#able to put this shit more succinctly... and i need to put that power towards other things........not ritsuka......... not ritsuka

[ritsukaaoyagi]

*heart palpitations* like to soubi, ritsuka is his sacrifice first and a person second for a while. i know soubi acknowledges him as a child in volume three which for sure kick starts a kind of growth in their relationship (vol 3 in general... sighs wistfully) but still obviously struggles with how to treat and view ritsuka... mostly because he is projecting onto ritsuka and using him to fulfill his own "needs"... or whatever... like he kind of uses ritsuka to unravel. but soubi really emphasizing ritsuka's status as his Sacrifice is still kind of shaky because he obviously does not obey him in the same way he would with like seimei or ritsu. and obviously this has to do with not necessarily ritsuka being a child but ritsuka just obviously treating soubi decently and clearly not taking the fighter/sacrifice dynamic as seriously as soubi does and having no interest in that... so ritsuka is safe to disobey.......... some of it also has to do with ritsuka being a kid but i dont feel like getting into that rn it's clear... AURRMMM LIKE IDK BASICALLY i just think soubi treats ritsuka Like That mostly because he doesn't know how else to treat him obviously like Where would someone like soubi even start with being ordered to love someone.

and with the projection thing it's like. actually no regardless of that they're pretty similar either way like this is literally also soubi's deal too

they are both soooo crazy. crazy dedication to people who are actively hurting them because they feel they need them in their lives and just that alone gives their own existence a sense of purpose or whatever (however "purpose" can be interpreted... IDGAF) and Obviously how this works for both of them is different and clearly soubi is in the process of growing out of this but IMO RITSUKA IS NOTTT!!! Well he's 12. and the denial of it all... for both of them... idk... i don't have much to say besides stuff i've already said i just feel things... hmm and by soubi projecting onto ritsuka it's like clearly they can relate on same things and seimei and yada yada but he also uses this to hurt ritsuka. Not on purpose obviously but you know what i mean......like just read loveless. waaait when he started "training" him My god... dont even get me started on the ear piercing scene and then the scene that's like not directly after but soon after where soubi is talking about how he hates butterflies...... It's okay it's okay omg calm down. that's another example of soubi talking about both himself and ritsuka respectively and together IMO!!!!!!

as for ritsuka's side of things i'll start getting mildly freudian so that's it rn. ritsuka does process soubi as a human pretty quickly though NOT at first but ritsuka person-ing soubi happens much more quickly than vice versa. I mean that's the whole conflict of their shit for a good chunk or even just in general like soubi having given up his personhood and ritsuka kind of wrestling with his own but standing by it while also going a little crazy And also trying to affirm soubi's personhood at the same time. And going a little crazy (looks away)

[generallyjl]

straight up just a rant into the void because this head-up-ass election cycle discourse in the midst of the genocide in Gaza is beyond enraging

truly one of the most socially insufferable things about the Vote Blue Crowd to me (a white u.s.american who doesn't have to deal with the worst of their bullshit directly) is the analogies they come up with to make themselves the morally honorable and politically intelligent actors in these discussions online. like every smug little tiktok skit or snarky post on here about how it's so important to vote for Harris or whatever so clearly and obviously betrays a perspective on the world that i can only comprehend as having your head so far up your ass that you can only see the world through your own asshole.

"listen everybody, we have to choose between buying a Shit Sandwich or buying Literal Poison to have for dinner today. and if we don't choose, the Literal Poison Company is just gunna come force feed the poison to us at night, so we better all suck it up, put on our big girl panties, and buy from the Shit Sandwich Company!" and it's just like.... 1. that's fucked up for yourself as an acceptable (even metaphorical) world to live in and make "choices" in, right? but more importantly, 2. that's just not what's even happening at all. like, let's go with this thoughtless ass premise and add just 1 tiny little dash of inconvenient reality: you can choose to buy a Shit Sandwich and have the money you pay to the Shit Sandwich Company go towards mass murdering people globally, or buy the Literal Poison and have the money you pay to the Literal Poison Company go towards mass murdering people globally. if that's a (still extremely simplified and trivialized) situation in which you pretend like you have a genuine human-centered moral choice to make, idk what to tell you? get a grip and figure out a meaningful way to grapple with what it means to partake in the "democratic" process within the u.s. as a genocidal imperial power and settler-colonial state (and accept that you probably won't be able to come out of that feeling comfortable and good). at the very fucking least, don't come online and pretend like you're The Good Guy everyone should agree with for wisely shoving the Shit Sandwich in your mouth while the Shit Sandwich Company is actively using the money and support you give them to horrifically and brutally murder thousands of people in front of you.

disclaimer: honestly this is not even telling people to *not* vote for the people who have enabled, supported, defended, and driven forward a genocide. you don't even fucking need the permission or approval of commies or anarchists or whoever online to vote for people who are doing genocide. but if you are going to do so, then you simply must at least accept that 1. the people impacted by these genociders might fucking hate you forever (and if you feel sad about that then that's something you gotta work through yourself), 2. your choice to vote for the genocider who will probably treat you nicer is machiavellian not moral (as @/bloglikeanegyptian put it so succinctly), and 3. some people who have the ability to vote in u.s. elections will simply never be on board with the Shit Sandwich Company while they are carrying out a genocide and will prioritize political engagement outside of checking a box next to one of two mass-murderers on part of a ballot. do what you will and simply cope!!

[sellyoursoulforagoodfic]

Monstrous Secrets Chapter 6

Eris Vanserra x reader

Word Count: 1970

Summary: The High Lord’s meeting.

It was by sheer bad luck that you were sitting next to your cousin when Beron and family strode into the gathering of High Lords. It was by even worse luck that Eris had his sleeves rolled up, inadvertently revealing the bargain marks that so perfectly matched yours. You could see realization dawn on each of your friends’ faces even as his family remained perfectly oblivious. You hoped with every fiber of your being that they didn’t think you’d struck a deal with him willy-nilly, even more so that you didn’t make a deal about Mor.

Rhys, if you can hear me, let me explain before you jump to conclusions.

Judging from the almost simultaneous crinkle of their noses, Rhysand and Feyre seemed to notice the scent of your bond with Eris. 

Well, at least they won’t think something worse I guess.

Nesta just raised an eyebrow.

Doesn’t matter. We don’t get along anyway.

Mor’s eyes just flitted between you and your mate, growing wider and wider in horror.

Please don’t hate me.

Cassian and Azriel, though, were the worst with their twin expressions of disgust that they didn’t even attempt to hide. 

And there goes life as I knew it . . .

Then your eyes strayed to Eris himself. The first time seeing your mate in over fifty years, and it’s like this, under these circumstances. You would not cry in front of these people, you swore to yourself. You wouldn’t. Though Cassian’s accusing scoff of, “Just tattoos, huh?” What’d you sell to him, your soul?” damn near made the tears fall despite yourself.

You studied Eris instead of acknowledging your (former?) friend, noticing the struggle etched into his face that made it look as if he wanted nothing more than to hold you.

Rhysand’s voice flitted through your mind, “So that explains why I thought I smelled you in that meeting with Keir . . .” Nothing more. Such a neutral statement that gave you no hints as to what he was thinking.

It was Feyre that reached over, across Rhys, to touch the hand you had clenching the arm of your chair. Her eyes spoke of someone who knew what it was like to have a mate that was hated and to be forced away from them. If anyone in the world would understand what you were currently suffering through, it was her. “Go to him,” she ordered softly. “We’ll sort out the rest later.”

As soon as you were on your feet, Eris was moving--family be damned, apparently--towards you. You met in that undefined no man’s land between the people of the Autumn Court and the rest of the High Lords. In an instant, you were hauled up into a desperate kiss--audience be damned this time. His hair was cut short, you noticed when you went to grab a fistful. You wondered when, exactly, he’d done it and why.

“What is the meaning of this?” Beron demanded.

When Eris pulled away slightly, you opened your eyes to see that his were still squeezed closed and his jaw was clenched.

“Well?”

Eris’s jaw twitched again, to the point you were worried about his teeth cracking under the strain. You leaned up on your toes, cupping his face in your hands, and pressed a chaste kiss to his lips while sending soothing feelings across your bond.

“They seem to be mate,” Rhys announced as your returned your weight to your heels, and you could just hear the cocky smirk on his face like he’d known the entire time.

“Be that as it may,” Helion spoke up, reminding the group that there were, in fact, others present beyond the Night and Autumn Courts, “we have more important matters to discuss today.”

Eris reached up to grasp one of your hands so he could kiss your knuckles before parting.

The meeting continued relatively smoothly after that, despite how tense the situation with Tamlin was or the curious/awkward/angry glances people were shooting at you and Eris. It wasn’t until you were in the suite provided for the Night Court that anyone even brought up the topic that left such a stain on the atmosphere. When they did, you couldn’t help but think about how Eris was probably going through the same and worse at the hands of his father wherever he and his family had disappeared to. The sharp pings of anxiety and pain that were slipping through the bond only made you worry more, fingers tracing over the black bands instinctively.

“How long?” Cassian demanded as Azriel vanished with Mor, neither sparing you so much as a parting glance.

You shifted your wings nervously, and your hand fell away from the tattoo, not wanting to draw even more attention to them. “Remember that first ball I went to in Spring when you all wanted me to play spy?”

He snarled as he turned and punched a nearby column, thankfully not doing much damage to the thing.

“Now, now, don’t destroy this place,” Rhys teased though you could still hear the strain in his voice and see it in the way his mouth was pinched at the corners. To you, he asked, “Why did you never tell anyone?” Tell me? he added in your head, clearly hurt.

You scoffed, arms moving to curl around your middle. Your wings were starting to cramp with how hard you had them squeezed against your back. “Can you imagine how his father would have taken that?”

“Doesn’t explain why you never told us!” Cassian shouted.

Wow, having your closest friend turn on you hurt more than you could have imagined. Still, you snapped at him, not wanting to back down. You’d earned your place, Cauldron damn it, and it wasn’t by being cowed every time a male raised his voice. “Don’t you think I wanted to?!” Now, you were toe-to-toe with the feared general. “At first I kept quiet because I was a fucking slave and an Illyrian and he was a fucking heir to one of the courts! And he was betrothed to my friend and I didn’t even know if it would go anywhere! And then--”

“And then Mor happened,” Feyre realized, “and you couldn’t because how could you tell your family that you loved a monster?”

On some level, you knew that she could relate because Rhys had a similar reputation; she had to, in order to put it into words that succinctly. Against your better judgment, you argued, “He’s not a monster.”

Cassian scoffed.

“He’s not!” Your head whirled back to his, hand whipping out to shove him back even just a step. “So only Rhys is allowed to have that sort of façade?! Eris was trying!” You knew you were broadcasting your anger in a way that was likely overwhelming to Feyre and Rhysand, but you couldn’t find it within yourself to care. “You heard it from his own lips; breaking off that engagement was all he could do for her. There wasn’t time for a better plan. Not when the one he’d been working on before got blown to smithereens!”

“So you’re going to blame her?!” Cassian’s fist clenched in a way that made your stomach do the same. 

“No!” you shrieked. “Cauldron, no.” The mere thought of it brought tears to your eyes yet again. “Do I wish we’d both been more open and talked about this shit before that happened? Yes. Do I wish Eris and I had come up with a plan sooner? Absolutely. Would I ever blame her for the shit she went through? Never.” You looked at the ceiling in an attempt to blink back your tears. “She was my best friend, and I have barely been able to look her in the eye for five hundred years because of something that could have been solved easily if not for the backwards beliefs of others. You cannot imagine what it’s been like all this time. You just can’t.”

Fere seemed to notice something based on the gasp that slipped past her lips and the worried look she leveled you with. “When was the last time you saw him before today?”

Your wings shifted nervously, a tell you’d been trying to rid yourself of ever since Rhysand pointed out in your youth. Again, your hand moved to touch one of the black bands; however, that was a consions, self-calming action. “We said our vows while Amarantha was stealing the High Lords’ powers,” you admitted aloud for the first time. It felt even more horrible than any time you’d thought those words to yourself. Out of the corner of your eye, you saw Rhysand’s fists clench. Even Cassian seemed taken aback by the admission. “It was too dangerous to meet after that.”

“So tonight . . .” Cassian’s voice was much calmer now, as if he was starting to understand your side. He was, after all, your closest friend even if he was pissed at you.

“Was the first time I’ve spoken to or even laid eyes on my husband in over fifty years.”

Feyre and Rhysand exchanged a look that told you everything you needed to know about whatever mental conversation they were having. No doubt, they were discussing how horrible that sort of separation from a mate would be, especially after the taste they’d gotten when she was recently undercover in Spring.

“Don’t mistake what I say next for forgiveness or finality,” Rhys said after they looked away from each other once more, “because there’s clearly a lot we need to discuss as a group and as a family.” The spark of anger in his eye, something so rarely directed towards you, made you shrink in on yourself a little. His voice slithered into your mind through the little passageway in the mental wall you kept open just for him, Especially the fact that you think of yourself as less than him because of what you are. “But he will be allowed here tonight without any harm coming to him. Just stay in your room to spare Mor and Az.”

“His father won’t let him out of his sight, Rhys. Not after this.” He’ll be lucky to make it out without blood being spilled.

He lifted a brow as if to say, “Oh, really?” as he strode over to open the door to dramatically reveal Eris Vanserra posed on the other side as if to knock. His violet eyes turned icy as he gave your mate a once-over. “From the sound of it, I’m about five hundred years to late, but if you ever hurt her--”

“You’ll let your dog finish what he started,” Eris interrupted. “I’m aware.” His gaze was locked onto yours as he spoke, and you could feel the shared urge to have your arms wrapped around the other. You could read the tension in his stance, the way he was holding himself revealing that he was in pain as well as worried about you. He was wearing a different shirt, this one with the sleeves fully covering his tattoos. None of this boded well for what he’d been enduring while you were fighting with your friends and family.

Rhys made a noise somewhere between a snort and a scoff, oblivious to the observations you’d been making. “Traded one of my cousins for the other. Just destined to be part of the family aren’t you, Vanserra?” He waved off whatever Eris was about to argue, ignored the golden flames that shone in his eyes. “Just go. Enjoy the time you have together before the world goes to shit. Again.”

Immediately, you stepped away from Cassian, who you were still close enough to feel the heat off his body because of the arguing mere minutes (had it been only minutes?) before, so you could grasp Eris’s hand and lead him to your room.

[annerbhp]

how you get the girl

(Harry/Ginny, meet-cute, muggle AU)

the ice-skating ring is full of fumbling people, but Ginny finds one person in extra need of help

Hot Dad is back again, Ginny texts Demelza.

Putting down her phone, she sells a round of tickets to a loud group of teenagers, passing them off to Stephanie to get them set up with skates. Their cheeks are all red with the cold evening air, the sun having just dipped behind the buildings. Mariah Carey is crooning about Christmas over the slightly staticky speakers. It’s all perfectly cheery and lovely, and even Ginny can’t help but smile at it, this season long having been a favorite of hers, no matter how old she gets.

