes it and smashes it on the ground. And you’ll never guess what happened next.”

“Tell me.”

“The egg? The one that almost got us killed? Was made of WOOD!” Carth breaks down hard, cannot contain his mirth. “A Sith scout team had been there earlier, a bit of a rival of mine, and thought it would be a fun prank on me to swap out one of the eggs with a wooden one. He told me about it later, but he had just planned to frustrate me. When I told him he almost killed me with that shit, he never stopped apologizing.” I take the bottle from Carth. “And that is my worst story. What have you got?” I ask as I take a drink.

“Nothing that good,” he says, “You’ve got me beat.”

“Oh, come on, no war stories where you got screwed over hard? No piloting lessons where you came out of a nebula upside down?”

“My life has been boring compared to yours, if that story is any indication.”

“Hey, I have plenty far more mundane stories - that planet was just a wild ride from start to finish. If Arus was here, he’d tell you the same thing. Albeit, he and I did have different definitions of wild.”

“I thought you had just crossed paths with him - did he hang around for the rest of the scouting trip?”

“That was the first time we met him, but he kept finding excuses to hang around our campsites. The shameless flirt that he was, I’m amazed he never just came out and said he was into me.”

There’s that face of his again. He gets so uncomfortable when I make off-hand mentions of former partners. “You don’t need to be jealous, Carth. The very nature of a scouting fling is that it’s temporary. The few times something has gone on longer than a single mission we quickly got sick of each other.”

“I guess,” he shrugs. Is there… something else on his mind?

But before I can ask, Canderous comes in behind us. “Hey, Rena,” he says. to get my attention.

“Something up?” I ask.

“We’re kind of in the middle of something, Canderous,” Carth says gruffly.

“And ordinarily I wouldn’t interrupt,” he says before looking back at me, “but Bastila wants to talk to you.”

Oh joy and rapture. I scoff. “If she wants to talk to me so bad she can come see me herself.”

“What happened?” Carth asks.

“Long story, I’ll tell you later,” I shake my head. “I’m not going to her, she’ll have to come to me.”

“She won’t,” Canderous says, “not this time, but I can tell if she doesn’t say what she needs to say she’ll never forget it.” Oh yeah? “She regrets that things aren’t working as smoothly as they could between the two of you.”

“Bastila regrets something?” Well there’s a shock. “Jedi princess admits a wrong?”

“Look, I get that you’re upset with her, I understand,” he says, trying not to get angry at me, “and you’re right, she needs to keep her nose out of your business.” At least he’s on my side. “But she’s as proud and as stubborn as you are and admitting something like this is hard for her. Would you just let her say what she has to say?”

I sigh heavily. “Fine,” I say and I stand up. I set the ale down on the container. “I’ll be back.”

“I’ll be here,” Carth says.

I follow Canderous to the port side quarters, where Bastila is sitting and meditating. When we cross the threshold she opens her eyes and sighs. “Canderous, you didn’t need to do that.”

“Like hell, I didn’t,” he says, “You’re not the only one who can read the tension in a room. Now, I don’t care if you two want to talk this out or use your fists, but I’m not letting either of you leave until that happens.”

Oh, for God’s sake. I’m pretty sure I could take Canderous in a fight but that’s the wrong way to go here. I idly look around the room before feeling Canderous’ glare on me and look at Bastila. “If you try talking to me about giving into my emotions again, I’m gonna throw up.”

“Our conversations on that topic have a tendency to end abruptly, so I wouldn’t be surprised,” she says.

“Well, it’s not exactly my fault that happens, is it?”

“No, you’re right. I do share fault for that,” she sighs, “I admit I have questions, and perhaps a Master could have addressed them all with the proper wisdom, but I never should have brought them up here. And not with you.” Canderous shifts behind me, and Bastila must be reading him. “It’s not solely about you, Canderous,” she says, before turning back to me, ”Or even about you and Carth. It’s… “ She stops, orders her thoughts, and starts again. “Part of my purpose on this mission was to guide you in the way of the light; to help you avoid the temptations of the Dark Side. But I fear I've failed in that task.” What makes you say that? I haven’t fallen to the Dark Side. I’ve done nothing but help people for the past two months, even before I knew her. “I don't think I'm the proper Jedi to guide you. I am no Master. You should have remained with the Council.”

“I have no idea where this is coming from,” I say, “Even if you take Carth out of the equation - and that’s an argument we’re not having again, because there is no way you can without being hypocritical and you know it - I haven’t fallen to the Dark Side.”

“The fact of the matter is that I have never possessed much skill at controlling myself,” she says, “With the bond that joins us, it seems I have even less. You have maintained the path of the Light Side, yes, but it has been in spite of my influence, not because of it. It is increasingly obvious I am unable to guide you properly.” She sighs again. She feels very anxious and upset. “I think… I think I may have made a very big mistake. I simply hope that you are not the one who pays the price, ultimately, for the fact that I can't help you enough.”

There was definitely an apology in there somewhere, even if it wasn’t in so many words. But we still disagree on a major point and if she — “This has nothing to do with our respective relationships, I assure you,” she says. Reading me again. “As Jolee is the closest thing either of us have to a Master, he has been kind enough to consult me on these matters, and I have come to the conclusion that we should both let the matter lie.” Hey, I’ve been willing to do that. But that means her concerns make even less sense.

“Honestly, I think you’re being too hard on yourself,” I say, “I mean, I already had impulse issues, so a lot of what you’re feeling might be me influencing you rather than the other way around. This bond works both ways, right?”

She smiles softly. “That’s a kinder response than I deserve,” she says, “And I can see there is wisdom in your words. Perhaps you can help me then.”

“On the impulse front? I’ll do my damnedest - so long as you don’t start building droids in the middle of the night. That’ll be lesson one - don’t do that.”

She laughs a little. “I will leave that in your capable hands,” she says, “Hopefully this will all work out, for the both of us. And for the sake of the mission.”

“Good!” Canderous says suddenly, “And with that settled, you are free to go.” He moves away from the door and lets me leave. Glad that’s over with, Carth and I really were in the middle of something. He seemed more bothered by the interruption than I was but that’s probably because he had something to say and Canderous broke his train of thought.

Carth’s still in the cargo hold, like he said he’d be. He’s taken his jacket off. Hot damn, he’s got some strong arms. It’s a good thing he keeps that jacket on all the time, otherwise I’d never get anything done. He’s also moved so that he can lean against the wall. He looks at me when I come in. “Everything all right with Bastila?”

“Yeah, she‘s agreed to stop being nosy in my personal life,” I say.

“Oh, because you’ve never been nosy in our personal lives,” he says sarcastically.

“Yeah, but I’m also not a hypocrite,” I say, “For weeks she’s been riding me about the Dark Side and my feelings for you, and the whole time she’s got the same thing going on with Canderous. So yeah, naturally I was quite pissed about that.”

“You’ve had feelings about me for weeks and didn’t say anything?”

I shake my head and sit back down next to him. “Somehow I knew that would be the part you heard,” I say, “In my defense, I’m not accustomed to making the first move. Every other time it’s been someone thinking with their crotch sick of beating around the bush with me. And it was different before anyway. This is different.”

“Good different or bad different?”

“At the moment?” I say, “Good different.” He smiles at me. I love his smile. He’s just so soft. When he actually gets soft, that is. “But anyway,” I say, “Before Canderous came in, you wanted to say something.”

“Oh, you could tell, could you?”

I scoff and take the ale from him. “It doesn’t take Jedi powers to read you, Carth, believe me.”

“Oh, yeah?” Oh, excellent, it’s play time. “Well, listen, beautiful, I don’t need to take this abuse. I get enough female Jedi bashing from Bastila, thank you very much.”

“Oh, I get it, there’s something between you and Bastila.”

He sputters, like I’ve caught him completely off-guard. “What? No! I mean… no! Don’t be crazy!”

“So someone would have to be crazy to like Bastila, huh? I’ll have to tell her that!”

“Oh, no, you don’t!”

“Or better yet!” Better idea! “I’ll tell Canderous! Oh, Canderous?”

“Don’t you dare!” he says playfully, “I’d have to shoot you down first, and I’m not kidding!”

“Sure, sure,” I say sarcastically, “You’re all talk, Carth, and you know it.”

“And just what would you do if I wasn’t?” I open my mouth to answer, but he stops me before I can. “No, no, wait, don’t answer that,” he says quite wisely, “I don’t want to know.” He shakes his head and smiles, sighing. “Anyway… as fun, uh, as this is, I do have to talk to you about something serious. Really serious.” It must be if you’re stopping the game.

“What’s wrong?” I ask. What has my Bunny Man in distress?

“I’m uh… I’m concerned about you. I’ve been keeping these thoughts to myself, mostly, but with this… if we… “ Find your words, Carth. “I think it’s time I say something.”

“What’s this about?”

“It’s about you,” he says, “I’m worried about what might happen to you.” Well, this is the second time that’s come up in conversation today, but somehow Carth’s concern feels more genuine than Bastila’s. “You have a lot of courage, and the fact that you’ve remained strong is amazing, but there’s even greater danger ahead. I think you might be setting yourself up for a fall. Maybe at the urging of the Jedi, I don’t know… but you’re definitely going to become a target.” I can feel a lot of pain from him. He tries to block it from me, I’m not sure if that’s an accident or on purpose, but I can feel it, anyway. “If, uh, if I’m going to find some purpose beyond taking revenge on Saul, then it’s going to have to be in protecting you.” Protecting me from what? He’s seen me fight - what does he think is out there that I can’t handle? “I don’t know why, but I think some terrible fate is waiting for you. I think the Jedi Council knows it, too. And I don’t want it to come to pass.”

“You think the Jedi have thrown me to the wolves?”

“Don’t call it up to my paranoia just yet.” I wasn’t. Carth has a good - and attractive - head on his shoulders and I trust his instincts. (Well… most of the time. His instinct to not trust me was obviously wrong.) “Something isn’t right. I blamed it on you, before, but I… I think the Jedi didn’t tell us everything.” Which is hardly out of character for them . “If I’m going to live past Saul, I need you to, as well. Let me protect you… from yourself, from the Sith, from… whatever, you have to let me try.”

“Not that I don’t appreciate it,” I say seriously, “but… you’ve seen me fight, you’ve watched me in action. I don’t need that kind of protection. Why are you doing this?”

“Because…” he says slowly, and with difficulty, “... because I never got the chance to save my wife and son. Because I didn’t stop Saul when I had the chance. Because I finally have the chance to do it right. You are an extraordinary woman… you make me think that maybe I might have some purpose beyond revenge. I don’t know whether it means anything to you… but it does to me.”

Oh, my God, this is the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard. ”It means a lot to me, Carth,” I say, “Thank you.”

He smiles softly. “I’m glad to hear that. I’ll do my best.”

I just… can’t stop looking at him. I can’t believe I didn’t see it before. How much I love him. Ever since Taris. Ever since I woke up in that mangy apartment. He’s always been there for me. And it was only a couple days ago that I really realized that I love him. Maybe I just didn’t want to think about it. As a scout you get used to being part of a tight-knit group of people for a few months, a year tops, and then you split and never see each other again. The few times I stuck with someone for longer than one mission, we were dating, and like I said before we would always and very quickly get sick of each other. You start to notice little things that didn’t bother you before but suddenly they’re all you notice. Chewing with their mouth open. Feet that smell like death. A grating voice. And for whatever reason you just can’t live with it anymore.

I’m going to miss this group a lot when we split. Oh, they’ll say we won’t. I know one of them will say, “no, we’re a family, we’ll always be together.” But I also know from experience that it doesn’t work like that. Bastila will go back to the Council. Juhani has a lot to work through on her own. Mission is still a kid with her whole life ahead of her. Zaalbar has a government to lead. Canderous will go wherever Bastila goes. It’s anyone’s guess what Jolee will do. Leaving me and my droids. The way it’s always been. The way I’m used to.

But with Carth… Loving him means I’ll want him to stick around. And maybe he will, maybe he won’t. Maybe he’ll want to, but he’s still a Republic soldier, he may not have a say in where he goes. And if he doesn’t want to stick around, it’ll hurt, sure, but it would hurt worse if he stays. Because I know what will happen then. We’ll get sick of each other. That’s how it always happens. We’ll have a few months of passionate sex and casual flirting before we each drive the other crazy. I don’t want that, I don’t want to get sick of him. But we have nothing in common beyond this mission. We‘re close due to circumstances. It’s happened to me at least a dozen times before. And I don’t want it to happen again.

But I love him. And as much as it could hurt me, I wouldn’t stop loving him even if I could. This feels so different than anything I’ve felt before. Like it’s… right somehow. And I don’t want to mess up a good thing. It makes me nervous but it’s a good nervous.

“What are you thinking about?” he asks me softly, taking another drink of ale.

“I’m… “ I start to say slowly, “… really glad I met you.”

He smiles at me. “I’m glad I met you, too,” he says in that same soft voice. He gets close to my face, just like before. His eyes close. And it doesn’t take a Jedi to know what’s going on, I’ve seen it all before. And I want it. He kisses me gently.

And he doesn’t stop kissing me.

One. Another. Another, pressing his lips into mine. Continuing what we started in the cantina. But no one will bother us this time - I reach out with the Force and close the door to the cargo hold. Carth notices but doesn’t stop or say anything. And I don’t want him to. I want this. He takes my head into his hand and I lean into it. His other hand brushes mine and I take it, our fingers locking together. And between kisses he whispers softly, “I love you.”

“I love you,” I whisper back. And he kisses me again, And again. And again. I unfasten my belt and my lightsabers clatter on the floor. He pulls me closer and I loosen my tunic a little. I can feel this. I want this. More than anything I want this.

Somehow, I know this is a bad idea. If this goes bad it could ruin our entire relationship, either as friends or more than friends. This is the point of no return. And hoping for shit has gotten me in trouble when things don’t work out. But this also feels so, so right, more right than anything has this whole time. He’s right, things have been a little off somehow since Taris. The Jedi adding me to the Endar Spire at the last minute. I’m an ecologist, why did they need me? The Jedi accepting me for training - Master Vandar said I was a special case? What did that mean? The Star Map on Kashyyyk seemed to recognize me, when I’ve never been to Kashyyyk in my life, much less down on the surface. There have just been so many little things that seem to add up to a great big something, but I’ll be damned if I know what it is. But as crazy as things have been, and as crazy as they might get, Carth will still be here. Carth will still be Carth.

I come close, wrapping my legs around him, and he holds me. Which is a great feeling and we haven’t even done anything yet. As he runs his fingers through my hair, I feel loved, so loved, more than I’ve ever felt before. Even if this doesn’t last, and I hope to God it does, it will still be the best I’ve felt my whole life.

--------

He holds me close after. Which is not only sweet, it’s also great because the cargo hold is a lot colder than you’d expect. I wrap myself up in his jacket and cuddle closer. “Have I mentioned how much I love this jacket?” I say.

“You’ve mentioned it once or twice,” he says, smiling. And then he sighs. “We should probably go to bed,” he says.

“You mean sleep here or go back to our bunks?” I ask, “Because that would be a horrible idea.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“For one thing,” I say, trying to look at his face, “I can guarantee you Bastila already knows about this because of that damned Force bond. If she’s spending the night with Canderous, she’ll hem and haw and stew about this despite her promise to shut up about it. But she won’t need to say anything because Juhani will also be there. She’ll be disappointed in me and go on and on about the Dark Side and Jedi attachments so Bastila won’t have to. Mission will try to be my girlfriend and goad me into telling her what happened like we’re two teenage girls at a slumber party. And she really doesn’t want to know.” I know these girls. I know all of that is exactly what would happen the minute I walk into the starboard quarters. “When you go back, Canderous will --”

“You’re right, that is a horrible idea,” he says before I can even finish, because he knows as well as I do that Canderous is going to be insufferable, as a man, as a Mandalorian, and especially as a matchmaker. He’s been trying to put us together since Dantooine. “But we can’t exactly sleep in here, can we? They’re going to come looking for us in the morning. Besides the fact that it’s cold as hell in here.”

“We can grab some blankets from the emergency supplies,” I suggest, “Or we could get dressed again.”

“Let’s grab the blankets,” he says quickly, and he starts to get up to grab them from the plasteel cylinder.

“You slut,” I tease, “If you wanted to see me naked you could have asked sooner.”

He comes back to me with the blankets and drapes one around my shoulders, over the jacket. “It’s not just that,” he says, “Or the fact that you look damn good in my jacket.” He spreads one blanket on the floor, sits down on it and pulls me close again, lying down. He kisses me, and runs his fingers through my hair, sending goosebumps rippling through my body. “I just…” he starts to say softly, sweetly, “…like how this feels. And I don’t want it to end.”

I curl in closer. “Me neither.”

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hpdabbles · 4 years

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YOU MADE ME SHIP REGULUS AND HARRY. WHY. DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW HARD IT IS TO FIND THAT SHIP!? Please may I have this ship plus being really tired parents to a pair of twins and Harry suddenly understanding Molly's pain?

Suffer. Suffer with me. Welcome to Harry/Regulus hell (Does this ship have a name? Can we call them Lion’s Heart? Since one is the Leo consultation and the other is a Gryfindor???)

Harry wanted to pull his hair out and it was only ten in the morning. He loved his kids, Magic In All Living he loved them, but there were days when they just tested every limit he had.

And Harry fought two magical wars, lived through two killing curses, traveled through time, and put up with Draco Malfoy who annoyed him more than Voldemort on some days.

In highsight traveling through time was one of the best things to ever happen to him, because he was able to save his family from all the heartache, managed to give his friends a life of peace and meet the love of his life.

Regulus Black was everything he wanted. His husband understood being the overlooked child in the house, understood not living up to people’s expectations, and understood the fear and the shyness that made it hard to be in front of new people. He is, in a lot of ways, just like Harry.

He was also the one who Harry turned to during the darkest first days in the past, the one who got him to smile and laugh and helped him take down the Death Eaters. Who was silly, nerdy and yet still had the elegance of a pureblood lord.

