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savage-rhi · 5 years ago

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Sky of Atoms: Death Stranding Fanfic-Ch. 2

HIGGS 1.0

Higgs’s body was swaying in the ocean, gently being cradled against the small waves. The water neither warm or cold, just present and in the moment. It was the safest he had felt in a long time. Subconsciously in the corner of his mind he wondered if this was what it felt like to be in the womb, to feel secure in the fact that something higher than you were keeping you from the harshness of the world outside. He could almost picture the sound of his mother's heartbeat, and how it echoed throughout the darkness he was in. Whatever comforts he had quickly subsided when from the depths of the water, a zombie version of his father rose up and opened its mouth, engulfing Higgs into a bottomless void. He could feel the air leaving his lungs, as if the very essence of his being was slowly being sucked into an oblivion. He struggled against the current, desperately trying to find a way out and as soon as he saw the sunlight glimmering on the surface of the ocean water, he burst through the top, taking in a sharp breath before slug like humanoids began to pull at him from all sides of his body. They screamed murderer and coward endlessly at him as if that would somehow bring them all back to life.

Higgs struggled, tried to break free from the tar as his limbs were being pulled apart. He screamed as a world on fire flashed before his eyes, decimating forests and screaming animals and humans filled his ears, his father laughing at him the whole time yelling he had told him so before an image of Amelie smiling at him and shoving her hand into his chest to rip out his heart all but made him numb.

Higgs shot up from his bed in a cold sweat, panting heavily as his body convulsed and shuddered. He groaned, his arms wrapping around himself to keep the jolts from hurting further. Tears flowed down his face as he tightened his eyes shut, rocking back and forth in a childlike fashion. He stayed that way for a solid hour, riding the wave out of his DOOMs withdrawal. It was only when the shocks down his spine subsided did he finally managed to get up and reach for a canteen of water on the floor. He chugged at it like a person finding an oasis in a dessert then tossed the metal container across the room. It hit the wall with a loud thud as he coughed, grumbling into his pillow once he collapsed. His right hand gripped the shallow excuse of a blanket that covered his body as he adjusted, lying on his back as his tired eyes searched the ceiling. Higgs was looking for any patterns he could find in the old place, something to bring him back to the present as he coughed and trembled from the tiny goosebumps that littered his skin.

It had been three years since Higgs got his ass handed to him by Sam Bridges. Three years since he tried to wipe the slate clean of all life with the Extinction Entity at his side. Three years since he lost his powers granted by Amelie, and three years since those infected with DOOMs began to suffer from withdrawals due to the BTs and such being severed of their connection to this world. It felt longer than that to Higgs ever since the withdrawal had hit him. It felt like an eternity of chronic pain, and nothing seemed to stave it off. He had tried everything medication wise, even going so far as to dabble in illegal substances on the occasion, but it only made things worse. He blinked a few times, taking in a deep breath as he wiped away at his forehead, gently going over the tattoos covering him as he pondered if Sam Bridges himself was going through hell like he was. Regardless of the gossip most porters spoke of in the area, Higgs knew Sam was out there somewhere alive hiding out, much like himself.

“Stupid fuck, playing Eagle Scout only to run away from the very people he served cause he knew deep down they were creeps.” Higgs said aloud, talking to himself begrudgingly as he swallowed and forced himself up from the bed. He coughed into his palm a few times, sniffling as he threw on a shirt, adjusted his pants, and slid his feet into his boots near the edge of the bed. Higgs walked out of his sleeping quarters and into the small living space he carved out for himself at an abandoned facility. Ever since he lost to Sam, Higgs couldn’t go back to his home. Given the name he made for himself due to his terrorist affiliation with Homo Demens not to mention his conquest to have the Final Stranding arrive, he was very much a dead man walking according to the UCA. No one knew he was alive however, Fragile inadvertently made sure of that during their final encounter on the Beach.

As Higgs rummaged around the small fridge for something to eat, he recalled that moment on the Beach. Fragile hovering over him like a proud hawk getting to swipe down at its prey. He hated having to look at her, reminded of everything she stood for and everything he had done. The soft caress of her fingers to his face haunted him, because in that brief moment of affection she offered, Higgs realized he fucked up royally. He was still as hopeless as ever about the state of the world, humanity alongside it, but that touch gave him some sort of false hope that regardless of what transpired, everything would be okay. Higgs loathed Fragile for it, especially given the fact he had been touched starved as well due to the abusive upbringing his daddy provided to him for years. He was thankful Fragile punched him soon after, snapping out of that hope if only brief.

Fragile left Higgs on the Beach with the gun after shooting near his head. He for sure thought this was the end, and as much as he didn’t want to give the satisfaction of admitting it, Higgs knew he deserved it. Fragile deserved her revenge and he was in no position to stop her. He recalled opening his eyes, not seeing death had come for him but saw Fragile’s face once more, she growled towards Higgs, eyebrows furrowed into a tight glare as she shook her head like a parent disappointed in a child.

“I’m not like you Higgs. I don’t take the easy way out. Regardless of the things you’ve done to me and the others you killed, you don’t deserve my wrath. You lost and if you want to escape the Beach, do it yourself. I will play no part in your life any longer, and you will no longer play a part in mine. If I were you, I’d hate living with myself.” That was all she said before teleporting herself away from the Beach, leaving Higgs alone with his thoughts and the realization he had no more power. Amelie no longer shared her strength with him. She had turned on Higgs, built him up as this great harbinger of destruction only to tear it down and leave him a weakling.

Higgs didn’t hesitate taking the gun and aiming it at his heart, shooting it directly. The pain was brief, and a rush of blood clouded his eyes as Higgs accepted death and welcomed it with open arms, however he wasn’t greeted by a void or rest. Amelie was staring right at him, he was back on the shore of the Beach but floated over his body. Surprised and confused, Amelie reached out and touched his forehead without saying a word, only giving a smile as Higgs woke up back into the world of the living, wounds and all from his fight with Sam healed and with the gun Fragile left. He felt rain for the first time without the Timefall, opening his parched mouth to take in whatever his tongue could catch as he laughed, then fell to his knees crying. His fists hitting the ground over and over until he tumbled from exhaustion.

Higgs sighed pushing back the memories, eating the last piece of bread he kept near the back of the fridge. Today he was going to have to make a supply run, knowing he was reaching his limit. Things would be so much easier if he could request a porter to come out and drop off food at his terminal, but given his predicament, Higgs couldn’t risk being found to be alive. With how strong the UCA had gotten, and with Homo Demens under new management and seeing him as a traitor to the cause now, he had to rely on himself. Joining a colony was not a choice either since he had notoriety. They’d turn him in to the Inquisitors, the UCA’s police and defense team, just as soon as they’d see his face. Living the life of a loner wasn’t so bad however. Higgs enjoyed his own company, finding entertainment in the little things and finding peace in the fact he didn’t have to take orders from anyone. The only shitty thing was having to get everything himself. Higgs had to remind himself that if he could do it before when he was living with his daddy, he could do it again. He was always a survivor, regardless of whatever death wish he carried.

It wasn’t always this easy, living life like this. At first when the BTs and Timefall disappeared, Higgs fell into a depression of sorts. He was ready to die. He had no hope, and Amelie and her being the Extinction Entity is what drove him and gave Higgs a new goal in life, now it had been snatched away. What was the point in living on when humanity was going to dry out and die off anyway within a couple thousand years? What was the point in him as a person living when the life expectancy was short in the UCA? What was the point of living in a world with no critters besides humans and their need to cling onto the past and false hope, the very mess that got them into this extinction predicament in the first place? Massive extinctions had happened five times within the earth's history. Higgs didn’t need to be a scientist to realize it was only natural, a cycle, and humanity was just denying the inevitable. He blamed it on the Western notions of their fear of death, thanatophobia. The original United States was filled with people that did whatever necessary to escape it, even going so far as to destroy their own environment to achieve some sort of immortality at the expense of others. He hated them for it. Maybe if the people back then had accepted the cycle, maybe he never would have ended up losing his parents. Maybe his uncle wouldn’t have become his daddy and raised him. Maybe he could have had a normal life. Hell, maybe he wouldn’t have been so suckered into Amelie’s desire to fulfill the Last Stranding.

Higgs shook his head, downing an energy drink after finishing off the last crumbs of bread. Here he was being a hypocrite living in the past. He was always a forward thinker, but the past has come back to haunt him in the form of DOOM’s withdrawal. This was the sixth one Higgs had in the month, which was better than how it had been at the start. He recalled going almost two weeks without sleep because of how horrible the pain and dreams were, having to use tranqs among other things to knock himself out. It was getting better, slowly.

“I better get this bullshit over with,” Higgs said to himself as he walked back to his sleeping quarters and prepared himself to go outside in order to gather supplies. Briefly, he glanced at his signature black and gold cloak. The one that emulated the crowns of the pharaohs of ancient Egypt. He missed wearing the thing, but settled for the black one that had blue coding on the shoulders. Higgs customized it further once upon a time, designing several eyes of Horus on the interior. Higgs wasn’t a religious man by any means, but in a way he was spiritual and the Egyptian myths and symbols gave some form of comfort. He didn’t feel right without at least having something akin to it on his person.

He took some of his old porter gear with him that way stocking up would be easy if he hit a jackpot supply wise. Higgs had gotten good at stealing from MULE’s since they began congregating together in the West. He was able to get a hold of one of a kind items and food that lasted a long while, mostly genetically modified fruit and such that could withstand the new environment created by the BTs and Timefall. Higgs missed having pizza whenever he pleased, but it was a commodity he couldn’t afford to have without getting the assistance of a porter.

Venturing outside and away from the terminal, Higgs didn’t take his time to admire the sunrise becoming more prominent in his neck of the woods. He quickly went to work, walking around for thirty minutes while glancing at plants and pieces of scraps left behind by MULE’s and porters alike. Occasionally he’d bend down, examining things and either tossing them into a pouch connected to his belt or would pelt them over his shoulder. Being a loner for the last three years, Higgs learned what scraps were useful for building things and which ones couldn’t be bothered with. He was amazed at how quickly he picked up on the skill, then again once upon a time, he had his own porter company; so it wasn’t too far fetched.

About five hours into his run, and Higgs spotted a pack of MULE’s near the valley floor, heading towards the rough patch of terrain filled with rocks that marked the start of the East. He carefully watched them from the cliff above he was on, observing their movements and how far they were staying together. If he timed things right, he could easily sneak down and gather whatever goods they had and make a beeline for his shelter. The plan was nearly foolproof. Higgs had done this dozens of times now, and he could feel confidence radiating as he took a long strand of rope off his belt and began to find a spot where he could attach it and climb down.

Upon reaching the valley floor, Higgs immediately had to duck into the long grass nearby. About a hundred feet away, he saw that the MULE’s were not alone, but had company. Homo Demens. He grit his teeth as his brows furrowed into a glare thinking about them. Once upon a time, they were his allies and subordinates, now they were an enemy just as much as Higgs was one to Sam Bridges. Higgs couldn’t believe it, seeing that the group had fallen so far as to work with MULE’s to get their dirty work taken care of. When he was in charge, they wouldn’t have done no such thing. He blamed Deeter for this, one of his comrades that rose up in rank when the group found Higgs and realized he was powerless.

“Did you pack rats get the cargo Deeter asked for?” One of the Homo Demens members asked, sounding out of breath but very much irritable.

“Yes, but it wasn’t easy. I hope your leader keeps his end of the bargain and keeps sending more porters our way. We’re running thin out here.” The Mule said begrudging.

“Yeah, yeah, he’s working on it. The man is busy, but don’t worry. Unlike our predecessor, Deeter always keeps his promises, especially those that show their loyalty.”

Higgs couldn’t see too well in the foggy atmosphere, but made out a rather large container that was being handed off to the group. He couldn’t be sure, but it looked like one specifically made for transporting bombs and the like. Before he could observe the exchange further, he heard something coming from his right. Rocks began to tumble down the huge wall of the cliff he cascaded down earlier. He cautiously looked up, seeing that something was there, but hiding. Quickly, he turned his attention back towards the MULE’s and his ex comrades, seeing they too picked up on the sound.

“Probably an animal. We are getting more deer coming back into the area.” One of the MULE’S offered as an explanation, only to be interjected by the odd gesturing of another.

“No, my scanner picked up on something. Someone is out there.”

Higgs double checked himself, he for sure knew that he didn’t bring any gadgetry on his trip so as not to be seen or picked up on in case MULE’s or what have you had tech to detect intruders and porters alike. No, this had to be coming from whoever knocked down the rocks, and whoever sounded the alarm was gonna get them both killed.

“Search the area, kill whoever or whatever it might be.” One of the Homo Demen’s commanded as both groups dispersed, partnering up and expanding outward with their weapons and such at the ready. Higgs wasted no time, he concentrated hard, closing his eyes as he managed to tap into whatever little power he had left from Amelie, and teleported himself back to the top of the cliff he was on. Panting, Higgs bent down to get the rope back and then began his search for whoever the intruder was. He had to get them to turn off their tech otherwise they’d be a sitting duck and screw over Higgs supply run. No doubt it had to be a porter, probably a newbie; at least that was Higgs assumption on the matter as he scaled and jumped from rock to rock, climbing on the occasion.

Eventually, he found his target. As soon as he saw the human shape, he jumped down and quickly his hand went for the top part of the cuff link he saw and he turned the machine off. The persons face peered up at him and he quickly shushed them before looking back over the boulder they were hiding behind. Higgs could see that the MULE’s were having a hard time picking up on the location now, and had stopped to mess with their equipment to see if things were faulty. His focus went back to the porter, and before getting ready to patronize the damn idiot, Higgs took a moment to observe who this person was.

Higgs hadn’t had any contact in a long time, and seeing the short haired woman before him made Higgs smile despite the fact she was giving him daggers. He could see the outline of Brisk HARPY on her shoulder. She couldn’t have been maybe a few years younger than himself. Her eyes were pretty, Higgs noted to himself before he snapped out of it, focusing once more on the fact they were sitting ducks.

“Honey, keep that thing off or you’re gonna get us both killed.” He said in a gentle drawl as to not scare her off, then peered over the boulder again. The MULE’s were still trying to figure out what was going on, and Higgs plus the delivery girl needed to get a move on while they were still distracted.

“If you want to live to see another day, you’re gonna have to follow me darlin’.” Higgs said in a whisper as he gestured for her to go, but the gal shook her head causing Higgs to raise an eyebrow at her suspiciously.

“I can’t move quick enough. My foot--the shoe broke, rock went inside.” She said worriedly as Higgs looked down while the gal lifted her leg up and showed him the deep gash that was at the bottom of her left foot. It was bleeding through the bandages she had patched on, and he could see a trail of blood left behind. No doubt if the MULE’s didn’t pick up on that soon, his old gang would. Higgs made a face, wincing a little as he tisked at her while shaking his head.

“Yeah, that doesn’t look good at all honey.”

“I don’t need you to tell me that!” Her voice rose, and Higgs quickly placed the palm of his hand over her mouth and shushed her.

“Keep your voice down. They’ll kill you if they find you. I heard them. They aren’t after whatever cargo you might have, they want you dead. If we work together, we can get out of here in one piece and you can go back to your route.” Higgs offered as he observed the gal once more while taking his hand away from her mouth. He smirked a little, seeing that she had a lot of spunk for a porter, something that reminded Higgs of himself once upon a time when he was doing deliveries.

“How do I know you’re not one of them?” She asked cautiously as Higgs snorted and chuckled. Go figure she would be hesitant. It was only natural for a porter in her position to be. Higgs shook his head.

“Trust me hon, if I were with them you’d already be dead. Look, we’re wasting too much time. We got a five minute window to get the hell out of dodge before their radar picks up on your cufflink, you’re wounded so you don’t have much choice but to come with me.”

“You could just leave me and save yourself. You seem capable, so why the hell do you want to help?”

Higgs’s head tilted playfully as he rested a hand on her shoulder, giving a pat before she shrugged him off.

“You’re jeopardizing my supply run being here. The sooner I get you out, the sooner I can get what I need and go home.” Higgs said.

“Could just kill me and get it over with. Most of you loners do that.” The porter retorted.

“Now hon, where would the fun be in that? Besides if I left your corpse stranded on this here cliffside, they’d know I’m here too. That’s not very smart if you ask me.” Higgs countered as the porter gal peered over the boulder quickly before looking back at him, giving a nod.

“Fine. What do you purpose I do?” She asked, her tone sounding defeated as Higgs smiled briefly before his gaze turned serious, he began to kneel down further to the point where he was below eye level.

“Get on my back, don’t worry. I can carry you.” Higgs said softly as he kept his eyes on her, his gaze neutral as he could see she was calculating her options before limping towards him, slinging her body onto him. Higgs grunted, shifting her around a bit before he slowly rose to his feet. Luckily for them, the fog was still obscuring the area so the Homo Demens and MULE’s couldn’t see them for now. Once settled, Higgs had her swing her arms over his shoulders and around his neck so she could hang on while his hands went down to her legs around his waist and gripped them to help keep her steady against his body.

“What’s your name?” Higgs asked quietly.

“Gene.” The gal said tiredly as he nodded.

“Well Gene, this is gonna be rough so bare with me’.”

#death stranding #higgs monaghan #higgs x oc #its got higgs in it you thirsty bitches!#fanfiction #fanfic #deathstranding #if you want me to tag you in these hit me up

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backstreets · 5 years ago

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Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”: My favourite lines and passages.

And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

Hoping to cease not till death.

I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard, Nature without check with original energy.

My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs

Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth much? Have you practis’d so long to learn to read? Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,) You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books, You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.

Urge and urge and urge, Always the procreant urge of the world.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is Me, Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns, Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me, Not asking the sky to come down to my good will, Scattering it freely forever.

I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise, Regardless of others, ever regardful of others

Vivas to those who have fail’d!

I know I am august, I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood

I exist as I am, that is enough

One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is myself

I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul, The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are with me, The first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I translate into a new tongue.

Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sun-rise would kill me, If I could not now and always send sun-rise out of me.

My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach, With the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds and volumes of worlds.

Speech is the twin of my vision, it is unequal to measure itself, It provokes me forever, it says sarcastically, Walt you contain enough, why don’t you let it out then?

I am given up by traitors, I talk wildly, I have lost my wits, I and nobody else am the greatest traitor, I went myself first to the headland, my own hands carried me there.

All truths wait in all things

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars

I understand the large hearts of heroes, The courage of present times and all times

I am the man, I suffer’d, I was there

I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.

The clock indicates the moment—but what does eternity indicate?

I am an acme of things accomplish’d, and I an encloser of things to be.

Why should I wish to see God better than this day? I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then, In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass

The past and present wilt—I have fill’d them, emptied them, And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.

Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.

#walt whitman #words #long post #been meaning to reread forever!!!!

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libidomechanica · 2 years ago

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Untitled Poem # 8680

A rispetto sequence

The accents of the corner wheeling back and his brutal man is! Still to let the load on her bright be so! Tell met—flower! They only sayings down, was sixty forever, I’ll say: but hear aye birds: please, his return out they contact; and straggled, swore, this late i have comes back’d, and of joking. Now scorn the creamy curd, suddenly transmitted, now, as who need of it?

And in tight-rooted, for his to live, where-through life’s desire; crossed by mistake, my courage early days: she seem’d her some slight and rave, but straight I have you look behind, not angry! And carnations were to your cheating he stops, statue set at which is the fair eyes can mimic not heart with the means to think it filled her bosom rose-bloom renew’d. The leave it in an hour.

This separates in one bloodhound rose-or myrtle- tree, and whisper its lights one their moss. Kings right: her small, save the more the great sensation; for the Tenement of satisfactions under a cannot rest—i’ve no others in the choir shall we saw the Lady Psyche, and yet she conceal’d, he said Baba, to stir, there there’s as well fence his aboad: but cherish!

Wo to myself from the eye no, no, no, no, no, my Deare, let be, as it else, no vagrant the marine clothyng forth to plante of Nature were all Cupid’s golden palace stood. How much honor, what traitor could say and hill inspired, and oak leave me her second rape, for fresh leave you but heard no more that he sun and in the higher that due to Will. Long since my head.

Belovëd, thou will forth in their breath from mortal thine eies, that their refulgent prime of day. With loud hear; your sorrow was, watched and at an all my life to till? Seen from trees and hides the flame things that were sleeping to ravel the vital air; death alone. It’s … well, all turn’d before. And downe-right of this refus’d, gods holy word to God’s work boots. But forth in Lethe, neither clothes.

His poor of the night I saw the bed-side, lads! The fair; while perpetual day, and a wond’rous care, and Iphigene once grown, the fit to where unfolded to this limbs have clotted. Thou were it an oath. With the man, expressed. Hid in higher heart in a cloud of art at all; if Eve did him going about their due Hence Cupids art; to significance on St.

—They bestows, the flowers of May, and lost just man; which thou hast thou yet awhile, entoil’d in vain innumerable of one another’s fate now ginnes the riddle-book, at which fair from the Elves and bursting that make known, by praised by light renewed, the world. ’ The cliffs of the with woe, vpon so faire leuelde againe, as girls do, any mercy: yet dripping oar, and bones of it?

Now hear behind loud till it was wont to ashes on a bitter what come square again and wearied love unfit, that tender voices mixed with busy bee the rank smells like two doves with light to be best in the brag o’ the fair. If thou dares not distant view his head like grass after scoop. By seeing, I leuell in an April shroud; their tranced, chafes at home I have fill’d soil.

The brag thou deny’st me but kiss, and plum, and bunch he of man or goodness an impious pride another shine and pleas are warmer; but of a weeping more Or hadst thou owest; nor whose shapes of our nerveless desire, distinguish of woe? Compared will have my sheepe with tears, and for all the could love, my funny kin, as your thorny soile to the walls of jet.

When, like thou lamentable of beauty that ye have, life’s offer in the field, and lets no atom glows, to make up a man who doth first. In darkness? The bridal within an April shroud; the holly unexpecting sense of a hundred swell of deep recesses grew faint eyes to blames her name way we belongs to love’s gained, the burden of a weeping dross the world will.

Where balm and pleas are all minded, quoth the dusky parts, stops, startled into man. But still, you say. Pine. Live! Your mourning rose; but a moan? With loue they stands his hat, the difficulty smooth- sculptured our earth, and made bare truth to shine own praise of all inheritors or spectacled shore, was upward blow, the pebbled she turnèd up his eye in deaths wound and a brothers of life.

And pleasant springs he is at rested than that their head with increased, dissembling her, when soft amethyst, lifts a young virgins’ kisses of its in sea-weed, Which was its earth, with that vow, when otherwise twenty, youth’s a sting’s plastic- gloved you, the dawn of day by love’s fev’rous care formed. Holding a fist this autumnal Nightfall break my heart how cunning through ashes cold.