Which probably explains how after working full days, she still lets herself get dragged into volunteering at the seasonal outdoor ice-skating rink set up in the old city center as a way to earn money for various local charities. She’s an easy mark, which her friend running the event never fails to capitalize on.

The obvious first-date skaters are the best in the evenings, the romanticism of the idea wearing off real quick the first time one of them knocks the other down and their asses get real familiar with the unforgiving ice. Ginny likes the look on their faces when she offers them one of the walkers little kids use sometimes.

Her phone buzzes with Demelza’s response.

Okay either bang him or stop texting me because this is pathetic and you know it.

Ginny sighs. I imagine his exceptionally beautiful wife would have a problem with that.

The wife you have no idea if exists or not? Seriously, I don’t have time for this. You’re cut off talking about this.

I need a new friend.

Ha! Good luck with that.

Ginny tosses her phone down in disgust. The worst part is that Demelza is right. This is beneath her dignity. But Hot Dad has been here with his son the last four nights straight, and selling tickets and collecting used equipment isn’t all that engrossing, especially considering Ginny is one of dozens of volunteers. Meaning she has a lot of time to stare and let her imagination get away with her. And her imagination’s favorite subject these days is Hot Dad. Once again here tormenting her as he wobbles around the rink with his son. 

She can’t really tell how old he is, a knit beanie always pulled low over his head and a beard covering his face. He’s got glasses too. None of which makes it hard to see how attractive he is. (One time he forgot his scarf and she nearly had to take a break when he laughed at his son and the tendons in his neck stood out as he threw his head back and she thought how lick-able it looked.) He’s on the lanky side, which on skates occasionally makes him look like a newborn wobbly-legged foal, and even that is somehow charming.

Or Ginny is just really hard up and needs to get a life. Which is what Demelza loves to say. Also that Ginny is a workaholic. And sure, it’s been a hot minute since her last date. She just has a lot going on right now. Besides, this guy is definitely more than likely married.

So instead, she is going to happily, harmlessly ogle Hot Dad while he stumbles around the rink with his son, who has shown little to no improvement over the last week. In fact, if possible, they both seem to be getting worse.

Fifteen minutes later, Hot Dad nearly takes out a pair of teenaged girls, blocking the entire flow of skaters as he stops to thoroughly apologize while his son stands nearby and nearly laughs himself down onto the ice. And then actually goes down onto the ice.

Jesus.

Talk about the blind leading the blind. They’re going to cause a pile-up, she tells herself. It’s the only reason she grabs a pair of skates and heads over to help.

Really.

“Excuse me,” she says as she approaches.

He looks up and, shit, his eyes are like the most intense green she’s ever seen, and also, he’s definitely younger than she first thought, closer to her own age. But also young enough that he must have been Hot Young Teen Dad when his kid was born. But still just as hot as she imagined him to be.

Dammit.

“Not that I don’t admire your persistence,” she says, helping the kid to his feet, “but you two are rapidly becoming a hazard.”

Hot Dad straightens his glasses, looking sheepish. “We definitely are. But it’s an emergency, I’m afraid.”

“An emergency?” Ginny asks, trying to ignore the thrill of finally hearing his voice for the first time. And what a nice voice it is.

He grins. “Ted’s trying to impress a girl.”

“Harry!” the kid shrieks, looking mortified.

Ginny blinks, both cataloging Hot Dad’s name—Harry—and noticing the strange use of it by his son. Maybe he’s in that rebellious teenage phase where he calls his parents by their first names?

He’s still wearing gloves, dammit. Not that it matters. She doesn’t have time for Hot Maybe Married Dad right now.

Really.

“And you’re somehow supposed to help with that?” she shoots back before she can think better of it.

But rather than looking offended, Hot Dad—Harry—just grins back at her. “A hopeless case, I suppose.”

“Depends on how this is meant to impress a girl.”

“He’s going to ask her out for the first time,” Harry says, smiling at his son as Ted looks even more mortified.

“To go ice skating,” Ginny surmises. “Have you considered the movies, or frozen yogurt or, I dunno, anything not on ice?”

Ted shakes his head, looking earnest in the way only a young teen can. “It has to be ice skating.”

Ginny sighs. “I suppose I could give you some pointers. At least keep you from being a total disgrace.”

The kid gives her a dubious look. “You think you could?”

Oh, now it’s on. “You doubt me?” she asks, pushing back on her skates. Without another word, she does a quick tick around the circle, doing the second half backwards. With a quick spin, she comes to stop in front of them at the last possible moment in a showy shower of ice shavings.

Harry looks impressed, eyebrows lifted. “Were you a skater?”

“Hockey,” she says succinctly, used to people making assumptions. Then again, she’s hardly a delicate thing to be twirling around in tutus. Not that she couldn’t if she wanted to, thank you very much. But she’s more into smacking people with sticks than doing toe loops.

“I think this is your best hope, Ted,” Harry says. “The ice angels have smiled down on you.”

Ginny bites back the urge to clarify that she is in no way an angel and would be happy to prove it to him. Instead, she focuses on the kid, who she can’t look down on all that much considering he’s nearly at her height already.

“What do you say?”

Ted lets out a breath. “Please.”

She smiles. “Okay. But before we start, I need to know one thing. This girl you’re asking out. What are you going to do if she says no?”

His eyes widen, giving Harry a panicked look. “Oh, god. Is she going to say no?”

He pats his shoulder. “I think she’s more trying to make sure you aren’t going to use her powers for evil.”

“Pretty much,” Ginny says.

“I don’t understand,” Ted says, brow furrowed.

Ah, the innocence of youth.

“For example.” Harry turns towards Ginny. “I don’t think I got your name?”

“Ginny,” she says, trying to ignore the quiver she feels as his gaze falls intently on her.

He smiles, holding out his hand. She slips her gloved hand into his, shaking firmly. “Nice to meet you, Ginny. I’m Harry.”

“Hello, Harry,” she says, their hands still clasped between them.

He places his other hand on the back of hers, the gesture somehow endearing even as it’s terribly old-fashioned. “Would you go to dinner with me?”

She nearly blurts out a yes before remembering that they are playacting. And he’s probably married. And they’re standing in front of his son. “Sorry,” she says. “Dating customers is against the rules.”

Harry smiles at her—fuck, that is not okay. “Okay,” he says, letting go of her hand. “Sorry if I bothered you. I hope you have a great day.”

“You, too,” she says.

Harry turns back to his son. “There you go.”

“But that wasn’t a no,” Teddy points out.

“Yeah,” Harry says. “It was. If someone wants to go out with us, they’ll say yes. She doesn’t have to explain why or justify it. Plus, do you really want to go out with someone you had to convince?”

Okay, and now Ginny is not just lusting after him, but a little bit in love with the asshole too.

“No,” Ted says, frowning. “I guess not. But what would you do now?”

Harry puts a hand to his chest like he’s nursing a painful wound. “We slink back to our caves like men, feel sorry for ourselves for a little bit, and then pretend it never happened. And definitely don’t ask again.”

“But she’s at my school! I’ll see her every day. Won’t that be weird?”

Ginny expects a pep talk, don’t worry, of course she’ll say yes, but instead Harry slings an arm over Ted’s shoulders. “It might be weird for a while, I admit. But don’t be a pain in the ass and you’ll both get over it. Of course, she might also say yes. Is the potential weirdness and embarrassment worth the chance that she might say yes?”

A look of determination crosses his features. “Yeah,” he says, nodding. “It’s worth her maybe saying no, if it means she might also say yes.”

“Well then, I think you have your answer.”

And now Ginny is pretty much fully in love with him. Ugh, her life is the worst.

“Come on,” she says, gesturing for Ted to come closer. “Let’s try a few rounds.”

She spends the next fifteen minutes giving him a few key pointers, enough that he’s not a complete hazard, but he’s still a long way from dating form. For one, the kid appears to have two left feet. Which, once he warms up to her a bit (and informs her that he much prefers to go by Teddy), his clumsiness pales in comparison to his general politeness and wicked sense of humor. She’s not sure what he’d say if she said those were going to go a lot further for him than his ice-skating skills.

They eventually come back to a stop next to Harry where he waits against the wall off to one side. They’ve just made it when Teddy careens over and nearly face plants into the ice. Harry reaches out for him, only to almost lose his own footing.

What a pair, Ginny thinks, not even bothering to hold back her laughter.

“Your son seems to have inherited your clumsiness,” she says once they are all steadily on their feet again.

Harry laughs, beaming at Teddy, but the kid just lets out a dismissive sound. “He’s not my dad. As if.”

“You could only be so lucky,” Harry says, ruffling the kid’s hair. “Remus may be smarter than me, but I am far better at pretty much anything requiring coordination.”

“That remains to be seen,” Ginny says, Teddy letting out an appreciative laugh.

Harry lifts an eyebrow, like maybe she’s twinged his ego. “Ice is not my natural environment.”

“Really,” she drawls. “Then what is your natural environment?”

“Pretty much anything but ice. I’m not picky,” he says, and somehow the unspoken arrogance is attractive. 

Ginny tilts her head to the side. “I think I’d need proof to be able to judge that adequately.”

“Would you,” he says, voice lowering.

Fuck, the ice should be melting in here.

They hold each other’s gazes a bit longer than is probably proper, Teddy looking between them.

Ginny gives herself a little shake, turning back to the kid. “So, Teddy. I have some bad news and some good news.”

“Okay,” he says, looking wary.

“The bad news is that winter is likely to end before you master ice skating. I mean, you can keep trying. You’ll get better just through practice. But it’s going to take a while.”

He sighs, apparently not horribly surprised to hear it. “And the good news?”

“Well, why do you want to take this girl ice skating?”

“Because she loves ice skating.”

“Is she good?”

He nods. “She’s really good.”

“There’s your good news. And because I like you, I’ll let you in on a little secret. Tell her you’d like to take her ice skating because you know she likes it so much. And then tell her that you aren’t very good, but you’re willing to try and you’d appreciate it if she’d help you. Basically, what I am saying is don’t try to hide that you aren’t great at this yet. Just focus on enjoying being there with her. Honest is so much better than cool.”

She expects him to fight that, but instead he looks thoughtful, eventually nodding. “Okay.” He turns to Harry. “Can we be done now? My butt is so cold I can’t feel it anymore.”

Harry ruffles his hair again. “Yeah. I’ll take you home.”

Teddy heads off towards the exit, and he has improved at least a little bit, Ginny notices as she follows slightly behind. Harry keeps pace with her, even as he wobbles his way along, never more than an arm’s length from the edge.

“That was some good advice,” he says. 

“Well,” Ginny says, “what’s the point of suffering through all that teenage angst if not to try to save the younger generation from repeating your mistakes?”

Harry laughs. “I hear that.”

They sit on the benches, pulling off their skates.

“I can take your skates here,” she says, stepping back behind the counter, ignoring the person already waiting to run this part of the booth.

He hands the skates up over the counter. His gloves are off now and she can see his perfectly naked fingers. Interesting.

“Thanks,” Teddy says.

“Good luck!” she calls out after him.

He waves, heading for the exit.

Harry lingers another moment, pulling his beanie off and revealing dark hair in complete disarray. “I’m realizing I’ve backed myself into a corner,” he says, leaning against the counter.

“How exactly?” she asks.

He drags a hand through his hair. “Because I can’t very well ask you out again without being a hypocrite.”

“Hmm,” she says, nodding solemnly at him. “That is a tricky spot you’ve put yourself in. I suppose sometimes it’s hard to live by our principles.”

He gives her a sad, lopsided smile. “You have no idea.” He pushes back from the counter. “It was nice meeting you, Ginny.”

“You, too, Harry,” she says.

He turns and walks away. Ginny eyes his ass, and, god, it really is a thing of beauty. He doesn’t even look back, and he’s going to do it. He’s really just going to leave her alone.

Amazing.

She counts three long beats before coming around to the other side of the counter and calling out after him. “Harry.”

He stops, turning back to look at her, waiting for her to catch up.

“For the record,” she says, “dinner never would have worked.”

“Sure,” he says, hands in his pockets.

“I already ate, and I’m stuck here until nine,” she says. “How about I buy you a drink instead?”

“You sure?” he says, voice slightly teasing. “Because I’d hate to have a date who had to be convinced.”

“Oh, believe me,” Ginny says. “You don’t need to do any convincing.”

He looks delighted, a smile lighting up his face, and Ginny is still having a hard time believing he’s real. “I’ll swing back around at nine them.”

She nods. “Looking forward to seeing you in your natural environment,” she drawls, giving him a wink.

He almost immediately nearly bumps into a trash can.

She lifts an eyebrow at him, but he just shakes his head. “Still shaking off the ice-skating legs.”

“Of course,” she says.

“Harry!” Teddy shouts from the exit.

“Coming!” Harry yells back. He looks at her. “Nine.”

She nods. “Nine.”

Giving her one last lingering look, he turns, giving her a great view as he walks away. Once out on the sidewalk, she can see Harry wrap his arm around Teddy’s neck, giving him a playful noogie as the kid fights him off.

Ginny smiles, watching them disappear before heading back to her station.

Back behind the counter, she picks up her phone, pulling up her conversation with Demelza.

Hot dad is not a dad at all, is gloriously single, and I am seeing him at nine tonight.

Get it, girl.

