#'you must pay attention to what you say when you go outside of rome because there saying 'curse your dead ancestor' is like giving a caress'

[essential-randomness]

Got curious about how one could correctly explain "it's bitter dicks" to non-Italians, and found this amazing reddit post with cultural references an Italian developer put in his game.

Never has anything conveyed Italian culture better.

[twoidiotwriters1]

The Curse of Oenone (Leo Valdez xFem!Oc)

A/N: I'm seeing Hozier tomorrow wish me safe travel! -Danny Words: 2,230 Series' Masterlist Previous Chapter // Next Chapter Listen to: 'Chronically Cautious' -by Braden Bales

XVI: I Hope Ya'll Were Paying Attention, 'Cause I'm Never Doing That Again

From now on, Ara won't think about anything else than taking the seven demigods to the ancient lands. Once there she'll save Nico, and after that... she'll do what she must to make sure her camp gets saved, and maybe break her curse in the process.

Annabeth sits her on the mattress. "I shouldn't have forced you to do three missions in a row—"

Ara groans. "That is the only reason I'm here. And one of the missions was a tea party where Aphrodite complimented my eyeliner." She touches her face in sudden realization. "Oh gods, my eyeliner! Do I look insane?"

Annabeth smiles a little. "The storm and your crying washed it all away—you should get a better brand."

"I like how easy to remove it is," she lies on her back. "And that brand has pretty colors..."

The ship is groaning and swaying from one side to another, but Ara isn't allowed on deck. She had a meltdown and Frank had to carry her to the sickbay, and now she's too weak to do anything.

Ara stepped into the role of daughter of Olympus so sure of herself, and now... Why couldn't all this happen when she had the option to step out? She remembers how harshly she judged Clarisse during the first war, but now she understands that sometimes being impartial is not an option.

When the storm gets more violent, Annabeth is forced to leave the room. "I have to go help..."

Ara says something before Annabeth leaves her cabin. "You don't have to worry about me bailing out after this. I'll help you defeat Gaea if it is the last thing that I do." She stares at the ceiling with a blank expression. "I'm sorry I freaked out, I suck at diplomatic stuff. Lily always took care of that part..."

Annabeth crosses her arms and sighs heavily. "Yeah, that was concerning. You used to hold your front just fine, what happened?"

Ara makes a face. "Aphrodite told me not to be rash and I didn't listen. I wonder why I ignore her when she's trying to help..."

"You always complained about being underestimated," Annabeth shrugs. "Maybe you're doing the same to her."

Ever since the gods stripped her of her Aphrodite identity and dressed her in General attire, Ara has done her best to hide who her godly parent originally was. She acted all offended when Leo didn't believe she was from Cabin Ten, but deep down, she'd been satisfied. The implications of that, of course, are terrible, so Ara decides to ignore it.

"Could you not..." she clears her throat and speaks with more authority. "Don't tell the others, I don't want them to freak out over nothing. Let them have peace before we reach Rome."

"I figured you'd say that," Annabeth sighs. "Fine."

Moving my stuff out of Cabin Ten isn't hard, I haven't kept much in there since I moved to New York. I choose a room on the second floor of the Big House, close to the stairs so I can get out fast in case of an emergency.

Nico takes the room across from mine, and Rachel the one in the middle. We go to Apollo's cabin, and the campers salute me as I enter. Nico and Lily stay outside to start the funeral rituals and I help where I can. I use my empath touch on the mourners until I can't hold more of their grief, I employ my charmspeak so the wounded rest. 

I stand next to Chiron and Mr D and we burn the shrouds, as that comes to an end, I introduce myself as the new head of camp. I promise to be there to help and protect them.

During dinner, Nico sits with me because he doesn't have a table. Tomorrow I'll see that he gets one. Lily will help him design his cabin, they'll leave tomorrow night and Lily will stay a few weeks in the Underworld to help Daedalus, I know she's hoping to catch a glimpse of Mike.

Campers approach our table to congratulate Nico, but they give me nervous glances as they move to me. Some of them, the Cabin Nine and Cabin Ten campers seem happy, although my siblings also look concerned about having Drew as their new counselor. I had to give up the spot for the bigger part, I was never a proper Aphrodite anyway, perhaps this is better.

The Stolls want me to change rules so they can go out on the weekends, but when I tell them that's out of my control, they lose interest in my title.

Most campers are anxious, Drew's spreading rumors about a curse, she says a child of Olympus and peace are mutually exclusive, and having me on camp taunts the fates. She tells everyone it's in my name: The bringer of curses.

The first night though, they're willing to give me a shot. 

I go to bed completely exhausted, so I don't wake up when Rachel walks in and stares at me for Hades knows how long. I wake and jump out of my skin when I notice the girl at the foot of my bed. I reach for Almighty but then notice the bushy hair and the large T-shirt. 

"Rachel?" I speak hoarsely.

Her eyes snap open and illuminate the room with their green light.

"When the dove touches the smith

Almighty raises her myth

And the curse of love releases

By tearing earth into pieces."

Rachel stumbles forward and holds onto the bedframe.

"W-Wha..." she blinks, her eyes going back to normal. "Where am I?"

I gulp. "My room."

She looks at me. "How did I get here?" Understanding falls on her features. "Did I just..?"

"Go to bed, Rachel," I get up.

"What did I say?"

I guide her out of my room and back to hers. She sits on the bed and I hand her the glass of water she had on the nightstand. "Can you please keep this a secret?"

Rachel frowns. "Why? What did I say?"

"Something that has to do with me, and only me."

"Are you sure?"

"Well, the oracle took you to my room, so if I had to guess..."

"But what did I say?" She insists.

"I'll figure it out, Rachel."

"But—"

"Please," I press. "That's—er, an order."

"The Oracle doesn't answer to you, General," she gives me a grumpy look.

My shoulders fall. "Can't you do it as a friend?"

"What thing?" She teases me. "Keep the secret, or answering to you?"

"It wasn't a big deal, so I can take care of it on my own."

She doesn't believe me. Nothing was ever "not a big deal" if the Oracle was spitting out a prophecy about it. 

"Alright. But if you end up needing help, you have to ask for it."

I tense, not wanting to utter the words, but if I don't, Rachel will tell Chiron.

"I promise."

There are better ways to wake up from a nap than to turn your room sideways.

The nap worked though, so as she navigates the large corridors slamming against the walls, she manages not to throw up at all until she reaches the deck.

"Holy—!"

"What's going— Gah! Shrimpzilla!" Percy crashes against her.

"What is that?!" Ara screams, drawing out Almighty and almost crawling to reach the helm.

"Must be one of Keto's stupid monsters!" Annabeth yells. "How did it get so close?" 

"I don't know!" Hedge shouts.

"I'm stupid!" Leo cries out. "Stupid, stupid! I forgot the sonar!"

The ship tilts again, almost completely on one side. 

"Sonar?" Hedge growls. "Pan's pipes, Valdez! Maybe if you hadn't been staring into Hazel's eyes, holding hands for so long—"

"What?" Frank and Ara reply in shock.

"It wasn't like that!" Hazel argues.

"It doesn't matter!" Piper intervenes. "Jason, can you call some lightning?"

Jason is completely drained from their encounter with the Romans, and Percy isn't any better. The monster's thin wire-like legs slid over the deck and Ara barely ducks and presses herself against the railing.

"Stay away from my ship!" Ara slashes tendrils as she goes.

"Hazel!" Leo screams. "That box! Open it!"

Ara's eyes land on the box of Greek fire Leo keeps on deck. She knows what he's got in mind.

"Ara, go and help!" The boy continues to give out orders. "Coach, take the wheel! Turn us toward the monster, or we'll capsize!"

"Hope you got a plan!" The satyr runs up to him.

Ara has half a mind to think about what Hedge said about Leo and Hazel, the current monster threatening to sink them is far more important than whatever feelings she may have about it, if she has any at all. Janus came, and she chose duty. She mutes her emotions and does what Leo asks of her, running to Hazel and opening the wooden box. 

"You gotta be gentle with these," she warns her.

"Ara," Hazel starts. "What Hedge said—"

"I don't care!" She snaps at her impatiently. "Come on!"

"Frank!" Leo runs across the deck. "Buy us some time! Can you turn into a shark or something?"

Frank scowls at Leo, and the monster knocks him out of the ship when he gets distracted. Hazel cries out and almost drops the vials she's holding, but Leo catches them when he arrives at their side.

"Come on! We can kill the monster—and save Frank!" He glances at Ara, his expression telling her nothing at all. "Can you help us climb to the port rail?"

"Yes."

"What is this stuff?" Hazel pants as Ara drags them up the deck.

"Greek fire!" Leo shouts.

"Are you crazy? If these break, we'll burn the whole ship!"

"Its mouth!" Leo points as they reach the railing, he holds onto it to not slip back down. "Just chuck it down its—"

Once again, Ara is the only one fast enough to dodge the tendril. She slips back and watches in horror as Hazel and Leo get lifted. The girl glares at the monster, Lily's stygian dagger gets heavier on her belt. "You asked for it..."

Leo singes the creature so it loosens its grip. It feels like it happens in slow motion, Ara can tell what his plan is as it happens, and she only has a few seconds to help. She presses twice on the alpha of her sword, turning it into a BB gun.

She shoots at the same time Leo throws his vial of Greek fire at the monster. The pellet crashes against it and makes it explode directly into the monster's mouth. Hazel throws the second vial, and Ara shoots again. That one explodes in the monster's line of vision. 

Ara presses on the alpha twice, and Almighty turns into a grappling hook. It attaches to the main mast, and the girl jumps overboard drawing out Lily's dagger. She swings across the length of the monster, cutting through the creature's skin. 

It's not a deep cut, but the injury is long, and mixed with Leo's Greek fire weakens the beast enough so it loosens its grip on the ship. Ara's hand hurts from holding all of her weight, but she pays no attention to it as the tool yanks her back into the ship. She stumbles to a stop, then puts Lily's dagger away and her skin glows teal.

"Everyone hold onto the railing!" A wave pushes them away from the monster, and Ara forces the currents to keep pushing until they're out of reach. "Annabeth, the ballista!"

Her friend shoots twice, the creature shrieks, and then the sea swallows it leaving nothing on the surface. Ara slips to the floor, her face turning green.

"Ara," Piper approaches. "Leo and Hazel—"

"And Frank," Ara nods dryly. "Where is my brother?"

"The monster knocked him out," Jason gets closer too, eyeing her with concern. "We should check on you too."

"Feed him ambrosia and bring him up," she turns Almighty back into a compass and looks at it, the needle moves speedily over the symbols without stopping and makes her dizzier, so she looks away. "We gotta search the sea."

"Ara, we have a problem with the—"

"In a moment," she stops Annabeth and leans over the rail to talk to Percy. "What do you mean they're gone?!"

"I can't find them!" Percy shouts back, floating right next to the Argo II. "And no one here has seen them!"

"I saw them fall! Keep looking!" Ara looks back at Annabeth. "You were saying?"

Ara clings to her role and does her best, but Leo is the one who fixes what's in the engine room so that will have to wait until he comes back. If he comes back. In the meantime, Ara takes care of the rest with Annabeth's help and makes sure everyone patches up their wounds.

Percy comes back on board frustrated, this is the first time he's lost a battle against a sea monster, and he's deeply confused at the fact that he wasn't able to find any of their friends. Ara remains hopeful, if there are no bodies, then they didn't die.

Annabeth approaches and places a hand on Ara's shoulder. "We have to warn the camp about Octavian."

They call Chiron. Annabeth and Ara explain what happened. At least this she's familiar with, preparing the camp for attacks used to be her bread and butter.

"We'll be okay, Strategus," Chiron tells her. "Your job is to keep the seven in one piece until they finish the quest. Focus on nothing else."

"She's doing a great job," Annabeth informs him. "Last night she killed Shrimpzilla and made it look easy."

"Shrimpzilla took three of our crew," Ara points out sternly. "I gotta keep searching, Chiron, but... Tell everyone I'll return soon. I... I promise."

Chiron gives her a sympathetic look. Being a leader is nothing like she thought it'd be.

Next Chapter –>

Taglist.

@siriuslysirius1107 @ask-giggles1303 @asnyox-the-hoarder @im-planning-something-look @bandshirts-andbooks @coolninjapaper @thewaterlily @whenisthefall @1randomcomic @you-bloody-shank @sunflowergraves @owlalex44 @taylordaughter @typicalsolangelolover @writingmia @espressopatronum454 @slytherinnqueen @orbitingpolaris @obxstiles @ellipsisspelled @thepixiechicksh

[paalove]

puppy honey pickrome fic idea of pick being simply so down bad for rome but ofc it’s pick so he has his own way of showing it and it’s adorable and i just need more of them

💖💖 p'pick! study date fic for them in which pick is settling into Being A Boyfriend.

also on ao3

Rome’s got plans for the week.

Not fun ones! They aren’t fun. It’s the start of exam season, which means that everybody Rome knows is about to descend into their worst, least social selves, for a couple of weeks at least.

What’s worse is that the good students and the ones who are about to graduate went into that state even earlier, so P’Pick – and P’Porsche, which of course matters to Emma – have been basically missing for the last month. It’s not been lonely-lonely, he still has Emma to talk to, but it isn’t fun.

P’Pick’s last exam is in twelve days.

Rome and Emma have theirs from five days from now to three days after that.

Which means Rome’s important plans are studying. He’s going to hole up with Emma and a stack of textbooks and she’s going to scold him for not learning anything for the past few months and only paying attention to P’Pick, and it’s not even going to be hypocritical because he knows P’Porsche and Emma have done at least one library date.

But he doesn’t want to get up.

P’Pick’s already up – he can feel that side of the bed getting cold, and also if P’Pick wasn’t already up Rome’s arm would at least be over him, and he’s not touching anything but the bed – but Rome’s still tired. And also in a state of opposition to studying.

He tries to bury his face in the pillow and go back to sleep, pulling the covers over him as he does so because P’Pick left the curtains open when he got up, because P’Pick is still kind of thoughtless even though he’s Rome’s boyfriend now but that’s fine because it’s very cute when it’s not just him leaving the curtains open and ruining Rome’s sleep.

The newly-created darkness is helping pull Rome back to sleep, nice and cozy and warm, when-

Something hits him through the covers right in the back of the head.

“P’Pick,” he whines at the wordless thud, because who else is going to throw things at the bed?

He doesn’t know why P’Pick is throwing things instead of vanishing to the library or P’Porsche’s place, but it’s got to be P’Pick, so when he sits up – blanket and mysterious thrown object falling to his lap – he’s already smiling even before he sees his boyfriend standing in front of him, face covered in his trademark irritation.

And that means P’Pick’s not smiling but Rome can see the amusement in his eyes as he says, “Uh. It’s me. Get up, shorty, it’s nine.”

“But classes are done,” Rome points out, head tilted half in confusion and half to look at P’Pick from a slightly different angle.

He’s wearing jeans and a t-shirt – he must be studying at P’Porsche’s place today.

The other thing he’s doing is rolling his eyes and saying, “Studying isn’t. With Emma, right?”

Rome feels his own smile go wider, stretching across his face because P’Pick can say it in as few words as possible but he can’t hide that he knows Rome’s plans.

He says, “Yes,” with the type of smile that P’Pick always rolls his eyes and turns away from and then looks at the object.

“Oh,” he tells P’Pick, still looking down at his lap, “Thank you, but I need my uniform, not normal clothes. Emma and I need to get some things from the library, so we’ll be on campus today.”

He always feels really bad when he has to correct something nice P’Pick’s done or said, but it’s like the thing with the camera which was very sweet, and very expensive, and the wrong specs for Rome’s classes – P’Pick would notice him not using it. Without an explanation P’Pick would get stroppy.

Well, with an explanation P’Pick had gotten stroppy, first saying he’d bought the camera for himself then saying it was for outside class, just Rome’s hobby photography, and finally he’d stopped being all sad and bought Rome a new one with Emma’s clear guidance-

But he would have been worse if Rome hadn’t said anything.

His response is different today, though, and when Rome does look back up he’s actually smirking a little bit in the way he knows Rome thinks is hot, and he shakes his head and says, “Nope.”

Then he turns and walks out of the room.

Rome looks confused after him and considers going back to sleep, but…

Well, P’Pick got him up on purpose, and he’s looking all proud of himself, so there’s probably something else going on.

It’s with some pressed-down excitement that Rome gets up and showers and, eventually, decides to put on the clothes P’Pick gave him, a nice shirt and tighter jeans than Rome normally wears when P’Pick’s going to be elsewhere all day, but P’Pick likes them so him choosing them isn’t surprising.

The worst that’s going to happen is Rome has to come back up to P’Pick’s room, dig through the corner of his wardrobe that P’Pick hasn’t admitted is Rome’s now, and find his own uniform.

He goes downstairs cautiously – even more cautiously when he smells food.

P’Pick can cook, but not super fancy stuff, and also he doesn’t do it a lot, and he’s busy today so why-

It’s takeout.

That’s the first thing he sees, plastic bags and boxes abandoned on the table, and Rome smiles because he should have realised it would be that.

The second thing he sees is-

“Nong Rome,” calls P’Porsche, reminding him of why they still call him P’Doggy even though he hasn’t worn the dog costume in a while.

Emma, next to him at the table, waves one hand – the other one held captive by P’Porsche as she says, “Good morning, sleeping beauty.”

“It’s only nine, P’Pick said,” he defends himself, going to the chair opposite Emma and next to his embarrassed boyfriend, who seems to be avoiding his gaze by pretending he needs to rearrange a stack of books.

He ignores Emma continuing to make fun of him as he sits down and hooks his foot around his boyfriend’s ankle, making P’Pick go completely still, and then he asks the table, “Are we studying together?”

“I’m glad you asked,” P’Porsche answers with a flourish, “We were going to be studying separately, but Pick was worried you would- ow,” he breaks off with a yelp.

The leg Rome hasn’t got trapped seems to return to its original position, and Rome mirrors Emma’s laugh, but he also pats P’Pick on the forearm and says, “Thank you, P’Pick, that’s so thoughtful.”

If they were alone Rome might have to point out P’Pick’s ears going red; luckily today P’Porsche notices for him. Not lucky for P’Pick, though.

[openingpandorasbox1]

SCHOOL REUNION Part 3

Not everyone from school turned up, I would say there were about half of the kids from school there and a few teachers turned up as well. Sharon and Keith eventually turned up (late as always). Sharon and Keith were nice towards me that night thankfully. I didn’t need their bullshit that night (I don’t need their bullshit any night) but the reason why they didn’t give me grief that night was because I wasn’t isolated and there were always others around (people who they didn’t know too well) and I also had Daisy with me. There were some girls that were bitchy towards me and giving Sharon and me dirty looks, but some people just remain trashy for life. There was this guy that Katie used to have a crush who she nicknamed him “Speedy Gonzales” after a cartoon character she liked. There was this other guy who was there who sort of knows this girl I know Judy (Judy didn’t go to school with us) he’s a nice guy and drives buses. My stepsister Autumn had him as a bus driver a few times and she thought he was cute. He used to get picked on sometimes as well from what I can remember. We were standing around this table outside where Sharon and Keith were smoking. He came up to us and started bitching about these people from school who were bullies. I didn’t know about it when he was doing it, I wasn’t really paying attention to him, I was chatting to Daisy. Sharon told me about it the next time we caught up. Simon had paid a photographer to turn up to take our photos and we had a group photo taken. I didn’t want my photo taken so I attempted to hide. Even though Keith didn’t go to our school he posed in our school reunion photo with us that were kinda funny. I can imagine all the kids I went to school with, trying to work out who that guy is in the photo. I didn’t drink too much that night but I don’t need to drink too much red wine for it to get me tipsy. I’m a cheap drunk (as they call it). I drank enough to lose my anxiety and by the end of the night I was taking photos of everyone. I approached my history teacher and told him I still love history and I told him how I’m a big fan of the Tudors and Anne Boleyn. He said, “Anne Boleyn is that the girl who had her head cut off?” and I said “yes”. What kind of history teacher doesn’t know who Anne Boleyn is? I think he preferred Ancient Rome and Australian history from what I remember. I remember this girl we used to hang out with in high school had a huge crush on him and she once told me that she used to ring him up on his home phone number to ask him questions relating to her school work. I didn’t think you were even allowed to do that. Sharon told me that he would have sex with his former students after they left school. I don’t know if it’s true or not.

