#thinking about my middle school classmate who is also in the army.. god | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin · 3 years

Note

Hi! Anon form HP's classmates ask. After reading the Lavender, Parvati, Dean, and Seamus, I forgot to ask you these: Cedric (I don't think you did him), Cho (pretty sure you didn't do her), and Marietta (even though we barely see anything of her). Oh and also Colin if you can. If it's too long just do the first two. Thanks, and have a good and safe day! =)

Well, I have to confess, these will probably be a lot more boring than you’re expecting. I do tend to have opinions on arbitrary Harry Potter characters, but there’s also a lot of NPCs that, well, I really don’t think about them much. They’re kids, they go to school, seem nice enough, the end.

Not all my opinions are made of spice.

But, with that, let’s begin.

Cedric Diggory

Really not much to say on him.

Seems like a nice enough guy, I appreciated that he was a Hufflepuff so we got to see at least someone from that house that was a really cool dude, the house division also helped explain why we’d seen and heard so little about him (I think he gets a brief mention as being Seeker for Hufflepuff in Prisoner of Azkaban).

For me, what stands out about him is mostly the tragedy. Here was this young man, in the prime of his life, with his whole future ahead of him who senselessly dies.

Had he not accompanied Harry, he would have lived, and it was pure unfortunate luck that he did. And then it’s over so quickly, just a demand of “kill the spare” and he’s dead. That’s it, it’s all over.

And then his death is made a mockery of, overwritten, then willfully forgotten by society.

He’s used as evidence by Harry and Dumbledore for Voldemort’s return, his murder is pinned on Harry by the government, and by the time the government admits to what happened they’ve moved on to bigger problems.

We only really see the mourning of Cedric from his father and later Cho. Harry’s messed up about it, but it was more from witnessing the event, he didn’t really know Cedric that well as a person. In fact, he feels very awkward and put out when it becomes clear that, a few months later, Cho is not handling her boyfriend having been murdered by a dead man very well.

And that’s what strikes me about him, just how easily he’s forgotten, and how sad it all is.

Cedric might be the reddest of red shirts in Harry Potter.

Cho Chang

I wish more had been done with Cho.

I know, I know, we get a lot of Cho.

But we get Cho in the context of Harry’s first romance, his crush that later sets him up for Harry/Ginny (JKR is fond of using other pairings to set up her main pairing, we see this also with Ron/Lavender). They give it a whirl, Harry finally gets what he wants, and it turns out to not really be his thing.

Cho is too girly, enjoys things like Madame Puddifoots, and is clearly still hung up on Cedric. The whole thing ends very awkwardly and we get a Harry who’s ready to move on to Ginny by book six.

That said, that’s what I like about Cho. She has this great boyfriend who she really liked, he dies horrifically and tragically, and she’s left trying to sort through the aftermath. She ends up clinging to Harry as he is a) Harry Potter and essentially Jesus b) the only witness to what happened to Cedric. To her, I imagine, she and Harry share this unbreakable bond after fourth year. She was closest to Cedric in the school, the only one who truly seems to want to mourn him, and Harry watched Cedric die.

Cho lives in this world where Cedric’s death has been made a political issue. That his dying seems not to have mattered, indeed, is barely discussed so much as the manner in which he died. People are constantly fighting whether a deranged Harry did it, Voldemort came back, and Cedric gets forgotten somewhere in the middle.

And Cho tries to move on, she tries to embrace the fight against Voldemort, prepare herself to defend her nation and help fight against the man who murdered Cedric, but it just doesn’t work out. Because ultimately, they’re a bunch of kids in a room practicing the patronus. And even in the DA, despite acknowledging that Voldemort’s back, it’s still never about Cedric. It’s all about Voldemort and what’s coming, Cedric, oh yeah, poor guy, what a tragedy, the first casualty of war.

So, mostly I just feel very bad for Cho, and wish we could have seen more of her to see what the effect death has on people. We have Harry’s reaction to Sirius’ death but... in a weird way he actually gets over that kind of quickly. This isn’t the post for it, but to me Harry was always more upset by the loss of what Sirius represented than Sirius himself.

Marietta Edgecombe

Marietta does not deserve the hate she gets. Sure, she decided to leave the DA and snitched. But you know what, they’re fifteen year olds in a boarding school, and the DA while stupid was also kind of terrifying.

I mean, you suddenly find yourself in a group called “Dumbledore’s Army”, which is actively preparing itself for “fighting against the dark lord” and possibly “against those who deny his return”. The club has all these rules about secrecy, which at first seem reasonable as it’s against the rules, but then start sounding pretty scary. It sounds like you just signed up to launch a coup against the ministry on Albus Dumbledore’s behest. Had I been in DA,I like to imagine at some point I’d start thinking “what the actual fuck?”

More than that, Marietta’s family is on the line. Her mother works for the ministry. Her mother could be fired or perhaps even persecuted if this got out. Shit starts getting very real for Marietta.

So, Marietta leaves and snitches, and then she gets stitches.

Hermione gleefully scars and deforms her, something Marietta will carry with her for the rest of her life. I mean, can you imagine if Hermione had said, “Oh, by the way, if you rat us out I will personally murder you. Just kidding, but I will cut up your face, snitch” that anyone would react well? Which is probably why Hermione just stuck to an ominous vague warning instead. The true noble members, after all, would never think of leaving.

So yeah, given Hermione, actually given all of it (including Harry’s complete lack of sympathy for Marietta being branded when Cho tries to bring up her situation) the DA absolutely should have been shut down. My god, it was spiraling out of control, and given Harry and Hermione could have honestly gotten to the point where they took out hits on, oh I don’t know, Draco Malfoy.

You laugh, but I’m serious, they would totally do that.

Colin Creevy

It’s very bold of JKR to assume I care at all about Colin.

Colin’s one of the typical HP NPCs, quirky enough to be memorable, gives us a nice muggleborn student, weird kid but around enough that we remember him.

Then he dies in the Battle of Hogwarts, where many of our main characters survive, and I’m supposed to be absolutely devastated. COLIN IS DEAD, FRED IS DEAD, THE WORLD IS SO SAD.

We barely know Colin, his dying is just there to wrack up the red shirt numbers and make the last book of Harry Potter feel more like an actual war with actual consequences.

Sad that he died, but certainly not a tear jerking moment for me.

#ask #anon

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freudensteins-monster · 3 years

Text

You Say “Mad Scientist” Like It’s A Bad Thing

Based on my own tumblr post: 3am thoughts… Has anyone written Jane Foster as a mad scientist, I mean like a villain?

Chaotic neutral Darcy and Jane featuring modern/human SHIELD Agent Bucky.

Available on AO3.

Content Warnings: Implied/Referenced Torture, Aftermath of Torture, Amnesia, Memory Suppressing Machine | The Chair (Marvel), Dark, Sort Of, Ambiguous/Open Ending...

In a world full of megalomaniacs, straight up supervillains, and fricking aliens, mad scientists were a dime a dozen. Dr Foster was one such scientist who was quickly moving from mildly irritating to SHIELD’s Most Wanted.

Dr Foster’s gimmick was portals. She first gained international attention when she claimed responsibility (via an untraceable Instagram account, @dr-mthrfckng-foster) for diverting LA’s 405 to a dirt road in rural Australia. Then came a string of impossible robberies – bank vaults and the private collections of the world's richest assholes stripped bare in seconds. Then she created a portal that caused an Indonesian typhoon to bear down on Wall Street, flooding the trading floor. And then she robbed a top secret government black site of some classified technology.

And that’s when Director Nick Fury made finding and stopping Dr Foster SHIELD’s number one priority.

Agent James Barnes had been stuck on suspension for two weeks, with two more to go, and was itching to get back into the field. He had way too much free time on his hands: he’d caught up on his sleep and everything in his Netflix queue. He’d cleaned out his refrigerator, done laundry and enough meal prep to last him until next month. He’d caught up with his family, cleaned his whole goddamn apartment twice, and now he was well and truly bored.

He was out for his fifth run of the week (and it wasn’t even Wednesday) when his work phone rang.

“Thank Christ,” he muttered before answering.

“Barnes.”

“It’s Hill. How’s the arm?”

“Fine,” Barnes grunted, rotating his metal shoulder irritably. “You got something for me?”

“Are you up for a recon mission?”

Usually he would have protested. He headed tactical units. He was an elite ‘first through the door’ kind of field agent. Not that he couldn’t be stealthy and patient - he’d been a sniper in the army for christ's sake - but going unnoticed in public was kind of a problem for him these days; he’d have to wear jackets and gloves in the middle of August to hide his prosthetic for starters.

On the other hand, his mother had been calling him every second day to feed him carb-heavy meals in exchange for help around the house, all while dropping not-so-subtle hints that he should start dating again. Requests for more grandchildren couldn’t be far behind.

“I’ll be there in thirty.”

Thirty-five minutes later Agent Barnes was back at his desk at SHIELD HQ perusing through the increasingly large file of one Dr Jane Foster.

She had been a brilliant student and had earned a PhD in Astrophysics from Culver University by the age of 25. By all accounts she should have been one of the leading researchers in her field, and if doctoral programs handed out superlatives Dr Foster’s would have been “Most Likely To Win a Nobel Prize By 30”.

Unfortunately for Dr Foster, and the rest of the world, she had been forced from that path by a sexist tenured professor who publicly denounced her theories, and the woman herself, as crazy, discredited her published work, and used his influence to ensure she was denied all of the more lucrative research grants.

When federal agents went to interview him after the 405 incident they found his office looking like a tornado had gone through it and the professor himself was nowhere to be found. A few weeks later he stumbled into a US Embassy in Russia after being found wandering in from the forests outside Vladivostok, half mad and still decrying the evils of allowing women into scientific fields.

He had been placed into witness protection and promptly admitted into a psychiatric facility under his new name, and was being monitored by several undercover agents in case Dr Foster felt like punishing him some more.

Anyone else who had a part in ruining Dr Foster’s legitimate career was also under surveillance, as was her mother in London, a terrified ex-boyfriend in Boston, and a handful of known associates, though Dr Foster hadn’t been in contact with any of them in years.

SHIELD and other federal agencies had tried the usual methods of tracking down a rogue mad scientist. They tried to find out where her base of operations was, firstly by looking for any properties in her name, but Dr Foster had been a broke student with an impressive amount of debt (until the day she decided to wipe it, and the rest of Culver’s student debt, out). So if she had property it would definitely not be in her legal name and all but impossible to trace back to her. Then they tried to look for drains on the powergrid. However she managed to generate her portals - SHIELD scientists still hadn’t figured that out - it surely had to be using huge amounts of electricity. So far they’d found six grow labs and two server rooms running illegal god-knows-what, but no Dr Foster.

Agent Barnes read the file twice, reviewed all the transcripts of the interviews with her known associates, and came to one very important conclusion: she had an accomplice.

As smart as Dr Foster was there was nothing in her academic history to suggest that she had a background in computer science that would account for the notable hacks and the untraceable nature of her activities. To add to that several interviewees had made passing remarks about her not having a cell phone for most of her academic career, and how she had zero interest in social media.

Two days later, after getting the okay for a field trip from Hill, Agent Barnes made his way to Culver University to speak to anyone who had even the vaguest recollection of Dr Foster. And that’s how he learnt about the intern.

He’d started by dropping by one of the physics labs where Dr Foster had spent most of her time, and by pure chance met a doctoral candidate who remembered her, and her intern.

“I think her name was Darlene. Glasses. Always on her phone.”

…which led him to the academic advisor who put the two of them together...

“Darcy. Darcy Lewis. She was actually a PoliSci major but left it too late and Dr Foster’s internship was the only one available. She had only been working with her for a few weeks before… before Dr Foster’s funding was revoked and she was asked to leave.”

...who pointed him to one of Darcy’s former professors…

“Average student. Good debater. Often late, and always had a coffee in her hand.”

...who gave him a few names of some former classmates who might remember her…

“Not the worst person to be stuck with on a group assignment. Pulled her weight. Obsessed with her stupid iPod.”

“I swear she lived off pop tarts and coffee. And not Starbucks either. Some stupid hipster chain.”

“Deja Brew. Serious problem. Went through one of those loyalty punch cards every week. Always complained about having to go home for the holidays and resort to big chain coffee shops.”

...which had him driving out to Darcy Lewis’ hometown, located a few hours south of Roanoke, Virginia, stopping first at the local high school to speak to the school principal…

“She’d always been good with computers but wasn’t allowed to use them at home for some reason so she spent a lot of time at the local library using theirs. We had to suspend her once. One of her classmates accused her of accepting payment from other students to hack the school’s records and alter their grades. Their grades were definitely getting altered, but we couldn’t get any concrete proof it was her.”

...who was able to find a photo of 16 year old Darcy in an old yearbook and told him what bar he could find Darcy’s mother in.

“She knows not to come to me if she’s in the shit, because I would call the cops in a heartbeat. Especially after that stunt she pulled before she went off to college…”

“What stunt was that, Ms Bennett?” Agent Barnes asked patiently, hoping he wouldn’t have to enable her alcoholism to get some useful information.

“I made some mistakes, okay,” she slurred defensively. “I was having an affair with my boss. Don’t know how Darcy knew. She told her stepfather but he didn’t believe her. Then a few weeks later we went out to dinner for my boss’s birthday... all the tv’s in the bar start showing security camera footage of us falling into offices and motel rooms. Took her all of a minute to ruin two marriages and a law firm.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he replied diplomatically. “Is there anyone she could turn to for help? Her father, perhaps.”

“He died when she was about twelve. They were as thick as thieves,” she recalled with a tinge of bitterness.

“Was there any place that was special to them? Someone she might go to ground?”

She shook her head. “He used to rent this old cabin near the Catskills off a buddy of his every other year. Winter or summer, Darcy loved it. But it's long gone. Forest fire, I think, the year before his accident.”

Back in his car Agent Barnes reviewed the data points.

Dr Foster had a base of operations somewhere. Had to be private, and as best SHIELD could guess it must be off the grid and Dr Foster must be generating her own power.

Dr Foster was a space nut at heart, and while an abandoned observatory might be too much to ask for, she’d probably want somewhere with minimal light pollution.

And while they could portal anywhere, neither of them spoke any other languages and had no familiarity with any international locations, so they were most likely still State-side. (Dr Foster’s mother had moved to London when Jane was twenty-three, but she’d never found the time to visit.)

Miss Lewis was familiar with the Catskills area. A base of operations there could be very isolated.

Dr Foster was most likely building and modifying her own own equipment so she had to be able to access materials. Sure, she could portal to her local hardware store, but having Darcy drive into the nearest town for supplies would attract less attention.

Miss Lewis had an addiction to coffee procured from Deja Brew, a small hipster chain with only a handful of locations along on the east coast. While she could have found another way to get her caffeine fix, people were creatures of habit.

Miss Lewis was also known for stocking up on poptarts. In one of the only images of the other side of one of Dr Foster’s portals there was what appeared to be, if one squinted, a box of limited edition pop tarts on a counter.

He plugged it all into SHIELD fancy search engines and got a few results back. The most promising was an abandoned ski chalet turned abandoned research station halfway up a mountain, an hour drive away from an up and coming tourist town, whose main street hosted a Deja Brew cafe. They also had a small mom and pop hardware store, as well as a post office, and a grocery store that had still been selling pumpkin pie pop tarts around the time Dr Foster’s portal had been caught on camera.

Agent Barnes came to with a groan. The flesh of his shoulder where it met his prosthetic felt like it was on fire, and he was pretty sure he could smell fried wiring.

The research station had come up in SHIELD’s initial search for a potential mad scientist's lair, but had been dismissed for not using any power and for not sending back any heat signature readings. Perhaps they’d found a way to fool the scanners. Or maybe they just weren’t in the day the readings were taken. Whatever the reason, Agent Barnes had a good feeling about it. He filled his tank up at the nearest gas station and got on the highway, forgoing checking in at the Triskelion on his way past in favour of driving all night. He’d call Hill when he had something solid.

** *** **

“Fuck…”

He willed his eyes open and came face to face with Darth Vader.

Barnes reeled back at the sound of the synthesized voice. “Who sent you? Who do you work for?! The Rebellion?”

“What the fuck!”

It took him until his eyes adjusted to the fluorescent lighting to realise that Darth Vader was wearing a grey knit dress and black tights. Darth Vader laughed and ripped off his mask to reveal a smiling bespectacled brunette underneath. The accomplice. Darcy Lewis.

“Sorry, I was just messing with you, dude,” she teased, tossing the mask over her shoulder. “I’ve always wanted to do that. But seriously, who do you work for? Who knows you’re here?”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” he lied. “I was just camping in the woods, man. I saw the lights and decided to check it out,” he rambled in a lazy Canadian accent. “How the hell did I get here? Did you electrocute me?”

He used his not-quite fake panic to test the limits of his restraints. He’d been strapped into some sort of junkstore barber chair, with thick metal shackles locked around his wrists, ankles, and chest. His metal arm could probably make quick work of them but the damn thing was not responding. His panic became a little less fake.

“Just camping, huh?” she echoed back with a raised eyebrow, leaning forward to the point where Barnes couldn’t avoid getting a good look down her top and the 15-carat pink diamond (worth about 40mil and reported stolen in one of Dr Foster’s vault heists two months ago) hanging around her neck. “So that wasn’t you poking around town this morning?” she asked pointedly, drawing his attention to the wall of monitors he hadn’t noticed showing various street cameras around the town. “I’ve got eyes and ears everywhere, dude. You got into town bright and early in a beat up looking truck with plates that didn’t exist two weeks ago and started flashing my yearbook photo around. So, who do you work for?”

He levelled his best steely-eyed agent stare at her and switched back to his native pissed-off Brooklynite accent. “I ain’t tellin you shit, sweetheart.”

“C’mon now,” she cooed, taking a seat on his lap. “Who do you work for? FBI? Interpol? SHIELD? Crawford County Library Services? Listen, I was totally going to return Eat Pray Love, but we had to skip town in a hurry and it got lost in the move. I will totally pay to replace it.”

Years of training (and regular poker games with the Black Widow) had taught him to school his features, even if that last one threw him for a loop.

“Nothing? You sure you don’t want to talk to me? Fine,” she whined. “Jane!”

It was only then that Barnes switched his focus from his captor to his surroundings and realised that there was another occupant puttering about on the other side of the large telescope that took pride of place on a hydraulic platform underneath the research station's retractable roof. The infamous Dr Foster.

“Jane!”

“What?” came the irritated reply.

“Come over here and practise your monologue. Look! You’ve got a captive audience and everything!” she announced, laughing at her own joke.

“I don’t have time, Darcy,” the disgruntled voice argued.

“Hey! I spent two days writing up that monologue, the least you can do is spend twenty-five minutes reading it out loud so I can make sure it doesn’t make you sound too much like a cartoon villain.”

“Twenty-five minutes?! Are you kidding me?” Dr Foster stormed out from behind the telescope to wave a wrench at her assistant. She looked less put together than her ID photo, appearing to be long overdue for both a shower and a nap. “I’m in the middle of something. I’ve almost figured the problem with the mobile portal generator, and… Darcy, why is there a man tied to a chair in my lab?”

“This man?” Darcy snorted, taking Barnes’s chin in her hands and wiggling it about. “This is the intruder. You remember the intruder alert, like fifteen minutes ago? Lots of flashing lights and alarms? Well, I found this guy passed out on the lawn. For most people, hitting my force field would be like getting lightly tased, but this bad boy,” she continued, tapping a fingernail against his dead metal arm, “meant you ended up getting the full 50,000 volts to your heart. Thanks for letting me practice my CPR by the way,” she added with a wink.

“It’s not a force field, Darcy. It’s a glorified invisible pet fence, upsized and modified so it reacts to the electrical impulses in the human body.”

“It keeps people out; I’m calling it a force field.”

This was definitely the weirdest interrogation he had endured by a large margin, Barnes mused as he followed their bickering like a pingpong game.

“Who is he, Darcy?” Jane sighed wearily. “What is he doing here?”

“Fiiiine. Janey, meet Agent James Barnes of SHIELD.”

“What?! SHIELD?!!”Jane screeched. “Why did you bring him here?”

“He found us, Jane. What was I supposed to do?”

“Something other than bringing him inside our secret hideout.”

“I am not killing him and burying him in the woods; I just did my nails.”

Jane scowled, turning the full force of her overtired fury on James. “Why can’t you SHIELD issue jackbooted thugs just leave me alone? Can’t you understand how important my work is? I am challenging the very foundations of modern science - of the laws of the universe! I am on the verge of a breakthrough! And if you or Nick Fury think you can stop me, you’ve got another thing coming!”

Before his mouth could betray him and ask how the hell they knew his boss Darcy spoke up.

“A little off script, but I like the energy, Jane. Very much the mad scientist vibe we’re going for. But next time, try not to make it so personal – we’ve got to hide the target of our frustrations, remember? Instead of saying “SHIELD” say “government”, instead of saying “Nick Fury” say “president”.”

“Right, right,” Jane nodded absently, tapping the side of her head with the wrench she had just been waving around like a weapon.

“Now, go back to work. I’ll handle this.”

“Okay, thanks Darce. Oh, have you seen my soldering iron around?”

“It’s in the locked cabinet because you’re not allowed to use it unsupervised, you know that. Gimme ten minutes, I’ll bring it to you.”

Jane wandered back to her side of the observatory, muttering under her breath, leaving Barnes at Darcy’s mercy.

��She’s not the criminal mastermind here, is she?” he wondered, his eyes roaming over the strange cupcake of a woman in his lap.

“Not exactly,” Darcy admitted. “I mean, it’s not like she set out to be a mad scientist. I kind of rebranded her after that little freeway incident.”

“Rebranded?”

“Yeah. She was in a bad way after New Mexico and then when the first live test of her portal engine went a little sideways I didn’t want dudebros on the internet coming after her, so I changed the narrative. Instead of ‘girl scientist makes mistake, should stick to making sandwiches’ I changed it to ‘Dr Foster, genius astrophysicist, causes chaos, totally on purpose.’”