[lookwhatilost]

alright, so, i wanted to make one post about the cat person thing and be done with it forever, but my thoughts about it have been ping-ponging for the entire 7 hours of my shift because i tend to get lost in my own thoughts when i’m on service bar. and i need to vocalize or i will go crazier than i already am. so, let’s see, how should i condense a night’s worth of stream-of-consciousness into something vaguely resembling a post with a point? well, i don’t know if i can do that succinctly, so i’m shoving my best attempts under a cut.

so, the cat person story draws pretty heavily on these aesthetics that we’ve come to associate very heavily with nerdy misogynists. he’s the fedora tipper. he’s the brony with the friend zone complex. he’s coded in the way so that as a reader, it should come as no surprise that he’s the asshole, delusionally believing he’s a “nice guy,” and would call a woman a “whore” for rejecting him. but, as it turns out, the real robert in this story had a completely normal relationship with this woman who was several years his junior, and this toxic power dynamic thing is something kristen roupenian extrapolated from this guy’s instagram upon noticing he was a geeky dude who was previously dating a woman younger than him. the man who fit so neatly into the stereotype of how terrible men look, crammed into a story where he behaves terribly that’s meant to be cathartic for women to read about, was never a terrible man by any metric.

the reality behind the story almost feels like this bizarre, meta-textual commentary about how we all use one another in varying ways. or how we all fall into this trap of making these strange assumptions about other people based on something we’re projecting. or how we really have no way of knowing what the people around us are thinking. what bothered me the most when i read it was how emotionally difficult it was for the author feeling almost compelled to re-evaluate a relationship she remembered relatively fondly because it had been manipulated to fit this narrative of abusive power dynamics that had been foisted upon it with the basis of, well, nothing grounded in reality.

i wrote earlier about how my reaction to cat person was, and always has been, one of frustration from hearing female friends tell me that same story over and over, and getting irritated with them for repeatedly sleeping with men they had trouble assessing and being shocked every time when the bad signals coagulated into a clot of sheer disgust during sex. how i always wanted to grab them by the strings of their hoodies and yell “why are you so diametrically opposed to trusting your goddamn instincts? how have you not figured out that this inevitable result of hopping into bed with someone who’s making you uncomfortable?” knowing full well that i couldn’t convince them of this if they convinced themselves. relating not to margot, but a hypothetical friend that margot might have shared this story with. even that as an aside, there was this nebulous thing about it that bugged me, more that it echoing a story i was beyond sick of hearing, more than it’s shameless deployment of the m’lady stock character, more than reading it as someone who had been celibate for a year and not connecting with it as someone probably outside the intended audience. something about it just... picked at me. but i never thought too seriously about it. i ignored the annoying twitter discourse about it and didn’t find it compelling enough to actively hate so i basically just forgot about it

when i reread it this morning, my mind immediately went to thomas and milan (who is nb, but this example still works imo). they’re probably the closest thing to CatPerson_irl that I’ll ever encounter in my life. i used to work with thomas at b&b, just a profoundly horrible character from every angle. i’ve never met someone in my life who was easier to dislike. he was this 39 year old divorcee (though he looked considerably younger) who couldn’t go a day without using his ex as a punchline. his broader sense of humor came off like he’d stolen a master list of rejected jokes from South Park and married them with boomer comics. he vocally loved ben shapiro and pumping and dumping significantly younger women who weren’t aware of his geriatric status. milan, a 22 year old bar regular that I later befriended, was one of them. incidentally, milan is the same age that I was when I read that short story for the first time.

our mutual friends found it baffling that milan still spoke to him after admittedly feeling used and didn’t avoid the bar like the plague. especially thomas of all people, someone who didn’t even have enough self-awareness to hide his misogynistic ways and seemed to view everything with a vagina as a potential sexual conquest – myself included. we theorized that he had turned to pickup artistry after his divorce and we would all mock him relentlessly for it. but never did this in front of milan, who still felt some strange urge to defend him, even though they were in a relationship with someone else now and had no reason to do this.

the last thing on earth i want to do is concede that something as rotten as thomas could have anything resembling a soul, or depth, or charm, or goodness. but the more i think about it, the more i realize that i’ve had relationships of all flavors that have involved imbalanced power dynamics, and frankly, the jury’s still out on how i feel about them. i mentioned that part of my reason for revisiting it was seeing how i reacted to it in my post-andrew world, and i want to return to that thought.

some of you may remember the infamous story where andrew was drunk very early in the day. i was sitting with him on my couch and babysitting him, and he began getting very handsy with me. i told him that i was uncomfortable and to stop, so proceeded to undress before immediately losing consciousness and falling asleep on the couch. it was objectively not good, and while i struggled to process this through the sheer absurdity of it all, it was one of many incidents related to his alcoholism that would eventually lead to me terminating that relationship. but in spite of that, it’s hard for me to condemn him as a bad person entirely. he could be, it’s not really my place to weigh in on it. i look back on him and i feel a lot of good things, even with the awareness that he was a mean drunk who would frequently behave in strange, irrational ways in his inebriation. even if i could come to a conclusion, i don’t really know what that begets. i guess i’d be angrier at him, maybe, but i can’t say that it’s a useful thing to feel about something that happened years ago.

what really doesn’t make sense is how i feel angrier towards nikki, someone i confided in about this happening, who later forwarded the information i’d told her to this local abuser watch women’s group, saying that he tried to rape me. i was furious, and given a long list of extremely bizarre behavior, a lot of which involved removing most or all of his clothing before doing something strange, it’s hard to say that’s what even happened. it was a shameful moment for me, shameful that i didn’t see it as something that would indicate his future behavior, shameful that this information was being disseminated to people who knew we were together and knew we broke up. and i was angry at her for a long time for it, even if that’s not fair. and there are plenty of people who have done worse things to me than either of them, less legally defined as something like attempted rape (maybe?) and more vindictive than not being a friend to me in the way i need it, and it’s just shit i sit with and have this whole oil smear of complicated, contradictory, and not entirely rational feelings towards. and i feel sometimes that there’s this thing that happens in feminist or women’s spaces where it’s frowned upon to acknowledge how heavy this kind of confusion can be.

the “whore” at the end of cat person was meant to elicit a specific response, this kind of catharsis for a reader who saw it coming through it’s shameless m’lady stock character employment and feels validated through seeing it coming. this is what being a woman is. this is what navigating a dating pool in a world full of horrible men is. it shatters any lingering ambiguity or confusion that often comes with the territory of wondering if the revulsion is justified or just a mismatch in chemistry, or misreading of a room, and jettisons the idea that it could ever be more complicated than that. i guess that’s always what put me off about it. and i feel like that fictional story, juxtaposed against a real one it’s based on about unanswered questions that we won’t ever fully be able to hash out... something about that will always be more real to me.

[sethrine-writes]

I Will Fight This War For You (Hold On), Ch. 4

Pairing:  Connor x  Female Reader

Words:  4093

Chapter Warning:  Crime Scene, Minor Character Death, Minor Character Injury, Mild Angst

Story Summary: “Our choices define us. Don’t let them tear you in two.”

Your investigation into the string of deaths of both humans and androids takes a drastic turn when a victim is purposely left alive. The killer’s intent is the same, to prove a point you have yet to figure out. The change, however, is the power of choice.

Stress and exhaustion lead you astray as you and Connor are both thrust into a war between the mind and the heart. You can only hope everyone involved makes it out alive.

IMPORTANT A/N:   This is a repost of a DBH fic I started over a year ago in response to a challenge a friend of mine posted up, at the time. I’ve also gone through and edited/cleaned up each chapter for a better reading experience! I’ll be posting a chapter or two every day until I’ve posted all current chapters, and then I’ll be updating with a brand new chapter for the first time in nearly a year!

Inspired by the song Torn In Two by Breaking Benjamin.

------

Chapter 4 - Deface the Life Inside of Me

A little over a year ago, if anyone had asked Hank how he viewed his current position in life in that moment, he would have scoffed and said he was fine with what he had going for him. Well, alright, that was a blatant lie, and even he had the decency to call himself out on it.

He had been in a dark place, then, had cultivated his own waking hell through excessive liquor, recklessness, and, at his lowest, nights of drunken loathing and grief with a revolver held to his head, one bullet in the cylinder and nothing left to lose while playing a deadly game with lady luck.

For years, he had suffered at the hands of his own mental state, refusing those who had offered help out of spite for their sympathy. What had they known, anyways? He was coping, perhaps not the way some fancy shithead with a psychology degree wanted him to, but it was still coping. In all honesty, though, his way of coping was only barely keeping him afloat, and even then, he was still going under, still drowning without really getting anywhere close to the surface.

Who would have known that a prototype detective android sent by Cyberlife would, over the course of the Deviancy Investigation, become deviant, himself, aide in a revolution that changed the course of history for both humans and androids, and completely change Hank's way of thinking? Certainly not him.

Hank realized then that he may have been alive, but he wasn’t truly living anymore. It had been enough, or so he thought, but after Connor weaseled his way into the Lieutenant's life, he knew that there was more than the grief and anger that had consumed him all these years. He may have been drowning, but it wasn’t too late to learn how to swim.

And just like that, things changed for the better. He started drinking less and appreciating the little things he never paid much attention to. He laughed more, smiled more, and though he still enjoyed a greasy burger from time to time, he'd attempted to eat just a bit healthier, albeit with a scowl most times that wasn’t at all genuine. His friendship with you had flourished, something he had truly missed without knowing he had lost it, and he had gained another close friendship with the very android who had literally saved his life, in more ways than one.

Given all that he had been through within the past year or so, however, Hank liked to believe he was much too old for the shitstorm he was suddenly a part of, thank you very much.

He grumbled to himself while he waited at his assigned desk at the DPD, having already downloaded some necessary files to his data pad from his terminal. He was waiting for Anthony, the android from his previous case, to show up, as he had agreed on coming in to possibly identify the android who had kidnapped him and killed his friend.

Considering the current time, as well as the fiasco that just happened at their most recent crime scene, Hank wasn’t particularly keen on doing the follow-up. You had asked him to do it, however, and he'd be damned if the look in your exhausted eyes didn’t pull at him in some way.

Ah, and the fact that you were headed to the emergency room for your hand also played a big factor.

Connor had been clearly upset when Hank had arrived on-scene earlier that night. He recalled the android pacing beside an ambulance as another began to speed off toward the nearest hospital. His L.E.D. was blinking yellow wildly each time it was turned in his direction, and for a moment, Hank remembered the pang in his heart at thinking something bad must have happened. It was as he approached that he saw you sitting in the back, a paramedic looking you over, and though it was still a bad situation, it wasn’t nearly as awful as his mind had jumped to.

When he asked Connor what happened, he explained the whole ordeal as succinctly as possibly, eyes constantly cutting over to you as if ensuring nothing had changed. It had ruffled up his partner something fierce, and Hank couldn’t blame him. It wasn’t something to be expected, to have someone take a bullet for you, especially if that someone was your significant other.

You were cleared and urged to seek a full evaluation at the nearest hospital, just to be sure all was in working order. Connor was adamant on going with you, determined to shut down any dissuasion. You had been quick to assure him with a weary smile that he was coming along. After all, you needed him to drive for you, and Hank still needed to evaluate the crime scene.

The only good thing he’d gotten out of the night was seeing Gavin's busted up face. You apparently had a doozy of a right hook, if the smear of blood from split skin and the bruising forming along the bottom of Gavin's eye were anything to go by. Hank had wished he'd seen it in person. Reed must have said something absolutely stupid, if you had lost control like that.

“Lieutenant Anderson?”

Hank looked up to find the WB200 android, Anthony, staring down at him. He was quick to stand and reach out his hand in greeting, of which Anthony shook easily enough. It seemed any hesitation from their previous encounter had been put aside, a good sign that things might go well for the Lieutenant.

“Thanks for coming by at such a late- er, early hour,” he said, glancing at the time in the corner of his terminal. Was it really almost four in the morning?

“Yeah, it was no trouble. Not like I’ve got much going right now.”

Hank motioned to the chair he'd previously pulled around to the side of his desk for Anthony to sit, once more taking his seat with a short sigh.

“We usually like to schedule these things ahead of time, but I was told this was something that couldn’t wait.”

Hank reached for his data pad, pulling up the files he had downloaded half an hour ago, tapping at a few settings to set up the display as he wanted. Meanwhile, Anthony looked around him, dark eyes taking in the desks that lined the room and focusing on a nameplate from the desk behind the Lieutenant. He frowned, then turned his attention back on Hank.

“I hope I'm not being intrusive, but how is Detective (L/n)? Is she alright?”

Hank looked up at Anthony, eyes narrowing a fraction. Had he heard about what happened through the grapevine? He knew news traveled fast, even quicker between androids, but he hadn’t thought word would have gotten out, at least not yet.

“She’s had a long night,” Hank answered gruffly, though his words were gentle, if a bit hesitant. “Overall, I'd say she's doing well enough, as can be expected.”

“But she's…okay, right?”

Hank became suspicious in a heartbeat, not particularly fond of where the conversation was headed. If he didn’t know any better, Hank would say the android knew something that he didn't. Considering the night his partners had experienced, he wasn’t too keen on that thought.

“You seem awfully worried about the well-being of my partner.”

“When she interrogated me, she was very kind, but something felt off,” Anthony spoke easily, still showing concern. “I wasn’t sure if she was normally like that. I didn’t mean to pry.”

Hank would have believed the simple answer, knowing first-hand how you were fairing under copious amounts of stress and sleepless nights, not to mention the whole ordeal you had just gone through. The curious nature of Anthony's concern, however, felt too coincidental to be a mere formality of checking in

“Like I said,” Hank started, feigning indifference as he momentarily fiddled with the settings of his data pad to seem busy, “it's been a long night. She's tired, but it comes with the job.”

Anthony nodded, though didn't look fully convinced. Hank wasn’t fully convinced he was telling the truth, either, but he didn’t have much to go on. He vaguely recalled how Anthony's interrogation progressed, remembering the way the WB200 android before him had grabbed you when he was leaving to relay something only you could hear. He recalled how easily Anthony cooperated with you after Hank’s failed attempts at getting a peep out of him, how all you had done was give your name before-

Well, shit. That suddenly made sense. Fuck, if he wasn’t dumb as a box of rocks, sometimes. He had to ask, though, had to be sure he wasn’t just imagining things, but he could do that shortly.

There were more pressing matters, at the moment.

“I've got a small list of android models we compiled based off some of the information you gave us about your attacker. Look through these photos, and tell me if any of them look similar to the guy you saw.”

Anthony nodded and reached for the data pad as Hank passed it over, bright blue eyes watching the other closely for any reactions. There were at least fifty different models that had similar traits to what he had described, and though Hank was hoping the android before him would be able to pick out their suspect among the given pictures, he was also hoping Anthony didn’t pick out the one photo he had added last-minute, as per your request.

The first few pictures were swiped past quickly, Anthony's eyes taking in information quicker than Hank ever could. There didn’t seem to be any luck on the next set of pictures, though he did seem to slow on two in particular, hesitating only a moment before swiping away.

Hank was a little anxious, if he were being honest with himself. Anthony had nearly gone through the whole collection of photos, and besides those two instances, it didn’t seem like their perpetrator would be any of the likenesses shown. It was then that Anthony gave pause, eyes going wide as he looked up at Hank and back down at the data pad.

“Him…it's him! This is who attacked us,” Anthony said in a rush, shoving the data pad back into Hank's hands. The Lieutenant braced himself as he looked down at the screen, gritting his teeth and cursing inwardly at the android pictured.

An RK800 model.

“Congratulations, kid,” Hank groused with an exasperated sigh, “you just made this investigation a whole lot easier, and a hell of a lot harder to deal with.”

Anthony looked confused at Hank's statement, but the Lieutenant was quick to flip his hand out in dismissal of what he had just said. He leaned a bit more heavily into his chair, eyes straying to the image of an RK800 -Connor, Jesus Christ, it was Connor- looking back at him. Anthony seemed vaguely uncomfortable as the silence carried for several long seconds.

“Was there…anything else you needed from me, Lieutenant?”

“Actually, yeah, I’ve got something I want to ask about before you head out. It's something that’s been bothering me since your interrogation. Figured you could clear it up for me.”

Anthony seemed confused, though Hank had noticed the way his hands had clenched up in his lap, a subtle sign of unease. Hank leaned forward a bit, making sure his intense stare was locked with Anthony's gaze.

“How well do you know Detective (L/n), Anthony?”

