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slimepuparibaba · 4 years ago

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ChiLumi | The Battle of Golden House

Golden House was what screwed my feelings over the most, if I'm being completely honest here. It hurts so damn much.

I don't wanna get into too much of the nitty-gritty before we start but here are some FYIs.

Childe temporarily joined Lumine's team after their little outing in Liyue. His reasoning to the Fatui was that it was to squeeze out information--in reality, he just wanted to spend time with Lumine.

The team was compromised of most of the characters, except for Venti, Klee, Bennett, Mona, Keqing, Qiqi, Jean, Diluc, Ningguang, Zhongli, and Xinyan. This took place BEFORE the 1.2 update happened!

Kaeya, Chongyun, Xiangling, and Barbara were the least suspicious of Childe as they spent more time around him and knew of his feelings towards Lumine--they are also the main team members in this fight.

All this is based off of my gameplay in Genshin!

Leading Up to the Battle

Childe and Lumine were very close. Weeks had passed and Childe had gotten to the point where he would use "Lumine" more often instead of "Traveler" or "ojou-chan". Childe would also call Lumine "Aster" due to her favorite flower being a Windwheel Aster

Kaeya was also the closest to the two of them and gave advice to both Lumine and Childe on how they should court each other

However, Childe was eventually reminded that the good times can't last forever. After he hard that Lumine visited the Jade Chamber that floated above Liyue, he remembered that he wasn't here to chat. His initial goal was to bring back the gnosis.

The night before the fight, as the team rested at an inn on the way to Liyue, Childe, cloakee by the darkness of night, left the group. He ditched the weapons that Lumine gave to him as well as his artifacts. If he held onto them during their destined battle, he knew he wouldn't be able to fulfill his duty.

Childe hesitated to leave, and yet, with a heavy heart, he left the Inn behind and stationed the Fatui to mobilize in Liyue.

The next morning, Lumine was shattered to see that Childe was gone.

Confrontation

The group heard of the Fatui being mobilized as well as the Adepti and the Qixing about to throw down, and Zhongli gave Lumine the tip that Childe was behind it. She really wanted to be able to talk it out with Childe and convince him he didn't need to go this far, but Zhongli himself stated that "sometimes, they won't understand that until everything is said and done."

Lumine was ready to confront Childe, but her heart was shaking and she felt uneasy. The uneasiness began to settle in though when she and the rest of the group approched the Exuvia and heard Childe's chilling laughter echo throughout the empty hall.

Lumine, hoping to resolve this without fighting, tried to talk to him.

"Childe, you don't have to do this! Don't you remember all the fun times we had? All of us? You're one of us, Childe! You don't have to be their pawn!"

Deep inside, Childe agreed. He knew full well that Lumine had a point--that he was merely being used as a pawn and he could easily discarded. He wanted to join Lumine, but...

"Monsters like the Fatui cannot be saved."

That was all that ran through his mind.

He wanted to agree; god knows he did. What he wouldn't give to leave the Fatui, resign as a Harbinger, and join everyone on that team on their adventures and protect everyone that he ever loved.

But he just couldn't do that.

Childe knew that Lumine wouldn't give up, no matter what, and he kept battling within himself. Sadly, though, his "loyalty" to the Tsaritsa got the better of him.

"Shut up!"

Lumine fell silent, and the entire group watched as Childe began to call her out. It pained him to do so, but his loyalty to the Tsaritsa practically demanded that he continue with this farce.

He said many things he truly wished he didn't say, many things he wanted to take back. But he was too far in. He stopped calling Lumine by her name, instead only calling her "Traveler", trying to distance himself. He mocked Lumine, as well as everyone else, calling them naïve for trusting a Fatui, of all people. Deep down, he was happy they trusted him. He wasn't upset with them, but himself for doing this.

Childe was waiting for Lumine to retort--to fight back and say something, and it looked like she was about to...

...until he said he was simply toying with Lumine's feelings.