Add to the fact Regulus looks like Adonis dyed his hair black and had a brain that was equally impressive as his physical features? The man was eighteen when he figured out what Voldemort had done to the Slytherin locket and find it. Harry knows it took Albus Dumbledore a decade to get an idea of its location, meanwhile, Regulus took six months to learn of them and then another six to write that giant “Fuck you” letter to stick inside the locket.

He’s husband is the whole damn package and Harry would fist fight anyone who tries to say otherwise (He did fight Sirius that one time luckily his in-law no longer holds it against him).

That is why it only made sense that he asked this perfect wonderful man who was just a flawed and broken as Harry to marry him a year after they killed Voldemort together. The marriage of the Men-Who-conquered was the biggest event in modern magical history- or that was until the two successfully blood adopt a year and a half later.

Blood adopting, a valid way to allow same-sex magical couples to have children by blood, but with a high risk. Not only did they have to find magical newborns for any child above a month would fail, but they also had to be able to transfer their core’s magic and fuse it into the child.

Usually, the parents died from over draining their cores or they just couldn’t recover the amount they gave away and in a sense, crippled themselves to squibs.

That’s why most blood adopting was rarely done, and it was even less common to attempt more than one child.

Of course, Harry Potter always challenges the norm, and thus he along with his husband managed to get a pair of twins; a boy, and a girl. The day after the ritual Harry had been so tired it took everything he had just to stay awake, with Regulus fighting for his life in the bed next to him, and yet the sounds of the newborns cooing in the crib had made it all worth it.

One was named the Heir of the Ancient and Noble House Of Black- since Regulus keep the title since he stayed alive- and the other the Ancient and Noble House of Slytherin- since Harry couldn’t keep the last name Potter and he sort of won the title through the right of conquest in the future.

Harry loved them so much, even if it was surprising to everyone- none more so to Harry who could argue that they had a lot of Slytherin in them since he was almost a snake himself- when his kids were sorted and they were not wearing red or green but yellow and blue.

After the shock of knowing the family had all four houses, it became clear why they sorted this way. Harry should have seen his son’s thirst for knowledge was obvious the moment he learned the dreaded word “why?” at age three, while his precious girl was loyal to a fault as she would often take the fall for her brother who’s curiosity led to him trying his own experiments that ended more in injuries then proven hypothesis.

The problem was they represented their Hogwarts houses too well.

Standing as stern as he, a thirty-four-year-old man could besides his equally as stern thirty-two-year-old husband, clash in a battle of wills against a thirteen-year-old girl who’s loyalty and puberty made them bugs beneath her shoes, while unwilling to sell out her brother.

The fact they found their son’s possible broom design blueprints made it all the worst. His son was one of the brightest wizards to ever walk Hogwarts having to earn the brightest Wizard Award three years in a roll and yet he lack so much common sense. Honestly, it was Hermione all over again.

While his daughter would defend him to the end of the world, she gave her loyalty too forcefully and fiercely. Once he would marvel and love this trait in Ron, now as a parent it just worried him how far she would go for those she trusted.

Harry called this the dark side of the Hufflepuffs. But they had to get her to see the light before her brother breaks his neck on another of his hair-brained ideas.

Regulus took the initiative and stared down his daughter "Ursa Lily Slytherin Black, I will not ask again. Is your brother on the roof with a dangerous broom he made himself right now?"

Ursa folded her hands before her in the proper manner a lady of her standard should, having the rules of high society drilled into her by Regulus since before she could speak. There were days where she was more graceful then Harry ever could be.

The light of the large window she stood in front of made her dark wavy hair and emerald green eyes all that more striking. She is a very beautiful young lady, taking more after Regulus in looks alongside her brother, and Harry knew he would be beating suitors back in just a few years.

"Father, I am absolutely certain that my brother, Gemini Regulus Slytherin Black, is-" suddenly a figure dropped down screaming in a flash of expensive robes bypassing the window before Regulus or Harry could process it.

"-not on the roof" She finished without so much as a blink. "I would check the front yard. On a completely unrelated note is our floo connected to St. Mungo’s emergency room?”

Harry opens his mouth but an explosion goes off somewhere down the hall shaking the whole house to its foundations. Ursa stares at him as if though she is daring him to comment on it. He reaches up to grab onto his hair fighting the urge to rip it out, as he turns away, leaving the pair alone.

Harry barely loses any speed as he rushes down the stairs into the front hall and out into the front yard where Gemini is laying on his back, tracing mathematical equations in the air with his wand and legs bent in the wrong direction.

Regulus can handle the explosion he needs to get the Black Heir to St. Mungo’s. Why is that his boy inherited his lack of fear for death while his daughter took after her Father in his defiant till the end tendencies?

“Hi Dad!” Gemini chirps at him the moment Harry’s shadow falls onto his face. The boy has the audacity to be smiling like a loon. Fred’s and George’s mischief rests in the curve of his lips. “Guess what? I almost figured out the charms they use on brooms. Soon I’ll be charming everything to fly just like Uncle Sirius’s motorbike! And Professor Flitwick said it was too advanced for me, pffff, I’m sure showing him huh?”

“Why are you like this?”

“That’s a good question. I read that Muggles think it’s due to how we are raised or treated by our parents that manifest into personality traits and they have a whole field of study in it. It’s call psychology-oh that reminds me. Dad, can I go to a summer school for psychology in the muggle college? Hermione invited me and Luna, it sounds fun!”

He loved his kids but they were going to led him to an early grave. He wondered how Molly would react to the Lord Slytherin sending her a gift basket as an apology for all the stress he put her through the first go about, even if in this timeline the families weren’t close.

For some reason, Ursa was closer to Draco Malfoy and Gemini was best friends with Luna Lovegood. The last one wasn’t a big stretched when he thought about it but still, it was wild to think about.

“You are grounded-”

“Yes that’s why he’s on the floor”

Harry whirl around to give Ursa a glare “Is that backtalk I hear young lady?”

“That’s how conversations tend to work Dad.”

Regulus snorts “My how the tables have turned. But your both grounded. Now let’s get to St. Mungo’s I’m sure the healers have missed us since the last time we were there....two days ago.”

His husband releases a sigh like he’s dealing with the madness in this house in that one exhale of breath. Harry might be a little mad himself because he finds he really wants to kiss the sigh off those lips even with the stress he’s never been happier.

#Hpdabbles #Regulus/Harry #Time travel #Over lapping time lines #Ursa and Gemini Slytherin Black #Lion's Heart (ship name??)#Harry's kids are insane #((Suffer))#Anonymous #Now Harry knows Molly's pain #Regulus and He are good dads #Regulus and Harry have a Gomez and Morticia marriage #harry x regulus

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wardencommanderrodimiss · 4 years

Text

Got invested in figuring out how my Twin Byleths with B and Lethe would happen and wrote up a 3k outline of White Clouds because sometimes you just gotta be self-indulgent, and I’m counting this for my Camp NaNoWriMo total for the month too. That might be the main function of writing up all this shit.

The twins’ mother and Jeralt probably only had one name, Byleth, picked out as a name, and when Jeralt ended up with two babies and no mother of them to consult with for a second name, he just sort of played around with Byleth until he got Lethe as something he figured worked as a name. He notes in his diary that he’s sure he’s not ever switched their names around; they might look identical, but it’s easy to tell. One of them is a normal baby. The other is silent as the grave.

Byleth is eventually nicknamed B, and Lethe is Lethe, and they grow up learning to fight and become mercenaries in their father’s footsteps. B is fearless, unwavering, charging into battle alongside cavalry and soldiers with more years of experience than she’s ever been alive. Lethe steps back, knocking aside any ambush or assault from the rear, and proves herself capable enough with white magic that she can help patch up her father and her sister when the battlefield calms. One of them is just another mercenary. The other is called the Ashen Demon.

After seeing them fighting the bandits near Remire Village, and knowing that the Officers Academy now lacks a professor, Alois recommends one of the twins to Rhea as a professor. Damned if he knows which one, though. Jeralt leaves it to them to figure out amongst themselves who wants to be the teacher, and which one of them wants to come join the Knights of Seiros with him. Neither of them really want to be teacher, but Lethe lays claim to the position. While either of them will have to learn a lot of new skills to learn how to teach them, Lethe at least already knows more about magic than B, and figures for that reason she’ll have a slightly easier time teaching it.

And while neither of them really wants to wade into an academy full of nobles, Lethe is used to watching out for her sister. She figures she will shoulder this burden for her, too. She becomes the professor for the Blue Lions.

B joins the Knights of Seiros. Jeralt worries about the personal interest that Rhea has taken in both of his children, allowing one to be made professor with no teaching experience, and personally picking and choosing which missions with the Knights the other should be sent on. B leads the knights who travel to the Red Canyon with Lethe’s class; Rhea’s assessment of both their skills, at one time, they figure.

(Dimitri tells Lethe that while her sister certainly seems strange, he’s rather jealous of them; that they got to grow up together with a sibling who they knew they could always rely on. Who they knew would always be at their side. He tells her he envies that.)

Their next mission together occurs two months later, when B ditches her orders to guard other parts of the monastery and goes to watch over the Holy Mausoleum with Lethe and the Lions. (“It’s better that you become the professor,” B said back at the start. “‘Lethe and the Lions’ sounds better than any class that I taught would.”) Seteth later wants to have a word with her about that - “That area was already under guard, and they I’m sure would have been capable without you. You were to patrol other areas of the monastery” - which does not happen because, since the Mausoleum really was the goal, nowhere else had an issue without B, and because Rhea is...just too pleased with what happened.

And what happened was, when a mysterious mage pulled a bone-colored saw-edged sword out of the tomb, Lethe disarmed him and knocked the sword from his hands. B caught it, and when she swung it back against the enemy, it glowed red.

B accompanies the Lions, along with Gilbert, to reclaim the Lance of Ruin. She’s the one who takes command of the battle, and the students, when Miklan turns into a beast. And it’s because of her that conversations Lethe has later with her students - the talk with Dimitri after this mission, and then Sylvain’s B-support - take the shape that they do.

(“So had we been born in Faerghus, to a noble family like House Gautier,” Lethe says to Dimitri, “then no matter what else - even if she didn’t have the aptitude to be the head of house, or didn’t want to - no matter what, she would still be the heir, no matter her actual ability, and no matter my abilities, I would be left out in the cold.”)

(“You and your sister really never knew she had a Crest and you didn’t?” Sylvain asks Lethe. “I guess it wouldn’t matter so much to a mercenary like your father, but - you know, I could hate her for that. Getting to live without burden, no one pretending to like her just for her Crest. That she didn’t grow up hated by you because she had what you lacked. She and I could’ve had a lot in common. Hardly fair that she got to be free and I didn’t, huh.”)

After Jeritza vanishes, and Flayn is rescued, Rhea finally gets her way, and finally finds a solid excuse and reason to keep B close at hand to observe her. By Rhea’s request, B is no longer a Knight of Seiros, but the new combat instructor at the Officers Academy.

With the Battle of the Eagle and Lion looming, and Flayn having joined her class, Lethe has enough distractions that she can’t really properly worry about how her sister is doing with interacting more with the students now. She’s not really a proper teacher, but she’s still got to deal with them, though it’s the Golden Deer she’s helping out with more often than not, while Manuela recovers from being stabbed by the Death Knight.

It’s only the month after when Lethe really notices that things are changing, with her sister and her place in the monastery and with the other students. It’s Dimitri who points it out. “Claude’s really taken a shine to your sister, hasn’t he?” he asks, and Lethe stops to think and realizes yeah, she has seen Claude talking to B a lot. Following her around. Everyone is interested by the Sword of the Creator, even Lethe’s own students, but Claude is...very interested in the Sword of the Creator.

And once she notices that, there’s just more she notices. Hard not to notice the time that B and Claude and Hilda and most of the other Golden Deer came limping back into the monastery past the gates, running into Lethe on what seemed to be their hope to get back to the Golden Deer classroom without really being stopped. “What happened?” Lethe asks. “Are you all right? Where were you? What were you doing?”

“Combat training,” B answers without stopping. There’s a gash in her arm that looked like something clawed her. Something huge. All of the Deer look worse for wear, but B definitely looks the worst, which is strange, because B never gets in over her head. She’s always keenly aware of what she’s doing in battle. Though - she has seemed a little more spaced-out ever since they came to the monastery - lost in thought and deep in her own head sometimes--

Lethe blinks. “You’re not their professor. Are you allowed to do that?”

“I’m the combat instructor, and I teach combat, so there we are,” B says.

She’s hiding something from Lethe. Lethe knows it.

There’s never been anything they’ve ever had to hide from each other, before. Before the monastery, they were always side by side. Almost never out of eyesight of the other. They never could hide anything from each other, before. Nor would they want to.

B tells her, later, when there’s no one else around, no chance of anyone overhearing. “When we went to the Red Canyon, months ago, something about it felt familiar. I wanted to go back. It was full of wild beasts, and I would’ve been killed if they hadn’t followed me. I didn’t tell you then because they didn’t have permission to go and follow me, and I refuse to let them get in trouble after they saved me.”

“Familiar?” Lethe repeats. “What do you mean, familiar? We’ve never been there before.”

“Do you remember,” B says, “months ago, I told you and Jeralt about the strange dreams I’d been having? About huge sprawling battles, and about a young girl?”

And she tells Lethe about how more and more often she dreams of this girl, named Sothis, who B gleans things from, knowledge she should not have, about demonic beasts, the familiarity of Zanado, and other such things. “Are these daydreams, too?” Lethe asks, thinking of how sometimes her sister will just seem to leave the world for a moment, disappear inside her own head.

“Something like that,” says B, and Lethe cannot know now that there is still more her sister is hiding from her.

“I wonder if this has to do with your Crest, somehow,” Lethe says. “Surely it must.”

(She pays more careful attention to the attention Rhea pays to her sister. Thinks about Claude. Thinks about Sylvain telling Lethe what it’s like to have a Crest - to have people pretending to like you only because you have a Crest.)

B and Jeralt and others of the knights go to Remire Village with Lethe and the Blue Lions. It is more than Lethe and the Lions go with B and Jeralt. Rhea told B she would be going there, told Lethe she could decide whether her class would accompany her. Lethe said yes, of course. Rhea is up to something.

(In another lifetime, Lethe is still aware that Rhea is up to something, but it does not really bother her. Her concerns about the Lions are more pressing, and what Rhea wants from her is the afterthought. In this lifetime here, Lethe is much more bothered, because she can see from the outside that this is odd, this is strange, this is Rhea too interested in someone Lethe loves dearly.)

(In another lifetime, B is still deeply bothered and concerned by what Rhea is up to regarding her, what Rhea wants from her, because B always has Claude digging into both hers and the Church’s secrets, and encouraging her to wonder about those suchsame things.)

Halfway to Remire Village, Lethe drops back to the end of the marching line to check up on things there, and finds Claude, and 70% of the Golden Deer with him. “Did my sister actually ask you to accompany us,” Lethe asks, “or if I asked her would she say that it’s ‘combat training’, but only say it to cover for you running off without permission?”

Claude winces. “Oh, you found out about that. But let’s not worry about that now - I can already see the smoke from the village.”

Lethe lets it rest, because she now knows the answer, though B never confirms one way or the other for her. They have much more to worry about on this day. Lethe has Dimitri to worry after too. And to worry what Solon and the Death Knight and their ilk want. And what the Flame Emperor wants. And that the Flame Emperor offered B the chance to join them.

Everybody wants something from Lethe’s sister - Rhea, Claude, the damned Flame Emperor - and there’s an ever-growing part of Lethe that is glad she herself isn’t the one with the Crest. Is glad that she is the forgotten one, the one left out in the cold. But she could never be Miklan - she loves her sister still with her whole heart, her quiet sister who dreams strange dreams and knows strange things and whose eyes are no longer always so dead. Who smiles sometimes, enough that not just Lethe notices it. Who gets angry, visibly angry, at the injustices in Remire Village - a sharp change startling Lethe as much as Dimitri’s does.

And B gets angry at smaller things now too - when Lethe pulls her aside to worry over her some more, tell her to be careful because there are people here in the monastery who are trying to get something from her and they don’t know their intentions. “I’m not a child!” B hisses at her. “I am fully capable of understanding that Claude is after something just as much as Rhea is. But you, you have no understanding of what it is like to be me. Rhea knows more about me than she’ll tell me, and I don’t just want to sit and wait for what she does next. I’d rather throw my lot in with Claude and see if he can find answers about the Church and about me. You have no idea what it is to be me, to not know what I am or why I am this way - I have a Crest that shouldn’t still exist in this world, and I can use the Sword of the Creator though it doesn’t have a Crest stone like every other Relic weapon. Everything I am and everything I can do shouldn’t be possible. I don’t care if that doesn’t bother you. But it bothers me, and I want to know what I am and why.”

Lethe is glad to have come to Garreg Mach - to get to interact with people near her own age, to make friends, to see her sister make friends, to see her sister learn to smile - but she hates that there is this thing between them now, only discovered because they came here. Because of the Sword of the Creator. Because of Rhea?

Because of Rhea.

The ball passes; they fight the demonic beasts at the chapel. Lethe turns around to see B, apparently unprompted, take a swing at Monica, only for a monstrously pale man to appear and knock aside her blade and disappear with Monica. Jeralt falls.

They read his diary. B reads it, mostly, reads parts out loud to Lethe that strike her as interesting. About them when they were young. About before they were born, Jeralt and their mother. Lethe tries sooner to get back to living; she has a class to teach, after all, and she has cried before. She has never coped with a grief like this, but she knows better how it feels to have a heart. (She doesn’t read their father’s diary about the time of their births, about his suspicions about Rhea. She is burdened only with grief for their father. B is burdened with that, with never having felt this in her life, and now, learning so much more about what she is. About Rhea’s role in it.)

B sticks markers in the diary for parts she wants to show Lethe later. If B isn’t haunting Jeralt’s office, then Lethe will sometimes pick up the diary and read the noted parts herself. She comes back one day and doesn’t find it where B always leaves it. Maybe she took it with her to her quarters? Strange, but at least she’s not just haunting the office anymore. Is starting to move forward again.