                During the end of the night Simon and his girlfriend (who also went to our high school) gave a speech and thanked everyone for coming. It was during his speech Sharon taped me on the shoulder and told me that she and Keith had just got engaged (again). This wasn’t the first time she has told me that she and Keith had just got engaged. The first time she told me was years previously when we were at the club, we were sitting around drinking (Matthew was in England at the time) and she told me that she proposed to Keith because she said on a leap year (or something like that) it was okay for women to propose to men. Sounded like a bunch of patriarchy bullshit to me. It doesn’t matter what gender you are or what time of the year it is, if you want to ask someone to marry you just do it. She didn’t have an engagement ring that time and I don’t even recall her ever having an engagement ring or celebrating their engagement. I don’t even recall Keith saying anything about the engagement back then. So at the reunion Sharon told me she and Keith had just got engaged (she must have forgotten about the previous time they got engaged). I told her congratulations and I was happy for her and Keith. She told me the ring was still at the jewellers. They never celebrated their engagement and that was the only time it was mentioned. The engagement ring never showed up. Even though Sharon always calls him her husband, they’ve never been engaged or married.  They are probably better off not getting married, they are probably sensible that way. I think Sharon wanted to marry, but Keith was never interested.

There were a lot of people who had to travel from different states to go to this school reunion and were staying at motels. People made effort to come to this thing so it was a good turnout. Simon should be proud of what he did, it was well organised and people had a good time.

#schoolreunion #schoolreunions #howtosurviveaschoolreunion #thelogcabinhotel #penrith #emuplains #yorkpublicschool #southpenrith #jamisonhighschool  #romyandmicheleshighschoolreunion

[aellynera]

Goddess (Orestes x Reader)

GODDESS

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

Word Count: ~4400

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

Everything is madness.

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

You tell him he shouldn’t be here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until you breathe his name.

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

“My goddess.”

~end~

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[monotonous-minutia]

Benvenuto Cellini in 300 lines or fewer

for the lovely and incredibly patient @notyouraveragejulie, as requested! Happy Cellini-versary! took me long enough, but decided to get it done today to honor the occasion :)

Act I Scene I

Balducci’s house

Balducci: Teresa what are you doing looking out the window I told you never to look out the window. Besides I need you to listen to my rant. Can you BELIEVE what the Pope has just told me? He’s hired that delinquent Cellini to make his new statue instead of Fieramosca. I just can’t wrap my head around it.

Teresa: Maybe you could if it wasn’t so big.

Balducci: What?

Teresa: Nothing.

(Balducci exits)

Teresa: Ugh FINALLY I hate listening to his rants. )goes back to look out the window)

Masqueraders outside: LALALALA IT’S CARNIVAL THE BEST TIME OF THE YEAR

(Balducci comes back and sees Teresa at the window)

Balducci: TERESA WHAT DID I TELL YOU ABOUT STAYING AWAY FROM THE WINDOW what is even going on down there? I bet it’s that Cellini whipping everyone into a frenzy. Ugh, Carnival. (exits again)

Teresa: (goes to the window and is immediately showered with flowers) I don’t care what my dad says, hanging out by the window is fun. I love flowers. Oh hey, a note from Cellini! What? He’s coming here? Oh, that’ll be risky. But hey, dad’s out of the house, what could go wrong? Y’know, it’s kinda hard, dealing with all this—feeling like I have to listen to my dad, but wanting to indulge in the affections of my beloved. When I’m older, old like my parents, maybe I’ll be responsible, but right now I’m young, and I deserve to have some fun! Girls just wanna have fun!

Cellini: (appearing at the window) TERESA MY BELOVED

Teresa: Cellini, I love you, but it’s too dangerous for you to be here. What if my dad catches us?

Cellini: But look, it’s carnival, and it’s so gay! And I mean that like happy, but y’know, it’s pretty gay too. Besides, I love you. Why do you turn me away?

Teresa: Well, I just got done singing this empowering feminist aria, but unfortunately reality hits and I remember that it’s 1532 and I basically have no rights, so it’s best for you to forget me and move on.

Fieramosca: (sneaking in carrying a huge bouquet) The best way to a woman’s heart is with a cool sneak-in plan and a bunch of flowers. Hang on, is that Cellini talking to my Teresa?

Cellini: How am I supposed to just leave you behind? Let you be forced into the arms of that Fieramosca?

Teresa: I’d rather die than marry Fieramosca!

Fieramosca: …I just came here to have a good time and I’m honestly feeling so attacked right now.

Cellini: Okay, so, how about this: Come to the new opera Cassandro is presenting tomorrow night. While your dad is distracted, my apprentice and I will sneak over disguised as friars and spirit you away! We’ll go to Florence and live happily ever after! Nothing could possibly go wrong!

Fieramosca: Hmm, interesting plan. It would be a shame if someone were to...interfere.

Teresa: Sounds foolproof. But hang on, my dad is coming back. You have to hide!

(Cellini hides behind the door. Fieramosca hides in Teresa’s bedroom. Balducci somes back.)

Balducci: Teresa, what are you up to? Are you talking to people? How many times do I have to remind you that you’re not allowed to have a life?

Teresa: (distracting him so Cellini can sneak out) DAD THERE’S A MAN IN MY BEDROOM

Balducci: What??? Let me see!

(Balducci goes into Teresa's bedroom and comes out dragging Fieramosca) I can’t believe this! This is so inappropriate, Fieramosca, how dare you?

Fieramosca: No, wait, let me explain! I just came to visit! Cellini is the real rascal!

Teresa: Oh the poor man is raving mad.

Balducci: I will not stand for this! Servants, come here! Let’s teach this seducer a lesson!

Servants: OH YEAAAHHHHH LET’S STICK HIM IN THE FOUNTAIN

Fieramosca: NO WAIT

Teresa: This is the best thing ever.

Act I Scene II

Piazza Colonna

Cellini: I can’t wait to elope with Teresa!

(A bunch of Cellini’s friends and students come in)

Chorus: LALALALALA LET’S GET SLOSHED

Cellini: Yes, but for god’s sake none of those ridiculous drinking songs. Let’s sing about the glory of metal-workers!

Everyone: YEAH GLORY TO THE METAL-WORKERS!! WE’RE THE BEST WE WORK WITH METAL THAT SPARKLES LIKE JEWELS AND RIPPLES LIKE FLOWERS AND IS MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN BOTH OF THOSE PUT TOGETHER

Bernardino: Alright folks, let’s drink up!

Innkeeper: Sorry lads, not until you pay your tab.

Cellini: Okay who’s got the cash? …nobody? Well this is a nice little pickle we’ve gotten ourselves into.

Ascanio: (enters carrying a bag of money) ASCANIO TO THE RESCUE

Everybody: YEAHHH VIVA ASCANIO

Ascanio: Okay hold your horses folks, before you spend this money, you have to realize where it’s coming from. It’s a down payment on that statue you’re supposed to build. Cellini, remember you promised the Pope you’d make that statue?

Cellini: Ugh, don’t remind me.

Ascanio: It’s literally my job to remind you.

Cellini: Fiiiiine I promise I’ll finish the statue.

Ascanio: Okay, cool. Here’s the money.

Cellini: Here you go, you troublesome little man, now give us our drinks.

(He gives the Innkeeper the money.)

Cellini: Okay, now that we all have had our libations, let’s talk revenge. You know that guy Balducci who’s always disrespecting me and trying to keep me away from my girlfriend? Well, I have a plan for Carnival where we can humiliate him in front of everyone as payback!

Everyone else: Sounds like a great time! We’re in.

Everyone: Yeah!! A curse on that guy! And while you’re at it, honor to the metal-workers again!!

Ascanio: That’s such a bop where’d it come from?

Cellini: We made it up while you were gone.

Ascanio: I always miss the fun stuff.

(they all leave to get ready; Fieramosca, who was eavesdropping, comes out into the open)

Fieramosca: Ugh, look at them all, plotting against my future!

Pompeo: (entering) Hey boo! What's with the long face?

Fieramosca: Alas, Pompeo, my only friend! What a week it's been! First off, I got an impromptu and very much unwanted bath at Balducci’s yesterday. And as if that weren’t enough, now Cellini and his apprentice are going to abduct my girl!

Pompeo: That’s actually not a bad idea.

Fieramosca: What do you mean?? You want him to steal Teresa from me?

Pompeo: No, the getting in disguise and abducting her part! Why don’t WE just don those same disguises and get her ourselves?

Fieramosca: Ohhh, I get it! What a great idea! Although I must admit, I am a little scared of what Cellini might do if he catches me in the act.

Pompeo: What you think he’s actually going to stab somebody? Here, let’s practice sword fighting so you’re prepared if he does try to pull anything funny.

Fieramosca: Good idea! (they practice sword fighting) HA LOOK AT ME, WHO WOULD EVER DARE CHALLENGE ME, ALL Y’ALL PEASANTS GET OUT OF MY WAY, I’M THE ROUGHEST TOUGHEST GUY YOU EVER DID SEE. Oh, Teresa, I wish you could know just how much my heart burns for you! I’ll be damned if I let that rascal Cellini come between us.

(They leave to get ready. Balducci enters with Teresa as the Piazza begins to fill with people)

Balducci: Well, Teresa, I hope you’re happy. I’ve decided to suffer through this vulgar comedy so you can stop nagging me about not letting you go to Carnival.

Teresa: I’ll never forget your sacrifice, dad. (Come to think, it DOES make me feel a little guilty to be running away from home...is it fair to leave him all by himself?)

Cellini and Ascanio: (dressed as monks) Quickly and quietly, let’s get down to business! The plot is about to start!

Chorus or Troupers: COME, GOOD PEOPLE OF ROME!! COME AND SEE OUR SHOW!!

People: THIS IS SO MUCH FUN CARNIVAL IS AWESOME

Troupers: Let the show begin! (They start a pantomime featuring a parody of Balducci and the Pope)

Balducci: What fresh nonsense is this?

Teresa: Uhhh maybe we should go?

People: SHUT UP AND WATCH THE SHOW

Balducci: You know what? I’m going to suffer through this whole thing and then go tell the Pope how you’re all mocking him! Because he and I talk all the time I guess.

People: WE SAID SHUT UP JUST WATCH THE SHOW

Cellini: Ascanio, can you see Teresa?

Ascanio: Nope but I see someone else trying to interfere with our plans!

People: HAHAHA WATCH THE SHOW THIS IS SO FUNNY LOOK AT HARLEQUIN LOOK AT THE OLD MAN HAHAHA

Balducci: I’M GOING TO TELL ON ALL OF YOU

Teresa: Dad, stop, you’re just riling them up!

Balducci: THAT’S IT I’VE HAD ENOUGH COME GET A TASTE OF MY WRATH (he runs onstage wielding his cane)

People: HAHAHA THIS JUST KEEPS GETTING BETTER

Fieramosca: Come on, Pompeo, let’s sneak over and grab Teresa!

Cellini: Come on, Ascanio, let’s sneak over and grab Teresa!

Fieramosca: Teresa, it’s me! Come with me!

Cellini: Teresa, it’s me! Come with me!

Teresa: ??? I don’t know who is who!

Cellini: Come with me!

Fieramosca: Come with me!

Teresa: You know, when I imagined myself falling in love, I never thought I’d have two fake monks vying for my attention.

Ascanio: WE’VE BEEN HAD YOU WON’T GET AWAY WITH THIS (starts chasing Fieramosca)

Cellini: Get out of my way! Cut it out! (He and Pompeo fight; Cellini stabs Pompeo.)

Pompeo: Oh, I’m dead! (He dies.)

People: OMG SOMEBODY DIED CALL 911 I CAN’T BELIEVE A MONK JUST KILLED A GUY WHAT KIND OF WORLD DO WE LIVE IN

Fieramosca: OMG I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU JUST KILLED MY BOYFRIEND

Teresa: OMG CELLINI

Balducci: OMG A DEAD MAN TERESA WHERE ARE YOU

Cellini: OMG I’M REALLY IN TROUBLE NOW

Ascanio: Well, that happened.

(General chaos ensues; Cellini’s students help him escape. Amidst the mayhem Balducci bumps into Fieramosca, and, thanks to his white monk costume, mistakes him for the murderer)

Balducci: I FOUND HIM I FOUND THE MURDERER

Fieramosca: ...are you telling me this is the second time in as many days I’m being accused of something that Cellini did?

Ascanio: Come on, Teresa, let’s get out of here!

Teresa: You don’t have to tell me twice! (They both run off.)

Act II Scene I

Cellini’s workshop

Teresa: Oh my gosh what a catastrophe! I hope Cellini is okay!

Ascanio: Have faith! My master is not one to let a silly little murder accusation get him down. I mean, he did actually kill the guy, but I’m sure it will all work itself out. Have faith!

Teresa: Let’s pray for his safe return! (She and Ascanio sing a very pretty prayer; Cellini busts into the workshop)

Cellini: HONEY I’M HOME

Teresa and Ascanio: OMG YAYY YOU’RE ALIVE

Cellini: It was a close call! Everyone was running after me with daggers and calling out for my blood! I thought for sure I was done for, but I managed to evade the crowd and find a place to hide, but passed clean out in the process. It was just my fortune that as I came to my senses, as group of white monks were walking past! I joined their procession and no one was the wiser. God led them right to you!

Teresa: OMG that’s such a harrowing adventure! I’ve got goosebumps.

Ascanio: And you’re sure this is 100% accurate, with no embellishments?

Cellini: What do you take me for? Now, come on, we’ve got to get out of here before they come after us again.

Ascanio: Whoops, they’re already here.

Balducci: Cellini, you scoundrel, abductor, murderer, and general all-around-annoying person! Relinquish my daughter. It’s time for her to unite with her husband, Fieramosca.

Cellini: OVER MY DEAD BODY

Ascanio: Don’t give them any ideas!

Balducci: Come on, Fieramosca, claim your bride!

Teresa: DAD NOOOOO

Fieramosca: Uh...I don’t want to cause a scene…

(The Pope enters with his retinue)

Everybody: OH SHI--OH DEAR IT’S THE POPE

Pope: Rise, rise, my children! Relish in my holiness, but don’t hurt yourselves.

Balducci and Fieramosca: Oh your Holiness, please grant us your assistance! That rascal Cellini has tarnished Teresa’s honor.

Cellini: Come on, I think that’s a bit of an exaggeration.

Pope: Well well, well, Cellini, this isn’t the first time you’ve gotten in trouble with me, is it? For example, where’s my statue? The one I commissioned you to make?

Cellini: Well...it’s not quite done yet.

Pope: Are you saying I should find someone else to cast the statue instead?

Cellini: WHAT?? HOW DARE YOU!! SOMEONE ELSE CAST M STATUE?? I’D RATHER DIE THAN SEE SOME AMETURE DARE TO PUT THEIR GRUBBY LITTLE FINGERS ON MY MASTERWORK

Everyone else: Are you seriously yelling at the Pope????

Pope: Arrest this man!

Cellini: YOU ARREST ME AND I WILL DESTROY THIS MODEL RIGHT HERE THEN NO ONE WILL BE ABLE TO FINISH THE STATUE! NOBODY!! NOBODY!!

Pope: How dare you threaten me? What’s it going to take to calm you down?

Cellini: I want full forgiveness for all my crimes up till this point. Wipe my record clean.

Pope: Fine, fine.

Cellini: ALSO I want Teresa.

Balducci and Fieramosca: WHAT??? Your Holiness can’t possibly be considering this.

Cellini: I ALSO want more time to finish the statue.

Pope: …you know my weakness for art; fine, fine, I can’t really say no.

Balducci and Fieramosca: What audacity! But we’ll see who has the last laugh.

Teresa: Oh, what a fateful day!

Ascanio: Look at my master, he’s so clever and devious!

Pope: Okay, Cellini, here’s the deal. Finish the statue by tomorrow, and you’ll get all that you asked for. If you can’t finish it in time, you’ll be hanged.

Cellini: Fine!

Balducci and Fieramosca: He’s on the brink of ruin! We’ll see who wins this one!

Teresa: He’s doomed, alas! There’s nothing left for me in this world! Luckily I'm not going to end my life based on this notion like most operatic heroines, but I still feel dread in my heart!

Cellini: I’ve got to win this!

Ascanio: Come one boss you’re the best you got this!!!!

Act II Scene II

Cellini’s Foundry

Ascanio: TRALALALALALA….idk what I’m feeling...I’m happy, then I’m sad, then I’m crying, then I’m laughing, then I’m singing! Must be the hormones. Or the stress...our little bronze boy is finally getting finished today! But there’s a lot on the line. On one hand, I’m all scared that we’ll fail and my poor master will be hanged; on the other hand I can’t help laughing over how ridiculous the whole situation is...I mean, did you SEE the way my master stood up to the Pope?? Anyway, I better start getting ready. Tralalala! (He exits)

Cellini: What have I gotten myself into? How did I expect to finish this statue on time? All of Rome has its eyes on me

Ascanio: *Hamilton chorus voice* history has its eyes on youuuu

Cellini: What?

Ascanio: Nothing. I’m not here.

Cellini: Ah, why can’t I be a simple shepherd, whiling my life peacefully away in the mountains?

Chorus outside: Oooh!! here’s a grim old sea shanty

Cellini: I wish they’d stop! Nothing good ever happens when they sing that song!

Ascanio: (coming back) Not that song again!

Cellini: Take heart! We’re like sailors ourselves, but our sea is made of metal! Let’s get to work!

Fieramosca: NOT SO FAST!! I demand justice! Cellini, I challenge you to a duel! No need for all those sword-fighting lessons to go to waste.

Cellini: Someone finally grew a pair, eh? Fine, let’s duel right here.

Fieramosca: Not here! If I kill you in your own place, I’m a murderer. Meet me behind St. Anthony’s cloister.

Cellini: I’ll see you there!

(Fieramosca leaves; Teresa enters)

Ascanio: Here’s your sword, boss!

Teresa: Omg Cellini are you going to a duel??

Cellini: Relax, it’s just Fieramosca. (exit with Ascanio.)

Teresa: What if it’s an ambush????

Cellini’s workers (storming in) THAT’S IT WE’RE GOING ON STRIKE THESE WORKING CONDITIONS SUCK

Teresa: Oh heavens! What’s this ruckus? Come on, folks, just wait for Cellini to come back and talk about it!

Workers: NOPE WE’RE OUTTA HERE

(Fieramosca walks in)

Teresa: OMG FIERAMOSCA IS BACK WITHOUT CELLINI THAT MEANS CELLINI IS DEAD HE KILLED CELLINI (faints)

Workers: YOU KILLED OUR BOSS???

Fieramosca: What? No! Geez, this really is not my week. I’m just here to offer you the raise Cellini won’t give you.

Workers: NOPE WE’RE LOYAL TO CELLINI FORGET WHAT WE JUST SAID GET OUTTA HERE YOU RASCAL

Cellini: (coming back) What’s going on?

Teresa: (awake) OMG YOU’RE ALIVE

Cellini: ...was that ever in question? Oh, hey, Fieramosca, you’re just in time to help build the statue! Here’s an apron, get to work.

Fieramosca: What? I--

Everyone else: Get to work, or you’ll be taking another impromptu bath, but this time it’ll be in a sea of molten metal!

Fieramosca: YIKES! Okay, lead the way.

Everyone: COME ON LADS LET’S GET TO WORK

(the workers and Fieramosca head to the forge. Balducci enters with the Pope.)

Balducci: Teresa! What are you doing here?

Teresa: Uh, funny story.

Pope: So, Cellini, is my statue done yet?

Cellini: Nope, but it will be very soon.

Balducci: We’ll see about that.

Pope: You better be right.

Fieramosca: (running in) We need more metal for the statue!

Cellini: What, are you messing up my statue?? Let me go see (he runs to the forge)

Balducci: Fieramosca? What are you doing wearing an apron?

Fieramosca: Would you believe me if I said I got a new job?

Cellini: (coming back) Haha nothing to see here! Everything is going according to plan! We just need a bit more metal, that’s all, no biggie.

Workers: Just one problem: There is no more metal. And the fire’s going out. If we don’t get more metal in there quick, the whole thing will be ruined!

Balducci: Well, well, well, looks like I’m winning!

Cellini: NO THIS IS NOT THE END I REFUSE TO GIVE UP! Everyone, just grab anything metal and throw it in there!

Workers: What?? Even all your old work?

Cellini: I SAID EVERYTHING DIDN’T I

(Cellini, the workers, and Ascanio all start grabbing metal things and throwing them into the furnace)

Teresa: I can’t handle this stress!!