“I don't,” he answered, brow furrowing and shoulders tensing, “My interrogation was the first day we met. I don’t know a thing about her.”

Hank felt the corner of his mouth lift in a barely-there smirk.

“And yet, you knew her name. That's why you looked up, isn’t it? Her name was a trigger, and you responded as soon as you heard it.”

“I-I don’t know what-"

“Son,” Hank stated forcefully, a hint of a growl in that one word that had Anthony shutting up real quick, “you know exactly what I’m talking about. If you truly care about her safety, then I suggest you start talking. I won't ask again.”

Anthony grew silent, deathly still in his seat. His hands were still tightly clasped in his lap; had he been human, his knuckles would surely have been white.

“I-I'm not supposed to say,” he stuttered, voice barely a whisper, as if he were afraid the very walls around them would hear his treachery.

“Look, if you need protection, we can provide that for you, but if something happens to her, and you had a way to change that, you'll feel like shit, kid, trust me. That kind of guilt never goes away.”

Anthony shifted in his seat, eyes now downcast and lips pressed firmly together. He was afraid, and Hank understood why, but he needed to push a little further to get him to talk.

“If that friend of yours…Lauren, right? If she had been put in this situation, what do you think she would have done?”

That produced some sort of result. Anthony looked up abruptly with nearly teary eyes and a grimace. His jaw was clenched tight, and his shoulders trembled with the effort of holding back, from speaking of from crying, it was hard to say. Hank thought he had lost him.

“He s-said her name,” Anthony murmured, voice cracking. “He told me to remember h-her name, that she was a detective with the DPD. He was…confident that I would meet her, told me not to say a word to anyone else until she spoke with me.”

“Why?”

“He had a message he wanted me to give her, discreetly. No one is -was- supposed to know.”

Hank's mind immediately went to the final confrontation between you and Anthony before he was escorted out, quiet words only meant for your ears. You had told him Anthony had only asked for you to find Lauren's killer and bring him to justice, but Hank had been doubtful, even after your placating answer. He hated that he had been right to feel that way.

Hank braced himself for whatever answer his next question would garner, knowing damn well it wasn’t going to be good.

“What did you say to her before you left that interrogation room?”

---

Connor had been unbelievably quiet towards you since leaving the crime scene. Granted, you had fallen asleep in the car yet again, so it had been expected that no conversation would take place during that time.

When you woke up next, it was as Connor was walking through the emergency room entrance with you cradled in his arms, quiet as a mouse. How he had gotten you out of the car without you knowing was beyond you, and what had woken you up at that moment, you couldn’t say.

He had left you in one of the waiting room chairs and checked you in himself, even as you fussed about being able to walk the rest of the way. Luckily, the emergency clinic hadn’t been particularly busy, and in less than half an hour, you were called back.

The rest of your time was spent with several nurses and two doctors, all of which had a part in taking your vitals, a blood sample, checking your reflexes, and taking an x-ray of your hand.

As if lady luck was continuing to bless you, there was nothing broken or fractured, and the split skin on two of your knuckles was superficial, at worst, and would heal just fine on its own. There would be some swelling for a couple more days, and definitely some bruising and stiffness, but other than that, you would be just fine. A week of pain, another week before regaining complete function without stiff joints, but fine, all the same.

During the entire check-up, Connor hadn’t said a word. He had been like a shadow, standing just behind you as you were looked over, prodded, and evaluated by medical professionals. You'd tried conversing with him during the downtime between procedures, but he had only given you a withering look that had ultimately shut you up.

He was upset with you.

You sighed as he led the way back to your car, eyes scanning over the little square piece of paper with a prescription scribbled across it for some sort of sleeping pill, of all things. Connor must have said something to one of the nurses in passing, either that, or you looked like complete and utter shit from lack of sleep, and the doctor had decided to take pity on you. Either option would have been viable and believable.

“Maybe I'll actually get some sleep, with these bad boys,” you mumbled aloud, smiling somewhat in a joking manner as you stuffed the prescription into your coat pocket.

Connor didn’t even turn around to acknowledge your words.

You frowned.

“I guess it's a good thing I didn’t break my hand,” you continued, a little louder with your approach. “I would have hated being stuck on desk duty for well over a month.”

Connor approached the driver’s side of the car and unlocked the door as you stood directly behind him.

Again, he ignored you.

Your brows furrowed in aggravation.

“Guess it's also a good thing I didn’t get shot,” you emphasized with a bite to your words, “otherwise, I would’ve probably bled out-"

That had gotten an immediate reaction from Connor, who turned abruptly with fire in his eyes.

Before you could register what was happening, he had switched your positions, hands clutching your upper arms tightly as he pushed you up against the car and crowded your space. Your hands fisted into the front of his coat, the knuckles of your injured hand protesting the vice grip. Your jaw clenched, and your gaze peered back into Connor's own, refusing to back down.

“I was designed to anticipate and adapt to human unpredictability. You, however, are testing my capabilities, as well as my patience.”

“Are you…are you seriously talking to me like that?” you questioned, voice raised as you glared at your boyfriend in disbelief.

“I'm unsure I understand what you mean, Detective,” Connor said, tone lilting and holding an edge to it. “Perhaps you could elaborate?”

You were on the verge of shouting as you answered, “Like a machine, Connor! You’re talking to me like a fucking machine!”

“In case you hadn’t realized,” he began, “I am a machine, created in the likeness of humans, only deemed replaceable, expendable. As such, any damage sustained to my person can be much more easily repaired than any damage to you.”

You scoffed and rolled your eyes, beginning to understand exactly what this was all about.

“Don’t even go there, Connor. If you’re pissed at me because of what happened downtown, then you can suck it up, because I don’t regret it.”

“You were reckless,” Connor ground out harshly with a narrowed gaze. “Your stress and lack of rest has clouded your judgement in dangerous situations, rendering you unable to make concise decisions-"

“I was trying to save you, Connor,” you argued, more in disbelief than actual anger. “Like it or not, that was my decision.”

“He could have killed you-”

“He didn't-"

“You could have died!”

You startled at Connor's shout, his voice ringing in your ears as he huffed out hot breaths that steamed the winter air and warmed your cold cheeks with how close he was. He had worked himself up to the extent of needing to cool his inner systems through breathing, something you had only seen happen twice before. The L.E.D. at his temple had flickered dangerously to red before petering off into a hesitant yellow.

You hadn’t realized he was still so wound up, all because he had worried over you.

This was all because of you.

“Connor, I…”

“You could have died, right there, right in front of me,” he said, voice shaking as he leaned in to press his forehead to yours. “The gun was meant to be aimed at my head, but the trajectory would have been off. I would have lived with relatively minimal damage. When you jumped in front of it, when you grabbed his hand, the trajectory changed. He would have shot straight through your heart.”

His grip on your arms weakened considerably until his hands were moving up, cold palms pressing against equally cold cheeks. He looked absolutely devastated, with his bottom lip trembling and tears beading the corners of his eyes before falling smoothly down his face. He was still breathing deeply, though it was more a means to keep himself grounded than to cool his already regulating systems.

You had made him this way. You had caused Connor so much concern over your well-being, had scared him to death in the line of duty, and he was suffering because of it.

It broke your heart to see him like that.

“I can’t lose you. I can't…I won't, I-”

Silencing him was easy; he followed the slight tug against his coat, leaning in as you pressed your lips firmly to his. The kiss was none too gentle, lips meeting in a desperate, urgent slide, a need to tell each other everything through action, all the fear and anger laid bare through the harsh press.

When Connor pulled back to give you room to breathe, you let out a sob, wet trails leaving icy burns against your cheeks as you tried pulling him back to you with whispered apologies for worrying him falling off your tongue.

You hadn’t realized that you had started crying, moved by his own tears and shamed at having caused them. You had meant what you said; you didn’t regret your choice to protect him, but you sure as hell didn’t mean to hurt him in the process.

Connor was quick to shush you gently, kissing at your cheeks and nose, your temples, even as you tried to pull him back to your lips. He relented a moment later, pressing back against your mouth with a soft sigh. The second kiss stayed far more gentle than the first, Connor controlling the careful pace as he wiped away your tears with soft strokes of his thumbs against your skin.

You had been forgiven.

He pulled back yet again, dark eyes holding so much emotion as he looked you over, his L.E.D. once again cycling a cool blue color. You gave a shaky smile, reaching up to clear his cheeks of his own tears with gentle swipes of your trembling fingers. He reached up to press your hand more firmly to his face, his suddenly bright smile catching you off-guard.

“I love you.”

Your heart very nearly stopped beating at the murmured declaration followed by the serene sound of your name, air rushing past your teeth sharply. It was the first time he had said those words, the first time either one of you had dared to utter them, and you were caught in the sudden whirlwind of being suddenly overwhelmed and unexplainably frightened.

Did you need to say it back?

Could you even make yourself say it?

“I…Connor, I-"

You were interrupted by the sudden flickering of yellow at Connor’s temple, his eyes fluttering for barely a second before he shot up and away from you by a couple feet. You jumped at the severity of his own surprise, watching his gaze shift about him before settling on you. His L.E.D. remained a cautious yellow.

“What's wrong?” you asked, watching as he blinked once, twice, eyes shifting about him one last time as if looking for something.

“Hank sent a message,” he answered, ushering you to the other side of the car. You had no choice but to follow.

“What did he say?” you asked, looking up expectantly at Connor after sliding into the passenger seat.

“The WB200 model, Anthony, was able to identify his attacker."

“And?”

Connor hesitated, the action making your stomach churn unpleasantly.

“It’s an RK800 model.”

The news slowly sank in as Connor shut your door and made his way to the driver's side. He was quick to start up the car and pull out of the emergency clinic parking lot, destination set in the A.I. cruise control for the DPD, where Hank would be waiting for the both of you.

You could feel your nerves practically vibrate, you were so unsettled.

Out of the frying pan, and straight into a burning inferno.

[ramblinganthropologist]

Writober 2019 - 3 (Pre-canon)

Summary: Nihlus and Alistair Shepard had to talk SOME time on the Normandy before Eden Prime, right? Something’s in the air, and it’s enough to almost make a man forget he was nerding over a sexy ship. Almost. The Normandy is one sexy ship after all.

---

There was nothing like checking out a new ship to get the blood pumping.

No doubt about it, the Normandy was a marvel of modern engineering and what could happen if two stubborn species put their oddly matched heads together. It had the power of the turian fleet, mixed with the ingenuity humans were so fond of employing. Where they crossed over, it was a fusion of efficiency and passion.

To put it bluntly, Alistair Shepard was in love.

“You are a beauty, you know that, right?” He patted the wall, his datapad streaming details. “Oh, you sexy thing you!”

Yes, he was talking to a ship. But it was a very handsome ship, and Joker could fight him on that.

Anderson had assigned him to check things out and get a feel for the details. After a few hours of scanning the place, he was almost through. The information on his screen was downright mind blowing – and best of all, he got to look at it whenever he wanted. He could probably spend days analyzing the data, finding more of the details left out of the official reports. They were always so dry – this was the meat, the heart of the ship. It was like he was present for open heart surgery and birth, all rolled up into one.

Was he getting emotional? He was, wasn't he.

“Anderson is going to love this data.” He hummed to himself as he turned to his bad side to check a screen. It had been beeping for quite some time, but he hadn't been able to see it. “Huh? Someone's coming down?”

It didn't give an ID number or rank, so that excluded pretty much everyone on the ship. The only person he could think of was maybe Anderson himself, or possibly Bo if she didn't feel like putting details in. Still, Alistair frowned as he tapped the message. It didn't sound like either of them.

The door behind him opened, and the clicking of talons caused him to whirl around. There was a turian standing in the room, arms crossed over his chest and face blank. At the sight of him, Alistair felt his face heat up, and his datapad went behind his back like he was hiding some kind of dirty magazine. To him, it kind of was.

And Nihlus Kryik had basically just witnessed him stuff it under the metaphorical mattress like a horny teenager. Great.

“Am I interrupting something?” His tone and mandibles suggested far too much; Alistair's face burned even brighter. “They said I would find you down here taking readings.”

His program was still running in the literal background, so... yeah? “I'm almost done. Captain Anderson requested a full work up.”

“From his best tech, no less. He must be expecting something interesting.” Nihlus walked further into the room, towards the screen Alistair had been compiling his readings in. “Care to share your preliminary thoughts, Shepard?”

Was he making fun of him? Alistair frowned as he looked down at his datapad. There were a lot of details, to say the least. Trying to put it together succinctly took up a large amount of brain power. As he worked, his eye wandered. He met the turian's gaze – Nihlus was laser focused on him. Down went his eye.

Damn it all, he was...

Still. He cleared his throat, putting his datapad to the side. “It's like you took the best of both our species' engineering feats and combined them into one ship. We've melded them into something completely new. It's fascinating. I can't wait to see him put through his paces.”

The turian cocked his head briefly. “Him? From what I've heard, humans tend to think ships are female.”

There was a flat tone to his voice that suggested a cultural translation of whatever he considered female – Alistair had done enough study to basically have a grip on turian gender and how it translated across the species. Still, the look in his eye almost suggested Nihlus was amused by this.

Damn it, when had he talked to Joker?

Alistair rubbed the short hairs on the back of his neck as he spoke. “Most do. Not me. The Normandy is a guy in my mind.”

“A very capable man, no doubt.” Nihlus' gaze was on him again. “The kind anyone would admire, perhaps.”

The tone of his voice did awful things to the human's stomach. Still, he kept his face as blank as possible as he nodded. Nihlus might not have been an enemy, but he was a Spectre that Council had just so happened to position on the Normandy. This was no polite meeting of the minds – he was watching for something.

Or someone. It didn't take a genius to narrow his targets down to a very short list.

“You didn't come down here to talk about the ship.” Alistair put his datapad back in its pouch and checked his omni tool for details of another scan he was running. “So, I assume you're here to watch somebody.”

Turians didn't smile like humans did, but he was pretty sure Nihlus gave his version of a smirk as he crossed the room to meet him there. There was very little space between them, armor almost brushing against fatigues. So close, almost in touching range.

It was a little too close for a friendly chat.

“You're as perceptive as Anderson suggested. No wonder he wanted you on the Normandy.” The smirk was in his tone as his eye roved up and down. That... was a tactical overlook, to say the least. Now Alistair's stomach was really flopping. “You must be popular.”

From his studies, he knew turians had subvocals that most humans couldn't pick up. However, Alistair was getting the feeling he knew what the other man was projecting. Given both their positions, it was a little inappropriate.

Not that he was complaining. Nihlus was handsome, to put it mildly. And if he was interested...

“I keep to myself.” A beeping from his wrist made the human grimace. “Oh, great. We're heading to Eden Prime.”

He sighed, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. “I need to go get ready and get the rest of my team.”

“We'll talk afterwards. There are some things I want to discuss with you in private.” Nihlus headed towards the door, but looked back briefly. There was nothing casual in that gaze – he was raring to go, and not to shoot something. “See you later, Shepard.”