Lethe and Dimitri tell B about spotting that strange mage who rescued Monica, together with the Flame Emperor. Dimitri tells neither of them what he knows about the Flame Emperor’s dagger. B tells neither of them what she and Claude are up to with the diary.

Claude and Dimitri come to them to tell them what the Knights learned about their enemy’s location in the Sealed Forest. When they go to deal with that, the Golden Deer come along - this time with B, and Manuela’s, foreknowledge and permission. B might still only be their combat instructor, not their day-to-day professor, but since Claude started hanging out with her, the rest of them wanted to get to know her better too, and they’ve grown rather defensive of their stone-faced instructor.

B is the one to charge ahead, closest to Kronya to pursue her, recklessly chasing her down only to be thrown into the dark. Lethe is the one, with the students, to see her sister disappear from her sight. And to see the sky split open by a burning blade, and her sister, transformed, to re-emerge from the darkness.

There’s a lot that Lethe, Claude, and Dimitri need to be caught up on.

Rhea proposes that B go down into the Holy Tomb to receive a revelation from the goddess. Lethe and some of the students accompany her. Imperial Troops attack, the Flame Emperor unmasks herself, Dimitri cracks, and the Empire declares war on the Church of Seiros.

Now, this is the fun part, because the ensuing battle for the defense of Garreg Mach is where the scenario can splinter.

The first option is the story we know, mostly: B and Lethe fall, and Lethe survives due to B’s powers, and they wake up five years later to find everything passed in the interim as it does.

And the other path, which I find myself with a particular fondness for:

B and Lethe more often than not did not fight side by side. Not when they were mercenaries, and not now with such a large-scale battle. They’re busy on different parts of the field. B is the only one to see Rhea transform into a dragon, the only one to rush off to save her from the demonic beasts. The only one to fall beneath the rubble.

The Empire’s forces are too numerous and well-prepared. Lethe knows what it looks like when a battle is going south. She gathers her students and tells them to run, to help each other return to their homes and prepare themselves and their territories for war. Some - the pragmatists, the tacticians, those who can see past one battle to realize losing this does not mean they are damned to lose the war, those who refuse to die futile deaths - go easier than others. She has to beg Dimitri to live to fight another day.

She is one of the last to retreat, trying as long as she can to search the battlefield for her sister. Because she noticed, some time after the dragon was subdued, that B was no longer present in the fight. Not because of any mystical twin intuition or anything, but because she and everyone else noticed when the Sword of the Creator was not blazing a path to follow. And she thinks surely someone would have to have seen something - some Empire soldier brag about having cut her down, or some knight seen her fall - Byleth can’t just have disappeared.

But Rhea just seems to have disappeared, too, and no one can say where she went, or where that dragon came from. (If Lethe was not so consumed by everything else, she could have added that up.)

Garreg Mach is surrendered and abandoned. Rhea and Byleth disappear. And Lethe, the Crestless and forgotten sister, finds not a trace of either of them, and she retreats too. She leaves behind the monastery, the place where all her family fell, where her mother and father are buried, where she last ever saw her sister, and she catches up to Gilbert, Dimitri, and Dedue, to accompany them to Fhirdiad, to prepare the Kingdom for war.

(And there’s another point where things can splinter, once they get to Fhirdiad, but this is already 3k words so we’re just gonna leave it here at the end of White Clouds.)

#fe3h chatter tag #byleth blogging #i did not want to wrangle blythe into this at this point so this is only Twin AU and not Oh God They’re Triplets AU

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leahlisabeth · 5 years

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37 for andreil!! 💕

Thanks for prompting! I had a lot of fun with this one!

This also can be found on AO3!

“Why did I let you talk me into this anyway?” Andrew grumbled as he stumbled into yet another patch of muddy ground. His feet were heavy from the mud coating the soles and he practically had to change his gait to accommodate for it. When they started out he had scraped the mud off on the trees every time but he was no beyond fed up.

“I’ve never been camping,” Neil said. “And Nicky couldn’t bear the thought of me missing another ‘essential growing up memory.’”

Andrew groaned. He was going to kill Nicky. First, for teaching Neil about air quotes. Second, for teaching Neil about FOMO. Third, for ruining Andrew’s favourite boots. “Are we almost there?”

Neil consulted the map, brow furrowed. “I think so? I think Nicky drew this himself and it’s not exactly to scale.”

Andrew trudged up beside Neil and snatched the map. It was definitely hand drawn and it made almost zero sense.

“I think that’s the rock outcropping we just passed and I’ve been keeping the stream on our left. It should be just over this hill,” Neil explained.

“If it isn’t, we’re going back. Fuck camping!” Andrew said, pushing on ahead.

Neil caught up right away because somehow he had managed to miss the worst of the mud so he wasn’t dragging another fifty pounds on the soles of his feet.

They reached the top of the hill and saw the end of the trail. Nicky had borrowed Matt’s truck and it was parked by a small pit and three tents were set up around the perimeter of the clearing. Nicky was perched on a log by the fire, setting up a spit to roast the fish in the basket beside him. Andrew marched over to his cousin and placed his hands around his neck.

“Andrew, you made...erk,” Nicky choked as his airway was almost closed off.

“Why did we have to hike in when clearly we could have driven?” Andrew asked dangerously.

Nicky wheezed. “Not enough room for everyone. Neil’s camping experience.”

“I’ll show you camping experience,” Andrew growled.

“Andrew,” Erik’s mild voice came from the door of one of the tents. “Can you maybe wait to kill my fiance until after I’ve married him?”

Neil caught up and dragged Andrew away, laughing. “It’s okay, I don’t mind.”

“I mind.” Andrew glared back at his cousin. “I mind very much.”

Neil leaned in close. “I’ll make it up to you later.” Promise coloured his voice and Andrew could feel himself blushing.

“Fine,” Andrew growled. “I won’t kill him so long as he remembered to bring stuff for s’mores.”

“What do you take me for?” Nicky asked. “I promised Neil a classic camping experience. I brought like five bags of marshmallows.”

Andrew nodded. “You’ve earned yourself a stay of execution but you’re on thin fucking ice.”

“Which tent is ours?” Neil asked.

“Yours is there,” Nicky gestured to the one on the right. “Katelyn and Aaron are on the left and Erik and I are in the center.”

“Where is Aaron, anyway?” Neil asked.

“He and Katelyn went to check out the swimming hole. If you value your eyes, I suggest you not join them,” Erik said, coming to join them by the fire.

Neil flushed red and didn’t argue. He didn’t say anything to Aaron when they returned, flushed and dripping wet with buttons mismatched and hair in wild tangles.

Supper was okay. Erik had caught plenty of fish for all of them and Nicky was surprisingly good at preparing them over the campfire. They were crisp on the outside but melted on the tongue. He’d also wrapped some potatoes in foil and baked them over the coals.

The sun was going down, turning the sky to pink and orange flame and Nicky rummaged around in the bed of the truck, coming out with a couple grocery bags full of marshmallows, chocolate, and graham crackers.

Aaron showed Neil how to find a good straight green stick and peel off all the bark. Andrew watched too. He had only had s’mores once, when Cass and Richard had taken him camping for Labor Day weekend. They had their own metal sticks for roasting and he had never had to find his own. It had been a good weekend, one of the last before Drake had started coming home to visit.

The first marshmallow he roasted burst into flame. He managed to blow it out before it got completely charred. The sticky sweetness was a little bitter from the burnt sugar and the inside was still solid because it had cooked too fast but it was still delicious with the warm chocolate and the graham cracker.

Neil tried one. He managed about half before he fed the rest of it to Andrew. Andrew’s next marshmallow was more even and he was sudden;y grateful for a boyfriend who didn’t enjoy sweets because even though Neil was not interested in eating more s’mores, he was thrilled by the challenge of roasting a perfect golden brown marshmallow and Andrew could stuff himself with his own and with Neil’s.

After a while, long before all the marshmallows were gone, Andrew sat back and tossed his stick into the fire. His stomach was heavy and full, lips still sticky from marshmallow. Neil copied him and leaned back, a solid weight at his side. Andrew turned his head to look over at Neil. Neil’s expression was soft and he carefully leaned forward and kissed him.

“Mmm, tastes better that way,” Neil grinned cheekily.

Nicky squealed from across the fire and Neil jumped away.

Andrew glared at Nicky, who had to grace to look sorry.

“Let’s tell ghost stories!” Nicky said, rubbing his hands together gleefully.

A chorus of groans sounded around the campfire.

“Nicky, why?” Aaron asked.

“Neil? Have you ever heard ghost stories around a campfire?” Nicky asked.

“Uh...no…” Neil said slowly.

“Well there you have it. Authenticity is key.” Nicky stood and dug through his bag for the flashlight. “I’ll go first.”

Neil settled back in at Andrew’s side now that the attention was off of him once more.

“It happened in a place much like this. The forest was old and dark, full of forgotten spaces. A little girl lived on the edge of the forest in a tiny house with her mother and father and big sister. The older girl despised her younger sister. She had been happy before she came along to steal her parents love.

“One night, the little girl was sleeping soundly when her older sister came in and carried her away. She carried her for hours until the last light from nearby towns disappeared from the sky and the last sound from any road faded into the distance and no path but her own footsteps marred the ground beneath her feet. She laid her sister at the foot of an old oak tree and silently slipped away, covering her trail behind her.

“When the little girl woke, she was alone. There was no sound but the birds and the whispering of wind through the trees. There was no light but the stars. She tried to find her way home but she was too far away and she kept going around in circles until she wound up back at the beginning at the foot of the old oak tree.

“She sat down and wept and the cold stole her breath and time stole her life and no one came looking here for this one little lost girl.

“The spirit of the oak tree took pity on her. He grew a blanket of moss to cover her. He sent out tendrils from his roots to wind around her limbs and make her dance in the light of the moon. He whispered to her trapped soul and fanned the flames of her anger until they burned bright and all she dreamed of was revenge on her big sister who had wronged her.

“The story would end here if her sister were smart enough to stay away. But she crept back the next summer to see the place her little sister lay but she did not find a body, she found a little girl dressed in green, leaves through her hair, and an unnatural light burning in her eyes, dancing in the moonlight.

“Sister,” the little girl cried. “You’ve returned to dance with me!”

“The big sister turned to run but it was too late. The little girl ran after her and wound her arms around her, hugging her tight and forcing the breath from her body. The oak tree clothed her too after her death and now both of them dance on nights the moon is full. They will not bother you unless they sense that you have been cruel to your own flesh and blood, like not listening to his great ideas or having a bad attitude when he tries to do something nice. If they look into your heart and see your cruelty, they’ll bind you too and turn you into a puppet…”

“What the fuck, Nicky?” Aaron interrupted.

“Cruelty includes interrupting your cousin’s ghost story,” Nicky said primly.

Andrew scooped up a few pine cones from the ground and began tossing them into Nicky’s hair. Neil giggled breathlessly at his side.

“I don’t know why I even bother,” Nicky muttered.

“Is that supposed to be fun?” Neil asked.

Nicky threw up his hands and dragged Erik to his feet. “Come, my love, we’re going to take a walk in the moonlight. Leave these assholes to stew in their bad attitudes.”

Erik wrapped his arms around Nicky from behind and whispered in his ear. Nicky giggled and willingly led the way into the dark.

Aaron rolled his eyes and he and Katelyn went into their tent. Andrew could hear them talking and laughing in low tones but he couldn’t hear what was being said.

He and Neil were left alone to sit by the fire.

“What do you think of camping?” Andrew finally asked.

“Some of it’s nice,” Neil said. ��I like having a fire and the food was good. The few times I’ve slept outside, we were staying in the car and we didn’t dare light a fire to give away our position. It was old gas station snacks and dressing in every piece of clothing we owned and still shivering until we could get back on the road.”

“Your life is a fucking tragedy,” Andrew said, rubbing his hand carefully up and down Neil’s side.

Neil grinned at him wickedly. “But I’m not so sure about this whole ghost thing. I’m so scared. Hold me.”

Andrew found himself suddenly holding a lapful of warm and willing Neil. “Ghosts aren’t real, for God’s sake!” But he tightened his arms around Neil anyway.

“I’m glad I have a big strong man to protect me,” Neil said, leaning close.

Andrew could see exactly what Neil wanted and he wanted it too. He caught Neil’s mouth in a deep kiss. Maybe camping wasn’t so bad after all.

“Stop your gross flirting!” Aaron shouted from his tent, breaking up their kiss. “I can hear every word.”

Neil laughed and instead of returning to the hot and searing kiss, he lay his head on Andrew’s shoulders. They both watched the stars.

#i wrote this #andreil #aftg #camping trip #crochan #prompt fic

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missjanjie · 5 years

Note

Prompt: in a TV interview (for the emmy's or AS6 or something) B admits that she is still very much in love with V despite them not being together at the time.

i couldnt see brooke just announcing she loves vanjie out of the blue like that so i like, took the premise as inspiration lol

Brooke Lynn was nothing if not a professional. Anyone thathas ever interviewed him would say that he held himself with poise and grace.He could always answer questions in a pageant-like manner, giving just enoughto get the job done without issue. But even perfectionists can slip up everynow and then, though it isn’t often these mistakes happen at events like TheEmmys.

And he supposed he could take solace in the fact that itwasn’t a mainstream brand, it was for an entertainment youtube account. It waslater in the night, he had maybe had a drink more than he should have, therewere a lot of reasons he could give, but none would be sufficient to why hesaid – on camera – “Yeah, I’m sure everyone knows Vanjie and I still havefeelings for each other. It’s whatever. Love is weird and messy like that,”without nearly enough hesitation.

The worst thing he could have done when he got home was to drinkeven more. But he had knew he had fucked up and just was not ready to deal withit. But then the interview went up and friends were texting him about doingdamage control – that it wasn’t anything bad per se, but it was something heneeded to address and take care of to prevent it from spinning out of control.

Waiting until morning would have probably been a betteridea, but Brooke Lynn was not sober enough to make that logical conclusion.Instead, he opened his phone to do a livestream at eleven at night. “Hey guys,how are you all?” he started reading the comments and laughed softly. “Yes, mommyis a little drunk tonight. But she deserves it,” he hummed. “Yeah, the Emmyswere so much fun, so much crazy shit happened,” he answered.

Then the inevitable question came – did he and Vanessaactually still have feelings for each other, or was it a joke for theinterview? “I don’t know, you guys. I miss Vanjie like, all the time. Togetheror not, we’re still really good friends,” he answered. “Has he seen theinterview yet? Beats me, ask him,” he shrugged it off. “We hung out a little duringthe show, yeah, we were at the same table. But it’s not exactly a, you know,opportune place to have a heart to heart.”

Brooke Lynn allowed the livestream to go on for a littlewhile longer and the conversation did eventually go to somewhere other thanVanessa. By the time he turned his phone off, he was nothing but exhausted. So,he passed out for the night – he would worry about tomorrow when he needed to.

And tomorrow wasn’t as calm as he had hoped it would be. Brooke’sphone had blown up with texts, calls, and emails. But he didn’t care about allof that, he just wanted to see if Vanessa had reached out to him. He did get atext, it read ‘you messy, bitch’ and a few laughing with tears emojis. He didn’tactually know what to make of that, so he called him. “Are you mad at me?”

“No, it’s kinda fun to see you be the wild, unpolished onefor once,” Vanessa answered.

“And you’re not freaked out that I, you know, talked aboutyou that way?” Brooke asked, starting to pace back and forth in his room.

Vanessa was quiet for a beat. “I’m not freaked out, but I’msurprised. You made it seem like this was common knowledge, but I didn’t knowyou still had feelings for me. I mean, I knew you still wanna fuck me but like,duh.”

Brooke Lynn laughed softly. “I’m sorry, that shouldn’t havebeen how you found out. And I am seriously considering weening myself offalcohol. But…maybe you and I could meet for brunch? Just to talk?”

There was a little more silence. “Yeah, actually, thatsounds like a good idea.”

And so there they were, at IHOP with food perfect for a stillmildly hungover Brooke Lynn. They had spent most of the meal just talking andcatching up. Then they had to get to the heavy stuff. “I don’t want you to feelobligated to get back together with me just because I made an ass of myselfjust putting it all out there,” Brooke told him.

Vanessa shrugged between bites. “You said it yourself,everyone knows we still got feelings for each other. Guess there really is nouse of fighting it. Though if you pull that shit again without consulting me,Ima whoop yo ass,” he warned.

Brooke Lynn laughed as he drank his coffee. “That’s fair, Ideserve that.”

#branjie #branjie fic #Anonymous #fluff #on screen

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eleanor-writes-stuff · 5 years

Text

and my heart goes boom, boom, boom [ficlet]

When Ben first decided to start a rival fireworks shop near his father’s place at the young age of eighteen, he didn’t really have much of a plan aside from “piss Dad off”.

But he can’t exactly say that to the beautiful girl behind the counter now, can he?

Earlier this week my sleep-deprived mind and I were scrolling down my dashboard when I came across this post about rival fireworks shops. @orkindofamazing had reblogged it with a couple of Reylo tags, and next thing I knew I had a ficlet on my hands.

So here’s the fireworks shop AU no one ever asked for.

First posted here. Also available on AO3. And hey, maybe check out my Twitter and Ko-fi?

Ben Solo might well be the only kid in the world who can say he grew up splitting his free time between a Senator’s office and a smuggler’s illegal fireworks shop.

His father has been running Dishonest Don’s for as long as he can remember. Hell, his very first memory is of the shop, of being shut away in the back office and slowly sinking into the lumpy couch while his parents made annoyed faces and wild gestures at each other just beyond the window. It was all so funny and entertaining to young Ben until his mother stormed into the office, scooped him up, and shouted something about child-appropriate environments at his father while Ben waved goodbye over his mother’s shoulder.

He was back in the shop less than a week later, when his mother couldn’t find anyone else to watch him during her filibuster. Just this once, she told him and his father. This is the last time, she promised him two months later.

