#//YES i drew a reaction image for this post. YES it was necessary

[le-higuu]

Waiting for the next drop of shapes and pines lore like

I'm so obsessed with those goofy guys. I want to squeeze tad like a stress ball

[undermounts]

Bound―Chapter 2: An Agreement

Summary: After twenty-two years, Diana and Gaius reunite.

AO3 | Masterlist

Pairing: Gaius Augustine/Diana Leigh (BB MC)

Notes: I was going to wait until Sunday to post, but let’s just get this show on the road. Buckle in y’all for a slow burn

                 Aosta Valley, Italy, 2042

Diana was vaguely aware of tall blades of grass swaying in the wind around her, delicately caressing her arms and cheeks, like soft whispers against her skin, as she sat on the ground, the young boy draped across her lap, unconscious. She held him gently, eyes closed and fingertips pressed to his forehead as she immersed herself in his mind.

Nebulae of indigo and amber matter swirled around her as she focused on the silvery threads that wove together the tapestries of his recent memories, delicately removing the strands that formed her own image as well as Gaius’s and the two Daughters’. 

Diana observed through his memories as the young boy wandered onto the front porch of his home, curious about the noise in the street outside. A shout. A crash. Diana watched as he rubbed sleep from his eyes, still yawning when the second Daughter of Rheya had appeared before him, seemingly out of nowhere. She was smiling and for a moment, the young boy smiled back. Diana felt the moment he realized there was something wrong about this stranger who appeared so suddenly, whose smile seemed unnaturally wide. The street beyond had gone quiet, there was no sign of whatever ruckus had roused him from sleep. Uneasy, he stepped back towards the front door, smile fading.

“Where are you going?” the woman crooned, stepping forward as he stepped back. “The sun is down. It’s time to play.”

On the corporeal plane, Diana’s body shuddered in response.

Diana removed those threads of memory, weaving together the gaps she had left with the remaining material and supplementing doctored versions of what she took away. When the boy woke in the morning, he would not remember cunning smiles, vicious fangs, and sharp knives. Instead, he would only remember dreaming of empty fields, soft grass, and the sky full of stars above.

As she polished up the new memories, Diana felt him there, on the edge of her perception. She felt his amusement, his restlessness, his… curiosity. Even detached from her body, she could feel the intensity of his gaze, burning like a brand on her skin.

“Would you stop that?” she snapped, concentration broken, her consciousness now split between her own body and in the child’s mind palace.

“Stop what?” Gaius hummed, voice perfectly neutral. If she could, Diana would have rolled her eyes.

“Staring. It’s distracting. And rude.” Diana huffed, eyes still closed.

She heard Gaius scoff, but he turned away nonetheless, soil crunching beneath his boots. “As you wish, Your Highness.”

Diana scowled but slammed her mental barriers back up, retreating into the boy’s mind to finish her work in peace.

Hardly a minute later, she had finished, withdrawing from his mind with a satisfied hum. Diana had taken longer than necessary to alter the child’s memories, but her work was seamless. And if she was being honest with herself, she was stalling, staving off the moment she would have to face the new predicament she suddenly found herself in.

Gaius was here. Gaius, who she had not seen in more than two decades. And he had come to her aid.

Diana opened her eyes, letting her hand fall from the boy’s forehead to the ground beneath her. She took a deep breath, looking first to the moon, bright and luminous overhead, and then to Gaius.

He had already been watching her. Again.

“So it is done, then?” he asked, waving his hand towards the boy although his eyes remained locked on hers.

Diana swallowed and nodded, shifting the boy, still fast asleep, in her arms to stand. “Yes. He won’t remember any of this.”

Before Diana could get to her feet, Gaius was there, lifting the child from her arms and tucking him against his chest with a gentleness Diana had never seen in him before, although his face remained perfectly placid. It was...an odd sight. Although she had made peace with Gaius many years ago, Diana was admittedly having difficulty reconciling her last memories of Gaius, even when he was free of Rheya’s corruption, with the man standing before her, cradling a child.

Her thoughts must have been clear on her face because Gaius huffed at her expression, turning on his heel and striding towards town without a second glance. Wordlessly, Diana drew her coat tighter around herself and followed.

Once the field had given way to the edge of town, Gaius slowed, letting Diana lead the way to the boy’s home, guided by the memories she had witnessed. She waited outside, leaning against the wall of a nearby building as Gaius silently entered the house to put the child back in bed.

Her mind reeled, still coming to terms with the fact that Gaius was here in Aosta with her. No one had heard a word from him since he left New York City. Jax had speculated―more like hoped―that Gaius had died, unlikely as it was. Adrian and Kamilah had agreed that as long as he wasn’t causing trouble, he was the farthest thing from their minds. Diana on the other hand, had secretly hoped that he was somewhere out there, trying to do some good in the world. Like he promised her he would.

It wasn’t often that Diana thought of Gaius, but whenever she did, she couldn’t help but wonder if she was foolish for vehemently holding onto a promise Gaius was under no obligation to keep.

When he finally emerged from the house, Gaius blinked at Diana, as if surprised she was still there. Diana watched as he hesitated, and then crossed the street to where she stood. Did Gaius ever hesitate? They stood together in the shadows, the air between them taut as they sized each other up. Finally, Gaius spoke first, breaking the silence. 

“You’re different.”

Diana raised an eyebrow, pointedly looking him up and down. “And you’re wearing pants.”

It was true. As far as outward appearances went, Gaius looked just as he did twenty years ago, wavy hair still falling at about chin-length, one eyebrow forever lifted as if he regarded everything he saw with detached amusement. The only difference was he had ditched the doublet for something more modern: black jeans and a sweater of the darkest blue.

A muscle feathered in Gaius’s jaw as he stared down at her. “Perhaps you aren’t so different after all.”

Diana smiled slightly at that.

With a sigh, Gaius turned, scanning the streets around them, eyes glinting in the moonlight. “We shouldn’t stay out here. Just in case there are more… cultists,” he grimaced as if the word had left a bad taste in his mouth. “...around”

Diana opened her mouth to protest that the Daughters of Rheya weren’t a cult―Serafine and cult simply did not fit together―but the more she thought about it, the less inclined she was to argue with him. Instead, she frowned slightly, glancing between Gaius and some spot southwest of where they were now. Diana pushed off the wall, waving a hand at Gaius. “Come on. I’ve got a room. We can talk there.”

                                                 Diana felt like she was dreaming.

She sat on the edge of her bed, watching as Gaius absently roamed around her hotel room, running his hand along the mantle of the fireplace that crackled to life along the far wall.

Gaius was here. In her room. Wearing jeans.

She shook her head and cleared her throat. They sat in silence for long enough. “What are you doing here?”

Gaius glanced over his shoulder at her, firelight flickering across his countenance. “I could ask you the same thing. Shouldn’t you be back in New York, helping stray pups find their forever homes?”

Diana grit her teeth. “Is that what you think I do?”

He shrugged indifferently. “Isn’t that the sort of thing you good do-ers… do? You and Adrian, the good Samaritans.”

Diana let out a long breath, resisting the urge to roll her eyes at him. “I’m on… a mission.”

“By yourself.”

“I can handle myself.” The moment Diana said it, she braced herself for some sarcastic comeback. Clearly, she imagined Gaius scoffing.

Instead, he merely said, “I know.”

“I―you what?” Diana blurted.

Gaius turned, folding his arms as he leaned against the wall beside the fireplace. He regarded her for a moment longer, and Diana was surprised to find that for once, he wasn’t amused or calculating when he looked at her. He seemed… thoughtful.

“I said I know. I know you can handle yourself,” he reiterated, speaking slowly, deliberately. “You expected me to mock you, I can tell. But that wasn’t my intention, Diana. But it is… rare, isn’t it? For one of you lot to go off alone?”

“It was how I wanted it,” Diana shrugged, keeping her voice carefully even as she gauged Gaius’s reaction. If he was curious about what that meant, he didn’t let it show.

Instead, he simply nodded and seated himself in one of the leather armchairs by the fire. “I know what you are capable of. I haven’t forgotten.”

“You shouldn’t,” Diana said, although she didn’t know why. There was no menace behind her words. No reason for it. Gaius wasn’t here to fight her, she knew. He was no longer the man she feared,  the man who had been her enemy. But old habits died hard she supposed.

Gaius hummed as he hunched forward, elbows on his knees, hands interlaced before him as he searched her face. For what, Diana didn’t know. His pose was so relaxed, far from the stiff, proud posture he once held.

“I haven’t forgotten either, Diana,” Gaius began, eyes finally falling away to his hands, “my promise to you.”

Diana let a slow breath, her heartbeat suddenly loud in her own ears. All those years she had dared to hope…

It had not been for nothing.

 Gaius sat there, eyes downcast, wringing his hands. Was he… nervous?

“I know I can’t undo what I have done. And I know twenty years is not enough to atone,” he said softly. “I am not looking for praise or approval. I know I don’t deserve that. But I just need you to know. I am not wasting this second chance you’ve given me. You did not spare me for nothing.”

Diana stood and crossed the room. Gaius’s eyes followed her as she went, but quickly fell to his hands again as she sat in the chair across from her. For a moment, she was reminded of herself as a child, of how she used to extend that helping hand to her mother on bad days, hoping for acceptance while fearing rejection. How long had Gaius been alone, trying to atone, hoping that the one person who had faith in him hadn’t given up? 

“I promised you I would do you proud,” Gaius continued, shadows flickering across his face. “I will never forget that.”

Diana reached out slowly, laying her hand over his as she whispered, “I knew you wouldn’t.”

He looked up, blue eyes searching hers and Diana almost gasped out loud from the relief she felt pouring off of him in waves. The sheer amount of gratitude. All of it, strangely, for her.

She didn’t know what to make of that.

After a moment, she withdrew her hand and leaned back, disentangling herself from all of his emotions now that skin-to-skin content had been broken. She could still feel some of it, echoes of his presence, but at least it was somewhat muted. Odd, that she could feel any of Gaius’s emotions at all, especially so acutely. She knew that he had some small affinity for psychic power, enough to shield himself. So why…?

Curious, she shifted the conversation, distracting Gaius as she sent out minuscule tendrils of power, just enough to probe his mental shields, but slight enough to avoid detection. “How did you find me here?”

Gaius scoffed, straightening, a bit of his usual self shining through once again. “You were hard to miss, Diana.”

“What do you mean?” She frowned, brushing against the fortified walls of his mind, solid and impenetrable. She supposed that was wise of him, to keep his mind guarded in her presence, all things considered. Although that didn’t explain why she could sense his emotions as if they were her own.

He leveled her with a cool gaze and she felt rather than heard his sardonic amusement. “You’re like a beacon, Diana. I was a good couple of miles away when I felt you out of nowhere, burning like a wildfire on the horizon. I have only felt that sort of power once before, in you,” he shook his head. “So I came running. But surely you didn’t need all of that to fend off two measly vampires.” She sensed the implication in his voice and frowned.

“I…” Diana trailed off, remembering the talisman she had come here for. She glanced down, withdrawing the bundle of fabric from the inside of her coat. Its presence was dim now. Slumbering. Carefully, she unwrapped it.

“What is that?” Gaius watched her intently, eyes flicking from the item in her hand as he gauged her reaction.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, turning it into the firelight. “I… I dreamt of this. Weeks ago.”

“That’s why you’re here.”

“For this and other things,” Diana murmured, frowning at the talisman. It bothered her that she still couldn’t identify its purpose. It had to do more than flash every now and then, right? She glanced up at him, momentarily considering just how much to tell him. “When I found it, it was as if it were calling to me.”

“And then what? You touched it?” Gaius huffed, then seeing her expression, pursed his lips. “...Of course you did.”

“I’m sorry, weren’t you the one who wanted me to go around touching random, powerful things to see if I was the Bloodkeeper?” Diana snapped, pocketing the talisman with a huff. 

Gaius merely rolled his eyes, crossing his arms. Typical.

“Anyways,” Diana continued, taking a deep breath to soothe herself. “My power reacted when I did. Beyond my control.” She clenched her fist against her thigh, recalling the way it had torn free of her body. “I don’t think it went anywhere. Just a burst of energy and the gemstone flared for a second. That’s what you must have sensed.”

“Must have been,” Gaius echoed, expression unreadable. They sat in silence for a while longer, each of them left alone to their thoughts, conversation evidently over. After a few minutes had passed, Diana fidgeted in her chair, glancing from the fire to Gaius, who seemed to be perfectly unaware of oppressive air in the room.

Now, what were they supposed to do?

Gaius wasn’t her friend, but he wasn’t her enemy anymore either. Diana didn’t know what he was to her anymore, or what she was to him. She didn’t know what to call someone whose life had been in her hands twice before. She had decided his fate more than twenty years ago and given him a second chance to atone. Whatever that made them, Diana didn’t quite feel right telling him to leave, although she didn’t know if that meant she wanted him to stay.

Diana cleared her throat, about to ask him what he planned to do next and if he had a place to stay when Gaius got to his feet, crossing to the window that overlooked the town of Aosta below. Diana watched as he studied the streets and buildings beyond, his silhouette limned in the moonlight. She noticed, with some relief, that the only emotions she felt now were once again her own. She wasn’t entirely sure why their consciousnesses had merged like that, although she admitted it would have been nice to know what he was thinking at that moment. When Gaius spoke, his voice was calm and steady, like a general laying out a plan. 

“More will come looking for you, Diana. I imagine that the Daughters of Rheya you encountered and I were not the only ones who felt your power. ” He turned to face her, hands clasped behind his back. “It would probably be in your best interest to leave as soon as possible.”

Diana nodded slowly, glancing over at the digital clock that sat upon the nightstand. It was just a few short hours until dawn. She supposed she could leave at any point during the day, since sunlight did not have the debilitating effects on her that it did on other vampires. But she had grown used to the graveyard shift with her friends at home and was surprisingly tired, both from the long plane ride she had taken earlier that day and the amount of power she expended tonight.

As if Gaius had heard her thoughts, he added, “I can stay and keep watch while you rest and make the proper travel arrangements. And then I will continue on my way.”

Continue on my way.

Diana tilted her head at that, an idea coming together. Whether it was a good idea, she wasn’t quite sure. “Where will you go?”

Gaius shrugged, glancing out the window. “I don’t know. Wherever I am needed.”

“So you just… wander? Until you find someone who needs rescuing?” 

He huffed, brow quirking, “It’s surprisingly effective. But yes, I suppose I wander until I come across someone in need of help or hear of places where I could be useful.”

She nodded, contemplating this new information. For twenty-two years Gaius had roamed alone protecting humanity. And she had never heard a word of it.

“What if...” Diana began, watching Gaius closely to study his reaction. “What if you came with me? I have quite a bit of wandering to do myself. I’m sure you can find some humans to save along the way.”

Gaius simply blinked at her as if he couldn’t believe what she had just said. Diana wasn’t even sure if she had really just proposed the idea either. It was absurd, honestly. The idea of her and Gaius traveling around Europe together, all because of one chance encounter―

“You’re asking me to come with you.” Not quite a question.

“Yes,” Diana answered without hesitation. Then she added, “I don’t know what lies ahead of me. It wouldn’t help to have some backup or someone who knows Europe and its history better than I do.”

Gaius stood there silently, mulling this over. His gaze was intense, unrelenting as he studied her, weighing her words and searching for any hint of insincerity in them. Seemingly satisfied by whatever he had worked out, Gaius let out a long breath, jaw set in resolution. Then, he dipped his chin, ever so slightly. “Alright.”

“Like, ‘alright,’ you’ll come with me?” Diana reiterated, eyebrows raised. She realized that she had been the one to invite him along, but she hadn’t anticipated that he would actually say yes or what to do if he did.

“Yes. I’ll accompany you on… whatever it is that you think you are doing.” He sighed as if in anticipation of the trials that were to come. “Something tells me that wherever you go, trouble will follow.”

Diana’s lip quirked up. “Which is why this is an excellent proposition for you.”

Gaius merely sighed again. When he wasn’t looking, Diana smiled.