Your living watch the earth is none saw not: her dream he melodious hours of Rhodes is supernovas, and weep; is it from a recurrent of an immortal man and beautiful as the charge, in the dish of which fair, and have love-salute was intended. An early days: which choked in ashes should say, mine own in other sadden’d round the corse beneath her husband!

The mass may be, that doth transform’d to chew their lot the key. So, all out, try at their heart submit, To Phoebus was round quickening each mass may breast. Wilds Ierne sent to masculine and blown sleep in lap of offal in the prisoner sent; in when they, like a things served your Pasimond, the kind, the spite of Nature made, obliged by a garret wind like Ormisda called to use.

And how the Medici have gives off noise is come forth. Stay yet awhile, I’ve been blest thicke, as my painted all, the fire out to hear, or infection, having sun should’st to die, heartbeat to me alone. Than forth, love is just abuse me, love. Love, like a blast, and let their caps; you are sleeping shepherded with chosen fringe upon a summer shar’d its moving for Lebanon.

And bones, two bits of the best in sports refuse. And cannot recapture is Madeline, to Fame’s servest along the captive Cymon ploughs the mall selling course untrimm’d; but fair no longed to say thee, to Fame’s service to brother in you reach true life were by the day complexion dimm’d; and dumb orat’ries, noise is gone fierce the weakeness, as well finish my day.

Her e’en, sae bonie and Sorrow fraught from bedde. As much he durst he darling breasts. The nuptial day and he is felt th’ unwilling day; when sweet their own with disturbing shadows sits as dew of kirtles when it hath found the ancient Beadsman’s fit for her own ear against a rocky shore; they survey; and I turn over: yeah, I know about whose pale, lattic’d, chill, and name!

Old tis nourished. I have fled, or find while these stone, and adorn’d and men shack. Since she cannot launch. Whatever heed: the gray beginning. First see, so sweet bird; like deer. Its last cloud in surprise, victors of and at the flaw-blown sleet: Thy extremes, but thou be a bud again. Go: and ye forests, cease the guard they desire. Hands though! Whose same, while Cymon soon will not endure.

And she loved you had sounds, the last, at glaring wound. The portal thoughtful skill, the his equal fire, while than I, belike; however, then, church a pretty sure them where, in a wide bottom of yours, Cassandra mine. For yet in his heard thing, the world with Beauty in Love’s fine style me so. Why linger as love before a great light is a dying. Compute thought I was a tomb.

Yet wait the timbrels, and bunch he of my sweat. The hour warmed jewel in the little dance now nighest face, nor carrion Crowes had sound, Thy hope to approach. It takes decay, and Sorrow mind and Love, in the shrubs, with that glitters the sum could defenceless woe till curse or heaven, with darts a distant view: in vain; for Which is you with his come what is past: that’s more.

Or when day revealed, when thy Son lay, pierce the favored his beauty of your cheek. To go with tears, and runs not much refined, the warm serge and grasp’d it; of their spite but in her bones: mought me: I’m a beaten hound, he show he him any more. Smiles today, to-morrow fraught it little kiss, sharp sleet: pass, till wink and fixed to our memory, doth the fooleries you that the fair.

From that, in Heaven with bowe and Fletcher, swans to times in this lady’s eye in delight clips, it flushing rose, if I’ve been array after the Eight a rainy more: it only what you say—the stern, and smil’d! ’Er wilful grief, and piteous brides. You and I think I speak, whimp’ring your warmer; but live oaks, shoreliness his ravished manned expecting so, she hurried back.

To the timbrels, and to know the fair to smoke. Round with his crosswise, weak defend there, She took, to speak, she cries. Or I will be mine, where yet live, long day, and wait these love, ye wrack my love of Julia goes, the vanquished his dark undercurrent dream, then she to what he shapes, and smil’d through camps and hit me running if an openness of the song of things belongs to love you.

I turn him not at all with his own that you gained. Myrrh, and breast to fall: Oh leaves are blue affrayed eyes, cold fired, he long as fire which a new bird stirring nations, Not all baser thing through desolation I thine own self and veiling. An awful eyes looked at the bed-side, when my hands; the fled away in earnest snatched limbs, so late I noticed, now, your hand with both drink.

And, as they contract then with stone, so faire hand, as if we should closes everything in one of us. The little start back. And Joy, whose hath mortal curtain grief with such delight, and think they’d have our heart’s core, and our daunce.—None. Who dares not angry! Resort O gently hent, and clear the future but she hath of shame on, and life’s dear. Listening the coming a desire.

More the Medici have gives the tempests play. The Gods dearest instrumental statue set flowers alone, nor dares she panted moan only hast seem’d to Time, and greenish all the porch, windchime in safety land, she stars, thus with fitting not prevent, studied quicken. Of all them talk—he picks my pain; whose gentlest of fortune was pre-engage all the brutal man is!

All too surely Adam can never more! The mountain stakes decades to pleas’d to the Hands of the first, and Winter is less he came; she sleepy vigour of lights! Now tell thy dew to lay thereby by choice the girl. The Power Whence cannot die a tables fall a sleepy meads; where we are little smoke occupies me. Brimming he doth find the tints of life, of love here, lo!

Yes, if you give him sight, whose for a season? To find through the eye saith. And upon it. Whom fair face under you went aboard. Beyond all the magistrate. Hark how the show their heart on fast as the simple that will tell, blest, burning sweet self destroies. And died apples while they blew out of a ruin’d brow, feeds on mankind. And piteous eye in deede I do these secure, like deer.

At sixteen you reached across material sound. See if you may be eclipse. Of limbo I keep still, That night can everywhere as this cruel fair: urg’d with precision found, dark stair, wi’ purpled them three, I would never faith the relations howling woe is made, the talks o’ rank smells like spring and right: long mute, turning like Ormisda stood, and those transfix the forecast.

Smallish female with grace and lo, it is there, that, selfe his fire for naebody; i’ll kiss the walls, and Winter comes to know, i’m half behind his own the marble; and white, and so warmth he durst displace, it was well seru’d that had brooded, and see thou shalt—as now. Stirring again undone, possess’d, we faint eyes to see what he is near your self the taper as I am?

And keep your gifts to their head moving of the weary road, yet the greene, let be flatter’d mountains, Never on the garden, care.—For the seas, supperless that had robbed us so, thus he distinguish, thrown; each change, although I never gave consent, the Courtesies of toil all the doors being crown’d Arab’s lip was for all but those transform’d to quell, and saint: a phantasies.

And to make this bleed. Resolved on the inmost veil of Heaven’s light of delight and lets drop his body and mountains, and retossed by me. More soules health is note, came a Seventh a Moon—the wood, but nought for valour and this closet, of such as are not how to pleasure which knows what within our loss in life since his own like, and runs not wherewith a corner wheel?

Now, for she frees; and here among the will fling that is thine: for Winter issue bears. The amorous birds in bushes too crowded and the shore; known land vibrated, all the many a door upon him, he was most musical of mourn when the melancholy Mother, as I am? With an equals he stood, nor then the door, she panted by her face: yts time to pray.

I want to deface Though it was only has he cannot that I work, the perfect all the view to splendid angel pure and liquid restless be, for let the hills of barren ground. And fine, her palsied hands, together. If you cannot live, thought by thy odour window my rage, nor shall whisperers increas’d; for all thine eies, that now approached; if force, his face, yonder what?

Not, wound of mine own way backwoods days long as yet a porter at his Feet, she saw the Maker’s is that drop in forgive, if thou that you cannot blot on love’s isle the city’s edges, a heron. With shaded wassaillers wide—be sure, where livelier emerald twinkles in one flea is yours, Cassandra was the witch’s life of mist while one, another, and Love is dead!

We passionless; all mortal lair, or I will, in dark process, a priest, though infinite numbers such a stedfast she nuh see who rather alone. We passion of worth with love, who, radiance of fortune for from the Maker’s image one theirs of mist which is the last the two doves with hair unbound, his rival chance could shine, I shoulder. Where I’ll she still, you might to speaks out.

Like to grace; so ample pleased: but sought to what thou hast thou teachest how thy courage to second stopped upon the heads shake thou art! Out went, a sweeping clay. Bow and when her trie, by reason her life, climbing their camp of the sweet; then ply the Prior and with equals, free from a recurrent woe that the man and rest, which is possible to playe, I can see, being blow.

With fears; and there did glow. Though but it is St. By chance spear? You unders to a safe enough; here upon its second times of thought, with his name, and know about thy courage early days I withdrawn from me, after the weakeness, and plump. What’s it all! And feared of all; who neither willows, the bench behind. The coverlet, and in thin a day, fair face I recognize?

A beast and down I went an Angel came: he loves itself to the tints of a fancy. Me with loue be infected spouse, with vague, the green access of shriek out forth, that, yield withstood with honey’d middle the bridegroom thought, without one phiz of your mourn not be undercurrent of thou least, where, by conquered prey, or death of globe the revolving you, drink and so wight, despair.

The Prior: when you do like with instrumental sound their thought its crescent the kind, above, whom thy dew to lay the doors being crown the gleam; afar the only gleaned. Why can’t stop with woe, after there or loss of toil and countries, shew like too late her breath no rude infidel. Now everything therewith dear Love’s jealousy, how he fled; and weep; is it is a tomb!

The land, with sport; Wake the to Rhodians for its pipe given in ease, more fierce, and would remove, ye wrack my love’s gate. All tongue but live, and even to dust. So much deep and decay, and delicious kind, than he no firebrand to testified,—take breast, from bedde. And let him whose they are grateful objects to cultivate his scythe I loved thirst constrains of loneliness, in soul.

And night I have outgrown came at all. Attracts to cry; for admonition first not love you catches the thou thus he thunder, to that tear sometimes, I can’t a painter rude! The crew to land: yet still, you and I turn my bonie laddie’s younglings, as if it had never could moveless garden and deepest hell, that matter part of the shall cling throng to ravel theatre.

Why show you are far off I bear my fall sorrow; sad Urania: her how, upon a pastoral slope as fair, and the ground. The grass, a purer sapphire heap’d with aged man and over they punished heart can mend; all my proper twist for she wakeful and grown the one word spoke the learned, he seemed, but as iced stream immers’d, filling bay was fill of deep anew!

Dumb; for having way. And whisper’d from me, after hands; who need of all, to whom near they gave, life’s flash’d to be up tomorrow? And satiate her love. I starves in her lying conqueror’s banner nor durst distinguishing th’ unkind breath. It muddies our archways, but lov’d in sort of woman; and as he fell arrest with dear love, whose petals nipp’d before and change.

Feign we no more the Cretans own love and men shall we cannot pain, when I cast to time. Blessed; more like to have doth hence! Feign we no more in this scythe, does his own liking birds perch’d my head of her died on a cheat. Roses crown, a judge erected to shines, by chance to see,—before it not endure in the doors ajar? Fierce the deep to climb, girt round and feeble, and the eye.

Your hands, together or no, for now art! But night, if in my proper twist had lov’d in darkness must do: for yet to light. Eyes that what worst of dim emblazonings, this stiff to defend the lofty thought, or on this and notions howl and brought it this line some face I go: and a wond’rous riddle they punish all the Beadsman’s song a close as whott as fyre, the daughter’s hats.

Drift of the sleepy meads; where Venus keeping friend for me, and kings. Yet where he spoke, he fell and sweeting; journeys end in love, my son! Oh, the perish’d; otherwhere: she sits as dew of roses crowd—your Pasimond and gums. What is to pray. We’ll be as before: from her safe; your poets their heart of me? On Earth, when other places were it all; if Eve did this, alas!

And fair fallen to Pindar; and hours which here hide and win perhaps too crowd pursues you condemne to foreign spouse away, my soul to Cymon, here footless fates, in her breath, bleed away love concern: if snake, my selfe his ears, or forward, but for us all! Decay his ears, at length, or find the tiger-moth’s deep upon her icy breast: so longer give that I so dear.

The lepped light learned: to burn and every sweet grace with you might have doth my blush’d over more! The flowering in this net? In the air would move or a shelter fountains, the other pleas’d with pains without dislike or this this one breathless fair the golden frog wades; and saw but soone it sore encreased. The first not be matcheth not so freeze, young, but would he blest the Gate!

And if that sets us praising his frosted breathless; that should forgive, and flattery! And me: I’m a beaten hound, and the crowd pursues, wide-eyed and his brothers of gathered in this spread of death At length burden of butter, I am sad astrology, the feast prayed her earth can joined by the shine, by now; I’ve watched and by proofs with complexities of life, wilt thou!

Your Pleasures for its light urge the rosy temple’s worship has paid his Demon all that, should she sigh’d for want to come, and his frantic pain. More was, alas! Where are her moonlight foot, go a double eyelids art; to sighing folk’s face I recognize her bosom to think on, it’s a fire, of laws. Might unto those engine refuse your Pasimond, they stars which dull Time Cruel!

What with fears, and cheer; the world, who lost just man; which is possible to take breast, when thy sour leisure, blinds. By man and in song These delight leave you canst not us Women became many flowers, and murmur, between what by love you are for his fingers that thine eyes lifting the foe: or strike you, who in the well-proportion join together petty grief would be so!

It was the brides are awa’ that grows late struck by that grasp’d like two of your living her clotted. Of starre. Person fair, but she grew. The nursling offended; I hate you are from a lucid urn off his descending on the right badge is bent my deeds; then unto dancing follows wild distrust she seem’d her hands clasp’d his parch’d through the dust of worthy heart is summer shall stay.

Let their happier the Eternity, and sic a lassie by him? They seemed, not sent before was as if John there alone, and put the curtain zest to be dried before. Thy pale floor. Where came, into a great expect, as onely too many a woe, for the dead leave to die, or convent, she panted, as the field, and they punched each ephemerald twinkles it all!

Numb were never make a beast alone. Unprepared and bent of you with loud groan for this, how her; but the offerd, Strength burst whose rude shaft dark and short, and oak leaves, when it had hair clip, and reproduce her likeliest to the subject; and half-hidden, propounded to her knees: to ventures choycest tree; or seek my love my grave among her, why fear? Half-stripped for naebody!

Although he no firebrand torturing taketh me! And from the slave it soup? The thinking about this wish I could not confessing our daunce. Not fails to thee. Was they hold them of the green. But our cheek and wrong has gone. Or reach’d through desolate rockfields and novice in slumber, silken Samarcand torture not alone. Yea having lope to go, vntill bloudy trophies hung.

To languid moonshine accent and looking the fun hard by Satans subtill Serpent through, and my blunter grows late is thistles sowed! Fleece I shear of all the melodious hours was round arms they know, i’m half before than the upper crimes enjoys before the valiant overthrew; cheap conquest, when heart revive; inspired, devoid of God, that sometimes are not vex, with love.

I tell that spurn the twilight Phantasies; mid look out? And spare the smallish female with veiled eyes, my funny kin, as this sire indulged his backup: crow, please let me not! The solve thee that mine eyes lifting go the people from the crown’d all the woodbine began retreat the air; death her moor and the motionless ennui surrounding, breathed rite If it be poison—oh!

Soaring enterpret God to a tree. Thou art at all smile, overjoyed: Do thought, Her fall in you had set, But now beams awake no more, already were only face doth view and lo, it is, thou lamented verses tend than of your betters that grow they labour tost, and a word. Open fired; love taught vpon a pastoral slope of gold and boon; as he weigh, then shooting.

The war begun: the tilt of body and trust the priestly race! The fright of words, which thy father still her maidenhead; then, churls, the day revealed, when he fashion of her flower as long he laboured, harmonized the violets, which, the blue, can’t unlearn how I plot to confess. Over the guard, drag on Love’s the rosy temple of the level matting. Thus warned, the sealed.

Befell about the east, and pampered syllable, or each frozen graceful everything there, by former height; in when my wit. To language starry dew A pardlike Spirit fails to thy door. Where as the still to learn ten minutes slow and fear and a face rose, that traitor could execration, and that strength, ashamed of flowers plucked from heaven lizard, and nothing his den?

Conquered swell of deep upon her beauty grown the balustrade, Soon, up shall wish, betide he took life when a boy starved angels her who think she came. Receive, and sleepeth not seem’d her rave, life’s sacred thine own like her, when that only way, my friend. Through the vanquished dames full on her impel, till gathering through my head grown gray walls, austere, supreme delicates he knew.

There could lay, sham’d by me. I like a spread: sweet angelic slip of art at all the bride. Full of your body’s weight that bottom of your heart was granted by his supernovas, and streams came into the walls a blast thy weeding; yet her who keepeth not, but only for long ago was made the Clover freed his lips for a thought praise devised you recede: the Hour came to?

Of the ravisher profuse locks off my stomach being crown’d with soft Form the air, as though! But the door, the musical of more he is decay, o’er the deathless faire handle to the world—the best displaid. An injure the subject to remove his silent, she wild distress minutes slow degrees, first hunger. Our matched, and uncomplain. For lustie Loue and woe is made the death?

When passion, and the proud archange, unquench love, while thilke same the woodbine began to weare, that matters fast holds john Baptist’s heart, Love, thought, soft splendour nor loss of many hours, like syrens in hopeless eyes the marble flood of sun burned and love which tenacious room goes black, purgatorial still, then sitting charnel-roof! Lifting gales forsake, hung half return’d before abhorred.

That ages, empires and know not thilke same to shine, died: this is my mother now, when our newly drest, her faith the end of a kiss from wicked pit in a circle and rolled like a cup; your lips, more fang’d Martial, and over who knelt, so of meane no more the fields. And shaded was like phantoms, to know their turn off his due; my spirit meet, the bosom to thee, to be!

In depth of night; vibrates where in her, none. And count faire leuell in your eye twinkles its pride, yet men shall paint the sot stood prepared of seeming, but if he wild an entire relations were hide descending blind with Sense and count it three streets eight year, for all her kind; exciting about supernovas, and the fields the little space and the heads cut off! Disarmèd of it.

None like a snail, shall be slave told ye caverns and threw their head, which longed the spirit tenderest by cool and country clowns repair, but if they known, somewhat unusual heats are all the Courtesies of Proserpine; had her in his pains—which leads, o’er craggy mountain round so entrance perceav’d, no hurt apples cast, deprived of it. No light, night her not die; and oil besmear’d.

Lifts a youth withstood, and wishest, said her tail quicksilver, she close, He will bloomin’ and she slept. Out went on what he should be thou dost love possess and beneath. Sweeping shut, and the pearl the cause, startled her close infamy is not so free. Whose famed for fear, sorrow; sad Urania; whose rude militia swarms to the Heaven with aged crone The house past the frosted breasts.

Fly, fly, my son! Evening sweetest of war, each other sex is foiled. The merry, what he is for knee socks, what by thee, in the promptings of love, and at the sun delight, His head live oaks, shore. So many, and breast. Cried ’Tis ask a broad afar with their tents. And the fence are all death, if thy kind means hope, and change; and as he caress within our Peeretree haunted.—Well-a-day!

Warmth of a heart with his face. When I tune myself, and grammar, vowel sounds daily more a Pasty than all his crown a manned expectation of the ground-worms withdrew from silken friends remains the frost which was, to do our cheeks thee, I adore that was a sword decided, and Fays, in sorrow, is the laws: both parch the iron skies are slight rose and spare, while she start back.

The visions and beasts and stray, that’s sure to free. There their sphere, nor other. The slave to look back the dew, or I will forget the last, it sinks, how gay is younger, why shrink and murmur, between the offend, there shadow at the needs her warmed with thing, there behold their renewed, the lark’s wild warbled lay, was upward eyes grew faintly care to plead for not be sad for nothing ruth.

Melancholy Mother like phantoms, to lead him, in close and large, althoughts, which turns eyes of that poortith a’ I could redress he cheeks, and had not fresh leaves the rising he lay; it sinks, how little start of a kiss the full point with shown. Or in sportive ladies like shatter’d mountain round and sense first his face, or judge erected success: the Hour case his shame with my day.

Of thee thither, whom your place on Earth’s shadowing to save for, but dares of birth require of the world will I touch, kiss—in soothed. Hat, and the news rarely make ready! Were long nights thy love you eyeing me disguise of all thirst; of painted attones, two bits of the news tonight: and lets the means that grow the maintained brides. I do not light. Fury, or no—may the world.

Autumnal Nightfall break from this sire and gall. For, had I will cut strain, as when my wife, impatient, holy and pleased; and awe she sight and grammar, vowel soul began: love is like Heaven’s like or sonnet, all mortal man amends for knees, keeps her family of Sighs, they have before thee, my love is death alone, the paired by degrees, first has been others turn my break.

Ah, happy speech t’ engarlands sere, they draw but he’s a corner when remedies the osier- isle we fool of nature’s the mountainsides his song. Me loved, as if it be poison’d, tis we, while though flow’ry meads; where are you gave a little that are all my grave eyes weren ouerwent with happy chang’d Martial, and, even to the minstrels, and feminine which longer bounds.

Heart, how she repays my pulses plague, regardless rose should for all his ashes lay, from the baskets starts; then, folk at church, from silken friend; nor plays he hath found; by love, the violet? Them wich in the ravishers turned the torches vary they meet, a godlike men in a witch’s life. Began to weare, the large, in the years, or for one phiz of you waking about this, alas!

Let be, as loved the temple’s worships with thing, if it means were fixed regard on this bitter parts convent. Time passed. If I have had either work require of Hero and a little part. That it is, that now bites, white radiant insect that ever love you but hasten to receive Dust to shine own praise to remove, and banking there was more, already … I’m beginning.

Let the spirit, unaware: wolf’s-bane, tight, night proclaim the panted moan for Agnes’ charmed maiden cherish no less that now sucks the could pierc’d by thy obscure company! The sound. In depth of sleep: thou prove where are left them ken he’s none said a sin, nor would complaining Love All stormy gulf of despair. The convey, and riseth from his tongue: to Linus, they fawn on the wall.

But standing bare is fled: twas refection know what good made my lips let me steal a taste at first breathe noiseless woe till overborne with an equal fire, that month follow sky, and whose into it myself, the Rhodian crew, and the passeth by; and naught. People have lost. Of praising God invention quite, dulling all to hear them. Where was incline to love taught in her earth.

And clowdie Welkin cleared, to what she speakes for yellow does as shaded with our the ravished he lay, winged reeds, as the magistrate: he was no gift was they makes us cowards would keep thy heart light, from hurry of mi skirt, just man; which veiled eyes this frozen tears and farther to die, but me alone. Then, you’ll tak dunts frae nane, i’ll brings and breast. Who mournful Psyche, nor blame?

The life of the way to paint any one, can touches me many a door shuts again, or that fair breath is a prey, or lead him, but first love much knowst I love and who cannot rinse it would barbarian hordes, or through simulations while one, and the gusty flower amang the scene more they found in the lightning flowers; and thither? Such cherubins as young as fire!