It wasn’t.

The last time was when he was thirteen and rumors were spreading about Senator Organa’s shady husband and Ben watched his father pick the stupid shop over his family.

The next time his mother tried to drop him off at Dishonest Don’s, Ben tried to convince her that he was old enough to stay home by himself. His mother agreed almost immediately, in what was probably the shortest argument in her entire life.

So from then on Ben stayed home and watched his father head off to work, and he sulked, and he seethed, and he plotted.

In lieu of a big bash with non-existent friends for his eighteenth birthday, Ben gets a typical Organa-Solo family dinner.

His father is actually home in time for dinner, for once, but he and Chewie talk about work all evening anyway.

Uncle Luke tries to ask him about school, then girls, then his future, until his mother takes mercy on him and drags her brother away under the guise of needing to consult him on a very important, very confidential matter.

There are a few others scattered here and there, familiar faces always in the background of nearly every birthday he’s ever had, but there’s only one Ben is interested in talking to.

“Happy birthday, kid!” Lando grins as he approaches, and Ben knows he’s made the right choice when his uncle toasts him with a beer and immediately proceeds to hand said beer to him. “Probably time to stop calling you that, huh? Eighteen. Eighteen,” he whistles. “Feels like just yesterday you were hiding in my cape to block out the fireworks. And now look at you. There’s no cape in the world big enough for you to hide in, young man!”

Ben drops his eyes to the ground, scuffs his feet for a bit, holds back a satisfied grin at Lando calling attention to his newly filled-out frame.

His uncle knows him well enough to change the subject.

“So, any plans, Benny? Eighteen’s a pretty big deal.”

He looks up, holds eye contact as he knocks back his beer. Is alcohol supposed to be involved when you pitch a business idea to your mysteriously rich uncle?

Either way, Ben figures it can’t hurt.

“Actually, on the subject of fireworks…”

At the ribbon cutting for Honest John’s, Han laughs until he’s doubled over on the sidewalk, tears streaming down his face.

It’s not exactly the reaction Ben was looking for, but he almost doesn’t mind when his father comes up to him later that day and squeezes his shoulder.

“This is… this is really something you’ve put together here, son. Much better than anything I could’ve come up with.”

Much more legal, too, but Ben keeps that thought to himself for once. Because his father is looking up at him, and he’s got a hand on Ben’s back, and for once Han smiles, actually smiles, when he says, “I’m proud of you, Ben.”

So maybe it’s not the confrontation Ben’s been itching for since he was thirteen and he saw tears in his mother’s eyes for the very first time as she tried to make his dad understand the consequences of his actions.

And yeah, it’s probably not going to turn into a fistfight that’ll finally give him the chance to wipe that cocky smirk of his father’s face.

But there’s a telltale shine in his mother’s eyes as she runs her hands over the counter he built, and there’s no sign of a smirk on his father’s face as he admires the rest of the shop, and when his parents meet in the middle they take each other’s hand and turn to him with a look of pride and joy that nearly chokes him up.

That’s good enough, Ben decides, and throws himself into running the best damn business he possibly can.

“Hey, Mitaka. Been a while,” Ben comments as he walks out from behind the counter to assist one of his oldest regulars.

He doesn’t mean anything by it, just a simple observation, but then Mitaka avoids his eye and looks down at the ground and-

“Sorry about that. It’s just, everyone said it’s different now with the new regulations, and of course you’d have to follow them because you’re above the board and all that, which is great, really, it’s great, but no one wants boring fireworks at a 4th of July party, you know? Not- not that I’m saying your stuff is boring-”

Ben frowns as he steps forward, resting a hand on the red-faced man’s shoulder. “Dude. Breathe.”

Mitaka does as instructed, even as he continues to twist his fingers together nervously. “So yeah, sorry it’s been a while. But I’m back now, and I’ll never go to Dishonest Don’s again, I promise-”

“Wait, wait,” Ben interrupts. “Dishonest Don’s? You’ve been going there?”

Mitaka looks like a kicked puppy as he nods.

“Why? You’ve been coming here for years! And you know they’re illegal-”

“But they’ve still got the meteor shower ones, and I know you’re not allowed to sell those anymore.”

This is news to Ben, who just received a box of said fireworks two hours ago. “Says who?” he demands incredulously.

“Um, well, everyone really, but mainly-” Mitaka pulls his phone out and opens up a familiar-looking website before handing it over to Ben.

The design is unmistakable, and the URL at the top can’t be a coincidence.

His father’s latest post is titled The Silent Night Act and what that means for you, which sounds nothing at all like the succinct announcements Ben’s gotten used to. New stuff, the posts usually read, followed by a slew of pictures and prices and nothing else. This… this article about new sound and light pollution regulations warning against hefty fines for those caught red-handed and watered-down versions from licensed sellers trying to toe the line sounds nothing at all like his usual style.

It’s also not like his father to stoop this low and try his hand at sabotage, but here they are anyway.

Ben throws the phone back at Mitaka and stalks towards the front door.

“Hux, watch the shop! I’ve got a fucking bone to pick with Han fucking Solo!”

Dishonest Don’s is both fifteen minutes and worlds away from Honest John’s. While Ben’s shop operates in a perfectly respectable area, it’s just a short walk away from shady repair shops, hole-in-the-wall spots, and, of course, the city’s worst-kept secret.

For fuck’s sake, his father even has the name of the shop spelled out in neon lights. The sign stopped working properly a long time ago, way before Ben hit puberty, but it’s still there, flickering every once in a while like some kind of prolonged death rattle-

Ben stops short right outside the door. For the first time in nearly fifteen years, the lights are working. Dishonest Don’s is spelled out in full, rather than the usual hoe on that’s greeted customers for as long as he can remember.

Inside is even more baffling. There are lights, actual lights bright enough for him to see where he’s going. There’s a bell over the door that announces his arrival. And most unexpected of all, there’s someone other than his father and Chewie standing behind the counter.

“Hi there, looking for something?”

She’s young (probably younger than him) and tall (for a girl) and beautiful (in every sense of the word) and Ben almost, almost blurts out you because when she smiles, it’s brighter than a thousand fireworks lighting up the night sky.

He shakes the thought away, stalks further into the shop and towards her to show her the post. “Where’s Han? We need to talk about this.”

The girl tilts her head. “What about it?”

“It’s- it’s-” Ben splutters, dropping his phone on the counter. “It’s slander! Fake news! Total and complete bullshit meant to sabotage me-”

“Wow, I did not expect this big of a reaction.”

Ben stops, considers her in silence for a beat. “Wait, what? What do you mean- you knew about this?”

“Of course I did,” the girl shrugs as she scrolls past the article on his phone. “I wrote it, after all.”

Everything comes to a screeching halt. The world stops making sense. Up is down and down is left and why in the hell would this random girl use his father’s website to sabotage his business?

“Why the fuck did you do that?” Ben demands, snatching his phone out of her hands. Small hands, rough hands, hands that look like they would fit perfectly into his own- “You lied about me!”

The girl shrugs. “Thought I’d make things interesting.”

“You stole my customers!”

“Mm-hmm,” she hums, shifting her focus to the register. “Gotta meet those sale targets somehow.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!”

At this, she finally looks up. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” she retorts without missing a beat, without losing control. “What kind of asshole sets up shop right across the street just to piss off his father?”

Truth be told, sometimes Ben does look back at his teenage self and feel a slight bit of shame over his actions. But this stranger doesn’t need - or deserve - to know that.

“You wouldn’t get it. It’s a long story,” he says dismissively, crossing his arms over his chest as he looks around the shop and takes in the small changes she must be responsible for. Things are… things are actually organized, for once. And he can stand here without worrying that one of the highly flammable, highly explosive piles his father likes to keep things in is about to roast him to a crisp. It’s… nice, and Ben’s happy just looking around until-

“And I’ve got a long lunch break,” mystery girl replies easily, pinning him down with a challenge in her eyes. “So start talking, Honest John’s.”

There’s a chair on the other end of the counter, a little waiting seat of sorts. Ben remains silent until he’s settled down. “It’s, um… it’s Ben, by the way. Not John. Or Honest John.”

She smiles at him again; just one more and his heart will probably fail him. “Yeah, that sounds better. Fits you.”

And then she holds her hand out and offers him the beginning of everything.

“I’m Rey, in case you were wondering. Rey like sunshine, but with an E.”

Of course the only thing brighter than all the fireworks in the world is the sun herself.

So, um... yeah, that’s that. This is what happens when you attempt to write while severely sleep-deprived, kids.

As always, thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed at least some part of this. Please don’t hesitate to like/reblog/comment!

#reylo #rey x ben solo #kylo ren/rey #rey/ben solo #rey/kylo ren #star wars #rey #kylo ren #ben solo #ficlet: boom #series: ao3 reblog #my fics #fic archive

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beatricethecat2 · 5 years

Text

if/then (2.0) - 18

This isn't 100% ready and I know it but I've got a lot of work coming up so I'm releasing it into the wild anyway. Slightly more upbeat than the last chapter, but there's still much to resolve. Which will happen in a timely fashion, meaning not a million chapters to go. Typos abound, I will fix later.

Previously: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9, part 10, part 11, part 12, part 13, part 14, part 15, part 16, part 17

////////////////////////////////

“Hey Claud, I’m coming up. Text me or something if you’re there, ok?” Myka pushes through the front doors and stands inside, waiting for a reply. She smiles at the front desk guy, then looks down at her phone. Nothing yet, just like every other message she’s left this week.

“Hey Doug, you seen Claudia today?”

“Uh-uh,” the front desk guy says. "First shift back from vacation. Want me to ask Tony?” He picks up his walkie-talkie.

“That’s ok, I’ll just go up,” Myka says, scuttling past him as the elevator doors open. Two people step out as she walks in. She taps the button for Claudia’s floor and checks her phone again. No new message, but she really needs her stuff.

Claudia should be home as it’s late for a school night...but wait, it’s not, it’s Friday already. Maybe they're eating out or at a movie, or watching a movie at home. Or maybe Claudia's so miffed she won’t pick up the phone.

Claudia's police station antics are still a conundrum, they could have been for show or totally sincere. She has no clue what Helena told her as after the group interview, she didn’t see either of them again. If she could have talked to them before she left, she'd feel more confident moving forward.

Claudia’s buzzer rings and rings, so she waits for a beat then knocks twice. She tries her key card and the indicator glows green, thankfully, as she was worried Claudia already changed the code. Dewy whooshes out the instant the door opens. She drops her bag and rushes after him.

“You don’t want to go down there,” she says, scooping him up near the stairs, holding on tightly as he squirms. She wedges her foot in the door and pushes it open then crouches down to pick up her bag. Dewy wriggles free, but she blocks his second escape, swinging her bag to shoo him in.

“Claudia? Christina?” she calls and waits for a reply then pokes her head into bedrooms and the terrace.

“Where’s your moms?” she says to Dewy as he rubs up against her leg. He's purring so loudly she can hear him clearly. She glances his bowl, it’s empty. He must be hungry.

“Let's get you some dinner, mister,” she says and walks into the kitchen. Its surfaces are oddly clean, but the cat food cabinet is its usual mess. She sets a bag on the counter then grabs Dewy’s bowl to give it a good cleaning. The sink is devoid of dishes, which highly unusual as they often linger for days. She checks the fridge, it's also sparse, but maybe Claudia hasn’t gone shopping. That's not as unusual as an empty sink.

Myka snaps back to her task as Dewy mews plaintively. He hops up on the counter as she opens the bag of food. “Dewy, chill!” Myka says and swipes him to the floor. He’s way more anxious than usual.

She strokes his head as he eats and rubs behind his ears, his purrs vibrating so vigorously they travel up her fingers. Such good cat, she thinks, so good-natured, and mostly well behaved. We’re lucky to have him, even if he is a little dumb.

She looks across the living room at her corner, then traipses across and into the space. There's far too much stuff to take in one go, so she starts plucking out what she needs for now.

A picture of Helena hangs on the wall but a corner has popped free and it flaps to and fro. She peels it off and drags a finger over Helena’s likeness, then sits on the bed, drinking in Helena’s warm smile.

“Would it be bad for you if I see them? I want to know if they’re ok, but I don’t want mess this up for any of us.” Second guessing her movements is already difficult. Subterfuge isn’t her strong point.

Dewy bounds into the room and jumps on the bed. He sits on his hindquarters and chirp-mews at her insistently.

“What do you want?” Myka asks as he smushes his head against her side, then drags his body back and forth. She rubs his head again and sighs, then swings her legs onto the bed. It's ok to say for a few minutes longer than needed, so she lies down.

“You’re lucky, Dewy. You can't fall in love. At least not the way humans do.” She holds the photo up in front of her, what a lovely day that was, laughing and lounging at the beach. Her heart swells, she really does love Helena more than she ever imagined possible.

Dewy headbutts her cheek then abruptly flops on his side. She lays the photo on her chest and turns her head to look at him.

“She did this all for me, you know, but you don’t know that means. I should be thankful, but…" She reaches over and scratches Dewy’s belly. "I can’t stop thinking about Bonnie.”

Dewy claws her wrist, lightly, as a warning. Myka yanks her hand away.

“Yeah, exactly. I don't know if I can trust her. But she’s helping me, I guess. She’s supposedly an ally.” She looks at the photo again. It was taken during their trip to Shelter Island, when they were pretending everything would be ok. If Helena knew then that Mrs. Frederic planned to frame her, was she already in cahoots with Bonnie? Was Bonnie’s price a roll in the hay or is that the jealous girlfriend she’s been groomed into talking?

Dewy stands up and turns in a circle, then lowers himself down, smooshing his back into Myka’s middle. She scratches under his chin and turns on her side, pulling her knees up and hunching over to spoon him.

“She wouldn’t do that to us, would she?” Dewy’s purrs soar as she rubs behind his ears. What lengths would Helena have gone to spare her? She skims her hand over Helena’s pillow, smoothing a non-existent head print and closes her eyes, summoning Helena's form.

Helena often laid awake for hours as the clock ticked toward her departure. On those days, Myka would nudge her on her side and spoon her from behind. She'd bury her nose into the bend of her neck, letting her warm breath graze over Helena's skin. When Helena'd let out a whimper, she’d press her lips into her shoulder until Helena would roll over and kiss her back. And then quickly, but quietly, their bodies would meet, instinctively quelling each others lingering anxieties.

In comparison to now, those times seem simple; if only being deported was the worst of their fears. It’s not fair their last night in Poland was fraught resentment and that she’d wasted precious time being angry. Or that she has no idea where or how Helena is or how she’s ever going to gain her freedom.

Dewy rises and blinks as she shifts to lie flat. He then settles comfortably into her armpit. She circles an arm around him as he lets out a huge yawn. She yawns reflexively, then scratches his head.

“I wish I could stay and nap with you,” she says as Dewy lays his head on his paws. “But I don’t want to scare your moms when they get home. And…I probably shouldn’t be here.” Myka turns to leave but Dewy lays a paw on her arm. She slips it free. “Sorry, little dude. Say hi to them for me?”

She plucks Helena’s photo off of the bed. "I hope you're ok,” she says to Helena's likeness, then tucks it into her bag.

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

As Myka waits for her Uber, her phone rings.

“Steve, hey.” She’d called earlier to ask if he’d seen Claudia.

"You’re back!”

“I’m back.”

“Claudia’s back, too?”

“She should be.”

“Great! So we don’t have to feed Dewy anymore.”

“You’re still feeding him?” A car pulls up to the curb. There's an Uber logo its window so she waves and points toward the trunk. "Hang on a sec,” Myka says as she throws in her overfilled tote and garment bag into the car. She slams it shut then climbs into the back seat.

“Ok, back,” she says, but gets no reply. “Steve?” She pulls the door closed and checks her screen; no service. She waves the phone to the left and the right but gets no bars.

“No use,” the driver says while driving away. “Dead zone."

“There're no dead zones in New York,” Myka snips, scrolling through her settings and tapping buttons. She glances at the driver, her voice is familiar, but all she can see is fair hair bunched up underneath a blue baseball cap. “Hey, your not...” She consults her app but the phone won't connect. “I thought my driver was a dude.”

“Change of plan,” the woman says, continuing to drive. At a red light, she turns to face Myka. “You and I need to talk.”

There’s a thunk as Myka’s phone drops to the floor. “B-B-Bonnie?” The quintessentially American accent threw her off.

“Morgana Kurlansky, Interpol,” Morgana says, extending a hand over the seat. “Though I heard you already knew that."

"I, um, yeah?" Myka takes her hand and shakes it, limply. Morgana’s tone is deeper than her European one, but just as brusque.

"This has gotten way out of hand. We're doing our best to fix it." Morgana turns back to the street and drives away.

“Is Helena in jail?” is the first thing Myka thinks to ask.

“House arrest, held for further questioning. Bargaining for leniency as we speak.”

“That’s a relief. Have you seen her?"

“No, Bonnie Belski can’t. The cops don’t know who I really am. But she’s not alone, her daughter and her friend are there with her.”

“Christina and Claudia?”

“They’re under our protection. Potential collateral damage. MacPherson’s a threat, but Mrs. Frederic's our main concern. We’re worried she'll use Christina to force Helena’s hand.”

“No,” Myka says, shaking her head. “No. She wouldn’t do that, would she?”

“There’s no limit to what she might do.” Morgana glances at Myka in the rearview mirror. The sincerity in her eyes is frightening.

“How can I help?”

“Stick to the story. Keep acting scorned. Play dumb. You did a great job in the police station.”

“So did you,” Myka says, her mood suddenly souring. “You and Helena, did you really…you know. You said you had proof.”

“What do you think?” Morgana snaps.

“I don’t know.” Myka narrows her eyes.

“Everything Helena’s done has been to keep you in the clear. Do you think she'd go that far?”

“No.” Myka looks down at her hands.

“She loves you. Remember that. But it's better for you if you don't know.”

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Go with your gut."

More cryptic bullshit. Great.