Lumine didn't want to take that at face value, and Childe didn't want her to either. But, as soon as he said that, even though he may not have meant it, she shed a single tear.

Kaeya intervened, stating that Childe went too far. The Harbinger knew that... he knew that all too well. But, time could not rewind. He had already done enough damage.

He convinced himself that there was no turning back. If he was to fulfill his duty as a vassal of the Tsaritsa, he needed Lumine to hate him. He needed to crush all the lingering feelings that were held between the two of them. He needed to be the villain.

With that, he challenged Lumine to a battle. And thus, the Battle of Golden House was set in motion.

Phase 1 and 2: Childe Unleashed

He was completely ready for Lumine to throw everything at him, but instead, she stood still, not moving. Her eyes were devoid of the hatred he was hoping to see. It was... empty.

Instead, Kaeya, Chongyun, Xiangling, and Barbara hopped in. Noelle shielded the rest of the party, Lisa and Amber comforting Lumine, who was silently weeping in heartbreak. Everyone looked upon Childe with hatred, wondering why he would do such a thing.

Xiangling would crash into Childe, crossing blades and questioning why he was doing this. She believed he was happy with them, so why did they have to fight?

Chongyun, too, was upset. He may have come late to the party, but he saw how easily Childe fit in. In fact, while Chongyun was trying to train to get on par with the rest of the team, Childe would help out.

Barbara was one of the only rational ones, and she sensed there was more to the story. She tried to talk it out with Childe, saying that he didn't have to do this and there was no real reason they had to fight. She knew that Childe wasn't happy with this either.

But it was Kaeya that completely lost it.

People say that Kaeya is one of the chiller, cooler people in all of Teyvat. But, make no mistake... Kaeya is scary when he gets angered. When you push the wrong buttons, he will show absolutely no mercy.

While the three main fighters were throwing questions at him, trying to persuade him to stop it, Kaeya threw himself into the battle without second thought. He asked no questions--he only snarled at the one he once saw Lumine happy with.

Kaeya was supportive of Childe and Lumine when he saw how happy she was with him and how Childe seemed to be the same way. Kaeya understood Lumine didn't have her brother there like she used to, and he understood that same feeling, so he swore to try and be the brother that the both of them didn't have at the moment. Lumine was practically his little sister.

So when Childe betrayed her, when he broke her heart, Kaeya was ready to go absolutely apeshit.

Throughout the battle, even when Childe reached Phase 2, Kaeya would be the one throwing blow after blow at the Harbinger. It wasn't just physical hits, either. It included emotional daggers.

The two men would argue constantly, Kaeya threatening Childe and Childe laughing in response, mocking him.

"She trusted you--no, WE trusted you! I let the fact that you're a Fatui go because I thought you had some piece of humanity in you!"

"Then that was YOUR mistake! You just had to believe a Fatui all because, what? Your "surrogate sister" fell in love? Haha, don't make me laugh! Just because you didn't have a brother for half your life doesn't mean you need to project yourself onto the Traveler and become hers!"

The more their blades crossed, the more enraged Kaeya became. However, a third blade came into play and threw Kaeya's sword out of his hands.

It was Lumine.

Phase 3: Tartaglia's Foul Legacy

Lumine was standing still, her sword at her side. She stared at Childe with no emotion showing on her face. This was it, Childe thought. She finally hates me.

Childe held up his weapon, but before he could strike Kaeya and Lumine, she blocked it with her anemo skill, her feet digging into the floor as her geo skill kept her in place. Kaeya lept away, and all that was left on the battlefield was Childe and Lumine.

A large explosion of light occurred, but Childe simply appeared on the Exuvia, ready to grab the Gnosis. But when he discovered it wasn't there, he didn't know what to think.

Lumine stood still, and Childe wanted to end it there. But part of him delusionally screamed "No!", and instead pinned the blame on her.

It felt like Childe was slowly being torn apart on the inside. He wanted to stop it, apologize to Lumine and run away with her and their friends, but he needed to fulfill his duties.