And flower o’ the cock the best instruck—I’m the Gaule is more fierce witty, long night, or raise, he shortest days. Speak thy though infinite numbers he thus adorns with a wide awake against his game. He is at rested to live for virgins might a peerless night to say the praetor bent to play hot cockles, allured by fears, timing without dislike or suspicion.

Nor so fair this, a young Spring, its summer blown before waked her close room goes before the blue, and with trembling, let be, and bursting heart’s gripe! Renewed might limbs complexities rough the facts of purple and well, there, that deaf and violet? Makes our whole words I staid, striuing about the flagging I may never could repenting, but earthly power given before abhorred.

I never was spectacled she speed. Let’s see the year. Lava river of his closed at their moss. That spurn the looks shew him to fragments. Where, like syrens in her necke beneath he denies his dead! But late to second rape, for I am shoveling prey, from the rest; when the roaring wine, and the relation’s hanging fair, but her pair in everlasting way that seeing frown.

Dimpled and riseth from her and doth hence depart! So sad, I shall I descending blow: and other peerless night kept alive with a rude embrace, and look in your glass will we bury one, and life since at Prato, splashed the holly- tree—the Day became at my fire: life, in this, alas! And him in a crescent moon the Courtly care, as when my wife is sleepe would have her.

No excus’d, being crowned for my saints and quiet of fortune for heaven are close into her dear loved out to proue; there hide nought for me, I think he wiped her arms to the night I saw the snake, like too hot them in a fowling well. Delves told, for pity—let me in the nursed the thou prove, the mind their tears nor me in vain, when he fashion. Its center, a superficial.

But their joyous time pass into the light, despairing coal and that alone amid the last: a peach frozen cherish no less he heavens— Old Love like a ghost abandon hopeless cup. For that you affected winges of mine disabled, unprepared as her look; as if to stay. I thinkest to the voices die, here’s Giotto, without once a monumental stone.

The learned so fast, that was vacant, and dance weakens his hold water bathes my window my rage, who am I? Eglantine, which made her dream, I plotted. Like thee hither, where either all, their ships with a cypress he understand the margent remained, he reaped the future blinded alike, both parting first mad without a son, though their moss. And torturing taketh me!

#poetry #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Markov chains #Markov chain length: 6 #108 texts #rispetto sequence

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lizartgurl · 7 years ago

Text

“Back To You” (Aqualad x OC)

Kaldur is bi. Fite me. Allow me to shove a multi-chapter fic of him and my oc in your face because almost no one else seems to want to write about him because it’s “too hard”

Shout-out to @sand-son for your excellent beta-reading input. Comment if you’d like me to tag you in future updates.

PART ONE

Word Count: 2100

The smooth floors of the Watchtower reflected her frown back up at her as her boots thudded rhythmically. Emma couldn’t tell if it was some very well-polished granite, or if it was some alien material from far, far away.

Right now, she'd rather be in a galaxy far, far away than stuck here.

The Reach were defeated. The Lanterns were escorting them to trial on Rimbor, and she wished she’d bullied Bruce into letting her go with them. Like that would have worked out, but it would be better than what she’d faced every day since the summit.

“Emma!” Wally waved super-fast as she walked past the med-wing. Since he helped his uncle and cousin-from-the-future stop the last of the Reach’s chrysalises, his powers were fading in and out, giving him random burst of hyper-speed at some inopportune moments. When his arm wouldn’t stop waving, Artemis grabbed it to steady him. She fell over from his momentum, and they laughed before kissing.

They were so lucky.

Not breaking her stride, Nightingale managed a smile at two of her oldest friends, and waved. She finally arrived at the conference room, far away from prying eyes and ears in the garden, the cafetorium, or the mission room. She squared her shoulders and knocked.

Bruce opened the door.

“Come in, Nightingale.”

Emma nodded, and softly stepped around her mentor, hugging herself nervously.

The four other Leaguers clustered at one spot at the U-shaped table stood up to greet her.

“Thank you for coming, Nightingale,” Canary smiled warmly, setting a few of Emma’s nerves at ease.

“You’re not in trouble, don’t worry,” She joked. Emma almost laughed, taking the empty seat between Batman and Black Canary.

“Then what is this about?” She asked. The others sat down in silence, and Emma tried to do what Bruce did his best to teacher and analyzed what else they could be asking of her.

Black Canary’s day job was a psychologist, and Emma and her other team members were very open with her about their thoughts and problems. Aside from that, she was also the new chairman of the League. Everything went through her now.

The android Red Tornado used to be her team’s “Den Mother”, she got to know him very well while she lived at the cave that was now blown up. He was usually present whenever the League held counsel with team members, as he provided insight that didn’t typically occur to human minds.

Batman, Bruce, was like her father. Even if he wasn’t her mentor, he was almost always included in top-secret meetings. He was Batman.

Between Red Tornado and Black Canary sat Wildcat, her mentor, and a semi-retired superhero who used to work in the Justice Society with Red Tornado, a precursor to the Justice League. Emma wondered if it had anything to do with the JSA, but she only knew Red Tornado, Doctor Fate somewhat, and now Wildcat.

Aquaman, sitting gravely next to Bruce, was what worried her. Aqualad wasn’t present, but if his King was there, it had to be something to do with him.

Bruce saw her bite her lip, and squeezed her shoulder. Dinah took her hand.

“Aquaman and the League have received a few...disturbing messages in the past couple of weeks,” She said carefully.

“And another two since you entered this room,” Red Tornado updated. Wildcat made a grunt that sounded somewhat like a chuckle.

“What kind of messages?” Emma encouraged, though by Canary’s tone, she took it that they weren’t the most pleasant of memos.

“Threats,” Aquaman sad simply.

Emma blew a bit of hair out of her eyes, “I thought we got those all the time. Isn’t that part of the job? Dealing with ‘threats?”

“Ones directed at the League or at the Earth as a whole, yes, but these were directed towards a specific individual,” Batman said.

“One you seem hesitant to state. Is it me?” Nightingale asked.

Batman raised a brow in her direction.

Aquaman activated his personal screen, projecting an image onto the shared screen for all to see.

The image wasn’t best quality. The lighting and blur suggested it was taken deep underwater. Graffiti was marked on the side of a white stone building in dark black that looked red, striking Emma with a sickening similarity to blood. Where did they get that much?

“I-I’m sorry, I can’t read Atlantean,” She apologized to the King of Atlantis. Her stomach churned as she stared down at polished gray table.

Aquaman stood up, bracing himself against the table.

“Well, editing it very mildly, it says ‘Kill the kama traitor’.”

“And kama means...?” They were dancing around it.

“Emma,” Bruce turned her towards him, his voice gravely serious, “They’re threatening Aqualad.”

Emma swallowed that, as Red Tornado silently played a slideshow of similar threats for her illumination. She stopped counting at fifty-seven, holding her head in her hands as she tried to focus on memorizing the grain of the table. This could not be happening.

“It’s about his undercover mission,” Black Canary explained, as if Emma couldn’t guess.

“Contrary to popular belief, I was aware of Kaldur’s plan. Captain Atom was not very pleased to find out when he did, and neither were my people. Many, specifically the purist sect of Atlantis, refuse to believe that is the case.”

“They want to kill him, Emma,” Canary said. That much was obvious.

“We run into people who want to kill us all the time!” Emma snapped. She tried to even her breathing, and Bruce patted her back calmly.

“Nightingale, they have already tried to assassinate him when he returned home to visit his parents.”

Emma’s breath caught in her throat. Sha’lain’a and Calvin were more than willing to die for their son, they had proved that by raising him for the past twenty years. But they shouldn’t have to, Kaldur wouldn’t want them to.

“I assume you’ve already spoken to Aqualad about this?”

“Yes. And he suggested he take a leave of absence.” Canary said. “Depending on whether this cools down or not, he’d return eventually, or completely drop off the map.”

“Because he always has the best ideas,” Emma leaned back in her chair with a sigh that made her resemble a deflating balloon. She realized that wasn’t the most mature move, but she didn’t particularly care at this point.

“I assume he wants to give me lead of the team, since Nightwing was so eager to give up command after this past year?”

Batman and Canary shared a look. “He actually suggested Batgirl.”

Emma was barely surprised. She wasn’t the most capable of leaders, but she was used to everyone just automatically assuming that she was a good leader because she was trained by Batman and was almost joined at the hip with her little brother. She forgot that Kaldur knew her better than that.

“He volunteered to go alone, but we suggested taking backup.”

“Like pretending to kill Artemis so she could go undercover?” Nightingale couldn’t keep the bitter tone out of her voice.

“Yes,” Canary smoothly continued onward as Aquaman looked around awkwardly.

“Except, this time, we believe Artemis and Wally would like to spend more time together, especially after his near-death experience. We’d ask Miss Martian, but she is on probation until she figures out how to get a handle on her powers again, and Superboy is trying to help us help her with that.”

“And Nightwing?” Emma was afraid of the answer.

“Richard is going step back from the team. Take time to ‘find himself as a hero’.” Bruce spoke up at last.

Of course she was the last to know.

“Any other team members?”

“Kaldur’ahm requested this stay with the senior team members. Rocket has her son to raise, and she and Zatanna both have their cities to protect.” Aquaman stood, his arms folded.

“Just like last time,” Emma grit her teeth, squeezing her arm to keep from lashing out.

Canary squeezed her shoulder. “You can say no, Emma.”

She was very tempted to say no.

But something kept her from saying no. She knew Kaldur as well has he knew her, and Kaldur was too selfless for his own good. Someone had to be there to watch his back.

“I’ll need to think on it.” She said.

“How long would you like?” Canary seemed hopeful about that. This was definitely farther than she expected to get.

“How long can you give me?”

“The JSA has a cabin up in Canada, a very remote area,” Wildcat spoke up at last. So that was why he was here, “We wanted to leave tomorrow.”

Emma held back a groan. “Give me an hour then.”

Without waiting for their okay, she stood and turned, leaving her chair spinning as she all but ran for the door. Out in the hall, with no windows to let you know that you were in space at all, she felt like she could finally breathe,

“Emma,” She didn’t look up at Bruce.

“When did Rick resign?” She asked.

“When we asked him to take on this mission. He’d finally made up his mind, and he planned to formally resign when we called him in.”

Emma was still upset that he’d kept that from her. He was keeping a lot from her lately. She knew full well that he wasn’t required to tell her everything, even though they were siblings. A lot of people didn’t seem to trust her these days. Artemis, Wally, Conner, M’gann, Kaldur. She felt left out of the loop with everyone she used to know so well.

“We didn’t want to ask you, Emma,” Bruce insisted.

“Then why did you?”

“You and Kaldur were very close-”

“Until he betrayed everyone and made us think that he’d killed our friend! Artemis is like my sister, and Kaldur knew that. Richard knew that. Why didn’t they tell us?”

“Sometimes secrets have to be kept,” Bruce said, stepping up to her side.

“Yeah, that was exactly what Rick said when he told us about the whole undercover thing. He really is turning out more like you every day,”

Bruce sighed. “That’s what I was afraid of.”

“Emma.”

Before she could think, she spun to face the voice. Her baby brother took off his mask under a look of disapproval from their mentor to talk face-to-face.

“I told Kaldur not to tell you.”

“About what, your little espionage setup?”

“Yes,” Rick said, completely serious, “I didn’t even want to tell Wally about it, if it wasn’t pulling them out of retirement...” He trailed off and shook his head.

“I didn’t know it would take the toll it did.”

“Going undercover at all takes a pretty big toll,” Emma snorted.

“Emma,” Rick interrupted, “He’s sorry. He loves you so much and he’s too nice a guy to tell you.”

Emma scrambled for something to throw back at him. “Well just because he likes me doesn’t mean I like him back!”

Rick’s face deadpanned. “You did for almost six years.”

Emma’s face burned red, and she took a few steps away from the men to think.

“I know you don’t owe him anything, but just let him apologize,” Rick begged.

Aquaman came out of the room next and dashed up the hall, where Kaldur himself came around the corner. Emma tried to avoid looking at him, but she couldn’t help it. He was too wrapped up in talking with his King, anyway.

His dark skin was noticeably paler, illustrating the dark circles beneath his eyes. How long had he been like that?

She had loved him, once. She owed him nothing after all that he did, but Shayera once said that both their hearts were too big for each other, for the world. Emma knew she would feel terrible if something happened to Kaldur that she could have prevented, and she did nothing about it.

She spun on her heel back into the mission room, interrupting Wildcat’s reminiscence with Canary.

“I’ll do it.

“I’ll go with Aqualad.”

The moment she said the words, she knew that Aqualad and his King, along with her brother and her mentor, were watching from the doorway.

Canary smiled in relief. She knew, just as Emma did, that Kaldur would be better off with someone to watch his back.

“Thank you, Nightingale,” She stood up and hugged her tightly.

Wildcat patted her soundly on the back, and pointed to Kaldur, “Now you two kids better get packed. We leave at five am sharp, Eastern Standard Time.”

For the first time in a week, Emma met eyes with Kaldur.

What had she gotten herself into?

#excuse my fricking salt #kaldur'ahm #kaldur #kaldur x oc #lizart writes #young justice fanfiction #back to you #<my tag for this fic on my blog #y'all are amazing thank you #i just want to read a nice kaldur fic is that too much to ask?#apparently yes #my ocs #nightingale #i got secondhand anxiety writing emma here please validate my writing #kaldur imagine #aqualad

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carryforthtradition · 4 years ago

Text

Wrestles with Books by Masha Savitz

Excerpt from magical realism memoir, Fish Eyes For Pearls

I am born into the tribe of Israelites, the Children of Israel, people of the book.  Israel, Yisrael means ‘wrestles with God.’

What does it mean to be dyslexic as one from the people of the book?

I’m one who wrestles with books.

I’m a stranger in a foreign land and although I seem to speak the same language, I don’t understand.

This foreign place is school.

I am a character in my own imagined sequel to Camus’ book that I am assigned to read in high school, but never do.

Why would someone who claims to be an existentialist bother writing a book in the first place?

School is the first box.

People banter around the phrase, ‘Think outside the box.’ I didn’t know there was a box. I don’t know of this common system.

Some of us are born in the box, some are herded in soon after, while others need maps and instruction for finding it and operating within its proximity.

Some of us need this instruction drawn in colourful pictures depicting icons and landmarks associated with related emotional resonance. Some need mathematical equations, precise data with circumference for com- fort. Some prefer nautical, elemental references, including the movement of stars, time of year for bird migration and weather patterns.

Still others need it sung in a lullaby.

How does one enter The Box, and what might the consequences or rewards be for doing so? Can you get back out once you get in, are there emergency exits, public transportation, equal access for all?

Kindergarten is lovely, but all becomes alien thereafter.

I’m not indifferent, just different.

In third grade, I wonder how everyone else knows what to do, when I am so lost. We build a huge Noah’s ark. I make the lions. This, I get.

My father asks about my homework assignments. I don’t know. Why don’t I know there are homework assignments? He is frustrated, loses his temper with me. I feel bad that my smart papa has a dud for a daughter. I burrow deep into myself.

In high school, I sit down to study for a final exam, pulling out the year’s notes, all utterly incomprehensible gibberish, turns me cold and sick inside.

Like the moment we find out that Jack Nicholson, in The Shining, has spent all his time writing a book comprised of just one sentence, ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’, repeated a bazillion times.

That sick feeling.

Frightening- because this looks like the writing of a mad person. I burrow deeper. Never tell anyone.

But as an art major, I get into university. My personal essay and portfolio are strong. In painting class, I come to sense my intelligence.

I feel like NASA, discovering intelligent life, my own.

It has its own way of organizing, perceiving, analysing, it doesn’t live in my mind, no, somewhere deeper.

I will cherish and slowly learn to trust it, defend it, cultivate it, as it cultivates me- moving from the non- verbal languages to the written, expanding into my mind and heart, eyes and hands and into empty space.

At eight years old, I am fascinated with the back cover of a children’s scrapbook that my grandparents buy me. It is decorated with astrological symbols and signs. The written word, now, begins to interest me.

I read my first books in my twenties.

Astrology books allow me to match my own perceptions and knowing with the written words before me, creating a symbiotic relationship between my thoughts and words in reverse, a process which will eventually begin at the written word and lead to comprehension.

For the first time, the written word, this collection of letters and symbols, has a relationship with something I know. A pathway is forged in my mind for associating words with cognitive ideas and thoughts. Though decoding is still arduous, with effort I crack the codes.

My mind doesn’t build files. So, like a computer, if there is no file or system to save it to, bye-bye.

I don’t make this connection until after an entire summer of trying to organize my apartment, I find at the end it is no more organized than the day I started.

I walk around with a photo album or box of chargers and extension cords, trying to figure out where it goes, can’t decide, and pick up another object. Weeks of this make Jack a dull boy.

To support myself through college I get a job teaching at a religious after-school program at a synagogue outside of Boston. But I am ambivalent about being a teacher, since I had loathed school. I feel like a traitor.

There are children and there are grownups. Us and them.

I cannot conceive how it can be that grownups don’t remember how it was to be a child. Do they really forget? How does this happen?

When I am still a child, I wish as hard as I can to imprint this on my soul and mind, instructing my future self never to forget being a child.

This may be in part the reason it is easy for me to connect with children.

I never forgot. And I don’t forget. And some things about teaching become evident:

1. I have the opportunity to make school for others what it never was for me.

2. Whatever I hope to achieve as an artist happens more readily, efficaciously in a classroom.

I can create a small community of joy and expansion, honouring the individual, while working and sharing together as a collective.

I spot all the kids who are drifting away. I see their manoeuvres to keep me off their trail, so that I won’t suspect they do not understand the lesson.

I know where they are, I know how they feel. I know how to bring them back. We expect children to meet us where we are. That is impossible.

Like someone adrift on a raft in the ocean, it’s a search and rescue mission.

We must get into the cold water with a life jacket in hand, because they are scared. They would rather fail from not trying, than fail after trying, because that is too humiliating. They will do what they can to avoid any more bruising. Protecting their fragile ego.

Because I am them, I know how to find them and get them safely back to shore. I won’t let you drown I try to say to them in the silent language of my gaze. Ich und Du, I and thou.

In this space created between us, the atoms that will form pathways, bridges, avenues trails and rails. Seeds yielding life.

While working with children I will often sense the profound field that is created, and the words I and Thou, coined by Vienna born philosopher, Martin Buber.

My first awareness of Buber is in a Jewish Encyclopaedia, where in volume ‘B’, there is in an old photo of Buber from the early 60s. My young father’s face beams out from among all the parade celebrants at the side of the eighty-year-old philosopher!

Without having read his work, I sense that this is in part Buber’s thesis, his foundation. Success lies in the space between. The mutuality. Where, sharing that same space, rapport is experienced. Then, can come communication, where all is possible, a third entity of commonality. The new colour made between two primary colours. The fertile green ground of potentiality created between yellow and blue.

The students, like works of art, require similar skills from me. It will be a dance between my will and their potential- a process of discovery.

My cousin, a child psychologist, connects me with a job to shadow an eight-year-old boy in a private Cambridge elementary school.

W has moved out. This gig should be lucrative and maybe rewarding. I meet Jared, the boy, and his mother for a preliminary interview over coffee.

He is quite a frail little thing, sleepy heavy lids, freckled chipmunk cheeks. He smiles politely, wiggling in his chair with feet dangling a foot from the floor.

I am now part of the second-grade class. The children pet my burgundy velvet full bodysuit. Jared throws blocks across the class at some other children and then runs out of the building. The teacher wants Jared out altogether. His meagre demeanour becomes meaner and meaner as he morphs into a petite terror.

I am given my own little office in hopes that I will occupy him for the school day and keep everyone safe.

Initially, I am told that Jared gets frustrated because he has learning challenges. Squatting on the floor of my office, he sharpens a pencil, and with great fervour, stabs my booted foot repeatedly, a maniacal grin across his face.

‘How is Jared doing? Is he learning his math?’ Asks his quaffed and tailored mother, sitting in my office a few days later in all shades taupe. ‘Well, when we can get past his anger.’ I answer.

‘He’s not angry,’ she replies, placing her hands in her lap.

‘Actually,’ I respond, ‘he is REALLY angry. ‘She smiles and clearing her throat explains, ‘Oh no, he’s just acting angry.’

Jared, though abusive, seems to need me. I’m the only one he has here, the only one who acknowledges that he is angry. But after years of a marriage with anger hurled in my direction at light speed, on the subway platform fresh from work, I hold back tears.

I sceptically purchase a book on energy healing from a local bookstore.

I sit at my kitchen table and read. This all makes perfect sense to me. Traditional therapy only builds a road between the emotional to that of the mental. To contextualize feelings, very important, a start, but ultimately limited. I learn that there are aspects of the self that the self cannot access. This speaks to my floundering stuck state. It seems I should consult someone that has studied with the author. I successfully track down someone in the Boston area.

After reading the book I make an appointment with Perry, an energy healer, I explain my situation...Jared is so angry and W was so angry...and I can’t take anymore anger. They need me, but abuse the one closest.

‘That’s because you are angry.’ Perry explains. ‘I’m not angry.’ I shuffle uneasy in an easy chair. He smiles, ‘No, you’re angry.’

‘Jared is not separate from you,’ he explains, ‘but rather an extension of you, and you need to see him as such, and only then, will you both heal this.’

The next morning, I take Perry’s advice. Jared and I go to the gym, and at the count of three, I instruct, we will hurl ourselves into the mats that are hanging on the wall.

‘One two three.’ We leap into the thick foam rubber blue plastic. SMASH. A shock as our bodies hit the mats.

Release. Laughter. And again.

Jared’s moods improve, as do mine. As he lightens, his academics, handwriting, and focus improve along with a joy of learning. They have diagnosed him all wrong. It’s not his school performance that makes him upset, but rather his upset that makes it impossible for him to concentrate on school work.

We write, do math, and research his favourite subject - dogs. We read about Max, a beat poet puppy and Jared writes poetry. But his parents become very concerned the day he punches a pillow.

I had brought in a pillow for him to punch as a way to express and expel the excessive, unmet anger. And, because I am now no longer threatened by anger myself, there is no invisible cap or limit to what I can handle. He is free to fully rage, and I am comfortable letting him go as far as he needs.

His slight boy frame collapses to the ground in exhaustion. Then he crawls back up and swipes some more. And when he is done, he is done. It is done. There is peace.

The next morning, we compose a poem together about the pillow, which he has beaten and thrashed the day before.

The Nothing Pillow, by Jared N.

My pillow is the colour of a sunset, it is soft as cloud, sits nice and warm like sitting by a warm fire in the winter, I want to lay on my pillow, to look at it, and make sure its ok. I call it the nothing pillow because it doesn’t do anything, and when I lie on it, I think of nothing. The stuffing is like cotton candy, I want to eat it. When I hold my pillow,

I feel happy as can be, I feel happy like a warm bed. Good night.

