#When they found the Cross it was liberating and relief

[black-grey-white-purple]

Nothing will compare to the unadulterated innocent sheer joy the Pogues felt when they found the Royal Merchant Gold.

[yanderewhispers]

Yandere Sugar Daddy

"You don't even know how lucky you are. I protect you and provide for you. Don't act so ungrateful." - from Pinterest.

You try to break up with your sugar daddy after noticing his obsessive behavior, but it doesn't go well.

You found yourself in a desperate situation. Struggling to make ends meet, you cast your hopes on the allure of financial security. The idea of a sugar daddy crossed your mind, a solution to your financial woes that seemed too tempting to ignore.

Amidst the thrum of city life, you met him—a man of means who exuded quiet charisma. His initial gestures were a lifeline, an escape from the suffocating grip of debt. The promise of stability was irresistible, and you stepped into his world, blinded by the glamour he offered.

He used his wealth to weave a world around you, enveloping you in opulence. Lavish gifts arrived like clockwork, and he orchestrated extravagant outings that swept you off your feet. You basked in the glamour, feeling cherished and cared for.

However, beneath the surface, cracks began to appear. His calls and messages grew incessant, a constant stream that left you feeling suffocated. His insistence on being updated about your every move escalated, his voice holding a possessive edge.

Despite the unease that settled within you, you tried to convince yourself that his intentions were rooted in genuine concern.

The turning point came when he orchestrated an elaborate surprise, turning your living space into a lavish display of his affection. While the gesture was grand, the realization struck that he had entered your personal space without your consent.

One day, you gathered the courage to express your discomfort. His reaction was swift and unexpected. His calm exterior cracked, and his tone turned sharp. Accusations of ungratefulness filled the air, and the person you thought you knew seemed to unravel before your eyes.

As days turned into weeks, his behavior spiraled further into obsession. He insisted on accompanying you everywhere, his presence suffocating. His eyes followed your every move, and he used his wealth to monitor your actions, a haunting reminder of his control.

When you discovered cameras hidden in your personal spaces, invasive eyes watching your every move, panic set in, and you decided to end the relationship.

After summoning the courage to sever the suffocating ties, you hoped for relief, for a chance to reclaim your independence. But the aftermath was far from the liberation you sought.

His reaction was swift and ruthless, a stark contrast to the facade of affection he had once shown. The possessive grip he held on you tightened, his demeanor shifting from charming to menacing. He scoffed at your attempts to break free, belittling your resolve and dismissing your concerns.

The sense of being watched was inescapable, your every move under his relentless scrutiny. His wealth became a weapon, affording him the means to manipulate your surroundings, to control your life in ways that left you feeling like a captive.

Fear became your constant companion, the suffocating grip of his obsession pushing you to the brink. Isolation settled in as he severed your connections to the outside world, creating a cocoon where his control was absolute. You were trapped, ensnared by his twisted affection.

The man who had once promised a lifeline of stability had become a puppet master, pulling the strings of your life with a terrifying obsession. The very wealth that had seemed like a blessing had turned into a curse, chaining you to a reality that grew bleaker with each passing day.

[whyisaravenlike-awritingdesk]

Nevermind (ao3)

Twelve months to the day since she and Elain were thrown in the Cauldron, Nesta finds herself at one of Feyre’s dinner parties, trying to wrestle with an entire year’s worth of grief— until Cassian holds out a hand. (For @nestaarcheronweek day 2)

It was the laughter that rankled the most.

That stung as it echoed off the crystal wine glasses and polished silver knives that lay at intervals along the grand mahogany table; glittering peals of it reverberating as bottles were uncorked and priceless wine was poured as liberally as water. Edged in the soft evening light, their joy was bright and bold and loud and warm, but as the dark crimson liquid licked the sides of her glass when someone filled it, Nesta Archeron could do nothing but sit frozen in the chair set out for her in Feyre’s expensive new house, watching the wine settle in her glass, trying not to think of how much it resembled freshly spilled blood. 

There was no air in that expansive dining room trimmed with wealth and filled with golden light and laughter, no way to breathe, and as Nesta felt herself slowly suffocate, their laughter cut and pierced her skin like an entire quiver of arrows shot from seven different bows. Each one hit their mark; each one made her bleed. 

With a hand she forced steady, she reached for the wine and lifted it to her lips, praying she might find some relief at the bottom regardless of… well, everything.

She wished they’d given her whiskey instead.

Cheap wine and strong liquor— that’s what Nesta had grown used to these past months. What she wantedmore than fine wine and elegant dinners pierced with laughter she couldn’t share. But then— when had it ever really mattered what she wanted anyway? When had it ever made a difference? 

This wine certainly wasn’t cheap. It was rich and heady, the taste lingering on her tongue and coating the back of her throat, so thick she couldn’t breathe. It clung to the side of her glass as she lowered her hand, a smear of red staining the crystal that had her stomach churning and her throat threatening to close. Blood— did none of them notice, how much it looked like blood? It had her hearing not laughter but screams— had her tasting iron and recalling the way the blood had pooled between her fingers and collected between her knuckles only a handful of months ago. 

Around the stem of her wine glass, her fingers trembled.

So little time had passed since the battle that had made an orphan of her, and yet…

They laughed.

Still, they laughed.

It was why, in the time since they had walked away from that battlefield alive if not entirely intact, Nesta had done everything in her power to distance herself from her sister and her newfound family. She had found an apartment on the other side of the city, as far from Feyre’s new house as she could get, and most nights she tried her hardest to avoid Rhysand and the members of his Inner Circle, seeking solace instead in dive bars— trying to find it in the arms of strangers whose names she never learned and whose faces she wouldn’t remember when the sun came up.

But this night… 

This night was different. 

The wine soured on her tongue, the sound of their laughter almost making her flinch. It was twelve months to the day since she and Elain had been forced into that Cauldron— twelve months since she had been broken apart so irrevocably that she didn’t think that there was a hope in hell of putting her back together again. It was the only reason - the only reason - why she had accepted Feyre’s weekly invitation to dinner when so many others had gone ignored. Why Nesta had crossed the river and stood in that grand, echoing entrance hall, looking up at portraits of damn near everyone Feyre had ever met, and finding that the only absence was her own. 

The familiar hole in her chest had widened, yawned and gaped until it threatened to swallow her, and on this brutal anniversary she had thought that she might want, for once, to be near the only people who might understand the significance of it. Who might remember what day it was too.

She’d realised her mistake as soon as she stepped over the threshold.

Elain had been holding a cake on a silver stand, emerging victorious from the kitchen and smiling as she made her way to the dining room, where the cake now sat proudly in the centre of the table. Elain always makes dessert, Feyre had whispered as Nesta stood motionless in the doorway, trying to catch Elain’s eye and hoping to find—

What?

The same pain, reflected back at her in eyes she knew as well as her own? Some flicker of understanding?

Feyre had patted Nesta on the arm and slipped away to the sitting room, leading her to the space warmed by the glow of the fire and softened by the sound of laughter. But Nesta couldn’t find it in her to make her lips bend into a smile, couldn’t force a spark into her eyes. When Elain returned, and when Rhysand complimented the cake, her sister had blushed and dipped her chin, batting away the kind words with a soft smile and a demure tilt of her head. All the while Nesta sat in her chair, blinking, trying not to feel like a ghost that had stumbled and sat, unseen and unnoticed, at a stranger’s dinner party.

The laughter rose now, filling the dining room until the space was bursting with it, their joy pushing at the seams until it felt like Nesta would break beneath the pressure. As if from a great distance she heard Amren make some dry, cutting comment that she was too far gone to fully comprehend, and Azriel’s retort was a low, dark whisper across the silverware that had Mor’s laughter pealing all over again, like the ringing of a church bell. 

Nesta’s hand tightened on her wine glass.

Did they not realise— did they not see? Or was she just screaming into the void, her pain and her anguish swallowed by their laughter?

The grief was a collar around her neck, tightening with every breath and dragging her beneath the surface whenever she was reminded that this place was not her home, this life not one that she had chosen. When she looked in the mirror and glimpsed her reflection, Nesta saw elegantly arched ears and eyes that glinted silver and she mourned every. damned. time. On the rare occasions she managed a smile, her lips felt absurdly weighty, the curvature forced and unwieldy, too unnatural to be believable given that her chest was still so empty and hollow.

And none of them noticed.

It hurt.

Every breath hurt— still. They had told her it would get better with time, that she would learn to heal, but it hadn’t, she hadn’t, and all she had come to realise was that her anger and her sorrow and her pain could not be parcelled away, couldn’t fit neatly into their little box. It had teeth— teeth and claws and a taste for blood, and it was tearing her apart, day by day by fucking day.

But it was invisible to them, because they had ticked off the days, the weeks turning to months, and now that a full year had passed… Nesta had, apparently, sailed right past the point of her pain being acceptable.

She gritted her teeth now, the meaningless and inane babble making her want to take her fork and drive it through Rhysand’s neck. If any of them spoke to her, she didn’t hear it. Didn’t register it. Instead she sat with her back straight, pushing around the food on her plate and ignoring Mor’s disapproving glance when she barely ate a mouthful and chose, instead, to drain her sanguineous wine.

A silent scream began to build in her chest, one that threatened to cleave her in two.

The laughter grew louder, another bottle of wine was opened, and for all the size of the great dining room in Feyre’s new home, the walls seemed to be closing in, the air suddenly thin as ribbons of ice crawled up Nesta’s spine. When the food was cleared away, Nesta saw as if through water when Feyre pushed away from the table, lifting her glass and suggesting that they move to the sitting room for a while before returning later for Elain’s cake.

She didn’t hear the murmurs of agreement or the clink of glasses as her sister’s family got to their feet. She didn’t hear the scrape of the chairs against the hardwood floors - not even her own - and as the rest of them departed for one of the luxurious sitting rooms overlooking the lawns, Nesta curled a hand around the back of her chair as she stood, fingers curling painfully into the carved wood. 

“Nesta?”

Feyre’s voice drifted to her as she placed a hand on Nesta’s arm, but Nesta didn’t feel any warmth or kindness in her sister’s touch— felt only the icy kiss of the Cauldron and the hands that had held her captive in that throne room— a bruising grip that had held her down before water closed over her head, before her blood had boiled and her bones had shattered. 

The memory slammed into her, made her flinch. 

Against the onslaught Nesta took a breath, fixing her eyes on the windows and the night sky beyond, dark and clouded over, without a single star visible in the sky overhead. She looked into the impenetrable black, like a mirror to her soul.

“I’ll join you in a minute,” she managed after a long silence, her voice straining against the words. 

Slowly, Feyre nodded.

She drew her hand away and looked once at her eldest sister before turning for the door, and as the sound of Feyre’s retreating footsteps grew distant, Nesta found herself standing alone and motionless before the window, looking at her reflection and mourning the life she had lived twelve months ago.

A life where she had a father still, even if he had been absent.

A life where she woke each morning and recognised her face in the mirror; where there was a path laid before that she knew she could follow. A human, mortal path.

Nesta caught sight of her eyes reflected back at her in the glass, dark and humourless, as cold and as empty as a void. From the sitting room the laughter echoed still, Mor’s voice louder than the rest as she told some ridiculous, raucous story that had Rhysand shouting something in good-natured protest, that had Feyre gasping a laugh as she allowed herself to be regaled by some tale from her husband’s past.

Nesta wondered if she would ever laugh again— ever find a reason to smile. 

She had never felt more out of place than she did now, with her arms wrapped tight around herself as she stood alone, listening to the laughter and the joy of a family she would never be a part of. 

A mistake— it had been a mistake to come tonight.

She closed her eyes, wondering how much scorn she would receive if she left right now, without saying goodbye. Glasses clinked in the sitting room, and it was almost enough to make her dart for the kitchen and the door that she knew would take her outside, but before she could commit herself to running away, the sound of footsteps approaching made her open her eyes again. Looking at the dining room reflected back at her through the windows, Nesta didn’t bother to turn as the door was opened again, letting in another sharp slice of the mirth beyond. 

Cassian hesitated in the doorway.

Through the glass Nesta watched as he stood, lingering and drawing no nearer, even though his eyes had found her in an instant— had snapped to her, like seeking her out was the only thing he was good at. Without pause, without fear, he met her gaze in the window’s reflection, standing a handful of feet behind her as the heart in Nesta’s chest twisted painfully. 

“There you are,” he said gently. “I wondered where you’d got to.”

He stood with his hands in his pockets, a stance so casual that Nesta could have forgiven herself for forgetting that he was a warrior born and bred, as ruthless as they come, with hands even more bloodstained than her own. The hair hung to his shoulders in a mass of haphazard curls, and the ruby earring he wore caught in the low light as he canted his head to the side, studying her with eyes that held no humour anymore, no hint of jest.

She wished now that Feyre had left the wine behind.

Cassian’s eyes searched hers in the reflection, taking in the hollows of her cheeks and the skin that she knew was too pale, too wan. His eyebrows inched together, a furrow forming in his brow as he took in the tracery of grief left behind, and when his throat bobbed with a swallow, something like concern alighted across his face. The scar slicing through his eyebrow was thrown into relief as his head tilted, his jaw tight as he looked her over, and something sparked in his eyes that she couldn’t bear, something so ardent and sincere that it made the hollow ache in her chest spread until she could feel it in her toes. 

She didn’t know what to do with it. How to handle it. 

So Nesta turned sharply on her heel, whirling to face him and taking some small pleasure in the fact that his eyes widened— that she had managed to surprise him. 

“You don’t want to join us in the sitting room?” he asked, his voice slow and careful. Like he was sizing up an opponent for battle.

Nesta snorted.

Regret glimmered in his eyes, edged with just the barest hint of sorrow, but it was there and gone in an instant. The hazel darkened, and Nesta felt the anger and pain that simmered beneath her skin extending its claws like a beast stretching languorous before the hunt. 

“Why should I?” she asked, poison seeping into her tone— poison as lethal to her as it was to him. Part of her knew she would regret it later, regretted it already, but she couldn’t hold back the tide of her grief alone. It was easier to let it swallow her, to let it drown her— easier to feed the anger than feel the pain, and so she lifted a chin and nodded to the doorway and the sitting room beyond, her lip curling on a sneer that only a small part of her tried and failed to fight. “So I can hear more tales about how wonderful your lives have been?”

Cassian’s eyes didn’t widen this time, like he’d expected every harsh word that had fallen from her lips. But he didn’t draw back— Cassian remained, resolute, with his face blank as Nesta’s arms tightened around her middle, as though her grip was the only thing holding her together. For half a moment she thought she saw his eyes soften— thought she saw him reach the same conclusion.

“So you can sit beside your sisters and remember what it is to be loved by them,” he suggested instead, removing one hand from his pocket and extending it smoothly out towards her. He caught her eye and raised an eyebrow, splaying his fingers like all he wanted was for her to take his hand and let her fingers slip between the gaps he’d left in his. 

Nesta’s heart twisted again, and she thought that maybe - maybe - a part of her might want that, too. 

A pity then, she thought dryly, that she couldn’t see beyond the tangled mess of emotions that were churning up her chest like dried earth. That she couldn’t reach beyond the shroud of grief to accept the hand that he offered. 

She was silent for a moment, not quite knowing the words to say. His hand hung in the air between them, not quite enough to close the gap, and she was acutely aware that before her was a man who had thrown his life before hers, who had laid his head in her lap and grasped her hand as he lay dying. A man that she had barely seen since, who had started the hours and days after the battle by giving her space, and had never quite managed to stop. The distance between them was so great now that Nesta had no idea how to bridge it. 

And then—

“I know what day it is, Nes,” he said quietly.