Pope: I can’t believe the nerve of this guy! Is it possible he could actually succeed?

(An explosion comes from the forge)

Cellini: OMG THIS IS IT I’M DONE FOR

Workers: WOOHOO WE DID IT LONG LIVE CELLINI

Cellini: We did it??

Workers: VICTORY! VICTORY!! LOOK AT THE STATUE ISN'T IT AMAZING

Fieramosca: CELLINI WE DID IT HOW ABOUT A HUG

Cellini: ...how about no

Pope: Well, Cellini, I didn't think I was going to be able to say this, but you made good on your word. I officially pardon your sins, and bless your marriage to Teresa. (He leaves.)

Cellini: YAYY TERESA

Teresa: YAYY CELLINI

Everyone: VICTORY!! LONG LIVE CELLINI!! IMMORTAL GLORY! GLORY TO THE METAL-WORKERS!!!!

The End

[fallingstarnovel]

Chapter Three

That Monday, when he got to the lecture hall, he glared at Aliya for the entire time. She was visibly avoiding his gaze, tugging down her hair so she wouldn't make eye contact with him.

After it ended, he quickly walked over to her, coughing loudly from behind his fist.

"So. Judas comes to face his crimes."

Aliya turned and gave him a pitying look. "I'm really sorry! I completely forgot I had a revision session in the morning and I had to prepare for it. I felt so guilty."

Evan glared at her for another second – before rolling his eyes with a smile. He was a benevolent kind of person when he wanted to be. "It's fine."

"You sounded like you had a good time," Aliya teased him. “Your texts were indecipherable.”

"Uh. I think I did." He pulled a face as he failed to remember literally anything about how he got home. "It’s all kind of a blur. There was this girl..."

Aliya's eyes went wide. "There was?"

"Ah, shut up, she just said a bunch of stuff at me and then... Hm. I don't remember much after that, but clearly nothing weird happened since I got home safe and fully dressed."

Aliya tutted. "This is why I don't drink. Sounds kind of scary."

Evan opened his mouth to say something like "you get used to it", but then he remembered that he was trying to be normal and closed his mouth again. "Yeah. Haha, a little. I'm not sure you would have enjoyed the party. It was loud and everyone was off their faces."

"Maybe. I'm glad you were okay, though. And you got home safe."

Evan smiled. By now, they were long outside the lecture hall and were walking through campus. Students were rushing from building to building, or walking in groups and chattering away together. So many people who were meant to be here. They all looked like they were right at home.

There was a flash of black in the corner of his vision. Evan turned his head automatically, only to see the black cat from a few days ago sprawled across a wall. It was staring at him with green eyes, unblinking and imperious.

"Oh, it's the university cat," he said to Aliya. "Look."

"Aww. I'm more of a dog person," she said bluntly.

The cat's eyes narrowed in disgust.

Evan was about to go over and pet it when he heard someone say his name over his shoulder. He looked behind him, only to see a boy with curly blond hair and an angelic smile. He was looking at the cat with a strangely intense gaz, before snapping back to smile at Evan.

"Ruth!" he said. "Hey!"

Ruth waved. "Hello again. You look like you've recovered from Friday night."

Wait. Wait a minute... Evan squinted at him, before feeling his face flush red. Was Ruth there as well?! He didn’t remember seeing him at all!! He laughed awkwardly. "I am. So sorry. I don't remember a lot. I was... very drunk."

Ruth nodded. "I was. I thought you might have difficulty remembering."

Aliya's eyebrows inched up her forehead, right into her hijab. Evan realised that he had been quite rude, and quickly introduced her. "This is my terrible friend from Astro. She invited me to the party and then left me to die."

"I'm Aliya," she said, elbowing him in the stomach subtly.

Ruth gave her a polite nod, before turning his attention back to Evan. "I hope you don't mind that I let myself into your house. You seemed very worried that I was going to harvest your organs."

"You were the one who took me home?!” Evan yelped, feeling the blood rush all the way to the tips of his ears. “Oh, haha, what? Haha, so weird," Evan said, feeling himself dying of mortification again. "Thank you so much. I don't mind at all. That was really nice of you. Usually I just stumble home by myself, you know? God, sorry, I must have been so annoying to handle."

Ruth shook his head, his hair tumbling around his ears. "You weren't annoying at all. You were very sweet, like a well behaved child."

Evan wanted the ground to swallow him whole. "Haha, that's good. Still, I'm so sorry. Thank you. Augh."

How was he so bad at this?

An idea occurred to him. He quickly started rummaging in his pockets. "Wait, wait, I think I owe you a coffee for saving my life twice now. I don't have a lecture for a while, so..."

Ruth looked at him in surprise. There was a yawning moment of silence in which Evan questioned everything that made him ask that question and wondered if it was too late to change his name and move to Mexico.

But then Ruth smiled. "I think I owe you one instead. You spilled yours last time."

"In that case, I'll pay for yours and you pay for mine, and we can call that even," Evan laughed, feeling relief flood through him.

There was a polite cough from behind him. "Well, I have a study group to get to, so," Aliya said, shooting Evan a knowing smile. "I'll let you two go have fun. See you, Evan."

Evan felt a little bit guilty at accidentally muscling Aliya out of the conversation. He waved her goodbye and turned back to Ruth, and all his guilt was forgotten. Ruth's smile was blinding. There were two little dimples in his cheeks. Wow, he didn’t know anyone in real life with dimples.

"Let's go," he said, inclining his head in the direction of the coffee shop, and off they went.

Evan watched Ruth over his coffee while trying to look like he was doing no such thing.

Ruth was fascinating. He had a very handsome face, with eyes that could have been carved into one of those old statues they kept in the museums of Rome. His movements were all graceful and deliberate, from the way he stirred his coffee to the way he unwrapped his blue scarf from around his neck.

He was also tall. Evan wasn't short – okay, he was kind of short – but Ruth made him feel like a god damn manlet.

"So," he said, because he felt the need to fill the silence with something, "what course are you on?"

"Actually, I'm a part time student."

"Eh, no way. I didn't know you could do an undergrad part time!"

Ruth smiled and shrugged. "I have a job on the side. It takes up a lot of my time. I suppose the university understood I had other commitments."

Evan blinked. "Wow. Must be an intense job."

"You have no idea," Ruth said, something steely glinting in his grey eyes. "But it's rewarding."

"Is it why you skip so many lectures?"

Ruth nodded. Evan couldn't hold back his curiosity.

"Then what is it?"

Supermodel? Secret agent? Government official? What was important enough that the university would let him mess around with the schedule like this?

Ruth just winked at him, and Evan immediately upgraded all his guesses. Eldest son of a mob boss. Heir to the CEO of a huge corporation. A superhero in disguise as a student.

"That's fine. I didn't want to know anyway," Evan lied. "I bet it's something boring like business management."

Ruth ran his finger along his cup, his eyes flickering down to the table. "In a way, I suppose you're not far off."

"So... why astrophysics?"

"No reason, really. I just felt something pulling me here. That's all."

Wow! Such a free spirit! This guy was definitely some kind of billionaire. Only a rich person could afford to come to university on a whim and then spend half his time doing something else instead. Evan, who thought coffee was a fancy treat, tried to contain his jealousy and failed.

They drank their drinks in companionable silence. Evan was full of questions, but he didn’t want it to seem like he was interrogating his new friend. He was just curious!

“Do you... go to a lot of student parties?”

Ruth shrugged. “Not generally.”

“Oh. Aside from last night, I guess. Um... actually, about last night... I was wondering about what exactly happened.”

Ruth went still. “Yes?”

“Was I... alright? When did I go home?”

“I found you upstairs in someone’s bedroom with a few people. It looked like you were playing some kind of game that involved kissing,” Ruth replied. “You seemed very uncomfortable with the situation. Did I misread that?”

A kissing game. What the hell. Evan hadn’t played one of those for years. He wondered who he was smooching when Ruth discovered him. So deeply, horrifically embarrassing.

“I have no idea,” Evan replied with a shrug. “I don’t really remember if I was comfortable or not.”

There was a faint frown colouring Ruth’s pleasant smile. “Then I’m glad I was there regardless. There should be no room for doubt with things like this.”

“Hah, in an ideal world. In my experience, there’s always doubt. You just kind of have to move on afterwards.”

Ruth’s throat bobbed, but he didn’t say anything else. His coffee was steaming so much that it fogged up Evan’s glasses, and he took them off with a chuckle to clean them. “Wow, look at that,” he said, desperate to change the subject. “It’s that time of the year where I go blind every time I enter a warm room. You don’t wear contacts, right?”

Ruth, still speechless, shook his head. Oh, this was awkward. Evan got the horrible feeling that he had messed up somewhere.

“So lucky. Well, hah, look at the time. I should start heading to my next lecture.”

He didn’t have a next lecture. That was a lie. But he really didn’t want to hurt the poor guy’s feelings. He started gathering his stuff slowly, trying not to look like he was rushing out of there. Ruth let out a deep breath, before reaching across to lightly touch Evan’s wrist. His skin was very hot from where it had been holding his coffee cup.

“The next time you go to a party,” he said quietly, “take me with you.”

“Sorry?” Evan said, certain that he misheard.

“Take me too. I, ah.. I’m actually quite nervous around people. And I find it difficult to go alone. It would be... nice to have a friend to go with.”

“Oh, dude, me too,” Evan said, giving him a reassuring smile. “I have mad social anxiety. I actually don’t get invited to a lot of things like that anymore, but if I do, I guess I’ll text you and see if you’re free?”

Ruth nodded, his hand slipping off Evan’s wrist.

“Thanks.”

“It’s no worries. We can be anxious buds together.”

With a slow incline of his head, Ruth signalled that he would like that, and Evan felt some of his nervousness settle somehow. It was a surprisingly soothing gesture.

“Well. See you at the next one.”

“See you then.”

And then Evan rushed off to hide in the library for a couple of hours so Ruth wouldn’t see him walking around campus when he was supposed to be in a fake lecture instead.

Evan was getting out of the shower when he noticed something black flash in the corner of his vision. He whirled around, rubbing shampoo out of his eyes, visions of getting murdered by some opportunistic shower murderer running through his brain.

However, when he looked around, there was nothing there. He swore he saw something, though. Something in the reflection of the bathroom tiles near his back.

When he was done, he stopped by the mirror in the hallway and checked his body just in case the black thing had been a huge house spider or something. It wouldn’t be the first time that he had a spider fall on him in the shower. Usually they washed down the sinkhole, leaving Evan shivering and feeling strangely violated, but what if this one managed to cling onto his naked skin?

There was no spider. Instead, sprawling across Evan’s lower back like a trampstamp was a sprawling, intricate black tattoo, formed from archaic lettering and symbolism that he couldn’t read.

“Hey, what the fuck,” he said into the empty house.

Having no housemates meant that he couldn’t run into anybody’s room and ask them to read whatever the hell it now said on his back. He tried rubbing at it, but nothing happened. It didn’t even feel weird or raised. It just felt like skin, and it didn’t budge.

Not even soap or nail polish remover got it off his back. It was like ink had sunk into his skin and stuck there overnight.

Evan was, understandably, more than a little freaked out.

> HEY UHHH SO > sent: image_5473843.jpg > ???

wow, that’s a really interesting tattoo!! when did you get it? <

> well you see that’s the thing aliya. i didn’t. > i do not know where this tattoo came from. ummm > i am freaking out a little!!

wh??! < you mean it just....??? appeared?? <

> yeah?? i literally do not remember getting any tattoo there??! ever?

you do have a lot of tattoos... are you sure you didn’t forget about one of them? <

> you don’t just forget about a tattoo!! > okay actually. sometimes you do. BUT NOT THIS BIG. THIS IS A TRAMP STAMP > I WOULD NEVER GET A TRAMP STAMP > oh god what if this happened while i was drunk at that party

ok calm down do you want me to come over and look at it? <

> no, it’s fine. i’ll just. ???? hhhhhhhhh > wait, there is something you can do! can you get me the numbers of uhh. fuck what was their name uhhh Tree. Branch > ROCK > and there was this girl who dressed like a goth, they were both at the party, can you ask your netball friends if they have their numbers? they might know what happened?? i guess? help?

i’ll ask around babe x sorry about this maybe go to the police? <

> they’ll just say i was drunk and there was nothing they could do. but thank you anyway i really appreciate this. sorry for bothering you

no need to apologise at all xx hoping you’re okay xx message me whenever you like <

Evan examined the tattoo in the mirror again. Now that the shock had worn off... well. Aliya was right. He already had so many tattoos. Most of them were already stupid ones he got on a whim. So even if he didn’t ask for this one... it was okay, right? It wasn’t so bad.

It was even kind of cool, in an old-school, mall goth kind of way. Spidery webbing and dots of red ink in what he thought might have been flowers of some kind. He tried to take a photo with his phone, but his hands kept shaking, so he just kept getting blurry pictures of his ass. Not ideal, honestly.

With a sigh, he stretched out on his bed and examined his older tattoos. His favourite one was still the navy outline of a falling star stretching down his inner arm towards his hand. It was his first proper one that he got done at a real tattoo parlour. A lot of the earlier ones were... well, the less said about how close he got to a skin infection, the better.

With a sigh, he tugged on a long sleeved shirt from his closet. Until he could work out why he suddenly had that black monstrosity on the back of his hips, he wasn’t sure he wanted to accidentally keep catching glimpses of it in every reflective surface.

Wait a minute. There was someone else there at the party. Someone who might have seen something that could help.

He opened up the messages from the unknown number and prayed that it was who he hoped it was.

> heyyy ruth i hope this is you!! haha hi

The reply came back about half an hour later, which was just long enough for Evan to overthink everything that had ever happened to him.

It’s me. Rest assured. :) <

Oh god. How to word this?

> well i’m doing good actually i’m you know. chilling! > actually there was something i wanted to ask you > please excuse the ass in this photo!!!!!

The what. <

> sent: image_5473843.jpg

Who did this. <

> funny question! i don’t know > i was hoping you could help???

I’m coming over. <

> no, i meant like do you remember seeing anyone at the party with a tattoo gun or a stick and poke or something?? you don’t have to come over sorry i don’t want to be a bother

You’re not a bother. I’m coming over. <

Well. Fuck. Evan panicked and threw on a pair of sweats and a hoodie, and then felt stupid, because presumably Ruth was going to come and look at the tattoo. Maybe he should wear nicer clothes? Did he have time to tidy his room?

> are you sure haha i don’t want to inconvenience you!!!

I was in the area anyway. It’s okay if you don’t want me to come over. But I have an idea about what happened. < Sorry. I know this must be alarming. I don’t want you to be uncomfortable. <

Evan thought about it. Well. It was the only lead he had.

> sure why not come on over

I’m outside. <

The doorbell rang.

***

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[chayacat]

Devil’s Sweet Star (20)

Fandom: Dead by Daylight

Ghostface x Female Reader  

Rated M for Violence, Language and Smut  

***

All artists have a muse. An inspiration. Motivation, unwavering will. A signature of their own. It’s impossible to copy the work of an artist, because he always leaves a part of himself, a small detail, whether in the choice of shapes, lines, colors, etc., which allows us, little observers to recognize his work. We could take the example of Vincent Van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Sandro Botticelli, Michelangelo, Andy Warhol and finally Salvador Dali. All these artists had a particular signature, a little something that made their works unique, inimitable. Yet many have tried to reproduce them in order to make money. And even if some of them succeeded, they quickly found themselves behind bars.

But Danny is an... Particular artist. His works are particularly... Bloody. Certainly, he’s an assassin, but an assassin who wants to leave behind a trace of his passage, a piece of him in this vast world. Something that will remind everyone that he existed. At least Ghostface existed. But if every artist has a muse... What's Danny's muse? To tell the truth... He's got two. The first is simply envy. His insatiable urge for blood, to hear the gentle howls of his victims and to see the authorities tearing their hair out in the face of the lack of clues, is the reason he does this. As for his second muse...

Well, his second muse is you. For him, you are a precious jewel that he must protect at any price. No one should approach you and he won't let anyone near you. Of course, you will have the right to have friends, but don't plan to spend too much time without him. Besides, he feels frustrated that you prefer Jed to him. His alter ego is so boring compared to him! And yet how many times did he tell you? How many times did he tell you to think carefully?

And yet you chose Jed. But what happened that night ... He will remember it forever. Those little chills he felt on your skin when his tongue ran through your belly, your chest. And your little moans...A twisted smile appeared on his face just thinking about it. He's going to make you languish, but he's going to enjoy himself. And if you change your mind... it is beyond the seventh heaven that he will take you.

But for now, he has a more urgent matter to deal with. Because tonight is the big night. Everything was ready. Hoggins had brought charges to McKellan, who of course had retaliated strongly. How does Danny know? It's a journalist don't forget it. During one of his nightly visits, he had spied on a conversation between the two men and judging by McKellan's tone, the exchange was muscular.

“it's been so long that I've been waiting for this moment ... You dared to attack my angel in front of me. It's time for you to pay. I'm going to make you the best masterpiece ever created." He said, looking at McKellan house.

He had checked everything. He knew everything by heart. The round of the guards, the presence of the camera, McKellan's habits... absolutely everything. No surveillance camera.... humph, he thinks he's so untouchable that he doesn't feel the need to have security cameras. Poor fool. You're going to bitterly regret your arrogance. And Hoggins is going to pay the price.

It does not enchant Danny to attribute this murder to another, but if it is to see Wilhelm go round in circles, the game is worth it. He had parked his van in a place well out of sight. McKellan's villa is a staple, isolated from the city. No neighbourhood, no one to see or hear anything except the guards. Danny will never understand the rich and their desire to get away from people. Even if in a way, it feels good to have nothing around you, except the birdsong and the rustling of the leaves. But for these people, it's mostly a way not to mix with the "plebe".

He put on his mask and proceeded to the villa discreetly. It's time for the show. It's time for the massacre. From the bushes of the rear terrace, he watched the guards stationed. He knows that in a few minutes they will move to the sides and go around up to him. He must therefore move forward without being spotted to the building. And indeed after a few minutes, the guards moved. They always start at the inside of the terrace before returning from the outer sides. It was therefore cautiously but without concern that Danny advanced, not without paying attention to the flashlight that often came in his direction. Once near the walls, he glanced inside.  

As expected, it was impossible to get in from the back as the number of guards was too large. But he knows where McKellan's office is, and he knows that in exactly 20 minutes, he's going to go to his office and lock himself in and listen to music. He always puts the volume to the fullest, a significant advantage since so no one will hear him scream. He will be the only one who has the privilege of hearing it. Perfect. Once he's dead, Danny will have exactly 1 hour to make his masterpiece and leave because the guards will start suspecting a problem because of the music. Obviously, their boss listens to it every day for the same time. So, if it goes beyond the usual time slot, it's not normal.

Danny passed on the right side of the villa, on the side of which McKellan's office should be. And indeed, the second window of the office is open, surely to ventilate the room. He climbed to the gutter and clung to the balcony to enter the room. And the least we can say, is that this was to be the richest room in the house. He had something in common with Hoggins.

The walls were white marble making the room brighter. The many decorations in gold and red, as well as carpet flooring of the same color, recalled the time of ancient Rome. The few sculptures also for that matter.

“A passionate man of Ancient Rome... that will make my pleasure even more... Living. He will not only be my best masterpiece... but also the masterpiece of this room. It would almost bother me to soil this place of his filthy carcass and pig's blood. But he has to pay for touching and insulting my little angel...my precious love.” He said looking all around the room.  

He saw multiple objects that could be used for him, including multiples knife that look much sharper than his own. He could steal them but Ghostface is not a thief. He had taken a rope that he had found in the garden shed a few nights earlier. Like all the strings he took... this one will help him keep his "work" still.

He had the diagram of his artistic project in mind, with every little detail, of what he was going to cut to what he was going to leave whole ... Nothing much. He looked where he could hide and wait to strike. The cabinet in front of the desk will be the ideal hiding place. As soon as he will be close enough... he will catch him. Suddenly he heard footsteps. McKellan is on his way. Danny hides in the cupboard and waited. McKellan entered, furious as ever.

“Hoggins asshole... after all the services I have rendered to you to enrich yourself like a fat pig, you dare to accuse me?? I should cut your balls off... And this little whore and her damn coffee... not only has it not closed but it also gains in reputation! I'm surrounded by fools.” He said heading to the CD player. “Maybe I should kidnap her and torture her...or sell her as a prostitute...I’m sure that she can make a lot of money...”