                                                tagging: @bigmemesplz, @somin-yin, @mkamra2355

[its-always-the-witching-hour]

Hero vs Villain

(Let me know if I should continue this)

Hey guys. I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted something original on here, but I just had no motivation to write anything. Here’s a story I’ve been writing to make up for it. Just to let you know, I probably won’t continue the Apocalyptic AU, because I’ve run out of ideas. 

Word count - 1707 words

Warnings - (Slight spoilers) Mentions of brainwashing, basically kidnapping, a mention of stabbing, someone being manipulated without their knowledge

---

“Why do you want to kill me so badly?” The Hero managed to ask as they struggled to free theirself from the Villain’s grasp. The Villain stopped, causing the Hero to trip and slam into them.

“What gave you that idea?” The Villain asked, sounding offended as they reached out to steady the Hero.

“W-well you’re always trying to attack me or my friends when you see us, and you’re literally kidnapping me right now!” The Villain hurriedly slapped their hand over the Hero’s mouth as their voice raised in volume. They dragged the Hero behind a building as another group of heroes ran past yelling instructions at each other.

The Villain sighed as they looked the Hero up and down as they struggled helplessly against their restraints. “For your information, this is not a kidnapping. I’m trying to help you.”

The Hero managed to shake the Villain’s hand from their mouth. “So you call attacking my group on patrol, grabbing me, tying me up and shoving me behind a building helping?”

The Villain looked away, almost guiltily. “This was the only way I could think of that didn’t involve me breaking into that top security base of yours. What’s the deal with that place anyway? It seems designed so nobody can get in or out.”

“None of your business.” The Hero started to struggle again, their hands sparking as they tried to summon a wind current to help them out. The Villain just stared at them in boredom.

“You do know that the ropes I used to tie you up are woven out of multiple shape memory alloys. If I touch this flame to it…” The Villain drew a lighter out of their pocket and flicked it on, “then the metal will return to it��s original form, which is much spiker then you’d like. So unless you would like to bleed out from various stab wounds, I’d suggest you keep your weather powers to a minimum.” The Hero growled in annoyance, but stopped attempting to form a storm overhead. “Good. Now, if you would please follow me inside, I may consider releasing you from your bounds.” With no other option, the Hero reluctantly followed the Villain into the building.

-

“So, why am I hear again? And is that amount of locks really necessary?” The Hero asked in bemusement as they watched the Villain slide various dead bolts into place and snap locks closed on all sides of the door.

“Can’t be too careful when dealing with the ‘hero’ community. I know you have someone who can open anything by just imagining the inside of the lock. Unlike you, I take notes on my opponents and their capabilities in battle. I bet you don’t even know my power.”

The Hero opened up their mouth to answer, seemed to think for a few seconds, then closed it again, glaring at the Villain.

“Finally, you start to see some sense. There might be hope for you yet.” The Villain grabbed the end of the Hero’s restraint and strode off again, pulling the Hero so that they had to jog to catch up.

“W-wait!” The Hero called out, stumbling as they turned a sharp corner. “You never even told me why I’m here? Why would you target me, out of all the other more powerful people?” The Villain entered a dark room and pulled the Hero inside, locking the door behind them. “Um, what is this place?” the Hero asked tentatively, trying to get a hold of their surroundings even though the entire room was pitch black.

“Sorry, I had to make sure that we weren’t being followed. The reason I bought you here is that I know you aren’t actually one of them.”

“What do you mean? One of who?”

“The so called ‘protectors of the city’, ‘defeaters of evil’, the self-proclaimed ‘saviors of the human race itself’.” The Villain punctuated every title with air quotes that the Hero could barely see. “Those are the people you work with, are they not?”

“Yes, but they would never-” The Hero trailed off as the Villain flicked on a projector. The slightly blurred image cast onto the back wall showed an image of one of the head heroes holding a case that was locked closed. The image was grainy as though it had been taken from far away then zoomed in greatly.

“This was taken a few days ago. Even though the quality is regrettably…” the Villain pulled a face as they searched for a good word to use, but gave up, “bad, you can clearly see that this so called ‘hero’ is doing something not very ‘hero like’.”

“That’s just one photo, and they could have been doing something completely different then what you think. You better have more of this so called ‘evidence’ if you want to convince me to join you.” The hero scoffed, slightly more confident now that they knew torture wasn’t on the Villain’s agenda.

“Well, when was the last time you got to choose where you did your daily patrols?”

“Um, I-”

“Did you design that suit yourself? Or did someone else tell you to wear it?”

The Hero pulled at the sleeves of their costume uncomfortably, looking uncertain.

“Have you ever had a holiday or day off?”

“Actually last week-”

“Do you even have a family to go home to?”

“Hey! That’s personal information that I would never dream of sharing with a villain!” The Hero glared daggers at the Villain, who just smirked.

“Touchy subject I see. It’s okay if you don’t have anyone. I didn’t either.”

“What do you mean?”

“What I mean is have you heard of anyone ever leaving the Hero facility?”

“Why would anyone do that? It’s amazing there. We’re treated very well there, and choose to defend this city to repay them for helping us!”

“Helping, or brainwashing?”

“They wouldn’t do that to any of us! They saved us from our own families, who were afraid of us.”

“Saved is one word for it, but I prefer to use the term ‘kidnapping’,” the Villain paced around until they were standing directly in front of the Hero, “I too, was ‘saved’ by the Government. My family were also afraid of my power. They hid me away from everyone else in fear that people would start making rumors. I was usually left alone for hours while my parents went to work and my siblings to school. That’s when the heroes showed up. One of my neighbors had gotten a glimpse of me using my power, and had called the police. They took me away, promising big things such as honor for my family and fame for me. They promised me friends. So, as any young child would, I went with them. My first few years at the academy were great. I met people and honed my powers to almost perfection. My friends that I made at the academy were always behind me. Did they ever tell you what happens to the people who aren’t cut out for battle, who aren’t strong or brave or smart enough?” The Villain stalked around the Hero, watching them intently for a reaction. “They never told us either, but one by one, people started to disappear from class. People who were my friends. When I asked about it, they said that other parts of the country needed heroes, or that my friends were sent home because they didn’t have what it took. None of us had ever had a home before the academy. When people started disappearing after asking too many questions, we had nobody to turn to. You never knew who you could trust.

“I was one of the more curious people in my class, as I had lived a very sheltered life beforehand. So naturally, I decided to see what would happen if I vanished. Not being able to continue with becoming a hero wasn’t an issue to me. I had never really agreed with what they were offering anyway. Honestly, trying to be subtle enough to make it seem like I didn’t want to get caught in the act of spreading rumors was the most fun I’ve had in years. Eventually, they found me, of course. I was sent to a place similar to a mental prison, except for the fact that instead of being helped, you are tortured, and no one has ever left alive. Except for me, of course. I asked you earlier what my power is. The short answer? I can create illusions so authentic that they look more realistic than actual life. It wasn’t a strain to create a guard’s eyeball from memory for the retina scans, and confuse the security cameras. I then made my way back here and decided to lay low for a couple of years. I kept clinging to a small hope that someone else would realize how twisted this society has become, but I found nobody. Until you came. I saw it when you were on your first mission, to arrest a citizen who had shoplifted food in order to feed his family. When you were told to hit the man for resisting arrest, you hesitated. That’s when I knew you were different. Sure, they had managed to brainwash you into obedience, but there was a part of you that knew what you were doing was wrong. I managed to break that man out of jail a week later, by the way. Wanting to feed you family isn’t a jail-worthy crime.”

The Villain watched the Hero carefully, trying to gauge their reaction.

“Wait. You’re the one who broke out of Redemption institute? The person who managed to escape and left no evidence behind about yourself at all?” The Hero tried to turn around to face the Villain, but forgot that they were attached to a chair and nearly fell over.

The Villain caught the back of the chair and stood it upright so that the Hero faced the Villain. “That’s right. Glad to see you haven’t been learning only useless information at that academy. Now that you have seen my side of the argument,” the Villain extended one of their hands towards the Hero, “will you help me bring down this twisted society?”

[takadasaiko]

Love Me Twice: Chapter Twelve

FFN II AO3

Summary: Tom and Ressler end up on a stakeout with Aram and Tom comes face-to-face with Brigitte Tremblay.

Chapter Twelve

Liz's call to the Post Office found them neck deep into a lead that had broken while she and Tom had been dodging bullets. They had found Petrov's safe house and moved in quickly, uncovering the treasure trove that Reddington had promised with The Collector. Ressler, Park, and Aram were all still there when Liz and Tom stepped out of the lift and into the War Room. They used the time to search what they could for entry and exits on the building that Brigitte Tremblay had shot from, hoping for a break of their own.

"I'm telling you, this woman's a pro," Tom said as he motioned to the single photo they'd found. It was grainy, triggered by a car flying through a red light, but even if Aram cleaned it up it wouldn't do any good. All they could see was the bill of her cap shading her face from view.

The lift sounded, drawing their attention, and Liz's three partners trudged their way in. Ressler spotted her first. "Cooper said that Tolliver's dead?"

She let a breath out on a sigh. "It's been a long day."

Park set her things down on her desk. "Any leads on who killed her?"

"Yes and no. We think it was the woman who hired Tom, but this is the best photo we have of her." Liz swiveled the computer screen around to show what she and Tom had been looking at.

Aram visibly cringed. "Nothing else?"

"No, and I need to go pick up Agnes from her friend's house."

"I'll keep looking," Tom offered. "I have a couple of contacts. It's a long shot, but —"

"No."

He blinked hard, a sign she knew well of him resetting. "Why?"

"Because she's been using you. We have no idea if she's going to try to tie up loose ends or what she's doing."

"I'm a big boy. I can take care of myself," he promised.

Liz looked past him at her team that was trying to look busy with anything else to give them what little privacy the War Room could afford and she let the honest answer roll off her tongue before she could talk herself out of it. "I'm scared. I've lost you too many times. I can't do it again."

She watched his expression soften at that and his hand twitched at his side, almost like he was about to reach for her. "So now what?"

"I just need to know you're safe."

"Okay…" he drawled out. "I can't exactly crash on your couch with the kid there."

Liz looked past him, her gaze sweeping the space. She couldn't just leave him there. It'd be safe, sure, but Cooper would never go for it and Tom would feel like a prisoner. With everything going on she needed him safe, but she needed to keep his trust too. She knew he was desperate and clinging to any hope that she could help him remember. The last thing she wanted was to somehow spark that instinct he had to run. Asking him to let her lock him away in a government bunker might just do it.

"I got a couch."

Both Keens turned to Ressler who shrugged. "What?"

"Are you offering?" Liz asked skeptically as Tom said:

"Yeah, that's really not necessary, man."

Ressler quirked an eyebrow. "Alternative is putting a cot in one of the holding cells."

"Or just finding my own place to crash and reconvening tomorrow," Tom countered.

"Listen," Ressler said as he stepped towards them and Liz didn't miss the way Tom drew himself up a little taller. "Just an offer. For Liz. Otherwise she'll be stressing out over you and she won't be good to any of us when we have to hit the ground running tomorrow."

She caught her partner's gaze briefly. She owed him. Hell, she owed him more favours than she could count by this point.

Tom's shoulders sagged just a little and he turned back to Liz. "One night."

"Thank you." She had to stop herself from tipping forward and pressing a quick kiss to his lips. Instead she reached forward and her hand squeezed his before releasing. "I need to go pick up Agnes. Ressler..."

"I'll add it to the list," he huffed and she tried for a smile.

"Thank you. I'll see you guys in the morning."

She turned and started for the door.

----------

It had been a long day for everyone. Tom finished filling them in on the details of the chaos and Ressler found himself shaking his head. Somewhere along the way this had become normal, or at least expected. With the spies and secrets that could get you killed and people that had been dead for years popping up with a decade's worth of memories missing, it was a wonder they hadn't all lost it yet. If Park's reaction was anything to go by, maybe they all should have run from it by this point.

For that moment, though, he was looking forward to a shower and his bed. Somehow he and Tom were the last ones out.

"Let me grab my keys and we'll head out," Ressler called over and Tom looked up from the computer he'd been given limited access to in order to research Tremblay. He shifted, his expression careful and his gaze steady like he was looking for something.

"Listen," he said slowly and nothing about his tone instilled any confidence that Ressler was going to like what came next, "I get Liz is… worried. I guess. From what she's filled me in on we've been through a lot."

"Understatement," Ressler muttered as he grabbed his coat from the back of the chair it had been draped over.

"But with everything that's going on…. she could be in danger too. I'm not just gonna sit around."

"You just said you understood that she's worried about you," Ressler pointed out.

"Right, so if she thinks I crashed at your place she won't be. Everybody wins." Tom flashed what Ressler was sure he thought was a charming smile, but it reminded him of the days when he wanted nothing more than to take a swing at that smug look. Sometimes he had.

"You want me to lie to her?"

Tom's expression shifted to confusion. "Well… yeah. So she doesn't worry. She's got enough on her plate right now."

Ressler snorted and shook his head. If it weren't so idiotic it might have been funny. Was this really how Tom's brain worked the entirety of his and Liz's first marriage? No wonder she'd shot him. He took a beat, pulled a breath in, and tried to curb the sarcasm as he spoke. "Listen, pal, I get you didn't see what she went through when she lost you, but I did. It destroyed her. That woman - the one that you're just trying to placate right now - hasn't been the same since. I don't wanna see her go through that again, so if I have to lock you in the box to make you keep your promise to her tonight, I'll do it. Happily."

"What box?"

Ressler smirked and watched Tom's expression grow a little more worried. "You can sleep locked up here or you can crash on my couch. Only two options."

The other man watched him carefully as if he were trying to gauge just how far Ressler was willing to take this. Finally he relented. "Couch it is."

"Thought so."

The drive to Ressler's apartment was tense and quiet, Tom looking like he was just waiting for his opening to do what he wanted to despite Ressler's threats. He reminded the agent of the asshole fresh out of captivity on the boat that had been looking for any angle he could work. It had been so long since Ressler had seen him in that light, but for Tom, he was still in that mindset. As much as the older man hated to admit it, he didn't know any better.

Ressler unlocked the front door to his apartment and motioned for Tom to enter. "You hungry?" he asked, giving civility another try.

"I think I'm just gonna crash. Get an early start tomorrow." He tossed his go-bag onto the couch. "You got a shower I can use?"

"Yeah. Just through there," Ressler said as he motioned towards the bathroom. "Hey?" he called out, stopping Tom midway. "I know you don't remember and I don't know what all she's told you, but I'm gonna give you a piece of advice."

"Pretty sure I didn't ask for it,"

"Don't lie to Liz."

Tom snorted. "I get that you're a cop and you've got this whole —"

"This isn't about me. It's about her. And you. You spent your first marriage manipulating and lying to her because you thought you could run the board and get everything you wanted. It ended with Liz in a really dark place and you with a couple rounds through you. After all of this, she doesn't deserve to have to be put through you figuring it out again."

Tom's dark blue eyes were fixed on him and there was a hint of danger in them, his tone careful as he spoke. "I don't know what you want from me, man."

"I'm just trying to help you both. Be honest with her. It'll save you both a lot of pain." At that he turned, disappearing into his room and hoping Tom would be there in the morning.

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

He wasn't sure what he had missed. Liz said she knew him, and she knew enough that he couldn't help but believe her, so why wouldn't she expectthis? She must know that he needed results, that that drove him. He needed somewhere to focus his energy. If he was working for Tremblay or not, his job was to keep her safe. He couldn't do that without answers, and he couldn't wait for play dates and workdays to wrap up to get those. He didn't hold that against her, but in the same way surely she didn't hold that against him. It had to be more of a way to protect herself rather than a real expectation. At least that's what he'd assumed before Ressler's whole lecture.

The shower did nothing to provide any clarity, but by the time Jacob emerged, steam following him out the door, he found a pillow and some blankets on the couch for him. Ressler's door was shut and the light was off inside. Well, at least he didn't have to work his way through any further conversation. The best remaining option was to try to get some sleep.

His mind was spinning as he shut his eyes, dozens of images and thoughts colliding together. Somewhere along the way he must have slipped a little deeper and it was like being dropped in a room filled with people. He could hear the constant chatter of voices that he didn't recognize talking about things that didn't make sense, and he could feel his anxiety spike as he tried to cover for his obvious lack of intel. Everything he said was wrong and he knew it. They knew it too, and the more he screwed up the worse it got.