“And all those robberies?”

“I may have encouraged that. I’m all for sticking it to the one percenters, and Jane needed to fund her experiments somehow,” she added with a shrug.

“So Jane’s the absent-minded professor and you’re the brains behind this operation, huh?”

Darcy laughed and slid out of his lap causing a distracting amount of friction. “I’m really not. So you, Coulson, and Fury should be really, really scared.”

“How do you know those names?” he had to know, cover be damned.

“You don’t know? Of course you don’t,” she huffed. “Fury and his clearance levels. I’d tell you to ask him about New Mexico sometime, but you’re not going to be able to.”

“Why not? What are you going to do to me?” Barnes fretted, unable to ignore the sinking feeling that he was in big trouble; she wouldn’t have told him anything if she intended on letting him walk out of here.

“Oh, relax. I’m not going to kill you. I’m just gonna scramble your brain a little.”

She circled his chair, flipping switches as she went, and something behind him started humming ominously.

“So, admittedly I didn’t major in hard sciences. I had an ex who did, but he also fancied himself something of a cat burglar, so when he went to jail I liberated all his college textbooks and gave myself a crash course in electrical engineering. And it helped that those HYDRA designs were really easy to follow.”

“HYDRA?” Barnes cursed.

HYDRA had been the scientific branch of the Nazi regime and believed that discovery required (human) experimentation. They were supposedly eradicated at the end of WWII but Project Paperclip saved some of HYDRA’s greatest minds, giving them immunity in exchange for their genius. If Foster or, more worryingly, Darcy had aligned themselves with some surviving HYDRA faction the results could be catastrophic.

“Yeah, I found them in that SHIELD warehouse when we recovered Jane’s stolen research.”

“What are you talking about?”

“They just call it ‘The Chair’, which is totally not creepy at all,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “And this is the Halo,” she added, drawing Barnes’s attention to the whirring circle of metal that was lowering itself over his head.

“What the hell are you doing?” he shouted, renewing his efforts to break free of his restraints. “Get that piece of scrap metal the fuck away from me!”

“Hey! Don’t mock my work. It may look like I raided a junkyard for the components - and I did - but my welding game is on point. It’s totally safe. Mostly safe. It’s just going to send focused electrical pulses to your…” she paused to consult some smudged writing on her hand, “hippocampus and prefrontal cortex.”

The Halo stopped moving and two metal plates extended, pressing against the sides of his head, holding it like a vice.

“Please… don’t do this,” he begged as she approached him with a rubber mouthguard.

“C’mon, open wide. You don’t want to end up braindead and unable to chew your food,” she jested, waving the thing in front of him. “Oh, just one question before I fry your brain,” she added just when he was about to give in. “How did you find us? I was so careful,” she whined.

Agent Barnes, terrified as he was, still managed to look smug at his small, short lived success. “Deja Brew coffee.”

“Curses!” she wailed theatrically. “Betrayed by my one true love!”

Darcy huffed and quickly returned her attention to the matter at hand.

“Thanks for that,” she said with a smile as she forced him to bite down on the mouthguard. “I’ll know better for next time. Start making my own coffee at home… but it never tastes as good,” she muttered to herself.

She stepped away from him and bent down to pick up a similarly frankensteined industrial remote with long wires snaking back to the chair and a clichéd big red button at its centre. He began struggling anew, screaming around the foul tasting rubber, begging for mercy.

She took great delight in his terrified expression and put on her best supervillain voice, “Give my regards to Nick Fury.”

Nick Fury observed his agent from behind a two way mirror as he sat behind a table in an interrogation room. Barnes had been sitting there for the past hour as still as a statue, except for his unfocused eyes which flitted about the room.

In true horror movie fashion, Agent Barnes’ screams echoed down the mountainside like an avalanche, sending animals fleeing in terror for miles around.

** *** **

Local LEO’s had found him wandering aimlessly down a stretch of highway just outside the ruins of what had previously been Puente Antiguo, New Mexico, and ten minutes after they ran his prints Agent Romanoff had been on a quinjet to collect him. She’d been directed to the nearest hospital and found him sitting up on a bed but not responding or reacting to any of the medical staff as they buzzed around him. Agent Romanoff took a cautious step forward and held her breath as his unfocused eyes settled on her.

“Hello James...”

An excruciating minute later the veil lifted and he attempted a smile.

“Hey Tasha.”

She’d brought him back to base and dragged him to SHIELD’s medical bay for more tests - not that Barnes put up much of a fight, in fact he was terrifyingly compliant. The SHIELD doctors confirmed what the New Mexico doctors suspected: the bruising and electrical burns around his temples and his memory loss were indicative of some back alley version of electroshock therapy. His memories should come back in time - how long was anybody’s guess - but for the moment Agent James Barnes had no memory of the last four weeks.

Fury picked up a tablet with depressingly little information on its screen and stepped into the room, waiting for Barnes eyes to focus on him before taking a seat.

“Agent Barnes.”

“Director.”

“I know you’re probably sick of questions by now, but I have a few more for you, if that’s alright.”

“Yeah, sure…”

It rankled Fury to no end how meak and passive Barnes seemed. Heaven help him, he missed the argumentative sonofabitch.

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

“Being called into your office.”

“What for?”

“I punched Rumlow.”

“Why?”

“He was bragging about taking advantage of a drunk woman at a club when he was last on leave. He didn’t like me calling out his shitty behaviour. He punched me, I punched him back.”

Fury sighed. He hadn't gotten a straight answer out of Barnes at the time of the incident and he couldn’t feel happy about getting one now.

“Do you remember what happened once I called you into my office?”

His brow creased and his eyes zipped back and forth like the carriage of a printer as his mind searched for the elusive memory.

“You suspended me?”

“I did,” Fury confirmed. “For a whole month. But two weeks into it I pulled you in for a special assignment.”

Barnes tensed, shrinking in on himself. The confusion about his lost time seemed to be the only thing that got under his skin, but only when someone brought it up. Once the moment passed he forgot to be concerned about it.

Fury took pity on him. “For the past two weeks I had you running down leads on the whereabouts of Dr Jane Foster.”

“The scientist with the portals? Did she do this to me?”

“It’s not exactly her MO, but then again no law enforcement agency’s ever managed to have a confrontation with her. Never had the chance. Those portals of hers let her keep at a distance. You might have been the first person to have a face to face with her, but I can’t confirm it because I don’t know where the hell you were when this happened,” he grumbled, letting a little more of his usual exasperated tone filter through. “You missed check in by two days. The last we heard from you, you were at Culver running down leads on what you said was a potential accomplice. We found your car in Tromso, Norway, a day after you were found on the side of a road in New Mexico. You don’t appear on any security footage or speed cameras in the area. There’s no activity on your work or personal credit cards. Your activity logs on our highly secure system for the last two weeks are nonexistent, as are your call logs on your work phone. Even the messages you sent Romanoff from your personal phone complaining about your assignment have since been deleted - from her phone too. She’s real pissed about it. As far as your digital footprint is concerned you disappeared from a gas station outside Roanoke, Virginia, last week - do you know how weird it is to know you were headed out towards a place called Roanoke only to up and vanish?” He sighed at Barnes’ painful silence. “Is there anything you can remember, anything at all about Dr Foster or her accomplice? Anything that will help us catch up to you without talking to everyone on campus to figure out what you discovered?”

Barnes’ brow creased in painful confusion.

“I think… I think I saw Darth Vadar.”

Director Fury blinked. “Right…” He took a deep breath to stop himself from venting his frustrations at Barnes, the sorry bastard looked like a kicked puppy as it was. Instead he got up and tapped the tablet against the metal tabletop harder than strictly necessary. “Well, I’ll just go put out a BOLO out for Darth Vadar then.”

“Okay,” Barnes murmured, and promptly zoned out again.

Agent Romanoff exited the viewing room looking uncharacteristically unsettled.

“I want a full detail on him at all times,” Fury ordered as he stormed off towards the elevators. Hill had just stepped off and was looking even more grim than usual. “Until his memories come back he’s vulnerable, and once they do he’ll be a target.”

“I’ll get a STRIKE team on it. Not Rumlow’s.”

“Get another one along with any assets currently not on assignment. Flood that campus, interrogate everybody. I wanna know who the hell Dr Foster’s accomplice is, and I wanna know yesterday. Understood?”

“I think we might have more pressing concerns, sir,” Hill reported, tapping at her tablet as it beeped erratically. “Coulson’s said there’s an issue with the Tesseract. Dr. Selvig read an energy surge from it fifteen minutes ago.”

“NASA didn't authorise Selvig to test phase,” he grunted, taking the tablet from Hill.

“He wasn't testing it, he wasn't even in the room. Spontaneous advancement.”

“Motherfucker.”

#you say mad scientist like it's a bad thing #freudensteins-fics #mad scientist jane foster #competent assistant darcy lewis #shield agent bucky barnes #torture #aftermath of torture #amnesia #winter soldier memory wipe chair #darcy lewis #jane foster #bucky barnes #natasha romanoff #nick fury #maria hill

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notthatlady · 3 years

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There is also a deleted scene from The Last Olympian, the last book of Percy Jackson and the Olympians series!

The following was posted by Rick Riordan on his blog, a long, long time ago (October 3, 2013).

A Deleted Scene from The Last Olympian

Recently on Twitter I mentioned a deleted scene from The Last Olympian, in which Percy Jackson comes across his old nemesis Nancy Bobofit, the mortal girl who bullied him in The Lightning Thief. The scene was cut from the book for the sake of keeping the narrative moving, but I’ve always liked it. This week I spoke with Publisher’s Weekly about how I decide which characters to highlight and sideline in each book. As an extension of that interview, the deleted Nancy Bobofit scene is featured below.

Percy, Thalia, Annabeth and Grover are heading to Central Park to fight the Titans when they run across a group of unconscious mortals. As you may recall, the god Morpheus put all the mortals in Manhattan to sleep before Kronos’ army attacked the city:

The lights of the city were blinking on. I guess they were on automatic timers. The streetlamps in the park glowed, making the lanes and the trees look spooky – like we needed any more spookiness.

Thalia stopped and tensed, like she was catching a scent. “I’ll be back. Need to check the Hunters on the right flank.”

Her bow appeared in her hands and she disappeared into the trees.

We stepped over bodies of sleeping New Yorkers, moving them to safety when we could. We were just coming to a stone bridge on the northern side of the park when we came across a dozen kids, all slumped next to a pretzel stand, like they’d been lined up to buy snacks.

Grover yelped. “Percy . . . look.”

He crouched next to a girl with orange hair and freckles. She reminded me a little of Clarisse, because she was a big girl, like she was built for tackle football.

And then my eyes widened. “Oh my gods. It’s . . . Nancy?”

I hadn’t seen her in four years, but I still recognized her. Nancy Bobofit, a bully who’d made my life miserable in sixth grade. Grover and I had been at Yancy Academy, and she would pick on us mercilessly. She’d been around the first day I suspected that I was a demigod.

“Who’s Nancy?” Annabeth asked.

“A girl we used to know,” Grover muttered. “Not a very nice girl.”

I looked at the other sleeping kids. Some I’d never seen, but a few looked familiar.

“This is our class from Yancy,” I said. “They must’ve been on the summer trip.”

“Yeah,” Grover said. He pointed to a lady in a flowery dress. “Here’s Mrs. Watt. She always chaperoned the summer New York trip. If we’d stayed at Yancy . . .”

He didn’t finish the thought. We both knew that was impossible. We didn’t live normal lives. We never would’ve made it through middle school without monsters destroying us or the school or both. Still, it was strange looking at my former classmates. I never went backward. Once I left a school, I always tried to leave it behind for good. Besides, the memories were usually bad. But looking at the kids who’d kept going, even stupid old Nancy Bobofit, I felt a wave of sadness wash over me.

“They’re right in the path of the battle,” Grover said, and he looked at me to see what I’d suggest.

“We have to move them,” I said. “Under the bridge, maybe. They’ll be safer.”

“After all she did to us,” Grover mused, “it kind of serves her right to be stomped by a titan army.”

“But we can’t.”

He sighed. “Yeah. You’re right. Maybe . . . draw a moustache on her, at least?”

Four years ago, it would’ve been tempting. Now, I realized that I didn’t hate Nancy anymore. I was a different person. She was a mortal in the path of danger – we were the only thing between her and destruction.

“No moustaches,” I said. “Annabeth, give me a hand?”

She was studying me carefully, trying to read my thoughts, but she didn’t say anything. She just helped me drag the school group to safety.

This deleted part is in Chapter 14: Pigs Fly, between these lines:

“Do you think Ethan suspects about your weak spot?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “He didn’t tell Kronos anything, but if he figures it out—”

“We can’t let him.”

“I’ll bonk him on the head harder next time,” I suggested. “Any idea what surprise Kronos was talking about?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t see anything in the shield, but I don’t like surprises.”

“Agreed.”

“So,” she said, “are you going to argue about me coming along?”

“Nah. You’d just beat me up.”

She managed a laugh, which was good to hear. I grabbed my sword, and we went to rally the troops.

--- Somewhere here. ---

Thalia and the head counselors were waiting for us at the reservoir. The lights of the city were blinking on at twilight. I guess a lot of them were on automatic timers. Streetlamps glowed around the shore of the lake, making the water and trees look even spookier.

“They’re coming,” Thalia confirmed, pointing north with a silver arrow. “One of my scouts just reported they’ve crossed the Harlem River. There was no way to hold them back. The army . . .” She shrugged. “It’s huge.”

“We’ll hold them at the park,” I said. “Grover, you ready?”

He nodded. “As ready as we’ll ever be. If my nature spirits can stop them anywhere, this is the place.”

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ificanthaveu · 5 years

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Trust Issues || Shawn Mendes

Description: You and Shawn bond over your shared trust issues, telling each other where they came from. Something you haven’t done in years.

A/N: half of the reader’s problems are literally what I went through, so yay for trust issues!!! I had a lil daydream about this the other day, and it actually turned out pretty cute.

Word Count: 3k

A soft knock on your door pulled you out of your trance as you stared at your laptop. You blinked the tiredness out of your eyes and checked the time. It was just after 1:00 pm, and you’d been working for over four hours already. You sighed and stood up from your desk and workspace in the corner of your living room to go answer the door. You peered through the peephole to see your neighbor Shawn waiting there. You knew what was coming.

You swung the door open, and you were met with his cheerful face and two cups of coffee.

“Good afternoon, Ms. [Y/L/N],” he said with a big smile. You definitely didn’t have the same expression.

“What do you want?” You said in a monotone voice.

“You wanna go for a walk?” He asked hopefully.

“Shawn, I have a stack of work I haven’t even gotten to yet that has to be done before midnight,” you said as you leaned against the doorway, eyeing the cup of coffee in his hand. It was an iced latte. Your favorite.

“But I know you need a lunch break,” he paused and held up your drink. “And I got you coffee. So we’re going to go on a walk to clear your head and to recaffeinate yourself.”

You thought about it for a moment as you continued to stare at the drink in his hand. You could easily grab the cup out of his hand and shut the door on him.

Before you could even entertain the idea, he had your cup held over his head.

“Not happening. You’re not getting this until we’re out of the building,” he said with a sly smile.

“Fine,” you grumbled with an eye roll as you grabbed your coat from the hook next to the door, stepped into the hallway and locked your door behind you.

“So what do you all have to do still?” He asked as you stepped into the elevator.

“I thought we weren’t talking about work.”

“We won’t after this one question.”

“I have a play manuscript and half a novel to read still. I’ll be lucky if I send it in before midnight,” you said as the elevator stopped at the ground floor and you walked out.

You exited the building and were met with the cool, fall Toronto air. As promised, Shawn handed you your drink as you turned to your left and began to walk towards the park.

“What are you doing today?” You asked him as you took a sip out of your coffee.

“Nothing. I had a melody stuck in my head for a while that I might try to get a song out of later, but the more I work at it, the less promising it gets,” he said as he took a drink out of his black coffee.

You walked in silence for a few moments as you both drank your coffees. As you stepped into the park, you took a deep breath and smiled. The smell of autumn air was your favorite.

“Alright, Mendes, what’s today’s walk topic?” You asked as you started down your usual trail.

Shawn was one of the first people to come introduce himself when you moved into your condo almost a year and a half ago. He offered to show you around the neighborhood, and you gladly accepted. Ever since then, the two of you took to a walk in the park down the street at least twice a week. On bad weeks where you had a ton of work or he was swamped with rehearsals and meetings, you made it a point to walk every day to make sure you got your mind off things. But work had its way of making the whole conversation about itself, so you and Shawn started coming up with topics to center your walks around. Whether it be friendships or why you love your hometown or favorite vacations, you always kept your conversations on track.

“Trust issues,” he said plainly without looking at you.

“Ah yes, the perfect light-hearted topic to distract us from work, our trust issues,” you said sarcastically.

“Well, you obviously have a lot of them. And I have some, too. So, today, I’m determined to find out why you have them,” he said as he glanced over at you.

“It’s a long story. Also, me telling you all that, would show that I don’t actually have trust issues since I’d be trusting you with why I may or may not have trust issues,” you reasoned.

Shawn gave you a confused look as you tried to rationalize you not saying anything.

It was nothing against Shawn. The two of you had grown to become pretty close within the last year, but when it came to the deep stuff that barely anyone knew, you hesitated to tell him You hesitated to tell anyone.

“We’ve been friends and neighbors for over a year now, and you do a remarkable job of not telling me anything remotely secretive about you. Most I know about the traumatic stuff is that you met your best friend because of it. But I don’t know what that ‘it’ is. And I think you should tell me. But that’s up to you and I have a backup topic if you don’t want to fight that battle today. That being said, I will bring this up every walk for the rest of our lives until you open up to me,” he said as you two stopped for a moment in front of the creek.

You stared at the ripples in the pond caused by a little boy throwing pebbles to your right.

“It all started in third grade,” you said, maybe a little too dramatically.

“Beautiful,” he said, a little too happily. You gave him a look. “Not the trust issues, you opening up to me,” he saved himself.

You started walking along the creek as you began again. You ran the story in your head a few times and cringed at the worst parts. You shoved your hands in your coat pockets as far as they could go.

“Third grade is when I fell in love with writing. I found it so remarkable that I could write my daydreams onto paper. I became absolutely obsessed with it. It’s really what carried me through everything. It’s what brought me to what I’m doing,” you said softly. You loved talking about your job. It was stressful, but it was your dream job. Since third-grade grammar lessons where you corrected your classmates' papers, you knew editing was going to be just for you.

“I don’t know how you do it. I can barely correct my own writing. And that’s never more than a page,” Shawn said.

“Third grade was also when my anxiety started to kick in,” you continued. “Third graders don’t understand that stuff very well,” you said.

“Like you didn’t understand it? Or your classmates?” He questioned. You shrugged your shoulders.

“Both? I guess. I would get frustrated, like why is this happening to me? Why can’t I go to sleepovers at a friend’s house without freaking out? Why do I feel nervous when literally nothing is going on? What’s this constant pressure in my chest? And then, on top of that, my friends never understood, and I lost a lot of people,” you said as you ran your hands up and down your cup.

“Is this when you met Bea?” He asked hopefully.

You laughed and shook your head.

“I didn’t meet her until junior year of high school. We have a beautiful roller coaster of events that happen before that,” you said.

“Damn,” he mumbled.

“Anyway,” you continued. “I remember being in the lunchroom. I was sitting at one of the tables with my neighbor. I went to throw something away, and on my way back to my spot, I heard one of my other friends talking about me. She was telling a whole lunch table about the weekend before when I left her house crying. I was quick to stop as she noticed I was there. I remember looking at her and saying ‘You don’t understand what I’m going through,’” you recalled.

“You called her out?” He said excitedly. “Is this when your badass side was born? Because of some asshole third grader telling everyone your problems?”

“Exactly. Look at you, learning so much already,” you said as you rested your hand on his shoulder.

“Amazing.”

“I look back at it, and she was always kind of an asshole. Her family was cool though. Her older brother still comments on all my facebook posts, but I haven’t really talked to her since middle school,” you said.

“So, after that I kind of shifted friend groups. I started stuffing all my feelings down instead of saying anything. But then I got comfortable and started opening up to these people. It was seventh grade. We were all at our one friend’s house and talking about anything and everything. And I told them about the guy I had a crush on.”

“Oh, God, I definitely know where this is going,” he said with a disgusted look on his face.

“Yep, they told him. Everyone found out, and I was humiliated. No one ever really said anything to me except for little comments here and there.”

“They knew not to mess with you because of your badass side,” Shawn added.

“Exactly. But that’s how I became friends with Andy. He was friends with the guy I liked, and he always called people out if they said anything. Besides Bea, he’s the one who knows everything because he lived it with me. I’d be dead without him,” you reminisced.

“I want to meet him. He’s in the army, right?” Shawn asked. You nodded your head and tried to hide your shocked expression. You didn’t think he’d remember.

“Yeah, he actually just got home a month ago. He’s visiting me next week,” you said with a big smile on your face.

“Will he join us for a walk?” Shawn asked. You shrugged your shoulders.

“I’m sure he will. He’ll want to be shown around, and you do it best,” you said as you bumped your shoulder against his.

“Ok, ok, back to the story,” Shawn caught you sidetracking, and urged you to continue.

“After that, I kind of coasted through the rest of middle school. I tried to stay open and friends with everyone without actually letting people in. It ended up working out pretty well. And then high school came,” you paused and took a drink.

“The suspense is killing me,” Shawn whispered. You rolled your eyes at him before continuing.

“I met some new friends. I met a guy. His name was James. He asked me to homecoming. Everything was perfect. I had a nice new group of friends and a guy who was head over heels for me. I really thought I had finally found my place. I had never been more wrong in my life. He kissed me that night. Then proceeded to text my friends that I was a bad kisser and that he planned on not really talking to me anymore. They thought it was hilarious,” you grimaced at the memories of your early high school years.