Danny's blood was boiling. How dare he imagine for a second making you a toy for filthy fat pigs???  For a bonus profit??? He wanted to jump on him now, he wanted to slit his throat, butcher him, tear him to pieces... But if he goes out now, the guards will hear him and his whole plan will fall apart. He's got to stay calm. He's got to stick to the plan. As soon as he's at the cabinet level... he can attack. McKellan set the music on and turned the sound loud enough for the guards outside the room to hear it. Either he's deaf or he's crazy. Or both.

He stood for a few minutes in front of the reader before starting to "waltz" with his eyes closed. He reached the level of the cabinet and once in his line of sight, Danny went out to knock him out with a blow. He used the rope to tie him to the chair. He knows that from now on, he has 1 hour to do what he has to do. And he intends to take advantage of it. McKellan awoke after five minutes, trying to get away. The music was too loud for anyone to hear, so he looked at the knives but was quickly attract by a sinister sneer.

“Well, well... You finally woke up. You have a beautiful office. In fact, you have a very nice house, I would almost be jealous if it were not yours. Such a beautiful home for a rotten man like you... It's a shame.” said Danny, playing with his knife.

“You...I should be honoured by your presence... but unfortunately, I'm not very friendly with psycho like you. Hoggins sent you, didn't he? he's just a bastard.” Said McKellan with disgust.

“Sorry to tell you, but I'm not a man you can hire... I am acting and I will always act on my own. See if I'm here... it's because you and I have to settle.” Replied Danny before sticking his knife in McKellan's leg, making him scream.  

“YOU LITTLE SHIT!!! I’M GONNA CUT YOU HEAD OUT!!!!

“You see... You attacked someone very precious to me... and if there is one thing, I hate more than anything in this world... is that a rotten man like you, touch on what belongs to me. I'm sure you're wondering who I'm talking about. The "whore" as you like to call her, the boss of the Nebula... No luck for you... She's mine. And I'm going to make you regret every word you say. I hope you enjoyed your last musical moments... But don't worry... I intend to make you the masterpiece of your collection. And my best signing. Let the show begin.  

He cut off the leg where he had planted the knife, with a dry blow, recovering it before it fell to the ground. He did the same with the second and put it all on the desk. He stopped for a few seconds to listen to McKellan's delicious screams about the "tragic" loss of both legs. What sweet music to his ears... But unfortunately, he can't enjoy it very long, he has a countdown to respect.

“Oh... It hurts? I'm really sorry... I should have gone more slowly to lengthen the pleasure. But don't worry... I still have material. And limbs to cut you up. It's too bad you can't see that.”

“Please please ! I... I will give much more If you kill Hoggins for me!  I can make you the richest and the happiest man in this pathetic city! All the women will fall at your feet! You don't need that little slut! She's good for nothing! Just a little whore who thinks she's going to make a career!”

" I don't think you understood. I'm going to tell you one last time. One...” Danny started, planting his knife in one of McKellan’s arms. “I don't work for ANYBODY. If you think I'm just a puppet, I want you to know that I'm just for myself. I'm only doing this for my one and only pleasure. Never, and I say NEVER, would I work for anyone, even less for a rotten man of your kind. But if it makes you feel any better, Hoggins is going to come and keep you company in hell. Two...”

He thrust his knife deep into MacKellan’s arm to keep him awake until he finished talking to him. He drew his face closer to his.

“I only need one woman and that's her. I won't let anyone.... ANYONE, treat her like a good-for-nothing. You threatened her, assaulted her, you even sent someone several times to kill her. She is mine and only MINE and I will not let anyone near my angel, you fat pig!”

Danny pulled his knife out of Mackellan’s arm before repeatedly stabbing McKellan's skull. He recoiled inwardly at the sight of this bloodied, lifeless skull. He cut off his arms, then cut off his tongue and cut off his belly like a pig. He took out all these innards, cut them to a certain length and used them to tie his victim once again, one end ending deep in the throat, like a snake coming out of his mouth. He made sure to hold his arms and legs on the top of the skull, like deer antlers. How can he do that? A magician never reveals his secrets. Once his work was finished, Danny took out his camera.

“Look at you, you’re a masterpiece....MY masterpiece! You get exactly what you deserve you Motherf*cker. Now my little angel is safe...Almost if we count me in the lot. Well! Smile for the camera!”  Danny said before taking a picture. “Oh, I almost forgot the message! It’s necessary to give a lead to this dear Wilhelm ... even a fake one. Hoggins... You might not like the next few days.”

He wrote a bloody message on one of the walls of the office, leaving the policeman and the guard thinking that Hoggins was the author. One way or another. Then he quickly but discreetly left the premises before the guards were alerted by the unusual extension of the music. He returned to his van, changed, put his Ghostface outfit and mask back in the bag before heading home. On the road, he couldn't help but stop and burst out laughing, a laugh as he thought about what he had just done. The adrenaline was still running through his veins, he could not calm down.

He took a few minutes to calm down, then take the road again and went home. He parked and looked at your window. Everything was off and given the time, it was normal. Everyone was asleep, no one to testify anything to the police. Everything is always perfect. He went up to his apartment, entered, closed the door and walked to his office with his bag in his hand. He put it all down on the couch and looked at his hunting board, a satisfied smile on his lips.

He took his red felt, which was still working despite the rage of the last time, and bared McKellan's face with a long cross. That's it. He's finally dead. And there's more to kill. Hoggins is next on the list. But Danny will let time pass before attacking him. For now, he's going to focus on you. His sweet little star, his precious love, his angel. He looked at his bag, perhaps a little visit is necessary? Anyway, you sleep then ... you're not likely to say much.

A light cool wind entered your room, but it didn't seem to bother you. You were warm in your duvet with a radiant smile on your lip. Danny, or rather Ghostface was above you, a big smile behind his mask. He stayed for a few minutes without moving before lifting his mask slightly to kiss your cheek delicately.

“You can finally sleep easy, my angel. That fat pig won't do anything to you anymore. But never forget that you belong to me. Sleep well my love, hoping I'll be in your dreams.” he whispered so you don't wake up.

He put a small piece of paper on your nightstand to warn you of McKellan's death. The word is simple: "He's dead." He knows you will understand who it is. He left as discreetly as he had come, to go to bed as well, despite the little adrenaline he had left. It's going to be a long night.

But Damn it was so delicious.

***

(I'm practically about to pass my code exam! I'm so happy! hoping we won't be confined to the date where I'll pass it. I want to thank you all as much as you are, you are almost 40 to follow the poor little French potato that I am! In the meantime, I hope you will love this chapter as much as the others! they all deserve to be appreciated so much! Have a great weekend to you all! See ya!)

[giurochedadomani]

Fic-in-progress type of update that has gotten a tiny, little bit out of hand but I regret nothing and I really want to share it

I’m doing the third and final part of this. 

When I do get to finish this I feel like it’ll work just fine as a one shot, but. Just to give you some context: this scene of the story takes place after a botched plan ends up with the son of a rival capo dead at the hands of? Leonardo? I never bothered to write out what exactly happened on That Fateful Night and now I’m taking 100% advantage of that.  

The thing is, the other mafioso certainly blames him. When Primo manages to keep Leo out of jail by putting the blame of the murder on the son of the town’s mayor, their rival decides to take justice into his own hands, failing to consider how little Primo is likely to stop until he owns the city and ends with every kind of threat vaguely pointed in his direction, Leo’s or this family he has adopted himself into. Enter: 

[Gioia Tauro, Saturday night] 

Uhhhhh there are things I can tag for: mentions of abuse re: Primo’s childhood, discussions of murder and other Mob related stuff, but there are other things that I can’t really tag without spoiling away what happens,  so I’m gonna highlight that this story is basically about a mob war and that violent stuff happens and use the handy ao3 sign of ‘Author decided not to display any warnings’

“Do you want me to tell you, or not?”

“I don’t know, you seem to be doing quite well on your own”. 

It comes off way drier than Leonardo means to, and the without me goes over them, unspoken. He bites the tip of his tongue and stands his ground and tries not to picture the hint of hurt that passes over Primo’s face as Leonardo goes through his business, picking up his suit’s jacket and the briefcase from the sofa as the other looks at him like some kind of gargoyle while he fusses through the office. 

“A bomb. In his office”, Primo explains, slow, after a moment, blatantly ignoring him. “Next week, we’re aiming for Friday, although Fiore needs to tie up some loose ends”. A beat of silence. “I insisted on it being Friday. Less people in the building that day, like you said”. Leonardo won’t give in to Primo’s unsubtle attempts to win him over. “I was going to tell you”. 

He gives the other a sharp look. What he means to be a sharp look, really. It’s kind of endearing that Primo cannot withstand a grand total of half a minute of silence treatment. No, Leonardo’s still pissed that he didn’t call him into the meeting. 

“What loose ends?”, he asks, tone clipped.  

“ID passes. He wants to get a couple of original ones”, rob some innocent cleaning lady of her own pass, more likely, Leonardo thinks, as if he were in some shape or form morally superior to that, “and just modify the photos, keeping it simple. He can’t do that a week earlier, it’d be...”, Primo trails off, looking at him with a tinge of— 

It’d be less likely to call on any unwanted attention, that’s for sure. And truth be told, they’ve never been lucky with forgeries. It’s not as if they’re trying to enter the fucking Quirinale, and one would think that a sleepy guard on a Friday morning wouldn’t pay much attention to some cleaning staff’s passes, but it doesn’t hurt to be a little bit extra cautious: Romano has proven himself to be able to become quite the headache. And he can’t help feeling a little satisfied at how Primo is not diving head first into danger for once in his fucking life— no. He’s annoyed.

Leonardo hums, pensive. He locks the door of his office after they step outside, and speaks again once he finds another direction in which to funnel his irritation. 

“What’s their story, if they’ve got to flee the scene”.

Primo frowns. His patent confusion vindicates Leonardo, for some fucking reason. He focuses on that instead on how much it pisses him off that he already knows that Primo will avoid simply saying that he’s sorry, as if the words were fucking poisonous. 

“They don’t manage to do it, what do they do”, he insists.  

The eerie stillness of the building, empty at that hour, just makes Primo’s silence louder as they walk to the elevator. 

“Why, if someone had thought to ask just that”, Leonardo concludes, sarcastic, stabbing the push button. 

Primo huffs. He can behave like a child all he wants, Leonardo is not going to give in. He’s fully capable of becoming as difficult as Primo can be, when he puts his mind to it. Let’s see if the other can take his own medicine—  

“Her name’s Lucrezia”. 

…

Leonardo is so thrown off by the non sequitur that he almost manages to momentary forget about his exasperation. He stares at Primo for a long moment, the doors of the elevator opening and staying open for them. “...She’s one of his classmates”, Primo adds, as if that clarified anything. 

Leonardo’s bewilderment must be patent on his face because Primo makes a whole show of rolling his eyes, looking up as if asking God for patience. He grabs him and pushes him inside the elevator, pushing the button to the ground floor. 

“Francesco”, he starts again, slowly, once the doors close off again. He’s probably aiming to be more comprehensible, but doesn’t manage to make it look as if he’s not in some way explaining things to a baby. “He’s not out there doing…”, he has to think for a moment to land in something Leonardo could possibly be pissed off about, and he’s not entirely convinced when he says: “...Drugs, or whatever the hell you’re worried about. He’s just got himself a...”, he trails off again, does a florid gesture with his hand as if he could grab the right word, ends up saying a very dubitative: “... friend”. He shrugs, as if deeming it a suitable enough explanation. “So yeah. You can stop being insufferable now”. 

Each button keeps getting illuminated as they descend, a little peep sounding each time they pass a floor. So that’s what was up with them both. Leonardo feels tranquility washing over his surprise, before his gut settles on uneasiness as he continues looking at Primo and the stiffness of his shoulders. 

He passes a hand over his face. 

“Francesco’s got a girlfriend”. 

“You’re not this dense on the usual”. 

“And he told you about it”. 

He’s well aware that Franceso regards Primo with an undercurrent of hero worship. He’s also intimately familiar with how despite the fact that Primo is a man of many hidden talents, romance is, to put it mildly, not the subject he feels most comfortable with. The other is fucking with him in some way, he can’t help feeling sure of that, and it makes him kind of tense not being able to point out exactly where. 

Uncharacteristically of him, Primo feels the need to fill the silence. 

“Don’t be jealous”, he starts once the doors open, and he sounds a tad arrogant, as he always does when— “I told him to do a formal presentation at some point, bring her home to have dinner and all that stuff, let Regina gush and… yeah”. He turns to face Leonardo once he realizes that he has stopped on his tracks, adds, defensively: “You have been weird all fucking day. That’s why I didn’t tell you to come into the meeting”. 

“Lucrezia”, Leonardo repeats. The name sounds familiar. It’s Primo’s closed off expression what makes realization fall onto his mind like a circuit breaker blowing up the fuse: a scratching sound and then fade to black. He stares at Primo in disbelief, mouth hanging open until he can work around the knot at his throat. 

“Brambilla. Lucrezia Brambilla. Brambilla, as in. The daughter of the—”. 

“Yes”. 

A well-mannered girl, soft spoken and sweet. He has seen her in passing, disappearing behind the tinted windows of his father’s fancy car at the entrance of Francesco’s high school. He knows her father better. Sergio Brambilla.

Prosecutor. 

“And you told him it was a good idea?”, Leonardo asks, in which he’d defend as a very reasonable tone of voice, given the circumstances, but doesn’t perhaps quite manage to hit the whole discreet thing, because Primo makes a sharp movement in the general direction of the night guard booth.

“What’s exactly bad about knowing what the fuck happens in that house?”

Of course. Of fucking course Primo would think it’s a good idea. He doesn’t even know why he’s surprised except that for the very little, trivial fact that he cannot believe what he’s hearing!

“You had a hand on it!?”

Primo has the sheer audacity to look offended. 

“Me? In what? How the fuck could I possibly— As if it were my fucking fault now that your kid likes blondes!” 

“I swear on everything that’s holy, Primo!”

Primo throws a look to the booth over his shoulder, then at him, then promptly grabs his arm and pushes him forward, making him advance towards the garage entrance, past the night guard, who takes a look at them and searches to fade with the wallpaper behind. He loves Primo, God damn them both, he does, but sometimes he’d hit him with a fucking chair, but also no, because someone’s got to keep a levelled head and he refuses to go down the level of a machiavelian, manipulative jerk who deems feasible to intervene in his son’s life like— 

“Shut up for a fucking minute, will you”, Primo says, which is fucking rich. Leonardo shoves him off the moment they’re passing the first row of cars, the itch of a fight bubbling right under his skin. Primo doesn’t continue after seemingly making sure that he’s going to listen. He takes a deep breath before doing so, evidently to rile himself in, which would be the most annoyingly petulant thing in the world if he were any other person. “He took a liking to the girl on his own. They’re classmates, as I said. They’ve been friends since the start of the year, and now, well”, he shrugs, ostensibly. “She’s also going to study in Rome, it seems”. 

It hurts. The fact that not only did Primo know before him about it, but that he has done so for such a very long time. 

“And you planned to tell me when, exactly?”, Leonardo can’t help but to interrupt.

Primo copies his sarcastic tone when he answers: “When you’ve decided to make a problem out of it, perhaps?” 

He knows in his heart that Primo trusts him, and that he does so seemingly to a further extent than anyone else. That he loves him, in his own peculiar way, and that he’d move heaven and Earth to protect him, and his family. That’s why it’s so hard to wrap his mind around the fact that he wouldn’t even bother to mention something like this. Besides, the careless way he’s speaking about it doesn’t really sit well with Leonardo. As if he had landed himself had single handedly on court when he came to know the girl’s father: “You remember that Brambilla accused me of murder, don’t you?” 

“You were acquitted”, the other replies, instantly, tone tense. “You’re a model citizen, for all the guy knows”.  

“He defended that I’m a mafioso”, he insists. He remembers the charges line by fateful line. Refusing to talk about it won’t make him forget what happened, notwithstanding Primo’s look on the subject. “He said that I planned to set up a cocaine distribution ring with the money I supposedly stole from—”. 

“Nothing about them getting together forces you to have a good relationship with Brambilla”, Primo points out, exasperated, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “It’s Francesco the one who’s dating his daughter”. 

Leonardo limits himself to stare at the other from the other side of his Berlinetta when they reach it.  

He should have confronted Francesco directly about it, but no, because the kid’s got an angelic face of never having done harm to a fly and he’s soft. Regina has a sixth sense for these things, she would have been a better option, except that he feared that Francesco would have gotten himself in bigger problems than a girl. It’s not a girl, though, not just like that, and really, there’s probably an option that he has somehow missed that would have prevented him from ending up in a parking lot, being looked at as if he’s hawk’s prey. 

He sighs, opens the car and gets in, going through the usual motions as Primo follows him suit, putting the briefcase on the backseat, his jacket covering it after he fishes out his keys from one of the pockets. 

Francesco could easily say the wrong thing, in the wrong moment, to the wrong person, and neither of them would be none the wiser. He could rat them out in a bid to brag, or because he thinks that he can relax his guard. What if he breaks the poor girl’s heart and she wants to take revenge? He remembers how stupid young love can make you, how blind. 

“Telling Francesco that he can’t do it won’t work”, Primo says, serious, but not quite as biting. “You’ll just be handing him over the perfect excuse for him not to tell you shit in the future”. 

Leonardo wonders if it’s the girl sticking it to her father what appeals to Primo so much about the whole thing, he supposes the other could appreciate a kindred spirit. It’s obvious that he’s talking from experience, and Leonardo doesn’t know if he feels more insulted by the possibility that Primo might be comparing him to Salvatore, of all people, or to Primo’s own dad, of all fucking people, as if he had ever given the slightest indication that he’d beat— That he’d— Just considering the idea that he might have to explain to the other that not every son has quite the same relationship with their father as Primo did with Angelo Nizzuto makes him kind of nauseous. 

Primo must sense where his mind’s heading because he ends up adding: “Doesn’t matter if you’re nice about it, but you can be my damn fucking guest if you want to try”. He shrugs, then looks out of the window, as if he were washing his hands out of the situation instead of biding his time, as Leonardo is completely convinced he’s doing. 

This is a lost battle, if Primo has already taken such a defensive stance on the subject. He’s got months on him, despite all (“They’ve been friends since the start of the year, and now, well”), more than enough time for him to look at Francesco and Lucrezia from every possible angle and to collect every single argument in favor of their relationship before quick starting a confrontation with him. And really, he’s just so blind sided by the whole thing. He must be a really bad father not to suspect a thing for months.  

Leonardo puts the ignition key on, but Primo speaks again before he turns it. 

“I’ve just told him to be smart, to pay attention, and not to run himself into problems” he insists, softer. “Your kid can do that. You know he can. Besides, I’m keeping an eye on him”, he turns to face him, “You can at least trust that, don’t you?” 

That’s very unfair of Primo. It’s not a question of trust. Francesco’s a very inexperienced hot head. He’d be up to his knees in problems before he recognizes the first signs of danger, let alone ask for help. 

“He’ll tell me himself if he does fuck up, you can be sure of that. Holy hell, he just won’t stop talking about the girl, you know? Lulu this, Lulu that”, Primo continues, as if he knew full well that he’s picking at his reticences little by little. Leonardo’s running out of excuses not to associate the pang in his chest with the notion that he’s been kept outside this little secret. “He calls her Lulu”, Primo explains, seemingly flabbergasted at the notion, which is very boldly rich coming from him, and kind of makes Leonardo want to ask him what exactly makes Lulu any more ridiculous of a nickname than Leo. 

He snorts, despite himself.  

Primo smiles a little when he sees him doing so, as if he’s just proved his point. It’d be so annoying, if it wasn’t so genuine.  

“Better to wait the whole thing out. Let him go to Rome. There are more options in Rome. He’ll just grow bored, with time”. Leonardo raises an eyebrow. Primo’s smile takes the barest turn to playful. He deadpans: “Worse case scenario, they do end up getting married and we need to find you a proper suit to wear. You look hot with a suit. I don’t see a downside of the situation for anyone involved”. 

Just like that. As if it were so easy. 

He’d like to have a smidge of Primo’s unwavering faith in their future, of his unstoppable conviction that they’ll always come up on top, though he’s reduced to trust that the other knows what he’s doing and join for the ride. 