Finally, for the first time, a voice he recognized broke through. Liz. It was Liz. Her name left his lips and it was like he'd banished all the other voices, the figures evaporating like ghosts and he was left standing alone in the center of a large room he didn't recognize. He turned, looking for her, and called out again. She answered and he started towards the voice.

Red and blue lights filled the interior space, but no sirens accompanied it. The only sounds Jacob could make out were Liz calling his name and the sound of his own heart pounding in his chest. He opened door after door, but she wasn't there. It was like her voice shifted, always out of reach, and he couldn't fight the overwhelming feeling that if he didn't find her now, he might never see her again.

"Liz!" His voice echoed through the empty hallways and he rounded to another closed door, throwing it open.

And there she stood, dressed in white with her hair trimmed short. Instead of the red and blue lights flashing he could hear the sound of the waves and see the sunset from the balcony behind her. She smiled, relieved. "You came."

"I've been looking all over for you," he managed, crossing the space between them.

Her smile broadened, but even though he was moving further into the room it felt like he was running in place. He reached out to her and there was a bright light that flashed. The sunset behind her disappeared and the flashing lights returned. He could see blood in her hair now and she met his eyes. "Tell Agnes about me."

"What?" he managed, but she was gone. It was as if she simply flashed out of existence with the lights and Jacob couldn't breathe. "Liz? Liz!"

"Tom?"

Dark blue eyes snapped open and Jacob was halfway to sitting before he realized he was no longer in the strange, shifting place that was becoming more and more shrouded with each passing second. He was pulling air into his lungs in painful gulps, the strain sending him hunching forward over his knees.

"You need a trash can? Because I really don't want you puking on my couch."

Jacob turned to find Donald Ressler squatted down next to the couch, his expression not quite irritated. It wasn't worried either. From what Jacob could tell in the dimly lit living room it looked a little closer to understanding. "I'm good."

"Nightmare?"

"What gave me away?" He swallowed hard, feeling the painful scratch all the way down. "You got, uh…."

"Water?"

"Yeah." Ressler disappeared for just a moment before returning with a glass of tap water. He handed it over and Jacob took a long sip from it. "Liz said that the doctors you saw after… everything said there was no sign of head trauma. If someone intentionally manipulated your memories -"

Jacob turned quickly, regretting the sharp moment in an instant, but he did his best to cover it. "How - or why - would someone do that?"

The fed snorted, shrugging as he stood again. "There's a process that people are trained in that can manipulate and… hide memories. Didn't Liz say anything about it?"

Jacob leaned back, listening to the other man rummage around his kitchen. "There's a lot of ground to cover in what I'm missing."

"Fair." He returned, a box of what was probably cold pizza in one hand and a couple of beers in the other. He set it all down on the coffee table and took a seat in the chair next to it, opening the pizza box. He glanced at Jacob. "If the nausea's passed, feel free to grab a slice."

Jacob swung his legs over the edge of the couch so that he was sitting up fully and took Ressler up on the offer. He hadn't realized just how hungry he was. Halfway through the second bite he risked a look at him. "People can screw with your memories?"

"In our experience, yeah. We've run into it a few times. Liz had some memories buried from when she was a kid and I, uh…. I had someone manipulate mine to get me to do something I wouldn't normally have done."

"Is there someone that would have? My memories, I mean."

Ressler loosed a breath and reached over to one of the beers, popping the top off of it. "A couple options," he said slowly. "Liz is leaning one direction, I'm wondering about another."

"And those are?"

"You need to talk to her about that." He motioned to the beer and the pizza box. "I had a lot of nightmares after they scrambled my brain like an egg. After the nausea was done, this helped ease the nerves."

"Thanks," Jacob huffed and took the second beer. Definitely not how he expected the night to go. "You ever…. get back what they took from you?"

Ressler's expression darkened and he reached for a second slice. "They didn't really take as much as they put stuff in there that didn't belong."

"I just have this massive, gaping blank," Jacob found himself saying. "There's nothing. It's like I went to bed one night and woke up ten years later."

"Hell of a thing to wake up to."

"You're telling me. I had scars I didn't recognize, nobody would tell me how I'd been hurt…. Guess that part makes more sense now. Gina…. Someone I work with -"

"I know who she is," Ressler answered and there was a hint of spite in his voice.

Jacob huffed a laugh. "She made it sound like it'd just been any other job that did it. She lied. I know that now. I shouldn't…. I shouldn't trust Liz - or you people - but she knows too much to be making it up."

"She loves you," Ressler said firmly. "I meant what I said about how she took thinking you were dead. It was hell for her."

"I wanna remember."

"Good. She needs you to."

Jacob took a long drink from his beer and his phone buzzed on the table. He reached for it, brows drawing together as he looked at the text.

"What?"

"It's Tremblay."

"The woman that hired you?"

"Yeah."

"What'd she say?"

"She wants to meet." Jacob could feel Ressler watching him. "I should go. We might not get another chance."

"Did you get nothing from our conversation earlier?" Ressler groused.

Jacob's lips quirked up at one corner, tilting them into a lopsided smile. "Liz is worried about me going at it alone, but I've got backup now. If you've got a camera, I can lure her out and you can grab a shot. We may be able to find out who she is."

Ressler watched him for a long moment. "I don't, but I know someone with the equipment we need."

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

Aram hadn't expected a call at three in the morning, much less a call asking him what kind of surveillance equipment he could dig up then and there. It took a couple rounds of explanation before his sleep deprived mind was able to piece together that Tom's mystery employer had made contact and that Ressler was going with Tom to the meet. Did Liz know? They should probably call Liz…. she was really worried about Tom doing this without her.

She wouldn't have anyone to watch Agnes at that hour and they needed to move quickly. Their window was closing. It was fine. Her biggest concern was going at it alone, and he wasn't. He now had not one but two federal agents to watch his back.

Aram had forgotten how effortlessly smooth Tom was when he wanted something, but at least Ressler had been quick to say that they'd let Liz know first thing the next morning and they would have Tom's back. Okay. He could get behind that.

That's how he found himself sitting in the back of Ressler's Bureau-issued SUV a block away from the meet with the only the surveillance equipment that he'd been able to get his hands on at that hour of the morning. The sound quality was a little iffy on the watch they had fitted Tom with, but it was better than nothing. It wasn't like they'd be able to get the permission to patch into any CCTV feeds to get live visuals.

Ressler shifted in his place across from Aram. "You have everything up and running?"

"I do. We can hear him, but it's only one way." He handed Ressler a headset to listen through and frowned a little. "Is it… weird?"

"Liz's husband coming back from the dead without any memory of her? Yeah, it's weird."

"Okay, good, because with everything we see sometimes it's hard to tell." Aram reached over to check one of his feeds, but risked a glance out of the corner of his eye to watch Ressler's reaction. The other man sighed and ran his hand through his surprisingly ungelled hair. Well, it had been in the middle of the night when all of this had been kicked into action. He looked tired.

"It's weird," he confirmed again quietly. "But you're right. Sometimes it's easy to lose perspective on that. We've seen more crazy since Reddington turned himself in than I would have ever believed possible."

"I mean, I guess that's good though, right? Maybe it means we can find a way to get his memories back. Liz…. Liz deserves to be happy." After everything they'd all been through, at least one of them did.

Ressler made a small sound of acknowledgement, but didn't get the chance to say anything else as Tom signaled that they were a go.

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

He was meeting her in the warehouse district at half past five in the morning. Limited visuals, audio equipment that Aram had been struggling to get to work, and a delay in backup that could cost him his life if things went south. He may have shrugged off the risk as minuscule, but it was a good thing Liz wouldn't know about this until after it was done.

Jacob pulled in a deep breath and felt the cool night air rush down into his lungs to help clear his sleep deprived mind. The urgency of the meet had been a bit of a surprise, following up only hours after Brigitte Tremblay had taken out Tolliver in her pointed fashion, and it could either be a good or bad sign. He didn't think there was much of an in between there. All he could do was hold onto the fact that, from her vantage point, she could have easily taken either him or Liz out if that had been her goal. Instead she had saved their lives. The only casualty other than Tolliver's men had been Fitz, and Jacob wasn't crying too much over that little traitor.

He didn't visibly tense at the small sound behind him signalled her approach but he turned to meet those sharp blue eyes. An almost playful smile tilted her lip. "You don't follow instructions well, do you?"

"My instructions were to protect her," he answered flatly, watching every hint of reaction. "That's exactly what I've done."

Her smile managed to broaden at that and her posture was loose. "I knew you would, Tom."

Jacob bristled at the name everyone had been calling him by, but it felt like a taunt falling from her lips.

"I'll admit that you moved more quickly than I would have anticipated, but I shouldn't be surprised. Zanetakos assured me her best."

"You knew it'd be me."

"I did."

"Why?"

Tremblay's amusement faded just a little at that, a hint of seriousness taking hold as she studied him. "Because I am very good at what I do, Tom. I read people. You didn't have to remember her for me to know that you'd be drawn to her. That you'd be willing to give your life to protect her."

A shiver ran through him and Jacob took a step towards. "Do you know what happened to me?"

"Pieces."

He could feel something inside of him shift, a desperation starting to claw at him. He wasn't afraid of much - he never had been - but answers dangling just out of his reach reminded him of the precipice of questions he stood at. He'd spent two and a half years pushing those questions back and down. It was the only way he'd been able to move forward, or at least what he thought was moving forward. He had burrowed down in what he knew. Which was… a lie, or at least it hadn't been the truth in a very long time. Now, knowing that, he still didn't have the answers he needed about what had happened in his ten missing years. He had stories and people that knew him, but he didn't remember. "I need to know."

"You want to."

"I need to," he pressed. "I need to know who I am because the man that Liz knows…."

She tilted her head, watching him carefully and all the mirth had washed out of her now. "You're an operative. A man that can become anyone. People like us shift and soak up whatever we need to in order to be whatever the job requires."

"I became someone else. Someone better."

"No," Tremblay chuckled. "You just convinced yourself that you did. You're a shell that was ready to be filled up and, for the first time, you were filled up with hope. It's powerful and it's distracting. It can get you killed, but I'm betting it'll protect her."

He wanted to argue. Liz saw someone different than he knew. Her friends saw someone different. He felt different around her. He couldn't explain it and he couldn't remember it, but he knew it, somehow.

At least he thought he had.

The argument died in his throat and he swallowed hard. "Why am I here? Tonight. Now."

"To hear a warning." Tremblay said as she leaned in. He stood still where he was and felt her fingers ghost over his watch. She knew what it was and she knew how to disable it. It clicked before she whispered into his ear. "This is the beginning of the end, Tom. Protect her. She's everything." She pressed a strange kiss against his cheek and pulled away, leaving Jacob to stare at her, dumbfounded.

"Don't move!" Ressler shouted from behind Jacob and Tremblay's smile returned.

"Don't let your wife's partner shoot me, hm?" She turned on her heel and Jacob watched her take a couple of steps before instinct kicked in and he spun, motioning to Ressler.

"Let her go."

"What?" the fed demanded, but Tremblay was already gone. Ressler lowered his gun and started towards Jacob. "Hey, you okay?"

He hadn't realized until that moment that he was dragging each breath in by gulps, the effort making his chest heave. It hurt, one breath not fully expelled before he tried to swallow another one. He couldn't shake the sudden and overwhelming feeling that each breath might be the last one he could pull in. It was the same feeling of panic he'd felt as he woke a couple of hours before.

"Tom, you okay?"

Ressler sounded genuinely concerned and as Jacob turned to look at him, he didn't feel like he had any control over the words leaving his lips. "I can't do this."

And he was moving. Running. The only thing that pushed back at the panic was running.

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

TBC

Notes: Well, Tom warned her in S2 he'd been running his whole life. He does it well.

I really enjoyed writing this chapter. Like so much with Tom, Tessler was a bromance that just didn't get what it deserved. They tee'd it up and set it to swing and then.... they killed Tom. Okay then. That's what fanfiction is for I guess.

Next Time: Ressler has to admit to losing Liz's husband, Red provides a new detail for their case, and the Keens find a way to reconnect.

[nekojitachan]

Okay, I just felt like writing something Halloween-inspired. This is the start of something new (I KNOW, FINISH SOME OTHER STUFF).  I’m getting back to RP, I promise, but I wanted to post something since I haven’t lately, so here’s this.

Warnings for Mary (so yes, abusive relationship), and mentions of child abuse, mentions of the abusive pasts of our boys.

The Ghost in You

*******

Andrew gave what passed as a glare from him at Wymack as he stalked into the man’s office. “How the hell am I supposed to help Peter Minkin if I can’t understand him, hmm?” he asked in a deceptively mild tone of voice as he slapped his latest case file onto his boss’ desk and narrowly missed sending a pile of paperwork toppling over as a result.

Used to him by that point, Wymack didn’t even flinch or pause in drinking his coffee, merely gave Andrew the finger as if gesturing for ‘one minute’ while he finished his needed influx of caffeine before speaking. “Because that’s why I hired a damn translator last month? Which a shitty little maggot like you would know if you’d attended the supposedly mandatory staff meetings.” Wymack glowered as he folded his tattooed arms on top of his messy desk.

Andrew waved aside the usual gripe as he snatched up the abandoned file, partially mollified that he’d have a way to communicate with the kid. “That’s what Kevin’s ten page summary emails are for,” and ignored – he relied upon Renee to fill him in on any necessary details, but she was currently on sabbatical, off helping out some old Peace Corps friends with a project for a couple of months. Hmm, he had to wonder if the new translator had anything to do with the ‘hot piece of ass’ Nicky had been going on about lately, which was even more reason for Andrew to ignore his cousin. “I’m scheduled for a preliminary meeting with Peter in half an hour, the translator better be there,” Andrew said as he turned to leave the cluttered office.

“It’s already on Josten’s schedule,” Wymack called out. “You’d know that, too, if you read your damn emails!”

That was another familiar complaint which was waved aside as Andrew left, intent on having some more caffeine himself while he checked for any important updates to Peter’s files before the appointment; on the way to the kitchen and then to his own office (a lot less cluttered and disorganized than Wymack’s), he ran into Nicky and Robin, yet managed to fend them off by waving the thick folder in the air. Nicky grimaced, clearly in the mood to talk and unhappy to be denied, while Robin, finally cleared to work on cases of her own after shadowing Andrew for the past few months, smiled and wished him a good day.

It was such a hopeful thought, but highly unrealistic; the children brought to Palmetto Services (nicknamed the Foxhole because of all the stuffed foxes scattered around the place and the playful versions painted on the walls in an effort to soothe and cheer up the kids) were abused and/or traumatized, were the ones who’d been fucked over by the ‘official’ child services system in one way or another and so it had been decided that they needed more specialized attention (that they’d be someone else’s problem).

It meant that Andrew was working with kids who often suffered through the same thing he’d gone through as a child, the same pain and abuse and neglect… and he got to end the horror for them. He got to make it better, but it took a lot of work, a lot of patience and digging and effort, and he knew firsthand the nightmares would still continue even though the monsters had been vanquished at last (at least those monsters).

At least, he did everything he could to help the children assigned to him, so the new translator – Neil Josten – better not fuck things up with Peter Minkin. From what the files said about the boy, he’d been taken into custody from a violent father up on various charges with no sign of the mother, and could barely speak any English. The boy was malnourished and bore repeated signs of abuse (Aaron had done a thorough physical on Peter, and Andrew could tell from the sloppiness of the handwritten notes attached to the copies of x-rays and bloodwork that his brother was furious about the results).

He skimmed the newly added details from his brother and what Seth had been able to unearth about the boy’s father, everything committed to memory, then went to the one prepared play room where Peter would be brought for their first session. It only took a minute for Andrew to reach it since it was right down the hall, and he was surprised to find someone there already.

The person was a young man around his age, perhaps a little younger, and had a couple of inches on Andrew’s five feet. The dark grey sweater he wore hung on his lean frame, the sleeves falling past his hands, and dark brown hair fell onto a handsome face bearing a faded scar down the right side, obscuring what seemed to be brown eyes. “Andrew Minyard?” the young man asked, his voice a quiet tenor and accent bland, lacking in any regional indicators.