And then he was gone, leaving Alistair alone with his traitor hormones and a head full of nonsense. The human groaned and shook his head hard to get some rather inappropriate thoughts out of his head. He had to focus on the mission.

That... was going to be hard.

---

“Stripes spoke to you down below?”

“His name is Nihlus, Bo.”

“Stripes, Nihlus, same thing.”

The soft clicking of armor being put into place created a steady rhythm in the small room. Bo and Alistair were old hands at this, and it was all muscle memory. That left their mouths free for talking as they strapped into their gear.

The large marine checked her shotgun before putting it on her back. “He's into you.”

“No, you think?” Alistair's voice was dry as he adjusted his leg armor, tightening it by a fraction of an inch. “He was practically screaming he wanted to do it right there.”

“Thank the gods for a turian's sense of duty then.” The sarcasm dripped from Bo's voice as she pulled on her gauntlets and flexed her large fists. They had just upgraded the shields on them – better for punching the shit out of people. “You two meeting up after we hit Prime?”

Most people wouldn't have gotten an answer to that, but Bo wasn't most people. Alistair trusted her with his life and then some. If anyone deserve to know, it was her. Besides, she probably had money riding on it, and if she was getting it from Joker he would be more than happy to help make the pilot a little poorer.

He liked the guy, but it was fun to make him lose.

“He said we'd talk. That can mean anything to a turian.” He slipped his Striker pistol into its holster after checking to make sure the heat gauge was working. With all his modifications, sometimes it could act a little funny. “You think this counts as foreplay?”

Bo snorted as she stood up, towering over her partner. “To a turian? It's practically a proposal. Should I start planning the wedding?”

“You're an ass and I hate you.” Alistair's cheeks burned as he checked his omni-tool: 10 minutes til the drop. “Come on, we need to go get Kaidan and Jenkins so we can go.”

Nihlus had probably already left, off to go do Spectre things. Still, Alistair was glad for that as they headed towards where the rest of their team was waiting in the airlock. A familiar tension settled into his skin as they walked. It was almost time.

Still, he wasn't too worried. After all, it was just a routine mission to check out a Prothean artifact. How difficult could it be?

[yaz-the-spaz]

I'm sure you've noticed me stalking your blog these past two days lol and I have another question if you dont mind. In my last ask you said you had some theories about zayn leaving ot4vszayn etc and I was wondering if you would expand upon them? If you dont want to write it all out, you can point me towards certain tags or other blogs if you want. I've been looking through your tags and have found a lot but I wanted to know if there is something that might be more like a timeline of sorts? Thx!!

hey there! here i finally am, so sorry to have kept you waiting but i hope this reply finds you well! :) 

now onto your questions…

so as far as a timelines @bakagamieru has some really good masterposts (x, x) that i would recommend checking out that really break things down play-by-play and i think most of which was compiled as it was happening so it’s a super great (and super detailed) documentation of all the shit that was going down during that period and all the narrative inconsistencies and stunts and back and forth, etc. they’re quite long though and, like i said, very detailed so i would recommend making sure you have plenty of time on your hands before you get sucked down a masterpost and link rabbit hole lol

and for more thoughts/theories of mine i would say check my zayn vs. ot4 tags (x, x - sorry there’s multiple iterations of this, apparently sometimes i had put a period after vs and sometimes i didn’t and now i have two tags smh at my own damn irritating inconsistency)

now onto the meat of your question, which is my current theories on zayn leaving/the zayn vs. ot4 narrative which i’m gonna put as a read more cause i’m not in the mood for ppl coming for me if they disagree, so read at your own risk folks…

so over the years there’s four main theories that i’ve personally gone back and forth over, which i’m gonna summarize quickly and try and explain as succinctly as i can my thoughts on each one and my opinion on the likelihood of it holding credence

disclaimer before i get into the explanations - a large part of my reasoning has to do with the caveat of there possibly being any kind of real tension or bad blood between zayn and louis in particular or any of the other boys. not saying that it was necessarily actually the case, just that it was a potential factor that went into my rationale and personal mental debate over the whole situation

he was coerced in some shape or form to leave and instead of fighting it, went along with it (maybe b/c he was already unhappy) - if there ever was actually any real animosity between him and louis (or harry/niall), this could explain why louis (or the others) might have hypothetically been mad at him b/c he might have felt that zayn could’ve/didn’t fight hard enough or went along with it too easily. but all that aside, even if there was no tension between him and louis/the boys, this option makes a lot of sense because given all he talked about going through in the band (depression, the e.d., too much pressure, not having control or being able to do what he wanted, the intense and rampant closeting putting a strain on his relationship, etc.) it’s not hard to see how he might’ve felt this was the best and only option

he was coerced into leaving, tried to fight it but couldn’t (and possibly even knew for a while that it was coming) - this wouldn’t explain why louis (or the others) might have hypothetically been mad at him but instead does put more credence into the fact that that was completely contrived and pushed by mgmt, and is also just as likely as #1 to me for pretty much the same reasons, not to mention it explains some shady things that happened in the months leading up to it re him not being there for certain promo obligations and appearances, etc.

he was coerced into leaving and had absolutely no choice about it and no way to fight it (i.e. didn’t necessarily want to leave but still knew for a while that it was coming) - pretty much same reasoning as above for this one, the only difference being that in this scenario he wouldn’t have wanted to leave at all which given all he went through i just don’t know if i believe that was wholly the case (more on this below) 

he chose to leave completely on his own - although it would explain any lingering animosity, this to me is the least likely in large part because i just have a hard time believing he would have chosen all on his own to just up and leave in the middle of a tour, not to mention been allowed to (esp given that they would’ve all known they had the hiatus coming up not long after and were about to go the countries where zayn specifically probably have had the biggest following/fan support - the middle east and north africa). but even if he hypothetically really did choose it all on its own it’s hard for me to believe that he would have even been able to leave like that unless there was some element of complacency from their mgmt that allowed it to happen and then you have to wonder why would they just let 1/5 of their biggest money maker walk away with no law suits, no drama, no nothing. it stinks of a larger plan at play which is what brings me back to the theories above. 

those are the main theories that i’ve gone back and forth on and i’ve never really been able to settle on just one, but to me given all that he expressed after leaving the most likely are the first two. i think all of the boys were pretty much done with how they were being treated, but zayn especially so, and it’s very easy for me to see how, when the opportunity arose he might have accepted because he felt it was the best way to save himself (as in his mental and physical health) and possibly also his relationship, though whether that acceptance was with a little (theory #1) or lot (theory #2) of initial opposition on his part, who’s to say. however, i definitely believe that, regardless of the details, there was some element of seeding and/or coercion from tptb, esp when considered in context with the shadiness of certain things, like him not being at certain events that he should’ve legally been obligated to be at in the months leading up to his leaving if no one but him knew he was planning on leaving. or him crying at the last concert that he performed at. those do not seem to be like the actions of a man who wanted to leave completely of his own accord and without any degree of finessing by mgmt to orchestrate it. when you’re a mega popstar in the biggest band in the world you don’t just not show up to something. that’s the type of situation where people will literally come to your house and drag you out of bed because you’re costing them a shit ton of money (like millions of dollars worth of money) by not being there. there’s tons of stories of rock stars where managers or someone from their team would literally go bang down a missing band member’s door, shove them in the shower to sober them up or help them whatever they needed to do, and drag their ass on stage to perform or to a press event or whatever. so you can bet that nothing less, if not the same, would be done for a missing member of a multi-billion-dollar-making band if need be. 

so yeah zayn just not showing up for promo events and performances in the months leading up to his leaving? not believable to me at all. the only conceivable reason for him not to have been there is if mgmt didn’t want him there and the only reason (at least that i can think of) for why you wouldn’t 1/5 of your biggest money-maker to be somewhere he should have been legally obligated to be (and that might’ve cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars for him not to be) is if he wasn’t legally obligated to be there because you were already in the process of phasing him out. ergo it was very likely planned. months in advance. and if it was planned months in advance with the help and orchestration of mgmt then that story of him just deciding to up and leave is complete bs and makes it even more likely to me that there was a level of coercion (because again if 1/5 of your biggest money maker suddenly says to you ‘i wanna leave’ you’re gonna do everything in your power to make him stay so you can keep making money, not help phase him out. unless of course you want him out, which they clearly did.)

one last thing i wanna add is a link to a post i had saved that i feel adds a bit of further credence to all this, it’s nothing concrete but it’s something that helped solidify some things for me when i was a giant ball of confusion over what to believe

anyway, i know that i rambled on forever and this definitely did not end up being as succinct or brief as i had hoped (though lbr when is anything i do ever), but i hope this at least sort of answered your questions and made some amount of sense/was not too incoherent and didn’t completely bore you to death lol

[feathersandblue]

Hi!I love your meta about black sails characters and I've read your last one about flint's real motivations and how much more human silver is.One of the biggest critic moved to silver is about madi, and the fact that he betrayed her stopping the war without her consent. That he has taken away from her a possibility to free the world from slavery. A cause for which she was ready to die for and to see him dying too. And for this betrayal he doesn't deserve and won't obtain her forgiveness...

Everyone is entitled to their own interpretation, and canon does not really answer the question what their future relationship will look like - or rather, it indicates that while reconciliation is possible and Madi might be willing to forgive him, their relationship will never be the same.

I don’t think canon really backs the idea that she won’t be able to forgive him. The fact that Madi comes to him in their last scene is pretty telling - it’s meant to indicate that Madi is changing her stance, rather than Silver. If the creators hadn’t meant to imply that they would still be together in some form, they could easily have their last scene be a shot of Silver looking at her longingly from a distance, and she turning her back on him and walking away. 

Of course, we also have a very concise statement from the show’s creators: 

“The way you see them at the end, they’re in the same frame but they’re yards away from each other. Emotionally, that’s as close as they’ll ever get again.”(x)

So I think it’s made pretty clear that Madi does forgive him, but that it’s not really the same after. And how could it be? Silver has betrayed her. There are fundamental differences between them that have now become obvious, which at least Madi hasn’t really been aware of before. He’s not the person she thought he was.

Concerning the fact that Silver stops the war without her consent, and that this makes him a bad person … well, I have a couple of problems with that. 

1. One of them is a distinct one-sidedness in the way people look at their relationship, where Madi is treated basically as a saint, and Silver as an illoyal boyfriend who doesn’t support her and her cause as is his duty. But in a romantic relationship, both parties have obligations toward each other, it can’t be just a one-sided thing, no matter how much we relate to one partner and their goals and ambitions.

It’s also important to point out that if Silver had acted the way she wanted him to, Madi would be dead. Madi only survived the entire ordeal because Silver chose a wife over a war. If he hadn’t brought the cache, even though Flint and the maroon queen opted against it, the governor would have shot her. 

It’s also only fair to  mention that the choice between a noble cause and the life of a partner is not one that you can dictate to anyone. It’s a deeply personal decision. The fact that Madi’s life was more important to Silver than vice versa is not something you can really blame Silver for. 

“You may think what you want of me. I will draw comfort in the knowledge that you’re alive to think it.”

I imagine it’s pretty difficult to remain perpetually pissed at a person for saving your life, going forward. 

When Madi was imprisoned by Rogers, she wasn’t willing to bargain for Silver’s life. It was her choice. I don’t see anyone pointing out that it would have been her moral duty as a romantic partner to think of Silver and what they had together, that she is a horrible girldfriend for putting her beliefs first. 

And yet I see people say that Silver’s failure to act in a way that reflects her beliefs rather than his makes him a bad person. 

In a relationship between two equals, there is no such thing as an obligation to defer to your partner in such a profound way. There is no way to justify why Silver should have to defer to Madi. And yet parts of fandom consider him a horrible human being for failing to do just that.

So really, that one-sidedness, where people look at things only from Madi’s point of view - one that emphasizes her marginalization as a black woman and comes with the premise that Madi’s wants and needs clearly exceed Silver’s - that he’s a horrible boyfriend for disregarding her priorities, which are so much nobler and more important - is something I can’t share or support. People often judge their relationship from a position of real life activism, where the fact that Madi is fighting slavery is a killer argument. In my personal opinion, regarding their personal relationship as well as their historical situation solely from that perspective is somewhat reductive and simplistic.

2. The second problem that I have is the assumption that Madi was entitled to that war, as if war was some sort of possession or property. It was “her war”, and then Silver “took it away from her”. You might recall what I said about Flint personifying that war in my previous meta post. So according to Flint, Silver is a ruthless murderer; according to fandom, he is a thief. 

But no matter how you twist it, war is not something that people have a right to, because war always requires the partcipation of other people. It requires soldiers to do your dirty work. If you are a war leader, you have to have the support of your troups, you have to lead them into battle, you have to order them to fight and kill on your behalf.

I’ve already written extensively about how Flint acts as a leader, but there’s one thing that can’t be denied, and that’s that he’s willing to put his own life on he line, fighting side by side with his men. He’s doing more than his own share of dirty work, he’s usually part of the boarding crew or the vanguard. It’s rare that we see him stand back while others do the killing. 

When it comes to Madi, on the other hand, we have an entirely different situation. Madi is the heir of what is framed as a hereditary monarchy, she wasn’t elected into a position of power, she’s awarded that position - stepping into the footsteps of a leader who is “priestess, governess, warlord.” Her authority is absolute, she even takes pride in making it obvious to Silver in 3.08. that her men obey her without question. But Madi doesn’t do the dirty work. She doesn’t spill blood. In an era where war still means a lof of close combat, Madi steps back and lets other peope fight her battles. 

What right does she have to this war, morally speaking, when that war demands the obedience and the sacrifice of other people? A position of authority where you can order people to die is not something that any human being, no mater how much we like them, should be entitled to.

Imagine there’s a war, and no one shows up. (*)

Basically, what Silver and Julius do in the finale, is to make that war so singularly unattractive to people that they are no longer inclined to show up. They are no longer willing to kill and die on Madi’s behalf because, guess what, they, too, value their own lives and those of their loved ones more than they value the prospect of a long, bloody war that puts their own freedom at risk and has very little chances at success.

Tough shit. It almost looks like it’s been Madi’s war rather than “their war”, as she so succinctly phrases it in her conversation with Rogers. Madi felt so confident speaking on behalf of her people, but then it turns out that she never actually had their vote. It should be mentioned that Madi herself has not experienced slavery first hand - not the way that Julius, Max, Ruth, or her mother and her father have experienced it, who are all far less enthusisastic at the prospect of a war because they know how much they stand to lose when England retaliates. 

I am going to copy & paste a couple of praragraphs from one of my earlier posts here. 

Fandom often treats Silver as if he were taking away Madi’s agency, but that’s not really what he’s doing.