They drive in silence for a few moments, then Morgana speaks up. “We have eyes on you, but stay on your toes. Has anyone at work asked about your trip?”

“Just about my show and Thanksgiving.”

“Even Vanessa?”

“I’ve barely seen her.”

“Hm. Steering clear until there's a verdict. None of this is public yet.”

“I know, I’ve looked.” Myka waits for Morgana to continue, but she doesn't. “How long will this last?"

“No one knows. But there's a contingency plan if things go further south.”

“What about Christina’s school? And Kenpo? And drum lessons?”

“We’re taking care of it.”

“Steve and Liam? Claudia’s neighbors?”

“Claudia will be in touch."

“And if Steve asks me what happened? What do I say?"

“For authenticity, you should—”

“Yeah, I get it.” Myka waves a hand dismissively. She sees it now, why Morgana won't tell her the truth. She looks out the window, but doesn’t focus on anything. Acting the part of a scorned lover doesn’t appeal to her at all.

The car pulls over to the curb.

“Do you really work or Interpol?” Myka asks.

Morgana nods.

“And the other stuff? Was Claudia right?”

Morgana looks over her shoulder but her eyes offer no answer.

“Fine.” Myka unlatches the door. She's not sure she can handle the truth right now anyway.

“Remember what I’ve said. And be mindful about what you say,” Morgana warns. “This is a critical stage; we all have to play our parts. Everyone’s looking for faults, especially Mrs. Frederic. Be extra careful if she contacts you."

The remark hits Myka hard; she trusted Mrs. Frederic unconditionally. It’s still foreign that Mrs. Frederic wants to hurt her and the ones she loves. “They’re all ok, right?” She looks back at Morgana.

“As far as I know, they’re fine,” Morgana says, her tone softening. “I’m sorry I can’t give you a better answer, but I’ll be in touch whenever I can.”

Myka nods and opens the door, then walks toward her building.

“Hey, your stuff,” Morgana calls.

“Right, stuff,” Myka repeats. The trunk pops open but suddenly her stuff is no longer important.

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

As December crawls to a close, Myka’s worry morphs into a dull, constant pang. She obsessively checks for news but finds none. She avoids talking to friends, especially Abigail, as she's the hardest person to lie to. There's no way she can navigate this for months on end.

For the holidays, she visits her family as she's done every year. There’s little mention of Helena, except from her sister, who begs for details about her relationship. She concocts a story about visas and compromise, unable to tell the lie in full. Tracy seems to buy it, enough for her to drop it, at least until after the celebrations are over.

On Christmas afternoon, she hides upstairs, looking through boxes her mom said to "take back with her." Nothing strikes her as worth keeping, though lukewarm memories of school hijinks momentarily displace thoughts of Helena’s whereabouts.

When her phone buzzes, she startles. The number's oddly long but her gut tells her to answer.

“Hello?”

“Happy Christmas! Did you know they say that here instead of Merry Christmas?"

“Christina?”

"In Welsh it’s Nadolaig Llawen. Mom’s been teaching me.”

“Nadolay…what?” Christina’s last word sounded like a phlemy version of “lawn".

“But everyone on TV says Happy Christmas. And the Queen gave a speech to address 'her royal subjects!’ Mom said I’m one of them, but Aunt Claudia's not because she’s American.”

“There was a war. A revolutionary one. So yeah.” Myka's voice cracks as a swell of relief overtakes her. Plus Christina mimicking the Queen was the cutest thing ever.

“We opened Christmas crackers and mine had a hat, a bracelet and a joke. Who delivers presents to baby sharks at Christmas?”

“I don’t know.”

"Santa Jaws!” Christina cracks up laughing. “Oh, oh, and we made fruitcake. Mom said the store-bought ones were gross but the one we made was kinda gross, too.”

“I’ve never had fruitcake.”

"Don't."

A mumbly voice sounds in the background. Christina says “ok.”

“Mom wants to talk to you.”

“I want to talk to her too.”

“I wish you were here.”

“So do I.”

“Merrrrry Christmaaaaas!” Christina says, her words fading away as the phone is passed on.

“Hello, Myka,” Helena says and those two words, in that rich, velvety voice, make Myka's insides melt. She swallows back a sob before answering.

“D-Does this mean that you’re...”

“I’m afraid not. There’s been little movement since we last spoke. All that fanfare for such little gain.”

"How are you calling?

“Many strings were pulled. And a tantrum may have occurred in front of several key officers. Not by Christina.”

“Oh my.” Myka pictures a distraught Helena pleading with suits while Claudia's concocting a covert communication scheme in the background.

“I assume you're at your parents?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. You shouldn’t be alone.”

“Where are you?”

“How are you coping?” Helena says.

Deflecting already. “I’m…” Should she tell her this lie’s been eating away at her soul, that waking up every day without them is torture? “I’m ok, I guess. But it sucks, not knowing where you are or how you are.”

“I’m sorry.”

“This is my fault, not yours. You did this for me.” The weight of that's still sinking in. "It’s hard to be here without you."

“But you must."

“I’m trying.” Myka tears up, speaking the truth after bottling it is overwhelming. “I, um…I got that residency, in LA. I’m going in February. Unless you think I shouldn't.”

Helena sniffs in before continuing, she must be affected, too. “Go on. Focus on your work. Put this behind you if you can.”

“What if you come back while I’m gone?”

“That’s highly unlikely.”

“But it’s already been a month. How long will this take?”

“As long as it needs to, so we all may be safe.”

“I know. It’s just...” Myka pushes a box of out of the way and flops back on the bed. “I’m being encouraged, 'for appearances,' to move to LA.”

“By whom?”

“By Morgana.”

“You’ve spoken?”

“Briefly. Twice.”

“I asked her to watch over you.”

“So you think I should?”

“If she thinks it’s best, perhaps consider it. I know it’s a lot to ask.”

"Charlotte and Bennett are moving to London, so I have to move anyway. And Vanessa introduced me to a museum there looking for a new registrar.”

“Ah. If she hands you off, you’re no longer her problem. I imagine she’s keeping her distance, riddled with guilt.”

“Maybe, yeah, I don’t know. It’s been weird at work in general.” Everyone keeps giving her sad, concerned looks, and she’s worried they know more than they're saying. "A fresh start might be good. I’ve never been to LA. I might hate it.”

“It’s awfully showy.”

“When this is over you’ll come back New York, right? I want to be here when you do.”

“Claudia will be back eminently, but Christina and I…”

“Christina and you what?"

“Christina and I will be moving on after the holidays.”

“Moving where?”

“Somewhere safe."

“You'll call me when you get there.”

“There'll be strict rules, once we’re settled.”

“Once you're settled? Settled where? Like witness protection?”

Helena’s silence is answer enough.

“For how long?” Myka yelps. “God, I sound like a broken record."

“We'll miss you terribly if that helps.”

“It doesn’t.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Someday you’ll stop saying that. You’ll be able to stop saying that.”

“One can only hope."

“Does Christina know what's going on?”

“She understands as much as an eight-year-old can.”

“She’s almost nine. Nine! I’ll miss her birthday. I don’t want to miss her birthday.”

“You’ll be there in spirit.”

There's mumbling in the background.

“Please, not yet,” Helena says.

More mumbling.

“They’re saying I must go. The line’s unstable.” As if on cue, the line crackles.

“Helena?”

“I’m here.”

“Merry Christmas.”

“Happy Christma—“

“Helena. Helena!” There’s a click then dead air. “I love you,” she whispers as if the phrase will reach Helena anyway.

"Who you talking to, sis?” Tracy says from the door.

Myka jerks upright. “I, um...Abigail. Her family’s driving her nuts.”

“Join the club,” Tracy says and rolls her eyes. She walks into the room and sits on the bed. “Mom’s going to have a coronary if you don’t come down soon.”

“Was she calling me?”

“Duh. Like a zillion times.”

Myka hangs her head but doesn’t move. Tracy circles and arm around her.

“It’s a big one, huh? Got your heart broken didn’t you?”

Myka shakes her head.

“You’ll get over it. You always do.” Tracy pulls Myka close.

“Thanks, Trace.” Myka leans into her sister. Her words are comforting, though she doesn’t know the truth.

“Soooo...Aunt Marjorie and Uncle Ted went to Graceland this year. Keep them talking; that might get us through dinner in one piece.”

-TBC-

#BERING AND WELLS #w13 #fan fiction #if/then #Myka Bering #Helena HG Wells #I'm trying to piece together a trail of clues I left along the way #ones I didn't know I needed but they are mighty handy now #not in this chapter necessarily #but coming up #I may even finish this story before winter is over #(what's that - you say winter hasn't started yet?#-exactly....)

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starry19 · 6 years

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AN: This takes place in the How to Pretend universe, though it can certainly stand alone. For my anon who wanted DomesticGarcy - be careful what you wish for.

After The End

The first time it happened, baby Amy was five months old.

The day had been quite normal, or what passed for normal in the Flynn household. The morning was a wild flurry of loading diaper bags and getting herself ready for her Modern History lecture at nine. Amy had been perched in her father’s lap, contentedly gnawing on his wristwatch while he attempted to send e-mails from his phone before heading out the door.

She had paused for a second to kiss Flynn goodbye, Amy squished happily between them, then tickled Amy’s bare toes until she giggled. The sound followed her out of the house, and she got into her car, smiling.

Morning lectures meant Flynn dropped Amy off at the sitter’s before he headed in to work. He had gone back to the NSA, though he had announced his days of intelligence gathering were over. Instead, he oversaw their local field office and did a great deal of consult work. Mostly, he kept regular hours, though occasionally he pulled all nighters, coming home in the early hours of the next day, muttering about Chechen rebels that were never where they were supposed to be.

Her class had gone well, though she had stumbled once. It still threw her every once in a while, the changes they had made to history. Dates, events, names that she could have once bet her life on, no longer mattered or were the same.

Amy had spit pureed peaches all over Flynn that evening at dinner, and she’d laughed out loud before handing him a towel, though usually Amy ate like she was starving. Slightly concerned, she watched her daughter closely throughout the rest of the night.

By bedtime, she was convinced Amy was coming down with a cold. Unsurprising, since day cares were full of small, usually snotty children who loved stuffing things into their mouths.

A few hours later, she was getting into bed herself, curling into her husband’s arms, trying to remember if they had any baby Tylenol. Hopefully they wouldn’t need it, but she had learned that the second you counted on it not being necessary was when it became absolutely necessary.

Flynn kissed her temple, her jaw, and she smiled softly, the general craziness of the day and the warmth of his body luring her to sleep.

She woke abruptly in the darkness, confused.

Then it hit her - the baby monitor.

She sat up slightly, Flynn’s arm falling away from her. Heard what must’ve woken her up in the first place.

She moved again, swinging her legs down. There was a sleepy murmur from the bed behind her, and she knew he wasn’t quite awake yet.

“Amy’s coughing,” she breathed. “I’m gonna go check on her.”

And in the next second, everything changed.

Flynn sat bolt upright, tension practically radiating out of him.

Before she could ask, he was gone, grabbing the gun he still kept in the bedside drawer, and sprinting out of their room.

There was a shocked second where she sat absolutely still, and then…

Then she knew. He had told her the story, after all. And that night, that awful night, had started in just this same way.

She felt a shiver of terrible, irrational fear lodge itself in her chest.

“Oh, God,” she breathed, hurrying after her husband.

She found him in the doorway to their daughter’s room, posture rigid, gun clutched in his hand, the lights flipped on. Amy’s coughing had turned into crying.

Tentatively, she touched his back.

He didn’t respond, and she wondered what was going on in his head. He was reliving the worst night of his life right now. God, was he even breathing? She couldn’t tell.

But Amy couldn’t wait any longer.

She ducked around Flynn, scooping Amy up and gently rocking her, still keeping one eye on her husband. At the same time, she glanced around the room, which was, of course, empty, and wondered if she was now destined to share Flynn’s deepest fear, too.

Slowly, she approached him, baby in her arms. In the soft spill of light from the hall, his face looked like it was made of marble. When she stood perhaps six inches away, he sucked in a sharp breath, then, with hands that shook, he reached out and gently touched one of Amy’s chubby, flushed cheeks.

Then he was gone, turning abruptly.

She shushed Amy, rubbing her back, humming as her tears ebbed.

From across the hall, she could hear the sound of retching, and she thought her heart was going to break. She needed to hold him, needed to tell him it was alright, but just now, their daughter needed her, too.

When Amy was quiet again, she gently eased her back down into her crib, hand resting on her tiny back, measuring the space between her breaths.

And then she went to save Flynn from his own personal hell.

He was in the shower, steam billowing out from behind the curtains. She was fairly certain he was crying, and she suddenly lost her nerve, or wondered if she was wrong to intrude on his grief at just this moment.

Instead, she waited for him, perched on the edge of their bed.

She just…she had no idea what to do. She could never take the pain of Lorena and Iris away, and she knew that he honestly wouldn’t want her to.

When Flynn emerged, looking lost and tortured and haunted, she did the first thing that popped into her head - she opened her arms. He didn’t hesitate.

With a bit of adjusting, they lay with his head on her chest, her arms wrapped around him as tightly as she could. No one spoke, and she wondered if his English had left him temporarily.

He was utterly rigid, every muscle drawn taut, every breath sharply precise - he was holding himself together and she wanted to weep.

“I love you,” she whispered to him, but in Croatian. He’d taught her a few simple phrases over the years, and though she didn’t think she’d ever be able to have a real conversation with him in his native language, she knew enough for this.

His breathing became slightly shakier. “I love you,” she whispered again. “Everything is well.”

He looked up at her, and the pain she saw took her breath away. She kissed him, softly, tenderly, deciding that words were less important at the moment.

He kissed her back, emotion making him less careful than he usually was. Their teeth clinked together, his mouth desperate against hers.

Later, she would find bruises from his fingertips, from how tight he had held her. In the moment, it didn’t matter. She knew - knew his need to feel alive, to assure himself that his world hadn’t been destroyed again, to have proof that she was there, too, alive and whole and well. This was…life affirming.

She wrapped her legs around his waist, linked her hands behind his neck. He moved over her with deep, urgent thrusts, his wet hair falling into his face.

Her climax was sudden and unexpected, and he followed her over, her name falling from his lips at the last moment.

When he looked at her again, she recognized the person behind his eyes once more.

He gathered her into his arms, his chest heaving beneath her cheek.

“I’m-“ he began, but she cut him off.

“If you tell me you’re sorry,” she told him, forcefully, “I’m going to hit you over the head with a phonebook.”

His startled silence was…a little amused, and she was grateful for it. She pressed a kiss against his heart. She was never more grateful for the way they could leave so much unspoken. There was no need for apologies or explanations.

“I love you,” he eventually breathed.

And that was enough.

She dozed lightly, restlessly, for the remainder of the night. For his part, she didn’t think Flynn slept at all. Around dawn, by silent consent, they crept out to check on Amy.

She had rolled to her stomach, her rear in the air. She was also, adorably enough, snoring, though that just meant the poor girl had a stuffed up nose.

No one left the house that day.

Amy, even sick, was delighted with her parents’ undivided attention, and took her afternoon nap against her father’s chest, while he managed to finally relax enough to sleep himself.

That night was uneventful, though Lucy was awake more than she was asleep, half her attention on the baby monitor and the other half on the man beside her.

It didn’t happen with quite the same urgency any time after that first, awful time, but it did still happen. He never left their room armed again, but his pistol never left the drawer.

Once, when she woke to an empty bed, she found him asleep on the floor of Amy’s nursery.

He was trying, she knew that. And this would all ease in time.

She hoped it was soon-ish, because apparently they were going to need to stock up on sleep. It was going to be a rarity again, in just about 8 months.

The night she told him, his jaw dropped, and then he had grinned widely. There was no fear in his eyes, none at all, and she was so grateful for that.

For herself, she was quite convinced this child had been conceived that night, as Flynn had fought to come back to her from his nightmares, both real and imagined.

She chose to think of it as a sign from God. More giving, less taking away.

Yes, their hands were going to be full.

But so were their hearts.

#garcy #garcy ff #timeless

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Screenwriter Ed Solomon on Soderbergh, Noir, and How Bill & Ted Saved His Career

https://ift.tt/2Vq97R3

Steven Soderbergh’s noir crime feature, No Sudden Move, is set in 1954 Detroit: back when automakers drove the city and mobsters rotated their tires. This isn’t just another heist movie from the director of Ocean’s 11, even though it centers on a big score and hosts an impressive cast. Don Cheadle and Benicio Del Toro play two small-time criminals hired to steal a document which is very valuable to some powerful people. It’s a big-ticket item which can revolutionize the auto industry, and the price keeps going up.

For the movie, Soderbergh colludes with the Big Four Automakers to cloud the atmosphere. The caper careens through a smoggy set of turns, picking up passengers like Ray Liotta, Jon Hamm, David Harbour, Brendan Fraser, and Bill Duke (in killer shades) for a wild ride downhill. It all stops with Mr. Big, played with beneficent malignancy by Matt Damon.

Nothing is what it seems in No Sudden Move. It was written by Ed Solomon, a veteran best known for his work on Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Charlie’s Angels, Men in Black, and The Garry Shandling Show. And Solomon spoke with us about exploring dark themes, working with Soderbergh, and how he intends to continue changing how stories can be told.

Den of Geek: I really, really enjoyed No Sudden Move, and I agree, ulterior motives are sexy.

Ed Solomon: That’s very funny. I remember the moment I wrote that [line] and I was like, “Is this just me? And is this an indication of something maybe not so great about my personality?” I actually thought that, I literally thought that, and it’s funny. You’re the first person who’s ever said that. That’s really hilarious.

It made me ask the same questions about myself. Was that the creative key to the script?

Yes. The drive that got me excited about every character at every moment was that they had a secret motive. Every character had a secret motive that they weren’t letting on, to the other characters. And that’s what gave it its energy for me as a writer. It gives a kind of excitement, because what happens then is the actors don’t get to just act with so much subtext. But as a writer, you get to, you know that you’re writing people that are saying one thing but thinking something else, and that’s where all the energy is for me as a writer.

