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Drug Testing for Legal Purposes

[feminist-space]

December 2024

"Across the country, hospitals are dispensing medications to patients in labor, only to report them to child welfare authorities when they or their newborns test positive for those very same substances on subsequent drug tests, an investigation by The Marshall Project and Reveal has found.

The positive tests are triggered by medications routinely prescribed to millions of birthing patients in the U.S. every year. The drugs include morphine or fentanyl for epidurals or other pain relief, anxiety medications, and two different blood pressure meds prescribed for C-sections.

In a time of increasing surveillance and criminalization of pregnant women since the end of Roe v. Wade, the hospital reports have prompted calls to the police, child welfare investigations and even the removal of children from their parents.

The reporting for this story included interviews with two dozen patients and medical professionals, and a review of hundreds of pages of medical and court records. Some spoke about cases on condition of anonymity because the custody of children is at stake."

[chiaraanatra]

Life as We Know It | Part 3

Summary: You and Seresin unexpectedly become the caretakers of Bradley and Natasha's baby girl, Nicole. Can you two put your disdain for one another aside for Nic's sake? Based on the movie "Life as We Know It"

Warnings: mentions of parental/character death and funeral, angst, arguments, and swearing. no use of y/n. Always check chapter warnings!

Word Count: 1.7k

AN: Here is part three, another sad chapter... It's not my favorite, but I think chapter 4 will be an upswing! Thank you for all the support on this series!

《 part 1 || part 2 ��� 《 m.list || ao3 》

The funeral was a blur. You honestly couldn't remember much. What you did remember was the insanity of the gathering afterward. A sea of people, most of whom you had never met, let alone heard of, invaded the house. You and Seresin had spent most of the time talking up anyone and everyone who seemed like they may be a good fit to take on Nic.

When the dust finally settled and you were able to lock the door you were both exhausted. You and Seresin were seated at the dining room table, Nic was passed out in her crib and the fridge was stocked with enough casseroles to last a lifetime.

"WeII…" Seresin was the first to speak, "We could go with the cousins with nine kids. They clearly know how to keep a kiddo alive..."

"The stripper seemed nice." you half-joked.

"Yeah..." Seresin thought through his next few words carefully, "How did she know them?"

You couldn't help but laugh, "You know... she didn't say." you both erupted into laughter.

However, the laughter naturally died and he looked at you with soft eyes. "We're screwed...."

Your head collapsed onto the dining room table, voice muffled by the cold wood, "Yeah..."

You and Seresin had concluded that while you two may not be the best fit, you were better than foster care. The two of you decided to bite the bullet and gained joint IegaI and physical custody of Nicole Carole Bradshaw.

The three of you were making your way out of the courthouse and towards Seresin's truck. As you began to strap Nic into her car seat, he sank into a squat against the truck, his hands rubbing his face. "That's it? No drug tests, no questions? What if we're crazy murderers who like to eat human flesh? Eh, doesn't matter! Boom, 'Done, case closed.' You'd think they were giving those things away."

"Where is that stupid bunny that she Ioves...?" you rummaged through the car, laying across the floor of the lifted truck, feet kicking outside the door, trying to reach under the driver's seat.

Seresin shifted to look at your stocking-clad legs falling out of his truck. He shook any thoughts he may have had out of his head, "what are you doing?"

"Almost got it..."

Seresin couldn't take any more of your struggle. He grabbed your hips and lifted you out of the truck to stand on your feet. He reached under the seat with ease, grabbing the plush bunny before placing it in Nic's lap. The gesture made her smile, happy coos leaving her lips.

You huffed, blushing a little, "Thank you..."

You walked over to sit next to Nic in the back seat. There was one thing you noticed pretty quickly and that was that Nic loved car rides, meaning she would fall asleep immediately. Once her seatbelt was buckled, she was out like a light, and if you and Seresin were lucky she would remain that way for a while.

When the two of you got home you placed Nic in her crib and walked back downstairs. Seresin was on the couch elbows on his knees and his head resting his hands. He lifted his head when he noticed you coming downstairs, running his fingers through his sandy blonde locks.

You took a seat next to him. Your mouth opened like you were about to say something, but you couldn’t think of the right words. You took notice of the pull-out couch that he had spent the last few nights sleeping on. “Umm. Are you sure you don’t want to stay in their room?”

He didn’t skip a beat before giving his reply, “Positive.”

You could only nod in response. In the few days that you had been staying in their house, you both refused to step foot in their room. That was theirs and it felt wrong to step into their space. That’s how the whole house felt. You both felt that you were out of place, invaders in a house that was yours on paper but felt far from belonging to you or Seresin. Deep down, you hoped that at any moment Nat and Bradley would walk through the front door and life as you had know it would resume.

You took a deep breath, “Would you mind keeping an ear out for her...? I could really use a shower.”

His head returned to his hands as he took a breath of his own, “Yeah…”

The two of you felt like you were walking on eggshells around one another. Especially when it was the norm for small disagreements to develop into a fight. Neither one of you had any fight left in you at this point. So, you took your time standing up from the couch and making your way to the bathroom upstairs.

When the water hit, you so did everything else. You felt as though the world was falling around you. You couldn’t help but sit on the shower floor and let your tears fall.

When you walked through the door the house was silent. You weren’t sure if that was a good or bad thing, but since the alternative was the rantings of a 30-something-year-old man and/or a crying toddler, you decided things could be worse.

You quickly put groceries away before making it towards the stairs and up to Nic’s room to make sure everything was okay. As you approached her bedroom you swore you heard humming. Once you were just outside the doorway you noticed it was singing.

“Heads Carolina, tails California. Somewhere greener, somewhere warmer.”

What the hell..? You thought to yourself, but you couldn’t help the little smile that graced your lips.

You walked in, leaning against the doorway watching as Seresin sat in the rocking chair, that was placed in the corner of the room, with Nic in his arms. His voice was deep and carried a gentle tone as he sang to the little girl, lulling her to sleep. You felt your heart warm at his affection towards her, “What are you singing to her?”

“Everybody loves Jo Dee Messina. Do you mind?” He looked back at the little girl and began to sing again, “Up in the mountains, down by the ocean. Where it don't matter, long as we're goin' somewhere together.” His deep voice and southern drawl were more prominent in his own exhausted state. Nic didn’t appear to mind, as the lyrics faded to a hum, she was passed out before your eyes.

You watched Seresin lay her gently in the crib. He pushed you into the hallway before closing the door almost shut. “Told you it works.” You couldn't mistake the annoyance in his voice as he brushed past you.

You rolled your eyes shanking your head, “You know… would it kill you to be a little cheerful?

He lets out a sigh, crossing his arms and looking down at you, “Yeah. It might.”

You hated when he was short with you, “Come on, Seresin…”

“No,” he interrupted. “Why should I pretend to be happy? I'm miserable. Just let me be miserable.”

“You know what? I am so sick of aII your depressing IittIe comments.”

He interrupted you once more before you could elaborate, “No, you don’t get it, I ruined my life for her.”

You scoffed, “I'm so sorry parenting isn't the fun-filled ride you thought it was gonna be.”

“Oh, shut up. You're happy because your old life sucked.”

Your mouth fell open a little before you came to your defense, “My old Iife didn't suck!”

“Yeah” he leaned closer getting in your face, “It did.”

You roll your eyes, “You know nothing about me, Seresin! My life was great, my job was great. I made my own hours; I had free time.” You liked your life. You had your routine and it worked for you. You would never admit, especially to Seresin, that sometimes the monotony got to you. 

It was now his turn to scoff, “To do what? Blog?”

“Oh my God!” You through your hands in the air, “You are beyond frustrating!”

“You have no idea what a great Iife is. I had a great life!” Seresin was pacing, “I went out all the time! GirIs would buy me drinks, they would throw themselves at me. I haven’t had a dry spell since i was 15!”

“You're disgusting!”

“Sweetheart, they say you can't have it aII, but I did, I had it aII and it was awesome! I slept with whoever I wanted whenever I wanted.”  He turned away wanting to be done with the situation but decided to turn back to face you. “You know, maybe if you got laid you’d be more tolerable. Except to have sex you gotta find somebody who can stand you first.”

“Fuck you…” Before he could speak you spat back, “Of course you think that's awesome! AII you care about is getting with any girl willing to spread her legs for you and then praying she didn’t stick around till morning. God, even Bradley was embarrassed by you but he would never say anything because he was twice the man you are.” You turned to walk away. While you didn’t in the moment, you knew you would regret the words that fell from your lips.

You watched as Seresin’s face fell before turning away from you. He grabbed his keys from the entry way table before making his way towards the garage.

You walked over to him before he made escape, placing your hand on his shoulder, “Hey, don't drive angry and do something stupid! Your kid's parents died in a car-“

He quickly moved away from your touch, turning back to you and pointing up towards Nic’s room, “She is not my kid! She's not my kid…” The second time he said those words was much quieter than the first.

You paused, fighting the tears that threatened to spill over, “Then whose kid is she...?”

Seresin only shook his head in response before walking out the door.

At the rate the two of you were going, it was only a matter of time before you tore each other to shreds, and no amount of love either of you had for Nic would be able to prevent it.

《 part 4 》

As always, feedback, likes, comments, and reblogs are appreciated!

Top Gun Taglist: @callsign-viper @luckyladycreator2 @saturnsbabe69 @desert-fern @pono-pura-vida @dempy @t-rexs-world @averyhotchner @drxgxnslxyer @daisydark @hookslove1592 @teacupsandtopgun

Series Taglist: @djs8891 @multiverseprincess @littlestatesman @sunshineandbradbrad @hockeybabestars @buckysteveloki-me @lovebittenandlanguishing @cassadilasworld @my-mind-isnt-intact @poppet05

𝑊𝑎𝑛𝑛𝑎 𝑏𝑒 𝑡𝑎𝑔𝑔𝑒𝑑? 𝐿𝑒𝑡 𝑚𝑒 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤 ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 💜

[lucid-loves]

First Light ~ Simon "Ghost" Riley Part 4

Pairing: bodyguard!Ghost x princess!reader (fem!reader)

Word Count: 4.4k

CW: angst, violence, blood, strong language, scars, verbal abuse by parents, physical abuse by parents, psychological abuse by parents, opposites attract, forbidden love, slow burn, fluff, attraction and sexual tension, reader POV and ghost POV, minors DNI, smut, virgin reader, first kiss

Let me know if I missed any CWs.

Story Synopsis: After receiving death threats from a mysterious terrorist organization, your royal parents make a decision to reach out to the United States for help. Specifically, they want the US to send a bodyguard to protect their precious princess. When the 141 is called upon to investigate, Ghost is the one assigned to protect you. With your lack of experiences outside of your royal life and his experience with nothing but deadly, worldly affairs, opposites attract.

Chapter Synopsis: It’s time to head to the safehouse that Ghost set up for the both of you. Before you leave though, Ghost introduces you to some new experiences in your own country. While he takes care of you, you find yourself falling for him even more to the point where you want to test curiosity of yours. 