He made the nickname soft, breathed it like it could somehow belong to someone with a tongue as sharp as hers. His lips parted as his eyes fluttered, his gaze drifting down, and gods, it was as much of a hand extended out to her as the fingers he still had stretching towards her, a bridge offered when she couldn’t find one herself. Nesta had stilled by the windows, immovable as stone, but when her eyes shifted from his outstretched hand to the eyes that he had fixed on hers…

She had never seen his hazel gaze so earnest. 

It was almost enough to make her weep, forcing apart the cracks in her chest with enough verocity to leave her in splinters. But Cassian didn’t blink, didn’t shy away from her, and when she said nothing, he only took a single step towards her. 

“I know what it is to grieve, you know,” he added softly, in a voice hardly more than a whisper. “I know what it is to mourn.”

The laughter from the sitting room grew louder, and Nesta felt her eyes close against it, like she might protect herself from it if she could only pretend she was somewhere else entirely. She heard the rustle as Cassian’s wings spread a little, and part of her wondered if he’d thought he might extend those wings and shield her, blocking out the entire world. Part of her wished he would. 

“Do you?” she managed as she opened her eyes again, tilting her head in a challenge that wasn’t half as sharp as she had intended. His eyes softened. “Do they?”

“Yes,” he answered simply. “But they don’t allow their pain to morph them into something else—“

“How dare you—“

“Nes.” He dared another step, eyes wide, lips parted. A plea shone in his eyes, edged with desperation. “Please.”

Nesta felt her lip curl, falling back on the all-too familiar anger that served as her shield— the defence she flung up to keep them all from looking at her too closely, from seeing just how much she had been torn apart that day twelve months ago. Just how much she’d been raked apart every day since.

“Please what?”

Cassian didn’t back away, and in the face of her barbed words he only took another breath, as if to tell her he understood— and he wasn’t afraid.

“Please let me help you. Let me do something. Anything.”

There it was again— the bridge he offered, the path back to the surface.

“You think after all these years I don’t know what you’re going through? That I don’t see it?” Cassian dropped his hand at last, curling it into a fist and bringing it above his heart. “That I haven’t been standing exactly where you’re standing right now, facing down the same damn thing?”

The beast inside her bared its teeth, claws raking down her spine. It begged to be set loose again, to snap and bite and lash out and even the slightest provocation, but…

Gods, she was tired.

So, so, tired.

“I can’t sit there and pretend,” she said at last, her voice tight in her throat. She nodded to the sitting room, to the laughter still drifting through the walls. “Just because a year has passed doesn’t mean I’ve suddenly made my peace with any of this.”

“I know,” Cassian said smoothly, reaching out his hand once again. He didn’t wait for her to accept him this time, and there was no hesitation or second-guessing as he took her hand in his and closed his fingers tight around her own. His eyes burned, his face lined with the kind of sorrow that Nesta knew would be etched across her own too, and she wanted to sob, wanted to crumble. But for once there was a crack in the darkness, a sliver of light pushing against the black and begging to be let in, and as Nesta’s fingers slid home between his, she let his warmth ground her just enough to pull her back from the edge— enough to let his light filter through the gaps. 

“You don’t have to do this alone,” he whispered, and just like that… 

Suddenly it felt like the weight she had carried alone for so long was shouldered by him too. Like he took a portion of it, eased the burden with nothing but a squeeze of his hand and a look in his eyes that said that even now, he wouldn’t forsake her.

And it didn’t fix everything - far from it - but she hadn’t realised how powerful it was to have someone there beside her, to take her hand when the darkness got too much, when the ache was too deep and the world too heavy. Somehow the teeth tearing her apart felt a little less sharp, the claws a little more dulled than usual; the beast calmed if not placated. The pain didn’t vanish,  but it was easier to bear somehow, and for the first time in twelve months, Nesta could see beyond her grief to the world beyond. 

Cassian’s fingers curled around her own, his grip tight, like he was loath to let her go lest she slip away into shadow again.

“Why?” she asked, looking down at their entwined hands. “Why do you remember when they don’t?”

Cassian shook his head. “They remember,” he said softly. “Elain remembers.” He nodded to the cake still sitting on the table, waiting to be cut after dinner. “Why do you think they laugh so loudly, Nes?”

His other hand lifted to her face, his thumb brushing across her cheek, as if to wipe away the tears that had yet to fall. He angled his head to the side, as if to hear the laughter, and when it echoed his eyes snapped back to hers. His grip on her hand tightened. 

“They laugh in the face of it,” he said. “They find the joy and cling to it.”

And what do I have to cling to, Nesta thought dryly. Who do I have to lean on?

She thought of the dim bars waiting for her and the nights she had spent in the arms of strangers, and even though she didn’t ask the question out loud, Cassian’s lips lifted at the edges, giving her a gentle, plaintive smile as he squeezed her hand— as if that was the answer.

As if he was the answer.

He tugged on her hand, his smile lifting to something wider, something more mischievous. 

“If you don’t want to face the sitting room, how about we just stay here instead?” he suggested. “Or slip away to Rhys’ study? There’s a chess board in there and believe it or not, I was never much good at it.” Slowly, the smile curving his lips grew into one that felt more genuine than any Nesta had to offer, but Cassian didn’t let it drop. His eyes glimmered as he added, “Would thoroughly humiliating me in a game of strategy help turn the night around for you?”

“You’d rather sit and play chess with me than be with your family?”

Cassian rolled his eyes indulgently, tugging on the hand she still had clasped in his palm. “Of course I would.”

Nesta didn’t know how to answer, but when she glanced up and met his eyes, there was a warmth there that she hadn’t expected to find. And maybe it wasn’t enough to chase away the dark entirely, but maybe it was the tether that she needed to a world that wasn’t so completely consumed by sorrow. Cassian’s fingers were so warm around her own, still holding tight to her even after she’d spent so long pushing him away - pushing all of them away - and for the first time in twelve months, she wanted to let herself feel that warmth, to let it sink into her bones.

“Come on,” he said, giving her hand another small tug. His smile turned somewhat conspiratorial, his voice dropping to a whisper. “If we’re quick we can sneak down to the wine cellar. I know where Rhys keeps the good stuff.”

The retort bloomed in Nesta’s throat— a cutting remark waiting on her tongue about how she didn’t want anything from Rhysand, not even his most expensive wine. A scowl threatened to twist her lips, but when Cassian waggled a single eyebrow as if to say, well? What do you say? she felt the words die on her tongue, turning to ash as she pushed the scowl back. For too long, the sharpness had been her only defence, the only armour she could call on. But with Cassian’s hand wrapped around her own and the small smirk at the corner of his lips somehow telling her they were in this together… 

Maybe she didn’t need the armour.

Not all the time. Not with him.

After all, he had taken her hand when she was hurting and hadn’t flinched as she spat and cursed. He had let her sharpen her claws, but had been there to bring her back when she needed it, when he realised that those claws were cutting her to ribbons too, and so this time, when Cassian tilted his head in a silent question and squeezed her hand one more time…

Nesta nodded.

Because she didn’t want the next year to be like the last, and she didn’t think she could do it alone, and he was there, holding her hand and throwing a smile over his shoulder as he led her from the dining room and towards the kitchen, headed right for the door leading down to the cellars beneath. And even though the grief inside her continued to snarl and writhe and claw, Nesta felt her steps fall in line with his and thought that as long as she wasn’t alone, as long as he was there, waiting to pick her up when she fell down…

Well, she thought as she squeezed his hand in return, maybe the next twelve months would turn out better than the last. 

New Taglist: (If you want to be added or removed, let me know!) @asnowfern , @podemechamardek , @c-e-d-dreamer ,@lady-winter-sunrise , @starryblueskies7, @melphss , @that-little-red-head , @misswonderflower , @fwiggle , @tanishab, @xstarlightsupremex @burningsnowleopard , @hiimheresworld , @wannawriteyouabook , @hereforthenessian @kale-theteaqueen

[southernsolarpunk]

Hey check this out

I was making a zine (solarpunk ofc) and decided to use a bunch of old National Geographic magazines to cut up and use in a scrappy diy scrapbook fashion and of course I started reading them. This one in particular:

It caught my eye because it’s from September 1980 & talks about the Middle East. My brain wonders if they mention Palestine and they do! I copied the text for accessibility, but I put pictures at the end of the original pages.

“Jerusalem: reunited or occupied? The question has divided the city's 400,000 Jews and 100,000 Arabs since Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1967.

BEIRUT, JANUARY 1975. Armed soldiers lead me through labyrinthine back streets, up a dark stairway to a midnight rendez-vous. Only a bare bulb lights the temporary command post; Yasir Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, seldom dares spend two days in the same place. “Our argument is not with the Jews” He tells me. "We are both Semites. They have lived with us for centuries. Our enemies are the Zionist colonizers and their backers who insist Palestine belongs to them exclusively.

We Arabs claim deep roots there too."

Two decades ago Palestinians were to be found in United Nations Relief Agency camps at places like Gaza and Jericho, in a forlorn and pitiable state. While Palestinian spokesmen pressed their case in world cap-itals, the loudest voice the world heard was that of terrorists, with whom the word Palestinian came to be associated. Jordan fought a war to curb them. The disintegration of Lebanon was due in part to the thousands of refugees within its borders.

Prospects for peace brightened, however, when President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, most powerful of the Arab countries, made his historic trip to Israel in November 1977. A year later Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin signed the Camp David accords, a framework for the return of the occupied Sinai Peninsula to Egypt.

The former enemies established diplomatic relations and opened mail, telephone, and airline communications.

The Camp David accords also addressed the all-important Palestinian question but left it vague. Sadat insists that any lasting peace depends on an eventual Palestinian homeland in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza. Israel agrees to limited autonomy for those regions, but, fearful of a new and hostile Palestinian state suddenly planted on its borders, insists that Israeli troops must maintain security there.

Crowded Rashidiyah refugee camp, set among orange groves south of the ancient Phoenician port of Tyre in Lebanon, lies on the front lines. Frequent pounding by Israeli military jets and warships seeking PLO targets has war-hardened its population, some 13,700 Palestinians.

At the schoolyard I watched a solemn flag raising. Uniformed ashbal, or lion cubs, stood rigid as color guards briskly ran up the green-white-and-black Palestinian flag.

Ranging in age from 8 to 12, they might have been Cub Scouts— except for the loaded rifles they held at present arms. Behind them stood two rows of girls, zaharat, or little flowers. Same age, same weapons.

Over lunch of flat bread, hummus, yo-gurt, and chicken I commented to my hosts, a group of combat-ready fedayeen, that 30 years of bitter war had settled nothing nor gained the Palestinians one inch of their homeland. Was there no peaceful way to press their cause?

"Yes, and we are doing it. Finally, after 30 years, most countries in the United Nations recognize that we too have rights in Palestine. But we feel that until your country stops its unconditional aid to Israel, we have two choices: to fight, or to face an unmarked grave in exile."

AFTER CROSSING the Allenby Bridge from Amman, I drove across the fertile Jordan Valley through Arab Jericho and past some of the controversial new Jewish settlements: Mitzpe Jericho, Tomer, Maale Adumim, Shilat. Then as I climbed through the steep stony hills to Jerusalem, I saw that it too had changed. A ring of high-rise apartments and offices was growing inexorably around the occupied Arab side of the walled town. Within the wall, too, scores of Arab houses had been leveled during extensive reconstruction.

"Already 64 settlements have been built on the West Bank," said a Christian Palestinian agriculturist working for an American church group in Jerusalem. "And another 10 are planned," he said. Unfolding a copy of the master plan prepared in 1978 by the World Zionist Organization, he read: "Real-izing our right to Eretz-Israel... with or without peace, we will have to learn to live with the minorities...

The Israeli Government has reaffirmed the policy. In Prime Minister Menachem Begin's words: "Settlement is an inherent and inalienable right. It is an integral part of our national security."

"Security" is a word deeply etched into the Israeli psyche. The country has lived for 30 years as an armed camp, always on guard against PLO raids and terrorist bombings.

Whenever such incidents occur, the response is quick: even greater retaliation.

In Jerusalem I met with David Eppel, an English-language broadcaster for the Voice of Israel. "We must continue to build this country. Israel is our lawful home, our des-tiny. We have the determination, and an immense pool of talent, to see it through." His cosmopolitan friends a city plan-ner, a psychology professor, an author gathered for coffee and conversation at David's modern apartment on Jerusalem's Leib Yaffe Road.

Amia Lieblich's book, Tin Soldiers on Jerusalem Beach, studies the debilitating effects almost constant war has had on life in the Jewish state, a nation still surrounded by enemies. As she and her husband kindly drove me to my hotel in Arab Jerusalem afterward, some of that national apprehension surfaced in the writer herself.

"We don't often come over to this part of town," she said. "Especially at night."

I DROVE OUT of the Old City in the dark of morning and arrived a few hours later at the nearly finished Israeli frontier post, whence a shuttle bus bounced me through no-man's-land to the Egyptian ter-minal. As a result of the Egyptian-Israeli treaty, it was possible for the first time since 1948 to travel overland from Jerusalem to Cairo. An Egyptian customs man opened my bags on a card table set up in the sand. I took a battered taxi into nearby El Arish, to a sleepy bank that took 45 minutes to convert dollars into Egyptian pounds, Then 1 hired a Mercedes for the

200-mile run across the northern Sinai des-ert, the Suez Canal, and the Nile Delta. By sundown Cairo was mine.

Despite official government optimism, I found many in Cairo worried that President Sadat's bold diplomatic gestures might fail.

The city was noticeably tense as Israel officially opened its new embassy on Mohi el-Din Abu el-Ez Street in Cairo's Dukki quarter. Black-uniformed Egyptian troops guarded the chancery and nearby intersections as the Star of David flew for the first time in an Arab capital. Across town, police with fixed bayonets were posted every ten feet around the American Embassy. Others were posted at the TV station and the larger hotels. Protests were scattered, mostly peaceful. None disturbed the cadence of the city.

Welcoming ever larger delegations of tourists and businessmen from Europe and the U.S., Cairo was busier than ever-and more crowded. Despite a building boom, many Egyptians migrating from the countryside, perhaps 10,000 a month, still find housing only by squatting among tombs at the City of the Dead, the huge old cemetery on the southeast side of the capital.

Even with the new elevated highway and wider bridge across the Nile, half-hour traffic standstills are common. Commuters arrive at Ramses Station riding even the roofs of trains, then cram buses until axles break.

Cairo smog, a corrosive blend of diesel fumes and hot dust from surrounding des-erts, rivals tear gas.

Despite the rampant blessings of prog-ress, Cairo can still charm. In the medieval Khan el-Khalili bazaar near Cairo's thousand-year-old Al-Azhar University, I sought out Ahmad Saadullah's sidewalk café. I found that 30 piasters (45 cents) still brings hot tea, a tall water pipe primed with tobacco and glowing charcoal, and the latest gossip. The turbaned gentleman on the carpeted bench opposite was unusually talk-ative; we dispensed with weather and the high cost of living and got right to politics:

"Of course I am behind President Sadat, but he is taking a great risk. The Israelis have not fully responded. If Sadat fails, no other Arab leader will dare try for peace again for a generation."

Across town at the weekly Akhbar El-Yom newspaper, one of the largest and most widely read in the Middle East, chief editor Abdel-Hamid Abdel-Ghani drove home that same point.

"What worries me most is that President Sadat's agreement with Israel has isolated Egypt from our brother nations," he told me. "When Saudi Arabia broke with us, it was a heavy loss. The Saudis are our close neighbors. Now they have canceled pledges for hundreds of millions in development aid to Egypt. Some 200,000 Egyptians-teach-ers, doctors, engineers live and work in the kingdom.

"And Saudi Arabia, guardian of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, remains for Muslim Egypt a spiritual homeland."