When you were first brought together with Soderbergh, how much of a story was there, or was it just a concept?

We had a concept. We wanted to do just a spare, noir drama for Don [Cheadle], and maybe a couple of other people. The concept was some guys get called together to pull off a little heist that just goes drastically sideways. And are these people? And where is it set? We decided on Detroit. We were thinking about what era does it take place in? We were thinking maybe the ’50s. And that led to Detroit, because ’50s Detroit is just so American, and a lot of things were changing in Detroit at that time. There were fascinating things happening, and there was a lot of racial tension, and the city itself was remodeling itself in the way that America was remodeling itself. It was going from trolleys and cities to freeways and suburbs.

A lot of communities were getting displaced. And knowing we were writing, that Don was doing this, it was like, “What’s going to give Don’s character the courage of his convictions?” It just seemed like the right backdrop for it. So really we came in at a concept and then started throwing story ideas around together for a few days. Then I went off to do my outline. And then I gave him a beat sheet, which he gave me the thumbs up on, and then I had a few ideas for the end. Like the big seven-page aria that comes toward the end of the film. That was an add after Steven read the beat sheet. He’s like, “Let’s bring it to this kind of operatic conclusion, with these intersecting sectors of society.”

He gave me the not undaunting charge of, “Write a seven-page monologue.” I said, “Okay, I’ll do my best.” And then, he obviously read the draft and he had some notes. We did a revision, and the next rewrite we did was when we got the cast on. It was not one of those scripts that was constantly developed. That’s one of the great things about working with Steven. Also, I wrote it on spec, so I didn’t have to worry about studios giving notes or anything like that. Because again, I had Steven there, and Steven and I both knew how he was going to end up making the film. So we got to make it how we wanted to see it before giving it to the studio.

How do you personally get into the head space for a period piece?

Several ways. Yeah, I watched the movies, but really the bigger thing was going there. Going there and really being in the spaces that these people existed in at that time, those that are left in Detroit. Talking to people who were alive then. Spending time, there was an exhibit at the Detroit Public Library that a woman named Emily Kutil, had put together called “Black Bottom Street View.” They had taken all these photographs back in the ’50s of these neighborhoods that later got raised, and Emily recreated the experience of moving through, those neighborhoods, by using photographs in the library. She basically blew the photos up and you would walk down these aisles, which represented each.

I listened to music from the time I listened to people speaking from the time, I listened to recordings from the mid ’50s, in Detroit. I searched out as much as I could to get a tangible feel, a visceral feel. But at the end of the day, it’s about using all of these pieces to create an emotional space as a writer. I tend to write more from an emotional state than an intellectual state. So, once I could find myself in what felt like, the emotional frame of mind of each character, I found it easier to really be there in that time. And we had some very helpful consultants, as well. A man named Jamon Jordan is credited in the film, ironically and totally coincidentally, he’s an extra in the film. And his picture, he is in the frame that my screen credit is. My screen credit comes over his picture, which he and I [are] thrilled about.

Jamon runs an organization called the Black Scroll Network and they do walking tours of the African-American history of Detroit. He and I went through the script together, and of course Don and I went through the script together. I mean, every actor, we all went through the script together. But at every turn, it’s about trying to keep making it more authentic and more real, and more inhabited and more alive.

So you played Joey Biltmore in a 10th grade production of Guys and Dolls.

Whoa.

Reading that tweet made me have to ask you, what was it like being a staff writer on Laverne and Shirley?

Of course, it would make you think that. Oh my God, that’s amazing. Well, this is Den of Geek, after all. I could expect nothing less, then that kind of deep dive. That’s amazing.

Actually, here’s what’s funny. I will happily tell you about Laverne and Shirley in one second, but that experience on Guys and Dolls had more of an influence on the language of Bill and Ted. Meaning Damon Runyon, and that strange cadence and odd use of sometimes, somewhat anachronistic language was an influence for me. Not for [Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure co-writer Chris Matheson]. I asked Chris about it. I was like, “Were you into Damon Runyon as well, or was that just me?” And he’s like, “That was just you.” And I was like, “Oh.” That had more of an influence on the creation of Bill & Ted, for me, than anything else. More than surfer dialogue or valley talk, or stoner talk. Any of that, it actually was Damon Runyon to me, funnily enough. And it was because I had been in Guys and Dolls that I got into Damon Runyon.

But Laverne and Shirley, it’s a really interesting thing. It changed my life in many ways, but probably not the ways I would have thought it was going to change my life. It made me a professional writer, but I wasn’t great at it. In other words, I was in over my head with a bunch of real professional ’80s comedy writers, and I was a senior in college. I wasn’t quite ready. I had gone from writing jokes for comedians and writing plays that were performed at UCLA to being in a room of pros, and it was stressful and difficult, and I was still a senior and I didn’t get hired back into another sitcom. And in a way, I am really grateful.

At the time, I thought I had failed, because it took me about two years. Where I was doing standup again and writing jokes, and selling jokes, and writing for a game show, and doing anything I could to stay afloat, and borrowing money from my parents to live. I almost gave up, almost thought, “I’m my own worst nightmare. I’m a flash in the pan,” but had that not happened, I wouldn’t have approached Chris Matheson and said, “Hey, would you like to write something together?” And he, and I would not have written the Bill & Ted script, which is the thing that actually turned my career around and got me back on the map. It got both of us on the map, and then it relaunched my career from a different angle.

I think had I actually succeeded on Laverne and Shirley, in a certain way, I probably would have fried [out], as one of those ’80s TV writers, as those ’80s TV writers often did. Not just from drugs. But the environment itself – I don’t think was a super healthy one for a writer at that time. For me, at least. It was just a lot of competition, not the way I would want to be as a writer.

Plus, I think there’s a certain state of mind you have to maintain that I was unable to maintain. So, in a way, I attribute my failing out of Laverne and Shirley to the relaunching of my career in a way that was probably more appropriate for where I wanted to go. It was hard. It was a very stressful experience, and I never felt like I fit in. And I never felt like I could contribute comedically at the level that those people were. It took me about four years or five years to be able to feel comfortable in a writer’s room with other comedy writers.

And in the Garry Shandling writer’s room I met some of the funniest people I’d ever met in my life, and I could never get to the comedic level they could, but I was comfortable enough to be able to add whatever my two cents would be to any situation. And that room was much more fun. I think I had just grown up a bit.

Why does Bill & Ted continue to strike a chord?

I have asked myself that question because when it first came out, it was eviscerated by critics. It was pummeled. Every serious critic, and in particular, the non-serious critics. Because for the most part, they didn’t even let serious critics review it; they’d give it to their third- or fourth-year critics, and they just trashed it. So I was like, “Well, why did it sustain? Why did it not just last, but weirdly grow, over a few decades?”

Look, it started as the characters. It was how Chris and I, who originally played these characters just screwing around, but what Chris and I were always really attracted to in Bill & Ted, was this ebullience, this sweetness, this lightness of spirit and this sort of ‘yes!’ quality to them. They feel things deeply, but they adjust quickly and come up with a plan and move forward with the best, best, best of intentions at all times. That’s a really lovely place to inhabit, as a writer.

And then when the baton was passed to Alex [Winter] and Keanu [Reeves], they took it over so beautifully. And I think there is a beneficence of spirit, of kindness to the characters, a sweetness, that I think floated to the surface and kept Bill & Ted alive over the decades. And it did fine, it did well enough as the first film to warrant a second film, barely. It’s not like it did that well, but over time, people discovered it. And it’s what made it difficult to make a third movie, because there were no “numbers” to support it. “Why should we make a third movie? The first two didn’t do all that well.” It was more anecdotal. “But everywhere we go, people seem to know it, and people seem to want a sequel. And couldn’t we do it for them?”

It took John Wick getting where it was, but it also took the rise of social media to let audiences have a voice. So that when someone would say, “Is there going to be another Bill & Ted movie?” Then the studio finally started to see, or I should say the powers that be finally started to see, “Holy moly, there’s a lot of people out there that seem interested in this.” It took that, to get the movie made.

Going back to the tweet, when I read your responses, I thought you had a bit part on Kolchak. And then I found out that you were a real suspect on the Night Stalker case. Was that the worst review you ever got?

Well, that’s hilarious. Let me just put it this way. Being a suspect, which lasted only about 15 minutes and it was a misunderstanding. It was basically, my roommate’s car, which I had cosigned for, was stolen years later and taken to the scene. It was stolen by Richard Ramirez, it was still registered to my address and to me, I guess. So for 15 minutes, people were like, “Wait, is it you? You’re the prime suspect.” And then it was like, “Oh, wait, no, it’s not you. It’s not you, you’re asleep in your room, in Westwood and this murder took place 90 miles away.” But for a few minutes there, it was kind of weird and surreal.

But that was not even as bad as those initial reviews of Bill & Ted. I remember a review of Bill & Ted where the reviewer was reviewing a movie the following week, Friday the 13th, it was Jason Takes Manhattan. And the guy was like, “Here’s an idea. How about Jason Takes Bill and Ted?” I go, “Come on, dude. You don’t have to kill us again. You killed us last week, geez.”

It’s pretty funny because here in my office, somebody printed out one of the headlines. After I tweeted that, of course, I should have known that this thing was going to follow me in a way that I didn’t expect. Meaning when I tweeted it, I thought it was just kind of a funny anecdote. I didn’t expect the barrage of clickbait headlines saying things like “Bill and Ted writer was once suspected of being the Night Stalker killer.” Plus, for about two weeks, if you Googled Richard Ramirez and went to his Wikipedia page, my picture came up with it. It was funky. And then the headlines that they were doing were crazy. So people at my parents’ retirement community, friends of my parents, would be like, “What is this?” Because for people who aren’t actually reading beyond the clickbait, they’re looking at a picture of Richard Ramirez and a picture of me, saying I was a suspect along with him.

It was hilarious, and it was a little freaky. But of course after a week or two, the news cycle shifted, and you no longer found it. But for about a week, if you Googled me all you got was that I was a suspect in the Night Stalker [case]. It was not good. And I was just recently single, too. My girlfriend and I had broken up a month and a half earlier, and that meant if I was going to date someone and their friend was going, “Let me Google your date to see if I can find out anything about him,” it would not have boded well. It did not bode well, but it was pretty funny.

When you worked with Soderbergh for Mosaic, you were changing the way stories are delivered, and I want to know if you have any other plans to bend visual arts?

Yeah, I do. And we do. And we’re working on a new thing that I’m not allowed to get into any detail on, I’ve actually been asked not to. But it’s another thing that we’ve designed to be able to be told in various different styles. And what was the ultimate challenge of Mosaic was also the greatest gift of Mosaic. There was a moment when Steven and I looked at each other and went, “How often, especially when you’ve been doing this as long as we have, do you get to do something that is so challenging, that flexes so many muscles that you’ve never used before? That you can’t help but come out the other end of it, a better writer.” And that, to me, was one of the many great gifts of Mosaic.

One was working with Steven, which was an absolute high point, developing a relationship with him. Which led to No Sudden Move, which led to this new thing, which led to me bringing him on to help us get Bill and Ted Face the Music off the ground. He was an exec producer on that. So that was of course, one great thing, but just on a creative level. Having to design a story, where each character in the story has to be worthy of their own movie, because you’re also going to tell the story from their point of view, just like you can tell it from someone else’s point of view.

The notion that every villain is the hero of their own story, or every human is the central character of their own movie. That was really at work in Mosaic. It forced me to really upgrade how I thought about what I wrote. And it also was so difficult an endeavor, it took so long and it was so difficult and so invigorating that it made other writing seem easier. Because every decade or so, I really think a creative person has to really look at the work they’re doing and make sure that they’re not falling back on old habits or old tricks. Or, for sure as a writer, not getting into a mindset of, “Oh, I know how to do this.” I think that’s death for a writer.

I think, for me, the healthiest balance is that combination of confidence and insecurity. Not even confidence. Faith, I think is probably a better word. Like, “I don’t know if I can do this, but I think if I stay with it long enough, I’ll figure it out.” To me, that’s the sweet spot. No Sudden Move was a genre I’ve not written in and a tone I hadn’t written in. That alone was reason to do it, with a director I trusted and I really admire, and with whom I love working. For an actor, I’ve always wanted to work with? Don. That was like, “I’m going to do this and I’m going to work my ass off to get it right.” That’s that was my attitude on it. “And when I get out the other side of it, I want to be a better writer.”

And that’s my goal with everything, now. “When I get out the other side of this, I want to be a better writer than I was when I started it.”

No Sudden Move is a twist on noir, gangster, and industrial crime films. How did you come to the catalytic converter, and what research were you doing on the actual crime of it?

There’s always a relationship between research and writing. How to do the right amount of research without getting bogged down, and how to learn from the research and how to use the research to help you with where you want to go with it. I knew that the characters were going to be trying to steal something and we also said, “It might be cool if it’s initiated by one of the smaller auto companies, against one of the bigger ones.” I was looking for interesting innovations that happened in ’54 or ’55 that might have happened with GM or with Ford, or with Chrysler, that maybe Studebaker would have been wanting, or Nash, or something.

And then I thought, “Wait a minute, it’s going to be much more interesting if it’s an innovation that they tried to bury, as opposed to that they tried to actually bring out into the world?” And I was like, “What kind of stuff? What were they doing wrong back then? What have they uncovered that they forgot?” That led me to discovering this notion of the pollution control technologies that the automobile industry was forced to collude [on]. And so, for the first time, there was a lawsuit, the City of Los Angeles sued the Big Four, the Big Four lost, and the Justice Department ruled that the Big Four had to collude. For the first time, they had to collaborate, share technology, to come up with ways to reduce emissions in the automobile.

So for the first time in history, the auto industry, the Big Four, collaborated on something. And what they ended up collaborating on was not coming up with an answer, but finding an answer and then burying it. And I thought, “Okay, that’s more interesting.” In my research on Detroit in the ’50s, I discovered the deep potency of this idea of the cities re-landscaping themselves. And then those same companies were pulling up the trolley tracks, red-lining districts, making it so certain people couldn’t live in other communities. They destroyed Black Bottom, Paradise Valley, which were these thriving, African American residential and business communities. And I thought, “Well, that’s an interesting backdrop. And so, what if we set it against this changing landscape of Detroit?”

I knew we had Don, and so it also made sense that the person that he would be with would represent the other side of the spectrum, someone who is racist, and these two guys have to work together. [And the other guy] is not only racist, but he’s dealing with someone who’s smarter than him, and ahead of the game more than he is. So he’s got to deal with a kind of appreciation for this guy, that he’s kind of grown up distrusting, without knowing him. It seemed to give a deeper fuel to the back and forth between these two guys, as they’re trying to fuck each other over, over the course of the movie.

We were not trying to do a “socially conscious film.” We were really trying to just make a fun yarn. And to me, it just added to the fun, because it added to the potency of the characters. Like it gave Don’s character more muscle and more of a sense of righteous indignation. And it gave Benicio’s character more of a deeper character place to come from when dealing with Don’s character. It was not designed so that it would be “about something bigger.” It was actually designed to just give a bit more weight, so that the characters were more fun. It’s funny, because I’ve heard it referred to as a gangster movie, and it literally never crossed my mind, that this would be a gangster movie. Never. Until today.

Movies

No Sudden Move Review: Slow Speed Heists Get Away With Bigger Hauls

By Tony Sokol

Movies

Examining Bill & Ted’s Excellent Pop Culture Adventures

By Chris Cummins

I’m the gangster geek at Den of Geek, so I have to look at it that way. And I got to say, Matt Damon’s character is scarier than Luca Brasi.

You know what? I appreciate your saying that. And that’s why I’m like, “Yeah.” And that guy, he’s not in any kind of organized crime, but he’s legit scarier. And yet, he’s probably the most civilized of everybody. I appreciate what you’re saying, actually. Very much appreciate that. Luca Brasi, that’s so funny. I was thinking about Luca Brasi, just recently.

I think about him all the time. Almost everything you’ve worked on has pushed barriers. The Garry Shandling Show changed television, you changed entertainment.

I’ve always wanted to try to push boundaries, wherever I could, partially for purely selfish reasons of not getting stale. And not falling back, as we were saying before, and not falling back on so-called old tricks or old habits, because I’ve always wanted to have longevity. I’ve always wanted to constantly improve as a writer, and be vital. I don’t want people throwing a bone at me, just so I can work. I want to be able to have something to say that’s meaningful. It’s been both good and bad for me. It’s been good for me in that, it has kept me growing, but it’s been bad in that I’ve fallen on my face a lot.

I’ve really taken some swan dives and landed on cement. And that’s hurt. However, I think truthfully, taking chances and failing has probably led to more success and longevity than the successes I’ve had. Weirdly. It’s great to have success, because it makes you be perceived as viable by the people who make movies and who hire writers. But honestly, as a writer, it’s better to have failures as long as you have the emotional resolve to be able to get up and keep walking, and look honestly at where those failures are your fault.

I don’t think it’s possible to have all success anyway, but if I guess if you have all success, nothing’s a problem for you. But I think most of my friends who have a lot of success and don’t have a lot of failure, who are writers, don’t usually have a lot of longevity, which is interesting. And I don’t exactly know why except I think you stop challenging yourself, and your work stops becoming relevant. I think. I’ll know more in a decade or two, and we’ll get back on it. And we’ll see if my strategy worked or didn’t.

The new movie finds relevance today by going back to the past, and by going back to the filmmaking styles of the past.

I’m so grateful to hear you say that. Steven used these Kowa, I think that’s those anamorphic lenses that he had fixed on top of the RED monster camera, the digital camera. So that’s why it has the look it has, and I really appreciate the way everyone really went for authenticity. I think sometimes you can speak better about the present when you’re speaking, and you set it, in the past. Because sometimes you need that distance to be able to actually see yourself. And then when you’re just looking at a current, cutting edge, modern story, it somehow doesn’t resonate as much. It doesn’t have as much poetry.

No Sudden Move is available to stream on HBO Max.