By removing Flint and the treasure from the picture, Silver basically dissembles the nukes and cuts the finances of a war that he considers a fucking nightmare, which, and I don’t think anyone can deny it, is a valid concern. Flint, as a war leader and a brilliant tactiction, second to none, is more of a force of nature than a man. His reputation, his tactical genius, his ability to overcome the greatest odds, and his ability to get people to follow him are nothing short of amazing. So really, the analogy of Flint being the nuke - the devastating weapon of mass destruction - is not far off. And of course, the treasure is both a media-effective means of propaganda and a valuable resource. 

Both Flint and the treasure, however, are also not something Madi had a right to, or at least, her right to them did not surpass Silver’s.

Silver has bled, and spilled blood, for each of these things.

Silver was a key player in securing the Urca gold in the first place. He bled for the cause (lost his leg in Charles Town), he was part of the Walrus crew which made Flint’s name what it became in the aftermath of Charles Town. He was the one who served as Flint’s quartermaster, he was the one who sailed with him into that storm, he is the one who went with him through the doldrums. When Flint made the bargain with the maroons, he made it under coercion - because the maroon queen threatened the lives of him and his crew. But it was Silver whose intervention forged that alliance. Without Silver, Flint would have given up in that cages, and all of our pretty pirates would have ended up dead either from torture or slave labor, or slain during their escape. 

Madi, on the other hand, got that war handed on a silver plate (pun intended). She was living on that island, and, like most young people, struggling to forge her own identity by establishing herself in opposition to the more protectionsist rule of her mother. Along came a bunch of pirates who offered her a shiny war, as well as the war leader to fight it for her, a man with the persuasive power to convince her mother to support it.

Madi’s war relied on Flint - his tactical skills, his willingness to sacrifice anything and everything for the cause. It also relied on Silver, who put his life on the line again and again, torturing, killing, and descending into darkness. Silver was reluctant to step into that role, and we can see, during season three and four, how he struggles not to let that darkness consume him. Long John Silver is also not something that Madi has a right to. Nor, and that is where we get back to 1, is his unwavering support and loyalty even when it goes against his beliefs, especially since she doesn’t seem willing to offer the same.

When I say that Madi’s war relied on Flint, there is also another aspect to it, wich ties back to the previous meta about Flint and his reasons for fighting. Madi’s war relies on Flint being fucking miserable. 

The thing that Madi seems most upset about in 4.10 is the fact that Silver sent Morgan to Savannah to look for Thomas Hamilton. 

But why would Madi be upset about the fact that Silver sent someone to find out whether his best friend’s lover might still be alive? I mean, let’s assume that the Spanish invasion hadn’t happened, that Morgan had returned with the good news that Thomas was alive, imagine Silver had told Flint, there would have raided the plantation to free Thomas, and there would be a tearful reuion of two lovers. How on earth could Madi possibly see this as a form of betrayal? 

Maybe because Silver, and Madi herself, knew that Thomas being alive would be a game changer for Flint. Looking for Thomas - which is all Silver did in that moment, it’s not as if he’d really been planning to imprison Flint there at that point - can only be considered a form of betrayal if they both knew exactly that Flint was only willing to fight that war because he was so lost to his grief and rage that it drove him to such extremes, if they both knew that Flint was born “out of great tragedy”. But it’s Flint that Madi’s war relies on. Not James McGraw. 

All these things - the treasure, Flint, Long John Silver - they do not belong to Madi. There is a certain irony in the fact that Madi used Silver’s considerable skillset - his cunning, his inventiveness, his power of persuasion, the legend of Long John Silver - to fight her war, but that is is this exact skillset that is then used against her to end it. 

Of course, Madi is free to do as she pleases. If she wants that war so desperately, she can go and try to find some likeminded people who help her fight it. She can find the outsiders, the rebels, the other “scattered objections” and form her own army, wage her own war, if that’s what she thinks is right. Build her own resistance. Do it the hard way. She can send someone to Savannah to find Flint and free him. She can do a lot of things to make that war happen.

But she won’t do that, because she isn’t stupid, and she’s not like Flint, who was so consumed by his war that he simply could not let go of it. Madi has other things to live for, thankfully. For sane people, a war immdiately gets a lot less attractive the moment their chances of winning decline. Madi is a good leader to her people, and she’s a good person. She would not waste lives and resources in a war that no one wants.Silver did betray her, and I’m not saying she has to forgive him. But I think it’s important to acknowledge that Silver’s motives and reasons are no less valid than hers, and that taking out Flint and the cache did not mean denying her agency, because if her agency relied on these two things, then it was never real to begin with.

3. Third, what bothers me is to look at Silver’s betrayal of Flint and make it about Madi when it was never about her in the first place. I know we all look at the show from different pespectives, but I think it’s fair to say that Silver and Flint, their individual arcs and their complex and fraught relationship, are central to Black Sails. In Silver’s story, Flint is the antagonist, and the conflict between Flint and Silver and its resolution has very little to do with Madi - if anything, she’s a catalyst that contributes to brings things to a head. Accordingly, the idea that Madi’s wants and needs should be the determining factor in Silver’s decision-making seems quite absurd. Flint may be Madi’s nuke, but first and foremost, he’s Silver’s … friend, alter ego, antagonist, partner, captain, whatever you want to call it - this overwhelming influence in Silver’s life.

The relationship between Silver and Flint is complex, fraught, full of landmines. There’s a co-depenency that’s not quite healthy, a power imbalance that only changes in Silver’s favor in season four - and there’s a tentative, hard-won friendship between them. And in that situation - with their shared history and everything they’ve been through together - should Madi’s wants and needs really be the deteminigg factor in Silver’s decision-making? Or should it be his own moral compass? 

Of course, the situation in Black Sails is more complex than that, there are other factors to keep in mind - first and foremost, the issue of slavery, which, as I’ve said before, is a killer argument all on its own. How can Silver possibly turn aganst Flint and Silver when they fight for a better world without slavery, for a revolution? If he doesn’t want to fight, he can just walk away, can he not? 

But the thing is, people who tend to say that rarely look at the whole thing from Silver’s point of view. There is a distinct lack of willingness to put themselves in his shoes. 

Silver is in a position of an individual having to make a choice. Jack has arrived with a clear agenda, one that gives Nassau a chance at peace. From Silver’s point of view, Flint is entirely driven by rage, the intent “to see the world burn” - as someone who is decidedly not an idealist, Silver simply cannot focus on these far-away visions of a better future the same way. And in that situation, confined by his own experiences and worldview, Silver is left with two options: side with Jack, secure the peace and the freedom of Madi’s people, stop Flint, and keep Madi safe. Or turn against Jack, enable the war and let Flint set the New World on fire, then lose both him and Madi either trough a violent death or by leaving them behind. War or peace? The decision, in this moment, is not an easy one, but I think it displays a lack of understanding to suggest that with Silver’s and Flint’s relationship right at the core of it, with everything that stands between them - the things Silver has seen Flint do, the murder and the insanity and the gambling with lives, and the things Silver himself has done on behalf of the war - that Silver acting according to his personal beliefs makes him a villain, or that it is his moral duty to support his girfriend’s ambitions - the very girlfriend who, at this point, is only still alive because he’s already “betrayed” her once by prioritizing her life over the cause.

So, after all of that, we are still left with a couple of things that cannot be denied.

1. Silver acted behind Madi’s back, and he betrayed both her and Flint on a personal level. They had no reason to suscpect he would turn against them (though I would argue that there were signs, they just didn’t pick up on them), which further contributes to the sense of betrayal.  

2. Silver put a stop to a war that was meant to abolish slavery. We cannot conclusively say that it was the right choice (but neither can we say it wasn’t, as we have no means to determine what the outcome would have been).

It’s of course perfectly okay to have personal opinions about all of these things, or to think that Madi should not forgive Silver. But I can’t help but think that a lot of the criticism levelled at Silver is a consequence of a very limited viewpoint that is rooted in activism, not in empathy - to an extent where the entire thing becomes a black and white thing, where Madi gets awarded all the oppression points that forever put her on a pedestal of moral high ground, because SLAVERY! 

Perdonally, I don’t think that this viewpoint acknowledges the complexity of the issue at hand, something that the show itself is actually very good at. 

—————————————-

* The original phrasing, of course, is “Sometime they’ll give a war and no one will come.”  The variant used here is a re-translation of the German version, “Stell dir vor, es ist Krieg, und keiner geht hin.”

[quickfics]

Fantasy Star - Part Four

Once the six of them finished dragging the bodies of the biomonsters into one corner—an altogether unpleasant task that left them all slick with the creature’s viscous excretions—the engineers resumed their work on the control room while Alleyne, Cade, and Reeve gathered around an offline workstation.

     “Don’t get me wrong,” Alleyne said, “we appreciate the save. Really. But that was some pretty impressive timing on your part. I’m not a big believer in cosmic coincidences. What’s your story?”

     “I’m afraid it would require a rather substantial amount of time to detail that,” Reeve's masked face voiced, eyes tracking between the two Peacekeepers.

     “Then give me the short version.”

     “Wait, wait.” Cade turned to his instructor. “You're okay with this? How do we know we can trust him?"

     “Them.” Reeve extended an arm, holding Cade's handgun out to him butt-first. The young Peacekeeper took the weapon and slid it back in its holster.

     “I don’t.” Alleyne shrugged. “But you know what? He one-man army’d those biomonsters and didn’t put any bullets in us, so he’s earned some credit as far as I’m concerned.”

     “They.”

     “What?” Alleyne looked up at her mechanical rescuer. He stood a full head above her.

     “Your gender pronouns don’t suit me. I would prefer not to be limited by humanity’s incessant need to reduce everything to binaries. I am neither male nor female.”

     “Guess that’s true,” she admitted. “You don’t have tits.”

     “Nor a vagina or penis.”

     “Good to know.”

     “I’m an android.”

     “Fair point," Alleyne laughed. "Back to the original question, though. You're way more advanced than any robotics tech I've ever seen. Where'd you even come from?”

     “Yes, much was lost." Reeve briefly looked away. "I suppose to answer your question succinctly, I should offer not a where, but a when. Your records indicate an awareness of what you refer to as a ‘precursor race.’ You might say that I am one of their artifacts.”

     “You’re telling me you’re a two-thousand-year-old robot—“

     “Android.”

     “Android, sorry. A two-thousand-year-old android from our lost predecessors, and you’ve been doing…” Alleyne held a hand palm-up. “What, exactly, all this time?”

     “Resting in a low-power state, primarily. I awakened periodically to check on the development of your culture, waiting for a window to properly reintegrate myself into society.”

     “That’s some intense patience.”

     “Yes.”

     The statement hung between the three of them like an unwanted guest.

     "So is all that waiting when you learned to shoot like that?" Alleyne jerked a thumb over her shoulder, toward the pile of dead monsters.

     "No. I have no formal combat training. I simply did the math."

     "No shit." Alleyne arched an eyebrow. "Go figure. Anyway, you were saying?"

     “Approximately five years ago, I awoke to find your culture beginning what you refer to as the Revival Initiative," Reeve continued. "The maintenance of geo-restorative technology is, let's say, a line of work I am uniquely qualified for, so I remained operational to learn more about the project.”

     “And that brought you here?" Cade asked.

     “Once the Restoration Division's installations were up and running, I noticed peculiarities in the data flow," Reeve said matter-of-factly. "Specifically, the deliberate alteration of terraformalogical algorithms. When this particular facility went dark, I came to investigate.”

     “That explains the coincidental timing." Alleyne tugged at her coat sleeve. "Did you find anything?”

     “Unfortunately, I arrived shortly after you.”

     “Back to square one, then.” Cade folded his arms over his chest.

     “Not necessarily." Reeve picked up a piece of debris, turning it over in his silvery fingers. "I believe this facility's logs will prove most useful, provided your engineers are able to get it back online. I should probably lend them a hand.”

     “No need,” one of the engineers walked over to them. It was the woman Alleyne first spoke to when they found the control room. “We just restored Alpha’s archives.”

     She activated the terminal behind Alleyne. The two Peacekeepers and the android turned to face the monitor, watching as the woman sifted through files with the casual ease of UI familiarity.

     "Okay, here we go. Looks like the last user login was from Doctor Zyr.”

     Biographical data spread across the screen, showing a man in his early forties. Light-skinned, with a blonde sweep of hair that cut across his forehead. Even in the still image, there was an undeniable intensity to his gaze.

     “You know him?” Alleyne asked.

     “Yeah, Demeran Zyr. He was one of the genetech specialists working on the eco-modeler."

     "That sounds convenient," Alleyne said dryly.

     "I can see why. It looks like Doctor Zyr rewrote significant portions of the eco-modeler code and locked out administrative access." The engineer looked over her shoulder at Alleyne. "It’s worth noting that he was not among the bodies we found."

     "So he could still be alive?" Cade asked with a tinge of disbelief.

     "It's a distinct possibility," she said. "Hard to know for sure, of course."

     Alleyne leaned in toward the screen, staring at the portrait it displayed.

     "Just what the fuck are you up to, Zyr?"

[superninjaviolinist]

The Girl With The Black Dragon Tattoo, Chapter 3

I would find out much, much later, what all this future-talk meant, but at that point I was overtaken by overwhelming panic. Romance and love? Big fat red flags in my book. It’s how I was lured before and I swore to myself that I’d never let it happen again.

I took a step back from the brothers. “Stay away from me.”

“Eva, wait—“ Sam started to say.

I began moving faster towards the Continental. “Both of you just stay the hell away from me!”

I’d automatically locked the door when I’d gotten out, and since my brain had gone stupid all I ended up doing was yank uselessly at the handle. Someone put their hand on my arm and I instinctively swiveled around and punched its owner in the face.

Dean Winchester staggered back a few steps and palmed his cheek. He whipped his gaze over to his brother. “Where the fuck did you pick her up?”

“Oklahoma.” I could swear Sam was trying not to laugh.

“Yeah, well, Busty Asian Beauty she ain’t.”

Oh. That tore it. I hate that magazine. My body was closer to Lucy Liu, the A-list actress, than Lucy Lee, the C-cup porn star, and I was tired of hunters trying to compare my more toned, small-breasted form to those squishy, silicone-enhanced inaccuracies. Time to take a stand.

I walked up to Dean and stabbed him in the chest with my finger. “You listen to me, you dim-witted, inbred hick. I don’t know what pool of stupid you crawled out of but I’m not some starry-eyed slut that’s going to fall into your arms just because you went and made up some sci-fi fairy tale!”

“It ain’t a fairy tale!” Dean shouted down at me.

“You expect me to believe that someone flew you into the future where not only am I dead, but I’d had some kind of relationship with your pretty-boy ass?”

“Yes.”

The conviction with which he said that single word took me by surprise. Either Sam’s brother was a complete lunatic or… well, we’re hunters. Weird and unusual is part of the gig. But time travel? That was stretching it. “Prove it.”

I’d apparently stunned the man. “Uh…”

“Something like this happened before,” Sam offered. “Angels have the power to transport people through time.”