“Is this the James you were trying to avoid when we were out a few months ago?” He asked.

You nodded your head, “you bet. He’s not doing too well recently. Just lost his job because he was stealing from the company.”

“Serves him right,” Shawn mumbled.

“Oh, yeah,” you agreed. “But during that time, I had one friend in another friend group. She helped me through all of it. She was the one who listened to me crying in the middle of the night and responded to my depressing texts in the middle of the day. She introduced me to her friends, and it was all perfect. That friend group felt like home to me,” you paused.

“Or so you thought?” Shawn added.

“Or so I thought, exactly. She was my best friend for three years. Three whole years. It was a new record. I met Bea somewhere in the middle of that when she transferred. It was because of Bea that I found out the truth about my supposed best friend. Since day one, she had been gossiping behind my back, telling lies about me and telling people my secrets,” you said quietly. Out of all the horrid memories, this one hurt the most.

“Oh my God,” Shawn whispered.

“Bea was the one who told me. I was having a hard time with this friend, and I spent the night at Bea’s after a football game once. She asked me a question about me and one of our guy friends having feelings for each other. When I looked at her like she was crazy, that’s when we started piecing together what was going on,” you explained.

“Is that the end of it?” Shawn asked carefully.

You shrugged your shoulders, “For the most part. There was some work drama, too, with my coworker telling people things I’d complain to her about, but the thing with my old best friend was the part that definitely broke me.”

“But you trust Bea?”

“Oh, totally, but there are things that I told my old friend that I still haven’t told her,” you said with hesitation.

“Really?” Shawn said, completely shocked. “But she’s your best friend.”

“It’s not that easy. It’s the heavy shit. The stuff that keeps me up at night. I know she’d understand and love me through it, but it’s the actual saying it part that I have such a hard time doing. Anxiety and trust issues don’t pair well together”

“Wow,” Shawn said before he paused for a moment, processing everything. “You had some asshole friends.”

“The beauty of private school,” you proclaimed. “So, what about your trust issues, huh?”

“I don’t have trust issues,” he said as he gave you a look.

“Oh, yeah, sure. The international superstar that gets every bit of his personal life leaked on to the internet doesn’t have trust issues. I’ll never, ever believe that,” you said.

He shook his head with a small smile on his face.

“Alright, you got me,” he said. “But that’s also the whole story just in what you said. Everything I tell someone ends up in a tabloid. I have to be extremely careful about every damn thing I say. It gets twisted and turned into something it’s not.”

“But you tell me everything,” you pointed out as you stopped near the lookout. He turned and looked at you. He stuffed his hands in his denim jacket pockets, something he only did when he was nervous.

“Because you have trust issues,” he said quietly. “I know you’d never tell anyone because you know exactly what it’s like to have it be told. People with trust issues keep secrets the best. I trust you.”

You paused for a moment and just stared at him.

“I never thought of it that way,” you whispered after a while.

“It’s also more than that. You always seem insanely interested in everything I say. You get this look on your face,” he paused as he tried to imitate it, “when someone’s telling you a story. It’s cute.”

Your heart leaped as you turned to look at the view of the park from the top of the hill. He did the same.

“I hadn’t told anyone that story since I told Bea,” you said quietly. “I promised myself that the moment I found someone that reminded me of home, reminded me of that feeling I get when I’m with my family or Bea or Andy, I would tell them.” You didn’t look at him.

“I feel like home to you?” Shawn asked with a glint of hope in his voice. You could feel his eyes on you, but you still didn’t look at him. You just nodded your head.

“I’ve never told anyone that,” you said before finally looking at him. The sun hit his face perfectly. He was radiating.

Without saying anything more, he pulled you for a hug and held your head against his chest. You felt him press a kiss to the top of your head before resting his head on top of yours, looking at the fall colors and admiring the colors of change.

You pulled away after a moment. “Ready to head home?” You asked as you rocked forward on your toes.

“But you’re home right now,” Shawn said with a stupid smile on his face.

“Shut up,” you said as you hit his chest. He grabbed your hand before you could move it. You looked from your hand on his chest up to his face.

Before you knew it, you were both leaning in. He pressed his lips to yours as you rested your other hand on his chest and his arms wrapped tightly around your waist. His lips were smooth, and his cold nose tickled your cheek. You could feel his curls as they lightly touched your forehead. You pulled away, and he rested his forehead against yours.

“Yeah,” you finally said after a moment of silence. “That’s home.”

Shawn pulled you in for another kiss. You could feel him smile through it.

“Ok, for real now, we’re going home. I have a manuscript yelling my name,” you whispered. He nodded his head and grabbed your hand as you made your way down the hill.

“Can I take you out tonight?” He asked. “You know, on a date.”

“Unless that date is bringing me Chinese food and keeping me company while I edit, it’s going to have to be a no for tonight,” you said.

“Well, then it looks like I’m bringing you Chinese food tonight,” he said before looking down at you.

“For a superstar with trust issues, was kissing someone in the middle of the park the best idea,” you pointed out.

“Nope, that was a horrible idea. One of my worst,” you said. You could feel his hand shake a little as you brought your other hand around to grip onto his arm and squeeze it. He looked down at you again and smiled. “Totally worth it.”

Reblog! Comment! Send me a message! An ask! I need constant validation to truly thrive!

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balterbruh · 4 years

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Angel ~ Draco Malfoy one-shot

Hello! This is my first harry potter short, and it may not be the best, seeing as I haven't read the books since I was in primary school, and I last watched the movies at Christmas. however, my friend asked me to write her a short, and Im lowkey proud of it. So if you read this please do leave feed back. -B

Draco and you had fallen in love gradually over the 6 years in Hogwarts. You shared many classes, and many arguments, including the same house. Slytherin. At first you never thought you’d be crying over the annoying blonde boy from 1st year, who made fun of your red headed friend. And that doubt increased when he constantly called Hermione a Mud-blood. Making you feel all the more guilty when you first began sneaking off to his dorm in the middle of the night.

You fell for him, it took a long time, it was the Yule ball, and you had been stood up and sat on the side, watching your friends look as miserable as you. Ron was sulking, and he had ruined Hermione’s night. Harry was pining over a girl, who was not Ginny, and the night was just a mess for the golden Trio. Then you nose was filled with the smell of peppermint and expensive cologne. She could smell it from anywhere. Draco made sure to plaster it on every morning, to remind everyone in the whole castle. Just how rich he was.

“Look, now isn’t the time Malfoy. Why don’t you go-“ Your thoughts were interrupted when his hand came into your eyeline. His rings were adoring each finger. And you found yourself scoffing at his limb.

“Just dance with me Y/L/N.” Although his intentions were kind, he was still speaking with the arrogant tone you had grown accustomed too. You found yourself reaching for his hand and he waltzed you to the dance floor. You both danced awkwardly at first but later were laughing as you ran the halls of the castle.

You rarely spoke after that night, not even rude comments, but the kiss you both shared after potions class the month after. You became an inseparable, secretive couple.

At first both of you agreed you didn’t want to let everyone know you were dating. As it would ruin his image and bother your friends. So 5th year rolled round, He remained the arrogant Malfoy you knew from day one, but when he was with you, he was nicer, smiled more. You even had silly nicknames for each other.

“Baby, can you pass me my tie?” You were getting dressed for your first class of the day.

“Here you go Angel.” He threw it at you, smiling when it hit you in the face.. you let a giggle pass your lips. You threw on your robe, he held the door open and gave you a peck on the lips as you passed him, “See you later today.”

However later that day. wasn’t what you had expected. The question he asked you, made you panic, thinking ,maybe he had told someone about your relationship. “When are we going to tell people were dating?” He said it so casually, in the middle of the common room where anyone could hear. You immediately shot up and covered his mouth, looking around for anyone, but seeing as it was past midnight, everyone else was asleep, He laughed at your antics, pushing you off. “Come on, I’m ready to tell everyone about us.” The happy look on his face made you let out a small sigh.

“Draco, we cant.” His smile fell, and you hated when he didn’t smile, after the first time you were the cause of something you had never seen before, you just wanted to make him smile all the time. “don’t look at me like I killed your Toad, besides, you were the one who said we should keep quiet.” After Draco asked you to be his girlfriend, he was also very quick for it to remain a secret. It was a mutual agreement or so you thought.

“What I can’t change my mind? God.” He huffed and crossed his arms and looked away with a scowl on his face.

“I don’t see why it is so important? We have been doing just fine and my friends-“ He cut you off, which made you angry, especially after expressing on multiple occasions that the one thing you hated most was being interrupted.

“Oh why do they matter? They’re not worth your time.” You glared at him. Yes you were in different houses, and the three were closer than you were with any of them, but they were your friends.

“Potter, a Weasley, and a mud blood, you’re just a traitor.” He stated as he stood up, you followed his move and pointed a finger to his chest.

“That is why I won’t tell people about us.” You knew that he didn’t mean calling you a traitor, and admittedly he had refrained from insulting the rest of your friends, so that was just his way of angering you, and you didn’t mean what you said about telling people about your relationship, you just wanted to anger him. And it worked, he pushed past you and stormed off to the boys dorms.

You didn’t speak to him for two days after that, it was a hard thing to do, as a day hadn’t went by without talking to each other since fourth year. So seeing him walk straight past you without a glance, and watching him lean into Pansy’s advances while staring you in the eye was getting beyond infuriating.

You stormed into his room, it was Monday, the day where almost everyone in the Slytherin house had class all day. except you and Draco had free’s during third and fourth period. So when he saw you walk in with an angry look on your face, he wasn’t surprised, you had taken this time to hang out many times before. “You have no right being mad at me Draco!” You seethed, snatching his book from his hands. “We both agreed that we would keep this a secret, so if you’re going to whine like a baby, then maybe we should just end it. So there’s no secret to tell.” That spiked his interest, his attention finally was on you and you let yourself faulter just the littlest bit, keeping your arms folded and your glare firm.

“I don’t want that…” He said with a soft voice, something you had heard very little from him over the course of the year. “I don’t want to tell anyone anyway…” That made you falter, your arms fell and you sat next to him, tilting your head trying to get a look at his face. When he didn’t make it easy for you, you lifted your left hand to tilt his head up and your eyes met.

“Are you sure-“ You were cut off with a nod. “Then what’s wrong love?” He took a deep sigh, and let his guard down just a little bit more, you couldn’t help smiling at that, it was something you had been working on for the past year of your relationship.

“I just wanted to feel like this…” He pointed between himself and you. “this was real, and that it wasn’t just a silly thing.” You let out a giggle at his words, never had hearing him speak in such away. “Its not funny…” You cut him off with a kiss, and you felt him relax into it.

“I love you, Malfoy.” His eyes widened at your confession, and by doing that it made you more nervous, you hadn’t said those three words to each other before, and you knew he wasn’t going to say it first, and the timing just felt like the right time. Well it did. “I-“

“I love you too Angel,” He smiled and leant in for another kiss. That was the first time you fought, you’re first I love you, and first night you spent together. Or afternoon.

“What if Crabe or Goyle walk in?” He didn’t answer just lifted his wand and locked the door. Making you both continue in a flood of awkward giggles.

You didn’t tell anyone about your relationship, 6th year rolled around and Draco was acting different, he was less loving, and more angry. It confused you, but you still remained together whenever you could. After your first fight in 5th year, you didn’t again, only little disputes when he insulted people, or you made fun of his attitude.

The year was a stressful one, with Voldemort looming over everyone. You were a nervous wreck, then you found out about Dumbledore’s death and Snape had become the headmaster. You were frightened. You looked for Draco in comfort and he gave it too you, yet when you found out he was a death eater, it broke your heart. You had noticed that he had been acting more hostile, harry had mentioned it over the course of the year. Yet you never believed it until you saw him leaving for the room of requirement. After he had been avoiding you for days, and cutting your conversations short. You knew something was up right away and when he forgot to cover his death eater tattoo.

“I cant believe you…” You were backing away, he rolled down his sleeve. Trying to keep you from leaving. “Don’t. You say I’m a traitor but you! You’re much _much _worse…”

“Angel.”

“No! Don’t touch me.”

The blonde boy watched as his only constant left and he couldn’t help but let a tear fall. You stormed out, letting the golden trio know that you were ready to fight for Hogwarts, you wanted to take down Voldemort. In hopes of getting your Draco back.

The war killed many, you watched as many of your classmates fell. You however kept your head high. Then Voldemort arrived. Harry went to fight. To stop him once and for all. Yet when Voldemort’s Army arrived, with Hagrid carrying the boy who lived. Limp in his arm.

“Harry potter is dead!” He belted, Bellatrix was laughing and Ginny screamed.

You swore you heard everyone’s heart crumble at his words, you glanced around the crowd, and your eyes landed on your boyfriend. He looked just as heartbroken as everyone watching. He looked scared. Nervous and all you wanted to do was run and hold him until all the bad left his life.

We had lost.

“Come forward and join us, or die.” Voldemort finished, no one even moved a muscle, and you stared Draco down, he was looking around at his fellow students, he was looking at you. Then Draco’s father began to catch his attention.

“Draco.” He begged. Yet, his son was hesitant, just waiting for someone to stop him, to convince him to stay. So you did.

Reaching out your hand. Everyone’s eyes fell to you. “Draco come here.” You smiled softly, his nerves seemed to ease, only to spike when Voldemort spoke. “Draco my boy! Come here.” The tone was condescending, and you watched as Draco almost walked to him.

“Baby, please. Don’t do this.” You kept your hand raised. His eyes filtered between the both of you. Before he took a step. Everyone was watching it unfold, wondering how they missed the relationship, but you payed no attention to anyone else, keeping your eyes trained on the boy you had grown to love. Before you knew it, his ring clad hand was placed in yours, the same hand you took the night of the ball however his cologne wasn’t as strong this time around.

Without missing a beat, you wrapped your arms around him, uttering how much you loved him, apologizing as he clung to your clothes. Everything moved in slow motion. You looked over his shoulder to see a very angry Dark lord, he raised his arms. Aiming for Draco’s back with his next spell.

“Avadakadabra!” and as quickly as he said it, you had turned his body, blocking it with your own. Screams filled your ears. Your fellow classmates watching as your body fell to the floor being cradled by the Slytherin prince himself.

You were gone before he could tell you how much he loved you. He didn’t know how he would carry on without you, but one thing he knew is he was going to kill Voldemort, or die trying.

The war had ended, Hogwarts had won, yes it was destroyed, and many lives were lost. They still won. Draco had stolen the wand of Voldemort, helping Harry in his ambush, before keeping the dark lords attention for as long as he could.

It was time to clean the castle up, and Draco walked around, eyeing the once magical pictures. Hermione had helped him move your body. Offering him a kind but sad smile in the meantime. Now he was cleaning up the mess as best he could to distract him from his heartbreak.

He lifted an old mirror, making him let out a small gasp. It was the mirror of Erised. The thing that shows your most wanted desire. He finally let his tears fall, not bothering to hide them anymore. With a deep sigh he smiled.

“Hello Angel.”

#harry potter #draco malfoy #reader #imagine #please leave feed back

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lokisasylum · 4 years

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Get To Know Me (’cause we’re bored on Quarantine)

How long have you been an ARMY? How did you get into the fandom?

2013 was the year i really transitioned from Rock & Jrock/Visual Kei to Kpop, which worked perfectly as I was able to catch the boys when they were debuting. Started out as an occasional listener, and I think by late 2013-early 2014 I was in this Bangtan Sonyeondan Shit For Life.

Who is your bias and bias wrecker?

Bias is Jimin, wrecker is Yoongi.

Which member do you think is most similar to you?

I am both Jimin and Yoongi at times.... some days I’m Jin LOL.

What are your favorite ships?

I absolutely adore the relationship between Vmin, Jikook, Vminkook, & Yoonmin.

Do you like any other kpop artists?

I’m an occasional listener to the bands DAY6 and The Rose.

What non-kpop artists do you like?

Hmm… for many years I was a loyal fans to Disturbed, Nonpoint, Ill Niño, The GazettE, Evanescence, Staind, The Birthday Massacre, ect.. but nowadays many of those bands are either not that active, some disbanded and such. So really it depends lately, although I do listen to songs and artists that were recommended by members of BTS (Alex Lustig, Troye Sivan, Lauv, ect) and I’m very interested in these composers: Peter Gundry, Adrien Von Ziegler, Nox Arcana and many more.

Do you have a current favorite song?

According to Spotify (LOL), I’ve been listening to Daechwita (Agust D), Filter (Jimin), WHO (Lauv feat. Jikook), FRZZN (OZZIE feat. Teflon Sega) and god.drugs.you (Luna Shadows) quite often.

When were you born?

March 28, 1986 (Chaotic Neutral Aries)

Where are you from?

Puerto Rico

Do you play any instruments?

No, but I wish I could play the piano so I can play Suga’s “First Love”.

Do you speak any other languages?

Spanish (mother tongue), English, Japanese (self-taught so very basic conversation), and Latin (can read it).

Do you like kdrama?

No, not really into series.

Do you like anime/manga?

YES! Currently into Seraph Of The End, Given, GANGSTA, Kamisama no Uroko.

Do you play video games?

I’m a loyal ZELDA fan.

Do you read books?

Back in college I used to read A LOT since I was majoring in Arts with a specialty in History for the bachelor’s. Then did a masters in Education with a specialty in Museum/Archive management and History of Arts. So I had to real constantly, the same goes for the 5 years I worked in a museum. But presently I’m more chill about it and only read once in awhile for enjoyment and it the story is good.

Do you like movies?

No… not really. I don’t even like going to the movies because I find it completely pointless to leave my house only to spend 2 hours sitting in a dark room watching a movie that will be available and repeated over and over on cable a month later >_>

Favorite series/TV show?

I think the last ones I watched were The Order & Luna Nera (I hope they finish them..)

Favorite foods?

Pastas. I love most of them and will try to recreate them at home.

Favorite snacks?

If it has coffee in it I will SELL YOU MY SOUL.

Favorite sweets?

If it has coffee or mint in it I will SELL YOU MY SOUL.

Any foods you dislike?

I’m not really a picky eater so much as I may be either allergic to certain things (shrimps and onions) or CAN’T eat it (too much condiments or spicy foods).

How would you describe your personality?

I’m an Introvert and the embodiment of a Chaotic Neutral in addition to being a perfectionist and procrastinator. I will only smile at puppies, BTS and my mutant cacti children. (It’s a lot to take in, it’s okay, take your time.)

Are you working or in college?

Currently looking for another job in the middle of a pandemic, hurricane season and earthquakes.

What is/was your favorite school subject?

Fun Fact: I HATED ALL SCHOOL SUBJECTS X”D

What were you like in grade school?

I used to be very quiet and kept to myself (years of bullying and harassment does that to you).

Are/Were you any different in college?

I remember still being quiet, but was more sociable and open with my classmates. But as soon as it was mentioned that we had oral presentations I was an nervous wreck.

Do you have any other interests?

I’m a freelance artist (both Digital & Traditional), I also like Photography, doing research on topics of my interest and I also make jewelry.

Pet peeves?

I HATE when its my turn to speak in a conv and the other person interrupts me in mid-sentence to talk about something completely off-topic. And people who clap their hands when speaking.

Sexuality and orientation?

Straight (dunno why this is relevant).

Are you in a relationship?

No and THANK GOD FOR THAT.

I TAG: @utopiajeon @guincoleridge

#tag #tag meme #humor #fun #bts

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makeste · 5 years

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BnHA Chapter 227: Basically Just Me Saying “Holy Shit” a Bunch

Previously on BnHA: We went on a semi-enlightening romp into Toga’s past. Basically she was an adorable child who just so happened to have a taste for blood. And whoever’s job is was to explain to her, “hey Toga, I know you like blood, but other people like being alive, so, you know. Let’s explore some other options for you,” they basically dropped the ball there. So after she murdered her hapless Deku-looking classmate in middle school, she went on the run, and we basically know the rest. Back in the present, Toga had just been blown up from the inside out as you may recall, so she spent most of the chapter kind of out of it. At one point Kizuki even started talking about her like she was already dead, reassuring her that she’d become a martyr for the Army’s cause (which, no thanks). But then Toga managed to stumble to her feet and transform into Ochako as she tried to flee. It was revealed that while transformed, she can use the quirk of whoever she’s turned into, and she proceeded to demonstrate this by floating Kizuki (and half her redshirt goons) a hundred feet into the air before dropping her back down to the pavement. Yeah. So I’m pretty sure she’s dead now. Ah well.

Today on BnHA: Toga passes out in a shed after a job well done. We learn that the MLA is recording all of the fighting, most likely for propaganda purposes because as we have previously established they’re a bunch of dicks. Hanabata confirms that Kizuki is dead and gets the Army all fired up. They charge at Tomura, who is really fucking sleep-deprived you guys, and as he stands there blinking at them he has another flashback. Turns out the little girl from the previous flashback was his sister, and back when they were cute lil munchkins and she was still alive (sob), she showed him a picture of Nana and told him that their grandma was a hero. Tomura doesn’t remember this clearly, but he remembers the accompanying emotions, which is enough to get me hyped out of my mind fyi. Back in the present, Tomura disintegrates I’m-gonna-go-with-about-200 Army henchpeople basically instantaneously without even touching some of them, which, oh shit. And then Dabi is all “oh cool I want to do some mass murder too” but before he can let loose, some dude with fucking ice powers shows up to challenge him. I guess this means we’re never going to get Touya VS Shouto, or if we do it’s going to be very repetitive. But it’s not like I’m complaining either way. Here’s hoping the villain flashback trend continues next week because omfg.