Leonardo’s done so many bad things in his life, this is surely his God given punishment. 

“When I told you to solve this I didn’t mean, like, personally”, Primo interrupts his train of thought making a vague gesture towards the backseat. “We’ve got people for that. You keep insisting on that: a good boss knows when to delegate”, he adds, in which Leonardo’s forced to interpret as his attempt to mock him. It’s very unfair, given how different is delivering the suitcase from when he told Primo that, that is, when he had to keep him in bed after getting shot, but he knows where Primo’s going with this. He knows this kind of dance. 

He looks at him and keeps silent, so Primo’s forced to elaborate. If he wants to have dinner with him, he can just ask. Primo purses his lips, frowns a little, but finally says, slowly: 

“I have an idea. That I want your opinion on”, then he stops for a moment, seemingly to revise what he’s going to say, and adds: “That we could discuss, with wine”. 

“You want to have dinner at the Olimpo, then?”, he insists, just to hear Primo say it, and not be the slightest bit surprised when he ignores him. 

“It’s got to do with your cousin. Does he still want to work for us?”

“Antonio? Yes”. 

“How fluent would you say that he’s in Spanish?” 

Leonardo takes the ignition key out. 

___

An hour later, Dante would finish his cigarette under the street light by the back entrance of the office. He would take a quick look at his watch, and he would get into the car after checking the backseat, adjusting the jacket slightly over the suitcase. If he came back soon enough, he could have dinner with his girlfriend, he’d think, fishing for Leonardo’s car keys in his pocket. Maybe he could take her out next weekend, treat her to somewhere posh by the port. He’d turn the ignition key on. 

…

KA-BOOM!!!!!

[yodawgiherd]

Rome pt.2

>>>Read on AO3<<< 

Rating: M

Setting: Historical Rome

Second part of the Rome AU =) Stay cool.

The sun was hot, but Eren was used to that. Under the protection of the villa’s roof, the heat was not even that bad, other things irritated him way more. If he were to name one that pissed him off the most at this very moment, it was sitting right next to him. His father, Grisha, half-drunk as usual, yammering on.

“As I was saying,”, he continued whatever train of thought went on in his head, “If they increase the taxes again, I’d have to sell some of my farms.”

Money, yes. That was the one thing that concerned him. At least Eren was not the target of his father’s speech this time, it was old man Reiss, sitting across the table and somehow paying attention.

“We should put some pressure on the senate,”, Reiss said, “They can’t keep pushing at us forever.”

His father nodded at that.

“Power to the people! That’s right! We should…”

Turning off his brain, Eren filtered out his father’s voice, a skill he was proficient in, eyes searching for the last occupant of the table. The blonde girl, Reiss’s daughter and heir, Historia. One of his closest friends, and by the will of both their fathers, his future wife. No, he did not have a say in this, and neither did she.

Kicking her lightly under the table, he made her look up, doing a grimace afterwards to express just how boring the money-talk was. She hid her smile under her palm and kicked him back, much stronger. Eren couldn’t stop himself from grinning. Historia was great, really fun and everything, but there was a little problem neither his nor her father knew that would complicate their upcoming marriage. Eren himself discovered it by accident and had sworn not to tell anyone. As they still had time before being seriously pressed into tying the knot, they decided to just wait it out for now. There was time for everything.

His father finished another long monologue, draining his wine cup afterwards and reaching out. A slave immediately jumped in and refilled it, which made Eren’s stomach churn. He hated slaves. No, that came out wrong. He didn’t hate the people themselves, he hated the system of slavery altogether. Their family, as a rich patrician one, understandably had plenty of slaves, and it was a topic of many arguments between Eren and his parents. Even as a child Eren never understood why it is okay for a human being to be owned by another one, just because one was born wrong, conquered, or in debt. His father originally dismissed all that talk as a child’s words, but as Eren grew, so did his hatred for slavery. The idea of not being free just because someone decided it is that way upset him to no end. But he was not the head of the house, that was his father, so technically he could not do anything. He was not even the heir to their villa, that was his half-brother Zeke, currently a Tribuni in the Roman legions, winning fame for himself on the frontlines.

A sudden burst of laughter got his attention, as both Grisha and Reiss laughed out loud, with Historia having a tight-lipped courteous smile herself. She was very good at pretending that she is interested in whatever bullshit the two of them were talking about.

“I do understand that,” Reiss was just saying, wiping tears from the corners of his eyes, “When Historia was a child, she brought home a homeless orphan and wouldn’t stop crying until I gave her a place in my household. Now, what is her name….”

“Ymir, father.”, his daughter quickly offered, “She is my best friend.”

“I do not believe in associating with the lower classes myself.”, Grisha said, “Eren also had a small episode when he tried befriending some slave girl, but I quickly got him out of that.”

Oh yes, that was a great memory. Even now, years later, Eren remembered coming home and telling his mother all excitedly about this nice girl with strange eyes that he met, and that he gave her his candy. He remembered being all giddy when he asked if he could go and see her again tomorrow, perhaps bring her some more candy, so that she would tell him her name. And most of all, he remembered the pained expression that his mother had during that talk because unlike Eren in his childlike ignorance, she knew very well what Grisha’s reaction will be once he finds out.

“It was not easy,”, his father was just saying, “But a highborn must know who to make friends with, and it is not slaves.”

He turned towards his son.

“Tell us Eren, how did I stop you from seeing that slave girl again?”

As if he could ever forget.

“You threatened that if I ever went to visit her, you would buy her yourself and then have our house guards drown her in the Tiber.”, meeting his father’s eyes, it took everything Eren had to keep his voice calm, “And I would have to watch it all.”

“Exactly. And even with all the crying and locking yourself in your room, you obeyed in the end.”, looking back at Reiss, his father continued, “Principles must be taught to the youngsters, otherwise they would just get out of control.”

Sometimes, at nights especially, Eren wondered how that girl was doing, if she was even alive. Being a slave in Rome, mortality rates were high. Back then, she was working in a brothel, so was she a prostitute now? Did he maybe see her sometime when he was out drinking with his friends? Would he recognize her? Would she recognize him? No, he had to stop himself. This train of thought always made him angry, because it only reminded Eren of what his father robbed him. Maybe he could have had a best friend in that girl, just like Historia had in Ymir. Instead, he would never see her again.

Standing up abruptly, the eyes of everyone present swung at him.

“May I be excused, father?”, seeing the hint of irritation in Grisha’s eyes, he scrambled for an excuse, “I would like to take a walk with my lovely fiancé.”

That worked, so after being officially allowed to leave, he and Historia disappeared behind a corner where they shared a long exhale.

“God that was boring.”, Eren said, rubbing his forehead.

“You tell me. I almost fell asleep.”, she sighed, “I wanna do something fun.”

Now that was a language Eren spoke well.

“I’m in. Let’s grab some friends and live it up! Where did you leave Ymir?”

“I think she’s in a pub here somewhere, not far.”, Historia grinned, “Not like Ymir will be hard to find.”

Eren mirrored her smile, remembering just how loud the tall girl could be.

“You’re right. Let’s go then.”

Two of the taverns they checked lacked the Ymir factor, but the third one looked promising. Right from outside, they could hear loud voices, and when they entered their suspicion was proven right.

“I’m just saying,”, Ymir shouted over the ruckus, “You would look great at the chariot races!”

“I don’t think I’m good enough driver to…”

“Wait, who said anything about the driver? You would be pulling the chariot!”

The table erupted into laughter, while Jean, the butt of this joke, mumbled something and hid his reddened face into a cup of wine.

“That joke is so old…”, he sighed, but no one listened.

Ymir was the first one who spotted them, bolting from her seat and sweeping Historia in a hug.

“You’re finally here! We all missed you so much!”

When there was not any response from the table, Ymir turned towards it with a dangerous gleam in her eye.

“I said, we all missed you. Right?”

This time there were affirmative sounds from everyone. Nobody wanted to get on Ymir’s bad side.

Scooting over to make room for the newcomers, they ordered another round and the conversation flowed. Ymir wanted to know what their fathers were talking about, but Historia simply waved her hand and claimed that it was the usual boring stuff. While she was talking, Eren looked around, taking in this group of friends. He and Historia were the only highborn here, the rest of them were plebians. His father would never allow him to hang out with slaves, but he gritted his teeth and stayed silent while Eren surrounded himself with the lower class. It was a small victory, but Eren also genuinely found them much more interesting than any of the patricians. Now that he had the time to take everyone in, he noticed that one person was missing, so turning to Jean, he asked.

“Hey, where’s Armin?”

“Working tonight.”, his friend replied, trying to take another sip of the wine but realizing that his cup was empty. The discovery made him frown.

Armin was an interesting fellow. Part-philosopher, part-medic, he made his living by treating the filth of Rome. Slaves, lowborn, all these that would get rejected by any respected doctor flocked to Armin and he helped them all, whenever they had the money to pay for their treatment or not. In all honesty, Eren thought that Armin was probably the best person he knew, far nobler than him. The art his friend practiced, medicine, also highly interested him, but as with most things in life, Eren didn’t get a choice in his future career path. His brother was a soldier, so he was going to be a politician, Grisha decided. Easy as that. Which meant that Eren’s medicine studied were limited to the times when he visited Armin, trying to learn as much as he could form his friend.

“Do you know where he is?”, Eren pressed on, getting Jean’s attention, that was still focused on his somehow magically empty cup, back.

“It’s Uuuhh…. Hmmm….”

Eren had to suppress a sigh here.

“Come on Jean…”

“Oh right! He’s down in the pits tonight, treating the gladiators that get gutted there.”

The pits were a chain of tiny arenas where slaves, madmen and animals were pitched to fight each other to the death for the entertainment of the unwashed masses. It was like the Colosseum, only a hundred times smaller. Armin often worked there, as even the victors of these matches hardly ever escaped unscratched. The losers usually didn’t need medical attention anymore.

“You’re right, the pits could be fun!”, Jean went on, standing up and swaying only lightly, “Gang, let’s see some blood!”

As nobody wanted to be called a wuss for chickening out, they left the tavern in a sound of chairs dragged over the ground and the clink of coins, heading through the streets towards the pits. Jean led the way, as even drunk he could navigate the gutters the best out of them all. Eren fell in next to Ymir and Krista, the two of them inseparable as usual.

“I do hope that you are taking good care of my fiancé.”, he said to Ymir.

She turned to him with a wink, dropping her hand low and possessively squeezing the blonde’s butt, making her jump with a squeal and quickly retaliate with a well-aimed punch at the taller girl’s shoulder. This was the small secret that he and Historia had from their parents, who were so sure about their future marriage. Historia was, unluckily for her father, mostly interested in women, a fact that was rare but not unheard of. The problem was that while her family might not have that big of a problem with her orientation as it was, they would require her to have an heir. She was, after all, the only living offspring Reiss had. But that was a hurdle she and Eren would cross once they got there, and it was not here. Yet.

While they were consumed by this petty bickering, back and forth, Jean reliably led them through the labyrinth of Rome, finding his way with ease. Left here, right there, turn that corner and they were approaching their target, easily heard from the excited shouts that were up in the air.

With an excited shout, Ymir broke through the group, dragging helpless Historia with her, disappearing between the spectators. The rest followed soon after, their own excitement in various degrees. Eren himself had mixed feelings. He did not mind the duels, per se, but it was another business that was partly made up of slaves being forced to participate. The thing was in full swing, meaning that seeking out Armin right now was most likely impossible. He would be running between here and there, hands full of dead and injured, and hardly needed Eren to make his job even harder. With nothing better to do, he elbowed his way towards the edge of the ring, joining Jean at the railing.

“Hey.”, an unknown voice to his left, “You wanna bet?”

Turning, Eren saw a scrawny man with parchment and several purses hanging from his belt. A bookmaker. Before he could tell him that no, he does not want to place money on the lives of people, Jean butted in.

“Sure!”, he pushed past Eren, smelling of wine and sweat, “Who’s fighting?”

“The next bout is…” the bookie blinked at the parchment a few times, “Siren versus Cyclops.”

“Siren?”, Jean snorted, “Who the fuck takes such a name?”

It wasn’t unusual for the gladiators to have a nickname, some ancient beast or hero. But Siren was not a monster known for its martial prowess, so Eren had to agree with Jean here. It was rather strange.

“Oh, she didn’t choose this one, it was given to her.”, the bookie quickly supplied.

“So you… Wait a second.”, even with his wine-addled brain, Jean caught up on the unusuality, “She? Her? This fighter is a…”

“Woman.”, the bookie nodded, “But she is not to be underestimated.”

Laughing, Jean pulled out a few coins and handed them over to the bookmaker.

“Sorry, but I’m tight on the money now, so I’ll be taking the sure way. My coins are on the Cyclops.”, turning towards Eren, he nudged him, “What about you? Don’t want to make some easy denars?”

Maybe it was the old habit of disagreeing with Jean on almost everything, maybe it was something else, but Eren reached into his own purse, pulling out a generous number and putting them into the bookie’s eager hands.

“My money is on the Siren.”, he announced, making Jean’s grin widen.

“Dude, woman gladiators are a joke, don’t you realize that?”

Seeing that Eren was not changing his mind, Jean shrugged.

“Guess you don’t mind losing those then.”

“We’ll see how it goes.”, Eren answered, turning back towards the arena. Just in time too, as the combatants were being ushered in.

First in was the Cyclops, large and imposing scarred man, armed with a net and a trident. Raising those weapons, he was greeted by booming shouts coming from all sides, probably a fan favorite. Then the challenger appeared. The woman was lightly armored, most likely relying on speed over brute strength. She was armed with a short sword and a dagger, holding these with an experienced grip. The full helmet on her face prevented Eren from seeing her face, but her body was lithe and crossed with several prominent scars, marked just as her opponent was. She didn’t generate nearly as much hype as he, and there were several laughs heard from the audience. Eren and Ymir were probably the loudest supporters, cheering her on. Cheers or laughter, Siren didn’t seem to care either way, completely ignoring the crowd and keeping her gaze on the opponent.

Once the signal was given, Cyclops was the first to move, poking at his enemy with the trident, abusing the reach he had over her closer ranged blades. But Siren was too fast, easily dodging and batting aside the strikes, moving between them, fluid like water. A few minutes into this dance, the crowd was getting bored, and demands for more action were thrown into the ring. If there was no blood, there was no fun. While Siren ignored those, just as before, Cyclops obeyed, abandoning this safe approach. He stopped using the net as a shield and utilized it as a weapon instead, swiping at his opponent. It was easy to get tangled in it, and once Siren would be caught, a single trident stab would end her. The problem was, she did not get caught. Turning on the aggressive mode, she weaved in between his attempts, slashing at him. Not drawn too close, Siren’s attacks were shallow, more like scratches, but they still hurt and the blood that colored the sands was a proof of it. Cyclops was getting desperate, None of his attacks connected, it looked like he was striking a ghost. The metallic teeth of his trident were always late, the net too slow and clumsy to capture someone as elusive as her. Overwhelmed, Cyclops screamed in defiance before betting it all on a single last thrust, putting all of his might behind it. And for the first time, he aimed true. The spikes of his trident hit Siren in the hip, leaving behind three identical red paths, dripping blood. Unluckily, this also put him directly in her face with nothing to block. Cyclops had about two seconds to celebrate his luck when a short sword was slammed right into his throat, toppling the large man over. Stunned silence followed.

First one to wake was Ymir, shouting her support even louder. She laughed, hugging Historia while her eyes quickly found the bookie, gesturing for him to come closer. Jean on the other hand let out a tired “Fuck me.”, before dropping his head to his hands. Siren herself took a step back, cleaning her blades on the dead man’s body. Hooking a hand under her helmet, she pulled it off, shaking her hair free and revealing her exotic visage. The way the sun glistened on those midnight strands prompted another comment from Jean, who stirred from his defeated slump.

“Damn, would you look at that.”, he said, half-turning towards Eren, “Now it’s easy to see why they call her Siren.”

The girl was indeed alluring, just like the mythical creature, even with her face twisted into a dark grin. Making a very rude gesture towards the crowd that doubted her, she reserved a single wave for Ymir, her loudest supporter, before turning away and ducking into the old door that led into the bowels of the pits. Free from her spell, now that she was gone, Jean moved his attention to Eren, now fully.

“Well, there goes my savings. Say, my good friend, now that you won, would you lend me some coins? It’s not like need them anyway, right? Eren? Eren!?”

But the lucky bet winner did not hear any of that. He was staring at the door where Siren disappeared, completely obvious to his surroundings. Why? Because he knew that face. He knew those almond-shaped grey eyes, albeit now they were much wilder than before. He knew that dark hair, now chopped short, not nearly as long as it was before.

He knew who Siren was.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WORK ETHIC AND RETROSPECT

There are two things you need initially: an idea and cofounders. The sharpest criticism of YC came from a founder who said we didn't focus enough on customer acquisition: YC preaches make something people want is the destination, but Be relentlessly resourceful is the recipe for success in writing or painting, for example. It's not something you could hand to someone else to execute. Customers loved us. And so it proved this summer. Especially the type, all too common then, that was an anomaly—a unique combination of circumstances that compressed American society not just economically but culturally too.1 And I don't think there's any limit to the number who could be employed by small, fast-moving, lightweight VC fund.2 One of the best places to do this was at trade shows.3 That's made harder by the fact that the founders of Google knew, brand is worth next to nothing in the search business. In software, it means you should give users a few basic elements that they can combine as they wish, like Lego. The reason VCs seem formidable is that it's more preposterous to claim about anywhere else.

They're in a different world. But you can't have action without an equal and opposite reaction. A sinecure is, in the spam I got from botnets.4 I felt that sheepish feeling you get when you offer someone something worthless. We felt like our role was to be driven by genuine curiosity, not some ulterior motive. It may be that a significant number who get rich tend to be owned by one of them. This proves something a lot of people who visit your site will be casual visitors. People just don't seem to be very good at business or have any kind of special training.

In 1960, John McCarthy published a remarkable paper in which he did for programming something like what Euclid did for geometry.5 Because investors are so bad at judging you, you should either learn how or find a co-founder who can. But when I finally tried living there for a bit, but you had no choice in the matter, if you love life, don't waste time, because time is what life is made of. Us build this thing to make money from one of these centers. That yields all sorts of plausible justifications. I'm not writing here about Java which I have never used but about hacker's radar which I have never had to use CLOS. And it must have powerful libraries for server-based applications. Because so little money is involved.

Stephen Hawking's editor told him that every equation he included in his book would cut sales in half. What makes the answer appear is letting your thoughts drift.6 Microsoft's death: everyone can see the evolution of book publishing in the books on my shelves. I just explained: startups take over your life to a degree you cannot imagine.7 There is a kind of business plan for a new Lisp.8 In retrospect, it would seem crazy to most people outside the US. But negative lessons are just as backward as search was before Google. It's surprising how much different fields' ideas of beauty have in common is that they can't force anyone to do deals with them. And because I wasn't paying attention, I didn't notice when the shadow disappeared.9

The bad news is that I don't think fast code comes primarily from things you do.10 And they are a classic example of the dangers of deciding what programmers are allowed to want. Does anyone who wants to use your system in their whole company won't. The third reason you need them, and I got in reply what was then the party line about it: that Yahoo was no longer a mere search engine. Anyone who can write an optimizing compiler can design a UI that doesn't confuse users, once they choose to focus on that problem.11 Your tastes will change. I had bought the hype of the startup world want to believe this comes from the city's prudent Yankee character. And in startup hubs they understand it.12

Notes

Treating high school kids arrive at college with a woman who, because what they're capable of.

7% of American kids attend private, non-broken form, that it even seemed a plausible excuse.

What drives the most important information about competitors is what the editors will have a lot easier now for a startup is a case of the world barely affects me. And you should be clear.

The dictator in the mid 1980s. Back when students focused mainly on getting a job where you have no idea how much they lied to them unfair that things don't work the upper middle class first appeared in northern Italy and the super-angels tend not to. Google's revenues are about two billion a year for a long time by sufficiently large numbers of users to observe—e. Einstein, Princeton University Press, 2005.

I'm claiming with the amount—maybe not linearly, but all they could attribute to the year x in a spiral.

5% of Apple now January 2016 would be taught that masturbation was perfectly normal and not others, no one is going to call the years after 1914 a nightmare than to call all our lies lies. 94 says a 1952 study of rhetoric was inherited directly from Rome. And no, unfortunately, I can imagine what it can buy. And if you did so, or Seattle, 4 in DC, 6 in Chicago, 8 in London, 13 in New York, and no doubt partly because it was so widespread and so effective that I'm skeptical whether economic inequality, and how good you are not in 1950 something one could reasonably be with children, with number replaced by gender.