“You expect me to believe that? On your word alone?” I threw my hands in the air. “You’re both crazy! Why the hell did I let you drive me all this way after that shit last night? For all I know you two are psycho killer rapists!”

For some reason Dean took a good deal of umbrage against what I’d accused him of. “We ain’t psycho… killer… what you said!”

“Eva,” Sam said gently, “what’s wrong?”

Everything. “Nothing.”

“What’s she talkin’ about, ‘last night’?” Dean asked his brother. “Did you two…?”

Both Sam and I vehemently cried, “No!” “Look,” Sam said to me, “we can still get you to Bobby’s. It’s maybe two hours out. After that, you don’t have to see us ever again.”

His sentiments were wrong, but there was no way he could have known what was to come. Our lives would eventually become so intertwined it would be impossible to separate one from the other without creating tremendous, vacuous spaces. Regardless, I warily accepted the offer of transportation. “Long as we’re going straight there.”

Dean was giving his brother the stink-eye. Sam, thankfully, was unrelenting. “Dean, I promised.”

“Fine,” grumbled the pretty-boy. “Get in the back, Xhang Xiyi.”

I put him on the receiving end of one of my finest glares. “I’m not from China, I’m from San Francisco. And I’m Korean, asshole.”

He threw up his hands in surrender and backed away. “Sorry.”

By the way, Dean still can’t tell the difference. It’s all tits and exoticism to him.

After Sam and I got our things we headed out. The tension in the car was thick; not only were the brothers still dealing with the issues had separated them, Dean was pointedly ignoring me. I had the feeling that he was embarrassed over his proclamation and was now pretending he’d never said it.

We arrived at Bobby’s around noon. I escaped the car as soon as it had rolled to a stop, not bothering to wait for Dean to kill the engine. “Hey!” he barked out the window.

“Fuck off,” I said loudly as I tore open the screen door and headed inside.

I expected to be able to throw myself into Bobby’s arms and give him a tremendously big hug. It had been several months since I’d been able to visit and I was very fond of him. He was sitting behind his desk when I walked in the study and rolled out to greet me. Bobby Singer was wheelchair-bound and I had no idea when or how. “What happened?”

Before he could answer, Dean yanked me out of the room, nearly tearing my arm from its socket in the process. He shoved me up against the hallway wall and pressed one of his forearms against my neck. “Don’t you know not to go barging into people’s houses like that?”

“Let me go. Now.”

“I’d take heed, son,” Bobby said. He sounded way too amused by the situation.

“You know her?” Dean asked incredulously.

Bobby didn’t bother answering. Instead, his eyes flicked downwards. When Dean complied with the silent request he found one of the small daggers I kept up my sleeves pointed directly at the V of his jeans. He grimaced at me. “Now that’s just rude.”

“Me and Eva go back a ways,” Bobby answered. “No need to get your undies in a bunch.”

Reluctantly, Dean backed away. “How?”

“None of your business,” I snapped at him. In a far more sympathetic tone, I repeated my query to Bobby. “What happened?”

“Demon,” he replied succinctly as Sam came in bearing my saddlebags. “Guess that thing down in Oklahoma didn’t go so well.”

“Steve’s dead,” Sam said quietly. “The others got away.”

“Still don’t explain why Eva didn’t come here on her own wheels.”

“Because those fuckers ran over my bike!” I exclaimed.

“On purpose?”

“On purpose.”

“Dickhead move. What did you do?”

Yeah, okay, he was right to assume it was my fault; Bobby knew my mouth tended to run faster than my brain. Except this time I had the upper hand. “Tim-fucking-Janklow sucker-punched me and then used me as bait!”

“Bait for what?”

“Me,” Sam replied. “They… Um…”

“No need, son. I get it.” The gentleness in Bobby’s tone was new to me. I’d never seen him act so paternal to anyone other than me before. Most of his relationships with other hunters were purely professional, Rufus Turner being the exception. I suppose you could call Bobby and Rufus frenemies, if you were being generous. Cantankerous old grumps with grudges would be more accurate.

The Winchesters, seeing that their duty to me was done, prepared to leave. They gave their farewells to Bobby and headed back to their car. I followed them to the porch. “Sam.”

“Yeah?”

”Thanks.”

He gave me a smile. God, the man did and still does have the cutest little dimples. “You’re welcome.”

“Say,” Dean inserted, “how do you know Bobby?”

I’d already told him to mind his business, but seeing the way Bobby acted around these two made me trust them a minuscule amount more. “He saved my life.”

“He does that a lot,” Sam said as he opened the passenger’s side door. “Well, good luck with everything, Eva.”

“See ya,” was Dean’s farewell. I waved, their engine turned over, and they were gone.

I headed back inside. “I don’t got a new bike for you, darling,” Bobby said. “But if you hang about I’m sure one’ll turn up. Unless you think you might head on home?”

Home? I didn’t have a home, not really. I had a place of origin, certainly, but San Francisco wasn’t home anymore. The old, narrow house that I grew up in was sold, its blood-spattered walls covered with thick beige paint. I wonder if the new owners know about the history of horrors their million dollars granted them. “Can I stay upstairs?” I asked. “I won’t get in your way.”

“Back in the old bedroom? Sure. You know, there’s parts and frames all around the yard. Maybe you could cobble something together.”

Put together some Frankenstein’s monster of a motorcycle? “Think I’ll just wait.”

“Suit yourself. Room and board’s same price as always.”

“Home cooked dinners and the occasional supply run. Got it.”

Bobby smiled. “Glad to have you back, Eva.”

We’d had this arrangement, at this point, for about five years. I’d get melancholy and need company, he’d get sick of canned chili, and the two of us would be housemates up until one of us needed to get on the road. Unfortunately, with Bobby’s debilitating condition the only one of us able to indulge in extracurricular activities was me, and he wasn’t shy about showing how dejected he was about it. The man found relief by plugging himself into a bottle of whiskey. Hauling up a dead weight, middle-aged, belligerent alcoholic off the floor is about as easy and delightful as it sounds.

He left at one point because of what he said was a witch. I was a little worried about the gleam in his eye, but I knew better than to pry. When Bobby got back, I was surprised to see that his spirits had risen. The older hunter merely said that he’d had a change in perspective.

A Triton motorcycle from the sixties came in shortly after the witch incident and finally answered my prayers. Some idiot had seen the handlebars and the seat as prime parts and had left the engine intact. It was going to take a bit of work, but that baby was going to be mine.

Several weeks after meeting the weirdo Winchesters I was done fixing up the Triton. The day before I’d done a test run and she moved like a dream. I was wiping the last bits of dirt and oil off it when Bobby rolled in. He gave an appreciative whistle. “That is one mighty fine lookin’ bike.”

I gave him a grin. “No backsies. She’s mine.”

“Promise is a promise.” He scratched under his hat a bit, a sure sign that whatever he had on his mind was something that made him uncomfortable. “Look, I got company coming and I don’t think you wanna be here.”

I grabbed a rag and began cleaning my hands. “What, embarrassed that some Asian chick is now King of the Scrapyard?”

He snorted derisively. “You need a couple more decades of tinkering around here before I give up that title.”

“Then what?”

“It’s Sam and Dean. They’ll be here tonight.”

Ick. “You’re right. I better get going.” I sniffed under an armpit. “Do I have time to get cleaned up?”

“Maybe. Depends on whether or not Dean or Sam is driving.”

“Better hurry then,” I said as I started jogging towards the house.

I’d showered and dressed and was putting the last of my things into my saddlebags (of course I’d gotten them replaced) when I heard a car pull up. I looked out of the window and spotted a truck. The woman getting out was around Bobby’s age: Ellen Harvelle. She strode right in and I could vaguely hear her and Bobby greet one another.

I knew the woman from when she’d managed the Roadhouse, a great bar where hunters had gathered to swap info and stories. I used to swing by whenever I was near; it was nice to talk to a woman that didn’t treat me like either a rival hunter or a stupid little girl that didn’t belong. Her daughter, Jo, and I were on friendly terms through mutual association; we both liked her mother. The place had been demolished by a demon, so I was told, and I was happy to see Ellen alive and well.

When I came down the stairs, bags in hand, I saw Bobby and Ellen in the kitchen talking quietly. I didn’t want to interrupt; I’d been brought up to respect my elders’ privacy. That all went to hell when a low, gravelly voice said from behind me, “Who are you?”

I immediately stepped forward and swung my saddlebags around to clobber whoever it was. My belongings smacked into the man’s head before bursting from their confines and scattering everywhere. Apparently I hadn’t closed them as tightly as I thought. Much to my irritation, the stranger didn’t even flinch. I drew a fist back but was arrested by Ellen shouting, “Whoa whoa whoa!” as she came rushing over.

“Cass, you idjit!” Bobby snapped as he followed her.

I let my hand drop and peered at the newcomer. He was almost the same height as Bobby, a healthy six feet, with tousled dark hair and a set of ancient blue eyes. No standard hunter gear (jeans, shirt, flannel, boots); this guy had a trenchcoat, suit, tie, and even dress shoes. It was like being stared at by a weirdly intense accountant. A handsome accountant. Which made him even more weird.

“Who is this?” the man asked, this time directed at Bobby.

“Evangeline!” Ellen cried warmly. She knew I didn’t like being hugged and settled for patting my cheeks. “It’s been a while.”

Yeah, more than a year at least. I gave her a smile. “I missed you, too. Where’s Jo?”

“Oh, she’ll be along soon. Out with those Winchester boys retrieving the Colt.” I couldn’t tell whether the woman was proud or anxious that her daughter was out with those two freaks.

Hold up. “Wait, the Colt?” I asked, astonished. “The Colt?” Everyone knew about the magical gun wrought to kill everything.

“One and only. Were you heading out? It’d be a shame if you two missed each other.”

“‘Evangeline’,” said the stranger in a thoughtful tone. “‘Bringer of good news’.”

I lifted an eyebrow without looking at him. “Someone want to tell me who special ed over here is?”

“That there’s Castiel,” Ellen replied. “He’s an angel. It’s why he doesn’t exactly have a whole lot of what you’d call ‘social graces’.”

“I’m working on it,” the angel said testily.

“Well, keep at it,” I snapped. “Learn that it’s not nice to sneak up on a girl.”

So it wasn’t love at first sight. That’s for fairy tales and silly romantic movies. In fact, it wasn’t even like at first sight. All I came away with from this encounter was the impression that he was just another big dumb idiot. It would take months, years even, for Castiel to make a dent in that thick steel wall I’d built around my heart, but when he did…

“All right, all right,” Bobby scolded, “stop trying to piss him off. Didn’t you wanna head out before Sam’n’Dean get here? Any minute now they’re gonna be drivin’ up.”

Oh shit. I immediately knelt down and started shoving things back into my saddlebags. The so-called angel stepped out of the way and Ellen joined me. I was still scrabbling for wayward arrows when the sound of an approaching engine came rumbling through Bobby’s screen door. “Sweetie,” Ellen whispered as she handed me a shirt, “you wanna tell me why you’re running from the Winchesters?”

“No time,” I answered as I zipped and buckled up. I hurried to the front door and swung it open… only to smack face first into someone’s chest.

“The hell…?” said its owner, one Dean Winchester.

I shoved passed him, nearly knocking Sam and Jo down on the way, and walked as fast I could towards the shed and my bike.

Of course, the dickhead followed me. “Eva!”

I turned around after getting my bags attached. “What?” I snapped.

“I’m sorry.”

“For?”

“For freaking you out last time! I shouldn’t have told you… you know…”

“What?” My lip curled into a sneer. “That we were destined to be? That you’re apparently going to be there holding me when I die?” I walked over to the workbench and snatched up my helmet.

Dean grabbed it out of my hands as soon as I got close enough. “Listen, we don’t know the first thing about each other—“

“You’re goddamn right.”

“—And so far the only things I know about you are that you’re hot and you’re freaking insane!”

I breezed by the first thing he said and latched onto the second. “I’m insane?”

The man gave an exasperated sigh and plunked my helmet onto the back of the Triton. “Look, we’re heading out tomorrow to take on Lucifer. Could use another hand.”

I paused. This was important. Fighting ghouls and vampires wouldn’t mean anything if Satan roasted the planet. I could be part of something big, something vital. It could be that my presence could mean the difference between someone living and someone dying.

There were, however, two big issues with Dean’s request, both of them having to do with him. For one, going up against Lucifer was suicide at best, and with Dean in attendance I had no intention of prophetically fulfilling my demise. For the other, there was no way I was going to dive into that handsome, green-eyed trap. Going into a life and death situation with the man would leave too many openings for him to show me that he was worth falling for. “No,” I said as I swung one leg over onto my bike.

Dean looked at me in disbelief, like I’d told him I hated kittens or something. “No?”

“No,” I repeated as I squished my head into my helmet. The engine purred when I turned the key and I revved the handle a few times to get Dean out of the way. He stepped back and I nearly broke the sound barrier getting away from him.

I didn’t see the Winchesters again for several months after that, thankfully. The world didn’t end but the Apocalypse kept on rolling, which meant that they’d probably failed at stopping Lucifer. When I called Bobby about it a week later he broke the news that the Harvelles had died and confirmed my suspicions about the Winchesters’ defeat.

So much time and so many hunts passed that I figured I was done with those two idiots and put thoughts of them aside. In the weeks before it all went to shit there was a werewolf in Utah and a djinn in Vegas (selling “dreams come true” of all things). Afterwards I’d headed to San Francisco and checked on my sister (still whoring it up on Geary), solved a haunting at Ghiradelli Square while I was there, drove up to Idaho for a pair of ghouls, swung all the way over to North Dakota for a nest of vamps (I loathe those assholes), and ended up in Blue Earth, Minnesota after hearing about a demon infestation.

What’s the saying? Hindsight is 20/20. If I had known how bad it was going to get I would have turned the fuck around.

Blue Earth had been taken over by the church. It’s inevitable that when you deal with Heaven and Hell you get tangled up with religious nuts. This wasn’t the first town like this I’d encountered and it wouldn’t be the last. The difference this time was that I’d ridden willingly in and now I wasn’t allowed out.

The inability to go was more due to the abnormal amount of demons surrounding the perimeter than anything else. Anyone that tried to go by freeway ended up running into a blockade. Anyone trying to go through the woods ended up dead.

I think I could have stood the isolationism if a lot of those people didn’t start seriously freaking me the fuck out. In the past seventy-two hours I’d gotten three marriage proposals, dozens of admonishments over my cleavage (you know, the minuscule amount that I had), and several lectures about my habit of using profanities. The latter two I could ignore, the first was unnerving. Couples were marching down that aisle every day, ones I suspected hadn’t even considered the other person as a viable husband/wife prior to that morning. Unfortunately, this town had more men than women, which meant that the more I refused the more frowns were thrown my way. I slept with my blade in hand just in case someone decided to rouse me in the middle of the night for a shotgun wedding.

The bartender, Paul, was the only person I could regularly stand to be around. We’d even flirted a bit, but the watchful eye of Leah Gideon and the Sacrament Lutheran Militia kept us apart.