(All comments are my unspoiled reactions from my first readthrough of this chapter like an hour ago lol. I did a quick edit for grammar and clarity, but aside from that this is as close to a live liveblog as I’m going to get. It took two-thirds of a year, but these recaps are finally caught up.)

this is so exciting guys. I mean, for me the reading process is basically the same, but the posting process is going to be a new one since I’ll be trying to get this up the same day once I’ve read it! so you can expect many exciting errors and brain farts! prepare for the full brunt of my unpolished rough draft thoughts!

so anyway, here’s Toga

lol so much to analyze here. real quick:

“sleepy.” if that isn’t the most relatable chapter title in the history of time, though

loving the “my villain academia” logo in the background! as far as I’m concerned that’s the official title of this arc

“the conclusion of the battles” y’all I read this and I was like “what?! already!?!” but then I realized they’re talking about volume 23, which features the conclusion of the joint training battle arc. so who knows how many more villain battlin’ chapters we’ve still got ahead. I have a feeling we’re already winding down, though

note how all of the stuffed animals are stabbed. ah this girl

it’s 2214, who the fuck still uses polaroid cameras. that would be like someone in our time using a [googles inventions from 200 years ago] modern suspension bridge. ...wait

anyway you guys maybe I should start reading the actual chapter already if I want any hope of actually getting this posted before fucking midnight though

oh hey, so Toga is dying in a shed you guys. fun

I’m not really thrilled about this! to be honest! I mean for fuck’s sake she’s only 17. she was blown up from the inside out. and although the consequences initially seemed to have possibly been handwaved, it appears that no one can escape BnHA’s realistic injury clause for long! so. yeah

I get why she hid, because it’s not like the others are just gonna drop everything to come help her (although Twice, though...), and there are enemies everywhere so this is probably safer. but it also means that if she passes out here there’s a good chance she’s not going to wake up again! and that is bad! that is very much not good

what she really needs to do is call Ujiko! hitch a ride out of there while you still can! he is a doctor, right? even if it is the questionable mad scientist type! worst case, you end up as a Noumu. actually, wait a sec, maybe we should think this through

and yet the fact that she’s still laughing, though. just. goddammit. I love her so much. I swear to god Toga if you fucking die...!!

so now she’s curling up in the fetal position and thinking “once again I’ve gotten closer to you”

yeah, Deku really does do this every other week. or he did for a little while at least sob

and now we are cutting to ReDestro who for some reason is monologuing about Toga!

oh right, because he had the cameras and shit set up to livestream that shit

okay but is it just me or is he not looking at any cameras. he’s just enjoying the view from his little observation tower same as before. does his quirk allow him to see everywhere at once or what

is it bad that I barely even paid attention to the actual content of his ramblings lol. it’s just the same old same old. blah blah society rejects anyone who’s different, it’s so unfair, blah blah

it’s not a bad point, mind you; it’s just that RD and his army are completely full of shit and acting like they’re so much better even though they’re just a bunch of mur-diddly-urderers. it’s like how PETA acts like they’re champions of animal rights when really they mostly just kill shelter animals, insult Steve Irwin, and claim that milk causes autism. but I digress sob

oh shit I forgot about this dude

here I was thinking there was only the one other miniboss to go before the big bad. silly me. how could I have forgotten that two page spread and our friend here with the Gorillaz mouth and the Beatles haircut

wow are you serious?

Giran sitting there with one skeptical eyebrow raised thinking about how these guys threatened to kill him in order to lure his friends out so that they could, you guessed it, kill them!

and also, way to completely disregard the dozens of other minions who already bit the dust before Kizuki. like, your entire town is basically doomed, guy. but sure let’s cry for the one dead villain who actually had a name though

holy shit you guys

are you telling me that’s why you were recording the whole thing? is that why you invited the League here in the first place?? for the fucking publicity? kill the bad guys and earn the public’s good will? did I miss that part of the planning sesh, or was this objective already painfully obvious and I somehow either missed it or forgot all about it?

either way it’s amazing how these guys become bigger assholes with each progressive chapter

oh now he’s explaining it all on the next page lol. so I guess I didn’t miss the memo, good

okay but first he’s getting real physical with my boy Giran here though

okay first of all, all he did was say “footage...?” like wth was so fucking impolite about that. and second, why do I get the feeling that there’s probably a fair percentage of people who read this chapter and got to this panel and now suddenly ship it sob

I mean, he just got so up close and personal though. all up in his face. this guy has such a weird energy and it’s really creeping me out now ngl

anyway so here we go with the explanations

holy shit you guyssssssssss

when did Giran get so fucking hot?? and is he single?! asking for a friend???!

anyway so now RD is wiping away his crocodile tears and says Giran is lacking in imagination

oh hey

what an interesting segue back to Tomura!

wow, Spinner’s asking how much longer until Big G wakes up, and Compress says one hour and twenty minutes. so that means they’ve already been at it for like an hour and fifteen minutes! minus however much time it took to warp over and then follow Back-Stab n’ Go out to the center of town for the ambush. even if that took a whole half hour they’ve still been fighting for a long time! but I guess they’re more than used to that by this point, thank you so much Ujiko and your six weeks of brutal endurance training

Spinner’s all “no matter how many we defeat, they just keep on coming!” and I know, dude, it’s almost like there’s over one hundred thousand of them or something dfskdj

although to be fair, probably not every last one of them is actually there. can you imagine. it might take a whole nother hour to beat them all

now Hanabata is driving in on the back of an election van. because apparently he just fucked right off in the middle of his fight with the League, and then came back. with a van

so he’s all “EVERYONE I HAVE SOME DEEPLY SADDENING NEWS” and oh my gosh what is it

yeah dude we already been knew. RIP and all that

so the crowd is all distressed and asking what the Supreme Leader said

really?? that’s what they call him?? yeah you guys aren’t evil at all

and Hana quotes, “‘do not let her sacrifice be in vain’“

sorry bruh. but. it’s gonna be in vain. hate to break it to you

right??

GASP

TWICE STOP BEING AWED AT HANABATA’S INFLUENTIAL AURA AND START PAYING ATTENTION TO THE DUDE WHO’S SNEAKING UP BEHIND YOU AND TRYING TO SNATCH YOUR MASK OFF

anyway so in the meantime this is happening

maybe there are 100k of them. seems like there’s a lot. I do like that from this angle it appears that Tomura and the others have holed up in a relatively narrow alley, thus creating a choke point and limiting the number of enemies who can attack them all at once. although this panel does make it look like there’s just a big ol’ wave of bad guys surfing their way towards them though, so it remains to be seen how effective this strategy will actually be lol

eh?

yeah no shit boy you’ve been fighting Daruk from BotW for the last month and a half

anyway so apparently he’s feeling ~weird~ though

I shit you not guys, my sister was hospitalized a couple months back (she’s fine now) because she started hallucinating after a three-day bout of insomnia. shit is no joke. don’t be like Tomura. go to bed and don’t stay up all night fighting villains

-- OH SHIT!?!

ASDFALSDFHLKSDHLFKJHAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

IT’S A LITTLE GIRL!! AND SHE’ S OPENING A SECRET DRAWER!!

SHE’S ALL “IT’S OUR LITTLE SECRET!” OH MY GOD

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

SWEET JESUS MARY JOSEPH!? HORIKOSHI DO YOU FUCKING READ THE THEORY POSTS ON TUMBLR JUST SO YOU CAN IMMEDIATELY SHIT ON THEM TWO DAYS AFTER?? HOW THE FUCK

AND IS NANA’S SON WEARING DEKU SHOES?? OH MY GOD PLEASE

AND THIS MEANS THE LITTLE GIRL IS ACTUALLY TENKO’S SISTER SOBBBBBBBBB NOOOOOOOOOOOOO

BUT ON THE PLUS SIDE THIS MAKES TOMURA MUCH MORE LIKELY TO GO APESHIT ON AFO’S ASS IF HE COMES TO REALIZE THAT AFO INDIRECTLY MURDERED HIS SISTER OH SHIT

BUT SHIT YOU GUYS, SHE’S SO CUTE AND SHE’S FUCKING DEAD NOW SOB THAT’S SO FUCKING HORRIBLE I MEAN IT I’M REALLY UPSET THOUGH

BUT LET’S CONTINUE WITH THE FLASHBACK TO SEE IF HORIKOSHI WANTS TO TOY WITH MY EMOTIONS ANYMORE!!

NANA DIDN’T DO A GOOD ENOUGH JOB ERASING ALL TRACES OF HER CONNECTION TO HER CHILD AND IT EVENTUALLY RESULTED IN HIS DEATH OH SHIT. I’M SERIOUSLY SO UPSET ABOUT THIS??

NOTE HOW BABY TENKO’S FACE IS PURPOSELY BLACKED OUT EVEN THOUGH (A) HIS SISTER’S IS NOT, AND (B) WE SHOULD, IN THEORY, ALREADY KNOW WHAT HE LOOKS LIKE! IT’S BECAUSE HE DOESN’T HAVE THE SCARS OR THE WHITE HAIR YET CUZ AFO HASN’T WIPED HIS MEMORIES. [nods sagely as though I have any sort of proof of this whatsoever and it’s not all just wild speculation and conjecture]

HANAAAAAAAA oh shit I better come up with another nickname for Hanabata then. looks like it’s Back To The Full Name for you mister

!!?!?!?

okay you guys I think this is intentional misdirection. we’re meant to believe that Tenko’s dad was perhaps abusive and that his behavior toward his son ultimately triggered the awakening of his quirk and led to all of the subsequent Horrible Things happening

but I think what it actually is is that Tenko’s dad probably resents Nana for giving him up. and maybe Tenko wanted to know more about her and maybe he got in trouble for it? because now Hana is showing him the picture, and then talking about this mysterious conversation with their dad and saying she’s on Tenko’s side. so that’s my bet

anyway! but this means Tomura might not need as much convincing as I previously speculated! I figured he probably wouldn’t know much, if anything, about his grandma even if he did somehow get his memories back, because he was only four when all that shit went down, and Nana had parted ways with Tomura’s dad years ago. but if he actually did know a bit about her and even possibly felt a connection with her, as this flashback suggests, that could go a long way towards fueling his eventual breakaway from AFO’s side once All Might is able to explain the truth

ahhhhh you guys this is exciting I’m excited. though also still very sad though because wtf seriously

so Tomura’s tiredly thinking that the least his stupid memories could do is show him the whole picture instead of these fragments. “it’s like a broken tape recording or something”

HOLY SHIT

...I have no words. holy shit

anyone else getting flashbacks to the Highway to Hell though? what is it with Tomura and periodically pulling off the most badass stunts in the whole fucking manga. all because he didn’t get his nap dsflkjlk

ReDestro look at this loss of life. are you crying again. no, I can’t imagine that you are. you ass

you guys are probably getting tired of me just going “holy shit” over and over, but

hooooooooooooly shit

guys, if Tomura can dust people without even touching them he might as well just change his name to fucking Thanos and we’d better start praying this kid gets redeemed and soon

so now there’s a panel of Tomura being all drooly, and honestly he looks like he’s about to pass out. not sure if this is intended to be a glam shot or what lol

ohhhhSHIT

YESSSSSSSSSSS DABI. DRACARYS

!LKJDSLFKJLSDKJF!!

OH SHIT YOU GUYS, IT LOOKS LIKE WE’RE ABOUT TO GET ALL A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE UP IN THIS BITCH

who is this weird little black mage. I’ll tell you one thing, he’s the only guy I’ve seen so far who’s actually dressed appropriately for fucking December weather, though, so good on him

will he defeat our boy Touya (spoilers, he won’t)? will Touya have some flashbacks of his own (TOUYA PLEASE), since that seems to be what all the cool kids are doing these days? will I lose my fucking shit all over again next week? stay tuned! but yes I absolutely will, oh jesus this is awesome

#bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha 227 #toga himiko #giran #shigaraki tomura #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #makeste reads bnha #are there any theories about tenko's sister possibly still being alive?#please you guys I need there to be theories where she lived #justice for the shimura sibs #brb going to pore through the entire manga looking for clues about who she might be if so #she's probably a couple years older than him #but we don't know her quirk #she could be anyone dammit #shimura hana please show yourself please I need this

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prcphcts · 5 years

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ELLE FANNING / CIS FEMALE. — henrietta prophet is really making a name for themselves as a tier 6 shepherd. i think that she is studying economics + communications in their sophomore year at lockwood, living in omega mu. originally from darlington, south carolina, henri is known to be ritzy & magnetic, but can also be intractable & guileful. — james / 20 / est / she/they.

aaaaaand that’s 5/5 intros done !!! woo !! realizing tht henri’s might be my longest as well :/ sry abt that ... all of that just 2 say she’s chaotic evil n a liar ... god ... anyways !!

TW ANIMAL CRUELTY, VOMIT MENTION, BULLYING, VIOLENCE, HIT & RUN, MURDER, DEATH, BODY IMAGE.

a e s t h e t i c s

the struggling flicker of a diamond-encrusted lighter, puppy dog pouts and crocodile tears, a mother’s pearls and her earrings to match, tarnished tennis bracelets soaked in vinegar and baking soda, baby pink stiletto nails, baby pink stiletto heels, furs and leathers and snakeskins, body glitter, reapplying lip gloss three times within ten minutes, biographies of famous war generals, twelve rings and ten fingers, persistent nosebleeds, the twirl of a tennis skirt, swan imagery, marble floors and chandeliers, fuzzy sleeping masks, long sheer robes, each lock of blonde hair methodically curled, practicing expressions in the mirror, spinning many webs.

general info !!

full name: henrietta eloise prophet

nickname(s): henri, etta, hen.

b.o.d. - august 13th, 20 yrs old.

label(s): the baby doll, the hellion, the icarian, the minx, the prevaricator, etc.

height: 5′9″ n she’ll stomp you out with her hooves

hometown: darlington, south carolina

sexuality: mostly straight :// tragic. but she’s also chaotic evil so :/

stats

biography !!

born in a city entirely too small for her, in a hospital in which she never cried in, and brought home to a four white columns exterior and a perfectly maintained lawn to two, normal, average, relatively well off but nowhere near millionaire status adults.

her father, william, was a simple man who has spent years climbing the ladder as a car parts salesman, only to stay stuck in the same position - same roll, same paycheck - for the past however many years. her mother, audrey, was an accountant at the same bank she visited as a child with her own mother, tiny fists balled up and tugging at the hem of her dress as she made withdraws.

there are no more prophet children, at least between william and audrey - henrietta’s an only child and a spoiled one at that. her parents showered her in gifts and affections - a desperate attempt to subdue her toddler terror years, a plan that worked most occasions.

she’d always been particularly bossy, particularly bratty - in her pink ribbon’d dresses and too puffy skirts, hands on hips and an awfully demanding voice to anyone that dared displease her - whether they were classmates, friends, family, teachers - waiters at restaurants, mommy and daddy’s coworkers. it had once been considered cute, in a way. nothing too concerning.

then she started ripping the wings off of butterflies, sticking them beside her eyes and prancing about - announcing herself the butterfly conqueror. not the butterfly queen, or princess - conqueror. vanquisher. defeater. victor. winner. champion.

she’d play by herself, often - partially in fault to the butterfly accident, which happened at another child’s birthday party - which had her dismissed early from the event, which had henrietta snatching back her carefully wrapped present (and a few, smaller bags - shoved right inside her barbie purse) and stomping out of the backyard.

it was easier to command an army of stuffed animals and barbie dolls than other people, but it hadn’t ever felt the same. playing pretend was never as good as actually doing. she minded being alone. hated it, despised it. so she’d learn to draw people in - small promises of homemade snacks and wearing her favorite tiara instead of herself - little white lies intended to draw people near and dear to her.

an awfully demanding, awfully conniving child whose personality only worsened as she got older. clawing at kids who wanted to be ‘queen’ at play time in kindergarten turned into getting sick, so very unfortunately, onto the dress of another girl for her third grade talent show who dared pick the same song as henrietta.

in middle school she became part of her school’s ‘peer mediator’ program - in which students deal with other student’s conflicts - a terrible, horrible idea. a terrible, horrible idea that henrietta had loved, fed off of. peers came to her, and days later - rumors were spread about the very people seeking comfort.

nothing has ever been off-limits to henrietta. if she wants it, she gets it.

history class entranced her - from the moment she had begun to learn about wars, she’d been obsessed. on her own, she’d research them - the strategies war generals had used, and which ones failed - which ones succeeded. she took the strategies to heart.

because henrietta had never felt like she’d been enough - not in a way that she loathed herself, no - henrietta loved herself. still does. but because her life had never felt enough - her parents were never enough, with all their affection - she always wanted more. more clothes, more toys, more friends, more control. more more more more more.

she always wanted to lead the narrative, to shape her own path - to shape other’s paths, always imagined things different - how she’d change things, if she could, whether they were classroom rules or real life situations. insatiable.

moved to rochester, new york the summer before her freshmen year at high school due to her father switching territories in a desperate attempt to up his paycheck. with her stained reputation ( known for biting classmates, throwing major tantrums, starting rumors, once gave the first clarinet chair bad sushi so she’d be sick during a winter concert in the 7th grade - leaving henri no choice but to take her place as best clarinet player, and other unsettling behaviors ) - henrietta thought it was an excellent decision.

spent the majority of that summer practicing how to speak without her southern drawl - it was cute, she’d admit, but far too predictable. never wanted to be known as a southern belle - just a gal with impeccable taste.

frequented new york city often within that time span, often with her dad’s credit card, and often buying well-made fakes so that she could build upon her identity as someone rich. someone important. someone influential. they couldn’t afford the real deal - so she made do, maxing their card along the way.

got introduced to the internet at a relatively young age, but she never utilized it in a way that benefited herself until she reached high school and realized she wanted to be bigger than big. better than all the girls older than her, a force to be reckon’d with.

got involved on kik in a bout of boredom and spoke to strangers often, mostly ridiculing them as she saw fit. made friends with a few - but enough of them to introduce her into a culture of scamming the creeps she’d run into on the app. how to promise them photos of herself and meet-ups, if only they sent a little bit of cash to aid her.

the money was good - but not consistent, and she’d only been so young - there was more to learn. she needed someone to teach her. and then she met tatiana samuels.

henri doted on tatiana, when they met. a few grades apart - tatiana was in her own world, a world that henri wanted in on - desperately.

she told tatiana many things - told everybody who would listen, many things. how her parents had died a few months previous ( & left her a hefty inheritance ) and she had moved in with her uncle, who she hated, and how she wanted to believe that there was still something good in the world after fate had been so cruel to her family.

tatiana took her under her wing. showed her the ropes, how to lure boys in and how to ignore the taste of certain liquors, and how to leave some stores wearing more layers than you had on going in.

henri still wanted more - and she had formed her own group of friends, twisted them around her finger so they’d never question her. still itched for something grand. something tatiana couldn’t give her. she could shoplift as much as she’d like, steal from her friends and seduce creeps online - but she was bored, and restless, and desperately trying to plan her next steps.

they stopped talking as frequently once tatiana had graduated - and then, they stopped speaking all together. this never bothered henri.

then during henri’s sophomore year came the whispers of something new. something that sparked her interest - something that she hadn’t been meant to overhear, but she had, and wanted in on.

watershed.

she wasn’t a coder, had no part in programming the app - she hadn’t even been one of the originals behind the app, just a girl in the right place at the right time - with the right ideas and the ability to be underestimated - an ability that was more often than not useful. it became another obsession of hers - much like wars, it captivated her interest.

she’s been involved with the app since 2016 - mostly out of self-interest, as she’s a girl with a lot of secrets, and a lot to lose.

the rest of high school was a blur - she’d gotten a lead in the musical after an unfortunate accident involving the lead, leaving her in a neck brace and henri, her dutiful understudy, to take on the role herself. a nasty rumor had spread about the head cheerleader during henri’s senior year - causing the girl to transfer and henri to take her place, as what was only right. both merely just coincidences that had worked in her favor.