This magazine was published before my mom was born, and yet the sentiments have basically unchanged. An interesting look at the past, and more proof this didn’t start October 7th. (But imagine my followers already knew that)

[eretzyisrael]

by Troy O. Fritzhand

A group of 3,000 teachers working in Gaza for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) — the global organization’s agency dedicated solely to the refugees and descendants of Palestinians who fled during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence — glorified and celebrated the Hamas terror group’s Oct. 7 pogrom across southern Israel in an internal Telegram group, according to a new investigation by UN Watch.

The Geneva-based NGO, which monitors the UN, found that on Oct. 7, when Palestinian terrorists invaded Israel, massacred 1,200 people, and kidnapped 240 others as hostages to Hamas-ruled Gaza, the UNRWA teachers posted messages such as “welcome the great October” and “Allah is great, reality surpasses our wildest dreams.”

One principal, Iman Hassan, said the surprise attack was “restoring rights” of Palestinians. Other teachers called the terrorists “heroes” and said “foreign nationals should remain among the Israeli prisoners in the Gaza Strip until the siege … is lifted.”

UN Watch exposed 20 specific Gaza educators who celebrated the massacre, ranging from regular teachers to even directors of a training center.

“This is the motherlode of UNRWA teachers’ incitement to jihadi terrorism,” UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer said in a statement. In a tweet accompanying the report’s release, he added that the agency was engaging in “the systematic incitement to terror.”

According to UNRWA, the agency has 702 schools with half a million students educated by nearly 20,000 teachers — including those who celebrated the Hamas attack.

Complaints that UNRWA is promoting antisemitism and terrorism are not new.

A report published in November by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se), an independent research group, found that at least 14 teachers at UNRWA-run schools had praised the Oct. 7 pogrom carried out by Hamas terrorists in southern Israel.

Another UNRWA teacher was separately accused by an Israeli journalist of having held one of the hostages abducted during the onslaught, depriving him of food and medical attention. For its part, UNRWA has strongly denied that there is any basis to that claim.

The US is the largest donor to UNRWA and gave over $371 million to the organization in 2023. Former President Donald Trump cut funding to the group in 2018, a move that was ultimately reversed when current President Joe Biden took office.

UNRWA’s future role in Gaza after the Israel-Hamas war ends has been a point of discussion in the Jewish state. Hebrew media reported last month that the Israeli government has outlined plans to root out the agency completely from Gaza following the war.

Part of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal to endorse the idea of the Palestinian Authority governing Gaza should Hamas be wiped out is due to the education it supports via UNRWA that promotes incitement against Israel and Jews.

For example, a 2023 joint report by Impact-se and UN Watch found that UNRWA employees had created classroom material celebrating the firebombing of a Jewish bus as a “barbecue party,” encouraging students to pursue jihad and martyrdom, erasing Israel from maps, and encouraging students to “liberate the homeland” with “their blood,” among other examples of incitement to radicalism.

In its new report, UN Watch called for the immediate dismissal of the teachers it identified and the implementation of a zero-tolerance policy for any future instances of calls for incitement or glorifying terrorism.

[soulessjourney]

Ashes of Panem

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Paring: (young) Coriolanus x Reader

Word count: 2.1k

Summary: Coriolanus Snow and Y/N Ashcroft had trained together since their entry into the academy. However, when their names were drawn, they found themselves pitted against each other and twenty other children in these games. As Y/N became a symbol of rebellion akin to her great grandmother, who vanished shortly after Panem's liberation, the looming threats of war and the approaching games forced Coriolanus and Y/N to forge an alliance. Amidst these challenges, they had to learn to trust and support one another in order to break free from Coin's oppressive regime.

Warnings: None

The room came to life with the cacophony of singing and instruments. People congregated in clusters, swaying to the rhythm of the music, occasionally jostling against you. Across the room, a smile stretched across your face as you spotted Coriolanus, leaning against the wall, engrossed in conversation with Sejanus, his gaze fixed on the performer. Turning your head, you noticed Lucy Gray, a classmate more inclined toward performance than combat. Relief washed over you knowing she wasn't among the top twenty-two students bound to fight in the imminent days. Her voice held an ethereal quality, deserving a stage rather than a fighting ring. Coriolanus' fixation on her was understandable; her voice possessed a hypnotic charm. However, there lingered an element of longing in his gaze that didn't escape your notice.

You bit down on your lip, attempting to quell the jealousy clawing its way in. The memory from last week, that shared moment between the two of you after the gala, remained etched in your mind. Something had shifted within you, leaving you yearning for more from him. At the academy, you never missed the glances he cast your way or the tender touches, yet foolishly, you had brushed him off, leading to his eventual distance.

As you approached, Sejanus spotted you, a wide grin illuminating his face. "Y/N, didn't expect to see you. You look stunning, by the way. Normal clothes, that isn't our school uniform, suit you perfectly," he exclaimed, eyeing your outfit. Adorning a long brown skirt that fell just below your knees, complemented by a neatly buttoned-off-white plaid blouse with a ribbon tied delicately beneath the collar, you exuded a graceful charm. Your hair, halfway styled, featured a ribbon securing it in place.

"Thank you, Sejanus. You don't look too shabby yourself. But I'm here because someone," you glanced playfully at Sejanus, "convinced me to sing. It'd be impolite to decline after receiving such praise for my singing skills in front of everyone, wouldn't it?" Your lips curved into a cherry-red smile. You wondered if the lipstick was a bit much given the ensemble, but judging by Sejanus's admiration for every aspect of your outfit, it seemed the perfect choice.

Beside you, Coriolanus cleared his throat, his focus trained on you. "You're singing?" His tone carried a hint of offense, as if you had kept this from him intentionally. But why would you inform him when he had ceased speaking to you a few days back, and it was Sejanus who had proposed the idea earlier today?

"Yes, I am. Any issues with that, Snow?" Arms crossed, you raised a brow, while Sejanus emitted a nervous laugh, attempting to diffuse the tension between you both. "I wrote a song, and Sejanus suggested I perform it, given it might be our last chance to hear music. How could I refuse our mentor?"

"No issues," he began, his gaze drifting back to Lucy Gray. "I just didn't know you had this talent, and it seems tonight you've got competition from our Songbird here." His words ignited a spark of anger within you, and you struggled not to snap at him in front of everyone. With a scoff, you nodded at Sejanus before striding off into the crowd, oblivious to the longing gaze Coriolanus directed at your retreating figure, as you walked away from him once more.

---

As Lucy Gray concludes her performance, her gaze lands on you. Her wide grin signals excitement brimming in her eyes. "Ladies and gentlemen, we have a very special performance tonight. It took some persuasion from a few friends, and I hope you'll give her the same respect you give to me. She's a woman with a golden voice and a charming presence. She might not be who you expect, but please welcome Y/N to the stage," Lucy Gray announces, and all eyes turn toward you.

Clearing your throat, you stride forward toward the stage. Each step echoes on the wooden platform, the silence of the room unnerving. You try to steady your shaking hand behind you, hoping to conceal your nerves. Lucy Gray wishes you luck before swiftly leaving the stage, taking her place next to Coriolanus, who smiles down at her. "Uh, hello everyone," you begin, flinching at the slight ring of the microphone and shifting nervously. Glancing at Coriolanus, engrossed in a quiet conversation with Lucy Gray, you fight back a frown attempting to surface on your face.

Sejanus starts clapping loudly, drawing a laugh from you and alleviating the tension in the room slightly. You make a mental note to thank your newfound friend later for the gesture. "I know you all see me as someone who fought to be at the top of our class, but after some convincing, and maybe a bit of bribery," you jest, eliciting momentary laughter from the audience. "I'm not much of a songwriter or a singer, but Sejanus has talked up my skills, so I have no choice but to prove him right." More laughter fills the room. "This piece is called 'Twist of Fate.'" You glance back at the group behind you, receiving nods as the melody of the song fills the air.

"In the corner of fate's design,

A tale began, quite unforeseen,

Where hearts collide in the strangest way..."

Your eyes wander the room as couples and friends listen in amazement. Soon, they start dancing in harmony with your words. As you glance back toward the rear of the room, your gaze locks onto a pair of intense blue eyes fixed on you, hanging onto every word as you sing.

"In the shadows of the mundane,

Where life's surprises often reign,

I stumbled upon a soul so true..."

You longed for him to absorb every word of the song, almost as if it were crafted for him. Perhaps it was? You couldn't be certain why you had wrote it. Since that day after the gala, emotions had flowed, and you transcribed exactly how you felt. You poured your heart onto the page, concealing the foreign feelings that tormented you. You had no right to feel jealous now; you had no right to desire tearing Lucy Gray away from Coriolanus because he wasn't yours to claim. He was his own person, free to act as he pleased. So why did you wish for this song, these lyrics, to bind him to you indefinitely? Clutching the microphone tighter, you shut your eyes, attempting to shield yourself from his intense gaze.

"Oh, the unexpected twist of fate,

Led me to love, albeit late,

In the one I least expected to find,

A heart so pure, so wildly kind."

Your eyes snapped open as you heard Lucy Gray pleading with Coriolanus to dance. He rarely danced, so it surprised you when he accepted, joining the crowd and moving to the song's rhythm with her. Whenever his gaze met yours, you felt exposed, yet it wasn't a gaze of observation. No, it was one trying to convey something, striving to draw you in and communicate unspoken words. You noticed how your voice reverberated off the walls, and in that moment, you recognized this song as your confession to Coriolanus Snow, a confession you'd soon regret.

"In hearts and souls, it truly lies,

In the one unexpected, love's perfected art,

A love story etched within my heart."

As the song concluded, your peers erupted into a boisterous cheer, chanting your name while clapping. Acknowledging them with a slight bow, you left the stage only to be intercepted by Sejanus. "Listen, I knew you could sing, but I had no idea you could sing like that. We all thought Lucy Gray had quite a voice, but everyone was captivated by yours," he remarked as both of you navigated through the crowd. You seized the chance to express gratitude for your classmates' compliments. "Coriolanus was hanging onto every word," he added, catching you off guard.

"What?" Knowing you had Coriolanus's attention was one thing, but hearing someone else acknowledge it brought an entirely new sensation. Part of you had questioned whether he knew you were singing for him or if he was merely watching because you were his partner and he wanted to prevent any missteps.

"When Lucy Gray spoke to him, he wasn't really focused on her. His gaze was fixed on you, which seemed to bother her, prompting her to ask him to dance." Lucy Gray's infatuation with Coriolanus wasn't a secret, yet Sejanus's confirmation both dampened your spirits and assuaged the tumultuous thoughts in your mind. Coriolanus was watching you, and only you. The notion itself caused your heart to skip a beat. However, if he genuinely cared, you pondered whether he would have stayed to congratulate you or tease you with a joke, knowing it would irk you because that's what he enjoyed doing.

"Well, that's thoughtful of him, but please excuse me, Sejanus. I need some fresh air. I'm not accustomed to public performances," you murmured softly, maneuvering through the crowd and ascending the stairs. Stepping outside, the cold air eased the burning sensation on your skin. Taking a seat on a nearby crate, you gazed up at the night sky, marveling at the brilliance of the stars.

"You sounded amazing tonight," a voice emerged beside you. Turning, you looked at the speaker. Coriolanus motioned and gently nudged your foot, signaling for you to make room. Shifting over, you cleared your throat as he settled down beside you. "I know my words earlier were rude, and I apologize. You're not in competition with Lucy Gray because I don’t think she could ever sing with as much emotion as you did," he expressed. His words warmed your heart, and you fought back a smile.

"I felt like I was going to pass out up there. I don't usually perform my songs for others. Sejanus mentioned you were hanging onto every word, and honestly, I didn't want to believe him," you confessed, releasing a deep sigh. Looking at Coriolanus, his gaze softened and the faint crease on his forehead seemed to silently ask the 'why' behind your words. "I didn't want to believe him because I didn't want to confront the reality of what the song meant. I know you understood the song's significance, and I didn't want it to become real if I acknowledged it," you explained.

Coriolanus chuckled, nudging your shoulder gently. "Then let's not confront reality just yet. I'll pretend I was captivated by the beauty of your voice and blame being enchanted by the melody alone, not the depth of those lyrics you sang," he whispered, leaning in slightly. "I won't confess that I felt like tearing my heart out and offering it to you. I won't admit that I didn't care whether you tossed it away or held it close and cherished it. I won't admit that those words weren't your way of expressing how you truly feel," he murmured.

With each word, his face drew nearer to yours. As he finished speaking, his nose gently brushed against yours. His lips hovered tantalizingly close to yours, making you want to either cry or grab him by the shirt and kiss him as if your life depended on it. You might have, if reality hadn't set in, reminding you of your impending doom and the interview questioning your willingness to fight to protect Coriolanus. There was no room for a relationship that would burn out the moment you stepped off those platforms. Maybe in another existence, void of cruelty, you both could share the passionate kiss you yearned for, and happiness could be your reality.

Cool hands on your cheeks brought you back, his thumb smoothing over the surface as he leaned in, brushing his lips against yours. The touch was gentle but enough to snap you back to reality. Pushing him away, you stood quickly, scanning the surroundings to ensure no one had seen the moment. Once you confirmed you were in the clear, you looked down at a shaken Coriolanus. "I'm sorry, I think I should go. We have our interviews tomorrow," you said, turning to walk away from him. As you journeyed home, snow began to fall once again, carrying away a piece of your heart.

Tags:@notyourwildestdream @runningfrom2am

[atinylittlepain]

Of Saints and Sinners - Chapter 4

Joel Miller x f!reader/f!oc

masterlist

warnings | 18+ dark themes, angst, canon-typical violence

a/n | this one is tough, y'all. we find out how our girl got all those scars...

It’s been five days since the men left Jackson. There’s been no sign of anything, no clickers, no bandits. They’ve made it through the mountain pass and are left in the eerie silence of the crumbling highway, on the edge of Idaho crossing into Oregon. Steve has taken some of the steel out of his attitude, becoming at least civil with Joel. Alex is much kinder, much more open, and he and Joel often make decent conversation.

Alex and Steve have both been slowly providing Joel with information about her, about this group called the Washington Liberation Front. A militia that was able to overthrow FEDRA, claiming Seattle first as its own and slowly spreading outposts across the state of Washington. Way before that happened, when everything went down, she had been at Whitman College, quickly shuttled into the Seattle QZ. Steve had shared a freshman seminar class with her, a passing acquaintance, so when she saw him in the triage center in Seattle, they both grabbed onto each other and never let go. They were both young, and smart, and had easily inserted themselves into the growing resistance that became the WLF, securing minor leadership positions as FEDRA fell in Washington state. 

“I still remember when we figured out that she was immune. We were out on a raid mission, got completely swamped by clickers. Our team got split up, I lost track of her. Got back to base and when I found out she hadn’t returned, I figured she was gone, another devastation.” They’ve set up camp for the night in a shelled-out gas station as Steve whispers these memories, hanging his arms over his knees as he sits against a wall. 

“Imagine my surprise, my relief, when she comes stumbling back to the gates four days later. They had to hold me back from hugging her while they tested her for infection, it felt like my heart exploded when the scanner went red.” He takes a deep breath, “but she swore up and down that she had been bit that first day she was out there, and she still hadn’t turned three days later. She showed us the bite on her shoulder and it was unlike anything we’d ever seen. It was healing.”

Joel thinks of the scars she had shown him, the glaring evidence of violence endured and rejected.

“They put her in solitary immediately, under observation. The Front had cobbled together a de facto medical team, former doctors and scientists. They kept her there, in the hospital, for two weeks. No one would tell me what was going on, just that she was still her but that they couldn’t let me see her, couldn’t let her back out among us.” 

Steve stops, shudders. Alex dips his head towards his chest, closing his eyes.

“And then, at the end of those two weeks, they let me in to see her. She was fine, the bite was fully scabbed over, no infection. She told me they were gonna release her the next day so she could get back to work, that they’d bring her in for more testing later on.”