Part 1 ~ Part 2 ~ Part 3 ~ Part 4 ~ Part 5 ~ Part 6 ~ Part 7 ~ Part 8

“Has the duke spilled his guts yet?” Ghost asked Soap, making the last minute arrangements for the safehouse as quick as he could. While he would’ve liked to have been the one to interrogate the bastard in his own special way, he didn’t want to leave you alone for too long. Luckily, Soap arrived quickly to take care of the interrogation for him. He was glad that his sergeant didn’t mind talking with his fists too. 

“Bits and pieces. Not much though. At least, nothing that will really bolster our investigation. He seems like he genuinely doesn’t know much about the organization he decided to trust. They just made him safety and financial promises which he took without question.” Soap revealed, wiping stray specks of blood on his arms with a warm, moist cloth provided by a maid.

Ghost hummed in annoyance. An idiot like the duke, who was so willing to sell out your life along with your country, wasn’t worth breathing the same air as you. He would kill him if he could. It would be doing the world a favor. “What about the servant?”

Soap shrugged and shook his head. “Still working on that one, Lt. He’s been asleep.”

“Asleep?” Ghost repeated, hardly believing what his sergeant just told him.

“According to the guards, when the man was taken in for custody, he just dropped dead asleep. Coma-level sleep. We can’t get him to wake up. I’ve contacted the team about it and Kate is going to send an expert to test for drugs. We think that he might’ve taken something before being taken into custody. Capsule in the teeth kind of shit.” Soap explained carefully, making sure he covered everything that he needed to cover.

“What about guest statements? Anything useful?” Ghost continues, his patience wearing thin. He needed a win. They all did. This was no longer just a concerned parental request. A whole country was truly at stake of being taken over by terrorists. 

Once again, Soap shook his head. “Sorry, Lt. Everything is on record so you’re free to read through everything just in case I missed something, but the only thing we can do is continue our investigation and wait for the servant to wake up.”

Little did they know that you were just outside the doors, listening to their whole conversation. You were finished packing what you thought you needed with the help from your maid staff. So, you ended up leaving the room in search of Ghost to let him know that you were ready to go. 

You didn’t mean to eavesdrop. You only meant to wait patiently for their conversation to wrap up. But you couldn’t unhear what was being discussed. It scared you that they haven’t been able to uncover much regarding these terrorists that were after your country and life. It was even scarier to know that there wasn’t much you could do except trust in Ghost and his team. 

Finally, you mustered up your courage and gave the door a light knock before coming in. “Pardon me. I’m all set to go to the safehouse.”

Soap’s expression lit up at the sight of you, his lighthearted, playful side coming through immediately. You were fascinated with how different he appeared compared to Ghost. A little shorter, stylish faux mohawk, and a smile that brought life to the prim and proper room. A part of you was expecting Ghost’s teammate to be more like him. Was the 141 actually quite diverse? What was the rest of his team like?

“Well hello, Princess Y/n! I’m Sergeant Mactavish, but people call me Soap. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you after all the things Ghost has said about you.” He greeted you warmly, holding out his hand for a casual handshake. Without thinking, you took it, your own eyes brightening up along with your cheeks.

“A pleasure to meet you as well, Sergeant Mactavish. Ghost talks about me?” You couldn’t help but clarify, your eyes meeting Ghost’s who just averted his gaze. God damn it, Soap!

“He-”

“That’s enough, Sergeant! Get back to work.” Ghost shut him down swiftly, the word of the lieutenant being final. It didn’t hurt Soap though. In fact, he was used to Ghost reacting this way which he thought was hilarious. 

With a chuckle, Soap took his leave out of the room. “Aw well, maybe next time! See you later, Princess.” 

As he walked out, you smiled, feeling uplifted by the interaction. Meeting Soap was like meeting an old friend. You hoped that you would be able to meet him again, especially to hear the kinds of things Ghost said about you. For now, you redirected your attention back to Ghost who looked more tired than usual.

“Are you feeling alright, Lieutenant Ghost? You look like you need some rest.” You gently pointed out, your brows furrowing in concern. Ghost’s soul warmed up like a fireplace being started at your consideration.

“I’ll be alright. No need to worry about me. You said that you were all ready to go?” He switched topics quickly, not wanting you to worry too much about him. He would catch up on rest later. The most important thing was getting you to a safer place. That would be his safe space to rest too.

You gave a sheepish smile as he redirected the attention onto you. “Indeed. I would prefer to leave sooner rather than later. I hope that me being ready does not rush you.”

He wanted to shower you with praise over you being such a good girl. Ghost was incredibly grateful that you weren’t fussy whatsoever. “No, that’s perfect. We should be getting out of here now.”

An armored car was waiting right outside the palace to take you to the safehouse, already loaded up with just a few suitcases. You weren’t sure how long you were going to be at the safehouse, but you only packed necessities. No formal wear, no jewelry. Nothing that would take up too much space. As you stood on the palace steps, you took a deep breath of fresh air. Birds were chirping excitedly, a slight breeze cut through the would-be heat. It was a perfect day to finally leave your marble prison. Not without protests from your parents, though.

“Are you absolutely sure that this is necessary? I mean, how else will we know that the princess is safe if she is so far away?” Your father nervously blurted, his eyes shifting from Ghost to you to the car in an anxious cycle. 

Your mother wasn’t too happy either, though for different reasons that almost had Ghost snap. “How will we know that she is keeping up with her studies?!”

Before Ghost could combat their nerves, you huffed and faced your parents for the first time in your life. This new courage was found in knowing that there was really nothing your parents could do to stop this from happening. “Mother, father, I will be perfectly safe. I will continue to study as usual. However, this will also be a great chance for me to learn what the world is really like outside of the palace. We won’t do anything unsafe, so please, just let me learn what I need to learn.”

For a moment, there was pure silence between everyone. No one was expecting you to stand up for yourself, even if it was about time that you did. Then, your father places his hands on your shoulders, his gaze softening. “Y/n, when did you become such a wonderful young woman? It was only yesterday that I was holding you in my arms for the first time.”

Your eyes widened for a second, not expecting your father to become so affectionate all of a sudden. He was certainly more affectionate than your mother, though, you couldn’t remember the last time your father told you that he loved you. You blinked back tears he pulled you in for a sweet hug as if you were leaving forever.

As Ghost watched, he felt his anger begin to melt. As much as he hated the decisions your parents made regarding your life, at least he knew that it came from a place of love. At least for the case of your father. Your mother, on the other hand, still had a sour look on her face. Thankfully, she kept her mouth shut in a tight line.

“Lieutenant, keep my daughter safe.” The king ordered to which Ghost gave a firm nod to. He would rather lose his life than have you in danger again. 

After you pulled away and said your final goodbyes, you got into the armored car. Ghost got into the driver’s seat and started it up, eager to help you see the world outside of the palace walls. As you looked out the window, seeing your parents get smaller and smaller with the distance, you felt a surge of excitement run through you. 

Ghost noticed how your demeanor changed. Now without the pressures of royal conformity, you were free to be yourself. More courageous. It seemed like you had some bark and bite in you as well after all. He wanted to know you even more. “You wanna choose the music for the ride?”

You perked up at his offer, eagerly nodding your head as he handed you his phone that was already connected to the car’s bluetooth system. After perusing some options, you settled on a playlist that surprised Ghost. Even under the mask, you could tell that he was questioning your choice. “I want to hear all kinds of music. I want to hear every single song that was banned for me.”

He gave a chuckle for the first time that you’ve been together. The sound had your heart skip a beat. You didn’t even know that he was capable of laughing with how serious he looked all the time. “Very well. I’ll make sure you get your chance to experience anything you want that you normally wouldn’t.”

You bit your lip, trying to contain the utter joy you felt, completely forgetting that your life was in danger just for the moment. 

~

It was a long drive to the safehouse in the deep countryside. Your eyes were trained on the views through the window like it was television. You never knew how pretty your country looked. The architecture was classic with plenty of brick buildings and natural curvatures. There were plenty of sidewalks to cater to pedestrian travel rather than cars. Ivy vines with flowers crawled on the side of buildings, the natural beauty of nature colliding with man-made structures. 

There were plenty of open-air markets as well. Produce stands, custom art pieces, coffee trucks. Everything was conveniently available, no matter if you were heading home from work or just taking a stroll. As you passed a farmer’s market, you noticed how busy it seemed with families. Kids running around, parents picking out ingredients, business owners offering samples to treat the good children. 

Ghost noticed how you looked out the window, longing to join the streets to really experience what life was like. He debated if it would be safe to allow a little time for you to explore. He wasn’t keen on the idea of so many people around you. However, if he stuck close to you, then it should be fine, right? Besides, how could he deny the pretty little look you gave as you yearned for a little adventure. 

Before you knew it, Ghost found somewhere to park and got out of the car. Then, he opened your door and held his hand out for you to take. “Just for a little while, okay? Stick close to me.”

The smile you gave was so big and bright that it almost hurt your cheeks. You couldn’t help it, though. Ghost was granting you one of your biggest wishes. You took his hand and stepped out of the car, taking in the sounds of the city. People conversing, bike bells ringing, dogs barking. It was unlike anything you have ever heard. 

Obeying his orders, you did stick close to Ghost, your arm naturally looping around his without much thought. This was the usual hold for an escort that you have performed many times. It was a natural instinct as Ghost led the way to the farmer’s market. That wasn’t to say that you didn’t notice how strong his muscles felt underneath his shirt. You definitely felt how hard your heart pounded as he held you just as securely to his side.

When he paused to swap out his balaclava for the skeleton face mask that he wore at the party, you nearly tripped over yourself. In the natural light of the sun, his blonde hair seemed brighter like sunshine itself. His eyes seemed more open as well. Warmer. You blushed and stared down at the sidewalk for a moment, trying to catch your breath that he ended up stealing from you.

“Everything alright? Having second thoughts?” He wondered, compassion present in his voice as you all of a sudden seemed shy. 

With a shake of your head and a smile, you reassured him. “I’m fine. Just eager is all.”

With that, he led you into the market that was flooding with people. Ghost kept a careful eye out on everyone that passed by. His arm also tightened just a little more firmly to ensure that you didn’t get separated from him. As you walked, your eyes scanned over all of the products up for sale. Baked goods, ripe fruit, crocheted clothes, beautiful art. Before you knew it, you were dragging Ghost from stall to stall to ensure that you could see everything that the market had to offer.

Ghost found it amusing. He noticed the way your eyes lit up when you tasted a free sample of fresh cheese or juicy apple slices. He noticed the way the corners of your mouth lifted into a grin as you admired the craftsmanship of art. He also noticed when your eyes lingered on a particular homemade hair claw clip that was decorated with pearls, thin gold chains, and delicate flowers. 

“You want it.” He pointed out as more of a statement rather than a question. Your cheeks flushed pink, feeling a little embarrassed by your obvious infatuation. The truth was that most of your clothes and jewelry were chosen for you. You were allowed to mix-and-match with what you were given, but you have never really chosen out anything yourself. 