( one fateful spring break, her senior year - henri and her gal pals had gone on a trip to california to shop, party, and celebrity hunt. all expenses paid via credit card. it was cut short after a particular accident which involved attempting to break into a celebrity’s home and fleeing the scene - henri taking the wheel and maybe, just maybe, committing an awful hit and run - and them all leaving to new york the next day. as far as those girls know - they were blackmailed into silence by someone on the app. and maybe henri has something to do with that, as well. )

lockwood was the obvious choice for her. tatiana died her freshmen year - and it was tragic, truthfully - and she shed a tear at her funeral, after all of it had been done, but no more than one, and no more after that.

personality !!

she’s an economics / communications major though she takes a lot of business / political / history related classes as well on the side. she likes to be well-rounded and educated.

still pretty obsessed w/ wars … has two twin balinese cats named napoleon & hannibal and they roam around omega mu.

a cheerleader, on the student government council, in debate, a newspaper writer, and in several sports (tennis, for one). she likes to be very involved - and likes to be very in control of what she’s involved in. needless to say she’s got a major role in each extracurricular of hers.

puts on a very kind, very friendly - helpful, maybe, if not a little eager to please personality. polite and the tiniest bit stern when it comes to school. she’ll walk you to your classes if you’re new, and leaves with fifty new facts about you while you know nearly nothing about her.

just … very clearly magnetic & charismatic & able to captivate and hold someone’s attention for a long while. rly charming :/ i guess :/ an interesting person to talk to b/c she always has a story to tell.

but she has motives for everything she does and it’s all an act - she’s very ambitious, very manipulative, and very well known for being just the opposite of that.

if anything - she tries to come off a little ditzy at times - a little giggly, while still retaining some semblance of elegance and respect. tries to radiate warmth without actually having to be so.

she’s often distant - very emotionally unavailable, none of her relationships have been long term - but there’s a lot of them, and if there is a social event then she will be there, undoubtedly, with a date on her arm.

learned from tatiana herself how to lead others on - she’s very good at making others feel important and like they have a place in her life - when henri often feels the opposite about them.

somehow manages to be seen doing charity work, or helping with fundraisers, and generally being a very involved student - whether it’s written in the college newspaper or photographed - without doing much work at all.

speaking of the college newspaper - she has an anonymous advice column where she gives purposely terrible advice under the guise of being something helpful, and well-meaning. her name is miss antoinette.

likes to be in control, and when it’s taken from her it’s always a shock - puts her on edge, and though she tries very hard to keep things under control, she’s frequently brimming with anger.

kind of person to scream when she’s alone - throws & breaks shit, a full out violent display - a tantrum meant for a toddler, in the body of a twenty year old.

the closer you become to her - or the closer you think you’re becoming - the more unsettling she seems to be. how unrealistic, almost. if you focus, you can start to pinpoint where her real laugh ends and her fake laugh begins.

has had … moments that were not her proudest - that involve her threatening someone with a sparkling pink pocket knife. mostly irritants, and after much provoking - and thankfully not in public.

she’s also incredibly stubborn - it’s near impossible to move her, or shift her opinion. always has to have her way and hates being told no.

looks out for only herself and no one else. if it comes down to it - she’ll gladly leave everybody else in the dust, especially if it means she advances.

very destructive - doesn’t hesitate to use gossip or rumors against others. has blackmailed others via the watershed app before, and will likely do so again. tends to end up using the things people tell her against them. very prone to guilt-tripping and turning tables.

her favorite color is pink & you won’t forget it. essentially evil elle woods. only wears shades of pink, and cream & white. & champagne & rose gold & metallics. will only resort to other colors in moments of absolute desperation - and even then, they’re always pastels.

big fan of fur and diamonds and pearls - everything finer in life. owns mostly designer items & flaunts them while trying to look like she’s not flaunting it.

like … she wears a lot of fur coats, and shawls ?? and dresses & skirts and heels, like she’s always dressed like she’s going to go to some big event sometime soon.

sleeps with an eye mask & a white noise machine. insists on getting 9 hours of sleep and will be incredibly grumpy without those 9 hours. spends a good amount of time on her skincare routine - like how in the marvelous ms. maisel, maisel would wake up before her husband to do her makeup and her hair and then go back to sleep right before he woke up ?? and how she’d measure herself constantly ?? that’s sort of how henrietta functions. cue american psycho morning routine monologue.

speaking of sleep … she has really weird n bizarre n frankly. just. off-putting dreams that feel like glimpses of a different reality but they just so happen to be her favorite part of her day. :/

is just … really obsessed with herself. huge ego - if she catches herself in the reflection of anything, whether it’s a window or a mirror, she’ll spend some time looking at herself for … longer than she should.

still has a nasty habit of scamming men online, though she’s delved into other websites & uses a few of the watershed functions to her benefit. pretty much constantly has money because of it.

very big into parties, though she tries her hardest to not go overboard. prefers to be able to make thought out decisions - though there have been times where she’s gone too far.

as i’m sure you can tell by now - henrietta is a very big liar. a hypocrite, too. will tell people not to do things for their best interest, then goes and does them. still tells people her parents are dead when they’re ?? very much alive ??

frankly just lies about her childhood a lot in general, even though it wasn’t terrible.

does this … thing … where if she catches wind that someone has lived close to her hometown she’ll :/ harass them on the watershed app and basically :/ just spread gossip about them until they’re firmly ostracized & away from her.

hooks up with quite a few guys but she has this … thing where she makes them think they’re special because she’s letting them sleep with her and she’s ‘very selective’ but frankly. she both is, and isn’t.

admittedly the jealous type, but also overall avoids catching feelings because she hates the distraction.

she has … emotions, somewhere, but she’s always been the type to bury them and pretend they don’t exist, even when she simultaneously acts like she does have them ??

just … a mess, overall !!

i’m sure there’s more abt her bt frankly i’m tired JSNDKFG

connections to the victims !!

tatiana samuels / her mentor. they met when henri was a freshmen in high school & tatiana was a senior, and tatiana was the one who showed henri the ropes. some of her best tricks are because of tatiana. they became distant after tatiana’s graduation, however.

george craig iii / close friends during high school, if only because of tatiana. but like her, their friendship also became distant once george had graduated high school and they hadn’t spoken much after that.

hana williams / one-sided hatred, henri hated hana and didn’t believe she was a genuine person due to hana’s outright cheerfulness. hana didn’t know this.

christoph wainwright / fellow shepherd, they knew each other almost exclusively through the app. he did her dirty work for her.

wanted connections !!

alright … friends. particularly friends who don’t suspect her to be anything other than who she portrays herself to be ( a very school-involved, well-rounded, friendly gal ).

but then … a close friend, near and dear to her, who has seen the considerably … worse parts of her, but not all of it. who knows that she’s not just another giggling gal pal - but not the full extent of it.

someone who just. gets on her nerves & annoys her to no end. someone she’s threatened with violence before.

fwbs & one night stands - casual hook-ups.

party buddies.

people she went to high school with & are familiar with her past involving tatiana.

someone from her childhood :/ just one person who knows that henri is not all sugar & spice.

others who are suspicious of henri’s supposedly good nature - whether they’ve witnessed something they shouldn’t have, or they think her vibes are off.

fellow shepherds. shepherds she’s using. any fellow tier 6s out there ??

teammates from tennis, or cheerleading.

or others involved in the same extracurriculars she’s in.

someone she’s manipulating for whatever reason. maybe multiple people.

full blown enemies where she just can’t hold back.

someone who is just as destructive as she is & they wreck havoc together when they’re off campus.

a good amount of her exes ?? nothing long term.

her dealers :/ mostly … weed & pills.

rly anything else !! whatever u want !! do it !!

#wshintro #animal cruelty tw #vomit mention #bullying tw #violence tw #hit and run tw #murder tw #death tw #body image tw

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selenesushiart · 5 years

Text

Mistletoe

Summary: Christmas 1904. The US Legation was holding a Christmas party this year. As a child in America, Eugene celebrated Christmas by going to church in the morning with Joseph. In the army, the officers celebrated with partying, drinking and dancing with the ladies. Eugene was the only Asian there and was usually the odd one out. This year in Joseon, things might different or ending up the same with him ending up as a lonely foreigner and not fitting in. Little did he knew, a certain noblewoman decided to attend the party that day.

A/N: I do not own the TV Show, Mr. Sunshine. It belongs to TVN & Netflix. This work is purely for fun and its Christmas time so why not.

I have a Mamma Mia AU I'm working on. I'm still debating should I post it or not. Please comment below if you want me to.

Thank you to @lukeswerrthing and @softwjs for being a total inspiration and posting your work here. I know I wouldn’t share this if you guys didn’t post yours here too.

“I still don't understand why Mr. Allan wants to hold a Christmas party at the legation,” said Eugene as he adjusted his bow tie for the third time in his office. That evening Eugene wore a gentleman's suit with his top hat and bow tie which he had to custom made here just for this occasion.

Apparently, the US Legation was holding a Christmas party this year. As a child in America, Eugene celebrated Christmas by going to church in the morning with Joseph. Then he offs running errands on the streets earning extra cash. In the army, the officers celebrated with partying, drinking and dancing with the ladies. Eugene was the only Asian there and was usually the odd one out. Kyle, bless his soul, tried to accompany him, but he too would be whisked away to a somewhere else.

This year in Joseon, things might different or ending up the same with him ending up as a lonely foreigner and not fitting in. He wishes to sit this party out. Unfortunately, Eugene as the acting consul and the marine captain, he had no choice but to attend.

“Tension is high right now. Especially the fact that the US army will be here to stay. We need to improve the diplomatic relationship between the people of Joseon and the foreigners here. To show we are friendly,” said Major Kyle “ and what better way to do that than to hold a party!”

Eugene rolled his eyes. “We all know what's the US intention here is for. They don't even celebrate Christmas here. What if they don't like it? ”

Major Kyle kept quiet for a while. He looked out the window. Guests are slowly starting to come into the legation. “Yes, but a little party won't hurt anyone.” Kyle wrapped his arm around Eugene's shoulders and dragging him out his office. “Come along now, Captain Eugene Choi,”

“Yes, sir.”

That evening the legation was decorated with red, green and white ribbons. Lanterns were lighted up and hung from the rooftops. They couldn't find a Christmas tree. So they took the tree at the middle of the legation and decorated it with ribbons and candles. Boxes of presents were placed under it, probably for the children coming in later.

Rows of tables filled with food are placed to one side. Gwan So was setting things up, carrying trays of food from the kitchens and arranging them there, Do Mi following him at his tail.

“Looks good, Gwan So,” said Kyle.

“Thank you, sir,” he replied. Then Gwan So looked nervously at the tables. The tables were piled with the usual food you come to expect at Christmas: mashed potatoes, pies, cakes, roast vegetables…

“It just that I couldn't find a turkey like Mr. Allan wanted. So I asked the chef to find the biggest chicken they have in the market,” said Gwan So. He pointed at the average-sized roast chicken, “I just hope he couldn't tell,”

Major Kyle laughed, Eugene suppressed a smile. As they walked to the entrance, Eugene turns to Gwan So. He asked in Korean “So who has Mr. Allan invented tonight?”

“Most of the westerners in Han Seong, some noble families, and officers here in Joseon,” he replied. “ Also Ms. Stella and her students from the English school.”

Eugene stumbles “Excuse me?”

“Here they are now!” Said Gwan So pointed to the entrance.

The English teacher, Ms. Stella bowed the gentlemen.

“Merry Christmas, I'm Stella from the English school here in Han Seong. And these are my students.” Said Ms. Stella, as she gestured to her students behind her.

Major Kyle and Captain Eugene both introduced themselves and gave their wishes. The students each introduced themselves to the men but their names glazed over Eugene's mind. He was distracted and kept eyeing around hoping to see a certain noblewoman.

Finally, he asked, “Are any more of your students coming, Ms. Stella?”

Ms. Stella looked around her students doing a headcount and then turns to her teaching assistant and asked “ It seems like one of them isn't here. Where is she anyway? I thought she's coming today, ”

The teaching assistant answered “She may be on her way here in her palanquin. The traffic tonight is a bit heavy.” Then she turned around and said, “There she is!”

Eugene saw a palanquin carried by four men entered the legation. The men put down the palanquin at the door. The Lady stepped out of the palanquin. Eugene's heart skipped a beat. She wore a beautiful hanbok with a white top and a bright red dress. Silver jewelry was pinned at the side of her hair. She walked towards them with her servants accompanying her. She greeted Ms. Stella and her classmates and turned to the men.

“Major Kyle Moore of the US Marines Corps, ” Kyle introduced himself.

He took out his hand. Ae Shin gave hers in return to shake it. Then he did something she didn't expect. He flipped her hand and brought it to his lips. “I'll say, my lady, you look like an angel fallen from the sky, ”

Confused, she turns to Eugene for translation.

“He said you look like a goddess who came down from the heavens,” He translated to Korean.

“Ah.” Ae Shin exclaimed “ Thank You,”

Eugene cleared his throat, Kyle finally let go of her hand and flashed a brilliant smile. Confused, she turns to Eugene for translation.

“He said you look like a goddess who came down from the heavens,” He translated to Korean.

“Ah.” Ae Shin exclaimed “ Thank You,”

“I see you two have met,” said Kyle.

“Yes, A few times,” said Eugene. He gave Kyle the cold shoulder. He switched to Korean and said to her “I hope you don't mind my friend, he's a flirt.”

She giggled, “No harm done. Tho I much preferred it coming from your lips,”

Eugene's face got even redder. He reminded himself that he needed to be professional tonight as a host. He coughed and then gestured the group inwards. In perfect English, he said “Please enjoy yourselves this evening. We have some food and drinks prepared.”

“Thank you, Captain.” said Ms. Stella “Come along now girls,”

The students began shuffling around following Ms. Stella’s lead. Ae Shin gave a small smile at Eugene's direction. And then she and her entourage followed her teacher and classmates into the dining area.

“I think she has an interest in me,” said Kyle smiling. Next, to him, Eugene slapped his shoulder “ No she doesn't,”

Kyle laughed.

“E for Eugene,” The teaching assistant said in a sing-song voice next to Ae Shin.

They were lining up at the buffet table to get some food. Ae Shin did not recognize any of the food on the table. She can only guess what the food made of. Is that chicken? What is that lumpy stuff with the green peas? In the end, Ae Shin picked up the sweet treats brought here from the bakery.

Ae Shin turns toward her threaten to lift up her plate of food “Stop it.”

Apparently, the teaching assistant never forgot Ae Shin's little slip-up and had been teasing her about it ever since.

“Come on… Is he the guy asked you to do love with him,”

“I don't know what you are talking about, He's a stranger, I know nothing about him,”

“He seems interested in you from the way he was looking at you,”

“Well, I'm not,” Ae Shin lied.

“Right. You're engaged to Master Kim,” she said, “A shame. Captain Choi is good looking and has a high position in the military.”

As the party went on, Eugene stood to one side. He chatted with a few of the guests but never got engaged with the conversation. His focus was on her, the Lady Ae Shin. He stood from afar, occasionally looking for her in the crowds. To him, she was brighter than the evening star and as far as one too. The flame that he dare not step into.

“You know, you should ask her for a dance,” Kyle said next to him.

“Who?” Eugene asked.

“That noblewoman, you're courting. You should ask her for a dance.” Kyle said again.

Music was playing in the background. A romantic melody to dance to. The gentleman started inviting ladies to dance with them. Mostly the westerners were dancing with their wife while the bachelors asked other women to join them too.

Eugene wanted to. God only knew how much he wanted to. But during all those time they spent together, they were never public. They ate separately, spending time together in remote places where no one can see them. They belonged to a different social class, different countries. Them being together was controversial. The fact that she was engaged to someone else publicly did not help.

“I don't know,” Eugene said. “This is Joseon. They aren't public with relationships,”

“It just a dance. Everyone's doing it. It doesn't have to mean anything. Where's your Christmas spirit Eugene?” Kyle said.

Eugene laughed, “Dancing is a spirit of Christmas?”

“You get the idea.” Kyle retorted. “Well if you're not going to do it. I think Officer Robert will.”

Kyle pointed to Officer Robert’s direction with his beer bottle. Knowing Officer Robert, he would want to dance with the most beautiful lady in the party. And that would be the Lady Ae Shin. Since they were off duty, Robert and his comrades were goofing around each other. One pointed at the Lady's direction and clapped Robert’s shoulder to encourage him. Much to Eugene's horror he started to walk towards her direction.

“Hold my beer,” Eugene said and handed it to Kyle. Eugene never paced this fast in his life. When he finally reached them, he saw Officer Robert chatting her up.

“Excuse me, Officer, ” Eugene said to him.

The Officer was surprised to see him.

“Yes, Captain?” he asked.

“Major Kyle wishes to speak with you,” said Eugene.

“But sir I am in a middle of something, sir,” he said.

“Now, Officer,” Eugene commanded. Not daring to offend his Captain, Officer Robert immediately stood up straight. He gave a salute and marched away.

Finally, Eugene could focus on the star of the night. She looked up at him with a face of innocence her eyes were bright. A little pout appeared on her lips.

“Yes? Captain,"

“Will you...will you like to have a dance with me?” Eugene asked.

“A dance?”

“Yes. With me. Do it with me,” Eugene confirmed and reached out his hand.

Beside her, the teaching assistant gasped. Ms. Hamman gripped her mistress’ arm warning her not to. But Ae Shin was lost in his eyes, in his sincerity. The logic part of herself warned her not to, they were in public. What happens if words got out…

But her heart, oh her heart… was making millions of excuses all to spend this beautiful night with him. Not just stealing glances at each other for afar. She wanted to be in his arm, to be whisk away to some faraway place.

Unconsciously she reached out her hand and accepted his.

“My lady!” someone said in the background.

The voice was muffled to her ears like she was underwater. Dark and murky. The only source of light was Eugene's bright smile. Her warmth, her sunshine.

Eugene guided her to the dance floor. They stood to face each other. He was so close she could hear him breathing.

“I don't know how to dance,” Ae Shin exclaimed.

“Don't worry. Just follow my lead and try not to step on my toes,” Eugene said.

He guided one of her arms to wrap around his shoulder and then he placed a hand on her hips. He held her other hand and extended it. And then he moved to one side. She followed.

Just like that, they were dancing. People started to point at them, whispering. Even so, Ae Shin didn't care. Everything seems to fade away when she was with him. The crowds, the noise, the music all disappeared. All she saw was Eugene, his soft eyes, strong jawline and his strong arms holding her oh so gently.

“You're a fast learner” Eugene pointed out.

“Well, I have a good teacher. Do you dance with many girls in America?

“No. Not many are willing to dance with an Asian man. Interracial relationships are illegal there,”

“I'm sorry to hear.” Ae Shin said and slowly back away from him. “ Not much different from our current situation I guess. I'm sorry, maybe we should-”

Eugene gripped her tighter. He pulled her so close their chests met. She could feel his heart beating.

“No. It's okay. Technically we're on American soil. So the laws don't apply here, ” Eugene said.

“But still. What happens if people found out. About you, about us, ”

“They won't. Even so, you're worth risking for.”

She leaned her head into his chest, feeling the steady rhythm of his heartbeat. They moved slowly to the soft music, Ae Shin trusted Eugene to guide her through the dance floor.

She spoke softly “Please don't ever risk yourself me. After that incident with that Japanese soldier, I was so worried. I.I.”

“I'm glad you do. I can't make any promises. But I can promise this. I'll be careful if I do so. I want to have the best time with you while we still can.” Eugene's hand gripped hers tighter.

“You reckless man,” was the only thing she could say to him.

Eugene laughed.

Snow started falling lightly from the sky. The dance was paused Mr. Allan began on his Christmas speech. Eugene wasn't listening much to it. Ae Shin was standing next to him, Eugene wanted nothing to spend time with her privately without the prying eyes of the visitors. He laced his hand with hers, she hitched with surprise. Eugene placed a finger on his lips, signaling her to be quiet. When no one was noticing, they away out from the crowd. They walked together around the legation, avoiding crowded places and just enjoying each other company.

Ae Shin laughed at his jokes and rolled her eyes when he teased her. She never felt so happy and carefree before. Being with Eugene was like that, she able to let down her guard and facade. As a noblewoman from pretentious family, her aunt constantly drilled in her that Ae Shin had an image to uphold.

Hui Seong saw her as a beautiful flower. Dong Mae saw her as his savior who was an ignorant noble. Eugene saw past that. Since that fateful night on the rooftops, Eugene viewed her as the most unique woman in the world.

He looked past the layers Ae Shin hide in. Eugene was curious, he started to poke around, peeling layer by layer. She got curious too. Ae Shin wanted to know more about this strange foreign man. She studied English so that she could learn his name. She let him peel into her heart.

Once she discovered his origin, she realized the hard steps he took to be with her even just for a little while. He made her realized her fight for Joseon wasn't just for herself or to preserve it but to create a safe place for the people she loved to live in. He didn't just peel off her layers, he brought her into the sunlight too.

They walked under a tree. It wasn't decorated like the other trees in the legation with lights and ribbons but at its lowest beach hung a bunch of small plants tied together by a red ribbon. Ae Shin looked up and pointed at it.

“What is that thing hang up there?” she asked.

“Mistletoe,” Eugene answered.

“I know. Why is it hanging there?”

“The soldiers probably did it as a joke. In the west, people who stood under a mistletoe must embrace each other with a kiss,” he explained.

“You westerners have such weird customs,” Ae Shin said. A thought appeared in her mind. She closed her eyes facing him.

Eugene looked dumbfounded, “What are you doing?”

Then he realized it. The mistletoe was hanging on top of them. Ae Shin was tip toeing. Eugene's face grew hot.

Embarrassed, Ae Shin turned around and started to walk away. “Clearly you don't want to,”

“Wait-Wait-” before she could walk any further, Eugene grabbed her and pulled her into his arms. She looked up at him with an annoyed expression.

They were still new in their relationship. There were so many things they hadn't done, wanted to do and didn't dare to do. Eugene didn't want to overstep any boundaries she might have.

He cupped her face with his hand, “You sure about this?”

She nodded and closed her eyes again. Eugene hesitated, his hand held her waist tightly.

He wondered if he should take another step into the flame. He questioned if he would get burn. Eugene looked at her again more closely. The answer came to him. He leaned in and pressed his lips to hers. It was short and as light as a feather. They parted, Eugene gave Ae Shin a dazzling smile. She blushed down to her toes. Not wanting it to end, she gathered up more courage. Ae Shin rose higher on her tips toes and grab his face, pulled Eugene in for another kiss. And then another and another... Eugene pulled her closer to him deepening the kiss, all he could think was fireworks.

The end.

#Mr. Sunshine #Mr Sunshine #tvn mr sunshine #mrsunshine #mr sunshine fic #fanfic #korean drama #eugene choi #Go Ae Shin #Lee Byung hun #kim tae ri

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dailydoseofkorea · 6 years

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Why the Koreans Hate the Japanese

Just then, my mum was telling me about the k-drama Hello Mr.Sunshine and it got a bit heated and she started talking about politics as well. I thought it would be interesting to share this so here it is!

WARNING: this includes my mum and my opinion and our opinions are not the world’s.

Also when I was typing this post the first time my broken and dysfunctional laptop shut down and also on the second time so here I am typing it on my phone

I’m gonna start with something that hits a little close to home. My family friends (my mum’s friend’s daughters) were both born in Korea but grew up in Japan until they moved to Australia during middle school. And the reason why they moved according to my mum’s friend (their mum), is this: “I was afraid they would get bullied. Her fellow female classmates even said that it doesn’t matter if she gets sexually assaulted since she’s Korean.” This made me absolutely furious because no only were the ones saying this girls, nobody deserves to be treated like that because of their nationality.

Dokdo, or as Google calls it, the Liancourt Rocks, are islands in the possession of South Korea (just like how it should be). But in Japanese textbooks, they teach students that it belongs to Japan instead. This is also infuriating because it’s scientifically and historically in the possession of South Korea. Please check out my Dokdo post if you haven’t.