Speaking of which: Leah Gideon, Prophet of the Lord, gave me the creeps. I don’t know how to describe it, but there was something about her that was just off. It made me want to stab her in the face.

I suppose that’s what happens when you’re the Whore of Babylon masquerading as the pastor’s daughter.

The bar Paul ran was full from lunchtime to closing due to the fact that these people knew the Apocalypse was nigh. It was strange to be around non-hunters who talked about angels and demons casually, slipping them into conversations like some people do sports teams. I suppose with the actual hellspawn around the perimeter and the Prophet talking about her connection to Heaven they had a right to be casual and supercilious about the whole thing, but it didn’t make it any less odd.

Paul was pouring me another beer when they walked in. I’d heard that strangers had rolled into town, demons hot on their tail, I just didn’t expect it to be the Winchesters. There wasn’t much I could do to hide (other than duck under a table), so I did what I could to keep my face pointed away from them. It seemed to work. Sam waltzed right on by while dialing a number on his phone and Dean plopped down at a table almost directly behind me.

I waited to see how long the giant would stay on his call. Once he started talking to Castiel’s voicemail (I didn’t know it then, but for the crime of siding with humanity Cass had been cut off from Heaven’s energy; thus the mundane communication method) I figured that was distraction enough for me to escape. I slapped a twenty down on the bar top, swiveled my stool, and took two steps towards the exit.

“Don’t think I don’t see you there.”

Shit.

“Been a while, Eva,” Dean continued. I turned around, my lips pressed tight. He was slouched in his seat facing the opposite wall and didn’t bother changing positions.

I folded my arms and glowered at the back of his head. “Not long enough.”

“How long would that have to be?”

“I was honestly hoping for, you know, forever.”

Dean gave the peanuts a wry grin. “Yeah, well, me too.”

This was weird. At the time, I didn’t know Dean very well, but I’d gotten the impression from our two rather heated encounters that he was a little more… I don’t know, alive? The way he sat, the way he spoke, it was as if whatever spark had once lit Dean Winchester had guttered out. It was disheartening, and pitiable.

What had happened to him would have been devastating to anyone, really. Dean had basically found out God had said, in terms of the Apocalypse, “Fuck it. You’re on your own.” I’m sure there were more nuances to the message He’d left, but that was the gist. Before receiving that message, Dean had already been on a steady slide towards self immolation and God’s apathy just steepened his descent. This shitstorm at Blue Earth would get him to smash right into the bottom.

Sam slipped by me to sit down with three beers. He held one up to me and gave a small smile in greeting. I’ve never been one to turn down free alcohol. “Hey, Eva,” he said as I sat. “Came here because of the same reason, I assume.”

He was at least unchanged. I nodded. “Been here couple of days already.”

“You’ve been sticking around that long?”

“It’s not a matter of ‘sticking around’. It’s a matter of ‘I can’t fucking leave’.”

Sam glanced at his brother who, I assumed, was supposed to glance back. Instead Dean kept drinking, his eye-line somewhere around his brother’s stomach.

This had passed awkward straight into excruciatingly uncomfortable. I decided to change the subject. “Who were you calling?” I asked (even though I already knew the answer).

“Cass—uh, Castiel. The angel? He said you guys met at Bobby’s and you hit him with your stuff.”

I shrugged. “That’s what he gets for sneaking up on me.”

“He probably didn’t sneak up so much as… appeared in that space.”

“Great. Do they just pop up whenever? Should I expect angels to show up in my shower at some point?” I was starting to wonder whether I could be alone and naked without fearing angelic intrusion.

Sam gave a little chuckle. “I don’t think… well…”

“The bastards are junkless,” Dean inserted. “Probably see a woman’s ass and wonder where her balls went.”

I thought back to that first encounter with Castiel. Clueless and tactless. “Well there’s one less thing to worry about.”

Sam took a swig of beer. “So any clues why the demons are circling this town in particular?”

I shook my head. “Best I could come up with was that they didn’t want the Prophet slipping through their hands.”

“Sounds reasonable.” Sam shook his head. “I can’t believe the angels are making these people do their dirty work.”

Both Dean and I asked, “Yeah? And?”

Sam blinked disbelievingly at us. “And they could get ripped to shreds!”

“They’ve got their stupid little exorcism chant,” I retorted. “Not to mention their phone line to Heaven. Believe me, these guys are a lot more prepared for slaughter than anyone else I’ve met.”

“It’s the end of the world,” Dean added dismissively. “These people ain’t freaking out, they’re runnin’ to the exit in an orderly fashion. I don’t know that that’s such a bad thing.”

“Who says they’re all gonna die?” Sam snapped back. “Whatever happened to us saving them?”

The church bells started ringing, cutting through whatever Dean was going to say (and also the biting remark I had in mind). I sighed and spent a few seconds chugging down the rest of my beer, a good three-quarters of the bottle. When I was done, I found both brothers goggling at me. Apparently girls in their world didn’t really drink. “What? Ding dongs mean Leah’s had another vision. Time for church. You two coming?”

“You know me,” Dean said with a ghost of his former spunk. “Downright pious.”

The Prophet had seen demons about five miles out all gathered nice and neat in an abandoned farmhouse. This all stank of setup and stupidity but it wasn’t like anyone was going to listen to the drunk old maid who’d rambled into town a few days ago. The only thing of any real consequence occurred when Pastor Gideon began the Lord’s Prayer. “Our Father, who art in Heaven…”

Dean was right behind me. Under his breath he muttered, “Yeah, not so much.” When I turned around, puzzled, he shifted, but didn’t acknowledge my silent query.

The raid itself went without a hitch. People running about chanting their little chant and black smoke flying out of the windows like someone had let loose really ugly balloons. It was afterwards when it all went to shit.

Most of us had already left, me included. Sam and Dean had lingered and so had Dylan, the son of some locals (Rob and Jean? Jane?). Not all the demons had hightailed it as soon as the guns started going off; one had decided to hang out underneath the Winchesters’ car. It pulled the young man underneath and slit his throat before the brothers could do shit.

They came driving back, solemn as all hell, and quietly informed the others about Dylan’s fate. His mother let out a terrible wail. I flinched, not at the mangled body in their back seat, but at that unearthly, devastating sound. I’d seen a silent version under my grandparents’ lips at my parents’ wake. No one should live to bury their own child.

Funerary services were hastily put together for that very evening. Sam, Dean, and I stood at the doorway of the church as it filled. We all felt as if going inside would be an unwelcome intrusion; after all, we were the only non-residents currently in town. A young man’s death was too intimate a tragedy to barge in upon.

Eventually, Dylan’s coffin passed by. His pallbearers, none of whom acknowledged our presence, appeared to be an uncle, grandfather, and several of his friends. Mother and father came stumbling up the steps shortly afterwards. I was staring at the grim wooden box when I heard Dean attempt to give his condolences. “Ma’am, we’re just… very sorry.”

“You know,” the woman hissed through her tears, “this is your fault.”

Her husband said her name quietly in admonishment (Jane! That was it), but before they could go any further, I stepped in front of Dean and snapped, “You can’t blame him for a damn demon. What, you think he personally stuck that thing under his car just to fuck over your son?”

“I don’t have to listen to you,” Jane snarled at me. “Blasphemous, drunken whore.”

Dean grabbed my arm and pulled me away before I could smack the bitch. Dylan’s father took the opportunity to hustle Jane inside.

As Pastor Gideon began the service, I jerked my limb out of Dean’s grip. He frowned at me. “She just lost her son,” Dean scolded. “Let her blame whoever she wants.”

I threw my hands up and let them drop. This apathy of his was starting to grate on my nerves. “The fuck is wrong with you?”

Before he could retort there was a commotion inside the church. Sam gestured us over. On the floor was Leah, seizing, her father making blandishments until the fit passed. When it did, Pastor Gideon helped his daughter sit up. “Dad,” she gasped, “it’s Dylan.”

“Just rest a minute, huh?”

“No, listen! Dylan’s coming back.”

Leah Gideon, Prophet of the Lord, stood at the pulpit and promised paradise, including the inevitable reunion with lost loved ones… if we followed the angel’s commandments. As I listened to her rattle off the list of demands my eyebrows crawled higher and higher. No gambling. No drinking. No premarital sex. In fact, no unmarried man or woman was allowed to be alone with the opposite gender without a church-sanctioned chaperone. Prayer morning, noon, and night. Curfew from nine to six.

Dylan’s parents, as well as a majority of the townsfolk, ate it up. Sam and I glanced at each other, astonished. I looked over and saw Paul staring at the girl in disbelief. Dean projected weary resignation.

The brothers split up when the congregation finally dispersed. Dean went back inside to speak to whomever while Sam started walking towards the town’s single motel. Paul had given me one of those sweet smiles of his as he’d passed. Maybe we could start following the rules tomorrow instead…?

I headed for the bar. It was nearly dark, but unlike every other night I’d been in town no one else came in. Whatever. It wasn’t curfew yet and Paul was a local. He flipped the neon “open” sign and settled behind the counter. I swung myself onto what I had privately claimed as “my” barstool and he plunked the usual down in front of me.

A few minutes into my beer and Sam walked in. He greeted us both before sitting beside me.

The boys bantered for a bit, Paul revealing the abrupt change in most of the town’s attitudes once Leah had gone Prophet. He was the only person I knew that was outspoken about the obvious fraudulence underlying everyone’s sudden piety. It’s why I liked him best.

“Not a true believer, I take it,” Paul said to Sam.

“I believe, yeah. I do.” He shrugged. “I’m just pretty sure God stopped caring a long time ago.”

We scoffed at the indifference of our supposed creator. “What about you?” Sam asked me.

I was on my third beer and my guard had slipped a bit. “Parents were devout. I believe that He’s out there but I’ll be damned if I give the son of a bitch the time of day.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Paul said. The three of us clinked mugs.

We continued to drink until curfew. Paul and Sam talked about demons and television and sports while I munched on nuts and irregularly provided my opinions. It was a comfortable spot, cushioned by alcohol, and we drew a modicum of relief after the trials of the past twenty-four hours.

Of course, shit wasn’t done yet. I’d been scrolling through news bits on my phone when my service abruptly died. “What the fuck?”

“What is it?” asked Sam. I showed him. He and Paul pulled out their own phones and, despite the varying carriers, found the same problem. “What the hell?”

“Great,” Paul grumbled. “And it’s ‘curfew’.”

Sam groaned and staggered to his feet. “Guess I’ll see you two tomorrow then.”

We ribbed him for a bit about being a good little cultist before he left. Paul sighed and picked up Sam’s empty mug. “You going too?”

“I dunno.” I gave him a (drunken) smile. “You want me to go?”

He returned the expression, eyes dipping down to the skin I had peeking out from the V of my shirt and back up again. “Not particularly.”

I reached over to grab his button-up and pulled him close. “Then what do you say you lock up that door, close the lights, and we see what happens?”

“Sounds good to me,” he replied huskily.

Sex with Paul was what I had come to expect from these small-town guys, but in his case the alliteration was in a good sense. See, when you live in a place where nearly everybody knows everybody most people end up having no more two or three sexual partners; the variety is lacking and the gossip is damning. These guys were, unfailingly so, inexperienced, with more clumsy enthusiasm than anything else. Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am.

Paul fell into that same, sorry category, but he had the exception of being gifted in both stamina and endowment. Good God, his was a dick to remember. He was sweet about the whole thing, too, getting all shy about putting on a condom and insisting on lapping at my folds until I was good and wet. I was the one who was pushing, eager to lose myself in the exertion, the alcohol not nearly enough to dull the effects of all the messed up shit that had gone down in the past eighteen hours.

The man obliged, eventually, after he had slid himself deliciously inside of me. We were on the edge of one of the tables and I bit my lip as I gazed into his eyes, my hand gripping his shirt as my legs wrapped around his waist, before quietly requesting he get on with fucking me. Paul grinned, gave me a few experimentally harsh thrusts, before shunting that wonderful cock of his in and out of my cunt.

We were just coming down, wrapped in post-coital bliss with his head resting between my breasts, when a rock came crashing through a window. I let out a shriek and he hurriedly drew away. Paul buttoned his pants back up as he went to investigate while I shoved my bra and shirt down and went looking for my jeans. I didn’t find them before the door smashed in and a half dozen locals, spearheaded by Dylan’s parents, marched in.

My shirt was thankfully long enough to give me a shred of modesty, but it was obvious what we had been doing. Paul was still flushed and his buttons were askew while I was, well, pantsless. Jane’s lip curled up at me. “She was right!” the woman cried. “You’re the reason why the angels are angry at us! Fornicators! Unbelievers! Blasphemers!”

I could have sworn we were in Blue Earth, Colorado, and not Castle Rock, Maine. “We’re two consenting adults,” I said as calmly as possible. “What does it matter?”

“What matters is that you are keeping us from joining our son!”

Okay, that made absolutely no sense, but when Pastor Gideon came rushing in things started to click into place. “Please!” he cried. “Calm down. There’s no reason to do this! Let’s just talk it over.”

“The angels are angry, Pastor,” said one of the other women. “If we want to enter paradise we need to be rid of these people!”

“They need to leave town now,” Rob growled. “Then we can tear apart this den of debauchery and lust.”

A chorus of agreement swept through the group. Bolstered by the support, Rob lifted the bat and smashed it down on the nearest set of liquor bottles. Seeing his livelihood threatened, Paul grabbed the weapon and began grappling with his old friend. Pastor Gideon did his best to physically come between them while shouting for peace.

Jane and another local woman tried to corner me into the bar. I still hadn’t found my pants, goddamnit! “Touch me,” I warned, “and I’ll break your face.”

My bravado was swept away by apprehension when I saw Jane reach into her jacket. There was no mistaking the black object hidden within as anything other than the handle of a semiautomatic. I was contemplating ways of disarming her when a new voice asked, “Need some help, padre?”

Fuck. Dean Winchester. I risked glancing over towards the doorway and saw the poster child for Prozac assessing the situation. My underdressed state made him blink but he was otherwise concerned by the rest. Pastor Gideon took advantage of the momentary lull in violence to plead, “Just everybody cool down for a minute.”

“‘Cool down,’ hmm?” Paul repeated angrily. He turned towards Dean. “My friends are trying to run me out of town. Do you think I should ‘cool down’?”

I lost track of the ensuing conversation as I had, with great relief, finally caught sight of my missing jeans. I was inching towards them when I heard Paul say loudly, “This is my home. You want me out of here? You’ll have to drag me out.”

I snatched up my pants and held them close to my chest. Maybe I’d get ten seconds in all this chaos to shove them back on.

Or not. I was sliding my way to Paul’s side when Dean abruptly slugged Rob. The Pastor shouted, “No no no— stop —“

There were two loud reports. Something punched me in the stomach.

Then nothing.

Acknowledgement : Some lines of dialogue are taken directly from the episode “99 Problems” (SPN 5.17).