“Neil Josten,” Andrew said by way of an answer, and noticed that Josten didn’t offer a handshake nor seem offended when Andrew didn’t do the same. “How’s your Russian?”

“Good,” Josten said then fell silent as he took a step back to lean against one of the bookshelves containing a multitude of stuffed animals.

Not a talker, which seemed odd for a translator, but that was fine with Andrew, who wasn’t much of a talker himself. He checked his phone to see that Abby was bringing Peter, along with a surreptitious glance at his associate; despite the shaggy haircut and baggy clothes, Nicky wasn’t too far off about Josten.

It was just a casual observation while he waited for the kid.

“And here we are,” Abby said as she arrived with Peter Minkin, a bright smile on her face and ash-blonde hair pulled back in a loose ponytail. Even though she was the head nurse practitioner for Palmetto Services and helped run the medical offices where Aaron and Katelyn interned, she often escorted the new or more skittish children around (her or Renee) since she projected ‘safe’ so well with her friendly smile, the colorful scrubs she wore and her genuine kindness.

As for Peter, he appeared small for his seven years (probably the malnutrition), his dark brown eyes huge in his face and his light brown hair cropped close to his skull. He was dressed in a Winnie the Pooh t-shirt and jeans that were a little too long for him, and was obviously reluctant to come near two strange men.

Before Andrew could do anything, Josten moved away from the bookshelf with a stuffed Pooh in his hands and knelt a safe distance from the boy while he spoke softly in Russian. After a couple of seconds, Peter’s face broke into a smile and he gave a shy smile as he reached for the bear; Andrew noticed that Josten was mindful to hand it over slowly and without touching the child.

Josten spoke for about another minute, and then Peter joined in as well. That went on for another minute or two while Andrew’s annoyance grew, until he heard his name be brought up. Peter’s eyes flickered toward Andrew and whatever it was that Josten said seemed to put the boy at ease, to the point that he gave Andrew a slight wave with his right hand.

Soon after that, Josten nodded once and slowly stood up as if mindful not to startle Peter. “All right, I told him that you’re going to talk to him for a while, perhaps ask him some questions but that you’re here to help him and it’s going to be all right, that you won’t touch him.” Something made Josten’s jaw clench for a moment before he went back to the one bookshelf. “No one here will.”

Interesting, that Josten said ‘not touch’ and ‘not hurt’, not that either would happen while Andrew was around. “He’s right,” Andrew told Peter even though the boy might not understand him. “As he said, I’m Andrew, now shall we play a couple of games?” He motioned toward the one table that was already set up with the various coloring books and simple games he used to help him know the children assigned to him better as well as work toward gaining their trust while Josten translated.

The session went by quickly despite Andrew’s inability to talk directly Peter, with Josten only speaking to translate and staying quiet otherwise. Peter seemed to enjoy being able to play with crayons and to draw what were probably meant to be animal shapes, but drew into himself whenever Andrew brought up his father or the one coloring book had images of a man and a woman with a child or children in it.

Probably not a good idea to have Wymack attend any sessions with the boy in the near future.

The session ended with Andrew certain about Peter’s abuse and forming a plan on how to move forward with his treatment, but aware that it would take numerous more sessions. He remained seated when Abby returned for Peter, intent on retaining the slight bit of trust he’d earned with the boy so far.

It was difficult to tell with the overlarge sweater, but when Josten left the room first, Andrew thought Nicky might be on to something about the man’s ass. Also, he’d have to talk to Wymack about having the door looked into since something was wrong with its hinges – the damn thing would have slammed shut in his face if he hadn’t stopped it in time. He also felt a blast of cold, so the air conditioning was acting up.

He stopped by Bee’s office to share his initial observations with her about the boy and go over his reactions to the new case, as well as his workload in general. After about half an hour, they moved on to more ‘safe’ topics (the latest books they were reading, a new bakery), and he brought up Josten. “What’s his story?”

“Neil?” Bee handed over a fresh mug of hot chocolate before she returned to her desk. “David felt that we needed an official translator on site rather than request one on demand all the time. We can’t keep limping along with the various languages everyone on the staff knows, so he brought in a heavy-hitter,” she said with a smile.

Andrew thought about that for a moment, about Josten’s quiet voice and professional behavior. “What does he know besides Russian?”

“That I know about? Chinese, Spanish, French, German and Arabic.” Her smile strengthened when Andrew’s brows drew together. “Yes, I know, impressive.”

“Why’s he working here, then?” One didn’t go into a social service related job for the money, and it seemed to Andrew that someone with Josten’s skills could be working for the government or some big corporation.

Bee was quiet while she sipped her own hot chocolate as if debating what to say. “I’ve only met him a couple of times and David’s been quiet about how he found Neil… but I’m willing to bet that Neil works here for much the same reason that most of us do,” she admitted. “It’s personal for him.”

Andrew thought about that after he left to continue with the rest of his current cases (Isabel and Ryan and Cory), while he worked with Laila on the upcoming court trial for Cory’s prick of a father and spent some time with Robin on one of her own cases. He had just enough time to meet with Aaron for lunch and was satisfied to have an excuse to turn down meeting up with Kevin later that evening to watch some stupid game in a bar, even if it had been too long since he’d gone out drinking or had any ‘fun’.

Josten showed up each day to translate for Peter, a quiet, unobtrusive presence who stood off to the side and relayed what Andrew and Peter spoke as Andrew worked hard to earn the boy’s trust, to slowly try to pry the truth out of him about what his father had done to him and his missing mother. Each day Josten would show up in thick sweaters despite the fall weather still being warm for that time of year, covered from lower neck to hands and feet, his hair barely combed and falling onto his rarely expressive face. He would translate and then leave, and Andrew wouldn’t see him in the break room or the small cafeteria or anywhere else around the Foxhole.

It wasn’t that huge of a building.

“What do you think of him?” Nicky asked during lunch one day, about two weeks after Peter had arrived at the Foxhole. “You’re so lucky you get to work with him – all of my kids speak English or Spanish,” he said with a slight grimace, as if he didn’t adore his cases; he worked with kids facing difficulties due to them coming out or transitioning, often because of their home life or the situations at school.

“He translates, which is good,” Andrew said as he broke apart his cheese sandwich.

“Oh come on.” Nicky rolled his eyes in an exaggerated manner as he leaned back in his chair. “I’ll admit that Neil needs a major wardrobe overhaul and makeover, but he’s still hot. How can you stand being in a room with him every day and not notice that hotness?”

Andrew greatly regretted his cousin finding out about him and Roland, even if it was just a casual thing. “Because I’m working and we’ve said like five things to each other?”

Nicky frowned at that. “Yeah, he’s not very outgoing, is he? Matt’s tried a few times to invite him out to some of our group events but always gets interrupted by something. “ He grinned as he leaned forward with his elbows on his table. “I wish I had my phone out the one time the coffee maker just started shooting water out all over him! It was the weirdest thing but funny as hell! Another time he leaned against the fridge wrong and somehow hit the ice button and the cubes started just falling out onto the floor! I think Neil’s terrified of being around him because of what’ll happen next, the poor guy.”

Well, Boyd was a bit of an eager puppy when he decided to go after something, though not as bad as Knox – there was a reason the men helped Kevin with the sports therapy programs. “Nothing’s going to happen,” Andrew told his cousin. “Drop it.”

“But-“

“No.” Andrew grabbed the rest of his sandwich with the intent of finishing it in his office and ignored his cousin’s crestfallen expression with ease as he walked away.

Still, something about the conversation stuck with him, as did Bee’s. It made him study Josten even more, made him pay close attention to the way the younger man was so patient with Peter, would soften his voice or offer up a new stuffed animal at just the right time (when Andrew had to ask more details about the bastard of a sperm donor). How there seemed to be a darkness in Josten’s eyes when Peter began to give up halting details, when he drew angry red marks on the child images (and the mom images as well).

“Who is he?” Andrew asked Wymack when they met the day before Cory’s trial would begin. “Where did he come from?”

“That’s confidential information,” Wymack said with a stubborn set to his jaw. “Just know that he had great recommendations and leave it at that.”

No, not quite, but the old bastard had installed a better lock on the personnel file drawers after he’d realized that Andrew had gone through them to check up on the last few hires, so Andrew would have to bide his time to read Josten’s file (that or get enough dirt on Seth to have him hack the online version, which might be easier).

His part in Cory’s trial lasted two days, two days of mental exhaustion and barely constrained anger while he was questioned and cross-examined and had to push down the urge to get up out of a damn uncomfortable wooden seat and bash in the brains of some fucking prick who’d dared to harm a defenseless child. Two nights of the memories rushing back to the fore worse than usual, of the demons riding him harder than usual… but it was worth it for Cory to be free, for the prick to receive a guilty verdict, according to the text he received from Laila as he worked on his daily tasks once back in the office.

Perhaps it was that text, or perhaps it was the way that Peter smiled at him when the boy saw him, the sense of progress during their session, but after Peter was gone and Josten went to leave as usual, Andrew spoke up. “Soon I’ll start working in new elements, have him sit in with Bee and try some sessions with Kevin as well. He’s going to need to learn English and get back in classes once he’s stable.”

Josten paused by the door to look back at him. “Yes, I’ve been asked to do a language evaluation of him in the next week or so, and to sit in with Dr. Dobson.”

Still so distant and polite, as always. Andrew shoved aside a thought on if he was like that with other things. “No other cases you’re assisting with right now?”

“A couple.” Josten cocked his head to the side. “It’s fine, I can manage.”

“Is that what keeps you so busy? I don’t see you around here at all.”

Josten tugged the cuffs of his light grey sweater (he always wore grey or light blue, wore such boring colors and clothes) even farther over his hands; Andrew thought he caught sight of faded scars on the long, slim fingers before they disappeared. “I have things to do.”

That wasn’t much of an answer, was it? “What do you think of Peter’s progress so far? Perhaps we can discuss it over a cup of coffee?” Andrew didn’t usually do the whole ‘social’ thing, but there was something interesting about the translator, something that drew his attention the more that Josten tried to hide away.

For a moment he thought that the man was going to say ‘yes’, and then Josten drew in a quick breath as he wrapped his arms around his middle. “No, I have paperwork I need to do. I’ll send you an email with my thoughts,” he said in a rush before he spun around and almost ran from the room.

Surprised by the reaction which seemed almost fearful, Andrew stepped forward to follow Josten and find out what had provoked that response. He shivered as he encountered a spot underneath the air conditioning vent (hadn’t Wymack fixed that yet?) and cursed when the door slammed into him with unexpected force, enough to knock him aside and leave his left arm throbbing with pain; it would have been his head if he hadn’t thrown his arm up in time.

Apparently Wymack hadn’t fixed that, either.

Josten forgotten for the moment, Andrew cradled his sore arm against his chest as he stalked down the hallway to go have a ‘nice’ chat with his boss.

*******

Neil frowned when he noticed that the grapefruit weren’t on sale anymore, but perked up when the green apples and pomegranates were instead, both of which he stocked up on until he felt a harsh tug on his hair. He grabbed some radishes and yams since they were cheap enough to pass without complaint (and the few vegetables he didn’t mind), then left the produce section with some regret.

Chicken thighs were on sale as well, so he grabbed a couple of packages with a whispered ‘I’ll freeze some’, then checked to see what cheese was marked down and got some decent cheddar. He managed not to sigh over the ramen packages he added to the cart, and at least would have the chicken, radishes and yams to make a proper meal out of it, and got a loaf of not quite the cheapest white bread along with a jar of peanut butter.

He grabbed some more shampoo, laundry soap and toilet paper, then saved the first aid aisle for last where he stocked up on bandages and antibacterial ointment. At least he didn’t need hair dye for a few more weeks, he thought to himself as he headed to pay for everything, mindful to pick a different cashier than last time.

The young woman smiled at him while she rang up his purchases, talking all the while about how she loved ramen, too, and wanted to try making an apple pie that weekend. He busied himself bagging up the items as they came down the conveyer belt, uncertain as to why she had to talk so much and not just focus on doing her job, and shook his head when she asked him questions along the lines of if he baked (he didn’t like sweets) or if he liked Japanese food (he did enjoy sushi, but it was rare when he allowed himself the treat).

She kept smiling at him despite the lack of answers, and brushed his fingers with her own when she handed him the receipt after he used his debit card to pay for everything. Aware of Mary’s cold presence behind him, he was quick to grab the bags so he could leave, and didn’t flinch when he heard what sounded to be a drawer slamming shut and the woman cry out in pain.

He didn’t know why people couldn’t leave him alone, couldn’t ignore him like he wanted. Why did they have to smile and talk to him? He wasn’t worth their attention, their attempts at friendship… or worse.

Mary tugged on his hair several times during the drive back to the apartment, hard enough to make his scalp burn but not enough to distract him from the road ahead. She waited to ‘speak’ until they were inside with the door locked and deadbolted for the night.

/Did you have to encourage that slut?/ Mary accused as she yanked on his hair again, that time hard enough to bring tears to his eyes.

“How did I do that?” Neil asked as he forced himself to carry the bags into the kitchen, the British accent slipping back into his voice since they were alone. “I didn’t even talk to her and I barely looked at her. Next time I’ll avoid her register,” he promised.

There was another tug to his hair, but that time it was almost gentle. /Good. What have I told you about her kind?/

His head hurting and arms aching from the scratches from earlier which still throbbed, Neil set the bags on the counter and took a deep breath before he recited the words he knew by heart. “That relationships are evil and will only harm me. That people who try to trick me into one aren’t ever to be trusted, that they only want to hurt and use me.”

/Yes./ That time Mary when stroked frigid fingers through his hair, he shivered from both the chill and the gentleness of the touch, from the rare show of affection. /You need me to watch after you, to keep you from falling for their tricks, Abram./

“I know, Mum. You’re always looking after me.” He gave her partially see-through form as grateful a smile as he could summon before he started on the groceries. “How about some tea?”

/Yes./

Once the chicken was put away (most of it in the freezer, as he’d promised), he filled the kettle with fresh water and started it heating up on the stove, then decided that he wasn’t in the mood to cook that night and settled on a peanut butter sandwich with an apple for dinner. He’d just finished making the sandwich, the kitchen orderly once again with the groceries tucked into their places (it wasn’t hard to keep neat considering how little food he bought) when the kettle whistled, so he rinsed out the two mugs to warm them up before he dropped teabags in them.

Mary hovered over the steeping mug set out for her, a pleased expression on her incorporeal face, her long hair drifting about much like the tendrils of steam rising from the mug. Neil allowed his to steep a little longer while he ate the sandwich, the large apple saved for ‘dessert’.

His mother was quiet for about an hour or so, during which he cleaned up after his dinner and took to reading a book in Chinese in the living room’s only chair. /How much longer are we going to stay here?/ she asked as she floated around the bare room, her expression one of displeasure.

Neil marked his place in the book then hugged his knees up to his chest. “I told you, this is a good place for us and there’s no need to run anymore. The money’s enough for all my bills, no one’s questioning my past and I like what I do.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly when she drifted closer. “He’s dead, Mum. No one’s looking for us anymore.” No matter how many times he tried to convince her of that, it never ‘took’ for long; he didn’t know if it was because of all those horrible years of living with a monster, of the harsh time on the run or her terrible death, but she couldn’t move on from the past.

But wasn’t that what made a ghost a ghost?

(And who was he to throw stones at glass houses, when he lived with said ghost?)

There was a blast of freezing air, Mary’s displeasure made evident as she whirled around the chair and tugged on his hair once more as a furious, sparkling silver blur. /Nowhere’s good, Abram. Everywhere is full of liars and betrayers and murderers, did he teach you nothing? How many times did we think we were safe, only to run away in pain? How many?/

“Everywhere and always,” he gritted out as he forced himself to not lift his arms to protect his head, to try to shove her away (as if that would work). “But he’s dead, Uncle Stuart killed him years ago. That doesn’t make anywhere safe, but… but that’s why I have you, yes?”