In the end, Childe listened to his head. He unleashed his Foul Legacy transformation and destroyed the flooring below everyone, sending them to the lower platform.

Kaeya was going to step in, but Lumine game him a look. It was as if to say "This is between me and him." So, Kaeya backed off and retreated to the rest of the group.

Lumine and Tartaglia simply stared at each other. Tartaglia expected for Lumine to say something, but no words were spoken. Instead, she immediately rushed towards him.

Tartaglia expected to block it, ready to stop her in her tracks. He was ready to take her head-on and see her full power...

...then she drew two blades made of water.

Tartaglia was in shock. Lumine pulled a surprising move... she was using his weapon! It stunned him, even amazed him, but for some reason, it also broke his heart. He left behind the weapons he used when with Lumine's team, not wanting to use them in fear that it would stop him from using his full potential, but here they were... being used against them.

It was after she pulled those weapons out that Tartaglia's moves grew slower.

Many speculated this was because Tartaglia's armor was heavier and using up most of his power. However, Barbara understood. She saw the look in Childe's eyes when Lumine entered the arena. He seemed prideful, but his eyes said different. He, just like Lumine, didn't want to do this.

Tartaglia was holding back.

Tartaglia and Lumine kept clashing. Their powers were equal to each other, and Lumine kept switching between using her blade and the weapons once used by Childe himself. Even still, no words were exchanged. There was no expression on Lumine's face. Within the Golden House, all that could be heard was the sounds of blades clashing, lightning striking, wind howling, and water crashing.

The two of them fought hard. In the end, both were one hit away from being knocked out and losing. Tartaglia had one charged attack he had been storing up and was ready to unleash it.

"If I use it, she will obviously dodge it... and then she can beat me. Then, she will hate me like she was destined to."

Tartaglia lifted his blade into the air and, using his Delusion, summoned a large amount of Electro energy. It wasn't undodgable--in fact, Lumine could just jump back and strike him and the fight would end there.

Just as he was about to strike, however, Lumine instead rushed towards Tartaglia, rushing right past him. Instead of dodging, she ran straight into the attack. Tartaglia was shocked, staring at the Traveler being pierced by the lightning. Just as she was struck, she whispered softly the only words she had spoken throughout the entire fiasco...

"...if I knew it would've come to this, I wish I never fell in love with you."

Lumine, at last, fell.

Fallen

Childe dropped his weapon, staring at Lumine's body as it hit the ground. She was knocked out cold. He reached out his arm, only for Barbara to rush in and throw her arms out to her side, as if forbidding Childe to touch her.

Memories of the times that they spent together flowed through his mind. He couldn't move. He felt paralyzed. He wanted to pick up Lumine and apologize, say it was all a joke and he just wanted to test her strength, but he couldn't do that. He glabced at her body, lying on the cold floor, and understood.

He did this to her.

This was all his fault.

The words that Lumine said kept repeating in his head, echoing and resounding, practically taunting him. Just as he was caught in a trance, he felt a sharp pain in his abdomen.

Kaeya stabbed him through his armor.

Childe, his Foul Legacy transformation fading, then collapsed on the ground, returning back to normal.

Paimon and Kaeya confronted Childe, who expected Lumine to be the one to get upset with him instead of the Calvary Knight. The Fatui Harbinger looked at Lumine, who was being healed by both Diona and Barbara. He felt like saying sorry, but the angry looks from everyone told him one thing, and one thing only.

"You're a liar. You never could've been saved in the first place."

"Monsters can never be saved."

Childe, feeling he had nothing left, lifelessly continued forth with the plan that he had formulated weeks before he had joined Lumine. He was still waiting for her to wake up and hug him, beg him not to, or at least just try and stop him. He wanted someone to tell him that he could change.

But no one did.

With a heavy heart and a false smile on his face, he summoned Osial and escaped from the Golden House. He felt no reason to stay there...

He was now a lost cause.