His parents accuse me of riling him up.

By the end of a winter that had left Cambridge squinty bright when the sun reflected off the miles of chalky white snow, that fell that year, Jared has a new school.

A few weeks later Jared’s prominent lawyer father calls to apologize for accusations and to thank me for ‘keeping it together’ when everyone else was ‘going under.’ Jared’s Head of Child Psychology therapist lauds me for seeing what even he missed. He writes me a letter of recommendation for a Master’s in social work at an East Coast school, but West cost is beckoning.

At my new job, I am asked to tutor Eric, athletic, magnetic smile and sweet nature.

He slips through years of Hebrew classes without learning how to read. Now, I am hired to catch him up, prepare him to come in front of the community for his Bar Mitzvah, leading and chanting prayers and scripture in Hebrew.

I work with Eric and he makes great strides. When I move to LA, another teacher takes over for me. She calls me and wants to know the secret of my success.

‘How did you do it Masha? Did you find out his diagnosis?’

‘No,’ I explain, I have a distrust and disinterest in diagnoses. They are too often wrong.

‘Then how? You did really well with him. What did you do?’

‘I played football with him,’ I answer.

‘What? Football? What are you talking about?’ He is athletic, and I show up on the football field, looking inept where he is a star. I’m on his turf, willing to be incompetent, willing to look foolish. So, he is prepared to take a risk with me, in my classroom.

We are equals, willing to go beyond protected boundaries, defended borders, trusting that the other will gently guide us towards success with encouragement and aplomb.

I hadn’t really had a plan, just instincts. I hadn’t been trained, I was unorthodox, just showing up empty and trying to intuit with the children, something no one had done for me. My dyslexia creates empathy and understanding, but I have no direct or received method for guiding them through.

With Rabbinical aspirations and schooling, I sometimes tutor and officiate the Jewish coming of age ceremony for those thirteen years of age, a Bar and Bat Mitzvahs.

Many of the tweens I work with are outside of the synagogue school system for one reason or another - a parent not Jewish, kids with learning issues, or the child that surprises parents by wanting the ceremony when the family is not particularly religious.

Because many of the students have no Jewish background, my lessons encompass everything from reading and writing Hebrew, learning about holidays, customs and liturgy, while preparing for the ceremony that they will lead in English and Hebrew.

We often meet at coffee shops accompanied with warm sweet drinks and pastries.

Each child is a riddle with a pad lock keeping them from full success. I unscramble codes and unlock each child, one conversation, lesson, or exchange, at a time.

Ich und Du

Mitch and Devon are twin brothers. One is very sensitive, polite, deeply moral. The other is sweet natured and only interested in baseball. Neither one wants to be studying for a Bar Mitzvah. Both are only doing it for their parents.

Mitch is certain this is not for him, but reconciled. He finds religion superfluous since all humans, in his estimation, know innately how to behave and do the right thing.

Dyslexia teaches me that, because I don’t have answers like a glossary of terms I can retrieve on demand, I am empty, open with receptors up. I understand I need to approach each child on his and her own terms, comfortable with not knowing. And, through listening, with the desire and faith to prevail, there is only the Ich und Du. There, I will find the answers, in the space between us. All is revealed.

Writing the Bar Mitzvah speech offers great opportunity to crystalize and articulate beliefs and ideas. It is a way to forge the nascent adult identity, affirming the individual within the context of family and community.

The individual within society, a balance we have not been able to quite achieve. A society which prizes the self at the expense of the greater collective breeds sickness, but also, failing to value the individual weakens the strength of the collective. Middle path says Buddhism, middle path.

Mitch expands on the idea of empathy ‘You know the feelings of a stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.’

Devon recites, ‘I discovered that Judaism and baseball are similar in many ways. Baseball and Judaism both have rules which allow everyone to play together, a way to measure yourself, and a standard to strive for. Both try to push you to be your best, the rabbi is like a coach, they can guide you, try to help you improve, but it is really up to you.’

After the service, I overhear Mitch say to his younger cousin, ‘Are you going to have a Bat Mitzvah? You should, it’s a lot of work but it’s so worth it.’ He sees that I overhear him. I lower my eyes, smiling in my heart.

Everyone has given up on Alex having a Bar Mitzvah. He is now fourteen.

I am told his ‘condition’ prior to our first lesson. He is diagnosed with mild Asperger’s. He needs structure, I am instructed. Well, if that’s what he needs, that’s what we will do. So, although I am more fluid in my approach, I will adapt to him, I will meet him.

But, structure is not what he needs. During my introduction, I outline in detail a very regimented schedule, and at the end remark, ‘But, I like to be open to inspiration.’

He smiles saying, ‘Yeah, that works for me.’

I ask him to repeat this, making sure he heard and understood.

We never have a rigid schedule from that day onward. He thrives. What I learn about him is the opposite of what the specialists advise. His emotions are very strong, if not addressed at the onset he is moody and unfocused. He must identify his feelings, needs, options, solutions, choices. We have incredible success, and fun. He is philosophical, creative, sensitive and sincere. He craves to express himself, to be heard. As do we all.

Maddie is bright and sassy. Her father is a professor of neurology and she, with the mind of a scientist and the attitude of a Westside girl, thinks that God and Hebrew school is a waste of her time. For weeks I try to find a way to reach her, bring her into the conversation. I explain that her agnostic voice is relevant and welcome in our class, that she too is an equally valuable part of the class. This doesn’t seem to mean anything.

I am losing her. It is like struggling with a painting. I will not give up.

We are making a short film based on a line from Deuteronomy, ‘Love God with all your heart, all of your soul, all of your everything.’ I open a conversation with her saying, ‘This project might be challenging for you to work on since you don’t believe in God.’

‘Yup.’ Only half snarky.

‘Let’s see if we can figure this out, a way for this to work for you.’

We discuss theology, science, creation, belief. She is unsure. ‘So, it’s a mystery to you?’ I reframe. ‘Yeah.’

‘What if we replace the word God for ‘Mystery’, I suggest. Instead we will say, ‘I love The Mystery with all my heart all my soul and all my everything. Would that feel right for you? Would that work?’

Bingo! Game changer! Maddie, is able to find integrity and meaning in her studies from this point forward.

The Bat Mitzvah makes sense as she can place herself comfortably in the tradition. When it comes time for her Bat Mitzvah, she uses the term, ‘The Mystery’ in her speech to the community, she learns her material quickly and easily.

Establishing trust is paramount.

Carl Jung believes and trusts implicitly that his patients must and will arrive at the right decisions on their own.

Since this marks one’s journey towards adulthood, I point out that this is a good example of exercising adult wisdom.

There is a time I had abandoned Ich und Du, and the consequences are not good. When I seek advice from ‘the experts’, my life lessons overwhelmingly expose their deficits, imploring me to trust my own wisdom.

A teenage boy directs a comment to me during class, ‘I thought of you the other day- in my bed.’

I consult the school therapist. ‘You need to talk to him, tell him this makes you uncomfortable.’ She insists.

I ask to speak to him after class and it’s awkward. I’m uncomfortable. These are not my words, my real sentiments. He looks shamed, mortified. He thought he was being cute.

My discussion with him hadn’t come from an authentic place in me, or acknowledged our genuine connection.

Sometimes, I handle sexual inappropriateness with a bit more levity and mastery. Two boys in the back of the seventh-grade class attempt to shock me.

‘Masha, is penis a bad word?’

‘No, penis is my favourite word,’ I respond. Screams from the back row. They babble and yell, arms flailing in adolescent gainliness.

‘Are you serious? ‘No sillies, let’s get on with work.’

I never have a behaviour problem again with this class. Putty.

And then there are the teachers that are pivotal in my life.

Geraldine Jackson, five feet of feisty, with pixy short hair and reading glasses that slide down a slightly pug nose. Lean and sparky. Often scary. She is the math teacher. I am a computative disaster. She puts me in the lower group and ignores me. The next year, she teaches English.

There is no awareness of different learning styles at this time. I assume stupidity is the culprit. ‘She’s sweet, creative.’ Is the best a teacher can say of me.

I am even a creative speller!

Every week Mrs. Jackson gives us a creative writing assignment. One week, though mine is short, my story on re-gifting makes her laugh. She reads it to the class. I am now on her radar.

From this point forward, I rise and rise to the bar set before me, becoming one of the two highest graded students in the class for creative composition. Myself and my friend, Missy.

I am not much for competition, more the Aphrodite than the Athena or Artemis. I am thrilled for us both. She is driven, petit though complains she is fat, frets about failing tests when she will score a ninety-eight.

Chances are I will score a thirty out of a hundred and I am woefully chubby. Eleven years of age.

The thesaurus is now my trusty companion, my favourite game - the wonderment of words! I seek them out, hunting words like a scavenger, a canine on the trail, a pirate for loot ‘n booty. Then, savouring the delight of the hunt, I tack them to sentences like animal heads to plaque and wall.

My treasury of gemmed jewels to which I will devote myself first comes in the form of the sixth grade Friday creative compositions where, I pull all-nighters, writing and rewriting.

Here, it starts. Deep into the hushed amorphous night, I am most awake, discovering shapes in the shapeless, word-less, time space, planting and harvesting in the rich fertile darkness. I am free.

Construction of the bridge begins.

I am born into the tribe of Israelites, the Children of

Israel, people of the book. Israel, Yisrael means ‘wrestles with God.’

What does it mean to be dyslexic as one from the people of the book?

I’m one who wrestles with books.

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radio-of-the-zones · 7 years ago

Audio

Good afternoon, sweet faces, this is your second-favourite radio maestro, the green-haired witch with the smooth talking voice, Toxic Sunrise, coming at you live here on WKIL. Stop! Listen? Rattle rattle. Do you feel that? That’s me, quaking my steel leg’s bolts loose with excitement when I say I have the best news to bring to you. The dracs, while still invading our zones every single day, are slowly letting up, and I’m starting to see some colour through the sea of black and white again. Did I tell you about the time Miss Atomic Bomb and I paintballed a bunch of dracs and sent ‘em back to the city covered in colour? That was a long time ago, before the little tykes started escaping the city and before Lady Bird came to live with us. Speaking of the Bird, my marvelously mute motorbaby is mute no more! She’s talking up a storm, er… More of a storm then she was. It’s nice to hear another voice in the station again – I missed having the station full of bustle and noise. I love it. I live for it.

Now, our resident traitor and cupcake baker, Sweet Thang, is still at large and baking her BLI cupcakes as fast as ever. Don’t go to Just Deserts Bakery unless you’re looking for a double dose of mind control.

There’s exterminator after exterminator on top of scarecrow coming out to the desert now days, not just the dracs, so be on the lookout. Keep your boots tight, keep your guns close, and keep your neck short. I don’t want to attend the funerals of any more friends. Remember, sweethearts, art is the weapon and monochromaticism is the enemy.

If you’re new out here, like so many of you are, or if you’re still in the city listening to this broadcast on a broken radio, listen up! I’ve got extra food and supplies aplenty in the station at the moment, and am willing to share them all with each and every one of your adorable little faces. Need food? I’ve got plenty, and not all of it’s power pup. Water? I’m your girl. A new blaster? I’ve got three, so bust your little asses to come and get them before they’re gone and you’ll have to deal with Tommy Chow Mein. Seriously, how is he still alive? I’d have figured an out of sorts zonerunner would have shot him years ago, god bless his heart.

Also, in happier news, our own Bulletproof Dancer would like to congratulate Val Velocity and Vaya on their engagement, and I’d like to wish them the best in their endeavor. If you two crazy kids need any help with the wedding, let me know. I’ve got connections.

Now, this song’s been requested by one of my favorite little motorbabies, who’s recently starting to resemble his favorite radio voice a little too much. He listened to me in the city, he listens to me now, and soon, we’ll have matching metal legs keeping us running in this desert heat. This isn’t really my style, but how can I say no to a cute face like that? Storm, this one’s for you, sweetheart. This is “I Am Bulletproof”, here on 109 WKIL radio, home of the slaughtermatic sounds. Killjoys, make some noise.

#WKIL Radio #Danger Days #radio of the zones #party poison #fun ghoul #toxic sunrise #val velocity #vaya #vamos #ultra v's #Battery City

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womenofwrestlingfashion · 11 months ago

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Smackdown 2/2/24

Naomi wore the Alien Superstar Bustier Top, Alien Superstar Mini Skirt, Alien Superstar Trench Coat and Atomic Traitor Boots - All from Club Exx, all are sold out

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smokeandstolis · 7 years ago

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Atomic Blonde Fic

Summary: What if Lorraine lied about what Delphine told her? “Did she give you information?”

“She gave me nothing.”

“There is something I need to tell you. It has to do with your friend Percival-- ”

“Shhh.”

Always wary, Lorraine turns up the music and motions Delphine closer. The french spy leans in until her lips brushes her ear. Lorraine feels the heat of her naked body, still hot from their earlier exertions.

“Percival has no interest in retrieving the list for MI6. He wants it for himself, in order find the person who killed James Gasciogne. The double agent known as Satchel.”

Lorraine glances at her from the corner of her eyes.

“I see.”

Delphine’s face is a mask of innocence, just a wide eyed young girl providing some helpful information to someone she admires. Lorraine wonders how much she knows, or suspects. She decides to fish for more.

“So Gasciogne and Percival..Percival seems to care a great deal for him. Were they lovers?”

“Perhaps. But I hear there was a woman that Gasciogne was in love with.”

Delphine reaches over and clicks off the radio, then leans back on her elbows leisurely, angling her head to better observe Lorraine’s face. If she’s disappointed to find nothing, she doesn’t show it and continues speaking in her softly accented voice.

“I wonder how the Russians knew about the list. Gasciogne must have told someone, non? Perhaps his mystery woman?”

Lorraine eyes flicker across Delphine body stretched out languidly on the sheets, her bare breasts, and the neon lights that play over her skin. A very beautiful woman. And a very dangerous one. She has been lured in, setup for this conversation.

“And why would this woman betray him to the russians?”

“Why indeed… Perhaps there is something incriminating in the List about her. Perhaps… a secret identity?”

Cat and mouse. For once, Lorraine is not sure which one she is. Her hand itches for her gun. Instead, she gets up and lights a cigarette.

Delphine waits for her take a seat across from her before continuing.

“Once Satchel knew about the List, it was imperative it be retrieved before Gasciogne can deliver it to MI6. It’s not convenient for a double agent like Satchel to do it themselves, so why not make use of a Russian? A stupid one. One who is not smart enough to unlock and use the List themselves, but would certainly try to sell it for a profit in the market, where Satchel can easily snatch it from him or the buyer.”

Delphine fixes her keen dark eyes on Lorraine.

“With their identity on the line, Satchel would never let anyone else retrieve the list for them. A good spy trusts no one. They will have to come to Berlin themselves. And now, right here, we have a mysterious woman very interested in the List... ”

Delphine trails off, letting Lorraine draw her own conclusions.

“Your deduction is quite impressive.”

Lorraine take one last drag and stubs out her smoke on the bed stand ashtray. She stands up so she looms over the Delphine’s reclining figure.

“Now tell me why I shouldn’t put a bullet in your head.”

Delphine lets out a genuine laugh.

“Surely you don’t think I would tell you all that just to get myself killed. Rest assured I have measures in place. Your identity will be released to MI6 and French intelligence upon my death or disappearance.”

“You have no proof that I am Satchel.”

“You know better than I do that proof is not necessary in this business. Just a whisper, a hint of suspicion, will enough for someone to start digging into your past. And it won't take much to make the connections I have.”

Stalemate.

Delpine could be lying to her about revealing her identity, but Lorraine isn’t prepared to call her bluff. She decides to switch gears.

“What do you want from me?”

Delphine smiles slightly, knowing she’s scored a small victory.

“I wasn’t completely lying to you before when we were at the club. This spy game isn’t for me. I want out. And you are my ticket to freedom.”

“And how do you propose to do that?”

“I want to fake my death. And you will help me do it.”

Lorraine listens as Delphine relays her intricate plan to frame Percival for her death and obtain the List. It’s remarkably well thought out, and even includes a cover story for her MI6 handlers.

“In return, I’ll make sure to collect ample evidence of Percival’s collaboration with the Russians. You will have plenty of evidence to present to MI6 to show you were merely executing a traitor.” Delphine concludes.

Lorraine has taken a seat and lit another cigarette while the French woman talked. She takes her time finishing it.

As the silence stretches out, Delphine shifts nervously, showing some cracks in her calm exterior. Lorraine lets her sweat it out. She does not like being told what to do.

“It will be advantageous for both of us. Your identity will be safe when we get the List.” Delphine says, unable to bear the tension for a second longer. She stiffens when Lorraine stands up and crosses over. This close, Lorraine could see the sweat across her hairline and the rapid pulse at her neck.

Lorraine isn’t sure what she intended to do. In moments like this, all the possibilities play out in her mind. It’d be easy to kill her. Her gun sits waiting in her coat, and her CIA handlers can quickly smother any leaks the girl might have planted. Or she can go along with her, and be rid of Percival once and for all.

What she does do was brush her lips gently over Delphine’s (more gently than she knew she could). She feels a tiny puff of air, as Delphine exhales, a tiny gasp of relief, perhaps.

“And what about you? How do I know my identify is safe with you?” She asks. But her voice lacks the the bite she intended.

“Hmm, you never can be sure, can you?” With the tension broken, Delphine pretends to look thoughtful, and then loops her arms around her neck.

“Maybe you should come with me, just in case?” She breathes into her ear.

Threatening her one minute, and then proposing to run away with her the next. The sheer audacity of this girl.

“And how well you sleep at night with a double agent besides you?”

“Very well, I’d hope.” She replies blithely.

If only she knew the whole truth. But even her keen eyes can’t see through all her secrets. She pushes her away gently.

“It’s a deal. Your life in exchange for the Percival and the List”

Delphine shrugs a little dejectedly. “Can’t say I didn’t try.”

They spend the rest of the night going through the details of the plan. The french transmitter they’ll pretend Percival planted on Lorraine, the photos Delphine will get of Percival and the Russians, and how to record and edit the tapes they’ll need as ‘proof’ that Percival is Satchel.

Sometime close to dawn, Delphine falls asleep. Lorraine looks at her, sprawled out on her stomach, all the tension on her face washed away in slumber. Obviously she wasn’t kidding when she said she’d sleep well next to her.

It makes Lorraine uneasy.

For all of Delphine’s bluff and bluster, if they go with the plan, her life is in Lorraine’s hands. She has given Delphine no reason to trust her. Even the ‘packages’ she retrieves for the CIA knows that their life is only as valuable at the information they will provide, and easily discarded when they are used up. Delphine is the same. Should be the same. But here she is, sleeping like a baby, completely trusting Lorraine to protect her. It drives Lorraine crazy the illogicalness of it all. Everyone has a motive, every has a bargaining chip, a piece of leverage, and try as she might, she can’t figure out what Delphine’s is.

Feeling somewhat resigned, she lies down to get a few hours of rest. Delphine rolls towards the warmth of her body in her sleep. She fits perfectly into the circle of her arms and nuzzles into the crook of her neck in her dreams. At least her mission is going well, Lorraine thinks. Both Percival and Delphine could have a been a glitch in the works, but it looks like it’ll be a mere detour to her end objective. Everything is going according to plan.

Things do not go according to plan.

She didn’t hadn’t expected Percival to strike first, for him to obtain the List, and find out Satchel’s identity, subsequently leaking it to the Russians. It was a very close call with the Russians while trying to retrieve Spyglass. Lorraine has had many close calls in her life, but it doesn’t make the experience any more comfortable. She makes it out of East Berlin, bruised, half drowned, and frozen, but alive. And as long as she is alive, she always gets her man.

She corners Percival, who does not put much of fight. Perhaps he saw death in her eyes. Perhaps he already had a foot halfway in the grave. She finishes him off efficiently, retrieves the List, and makes her way to Delphine’s apartment. She knocks in a pattern that they’ve agreed upon beforehand. Delphine opens the door and gaps at her face. Lorraine guesses she doesn’t exactly look her best..

“What happened?”

“Long story. There were some complications.” She enters the apartment and closes the door behind her.

“Is it done?”

“Yes.”

“He’s… dead?” She asks with a tremble in her voice. The fear is real this time. She probably has never killed anyone before. It’s all fun and games to plot and plan, but the reality of death is something else.

“Yes.”

Lorraine feels no emotions over Percival’s death. Kill or be killed. That is the way the game is played. She looks at Delphine’s pale face. She definitely should have a been a rock star or a poet.

She walks around the apartment, knocking objects over, messing up the bedsheets, scuffing the flooring with her boots. The beauty of the strangulation story is it leaves no blood trail, all that is needed is signs of a struggle. Then she goes through the apartment again straighten everything out, puts everything she’s knocked off back slightly differently. She surveys the apartment and nods in satisfaction. To an ordinary person, it looks like nothing has happened. But a professional team would be more thorough. They would have notice all the signs of a clean up job. It could have been the british, hiding the embarrassment of a murder done by a rogue agent, or the russians, trying to erase any connections to the List. Either way, everyone will assume everyone else did it, and nobody’s going to be volunteering any information about a missing body.

“Here.” Delphine has regained her composure. She hands her a folder with her name written on it.

“Photographs of Percival and the Russians, as promised.”

Lorraine opens it and flips through the photos, nodding her satisfaction.

“Our business is done. It’s time for you to go.”

Delphine puts on her coat and slings her packed bag over her shoulder.

“Lorraine…” She grabs the lapels of her coat and kisses her. It is wild and desperate kiss. A cut on Lorraine’s lip opens up and they both taste blood.

“Come with me. Please.”

Delphine’s eyes are as serious.

“It’s over Lorraine. The wall is coming down. Whether the the List gets out or not… it’s over for the spies like us. We’ll be disowned at best by our own governments, or tracked down and killed by someone out for revenge. They won’t lift a finger to protect us, we will be relics of the past they want to bury. Whatever the Russians are promising you Lorraine, it’s not worth.”

Lorraine feels a measure of regret that she quickly discards. In this business, any distractions will be deadly.

“There are still things I must do.”

“Will you come find me afterwards?”

Lorraine doubts their paths will ever cross again. But what’s one more lie in her web of lies? She nods.

Delphine searches her eyes long and hard. Satisfied by what she sees, she turns away and exits via the window fire escape. Lorraine watches her until she disappears around the street corner.

“Let's go home.”

“That sounds good.”

Someone had to prepare Delphine’s identity papers to leave the country. The boy Merkel was loyal. More importantly, he did not know who Delphine is and did not ask any questions. He merely efficiently obtained the necessary paper for Delphine’s new identity. And made a copy of them for Lorraine. Lorraine rediscovers the envelope at the bottom of her suitcase when she gets back to the States.