The whirling blast of cold eased up and the tugging stopped, right before Mary coalesced in front of him, her head downcast and wisps of hair floating in front of her face. /Yes, that’s why I’m here, Abram. I have to watch after you, have to protect you./

“I know, Mum,” he told her with a trembling smile. “You’ve always looked after me.” She taught him French and encouraged him to keep learning new languages when they were trapped in that nightmare of a home back in Baltimore as a means of distraction, to keep him busy and out of his father’s sight (as much as possible). When the abuse had finally gotten to be too much, she’d stolen money and run away with him, had managed to keep them out of his father’s reach until that awful night in Seattle.

Even after Nathan had nearly caught them, had left them bloody and beaten, Mary fatally so, she hadn’t given up. Her spirit had lingered on after Neil (Nathaniel) had burned her body, had kept him going long enough to reach out to the Hatfords for help (at last).

Neil thought that Stuart suspected that Mary hadn’t entirely ‘moved on’ after her death, that he’d picked up on her presence around him. After all, Neil had to get the whole ‘I see dead people’ from somewhere, not that many other ghosts came around him with Mary constantly there, for which he was grateful. There had to be something special about the Hatford bloodline which allowed Mary to be so powerful as a ghost.

Or maybe it was just more of their lives (and afterlives) being fucked up and cursed.

The debate about him leaving his new life behind settled for the time being, Neil made some more tea and read a little longer, then went to take a shower before bed. He sighed at the sight of the long, red scratches along his arms and even a couple of across his chest, but none of them were deep enough to require any bandages.

That time.

He took care not to scrub them too hard while washing clean, and only looked into the mirror to check his roots (they would be fine for a few more days) before he removed the contacts and brushed his teeth for the night.

Once he was tucked beneath the heavy blankets, Mary took up position by the bed, a familiar sentinel which never tired, never wavered in her duty to watch over him. He missed how she used to sleep in the same bed as him, her back pressed to his, but knew that when he’d wake up from the nightmares that she’d be there to brush cold fingers along his sweaty brow to calm him down, to reassure him that she was there and all was safe.

He was Neil Josten (now), he had a home to call his own, one with a deadbolt and a comfortable bed (even with the gun under the pillow), with no ghosts of people cruelly murdered by his father (save Mary), no monsters in human flesh eager to hurt him lurking about to cause harm. He had a job where he got to help children, something that paid the bills (even if Uncle Stuart had set up an account for him) and allowed him to do something he enjoyed.

He had Mary to watch over him, ever and ever.

It was enough.

*******

okay, pretend i know what i’m writing about here (in general).

[itsclydebitches]

You did a thing in your Cloqwork collection about ice skating? It's winter so could you maybe do a drabble about that Oz and Qrow?

I did! For those of you who are wondering, the fic referred to is here. (I don’t have the patience right now to try and work around tumblr’s stupid link policy...) This can probably be read on its own though. All you really need to know is that Ozpin is a figure skater hurtling towards retirement and Qrow is his new boyfriend. This takes place a few weeks after the first fic and, writing gods willing, I’ll post a story that links the two at some point :D

“So on the scale of legality about where are we at right now?”

“Entirely legal.”

“…lame.”

Ozpin chuckled, pulling the spare key out of his pocket and dangling it high for Qrow’s inspection. No, he hadn’t broken into their favorite rink, but it was only because Maria was an absolute darling and had granted him personal access years ago. In all honesty though, Ozpin might have actually broken in if necessary. It had been that kind of week.

Ah, but Qrow’s hand trailed lightly along his back as he passed him and a bit of the tension drained away.

“It’s weird,” Qrow said, surveying the empty ice; the darkened cafe and the locked-down skate exchange. “This place is always stuffed full of kids. I’m used to, you know, lots of screaming. Parents throwing fits about how expensive shit is. Never thought I’d see it this quiet.” He ran his fingers along the plexiglass now and inexplicably Ozpin shivered. “It’s very…”

“Peaceful,” he finished.

“I was gonna go with creepy, but okay.”

Ozpin threw his head back and let out a startled laugh, the sound bouncing off the high ceiling and settling around their shoulders. Oh yes, he was glad he’d brought Qrow here tonight.

He hadn’t had a laugh like that in ages.

“It is not creepy,” Ozpin insisted, seating himself on the nearest bench and stretching out his legs. “I come here often at night. Usually for extra practice, but sometimes to just… be. A library or the skate rink. They’re the only two places I’ve ever been able to truly relax, and only one of them has provided me with a purpose in life. People often find peace in running water or falling leaves. Why not ice?”

Qrow wandered over to stand between Ozpin’s legs, nudging them open with his knee until he fit there, snug. “You’re so weird,” he said, but it had none of the hostility that Ozpin had grown used to. From competitors. His parents. Even Glynda on occasion. “This place smells like piss and cheap disinfectant. It’s cold even by a rink’s standards. I’m pretty sure I just stepped in gum.”

Ozpin nodded. “It’s wonderful.”

“Oh my god,” and Qrow finally leaned down to kiss him.  

It was such a comforting clash: the old familiarity of this rink combined with the newness of Qrow’s lips against his. The position itself was awkward as hell—Qrow forced to bend too far and Ozpin with nothing to lean against, long legs continually bumping—but that only added to his joy. The moment felt real.

Qrow slid calloused fingers into Ozpin’s hair and he sighed, pulling back so he could focus on the new sensation.  

“Mm. I don’t normally like people touching my hair.”

Qrow’s hand jumped away.

“Normally,” Ozpin emphasized, drawing him back. Qrow’s expression remained wary until he placed his hand on his shoulder, encouraging him to play with the strands there. The question in Qrow’s eyes was obvious though and Ozpin shrugged, gaze shifting away.

“I hadn’t intended to let it grow out,” he said. “It’s simply amazing what one loses track of when training for competitions.”

“Like food,” Qrow muttered. Ah. So he wouldn’t be letting that go anytime soon.

Ozpin inclined his head. “Yes. Like food. By the time I was focused enough to schedule an appointment Glynda had already decided that long hair worked for my brand. Something about femininity, standing out… I hardly know. I was devoted to pleasing her and immediately agreed, but good heavens the upkeep was horrendous.” Ozpin’s mouth twisted down and his shoulders tensed again. Qrow was immediately leaning closer. “Do you know long it takes a team to style long hair in a manner that will last through multiple high speed turns?”

“Nope.”

“Too fucking long, Qrow.”

It was his turn to let out a laugh, though Qrow tended to keep the sound close, slapping a hand over his mouth and holding everything in until he shook. It wasn’t often that Ozpin cursed and in the recent weeks he’d learned to use his exclamations sparingly. For the simple reason that it got him reactions like this.

Ozpin shook his head. He reached out to squeeze Qrow’s hips. “I’d cut it all off if I could.”

“Really?”

“Indeed.” 

“So why don’t you?”

…What?

Qrow’s expression had moved from generally amused to specifically amused—at him. It was what Ozpin was quickly beginning to recognize as the Oh God My Boyfriend Is Stupid expression.

“You’re retiring,” Qrow said, enunciating each syllable like he was speaking to a child.

“…I’m retiring.”

It honestly hadn’t occurred to him. The tiny freedoms that came after making that call to Glynda and Ozpin sat, a little stunned, as Qrow moved to the other end of the bench. He’d thrown his purse over there—and yes, it was a purse. He didn’t know what the hell else to call the small bag he carried around with him everywhere. Yang might be an animal who was perfectly content to live in one outfit and eat random food she found on the sidewalk, but Ruby was a little princess who demanded any and every kind of amenity. Qrow had started carrying a wide variety of supplies with him ever since she’d come home from the hospital.

Small first aid kit. Emergency cell. Emergency cookies. Wipes. A pad for the day it was needed. Stuff like that.

Qrow also had a small pair of scissors.

He raised them and snipped at the air, a grin growing. “Whaddya say? Feel like being impulsive?”

“Here?” Ozpin’s eyes blew wide. “Now?”

“Anything stopping you?”

“I thought we were going to skate?”

Qrow snorted. “Please. Like I honestly thought you brought me to the empty rink at 1:00am to skate.”

He… had. Though perhaps it would benefit Ozpin to be a little less honest about exactly how inept he was at all this. Dating. ...Flirting. He kept his expression carefully neutral as Qrow approached with the scissors.

They were, impossibly, in a rather perfect position. The bench put Ozpin at just the right height for Qrow to work and the plexiglass provided a slight reflection for him to see in. Any mess they made would be cleaned up before the rink opened in the early afternoon.

Ozpin swallowed hard as Qrow parted his hair and drew the ends up for inspection. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

“Actually yeah. Tai’s a cheapskate.”

“Don’t be mean.”

“It’s true!” Qrow lifted half his hair over one shoulder and fanned out the rest. “We’re not poor, but we’re not swimming in cash either. Especially with two girls who’ll need college funds someday.” His voice had gone quiet and focused and it occurred to Ozpin that this was the most he’d ever heard Qrow talk about money. “I’ve cut their hair since they had any worth cutting. Tai’s now too. It saves a surprising amount.” Qrow’s eyes snapped up to meet Ozpin’s in the glass. “You actually want this?”

Honestly? He wasn’t sure. His hair felt like a crucial part of his identity. Or at least, his identity as a skater…

Which was precisely why he should let it go. Ozpin wasn’t that man anymore. The fuzzy image of Qrow standing at his shoulder was proof of that.

Ozpin nodded and Qrow gave a little hop of joy.

“Fucking love cutting hair,” he whispered. “Okay. Just try to stay calm and trust me. This is gonna be great.”

Oh, he trusted him, but that didn’t make the first cut any easier. Ozpin watched nearly two feet of hair suddenly plummet to the floor and felt a little like his heart was going with it. He blinked rapidly, nails digging into his legs… but then the second cut came and suddenly his whole head felt light. He felt lightheaded. It was such a strange, foreign feeling that Ozpin instinctually lifted a hand up towards his ear. It was caught and set gently back into his lap.

“No peeking,” Qrow said. He bent and pressed a kiss against the back of Ozpin’s neck. It sent a lovely little shiver down to his toes.

Okay. No peeking. Ozpin kept his gaze firmly on the floor as Qrow muttered things about layering and washing and needing a diffuser. He didn’t really follow it, but the careful attention Qrow gave to the task was worth more than Ozpin could say. When fingers suddenly appeared beneath his chin he was surprised by them. The feel of the work had made him drowsy and in the face of Qrow’s ministrations he’d forgotten what they had been leading to.

“Well?” Qrow said, nervousness threading his voice. “What do you think?”

He must have carried the small mirror over with him, the mirror that now reflected a man Ozpin didn’t recognize. His hair hung just below his ears and without the added weight had curled unexpectedly, little flyaways falling over his eyes and lifting in the back. It made him look younger. Approachable. The man, Ozpin realized, looked happy.

Qrow was visible in the mirror’s reflection, stationed beside him with flushed cheeks and twitchy fingers. Ozpin knew he was supposed to be looking at the cut right now, and yet…

“Perfect,” he said and he still hadn’t drawn his eyes away from Qrow.

[winteriron-trash]

The (Un)Wanted Kiss [Chapter 10]

A/N: Our tenth and final chapter! I’m posting the Epilogue right after this, and the bonus chapters are coming in a few days because I want to get right into my next project by next Tuesday, which is looking to be the fem!WinterIron, but the votes could swing back in favour of the Stripper AU, who knows. Thank you for all the support I’ve gotten on this! Trigger warning for suicidal thoughts.

Summary/Warnings | AO3 | Masterlist | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 

-

Bucky wasn’t really sure why he was even surprised about Steve and Sam. Sam had filled a lot of the roles that had once been for Bucky. It wasn’t that Bucky was bitter towards Steve for it, necessarily. If Sam and Steve were happy together, so be it.

If Sam was everything Bucky couldn’t be, then so be it.

That’s what Steve deserved, wasn’t it? He deserved the best.

Everything Bucky couldn’t be.

Sitting in Tony’s workshop lights off in the middle of the damned night, Bucky stared at the gun in his hand. It felt heavy, so heavy Bucky could hardly lift it. Its weight was all in Bucky's head, sure he knew that. It was all in his head, messing with him. Taunting him. The bullet almost seemed to know that Bucky wanted it there, buried in his skull and had already begun burrowing its way -even if figuratively- into his brain.

Too bad Bucky was too coward to pull the trigger.

Even with the image of Steve and Sam together seared into his mind, even with the awful pain of knowing how awful he’d been to Tony, Bucky couldn’t do it. Even sitting alone in Tony’s workshop while the genius slept because Bucky couldn’t even go to his own room, he couldn’t do it.

He wanted to. God, he wanted to. Wanted to be able to pull the trigger, shoot himself in the head. It’d be easier for everyone, wouldn’t it? Steve was happy without him. All Bucky had done was cause a mess for Tony. The UN wouldn’t even have to worry about him anymore.

It’d be easier for everyone. Easy. As easy as just pulling a trigger.

Bucky couldn’t even bring himself to point the damned gun at his head.

“Hey, what’s going on?” Tony’s rough voice filled the room and a light flicked on. “FRIDAY said you were down here hanging out.”

Bucky looked up like a deer caught in the headlights. “Nothing. Just thinking.”

Tony walked over in nothing but a tank top and briefs, sitting down next to Bucky. “In my personal experience, ‘just thinking’ with a gun in your hand is a lot more than thinking.”

Bucky looked down at the gun, and up at Tony. He didn’t know what to say. He never did, anymore.

“Right.” Tony cleared his throat. “Look, whatever you’re thinking about… don’t. Okay? Don’t do it. It’s not worth it. It’s never worth it.”

“How can you say that?” Bucky whispered. “How can you know that? I’ve caused you nothing but trouble. I’m not worth this, Tony.”

“Is anyone worth the trouble?” Tony shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t really think that matters. Look, I can’t stop you from pulling the trigger. No one can, if that’s what you’re determined to do. But I can tell you that you shouldn’t. That people would miss you.” He paused, head tilting to the side. “That I’d miss you.”

Bucky’s heart twisted into awful knots. “Why-you?”

“Why not?” Tony fidgeted a bit. “Who else would hang out down here and keep me company? Dum-E and U get annoying after awhile, you know.” He forced a smile and shaky laugh. Bucky managed a faint smile too.

“I want to,” Bucky said, quietly.

Tony nodded. “I know-”

“No, lemme finish.” Bucky shook his head. "I want to," Bucky forced the words out and they were barely a hoarse whisper. "I want to deserve it. I want to deserve having someone like you kiss me. Kiss me not for the cameras or the press, but... kiss me because you want to. Because you like it. I want it, but even more, I want to deserve it." Bucky drew in a shuddering breath.

“Oh.” Tony sounded… startled, really. Bucky didn’t blame him. It came out of nowhere, and startled him, even. But it was something he needed to say. “Well. For the record, I think you deserve it. I don’t know about me, though. But you do.”  

“Why wouldn’t you?” Bucky stared at him.

Tony laughed, almost hysterically. “I kissed you on national television and didn’t even give you so much as a warning, let alone ask for consent. It’s a dick move.”

“It was necessary,” Bucky admitted. Not only to Tony but also to himself. “It made me angry, sure. And I had reason to be. But you did what you had to. I could be in an underground prison being tortured right now if it weren’t for you.”

“Still got a long ways to go.” Tony countered. “This fight is far from over, Bucky.”

“I know.” Bucky sighed. “But thanks to you, there’s a fight, to begin with.”

Tony’s smile was more genuine this time. “And for what it’s worth? I want to kiss you too.”

Bucky blinked. “Really?”

“Yeah.”

“You can. If you want.” Bucky set the gun down.

Tony studied Bucky’s face for a painfully long moment. “Well then, I better do it right this time.” He cleared his throat, leaning closer to Bucky. “James Buchanan Barnes, may I kiss you?”

Bucky felt tears welling up, but it wasn’t painful. It was beautiful. “Yes, please.” He nodded.

Tony smiled and closed the gap, going slow enough for Bucky to be able to pull back if he wanted to. Tony’s hand came up to cradle the side of Bucky’s face, his calloused hand feeling like a perfect heaven against Bucky’s skin. The kiss was even better.

Tony’s lips were a bit chapped and tasted like alcohol, but they were still warm and comforting. Nothing was forced, and it wasn’t even a long kiss. Just a gentle press of lips before they broke apart again. Tony stared at Bucky, waiting for his reaction. He looked… nervous, almost.