“They didn’t release her though. When I didn’t see her at breakfast or lunch, I went to the hospital looking for answers. They hadn’t released her, they had moved her. Said that her body was too valuable, that she needed to be placed under full medical observation. Not that she was too valuable, her body was too valuable.” Joel feels sick to his stomach hearing this all too familiar story.

“They told me it wasn’t my place to be asking these questions, that I needed to remember my position before they reminded me themselves. Those were still early days for the Front. Someone said the wrong thing and suddenly you’d never see them again. I was terrified, I didn’t fucking know what to do. I figured she was too valuable a fighter, too valuable a soldier for them to kill her. That they’d get whatever they wanted from her and release her.”

Steve’s hands are shaking as he huffs out an exhale. “Months went by. They knew that I was worried, that I hadn’t just dropped it. I’d get a message every few weeks from a higher up, letting me know she was safe, that they still needed to keep her under observation. It had been ten months when I finally started to lose it. I couldn’t keep my head down any longer.”

“There had been a raid by the Seraphites, at the hospital. My team had been sent to pacify the situation. I was by myself, clearing out the top floor and I found a doctor, one of the doctors, bleeding out.” Steve’s staring straight ahead as he tells this story, fists clenched now, voice resolute.

“He had a gunshot wound in his left side. I dug my thumb into the puncture, twisting the bullet deeper, and I told him to tell me where they were keeping her. And he sang. I shot him in the head.”

“It was easy to get people to help me find her. She was well-liked by most, a natural leader and a good friend. They were keeping her in an enclosure in the old Woodland Park Zoo. The fucking zoo. It was an off-limits area for civilians.”

Steve pauses, wringing his hands, glancing at Joel beside him. “It wasn’t hard getting her out. I had the best of the best with me when it came to fighting, but when the others saw what had been done to her, they abandoned us. I guess they were scared of her, or scared for her, I don’t really know. But I had a car ready, packed up. I hid her in the back and we got the hell out of Seattle before anyone was the wiser. Never looked back.”

“I remember I stopped the car the minute we crossed state lines, asked her to let me treat her wounds. I think it had finally sunk in, what I had seen. When we found her, she was chained at the ankle in a plexiglass cage –” Steve hiccups and Joel can see he’s now silently crying, shaking in both sadness and rage. “N-naked from the waist up, a-and all over her back–” he takes a sharp inhale, “well, she showed you the scars. That’s nothing compared to what it looked like fresh.” 

“All these years, I’ve thought about it, and I still can’t figure out what they were trying to do with her, why they did that. Were they just trying to see how many infections it’d take before she succumbed to it? Trying to figure out how her body fought the infection by exposing her to it over and over and over? Or were they just using her as some sort of perverse entertainment? The miracle woman who gets back up everytime.” Steve takes a shuddering inhale, letting his shoulders slump.

“She was fucking terrified. Didn’t even really trust me, kept asking me if I was gonna have to take her back soon.” He scoffs, “I guess I understood that, after she’d been betrayed by so many. I just kept promising her and promising her that I’d– that I’d never let her get taken back there again.” Steve’s taking shuddering breaths, eyes squeezed shut.

Silence descends. Alex is crying. Joel is speechless. Steve mumbles, “I don’t wanna say anymore right now. I can’t.”

Joel tentatively rests his hand on Steve’s forearm. The younger man squints at him through the dim light. “We’re gonna find her. We’re not gonna let it happen again.”

He’s not sure where those words come from. He’s not sure if they’re even true. But it’s all that he can offer this shivering man. 

“We gotta get to them before they’re back in Washington. The minute they hit home turf, we’re screwed.” Alex wipes his nose with his shirt sleeve, looking at Joel, “we’ve got all of Oregon to find them then.”

The three men resolve themselves to silence in the aftermath of these words, each stuck in his own mind, replaying what’s been said, what’s been lived.

Little do they know about two miles further up the highway, she’s waking up after having been drugged endlessly for the last week, and she has no intention of going back under anytime soon.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Ricky Gervais

Published: Feb, 2008

I loved Jesus. He was my hero. More than pop stars. More than footballers. More than God. God was by definition omnipotent and perfect. Jesus was a man. He had to work at it. He had temptation but defeated sin. He had integrity and courage. But He was my hero because He was kind. And He was kind to everyone. He didn't bow to peer pressure, or tyranny or cruelty. He loved you. He didn't care who you were. He loved you. What a guy. I wanted to be just like Him.

One day when I was about 8 years old, I was drawing the crucifixion as a part of my bible studies homework. I loved art too. And nature. I loved how God made all the animals. Yhey were also perfect. Unconditionally beautiful. I was an amazing world.

I lived in a very poor, working-class estate in an urban sprawl called Reading, about 40 miles west of London. My father was a laborer an my mother was a housewife. I was never ashamed of poverty. It was almost noble. Also, everyone I knew was in the same situation, and I had everything I needed. School was free. My clothes were cheap and always cleaned and ironed. And Mum was always cooking. She was cooking the day I was drawing Jesus on the cross.

I was sitting at the kitchen table when my brother came home. He was 11 years older than me, so he would have been 19. He was smart as anyone I knew, but he was too cheeky. He would answer back and get into trouble. I was a good boy. I went to church and believed in God--what a relief for a working-class mother. You see, growing up where I did, mums didn't hope as high as their kids growing up to be doctors; the just hoped their kids didn't go to jail. So bring them up believing in God and they'll be good and law-abiding. It's a perfect system. Well nearly. 75% of Americans are God-fearing Christians; 75% of prisoners are God-fearing Christians. 10% of Americans are atheists; 0.2% prisoners are atheists.

But anyway, there I was, happily drawing my hero when my big brother Bob asked, "Why do you believe in God?" Just a simple question. But my mum panicked. "Bob," she said, in a tone that meant "shut up." Why was that a bad thing to ask? If there was a God and my faith was strong, it didn't matter what people said.

Oh...hang on. There is no God. He knows it, and she knows it deep down. It was as simple as that. I started thinking about it and asking more questions, and within the hour, I was an atheist.

Wow. No God. If Mum Had lied to me about God, had she lied to me about Santa? Yes, of course but who cares? The gifts kept coming. And so did the gifts of my new found atheism.

The gifts of truth, science, nature. The real beauty of this world. Not a world by design, but one by chance. I learned of evolution...a theory so simple and obvious that only England's greatest genius could have come up with it. Evolution of plants, animals, and us...with imagination, free will, love, and humor. I no longer needed a reason for my existance, just a reason to live. And imagination, free will, love, humor, fun, music, sports, beer and pizza are all good enough reasons for living.

But living an honest life--for that you need the truth. That's the other thing I learned that day, the truth, however shocking or uncomfortable, in the end leads to liberation and dignity.

I hope I haven't offended anyone with this article. Okay, that's a lie.

[broomballkraken]

Title: Make a Wish, Take a Chance

Fandom: Unicorn Overlord

Pairing(s): Auch/Rolf

Word count: 3369

Warnings: None

Summary: In the realm of angels, Rolf is contemplating his overwhelming feelings for their resident prickly sorcerer. Auch shows up at his campfire, which ultimately leads to them stargazing on the Valleyshallow Bridge.

As they both make wishes upon a shooting star, Rolf has no idea that his one and only wish was about to come true…

It was the dead of night in the realm of angels, and most of the Liberation Army were tucked away in their tents after a decisive victory, in which they wrested the town of Burbury and the Valleyshallow Bridge from Zenoira’s clutches. One lonely campfire provided the only light from the ground, while the rest of the area was illuminated by the moon and the countless stars shimmering in the sky.

Rolf let out a long sigh as he ran a hand through his hair, his auburn eyes locked upon the flickering flames of the campfire before him. Sleep was eluding him, and he would have liked to blame it on leftover adrenaline from the battle. However, that was far from the truth, for there was one thing and one thing alone keeping him up this night:

Auch. Or, more specifically, the fact that Rolf had fallen in love with him.

After tossing another log onto the fire, Rolf sat back, letting out a frustrated grunt and crossing his arms over his chest. Ever since the night after the chicken shape-shifting incident, Rolf had been trying in vain to fight these affectionate feelings off, but to no avail.

At first, he had tried to brush them off as a fluke, but as he spent more time with Auch, Rolf had come to look forward to - and even seek out at times - the prickly sorcerer’s company. That feeling had increased tenfold when Auch began to change for the better, in Rolf’s opinion.

Rolf had always admired how easily magic seemed to come to Auch, but the latter managed to find fault in most everything that he did, and that pissed Rolf off to no end. Auch was damn brilliant, and as Rolf started to help him peel away the layers of self-doubt and rudeness, he saw that underneath it all was a compassionate, ambitious man who cared deeply for those under his command, especially for his fellow sorcerers who looked up to him. It had been an amazing transformation to witness, and the more Rolf thought about it, the less surprised he became about falling in love with him.

Narrowing his eyes, Rolf poked at a log, causing it to topple over and send sparks flying around him. His gaze followed the ones that got caught floating upwards with the smoke, until he was staring straight up at the ethereal night sky. Even though he had come to terms with his feelings, Rolf had doubts about making them known to Auch, mostly due to the fact that he had no idea how he felt about him in return.

Rolf knew that Auch did enjoy his company at the very least, as he often came to him when he wanted to rant about something. The playful jabs they took at each other seemed to lift Auch’s spirits considerably, and Rolf felt much the same. Most of the other Liberation members were put off by Auch’s endless rambling, but Rolf listened to every single word that he said without complaint, even if he didn’t possess the knowledge to offer up any constructive opinions of his own.

Worried that Auch found their conversations boring because of that, Rolf had brought it up the day before, during a chess match after their preparations for today’s battle had concluded. Much to Rolf’s relief, Auch brushed off his concerns, and actually expressed gratitude that he actually listened to what he had to say without complaint. Hearing that made Rolf happier than Auch would ever know, and that was almost as satisfying as winning their chess match had been.

The battle today had been rough, and even though neither he nor Auch sustained any grievous injuries, Rolf was reminded yet again how easily either of them could wind up dead. Because of that, he knew that he shouldn’t keep his feelings for Auch to himself. Nonetheless, Rolf was still held back by the uncertainty of Auch’s feelings for him, and the fear of wrecking their friendship if he did not feel the same way…

“Ah, Rolf. I see sleep eludes you as well.”

Rolf jerked his head up, startled by the sudden break in the silence of the night, and his heart leapt into his throat when he saw Auch standing across the campfire. He was given pause at how the reflection of the flames danced within his beautiful hazel eyes, and Rolf’s nose scrunched up as a pit of longing formed deep within his gut.

“...Rolf?”

“Er, sorry, what?”

Auch sighed and let out a huff, tapping the end of his staff on the ground with his impatience. “I asked you why you’re having trouble sleeping.”

“Ah, right…” Rolf swallowed thickly and rubbed at the back of his neck. “It’s just…I’m still a bit worked up after the battle. That’s it.” He wanted to tell Auch the real reason, that he was kept awake by his overwhelming feelings for him, but that gnawing fear of rejection swelled within Rolf’s chest and forced him to hold his tongue.

Auch gave him a slight nod and turned his head to the side. “I see. It is…the same for me.” Rolf raised an eyebrow as Auch’s eyes darted around, never meeting his, which was a bit suspicious.

“A-Anyway,” Auch continued, and his eyes finally drifted up to lock with Rolf’s, “I’ve heard whispers around camp that the best view of the stars can be seen from the Valleyshallow Bridge, and since neither of us can sleep…would you like to go stargazing with me?”

Rolf blinked at Auch, and he was glad that his face was most likely already red from being so close to the campfire, because he felt like he was blushing like a madman. Biting his cheek, he steadied his breathing to try and calm his rapidly beating heart, before giving Auch a slight nod.

“Yeah, sure. I’d…love to.”

“R-Really?”

Rolf smiled when Auch sputtered and his face flushed a deep red; Father above, his animated reactions were so endearing. Auch shook his head before clearing his throat, and Rolf quickly put out the campfire. They were enveloped in darkness for only a moment, until Auch muttered a spell that caused the head of his staff to give off a bright, steady glow.

“That’s a nifty spell.”

“Yes, well, it was certainly helpful when I was stuck researching those dark and dank ruins for Zenoira…” Auch mumbled, and Rolf’s chuckling was cut off when Auch thrust his hand at him. Rolf blinked a few times in response, and Auch huffed as he waved his hand about.

“Well, what are you waiting for? Take my hand, Rolf.”

“Huh?” Rolf’s jaw went slack as he continued to stare dumbly at Auch’s hand, and the sorcerer sighed and rolled his eyes.

“While my staff gives off sufficient light to guide our way, it does not stave off the darkness entirely. I…do not want you to trip over something and fall on my account.”

Auch pursed his lips as he averted his gaze, and a smile slowly spread across Rolf’s face. That prickly attitude of his might have put off anyone else, but Rolf found it to be rather…cute. He finally reached out and slipped his hand into Auch’s, quite literally in fact, as it was very sweaty, and also trembling slightly; Rolf hoped that he wasn’t getting sick.

“Are you feeling alright, Auch?”

“Y-Yes, of course. Why wouldn’t I?” Auch said, letting out a dry laugh as he tightened his grip on Rolf’s hand. With an eyebrow raised, Rolf let Auch tug him along, and the archer listened with a fond smile on his face as the sorcerer lectured him on the history of the town of Burbury while they strolled through the quiet streets.

Eventually, the two men reached the middle of the Valleyshallow Bridge, and Rolf was given pause at how breathtaking the night sky looked reflected upon the calm, crystal-clear surface of the river. Rolf cast a sidelong glance at Auch, who was staring up at the sky, and he was suddenly keenly aware that they were now completely alone and away from any potential prying eyes. That, and the fact that Auch was still holding his hand, and Rolf had no plans of letting go himself.

They stood in silence for a while, and just when the roaring of Rolf’s heartbeat in his ears was becoming too much to bear, Auch took a deep breath and turned towards him.

“Rolf…While this view of the sky is rather captivating, I actually asked you here because I wanted to speak to you…away from camp,” he said, and Rolf’s eyes went wide.

“Alright…What’s on your mind?” Rolf asked with the slightest hesitation. He knew what he desperately wanted Auch to say, but he was careful not to get his hopes up too high.

“Yes, well…” Auch took in another long breath and let it out slowly, and his hand slipped from Rolf’s and moved to join the other in gripping his staff. Rolf set his jaw as he tried and failed to keep a frown from crossing his face at the loss of contact.

“After the battle today, I’ve come to realize that throughout my time with the Liberation, I have grown exponentially as a person and sorcerer…and much of that growth can be attributed to the unwavering support that I have received from you.”

“Me?” Rolf’s eyebrows shot up into his hairline as Auch began to pace in front of him, and he felt his face flush while a hopeful warmth flooded his chest. Auch cast a glance along with a small smile at Rolf, and the beautiful sight caused the archer to smile back as Auch spoke again:

“Yes, you. I spent most of my life trying and failing to live up to my mother’s lofty expectations, even after she passed on.” Auch let out another sigh and shook his head. “If I had never met you, someone who challenged my own self-beration and convinced me of my own worth, then I would not have become the man that I am today.”

Auch chuckled as he cocked his head to one side. “Do you remember that day, when I shape-shifted into a chicken and could not change back?”

“How could I forget?” Rolf said as he barked out a laugh. “I think I have little scars from the peck marks you gave me when you tried to stop me from bringing you to Yahna.”

“Ugh, and she still gives me grief about that blunder…” Auch grumbled, and Rolf couldn’t help but think that the pout on his face was rather endearing.

“Anyway, that night, you said that you wished that I could see what you do when you look at me.” Auch paused, and Rolf gave him a small nod of acknowledgment. “I just wanted to tell you that…I do believe that your wish has come true.”

A wide smile slowly spread across Rolf’s face as he crossed his arms over his chest and looked up at the sky, hoping to hide the blush on his cheeks.