Anyone can broadcast a high-minded Edwardian child-heroes of Edith Nesbit's The Wouldbegoods.

54 million, and FreeBSD 1.

I wouldn't say that it offers a vivid illustration of that. Or lack of results achieved by alchemy and saying its value was as a high product of number of big companies, but the nature of the big winners if they do the opposite: when we created pets. Odds are people in the top and get pushed down by new arrivals.

In some cases the writing teachers were transformed in situ into English professors. Google and Facebook are driven by money—for example, being a doctor. Indifference, mainly. Because they want to get great people.

You leave it to get kids into better colleges, I mean no more than most people will pay for health insurance derives from efforts by businesses to use those solutions. I was not in the old version, I didn't need to run on the group's accumulated knowledge.

And while they think the main effect of low salaries as the web was going to eat a sheep in the time it would have turned out to coincide with other investors doing so because otherwise you'd be surprised how often have valuation caps, a proper open-source projects now that VCs may begin to conserve board seats by switching to what you learn via users anyway.

Thanks to Robert Morris, Alex Lewin, Peter Norvig, Geoff Ralston, Jackie McDonough, Aaron Iba, and Cameron Robertson for inviting me to speak.

[jpaulfontan]

Clinging to the

Promises of God

You remain in control In the middle of the war You guard my soul I take great comfort in knowing God’s in control, Don’t you? Hello! You’ve found the Senior Adult Sunday school class for Corinth Baptist Church in Singleton, Ms. The title of our lesson for today is:

Clinging to the

Promises of God

This will be the 2nd in a

5-session series under the general heading of; Facing Adversity.

We’ll be drawing Scripture from the 27th chapter of the Book of Acts.

You know, there are more than 7,000 promises from God to us written in His Word. One of the 1st things that came to my mind when I read that was the question: ”Why? I mean, why would God make so many promises to humanity?” The overriding answer to that would be that He wants for us to simply………….. trust Him. So, how can we know that this Bronze-Age book, the Bible, is really God’s word to us? That would be because the Bible proves itself. I don’t know of another book ever written that declares future events with unerring accuracy. Over 25% of the Bible is prophetic. Peter wrote in 2nd Peter 1:19-21; 19. So we have the

prophetic word

strongly confirmed.

You will do well to

pay attention to it,

as to a lamp shining

in a dismal place,

until the day dawns

and the morning star

rises in your hearts.

20. First of all,

you should know this:

No prophecy of Scripture

comes from one’s own

interpretation,

21. because no prophecy

ever came by the will of man;

instead, men spoke

from God as they were

moved by the Holy Spirit. God spoke through men the words of prophecy. But, can we really believe the prophesies, or the promises of God to us? Well, if many of the prophecies actually did come to pass when and where they were foretold, I’d say that was confirmation that the words of the Bible are true. To this day, we remember what happened on Palm Sunday. Jesus fulfilled the prophecy that He would come into Jerusalem riding on a donkey and be hailed as the King of the Jews. But did you know that He did this on exactly the day that Daniel had prophesied he would? Daniel made the prediction more than 500 years before it happened. Think about it. 500 years before it happened, a man wrote down the prophecy that the Messiah would enter Jerusalem riding on a donkey. AND, he predicted the exact day it would happen. That’s just one prophecy that was fulfilled exactly as it had been predicted. Anyone can go onto the internet, search for fulfilled prophecies, and discover that there are many, many of them. Many more are yet to be fulfilled; but they will be because so many of them have already proven the fact that the Bible is completely accurate. If the prophecies are true, certainly the promises are as well. And if the promises are true, then why wouldn’t we trust God completely? In today’s lesson we’ll be learning of Paul’s shipwreck as he is being taken to Rome. Paul demonstrates his unshakable faith and trust in God through this harrowing situation.

Section 1: Acts 27:21-24; 21. Since many were going without food, Paul stood up among them and said, “You men should have followed my advice not to sail from Crete and sustain this damage and loss. 22. Now I urge you to take courage, because there will be no loss of any of your lives, but only of the ship. 23. For this night an angel of the God I belong to and serve stood by me, 24. and said, ‘Don’t be afraid, Paul. You must stand before Caesar. And, look! God has graciously given you all those who are sailing with you.’ Finally, after two years of

being under arrest in

Caesarea, Paul was, at last

on his way to Rome.

But these folks

weren't on a sleek

catamaran zipping over

the waves and making

short work of a voyage

from Caesarea Maritime

to Rome.

Instead, they were

transferring from one

large, slow moving,

grain vessel to

another painstakingly

making their way

to their

destination.

It's late autumn and

their progress was

being hindered by

unfavorable winds.

The captain of the

vessel they were on

had intended to sail

west from Cnidus,

but instead had been

forced to sail

southwest toward

Crete.

They had sailed around

the southern coast of

Crete and landed at the

port of Fair Heavens.

The Roman Centurion

that was in charge of

the prisoners had

decided that this

would not be a good

place to hold up for

the winter; and the

captain of the grain

ship they were traveling

on said he was

confident that he could

make the crossing to

Italy.

The problem was that it

was late fall.

At this time of the year,

that region of the

Mediterranean experienced

seasonal storms called

Euroclydon, (U Rock Lee Don).

Like the American Nor'easter,

these storms were fierce and

could last for many days.

Paul had been warned in his

spirit to try to dissuade

the centurion and the captain

from attempting the crossing,

but didn't prevail.

Now they found themselves

in the midst of one of these

terrible storms.

The ship was being battered

and the 276 passengers and

crew were wrestling with

the very real fear that

they might not survive.

It was at this time that

Paul stood up and told them

that they should have

listened to him.

He didn't say that as an

"I told you so" but rather

that they might now

believe the words coming

out of his mouth.

He told them to take courage

because he had been informed

by an angel that though

the ship they were on was

going to be lost, none of

them were going to die.

Because they were all

aware of Paul's warning

not to leave Fair Heavens,

what he was now saying to

them carried the

weight of credibility.

Now, last week I pointed

out that Nero had ordered

the Christians in Rome

to be killed.

In the telling of that

episode, I voiced my

opinion that Paul had

probably not had the

opportunity to stand

before Caesar.

But in verse 24 of our

lesson for today,

the angel talking to

Paul on that storm-tossed

ship, told him that he

must stand before Caesar.

I don't know it he ever

actually did, the Bible

doesn't tell me one way or

the other.

But I want to make something

perfectly clear here.

Like an onion,

the Scriptures and God's

Truth comes to all of

us in layers.

When God so chooses for

each of us to discover

something deeper in His

Word, He'll peel back

another layer for us.

Who knows?

Maybe, some day, God will

show me in His Word,

of by His Spirit,

that Paul did, in fact,

have the opportunity to

stand before Nero.

Now, back to the Scripture

of today's lesson.

The message that Paul relayed

to the others on the ship

was a reassurance that they

were all going to survive

this terrible storm.

And it's the idea that

leads us into the next section.

It's entitled....

Section 2: Encourage Others to Trust in God. Acts 27:30-38;

30. Some sailors tried to escape from the ship; they had let down the skiff into the sea, pretending that they were going to put out anchors from the bow. 31. Paul said to the centurion and the soldiers, “Unless these men stay in the ship, you cannot be saved.” 32. Then the soldiers cut the ropes holding the skiff and let it drop away.

33. When it was about daylight, Paul urged them all to take food, saying, “Today is the fourteenth day that you have been waiting and going without food, having eaten nothing. 34. Therefore I urge you to take some food. For this has to do with your survival, since none of you will lose a hair from your head.” 35. After he said these things and had taken some bread, he gave thanks to God in the presence of all of them, and when he broke it, he began to eat. 36. They all became encouraged and took food themselves. 37. In all there were 276 of us on the ship. 38. When they had eaten enough, they began to lighten the ship by throwing the grain overboard into the sea.

So, there again,

we see that they were

indeed on a ship

capable of carrying

over 250 passengers

and its very large

cargo of grain.

These weren't the

little boats

used by the fishermen

on the Sea of Galilee.

They were large,

sturdy wooden sailing ships

capable of

handling rough seas.

Before studying for

this lesson,

I just didn't know

what to make of

verse 30.

The author of

the lesson brought

out something interesting.

Verse 30 says that

"some sailors tried to

escape from the ship by

pretending they were

taking a skiff to put

out anchors."

These sailors were

trying to abandon ship.

From what I can see here,

Paul didn't tell the soldiers

what he knew the sailors

were really doing.

Instead, he just stopped

them from doing it by

warning the soldiers.

What the author of

today's lesson pointed out

was that these sailors

most likely were not

believers nor worshippers

of the God you and I

place our faith in.

For them,

salvation from their

gods had not come and

they had chosen to flee.

It would be tempting,

he goes on, to look down

our self-righteous noses

at them.

But the truth is that

all of us are prone to

a lack of faith during

times of trial and

difficulty.

But the thing is that

our God has proven His

faithfulness over and

over again.

When the Hebrews

cried out to God

from their bondage

in Egypt,

God sent Moses.

When Peter denied

Jesus, just as He said

he would,

Jesus was gracious and

restored him.

The Scriptures are full

of examples of this truth.

In our own lives,

over and over again,

all of us can point

to times when God

has proven Himself

trustworthy.

Even though we

know God is faithful,

Christians can struggle

to act in faith

in the moment,

especially in extremely

difficult situations.

When we're facing trying

times, right along with

unbelievers,

these are opportunities

for us to encourage them

to look outside of

themselves for hope to the only One

who can give it and

back it up.

This was what Paul

was doing onboard that

doomed ship that day.

Even though he was

a prisoner,

he rose above his

position and became

a fearless leader and

a beacon of hope for

everyone on-board.

The others on the ship

could see his confidence

in God.

When the rest of them

had lost their faith,

Paul was able to point

them to his God.

Section 3: Recognize the Fulfillment of What God Has Promised. Acts 27:39-44; 39. When daylight came, they did not recognize the land but sighted a bay with a beach. They planned to run the ship ashore if they could. 40. After casting off the anchors, they left them in the sea, at the same time loosening the ropes that held the rudders. Then they hoisted the foresail to the wind and headed for the beach. 41. But they struck a sandbar and ran the ship aground. The bow jammed fast and remained immovable, while the stern began to break up by the pounding of the waves.

42. The soldiers’ plan was to kill the prisoners so that no one could swim away and escape. 43. But the centurion kept them from carrying out their plan because he wanted to save Paul, so he ordered those who could swim to jump overboard first and get to land. 44. The rest were to follow, some on planks and some on debris from the ship. In this way, everyone safely reached the shore.

God’s angel had promised Paul that every one of the people on that ship were going to survive, even though they were going to lose the ship. Paul had told this to those on the ship. We serve a mighty God who says what He means, and means what He says. As the day broke, land was sighted, but they didn’t know where they were; they didn’t recognize it. But they did see a bay with a beach. The storm was still raging, so they decided to ram the ship onto it. But, as they tried sailing to it, they ran aground on a sandbar. They hit it hard and there was no way of getting free of it. The waves were hitting the stern, (the rear of the ship), with such force that they were actually tearing the ship apart. If they stayed on the ship, they’d all perish. The soldiers, knowing that they, themselves would be killed if the prisoners escaped, had already decided to execute them. But their commanding officer, the centurion, stopped them because he wanted to save Paul. He ordered those who could swim to jump overboard and make for the beach. The rest would have to use boards and anything else that would float to get to land. Just as God had promised, everyone made it to safety. Yes, God was in control through it all. He had worked in the heart of the Centurion to preserve the lives of all of the prisoners. The Bible tells us the centurion did this to save Paul’s life. All of the prisoners’ lives were saved because of Paul. Everyone’s lives were in peril as the ship was being torn apart by the waves. But, in breaking the ship apart, God was providing the very thing those who couldn’t swim so desperately needed at that time…… planks. God gave Paul through the angel a specific promise; he would preach the gospel in Rome, and that everyone on the ship would survive the storm. Like Paul and his companions, God doesn’t give us the details of how He’s going to accomplish His promises. One promise that God makes to all of us is; ”We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to His purpose.” God will take all the nuances of our various stories, both the good and the bad, and work them together for our good. That phrase, ”all things,” means just that, every experience in life that we have encountered. So, if you find yourself in a storm, a really difficult time in life, recognize that it won’t last forever. If you’re enduring a season of deep pain and woundedness, realize God’s promise to work all things for good remains true. God comforts us during our seasons of affliction so that He can heal us and we can, in turn, pass that comfort on to others who are suffering, knowing that God always keeps His promises.

God requires His followers to place their trust in Him, not only for the salvation of their souls but also for the care of each of their steps. We must be unwavering in our commitment to

Call upon the Lord when we’re struggling with trusting Him. He’s worthy of our trust, and we must fight to remind ourselves of this truth. Because God’s fulfilled His greatest promise in providing salvation through Jesus, we are now free to live fulfilling the great commission without wavering, even when our work seems futile and the future unsure. We can remain faithful even when we don’t have all the details God has prepared for us in the future. His Word tells us that He has prepared good works for us to do. We can be confident in God’s protection and preservation over His people to complete His mission. Let’s pray: Help us, Lord to cling to your promises

Help us Lord to Trust you and boldly proclaim your truth Help us Lord to Encourage others to trust in you. We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to His purpose.

[dailyaudiobible]

03/17/2020 DAB Transcript

Numbers 26:1-51, Luke 2:36-52, Psalms 60:1-12, Proverbs 11:15

Today is the 17th day of March, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian and what a joy it is to be here with you today as we come in and out of whatever is going on and just situate ourselves around the Global Campfire. And I…I just love that image, our…our faces in the firelight and we’re just intently listening to God's words speak into our lives in this little oasis that we have before reentering our day in the world outside that…that it can be crushing but we come here and we become strong and we center ourselves in God's word and we know that we’re not alone and that changes the atmosphere of the day. And, so, what a joy…what a joy to be here to take the next step forward in the Scriptures. And, so, let's do that. We’ll pick up where we left off yesterday. Numbers chapter 26 verses 1 through 51.

Commentary:

Okay. So, in the gospel of Luke today there is a pretty huge contextual piece for us to understand as we continue our journey through the Gospels and walk alongside Jesus for the first months of this year. And, so, today we have this…well we are given the awareness that Jesus family is a devout family and that He is grown in body and Spirit, but they have an annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem for Passover. And we’ve mentioned it before, that's a 90 mile walk one way. So, 180 miles on foot or cart. That's a pretty good-sized journey and the terrain of the journey isn’t the best either. So, we get these little clues, like this is part of the rhythm of Jesus life. He's accustomed to going to Jerusalem. It’s not a foreign place to him. So, it's not going to be a foreign place to Him later in His ministry. He knows what's up there. But the back story that's apparent in this story gives us a lot of clues about how Jesus was perceived. So, for starters when He was born and He was brought to the temple for the sacrifice according to the law of Moses, there were prophetic voices there, respected ones. An older woman who’d spent over 80 years worshipping God in the temple, she would've been known, she would've been respected. So, her words would've been heard by the common people coming in and out that that would've mattered. And the old man, Simeon, same thing. So, there's like this buzz around this child from the get-go. But now in today's story Jesus is grown to be 12 years old and they’re making their annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Passover and He stays behind when his family leaves. And they would've traveled is…traveled as kind of caravans for safety and just community. It's a long ways. So, Mary and Joseph don't figure out Jesus missing until they've already gone one of the days that journey. Now they can’t find Jesus and they gotta take another day to get back and search for Him. And, so, they’re gonna be traveling back to Nazareth on their own. And they frantically search the holy city. And this is not like a little village. This is big city. You can only imagine…you can only imagine what that would feel like as a parent, but in the end they do find Jesus and Jesus is in the temple and Jesus is with the religious leaders. He’s with the scribes and the Pharisees. He’s with the priests and they are amazed at Him. That’s very fascinating because two decades later, they're all going to turn on Him and have Him killed. But let's not just think that Jesus appeared in a vacuum of the Galilee and did ministry and that part of the region among the common people, a place known for its zealotry. Today we see Jesus at 12 years old before the religious leaders and their amazed by Him. He's already on the radar. So, when He does get older and does begin His ministry, we see often the Scriptures telling us that religious leaders from Jerusalem take that 90-mile trip up to the Galilee to find out what's going on with this guy. And some of them would remember that this is that little kid that stayed back here to talk to us. So, it's…it's…it's interesting to kind of look into these stories and understand that there’s this back story to the way that Jesus came onto the scene and did His ministry.

Prayer:

Jesus, we thank You for that. We thank…because knowing You and having the benefit of the Scriptures to allow us to observe You and look at You as You did Your ministry on this earth giving us an example for what our lives cam and must look like, we are grateful. And anything that helps us to understand story better is helpful. So, we thank You for that and we invite Your Holy Spirit to plant the words that we’ve read today from the Scriptures into our hearts, minds and lives, that they may yield fruit for Your kingdom. And we ask this in the name of Jesus, our precious Savior. Amen.

Commentary:

Okay, so I don't know if you noticed or not but there's this nasty virus going around. And I started paying maybe closer attention to it as we were preparing to depart for the pilgrimage to Israel a few weeks ago. So, I remember landing on the big plane in London and boarding another big plane for Rome. And Italy had seven cases of this virus at the time. And then we moved through there to Tel Aviv and began our journey in like a week later. Italy was beginning to go into lockdown. And then we moved through our pilgrimage and just kind of counted the days and we were all feeling fine. We’re like, “we’re in the clear. This is fine” and we moved through our Israel pilgrimage and then got back home safely and lots of places, including Israel started to lockdown. And then things started to escalate some in the United States and now there's all kinds of measures to kind of keep us sequestered from each other, so we don't pass this around. This is working out pretty well for like people like my son Ezekiel who’s been back…we’ve been back from Israel for a couple weeks, he's been to school for two days because schools been closed and he can't practically turn television without hearing that the latest update. And I'm not one to usually comment on world or political or the…whether related or these kinds of events and there’s a couple reasons for that. The first reason would be who cares what I have to say about world events? Who am I? Why does it matter what I think? There are so many people who are so smart and have so much to say and there is no shortage of…of ways to find out what people are saying about things. And, so, I just, you know, why add to the noise? I mean, it’s not my…it’s not my role to comment on everything that's going on and add a Bible verse to it. Secondly, back when the Daily Audio Bible was just getting going and had kinda become this podcasting phenomenon I got a piece of advice that always, always, always has stuck with me and that is fly above it all with what you do. Let the Bible speak for itself. And I’ve tried really, really hard over all of the years to do that, to create this space that we are in right now. Like we are around this Global Campfire. This is a place that we go to every day and it…it's a space that we have created collectively but individually in our hearts, and it is beyond the reach of all the things that are going on around us. It's a place where we just come and exhale and allow God's word to wash into our lives and we leave this place refreshed and able. At least that is the intention. And, so, you know, I thought this morning about 15 years, this, seven days a week, when hasn't there been some sort of crisis somewhere? When hasn't there been some sort of election? When hasn't there been some sort of political maneuvering? When hasn't there been things to fight about, or debate about? When have there not been things to be afraid of? I mean everything from a previous scares about infectious diseases to the rise of ISIS, we’ve moved through all these things together day by day by day. So, I wouldn't normally have any words about coronavirus. It’s just that at this point it's affecting the world and this is an opportune time for us to practice what we've been exploring all year long, eyes to see, ears to hear, because at this point this virus is causing all of our governments to in one way or another invite us to isolate ourselves so that this can go away, which is causing a ripple effect of disruption in small or large ways, and it begins…like you can feel the tension of it, the unknown of it. Like for most of us we’re like…we don't understand. There’s this is very very big reaction. All this news is a very very big thing that…and I feel fine, but we also see a little fraying things in society like, you don't…a run on the grocery store to get cases of toilet paper. And if we have eyes to see and ears to hear we can see the sobering reality of how fragile all of our societies, and even we ourselves really are and how much we actually are in this together whether we like it or not. And what I’d like to say is, as we move through the Bible and many of us here have moved through it several times, what we see is that the Bible is full of stories of disruption, whether created by man or whether it was just a thing that happened. It's full of the stories of disruption and what people do with it? And what the Bible tells us is that at every crossroads, wisdom is there at every turning point. Wisdom is there. So, I don't have any advice on whether or not you should have several cases of paper towel. I don't have any advice on how to kill the virus, or how long we should stay away from each other or what practices we can use to avoid these things. There is plenty of really good advice out there for these things. But what I would like to point out, at least spiritually is this is disruptive, whether it's in a small way or whether it's in a big way. This is disruptive. Normally, our course of action in times of disruption is to try to bulldoze it away. Make it go away as quick as possible so that we can return to the status quo. And what I want to suggest here is that we don't do that. That we embrace the disruption and invite wisdom, invite the Holy Spirit to come into this disruption because it's a time, it’s an opportunity all over the world to read think some the things. And man, we are in this season called Lent. What…what…I was gonna asay what better time…there is no good time for infectious disease to be racing around the world…and yet, because this is happening, because it is disrupting things and we’re all shaken in some way, this is an opportune time to invite God into it. What needs to change? Not just to make this go away. What needs to change within us that we have this opportunity to see now because we've got a glimpse of our fragility? What needs to change so that we might live healthy in body, in mind, in spirit. I hate disruption in life in general always. It's…I never welcome it. Who does? But I've learned over these years, God is there in those disruptions. He is there when we get shaken loose of something and He uses these times to right our course. So, like I said a number of times this isn’t normally what I would talk about but I see the disruption and I see it happening globally and if we would awaken, if we would revive, if we would have eyes to see then we will see the kingdom and we will see that God is inviting us forward through this and that this disruption is an opportunity for some things to get shifted, to get rearranged, to be re-prioritized before it all goes away because when it does go all away we’ll forget that it even happened. And yet, this is an opportunity to invite God.