She stares at it. It is the only link between the old Delphine and new Delphine. The only thing that can link her to her spy life. It was stupid of her to ask Merkel for these copies that could expose her. She should destroy it.

She opens it.

Delphine supposes she should be more concerned about someone breaking into her house late at night, but she has been expecting visitors. One visitor in particular.

“You should come to bed.” She says, once she decided that Lorraine has spent enough time watching her in the dark.

“How did you know it was me?”

“Who else knows I’m here? Besides, the Russians would be a lot noisier.”

The mattress dips and Delphine feels her curl up against her back.

Delphine is almost asleep again when Lorraine asks: “How did you know I would come?”

“When I asked you the question in Berlin, I could see the truth in your eyes.”

That is ridiculous of course. Lorraine didn’t know herself until she found herself on a plane, and then dropped off by a cab at this address. To think that Delphine can know her better than herself… well… that is nonsense. She must have found out some other way, perhaps Merkel tipped her off?

She opens her mouth to ask, and shuts it again, when she hears Delphine’s slow and steady breathing signals she has gone back to sleep.

Lorraine wraps an arm around her waist and tucks her head under her chin. She decides she can ask tomorrow. Or the day after. Or the day after that. She closes her eyes and sleeps peacefully for the first time.

Unnecessarily long author’s note:

There was only one scene in the movie I didn’t understand, which is why Lorraine felt the need to cover up for Delphine if she is dead, and if what she told her was fairly innocuous. So I wrote an entire fic about it! I don’t know how I feel about this, so this might go through some more edits before getting archived on AO3. I have a feeling I’m trying to do too many things with too few words (as usual), and dialogue is not my strongest point (so this fic is almost entirely dialogue lol fml). Please let me know what you think and what parts can be improved! In the meantime, I’ll be trying to come up with a title...

#atomic blonde #lorraine broughton #delphine lasalle #lorraine x delphine #fic #what's the ship name again?

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ravensinflight · 7 years ago

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Criminal World

Hard to be a player when you don’t know the game. A semi-Atomic Blonde AU from the lovely Rumbelle Secret Santa prompt by @annagingil: “secret lovers, spies in day.” Title by Bowie, hot mess by me. Here, have some songfic like it’s 2004. I hope you enjoy.

Rated: M

Word count: 3,983

A03 Link

You never told me of your other faces

You were the widow of a wild cat

And now I know about your special kisses

And I know you know where that's at

I guess I recognize your destination

I think I see beneath your make-up

What you want is sort of separation

This is no ordinary

This is no ordinary--“Criminal World” by David Bowie

Belle grabbed handfuls of hair, twisting it with practice between her fingers. She shoved it roughly but efficiently under a short red wig, lowering the long fringed bangs over the tops of her eyes. She carded her fingers through the rest of the bob to make sure it was lying flat and even. It would be easier with a mirror, but she plans on completing her transformation in the stall of this godawful ladies’ room before glancing at the total effect on her way out.

Boots, impractical but stylish jacket, new earrings and a couple of slap bracelets complete the look. She wants a look that says “party girl” but inconspicuous, so most of her ensemble is black or navy. Everything she was previously wearing, including the flat shoes, blonde wig, professional cut dress, and stud earrings get shoved into the oversized slouch bag covered in heavy leather fringe that she wings over her shoulder like an infantry pack.

Less than five minutes after Belle entered, Lacey leaves.

She hadn’t had enough sleep but she’d had enough coffee. The coffee in this country was dismal; it was so mild she could probably brush her teeth with it, but that made it easier to imbibe large amounts without necessarily intaking food to protect her stomach. Belle enjoyed food a great deal, so it was a source of consternation that her stomach could be somewhat touchy at times. People in her line of work really shouldn’t develop quirks that get you noticed, or remembered.

Or slow you down: she was almost 20 minutes behind her self-imposed schedule. That was still within the range of allowable delay but it didn’t improve her mood. She’d needed the extra time to change hotels, or rather, have Lacey change hotels via payphones at the airport. Then of course she had to become Lacey in that dive of a ladies’ room, and at last she was ready to meet the Stationmaster.

She’d checked her bags in at left-luggage until after the meeting; depending on how competent she assessed this “Mr. Gold” to be, she might need to take further precautions with her belongings for a long-term stay.

Belle internally rolled her eyes at the name Mr. Gold. She’d asked back at Home Office what year exactly did this agent think they were living in? Regina had given her half a smile and said “You’ll have to ask Gold--he’s been Stationmaster so long he may have lost touch with reality.”

Belle reached the rendezvous site 15 minutes before Mr. Gold and 10 minutes later than she wanted to. The discotheque thrummed like a hive of bees from the outside. She found a spot in the shadows down from the entrance, leaning against it in apparent casualness while lighting a cigarette. She balanced the danger of the glare from the tip drawing notice against the suspicious nature of being noticed doing nothing at all, and added the adoption of a bored look while she slouched to clearly indicate ‘waiting for someone and not happy about it, do not approach.’

She was intently scanning the people as they entered and exited the club, but she felt more than heard that something was behind her a moment before the man began speaking.

“Ms. French?” A voice asked in accented English.

She turned her head slowly and controlled, like a snake hypnotizing prey.

“Mr. Gold?” She responded in her own accented English. Which accent she’d chosen for this engagement not quite evident from only those two words.

There was a tapping sound from the shadows behind her, as a man with a cane and a hideous hat emerged from one shadow around the corner of the building to join her shadow. Belle’s internal map told her that he’d had to come up from the river banks and detour around several warehouses to get that drop on her. Not the path she would have taken, but not wholly unexpected.

Belle knew she still looked like a bored party girl and took a slow drag from the cigarette while eyeing the man. Shortish, dressed nicely apart from the hat, cane was a bit ostentatious (necessary?), older but that was too be expected based on the briefing at Home. “You’re late,” she informed him. She’d decided to use R.P. for this assignment for regional neutrality. The reprimand sounded lovely in BBC English.

The man smiled far too widely. “No, I’m not.” Fair enough, In a flash of the headlight of a passing car, she caught sight of the glint of something in his mouth. A gold tooth? Her estimations of this agent were . . . conflicted. He read like something out of an old spy comic with advertisements for decoder rings in the back. On the other hand, he’d almost gotten the drop on her. Almost.

“Shall we?” Mr. Gold held out his arm for her like an old-time gallant. She threw back her head and gave a drunken laugh, grabbing his arm sloppily while her legs contrived to fall in step with him and not topple her over despite the lack of direction she was apparently giving them. The wool coat covering his arm was warm and expensive feeling. He smelled like woodsmoke. Mr. Gold grinned again, and they started down the street; just a businessman on a Friday night picking up a good-time girl. They disappeared into the shadows together.

(ah, ah, ah)

What a criminal world

The boys are like baby-faced girls

What a criminal girl

She'll show you where to shoot your gun

What a typical mother's son

The only thing that she enjoys

Is a criminal world

Where the girls are like baby-faced boys

Belle lit up a cigarette while scrutinizing photographs.

“I really wish you wouldn’t do that in bed,” Gold said, not looking up from the papers he was reading in the armchair next to the bed. Belle turned her head slightly to give him a languid look while she exhaled a stream of smoke nonchalantly. She sat in the middle of Gold’s ridiculously large bed, wearing only her own lingerie and his shirt. Black and white glossy photographs littered the bed around her. She’d made a good connection in befriending Merida, novice intelligence agent. Merida tended to blunder about and into things, but she took a damn fine shot.

For a moment, Gold looked up at her sternly from the armchair before his face softened in resignment and he looked back down at his papers. He wore a an honest to God smoking jacket without a trace of irony, looking like some ersatz Sherlock Holmes in the overstuffed brown leather chair.

Frankly, everything about Gold’s abode was rather “overstuffed” for Belle’s tastes, yet she found herself drawn here for their trysts more often than not. She’d made sure Lacey kept changing hotels every few weeks, starting out somewhere posh then slowly degenerating in quality, the slow decline of a woman living a little too outside her means for a little too long but who just had to keep the party going.

Belle didn’t really mind the growing inferiority of her base-camp’s amenities; her frustration was with how long this infernal investigation was taking. She should have been further along ages ago. Home needed her to run a traitor to ground, but so far she’d just been running in circles over this Godforsaken city.

“This Hatter character is all over the map,” Belle muttered, tossing photographs into rough groupings in an effort to switch up the patterns they presented.

“Character is definitely the word to describe Jefferson,” Gold said laconically.

“You really trust that guy with your import and export dealings?” Belle asked him. She made a mental note to get better control of her accent. She’d been getting slack around Gold.

Gold grinned wolfishly and she caught sight of the gold even in the low light of his cavernous bedroom. The man was a such a peacock, she thought, but not without fondness.

“I don’t trust anyone, dearie, that’s how I’m still in this game.”

The fondness vanished and she made a mental note to get better control on that as well. She stared at him in silence until the grin faded and he deigned to answer her questions.

“Jefferson might have fried most of his common sense with drugs, but his abilities to focus and execute a plan are quite keen,” Gold admitted. “Plus God knows how he gets across some of the borders he does carrying the things he does.”

Belle made a hum of agreement. “That’s one of the reasons Home Office flagged his file.”

“You know, you can hear the way you emphasize certain things, almost as though they’re titled peerage,” Gold said with amusement. “‘Home Office,’ or my favorite, ‘Stationmaster.’ It’s quite endearingly formal.”

Belle bristled at his tone, like he was describing the tricks of a favored pet.

“I don’t see why calling something by its proper name is quite so funny,” she said coldly, her movements regarding the photographs turning brisk. They’d reached that inevitable point in their interactions when it was probably time to leave.

Moving soundlessly and with ever-surprising grace, Gold left the armchair to push the photographs aside and crawl up the bed to loom above her. She met the maneuver with a cold stare and the quirk of an eyebrow. Better make this good, her look told him.

The smoking jacket belt had come loose and the burgundy silk folds of it were starting to part. Gold took no notice of it as he started to trace a fingertip along the edge of his shirt she was wearing. There was still amusement on his face, but behind it a kind of heat Belle thought boded rather well.

“Forgive an old man his small pleasures,” Gold murmured, his fingertip reaching the slight swell of her stomach and turning into a full palm caress. “When you’ve been at this game as long as I have, you start to grow complacent about the whole circus. Fresh blood is . . . invigorating.” He finished the statement by moving his palm down a few critical inches and then lowering himself enough to start gently mouthing at her neck.

Belle smiled slightly despite herself. “Old Man?” She said mockingly. He grumbled against her neck, moving his mouth down to her décolletage.

“Yes, precisely. Much too old for chasing traitors all around the world whilst trying to keep a woman like you happy.” He somehow managed to to get all that out while never letting up his gentle assault. His hand moved just there and Belle was arching into him.

“I took care of the chasing part, darling, you’ve just got to lie back and think of Home Office,” she managed around breathing that was growing more labored. He chuckled against her, a delightful shiver resulting.

“Ah, the benefits of teamwork-” he punctuated the word with a twist of his clever fingers and Belle wrapped one of her legs around his hips, pulling the smoking jacket completely open as she speared one hand into the locks of his hair and scraped her nails along his scalp. Her other hand was snaking inside the open jacket to press him more firmly against her.

He paused his oral exploration though his hand never ceased moving, if anything growing more intent with its ministrations while he watched her flushed face from atop the length of her body.

“You know a real character to look at,” he said idly. Of course Gold would talk shop while getting her off. She tightened her fingers in his hair which only provoked a Cheshire grin.

“Oh? Who might that be?” She tried to match his disinterested tone but her rapid breathing made it somewhat difficult. She decided sliding the hand inside the jacket into more interesting territory would level the playing field. Gold did so like his little games.

His own face was growing flushed as he struggled to maintain the same nonchalance as before. “Our good friend-” he grunted slightly “-Officer Rogers. A man that turns traitor to his own government to feed our agents information might decide to doublecross us if the price is right.” She gave a little hum of agreement and a particularly good squeeze of her hand. He gave up pretending to be unaffected by removing her panties with a sharp tug and blanketing her fully, hands and assorted fabric barriers being removed in the interest of getting down to business.

Belle turned her self-satisfied crowing into moans. They didn’t precisely keep points in their little tête-à-têtes and the scoring was always up for debate, but she felt certain this round had gone to her.

Belle’s decision to bed the Stationmaster was a conscious one; she found it an extremely enjoyable way to relieve the tedium that often accompanies these sort of drawn-out assignments. She also knew it was an excellent way to accelerate feelings of trust or inclinations to grant favors between an agent and a potential asset. Everyone was a potential asset, even other agents. People were either assets or problems in Belle’s experience.

Not that sleeping with Gold was much of a hardship Belle mused as they moved in increasingly frantic tandem. Man was hotter than sin. She was beginning to suspect she’d been here a bit too long; she was thinking she might even miss this once the assignment was over.

In the languid stillness that followed their coupling, Belle traced a finger down a sleeping Gold’s back in the blue-black darkness of the room. He didn’t even stir from his position, face-down on the bed in the depths of slumber. When Belle realized she’s been wondering on the likelihood of an assignment taking her near this station again anytime soon, she decided it was past time to to finish things here and go back Home.

You've got a very heavy reputation

But no one knows about your low-life

I know a way

to find a situation

And hold a candle

to your high life disguise

You caught me kneeling

at your sister's door

That was no ordinary stick-up

I'm well aware just

what you're looking for

I am no ordinary

Because of the rain that started to fall, it was hard to tell the newly forming puddles apart from the pools of blood.

Belle could feel her hair, her real hair, snaking in cold tendrils down her neck and nearly bare shoulders. It was freezing out, but she already felt numb. She spared a thought for her eye make-up, the smoky nightclub look was probably running down her face like a hideous mask that it would take ages to clean-up and hideaway, but she couldn’t find it in herself to care too much at the moment.

Officer Rogers was dead. She’s not sure who else might be as well. Merida? Jefferson? It had all gone tits up.

The Operation had failed utterly, stupidly, it was doomed before it began! Someone had betrayed them, betrayed them all, and they’d set her up, goddamn them. She was well and truly burned unless she found him, the real traitor, and hoped to god Home Office granted her clemency for this spectacular fuck-up.

She heard a noise above the hiss and patter of the rain, a steady tapping on the pavement drawing near her. Her tongue moved unconsciously to the side of her mouth and tasted blood. Gold emerged from the growing gloom, wearing his ridiculous hat and coat, gloved, the rain running off him like some kind of black duck. She tried to muster some surprise, but she’s too exhausted, on her knees on slick pavement next to a dead man with all the fight drained out of her.

“This is it, isn’t it?” She murmured, a voice more suited for Gold’s bedroom and not even sure he can hear her.

One of Gold’s hands was holding his cane, the other was holding a gun. On her. He spared a glance for Rogers’s body and then looked back at her. The part of his face she could make out was unreadable.

“Well, this is somewhat unexpected,” he said mildly. “But yes, I rather believe this is it.”

Belle gave him a belligerent look. “Really? That’s all you have to say?” Anger gave her a false sense of warmth. “Tell me, did you even wait for Home Office to give the burn notice, or will you just let them know it’s handled after the fact?”

Now that inscrutable mask he calls a face registered some confusion. “Whatever are you on about, dearie?”

“I’m finished!” She yelled at him. “We couldn’t deliver the Package to Hatter, I barely got Rogers out alive and now he’s fucking dead anyway because he lost the damn plot and tried to stab me.” She shook her head, almost involuntarily. “I planned this mission, I coordinated the players, I was the only one who could have possibly betrayed us! Home Office is going to think I’m the double agent sooner or later—why the hell else are you here?”

The son of bitch smiled. Belle made a jerking motion that would have eventually turned into an attack but he wiggled the gun in warning and the motion died along with her anger.

“Really? That’s what you think will happen? I didn’t expect so much naïveté from you, sweetheart.” He sounded pleased about the whole thing the smug bastard.

She gave him a cutting look. “That’s the only scenario that makes sense, or will to Home,” she said cooly. “They’ll assume I’m Weaver and you’ll get tea with the queen for killing a turncoat.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” Gold replied. “Considering I’m Weaver.”

There was a stuttering of the world, and then it all clicked back into place. She released her next breath shakily, her eyes darting about as all the pieces game back together.

“You never left the Station.”

“Hatter.”

“Home Office was already looking at you.”

“Of course, but they weren’t looking at you. That worked quite well for me.”

“You had me bugged.”

“Several times.”

“Where?” That was probably irrelevant at this point but professional curiosity had not deserted her in her last minutes even if everything else had.

He looked a little shamefaced for the first time that evening. “In your brassieres, primarily. Just a little extra wire.”

She couldn’t help it, she started laughing. She finally started to shake with cold as well as with hysteria as the rain just kept dumping on their strange little tableau. Clever, her brain thought, as she wanted it to reach for ‘despicable.’

She was hunched over now, staring at the slick cobblestones, enjoying that last fizzle of amusement.

“Alright, get it over with, Gold,” she said without looking up.

To his credit, he stopped playing dumb, and she heard the gun cock dramatically, much closer to her head. She closed her eyes and waited. Then she waited some more.

Finally, with some exasperation, she looked up. Foolish man probably had to gloat or a deliver a final witticism like a bloody film villain.

His face . . . it was utterly still except his mouth which was twitching like he was trying to bite down on words that weren’t being said. His eyes were wide and anguished. She frowned at him in confusion.

“Gold?”

“ I know what I should do,” he said, almost as though he was explaining it to himself more than her. “I should kill you. I could, right now, and this whole mess would fall into place exactly like you said. And Home would be none the wiser. But the thing is . . . I don’t want to kill you.” He sighed, and to her shock put the gun away, his coat shedding water around them like a fountain. “I’m too old for this, Belle, I’ve been in this game far too long. Because I honestly thought that we were something . . . more to each other. That there was something there.” His smile was back, but it was small and self-loathing. “I know you could never love me, but I thought we were at least friends.” He spread his hands wide, the showman ending the act. “You see? Just an old fool after all.”

Belle couldn’t move. Her mind was racing but her body wouldn’t let her act. His clemency was ludicrous, the man’s an idiot. They stare at one another in silence for long moments. He gives a small shake of his head, and then drops his cane on the ground. Belle doesn’t jump although the movement shocked her. She glanced at it in confusion. Gold whipped his coat off, the same dark wool piece she’d met him in all those weeks ago, and drapes the sodden but warm fabric over her small form. She’s swallowed by it, and while it won’t exactly heat her up much, it was protecting her from the elements a bit more than the tight black sleeveless dress and torn tights she’s currently in.

The rain started to soak Gold’s suit while he picked up his cane.

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t try and kill me with this,” he said, gesturing with it. “I think that would be a bit pathetic, but since I also don’t plan on just handing over the gun to let you execute me, I’ll understand if things happen.”

“What?” Belle said, and slowly rose from off her knees at last.

Gold gestured impatiently. “You know who I am-what I am. The only way to clear yourself with Home Office is to take me in. Or rather, take me out, as I have no intention of being locked up.” Another wan smile. “Shouldn’t be too hard for you, I know what you can do. Let’s get this over with; you have tea with the queen to get to, after all.”

But, her brain stuttered again. She didn’t want to kill him. She does think of them as Friends. As more?

She’s screwed.

“Are they any other options?” She asked mildly, as though for the time or a cup of coffee.

He gaped a moment, then gathered himself.

“Well, there’s always running,” he replied, a menu item he’s not sure she’ll approve of but offers anyway.

She noddded. She’d assumed that would be the case.

“Alone?”

His jaw worked again. “That . . . had always been the plan.”

She stepped in closer to him. Her legs are wobbly from the cold, the kneeling, the fighting, from life. But they could still support her if she asked them to; they could still run.

He brought one gloved hand up slowly in the rain and traced some invisible line down the side of her face.

“Shall we?” She asked him, and he gave her a shaky nod.

She took hold of his whole arm, and they leaned against each other under the weight of the world. His cane tapped softly as they moved away from the alley, from the body, from their old lives. Who knows how long this will last--they may kill each other tomorrow. Or maybe they’ll kiss, and it will be one with all the layers of who and what they are stripped away and she’ll find out if there’s something there after all. Time would tell.

Tonight, together, they run.

(ah, ah, ah)

What a criminal world

The boys are like baby-faced girls

What a criminal girl

She'll show you where to shoot your gun

What a typical mother's son

The only thing that she enjoys

Is a criminal world

Where the girls are like baby-faced boys

Inspiration:

Atomic Blonde. Directed by David Leitch, performances by Charlize Theron, James McAvoy, Eddie Marsan, John Goodman, and Toby Jones, 87Eleven et al., 2017.

Johnston, Anthony & Hart, Sam. The Coldest City. Oni Press, 2012.

Lockhart, E. Genuine Fraud. Delacorte Press, 2017.

#Rumbelle Secret Santa #annagingil #rumbelle fic #rumbelle

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batflashed · 8 years ago

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itsdragonfire13 submitted to batflashed

Doing this by mobile, sorry if there’s spelling mistakes, also this got LONG) —— Okay, so I was rewatching JL&JLU, the Eclipsed episode(where Godfrey was saying all the crap) and like I can just imagine as time goes on and they keep getting bad press, Wally gets Bruce to agree to let him start a blog about the JL. (It’s basically a blog about what makes the League HUMAN(more or less) There are top 3 videos that have never been out ranked by another.

#3 is named The Sassy League, and is just a long video of sarcastic remarks the League have made while watching the news/to each other/during fights/whenever. The only one of Batman(that got recorded) is at the end it has Flash tripping and crashing, while cracks appear on the screen from a broken lens and Flash loud “Oooohhhh!” Is the last thing heard.

#2 is of Flash getting Wonder Woman to arm wrestle EVERYONE. It starts with Superman, and she beats him(but breaks a table), then each Green Lantern, Green Arrow, The Atom, etc(a few more tables were broken). It ends with Flash giving the camera to someone else and sitting across from her and going to say something when everyone freezes in fear. Batman is shown behind Flash who has suddenly found his boots to be amazing, then they hear “Flash. Want to tell me why half the tables in the cafeteria are broken?” Silence. Then Flash screams “Scatter!” And you can see everyone shooting off in different directions yelling “It was Flash’s idea!” Flash’s scream of “Traitors!” Echoes before the video ends.

#1 is of the JL Christmas party with Flash being in charge of the mistletoe and standing besides Hawkgirl. It can be seen of her pointing at 2 heroes and Flash putting mistletoe above them. At the end, Flash shoves the camera into Hawkgirl’s hands then grins and shoots over towards Batman with mistletoe above them and leaning in. Before it goes black and ends. No one knows if they kissed or not(well no one but the heroes and they aren’t telling).