Kaeya, still angered by Childe, wanted to chase after him, but a weary Lumine told him to worry about Liyue instead. Kaeya protested, saying they should nip the issue in the bud, but Barbara agreed.

Not only that, but she knew that Childe wanted them to stop Osial. She could tell... she saw it in the saddened look on his face.

Departure

The group, after fully healing, ventured to the Golden Chamber and fought against Osial alongside the adepti and the Qixing. They succeeded, naturally, with the Golden Chamber sadly sacrificed. The Qixing became the ruling power of Liyue, with the Adepti stepping down.

In the end, however, the mystery of the Gnosis and it's whereabouts still remained. Thus, the team ventured to the Northland Bank.

It was there that they saw Zhongli, Signora, and Childe.

Childe saw Lumine and was about to congratulate her, but Kaeya stood in the way, and Signora gave Childe a dirty look. He realized that, truly, what was done couldn't be undone. He had to continue lying through his teeth, just as he always did.

Childe made a false apology, saying that he truly was just a pawn and just doing his job. But, truth was that he meant to say that he didn't want to do it, and that he wanted Lumine to scold him and steal him away from the Fatui. Even then, though, Lumine didn't look him in the eye and fell silent.

The answers to the entire "Rex Lapis murder mystery" were solved, and Signora gained the Geo Archon's Gnosis. With that out of the way, Signora commanded Childe to head back to Snezhnaya with her. Reluctantly, he followed.

But, just before he could leave, he waited at the door and for Signora to keep walking just out of hearing distance. When she did, Childe turned around and looked Lumine in the eye. He gave a sad smile, and said one last sentence to her.

"...Lumine... I... really hope you didn't mean what you said back there..."

Lumine, taken aback, had no words to say. He responded to what she said back at the Golden House... did that mean that he...?

Before she could try and ask, Childe left, walking out of her sight, never looking back.

From then on, Childe and Lumine weren't reunited. All that remained with the both of them was the memories of the time they spent together before the fateful battle that tore them apart.

...that is, until Childe's Story Mission.

may i just say that this entire thing broke me

bruh. childe. Why did u do that

;;;

also the blows he made to kaeya's pride

"i know you and diluc aint close, dont go projecting on lumine"

fucking christ dude you needed LUMINE to hate you, not the fake pirate dude!

#genshin impact #genshin #headcanon #chilumi #childe #tartaglia #ajax #genshin childe #genshin traveler #traveler #lumine #this one...#THIS ONE is angst #CHILDE WHY #SHE LO V E D YOU???#AAAAAAAA #it gets somewhat happier when teucer gets involved tho dw #just deal with the consequences of childe being fatui

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everything-withered · 5 years ago

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love at first fuck AU MIT!tony wakes up with a sexy beefcake bucky

This plotbunny got dropped off in between my "things we said" prompts so I'm sorry it's late, I hope I made it worth the wait❤️

Also, like this ficlet is mature. I can't hide it under a "read more" because I'm doing this on mobile, but this is your warning!

"What's going on in that big beautiful brain of yours, darlin'?"

Tony. Does not sleep around.

Rendezvous in poorly lit club bathrooms don't count, and even if they did, it's not like Tony's signed up to join a monastery by attending MIT. Tony's had sex, okay? All kinds. They just. Usually don't involve beds. Or morning afters. Or hell, last longer than a couple of hours. Give or take. And, not to be a That Guy, but some encounters don't even involve names which. He knows how that sounds but while he's always tried to at least get some kind of identification, one is not always forthcoming when his chosen partners were much more concerned with getting the edge off than proper introductions.

It's MIT. It's high pressure shit. Tony gets it. He does. The culture is self-perpetuating, but not the point he's trying to make.

Wait.

What was the point he was trying to make?

A lightning bolt of pleasure shoots deliciously down his spine, and Tony shudders, thighs twitching where they're being held open in the grasp of a single metal-warm hand and another flesh one. At the tease of a hint of stubble, followed by the lush, wet slide against his hole; his dick weeps against the mattress, and Tony's arms almost give out from under him in his surprise.