It was cute.

“That was perfect,” Bucky murmured. He smiled a bit. “May I have another?”

Tony laughed so hard his forehead bumped with Bucky’s. “That was so fucking corny, Barnes. Really?”

“Really.” Bucky brushed a hand through Tony’s hair. “I want to kiss you every day.”

Tony licked his lips. “We’ll see about that.” He kissed Bucky again.

It was perfect.

-

@socialtendancies @justjessica131 @my-drowning-in-time@creepycrazyshipper@trashcanakin@journeythroughtherain @bash-it-all@adriebananas@valiantkittenwitch@skye07@jeshiipacheco@crazy4thewinbros @daughter-of-infinity@alldagayshipsbruh @tqny-stark@mrunaliniraman@drarrydarling @i-dont-know-anything-and-i-worry @shadowkya @niniony @smittenkitten143  @hufflepuffandcorgi @theastraywolf

[revolutionarygnosis]

COVID-19 and Proto-fascist media subjectivity

In the wake of the COVID-19, the state and media apparatus has managed to create a veritable biopolitical tragedy that synonymizes biological necessity with economic control. The ruling class is exploiting the crisis to pass draconian economic measures in this country and across the world, and we have no means to stop them, quarantined as we are, most of the time on order by those carrying out such measures. At the same time, we cannot not leave our house, or we could spread the virus around and cause people in at-risk groups to get sick or die.  Employers across the country laying off millions of workers, abrogating union contracts by invoking force majeure clauses, and the Gates foundation is furthering its agenda of global health imperialism; as per usual people of color are disproportionately bearing the brunt of all these measures. We are witnessing what will probably be the largest transfer of wealth to the ruling class in history. Capitalism never lets a crisis go to waste, and it seems impossible to organize against the state under the circumstances. But what can we do?

Further complicating the scenario is the discourse of “social distancing” (not social distancing itself), which has so effectively turned even the most well-meaning liberals basically into libertarians that move the onus of public health from institutions onto individuals. It is a critique of the discourse of social distancing (and lockdowns, stay-at-home orders, etc.), not social distancing itself, that I want to mount in this brief post. This post does not call into question the scientific efficacy of social distancing or engage in any “anti-scientific” conspiracy-mongering. This is also not a poststructuralist critique of the truth value of the scientific method. It is rather a critique of the ideology that the media and state have clandestinely packaged into the public discourse of science that preemptively disable a critique of neoliberalism. It is a deconstruction of the media discourse.

(preliminary note: when I say “proto-fascist” I mean what many people mean as “neoliberal,” since the latter inevitably becomes the former when placed under the socioeconomic duress of the likes we are seeing now.)

As an introduction, let’s look at a recent commercial by “America’s biopharmaceutical companies” declaring how hard they are working (not even mentioning what exactly they’re working on), concluding with “we believe in science.” Yes, I believe in science too. Great, I’m on board. But why is the biopharmaceutical industry saying this? Is it different from why us normal people say we believe in science? When they mean they believe in science, do they mean “the epistemological value of the scientific method” and nothing more at all? I don’t think so. These companies are commodifying “pro-science, anti-Trump” sentiment to convert into political capital to lobby for political and economic measures that will, now or later, line their pockets. What is most dangerous is that a critique of biopharmaceutical companies and their accompanying discourse of science is often taken to be equivalent to a critique of science itself. 

When they say a dangerously simple truism like “we believe in science,” in the context of capitalist semiotics they mean “believe in us.” When they say “we believe in science,” they mean “we believe in science (only insofar as it its findings can be turned into profit, and despite all our nefarious dealings ignored by the media, we can still manage to appear as saviors and capitalize on anti-Trump sentiment to present ourselves as pure embodiments of the scientific method, abstracted form all economic and political motivations). However, when you and I and a scientist says “we believe in science,” we mean that, and only that. This is an important distinction.

This commercial is a microcosm of the political discourse around science as a whole in the U.S. When we hear that Trump does not believe in science, what exactly is meant? Do they mean that he takes a principled opposition to the epistemological value of the scientific method? Is he a creationist or flat-earther? Do they mean he has some mysterious aversion to scientists, labs, and flasks? Or does he oppose science because its findings often threaten the profits of key industries like oil, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, and the military-industrial complex? Without a doubt, it is the latter, and unless this distinction is made the truisms hammered out by media and various congresspeople about “facts over fiction” and “we believe in science” feed the neoliberal, proto-fascist ideology that breeds people like Trump. Without this distinction, these proclamations encourage a very particular kind of political discourse and serve a purpose opposite their intentions. This ambiguous presentation of science in the media, on both sides, allows to slide the most chronic and systematic commandeering of the public perception of science by neoliberalism. The point is not to reject science.

The discourse of social distancing is part and parcel of the Manichean tendency of American news media that produces reductive political narratives that narrowly circumscribe the ideological ground on which we can discuss the impact of COVID-19 and excludes the possibility of any critique of capitalism. As Pepe Escobar writes, social distancing is being treated as an “abstraction, defined and lived in quite unequal terms.” When social distancing is abstracted from a whole host of socioeconomic issues, it can be inserted combinatorically into media discourse with a vast reservoir of other abstracted ideas, to construct narratives that prompt myopic political reactions from viewers. Unless there is an intervention in this discourse, we will reproduce and enunciate in everyday life neoliberal narratives under the guise of “pure science,” which I believe in the long-term will diminish the public’s trust in the value of the scientific method.

By all this, I mean to draw attention to how the discourse of science as it is presented in the media--as a conflict between the “pro-science” Democrats and “anti-science” Republicans--is a red herring for an underlying issue that pervades the state as a whole and is more pertinent to the experiences of the working class of whatever political orientation. When the scientific issue under consideration is one of biological necessity, that is, the scientifically-backed method of social distancing, we are faced with a biopolitical tragedy: we will literally die if we do not heed the science, yet by propagating in everyday conversation the media’s discursive paradigms surrounding science and social distancing we unwittingly contribute to the development of a proto-fascist subjectivity and accelerate the economic processes that allowed COVID-19 to become a crisis in the first place, and got Trump elected. The issue is not in social distancing, isolating, quarantining, etc. itself, it is in the habits and mannerisms of talking about science and these individualist measures developed by the media and disseminated by us in everyday life. 

Through various ideological mechanisms, the state and media have managed to posit the “non-Trump” as the most subliminal defense of Trump, equating biological necessity with proto-fascist subjectivity. Of course, the alternative is not to reject science and not social distance. That causes death, which is not good. We confront a tragedy, a paradox, and it could be the premonition of neoliberalism’s necropolitical end-point. We can either die or live while participating in neoliberalism, the very system that made us confront this paradox in the first place. However there is one alternative: we can to grapple with this paradox so we can look for ways to combat proto-fascist microaggressions in everyday life and also try to develop a revolutionary subjectivity that combats the fatalistic necropolitical spatiotemporality of the pandemic subject.

All that said, let us now investigate the the pragmatics and ideology of “social distancing” as it is being deployed. I insist again the problem is not social distancing, which is a biological necessity, the problem is the discourse that has emerged around the concept. Yes: it is necessary to social distance. But the fact I feel the need to include that clunky performative sentence to evade straw mans or equating my views with right wingers attests to the power of the reductive ideology disseminated by the media. Media furnishes the language with which we talk about social distancing, and as to be expected, the resulting discourse is completely devoid of a critique of capitalism. We need to critique not only the media discourse, but also how we are deploying it in our everyday lives. So, in what follows I will show some examples of this discourse.

First, the media discourse of social distancing has engineered verbal policing habits that preemptively de-center a critique of the power structures that value profit over lives. To bring up social distancing in your everyday talk without in the same breath criticizing power structures is to participate in, inadvertently or not, the formation of an individualist, proto-fascistic subjectivity. As an analogy, consider the ways in which we discuss the means of pushing back the impending climate apocalypse, which will make COVID-19 seem like a walk in the park. Here as there personal intervention is never enough, as to nearly exclusively focus on this intervention in your everyday discourse is ethically dubious: reduce, reuse, recycle (a.k.a distance, isolate, quarantine) is nowhere near enough, or encouraging your friends to do the same, and certainly not whipping up hatred against someone who had the gall to trash something that could have been recycled. We must always go beyond these individual acts, towards a consistent critique of the state and corporations that have sacrificed the planet to the altar of Capital, or in the present scenario, that have sacrificed public health, human bodies, and the economic stability of tens of millions to the altar of Capital. 

This type of critique not something one should do every now and then in socially sanctioned scenarios, but should be attached to every mention of social distancing. A common archetype is the well-meaning individual that lives an environmentally-conscious lifestyle, and encourages other to do the same. Even though they may silently agree with the necessity to hold corporations and the state accountable and whatnot, they will rarely voice such concerns, often claiming they prefer to be apolitical. However that is a screaming silence--unless one, as an individual, does not contribute both discourses to the marketplace of ideas, that silence is easily commodified by fascism and turned into an extremely political act.

A notable case of this discourse is the reception of the photos featuring a bunch of right-wing people protesting the stay-at-home order in Denver, Colorado; they are trying to block the roads in front of a hospital though nurses prevent them from advancing (below). I am less concerned with the intentions of those depicted, but the way the photo’s  meaning is created by and disseminated through the media. This image is full of subversive neoliberal motifs, and is particularly convenient for Manichean media narratives since the reductive binary conflict is presented with great clarity and photography skills!  Nonetheless, with some viral semiotics we can unearth within this binary conflict two readings of this image operating simultaneously. 

On the most immediate level, in this image, we have the Forces of Science reigning in the Uncouth, Spontaneous Right-Wing Working Class. For sure, the right wingers need to be stopped. We believe in science, and the lady with the chauvinist sign is an anti-science person. But is that all this photo is saying? Is it purely a demonstration of science? In other words--what makes this type of photo stand out from other demonstrations of science?

We need to look at the semiotics of the nurse. The nurse’ scrubs allow him to appear to come from an entirely different universe. He looks so out of place. A burst of color in the drab cityscape. He is standing with good posture, arms crossed, looking very resolute. He is wearing a mask. He stands parallel to the red stop light--a symbol of technology, integration, and city-planning. And it’s red, it’s saying stop just like he is. We can see how the mask, while biologically necessary for a pandemic, is convenient for the neoliberal narrative. By obscuring the face it dehumanizes the wearer. The photo would just not have the intended effect if, say, masks were typically transparent. The image does not insist on the wearing of masks for public health purposes, but as a symbol of participation in neoliberal subjectivity. Ideally we would want the former without the latter.

What is most about this image is the extent to which he is portrayed as a kind of David fighting the reactionary Goliath, and the fact he and the other nurses depicted in similar images have been deemed badasses on social media. This uncritical, reductive interpretation is welcomed by the media, as they reduce its multivalent meaning to a One that is easily integrated and disseminated by neoliberal forces. The image equates nurses with neoliberalism, and then says that neoliberalism is under threat from spontaneous, chaotic right-wing sentiment, and we have to save it. The point is not to save anything here. We don’t want either.

Certainly, these right-wing protesters will not agree with my desire to shift the responsibility of public health and social ills broadly from individuals onto institutions. But unless we understand the psychological effects of these two conflicting readings, the socioeconomic reasons for the “anti-science” biases of the right-wing working class will continue to mysteriously elude us, and we will never develop a revolutionary programme that can appeal to them. 

Another notable media moment is the response of pundits and social media to the photos of crowds of people on Florida beaches despite stay-at-home orders. It is a prime example of the red-herring nature of the social distancing discourse as it is being deployed by the state and media. A million pundits will afterwards be brought on to talk about the necessity of social distancing and individual measures, but none will be brought on to talk about how the entire capitalist class is exploiting the crisis for economic gain and leaving the working class in ruin. This fact alone should be enough to reveal the neoliberal sympathies of major news media all across the political spectrum, even if the sheer necessity of social distancing in the abstract is something we agree on. 

Nonetheless, on this note, the virus has revealed one promising fact regarding class consciousness. The anger conjured by such an image as the Florida beaches one demonstrates how media can organize and tap into mass reserves of working class anger, encompassing an even greater swathe of people than had voted for Bernie Sanders. Our mission needs to be redirecting that anger towards the right sources. I am excited for the day when people will harbor the same degree of resentment towards photos of healthcare executive meetings where they plot the indirect murder of millions, as they harbored towards those crowds of people on Florida beaches. 

Finally, we need to be wary of the neoliberal ideology implicit in the “left-wing” media’s critique of Trump administration. It is misleading to write off Trump et. al’s “lack-of-preparedness” as “incompetence.” CNN/MSNBC routinely deploy these narratives as a front for the real reason: capitalism is designed to be insufficiently prepared for epidemics, and profit is at the top of Trump’s list of priorities as it is every other member of the ruling class. It is a defense of Trump that is more clandestine, clever, and pernicious than the outright jingoism on Fox News, which is so easy to criticize. When something is too easy to criticize, when the fruit hangs so low, when something appears so absolutely ridiculous (such as Trump’s recommendation to inject detergent to kill the virus), we do not name it childish and stupid and call it a day, we move to analyze why this is politically efficacious for him. The media never goes this extra mile, because it necessarily implicates themselves. 

In this way, we need to be careful in the manners in which we criticize Trump and the Republicans. In a bewildering fashion, criticizing Trump without criticizing the enablers and propagators of the subliminal fascist ideology that produce Trump, criticizing Trump on the terms of the media by rehashing stale truisms, rather than on our own terms, becomes more dangerous than just not saying anything at all. In many social circles criticizing Trump risks becoming the mere political performance of a neoliberal media-sanctioned, acceptable politics when the bulk of our criticism should be directed towards capitalism. We redeem these performances by incorporating criticism of Trump into a Marxist analysis of the coronavirus response and the state-media apparatus.

In essence, for the entire the ruling class, regardless of the response to the coronavirus they propose, are entirely pleased with the virus. It means more sick bodies, more hospital beds filled, hospitals raking in millions, a chance to abrogate countless union contracts, engender mass unemployment and establish a massive labor reserve army to be redirected wherever workers are needed, upending millions of lives so that the labor and markets can be realigned as necessary. All the while the military budget will not be reduced by a dime. 

The logic of capitalism will always find a way to work, regardless of the stated intentions of even the most progressive politicians. Many progressive Democrats will criticize the shortcomings of this or that stimulus package but will put on the most pathetic resistance to the Republicans; the best we may get is a tweet declaring their belief in its insufficiency but a week later they’ve forgotten about it. Then with the military budget, nobody questions it, not even AOC, and Democrats are routinely signing off on all Trump’s increases of the military budget with the media not even batting an eye. The virus hits, and all of a sudden nobody is talking about socialized medicine; the virus hits, all of a sudden, Nancy Pelosi is peddling a universal basic income, a reactionary policy being dressed up in progressive language that if implemented would slowly eat away at the welfare state. If public health really mattered to the state, the military budget would have been sacked ages ago and a health care system a million times more efficient and advanced would have been implemented. The virus would have been eliminated in a week. If public health really mattered to the media, they would have spent a million collective hours analyzing how we got here and providing systematic  instead of policing the masses for their personal failures to stop the spread of the virus. And “how we got here” goes far beyond criticizing Trump’s decision to dissolve a pandemic response team. 

TL,DR, or conclusion. Social distancing is not the problem, but the discourse around it is. To talk about social distancing without also talking about at the same time the failures of the state is to contribute to the formation of a proto-fascist subjectivity that clandestinely moves the onus of public health from institutions onto individuals. Again, I am not critiquing the science behind social distancing, I am just trying to draw attention to the implicit biopolitical tragedy: when the state and media apparatus manages to ideologically correlate science biological necessity, our own survival, with its own economic interests. We cannot talk blithely about social distancing. We must always mention the failures of the state every single time we talk about social distancing. We cannot do one or the other, or neither--it must always be both. To do only the one is proto-fascist, to do only the other is anti-science and anti-life. To brag about one’s quarantine or social distancing skills without also engaging in a political critique of the capitalist state is to wave your proto-fascist carrying card, a performance of faith and support in the neoliberal state. To wish death on those not social distancing, on Twitter, is neoliberal. One might argue one is simply trying to be “apolitical” by talking about social distancing and not explicitly about the need for institutions to act though in fact, it is a silence that is a thousand times more political than this entire post.