“I’m just impressed with the details. It is quite a beautiful hair clip.” You danced around the topic, wanting to seem more humble. However, Ghost didn’t really buy it. With a swift motion, he fished out his wallet from his pocket and took out some bills. 

Your mouth opened in shock. “Lieutenant, you don’t have to-”

“It’s fine. Consider it a souvenir for your first real outing.” Ghost dismissed you with ease, handing over the money to the seller. He picked up the hair clip and handed it to you to try on, happy to indulge in your wants.

For a moment, you separated your arm from Ghost to put your hair up, loose tendrils naturally falling to frame your face. You let them be as the rest of your hair was fashioned up with the clip. The seller handed you a small mirror to see your reflection. You almost cried when you saw yourself. You never imagined that your bodyguard would buy you such a wonderful gift. “Thank you, Lieutenant Ghost.”

Ghost found his heart skipping a beat as he took in your new appearance. The clip matched your princess personality perfectly. The delicate chains that dangled down pearl and flower beads guided his eyes to the smooth nape of your neck. 

The thought that he wanted to kiss that nape crossed his mind. 

Clearing his throat, he took your arm again. “It suits you. Wouldn’t look better on anybody else.”

It was hard not to fall even deeper for him when he complimented you like that. Your heart pounded as you walked beside him again, your steps feeling lighter than air. Nothing else at the market caught your eye as his compliment kept echoing in your head, turning your feelings into goo. 

As the market neared closing time, the amount of people began to dwindle down. Ghost felt his shoulders fall, feeling more at ease with less people around. Circling back around, he led you back to the produce stalls, wondering what ingredients he should pick up for the safehouse. 

The safehouse would be stocked with food, but not with a lot of fresh ingredients. He wanted to continue making this a good day for you with a homemade dinner rather than whatever TV dinners were waiting in the freezer. He wasn’t a chef by any means, having spent most of his life eating MREs and military canteen food. At the very least, he could make you something simple yet good. 

Remembering the cheese you seemed to enjoy as a sample and how it was tomato season, Ghost picked out all the necessary ingredients to make homemade tomato soup and grilled cheeses for tonight. You watched him curiously as he picked everything out before something in the distance caught your attention. 

“What kind of bread do you like?” He asked you, holding two different loaves of bread in his hands while he considered the options. When he looked to you for an answer though, he could tell that your gaze was trained far into the distance. He turned to look around, trying to find what you were staring at. 

In the distance was a person with a dark hoodie and a bandana covering their face. Bright paint brought color to their sleeves and jeans. The figure was walking away, but it was obvious what they were just up to with what was close to him. 

“Shit.” Ghost cursed as he pulled out his phone with Captain Price on speed dial. 

The other line was picked up quickly. “Lieutenant?”

“Tagger going east on Clover Street. Black hoodie, blue jeans, red bandana, covered in paint.” He informed, his voice low as he kept an eye on the distant figure. He observed how they walked down the street, waiting for them to change directions if they were planning on it.

“Getting a hold of local cameras now. You’re with the princess?” Captain Price inquired, his hands moving fast to find this figure through the city cameras. Finally, he found the person that Ghost described.

“Affirmative.” 

“Sending Gaz to pursue. I recommend that you two get to the safehouse pronto. I didn’t think they would be out in broad daylight.” Price advised, already contacting Gaz to give him his new assignment. Once Gaz accepted the orders, the captain hung up. Ghost knew that his captain needed to focus on this immediately, so he wasn’t offended by the sudden hang-up.

He bought the groceries, now in a bit more of a rush. Securing your arm around his once more, he began to lead you back to the car. “Let’s go, Princess. It’s not safe here anymore.”

Your face fell as the day seemed to be ruined by another case of danger. However, there was something that was bothering you. You noticed the paint on the person’s clothes and a strike of color against one of the brick walls he was near. Curiosity was getting the better of you. 

“Wait!” You paused, your stance suddenly strong and pulling back from Ghost. 

His bold brows rose as you defied him for the first time. Surely you had a good reason to. “What is it? Something wrong?”

You all of a sudden grew a little shy as his intense eyes bored into you, waiting for your explanation. Despite how bashful you grew, you persisted. “I want to see the graffiti they were making. Can we? Please?

“Oh, Princess, it wasn’t a piece of art they were making.” Ghost said knowingly, flashes of the pictures he’d seen crossing his mind. Tags of revolution. War. 

“I still want to see. Please, Lieutenant?” You pleaded, trying to follow your instincts as closely as you could. 

With the way you looked at him, it was hard to say no. He wasn’t sure if you knew that there were tags around the whole city calling for your head. Probably not since your parents didn’t tell you the truth about your life being in serious danger. But. . . he supposed that you deserved to see them just this one time. This was your country after all. “As long as we’re quick. You have to stay close to me too. Got it?”

You eagerly nodded and latched onto his arm, letting him swiftly guide you to the spots of paint on brick in the distance. As you got closer, you could make out specific shapes and color switches. Getting even closer proved Ghost wrong.

This was art.

You stared in awe at the giant mural before you. A crow with a golden crown in its ebony beak. Feathers wrapped in fire and barbed wire. The crow was about to drop the crown into a pit of hell below it, filled with skulls, demons, hellfire, and sharp blades. Ghost was surprised as well. The pictures he saw depicted small tags here and there of the crows. Here, this was a full blown work of art. 

Your free hand drifted up to touch the now colorful bricks. The paint was still a little tacky, but nothing that would stain you. As you looked up, drinking in every detail, Ghost watched you. He was nervous about what you were going to say. 

What you did say startled him. “Crows are a symbol of transformations, prophecies, and death.”

“Your mother said the opposite, save for death.”

“For her, death is an inescapable darkness. Evil. In reality, crows can bring fortune during bad times. Death is good fortune since it is a new beginning. This message isn’t a threat. It’s hope.” You concluded, tracing the swooping beak with your fingers. The shadows and highlights made the crow look almost three-dimensional.

Ghost wasn’t sure how to respond. He normally had an answer for any situation, yet what you said stumped him. How could he respond to something so poetically profound? 

You did give him something new to look into though. He would find the time to talk to his team about it later. For now, he had to finally take you to the safe house. “Come on, we gotta get moving.”

~

The drive through the countryside was long and soothing. Ghost took control of the music once you began to doze off. Something light at a low volume was played so you could continue sleeping peacefully. You had a long day out. You probably burned a lot more energy than what you were used to as well.

Once the car hit the dirt road, you stirred awake. The stars were beginning to come out, having driven for hours. You were surrounded by endless fields of local wildflowers with only the occasional tree. While you did love the looks of the city, there was something to love about the countryside too. The land that felt infinite made you feel like you could do anything. You were eager to see what the land looked like during a beautiful sunrise. 

Soon, the car pulled up at a rustic cottage with a large shed beside it. Ghost stepped out of the car for a second to open it up, turning it into a garage that would just barely fit the vehicle. Once the car was parked, you were led into the house.

A thin layer of dust hung in the air along with the fresh scent of nearby wildflowers. The cottage contained the essentials as far as you could tell. A living room, a kitchen, two bathrooms, and two bedrooms. Generically decorated, yet cozy compared to the sterile fanciness of the palace. 

Ghost brought the luggage in, setting yours in the bedroom of your choosing. He gave you some time to unpack and settle in while he got started on dinner. 

As you placed some of your clothes in one of the empty dressers, the fact that you would be living with your bodyguard for who knew how long began to hit you. Your heart picked up speed along with your breath. Not that you expected anything to happen or develop between the two of you, a part of you still had a sense of hope that your relationship would grow stronger at the very least. 

Before heading back out towards the kitchen, you caught your reflection in a bedroom mirror. The hair clip was still fastened to your hair, giving you butterflies. It was still hard to believe that he had bought you a gift so easily like it costed him nothing. You could’ve sworn that he seemed a little stunned when it was in your hair too. In a good way. 

Ghost was a gentleman. He was just being kind. He wouldn’t do anything that could be considered unprofessional or unfriendly. 

Bodyguard protecting a princess. That’s all your relationship will ever be. Right?

-

Tag List: @angel-anna @ghostlythots @maiyatheprettiestprincess @cum-tea-and-towels @littleghostbride @meowzerzstuff @izziyuwh @literaturewh0r3things @bi-witch-bxtch @victoriareadsbooks

[sol-consort]

Imagine being the human that first experienced being with a drell? If you think about it, it’s kind of a nightmare fuel.

You’re one of the first humans living on the citadel and you’ve gone for a night out with a few human friends that you know(because it’s only been a year since the embassy has been established and you need to let loose) And you bar hop for a while and then at some point, you meet a nice man and he’s a species that you aren’t quite familiar with, but there’s chemistry and that’s what matters!

The night ends with you taking him home and you both have a great time but things get fuzzy. the morning after you wake up and you feel like shit more so than the usual hangover. You attempt to get out of bed without disturbing your guest and everything feels off and when you observe yourself in the small mirror of your washroom, it becomes clear that you have been drugged at some point. that would freak anyone out, especially with the strained relationship between humans and the rest of the citadel species.

You make the executive decision to go to the hospital to be tested and the drell acquaintance you made accompanies you because he’s a gentleman. You get there you get tested and then you find out that the guy you slept with drugged you, but not intentionally? No it’s just that the ingestion of any of his bodily fluids gets you high.

I think it would be the worst way to go down in history depending on how you look at it, 

The first wave of humans on the Citadel included pioneers, scientists, diplomats, leaders, political figures, and military personnel. So the chances of a human in that profession sleeping with a non-screened alien species are very slim.

Hypervigilant people, basically, who will notice that something is off and immediately clock in for a medical examination from a human doctor, no going to the untrustworthy alien hospitals just yet.

The second wave of humans on the Citadel was made out of celebrities and ultra rich people. Who are very likely to sleep with a non-screened alien species aka drell.

You could argue that the scientists would've clocked the drell skin toxin by now, but they were probably busy with more important urgent matters. Like integrating the advanced technology and knowledge of the aliens into humanity. Even the xenobiologists would've been busy studying the effects of the more common and widespread alien species on human biology, aka asari, turians, salarians, and krogans. The drell are too far down the list for them to screen just yet, too few of them left, and they're really not that interesting in retrospect when you consider the whole asari reproduction.

Clout-chasing celebrities aren't exactly known for their great patience or wisdom. They will want to sleep with a drell just to say that they slept with a drell.

I'm with you so far, but what doesn't make sense is taking the said drell with you to the hospital. You suspect a person of drugging you, so you let the said person accompany you afterwards?? No, that doesn't make sense. Most people would go off on them, freak out, and call the police.

So a diplomatic incident, since this human is a celebrity, it reaches the galactic high court.

Tests are made, and there are traces of toxins found within the human's bloodstream. Human archives have no matches for that toxin, but the galactic archives do. It's the common fluid the drell body produces to maintain a shiny coat on their scales.