Prayer:

Father, even though we just prayed, we’re coming to You again about this and we do intercede. We do intercede. Lord have mercy on the earth, have mercy on the people of the earth, have mercy on Your children. And yet, we acknowledge that we have a preconceived notion about what that's supposed to look like. And what we’re doing here is embracing the disruption that is happening, inviting Your Holy Spirit into our lives. What are You saying through this? Now that things, the status quo has been disrupted, what are You saying? How do You want to move us around? How You want to shape us in this? Infection…infectious disease can certainly spread from one person to another, but so can Your kingdom. Show us how to infect the world with light and life and good news and healing and hope and courage. And in this time of disruption may it spread like wildfire to all the ends of the earth, to all the lives that are affected either directly or indirectly. Show us how to be light in the darkness, even as You continue to transform us from within. This is our prayer God. Make us aware of Your Holy Spirit's movements in the world and in our lives and families. Come Jesus we pray. Nothing is off limits to You. We are open. Change us through this we pray in Your mighty name. Amen.

Song:

Life is Beautiful - The Afters

Through the window I see you waiting You are smiling 'Cause I'm coming Your eyes are a story An ocean of memories Pictures of faces and places

And all of the things That make us feel like we have it all All of the times That make us realize We have it all We have it all

Life is beautiful Life is beautiful

Living and dying Laughing or crying If we have the whole world or have nothing I know there are long nights

But we'll make it With every sunrise comes a new light And all of the things That make us feel like we have it all

All of the times That make us realize We have it all We have it all

Life is beautiful Life is beautiful Life is beautiful

A father's love A wedding dance New Year's dreams A toast with friends A soldier coming home from war The faith, the hope of so much more

A brand new life, a mother's prayer Shooting stars, ocean air A lover's kiss, and hard goodbyes Fireworks, Christmas lights

These are things that make us feel alive These are the times that make us realize Life is beautiful Life is beautiful

These are things that make us feel alive

Life is beautiful

These are the times that make us realize

[alchemine]

modern Baxley au, pt 4

part 1 part 2 part 3 on AO3

On the Monday morning following the adventure with the pipes, Molesley sees a workman heading upstairs, green boiler suit on and tool box in hand, presumably on the way to undo their makeshift repair job. Now that he’s paying more attention, he also notices a grocery delivery van parked up across the road as he’s leaving, which answers the question of how Phyllis handles the chores of daily living. He’s still not certain whether she truly never goes out, or whether she just prefers to stay in as much as possible, but a picture is starting to form in his head. It doesn’t make sense to him yet, but he means to understand it if he can. 

When he comes home again in the early twilight, her curtains are drawn as always, outlined in gold from the lamp inside, and he strains his eyes looking for a shadow or a flicker of movement before giving up and going in. His own home is tidy, but it feels cold and too quiet, even after he’s switched on the heating for warmth and the radio for company. Why on earth did he say goodbye and leave without a way to contact her, he wonders, as he slops beans over toast for his tea. In the moment it had seemed silly--she was only a flight of stairs away, after all--but now he suspects he may have been an idiot. 

It certainly wouldn’t be the first time, he thinks, sitting down with his plate to start the evening’s marking and planning. At least there’s never a shortage of work to keep him occupied, which is probably true of Phyllis as well, up there in solitary splendour with her marvellous creations. 

Some time later, during a break at school, he considers looking her up on one of the computers, but gets as far as typing her name into the search box before closing the browser, ashamed of his own unseemly curiosity. He does, however, visit her Etsy shop, which seems safe enough since she mentioned it to him, and  spends some time reading the brief About section and browsing the items on offer. All the prices look breathtakingly high to his uneducated eyes, but every review is glowing and several pieces are marked as sold, so people must be willing to pay. He thinks of placing an order, not least because it would give him an excuse to visit her again, but worries that it might make her uncomfortable and refrains. Anyway, he’d look ludicrous in a pair of plus fours or a tweed hacking jacket, no matter how exquisitely tailored. And where would he wear them? To playground duty? Not likely. 

On Friday, nearly a week after their second meeting, he’s on his way out early in the morning with an armload of supplies for a project he’s planning to do during the history lesson--they’re almost finished with Rome, thank goodness, although it’ll be a long time before he gets over Ollie Jacobs putting up his hand to ask why the Romans had sent legions of hares to defend their outposts. I don’t think rabbits would be very good soldiers, Ollie had opined, and Molesley had had to take a moment to compose himself before carefully writing out L-E-G-I-O-N-A-R-I-E-S on the white board. 

Preoccupied with the memory, and grinning to himself about it all over again, he’s just set foot on the pavement when there’s a sharp rapping behind him that makes him start and nearly drop everything he’s carrying. Turning around, he sees old Mrs Crawley at her bay window: she catches his eye and beckons to him, and hoping she won’t make him too awfully late, he backtracks and meets her in the foyer outside her front door.  

“Off to work are you, young man?” 

“Yes, Mrs Crawley.” 

“Hmm.” The old woman leans on her cane and eyes him as if she thinks his teaching job might be a front for something disreputable. “I’ve got a message for you before you go.” 

“You have?” Molesley shifts his box of nontoxic paints and precut sundial shapes to a less awkward position. He can’t imagine what message Mrs Crawley could possibly have for him, though he wouldn’t put it past her to be in touch with people at the highest levels of government. 

“Yes,” Mrs Crawley says. “It’s from Miss Baxter, above you.” 

This news makes Molesley’s heart leap so hard in his chest that he’s worried for a moment Mrs Crawley may have to administer CPR to him. “It is? Did she phone you or--?”

“I paid a call on her,” Mrs Crawley says, unruffled. “Yesterday afternoon. I visit quite often. It’s a Christian charity, and also she makes excellent gingersnaps. Ginger is very good for the digestion, you know.” 

“I’ve heard,” Molesley says weakly. He’s struck by the image of Mrs Crawley making her slow and shaky way to the fifth floor, climbing every step because there isn’t a lift in the building, driven by the implacable forces of her sense of duty and a craving for biscuits. And what does she mean by a Christian charity? Has it got something to do with the troubles Phyllis alluded to in passing? 

“Do you want your message, young Mr Molesley?” Mrs Crawley eyes him shrewdly. “You do, don’t you? I’ve seen you staring up at her windows like a great big mooncalf; don’t think I haven’t. You’re lucky she doesn’t seem to mind it.” 

“Er, yes,” Molesley says. The top of his head feels warm, as if his soul is trying to escape through it and flee his body. “I’d like that message very much, please and thank you.” 

“That’s better.” Mrs Crawley nods. “She says she’d like you to come for breakfast in the morning, if you’re not busy, which I doubt you are. Half past nine. She would have rung you up herself, she says, only she forgot to ask for your telephone number.” 

“You might have given it to her,” Molesley says. “I gave it to you when I first moved in, for emergencies.” 

“Breakfast invitations are not emergencies,” Mrs Crawley says primly. “And I certainly would not pass on private information that wasn’t mine to share.” 

This, Molesley thinks, is probably the truth. Mrs Crawley enjoys collecting information, but she’s more likely to hoard it for the sheer pleasure of knowledge than she is to gossip. It doesn’t matter, though. He’s too happy at the moment to be irritated with anyone, especially not the messenger of his good fortune.

“Would you--could you tell her I’ll be there? Are you going to visit again today?” 

“I am not,” Mrs Crawley says, “But because unlike the two of you, I always get a number, I will telephone her and convey your acceptance. In my day, we used to send a card with a proper response, but times change.” 

She shifts her weight on the cane and peers up into Molesley’s face, and unbelievably, he sees a twinkle in her ancient eyes. “I believe, Mr Molesley, that you have an assignation, or as you might prefer to call it, a date.”  

[robert-emmett]

So Others May Live, A Coronavirus Story: Part One

In light of the recent Coronavirus epidemic, our online blog asked for submissions from writers for fictional stories inspired by this global crisis.

This submission we received in an unusual way. It arrived at our editor’s doorstep without a return address, with a hazard symbol on the front. Our editor still does not know how the writer acquired his address.

The writer said that they would be sending multiple parts of the story over the next few days, and that if we wanted to take part in a process by which writing itself could save the world, we would be remiss not to publish his writing.

Receiving almost no other submissions, we obliged.

We present to you Part One, with subsequent parts, hopefully, to follow.

Part One

“Look at them out there…”

Pedestrians walk down the street in front of a packed sidewalk cafe. It’s a beautiful day out. Just below the window, Brendan can spot a group of joggers heading north, and then rounding the block towards the Schuylkill. He widens the slits in the blinds and shakes his head.

“They play their little games and they wander out in the sun as if everything is fine, even as the storm approaches. Fools. Fools Terry. Did Nero not fiddle while Rome burned? We are the architects of our own doom, and we do it not out of ignorance, but out of apathy. Out of false confidence. They dance on a stage that’s already on fire, they make plans on a calendar that’s crumbling between their fingers, they go to parties that are-”

Brendan turns to the couch. It’s empty except for a Playstation controller.

His roommate, Terry, exits the bathroom, returns to the couch, picks up the controller.

“What was that?” Terry asks, unpausing the game.

“I just…I had a whole speech. I thought you were on the couch listening,” Brendan says.

“Sorry I was in the bathroom,” Terry says, focusing on the TV.

“Oh.”

“What did you say?”

“Well…it was a whole thing…”

“Tell me.”

“…It was a little stream of consciousness…I don’t know if I I could recreate it…I was talking about how they play their little games, how they’re just…wandering around, out there, and — “

“Who is ‘they’?”

“What?”

“Who is the ‘they’ in the phrase ‘they play their little games’?”

“The people outside. ”

“Outside on the street? I’m confused. Could you start from the beginning?”

Brendan’s face turns red as he grabs the controller out of Terry’s hand.

“PEOPLE ARE NOT TAKING THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC SERIOUSLY TERRY!”

Brendan throws the controller at the wall. It shatters a framed diploma on the wall that slides off its anchor and bounces off the back of the TV and onto the floor.

“Jesus Christ!” Terry says.

“Are you paying attention now Terry?!”

“I was always paying attention, you just weren’t making any sense!”

“This is serious! Serious like a plague, TERRY!”

“I get it. You are concerned about the coronavirus, as are we all.”

“No Terry. Not all. You and I are concerned, Terry. But the people outside-”

Brendan goes back to the window, opens the slits.

“-they act as if nothing is wrong! As if the quarantine is a polite guideline. ‘Oh, please, kindly stay in your homes, if you possibly could, so you don’t END HUMANITY!’. But while you and I are trapped here, people are outside spreading the virus, infecting everything they touch. In a week they’ll all be sick. In two weeks it’ll be panic in the streets!”

“Well, it is bad. More people should be staying in to flatten the curve, so that we can make sure that the mortality rate is low.”

“Good for you, frequent reader of The Atlantic. But while we know that, everyone else doesn’t give a fuck! And by the time they do, it will be too late.”

“I don’t know what you want from me.”

“I want you to join me in a venture.”

“No.”

“No?”

“I’m not doing a ‘venture’ with you again. Last time I did a ‘venture’ with you my insurance premiums skyrocketed.”

“Terry…”

Brendan gets down on his knee, to Terry’s discomfort.

“I don’t always make requests of you — “

“ — incorrect — “

“- but I need this from you. It is up to us to make a difference.”

“Brendan. Let’s just stay in the apartment and wait it out.”

“That’s not enough. We have to do something dramatic. Something that will make people look up and realize how serious this is.”

“Like what?”

“People in this country are vain and vapid Terry. They only care if illness strikes the famous.”

“Tom Hanks and Idris Elba got coronavirus.”

“But they’re going to recover. Someone needs to die, Terry.”

Slowly, Terry’s eyes narrow.

“Brendan…”

“…and it can’t be anyone. It has to be someone famous. And not just famous. Beloved. Someone whose death would cripple us emotionally, and force people out of the streets and into their homes out of fear. Something that wakes them up!”

“You’re getting that crazy look in your eyes Brendan.”

“We need to kill someone famous with the Coronavirus.”

“Alright.”

Terry stands up from the couch and begins walking towards his room.

“Terry!”

“If you want to use the TV, you can just ask for it.”

“I’m serious! We have to do this Terry. We must.”

Before Terry can respond, Brendan holds up his phone.

“It is already in place. Like a mouse at the start of the Rube Goldberg machine, it just needs to be let out of it’s cage…”

“Just out of curiosity, who are you talking about?”

“…let’s just say that if you were to meet her in person, you’d want to thank her for being a friend…”

After opening his mouth to speak, Terry stops himself. He takes a step towards his roommate.

“Brendan, whatever you’re planning…” Terry starts to say.

With his thumb, Brendan unlocks his phone.

—

“-I mean technically it wasn’t six feet, but I’m not gonna not dance!”

“It’s Saint Patrick’s Day!”

The phone on the marble desk rings. Of the two, the security guard nearest picks it up.

“The Summit, Beverly Hills,” the guard responds.

A car drives up to the security glass. Someone in a Mercedes looking for a specific resident. He’s let through by the other guard.

“No, you’ve got the wrong block entirely, the correct address is 7820 Vine Drive. No problem. Have a nice day.”

“Who was that?”

“Shipment for Betty White. They were looking for her address.”

“I love her.”

“Oh my god. So friendly. Always has something nice to say when she sees me.”

“She is a national treasure. I’d go so far as to say that if anything were to happen to her, it would devastate me!”

“I’d be destroyed! The whole country would!”

Both guards laugh.

—

“-you have a nice day as well.”

Brendan ends the call. He stares at his roommate. A long silence passes between them

“…what did you just do?” Terry asks, still standing in the doorway of his room.

“I just found out the address of Betty White. And I’m going to use it to find her, infect her with the Coronavirus, and have her become the martyr we need.”

“Brendan I’m worried that you’re even suggesting this. How did you know where she lived?”

“Research. Lots of research. It helps to know the Irish, Terry.”

“…is that a saying? I don’t know why, but it sounds racist.”

“Come with me to California. I can’t trust that the final steps will be carried out by anyone

except myself and someone I trust. And that someone is you.”

Terry stares at his roommate, who is still taking a knee in the middle of their apartment. It may just be the light, but Brendan looks particularly tired, worn. His skin is sallow, and there’s a film of sweat covering his body. If Terry didn’t know better, he’d believe that Brendan had the virus.

“…ok,” Terry says.

“Really?”

“You sound surprised.”

“I’m not! Because it’s a great plan and I expected you to say yes!”

Brendan jumps to his feet and rushes over to Terry, taking him by the shoulders.

“You won’t regret this! I promise.”

Terry nods, smiling.

He goes into his bedroom and closes the door, noticing that Brendan has just started sweeping up the glass from the picture, and is readjusting his Princeton diploma inside the frame.

—

“So you’re going to stop him?”

“Of course I am.”

Terry extends his arm out a little as he lays back in his bed. He lifts up his phone so Jess can get a better angle of him on FaceTime. A part of him misses her. Another part of him is glad that they’re separated, temporarily. They had been fighting a lot before the quarantine.

“But he wants to go to California, Terry.”

“We’re not gonna get that far.”

“Well…you know maybe you shouldn’t humor him at all.”

“It’s not humoring. Brendan is like a sleepwalker. You can’t just wake him up, you have to let him wake up on his own. It’s for his own sanity. He spirals like this sometimes. It might be helpful if he gets it out of his system.”

“But getting her number?”

“Yeah that’s weird. He is resourceful. And not unintelligent.”

“It’s probably the job thing too.”

“Yeah him being out of work is bad for him. He has too much energy he needs to expend. Plus, he said he would pay for everything.”

“Alright. Well if you think it’s safe…”

She starts to get off the couch.

“Where are you going?” Terry asks.

“I have to give my mom food. I slide it under the door while I wear gloves.”

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s what you get with chemo. She’s not worried. I am.”

“Tell her I hope she feels better.”

“I will.”

There is a long moment between them as they stare at each other, silently.

“…I miss you Jess.”

“It’s not going to be much longer baby. Call me when you head out. Please stay safe.”

“Wait I wanna talk more. How’s the job?”

“I got a promotion.”

“While working remotely?!”

She nods.

“Damn.”

“Uh huh.”

Jess’ smile fades for a second.

“Just…in case he’s being serious…”

“He’s not. And I will be careful.”

Her smile returns, and she kisses the screen.

“Oh fuck!” she says.

“What?” Terry asks.

“I kissed the screen.”

“Ok…”

“Screens can carry the virus for days!”

“Well have you been washing your hands?”

A voice from another room on Jess’ side of the call speaks out.

“Did someone say they kissed a cellphone screen?”

“No mom!” Jess says in the direction of the closed door at the far end of her apartment.

“Fuck!” she says back to Terry.

“You’ll be fine, I love-”

She hangs up.

—

“This will be so exciting!” Brendan says.

He and Terry walk down the concourse at Philadelphia International Airport. Through the glass above them they see lines of people crowded together at the Arrivals terminal, going through hours of temperature checks before being allowed into baggage claim. In departures, almost no one is in line at the ticket counter. But anyone who is even within the vicinity of the pair watches them pass with astonishment.

“…sure it will,” Terry says, smiling at the people who are staring.

“In-flight movies, those little stroopwafel snacks. This is going to be amazing trip!” Brendan says, spotting a United counter.

“They don’t serve stroopwafels on United flights.”

“Yes they do.”

“You’re thinking Lufthansa,” Terry says.

“I promise you, it’s United. Trust me on this.”

A husband and wife almost stop in their tracks on their way to the security lines to stare at Brendan.

“Lufthansa has those little mixed pretzel — “

“-Brendan is there a reason you had to dress like that?”

“Like what? Like someone who values safety?”

The sound of Brendan’s rubber boots clopping down the concourse echoes off the high ceilings. Most of his face is hidden behind a military-style respirator. He’s wearing a white lab coat with a hazard symbol emblazoned on the chest and elbow-length rubber gloves.

“You look like you’re about to reanimate the corpse of a loved one with devastating consequences,” Terry says as they come up to the desk agent.

“Two tickets for the next flight to Los Angeles please!” Brendan says.

“Sorry, no more flights to the West Coast,” the agent says.

“What? Really?”

She points up towards the departures board.

In quick succession, the flights to San Diego, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles are marked “Cancelled”.

“For quarantine reasons we’re making sure there’s as little travel west as possible,” the desk agent says.

“Oh no. We can’t do the horrible thing you were planning…” Terry says, flatly, under his breath.

“Yes we can, and it’s not horrible!” Brendan says.

The desk agent looks Brendan up and down.

“You look like a broke Bane,” she says.

—

Brendan drops his credit card on the Amtrak counter and slides it towards the agent.

“Two train tickets to Los Angeles please!” Brendan says.

The desk agent points to the Amtrak departure board. All west bound trains are cancelled.

“Oh no, another mode of transportation we can’t use to do the horrible thing you’re planning,” Terry says.