Dokdo and Ulleungdo used to be separate countries from Korea until they were both conquered by the Silla Kingdom. The Silla Kingdom later conquered the other two kingdoms (Baekje and Goguryeo) and created the United Silla Kingdom which is now know as Korea (both north and south). In addition, Dokdo is 87km (54 miles) away from Korea’s Ulleungdo whilst it is 157km (97.5 miles) away from Japan’s Oki Islands. I don’t think I can be any clearer than that.

It’s really hard to explain why Koreans hate the Japanese so much since there’s a lot of history behind it but here is a very short version of that! The full version would include around 900 invasions both big and small, 15~30 wars as well as the colonisation of Korea!

*my mum’s opinion from now on*

“Japan doesn’t want Korea to unite because then we would be more powerful since North Korea has a lot of resources that North Korea can’t use at the moment since they lack the technology. The current Japanese prime minister wants to change the law so that they can have their own army and you can guess what they’re gonna do with that. Heck they treat those who tortured and abused Koreans like gods.”

And this is a fact by the way: The one think North and South Korea can agree on is their hatred towards Japan😂 “We can forgive the South Koreans and the Americans but the one country we cannot forgive for the rest of eternity is Japan” -The North Korean media.

#Korea #korean #learn korean #korean words #korean word of the day #korean culture #dokdo #languageblr #langblr

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drrjsb · 6 years

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Bruce Banner Appreciation Week Day 4, 6, & 7: Science, Anxiety, Hope, Pride, & Past

(It’s a lot to pack in, but it’s longer and maybe worth the wait. I’ve always disliked the story about Bruce building a bomb at his high school, so I fixed it!)

“Before: Spring 1980″

Things have gotten rougher for Bruce at school, so he takes matters into his own hands when he’s bullied by his much older classmates. He finds allies who encourage him, but he also learns adults often have different agendas than his.

Dr. Susan Banner walked briskly across Central High School’s campus, heading toward the Administrative Building. The robins were out, the bright yellow forsythia bushes were a riot of blooms, but she didn’t have time to enjoy those or the varieties of narcissus, hyacinths, and tulips in the flowerbeds. It was early in the day and normally she would be teaching a music theory class to advanced students, but she’d had a call in her office between first and second period. Luckily, a colleague was free to cover for her till noon, so she was headed to the 10th Grade Vice-Principal’s office with all due haste for an active woman who’d just turned 35. She fought her inclination to go into full panic mode and sprint the last hundred yards in her high heels and A-line skirt. When she entered the building, Susan saw two uniformed police officers standing outside the office suite’s door with Bruce and two older boys sitting on a bench between the vigilant adults.

She walked straight up to the nearest uniformed officer. “What’s going on, sir?” She gestured to Bruce. “This is my nephew.”

He looked at the other older officer with a mustache who nodded it was okay to talk to her. “A device, possibly a bomb, was found in the boiler room in the basement, mam. It . . .”

“It wasn’t a real bomb,” Bruce piped up from the bench. Everyone looked at the 10-year-old. The older boys initially seemed puzzled, but they frowned as the revelation sunk in, exchanged a panicked look at each other, and then both turned to Bruce with murder in their eyes.

“What do you mean it’s not a bomb, you little shit?! You said it would work,” blurted the rougher looking of the two, a blonde with a shaggy mullet, artfully ripped jeans, and a Def Leppard t-shirt.

“We were going to get out of final exams, dweeb!” said the larger one who had a feathered-back haircut and preppier clothes. He made a lunge across his friend at Bruce, but the nearest officer clamped a hand down on the kid’s shoulder and roughly pushed him to the far end of the bench. At the same time, the blonde pulled back his right arm, ready to take a swing at Bruce.

“Go ahead, I’m notafraid to take a punch,” Bruce growled, balling his hands into fists. “You thought you could bully me into doing what you wanted. Well, the joke’s on you both, Coulter.”

The mulleted boy started to get to his feet, but the officer Susan had spoken to was already between the juveniles. “Sit down, son! You’re in enough trouble as it is.” The kid sat back down and the officer kicked his high-top-covered feet to move him down to the far end of the bench with his fuming cohort. “One more stupid move, and the cuffs go on,” the older officer said as he rattled the metal restraints on his belt for emphasis.

“Where is Vice-Principal Weaver?” Susan asked. She had stepped up to block Bruce from the older boys as well. The teacher was unnerved by what she’d already witnessed, but she wasn’t about to let it show.

“I’m coming,” called an almost cheery male voice from down the hall. She turned to see her administrative colleague wheeling a cart toward them with what looked like a bundle of gas canisters sprouting wires and boxes with dials attached to a metal framework. Another officer, who was taking off thick bomb gear, walked behind him along with one of the newer Assistant Vice-Principals she didn’t know. “It’s just like I explained when I called you Officer Jennings: it’s a total fake.” The officers seemed to relax a fraction, but the tension in the hall only seemed to shift rather than dissipate.

“Someone had better explain what happened,” Susan finally said, looking at the adults first then Bruce who had an oddly triumphant expression on his face as he continued to stare down the older boys. She would deal with him later. “Dr. Weaver?”

The Vice-Principal was in his wool suit and had obviously been perspiring for a while now. Susan thought Dr. Weaver seemed inexplicably jazzed about the whole situation. He pushed his thin hair back with his right hand and grinned at her, “Susan, that’s one smart boy you have. Let’s go in my office. Marty, please take Mr. Coulter and Mr. Bendis to the detention office and see that their parents are notified.” The younger administrator motioned for the two older boys to follow and the senior police officer gestured for his younger colleague to follow them since an investigation was no doubt pending.

“Just wait, Time Bomb, you’ll regret this,” the larger boy threatened, before the officer jingled a pair of handcuffs as a reminder and moved him along.

Once they were down the hall and had disappeared behind a door, Dr. Weaver addressed the older officer. “Well, Tom, I think we have enough to suspend them from school. Do you have enough to bring charges?”

Officer Jennings stroked his greying moustache, “What kind of video evidence did you say you have?”

The administrator turned to Bruce who opened up his backpack and handed over two VHS tapes then pulled a Dictaphone recorder out of his pants pocket and gave the officer the mini audio cassette out of it. He’d made copies of all of them, but Bruce wasn’t about to volunteer that.

“Bruce!” Susan gasped. It seemed pretty obvious that her sweet, 10-year-old, genius of a nephew had become some kind of junior narc or an undercover informer pretty much beneath her radar.

Dr. Weaver took her arm. “Susan, let’s go sit down. There’s someone I want you to meet in here. Bruce, why don’t you head back to class. Good work, kid.” Dr. Weaver fished a hall pass out of his pocket and handed it to the boy. Her nephew grabbed up his backpack and hurried away without meeting her eyes. Oh, we are going to talk all right. The two remaining officers headed down the hall with the tapes, looking satisfied. “Open the door, will you please, Susan? I don’t want to leave this evidence out in the hall. I’m sure they’re going to want it.” She opened the door, and he wheeled the cart with the “bomb” on it into his outer suite which was an unoccupied waiting area. “Just look at the detail on this, Susan. You should be so proud of Bruce. I can’t believe . . .”

Susan flat-handed her colleague with a slap on the back of his balding head. “What. The. Hell. Harvey!?!?” she said in a low, icy voice. “This is my nephew’s life, not an episode of Kojak orMission Impossible. You just put him in harm’s way. Suspending those two little thugs you’ve caught is not worth the damage you might have done to him.”

“Now, Sue, you have the wrong idea here. Bruce approached me back in December after he heard the two were planning something dangerous. The boys knew about what happened with your brother, and they were trying to use it as leverage over Bruce and then as blackmail. He had a pretty brilliant plan to turn the tables on them, so I helped him and oversaw the operation every step of the way. He wasn’t in any serious danger.”

“You put my nephew in the middle of a conspiracy to entrap those delinquents, Harv!” She was keeping her voice down, but she wanted to shake the older man until his teeth rattled.

“I empowered him to stand up to a couple of bullies who were one move away from blowing up our Science Department. Thank God, they weren’t that smart.”

“You used him like a tool.”

“I let him use that big brain of his to analyze and solve his problems in a creative way.”

“You made him a target at best. At worst, he’s going to think this is a way to solve his socialization issues.” She was so angry, she felt like throttling her colleague. Calm down! The boy is going to need you, the voice in her head reminded her. “Why didn’t you come to me back in December?”

“Leaving you out of it was his only condition,” Harvey explained.

“Harvey, he’s a child. Bruce shouldn’t have been the one dictating conditions. You’re going to be lucky if you and the school don’t get sued.”

“Which is one more reason for keeping you out of it,” he pointed out with a knowing look.

“I’m not some delicate flower to protect,” she sputtered. “If anything, Bruce is the one who needs to be protected.”

“No, he’s not. Bruce is not some fragile basket case. The kid needs challenges and mental stimulation. He is bored to death in a normal classroom. You know deep down that’s true.” She couldn’t disagree. “This operation taught him how to make a plan and carry it out. He developed his social skills and used critical thinking to accomplish our goal.”

She was starting to pace the length of the small waiting room. “You taught him it’s okay to be disingenuous and lie about who he really is.”

Someone inside Harvey’s inner office cleared his throat and the two educators turned to face a tall Army Officer with sandy hair and a moustache that was much more impressive than the police officer’s had been. “He’s Brian Banner’s son, and he’s going to be more brilliant than his father.”

“Colonel . . . excuse me, GeneralRoss,” Susan said in acknowledgment of the new rank showing on his uniform.

“You already know Thunderbolt?” the administrator asked, sounding puzzled.

“Yes, we’ve spoken a few times,” Susan said. The last time was after she’d called him, and he’d come to the house to meet Bruce a few weeks later. Initially, their hopes had been high that Ross might sponsor Bruce, and they would find a way around the age requirements for the Science Academy. Unfortunately, that hadn’t panned out, so then they’d been left waiting and treading water until Bruce turned 12. At that time, they were welcome to present his case again for reconsideration.

“It’s a pleasure to see you again, Dr. Banner,” Ross said as he extended his hand to her, and she shook it firmly. He took a step back and looked appreciatively at Bruce’s false device on the cart, “Harvey, I’m having a serious sense of déjà vu here.” He walked around it, nodding and stroking his chin. “The only thing I see lacking is the payload.”

“And a working ignition switch,” the Vice-Principal added quickly. “Young Bruce explained in great detail the differences between what you see here and the real thing.”

Susan closed her eyes and took a deep breath; she was fairly certain where Bruce might have gotten the idea for the device’s plans, but she still had other questions. “When did he get the time to work on this and how did he get the resources, Harv?”

“Well, I’ve let him use his free period for the last term. The smaller workshop was unscheduled, so the shop teacher Mr. Eldridge helped us, and we worked there and then took it down to the basement to finish the details in the boiler room.” The administrator grinned as he recollected what had obviously been a positive experience for him. “It was kind of fun to do all the hands-on learning,” he admitted. “We made a list of required materials and tools, planned our budget, and recycled some components to cut costs. It came in a good 10% under projected costs.”

Susan tamped down her desire to throttle the man and added the shop teacher to her “shit list.” This was awful in so many ways. “Did it occur to you that this was not a good idea on any level? Harv, what were you thinking?”

“I was thinking that if I didn’t keep your nephew busy doing something that challenged him, he’d either be getting picked on in a study hall or building something that actually was lethal on his own time without any adult input or supervision. Great saints and great sinners are cut from the same cloth, Sue.” She folded her arms across her chest, but she didn’t argue, so he went on. “I took the liberty of contacting Thunderbolt here because I knew he was on the Advisory Board for the Science Academy.” He turned to General Ross, “I had no idea you knew each other, sir, but I hoped you’d take a look at the project and see what you thought about early entry into the Academy.”

The General chuckled, “We’ve tried it before, but I think, under the circumstances that it’s worth applying again. Dr. Banner, Susan, if I may, would you be willing to have another go at this?”

She walked a few steps forward and back, trying to gather her thoughts. “Look, I want my nephew to have a fair shot at the education he deserves, but this . . . this stunt isn’t the way to do it. You’ve rewarded him for behavior I don’t condone, and it was done behind my back.”

“Think of it as an advanced ‘Independent Study,’” Dr. Weaver said brightly. “That’s what it was on paper.”

She shot the Vice-Principal a withering gaze and turned back to the General. “Sir, I need to think about this and talk to Bruce. You know his past. I don’t want him to cut corners, trying to do the right thing for the wrong reasons. I can’t in good conscience start him down the morally questionable path, especially at this young of an age.”

The General ran his hands over the false bomb’s frame and Susan was shocked to see a look of—what? longing? desire?—on his face. It really struck her as odd. He looked over at her, and for a moment she was certain he was angry, but he quickly smiled at her. “That’s quite understandable, Dr. Banner. You have my home number. Please give me a call if and when you change your mind.”

“Thank you,” she said, and he didn’t waste any further time in leaving as he nodded to the flummoxed administrator and was out the office door. She listened to the sound of his military dress shoes retreating down the hall and prayed she hadn’t just thrown Bruce’s future away.

“Susan! How could you? He’s Bruce’s ticket into the Academy.” Now, Dr. Weaver was the one who was upset.

“Harv, shut up. You have foisted the most difficult choice possible on me by indulging a child’s revenge fantasy. There is no good option here. Did you tell Bruce you were contacting someone about the Science Academy?”

“No, I did not,” he said defensively.

“Well, that’s the smartest thing you’ve done today.” She rubbed at her temples with both hands. She needed some space so she could think. “Would you please find someone to cover my classes? Sandra is subbing for me till noon.”

“I’ll take care of it. Should I call Bruce down to the 6th-Grade Office?”

“You read my mind,” she said with a rueful smile. The Vice-Principal wasn’t a bad person, but she wasn’t going to forgive him for a good while. “Thank you, Harvey. Please don’t mention Bruce’s name if you are tempted to start talking to the press.”

“Of course not.”

“You realize what a mess this is going to be if it all goes in front of a judge, right?”

“That’s why Bruce is getting an AV credit along with the Independent Study.”

“I don’t think wearing a wire counts as AV.”

“You don’t know what we went through to jack up the mic on that Dictaphone.”

“I mean it, Harv. Bruce had to endure questioning by the police after the murder. Thank God there were adult witnesses, so he only had to give a deposition before they declared Brian unfit to stand trial.”

“Oh,” he said quietly. “I didn’t know that.”

Susan threw up her hands. “Maybe if you’d talked to me . . .” she let the phrase hang there in the air.

Harvey gave her a contrite look. “You’re right,” he admitted. “I’ll go call Bruce down to the office with his things. Look, I’m sorry, Susan. I honestly wanted to do the kid a good turn. He’s so much ahead of the other students here, and he does deserve a spot at the Science Academy. He’s got so much focus and drive to go with that intellect it’s scary, but I thought he needed a bit of a mentor and maybe a friend, too.”

“I know. Thank you for putting that amount of time into working with Bruce. I just wish you hadn’t cut me out of this.” Susan sighed, almost as weighty of a one as Bruce could make before she patted Dr. Weaver on the shoulder. “Now, I have to be the adult in the room and make sure he understands this is not a win-win situation and there are consequences.”

Susan walked back to her office much less briskly on her return trip. By the time she’d gathered her things and walked back to the 6th-Grade Office, Bruce was waiting on her. It was a Friday, so she didn’t feel too guilty about leaving with him early. The voice in the back of her mind suggested holding his hand until they reached the car was a good way to punish him, but she dismissed the idea, and they were silent the entire trip home in the car.

The moment they were inside the door, he ran up to his room, and she didn’t have the heart to stop him. After putting her things away, Susan sat down at the piano and simply started playing. She usually preferred Mozart or Liszt, but for some reason Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto no. 2, op.18 started coming out. It had been years since she played it in concert, but it all came flooding back. She was feeling mad about everything and not sure what to do, so she quit thinking and just played. She made it through the second movement with its familiar melody and the third that built into a crashing crescendo that pushed her to her limits before she finished and sat still, breathing hard from both the physical and mental exertion. She was still good, but she was out of practice and that depressed her more than she wanted to admit. Tomorrow, you’ll wish you’d picked the Mozart, her alter ego tisk-tisked at her. Those hands are going to hurt. At the moment, she didn’t care. It was worth it.

She’d put what she had to do off long enough. Susan got up and climbed the stairs to the second-floor bedrooms where she knocked on her nephew’s door. “Bruce are you hungry yet? I’m going to make PB&J sandwiches. Why don’t you come down and practice piano while I make them?”

She could hear him hop off the bed and pad over to the door before he opened it. “Okay. Could you use strawberry jam?”

“Sure, sweetie. Are you okay?”

Bruce opened the door and looked her in the eyes for several moments. “How mad are you?”

“Okay, I’m not happy, and it’s not you I’m upset with.”

“You’re mad at Dr. Weaver then?”

“I’m not happy with Dr. Weaver, but he was trying to do what he thought was the right thing.”

“I think we both were.”

“I’m sure youwere. Come down and practice, and we’ll talk after lunch, okay?” Bruce nodded and she stepped closer, bending down to get more on his level, and he hugged her as soon as her arms opened to him.

“I’m sorry,” he breathed into her neck. “I just wanted to protect you.”

“It’s okay,” Susan reassured him. “I’m the one who needs to do the protecting. I just wish you’d come to me and told me what was happening. I’m amazed you kept it secret all these weeks.”

“I didn’t want to upset you. I was afraid you’d say no, too.”

“I probably would have, but I didn’t get the chance to listen to you and help decide what to do. You’re still ten, Bruce. Dr. Wallace should have known better.”

“He was trying to be nice, and those two boys were going to do something bad. I don’t care who knows about my dad, but I couldn’t let them hurt other people.”

“So, you dug into your father’s journals that I was saving for you to have when you were older and used one of his weapon designs?”

“I did. I saw the box had my name on it. I only used his notes for the basic stuff. The other half I improved on. I made a new kind of detonation switch. There just wasn’t anything real to detonate.”

Susan ran a hand through the hair on top of his head, which was cut a shorter than it had been when he came to her almost two years ago. “Bruce, this kind of stuff is absolutely above every 10-year-old’s paygrade—you included. Come on down stairs.” He had a stubborn look on his face, but he complied with her request.

She made their sandwiches and listened to Bruce play through his piano exercises. He was progressing well, especially on scales and, now, chord progressions and arpeggios. He seemed to really get into the rhythm and flow in an almost hypnotic way. It was that way with her, too. The boy was right handed, but she’d noted he was just as adept with his left hand. As she listened closely, she realized he was talking to himself.

“I said slow down and do it right. No, I like to do this fast. Stop it. You’re messing me up. You are such a butt-munch. You need to relax, killjoy.” There was a pause as he switched books. “I told you not to cut her out. Now you get to deal with the consequences. It was worth it. You really hurt her! Do not screw this up with your dumb ego trips.” There was silence after that as he played through a couple of older pieces he’d mastered and finished up.

Susan finished by quartering his sandwich on the diagonals and waited until she heard Bruce put up the music in the bench before she told him to wash up. He had gone from unhappy to sullen, directing his thoughts inward. Ten was a little too soon for the teenage attitude, but something was going on in his head that was starting to spill over. They’d gone through three counselors and a psychologist so far while waiting on the psychotherapist to have an opening. She contemplated giving the current one a call, but she decided against it. No reason to pull someone else into this if they could work it out. It all depended on whether or not he would talk.

“Celery or carrot sticks or both, Bruce?”

“Both . . . please.”

He always fell back on formality—probably because its patterns were safe and familiar. Susan filled a melamine bowl with cut vegetables that matched the plates and placed it in the middle of the kitchen table then got out the buttermilk ranch dip. She poured them both iced tea and they sat down across from one another. Almost as a reflex, she bowed her head and said a quick formulaic grace, but she was pretty certain Bruce had remained silent and not joined in, even with the “Amen” at the end. Oh boy, this was new. Susan genuinely hoped she was not going to have to deal with an existential crisis on top of everything else today. Still, she couldn’t help but give him a discerning look, which he avoided rather guiltily.

Bruce had a unique way of eating the crust first on his sandwiches that she’d been meaning to ask him about for a while. “Why do you always attack the crusts first? Most people your age go for the middle.

He paused and thought about it. “I guess it’s like I want to save the best part a little longer because I’ll appreciate it more after eating the edges.” Then he shook his head as if to clear it, “And because I like to prove I can control myself, too.”

“Hmm, delayed gratification. That sounds like the Marshmallow Experiment that I read some psychologists are conducting at Stanford.”

“What’s that?” He asked after he’d swallowed his bite of food. “Not Stanford, the experiment, I mean.

“They took preschoolers and sat them down with a marshmallow in front of them. They could eat the marshmallow or earn a second marshmallow if they waited 15 minutes.”

“Sounds pretty easy. I could get the whole bag if I weren’t really, really hungry.”

She laughed, “I’m not sure it worked that way.”

“What were they measuring? Self-control or how hungry the kids were?”

“Hmm, it was self-control, but you do have a good variable there. I’m not sure how they accounted for that.”

“You know, Grandma Walcott had a dog with puppies when I was there. All five of them competed a lot for food and attention. If kids are like that, I don’t think they would wait.”

“So, kids with more resources have better self-control?”

“Maybe, but if some were tested before lunch and some after lunch, I’d expect there to be a difference. They should test each kid both before and after lunch more than once and compare.”

“We’ll have to read their published work to find out how the scientists did the setup then.” She took a drink of tea.

“I think it would matter where they went to school, too. Sometimes people with more money or talent go to certain schools, so kids might test differently in one school or another.” She smiled and shook her head. He really couldn’t seem to help reasoning questions like this through. “I think there is also a really basic question: do all the kids even like marshmallows?”

His aunt chuckled, “So there are circumstances when a bird in the hand is not worth two in the bush?”

He shook his head. “Not if you don’t want the bird. Then it’s not worth anything to you.” He frowned, “Unless you could trade it for something you did want.”

“True. Is it fair to test kids only while they are hungry?” she posed to him.

He thought a moment. “Only if everyone is hungry, but I think it would be better if everyone were full first.”

“By ‘better’ do you mean ‘moral’?”