“Glad to hear it. All that wishy-washy bullshit was starting to really dampen the mood around here.”

“How rude!”

Auch scoffed and puffed out his cheeks, and Rolf laughed. He was happy when Auch’s laughter joined his soon after, and when their eyes met, Rolf was given pause at the fondness he found in Auch’s gaze.

“Thank you, Rolf, for always believing in me, and teaching me to believe in myself.”

Rolf opened his mouth to respond, but no words came out. Auch was pouring his heart out to him, so this logically would be a perfect moment for Rolf to confess his feelings. However, try as he might, he could not bring himself to speak, and an anxious pit formed deep within Rolf’s gut; at this rate, his feelings would never come to light…

“Oh!”

Rolf raised an eyebrow at Auch’s loud gasp, and he followed his gaze up, where he saw a large, bright star streaking across the sky. His jaw dropped at the sight, and he turned to Auch when he heard his staff tapping on the ground.

“A shooting star, how fascinating!” Auch exclaimed. He turned to Rolf and took his hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. “We should make a wish. You’ll need a new one, since your old one just came true.”

Rolf thought that was a bit childish, but seeing how excited Auch was enough to make him smile and nod anyway. “Sure, let’s do it.”

They both turned to face the river, and Rolf placed a hand on his hip as he closed his eyes. There was only one thing that he wanted above all else, something that he longed so desperately for that it hurt: he wished with all of his heart that the incredible man standing next to him could come to love him in return.

Rolf opened his eyes and turned to Auch, and was confused when he saw that he had propped his staff against the bridge and was fussing with the sleeves of his robes. Deciding to be patient, Rolf stared at Auch for a few agonizingly slow minutes, until the sorcerer finally lifted his gaze and locked it with Rolf’s. The determination that Rolf saw blazing in his eyes was intense enough to steal the very breath from his lungs.

“Rolf…I would like to tell you my wish.”

“You know, it won’t come true if you do that.” Rolf let out a chuckle, but his mirth was quick to fade due to the deathly serious look on Auch’s face.

“On the contrary…This particular wish will never come true if I don’t speak of it.”

“Uh, okay…” Rolf’s voice was barely above a whisper, and Auch took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“Even if I wasn’t good at expressing it at first, I have cherished every single moment that we have spent together, Rolf,” Auch began, and Rolf’s eyes went wide, his heart beating so hard that it threatened to burst right out of his chest.

“Every conversation - one-sided on my part or not - every chess game, every encouraging word you gave me, and yes, even every scathing-yet-playful insult. All of those moments have changed me, made me a better person, and led me to this moment with you, the man that I have fallen completely and utterly in love with.”

Time seemed to stop as Rolf tried to process the fact that Auch had said the very words that he had been hoping to hear. Well, this new wish of his certainly didn’t take long at all to come true, and the thought made an odd mixture of emotions bubble up within him…

“My only wish is that you could return my feelings-” Auch continued, but he was interrupted when Rolf suddenly burst out laughing. The immense amount of joy he felt was uncontainable, and he also felt incredibly silly for being so scared of expressing his feelings in the first place. The man that he loved actually loved him too, and this was without a doubt the best night of Rolf’s life.

“You…You can just reject me, you know. No need to laugh and make this even more painful…”

Rolf’s laughter cut off abruptly, and when he had composed himself, his heart clenched when he saw that Auch had started visibly trembling, and tears were running down his cheeks. Cringing at his own carelessness, he quickly reached out to grab Auch’s hand when he turned to leave.

“Wait, Auch,” Rolf said, and he kept a firm grip when Auch tried to jerk himself free. “Look at me, please.”

“Why? So you can laugh at me again?” he hissed, and Rolf gave his head a vigorous shake, the taste of bile rising in his throat with his guilt.

“No, that’s not it! I’m sorry for laughing, but I wasn’t laughing at your confession,” Rolf said in a serious tone, and that seemed to be enough to make Auch finally look him in the eyes again.

“I was actually laughing because, well…I made the same wish as you.”

“You…what?”

“I…I love you, Auch.”

Rolf let a light chuckle slip out when Auch’s jaw dropped, and his heart raced when Auch lifted up a shaky hand. He pushed Rolf’s messy hair out of his face before moving his fingers to his cheek, brushing them against his overheated skin, the sensation causing a shiver to run down Rolf’s spine.

“Do you…really mean that?” Auch asked, and Rolf frowned at the uncertainty in his tone. Rolf reached up to take the hand that Auch still had against his cheek, moving it to his mouth so that he could place a tender kiss to the back of it.

“Yes, with all of my heart.”

“R-Rolf…” Auch choked out as more tears ran down his face, but the smile on his face told Rolf that they were happy ones this time.

“I’m really sorry for laughing and hurting you, Auch, even if it was only for a moment.” Rolf averted his gaze and ran his free hand through his hair. “It’s just…I’m really surprised that you feel the same about me. I was so scared to tell you.”

Rolf’s eyes widened when he felt Auch cup his cheek, and his head was guided back so that he was looking at Auch again. “Why were you scared?”

“I just…didn’t think you’d ever return my feelings, and I didn’t want to risk hurting our friendship because of them.” Rolf smiled as he wrapped his arms around Auch and pulled him close, coaxing a surprised gasp out of him. “You’re a hell of a lot braver than me, Auch.”

Auch laughed and dropped his forehead to rest on Rolf’s shoulder. “I don’t feel brave. Father help me, Rolf, that was the scariest thing that I have ever done.”

“And yet, you still did it before I could muster up the courage to do so.”

“...You make a valid point.”

Rolf let out a content sigh as Auch finally wrapped his arms around him to return his embrace. It was as if a massive weight had been lifted off of his chest, and all he felt now was an overwhelming happiness at finally getting to be with the man that he had loved so much for so long.

Auch pulled away slightly and placed his hands on Rolf’s shoulders. “I must admit, this all feels…quite surreal. I cannot believe you actually love me of all people.”

Rolf scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Auch…Didn’t you just say that my first wish came true? You know, the one where you’re supposed to be over this kind of self-berating bullshit?” A smile returned to his face when Auch pinched his chin between his fingers and let out a huff.

“Ah, right you are…I take it back then, and let me say this instead…” Auch cupped Rolf’s cheeks and pressed their foreheads together, staring deep into his eyes with the brightest of smiles on his face.

“Thank you…for loving me.”

Rolf’s arms tightened around Auch, pulling him flush against him. Hearing those words was enough to bring tears to his eyes, but he was quick to blink them away, and he let out a soft chuckle instead.

“You make it really easy, Auch, and thanks for loving me too.”

Auch’s hands settled at the back of Rolf’s neck, and he let the sorcerer pull him down until their lips met in a tender kiss. Their first kiss. Rolf’s face felt like it had been set aflame, and Auch pressed himself even closer as his arms snaked around his neck. Rolf tilted his head to deepen the kiss, and he wished that his absolutely perfect night would never end.

Far above them, countless shooting stars continued to streak through the sky, but Rolf and Auch paid them no mind; all the wishes that they could come up with would never compare to the one that had just come true, for the both of them.

[valnes941]

Satellite of Cybertron/Chapter 1

Okay, Google, what to do if you suddenly found yourself in space, didn't die after a few minutes, realized that you are no longer a human… are these two giant robots destroy nebula during battle?

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

He was running. Again.

Green crystalline trees whizzed past, metal ferns whipped around the hull, and cable vines tried to get under the servo.

But it wasn't the first time he'd been here either.

From behind, the slow, loud stomping and noisy venting of the pursuer could be heard. The vegetation around him reflected the violet glare more and more vividly.

He was being caught up. As expected.

Spark pulsed excitedly, heating up his chamber and accelerating the energon pounding in the audials. Optics in battle mode scanned the surroundings.

Up ahead, amidst all the kaleidoscope of green, steel and purple, the native blue lights appeared.

In time. He was already beginning to tire.

Suddenly, as always, the forest was replaced by the bare bank of a shallow but wide river. He was immediately transformed.

The two wheels made sure to make contact with the ground, and he quickly picked up speed. Using the familiar rocks as a springboard, he managed to fly over the obstacle and land softly.

He braked sharply to avoid crashing into the blue crystalline thickets and transformed again, but he was unable to steady himself on the servos and rolled over. Now he was lying on the aforementioned energy-blue crystalline vegetation and mentally counting the new dents on his hull. Well, as an unnamed seeker-researcher had written: ‘If you remain conscious after landing, the landing is considered soft".

Violet mech groaned and stood up, rubbing his bruised helm. When he regained consciousness, he retrieved two cases from subspace with a single manipulator movement. First, he checked the long and narrow case, opened it, and with a sigh of relief ventilated it: the brush and paints were in order (which was a good thing, considering how difficult impossible it was to find replacements for them in these places). The second case turned out to be a book - opening it, the motorcyclist checked the fresh inscriptions on the bound pages, which were safely hidden by the metal cover. Fortunately, the characters were still legible, though slightly smudged. All that remained was to quietly update them, and all would be well.

Flicking through the previous entries, he stopped at the very first page. The young Cybertronian's optics were not on that page, but on the inside of the cover, where the large handwriting read, ‘Notes of a novice explorer,’ and in smaller print, ‘Liber, doing Vector's Feats'.

Closing the book and carefully placing the important things back into subspace, Liber looked at the opposite shore. The creature that had stalked him had not left. It was following him closely with its bright purple optics, whose colour was diluted only by the darkness in the middle, like black holes surrounded by the light they sucked in. Though the beast was not clearly visible from behind the green thickets, the fur knew its appearance well.

A powerful giant, many times larger than him, a silver body, two manipulators, two servos, a pair of horns and wings each, as if made up of a single endoskeleton, capable of flashing flames the colour of the creature's optics. Something that shouldn't live, no, exist on Cybertron.

Cronid.

A species descended from Unicron himself, the bringer of Chaos.

And yet there it was, and it was about twenty-five mechanometres away, never having left its teritorium.

Satisfied with the job he had done, Liber walked slowly into the blue forest, looking for signposts to get back to the settlement. Knowing that he would not be attacked (the cronid himself had never crossed the river, all dangerous animals had been scared away by him), he found himself daydreaming about the next time he would learn about this creature.

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

The creature sighed as it looked at the robotic motorbike. Wasn't he tired of following her and then running away? On one hand this behaviour annoyed her, on the other…. it was refreshing.

This purple stalker was the first intelligent (?) inhabitant of this world who hadn't tried to kill her after his first encounter with her.

Though the fact that he always came back was a little tense and reassuring. How curious/crazy do you have to be to come back to her every time, knowing it would end in a mad race?

But, come to think of it, one didn't prevent the other.

Sighing once more, she turned away from the river and walked back to her house.

This day was exhausting without metal weirdos lacking the instinct for self-preservation.

[legendary-guest]

After reviewing @those-other-ones fanfic Powerless (NSFW 18+ fanfic and account), I was compelled to write a very short continuation! No smut in mine, sorry to disappoint, just some light groping. Constructive criticism appreciated.

Redemption

“Close the door.”   

“Sit.” The Supreme One's clawed finger points to her lavish bed.

He follows her command, scared, hopeful - very hopeful - more than he knows should be.

With his heart thundering in his chest, he barely registers the awkward creak of the bed giving way to his weight upon seating himself.

The Supreme One saunters up to him, removing her gloves and tossing them back to join her discarded cape on the chair. Then she fiddles with some feature or another on her high-tech suit.

The obedience collar is disengaged and unlocked. Drakken is stunned into silence - not that he would know what to say, anyway.

Before he can even feel the air around this part of his neck for the first time in many years, her delicate hands steal the first touch, smooth and cool.

It is clear from her expression that she is studying this part of him that has been concealed from them both. The twitch of her furrowed brow flickering her hardened face from analytical to remorseful.

He has no idea what she is looking at, what it looks like. In some far-off corner of his mind it occurs to him that there are electrical burns seared into his skin from liberal use of the obedience collar, punished for transgressions of love and passion. This is what vexes the unshakeable Supreme One, what gives her pause.

Nostalgia overcomes him, transported back to the Caribbean lair, where her very presence extinguished every racing thought for world domination, leaving him grasping for words, for breath.

Her lips on his skin surprise him once more and he gasps, voice hitching. It is soft, sensual, waves of relief and desire flood him at the sensation of plush lips and lapping tongue, unmistakeably gentle and apologetic.

"Shego!" Her name escapes him, hoarse and broken. Unable to control himself any longer, he embraces her fiercely, practiced in the art of gentleness and reverence in spite of his monstrous strength.

Collar clattering to the floor, her mouth finds his; hot, fierce, familiar. He can feel her, the both of them, shudder from the collision.

As if he hadn't cried enough that night, Drakken's stinging tears fall freely, a wretched sob threatening to crawl out of his throat. In an effort to will it away he bites down on her bottom lip, and she moans in pleasure.

Taking her mouth in his again, he greedily swallows every sound she makes, hungry for her.

One of her hands trails down to his chest, softly pushing him back, not with any force, but a simple command. He obeys like he's been trained to, fear spiking in his chest, the Supreme One, Shego, a pale, green-tinted haze as looks down at her. He can parse that her small, open palm moves to cradle his cheek, thumb grazing his scar.

"I've been treating you pretty badly, haven't I, Doc?" She asks - Shego asks - voice tinged with regret, when she knows she's crossed a line with her teasing, or actually hurt him with her plasma, or any number of the hundreds of memories that return to him in that instance. He'd never even been aware that Shego had shown him so much evidence of being feeling person, of remorse and regret. It's just that she never said sorry.

What he wanted to say was no - it was fine, he could take it. To prove to her, to the Supreme One, that he could handle her punishments, to be the perfect reflection of her regime that her last line of defence, that her personal bodyguard, needed to be. Unflinching, unfeeling. Instead, he found himself nodding in agreement, confessing. He had no more strength left in him to respond in any other way. Wounded. Weakened.

He closes his eyes and rests the full weight of his head in her palm, the events of the night leaving him exhausted, body and soul. Shego holds him, thumb continuing to brush against his cheek, interrupting the slow and steady flow of tears. Then her hand moves to the back of his head, fingers weaving into his hair, guiding him down to her shoulder, but his corrupted body can only crane down so far. The other, he is now aware of, settling on his clothed arousal, miraculously, or ashamedly, still erect.

For a moment, a tortuous and wonderful moment, she simultaneously kisses the freed crook of his neck and palms his erection, eliciting a groan.

"Let me take care of you."

[altarrot]

HUNGER HURTS TO KILL. / VOL 3

[ ♡ ] pairing: simon "ghost" riley + fem!reader

[ ♡ ] warnings: mentions of self-harm and slight drug use, sexual content, rough sex, use of weapons, reader inflicted of a wound, depictions of blood, slight angst, mentions of violence.

[ ♡ ] series masterlist.

ACT 3 - RAGE | PART 3/7

You were relieved and loose. It was all you ever desired in your confines of creed. You eventually, with quick decision-making over the course of a day, made the burdening choice of running away with Ghost. No luggage, no letter of sympathy left to be read, yours and his trace of life gone. Banished. Fleeing away from your desolate lifestyles. 

It was a fully-developed relationship yet — at least that's what you thought. At the same time it was a liberating and detaining; you had felt the only person you could trust and give all of anything up to this point was Ghost. It was ripping you to shreds. A substitute to the seeping hole of desolation growing like inside you. You perceived Ghost as multiple things at once — arousing, esoteric, corrupting, and like a brand new god to worship as if you were a saint. Fragments of religion would always be stalking at your sides no matter how hard you tried to flee from it, even into a more erotic, agnostic way of living.

Ghost had a great number chances to be at your side now. There was no more need to hide and shield away from you through his role as a desolate husband, and he was hung on you like you were a compulsive drug melting on his tongue, constantly taking you — tasting you. You overflowed his void of desertion. 