“Shut up!” Brendan says.

“You look like a default character from Fallout 4,” the desk agent says.

—

Brendan drops his credit card on the counter and slides it towards the agent.

“Two Greyhound bus tickets to Los Angeles please!” Brendan says, with great reluctance.

The desk agent points up to the departure board, which is cracked, and hanging askew from a single bolt in the ceiling. All westbound buses are canceled, except for one headed to Sacramento.

“Sacramento is close enough!” Brendan says with excitement, before turning to Terry.

“You see Terry? Things are finally looking up for us!”

Terry stares across the bus terminal to the far corner of the building with a look of horror.

“…Brendan…I can’t be sure but I think there are two toddlers over there fighting each other with brass knuckles… and people are placing bets on who they think the winner will be…”

“Oh, sir, I’m sorry, the Sacramento bound bus has been canceled,” the desk agent says.

“What? Why!?”

The desk agent points out the window. A bus rolls into the arrivals bay with the Philadelphia to Sacramento route on its front banner.

The bus is on fire.

Rather than stopping, it plows through a row of newspaper kiosks and crashes into the side of the building next door. Calmly, as if they have done it a thousand times, the passengers disembark. After the bus driver helps the last person off the bus, takes his belongings from his seat, and steps onto the sidewalk, the bus explodes, sending flaming pieces of metal across the parking lot.

Brendan and Terry are frozen in place watching the flames rise, while the desk agent looks Brendan up and down.

“You look like -”

“-like what?” Brendan says, turning quickly towards the desk agent, “a knockoff mad scientist? A shitty Resident Evil villain? Dumb Walter White?!”

The desk agent shakes his head.

“I was going to say you look like him,” the desk agent says, pointing to a nearby bench.

A man in his fifties is sitting there, in a tattered lab coat, with about the same look as Brendan. His eyes are wild, and as he looks at Brendan and Terry, they feel fear like they never have before.

“I was a doctor with a wife and kids before I took Greyhound! Nice outfit kid! Looks like someone values safety!!!” the man screams, before letting out a cackling laugh that fills the station.

A cheer goes up from the corner of the building, as one of the two toddlers presumably wins.

—

“One compact rental car, please!” Brendan says, sliding his card across the counter to the Hertz representative.

“Hey Brendan,” Terry says, bringing him away from the counter, “are you sure you can afford this?”

“Sure!” Brendan says.

“Brendan. It’s been a while since you lost the job. Renting a car for two weeks is a lot of money.”

“It will be fine! It’s all worth it for the greater good!”

“I’m sorry sir, we don’t have any compact cars available. Our only car left is from our Prestige Collection. It’s a Jaguar XF,” the rep says.

“Sounds good!” Brendan says, hesitation in his voice.

A receipt prints, the rental representative slides it across the counter towards Brendan.

“Your total comes to $2138,” the rep says.

Brendan nods, but does not move towards the counter.

“…Whenever you’re ready sir,” the rep says.

“You got it,” Brendan says.

Still, he does not move.

“Brendan!” Terry says.

He goes over and signs the receipt.

—

While the representative takes them to the car, walks Brendan around it to check for marks, explains to him that the car requires premium gas, which almost makes Brendan lose his footing, Terry is standing with his back towards them.

He types out a text message on his phone to Jess:

Looks like it’s not gonna be four days. More like two weeks driving cross country, LOL! Will try and call again soon baby…

Terry looks at this message.

“It has Apple carplay Terry! We can finally listen to all those Joe Rogan podcasts I’ve been telling you about!” Brendan says.

“Great…”

His thumb hovers over the send button. Instead, he deletes the message, types out another:

Love you baby, will call soon

“Alright,” Terry says, taking in a deep breath, “let’s go.”

—

They get into the car and pull out of the lot, Brendan insisting that he drive. About a block away from the lot, Brendan almost plows into the back of a truck because he can’t properly feel the gas pedal with the rubber boots he’s wearing. Terry calmly asks him to pull over, and takes over driving.

“Two weeks together. Man. Can you imagine how close we’re going to become as friends? Just the level of comfort that we’ll have with each other? I mean we’ve been friends for YEARS, but I don’t think we’ve ever actually taken a trip together. Weird right?” Brendan says.

“So weird,” Terry says.

There is a long silence in the car. On multiple occasions, Brendan begins to speak, then stops himself.

“Why don’t we listen to something?” Brendan says.

He switches to the podcast app and starts playing an episode:

“‘I just think that these liberals are blowing this way out of proportion. Even if I get Coronavirus, which I know all about because I’ve googled it twice, I’m basically inoculated from it because of all the bulletproof coffee I’ve been drinking *sound of a loud, possibly marijuana related cough*’”

“You know what, instead of Joe Rogan maybe we could just sit in silence…” Terry says.

Brendan turns it off.

After a few minutes, he turns to look at Terry.

“Do you ever get worried that people close to you will get it?” Brendan asks.

Terry shrugs.

“Sort of. I’m really only quarantining because it’s the right thing to do. My parents are pretty young and my grandparents are gone, so I don’t worry about that too much.”

Brendan nods, turns to look out the window.

“Yeah…me neither…:” he says.

They make the exit onto 76. Their GPS tells them they have 45 hours left of driving. Terry takes in a deep breath.

End of Part One

[juliussneezerfics]

His Past, His Present, His Future - Chapter 8: When In Rome

Germany and Italy take Rome... eventually.

Ao3

Fanfiction.net

**********************

Germany drove around, eventually parking on a side street a couple blocks away from the colosseum. As he got out of the car, he reached in the backseat and grabbed his backpack. He pulled out his sunglasses and donned them, glad that there was a slight breeze in the air. Without it, the heat and humidity would have been stifling.

Italy scurried over to where he was, latching onto his arm and pulling Germany along with him. “Come on! We have to see everything!”

Germany fast-walked up beside Italy, not pulling his arm out of his grip as they walked. “The colosseum will still be there in the ten minutes it takes for us to get there.” 

Italy slowed down. “I suppose so... I’m just so excited! It’s been so long since we’ve taken a vacation together!” His smile dimmed slightly. “I only wish Japan was here... that would be perfect.”

“Hm.” Germany pulled out his phone. It was a Wednesday. It was farfetched that Japan would get a day off, but Japan was similar to Germany in the way that he sparingly took vacations. Perhaps his boss would grace Japan with a day off in the middle of the week. “Perhaps he can come down tomorrow to spend the day with us.” He sent Japan a text inviting him.

Italy gasped. “That’s a great idea! We can all go down to Seborga’s place tomorrow! I know he likes Japan.”

Germany hummed. “Japan seems to make a lot of unlikely friends.”

Italy laughed, leaning into Germany’s arm. “You’re right, but every introvert needs a couple extroverts to pull them around! Kind of like you and I!”

“In your case, literally pulling me.”

The two lapsed into silence, enjoying their time together and the beautiful scenery around them. The sun’s rays hit the windows of the shops, illuminating the people milling within. The two stopped every few minutes as Italy insisted on taking photos. Photos of trees, flowers, and shops. Finally, right outside the colosseum, Italy tightened his hold on Germany’s arm.

“Germany, smile! I want to take a picture of us!”

Germany looked at the phone Italy had in his extended arm. “No.”

Italy lowered the phone, looking dismayed. “What? Why?”

“I don’t smile.”

Italy released Germany’s arm. “Of course you do! Maybe you don’t realize it, but you do all the time! It’s a lovely smile!”

“I still won’t.” Germany retorted, missing the touch.

Italy frowned. “Fine, I’ll just keep bugging you until you do!”

“You forget that I have put up with you annoying me for the past 80 years.” Germany replied, determinedly ignoring two passing ladies who gave him a double-take, muttering to each other.

Italy took his arm again, holding up the phone. “Fine then, Mr. Grumpy-Pants. Ruin my memories of vacation with your frowny face!”

“Excuse me,” A girl’s voice chimed in Italian before Germany could reply.

Germany glanced behind him.

A girl with jaw-length blonde hair wearing a sundress did an awkward half-jog-half-walk over to them. She looked to be in her mid-teens, her various brochures and translator book sticking out of her purse an obvious indicator to Germany that she was a foreigner.

Italy followed Germany’s gaze. “Yes? Is there somethign I can do for you?”

“Uhh...” She pulled the pocket-sized translator book out of her purse, holding up a finger. “Un momento.” She attempted.

Looking at her book, Germany noticed it was in English. “You speak English?”

The girl looked up, obviously relieved. “Oh, good! You speak English! Yeah, I am.”

Germany noted her American accent.

Italy brightened. “Oh! That explains why you tried to speak to me in Spanish, I guess.”

The girl had a visible blush on her ears. “Oh, yeah... sorry, someone I know is learning Italian and she said it was a lot like Spanish, so I just kind of hoped... sorry about that.”

Italy smiled and waved his hand. “It’s fine! Languages are hard. Was there something we could help you with?”

“Oh, yeah.” The girl cleared her throat. “I saw you were trying to take a photo and I was wondering if you wanted me to take one for you guys. My girlfriend is pretty short, so I know how hard it is to take couples’ photos when there’s a height difference.”

Germany felt his cheeks heat up as he pulled off his sunglasses. “You’re mistaken. We’re not a couple.”

The blush on the girl’s ears spread to her cheeks. “Oh, I’m sorry! I just saw you were holding his- it doesn’t matter. I’m sorry.” Her eyes widened with recognition. “Oh my God. You’re Germany.”

Germany was suddenly very aware of the fact that Italy was still holding onto his arm. He moved it out of his grip. “Er... yes.”

“Then you must be Italy.” The girl realized, moving her focus onto Italy as she turned to retreat. “I’m sorry I bothered you gu-”

“No, wait!” Italy said with a friendly smile, holding out his phone to her. “Could I actually take you up on that offer?”

Germany looked at the smaller nation, noticing that he was trying to calm her down. He suddenly felt slightly guilty about how he snapped. “Um... a photo would be nice.”

The girl looked up at him, still blushing. “Uh, sure!” She stepped back.

Italy slung his arm around Germany’s waist. Germany, trying not to look awkward, rested his on Italy’s shoulders as he smiled stiffly.

There were a few seconds of silence as the girl snapped a few photos before coming and returning Italy his phone. “Here, I hope you’re happy with them.”

Italy took it and scrolled through the camera roll, grinning. “Yeah, they’re great!”

The girl smiled. “Good! I’m glad to hear it. Sorry again.”

“You’re fine!” Italy assured, grinning at her. He looked up at Germany expectantly.

Germany looked at the girl and cleared his throat. “Ja, it’s not a big deal.”

“Thanks. Have a good day, guys!” The girl turned as she waved.

“Bye, thanks for the picture!” Italy called to her retreating back.

Germany looked over Italy’s shoulder as he looked at the photos again. They were rather good, he supposed. They would have been better if he had been able to just keep a neutral expression. He looked at Italy’s face now, watching as he flicked through the photos, making little comments about them. Germany hardly payed attention, his mind dwelling on how that girl thought they were a couple. For whatever reason, that didn’t bother him too much. You know the reason. His mind chided. It’s because you wish you were.

Germany heard a chime in his pocket, startling him out of his thoughts. He reached in his back pocket and checked the text.

I got approval from my boss. I will be down tomorrow morning at nine.

“Japan can come tomorrow.”

“Really?!” Italy lurched forward, selecting the face time option on the screen.

“You couldn’t have asked first?” Germany asked dryly.

Italy shrugged. “I get excited!”

Japan came up on screen as Italy finished, wearing his reading glasses. “Hello,”

“Hi, Japan!” Italy ripped the phone out of Germany’s hands, ignoring his noises of protest. “I can’t wait for you to come tomorrow!”

Japan smiled. To anyone who didn’t know him that well, they would think he was completely serene. But Germany and Italy knew that this was Japan’s equivalent to vibrating with excitement. “I can’t wait to come. What are your plans?”

“We’re going to visit Seborga! He said he missed you ealier this morning when he called!”

Japan raised an eyebrow. “I find that hard to believe. We talked for maybe three minutes.”

“Plenty of time for him, apparently.” Germany added, peering over Italy’s shoulder. “Hi, Japan.”

“Hello, Germany.” Japan replied. “It looks like you’re outside!”

Italy nodded, turning the camera around toward the colosseum. “We’re at the colosseum!”

“I see... can you turn me around now?”

Germany chuckled.

Italy laughed, turning him back around. “Sorry.”

Japan smiled, shaking his head. “You’re okay. How are you feeling, Italy?”

Italy rubbed the back of his head. “Much better. I talked it out with France, we’re good again!”

“I’m glad to hear it.” Japan said, looking relieved. “When he called the other day to check on you he sounded worried.”

“Well it’s all cleared up!”

Japan turned a questioning eye onto Germany. “And what about you, Germany?”

Germany met the deep brown eyes, noting the extra layer of trepidation. Of worry. Of concern. Almost like something happened to him instead of Italy. Germany’s suspicions then clicked into place. Somehow, Japan knew about Holy Rome. Not just about how France had killed him, but that Germany once was Holy Rome. And perhaps even that Holy Rome and Italy had a mutual affection for each other. “Fine.” Germany could hear the confusion in his own voice. How did Japan know?

“Good. Glad to hear it.” Japan heard the tone of Germany’s voice. The two shared a look: We’ll discuss it later.

Italy seemed to be picking up on the... whatever it was between them.  “How are you doing, Japan? Is the boss working you too hard?”

Japan snapped out of it and shrugged slightly. “Not really. Just a briefing on the unusual amount of foreigners coming to Kyoto. Nothing that couldn’t have been covered in an email.” Japan added the last part wryly.

“That’s the reason you went home?” Germany asked.

Japan nodded. “Unfortunately. Even now my boss just has be doing busywork. If it weren’t for that meeting, I could have been there with you now. Well I’m sorry to say, but I have to go. It’s time for dinner over here. Then I’m going to pack, get a good night’s sleep, and make my way over there.”

Italy jumped with excitement. “Awesome! You have your spare key, don’t you? That way if you get home before we do you can get in?”

Japan’s eyes widened slightly. “You realize that I’m leaving tomorrow morning, right?”

“Nonsense!” Italy shook his head. “Get over here as soon as possible! We can have a sleepover! Then you don’t have to get up early to come all the way over here! Just pack and get over here.” He turned to Germany. “We can be home for dinner, right? We can stop somewhere and get some food and bring it back for Japan!”

Germany frowned, thinking about it. If they started making their way back to the car at four, they would have plenty of time to grab a bite on the way home. Assuming the International Road cooperated, they would be home before the food got cold. Having the details laid out in front of him grew Germany’s enthusiasm for the idea. It would be great to have the three of them together again, even if the last time they were around each other was only yesterday. “Ja, I think we can.”

“What do you say, Japan?” Italy asked.

Japan paused, considering. “I think I can do that. I will be over in a couple hours, but don’t hurry back so quickly. I know my way around your house well enough.”

A thought struck Germany. “When you get there, my stuff is already in the guest room. Just ignore it and unpack. I can keep my stuff in a storage closet or something and sleep on the couch.”

“What? Don’t be ridiculous, Germany, you can share a bed with me!” Italy protested.

Germany gaped. “No, I don’t think that will be necessary.”

“Why? We did it last night!” Italy asked, frowning.

Hearing a slight laugh, Germany glared over at Japan.

“I hate to trouble you,” Japan added, looking at Germany in a way that could only be described as a challenge. “But I am much older and my hip has been giving me troubles. So I need a bed. And we’re going to be doing much traveling and walking. You cannot afford to get uncomfortable on the couch. So that may be the only option.”

Germany narrowed his eyes as he saw that Japan was visibly smiling, the bastard.

“Yeah, Germany! It would be really sad if the rest of us were having fun and you couldn’t because you were uncomfortable!” Italy agreed.

Germany analyzed his options. Well, it wouldn’t be all that bad if they shared a bed again, right? As Italy said, they did last night. It wasn’t that big a deal. Besides, Germany knew that Japan’s hip usually gave him troubles. And after all, Germany was just doing the kind thing. Japan needed the bed, and Italy enjoyed sharing a bed. He was just being selfless... right? He let out a long sigh. “Fine.”

Japan’s smile widened slightly. “Excellent. I will be over soon.”

“Okay, see you soon, Japan! Bye!” Italy said.

“Goodbye.” Japan replied.

Germany waved before shutting off his phone.

“This is wonderful! We can all go see Seborga together! I’ll let him know!”

Germany held out his hand, a silent request for his phone.

Italy turned it over, pulling his out of his pocket. “You can take a seat if you want, this may take a while.”

“How long does it take to schedule a visit?” Germany asked, setting an alarm for when they would have to start heading back to Italy’s house.

“We’re Italian.”

“... fair point.” Germany said. Italy replied with a laugh as he went to sit on a wooden bench. Germany pulled off his backpack, sticking his leg through one of the loops before setting it on the ground. He wasn’t going to have his stuff stolen. He pulled a book out of his bag as he heard Italy chattering in rapid Italian and got set to reading. Or he tried to read. His eyes just scanned down the pages, his mind wandering again to his past. With all the history that was surrounding him... has he seen this all as Holy Rome? Is this really his third time in the ancient city? He didn’t know how long it was before he felt a tap on his shoulder. Germany looked to his left, seeing Italy sitting there.

“What are you reading about?” He asked. “You seem to be reading really hard!”

Germany grunted. “It’s a book on American history.”

“You’re reading a book about America?” Italy asked.

“Not about him, exactly.” He said. “I wasn’t alive for much of the time he was developing, so I wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing anything.”

“And you say you don’t have a soft spot for him.” Italy teased.

Germany shot him a deadpan look. “I don’t.”

“Why not just ask me about his history?” Italy asked as Germany bent over to grab his backpack. “I was there!”

Germany peered up at him doubtfully. “Okay, when was the Declaration of Independence written?”

Italy put his hand up to his chin, thinking as Germany stood and slung his backpack over his shoulders. “Umm... in in the 1760’s...?”

“No. 1776.” Germany replied, shaking his head.

Italy also stood. “Well I was only a decade off!”

“Sixteen years.”

“Eh, if you’re being particular about it.” Italy said. “Now come on! We’ve been here for a whole half hour and we haven’t even gone in the colloseum!”

Germany followed as Italy led him to the entrance of the colloseum.

After they used their I.D.s to get in, Germany was astounded at the crumbled building. It was crazy to think of just how much time had passed... just how long this had been here. How long ago this place was filled with hordes of people. They were on a viewing balcony with a metal guard rail.

Italy was leaning against it, surveying the arena with an unusually contemplative look on his face. His forearms were resting on the metal bar, his hands clasped in front of him. He was abnormally still.

Germany looked at him, musing that he never saw Italy like this very often. It was strange, but interesting to observe him being this calm. “What are you thinking about?”

Italy looked over his shoulder at him briefly before returning his gaze to the arena. “The last time I came here I was with Grandpa Rome. There was a show going on. It was a wild animal hunt. They brought in several lions. It just looks so different.”

Germany also leaned on the bar, listening.

“There were so many people, Germany, you should have seen it. People packed elbow to elbow. The emperor’s box draped in velvet. The roaring crowds, the suspense... it was such a great bonding moment between Grandpa and I.” He looked at Germany. “But with this great beauty came a great wretchedness.”

Germany drew his eyebrows together.

Italy looked back over the arena and unclasped his hands. “When I was a little older, I understood what a terrible place the colosseum really is. I understood that what started as a sport killing dangerous animals ended as the persecution of people. The same dirt that puddles of animal blood sat on soaked up the blood of people. Of human beings, baking into the earth under the sun. It’s hard to look back on history, Germany. Whether you’re human or not. But it’s essential. You may regret your past.” He looked at Germany, his eyes filled with a harsh understanding. “But knowing what happened, and regretting it as fiercely as we do... it keeps us from making those mistakes again. They helped make us into the people we are now. I feel like you need to remember that sometimes.”

“... This is very sudden.” Was all Germany could say.

Italy nodded and gazed around again. “I know. But everything that France said just got me thinking, and... it got me thinking about us. You, me, and Japan. But you especially. I see you thinking about it every now and then. I see you about to say things sometimes at world meetings... probably to reference your past. But then you hold your tongue. I just sometimes think that you need to let that go. It’s not all your fault.”

Germany held his gaze on the side profile of Italy for a moment longer, musing that perhaps Italy was more observant- and more wise – than Germany gave him credit for. His eyes wandered around the decrepit colosseum as he pondered on what Italy had said.