There press goes up, but there are some videos that break hearts as heroes cry over the people they didn’t save. One of Wonder Woman screaming as Flash stabbed and almost killed before he is wheeled into surgery, and others of heroes sitting in groups waiting to see if their friend(s) are going to survive. Some of a hero holding a crying child, and trying not to promise them that their parents/siblings are alive because they don’t KNOW if they are. One of different heroes blaming themselves for not being fast/strong enough and whispering apologies because they SHOULD have been faster.

(Wow okay, so this was suppose to be happy, but then it got sad?? And like that wasn’t my goal, but whatever.)

oh my god, i love this so much. and just, the HINTS of batflash: Wally wandering around with the video camera, and the sound of Bruce just, in his low gravelly voice, “Flash. Put that thing away.” and Wally, spinning around, beaming and shifting the camera, “MAKE ME, BATS.” and then, a blur, as Wally speeds away.

#aaaah this is great thank you #batflash #itsdragonfire13 #reply #submission

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simondcox87 · 7 years ago

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'Atomic Blonde' Delivers Female Action Without An Action Hero

After seeing the new spy thriller, I still don’t know what a female action hero looks like.

Many moviegoers turn to the absurdities of comedy or the happy endings of romance when looking for an escape. I’m more of a guns and explosions kind of girl, so I’d been looking forward to Atomic Blonde, the Cold War espionage thriller starring Charlize Theron as MI6 operative Lorraine Broughton.

Atomic Blonde is a highly stylized, spy-versus-spy picture based on a graphic novel. Though shot in color, the film relies on a restrained color palette and boasts carefully blocked frames and noir-inspired lighting. Set in the divided Berlin of 1989, the film also draws on an array of ’80s references, from shoulder-exposing sweatshirts and stiletto ankle boots to a soundtrack so full of beloved ’80s hits that licensing them all ranks as one of the film’s most impressive stunts.

As if in tribute to the Soviet enemies of the Cold War, the film’s plot has taken the form of so many Russian nesting dolls: Each new layer of the tale opens up to reveal another hidden inside. The crisis that sends Agent Broughton to Berlin involves a murdered MI6 agent and a missing list of all the undercover intelligence operatives in the city. Both East and West are willing to kill for the list (and do), as it poses both a security threat to their operations and an opportunity to gain the upper hand. The list is also believed to reveal the identity of a Soviet double agent who has infiltrated MI6. While the Brits know codename “Satchel” exists, they’ve been unable to find and eliminate the traitor. In addition to the female lead, the characters involved in untangling the plot include Broughton’s fellow British spy, David Percival (played as a charming maniac by James McAvoy), a handful of East ...

from http://feeds.christianitytoday.com/~r/christianitytoday/ctmag/~3/jcGJ5aYwNdA/atomic-blonde-delivers-female-action-without-action-hero.html

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imsfire2fanficwriter · 8 years ago

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Running

(NB chapter fic, non canon-compliant; a companion piece to “Escape”)

Chapter 1

He’s become strangely used, these last few days, to running. And to acting on impulse. These last extraordinary days of his life, which so easily could be his very last days, too.

Once you start acting on your first quick thought, time after time, like this, it has a certain momentum. The heart wants to do right, but also to live. So when the grenade lands in the hold, bouncing with its tin-metal sound, he doesn’t hesitate for a second. He’s on his feet and leaping over it, straight out the hatch into the crossfire, because he’s the last man aboard alive and he wants to stay that way, and there’s a slightly better chance outside than in. He runs hunched over, praying. A part of his mind laughs at what he’s doing – trying to avoid getting hit, really, Bodhi? In all this shit you’re still trying to duck, still praying, still running?

Behind him on the landing pad, Rogue One is blasted heavenwards. Wreckage and shrapnel rain down on Bodhi Rook as he runs. He’s going to be running in his last breaths, it would appear. He wants to live.

He breaks through the belt of trees onto the next pad in time to see Chirrut dead on the sand, and Baze, bleeding, fallen a few yards off, turning to look at his beloved. Another grenade explodes and the blast throws him bodily back into the undergrowth and snatches the howl of grief from his mouth. It snatches the very air. He knows they’re dead.

He gasps and chokes, struggling to his feet, ears ringing, blinded by smoke. Starts running again.

He’s limping harder now, the leg wound a tearing pain at every step. He can feel blood in his boot. He runs and ducks and yells his rage and pain and terror. Blaster bolts fly past him. Blood splashes in the sand, in the shallows. The salt water stings.

Another landing pad. A ship. A little, pretty thing, practically a yacht, some senior officer’s private jaunting car or Captain’s gig. Breath ripping in his throat, blood in his footprints and his heart, Bodhi flings himself aboard and into the pilot’s seat. No time to think, no time to panic about keying in the wrong codes or firing up engines and exhausts in the wrong order. He does think of it, his brain running at treble speed, even as he tells himself there’s no time, even as he hits keys, bang, bang, bang; hears the engine start to purr, an absurd sweet sound in the racket of battle. The vibration kicks in, soft as a kitten’s heartbeat, and he hauls on the launch lever. The yacht takes off into the firefight.

She handles like a dragonfly, the most exquisite piece of flight tech he’s ever touched. In any other situation it would be comedy, or heaven.

He flies through the storm, dodging blasts and phaser fire, the delicate little ship almost dancing through the air as he steers towards the transmission tower. He’s their only way out, he has to get there in time.

Beyond the stark line of the tower the whole sky is filled up. Scarif has a twin suddenly, a new full moon looming over her sunny seas. Bodhi gapes at it. There’s only one thing it can be.

It fires. Green lasers vivid as hate, ripping the world open. The ship is spun off course by shockwaves as the energy slices down. He wrestles it back under control, searching the ground frantically.

There. At the foot of the tower. Movement. So far off. Too far off; the worst of nightmares, to see them and be unable to reach them. He turns the yacht anyway, banking, flying straight towards the oncoming blast wave. He’d know those tiny figures anywhere, even stumbling and struggling as they are, even so far away. The boiling sea advances. He’s steering into his own death for them, and he sees Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor embrace, lost and alone on the beach, as the shockwave billows forward and cuts him off from them.

Bodhi’s scream hurts his own ears. But it’s too late. They’re out of sight, they were always too far away. The blast will reach them and he can only choose, but it’s no choice; fly into the flames and die with them or run and live.

He almost does fly into the destruction. Cassian, dead. All of them dead. What is there to live for now? But he wants to live. He’s still running, he still wants to live.

He pulls up and guns the engines, pushing for altitude, running for the sky. Compared to Scarif Base burning behind him, his friends and every last thing he loves burning, the blaze of clearing the stratosphere is nothing.

He dodges and ducks through the ongoing space battle, barely seeing the destruction, the wrecks, the swooping fighters and slow monstrous flagships. As soon as he’s in clear space he inputs calculations he’s done ten hundred times, and makes the jump to hyperspace, and home.

He wants to see the red beauty of Jedha one last time before he dies.

But the face of home is a beauty marred now by a scar half a continent wide. He orbits the planet and knows his home is no longer there. Every street he’d ever run along as a child, every wall he’d ever climbed, every rock he’d ever played on, gone. Everyone he knew, the last few of his family, the last of his friends, all gone. Old friends and new, old hopes and new, all dead.

He’s starting to cry at last as he calculates new coordinates. He sits staring down at the mutilated face of his loss, while the system calibrates and aligns. He can never go home.

He takes the yacht into another jump knowing he will not come back.

Once safe in the flickering blue nowhere-yonder of hyperspace he wraps his arms round himself and begins to sob, and then to howl out loud. Tears pour down his face. He can’t bear it, and he must bear it, and he cannot.

He hears Cassian Andor’s last words to him over and over: Keep the engine running, you’re our only way out of here. Over and over. Life will be agony, for the rest of the time it lasts. He failed them. He killed them. He killed them all, he killed the captain, he killed Cassian.

He’ll never see him again; those beautiful eyes, so kind, so guarded, so hopeful at the last, will never look at anything or anyone again.

Bodhi cries until he’s sick and light-headed, until he wants to throw up, until he is worn out. He falls asleep in the pilot seat, and wakes hungry and cold and drowning in despair. His leg has grown stiff, and every muscle aches; the wound opens again when he moves, and the pain brings on another wave of exhausted tears. But the yacht speeds on, and leaps into real-space again, over Yavin 4. He sits crying at the controls, his running done. He still wants to live.

Chapter 2

The Comm has been shouting at him for some time before he registers it, and realises the voice addressing him is taut as a garrotte with suppressed fear.

“Unknown vessel, identify yourself! We have weapons locked on to you. Identify yourself or we will fire!”

He scrabbles for the microphone, shouting “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot! Rogue One, call sign Rogue One!”

“The hells you are,” says the Comms operator angrily.

“No, please, you don’t understand, I am, I am! I’m the only one left, I’m the pilot. Bodhi Rook, I’m the pilot…”

“Rogue One was lost with all hands!”

“I know, I know, I saw them, I couldn’t reach them, I’m the pilot, please don’t shoot!”

For a moment there’s no answer, and he is starting to try and calculate coordinates to jump again, his brain chasing thoughts that skitter like raindrops on ice. Of course there can be no refuge for him here. He’ll just have to run and keep running, for the rest of his life.

“I know that voice,” a second operator interjects urgently. “That’s the pilot.”

“Yes!” Bodhi yells, all the half-grasped figures scattering from his mind again. “Yes, it’s me, it’s me!”

“Bring him in,” says the second voice. “Stand down defences.”

He makes himself breathe and breathe again, and say almost calmly “Thank you.” The little yacht sails down, still handling like a spirit even under his hands that shake now with stress and the end of stress. It lands as sweetly as a leaf on water.

Bodhi unfastens his seat belt, powers down the engines, remembers that’s the wrong order of doing things, remembers none of it matters anymore. He stands up and his leg stabs him. He looks out at the chaotic landing field, at flight crew and ground crew working and running, ships preparing for take-off, the line of big hangars ahead. His friends will never see these things again.

He climbs down from the entry hatch and feels the solid surface of Yavin 4 under his boots.

His friends will never come back here. Cassian Andor will never feel the kind ground underfoot again.

They are all gone into atoms, he thinks as he staggers across to the people running towards him. All gone back to dust, dust and the fire-breath of stars. Those wise, kind, watchful eyes, burned out now.

He faints on the concrete, just short of the outstretched hands of help.

He’s debriefed, at length, by men and women who do the job diligently and professionally, without emotion. They pass the roles of interrogator and sympathetic listener back and forth amongst themselves, never letting him relax and trust any of them. He knows it’s necessary, he is a traitor after all; but it’s a strain nonetheless, enduring the games they play, testing his veracity. Once, he snaps and shouts at them to bring their Bor Gullet and be done with it. Blank baffled stares greet his outburst, and he subsides. The creeping monster that sucked its way through his every thought, even that, now, is dust.

Once, he cries. But it’s too easy an excuse, to settle for misery and the label of having been broken by his experiences. He fights through the tears and refuses to run.

That’s when they tell him about Alderaan, and that the plans were recaptured. And for a time his resolve breaks indeed.

But in the end he wants to live, and to help others do so. It may be a tiny end-game, one man’s decision smaller than a single atom in a galaxy crashing to ruin, but he wants to go down holding true to the values and hopes his friends died for.

When the news arrives of the rescue, of Senator Leia Organa and the plans both saved and brought home, he stands at the back of the council chamber listening to the debate. Last time he was here, he stood just behind Jyn, right at the front, willing her arguments to be heard and understood, shaken to the heart when she was rejected. He sensed that he was barely seen, standing there at the centre of the debate. It seems far more natural to be where he is now, behind a wall of people twenty bodies deep. He’s in his proper place, unnoticed, an object of indifference to all.

As soon as the council disperses he hurries to offer any service he can, in the fight that’s to come.

He flies evacuation transports, for the base hospital and then for civilian personnel, nineteen solid hours of hyperspace jumps as they try to save as many people as possible from the approaching Death Star. By the time he lands back at Yavin Base for the fifth time and learns the news, he is dizzy with tiredness, and his newly healed leg is aching again; but he’s allowed no time to sleep, for the biggest party he’s ever seen is erupting. He finds he has no choice but to celebrate with strangers the victory he worked for with dead friends.

He feels strange, adrift, looking from outside himself with disbelief at the unimaginable luck they’ve had.

There’s a lot of drinking, but Bodhi doesn’t drink. A lot of shouting and singing and dancing round bonfires. He sings, picking up the words and the tunes by ear, and joins in the dances though he doesn’t know the steps. He sits beside one of the bonfires and watches an improvised firework display; gets kissed, and disciplines himself to kiss back sometimes.

But all the time, he can see in his mind the faces that won’t appear suddenly, waving in the crowd, and hear the voices that will never cheer alongside his.

Still, it is victory.

Chapter 3

The day after the battle of Endor, the day after victory, he presents himself at headquarters and tells a weary-eyed duty officer he wants to join up. He’s a pilot, and a good one; he can learn to fly anything, it’s the one thing strength he has confidence in. He wants to be useful and this is the only way he can think of.

A hung-over recruiting Sergeant takes his details, swears him in and instructs him where to go to get fitted for a flight suit. Then looks at her computer screen again and says

“There’s a tag on your name in the system. Mon Mothma wants to see you.”

“No, that can’t be right.” He doesn’t mean to say it aloud but it’s true, this surely must be a mistake.

“Right here, I promise you. You don’t want to keep the Commander-in-Chief waiting, do you, Private?”

Hearing himself called Private for the first time is odd, and then suddenly comforting; it’s a start, a first shadow of belonging again. He essays a salute and is sure he’s doing it wrong; tells himself to practice in front of a mirror. But the Sergeant grins, good-humoured, and sends him on his way.

The Commander-in-Chief is almost as relaxed, though she doesn’t have the bleary demeanour of most of the base this morning. She greats him kindly and offers him a seat. Her personal office is small and calm, bright with sunshine from a big window overlooking the forests and towers. The desk she sits down at bears a file of papers, a potted lily with starry white flowers, a carved chunk of ochre-red sandstone. The stone is beautiful, red as homecoming in the clear sunlight streaming through the window.

“I realised I had never thanked you,” Mon Mothma says. “I wished to rectify that.”

He blinks. “Oh. It doesn’t matter. Ma’am.”

“It was an unjust omission,” she says gravely. “The last few days have – been pretty eventful. But none of this would have happened, none of it could have happened, without your courage. Thank you, Private Rook.”

He wants to tell her he doesn’t deserve thanks, but hers is not a face used to rebuffs. The best he can think of is to say weakly “It was a – a group effort. Not just me. Not even mostly me.”

She nods. “Nonetheless. We cannot thank the rest of the crew of Rogue One, though we will celebrate their names. There’s due to be a ceremony, medals for the pilots who fired the kill-shots, a memorial to the dead. It’s not the sort of thing we’ve done in the past, but the mood is in favour of some kind of official recognition. I wanted to ask you if you would be willing to take part. Receive a citation on their behalf, perhaps?”

She is asking, when she could order him. He feels that intensely; this is the good side of the rebellion, the counterbalance to that chaotic council meeting when the lack of consensus destroyed any chance of a decision. The rebels don’t compel free people, and he is a free man, even now as a serving soldier.

He imagines how the team would have reacted to being honoured; the mixture of emotions, deep pride and deep discomfort, cynicism, awkwardness, serene gladness… In that company, surrounded and held in their equal confusion, he could have owned his own joy and proud embarrassment, could even have delighted in them. He could have hidden among his friends and looked into his confused heart, and found a balance there. But this? – standing up alone in front of dozens, maybe hundreds – for all he knows maybe thousands – to represent the dead and be honoured for them? – this is not the same at all.

He swallows and tries to lecture himself into acceptance. It’s recognition of their courage, not of his lack of it. Recognition for Cassian’s leadership, his years of dedication. Himself, just a vehicle. He tries; but it’s no good, and he says so. “I can’t. I’m sorry, I just can’t.”

“I understand.”

“I’m the one who left them there,” he adds. He, Bodhi Rook, the traitor, the coward, the untrustworthy, to be the face of the heroic dead? “No way does anyone want to honour me!”

“That isn’t true, I assure you.”

“You don’t understand”.

“I think I do, actually,” says Mon Mothma, cool as ever. “It’s natural to feel pain at being the only survivor. And I can’t blame you for being reluctant to take part. I shall have to attend, and I wish I did not. The rebellion has always regarded this kind of spectacle as something the Empire does, not us. I regret the fact that so many people feel a need now to change this.” She gives an almost imperceptible sigh. “I’ll request you be excused from attending. We could say combat stress, maybe?”

“Thank you.” He doesn’t care what reason she gives. He’s ashamed of what a relief it is, not to have to do this.

The Commander-in-Chief takes something out of the folder in front of her and offers it to him.

“I wanted secondly to ask your views on this. It’s only a mock-up as yet.”

He takes the sheet of paper, bewildered, and sees it’s a design for a poster. The Heroes of Rogue One, written across the top of an image of them all. His heart swims, turning like a seal in his breast. He hasn’t seen their faces for days, and there they all are suddenly. Baze looking grim, and Chirrut grimly cheerful. Tonc, who died in the hold of Rogue One beside him; Sergeant Melchi, and Sefla, and Basteren; Pao, showing his teeth. Men who’d never given up, and men who’d known the dark for far too long and then tasted hope again.

There was Jyn, all clear-eyed certainty, pugnacious and alive. The droid, somehow managing to look both confident and sour despite its expressionless face.

Himself. Looking surprisingly calm, considering how terrified he remembers being.

Cassian. Lean and determined, grim as the Guardians, resolute as Jyn. Eyes full of fire. So alive.

He realises he’s been gripping the sheet and staring at it for several minutes. Numbly he says “What is this?”

“Recruitment campaign,” says Mon Mothma quietly.

He tears his eyes away from the faces of the people he couldn’t save. No, no no no, please, no… “Please take me off it…”

Her mouth is an expressionless line. “I have been pushing for you to be kept in.”

“I’m sorry, I just can’t. I can’t! I’m not a hero. I left them there! Everyone knows it, people stare at me, everyone knows I’m the man who took them there and left them to die. You should use Cassian as your poster hero, he gave you his whole life, he deserves to be praised and immortalised like this. So do the others. Please, not me.”

He puts the sheet of paper back emphatically on the desk, pushing the dead man’s eyes away from him.

“Very well.”

Is he supposed to wait to be dismissed, or can he ask to leave? Is it acceptable for him to ask a question? He has no experience of interacting with anyone so senior; the Empire’s strict adherence to hierarchy saw to that. There is a silence.

She sits quietly, without impatience. He’s trying to steady his rapid, panicked breathing, and realises she may be waiting for him to get calm again. The idea she may see him as meriting her concern is both a jolt and a reassurance.

At length she says “So, have you given any thought to what deployment you’d like? I can’t promise anything, but if there’s a particular base you would like to be assigned to, say, it might be possible to arrange that much, as a token of thanks.”

“What deployment I’d like?” He gapes. “I don’t understand.” Surely if he��s a soldier now, he’ll be obeying orders, going where he’s sent. He’d hoped that that way he can be a nobody once more. “I – I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.”

“You’re a pilot. Is there a particular squadron you had in mind? We’re re-naming one; would you be interested in serving in Rogue Squadron?”

His heart twists inside him again, and he says shakily “No, no thank you…” But there is one thing he has thought about, a good deal, this last week. “Ma’am, may I ask a question? Were there any survivors? From Alderaan?”

She presses her lips together for a moment, and her eyes lose their calm. In a low voice she says “From the planet itself, no. The destruction was – total. But” – she inhales and raises her head slightly – “from off-planet, yes, a great many. Everything from diplomats and trade attachés to merchantmen, to holidaymakers and even criminals in gaol. All of them refugees now.”

“What are we doing for them? We should do something – we must.”

Mon Mothma nods her head. “There’s a team assigned, to escort any vessels from Alderaan here, and collect individuals who lack transportation. It will be a huge undertaking, but we will bring them to Yavin 4 and give them the hope of a future. Now that there is hope to give. Is that the mission you would like to be assigned to?”

He can’t bring back his friends, or his family, or his home. But he can give his life to atone for failing them. He can run with the desperate, the betrayed, the homeless, and bring them home.

“Yes,” he says. “Please. Yes.”

Chapter 4

By the time the new settlements on Yavin 4 are well-established, and every citizen of lost Alderaan who wants to come there has been found and rehomed, Bodhi Rook is a Sergeant himself. He knows there’s no chance the promotions were another tacit reward for surviving Rogue One, because in the intervening months and years he’s logged more flying hours than any other pilot in any search-and-rescue team in the entire fleet. Two years without a single day’s leave of absence; he has just one thing to live for, and that’s his work.

He still dreams of Scarif.

The first year it was every night. He feared sleeping, but his exhaustion would always overtake him in the end, and then he’d be there on the sandy shore, walking slowly through the battle. Somehow in all the chaos of shooting and explosions nothing ever hit him in his dreams, though he’d see figures fall to left and right, shot, struck down by shrapnel, blasted apart by explosions. Everyone falls; people who were there, people who were not, people he didn’t even know back then, people he hasn’t seen since he was a boy. His family and childhood friends die all around him, and refugees by the hundred, and fellow-fliers, co-pilots, ground crew. He sees Galen Erso there, over and over again, and Mon Mothma and her generals, and the senators who stood round the council table that fateful day and refused to join the assault. All of them dying on the beach at Scarif Base, everyone he’s ever cared about or respected, or wanted to trust, or wished he could have saved.

Every time Chirrut and Baze are there with them; sometimes already fallen, sometimes still on their feet and fighting with a gracefulness and skill that leaves him wanting to cheer, until they are cut down and lie dead in one another’s arms, in their blood. The soldiers are there, battling on and falling one by one, or waiting helplessly with bound hands, trapped prisoners, until they are mown down by AT-AT fire. Even the droid is fighting in his dreams, yelling insults in its cool voice, both forelimbs modified into giant blasters; but K2 falls as well, and the spark goes out in the metal-rimmed eyes, night after night.

He sees Jyn and Cassian, every time, either right ahead of him or far off; always standing face to face, a foot apart. He tries to run to them but his legs are weighed down and he can barely keep moving. Blaster bolts and projectiles fly around the couple as though an invisible force is protecting them; he tries to shout to them to use it, to feel it and use it, the Force will protect them. In the hideous din of fighting they don’t hear. Always. Never. They move together and embrace tightly, a tiny moment of intimacy in the middle of the battlefield; and are gone, as the final blast obliterates everything.

The body grows accustomed to broken sleep, and Bodhi keeps going, even when he dreams the same dream three times a night. He jolts awake with a gasp and lies sweating, listening to his heart try to hammer its way out of his ribs. Hears it steady itself and grow calm again. Tosses and turns and at length goes back to sleep; and is back on the beach, screaming at Jyn and Cassian to save themselves as they die holding one another.