Seated in passenger seat wasn't so bad — sole in the front of a pick-up truck besides Ghost. He didn't have any remorse in his chest about the whole idea about abandoning his grueling life but had frequent suspicions that he was a criminal on the run — homicide, theft — all of those listed offenses yet being a complete cheater was what he felt so beaten-up about. Beaten-up about craving to touch and perform the same set of sins binding you two together. You on the other hand, it was like remorse was eating away at your limbs — the resentment you held to be in position of his most normal life, his dull and most suburban life with a wife and kid and a nine-to-five job used to supply like the good husband he was carved out to be, but you couldn't hold onto that resentment forever now that you had the satisfaction of no longer leading a church on with false propositions and acting like a little thing of innocence.

Through the deceits of purity and preaching you were sad, feasibly than sad. You were too young to be feeling as sad as you were from late teenage-hood into younger adulthood. 

It was more of a one-time thing. Repressed feelings of hormones and depressive episodes sent you over the edge, misusing substances and getting off on it like any kind of teenager new to the curiosities of an adult world would. It fucked up your perception of anything you had in view when nearly dozed off and left somewhere in a whole other nature. As bad as you knew it was, it was a known and easy fact as a way to sort all of your troubles out with one quick brisk motion. 

Torturing yourself was a multiple-time thing, though. Dressed in white dresses of lace and the usual chain of a necklace escorted with a rusted cross pendant, smelling of fresh perfume and never showing any exposures of skin beyond the limit, you found yourself sat on the edge of a marble bathtub. The sharp edge of your rosary rested against your chest, your hands too occupied with your head as you sulked out your issues, you didn't want to take the brim to the wrist of your skin. It just stacked on your issues. Another one of your bad issues, though you did it anyways. Not fully available to your consciousness but somehow it gave you a sensibility of painful relief.

The first and only time was horrific, your experience as a full-fledged teenage religious girl. Most of the particular wounds oozed of blood too much and caused you to become light-headed the next day at church. The gauzes around them were barely any kind of help at all.

You gladly never had done it again but the marks seemed to be hemmed onto your skin permanently. 

Ghost's truck was the staple of a soldier's base, and it resembled his time taken in the military quite well. The car-seats made of foam and tattered fabric smelled of him, a deep manlike cologne and a few spare balaclavas imprinted with the same pattern of a skull without the hard shell of a physical one much like Ghost worn most of the time. There were a pack of half-full cigarettes stuffed in one of the compartments, a few photographs of his family littered on the floors, a switchblade in the front cup-holders, and a small amount of handguns for protection loaded safely in the backseats and a bunch of other compartments. He was something of a decent guy with keeping polaroids of his family and cherishing them like any gracious dad would, besides the living with the shame of murdering while his time as a lieutenant and messing around with his town's preacher, but still kept up his face of a good man. Army training and guidance left him with the engraves of stealth and development skills. All of it still held a significance. 

"We'll stop over there," Ghost said. He says out of the blue without giving you a chance to agree with his words — but lethargy was getting to both of you, especially you. The absence of his family gave him a respite; a new start for his wife and son that offered a new start for them moreover, especially his kid stuck-up in the spider web of a weakening melancholy household and parent-life. "It's just for tonight, I'm getting a little too worn-out to drive anyways."

"Don't kill us, I refuse to die in a pick-up truck." 

Ghost chuckled. "What's wrong with my pick-up truck?"

"Nothing, I just thought I would be dead somewhere more delightful." You clearly didn't mean it, about dying in a cramped vehicle you've been seated it for the past hour or two, but at least you would depart with your supposed man-of-your-dreams. "There — park there for the night, it's closest to the motel entrance, and it's probably the safest." 

"Don't think it's safe anywhere around these parts," Ghost said. "But don't worry about it," he shifted into park and leaned over to the compartment above your legs and opened it. "Got a bunch of self-defense weapons for us, and I've got enough muscle to defend you and me off." 

"How sweet of you." 

"Course. It's only the best." he said. "You take the switchblade, I take the pistol, an AMT AutoMag II, It's for the best." 

"Is this legal?"

"Having weapons on you for self-defense? Certainly is." 

"I guess you would've known since you worked for the law." 

"Mmhm."

"What a coincidence, we've traced our steps back into first base." you said. "You know, we had sex for the first time in a motel. Now we ended up in another one but with weapons on us and a risk of being murdered in our sleeps... but who cares, we need the rest. Guess there is an advantage of you being apart of the task force." You lean back into the foam of the seat, unbuckling your seat-belt. "I think we should go in now." 

"Shit, yeah, let's go." 

His compact collection of guns were praiseworthy, impressive. They were wiped clean of dust and gleamed as if they were new considering you had listened to him ramble on about them throughout the duration of the car-drive. He was sort of a nerd on the military. There were much more of his weaponry from years of serving — combat knives, assault rifles, basic snipers, bouquets of badges and British-type equipment from his time as a leader. Hell, you had even gotten invested into it too, taking a chance to run the tip of your finger over the crests and carved patterns decorating each gun like a fine piece of china. 

You and Ghost we're out of the truck, given a period of time to stretch your limbs out, and start your way to check-in. With your own notice, Ghost seized a long glance at the gauze dying from around your wrist while you tucked your knife into the waistband of your dress, blotches of brown dried-out blood speckled at some of it, the rest of it beginning to peel and fall off. 

"It was a kitchen accident," You said, "Long time ago."

"Long time ago? Seems more recent to me."

"I meant it happened a week ago." 

"Whole lotta blood for a kitchen accident, you tear at your skin on purpose?"

"No. It was a one-off thing." 

"Well, don't do it again, could cause some serious blood loss." 

Ghost cleared his throat and came to the realization that the front door was already within feet in front of him. He opened the door for you, lacking of anymore words, without another mention of his awkward conversation started by his evident staring at your gauze. The blacks of his pupils followed as you went ahead, him following right behind, instantly being hit with the radiance of a buzzing overhead rectangular lamps adorning the ceiling.

You watched as he took lead and paid for the room, leather-pleated wallet, and a bunch of dollar bills that almost came across as too incompetent to pay for an entire overnight stay. In your eyes he was the more responsible one, not you, but him. You were never the type to be holding the title of responsible or adult-like, you had always felt like such a little girl disregarding that your mature responsibilities and tasks, but you had to accept that you ultimately grown into an adult woman with the same mindset of your childhood; it had never changed, and god was it degrading. Acceptance of it was a kind of a huge-small block in the path. 

Following Ghost into a turn of a curved hallway, you examined the bulge of his bicep through the shirt he wore, sweat shining his arms with the adding heat of the building — so run-down there was no air-conditioning anywhere, apparently. He had a look in his eyes of a worn-out father, soldier, lover, husband, or how many roles he took in as a vacant man, and only his eyes without an apparent face. It was kind of attractive, if you were being honest, though there laid pity in your palpitating heart. 

"Here," he said, an outstretched arm of his reaching out to your shoulder, situating you right next to him."Open it."

You lifted a brow. "Me?"

"Yes, you open it. Take the honors." 

He dropped the key into the palm of your hand.

"Go ahead." Ghost said.

His request was a bit bizarre, considering he was the one with key in-hand and had made it to the door first, but you couldn't rudely brush off his order specifically made for you. With his request on mind, you took the key into the rusting and unsteady keyhole, sliding it into the left and pushing open the door with your foot. The room was shadowed and flat with only simple glowing off the hallway light, a few outlines of a coffee maker and a front-door-closet that was placed way too close to be opened when right next to the entrance of the room.

The lights of the room were no different than the outside. Hardly even providing any light but gave you enough to make-out a single bathroom with a single bed, low-quality and not even cleaned from previous residents. Cum-stains, spit-stains, cigarette-stains — who knew what other lives had been present before you and Ghost, but you did hope it was good enough to rest and try to make a reasonable stay in. The entrance door was locked and gave extra security with a chain lock and a do-not-disturb sign hanging from the knob outside.

"You want anything to eat? I could ring up room service," you said. "If room service even works at this hour."

"Nah. I'm okay." 

Ghost sits at the edge of the bed, a sigh relieving from his lips. "This feels more like a honeymoon rather than a runaway." 

"What?"

"It feels like my honeymoon, you're the wife and I'm the husband, all of that stuff."

"I've been at your wedding," you said, leaning up against a desk. "Not invited but I was there when my father married you and your wife, I didn't know you, but you still had that mask clinging to your face."

He sort of grunted at your words; of course he didn't know who you were either but still held some kind of admiration for you, often seeing you roaming around town with feelings in his chest that were perplexing and confusing to him at the time, either dealing with them sexually or self-violently. 

"Really? Guess it was fate that brought us together again."

"I would've went up to you but I didn't want to ruin your special day." 

"I don't think you would've." he said. "But my wife insisted on you not being there, for some reason. Something about you being too scandalous. It was hard to believe when you were working under the church."

You were taken back but covered it up when you felt your heart skip over a thrum. It was hard to believe his wife's statement too. "Ah," you muttered, helpless to give a proper response. "So she's never liked me?"

"Challenging to say, she's never given me an actual opinion on you."

"Know what, don't worry about it," you said. "Save your energy for tomorrow." 

"I didn't pay cash for this entire room to be spent sleeping in."

"Thought it was, no?" you asked.

"We got until daylight."

"Well," You said, standing from the bed and proposing his long figure. "Just one request of my own, that's it."

-

The request this time wasn't perplexing or confusing. It was unanticipated. 

You didn't recognize yourself at first, like an out-of-body projection. You held in compiled traction, not because of Ghost but with all that you had went through with him — the request came in short straightforward words. Fuck me, ruin me like I'm your wife, tear me apart, ravage me. Between his mentions of the gore remaining on your wrist and his seemingly always-bulging muscles through the shirts he wore you could put together sex and brutality. 

Ghost was a natural at harming another living person — hence his burning skill of military trainings that fully gave into the skill of drilling up into you — but he lacked the genuine emotions he once felt when violence was impacted onto a combatant. Your begs irked him (Paying no attention to how hard it got him, considering mostly every single thing you did raised a boner up in him) but eased down with small tears glittering down your cheeks, chest heaving as you were spread out open on the mattress.

It wasn't like he was going to fuck you standing upwards, right up against a wall where neighboring residents occupied, because that would be indecent. The space was cramped and left you and him to either fuck in a dreary bathroom or a two-person single bed with a one-sided comfort. Ghost's biceps were more strained from the heated moisture around, as well as you were, but your words — more like begs, in which aimed towards him — were kept on top of your mind. 

For some mindless reason, he wouldn't stare you straight in the eyes when he fucked you, and neither could you. Occasional glances occurred but other than that it felt like you were having sex with a complete stranger, two strangers were you and him, and some objective sex. You didn't like it as much as the first time, sure you were turned on to the fullest — but you had also felt empty with a side effect of bothering feelings. The silent tears that continuously dropped in packs down your throat, the moans and rough skin-on-skin together, your begs now turning into a long, uncomfortable but pleasurable session of fucking.

It was also indecent to not take a birth control pill or, at the very most, a gas-station condom before giving permission to let him inside you again. At the back of his head, Ghost had some sort of sealed hatred for you — for ruining his marriage, acting as if you were fully-grown, your constant laughing and sexual remarks. It was bewildering to him; you were like an irritating stain somebody cannot scrub away of, at some point giving into its presence — though Ghost had already fully gave himself into you, he still loved you. In a sexual point of view, he loved your body and the way you fit so perfectly around his size, how warm you were, how you feel when he comes inside of you, how reactive you were underneath him. In other windows of views —

A share of it was limited. Not because he didn't know — it's just that he couldn't find the correct mental images to piece together the right concept. The right concept of love and a proper relationship in his two, very own dark-eyed perspectives. 

Bonafide love. The statement that had been passed around. 

"Tear me," You said, in some sort of whine under him.

Ghost turns a blind eye to your unusual, violent plea, thrusting up into your warmth. With his fingers caressing the contours of your face, he could feel the tears in which surged down your face, down your neck — and he disregards to it as well. You were whimpering and moaning, wounded with the feeling of stinging thorns at the space between your thighs. Bruised. 

He flattened a palm to your back, pushing your body further into the mattress, knee-deep into the springs and buried. 

"Tear me apart, please, tear me apart," you whimpered, legs unsteady as if you were about to give out any second. It was vulgar, and had some brutality to it while Ghost was fucking you far past his limit, deeper, back going sore from the amount of pressure being put onto your spine. "Please." 

"I can't," Ghost had you crushed, caged, as he keeps you within the fleshy enclosure of his body of sweat and tears. "I can't, I don't know how I would." 

He comes into you with a last grunt beyond his clenched teeth. Your own cum was soaking your thighs along with his, staining the sheets just like the many other couples who performed the same actions to acquire the same results. 

You were bare and cold, quivering. 

You were injured. 

You were caught in an excruciating, dreadful on-going agony. 

Ghost throws you to the pillows. 

You sinked yourself on the mattress heavily, swearing you could feel the print of springs digging at your skin. He's on top of you, overhead with something flaunting and curled in his fist. It was unknown to where he could've possibly acquired the object but through blurry lenses — the top was shifted and had the shape of a crooked spine, sharp too. Ghost uses his other fingers and wraps them around your gored wrist full of stained gauzes, crooking that top of a crooked spine to the out-spread of your palm where no fingers resided. 

His eyes squint while prodding the cold skin and without another word, the spine is dragging a sharp line down. It didn't last long (the pain of it) but you couldn't deny the way your teeth automatically clenched against each other, legs nailed down, whimpers falling through those teeth. Only beads of blood left in the wake of it, some of it deciding to drip down and stain the gauze even more. It was hot and spurting, cold wind going through the cracks of the crimson line at your palm. You were once again, confused — he didn't, and possibly wasn't going to explain what he was doing. Insistence. 

The sanguinary blade now rests at his right palm much like how he did with you. For the first time, he hesitates, he hesitates the sight of bloodshed for the first time since being put into his place of ex-military. But then he looks down at you, those two eyes of odd adoration up at him — gleaming and sparkling though at the same time, so empty and diluted. And with that sight on mind he drags the resting metal down his own palm without any symptoms of pain or even emotion, just a twitch of his right eye before the wound is finished and in preparation. 

Divided between you and him, a shared common was the gouge caused by the same weapon that was now scrapped to the bed-side table. Again, he gives you that soulless stare behind pools of dark brown, staying silent until he grasps at your right wrist again with his non-wounded hand. You swipe your tongue across your chapped lips and with your repaired vision, you're able to catch sights of him more clearly — the sight of his hand at your wrist and his wounded palm up. 

Lacking the need to open your mouth and vocalize anything out to him, he pressed the cuts together, warm skin and warm blood of his right in contact with you. There's a minor sting but soon subsides once his palm is pressed against yours for a longer period of time. Ghost adjusts himself — climbing over to sit up straightly crooked at the headboard, lifting you into his bare lap with palms still attached. 

"You shouldn't say things like that," he mutters, "Unless you've developed some weird violence kink like that." 

You tilt your head. "And you don't think it's weird you cut our palms out and pressed them together right now?" 

"Got me there." 

"Why'd you even do it, though?" 

"I've watched guys in the military do it," he said, "Some sort of oath to each other. Loyalty. One guy to another guy."

"Right, shit... that stings, will this give me an infection?" 

"There's a chance." he said. "But as long as I've known, those guys haven't." 

"Good to know." 

There's a change of demeanor in him. He acts far more gentle, his free arm wrapped around your waist, his cloth mouth nuzzled at your neck space. You actually didn't know if he was being gentle, or was just too exhausted from intercourse and took the chance to rest on you. Your legs rest at side of his spread ones, hairs on his legs lightly tackling at your flesh, shared blood drips down your wrist and his wrist. The liquid is warm. His wound apart of yours is warm. 

"So we're swearing an oath?" you ask him in a hushed-out voice. 

"Yes."