So the drell is held in custody. A hanar lawyer assigned to their case, whilst both an asari and a human lawyers were assigned to the celebrity human because we know who the Citadel Council was trying to suck up to during that point in history, especially with the high tension left in the aftermath of the First Contact war.

Several more tests are done, and the drell fluid, previously known as a protective coating, gets recatogrised as a hallucinogenic venom. Its effects upon external contact with human skin include:

Irritation of skin tissue

Inflammation of contaminated spot

Whilst internal contact (oral consumption or else) includes:

Decreased levels of consciousness

lethargy

Short attention span

Blurred vision (at high consumption)

The release of euphoria-inducing hormones

Dilated pupils

Impaired judgment

Increase in libido

Mild hallucinations

Increase the release of white blood cells (false alarms in the immune system)

The concentration of the venom depends heavily on the nature of the produced fluid and the method of consumption.

There's a whole scandal that rattles the freshly constructed bridges between the humans and the galactic species... or there would have been. But it was quickly buried and overshadowed by the birth of the first ever human/asari child.

The drell is released, the human celebrity milks the incident for sympathy fame, business is as usual.

Several months later, the hanar embassy is contacted by a particular human company—the very same one responsible for the widespread of nictone amidst the galactic market—looking to... forge a mutually beneficial contract to create a new product that will revolutionise the market!

And the hanar need not worry about legalisation, for as long as they let this one company hold the exclusive rights—monopolise—and trademark this product, then they'll take care of appeasing the pockets of the law-makers and politicians needed to allow this one thing to slide.

Some complications occur, some protests, the legality of selling pure drell venom is very grey and muddy for it can count as organ trading under some laws, not to mention the ethical delimma of extracting the fluids itself. The company is limited to selling this product only under Alcoholic Beverage Control laws, mixed within at least one type of FDA-approved controlled alcoholic substance, and within safe limits of human consumption as certian tests indicated the risk of an autoimmune disease over prolonged periods of extreme exposure to drell venom.

So this led to the invention of the Weeping Heart™, a special blend martini with a very ethically questionable history.

You could argue that at this point, just sucking a drell off at any random club bathroom would be tons more ethical. And you'd be right.

[livelovesimallways]

"Baby Johnson's Arrival"...Pt. 5

(previous)

20 Minutes Later......

"Deanna?..." *closes the door*

*sees who it is* "Oh hell no! I don't know why you're up here, but you can get out! Tell that mothafucker to give me my son and my phone, we're leaving! I'm getting a restraining order and filling for full custody. He'll be lucky if a judge allows supervised visitation."

"I know you're upset right now but just take a moment to think rationally."

"Rationally!??? Look at my face!!" *voice cracking* "This is more than one punch!...I'm done."

"Listen, he had no right to put his hands on you. Nothing in this world justifies that. But with that being said, it didn't come out of nowhere. You named his son after Sean, something he has to live with for the rest of his life. That was fucked up too."

"Well he should've handled that like a man, instead of using his fists! Of course I was wrong, but that doesn't mean I deserved this."

"I'm not saying you did, I just want you to see that there's cause and effect. Going to the courts over this one incident doesn't make sense. It wouldn't be a regular case. He's Michael fuckin Johnson!...The world famous, six time NBA champion, multi-billionaire! Do you realize the rippling damage that would cause? Think about Silas. Labeling his father as an abuser would mess up his future."

"Oh please, only Mike is going to suffer, and rightfully so."

"How can you be so sure? If this gets out, he'll be flooded with lawsuits from people looking for a payday. They'll say he's a monster and use your situation as ammunition. No one will care if they have any real claim, it'll be believable. His reputation will be finished, he'll have to resign from his companies, and he'll forever be blackballed. Silas is his son. No one will want to work with him or put him on a team because of the negative attention his father's name will bring. Sure he'll be rich, but will he be happy? All the comments, ridicule, comparisons...It will take a toll."

"Well, what do you suggest I do then!? I can't be here and I'm not leaving my baby. He's not going to give me custody without a fight. I won't win without telling my truth."

"I know. He's stubborn and not capable of seeing the bigger picture, but you are. You're Silas' mother and have been protecting him since you found out you were pregnant. Continue to do that by letting this go. Everything was fine before today. He knows he messed up and I promise you he won't do that again. Just take a breather, rest, and reset."

*shakes her head* "This is crazy..."

"I agree. It's alot, but you're doing the right thing. I'll go get you an ice pack and some Tylenol."

"...And Silas?"

"Hmm. Maybe I should bring him up after you get some rest. Babies can sense stress. You'll feel better afterwards and that will make all the difference."

A Little While Later.......

"Took you long enough, I was beginning to get worried. Ryan handled his part and got through to Sean's agent. Once he heard the words blackballed he had him make a post addressing the rumors." *rubs Silas' back* "So what happened with Deanna?"

"She's hurting but I think I got through to her. Right now she's resting."

"Good. Did you give her the pain medicine?

"Yes. I told her it was Tylenol like you asked." *with a slight attitude*

"I know you didn't want to do it but it had to be done. I can't trust that she won't change her mind, so it's just a little insurance. Technically Percs have Tylenol in them so you really didn't lie."

"So how exactly will that work in your favor?"

"It's simple. If she goes to the courts, I will have the judge order a hair sample drug test. They leave your system but stay in your hair for up to 90 days. My lawyers will paint a very different picture that you and Ryan will corroborate. I told her ass, I don't play about my kids. She's either gonna fall in line or lose him for good."

[fluent-in-lesbianism]

hi! long time follower, first time asker. this is a fandom question related to CPS. show is finding carter, a 2014 MTV show. MC is a teen girl who finds out that she was kidnapped when she was 3 and is reunited with her family. now the show definitely fumbled on how CPS should handle such a situation. i've been trying to research about it but have been having some difficulty. so i was wondering if you know of any resources or just professional knowledge about such situations. thank you so much!

I can only speak about Alabama CPS policy since that's where I work. CPS policy varies from state to state (even county to county within the same state). So I can only speak about my experiences in my state. Also, I've never actually seen Finding Carter. I'm only basing this off your short summary of the show.

I actually read this ask over the weekend and first thought I'd never actually worked a case like Finding Carter before, so I asked my supervisor (who has been in CPS for 22 years as both a worker and a supervisor) about her experiences. She'd never worked a case like that in her time as a worker, but she reminded me of a similar case I worked a few years ago that I'd completely forgotten about.

I'd gotten a report on a couple for non-kidnapping issues (that I don't remember anymore), but both I and my supervisor became suspicious during my first contact because the parents couldn't produce any adoption paperwork on a child they'd allegedly adopted from another country.

I couldn't do anything that night bc I can't remove kids off "vibes", but I made note of what they told me of their adoption process and their lack of paperwork in my notes for the primary worker. Two days later, I learned the couple was arrested and charged with kidnapping. They'd actually gone to another country, paid off hospital workers to give them a newborn baby, then flown back to the US with the baby to raise as their own.

In these situations, kids would not immediately go back to their biological parents. The kids would be placed in foster care until a judge determines that the bio parents are actually the bio parents. CPS can't change legal custody to non-relatives, and we wouldn't be able to immediately prove the child's relatives, so foster care would be the only option.

A judge would order CPS to complete DNA testing, checking hospital records, filing a police report, and checking missing persons reports before the child would even be considered for reunification. It would involve several court hearings and take a very long time. Probably several months, especially if it involves a child from another country. If it's a kidnapping from another country, Homeland Security would get involved as well.

So, let's say CPS proves that the bio parents are the bio parents, the child still wouldn't be immediately sent back. CPS would check the bio parents to ensure they're safe and appropriate. If CPS determines that the bio parents are unsafe for the child to return to (like prior criminal child abuse charges, parents use drugs, DV in the home, etc.), then the child would not be reunited with them until the parents complete court ordered services. Once the parents complete their services, a judge can make the decision to return the child to the parents.

In the mean time, the child would be placed in a bio family member's custody until a judge allows the child to go back to the bio parents. If there isn't a family member for the child to return to, then the child would remain in foster care. The child and family would also receive services through CPS like specialized counseling and supervised visitations between the parents and child prior to reunification.

I haven't seen the show, but I'm sure the show writers made it a plot point where the child was allowed to have contact with her kidnapper for the ~drama~. But that wouldn't happen in real life. The kidnapper would have a no contact order and jailed on felony kidnapping. If the kidnapper allows contact or encourages contact with the child, then they would face even more charges and jail time.

[beardedmrbean]

A California man was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport after he allegedly tried to check two suitcases filled with clothing soaked in methamphetamine, including a cow pajama onesie, federal prosecutors announced Tuesday.

Prosecutors have indicted Raj Matharu, 31, with one count of possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine, according to a Department of Justice news release. Matharu is scheduled to be arraigned Monday in U.S. District Court in downtown Los Angeles. 

He is free on a $10,000 bond.

“Drug dealers are continually inventing creative ways of smuggling dangerous narcotics in pursuit of illicit profit — as alleged in the facts of this case,” U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada said in a statement. “In the process, they are poisoning communities throughout the world. Law enforcement is committed to fighting drug trafficking, knowing that every seizure saves lives.”

Matharu was preparing to board a late-night United Airlines flight from Los Angeles to Sydney, Australia, on Nov. 6 when he attempted to check two pieces of luggage, a pink suitcase and a gray suitcase, according to court documents. Screening officers X-rayed the suitcases and pulled them for “secondary inspection” after discovering “an anomaly.”

When law enforcement officers unzipped the suitcases, they found various “white or light-colored clothing items that were dried stiff and covered in a white residue,” according to a criminal complaint filed in the Central District of California. Officers field-tested a sample of the residue, which yielded positive results for meth. 

The total weight of the meth-soaked clothing items was roughly 71.5 pounds. 

In the pink suitcase, Customs and Border Protection officers found white residue on five white T-shirts, eight pairs of women’s underwear, 19 pairs of socks, two sports bras, three tank tops, two towels, one cardigan sweater, one hoodie, one fleece sweater, the onesie pajama and two sweaters.

In the gray suitcase, officers found white residue on two towels, six pairs of socks, five boxers, seven tank tops, one pair of sweatpants, two pairs of jeans, four hoodies, one polo shirt, two button-up shirts and one long sleeve top.

In a sworn affidavit, Homeland Security Investigations agent Megan Palmer wrote in part: “I believe in this instance the white methamphetamine was ‘washed’ into the white clothing and left to dry.” 

“Based on my training and experience,” Palmer added, “I know that over time in a room temperature or cold environment, the solution would evaporate and then the powdered methamphetamine would separate from the shirt, forming a white residue.”

Matharu was intercepted at an LAX boarding gate and taken into custody on the morning of Nov. 7, according to the criminal complaint. If he is convicted, he would face a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in federal prison and a statutory maximum sentence of life behind bars.

[mariacallous]

Hip-hop mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs was denied bail again on Wednesday after his lawyers argued for the second time that he should be released from "horrific" jail conditions while awaiting trial in a sex-trafficking case.