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The post Screenwriter Ed Solomon on Soderbergh, Noir, and How Bill & Ted Saved His Career appeared first on Den of Geek.

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whiteliesuk · 3 years

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White Lie: Kamala Harris is the progressive queen we have been waiting for; as the first black, Indian, female VP all things will inevitably change for the better! Sit upon your pedestal Madam Vice President!

The reality:

Should anyone doubt the effectiveness of the US political propaganda machine, they need only look at how successfully it whitewashed Kamala’s abysmal track record as prosecutor. Our Madam VP elect is very far from the progressive her campaign slogans and your Instagram stickers have made her out to be.

I’ve been holding back from writing this post: I didn’t want to put out the sordid details of Harris’ record before the election in case I inadvertently convince some undecided voter to go the wrong way (lol at me thinking I had any such influence!) Or have someone accuse me of being a Trump supporter, heaven forbid. I also didn’t want to write this post too soon after the election, as people rightly celebrate the result after days, even weeks, of anxiety and stress. I don’t want to be that much of a party pooper! But… I did spend much of the post-election evening grinding my teeth at the multitude of ignorant Instagram posts screeching ‘KamaLove’, ‘Yes we Kam!’ or of her shimmying some dance moves. Worst of all was the widely shared video of Kamala’s post-election victory speech, where she declared:

“I am thinking about… the generations of women – Black women, Asian, white, Latina, Native American women – who, throughout our nation’s history, have paved the way for this moment.’

In Kamala’s case, women of colour paved the way in a very different sense: she figuratively stepped on them to make it as VP.

I fully acknowledge and appreciate the empowerment that comes from representation: it means a lot to have someone that looks like you rise to a position of power, especially when it is ground-breaking and breaks thick, bullet-proof glass ceilings. To be the first black, South Asian, daughter of immigrants to become VP in the US is huge. But representation only goes so far, particularly if said person has a track record of supporting or exacerbating systems that discriminate against minorities and the working class. We, in Britain, with the likes of Margaret Thatcher, Priti Patel, and Saji Javid should really know this by now.

To eradicate any doubt, I invariably wanted the Democrats to win the US election; I am still rejoicing at seeing the physical embodiment of Agent Orange lose. But while I celebrate the end of the Trump administration, I am not necessarily looking forward to a Biden-Harris one. Biden’s shortcomings appear to be widely accepted; heck, with a slogan like ‘Settle for Biden’ even the Biden presidential campaign acknowledge he’s far from perfect. But what baffled me was the wholesale acceptance of the message that Kamala Harris was ‘IT’: there was such fervent feeling that she was a progressive saviour; a progressive queen, who’s reign would mark the beginning of a progressive new age. And all her campaign had to do was repeat the word ‘progressive’ enough times for everyone to believe it.

There is nothing that irritates me more than public figures being put on pedestals they don’t deserve. This hero-worship tends to arise from ignorance, often by design, of said person’s full history. As such, it’s another example of a dangerous white lie that serves to maintain a harmful status quo. This is certainly the case for Kamala: her presidential campaign, and later vice-presidential campaign, pedalled the incomplete and erroneous message that she is a through-and-through progressive. When in fact, she has a history of being another run-of-the-mill, tepid-in-the-face-of-injustice, neoliberal candidate that perpetuated the status quo, particularly within the sphere of criminal justice and actions against the police. I hope the events of this past year, particularly those arising from George Floyd’s death and the BLM protests, has made it self-evident that we really want to move on from the status quo.

Now, I’d hate to be hypocritical by painting her as entirely ‘bad’. Kamala has largely been on the right side of history during her time in the Senate: she introduced a bail reform bill with Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) that would encourage states to reform or replace standing bail systems that currently jails hundreds and thousands of people for simply not being able to pay their bail; alongside Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Tim Scott (R-SC), she introduced a historic bill that made lynching a federal crime; Kamala has also signed on to Booker’s marijuana legalisation bill, in a drastic U-turn on her stance on the matter; she also voted for the First Step Act, a significant (although limited) federal criminal justice reform bill that would ease very punitive prison sentences at the federal level.

Even before then, she started the ‘Back on Track’ program as District Attorney, which allowed first-time drug offenders to obtain a high school diploma and a job instead of doing prison time. Her handling of California’s ‘three strikes’ law as DA was also head of its time: under the law, someone who committed a third felony could go to prison for 25 years to life, even if their third felony is a nonviolent crime (America is a wild and incredibly draconian place). But Harris required that the San Franciscan DA’s office only charged for a third strike if the felony was a serious or violent crime. Harris also unveiled the Open Justice portal, a website that contained data on arrest rates and deaths in custody, going some way in addressing the lack of a national database for these figures and therefore accounting for the use of deadly force by law enforcement.

But then some of what she did was just tepid. When the BLM movement took off, for example, Harris introduced and expanded ‘first of its kind training’ to address racial bias within the police. However, officers had to sign up voluntarily and were only required to attend 8 hours of training – I somehow doubt this’ll do much in overturning a deep-seated and institutional racism problem within the police. As Attorney General, Harris made the California Department of Justice the first state-wide agency to require body cameras, but she stopped short of endorsing state-wide regulations on their use, leaving it free to local forces to decide how and when they could be used. Doesn’t really instil accountability, does it?

Then there are parts of Kamala’s track record as prosecutor that is plain old regressive; reminiscent of a ‘tough on crime’ era that subjected people of colour to heavy handed policing and insurmountable institutional road blocks throughout the criminal justice system. It’s not merely the fact that she was a prosecutor that’s problematic: although there are those like Briahna Gray (American political commentator and lawyer) who argue that ‘to become a prosecutor is to make a choice to align oneself to a powerful and fundamentally biased system’, I am open to the possibility that tangible and radical change can be effected from the inside. As Harris said in the New York Times Magazine in 2016, she wanted to work within a system she wanted to change, to be ‘at the table where the decisions are made’ (however, I am also equally open to the possibility that eradicating institutional racism requires a more drastic overhaul of the entire system). But rather, it’s what she did and enacted as prosecutor that makes Kamala’s image of progressive saviour so deeply hypocritical.

Kamala Harris was anti-sex work

There are people I know who would balk at this first point and think, so what? I’m anti-sex work. For a moment I thought I would give in to this sentiment and miss out this point. But that moment passed very quickly; because to do so would overlook the women of colour Kamala Harris harmed as District Attorney, and women of colour have been overlooked enough.

To address those who are choking on their tea: it is now a progressive stance to be pro-sex work, catch up with the times my friends! It’s long overdue we fully respect any man or woman’s choice to undertake sex work, as long as it’s consensual. “But but but uggghhh!!! It’s so vulgar! So unsavoury and demeaning!! How could you be for it! It’s so disrespectful to women!’ yada yada yada. Sex work is not invalid just because it’s not work you’d personally undertake. I, for one, respect and value myself and others too much to ever debase myself by becoming a management consultant, but there are people who do and they’re not criminalised for it (despite their exploitation of the working class). And you know what’s even more disrespectful to women? Telling them what they can and cannot do with their bodies or how they should make their money.

While I accept the reality that some sex workers are vulnerable and, having grown up in Southeast Asia, I can’t deny that sex trafficking is a very real problem that needs to be addressed. But I do not believe that criminalising sex work is the answer to helping the marginalised and exploited. Rather, they should be protected and given safe options of redress. Moreover, there is a difference between exploitation and consensual sexual work. And that is fundamentally where Kamala got it wrong: although she presented herself as an advocate for victims of sexual exploitation, as District Attorney and prosecutor she often conflated ‘trafficking’ with consensual sex work.

For instance, she waged a war against Backpage.com, an advertisement website used by sex workers, during her time as District Attorney of San Francisco. Many in the industry argued that it made their work secure in more ways than one: the website not only provided a steady stream of more reliable income, but also meant sex workers no longer had to take to the streets to find clients, and provided a means by which they could vet clients or make complaints against them. Harris’, on the other hand, called the site ‘the world’s top online brothel’ and pursued pimping charges against the website’s operators even after a judge tossed out the initial case on free speech grounds. Backpage’s closure left many sex workers strapped for cash to pay for their housing and medicines and even forced some sex workers to turn to more precarious kinds of work to make up for lost income. Harris continued her opposition to the website as Senator and supported legislation that further criminalised sex work across the internet.

Harris made matters worse by making sex work unsafe more generally, most notably by voting against Proposition K – a bill that would’ve decriminalised prostitution in San Francisco. Prop K would’ve redirected city resources once spent on arresting prostitutes into education and health outreach for sex workers, providing access to an array of the city’s medical and legal services, therefore opening up avenues for sex workers to report violence committed against them and improve their public health.

Harris vehemently disagreed. In a public statement (video here) she equated Prop K to ‘roll[ing] out the welcome mat to prostitutes and pimps to come to San Francisco. It would impede and interfere with our ability to investigate and prosecute cases of human trafficking…’ Moreover, she claimed that ‘Proposition K pretends to be about compassion, when in fact it is completely the opposite… it is not compassionate to the families who live in the neighbourhoods where these activities are occurring… If you want to go see Pretty Woman, go rent it.’ That’s a very long-winded way of saying that outdated phrase we’ve come to hate so much: ‘tough on crime.’

Instead, the San Franciscan Police Department and DA’s office were using the presence of condoms as evidence of prostitution and other criminal activity, which in turn posed a significant barrier to the routine use of condoms by sex workers: to avoid criminal charges, many were reluctant to carry condoms or keep them at their place of work. Evidence shows that sex workers are more likely to use condoms and have lower rates of sexual transmitted diseases where payment for sex is permitted, as in Austria, Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Thailand. In the early days of the AIDs epidemic, there was an agreement between the San Franciscan DA and Health Department not to use condoms as evidence for this very reason; but this was well and truly gone as Kamala waged her war against ‘Pretty Women’.

Besides the moral and public health standpoint, there was evidence to suggest that criminalisation of sex work was ineffective – only 9 cases went to trial in 2009, the year before Prop K was proposed, and no convictions resulted from them. Even more problematic was police culpability in the ‘crime’ Kamala was so staunchly against: a 2012 USFC medical study found that 1 in 5 sex workers in San Francisco reported that police officers paid them for sex. Horrifyingly, 1 in 7 were threatened with arrest by police officers unless they had sex with them. Kamala was directing her ire to the wrong place.

Prop K would have been a more humane and effective approach to sex work, but Kamala was so against it that she maintained her position even during her ‘progressive’ stint in the Senate. Our so-called progressive champion championed a policy that is already viewed by many as backwards and unethical.

Kamala threatened to jail parents of kids who missed school

The well-being of children is perhaps less controversial and a cause that the majority of society can rally behind… Well, unless you’re a Trump supporter who doesn’t mind seeing children caged; a Tory who initially allowed children to starve during their school holidays; or you’re Kamala Harris and implemented a program that threatened to jail parents in order to solve California’s truancy problem.

Throughout her political rise, Harris has upheld her anti-truancy program as an example of her ‘smart on crime’ approach. Before the implementation of this new program, parents could be cited and fined but never faced the threat of jail time. Harris, however, thought truancy was a problem that could only be solved with an iron first. She argued that truancy was a criminal justice issue, declaring that ‘if we don’t educate these kids in the classroom, they’re going to be educated in the streets’; stating that 94% of San Francisco’s young homicide victims and two thirds of prison inmates are high school drop outs. As such, rather repressively, her anti-truancy program upped the ante by threatening parents with prosecution and adding the possibility of jail time: parents of children who are chronically truant can be found guilty of a misdemeanour and face a series of fines and punishments, starting with $100 fine for the first conviction and ending with a $2,000 fine as well as a year of incarceration. She first implemented the program in 2008 as San Francisco’s District Attorney, but later implemented it as state-wide law in 2012 as California’s new Attorney General.

To Kamala’s credit as District Attorney, the threat of prosecution was only used in extreme truancy cases, involving weeks or months of missed classes, and only after parents had been offered help by relevant support providers. Typically, when a student was found to be regularly truant, the school district would first get involved by sending out letters to parents telling them that their child was missing class. The school would then invite parents to a meeting with school staff and, sometimes, support service providers would attend to get to the root of the truancy. The next step was a meeting with the school attendance review board – in which various government agencies and social services, as well as school staff, would attend – to better understand how to prevent the truancy issues. That meeting typically concluded with a contract that dictated who was going to do what to make sure the child could attend class. Harris’ supporters have emphasised how this framework ultimately helped families struggling with poverty, homelessness, mental illness, and substance abuse gain access to the supportive services they need.

Harris, in her memoir The Truths We Hold, argued that this was the point of the program all along: ‘even today, others don’t appreciate the intention behind my approach; they assume that my motivation was to lock-up parents, when of course that was never my goal. Our effort was designed to connect parents to resources that could help them get their kids back into school where they belonged. We were trying to support parents, not punish them – and in the vast majority of cases, we succeeded.’ There is indeed evidence to show that school attendance rates did rise in San Francisco after the program’s implementation: San Francisco Unified School District data showed that the percentage of chronically truant students had fallen to 2.5% from 4% from 2007/8 to 2010/11; habitual truancy rates and overall truancy rates also fell. However, it’s unclear if the program can be credited for the change, as the school district also carried out various other efforts at the time to improve attendance rates.

But there is so much wrong with Harris’ anti-truancy approach. Firstly and unsurprisingly, it disproportionately affected children of colour: Los Angeles implemented a ticketing version of the anti-truancy program, in which children outside of school hours were ticketed and fined $250 or more, with a mandatory court appearance, for their first offence. These punitive measures were not only drastic, economically costly, and caused students to miss more school for court appearances, but had also highly racialised consequences: a Latinx student in the Los Angeles Unified School District was twice as likely to be ticketed and arrested at school than a white student, and a black student is almost six times more likely to be ticketed and arrested than their white counterparts.

Worse still, Kamala Harris as District Attorney specifically targeted children of colour in implementing the program: her office spent $20,000 on a campaign advertising a hotline and urging San Francisco residents to call if they spotted kids ‘playing hooky’ during school hours. The ad campaign targeted three historically black and Latinx neighbourhoods. Big Sister, Kamala Harris, is always watching… But only if you’re black or brown.

Secondly, if the point was never to imprison parents or punish them, and to ultimately work towards reducing the number of people who pass through the criminal justice system, then why did the possibility of prosecution and imprisonment exist at all? It is illogical to me that one would use prosecution and imprisonment as a solution to the very thing that prosecution and imprisonment brings about: punishment and increasing those who pass through the criminal justice system. In fact, a punitive approach to truancy only threatens to fuel the prison pipeline. Moreover, it is after all possible to implement the positive elements of the program – namely the framework and processes that connected struggling families with the support services they needed – without prosecution or imprisonment being a possible end point. Indeed, this would’ve probably put the program outside of Kamala Harris’ remit as District Attorney and Attorney General, and it would’ve instead fallen to the leader of the San Francisco Unified School District to implement it, but so be it.

Harris and her supporters have made pains to highlight that no parents were jailed during her time as District Attorney. Katy Miller, who helped implement the program as prosecutor working under Harris, states that at most 20 parents are prosecuted in a typically year in San Francisco, and none have been jailed. But the implementation of the anti-truancy programme state-wide has meant more conservative (read: punitive) parts of the State have not been as considerate towards families’ needs: in Hanford, California for example, one mum was sentenced to 180 days in jail in 2012 for not sending her kids to school. This is an unwelcome outcome even by Harris’ standards.

This therefore begs the question as to whether truancy should be criminalised at all? Firstly, all involved, including Harris – the anti-truancy program’s very own architect – acknowledges that criminalisation is an undesirable and unwelcome outcome. Secondly and more principally, prosecutors, the criminal justice system, and criminal punishment are far from being the answer to many social ills, truancy being one of them.

Jyoti Nanda, a law professor who runs a youth justice clinic at the University of California, Los Angeles, said she had been ‘deeply disappointed’ by Harris’ ‘fearmongering’ on truancy. And fearmonger Harris did: in a 2010 video, she boasted that a mum warned her kids, after seeing a letter from the prosecutor’s office, that ‘if you don’t go to school, Kamala’s going to put you and me in jail.’ Nanda has described the approach as ‘completely the opposite of best practices’ to help students. Furthermore, the way Harris framed truancy as the individual fault of poor parents fed into old, ugly, stereotypes about poor families and families of colour (which is, again, very reminiscent of a ‘tough on crime’ approach!) Nanda highlights that student truancy is not necessarily the problem of bad or neglectful parents, but a system of broader problems, the chronic underfunding of California’s State schools being one of them. ‘It’s using a crime lens to address what’s really a public health issue,’ Nanda says.

The reality is that more often than not issues stemming from or exacerbated by poverty are at the root of truancy – the program itself acknowledges this by putting families in much needed contact with the various support services they need. It’s therefore incredibly draconian to criminalise the issue: the threat of prosecution, imprisonment, or a fine could hurt an already struggling family financially, or take a parent out of a child’s home. A child who is a truant is probably not getting sufficient parental support or contact, because they or their parents are juggling multiple jobs, struggling with health issues and care, are homeless, in the criminal justice system already, and/or are generally struggling to make ends meet. As summed up by James Forman Jr, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning book Locking Up Our Own, in a series of tweets: ‘you’re essentially threatening people with prison when there’s underlying poverty issues that are potentially preventing them from having their kids show up to school on time.’ The last thing a child in these already difficult circumstances needs is for their parent to be prosecuted, jailed, and incur the financial and practical long terms costs associated with this. How is that mum from Hanford going to drive her kids to school if she’s in jail, or if she can’t afford transportation due to hundreds or thousands of dollars in fines? In the longer term, the criminal record she incurs could harm her future job prospects. These collateral consequences only inhibit a parents’ ability to support their children and get them to school; the program therefore carries the potential of hurting the children it intends to help. And it really need not to.