"Of what?" 

"Love — protection, I don't know." 

The words of issued love and protection were abnormal stripped from his throat and mouth. The oath could've been of something else, something that wasn't so love-and-protection-like — something more of guilt, longing for you to stay by his miserable, imperfect life. Though, you chose to be delusional to that. You successfully persuade yourself in the delusions of intimacy and the worship you held for Ghost — like he was some kind of holy being, a religious form of a god that you willingly indulged in worshipping yourself to. 

He acts superior, creating commands and proposals that were nearing religious. He wasn't a lieutenant anymore, or even apart of the military anymore after giving it up for the lifestyle of dull suburbia, but only a simple man. (One with the needs of bearing a mask all the time and a girl by his side, intentions of violence still drowning in the depths of himself.) And you were a simple girl, intended as daughter of Christianity — to God and the beliefs — but curving the normality of it all, fucking it up to be deemed as some whore who ruined some man's family life and marriage. 

Losing blood, the thoughts blur up in your head, head pounding with combining sensations of throbbing and a sting. While he brings himself up from your shoulder, his pupils are blown-out, the whites of his two eyes with some fading lines of red vessels crowning it. There's two of him in your vision, a delayed shadow of his outline each time with a move of his head or flex of his biceps. You struggle with the effortless task of looking him directly in the eyes or generally focusing on him at all. There's a want at your chest that you wanted to burst out, curse him out for allowing you to lose this much blood, but you didn't — you just couldn't bring yourself to do so, the feeling was too familiar; too easy to bathe in and swamp yourself in so easily. 

"Ghost," you mumbled, "There's two of you." 

"What was that, love?"

"I can see two of you." 

At first, he's silent, confused and hit with a bit of shock in the mind.

Ghost curses under his breath. "Sleep it off." 

"And my head is throbbing, hard to think." 

"Think I cut too deep for you," he said, "I'll patch us up in the morning, yeah?" 

You don't present him with an audible response to his statement, only managing for your vision to dim; an overcast of black polluting your perspective of where you gazed into him, and where your slashed hand linked with his larger one. There's white noise in your ears, along with a high-pitched ringing that you were certain could damage your inner-ears permanently. Now there's more than just two of Ghost, there's illusions of carbon copies like stuttering television static of black and white. Blood from the shared wound flashes your eyesight one last time before you burst into an episode of a blackout. 

-

The buzzing of ceiling fluorescent stings in his ears. There's an insidious chatter among a few motel workers nearby, a family of three from across the room with stares of concern. He's back in a black v-neck and some hurried, un-buttoned jeans; you're in the same dress upon arriving a few hours previously, before you started this runaway with him, and on-top of of a counter intended for laundry supply. A first aid-kit is right by your thigh. 

He knows he can't introduce himself to the public-eye just yet, not after a few hours of abandoning his family, so he does the best at medical attention — a hospital inaccessible during this time of your unconsciousness. Your limp body is supported with his hand splayed at your back, the other is reaching for antiseptic and spilling it onto a ball of cotton. The cotton drags to your hand which he holds open for you, some blood going dry, some of it still fresh from the slash. 

Your body stutters, even in this state, at the cleansing liquid. Ghost earns your attention, staring for a minute before continuing with the procedure of getting you cleaned up. The now-bloodied cotton is tossed into one of the sections of the kit, his fingers jabbing at the roll of gauze that feels like sandpaper under his touch. He holds you to his chest, allowing you to lean up against him as both of his hands are needed to portion out enough of the white sandpaper for his own faulted wound at your palm. 

At least it wasn't a major infection — he thought. 

White sandpaper wraps around your palm, surrounding your knuckles and palm, leaving your fingers to stand out. About three layers of the gauze are worn on before it's ripped apart with his bare fists. A sigh leaves his mouth; of exhaustion, maybe, or out of relief that he didn't kill a girl. He squeezes your bandaged hand with his raw one, in hopes of you waking up — and you do to his hope. 

Indolent orbs of eyes flutter open half-way prior to fully widening. You swallow, of nothing, just pushing a force down your throat. Ghost bites at his torn lip, but you're unable to see with his average balaclava right in your face. He wants to say something, but he's left astonished in an abnormal shock. You attempted to bleed out words but you're too fresh out of a coma-like situation to even think right now. 

"Thought I lost you there." he said.

You angle your head, eyebrows furrowed. "You say that as if you didn't see me bleeding out." 

"I know, I know..." he muttered stiffly, "I just — I wasn't thinking." 

"You know what, half of it is probably some of my fault too." 

"How?" 

"The confessions," you kept quiet, "Tear me apart, ruin me. Don't make me repeat them." 

"Ah, yeah. That." 

"So it's not entirely your fault that I passed out." 

"You're right, but I was the one with the blade."

"We're both at fault, then. That's that," you said, using him as a pillar to stand on trembling legs, "We need rest, anyways. Too much has happened today." 

You stare at the ground; it's spiraling of motioning swirls in your vision, similar to the sensation before falling faint. He assists you with the helpful gesture of placing that splayed palm of his right at your legs, hooking them around his arms and lifting you into his arms. You're in a sort-of bridal position — arms linked around his neck while your head was heavy at his shoulder, looking up at his clad face. You feel him move from the room where he provided you with medical attention, sights of a hallway coming into perspective soon enough. 

With him this close-up, you feel person towards him. Almost intimate again. Even without the indications of intercourse, you can still feel a malformed connection towards him. He's as special as you were to him; at least, that's what you thought. You actually didn't know what he thought of you, that region of curiosity closed-off and kept in his private depths. Maybe he really did like you, loved you more than life, than himself — or he just really despised you, had a fathomless disgust in his chest, only keeping you around just for the sake of having a reason to desert his family. 

As bad as you wanted to interrogate him on it, you didn't. You've already caused him so many problems; your hand, your fainting, your presence of a disturbance between him and his household. So during this time you just wanted for him to have some term of recovering. The nostalgia of your divided motel room swarms your eyes, facing walls, then a ceiling where you lay flat on the jumble of sheets that were left with small blemishes of blood. His blood. Your blood. 

The noise of a zipper sliding down echoes from across the room with a swish of a shirt coming over a head. A sink in the mattress next to your body appears, more vanishing, causing you to face in the direction of the sinking. There, you're met with him, and his naked face. He's peering at you, not only two holes from a mask, but now given an entire structure of a face. A light stubble plants at his jaw, faded scars on his cheeks and flesh, short dirty blonde hair at his head with lashes on his eyes of the same tint. 

Inching closer, you rest your head on one of your arms while the other hoists to his bare face — fingering at the dim scars and brushing over his skin in gentle motions. He's nearly a god, half-religious and gorgeous in your eye of worship, but he's stiff. He doesn't smile, he just watches. His eyes examine you like an artifact as your fingertips trace his skin as if it were water to a pond. 

"You're handsome." you said. 

"You didn't think I was handsome with the mask?"

"I meant I think you're as equally handsome, even with the mask."

"Good," he said, "Get some rest." 

His blonde lashes reach to the sagging dark marks underneath his eyes, closed, at ease. Only the reverberates of the boxed air-conditioning on the opposite side of the room, where the closed-curtain window was gave you some noise — no longer his raspy, accented voice. 

You're at some kind of heaven of tranquility, for now. 

[unavernales]

Tae-hyun knew how to be content with anything. It came with his upbringing, the life of an honest monk to never want more than what he had. So, the question was a difficult one for him to answer. Especially when he didn't know how Pasha felt. He was happy to be as they were, the yearn for more had often crossed his mind, but this was a desire he didn't mind leaving unfulfilled if Pasha wished. "I want what makes you happy." 'I want what you want' would probably sound like a cop-out response, but it's what he honestly felt. If Pasha needed him to be something, he could be that.

Pasha's new closeness had Tae-hyun inhaling. Fingers tensed and relaxed as they adjusted, as his heart picked up in pace. Pasha could probably hear the wild beating in his chest, could probably align it with the pure blood coursing through his veins - another part of himself he'd be willing to offer Pasha from his knees.

Oh. He blinked in surprise. Tae-hyun had never kissed anyone before. He's seen it in movies and shows and read it on occasion... but... the prospect of doing it himself made him bite his lip.

The nerves of the unknown were almost overwhelming, but he allowed himself to revel in the new experience. Like he did everything, he moved slowly and deliberately. Full of intention and transparency.

He shut his eyes in relaxation, and allowed his lips to meet Pasha's. He closed the distance between them slowly, and when their mouths finally met, he felt his soul be liberated. After a century of meditation, fasting, seeking that bright spiritual peace... Who knew enlightenment could be found at Pasha's lips?

no, pasha wants to tell him. no you don't. because pasha wants so much. his desire is monstrous and all consuming. taehyun would flinch at the face of it. or maybe... maybe he wouldn't. maybe he'd lean in, just as he does now. maybe he'd accept it, just as he's accepted pasha. swallow it down, just like he swallows down pasha's sigh of relief. a sigh of satisfaction.

fingers tangle into taehyun's hair as their lips finally, finally meet. pasha had let himself fantasize this (and much, much more) dozens of times. had imagined it with nothing but wet filth. the reality, of course, is so much sweeter. softer. but his desire, he hopes, is palpable. it does not sate pasha as much as it ignites him. makes him want more. can feel his fangs in their desire to pierce, his predatory flickering of bright yellow in his eyes.

"you meant it," he says when he wills himself to pull away. he licks his lips, savors the taste of taehyun. "the things you would do... if you were mine." the hand not in the reaper's hair moves to cradle his jaw. "you are mine. i can't have it any other way. not after this," pasha murmurs as he goes in for another kiss. hungrier. thumb pressing into his jaw to signal for taehyun to open up. let him in. he licks into the reaper's mouth. savors the taste and bites briefly at his lip. "do you understand?"

[cagcd]

     There was still a fine line of trust between them,   one that thankfully hadn't been torn by a bitter divorce.   There used to be a time when the thought of her had brought him a sort of joy no amount of Hollywood attention could have given him in all his years in the profession,   now there's a heavy sorrow that takes place,   mixed with memories of the aftermath so awfully fragmented and blurry by his own doing.   They were married once,   they were happy,   until work got in the way,   until late missions had her storming out the door and agent calls interrupted,   peaceful moments robbed by one too many drinks instead of much needed instances of honesty   ...   oh,   what he would give to go back in time and be a little more patient,   to be better.   It was a lie,   more of a desperate hope to cling to,   he had seen his parents,   understood what Cassie's childhood would turn out to be if they kept going like this,   they couldn't do that to her   ...   he would never forgive himself.   The divorce was a must,   and yet to say he found a sense of liberation away from fighting was another lie,   he had missed her,   dreaded the new empty house and cold bedside where she would lay next to him,   he wanted out,   sought an escape of any sort   ...   he has only himself to blame for what happened,   addiction was a beast he allowed to take the best of him for long and still struggles with to this very day.

  It was during recovery that he had seen her at his doorstep,   coming with the excuse to pick up something cassie had forgotten when in truth she was worried why someone like him would drop off the face of the earth.   Regardless of the timing,   it was a relief,   he had been too caught up thinking about how it went with Cindy to leave a line for friendship,   and they had maintained one after a relative time of healing,   they still worked well together even though apart,   made sure their little girl never felt like she was missing on anything.   But to say he was content,   to say this heaviness at heart had disappeared everytime he glanced her way   ...   did she harbor a similar feeling in her heart ?   Ever feel anything towards him at all ?   He doesn't know,   doesn't take it as a sign when she stood there at his doorstep,   injured with nowhere else to go but the first one that crossed her mind.   They were now at the guest room,   bloodied bandages piled up on the table,   fingers stained in crimson as he worked through the last stitches.

     "aren't you going to say i told you so? "

     she utters after a long silence,   ever present between them as of late.   Now even more so in the privacy of his home instead of the commotion at base,   her pride wounded after being proven wrong for refusing to follow his advice,   you can't do everything on your own,   he'd often tell her,   both in worry and frustration with the way she'd shut him off constantly.        ❛❛   No,   you're okey,   that's what counts.   ❜❜        I was worried,   that's what he really wants to say,   avoiding eye contact still as not to think of what is left unsaid between them.   There was so much on his mind,   her visit had stirred an inner storm he had often managed to subdue as their interactions were always deliberately cut short.   He missed her,   so damn much,   wished to protect her during those vulnerable moments she detested so much.   He could see it,   the way her jaw would clinch and her eyes would be so lost in reflection,   for the first time they seemed to be seeking his own,   there was hope               quickly shut down by the walls she put up in the space between them.   Johnny held back a sigh,   frowning.   [   It's alright,   he knew she wouldn't let him in ever again.   ]

        ❛❛   Well   ...   ❜❜        he gave a smile,   a well crafted one that he'd usually use as a fill in when a script would lack emotion,   not as earnest as he the one he'd show around her,   mixed with another feeling he wants to remain hidden.        ❛❛   You should rest,   don't worry about reporting tomorrow I'll call Jax and fill him in.   ❜❜        he got up then,   occupying himself in cleaning the mess on the table.   He fetched one of his shirts for her to wear instead of her bloodied one,   joking that it would be best to bleed on that instead of the white carpet,   but there's only so much he can do to make light of the tension between them,   he hated it.        ❛❛   If you need anything,   I'm one room away,   okey ?   ❜❜        a pause,   as if he wanted to add something,   but chose to keep it at that,   turning to leave instead.

@blxdc // based on this bc PAIN

[makeusfly]

More Light Than Heat, Chapter 17

Just Let Me Liberate You

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He sat down to work at noon, five minutes passed, and now it was nine o’clock.

That’s how it felt at least, when a knock on his door jolted him out of Phineas-land.  He’d already yelled, “Come in,” before it occurred to him just how many people he didn’t want to be on the other side of that door.

“Hey.”

He blinked a few times.  He’d thought it might be Candace or Isabella.  He’d worried it would be Ferb or his mother.  But crossing his room and sinking into his beanbag chair like she owned it was Stacey, of all people.

“Know what my job is?”

“Yeah.”  He looked at her for only a second before going back to his microscope, adjusting the lens.  “You’re a staffer at City Hall.  Which reminds me: I have some concerns about the tiger excluder.  I think it needs an upgrade.”

“I will mention that to the mayor, but I meant as Maid of Honor.”

He looked up at her, squeezing the knob to keep from turning it.

“My job is to fix everything so Candace doesn’t have to worry about anything.”

He raised his eyebrow in what he thought was a quite good imitation of his brother.

“Yeah, I know,” she said flatly.  “Big job, considering she worries about everything.  But one problem at a time.”  She scrolled through her phone for a minute.  He was under no delusion that the conversation was over, but he sensed she also found it easier to have if they didn’t have to look at each other.  He yanked open the drawer beneath him, breathing a sigh of relief when he found his fidget spinner there.

“As your sister, she’s worried about your well-being.  As a bride, she’s worried about drama at the wedding,” she said, her eyes never leaving the screen.  “So it’s my job to ask: what’s going on with you and Ferb?”

Phineas flicked the spinner.

“See,” she continued.  “Our best guess is it’s got something to do with Isabella.”

Phineas froze, even as the fidget kept spinning.  As it stilled, he let out a tired sigh.  “He’s just...too invested in this me and Isabella thing.”

“More invested than you, you mean?”

Every muscle in his body tensed as he glared at her.  “I love Isabella,” he said, not even sorry for the edge to his voice.

“I know,” she said, and it sounded like she did, like she had no doubts.  She was still scrolling through her phone but Phineas was suddenly aware of the pantomime of it, of how pointedly she stared at the screen.  “But it’s okay if you aren’t in love with her.”

The fidget spinner slipped from his hands and clattered to the floor, and he scrambled to scoop it back up if only to have something to do, just as he scrambled for something to say to her.