A New York federal judge remanded the musician into custody on Tuesday after prosecutors argued he was a "serious flight risk".

Mr Combs, 54, was arrested this week, accused of running a criminal enterprise from at least 2008 that relied on drugs and violence to force women to "fulfil his sexual desires", according to prosecutors.

He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Instead of jail, Mr Combs's lawyers were proposing a bail package that included a $50 million bond co-signed by Mr Combs, his mother and other family members, as well as home detention, surrender of his passport, weekly drug test and a visitor log that would be submitted to pre-trial services each night.

But the judge hearing Wednesday's arguments did not agree to the proposal.

“My bigger concern deals with the danger of obstruction of justice and the danger of witness tampering," Judge Andrew Carter said. "That is a real concern that I have here.”

After the ruling, Mr Combs's lawyer, Marc Agnifilo, told reporters the ruling "did not go our way," adding "the fight continues".

A 14-page indictment charges Mr Combs with racketeering, sex trafficking by force and transportation to engage in prostitution.

If convicted on all three counts, the rapper and record producer faces a sentence of 15 years up to life in prison.

Asked by US Magistrate Judge Robyn Tarnofsky on Tuesday how he wished to plead, Mr Combs stood up and said: "not guilty".

Mr Agnifilo said afterwards that the musician's defence team already had launched an appeal of the judge's bail decision.

"We believe him wholeheartedly," Mr Agnifilo told reporters outside the Manhattan court of his client. "He didn't do these things."

'Freak Offs'

According to court documents, Mr Combs "wielded the power" of his status to "lure female victims... to engage in extended sex acts" called "Freak Offs".

"During Freak Offs, Combs distributed a variety of controlled substances to victims, in part to keep the victims obedient and compliant," the indictment said.

In a news briefing, US prosecutor Damian Williams said officials found firearms, ammunition and more than 1,000 bottles of lubricant during raids on Mr Combs's homes in Miami and Los Angeles, about six months ago.

Mr Williams said federal agents also found three semi-automatic rifles with defaced serial numbers and a drum magazine.

He told reporters that further charges were possible, without offering details.

Mr Agnifilo, the musician's lawyer, maintained, "there's no coercion and no crime."

"He's not afraid of the charges," he said, adding that he believed Mr Combs was the target of "an unjust prosecution".

In court documents, federal prosecutors said that Mr Combs had "abused, threatened, and coerced women and others around him to fulfill his sexual desires, protect his reputation, and conceal his conduct".

Prosecutors accuse Mr Combs of "creating a criminal enterprise" whose members - under his direction - engaged in sex trafficking, forced labour, kidnapping, arson and bribery.

"On numerous occasions", the documents said, Mr Combs assaulted women by "striking, punching, dragging, throwing objects at, and kicking them".

The indictment did not specify how many women were alleged victims. It also does not accuse Mr Combs himself of engaging directly in unwanted sexual acts with women.

The Bad Boy records founder, who was also known during his career as P. Diddy and Puff Daddy, has faced many of the accusations before.

Last November, his ex-girlfriend, singer Casandra Elizabeth Ventura, filed a civil lawsuit against him that included graphic descriptions of violent abuse. He denied the accusations, but settled the case a day after it was filed.

In May, Mr Combs released a public apology after video footage from a Los Angeles hotel appeared to show him beating Ms Ventura in a hallway.

Tuesday's indictment against Mr Combs accuses him of similar violence.

Ms Ventura's lawyer, Douglas Wigdor​​​​, declined to comment on Mr Combs's arrest.

The indictment follows a string of sexual assault allegations against Mr Combs, one of the most successful music moguls in the history of rap.

Four women, including Ms Ventura, have filed lawsuits accusing him of sexual and physical abuse.

In a statement issued last December, Mr Combs defended himself against what he described as "sickening allegations" made by "individuals looking for a quick payday".

In June, he returned a ceremonial "Key to the City of New York" following a request from Mayor Eric Adams, who had bestowed the honour on him just nine months earlier.

Days later, Howard University announced it was revoking Mr Combs's 2014 honorary degree.

The musician is credited with helping turn rappers and R&B singers such as Usher, Mary J Blige and The Notorious B.I.G. into stars in the 1990s and 2000s.

[feminist-space]

"Now, already experiencing the clawing pangs of contractions, she pulled out a frozen pizza and a salad with creamy everything dressing, savoring the hush that fell over the house, the satisfying crunch of the poppy seeds as she ate.

Horton didn’t realize that she would be drug tested before her child’s birth. Or that the poppy seeds in her salad could trigger a positive result on a urine drug screen, the quick test that hospitals often use to check pregnant patients for illicit drugs.

Many common foods and medications — from antacids to blood pressure and cold medicines — can prompt erroneous results.

The morning after Horton delivered her daughter, a nurse told her she had tested positive for opiates. Horton was shocked. She hadn’t requested an epidural or any narcotic pain medication during labor — she didn’t even like taking Advil. “You’re sure it was mine?” she asked the nurse.

If Horton had been tested under different circumstances — for example, if she was a government employee and required to be tested as part of her job — she would have been entitled to a more advanced test and to a review from a specially trained doctor to confirm the initial result.

But as a mother giving birth, Horton had no such protections. The hospital quickly reported her to child welfare, and the next day, a social worker arrived to take baby Halle into protective custody.

...

To report this story, The Marshall Project interviewed dozens of patients, medical providers, toxicologists and other experts, and collected information on more than 50 mothers in 22 states who faced reports and investigations over positive drug tests that were likely wrong. We also pored over thousands of pages of policy documents from every state child welfare agency in the country.

Problems with drug screens are well known, especially in workplace testing. But there’s been little investigation of how easily false positives can occur inside labor and delivery units, and how quickly families can get trapped inside a system of surveillance and punishment.

Hospitals reported women for positive drug tests after they ate everything bagels and lemon poppy seed muffins, or used medications including the acid reducer Zantac, the antidepressant Zoloft and labetalol, one of the most commonly prescribed blood pressure treatments for pregnant women.

After a California mother had a false positive for meth and PCP, authorities took her newborn, then dispatched two sheriff’s deputies to also remove her toddler from her custody, court records show. In New York, hospital administrators refused to retract a child welfare report based on a false positive result, and instead offered the mother counseling for her trauma, according to a recording of the conversation. And when a Pennsylvania woman tested positive for opioids after eating pasta salad, the hearing officer in her case yelled at her to “buck up, get a backbone, and stop crying,” court records show. It took three months to get her newborn back from foster care.

Federal officials have known for decades that urine screens are not reliable. Poppy seeds — which come from the same plant used to make heroin — are so notorious for causing positives for opiates that last year the Department of Defense directed service members to stop eating them. At hospitals, test results often come with warnings about false positives and direct clinicians to confirm the findings with more definitive tests.

Yet state policies and many hospitals tend to treat drug screens as unassailable evidence of illicit use, The Marshall Project found. Hospitals across the country routinely report cases to authorities without ordering confirmation tests or waiting to receive the results."

Read the full piece here: https://www.themarshallproject.org/2024/09/09/drug-test-pregnancy-pennsylvania-california

[moontyger]

If a fetus is a person, then a legal framework can be invented to require someone who has one living inside her to do everything in her power to protect it, including—as happened to Savita Halappanavar, in Ireland, which operated under a fetal-personhood doctrine until 2018, and to Izabela Sajbor, in Poland, where all abortion is effectively illegal—to die. No other such obligation exists anywhere in our society, which grants cops the freedom to stand by as children are murdered behind an unlocked door. In Poland, pregnant women with cancer have been routinely denied chemotherapy because of clinicians’ fears of harming the fetus.

Fetal-personhood laws have passed in Georgia and Alabama, and they are no longer likely to be found unconstitutional. Such laws justify a full-scale criminalization of pregnancy, whereby women can be arrested, detained, and otherwise placed under state intervention for taking actions perceived to be potentially harmful to a fetus. This approach has been steadily tested, on low-income minorities in particular, for the past four decades. National Advocates for Pregnant Women—the organization that has provided legal defense for most of the cases mentioned in this article—has documented almost eighteen hundred cases, from 1973 to 2020, of prosecutions or forced interventions related to pregnancy; this is likely a substantial undercount. Even in states such as California, where the law explicitly prohibits charging women with murder after a pregnancy loss, conservative prosecutors are doing so anyway.

Most pregnancy-related prosecutions, so far, have revolved around drug use. Women who used drugs while pregnant, or sought treatment for drug use during pregnancy, have been charged with child abuse, child neglect, distribution of drugs to a minor, assault with a deadly weapon, manslaughter, and homicide. In 2020, law enforcement in Alabama investigated a woman named Kim Blalock for chemical endangerment of a child after she told delivery-room staff that she had been taking prescribed hydrocodone for pain management. (The district attorney charged her with prescription fraud—a felony���before eventually dropping the prosecution altogether.) There has been a string of shocking recent prosecutions in Oklahoma, in which women who used drugs have been charged with manslaughter for miscarrying well before the point of viability. In Wisconsin, state law already allows juvenile courts to take a fetus—meaning a pregnant woman—into custody for the fetus’s protection, resulting in the detention and forced treatment of more than four hundred pregnant women every year on the suspicion that they may be consuming controlled substances. A proposed law in Wyoming would create a specific category of felony child endangerment for drug use while pregnant, a law that resembles Tennessee’s former Fetal Assault Law. The Tennessee law was discontinued after two years, because treating women as adversaries to the fetuses they carry has a chilling effect on prenatal medicine, and inevitably results in an increase in maternal and infant death.

The mainstream pro-choice movement has largely ignored the growing criminalization of pregnancy, just as it has generally ignored the inadequacy of Roe. (It took Joe Biden, who campaigned on making Roe the “law of the land,” more than a year to say the word “abortion” on the record after he became President; the Democrats, given the chance to override the filibuster and codify Roe in May, predictably failed to do so.) Many of those who support the right to abortion have tacitly accepted that poor and minority women in conservative states lost access to abortion long before this Supreme Court decision, and have quietly hoped that the thousands of women facing arrest after pregnancy, miscarriage, stillbirth, or even healthy deliveries were unfortunate outliers. They were not outliers, and, as the columnist Rebecca Traister noted last month, the chasm between the impervious class and everyone else is growing every day.

Pregnancy is more than thirty times more dangerous than abortion. One study estimates that a nationwide ban would lead to a twenty-one-per-cent rise in pregnancy-related deaths. Some of the women who will die from abortion bans are pregnant right now. Their deaths will come not from back-alley procedures but from a silent denial of care: interventions delayed, desires disregarded. They will die of infections, of preëclampsia, of hemorrhage, as they are forced to submit their bodies to pregnancies that they never wanted to carry, and it will not be hard for the anti-abortion movement to accept these deaths as a tragic, even noble, consequence of womanhood itself.