We are dealing with an ideology in many ways more subversive and pernicious than the jingoistic chaos of Trump et al., especially since it is taken to be representative of the “Good” in the media’s Manichaean political discourse. To uncritically reproduce this ideology and discourse is to contribute to the socioeconomic factors that led us to Trump, and will certainly lead us to people far worse than him in the future.

[badlydrawnjotarocean]

Concerning the Design Drama

I’m really sorry that this has to be my first post after a long hiatus

I wanna thank everyone though who has sent me good vibes about this situation, it’s very touching

I've been seeing others have an opinion on this matter between Mod Jota and myself. I figures I'd personally tell my own opinions and side on the discussion.

First of all let me discuss the matter of the private conversation that was posted online.

Posting up a conversation that was put in the DM’s without the EXPLICIT permission of the other person on the other side of the conversation? Not really cool! Yes, I did block Jota, but he should have kept that as a private matter between him and me because I didn’t give consent on publishing at all.

Announcing to the world that he was going to post the conversation, even if I had said yes it’s okay, if he published without even asking me about it? I probably still would not be okay with that! I hadn’t even seen that post prior to getting his private message, and it didn’t seem like he was going to tell me that he was going to post this on public! I do understand trying to be transparent to everyone, but when you’re not as transparent to the other person on the other side of the wall as you are with the audience, that's not okay. I'm grateful he deleted the old design and started anew, but the public does NOT need to know our conversation.

In fact, whether or not I DID say anything back wouldn’t really have mattered on the factor, he still was planning on redesigning character no matter what! So why would everyone need to see my reaction nonetheless? It seems a little shady to me. 

But since we are here talking about the conversation, lets dive into it! 

In my reply, was I aggressive? Yes! Was I not very compliant and open to what he had to say? Definitely YES, I immediately blocked him before he could explain more on his factor. But frankly, I don’t want to hear any excuses after three times a design got stolen from me by the same person! 

And frankly? His apology seemed more like he wanted to get it over with because he knew he had been caught and had to do public damage control. Not a very genuine tone in my opinion, however it’s text, tone can be easily interpreted the wrong way, so I won’t hold onto him on that too much.

Secondly, the three designs!

I never publically talked about them because this is NOT something that needs to be public. Again, I do really want believe they were misunderstandings, but 3 design misunderstandings from the same person? That sounds more like a pattern to me. 

First time it happened, it was my initial Standswap design!

((The bottom one I gave a little update too but I’m posting this here for facial reference.))

After a few months of standswap being over, BDhumanstar was introduced, made by Mod Jota, prior to DailyKujos!

Also for time reference

And before I dive into why this design made me feel uncomf let me start by repeating what I said to Jota: We are basing off of the same concept and character, so of course we WILL have similarities. However, this does NOT allow our characters to look identical.

Again similarity is fine, gloves? The loin cloth thingie? Sure, the canon Star Plat had em, why not! However, it’s gotten to the point that someone actually interacted with Jota’s blog because they thought Jota had explicit permission from me to rp my Star Plat Gijinka design, there’s an issue.

So when I saw this initially I was really greatly unsettled, however I thought I was just being too overzealous and let it go. It’s Star Plat right? People will be similar! Its a gijinka of a concept that already exists, surely it’s fine if they look a bit a like, they’re on the same concept! 

I’m finally off my first Hiatus, and people inform me that dailykujos has a really similar artstyle to my own, and tell me he’s trying to rip mine off. I didn’t think anything of it when I saw it, because I saw it more as he’s trying to draw inspiration from me. So that was a okay with me. 

Until I saw his standswap Jotaro which looked a little too familiar for me.

Mine, posted around when I participated in the second Standswap

Theirs, around the third standswap, which I hadn’t participated in.

Again, similarity on same concept, is fine! But the fact that there have been so many Jotaro Stands out there so different, yet this one looks so similar to my own? Doesn’t sit well with me. So I didn’t want this to go on for a third time on accident. 

So I told him in private dms about both the standswaps.

I unfortunately did not know that blocking someone makes you delete your message history with them, so I do not have the messages. 

However, him acting surprised like this was the first time he had been told his design looks stolen doesn’t seem right.

He responded and apologized, which I’m glad he was very compliant and changed the Jotaro design!

Which hey! Looks different, looks cool, it’s good by me!

He however didn’t change Star’s design until the next Standswap had came up, However, perhaps this was a misunderstanding there, I said something among the lines of your standswaps look a little too much like my own, can you change them? And maybe he only misread and interpreted as one of them, that is my own bad for not being clearer on that matter. I should have said something again but again, I could tell I was hurting his feelings just by pointing out one of them so I decided to give him a break.

Fast forward to about last night? My friends AGAIN tell me to look at something from Kujos, and low and behold I see something sadly very familiar.

Unfortunately I don't have a screenshot of it because Jota did delete it, so forgive me for not being able to get the stamp.

It looked way too much like to a Star Plat I had reinovated for the former standswap, because small redesigns right?

I do understand headphones yes, he’s a DJ, Star Plat gotta listen to his hot beats right? But a lot of his attributes are the same. Again. And at this point, I’m tired of this pattern. Again.

And so, three strikes you’re out!

Now, let me address some arguments I saw.

Firstly, I’m sorry that this was the cause of someone else leaving this community. However, there are somethings that didn’t sit well with me. I’ve already discussed the design aspect, so I won’t get into it. However, the mentality of ‘because you are a popular artist it’s your job to be a role model’ really bothered me. Artists are human, and humans make mistakes, just because someone has a little bit more of a broader audience, does not suddenly make you get PAID to be a behavioral role model. Did I make him feel bad? Yes, and I don’t feel great about it, but I felt it was necessary for him to learn his mistakes. Did I humiliate him? No, humiliating him would have been me publically posting my opinion and scolding him in public. He decided to let everyone know about this and a public issue, not by my hand. However, I’m not mad at you for not holding my opinion and stance nor do I feel any dislike towards you, you’re allowed to think your opinion. Again, I apologize for being part of the cause you departing from this community, and I very much hope you the best of luck in the future.

I also saw someone note that since these are based off of Araki’s characters and so these are technically not our designs. Which can be semi true, for a couple events, I straight up used Jotaro’s design but put different clothes and bam I call him an event character. I won’t call someone copying me if they also draw Jotaro in the same set of clothes that I drew him in. However gijinkas are somewhat different from that. We use the concept of the character as a basis for a new character, and basically morph the basis into a new character. Stand Gijinkas and Human Standjinkas??? are a different territory in general because of this. There’s a difference between having inspiration for a character, and copying entirely. Is there heavy influence from Jojo characters? Yes definitely. Are we stealing from Araki himself? No, because we are making our own concepts based on another concept, designers do it all the time. Two concepts that look identical, not looked happily upon. 

And because I see people jumping into this argument, even though they haven’t seen the image itself, please know the context of both sides before assuming otherwise.

And lastly, I want to address Mod Jota himself. I’m aware I blocked him but I’m sure he can see through anonymous, if he really wanted to.

I know you’re still young and you still will make your mistakes. And that’s fine, as long as you learn from them.

What I do not like is how you are avoiding the blame at this point. You said you’re distressed about the situation and don’t want to further discuss this in public, yet once one person praising you, you immediately discuss more about it and you don’t seem very sorry about this at all, and you seem more annoyed I’m not complying with you. Screaming and cursing is not feeling sorry. Shifting the blame on a 'coincidence' is not sorry. And then trying to be like Mango is over reacting and 'it should'nt have gone as bad as it went'? Not a very apologetic move. Not only that, there’s been other situations where you don’t listen to criticism and have this victim mentality. If you are at fault, look at your actions and try and see why someone is being this harsh, and how to correct it. Pouring more research into things comes a long way, especially when designing concepts. I don’t hate you Jota, I’m just tired. I hope you the best of luck in the future and I pray you grow from this, but I don’t think I’m patient enough to see it happen. This will be my final word on this stance, because I don’t want to prolong this drama with what I have already done, I just wanted to say my side of this discussion, and that'll be all. 

Have a nice day everyone.

[justasmallbloginabigklainefandom]

From Grey, chapter 6

Temperance_V: So this is a special blog post featuring a guest blogger, which I've never done before but it seemed like a pretty fun idea since *basically* we talk more than enough to do this without going out of our way anyway. So, this week the blog is in the form of this chat log between me and Paleanghostly, who's mostly active over in the 'ghostlanx' fandom.