Kamala defended mass incarceration

In this time of greater awareness regarding the racism and brutality of the criminal justice system, thanks to the Black Lives Matter movement, a defence of mass incarceration is unarguably a non-progressive stance. Credence must be paid to the fact that Harris’ put forward an ambitious criminal justice reform plan during her bid for the Democratic nomination – policies that aimed to end the war on drugs and, most notably, scale back on mass incarceration have now been adopted into Biden’s presidential campaign. However, this reformist stance is the antithesis of Kamala’s own track record as Attorney General, when she defied the US Supreme Court’s order to reduce overcrowding in Californian prisons.

California’s mass incarceration problem was both chronic and infamous: at its peak, the State’s prison system was at 200% of its designed capacity. The situation was so dire that in one prison, 54 prisoners shared a single toilet; suicidal inmates were locked in telephone-booth sized cages for 24 hours at a time; and beds and medical personnel were at such a shortage that preventable deaths due to substandard and overstretched medical care occurred every five to six days. Constitutional protections for prisoners against cruel and unusual punishment is enshrined in the Bill of Rights, but for decades successive Republican and Democratic administrations ignored the problem.

It speaks to the seriousness of the problem that a federal District Court held in 2009 that no other plausible solution existed for getting the State to conform to a constitutionally reasonable standard other than prison release – federal courts are typically reluctant to consider prisoner release and see it as a measure of last resort. A pledge to quickly build new prisons was considered but found not credible in the midst of a recession and given California’s limited finances. The District Court therefore mandated that the State enact a series of decarceration measures to reduce the prison population to 137.5% of its designed capacity within two years (i.e. mass incarceration would continue, but at least to a lesser extent. Yay!)

However, the case (Brown v Plata) was taken to the US Supreme Court when the State appealed the District Court’s ruling. Again, the severity of California’s mass incarceration problem was highlighted when the conservative leaning Supreme Court’s judgement found California’s prison system to be in violation of prisoners’ Eighth Amendment Rights and identified prisoner release as the most effective method of ending the State’s constitutional violation in a timely manner. The verdict was split 5-4, with the conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy joining the Court’s liberals: in upholding the lower-court mandate, Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in the case, adding gruesome details from inside California’s prisons, and condemning the State for facilitating “needless suffering and death.” I’ll keep mum of the hypocrisy of this coming from a judge who ruled in favour of the right to bear arms for now.

By the time this judgement was released on 23 May 2011, Kamala Harris was newly appointed California’s Attorney General and the ruling would therefore have to be enacted on her watch. Every six months, the State needed to show that it had decreased its prison population in compliance with a threshold overseen by a three-judge District Court panel: 167% of capacity by the end of 2011, 155% by June 2012, finally arriving at the target level of 137.5% by June 2013. But, with Harris at the helm, it soon became clear that the State would not easily comply with the judicial order.

It’s worth noting that Harris was acting on behalf on behalf of California State Governor Brown, who preceded her as State AG and was notorious for his position on the issue. I’m sympathetic to Harris for having to defend an unsavoury client in this case: all lawyers have experience of this and I have no doubt that I’ll have many a client I strongly disagree with; but so often our hands are tied behind our backs, due to regulatory and ethical codes, and despite strong vehemence to our clients’ stance we have to defend them nonetheless. But it’s the way she conducted the case, which lawyers do have scope in determining, that I take issue with: Harris, on behalf of Brown, acted in complete defiance of the Supreme Court ruling.

Little to no progress had been made on the decarceration mandate and, by 2012, a report surfaced that proved the State actually intended to increase its prison population. In May of that same year, Harris’ office ‘confirmed their intent to not comply with the Order but instead to seek its modification from 137.5% design capacity to 145%,’ a modification that was not granted to them. The District Court ended up extending the decarceration compliance deadline to the end of 2013. But by April 2012, just two months before the initial deadline given in the Supreme Court decision, California still had 9,636 prisoners more than the court-imposed ceiling. The State submitted a proposal that involved relocating inmates to fire camps to fight wildfires, and prevent out-of-state prisoners from being returned. But after reviewing these proposals, the three-judge panel found that that still left California’s prisons some 4,170 prisoners over the hard limit.

Again, the three-judge panel acquiesced and arrived at a solution: the expansion of ‘good time’ credits for nonviolent offenders, shortening stays often by just a handful of months. This effectively involved increasing the sentence reductions minimum-custody inmates can earn for good behaviour, instead channelling them into rehabilitation and education programs. The State’s own expert witness had testified years prior that he did not oppose good credit measures, and that there was no correlation between length of stay and recidivism, meaning that the public was not at risk. States such as Washington, Illinois, and even tough-on-crime New York had implemented these programs with success. The Court found that the expansion of good time credits would make some 5,385 inmates eligible for release and therefore solve the problem at hand.

But Governor Brown, with Harris steering the ship, did not agree. Harris’ office launched into a campaign of all-out obstruction, refusing to answer why they could not simply comply with the request to release low-risk, nonviolent inmates in order to conform with the Supreme Court’s request. Harris office relented further: they claimed on behalf of the State that the Supreme Court had no jurisdiction to even request such a release, refusing to answer questions as to how they would implement the Supreme Court ruling, and courting a constitutional crisis. Any lawyer reading this will be clutching their pearls right now – the audacity to refuse the final ruling of the highest court in the land, can you believe!!!!

Unsurprisingly, the three-judge District Court panel replied with a stunning rebuke in their June 2013 ruling: when asked by what date the State could provide a list of prisoners who are unlikely to reoffended, the judge wrote that the ‘defendants defiantly refused and stated, somewhat astonishingly, that our suggestion that we might order defendants to develop a system to identify low-risk prisoners, a system that the Supreme Court had suggested we might consider ordering defendants to develop ‘without delay,’ is a prisoner release order that vastly exceeds the scope of the Court’s prior orders.’ The Supreme Court had in fact ruled that the three-judge District Court panel had exactly that authority in its 2011 ruling. ‘In tortured logic, the defendants suggested that the Supreme Court’s statement ‘did not authorise the early release of prisoners, or even the consideration of that question.’ The ruling went on to say that Harris’ Attorney General’s Office ‘continually equivocated regarding the facts and the law,’ to the point that the panel strongly considered holding the State in contempt.’ Ladies and gentlemen, gaslight tactics were indeed deployed by Harris’ office to the extreme.

The panel, however, did not hold the State in contempt, primarily because it would have delayed the release of nonviolent inmates further, and therefore aided the State’s obstructionist tactics. The manipulation! And all this to prevent the release of only 5,000 nonviolent offenders, whom multiple courts and experts had presented as next to no risk of reoffending or threat to public safety. Instead, the State decided to spend the time seesawing back and forth between dubious legal fillings and flagrant disregard.

Harris’ legal tactics also drew rebuke from legal commentators, who saw her legal motions as obstructionist, done in bad faith, and nonsensical. Barry Krisberg, long-time president of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, said that ‘the legal arguments that the State was putting forward make no sense.’ Andrew Cohen, Senior Editor at the Marshall Project and fellow at the Brennan Centre for Justice, believes that Harris’ behaviour may have put her in breach of California’s legal and ethical standards, which forbid filing a motion ‘for an improper purpose, such as to harass or cause unnecessary delay.’

In an endorsement of the exploitative prison labour complex, the State at one point argued that nonviolent offenders needed to stay incarcerated, because they worked as groundskeepers, janitors, in prison kitchens with wages that range from 8 cents to 37 cents per hour, and were needed in fire camps in the wildfire-plagued State. If they were released, then prisons would lose an ‘important labour pool’. Harris has recently distanced herself from these arguments, claiming that she had no knowledge of it and telling BuzzFeed News that she was ‘shocked’ by the argument. But Alexander Sammon, writer of The Prospect article ‘How Kamala Harris Fought to Keep Nonviolent Prisoners Locked Up’ casts doubt on the notion that Kamala was ignorant of legal arguments put forward in this case: generally, she was known to run an extremely centralised AG’s office, with few things coming in or going without her express sign off. Specifically, this was the highest-profile case she managed as AG, involving a ruling from the highest court in the land, concerning a decarceration order her office spent years resisting. As if any of the arguments put forward escaped her notice before they got to court.

This dogged and callous opposition to decarceration hardly conveys Kamala as being on the side of racial and justice reform. Moreover, as Sammon points out, ‘putting someone with a history of defying the Supreme Court on the Democratic ticket would significantly undermine the Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s pledge to return to the pre-Trump ear of governance, where the three branches of government are seen as coequal and the courts are respected.’

Kamala isn’t looking so progressive now, is she? A lot to take in, I know. And it’s gut wrenching to come to the realisation that someone you pinned so much hope on is disappointing in so many ways. So, let’s take a breather.

Or, are you not convinced yet? Fear not, next time we look into Kamala’s history of upholding wrongful convictions and inaction in the face of police brutality and prosecutorial misconduct.

#whitelies #kamalaharris #blacklivesmatter #vicepresident #joebiden

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wellpersonsblog · 3 years

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I Tried to Ride a 100 Mile Bike Race and Almost Died (Here’s What I Learned)

Note from the author: This Thanksgiving, we’re all living through extraordinary times and many of us are dealing with unbelievable hardship and loss due to COVID-19. I want to share a story that I hope will inspire you to reflect and give thanks for the little things in our life, no matter how difficult circumstances may be today.

Like many members of the NMA community, I started as a runner. Then I moved into yoga, strength training, and exploring the mountains I call home in Boulder, Colorado.

But until recently, I hadn’t ridden a bike since high school.

Nonetheless, my uncle told me about a century ride for which he was organizing a team to raise money for Type 1 Diabetes research. So without much thought, I committed.

Then I learned what a century ride even was: 100 miles… on a bike I didn’t even have… with six weeks to train.

Without any other options, I did what felt the most logical at the time: dive straight into the deep end.

I bought a road bike (apparently, that’s a thing), and spent as many “hours in the saddle” as I could, learning from whatever experience the ride threw at me:

I bonked, and had to learn about nutrition to fuel endurance training.

I got tire flats (3 in just 10 rides, and learned to change a tire by watching youtube on the side of the road.)

I got stung by a bee (I’m allergic), and forced myself to stay calm while I rode 20 miles back to town.

And, I fell in love with a new sport.

While training, I had clear visions of writing a blog post recapping exactly what I did and how you could too. I was psyched, passionate, and riding high.

When race day came, I started confidently, knowing that I had reached 84 miles on my longest training ride. I knew I’d finish the full 100, so I started focusing on the time and aiming to beat my best pace… I passed the 50 mile mark in less than 2.5 hours. I was on track to accomplish a sub 5 hour finish. (Nothing special for seasoned riders, but a personal goal.)

At mile 64, my race ended when I crashed, breaking my nose and eye socket bones, and impaling a plastic part of my sunglasses into my cheek.

Oh, and I exposed the bone in my nose. When I heard the EMT call for a helicopter, because the ambulance would take too long considering my condition, I was left wondering if I was going to make it home to my 1-year-old son.

Here’s what happened, what it taught me, and why more than ever, I believe failure should be your best friend…

youtube

The Setup: Training for a 100-Mile Ride in Just Six Weeks

What started as a wild idea quickly became reality when I realized I had just six weeks to train. So I figured I had two options:

Tell my uncle that I didn’t have time to train and wouldn’t be riding with him.

Start riding my bike as much as possible, while fulfilling my duties as a parent, with more than one job, and allowing for muscle recovery between training sessions.

I figured I’d start by testing myself with just a 20 mile ride. I had no conception of what that would even feel like, so, I figured, if I can do 20, I’ll put off quitting for a little longer.

I did the 20 (slowly), and four days later, I tried 30 miles…

And every 3-5 days, when my legs felt rested, I increased the length by 10 miles…

Before long, I was doing real mileage — 50, 60, 70 miles, and with two weeks to go before the race, I completed my final long ride of 84 miles.

I was feeling so strong and confident that I began setting goals in my mind: I wanted to finish in under 5 hours — average pace of 20 miles per hour.

And even though I had only been on the bike more or less 10 times, I felt that I could do it…

I even wrote down some tips, intending to write an NMA post that focused entirely on the training:

Don’t try to put together your own training plan, without consulting any books, experts, or friends. You’ll miss basic tips, like “eat constantly so you don’t run out of energy and crash.” (At the time, I meant “crash” as in “bonking”, not physically crashing.)

If you’ve never taken apart a bike, don’t wait until the night before the race to take apart your bike and try to fit it into a special shipping bag for the plane ride.

A small amount of caffeine is great at the end of the ride.

Start with slower-carbs (like Bobo Bars, PB&J’s, or this recipe for energy balls) earlier in the ride. Save gummies and gels for the end, if needed. It’s easier on your stomach; provides a better foundation for fueling past 50 miles; and, at the end of the race, you’re dry mouth won’t want to eat another “bar”, so sugar in drink or gummy form worked better for me. Tip: While the whole-food plant-based solution to workout energy, Plant Bites, weren’t a thing when I tried for this race, they are now. And they’re awesome.

The Glory: When Things Go Right

Early in the race, I was learning how to ride in a peloton. I had never ridden in a group, working together to save energy as we push against the wind.

“Wind,” as it turns out, is a factor when riding a bike.

It was a blast. The person at the front of the group would push hard for 5-7 minutes, breaking the wind for all of us behind. When they were wiped, they’d peel off and line up at the back. The next rider would take the lead.

When it was my first turn, I was more than a little nervous. The guy peeled off and said, “Just keep us at a nice 23 mph.” I responded, “I don’t have an odometer, so that’s one issue. And either way, I can’t keep a 23 mile per hour pace!”

He smiled and said, “We’ve been doing 23 miles an hour this entire time…”

I had a surge of energy… which was short lived, because leading the pack is tough work! I don’t think that I lasted a full 5 minutes before the guy behind me said, “Thanks for the pull. I got it.” I probably wasn’t keeping pace…

My only other memory was a prescient one:

I thought to myself, “I’m right on the wheel in front of me — just inches away — going 20+ MPH. This peloton stuff is dangerous. If I fall, that would be really bad. Just don’t take down Glen.” (That’s my uncle, who organized 100+ riders for the day.)

The Fall: Taking Down Uncle Glen, and Nearly Taking My Own Life

Sadly, I took down Uncle Glen….

When I crashed, he was right behind me, and then went right over me. And then went to the hospital with me.

That was one of the worst parts of the entire ordeal; the other was seeing my wife’s reaction to my mangled face.

“Losing” in an (internal) competition is tough. Not finishing is generally worse. Ending in the hospital is really bad…

After my face smashed into the pavement, my first thought was, “I’m not OK. I need to call Adriana.” (My wife.)

There is a tremendous amount of blood flow going to the brain. When you hurt your head, it’s very bloody. If you’ve ever broken your nose, you know how extreme it can be.

Blood poured freely while I crawled towards the phone still attached to my bike. I somehow got enough cell signal to tell Adriana that there had been a crash. Then the call dropped. She was waiting for us at the next water station, at the bottom of the hill. When she saw an ambulance passed, she grabbed our son and followed it to the crash site.

I was conscious during the entire journey from the ambulance to the operating room. I remember saying, “Thank goodness my face was there to break my fall. Otherwise, I could have really been hurt.” Adriana didn’t think that was funny, but I got some laughs from the doctors. She stood in the OR for hours, pregnant and holding our 1 year old son, while I was on the operating table.

I’ll never forget when they rolled me past her, on the way to a CT scan to check for any number of possible injuries to my brain or other vital organs. It all got real in that instant.

For the past hour, I had been making jokes, worrying about my uncle, and hoping to get out of the hospital, because I planned to treat my face with my own natural remedies, and I hate hospitals.

But then, all of a sudden, I was heading for a CT scan and the idea of lasting damage, or death, became very real.

What if I lose vision in that eye? Or both?

What if I can’t see my son grow into a man.

What if there’s internal bleeding?

What if…

Laying in the CT machine after having just seen her terrified face, the enormity of the situation washed over me.

We take risks each day, from driving cars to riding bikes.

And when everything is good, we take so much for granted — like my eyesight, our loved ones health and happiness, and the simple joy of a giggling little kid getting tickled by his mom.

How precious life is. How precious life is.

It’s a phrase we’ve all heard so many times before, but laying in that CT machine, that’s all I could think about.

How precious life is.

If I’ve learned anything — aside from how to ride a bike 64 miles and crash — it’s how fleeting life can be and how desperately we should try to enjoy the most simple pleasures.

Every run or ride. Every smoothie, family dinner, and kid’s book.

Every time we can roll over in bed without waking up from pain, or let water rush over our faces in the shower.

(I lost much of the skin between my upper lip and hairline— on both sides of my nose, which is hard to understand how that’s possible. And with 100+ stitches, showering was a pain, literally.)

So with all the different “goops” that I lathered on each day, all I wanted to do was wash my face vigorously. I couldn’t for months… Now, nearly every day, I consciously think about how nice it feels to let the shower hit my face.

But perhaps the most simple pleasure: enjoying each moment with loved ones.

Failures and Setbacks Leave Us With Opportunities

It’s hard to believe, but in some ways, I would go through it all again to derive the perspective that I now have.

I’m grateful for the adventure — and even the scars — because without them, I wouldn’t cherish every moment the way I do now.

It’s because I failed in a grand, dangerous way that I’m left with a gift far greater than I could have ever imagined when signing up…

A new perspective and a deep appreciation for life.

And while I certainly hope you don’t have to experience a near-death event to gain some appreciation, I do challenge you to stop running from failure.

Failure leaves us with opportunity. Opportunity to grow, learn, and get better.

We’re better athletes when we learn from failed workouts, and we’re better humans when we grow from failed experiences.

So as we approach the new year, I hope this story will inspire you, just as the experience has changed and inspired me.

Savor the little moments in your own life. Laugh and love as much as you can. Give your loved ones an extra hug. Call your old friend. Let the sun hit your face (something I’m not yet supposed to do until the scars fully heal)…

And always wear a helmet.

The post I Tried to Ride a 100 Mile Bike Race and Almost Died (Here’s What I Learned) appeared first on No Meat Athlete.

First found here: I Tried to Ride a 100 Mile Bike Race and Almost Died (Here’s What I Learned)

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