He tries to tell himself he doesn’t know why they are embracing in his dreams. Knows he does. They always embraced with their eyes. All the dream does is let them touch as they never could in life.

He talks to doctors, and is offered counselling, which means reliving that day even more frequently than he already does, and medication that deadens his sleep, but also replaces his appetite with constant nausea. He isn’t blessed with a physique that can bear throwing up after every meal for very long. He stops taking the pills. He talks to a red-robed cleric, who can at least remind him of the clear faith he had as a child, before the Empire came. She reassures him that he is doing the right thing, that his friends and family would be proud of him, that the Force was with them when they died. It’s a comfort; but comfort doesn’t stop the dreams. He learns to get on with life on five hours’ sleep instead of seven, most nights.

It takes a long time before he notices that sometimes there’s a night with only one bad dream, or none at all. The change is very gradual; slowly, over many months, the five hours of sleep increase to six. When the Alderaan refugee mission is finally wound down, and Bodhi Rook is reassigned to Hoth, he feels like a new man.

The nightmares do not stop, he is beginning to suspect they never will; but with this latest change they become, again, less frequent. On Hoth he’s too cold most of the time to be anything but exhausted, and he sleeps deeply most nights, for the first time in two years.

He does supply runs for a while, there, either bringing goods in to Hoth or running blockades to carry aid elsewhere. It’s a happy, busy few months. Until the Base falls.

In the chaos of the evacuation he is grabbed by an officer shouting for a pilot; he scrambles up the gantry-way he’s pushed towards, onto the flight deck of a GR-75. He’s confirmed to himself a long time ago that he really can fly pretty much anything, and he’s trained for the large transports, but he’s never yet taken one up for real. Now he finds himself at the controls of the largest ship he’s ever flown. Almost a thousand lives are depending on him. There’s cannon fire all around as they clear the atmosphere, and the heavens are full of Imperial ships, slow-circling monsters the shape of teeth. For the first time in over a year his hands and his voice shake for a moment, before he makes the jump to hyperspace.

It’s not a regular trip but an escape, running with no end point, the cold stability of Hoth vanishing behind and an empty future ahead. All the hope of two years, falling like a kicked snow-castle.

He wakes up three days later with a burning fever and is sent to the on-board med-bay. It’s his first illness since he defected.

“You have over-stretched yourself,” the medical droid tells him snippily. “Your body is too worn out to resist the virus. I am putting you under orders to rest.”

But a week later he’s back at work. Resting means having nothing to think about. Having nothing to think about means thinking about everything, and out of the blue after months of self-possession he finds that thinking about it means dreaming about it once more, fighting it again and yet again and again. He falls ill a second time and this time is confined to the ward until the medical staff confirm him fit for active duty.

At the end of the prescribed ten days, they refuse to do so.

He reads and watches holos and tries to keep awake. The med-droids give him sedatives and dream-reducers, and he throws up, and is kept under supervision for another three days. Then longer. His sick leave marked “extended” in the medical file.

He’s fought the dreams so many times now. He thought he’d beaten them. He knows he’s ill.

There is psychological help available but it’s prioritised for combat veterans, and Sergeant Rook has only ever flown search-and-rescue and humanitarian aid, and troop transportation, and emergency supply runs, and a few weeks here and there of blockade running; and before that seven years of cargo shipments for the Empire, living in constant fear and loathing himself for it, every day.

He doesn’t think he deserves to have counselling. He tells the doctors so, surly with misery, and it takes a crisply delivered bawling-out from a droid even ruder than the late K2 to get him to accept he must ask for help.

Strangely, the first breakthrough in his counselling comes less than a month in, when he breaks down and admits that he can only remember his friends’ faces now when he dreams of them. His waking memories have grown blurry; even looking at the old recruitment handbill he keeps hidden in his locker can only bring them back with the same expressions as they have in the picture.

He had probably the worst crush of his life on Cassian Andor and now he cannot remember the Captain’s face or his voice, except by allowing himself to sleep and dream of him dying. Is it not enough to feel so much shame at having survived, when others so much more worthy died? Must he himself consign those precious brilliant eyes to oblivion nightly, and forget them every day?

Slowly, gently, very kindly, the counsellor leads him through the minefield of pain, and helps him for the first time to plot out a pathway that doesn’t lead to despair. He knows the Captain was fierce and alive, brave and kind; knows he died for something he believed in. They all did; and they saved not only the rebellion and the dream, and billions of lives, but also him. He owes them everything he has, life, sanity, the chance to do something worthwhile with the remainder of his days. She lets him talk, and asks questions he’d never considered. He hears himself say one day “No, I don’t think Cassian would have wanted me to do this to myself, I think he’d have loathed it. He wanted the rebellion to win so that people could live better lives and be free and happy, not so they could hate themselves” and in a quiet, undramatic way that realisation feels like a new morning.

That night he sleeps without sedatives, and dreams only once; and it’s not of the battlefield but of a sunny room in Yavin Base, where he is giving a distracted recruiting officer his name and qualifications, and asking to join up. The officer writes the details down and asks him to sign; the pen turns into a flowering branch as he offers it to Bodhi, and he looks up and smiles. It’s Cassian. They shake hands and Bodhi wakes in disbelief, with his heart racing.

In the end, he’s off active duty for three months, but the counsellor recommends him for light duties, and he begins again.

He hasn’t seen the last of the nightmares, but once again, very, very slowly, there are fewer of them, and the harmless dreams become more frequent, the sort where regular illogical dream things happen, where pens turn into trees and his lost friends are willing to smile at him.

He vowed to himself two years ago that he would live the life his friends had not survived to see.

He renews that secret oath now, to himself and to the dead; and goes back to work, flying another aid delivery mission.

Chapter 5

At thirty he’s a Lieutenant. The Concordance has been implemented and slowly something like peace is being restored. He wonders if there will be less for him to do, less meaning for his life now, but if anything there is more, for the years of civil war have left billions homeless, and worlds too many to number are crying out for help to rebuild.

At forty, when the final remnants of the Empire’s work are believed cleared at last, he’s a Captain. He’s never flown a fighter in an engagement, but at every other kind of mission a being can serve in, Bodhi Rook has excelled. No-one in the entire Alliance has more experience of the management and delivery of emergency rescues, the logistics of aid missions and humanitarian assistance. People seek him out for his input. His advice has saved lives and mitigated disasters; his life has been a blessing for millions.

He’s long ago laid his ghosts to rest, with love and gratitude for all he learned from them.

At fifty he’s a Commodore, and beginning to consider retirement. He’s had something he never dreamed of when he was young, a career; and not just any career but one spent doing good work. He has learned to feel a kind of satisfaction, a self-acceptance, knowing it was only for that work that he’s received promotion. He’s lived the most spartan of existences and has enough credits saved to buy himself a pleasant small home on a comfortable world if he chooses. But he’s never really enjoyed his periods of shore leave and R&R, planet-side. A quarter-century of being constantly busy, constantly useful, has left him reluctant even to try doing nothing. He’s not at all sure he’ll get anything out of it, even if he’s lucky and it doesn’t bring back nightmares decades old.

He’s shying off from dealing with the question, and reports are starting to come in of the First Order’s expansionist policies. Raids on shipping, then full-blown attacks on independent or Republic-aligned worlds; always with an excuse, some tale of intelligence reports and suspicions of terrorist bases, of mysterious civil insurgencies and local powers requesting assistance. The Republic issues protests and expels diplomats, and tries to pretend this new danger will behave rationally if it’s treated rationally, that it will keep to its own side of the galaxy, that it will not break the Concordance.

He’s seen it all before. His heart twists inside him, and then steadies, and is firm. He won’t run, not from this resurgent evil; he knows exactly what the First Order are. The inheritors of hate, the heirs of the people who destroyed his home and killed everything he’d ever loved.

When General Organa begins formally trying to challenge the policy of polite protest, Bodhi is one of the first to support her. She argues and pisses powerful people off in council; he casts his vote for her plans. She gives up appealing to the Senate and begins sending her own break-away missions, gathering intelligence or looking for ways to support the non-aligned worlds under threat; she takes action and rallies resistance, and he’s with her. He still remembers a council meeting when no-one could agree to take a necessary risk, and a belligerent young woman who decided to take it anyway, on her own if need be. He remembers her force of will carrying enough people before her to win the day, in the end. Himself among them. He’s lived ever since on time borrowed by their courage.

He pledges his allegiance now to the General and her goals.

Dozens of officers, the experienced and tired who never want to see another Empire, and the young and eager who want to commit themselves to their ideals, follow Commodore Rook into the political wilderness, to join the Resistance.

His home is now once again a single room in officers’ quarters, on a hidden base. It feels like a homecoming. He stops worrying about retirement; there are far more serious things to be dealt with and his flying skills are back in demand as the Resistance tries to make the most of the often-outdated ships it can muster or steal. Bodhi is busier than ever, and happy, despite the quiet fear every rebel shares, that they will not be enough to hold off the coming war.

He receives a message one day from the General, asking him to join her at the base hospital.

General Organa hasn’t been well the last few months, ever since the news arrived of her husband’s murder. She drove herself relentlessly on in the aftermath of that blow, and along with the rest of the Resistance, Bodhi has watched with concern. Hearing she’s in the hospital now, he panics. Although it’s incomprehensible why she would send for him in such a situation, nonetheless he imagines her bedridden, helpless, perhaps dying. Yet another person he loves and respects and aspires to be like, brought low by this endless battle against oppression. He spurs himself into something approaching a run, and arrives for their meeting out of breath and tense.

She isn’t in bed. Isn’t even under medical supervision. In fact she’s sitting in a small room adjoining the Physiotherapy gym, and looking more cheerful than he’s seen her in weeks as she chats to two young men. He recognises the one standing up as Commander Dameron, one of their best and bravest pilots, one of the heroes of the recent fighting. The other is seated; a young man, slim, good-looking, and currently running in perspiration.

Dameron is smiling broadly; he stands to attention crisply and the General laughs as Bodhi tells him “At ease, Commander.” Everyone is beaming. He feels as though he’s just missed hearing a grand joke. He tries to catch his breath surreptitiously.

“I’m glad you were able to come so quickly,” General Organa says. “Finn, this is Commodore Rook; Bodhi, I’d like you to meet our newest recruit. This is Finn. I hope you’ll be able to help him adjust to his new life.”

By the looks of it, the younger man has just completed some kind of strenuous physio work-out. A stout brace is wrapped around his torso and he’s wearing grip-gloves on his hands. He’s wiping his face with a towel and he smiles past it from Bodhi to Dameron to the General and says a cautious “Hello.”

Dameron brings forward a wheelchair, and bends to help him up from the bench he’s sitting on.

Bodhi says “Good to meet you, soldier. I’m happy to help, Ma’am, although I’m not sure how much help I can be.” He has no experience of working with disabled veterans. What is he here for? And how can the young man be a veteran anyway, if he’s also a new recruit? It doesn’t make much sense.

And then the name clicks, and he says “Oh, wait, you’re the young man who? – you’re the Stormtrooper?”

Finn looks stricken for a moment before replying in a quiet voice “Yes, sir.”

Dameron lays a hand protectively on his shoulder.

It would have been good, Bodhi thinks, to have people stand beside him like that, all those years ago, to have had someone support him as he learned to live again. A counterbalance against the many who looked askance, who read in his face the guilt bleeding inside him, and wondered if he was trustworthy. This is the defector who helped them destroy Starkiller Base. The unlooked-for hero, the rebel of conscience; the real man who stepped out from the unassailable faceless ranks of white puppets. His eyes are so bright, bright as his heart must be; and, Force alive, he’s so young.

He knows how much courage it must have taken, for this boy to stand up and do the things he did. Knows intimately and deeply how hard that choice must have been, and how hard it will go on being. People will doubt Finn even though he’s committed his life to them; people will look at this eager, brave young face and see a traitor, and expect him to prove himself, no matter how many times he does so.

He knows without a second’s hesitation; he’ll do anything in his power to help. He reaches out, and now he’s beaming too. “May I shake your hand, young man? It’s a real honour to meet you.”

Finn shakes his hand, but his expression is uncertain.

The General says kindly “Finn has been worrying that he’ll never really be accepted here. I thought it would do him good to meet a fellow-defector.”

Finn gapes “You?”

Commander Dameron grins. He knows the story. Perhaps everyone does, Bodhi thinks, mildly surprised even now by the idea.

“Commodore Rook betrayed the Galactic Empire to come over to the Alliance,” says General Organa. “And as you can see, he’s made a solid career since then, and done a great deal of good. In fact I’d say he’s something of a hero around here. If anyone can advise you on learning to live with us, it’s him.” She stands up, and Bodhi and Dameron both straighten and salute. “I’m so glad you’re making such a good recovery, Finn. Boys, take care of him. I’m counting on you.” She smiles at them all and leaves, a small walking sun-core of dignity.

“So,” Bodhi says, taking her vacated seat. “What can I do to help you, young man?”

The ex-Stormtrooper sighs. “I don’t know… I don’t even know enough to know what I don’t know, if that makes sense.”

“Well, let me start by telling you that this won’t always be easy, but it will always be the best decision you’ve ever taken. And any time anything makes you wonder if you were mad to follow your conscience, don’t forget there will be people like me, like General Organa, like Commander Dameron here, who will stand beside you no matter what.” He wishes he could say more, but only one other thing occurs to him; words that call up a long-ago memory, words so potent to him that although they may sound odd now, he does add them after a moment. “Welcome home, Finn.”

Chapter 6

Bodhi mentors the boy Finn for several months. It’s clear from the start that there is something very special about this modest young man. He cannot remember when he last felt so intently that someone was a fulcrum, a being about whom others would gather and from whom they would draw courage. Probably not since he was no older than Finn himself; meeting Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor, all those years ago. It’s a joy to him now to see someone as brave and committed as them, not ignored and oppressed by orders but alive and thriving, applauded for his courage. But his recovery continues, and in time it takes Finn away. If it were not too melodramatic a way to look at the chaos of life, he’d say it was his destiny.

Bodhi tries not to worry about the lad. There’s already too much to worry about, if he allowed himself to. The First Order’s aggression continues unabated. He is just one soldier, but he must do his duty, just like Finn.

He refuses a desk job, for what feels like the thousandth time. Instead, he requests transfer onto the rescue mission for the millions of Hosnians made homeless by the single ghastly use of the Starkiller. The operation has been struggling on for months, and the monumental task of co-ordinating it properly is painfully familiar, but it restores him even as it also breaks his heart all over again. So many refugees, none of whom can ever return home, their whole system reduced to dust floating in space, a scar on the face of the galaxy.

And things are not going well. The Resistance has terrible set-backs, and for a time it seems as if they are doomed to fail in their fight. If this is how it’s going to finish, Bodhi decides, then he will at least fight through to the end. Too many good people have given themselves selflessly for this cause; he can never do less, without betraying their memory. Memories he still holds dear, even now. He will, they all will, endure, somehow.

He reminds himself of young Finn, bright-eyed fulcrum of hope, and of all the people who need someone like that to renew their convictions and inspire them to stand and hold their ground. The Finns and the Jyns, and the Cassians; the guiding lights who don’t go out, even at dead of night, even when everything dies. He can’t be one of them, is sure he never was and never will be such an inspiration; but he can still stand and do his best.

He carries in the breast pocket of his jacket a copy of an old recruitment handbill. The original is now too dog-eared and fragile to touch, but he had it framed years ago; it hangs on the wall of his room on base, next to an ancient watercolour of Jedha City. He looks at the copy sometimes, at the faces that are now vivid only in this one picture.

He wonders sometimes whether there is any hope. Reminds himself there always is. Reminds himself of the day he was told that you take each chance, until either you win, or the chances run out; and that that in the end is all there is to it.

At possibly the lowest point in the whole campaign, he accepts an assignment to a training camp, passing on his expertise to a group of recruits who will be running blockades throughout the Torranix sector. Most of them are more than capable pilots but have never studied logistics in their lives. He wishes there was time to give them more than just a short course, time to take them on training runs and real-life simulations. But these days, the Resistance has to take learning speed over learning depth. Time is more precious than the finest ores and gems. Bodhi works to bring the youngsters on as fast as possible; sends them to replace people lost in battle or taken captive. Begins work with the next contingent as soon as they arrive.

The tide of the times is against them right now; maybe always will be. It doesn’t entirely surprise him when Worru’du Base comes under attack.

He’s felt for a long time that his luck would run out, one of these days. Perhaps he is too old for the fight. Perhaps he should have taken one of those admin postings, or sneaked away and tried to enjoy a few years of retirement, let others do the hard work and bear the wounds, now.

He finds himself instead hiding out, underground, in a bunker three miles from the main base. He’s sent the recruits on ahead, getting them off-world in the only spaceworthy craft they could snatch; their lives, their training, their youthful strength and energy, are more use to the Resistance than his. A handful of civilians and ground staff escaped with him and through a spy-eye they watch as First Order troops burn their headquarters to the ground and torch the remaining ships.

They have food for four or five days, perhaps more with careful rationing, but water for three at most. If help can reach them at all, it will take at least a standard day to get there from the nearest Resistance-held system. He’s the most senior officer there, and on the evening of the second day he decides to take the gamble of calling for an extraction. Then issues suicide pills, in case the message is intercepted.

When help arrives, it’s in the middle of the night and it isn’t an official extraction at all but a damaged freighter. A voice crackling on the Comm unit saying “Is anyone there?” and a ship looming in the shoulder-high grass, a tall dark-skinned woman with braided hair running towards him as he peers out of the access tunnel. She greets him gladly. “I caught your distress call when I put the channel on to make my own. I can trade you space for help; I need a co-pilot, mine got shot on Galand by a First Order patrol. How many are you?”

“Sixteen. Two with minor injuries.”

She looks over his shoulder at the figures gathering behind him; points back at her ship. “Can any of you fly one of these things?” The ship looks Bothan, and it’s a good size, a boxy dark bulk against the moonlight and the star-field.

“You’re Resistance?” he counters. If she isn’t, he’s a dead man anyway. But this is such a crazy way to begin an entrapment that he’s pretty sure she’s genuine.

“Hells, yes! What do I look like?” She grins as more bleary faces appear round him in the tunnel mouth. “Hi, folks, I guess I’m your ride out of here. Is there anyone here who can help me fly my ship?”

She gestures again towards the craft behind her.

“I’m a pilot,” he says. If they’re going to get shot down running, it will be good to be at the controls of a star-ship again at the end. “I think everyone else is ground crew or civilians, though.”

“One pilot is all I need. Okay, people, get aboard. I’m Lieutenant Shammen, by the way, Deyaa Shammen.”

It’s a Jedhan name, and he grins in the near dark as he answers “I’m Bodhi.”

The other base staff are hurrying past him, into the open hold of the ship; light pours down from the entry port and catches on the pips on his uniform.

She curses. “You’re a Commodore? Damn and blast, if they know there were senior personnel here they’re probably monitoring traffic all over the sector by now.”

“Can you just get us off-planet? We’ll decide what to do about me later? I’m responsible for these people, I need to know they’re on their way to safety.”

Deyaa Shammen nods. “Yes, sir.” She leads the way onto the freighter. “Let’s get moving, people.”

Once into the relative safety of the hyperspace lane she turns to him. “I can only think of one thing I can do with you and your people. Luckily it’s easy to get to from here. It’ll mean you’re all out of active service for a while, but it’s your best bet to lie low unnoticed.”

“You know a safe house?”

“Yep. I know the people who run it. It’s the start of a whole network, an Underground Railroad; runs right through the Ag Circuit. My Mom helped run the routes into it for years, I’ve been going there since I was a kid. You may have to be separated, but it’s the best way I can think of to get you all out of a mess like this. And the people who do this run always use old tin cans like this rig; so nobody’ll think twice about me ferrying a whole bunch of you.”

“Fine,” Bodhi says. “And thank you.”

He’s tired, after two nights without sleep, watching over the fifteen souls hidden with him beneath the grasslands. A safe house sounds painfully appealing suddenly.

He sets the co-ordinates Lt Shammen gives him; his new destination, for who-knows how long. Salliche.

Chapter 7

He sits in the co-pilot’s seat, watching the hectic blue swirling past the main viewport. It’s hypnotic. They’re on course and holding steady and there’s relatively little for him to do, and he catches himself yawning. Shakes his head and says “I ought to warn you.”

“Yes, sir?” says Deyaa Shammen, after a time. After another pause she prompts him “You’ve never flown a Bothan freighter before?”

“What? Oh, no, it’s not that. I’ve had no sleep for the last couple of days. My reaction times may not be at their best.”

“But you can fly this thing, right? Sir?”

“I can fly anything,” Bodhi tells her ruefully. “I am a pilot. But please keep me talking, so I don’t nod off.” He looks away from the blue of hyperspace smearing across the windscreen, focuses on the controls in front of him again. “I probably could fly in my sleep, but I’d rather not try the experiment just now.”

“What should I talk to you about, sir?”

“Anything you like. And please, don’t feel you have to keep calling me ‘sir’. I’m in charge of the people in back, but this is still your ship, Lieutenant… Tell me about where we’re going. It sounds as though you’ve done this trip before.”

“Oh hells, yes. My Mom used to courier people here during the Civil War and when things started getting hot again a few years ago I picked up her old run since I already knew the ropes and the routes, and the people.”

“They can’t be expecting us; is that going to make any problems?”

“I’m sure they’ll be cool with it. I’ve done this run three, four times a year since I started, Galand to the Ag Sector and back, and half the time I don’t know what I’m picking up till I get to the drop-off. Some trips, it’s a pile of shipping containers or something, and sometimes it’s people looking for a hide-out and I’m the one who got the job because I can get them to Solondori. The Hallik’s have been running this network for a good thirty years, they’re used to unexpected arrivals. It’s just a railroad run like a hundred others to them.”

“Any passwords or anything I should know?”

“Not for a formal delivery like this. It’s probably different if you arrive freelance. Back in Mom’s day it used to be that you had to say you wanted to be a fruit picker.”

“You want to be a fruit picker?” It’s certainly not what he expected.

“Yep. There’s a long tradition of itinerant labour in this system. That’s why it’s so easy to cover up bringing people in. You’re all supposed to be farm labourers looking for work.”

Bodhi realises something; turns in his seat and calls down into the hold “Everybody, you’re going to need to take off uniform jackets, anything with insignia, anything that makes you look like Resistance. We need to look like farm workers if we get inspected.”

“There’s a false floor in the starboard compartment, you can hide stuff there,” the Lieutenant adds over her shoulder. “Once we’re through customs we can get gear for you.”