“I mean,” she continued, a levity to her voice that he wouldn’t have expected - except, of course, this was Candace’s best friend, and how else would she have dealt with her neuroses over the years?  “I’ve never experienced it myself - aroace, you know- but I hear it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”

He furrowed his brow.  “Aro ace?”

She shrugged.  “I don’t fall in love and I don’t want to have sex,” she said, bluntly, entirely unembarassed.  “It took a while to work out that I didn’t want what everyone else wanted, but as soon as I did, it helped.  In some really unexpected ways...it helped.  Because it didn’t feel like I was pretending, I guess, and also, I got to really focus on what I did want.”

Suddenly realizing he was trembling, he took a deep breath and slid into a cross-legged position on the floor in front of her.  He stared down at his hands in his lap for a long moment.  If asked later, he probably wouldn’t have been able to straighten his thought process into a flow chart, but maybe it came down to this: Candace trusted Isabella.  She knew Isabella, had most of her life, but primarily she trusted her because Phineas and Ferb did.

So maybe he could trust Stacey too.

“It’s just...okay...I mean…”  He took a deep breath and screwed his eyes shut.  “Okay: if you’d said that to me last summer, I probably would’ve been...I dunno.  Confused?  Because it never occured to me that most people weren’t like that - you know, that they weren’t just joking or exaggerating or using attraction as an excuse for doing something stupid.  If I thought about it though, I would have said, ‘oh yeah, that’s me, that makes perfect sense.’  But now…”

“Because of Isabella?”

He bit his lip, unsure of how she was going to respond but unwilling to lie to her after she’d just been so open with him. 

Before he could form the words, she said, in the exact same tone of voice, “Not Isabella.”

He groaned and buried his face in his palms.  He shook his head and his arms, loosening himself up.  With the wiggles out, a sense of peace came over him.

“The songs make sense,” he said finally.  “With…”  He stopped himself just short of using a name, or even a pronoun.  Candace’s family was his family, but he wasn’t sure he was ready to share that bit even with them.  “And I never felt that about Isabella.  Or, honestly, anybody else.  You know.  Before now.”

“Mm-hmm,” Stacey said, nodding.

“You’re not...going to tell Candace about this, are you?”

“I can keep a secret.  Which reminds me...where’s Perry?”

“Probably sleeping in Ferb’s room tonight.”  He shrugged.  Leaning in, elbows on his knees, he added, “I just don’t get why.  Objectively speaking, Isabella is beautiful.  It can be scientifically proven.”

Stacey laughed, not unkindly.  “So is a sunset, and that doesn’t turn people on.”  She cocked her head, considering.  “I don’t think.”

He bit his lip.  “So why...why now ?”

She shrugged.  “No idea.  It’s fluid.  Hasn’t happened to me, but my friend Alix called themself ace for ages until one day, poof.  They use demi now.”

“Demi?”

“Yeah, they’re only attracted to people once there’s an emotional connection.”

He blinked.  “Is that...you think that’s what I am?” 

“Dude, how should I know?  It’s your life.  You don’t have to figure it out now, or label it ever or do anything you don’t want to.  But...understanding who you are and what you want can go a long way toward making your relationships healthier.  All of them, not just the romantic ones.”

She pushed herself out of her seat and crossed the room, pausing at the door.  Turning back around, she pointed her phone at him.

“This may be too far, but...fuck it.  I know you love Isabella, and you don’t have to want or have sex to be in a relationship, but...if you do want it…”  She shrugged.  “You deserve to go for it.”

He smiled, the warmth spreading through his chest.  “Thanks Stacey.”

She nodded, closing the door behind her as she stepped into the hallway.

There was no going back to work after that, though he spent some time trying before giving up and changing into pajamas.  Laying in bed, he scrolled through his phone, waiting to get tired enough to fall asleep.  All he could think about was the conversation with Stacey.  And Django.

Django’s hair and laugh and art.  The way his eyes sparkled when he talked about something that excited him, the tone of his voice, the way he carried himself.  The fact that he was going back to school in a week .

He threw the comforter off of him and jumped up.  He tried to keep quiet as he carefully closed the front door behind him and crossed the street.  There was a light on in her room, and he reached into his pocket for his phone before remembering he’d left it on his mattress.

“Shoot,” he whispered.  He ran his hand through his hair, glancing at the door for a split second before his eyes fell on a couple pebbles in the flowerbed.  He took a handful and chucked one at Isabella’s window.

Nothing.  No reaction.

He threw another, and a third.  There was a shadow in her window and then, after another minute, she was yanking the front door open.

“You couldn’t have texted me?” she hissed.  Her hair was up in a messy bun, and he could see the bags under her eyes.

His heart sank.  “You look tired.”

“It’s after midnight, Phin.”

“But you weren’t asleep.”

She didn’t deny it, just crossed her arms and sighed.

“Do you wanna-”

“No.  No I don’t.  I’d rather know why you’re throwing rocks at my window .”

“Well, I…”  He pointed over his shoulder.  “I left my phone…”

She was obviously biting the inside of her cheek.  He took a deep breath in, but the words he meant to say got caught in his throat as a halo of moonlight crept out from behind a cloud and framed her face perfectly.  With the light, he could tell the bags under her bloodshot eyes were puffy and her nose was red.

She’d been crying.  She’d been crying, and she didn’t want to talk about it which meant he couldn’t fix it.  The thought made his heart ache.  The least he could do was keep up the charade until the wedding, like they’d planned.

“Sorry, it’s nothing.  We-”

“Phineas,” she growled.  “You did not drag my ass out bed-”

“You weren’t asleep.”

“ So not the point.  What do you want ?”

Well that was the million dollar question, wasn’t it?

He took a deep breath.  “I...I want to ask Django out.”

Her eyes went wide and, for just a second, he was sure he’d made a terrible mistake.  And then…

She smiled.  Wide and bright and so perfectly Isabella that he found himself mirroring her unconsciously.  The ache in his heart didn’t go away.  If anything, it got sharper and wider until he thought he was going to burst.

He loved her.  God, did he.

“I’m so excited for you, Phineas!”

And she loved him too.  How had he ever thought she’d be anything other than thrilled?

“But...shit, he’s leaving so soon.  You should do it, like, tomorrow.  Well...today, actually.”

“But we-”

“Are officially broken up.  It’s not you, it’s me.  We can still be friends.”

Her wink was so exaggerated, Phineas rolled his eyes, but he couldn’t stop smiling.

“Thank you,” he said, seriously.  “Umm...one more thing?”

“Anything.”

“Will, umm...will you tell Ferb?”

Her expression flickered for a single moment.  No one else would have noticed, but Phineas did, and he rushed forward to assure her.

“He’s not going to be mad at you .  He’ll probably offer to kick my butt, honestly.”

It didn’t help.  She was still smiling, but it was dimmer than before.  “I’ll take care of it,” she said.  “What about everyone else?”

“Once Ferb knows, everyone else can just...find out?  I guess?”

“Okay.  I’ll talk to him today.”

He swallowed the protest on his tongue, the insistence that she didn’t have to.  Because she knew it.  He knew she knew it.  He knew that one favor he did her was not a bargaining chip, and she wouldn’t expect it to be.  It wasn’t currency to be traded, it was a gift.

Maybe she didn’t really want to tell Ferb either, but she would because he needed her to.  And because she loved him.

“Thank you,” he sighed instead.

Her smile was soft, but it was real again, and so was the solid feeling of her arms as she wrapped them around his shoulders and tugged him close.

next chapter

[xtruss]

Analysis: Is Canada Really So Immigrant-Friendly?

Trudeau’s ambitious plan to increase immigration is facing pushback from the left and right.

— By Claire Porter Robbins | Foreign Policy | August 28, 2023

A refugee arrives at the Roxham Road border crossing at the U.S.-Canada border in Champlain, New York, on March 25, 2023. Lars Hagberg/AFP Via Getty Images

Canadians like to think of their country as a nation built on immigration. Canada, the story goes, is a bastion of multiculturalism. This narrative has been refined through smug comparison to the United States and other Western countries. At first glance, it may seem that Canada is more welcoming: While other Western nations have faced heavy criticism for their migration policies, Canada has garnered a reputation as being immigrant-friendly. Since 2019, the Canadian government has resettled more refugees than any other country, with little public backlash.

So in November, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a plan to expand immigration, it seemed like a politically savvy move. Since Trudeau took office in 2015, immigration has already increased from around 300,000 to 400,000 new residents per year. Now, Canada plans to welcome 500,000 permanent residents each year by 2025. Laid out as a way to build up the Canadian economy, which faces labor shortages and a declining birth rate, the plan prioritizes bringing in skilled immigrants. It was met with praise from major corporate advocacy groups, such as the Business Council of Canada.

Ten months later, Trudeau’s plan is facing skepticism from both sides of the political spectrum. Criticism from the far right is no surprise. But as the government has struggled to integrate and support migrants, the prospect of bringing in significantly more of them has led immigration experts and advocates to air grievances about what they see as the administration’s failings in related sectors, notably refugee resettlement and housing.

Meanwhile, public opinion on immigration has started to shift. As cost of living and housing prices stay stubbornly high, anti-immigration sentiment—long boiling—may rise to the surface.

In early 2019, controversy arose over billboards put up across the country with the slogan “Say No to Mass Immigration,” which promoted then-MP Maxime Bernier’s far-right People’s Party of Canada in the campaign for the upcoming federal election. Complaints and citizens’ petitions ultimately led the advertising company to take down the signs.

Those who complained about the billboards, including candidates from Canada’s center and left-wing parties, saw their removal as a victory for Canadian pluralism, thrown into relief by then-U.S. President Donald Trump’s xenophobic, anti-migrant policies to the south. On election day in 2019, Trudeau’s Liberal Party triumphed, while Bernier’s party received meager support.

The Liberals’ success, combined with the outcry over the far right’s weaponization of immigration, signaled to Trudeau that most Canadian voters were resolutely pro-migration. Polling seemed to back this up. The month before the election, the Environics Institute for Survey Research found that 85 percent of Canadians surveyed agreed that immigration has a positive effect on the economy, while 69 percent supported the current immigration rate.

Yet these figures obscured Canada’s long-standing challenges with diversity and inclusion. “Because Canada is pro-immigration, there’s a perception that conflates this with Canada being an open society and not being racist,” said Pallavi Banerjee, a sociologist at the University of Calgary who researches how discrimination affects young migrants’ futures.

Canada has a history of racist policies related to immigration, from the late-19th-century Chinese head tax, which forced Chinese immigrants to pay a fee when entering the country, to Quebec’s highly controversial Bill 21, a law passed in 2019 that prohibits the display of religious symbols from public servants’ attire, including crosses, turbans, kippahs, and hijabs. In one high-profile incident in 2021, Bill 21 led to the removal of a Muslim teacher from her classroom for wearing a hijab.

In a 2022 Environics survey, 46 percent of respondents agreed that “there are too many immigrants coming into this country who are not adopting Canadian values.” The term “Canadian values,” though vague, points to respondents’ desire for immigrants to assimilate. The same poll has been conducted for three decades, and while that figure has decreased from 72 percent in 1993, it still indicates that Canada has yet to fully embrace multiculturalism.

Even at current immigration levels, Banerjee said, migrants are segregated from established Canadians, limiting opportunities for them to integrate into the social fabric of their new country and thrive. According to Statistics Canada as of 2021, 41.8 percent of nonpermanent residents and 16.1 percent of immigrants who moved to Canada in the past five years lived in poverty.

The government’s failure to fully integrate newcomers has spurred skepticism of Trudeau’s new program on the left. Columnists for center and left-wing outlets have written that Canada has an “immigration elephant in the room,” referring to racism against newcomers, and that the country is “woefully unprepared for the coming immigration boom” due to funding cuts for newcomer settlement organizations, which are typically funded through a combination of federal, provincial, and private donor funds.

Advocates for refugees and other migrants are some of the loudest voices demanding reform to Canada’s immigration and settlement processes before expansion. Directors of settlement and refugee organizations, who may have otherwise endorsed Trudeau’s plans, say the system is already overloaded. Newcomers categorized as “highly skilled” have publicly complained about being stuck in a bureaucratic limbo with the immigration ministry and not receiving decisions on their residency permits for years.

Public opinion appears to have shifted as well. Even before Trudeau’s plan, anti-immigration sentiment was already worsening online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Banerjee said, as some Canadians blamed immigrants, particularly those of Asian descent, for the spread of the disease. In July, David Coletto, CEO of Canada’s Abacus polling firm, wrote on his Substack that 61 percent of Canadians polled believe that 500,000 immigrants per year is too high, including 37 percent who feel it is “way too high.” In addition, a July Abacus survey found that four in 10 Canadians polled would vote for a politician who promised to reduce immigration levels.

Now, some Canadians are conflating a different issue with immigration: the housing crisis that Trudeau has been unable to stem in his nearly eight-year tenure. In the many think pieces about immigration, commentators have complained of already overburdened services, from health care wait times to the availability of language lessons. But the most common criticism of Trudeau’s plan to expand immigration is the lack of affordable housing.

“Canada doesn’t have a refugee problem. Canada has a housing problem,” said Francesca Allodi-Ross, who runs Romero House, a nongovernmental organization in Toronto that connects migrants with people who have spare rooms. She worries about newcomers being blamed for a housing shortage that has been a long time coming.

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Canada has the most expensive housing market in the G-7. Vacancy rates for rental housing are at a two-decade low, and the Royal Bank of Canada expects the country’s rental housing gap (the difference between available rental units and those seeking them) to surpass 120,000 by 2026—quadrupling today’s deficit. In early August, Stefane Marion, the chief economist of the National Bank, called on the government to revise the immigration target until housing supply could match demand, citing “record imbalance” between the two.

Meanwhile, as housing shortages threaten to affect the coming “highly skilled” migrants prioritized by Trudeau’s plan, social justice-oriented groups such as Romero House have pointed out that the government has so far neglected to provide enough housing for other newcomers who have already arrived: specifically, refugees and asylum-seekers. The government’s failure to arrange temporary housing for them was glaringly apparent over the summer, when hundreds of asylum-seekers camped outside Toronto’s emergency shelter intake center.

The way the government responds to the needs of newcomers, and especially refugees, is “very reactive—and it’s been this way for years,” Allodi-Ross said. It was only after the Toronto shelter crisis, when many media commentators questioned Trudeau’s immigration expansion program, that the municipal, provincial, and federal government committed $71.4 million to housing for refugees and asylum-seekers, and the city freed up more hotels for emergency shelter.

Directors of temporary shelters and refugee settlement programs say there is a chronic lack of state funding and support for recent arrivals. John Mtshede, the executive director of Matthew House, a shelter for asylum-seekers in Ontario’s Niagara region, said his shelter is stretched to capacity. For years, the government has repeatedly denied Matthew House’s requests for funding to develop a plot of land for additional housing. Matthew House has found its most sustainable support through private fundraising and religious groups, rather than government funding.

Like many others who work at refugee and immigration NGOs, Mtshede is frustrated with the lack of coordination between the municipal, provincial, and federal governments about who bears responsibility for housing the government’s target of a little more than 70,000 new refugees each year. “Nobody wants to take the blame for this situation,” he said.

Despite the pushback, the Liberal government appears to be doubling down and ignoring accusations that it has not funded the services required to process and settle newcomers. At a press conference in early August, a reporter asked Marc Miller, the new immigration minister, if the government would reduce the immigration targets.

“Whether we revise them upwards or not is something that I have to look at,” he said. “But certainly, I don’t think we’re in any position of wanting to lower them by any stretch of the imagination.” In the meantime, newcomers will increasingly become the fall guy for the housing crisis that has unfolded under Trudeau’s watch.

— Claire Porter Robbins is a Journalist in Calgary, Alberta, and the Founder of Btchcoin News. She has worked as an aid worker in the Middle East and in Strategic Communications for a United Nations Peacekeeping Mission.