In the meantime, abortion bans will hurt, disable, and endanger many people who want to carry their pregnancies to term but who encounter medical difficulties. Physicians in prohibition states have already begun declining to treat women who are in the midst of miscarriages, for fear that the treatment could be classified as abortion. One woman in Texas was told that she had to drive fifteen hours to New Mexico to have her ectopic pregnancy—which is nonviable, by definition, and always dangerous to the mother—removed. Misoprostol, one of the abortion pills, is routinely prescribed for miscarriage management, because it causes the uterus to expel any remaining tissue. Pharmacists in Texas, fearing legal liability, have already refused to prescribe it. If a miscarriage is not managed to a safe completion, women risk—among other things, and taking the emotional damage for granted—uterine perforation, organ failure, infection, infertility, and death.

Most miscarriages are caused by factors beyond a pregnant person’s control: illnesses, placental or uterine irregularities, genetic abnormalities. But the treatment of pregnant people in this country already makes many of them feel directly and solely responsible for the survival of their fetus. They are told to absolutely avoid alcohol, coffee, retinol, deli turkey, unpasteurized cheese, hot baths, vigorous exercise, drugs that are not prescribed to them, drugs that they have been prescribed for years—often without any explanation of the frequently shoddy reasoning behind these prohibitions. Structural factors that clearly increase the likelihood of miscarriage—poverty, environmental-chemical exposure, working night shifts—are less likely to come up. As fetal personhood becomes law in more of the land, pregnant people, as Lynn Paltrow, the director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, has pointed out, “could be sued, or prevented from engaging in travel, work, or any activity that is believed to create a risk to the life of the unborn.”

[thenationaltreasuregazette]

Interpersonal Aftermath: Abigail and Riley Edition

Ben and Patrick | Ben and Abigail | Ben and Riley

Whereas I think Riley and Ben are both very aware that Ben is the protagonist of their shared story, Riley and Abigail have much more “best friends each separately think of the other as sidekick” energy. And I love that for them.

Their relationship is incidental to the story in a way all of the others are not. As we discussed in the first of these relationship deep dives, all of the main dynamics that drive the story forward pivot around Ben. This is especially true of Patrick and Abigail, because Ben and Riley’s relationship doesn’t evolve much during the film—they start and end as a team. But even still, Riley’s relationships to Ben as his accomplice, voice of reason, and comic relief are all central to the plot and tone of the movie.

For Abigail and Riley though, this isn’t true. As long as they can get along well enough to orchestrate Ben’s escape from FBI custody with Ian, their relationship with each other does not affect the plot. Whether they hated each other, become instant besties or anything in between, the movie doesn’t change. As long as Abigail doesn’t hone in on Riley’s role as tech wiz and voice of reason/resident pessimist (she doesn’t) and Riley doesn’t interfere with Abigail’s role as love interest (he doesn’t*) then their dynamic doesn’t influence the narrative.

*In the actual film. Headcanons may vary.

However, when we explored the missing time in National Treasure—the moments we don’t see on screen—we discovered the Riley and Abigail actually spend a good amount of downtime together, particularly in Philadelphia.

As I wrote there:

In any of the routes that take them on a bus, Abigail and Riley would spend a lot of time together. Remember, it’s Ben that Abigail’s really connected with so far. He’s the one she’s been flirting with, he rescued her from the catering truck, she learned about his family and his relationship with his father, and he’s the one she risked her career with testing the Declaration. She was talking to Ben only during both the late night car ride and while clothes shopping. To her, Riley has been the weird sarcastic guy tagging along. That’s not to say she hasn’t had any interactions with him. Her “I look pregnant?” comment is directed to Riley, so she’s clearly not afraid to engage with him. But she has gotten to know Riley way less than she’s gotten to know Ben. She’d probably be curious about how Riley got involved in the treasure hunt, and for preparation purposes I’d imagine she’d have lots of questions about Ian—who his henchmen are, their dynamics, the kinds of weapons they carry, etc. But after that the conversation might run a bit dry. Riley doesn’t know much about history; Abigail doesn’t seem like much of a conspiracy theorist. Though, idk, she jokingly brought up bigfoot during their first meeting so Riley might see how far he can run with that.

I also came up with this little moment earlier in the Philadelphia sequence, which I have no textual evidence for, but like a lot:

At some point they send Riley into a drug store to grab a few necessities—granola bars, bottled water, maybe some bandaids. A bottle of ibuprofen because Abigail’s shoulder is starting to bother her and at least one of the three of them has a pounding headache at any given time from here to the finale. Riley takes pity on Abigail’s increasingly smudged makeup and grabs a travel pack of makeup wipes as well. Abigail hasn’t paid too much attention to Riley up until this point, but she’ll always remember that gesture.

In any case, they have had time to get to know each other, and while Abigail and Riley might never have become friends if they met under other circumstances, here they are united by being the two “odd men out” swept along on this adventure—Riley because he doesn’t know much about history, and Abigail because she doesn’t know much about Ben and his quest.

Ben and the treasure might be the thread that initially brings and holds them together, but I have to believe they do become genuine friends in their own right. First of all, they’re the only other person each of them can go to when Ben and the treasure and the whole PR tour that it might entail become too much.

Also, I imagine each of them finds the other to be a grounding influence in their lives. Riley finds Abigail grounding because she’s the kind of put-together person who works a prestigious 9-5 and files her taxes early (not a lot of such influences in Riley’s freelance world). And Abigail finds Riley grounding because where her job, and probably any friends she has from professional world, rely on Business Speak™ Riley will simply voice his opinions bluntly (and often humorously). She needs more of that in her life.

Bonus:

When in the film did they become friends? Sometime before this moment:

That is friend banter and I'll hear no arguments. (Unless you want to, lol)

[syncopein3d]

Broken World II: Bait

Part 1: Changed

CW for this entire story: non-lethal but serious injuries, personal betrayal, angst, medical restraint, drugging.

The Ripper buried their fingertips in their chest and pulled. The world tore apart through the center of them, and now they were falling forward into the Other Place, completely immersed in the snarl of unreal colors and spinning incomprehensible shapes. There was no sound here. Anything metal would come out of a portal as an explosion of shrapnel. And any other creature brought through one of the tears would come out unconscious, the brain protectively shutting off awareness rather than deal with this unreality. But now the Ripper fell through this hell without the searing agony that it had brought before, and when it reached in front of it to tear again, it landed on its feet with only the jarring of impact, nothing worse.

They looked around. They were on the roof of the parking structure at SeaTac. Asphalt sprawled in all directions under the gray clouds, not one star showing. There weren’t many vehicles up here. There were always night flights, but the airport was busiest in the morning. Maybe taking a cab to the outside of the federal prison wasn’t glamorous, but it would do – and that would give the anesthetic time to wear all the way off, too.

With a view of the prison exterior, and a glimpse of its vehicle fleet for future identification purposes, then they had the rest of their night to map out routes between the prison and the Tacoma Courthouse in Union Station. They wouldn’t do it on Military Road, too close to the prison. 705 or I-5 was out because the vehicle would be moving too fast. The transport should be getting off the highway, diagonally across A Street, and then onto South 13th street around 9:45 if there wasn’t an accident slowing down traffic on the 5. It wouldn’t cause a real problem for Ripper if there was. It’d just be more boring waiting around.

Then it’d just wait for them to stop at a stop light somewhere on 13th – ideally near A close to the big parking lots, in case of accidents. Then if the van turned off unexpectedly, it would have line-of-sight on a lot of other rooftops and could get to it fast through the city. The Ripper popped around roofs along the length of 13th and around it, testing this and making sure it had spots picked out. It tore into an empty floor in the building at the corner of Broadway and 13th that was for lease, too.

There was a coffee shop on the bottom floor and several stories of office space up above, so if it decided to dump anyone alive there, they’d be able to get someone to let them out. It wasn’t averse to killing people if it had to, but getting Robert out of federal custody didn’t fall into the “have to” category, and so far, its rap sheet didn’t include any dead LEs. It wasn’t that it hadn’t been tempted. It was that you got a lot more priority attention if you did that.

Before Doctor Hale’s specially developed carnite solution and that twenty-something hours that they had lost in the clinic, this whole process would have left it exhausted and coughing up blood. Now it was down five million in carnite for the fee and another million’s worth that had been used for the infusion itself, and it didn’t hurt one damn bit. It was a little out of breath, that was all.

That wasn’t quite all. Something else had changed. It had always been afraid that it could get stuck in the Other Place and just dissolve, lose itself, forget what it was and become part of that instead. Maybe there had been other metahumans before it that had. It wasn’t that unusual for the same powerset to arise multiple times in different ways. Either way, it always felt like it was holding itself together by sheer force of this-is-me-I’m-still-me while it was Otherwhere.

Now it didn’t feel like it might fall apart in the Other Place. It felt almost MORE real there, more intact. But tearing itself back out again, that was harder than it remembered. The real world felt brittle and colorless for long seconds after. It was like when it had been a little kid and Mom took all three of them to McDonald’s, and Ripper spent that few glorious minutes crawling through the plastic tubes and flailing in the slightly smelly ball crawl, and then they had to come out and go get back in Mom’s shitty gray car and go home.

They had plenty of time to think about that as they waited. 1145 Broadway had four weird little balcony-parapet type areas, ugly and blank, but easy to pop on and off of for Ripper’s purposes. One of them faced the corner of Broadway and 13th. They could just see the turnoff from A Street, so if the prison van took a different direction, hopefully they’d see it.

They stood leaning their elbows on the railing as they waited, anonymous in their gray hoodie and black N95 mask if anyone had even noticed them up here. There was no reason to loiter at street level looking arrestable when they could loiter at roof level and not be looked at in general. They heard the first shift at the coffee shop come in far below at around 5:30, the morning was that quiet. Coffee was tempting, but getting it here was a stupid idea. They tore their way into an unobtrusive spot among the lots and lots of HVAC levels of a casino and went into the Starbucks at Caesar’s Palace instead.

They could afford to buy coffee pretty much anywhere they wanted now, so tourist prices weren’t really inconvenient. They’d stolen around five kilos or almost a billion dollars’ worth of carnite in the course of the heist where they’d met Robert. They so far had given 30 grams of it to Doctor Hale and sold another 500 grams to various interested parties for various negotiable assets. They had a lot of coffin stashes, and they’d needed all of them. If they’d gotten all of it in $100 bills (they had a few stacks of thousands, but those were out of print and harder to get) it would’ve weighed over a ton. It was less than that in a combination of bills, diamonds, Visa gift cards, and a weightless but volatile mixture of cryptocurrencies they were gradually selling off to funnel money into a bank account that was legally in Macau. They had a smaller one in the USA under the same fake identity so they could build some credit history for it.

You couldn’t just pay cash for everything forever. It got inconvenient and it looked suspicious. They were even paying taxes now. One of the things they could afford was a shady accountant Doctor Hale knew. He’d told them they should give their profession as Specialty Mover and start an LLC. They didn’t really like seeing a first name – last name on things, but at least he hadn’t argued against them choosing an androgynous one.