Paleandghostly: You have to put the scare quotes around it to remind people that I basically devote my days to looking at pictures of superheroes like a fourteen year old, of course. TV: I think most of your gang spend more time staring at their butts than most fourteen year olds do, P&G. P&G: You might be surprised. I remember being fourteen. TV: Anyway, we met a while ago now when P&G commented on my blog to insult my taste in whiskey and was somehow sort of charming about how stupid I am, and we ended up chatting. Now we play chess over the mail. P&G: Actually over the mail, on actual paper. It's a thing. TV: I genuinely look forward to the letter sneering at my last move once a week. So we're here to discuss something we've already been talking about anyway but it's been a *particularly* interesting chat, so we thought we'd share some thoughts with the wider internet. So this discussion got kicked off by the fandom reaction to this photograph of the Ghost and Phalanx from I think three weeks ago now? P&G: They'll remember the fandom reaction. It's the kind of wank that's so much bigger than the incident that caused it ever could be. TV: I'm not actually in the 'ghostlanx' fandom, btw, I should put that disclaimer out for anyone who's reading this *from* that fandom. If I seem like a n00b, forgive me. P&G: Please god stop putting it in scare quotes. Temperance usually blogs about anything interesting in the media and reactions to the media, for those who have followed *me* from phandom, and it was during one of her posts on Mad Men that I found it necessary to educate her in what we drink and what we use to clean toilets with. And it's *whisky*, please tell me you are actually drinking the stuff that is worth drinking and is not overpriced rebottled mouthwash by now. TV: Moving on. The photograph is a candid caught behind a police van, and shows the Ghost and Phalanx in conversation with a police officer - in suit and tie, so I'm guessing a detective but he looks a little young for it. No-one appears to be trying to arrest anyone. You'd think that would be have been the main point of discussion, P&G? P&G: *snort* Have you *met* fandom? Get to the interesting substance of the issue? No! We want exactly what we want and we want it exactly when we want it, anything deviating from this is a cause of deep personal offence to me and the *entire internet must stop and feel my pain!!* TV: So, it wasn't the crime scene they *weren't* arrested at that most people were talking about (though presumably, the 'enemy' you actually face on the streets you have more in common with than you do your own boss in their high rise office; if I was police I think I'd think we had bigger problems than superheroes too). P&G brought the discussion to my attention via the medium of much swearing, because she has a lot of feelings about these things. P&G: Oh please do make me sound like one of them. The reason I drew Temperance's attention to the response was - well, threefold. One is that in terms of gender politics and misogyny and homophobia amongst those who claim to not be bigots it was *fascinating*. Slash depressing. Two is that it was an eyebrow-straining example of the fandom entitlement complex. Three is that it gives us a very interesting insight into their identity and how very un-black-and-white that is - because people are more complicated than their labels, always. TV: Let's deal with gender first, though these issues do run through each other. This all came about because of the Ghost's posture in the photograph. He's standing quite close to Phalanx, who's facing and speaking to the police officer - I'm sorry, is that police officer really tall or is he actually that short? It's kind of adorable. P&G: He's like the Swiss army knife of superheroes. Flexible crime fighter, folds into your pocket afterwards. TV: Phalanx is speaking, standing with his feet apart, hands apart, gesturing - something, to what he's saying. Possibly just emphasizing a word. No-one even mentioned how Phalanx was standing? P&G: No. Because the Ghost was innocently standing next to him. TV: The Ghost is standing with his left arm crossed over his chest - his cloak makes it a little hard to see, but he's probably supporting the opposite elbow with his hand, because his right hand is held up loosely at shoulder height, as if propped off a desk. And he's got his hip cocked, and his head tilted the other way, it's a great photograph actually, his posture's like a da Vinci composition. P&G: I knew I liked you for a reason. It is a great picture. It's just enormously aesthetically pleasing, Phalanx standing sort of open and easy, the Ghost a longer but narrower zig-zag of angles, eyes on him. Both the Ghost and the cop are looking at Phalanx; the Ghost's expression, as much as you can make it out under the hood and mask, looks attentive and relaxed. Like you would look at your lover, mid-sentence. What fandom chose to cry and cause wank over is, Jesus fucking Christ, the way he's standing. TV: It's not the most masculine posture in the world. P&G: Why the *fucking* hell should it be? TV: Let's go through this in bite-size chunks so it's not just a string of expletives again. Why, as succinctly as possible, did fandom start a flamewar over the Ghost standing like that? P&G: Because they, the idiot ignorant children, fetishize homosexuality in the most contorted and disturbing way possible. Because they're fine with him being gay - happy that he's gay, since they can use his name and form for all their little m/m fantasies on a whole different level of appropriation now. But how dare he, human being in his own life, how *dare* he not conform to strict gender stereotypes at the same time. He's perfectly well allowed to be gay, as long as he does it the 'right way'. God forbid he be any kind of queer that disturbs them, though. TV: There was a lot of negativity. P&G: They don't want to see a male hero stand in a 'feminine' pose. It demeans him. It makes him less heroic. TV: Because to be female is to be less, and to be a male imitating a female is possibly the worst thing it's possible to be. Some of the responses were genuinely unsettling, I read some of your replies to them. P&G: I might have been angry, but I do not disown a single word of what I said. Disgusting self-absorbed ignorant little shits deserved it. TV: But not everyone was so negative about it. P&G: No. Some of fandom is actually populated by feminists and not by people who think that they know what that word means but have never actually thought it through. And then some of fandom is populated by people who further fetishize his femininity in again the most contorted way possible. We kind of had perfect storm conditions for the wank after that. TV: You posted a short piece of meta about it at the time. P&G: I posted a rant, please don't dignify anything that happened during that shitstorm with a respectful title. I hammered out at my keyboard my undying rage that these people were treating him like a doll to dress up how they pleased, and then throwing tantrums when he failed to live up to what they'd dressed him up as in their heads, or subsuming him under the further homophobic, misogynist, *the opposite of accurate* image of him as a swooning 'heroine' in need of big strong Phalanx to 'rescue' him. TV: Little strong Phalanx. P&G: I sense some favoritism developing. TV: He's really cute now I've *looked* at him. Look, I'm not in this fandom, this is not my war to step into. But it *is* interesting. Because, obviously, there's a lot of misogyny involved in campophobia - even in the queer community, the feminine man is despised. P&G: Yes. A loud part of the queer community, weirdly, strives for heteronormativity. We focus on gay men and women as being 'normal', the way straight men and women are 'normal'. Possibly just because it makes us less threatening to straight people, or helps us deal with internalized homophobia, I don't know. But that 'normality' is a lie whether the person in question is gay or straight, these categories are weird, and troublesome, and some of them are actively steeped in hatred and lies. The only thing to do is let it go. 'Normal' has only ever been an illusion. It is all so much more complicated than that you would not *believe*. Let gender be whatever it will be, and stop trying to shame people into going about it the way you're comfortable with. People are who they are and they love who they love. No-one should ever have to sit in a labelled box that someone else nailed the lid down on. TV: Fandom's largely female and yet we still perpetuate the weird misogyny wrapped up in all of this. P&G: Fuck the patriarchy that lives in our own heads most of all. TV: And the weirdest part of it is, everyone knows who he is - he's a hero. There is so much photographic evidence of his extremebamfery that it was a struggle to narrow down which gifs to illustrate the point with. P&G: He haunted New York on his own for five years before Phalanx showed up. Criminals are terrified of him, there's enough documented evidence of that. He can take down a dozen guys all bigger than him and then stroll away when the cops arrive, the last man standing and still unarrested. He kicks so much ass and we've always admired that. He also just copes with what must be a frequently distressing and draining occupation - most of what he deals with on any individual night could be completely traumatic to many people. I admire his strength and bravery utterly. And somehow people cannot square that strength, bravery, and bamfery with the image of him standing with his hip cocked *like a girl*. TV: Because, really, the two just aren't connected. They literally have nothing to do with each other. It's not that either should make the other difficult, there is no logical inconsistency in his not being traditionally masculine and his simultaneously kicking lots of ass. P&G: No. It was never his testosterone-fuelled uber-manliness that kicked ass. It was him. Exactly as he is. He's the same person kicking ass as he is standing next to Phalanx, in what is to him an unconsciously comfortable position - it's only since Phalanx came along that he's started relaxing like that, btw, *that* is clearly what's comfortable to him, not that wary cloak-covered hunch he always wore before. And it says so much more about fandom, about *people*, than it does about *him* that people somehow cannot make the image of the butt-kicking man who stands 'like a woman' sit right. TV: Because - what, heroism is manly? Girls don't kick ass *like that*? Because like you said, there are those who emphasize and fetishize his femininity, and in so doing they often fail to capture the bamfy aspect of him. P&G: What this links in to is the fandom entitlement complex. TV: Go ahead, I can feel your need to preach. P&G: I have a rant brewing, if that's what you mean. The fandom entitlement complex links into fandom sexism in a really strange and powerful way. Because fandom feels like it *owns* its figures of fetishization; they are what they are because we made them that. There is an enormous sense of ownership, like they're just the scaffolding, *we* construct who they are. And of course, they can't live up to that. They're real people, not our dolls. And when they fail to live up to our particular construction we either ignore the facts and go on as before or else we get *really fucking angry*. How *dare* they be actual human beings. They're supposed to be *my doll*, not any real person. Especially not any complicated real person! They should be as simple as possible because I can't conceptualize more than three personality traits in my head at any one time, I am *actually* that dumb! TV: Ahem. Plus we live in a patriarchal society and we construct our dolls along the strict and misogynist gender lines given to us, which oversimplifies them in very dangerous ways. P&G: That's what worries me about many of the people who make the Ghost out to be 'girly' - they're often people who obviously really *identify* with the Ghost, and they still make him out to be weak. So what does that say about the psychology of some women in this world, that society taught us to hate ourselves so *effectively* that we even want our *heroes* to just be rescued, that when we use him as a stand-in for ourselves in *fiction* we still *make him weak*? Because the fic and meta where the Ghost is effeminate *and* is the still the strong, life-saving hero - well, I've rarely found it under the sheer mass of 'basically all the Ghost really wants is for Phalanx to *save* him' fic. TV: I mean, ouch, but yeah. It explains the bizarre popularity of misogynist romance fiction written for women by women, after all. P&G: Mm. So we construct our dolls as manly male heroes, and then throw a shitfit when the queer man actually turns out to be *too* queer. Or we construct them as weak and flimsy *caricatured* women with dicks, who angst and cry and need a more masculine partner to 'rescue' them. The entitlement complex is so strong that we either write over them with our own images - rewrite the Ghost entirely, forget that he kicks ass, forget his *strength*, because a 'girly' man could never be strong because *girls aren't strong* - or we rage and scream about all our butthurt that the hero turned out to not be a cardboard cut out MAN. The part where he's a hero - do I actually need to remind people that he stopped New York being blown up? (with Phalanx; they are partners, after all) - who is both 'feminine' and 'masculine', because we all are, because those labels fix to characteristics and not to people, *that* part gets forgotten. We want them to be what *we want them to be*. We forget that they're not obliged to be a damn thing for anyone except themselves. And often people in writing their definitions of other people do want to wipe queerness out. They want us to go back to that gender dichotomy. They either want him to be a 'man' (caricatured) or to be basically a 'woman' (caricatured) in male form, but they can't *stand* that he's actually just a human being, and human beings are difficult. TV: No middle ground? P&G: Are you shitting me? This is fandom. TV: So tell us how to fix this, great wise Ghostly. P&G: I appreciate your sarcasm so, so dearly. There is middle ground, I was being facetious. There was a small, feminist, pro-queer faction fighting this corner as loudly and rationally as they could. And Blackbindings - one of the fanficcers in the ghostlanx fandom - wrote a piece after that photograph was published called Graduation, which tried to actually ignore the wank and deal with what the photograph *did* teach us about the relationship between the Ghost and Phalanx. Because all that wank is nothing like the most interesting part of that photograph. In this fandom, *everyone* should have responded to that photograph how Blackbindings did, but unfortunately she's the only one with the brains to see what's actually important. TV: I haven't read the fic. P&G: It's a meditation - all of her fics are strolls around a subject, giving you new angles and a wider perspective to actually *see* something from, I swear she makes me realize I have my eyes *closed* half the time. It's a meditation on the balance of 'power' in their relationship. What power means, and doesn't mean, and how it doesn't have to dominate, those who have power can *share* it. We think of it like it's a limited resource but why can't everyone be powerful, if it's the right kind of power? It's about their teacher/student relationship. TV: You're going to have to explain that for those of us who aren't in the fandom. P&G: Tell me what you think it might mean from looking at that photograph. TV: I don't know. The Ghost is standing slightly behind Phalanx's shoulder, relative to that cop. It could just be that the way Phalanx is gesturing has knocked their shoulders out of alignment. It could be that Phalanx has *put* himself between them. It could be that the *Ghost* put Phalanx between them. It could be that Phalanx is taking the lead and the Ghost is happy with that. It could be that the Ghost is watching over him . . . P&G: Yes. It could be all of those things. And not one of us mentioned it because we were just too fucking busy screaming about the Ghost standing like a girl. The Ghost was there first, and it's pretty long been assumed by many that they had a teacher/apprentice role - the classic superhero/sidekick relationship. But it becomes obvious in that photograph - and when you look back, there's a lot of other pictorial evidence for it - that it's really not that simple, and maybe it never has been. TV: You know I love it when you elaborate. P&G: I'm sexy when I'm verbal. When you look back through gifs and photosets, whenever they're dealing with crime victims, the Ghost tends to be in front. His attention is all on the victim and Phalanx is looking at *him*. When they're dealing with criminals they're usually side by side and their attention is focused on the threat. But whenever they're dealing with anybody else - cops, reporters, fans, bystanders - usually Phalanx is the one in front and talking, and usually, the Ghost isn't looking at who they're dealing with, his gaze and his posture are orientated towards *Phalanx*. The Ghost often isn't even fully visible in those situations. Look at that photograph again; Phalanx is standing very at ease and in control of the situation, very relaxed being the one talking, and the Ghost is looking at *him*. This is not a hero/sidekick relationship. They have strengths and weaknesses and they complement each other. They actually are, in every sense of the word, partners. TV: That's quite sweet actually. P&G: If you're contemplating joining the fandom I advise you not to, it's populated mostly by cretins and children. Blackbindings is special. Very special, actually. She does cryptic crosswords for *shiggles*, I don't know if you've ever looked at one but they are torture for the mind. But it affects her brain in interesting ways. She called it 'Graduation', because partly the fic is about how they educate each other, empower each other (of course education is empowering: in her fic, knowledge elevates). But the fic is also very steeped in color terms. It gives it a really physical, sensual, *there* atmosphere, almost close enough to touch, and it was only when I remembered her twisty-turny cryptic little brain that I realised that 'graduation' is only a letter away from 'gradation'. It's the sort of thing she'd notice and play on, cunning little creature that she is. The way hues run into each other. There is no dividing line. The labels are a lie. Strictly, once you realize how difficult drawing a line between colors is, there aren't any *colors*; there's just *color*, and we fumble through labelling instances of it as best we can, pretending that the labels create real categories. They, the Ghost and Phalanx, are so much more complicated than anything we can paint them. Their identities are human identities and the labels are a *lie*. It's not that the labels aren't labelling something real but that they're only labelling *parts* of people when they are *wholes*. They are complex. They live in a world of gradations. They're not superhero/sidekick except for when they are, but who is which is a very blurry thing. Isn't it for all of us? TV: I can't tell if you're a fan of ghostlanx or of Blackbindings right now. P&G: Probably both. Sometimes I just contemplate that her mind exists and give a satisfied sigh that the world *must* be a reasonable place after all . . . TV: We should probably get back to the wank we were discussing. Did you have any closing thoughts on the subject? P&G: Just that being a fan is a very peculiar thing. We never know the person that we 'love' so much, though I do think that that love is often very sincere and fierce-felt, but we only actually know the doll we made of them in our own heads - with masked heroes the problem intensifies. And what we should do is be relaxed, and accept that people are always more complicated than we think they are - this has wider implications than fandom alone - and discuss these things in a way such that we can *learn* from it. Because learning, and the openness to strange new things that learning requires, empowers. The close-mindedness that treats people as characters to be owned by us, that demands simplicity where simplicity is an act of psychological aggression, that sense that we're entitled to special access to their identities almost more than they themselves are - all those things harm both them and *us* in thinking like that. And if people could not be dicks about gender norms that would also be really cool. TV: Indeed. The sheer scale of the meltdown is something to be appreciated, I dabbled in to take a look and - whoa, basically. P&G: It's a big fandom, when we make wank we make a *masterpiece* of wank. Still, most people did stay out of it. The sensible majority who just duck their heads and reblog gifs whenever the shit starts flying. TV: And do you have this week's move ready yet? P&G: It's in the mail, and you really should have seen it coming. TV: We'll see. So next week I'll probably be discussing US remakes of other countries' movies and TV shows, unless something more interesting happens in the meantime. P&G: Oh god, don't even get me started on that bullshit. TV: And it looks like you'll probably see Paleandghostly in the comments section next week too, ahem. Thank you for your contribution this week, P&G, couldn't have done it without you. P&G: You're more than welcome. I hope it was educational, at least insofar as discouraging people from irritating me quite so much. TV: See you guys next week, signing off!

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: “Censorship Is Always Arbitrary”: An Interview with an Art Critic in Singapore

Kent Chan,”Bright Lights (better life later)” (2016), neon bulbs, acrylic sheet (image courtesy the artist)

Weng-Choy Lee is president of the Singapore section of the International Association of Art Critics. Malaysian-born, Lee spent his youth in Manila, followed by a decade in the US. In 1992, he moved to Singapore, where, among other things, he co-ran The Substation, an arts center and mainstay of the local art scene. Lee and I first crossed paths while I was co-organizing an event in Phnom Penh’s art gallery and resource center, SA SA BASSAC, for which he presented remotely. After I published an article on Singapore’s Art Stage early this year, we began to discuss art writing more seriously.

Singapore, so foreign to me, was Lee’s home for decades, and he is currently working on a book of essays on artists who mostly hail from his adopted country. Our previous conversations about the meaning of “home,” art criticism in the region, and learning to listen to a place have been extremely generative to me, so I was delighted by the opportunity to more formally discuss these and other issues with him.

*     *     *

Weng-Choy Lee: Let’s start with me asking you a question. In your Hyperallergic article, “Everything Points Inward: Capitalism and Its Discontents at an Art Fair in Singapore,” you wrote about working for SA SA BASSAC at this year’s Art Stage. What was the feedback like?

Ben Valentine: While I received a few positive reactions, investigating further on social media, I noticed a lot of negative responses, especially from Singaporeans. These seemed to be more in reaction to the predictability of me — a liberal white American — helicoptering into the island city-state to decry human rights violations and unfettered capitalism. I was aware of this trope and had tried to counterbalance it by grounding my writing in personal experiences, such as my discomfort with the fancy shoes I had to wear as part of my “costume” for working at Art Stage, and my wife’s brief detainment at immigration. Upon reflection, though, it seems fair to say I did not succeed.

Kent Chan,”If Not, Accelerate” (2016), two-channel video

WCL: I empathize. My first essay on Singapore was the same: I too decried capitalism and the lack of human rights. One reason I appreciated your piece is because you didn’t just write from your American perspective, you drew upon your experiences in Cambodia. Also, while you at first recoiled from the pungent capitalist spectacle of it all, I thought your point was about moving past that and listening to your surroundings and to artists like Kent Chan, who was part of a curated platform at the fair.

When I arrived in the ’90s, I sought out some local professors. One senior academic told me, with a straight face, that Foucault was completely irrelevant here. I don’t ever want to forget the shock of that encounter. But after a couple of decades, one can get complacent. It bears repeating that one must remain critical and not allow problems to become normalized.

BV: So let’s talk censorship and self-censorship. What are the limitations of Singapore’s art-criticism scene?  

WCL: The situation in Singapore is more complex than most people might assume. In 1993, the government’s Censorship Review Committee came out with a report that basically endorsed the status quo with a few minor tweaks. Its recommendations were generally welcomed without much objection by the arts community. Ten years later, though, the next Censorship Review was met with strong criticism by an organized group from the arts. We distinguished between censorship and regulation (e.g., ratings for mature content)—recommending the latter and completely rejecting the former.

In 2002, The Straits Times newspaper invited me to write a piece on censorship. The editor consulted me about some minor changes, to which I agreed. When printed, however, they changed the crux of my argument without telling me. I argued that censorship is always arbitrary; they changed it to “censorship is sometimes arbitrary” — thus proving my point. Today, censorship is not always about controlling content. Yes, certain topics remain taboo: Don’t cast aspersions on the judiciary or incite racial antagonism, film remains under tight control, and so on. But censorship here is also about singling out and pressuring certain individuals, thereby intimidating the arts community as a whole.

Over the years, independent art publications have tested boundaries, been met with government pushback, and continued to operate. In many cases, lack of funding was the reason for closing shop. The government will withhold funding on content they dislike, but again, this isn’t applied absolutely rigorously but arbitrarily. If you can fund it yourself, then you can say it, to a large degree. With regards to criticism, the challenge isn’t only direct censorship but also the poverty of public intellectual debate, which is a consequence of living in a censorship regime.

Singapore’s ArtScience Museum foregrounded by a Louis Vuitton store (photograph by author for Hyperallergic)

BV: You seem to suggest that the bigger issue is a failure to find ways to move beyond the obvious problems, while not ignoring them.

WCL: Historically, we’ve had a weak appreciation of what the public is or can be. And I believe a healthy public discourse is necessary if we are to become better listeners as an arts community.

Singapore’s first biennale, in 2006, was created to be the anchor cultural event for the World Bank and IMF meetings hosted that year. The Substation wanted to organize a “street party” well after the meetings. We explicitly said to the authorities there would be no speeches; we just wanted to bring together local arts and civil society groups in public to celebrate as a community. The authorities denied us permission.

Substation preparing for their current exhibition, Discipline the City

The following year — no biennale, no IMF meetings — we tried for a “tunnel party” (next to The Substation is a tunnel). We wanted to organize a commercial flea market and booths for arts and civil society groups. Again, no speeches, just live music. We did get permission for the flea market and music, but they said no to arts and civil society. Equally disappointing was that on the day itself, the arts and civil society groups — who all dutifully came to the planning meetings — were mostly absent. Since they were no longer formally a part of the event, maybe they didn’t feel the need to show up. Although some things have changed: Today’s annual Pink Dot gatherings are an example of a strong commitment to public space that we were perhaps missing back in 2007.

But let me ask you: What are some of your experiences in finding a way to speak from your present location in Cambodia? As noted, Singapore is my adopted home. Becoming local and being located isn’t about some essentialist precondition — often it’s very much about learning to listen.

Tzu Nyen Ho, “U for Utama” (2017), video-still from The Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia, algorithmically edited online video, infinite duration (image courtesy the artist)

BV: This is an issue very much on my mind, and one I believe I’ll always be navigating. I’m beginning to wonder if a master’s degree in art history about the region or about Cambodia is necessary for me. I’ve been diving into books and texts on the history here, but the context remains incredibly foreign.

The article I wrote about my early time in Cambodia would be so different today. The fundamentals wouldn’t change — ask a lot of questions, don’t come to artworks or artists with my own agenda, and be willing to put aside my Western art history education in favor of local context — but I still have a long way to go.

Although I’m far from fluent, learning the language has been invaluable for developing trust, respect, and a deeper insight. No doubt, subtle cultural differences have resulted in miscommunication and confusion. But I suppose the big adjustment is that here I trust my first reads of art much less, and I rely more heavily on interviews and conversations with the artists than I would in contexts with which I’m more familiar. Really taking time is the key — for empathy, not to mention accurate, thoughtful art writing.

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