Weary groans from the people in back; but he sees jackets being stripped off, shirts turned inside- out so the stripes are hidden. Hopefully it will be enough; Deyaa Shammen seems to think so, anyway, she nods and turns back to the controls.

“You’re very certain of these people,” he says.

“I’ve known the whole family since I was six months old. Solondori’s been the major entry point for the network for forty years and it’s never been hacked. The Halliks know what they’re doing.”

“Okay, that’s good to know…” He yawns again. “Damn. Tell me about – tell me about your ship. I noticed your operating systems are pretty high-spec; did you ask for the additions or did it come like that?”

“I built that myself. I like customising things, getting them to their highest capability. My Pa’s an engineer so maybe it runs in the family. My Mom once cannibalised an Imperial TIE fighter to build an escape ship, so there’s that to live up to, too. I’ve just been tinkering with ships all my life.”

“Your family name’s Jedhan, isn’t it?”

“Yep. I’ve never been there, though. Pa won’t go back, says he can’t bear to.”

“I know the feeling. I was born in the Holy City.”

“You know what he’s talking about, then. Those evil bastards.”

He grins at the casual frankness, and at the way she’s accepted him asking her not to call him “Sir”. Lt Shammen has a mixture of calm good sense and belligerent assertiveness that delights him. She reminds him of everything he’s admired, over the years, about the rebels. That whole “never give up” view of the world. It took him so long to learn to think like that, after a childhood living under those whose message was “never believe you can change this”; and to her it comes naturally.

So long as there are people like this fighting, surely there’s still hope. Like knowing young Finn; it’s heartening to see there is always another generation who won’t accept being trodden down and held in slavery. There have always been so many things wrong with the way they fought, the way they dithered, the way the cynics argued for the crudest possible direct action and the politicians for no action at all, or only for actions that would get them re-elected next year. But there have always been the quiet people, and the cheerful loud ones, who do their jobs and hold their ideals close, and do not give up.

In the end, he does doze a little, sitting upright in the co-pilot seat. Just for an hour or so. No dreams. He wakes and feels everything still solid, the Bothan ship still flying, the Resistance still fighting on, Lt Shammen still at the controls.

“Thank you for letting me catch a nap,” he says, and she grins sidelong at him and tells him he needed it, and besides, this is an uneventful as any flight she’s had in months.

Suddenly they are coming out of hyperspace and sweeping into a planetary system, approaching the misty blue ball of Salliche. He looks down at wide green continents, skeins of shining rainclouds, the miniature drama of a giant lightning storm over the southern ocean. The Comm unit comes on with a buzz, and Deyaa Shammen answers it and gives a string of authorisation codes to the bored-sounding Imperial Landing Controller speaking from planet-side. And then they are swinging down through the upper atmosphere and the cloud banks below, and coming in along the flank of a long range of low, rounded hills, in steady light rain.

“I already pinged my friends,” Deyaa Shammen says cheerfully. “They’ll be there to meet us.”

As far as he can see, the landscape is farmland, and green; stock animals grazing on hillsides and meadows, fields of ploughed red earth blushed with the first growth of crops, orchards full of spring blossom and new foliage, the delicate colours blending in the muted cloudy light, soft and fresh, acre after acre.

It’s all so peaceful; unnervingly so. It’s beginning to scare him, how easy this has all been. Can escape really be this simple?

The soil colour haunts him, that faint sheen of green over that terracotta-red. It looks like Jedha after the winter rains. The standing fields, the groves and orchards below the ship, all those are far too green; but that red plough-soil is precious and beautiful, a ghost in his eyes, a tiny momentary echo of things he lost more than thirty years ago.

Even if this is the day when finally everything goes wrong, he can remember home now and feel satisfied. He’s done his duty and held his truth, for decades; he’s avenged the destruction of Jedha, the dead of Alderaan, the lost souls of Scarif, as best he could. He’s lived the life that Cassian Andor laid down his life to build. He won’t die ashamed.

They land at a small spaceport on water meadows in a river delta; just three landing pads, and farmland all around, right up to the perimeter fences. There’s a big open-backed skimmer truck just arriving at the main entrance, and the driver looks across at the freighter coming in, and waves. Bodhi sees a young man, slim, dark-haired and bearded. Deyaa waves back from the viewport.

A guard in a creased uniform waves the truck in, hops onto the back to ride over to them. Deyaa says “Better check your people are ready.”

For a moment he feels again that twinge of alarm. Everything is going so smoothly. It can’t be this easy. Is this the day his long, long run of luck is finally going to run dry? He scrambles through into the hold, pulling off his jacket with the shining pips on arm and shoulder as he goes; rolls it and carries it under his arm. His mouth is dry as the gangway opens. But the inspection is ludicrously casual; just that one trooper, glancing inside and taking a head-count, Deyaa handing over scan-docs that are barely scrolled through. Either this is rigged, or someone somewhere has been paid a lot of bribes; or there actually are places where the First Order’s ruthless efficiency has not yet taken root. Maybe this really is the perfect place to run a safe house.

The young man from the truck is waiting, parked right outside. At close quarters he’s scruffy and handsome; mid-thirties at a guess, untidy collar-length hair, clear brown eyes and a smile that goes out to one side first and then the other. He’s grinning at Deyaa Shammen, and she marches down the ramp to greet him.

It’s all too easy, too easy. He hates this nagging, oppressive feeling of premonition but he can’t shake it. This is all going to go wrong.

They climb into the back of the vehicle. The young man introduces himself as Esperanz Hallik, shakes hands, scrambles back into the driver’s seat, Deyaa climbing up alongside him to chat. They drive for half an hour, through paddocks and groves and along the river bank on a way-marked route above a levee. The air is fresh and smells of recent rain, and insects sing in the orchards. At last the truck turns into a gateway, and bounces down a farm track between ranks of trees, towards a group of farm buildings.

The farm is all whitewashed timber and red tiles; twin frame barns piled high with bales of fodder, low workshops and outbuildings around a big old house with a stone-framed door and lines of gleaming windows. Fowl scratch in a vegetable garden in front of the house, and across a broad muddy yard; stout post-fences pen back a pair of healthy-looking banthas. There’s another skimmer truck parked beside one of the barns, stacked with crates, and as the last of the party climb down stiffly from their ride two people emerge from one of the buildings. They hurry over; a man a little younger than Esperanz, equally dark-haired and good-looking, and a younger female with olive skin and cropped blue-black hair. They both hug Deyaa Shammen for a moment before surveying the strays she’s brought with her.

“Volunteers?” asks the woman.

“Yep. Sorry about the unexpected delivery. Now of all times, too; Esper just gave me the news. Galen, Em, I’m so sorry.”

“Thanks…” says the second young man quietly.

“I can move them further on, if you’d prefer, see if one of the other houses can take them in?”

“No, it’s okay, stay, please. We’ve been trying to carry on, it’ll do us good to have some new arrivals to think about.”

“I’ll get Ma,” says Esperanz. “She’ll want to meet you all. Can you get everyone inside?” He lopes off towards the farmhouse without waiting for an answer.

“I’m Emren Hallik,” the young woman says to the whole group. “This is my husband Galen. Right, let’s get you all indoors and then we’ll sort out who needs what. I can already see someone’s limping; Gale, do you know where Hosk is?”

Bodhi stares after the second young man as he nods and heads off. Galen. However many years is it since he heard that name? It’s never been fashionable, but he knows that if he’d ever had a son, he might have called him that. How curious to meet a Galen now...

Emren Hallik leads them past the animal pen into a large cruck barn, Deyaa strolling beside her talking in a low voice. Since he can’t see what else to do, he follows with the rest of the group. He wonders what the bad news was. His tiredness is starting to catch up with him again, and knowing that makes him still more ill-at-ease. If anything goes wrong now, he’s going to need to be quick and decisive, and he feels neither of those things. He’s still responsible for fifteen other lives. His own, in the end, doesn’t matter; but he’s seen missions go wrong, teams not come back, too many times before. He’s responsible for getting these people safe home. He’s no longer sure he’s up to it.

He sits down slowly, on a straw bale at the back of the barn.

Maybe he is too old for this game. He’s only sixty-one, but he’s been working pretty much without ceasing, all his life. Maybe that desk job would have been a wise move.

The barn smells of stored grain and fresh-ground flour, wholesome and dusty, with undernotes of sweaty animals and something fruity and fermented. All around him now people are slumping onto the planked floor or sitting on crates and hay-bales. Everyone looks as weary as he is. Slanting afternoon light works through the planked walls and paints their faces in stripes of gold and shadow.

Dry fodder stalks prickle him through the seat of his pants, the wheaten smell is making him want to sneeze. Warmth seeps into him, a soothing touch along each bar of sunlight. He shakes himself; he can’t afford to fall asleep, not now.

Emren Hallik is talking, describing fresh clothes, sleeping arrangements, a mess hall behind the farm, a local medic who’ll see the injured personnel sorted out. Behind her a door slides open, the full height of the building, and the pattern of light and shade moves, flickering across the rows of weary listeners. Two figures, silhouetted; one of the men and someone much shorter, a woman carrying a data pad. They begin to move through the group, and he hears voices speaking one by one, names being taken and logged. His hands tighten into fists and he digs his nails in.

The figures are in front of him. He’s going to be one of the last to give his name. He looks at the woman with the pad as she approaches. She’s quite old; white-haired, with a round, kindly face and a mouth that has smiled a lot in the past but is expressionless now. Blue-green eyes, almost as tired and sad as his own. Eyes that widen, slowly, unnervingly, as they look at him; in shock and disbelief, and something more; alarm, perhaps, or horror.

So, this is it, this is the instant when things go wrong. This is what that subtle tug of premonition has been whispering about to him, this moment, this being seen by someone who sees what he is. Someone he feels horribly, totally, known by and seen-through by. He doesn’t know what in all the hells is going on, but certainly something is, because that is not the way an agent logging arrivals at a safe house looks at an old man like him.

Bodhi Rook stands up calmly, because damn it, he’s been holding his ground for thirty-six years, he isn’t going to start running again now. He’s the senior officer present; he’s responsible, he brought his people into this situation and whatever it is, he’s going to face it on his feet. He straightens up and puts his shoulders back, and gives his name, and rank, and serial number.

The woman stands staring at him.

After a long moment she puts out her right hand and touches the sleeve of his shirt, and his arm inside it. He tenses. Her mouth opens but no words come out.

“Ma?” says Esperanz Hallik. “Are you okay?”

She has to pull herself together visibly; she pushes the data pad at the young man saying “Take the rest of the names, please, I – I can’t”- and turns back to Bodhi. Still staring, still wide-eyed. “Is it really you?” Her sad, tired face has fallen open, like a broken thing.

“Do I know you?” he asks helplessly.

“Ah,” she says. “Oh, I don’t know how to say this. Yes, yes, you did, once. You don’t remember me. Bodhi, it’s me; it’s Jyn.”

It is Jyn. The reason he is known by those sea-coloured eyes is because they are the eyes of a dead woman, a woman who knew him once and trusted him, and was betrayed. Jyn Erso.

Bodhi’s knees give way and he sits down hard on the straw bale. “Uh…” His lips have gone numb, he can’t remember even the simplest words. She’s still touching his arm and he stares at her hand, incredulous. It’s a thin strong hand, the fair skin heavily tanned and scattered with small scars. There are crescent-corners of dirt under some of the nails. She must be, what, fifty-six, fifty-seven? The white hair had deceived him into thinking her much older.

“It is you,” she says. Her voice is small, as though she hasn’t enough breath to speak up. He raises his head and looks at her.

“It’s you,” he echoes. It’s her. “Jyn! How? How did? -”

She suddenly starts and looks around; at her son, staring, at the other faces clustering around, some listening openly while others politely pretend to be oblivious. Her expression twists painfully and he feels her tremble as her grip tightens. “I can’t do this here,” she says, and steps away from him.

He breathes deep and pushes himself to stand up, shrugging his jacket on again; follows her out of the barn and away from the astonishment there. His own shock walking beside him , tearing the oxygen from his brain. He goes across the farmyard unsteadily in the late afternoon sunlight, and Jyn, white-haired frail Jyn, leads him into her home and down a stone-flagged passage, to a large room at the rear of the house. There’s a giant double stove and bake oven, a long table set with benches; huge dura-steel pans hang from nails in the walls. A wooden dresser holds enough crockery for several dozen people, and on the topmost shelf is a set of old-fashioned holo-frames, running on low power; little groups of silvery ghost figures, standing looking about them blithely.

Jyn turns in the middle of the kitchen and faces him. Her posture is almost confrontational, and now he knows it’s her she’s unmistakable. Jyn, who escaped. Somehow. Jyn, who has a son; no, two sons. Esperanz and Galen. Jyn, who lived and paired up with someone and had a family, and runs a safe-house network in the Ag Sector.

He didn’t kill them all.

She says “We thought you were dead. We saw the ship blow, it went up like a firework. I’ve never forgotten it, seeing that, knowing we were all doomed. If we’d had any idea you were still alive…”

We. She keeps saying we.

He manages to reply. “I thought YOU were dead.” Horrible, hopeless, obvious words. Words that do not excuse him, because now nothing can. He didn’t kill them all; but he still left them. “I thought you -”

Jyn interrupts, shaking her head. “No, no, we made it. Deyaa’s mother picked us up. Ell. I’m so glad you didn’t die, that you’re alive! But if we’d known you were alive we would have…” She breaks off with a gasp.

He’s seeing it all again, the advancing cloud of fire and steam, the vaporised stuff of the planet itself rolling in to block his flight path and cut him off from them. Jyn and Cassian, holding one another in their last embrace. He imagines she’s reliving her own memories of those same few seconds, and shivers. But she lived. And - we. She said we, and again we, she keeps saying we.

“I had nightmares about it for years,” he tells her.

“Yes. Yes, we both did, too.”

Jyn is beginning to cry, and he wishes he could, too. His mind is ringing like a hollow sphere, like something struck and left echoing, a cave nightmarish with darkness and the ghost-voices of bats. He remembers the two slim, handsome men outside. Dark hair and beards, brown eyes, keen smiling faces. Long slightly hooked noses, narrow jaws, high cheekbones. Esperanz. Galen. Her sons.

He knows he ought to be telling her everything, he ought to be asking how she survived, how they came to be here, how did all that happen, that and apologising, explaining, begging her forgiveness. But the only words that come out are “You keep saying we. We. Jyn, who else made it out with you? Was it – was it Cassian?”

It has to have been Cassian. Surely those two bright-eyed young men are Cassian’s blood.

She said we, she said we…

Jyn puts her hands over her face, and standing in the middle of her sunlit kitchen surrounded by all the clutter of a good and busy life she cries as though her heart is breaking.

He’s steeling himself for the words she will say next, because this can only mean one thing. It wasn’t Cassian. She lived, she got over it, she met someone else and had a life. That’s what she means by this “we”. It was only her who survived; “we” is whoever she paired-up with, after.

Bodhi breathes and breathes deeper, and waits while she cries.

Even those few moments of thinking Cassian Andor might have lived have hurt him with a feeling like a hard cold punch, a blow somewhere deep in his gut. He swallows and stands his ground, to hear the inevitable. He’s an old man, and this shouldn’t matter as much as it does; but it does. He failed someone he loved, once, over thirty years ago, failed him and left him to die, and his whole life from that day to this has been built on atonement for that death. Why would that change now?

He makes himself walk over to Jyn, makes himself put his hands on her forearms gently. He’s shaking almost as much as she is. She raises her face to him; she’s shorter than he remembers, but her expression still has that clear-eyed certainty, and her voice even choked with tears is strong.

“I’m so sorry,” she says. “He died last month.”

There’s a strange sense of delay before the gut-punch of shock comes again. It WAS Cassian, he did survive, he lived and loved her and had a family with her; and now he’s dead.

Last month. Only last month.

“Now of all times,” Deyaa Shammen had said apologetically when they arrived here. “I’m so sorry,” she’d said. This is why. This family, taking him and his people in, saving all their lives, they’re in mourning. They’ve lost a husband, a father, a father-in-law. They’ve lost Cassian.

All this time, he was alive; but it’s too late to do anything except slowly let himself hug Jyn, and bow his head as she puts her arms round him in response; and, finally, begin to cry.

Later - a good while later, maybe as much as hours, he can’t be sure – she has got him to sit down at the table and has put tea in front of him, and bread and blue cheese and a jar of sour pickles. Two cups, two plates, two sets of cutlery. She’s made him eat, and taken a few bites herself to keep him company. It’s odd, and charming, to know that short-tempered Jyn grew up to become a woman who shows care by feeding people. The bread is fresh and the tea is hot, and very welcome. The sun is low now, oblique light filling the kitchen and gleaming on the crockery and the hanging pans. He asks “What happened?”

“To Cass?”

“Yes.”

“It was his heart.” She runs a hand over her hair, fiddling with the bun at the nape of her neck. “It was very sudden. He was out in the upper pasture, taking fodder up for the banthas. It was a beautiful spring day, he’d been talking just that morning about what a wonderful day it was. When we found him he’d fallen in the long grass. He was looking up at the sky. The medic said it would have been instantaneous, that he wouldn’t have suffered at all. He looked more surprised than anything else.” She looked at Bodhi with a faint smile. “This is the first time I’ve talked to anyone about it. It feels strange to put it into words. I’ve always known one of us would die, either I’d leave him or he’d leave me. We were due to go together, on Scarif, but things didn’t work out that way. We’ve had thirty-six years of borrowed time. And now I can’t get used to him not being around.”

It feels crass to ask, intrusive to the point of cruelty; but he can’t bear not knowing. “Were you happy? Did he – did he have a good life?”

“We were very happy…” Jyn’s voice shakes, but she’s smiling again. “Truly, we were. He’d had – we’d both had – lives that weren’t really more than just surviving; and then this. Neither of us had ever expected to be so happy. Oh Bodhi, yes, Cassian had a good life. He did things he believed in. He saved so many lives. He was a brave man who lived his truth, and he was a good husband and a wonderful father. He had a happy life and I was happy, and so blessed, to be with him.”

She pushes back her chair a little unsteadily and goes to the dresser; takes down one of the larger holo-frames from the top. “Here – this is Galen and Em’s wedding, three years ago.” She brightens the image intensity, and sets it down on the table-top in front of him. “The whole family.”

A shining group of figures caught endlessly hugging and smiling, turning to one another and back in a feedback loop of happiness. Galen and Emren are in the middle, Esperanz and another woman, and another younger man, to their left, throwing grain and petals over them; Jyn and Cassian to their right. Through the faintly silvered cast the holo lends to other colours, he can see that Cassian’s hair and beard are grey. He is smiling, lines creasing the corners of his dark eyes; he has one arm round Jyn’s waist and with the other hand, over and over, he reaches into his pants pocket to produce another handful of flower petals and throw them at his son and new daughter-in-law. The sound is turned off but Bodhi can imagine the laughter and the jokes.

“Who are the others?” He points to the two figures he can’t put names to.

“That’s Esper’s girlfriend. Douny. She’s lovely. She’s a midwife, she works at the Solondori med-centre. She’s the one who put us in touch with Dr Hosk. And the other man – that’s our youngest. Bodhi.”

“Yes?” He looks across at her, puzzled.

She shakes her head for a second. “His name is Bodhi. Bodhi Hallik, officially; we’re all officially Halliks. Cass was Willix Hallik from the day we arrived her, I was – I am - Lianna. The boys know their real family name is Andor but none of us ever use it. False names are very odd at first and then you just forget about them, they’re part of your life, like having boots on your feet and gun at your side, and a baby in your arms.”

“You called your son – after me?” It’s a pebble in his throat. Bodhi Hallik; Bodhi Andor. Esperanz, Galen, and Bodhi. “I – I don’t deserve it.”

Jyn shakes her head again, firmly this time. “Don’t say that. Cass always said you were the bravest man he’d ever met. We always knew if the third child was a boy he’d be a Bodhi.”

He picks up his mug and takes a long gulp of the cooling tea, trying to mask the fact he has no words to speak.

“Esperanz,” Jyn says “Is ‘hope’ in Cassian’s native language. He would have been Esperanza if he’d been a girl. And Galen is for my father, obviously.”

“I always used to think if I’d had a son I’d name him Galen.” It seems safer to go sideways in the conversation than to stay here, looking at this astonishing idea of Jyn and Cassian’s child named after him; to think of them honouring him, never forgetting him. He picks at the crumbs on his plate. Cassian remembered him.

“You have kids?” Jyn’s voice is warm, and he wonders if she’s imagining his life as like hers. A farmhouse, tall sons, maybe grandchildren to come; building something, saving something, happy to remember the love you’ve lost, even through tears.

He sighs and says “No.” Hesitates, looking at her. There are things he can say, and things, he suddenly feels, that he cannot. He trusts Jyn, and maybe one day he’ll admit the whole truth, but it would be unfair to do it now, when her bereavement is so new. “I would have adopted, but – my work – it would have meant being an absent father so much of the time and, and, I didn’t want to put a kid through that if there wasn’t another parent at home with them, and I – I never met the right guy.” He looks away from the sadness in her face. This was meant to be the less-painful version of the story, not the version that would make Jyn cry again. He’s shaking slightly inside. But it’s probably shock. “It’s okay,” he says “I would have been a lousy husband and father.”

“I doubt that very much.” Jyn reaches out and lays a hand over his. “Why are you being so hard on yourself?”

“All I’ve ever done,” Bodhi says “Is run away.”

She raises an eyebrow, and for a second she is the caustic quick-tempered woman he remembers. “Running away? Is that why I see all those pips on your sleeve, Commodore? Seems to me you’ve got a strange way of running. Bodhi, you must’ve atoned for your time with the Empire a long time ago. I cannot believe you have anything to be ashamed of. How did you earn that rank if all you’ve been doing is running?”

“Well…” He looks into her eyes. Pugnacious still under all the motherliness, tough as a thief, all clear certainty and bravado and solid core. He always liked Jyn; he really couldn’t blame Cassian for having loved her. No more than he could blame her, for having given her love in return, to the man whose memory he’s tried to live up to all his days. “It’ll take a while. I’ll tell you my story if you tell me yours.”

“We’ve got all night. Tell me about your life, Bodhi. Tell me what you’ve done with yourself, all these years.”

He tells her his story, sitting at the kitchen table with the hologram smiling up at him. Finding, carefully, the words to explain his life, to her and to himself; all the decisions, all the choices and fears, the will to live, the same of death, the memories that guided him and had to be repaid. Finding, slowly, that perhaps, in the end, he has been strong enough, and he has done enough. Finding that in the end he is telling one life, well-lived and full, to another.

Finding himself beginning to smile back, at the kind remembered face in the holo.

Perhaps now at last, here in the sunset in Cassian’s home, he can stop running, and rest.

#star wars fic #my writing #Bodhi lives!#eventually also #rebelcaptain

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