They were back on their balcony corner with a venti oatmilk iced Brazil Nut Bliss by 9:00 a.m. That meant they had to pop into the building to take a leak later, dumping their trash in the bathroom garbage, but that only took a couple minutes and by 9:25 they were back at their post. Google said traffic was worse than usual because of an unspecified slowdown on I-705. At least waiting was easier when their joints didn’t hurt. They did some stretches just because they could.

The trickle of traffic picked up as the morning went on, tapering only slightly after the rush. It was a busy area. That wasn’t great, but it couldn’t be helped. It was almost 10 by the time the Ripper spotted a van the right shape and color, a dark blue diesel Sprinter with the red door badge that would indicate a metahuman transport to other agencies.

It couldn’t see through the tinted windows, and anyway it was probably going to be pretty crowded inside. It had a different plan for that. It waited until the van was idling at the stop light at Broadway and 13th and tore itself down to the corner, startling a man with a briefcase. He walked quickly away down the sidewalk as the Ripper reached out toward the van in the lane nearest it.

It tore a long, flat hole directly under the frame and snapped it shut again before the vehicle could drop all the way through. The tear closing cut off the explosion of metal from the hubcaps, dispersing them randomly into the Other Place. The Ripper couldn’t make tears it wasn’t touching, and a bigger one was harder, but while it was a strain in the same way as lifting something heavy it didn’t actually hurt.

Now a van with no wheels was sitting flat on the asphalt, rocking slightly. A car behind it tore around it and peeled off into the intersection as the light changed, honking.

The Ripper dealt with the area of the back door locks in a similar way, and then immediately threw itself flat about a half-second before a shotgun went off over its head. The doors blasted open. It grabbed at the ankle of the uniformed and armored man in front of it and then tore the world open one-handed.

The two of them dropped onto the industrial carpet of the empty office floor. The officer slumped, passed out as everyone passed out coming through the Other Place. Ripper caught the gun as he dropped it, flicked the safety back on, and then set it carefully beside him as it rummaged him hurriedly for keys. There was a big ring of them. Fantastic. It ran to look out the window down at the intersection. Two more armored men were out the back of the van with what looked like assault rifles except for the fat yellow cylinder attached to the end of each barrel.

Anti-Meta Weapons. It wasn’t a surprise they’d be armed with AMWs while transporting a metahuman, but Ripper wasn’t keen to be disintegrated by a C-Beam any more than it wanted to get shot with bullets. Maybe they’d try and shoot to wound, but you could never bet on that with cops.

Good thing that was easy to deal with. It reached into itself and tore a hole in the air that opened directly behind one of them, then yanked him backwards through the Other Place and closed the tear as he dropped. This one made a stupid noise, like “fwuh.”

From the window, it saw the other one whirl toward where the first one had been. Tear #2 was behind that one. Boom, three men down on the carpet. More horns were honking down there, and the driver had probably already called for backup, but reinforcements would need a couple of minutes to get there from the courthouse.

Now they’d have to actually take a risk and look inside. Ripper tore back into the street between the curb and the van, ignoring more honking, and poked its head around the doorframe. There didn’t seem to be anybody else in the back, the driver still on the other side of the armored grate up front. A big steel hand truck squatted there in the shadowy interior. It was strapped to attachment points in the floor, and strapped to the hand truck was Bloodless.

It hadn’t seen Robert since he left the house in Seattle where they’d been squatting for that couple of days last year. A registered hero team had been experimenting on him with their stash of carnite. Ripper had never known where they got it or why they were so eager to fuck around with Robert with it, but they had lost both experimental victim and carnite in one fell swoop and then the dumb bastard had almost died of pneumonia before his powers came back. It was hard to say if he looked better now than he had the day he’d left. He had some kind of plexiglass mask strapped to his face, his black hair was shaved almost as short as Ripper’s, and his lighter brown complexion seemed paler than normal. Every other inch of his body was covered in orange jumpsuit, white straightjacket, and iron chains.

“Mmfn?” his voice was muffled; something inside the mask was sticking into his mouth, gagging him. He rolled his head slightly, putting half his face in the light from the street outside, and now Ripper could see that his pupil was a tiny pinpoint – yes, there was a tube coming out of the straightjacket on one side of the neck attached to an IV. They’d drugged him to transport him.

“You must’ve been uncooperative,” Ripper said, crouching under the low ceiling as it came to look at the IV. Then it grabbed the end and yanked. It pulled out of Robert and straightjacket with a little resistance, flinging a spray of blood and yellow-white fluid around it. He made another urgent noise as Ripper started trying keys in the padlock that held the chains to the attachment point on Robert’s right. It assumed this was a complaint about the pain until he just kept going. “Shut up, I’m working on it!”

“Mmf. Mmmf!!!” The second set of chains rattled onto the floor of the ruined van.

“Damn it, Bloodless.” It grabbed him as he half-fell off the hand-truck, yanking the mask off his face. It wasn’t gentle.

“Issa trap,” he slurred, about a half-second before the rapid thwip-thwip-thwip of darts. Ripper realized too late that they were deploying from launchers in the ceiling. It had already been hit three times, pinpoints of agony in its shoulders and side. Some hit the floor, and at least three or four hit Robert, because now he was on top of it and shielding it with his body. Shit. It knew that exalted feeling creeping into its head: more ceretol.

“Metal?” it asked. It was hard to get the words out. Everything felt so very nice and it could feel the drug trying to spin it away.

“Yeah, the damn straightjacket fasten – fasteners – fuck.” Rapid footsteps were approaching from somewhere, more than one set of booted feet.

“Freeze!”

Robert’s weight lifted away and there was a sound of heavy fabric ripping, and then a deafening array of gunshots and the hiss of C-Beams. Lying on its back, the Ripper saw three glowing red lines drawn from outside through Robert’s chest and all the way to the back wall. The light was there and gone in a second, puffs of shredded fabric drifting down. Robert vanished from its view as the world started to shrink to a pinpoint. Ripper couldn’t really move. It didn’t really want to. Someone was fumbling around nearby, bumping into its left side as they rustled fabric.

“Ripper. Ripper! You have to do it now!”

“I said FREEZE, dirtbag. You want to get disintegrated?” snarled someone from outside.

Robert seemed upset about it. Well, it knew what he wanted. It gestured weakly at its own chest and tore the world open.

The two of them fell downward and backwards together. The Ripper’s head thumped into a soft carpet, and then it lost its grip and the tear snapped shut just as a number of gun barrels started to lean down from above.

Robert was out now, lying splayed half-across the Ripper’s body. That was okay. It could hear little creaks and plinks as his body rejected bullets and they rolled out onto the floor. He was breathing. He would be back, and now it could stop worrying and let the ceretol lift it away into a spiral of glitter and silence.

Part III: Hurts

[walkingstackofbooks]

14-17 for the fanfic end of year asks, right back at ya <3

(For this ask game)

14 (unexpected fic) - already answered: basically all of them tbh 😅

15. something you learned this year

That if I have an idea, ideally I need to write all of it, straight away, and finish it while it’s fresh. I honestly don’t know how many WIPs I’m actually going to finish, because even while I love many of the ideas, I’m not in love with them the same way I was when I started.

16. fic(s) you completed this year

I completed 14 fics this year! Which is an astonishing amount, given I'd written like, 2, in the entire preceding decade? And one of them is Vision-Fucking-Awry which is an entire 90k novel! I'm still completely blown away that I can even say I wrote fanfiction this year, let alone that I completed as many as I did 😅😅

Here they are: (ordered by relationships in case anyone wants to check them out 😉)

Just Julian: A Drabble on Bajoran Time (Julian Has Feelings about having to adjust his internal clock)

A Minor Lapse In Judgement* (Julian spirals. Featuring bad self-care and season 6 depression/anxiety feels.)

The Brig (during Inquisition, Sloan makes Julian believe that he killed Jadzia during the Vorta simulation rescue)

Sloanshir: Imprisoned* (after The Brig: Julian’s signed himself into Sloan’s custody. Sloan’s very good at gaslighting. Awful, awful non-con happens but it’s okay because Julian’s an awful traitor who deserves it 🙃🙃🙃)

Julian Is Not (Julian knows he’s drugged, and probably should be panicking, but everything’s just so floaty… Even as Sloan brings him to a s31 gangbang)

[Sleep Paralysis; below]

Julian & Garak: A Bear Like Me (Garak mends Kukulaka. Julian has a breakdown over it. Hurt/comfort)

A Silence Of Two (After Camp 371, Julian and Garak talk. They don’t know what to say. Hurt no comfort.)

Julian & Sisko: 17:30 (During Inquisition, Julian really needs to pee, but Sloan won’t let him go. Post-simulation, he struggles to tell Sisko what happens. Hurt some comfort?)

Don’t Call Me Son (Sisko checks in on Julian after Camp 371. Julian isn’t having any of it. Hurt no comfort but Sisko wants to give it SO BAD)

Julian & misc. &Dax - Perfect Recall (Bittersweet. Julian misses Jadzia while talking with Ezri.)

&Kira – Happier (Julian confides in Kira that he’s still not happy, months after the end of the war. Hurt some comfort)

&Miles/Keiko; &Sloan - Sleep Paralysis (Julian keeps having dreams of being raped. It turns out they’re not dreams. Miles and Keiko look after him SO HARD. Hurt/comfort – E rated, but sex scenes are chapter-contained, so also can be an M)

&many (he’s so loved!) - Vision Awry** (Julian watches Miles die over and over again in a time loop)

Spock/Kirk Chess Mates (Spock and Kirk discover they’ve played chess against each other before)

*Finished for now – but there is the potential for more chapters if inspiration strikes. ** I hope! In theory, finished by the 21st!

17. fics you’ll continue next year

Any unfinished WIPs tbh – my last list I made is here – but my 3 main hopes are:

Damned If I Do (dead if I don’t) – Julian’s put in another s31 simulation, this time to test his ability to protect information under pressure. He believes that he’s in possession of some incredibly vital intelligence, which must be protected at all costs – even when those after it start killing the people around him…

Why Leeta Kept Kukulaka And How Julian Did Try To Ask For Him Back - A cute fluffy gap-filler where neither of them are in the wrong.

At Their Mercy – finally getting to write alpha!Garak taking care (or possibly “taking care”) of the poor, wretched, omega!Julian

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"Should Habitual Criminals Be Caged For Life?" Star Weekly (Toronto). March 26, 1966. Pages 1 to 4. ---- A crime against criminals. That's what one MP called the law that can leave a man CAGED FOR LIFE ---- by PETER SYPNOWICH Star Weekly staff writer photographs by Chuck Diven --- "The mood and temper of the public with regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilization of any country."

-Winston Churchill, 1910

At 52, John Hadden might be called a burnt-out criminal, except he really Anever was much of a criminal. He went to prison at 16 and since then has spent most of his life in custody. Like most drug addicts, he has no violence on his record. As a youth in Edmonton he tried burglary a few times, but at 25 he began taking morphine and it soon finished him. In 1947, after six sentences for vagrancy and drug possession, he broke into a barber shop and stole two clippers, for which he served. three years. That was his last burglary. He kept getting penitentiary terms, as drug addicts do in this country, but when he moved to Vancouver in the early 1950s. he was just a petty shoplifter trying to sup port an addiction. In 1961, at the age of 48, he finally gave up morphine. Then came barbiturates, which he got on prescription because he suffered from severe leg ulcers. He received five light jail terms for shop- lifting over the next two years. Then, one afternoon in 1963, he pilfered a $2.98 can opener from Woolworth's, and fell victim to the ultimate incarceration.