“Yes, it’s more moral and ethical. If it’s going to be accurate, they’d need to treat all their subjects the same or it’s bad science. I think they’d also use fewer marshmallows, so it’s more economical, too.”

“I can’t really argue with that,” she decided. “Let me ask you this, is it more important that the kids are treated the same or that the experiment does them no harm?”

He didn’t hesitate, “Both, they’re not mutually exclusive. I never want to do harm if I work with people or animals. I don’t think I want to work with human subjects that much anyway, but I’d be careful if I did.” He looked troubled. “Why are you asking me about this? My Science Festival project on saltwater filters is all done except for the posters.”

“No, I’m trying to pick your brain because I have some decisions to make.” The boy looked suddenly panic-stricken. “Don’t worry. You’re fine, Bruce. I want to make certain you understand that taking shortcuts as a means to an end is not the way to do experiments or other projects or to approach life either.” They were both finished eating, so Bruce collected the plates, and Susan put away the leftover carrots and celery and dip. She washed up the plates, and Bruce dried them as usual before she spoke again. “My dilemma is, because of the timing of what you and Dr. Weaver did, if something really important for you happens now, I don’t want you to associate what you did that was questionable with the positive thing since it’s not an outcome of your problematic behavior. I know I’m not making much sense, but I don’t want to withhold the good thing like it was a punishment either.”

Leaning back against the counter as she watched the boy finish putting up the plates, Susan noted Bruce had gotten taller. She could see his mind puzzling through the possibilities. “Does it have anything to do with the black Lincoln Town Car with the uniformed driver and the government plate I saw in the circle drive at school when I went back to class?”

As the description came tumbling out, Susan ruefully raised an eyebrow and nodded. The boy was just too damn sharp. “Yes, did you see General Ross was there?”

“GeneralRoss?”

“He’s been promoted,” she explained.

“No, I didn’t see him. Why was he there?”

“Dr. Weaver knows him and wanted the General to have a look at your ‘Project’ before, I’m sure, the police would have to cart it off as evidence.”

“Why as evidence?”

“Honey, those tapes you turned over may prove those two delinquents intended to commit a crime that’s way more serious than truancy.”

Her nephew looked a bit stunned. “But it was fake. It was just a way to get them to leave me alone.”

“Dr. Weaver believed they thought it was a real explosive device, and they intended to use it.”

“I wouldn’t have let them. Nobody was in any real danger. They weren’t smart enough to know there was nothing to blow up. In fact, we just sprang the trap and got that on tape this morning.”

“Bruce that’s probably not going to matter for their case. If they thought it was real and they intended to set it off, they are likely going to be charged with attempting to commit a crime or conspiring to commit a crime.”

“No, listen, Aunt Susan. This morning, we faked a malfunction. I used dry ice to make it look like a meltdown, and they ran away when they thought it was going off. It’s on the tapes. I think they just wanted to scare everyone enough to avoid taking finals, but we never let it get that far.”

Susan shook her head. “Bruce, try and look at it from Vice-Principal Weaver’s perspective. You had different agendas for your ‘Project.’ You wanted the boys to leave you alone, right?”

“Yah, and I thought they would hurt people if we didn’t do something. I was hoping to teach them a lesson, I guess.”

“Okay, it’s not that Dr. Weaver didn’t have those same goals, but he wants to put those boys into detention and possibly expel them from school.”

“Oh, and the officers have different goals, too,” he said, catching onto what she was saying. He stood there next to her with the gears turning in his head. She hated having to do this to him, but Bruce needed to find it out now before something more nefarious happened. He looked at her with a dawning understanding of how he’d been played and used by adults. “I think I feel sick.”

Susan wrapped her arms around her nephew, and he hugged her around her waist. “I’m sorry, Bruce. I know it hurts, but people always have an agenda and the quicker you learn that, the wiser and the better off you’ll be.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Would you have believed me if I just told you, genius or not, you don’t know everything yet?”

“No, probably not.” He shrugged then straightened up. “You were right. We shouldn’t have left you out. Ishouldn’t have done that. It’s my fault.” He looked up at her, “I really made a mess of things. What’s going to happen?”

“Bruce you’re not responsible for others’ actions. To be honest, I don’t know what’s going to happen, Bruce. I hope Dr. Weaver doesn’t get into trouble over this, and I hope the boys have learned their lesson. I also hope you haven’t made some serious enemies. At the moment things are out of our hands.”

He hoped Dr. Weaver wouldn’t get into trouble, too. “Why did Dr. Weaver ask General Ross to look at our fake bomb? I can’t reapply to the Science Academy until I’m 12.”

“Well, that’s the ‘sort of’ good news. The General said he would be willing to support it if we reapplied to the Science Academy.”

“Really? We went to a lot of trouble last time, and they didn’t want me.” They’d both felt pretty crushed at the time, but they’d picked themselves up, dusted each other off, and moved on.

“Yet,” she emphasized. “The General seems to be ready to push things harder this time.” She brushed the hair back from his face. “I told him we needed to think about it and talk first.”

Bruce nodded, “We’ll probably have to do the paperwork again.”

“And the interview,” she noted. “I’m sure Dr. Weaver will write you a very fine letter of support.”

Bruce smiled, “Maybe I should find a better character reference?”

“Don’t worry. We’ll find another person if we need to.”

Then Bruce became very quiet for a moment. “What do you think is the General’s agenda?”

Susan had been wondering about that since the funeral. “I don’t know, Bruce. He might be doing this for altruistic reasons or out of guilt, but I think he might want other things from you at some point. I’m sure there will be strings attached to it somehow.” She smoothed his hair back again. “Remember that, okay?”

“I won’t forget, Aunt Susan.”

“I promise you, I won’t either, Bruce. How about a movie? I think the new Herbie the Love Bug flick is at the dollar theater.”

“I wish the new Star Wars movie was out, but it won’t be till May 20th,” he noted with disappointment.

“Well, why don’t we rewatch the first one? That way you’ll be ready for the new movie.” They relocated to the living room, and Bruce turned on the television and the VCR. “What’s the new one called?” Susan asked as she sat down.

Bruce pulled the tape off the shelf. “The Empire Strikes Back.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“It’s supposed to be the middle of three films, so things are going to get messed up.” The boy put the tape in and pushed “Play.” He sat down with his aunt on the couch. She’d already slipped out of her shoes and rested her feet on the coffee table. Bruce did the same and slouched a little bit, so his feet would reach the table’s edge.

“Do you think it will be like in The Two Towerswhen all seems lost?” Susan leaned forward and scooted the table closer for him.

“I hope not, but that seems pretty likely.” He frowned in thought as the legal warning and a bumper played through before the feature started. “I’m not sure how they could get worse than Luke losing his Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru then his mentor Obi-Wan, but I guess we’ll find out.”

“Yah, he’s had it pretty rough, but I’m sure he’ll find other people to teach him. He still has Leia, Han, and Chewie.”

“And C-3PO and R2-D2, too. I guess it could be a lot worse. We were talking about Joseph Campbell and the Hero’s Journey in class last week, and the teacher pointed out how many adventure stories fit that pattern.”

“Right, a lot of them do.”

“Star Wars and The Hobbit fit the pattern. Sometimes I think my life is kind of like that. I’ve had bad things happen, but then I came here, and you’ve been like my Obi-Wan Kenobi, Aunt Susan.”

“Aww, come here,” she reached over and hugged him, wrapping her arm around his shoulders. “I love being Obi-Wan to your Luke, but I’m not going to let a Darth Vader get me yet,” she promised. “Not for a long, long time.”

“Good, because I love you, and I still really need you, Aunt Susan.”

“I love you too, Bruce. You are my best Jedi Apprentice.” She hugged her nephew tighter, and they smiled together, quite content in each other’s company. As the words began to appear on the television and then scroll up the dark screen, they read them together though they knew the whole thing by heart.

“A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away . . .”

#BruceWeek #DrRJSB #Bruce Banner #Susan Banner #Before the Hulk #The Hulk #hulkwidownet #brutasha brucenat hulkwidow #Chapter 4 #Special Needs: A Bruce & Natasha FanFic

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thewrittenpost · 6 years

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Twenty Questions Tag

I was tagged by @cohldhands; thank you so much! I’m gonna put this under a Read More to keep things small!

1. Is there any scene from any piece you’ve written that actually scared you? If so, describe the scene.

Scared, not so much. I was disgusted with the scene I did for Xavier and his necromancy, because he’s just not good. At all. Like, he kills a girl to summon a dead warrior for his army, and his biggest concern afterwards is that his robe is ruined. Like... dude. That’s your priority? Ick.

2. What genre do you feel most awkward writing?

Ooh... I’m not good at sci-fi. Or mystery really. And despite the fact that I seem to stick at least one romantic pair into my works, I’m not exactly... great at it. At least past hugs and innocent little kisses. I can do those. Anything more than that is just awkward.

3. How many different types of writing do you write? Types of writing include novels, short stories, poetry, song lyrics, etc.

Um... I did some short stories for class, and I’m attempting novels. I’m not great at poetry, unless you’re counting like... haikus (and even then...). So I guess two?

4. How old were you when you first started writing?

Ooh... I was in fourth grade when I really started, so I must have been like... nine? I wrote this horrible story about a girl and her dog for another classmate, whose reading level was far below “typical” levels, and gosh, I was so proud of it when I wrote it, but man, do I want to forget it now. I seriously hope my classmate took it home with her at the end of the year, and that my teacher doesn’t remember it. Unlikely, as she remembers me reading under the desk during class, but I still have hope that she forgot that part of the year.

5. How confident are you in your writing?

I’m... not. I mean, academic writing, like research papers and what not, I’m pretty confident in, but my fiction? Uh, yeah, I’m not so sure about that. I mean, I can’t get the images in my head down on the paper right and it’s just... ugh, I’m not good enough for it. But I’m practicing, and with practice I should improve!

6. Have you ever written and posted anything that was very personal to you?

Not really. I put some stuff in fanfiction that was more personal, but nothing very major. I’ve considered it, but when I’ve talked about those things offline, I got brushed off and some people told me it was no big deal and to get over it, so I just... avoid it now. Honestly, if I ever post something that came out of a personal place, I’ll probably write it as a fiction and never tell anyone.

7. What inspired you to start writing?

I was a huge reader growing up; my Nana always told us if we wanted to watch something based off a book, we had to read the book first, so that was a thing. And then I just wanted to write.

But as much as I say I try to forget that fourth grade “book” I did, that classmate was actually a huge part of it. Like, there was nothing that she could read/understand/test on in our class library. Keep in mind, she was at like... a kindergarten/1st grade reading level in fourth grade. And I wanted her to have something to read... which is how Suzy and her dog Bozo became a thing. Not sure if Suzy was actually the girl’s name, but it sounds write for 4th grade me.

8. Which of your OCs do you relate to the most?

Out of all of them? Probably Violet. I’ll be honest and admit that a lot of her traits are also mine. She’s not quite me; she’s a lot more assertive for one, and she’s not exactly one to back down from what’s right (in her eyes), but some of her backstory came from my life. (I’ll leave it to y’all to guess which parts as I post more about her)

If not Violet, then it’s probably Tobias. I completely relate to hiding the bad things behind a smile, so that’s a thing.

9. Have you ever written self-insert fanfiction?

I have, and nope, no one will ever know which one ever. Middle/High school was a bad time for me and fanfiction ideas, let’s just leave it at that.

10. What is your favorite piece you’ve ever written about?

Ooh, that’s a good one. I don’t actually know. I’m pretty fond of the ones I’m working on now, but... I tried writing out a script in high school (it’s gone, don’t ask) based off the Japanese Internment during WW2. It’s a really important thing for me to have tried, and I intend to go back to it one day, but that’s got to be my favorite because of how personal that time period is.

11. How frequently do you actually sit down and write?

I’ve been really good about sitting down and working on my stuff, whether it’s brainstorming, worldbuilding, or writing little bits every day! It’s my resolution for the year, and I’ve pretty much stuck to it!

12. How many hours at a time do you do research on your writing?

It depends on the thing I’m writing. Like... the Japanese Internment takes far less time to research because gee, I’ve got tons of sources already at home, and I’ve already done a bunch. But the less I know, the longer it takes. And because I don’t trust the internet sometimes, I double-check everything I find on it, so it takes a little longer.

13. Do you like to branch out in your writing or do you tend to stick to what you know?

I... tend to stick to what I know. Maybe one day I’ll branch out, but for now, I’ll stick to what I’m comfortable with. I have a hard enough time with that, you know?

14. What would your antagonist of your current WIP say to you if they saw you in person?

Huh. Frog Prince’s major antagonists are themselves, so they’d probably yell at me. Xavier from Death’s Eyes would tell me to make myself useful (in some way) or he’d just kill me. And since the antagonist in Villain’s Intern is technically a hero, he’d probably give me some inspirational speech or something.

15. Do you consider yourself your OCs’ god or just kind of a guiding hand (or other? If other, please list)?

Hahahahahahahaha, other. I’m the poor historian desperately trying to figure out what happened so I can make a reasonably accurate retelling of the events, I have no hand in any of this, help me

16. What do you think you’d be doing with your time if you’d never gotten into writing?

More video games. Probably more reading. Maybe more crocheting and sewing, because I’d have more time to do those!

17. Have you ever written a smut piece?

....Yes. I don’t remember if I ever posted it, it was awkward and horrible to write, I’m still not comfortable with it. I can read smut without much issues, but writing? That’s something I’m not quite sure practice will help with. ^^’

18. What was the first thing you ever wrote about?

Not counting school work? Suzy and Bozo. A girl and her dog. Silly adventures a 4th grader could think of.

19. What is the most creative creature you’ve ever created for world-building?

Uh.............. most of mine come from other things, but I suppose Matelus has these fire rock things that I haven’t talked about much. They’re rocks mostly, but they’ve got lava as the equivalent of blood, and can breathe fire, and they’re actually pretty passive. Some of them have gems that would be like... hair, but not all of them. They don’t attack people, except in defense (because people try to steal the gem hair) and they mostly just... make things. They’re more the smith part of Matelus than anything else, and I want to hug them. Except they’re rocky and hard and kind of spiky, so probably not a great idea.

20. Tell me one random fact about your WIP that you have yet to tell your followers.

Uh... I... don’t know. What’s not a spoiler? Um... so, relation-wise in the Frog Prince world, the major conflicts link back to the same family. Like, Gwen and Rhia are sisters. Scarlet has to face her curse because she’s trying to find Gwen. Rhia becomes Alba (Snow White’s) stepmother, and Gwen and Rhia’s grandmother is the one who curses Aoife (Sleeping Beauty). Like, they’re all connected and I feel like it might get too convoluted and messy, so it might change, but as things stand, that’s the way it is.

I also feel I might have said that before, but... yeah. I’m not going to tag anyone, but if you want to do it, please please tag me so I can see what you answer too!

#the writer speaks #thanks for tagging me!

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birdscreeches · 7 years

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Pamahiin || Aisha R.

"Pamahiin roughly translates to English as ‘folk superstition’. An unjustified yet widely held belief.”

My lolo had slept on a banig on the floor of a room filled to the brim with four grandchildren’s worth of stuffed toys, action figures, and school books. My lola slept on a bed right next to him in the same room, and when I asked him why he didn’t just sleep there—there was certainly plenty of space—he’d always tell me the floor was better for his back. More natural, or something. I just figured he had a personal vendetta against beds.

This is the same room he died in. Much to what I’m sure would’ve be his utter dismay, he didn’t die on his banig. Instead, at around six in the morning in my senior year of high school, he died on a hospital bed.

We bought the bed. We also bought several oxygen tanks, an IV stand, a wheelchair, something that functioned like a heart monitor, and a lot of different tubes for a lot of different things. In a room filled with toys and childhood keepsakes, we built him a hospital room. Thinking about the room and the sickening contrast between past and present and a future that was ending sent a sour pang through my chest. Like somebody had taken a metal bar and ran it across the bones of my ribcage. Xylophone sounds of guilt I couldn’t stand to hear every day.

To create silence, I pretended the room didn’t exist anymore.

It worked rather well until the morning Nanay had pulled me into the not-room. I was already dressed in my uniform, my bag weighing my shoulders down, when she told me to say something to Lolo before I left. Or before he did.

“Feeling ko malapit na,” she told me.

So I went. I barely looked at Lolo. He hadn’t been able to speak for months, by that point. He was more a corpse than anything. No more was the weird old dude who truly believed sleeping on the floor was more comfortable. Just a body we were keeping alive in a room I erased.

Not wanting to be rude, I forced myself to look at him, if only for a second. The eyes that looked back at me were murky and unseeing. Around us, various toys looked at me with the same kind of gaze.

“See you later, Lolo.” I said.

Unable to last any longer, I headed out of the room that didn’t exist and out of the house. Standing by the garden, I tapped my foot impatiently, waiting to leave for school.

A couple of seconds later, his heart stopped beating.

A little bit after that, I’m told what basically amounted to the fact that the last thing my lolo heard was my lie.

Now, the thing to focus on here shouldn't be his death, but the room. The not-room. The room I rendered gone. This was a neat superpower of mine; I could flip a switch in my brain and change what was and what wasn’t.

It all started with the spoon.

As a child, my lola taught me the intricacies of superstition. Don’t go bed with your hair wet, or you’ll go insane. Jump on new years, and maybe we can stop buying you Cherifer. If you drop your utensils, you will get a visitor. I found immense joy in these small magics of life, that one thing could cause another even if it didn’t make any sense. It didn’t have to. Afterall, with my superpower, I made it all true.

All I had to do was believe hard enough.

To the skeptics, I raise the fact that the galaxy revolved around the Earth because people believed it to be. The world was flat because people believed it to be. There’s somewhere we go after we die because we believe it’s real. We can rearrange the cosmos, shape planets, and live after life is over. If that wasn’t a superpower, I didn’t know what was.

One pathetic night at ten years old, I ate dinner alone. Everybody was busy or out or something and I was ten years old and alone. Petulantly, I threw my hand out, pushed my spoon off the the table, and watched it clatter to the floor. You will get a visitor.

I waited one second. Nothing.

Two. Still nothing.

Three, and something in my chest began to hurt. A bar dragged across my ribs, clanging around.

Four. The notes inside me said how dare you.

Five seconds in, I scrambled to the ground and picked the spoon up.

At the end of that night, nobody did come. My point here wasn’t that my superpower was bullshit, but instead that there was a caveat to it. I could believe in what I wanted, I could change my own reality and make things real or not-real, but the consequence to that power would always catch up.

A sound, a feeling, a something. Whatever it was, it always asked me the same thing: what have you done?

Twenty minutes after my lolo's heart stopped beating, we did end up leaving for school. My tito had taken us through the regular traffic that trickled Marikina into Katipunan Avenue, the normal slog of slow moving cars. Usually, the radio would quietly croon 70s and 80s music into the morning. 105.9 DZG-FM Mega Manila's first and only retro hit station—

On that day, nobody touched the radio. The rumble of the engine was the only sound to be heard.

In the passenger seat, my brother took a nap. Next to me, my younger sister had her earphones in, staring out the window, unmoving. I folded and unfolded the cuffs of my jacket over and over again until we arrived school and I clambered out of the car.

Class that day was almost hilariously uneventful. I returned a red pen to one of my classmates (I had lost all my own red pens). I took a Math final (I failed it very badly). I dry heaved into a toilet (the cuffs of my jacket were folded up). I put one leg in front ot the other, and kept walking, and nobody asked me anything. It was a normal day, and if it wasn’t, I told myself it was. I could rearrange planets, if I wanted. One day was child’s play.

In my gut, I didn’t feel the stirrings of mourning so much as the sound of a clinking spoon against the floor. Count the seconds now. How long until I caved? How long until the reality I crafted myself started to thrum with shame?

Lolo was my mom’s father, and Nanay had always been the type to get things done inordinately fast. After school, my sister and I were taken to a holding room in Loyola Memorial Park. There, everything was set up. Catering, relatives who were called from the province throughout the day, an army monobloc chairs, and of course, a coffin where Lolo now laid in. The only thing we were missing was one of those tarps all dead people seemed to have, but this was obviously a rush job.

“Maybe next time,” I joked to a couple of kittens I found under the table laden with food. There were two of them. A grey one and an orange one.

At around eight in the evening, we held a small mass in the holding room. Being a close family member, I got the front row seats. The priest was nice. He told jokes and had a voice that was made for condolences, and I enjoyed listening to him until he started the homily. His homily was about what I said to Lolo before his heart gave up. “See you later.” He went on for a long time about how he found it beautiful. Meanwhile, I wanted to go find a bathroom to try to vomit in again, but I stood my ground. I figured if I was going to have a reaction that strong, it would be because this was a wake. Not because of my lie. Not because of me. Somebody was dead, and all I could think about was myself. How dare you.

Shut the room closed and pretend it didn’t exist. My mind was no different. Obfuscate. Reroute. Distract. For the rest of the homily, I tuned out the voice of the priest and instead looked to the coffin.

I saw Lolo pretty clearly behind the glass. He looked off. In the middle of a solemn mass where I could hear my Lola crying, where, in my periphery, I saw my older sister’s tears fall to the floor, I almost laughed. I almost doubled over when I realized they put makeup on him. There was powder on his face. He had lip tint. My gut hurt from keeping it in. God, I thought. He would’ve fucking hated this.

When the mass was over, teary relatives filtered outside and began to eat. It’s amazing what food and company can do, because in roughly five minutes, all the tears were gone, replaced now by boisterous stories and loud conversation. Feeling a little safer, I told somebody about the makeup thing. When I’m met with laughter, I smile for the first time that entire day.

One by one, I watched everybody leave. They’d be back tomorrow. There’d be more people tomorrow. I sat by the food table, all the catering stuff cleared out and gone, and played with the kittens. They cuddled onto my lap, happy to have warmth and attention as I cooed over them.