John Hadden was prosecuted as an habitual criminal under Section 660 of the Criminal Code, which carries a sentence of in definite preventive detention. The underworld knows Section 660 as "the bitch," and nowhere is it more dreaded than in Vancouver, where city prosecutor Stewart McMorran has brought more habitual cases to court than all other prosecutors in Canada put together. Hadden was in Oakalla Prison, serving a seven-month sentence for stealing the can opener, when McMorran notified him he would be prosecuted under Section 660. On March 16, 1964, when Hadden had finished his prison term and was some- where at large, large, he was declared an habitual criminal and sentenced in absentia. Nine weeks later he was picked up in Edmon ton and taken to the B.C. Penitentiary. There, with scores of men like him. John Hadden will spend the rest of his life unless he is paroled.

Preventive detention is the harshest penalty in the Criminal Code, short of hanging, and it has been a source of continuing controversy. When Parliament passed the measure in 1947, one MP, Maurice Hartt of Montreal, called it "a crime against criminals." Toronto lawyer Arthur Maloney, president of the Canadian Society for the Abolition of Capital Punishment, says it is "inhuman and cruel," and when he was an MP in 1958 he urged its repeal on grounds that it was "alien to some of the most ancient and sacred principles of our criminal law." Last year, when McMorran's prosecutions began attracting national attention, MP David Orlikow of Winnipeg told Parliament: "I find it amazing that we have a crown prosecutor of this type in Canada in the year of 1965. I think he would have been more suitable a couple of hundred years ago. At the time of the Inquisition I can see him turning the screw or putting somebody on the rack. In the Middle Ages I can see him chopping off somebody's hand because he stole a loaf of bread." (To which McMorran replies, "Why should I be pilloried? I haven't committed any crimes.")

There does seem to be something wrong when tired old men like John Hadden, whom we've been locking up all their lives, are put into prison on a permanent basis. It smacks of the dungeon. The idea behind preventive detention, on of of course, is that if men are not reformed after successive prison terms they must be locked up indefinitely for the protection of society. But what if these men are not violent, dangerous criminals, what if they are cringing drug addicts and defeated old burglars who pose no threat to life or limb? If they are still pilfering and taking drugs after repeated imprisonment, perhaps there is something wrong with prisons. The fate of John Hadden, and others like him, raises some important questions about crime and punishment.

Stewart McMorran, prosecutor ever since he was called to the bar in 1946, thinks juvenile delinquents should be put to work scrubbing decks on a training ship off the B.C. coast. Otherwise, prisons are his answer to the crime problem - providing the inmates don't get too many luxuries. "We give them everything these days except booze and women," he says. "There should be a lot more hard discipline. Prison should be a place where they don't want to go. The only way men can be convinced that crime doesn't pay is through fear of continued incarceration.

McMorran says there has been a 2% per cent reduction in indictable crime in Vancouver since he won his first conviction under Section 660 in 1962. He concedes that his prosecutions may not have been responsible. There are real doubts as to whether the persistent offender is deter red; in one case the accused was let off with a warning-he was declared an habitual criminal but not committed to detention- and nine days later he was back in court for stealing a sweater (again being found an habitual criminal and again escaping committal). But if criminals cannot be deterred from committing crimes, they can be frightened away to commit them elsewhere or they can be locked up so they can't com mit them at all. And on this basis, McMorran is using Section 660 against every eligible offender. Up to the end of 1965 he had taken 106 cases to court, obtaining 60 preventive detention sentences an and 25 other convictions in which detention was not imposed. Elsewhere in Canada, habitual criminal cases average three a year, in Vancouver they now are going to court at the rate of one a week. "We're still in the posse stage out here," McMorran says.

Under Section 660, preventive detention "may" be imposed "if the court is of the opinion that because the accused is a habitual criminal it is expedient for the protection of the public." To be declared an habitual criminal, the accused must, prior to his latest conviction, have been convicted on three occasions since the age of 18 of offences punishable by five years or more. He must also be "leading persistently a criminal life." In McMorran's office hundreds of dossiers are maintained on people believed to be leading criminal lives. The evidence in one prosecution included these words uttered by the accused two years previously when checked by a policeman at 4 a.m. in an alley: "Hell, son, I've been in and out of jail all my life. I haven't had time to work."

Section 660 departs from traditional notions of justice in in several ways. The accused cannot be tried by a jury. It is not required that he be present for his hearing. He is imprisoned not only a second time. for offences of the past but also for of fences he might commit in the future. He is condemned with a label that he wears until the day he dies. Once sentenced, he need never again appear before a court; his fate is in the hands of officials to whom he is forever accountable even if released on parole. And finally, the law is unevenly enforced because prosecutions are made with the consent of provincial attorneys general.

Section 660 is based on a 1908 British law, the Prevention of Crime act (later incorporated in the Criminal Justice act), which, besides providing a maximum term of 14 years instead of indefinite detention, was aimed only at "dangerous criminals engaged in the more serious forms of crime." This law was copied by the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler but in Britain itself it was a dead letter by the 1930s. In 1938 its adoption in Canada was urged by a royal commission headed by Mr. Justice Joseph Archambault.

In 1947 the Mackenzie King government acted on the recommendation despite protests in Parliament. One opposition MP, Tommy Church of Toronto, pleaded on behalf of what he called "the victims of a vicious, half-baked penal system." MP John Diefenbaker had a similar argument, and also objected to the option accorded provincial attorneys-general.

Now, nearly 20 years after its enactment, when abolition of the British law has been recommended by a Home Office committee, when similar U.S. laws have been renounced by the American Law Institute in its model criminal code, Section 660 is being used in B.C. to clear the province of persistent offenders, by either incarcerating them or frightening them away. Attorney General Robert W. Bonner is quite candid about it. He compares it to the "floater," that dubious small-town tactic of charging unwelcome visitors with vagrancy and turning them loose on the understanding they will leave town. In Bonner's words: "It's like the vagrancy charge. People who are charged with vagrancy have a chance to appear or disappear."

Bonner thinks the other provinces should start wholesale prosecutions under Section 660, too, and he is reported to have urged this on his fellow attorneys-general at their crime conference in Ottawa last January. This could double our penitentiary population, for estimates of the number of eligible offenders range from 3,000 to 10,000. It would not, however, have much effect on serious crime.

"Section 660 doesn't get at the he really dangerous offender," says John Hogarth, research associate at the University of Toronto's Centre for Criminology. "It gets the nuisance type. Police are having problems with organized crime and the petty offender is being used as a scapegoat. Locking him up in a maximum security prison is a terrible waste of the taxpayers' money."

Norman Levy, a case worker with Vancouver's John Howard Society, knows most of the detainees in B.C. Penitentiary, and he says he has yet to find more than a couple who are predatory, scheming, or driven by a profit motive. "The majority are inadequate social misfits," Levy says.

"They are not habitual criminals so much as habitual prisoners." A talk with some of the detainees in B.C Penitentiary confirms all this. They are older men, unmarried, uneducated and unskilled. They may be articulate and even personable in the artificial environment of prison, but their conversation betrays feelings of inferiority, and their records demonstrate their failure in competitive society.

Photo captions: Top spread: Habitual criminals in B.C. Penitentiary meet for weekly group therapy under psychologist Chris Conway (head of table). Sessions began at urging of Robert McGrath (extreme right). Others are, from left: Frank Schlosser, John Hadden, James Atkins, Bill (Red) Henderson and Frank Little. Fourth page: Frank Schlomer, 55, has record of petty theft and assault convictions. He works daily in prison kitchens.

"I've never had any violence on my record," says Frank Little, 48. "All I am is a drug user and small-time thief."

[krikeymate]

Foster AU: What would happen if Christina comes back after Idk 2 years and is like, "Yeah, I'm clean and sober, so give me back my babygirl" ? Does Tara still love her mom? How will Sam react? This is the woman who abandoned her; who hurt her little sister; who ruined their lives... I know that Sam adopts Tara, but I would love to hear your thoughts

Christina is actually dead in this AU, though it's been a month and 45 posts since the beginning where that was mentioned lol. Even if she wasn't, she would have been SO done for child abuse, it was pretty egregious here.

Now, however, we do have the AU that Foster AU spun off from where this question would fit. That AU got so overshadowed so fast 🥲.

In this AU, Sam fights for guardianship of her 8-year-old sister the moment she turns 18. Christina never goes down for the child abuse, because there was never 'any signs', Sam had protected Tara as much as she could from her mother, but that worked against them. But Christina was a heavy drinker, and she failed the drug tests forced by the courts, so she was found unfit and Sam got custody anyway.

The courts told Christina that if she sobered up she could begin to have monitored visitation with her daughter, and maybe one day she could earn her back. Sam is furious by the verdict, but Hicks' hand on her shoulder helps her calm down. It'll never happen, her mother's an addict, she'll never get clean. Sam comforts herself with these thoughts.

Her mother gets clean, and the courts demand she be allowed visitation. A child needs their mother after all, Christina's lawyer says. Sam wants to rip his slimy tongue from his mouth and shove it up- deep breaths. Sam can't help but wonder why. Why is her mother doing this, why did she get clean specifically for this? She never wanted Tara, never gave a damn about her. She's not even sure she ever gave a damn about her. Her mother had fought the case because it was damaging to her reputation, but that damage is done, so why is she fighting for Tara back now? It's not because she wants her, because she loves her, Sam's sure of that.

Tara's 10 now, and confused by the news. Tara looks upset when she asks Sam if they have to go back and live with her again. Sam will never tell Tara that if she has to go back, it would be alone. She'll take her and run before she lets Christina get custody again. Sam just ruffles her hair and says of course not, it's only a visit, and I'll be there the entire time.

Tara knows you're supposed to love your mother, everyone says so, so she supposed she must do. She thinks she should want to see her mum again, but in truth she's been so happy living with just Sam, even though the house is smaller and there isn't really a garden to play in.

Her mother hugs her and kisses her face and smiles when she sees her and says hello, darling and it's so weird. Tara isn't sure she can ever remember her mother hugging her, or smiling at her before. Mum stands and her face forms into the neutral scowl she's familiar with. "Samantha." "Christina." The woman scoffs at being called by her name.

The next two hours are filled with fake smiles and interest in Tara's life, with comments about Sam that Tara thinks are meant to be mean. They sound mean. Her mother's hand is constantly on her head, her shoulder, her arm, and it makes her squirm. Sam frowns every time she does it. Her mother frowns every time Tara glances at Sam before answering a question. She hopes she never has to do this again.

Her mother's see you next week darling dashes those hopes.