It was at that moment, with my hands full of purring fluff, that I realized I hadn’t cried the entire day. While my hands moved over soft fur, I realized I hadn’t cried today because he didn’t die today. His heart stopped beating, but he was already dead for a long time. At least for me he was. At least I had created the story in my head to make it like he was. Here were the not-rooms and magic spoons and people who were dead before a doctor declared them dead. It’s one hell of a superpower. It’s one hell of a responsibility too, but I was sixteen and stupid and still counting down for the moment where I scramble for the spoon. To the sound of soft mews, I realized that the pin had dropped. Now it was a matter of when I’d pick it up.

The orange kitten pawed at the rolled down cuff of my jacket. Its claw dragged a faint line of red against my skin.

And I bled.

Now the worrying thing is that for the past month, I’ve been dreaming. This was an anomaly. My anxiety usually meant restless nights which usually meant that most of my dreams were lost to exhaustion. Dreams for me felt like something you needed to pull free from a strong undercurrent. It just so happened my grip has always been weak.

When I did dream, when I did remember them, it’s because instead of having to hold on, the dream clamped around my wrist, crawled up my arm, and wrapped itself around my neck. When I did dream, I woke up gasping. A slight change of semantics now; when I did dream, technically, it’s because they were always nightmares.

I preferred restless blurs any day, but for the past month, I haven’t been lucky.

The dreams vary slightly each and every time. Sometimes I was at school. I was at home. I was at the grocery store. I was at the Jollibee a minute walk away. Sometimes there’s somebody with me and sometimes I was alone. Sometimes there was rain. Sometimes there was fire.

But the constant was my teeth. No matter what happened, I always felt something shatter in my mouth. One by one, bloodied tooth shards came loose. They tumbled past my lips and into my shaking hands. When I thought all my teeth were gone, that finally, it’s done, it started all over again with new teeth breaking and coming apart. On one horrifying occasion, I pressed my hand to my mouth to to keep it shut. The teeth continued to break nonetheless and I felt them slide down my throat.

I woke up gasping.

Teeth falling out was a common enough recurring dream that the interpretations were limitless. If Freud was to be believed, these dreams either meant I needed to get laid soon or get off more. Others said that fear was taking control of my life, as if I didn’t know that already. My brother told me that maybe, I needed to see a dentist. I told him to fuck off.

“It means somebody is going to die,” Nanay told me over lunch. We were at a sushi place, and she popped a salmon sashimi into her mouth as if she didn’t just say the creepiest thing ever.

“Really?”

“Yeah,” she said. Another salmon. “Pamahiin.”

“I’ve doomed us all, then.”

“You have to bite on aluminum,” Nanay pointed her chopsticks at me. “And then say ‘this will not happen’.”

I made a show of biting down on my fork (I could never get the hang of chopsticks) before releasing it. “This will not happen.”

“No, you have to say it while you’re biting down.”

“Theeehs will nohh hapehn?” I tried again, fork in my mouth. My younger sister started to laugh.

“And you have to do it as many times as you had the dream.”

“That’s—it’s been a month, that’s over twenty times! You’re messing with me!”

“I’m not! I’m your mother,” she faux gasped.

“You do know that that fork is made of steel, right?” Tatay said. My younger sister lost it, bending over and laughing like a loon.

When I got home, I googled the pamahiin. Various sources confirmed that Nanay wasn’t messing with me, but they did say that it wasn’t aluminum you had to bite on, but wood. Between a faceless blog page and my own mother, I decided to believe the one who could whack me in the head.

When everybody had fallen asleep, I went to the kitchen and tore off a small square of aluminum foil. I folded it, bit down, and said, “This will not happen. This will not happen. This will not happen.” My garbled, pleading litany.

That night, my teeth fell onto the floor of my dreamscape yet again.

Who would I use my superpower on next?

Almost midnight on the day Lolo’s heart stopped beating, it was finally time for us to leave. Nanay would stay behind; it was her job to keep watch. Vaguely, I remembered something about aswangs stealing dead bodies in the night. Good luck to whatever aswang dared go against her.

I pried Orange and Grey off of my hoodie, waved goodbye to Nanay, and sleepily climbed into the car with the rest of my family. Tired and weary, I watched the bright blurs of streetlights zoom past, looking forward to passing out in my bed.

But then instead of turning right onto J.P, Rizal after crossing the river, Tatay kept driving straight.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Somewhere.”

“Why?”

“Never go straight home after a wake,” he said. Ah. Right.

Which is how we ended up at a Ministop across Sta. Elena High School.

I idly walked through the aisles of the store, instinctually gravitating towards the candy section. As I looked upon a selection of Cadburys, I thought about whatever spirits that had hitched a ride with us doing the same. Would they like fruit and nut, or just plain chocolate? I thought, laughing a little to myself. Would they be pissed knowing of all places we left them, it was at a goddamn Ministop? I thought, imagining a Sadako like figure tapping her foot by the cashier.

Would they wonder why I didn’t cry at my own lolo’s wake? I thought, my laughter dying down. Would they wonder if I had feelings? I thought, my stomach began to sink. Would they wonder if I had a heart?

In this too-bright aisle, surrounded by sweets, the spirits we were brushing off, and the ghost I refused to even acknowledge, tears welled up in my eyes. They didn’t fall. I blinked them away before they could, but not before my rib cage rattled the dissonant notes of something terrible.

The funny thing was that this wasn’t because I suddenly accepted he died, as if there was something about the ambiance of a convenience store that hammered the point in. I accepted he died long before, but as tears threatened to spill past my eyes like dream teeth falling out of my mouth, like a spoon clattering to the ground, I realized that the glacial five seconds had finally passed. What have you done? I told myself a story so hard I believed it. How dare you? I switched mourning for safety. What is the price you’ll pay? It’ll follow me home. It’ll follow me everywhere.

“Are you going to get anything?” Tatay asked, pulling me out of my haze. “Cadbury?”

“Nah,” I told him. My eyes were expertly clear when I looked at him, but he didn’t look convinced. “Are we going now?”

“Yeah,” he said. So we all walked out, a bunch of assholes who loitered in a convenience store without buying anything, and got into the car.

In the rearview mirror, I watched the Ministop get smaller and smaller til we finally turned on the road going home. We were safe now. No more spirits

Nobody touched the radio. The rumble of the engine was the only sound to be heard. In my head, I heard a something more. I’m bringing something home with me, I thought, listening to the tiny little clangs. Something was playing my bones, and it sounded like shame.

I shut my eyes, laid my head against the window, and pretended I didn’t hear it at all.

#written for the memoir submission for my nonfiction class #this piece could totally improve on things like cohesion and flow but for now. this is it.#death cw #non fic

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mishpacha · 6 years

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This article is the story of Nadia Avraham, a trans Israeli Mizrahi woman who was born in Iraq and fled the country to escape antisemitism. Nadia paved the way for Israeli transgender people and her story is well-worth a read. As this is a premium Haaretz article, I will be posting the entire thing below.

It was the period of the War of Attrition, which followed hard on the heels of the '67 Six-Day War. Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer, in Ramat Gan, was fully occupied, and the beds of the wounded spilled out into the corridors. Lying among the soldiers, on a bed at the end of a corridor, was a civilian, an alien in the military landscape, alive and hooked up to tubes, but completely covered by a blanket. The soldiers wondered who he was. Why doesn’t the man lying in the corner have any visitors, they asked the nurses. The odd figure became the main topic of conversation in the surgical ward, but the nurses refused to lift the veil of secrecy concealing his identity and the circumstances of his hospitalization.

Two weeks went by, and still no one came to visit. While soldiers continued to arrive steadily, the odd figure from the corridor left the hospital – the fourth person to undergo sex reassignment surgery in Israel.

That person is Nadia Avraham, who will celebrate her 85th birthday next month. “But I look good, still a bit sexy,” she says with a wink and a heavy Iraqi accent.

Avraham lives in the Hatikva neighborhood in south Tel Aviv, in a very small apartment. The bedroom also serves as the living room, and she shares her bed with a cat. On the walls are photographs from the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s – all showing a beautiful woman with big eyes and heavy makeup.

I recorded Nadia for the Hebrew version of “Israel Story,” a documentary podcast broadcast on Army Radio and online, of which I am one of the creators. (An English version is heard on a variety of NPR stations in the U.S., as well as on the website of Tablet magazine.)

Nadia opened all our meetings by saying, “It’s impossible to tell a whole life in a hour or two” – and then sat down on the edge of the bed, straightened up and, despite the constraints of time, started to tell her story.

She has blond hair, bright eyes, a piercing gaze and a singular style of speech that mixes words in Arabic with Hebrew, and in which one particular phrase is prominent: “Maybe yes, maybe no, only God knows.” That’s the essence of her complex worldview, rife with contradictions and an array of identities. Nadia is a “both one and the other” woman.

In one of our meetings, a moment before I turned on the recording device, she went over to the wardrobe and pulled out an old shoebox. In it were dozens of photos, some from a very different era, when she was still Naji, the son of an affluent Jewish family in Baghdad.

When Nadia remembers Naji, the boy she was, she speaks in the first person, but uses the masculine form of speech, adjusting the Hebrew to her biography. She talks about a boy from a large family, with an older sister followed by five brothers. Naji, the middle son, was very close to his mother.

When Naji was 5, a member of his close family started abusing him sexually. “I was afraid, I suffered, I was confused, I didn’t know what it was,” Nadia relates.

Naji did not tell anyone about what he was undergoing, and his psyche remained wounded. He fell ill, became withdrawn, and missed school. This went on for several years, and while his classmates advanced to primary school, he stayed behind, not learning how to read or write. He became a frightened boy, lacking self-confidence. According to Nadia, his worried parents took him to experts of different kinds and to psychiatrists across Iraq, but none of them understood what the child was going through – he refused to talk about it. “The secret stayed imprisoned within me,” Nadia says, “and life at home became unbearable.”

When he was 12, Naji ran away from home. He didn’t have a well thought-out plan, just took a bit of money and headed for the train station. He dreamed only of escaping to Egypt, Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, and starting life over. But shortly after he disappeared, one of his older brothers went to look for him and found the dreamy boy with a backpack at the entrance to the train station. He brought him home in angry and frightening silence. But Naji’s dream of leaving came true a few months later: His parents decided to smuggle him and his older sister far off, to pre-state Palestine.

A truck pulled up in the middle of the night, and Naji and his sister got into it, joining some 50 other people already crammed inside. The truck sped off toward its secret destination.

It wasn’t an orderly aliyah. Iraqi law prohibited Jews from leaving the country, but an escape route was created through neighboring Iran. Naji and his sister lived there with hundreds of Jewish migrants in crowded, dire conditions, slept in tents and made do with the minimal food that was distributed to them – bread with onion and tinned milk.

After a month in the Tehran camp, they were transported to Israel. Naji was happy to have the chance to turn over a new leaf. He was 14, his sister was 30. It took them time to adjust to their new life. They wandered from place to place, from Binyamina to Jerusalem and Rishon Letzion, before finally settling in Tel Aviv. They lived in a small home in the Hatikva neighborhood, which they purchased with money their mother sent.

Some months later, the rest of the family arrived in Israel. Naji, who had always been a mama’s boy, was thrilled to be back together with her. Within months of their reunion, however, his mother fell ill with cancer and died. Without her protection, Naji once more felt vulnerable and alone. Even today, when Nadia talks about her mother, she is visibly consumed with longing. She speaks of the loss as a kind of a “Sliding Doors” moment, and wonders whether her life would have been different if her mother had remained by her side.

After their mother’s death, Naji’s older brother, the same one who had forced him to return home from the train station in Baghdad, started to torment him. The house was no longer safe for Naji. “When I worked, he would take my money, or he would try to teach me to do bad things,” Nadia recalls. “He demanded that I distribute the drugs he sold, made me go to the homes of criminals. Once I tried to run away, but the police brought me back, because of my young age.”

At 16, Naji reported for a pre-induction army screening, thinking that perhaps the military would open the door to a better future.

“I tried, I wanted to go to the army,” Nadia explains. “When the day came, I entered a room filled with doctors and senior officers, and I asked, ‘When do I start serving in the Israel Defense Forces?’ But an officer said, ‘Go home, we don’t take people like you in the army.’ Maybe he meant that I had a feminine body,” she says. “I was as thin as a cue stick, and maybe they didn’t like my body. Maybe they didn’t like my behavior.”

As she tells the story of the event at the recruitment center, Nadia raises her voice and emphasizes the words, remembering the lean boy she was, and laughs. But between the lines and beyond the rolling laughter lurks the disappointment of a boy, somewhat different from other boys, facing a battery of officers, representatives of the establishment, alone. “To this day, I don’t know why they decided not to draft me,” she says.

The rejection by the IDF eliminated another possible route to an easier life as part of Israeli society, and heightened Naji’s distress. Once more he felt he had to escape – this time, for good. “At the age of 16 I ran away from home again,” Nadia relates. “I didn’t have anywhere to go. I lived on the street, slept on benches on Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv. To satisfy my hunger, I would look for pieces of bread that someone might have thrown into the garbage. And it was hot, a hamsin.”

Victor Victoria

Life on the street was hard, aggravated by a feeling of loneliness, fraught with danger, a battle to survive – and it was a life that set Naji up for exploitation.

Nadia: “I prayed to God that someone would come and take me. Let him do whatever he wants, only let me go inside to wash up and maybe eat something, in his home or in a hotel, the main thing was to get through the night.”

Naji spent a few months living a homeless life on a bench on Rothschild Boulevard. Still, alongside the tremendous difficulties, he began to experience a thrilling sense of freedom. A new world was revealed to him.

“There was a place on Rothschild Boulevard where all the homosexuals used to gather. In the morning I sat on a bench without anything to eat or drink, and in the evening, when the gays arrived, I would forget about food and forget myself – all I wanted was to look at them. One was named Merry-Man, another Poldina, and another Aunt Fanny, and they were from every ethnic group: Persians, Iraqis, Poles. They laughed and talked, and I was envious of them for having such a beautiful life and being able to live with their families, while for me it was hard, living on the street and sleeping on benches.”

On those Tel Aviv nights, Naji felt that he belonged for the first time in his life. “I met a gay guy who wandered around the parks, and he called me Nadia, he was the first to give me that name. I hooked up with him and he took me to his family in Or Yehuda.” From then on, Naji’s name was Nadia. The friend who gave him the name was Victor, who afterward became Victoria.

Victor lived with an elderly, childless Romanian couple who had informally adopted him and afterward did the same with Nadia. It was they who rescued him from the street. Nadia lived with them for eight years. “They were lovely, good people,” she says. “My life with them was the happiest I’d known, much more than with my family, whom I’d rid myself of.”

During those years, Nadia worked in a laundry, running a dry-cleaning machine that needed quite a bit of manual assistance. In the morning, she awoke happily to another day of work; in the evening she went out with her gay companions on the streets of Tel Aviv.

“In that period,” Nadia recalls, “Victoria and I met a dancer named Miko. He suggested that we go to Belgium, buy a wig and a dress, work as women and make a bundle of money. I don’t know whether I believed him or not, but I did it. I quit my job, got severance pay and went to Belgium with Victoria. We started to work as cross-dressers. At night I would dress up as a woman, and during the day I was a regular guy.”

Still not knowing how to read or write, but with acute street smarts, Nadia worked in Europe and met people from all classes of society. “I didn’t really know what to do with the money,” she notes. “For 15 years I lived in Europe, going from city to city, without knowing any languages other than Hebrew and Arabic. Trying to go deal with people who spoke Flemish, French, English, Turkish and Ladino. But I learned and I matured. I didn’t learn perfectly, but I started to get along. I would call to people, ‘Hello, come here, do you want to make love?’”

I try to ask Nadia about the hardships of night life, the world of clubs, the striptease acts and the prostitution, about the violence and exploitation that her life must have entailed. But she rebuffs the question even before I finish asking it. “There, I felt free and strong,” she asserts.

As we speak, it occurs to me that “freedom” is a relative term – elusive, era-dependent, biography-dependent, gender-dependent. The freedom she had in Europe was juxtaposed with her history, her past, the vulnerability, the secret and the rough life she had endured at home.

But as the years passed, Nadia’s attitude toward freedom and the “glamorous life” in Europe changed. After 15 years, she relates, “I felt that I couldn’t go on like that. I’d already started to become older, you could say, and I decided to return to Israel. I wanted to leave that way of life completely. I didn’t want it. I was revolted or despairing.”

The Surgery

Back in Israel, Nadia tried to start over. She found a job washing dishes in a Tel Aviv restaurant, but the regular hours and the minimum-wage work under a tough boss-woman was not for her. “The proprietress really tormented me,” she recalls, “until one day I took off the apron, threw it in her face and told her, ‘The salary I get from you in a month, I can earn alone in an hour.’”

She stalked out, and in the meantime moved in with Carol, a friend she’d known since the days on the boulevard bench. “I lived with him at the corner of Dizengoff and Ben-Gurion Avenue, on the top floor. One day, as we were talking, he suddenly says to me, ‘Nadia, if you want to have a sex-change operation, now’s the time. There’s an American doctor here, now.’”

Sex-reassignment surgery was almost unknown in Israel at the time, but it wasn’t a new concept to Nadia: “In the years when I worked in Europe, I met lady-men and also transvestites of all kinds.” Some of them had the surgery. She felt that this was what she had to do. Not hesitating for a moment, she met with the physician. As soon as he saw her, she says proudly, he agreed to operate. He explained the cost, told her about the process itself, the recovery period, and sent her for diagnosis by a psychiatrist, who also gave his immediate approval. A week later, she was in Sheba Medical Center among the wounded soldiers.

After the physical transformation, Nadia had to cope with the official, bureaucratic changes, including her gender classification in her ID card and passport. Unlike today, no orderly procedure for all this existed in early-1970s Israel. The Interior Ministry, flummoxed, sent her to the Health Ministry, which ruled that a person who wished to change his gender officially records had to go before a medical committee.

“I came to the committee, lay on the bed, opened my legs. I was examined by about 12 doctors, and they all said, ‘You are a woman in every respect, except that you can’t have children.’ I understood, and said, ‘Children there will definitely never be.’ I went back to the Interior Ministry and they immediately changed my ID and passport from ‘male’ to ‘female.’”

With her brand new passport, which bore the photograph of a woman, Nadia flew to Europe once more, this time to Berlin. “I was supposed to work next to a hotel, go up with each client, agree with him on a price of 30 or 50 marks, and then sleep with him And I wasn’t used to that kind of work. When I worked in the clubs, I would lure them with drinks, and I knew how to get more and more money from them without giving anything in return.”

In short order, however, Nadia returned to Tel Aviv – this time to stay. She worked in a nightclub on the seaside promenade. “Every client whom I could tell had plenty of money, I turned into my regular client. If I were to count the number of men I met in my life, it would be the length of a bridge from here to New York,” she says with resounding laughter. “All the rich guys, all the men who have inferiority feelings and are ashamed with their wives, they all came to me at whatever price I wanted.”

Eventually Nadia made enough money to buy an apartment in the upscale Bavli neighborhood in Tel Aviv’s Old North – a place she could call home, and which afforded her quiet and security.

One evening, a friend told her that she’d met a boy of 14 who’d run away from home and was sleeping in the street. Nadia felt that life had destined her to meet with this boy, whom she herself had been, sleeping on benches and hungry for bread. She asked her friend to bring the boy to her. Immediately she made a place for the boy, whose name she asks not to share, in her home and in her heart. Nadia, who had survived alone her whole life, raised him like a son.

At the age of 18, the youth was drafted into the air force. After his service he married and fathered children. Nadia remained by his side throughout, but the boy who matured into a man was unable to bear the difficult memories of his earlier life, and died suddenly and tragically. Nadia was shattered. It was the first time she had allowed herself to truly get close to someone, to create a family of her own.

“It was terribly hard for me,” she says now. “I couldn’t function anymore. He was the most precious thing in the world for me. No siblings and no family and no one else – only him.”

Nadia invited the widow and her two small children to move in with her. They lived together as a kind of family for 18 years, until the relations between them grew too complex and Nadia again felt that she had to leave home in order to preserve her freedom: “I really didn’t want to return to the kind of life I had lived with my family [growing up], to deal with difficult relationships, so I picked myself up and went, and left them the house, with no misgivings.”

The family of the adoptive son continued to live in Nadia’s spacious home in the Bavli neighborhood, while Nadia, who hadn’t been in touch with her own siblings and their families for years, returned to Hatikva. She moved into a one-room apartment that her father, who had since passed away, had left her in the family compound. She now lives in proximity to her brothers (her sister is no longer alive), but has no contact with them, she says. Time hasn’t dulled the pain. Nadia is unforgiving, but also unafraid, of them or of anyone.

“With all the suffering I went through, God always loved me and always looked after me, maybe he pitied me, I don’t know,” she says.

Donating a Torah

I’m in Nadia’s small room. We’re listening to the radio, to the very program we recorded in which Nadia is the star and tells her story in her voice. Occasionally she confirms what’s being broadcast, saying, “It’s all true, on my father’s grave.”

Photographs of Nadia in her youth peer out at us from the walls. She looks at them and says to me with a half-smile, “Old age will grab everyone in the end, there’s no one who won’t die.” Contemplating her death, she says with a wink that she deserves to be buried in Tel Aviv’s historical Trumpeldor cemetery, next to all of Israel’s founding fathers. But what’s truly important to her is to donate a Torah scroll in her name to the neighborhood synagogue. Nadia answers to no one but God and herself.

Now, at 85, Nadia has come full circle with her past, with the memories that well up and with the freedom she craved – and, finally, achieved: “I had it very good, and I loved my life. From the time I ran away from home and until I got to the cross-dressing and afterward the operation, and beyond, I was always happy in my life. I wanted and I chose and that’s the most beautiful and the best thing in life. I did what my heart demanded and what it wanted. That’s all. There’s nothing more beautiful than that. Live free in life and you have it good.”

#Nadia Avraham #Jewish #Israeli #Mizrahi #LGBTQ #trans #haaretz

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