He doesn't even bother to smother his whimper, and at that, the Sarge -- as Tony's taken to calling him considering the guy's costume at the frat party, and god, the things Tony's done to that man while he was still in uniform -- hums his approval; squeezing Tony's thighs as he spreads him wider.

For what feels like hours, Tony luxuriates in the attention; growing so pliant and giving that he's more sensation than person until he feels altogether too much. Before he's groaning, and rocking just shy of the mattress and begging brokenly, "Please, god. F-fuck - I'm gonna - Sarge, you gotta -"

Which only led to him working more insistently, sloppy and filthy until Tony is coming without a hand on his dick, and just a tongue in his ass. And it's. It's not fucking right. He isn't seventeen anymore, Tony internally scolds himself once he's been reduced to nothing but a puddle of molten muscle over the wet spot he'd made.

It's gross but like. Worth it.

Tony isn't actually complaining here.

Not when the Sarge hums again, trails lingering kisses up Tony's spine before slowly withdrawing.

And Tony hates this part.

He doesn't do morning afters. But morning sex before getting kicked out he's experienced plenty of when he'd been younger and more naive. And right now, he can barely remember his name, let alone gather his wits about him to get up and leave. The thought alone makes him want to cry. As does the sweet ache of several hours spent well loved.

Now he remembers why he doesn't sleep around. And oh, yeah! That was the point he was trying to make!

Because Tony, see, he's a genius. Always has been. But his speed is numbers, mechanics. Not people because people are hard. And Tony gets attached. And that's. Well. He usually avoids it by never going home with anyone to risk it. Except he'd made an exception this time because --

"Still with me, doll'?" The Sarge teases, gently easing Tony onto his back and off the wet spot, flashing those eyes at him, and Tony's weak, okay?

The Sarge chuckles, taking pity of Tony's lack of coherence, and starting to clean the mess off Tony with a wet cloth he must've gotten up to get, a task he's efficient enough at, though Tony doesn't miss the way the Sarge lingers: Gaze darkening and teeth worrying at his swollen lower lip; his mouth a tantalisingly distracting red that matches the impressive head from the piece of equipment that kicks at the Sarge's stomach for attention.

Like they're connected by the same string, Tony's gripping his hip and squeezing; looking up at the Sarge beneath a flutter of his lashes with an inviting swipe of his tongue across his lips -- his message is clear.

The Sarge purrs, "You're real sweet, darlin'."

Tony flushes pink at the praise; eyes brightening in anticipation as the Sarge complies; straddling his chest and feeding him his dick, murmuring breathlessly how pretty his darlin' looks; how good he is, how perfect and.

It's an hour, and another orgasm for Tony and a nap on top of that before he has to face the reality of leaving again.

He doesn't want to. But Tony's pretty sure his dick will break if they keep at it.

Besides. It's best not to overstay his welcome and risk ruining this by being. Well. Himself.

The Sarge had been nice enough to even let him leave without witnesses. Tony should be grateful, but he feels stupidly abandoned at waking up alone.

Just as he's propped himself up on an elbow to wonder where his clothes are, and whether he has time to sneak a shower before he does his walk of shame; the bedroom door opens and the Sarge is waltzing in.

He's not wearing the costume anymore, but he looks just as delectable in dark jeans and a t-shirt.

Before Tony can apologize for not having left yet, the smell of coffee coming from the two styrofoam cups in each of the Sarge's hands, hits him, and Tony's staring at him blankly.

For all his bravado earlier, the smile the Sarge flashes him is shy, and he's saying, "Sorry, I ran out; I hope you weren't awake for too long. I didn't have much of anything in my apartment and I just figured." He wiggles the takeaway coffee in explanation, then, "I...uh, didn't know how you took it, hope black is okay? Or, I...can go out and get sugar and milk? It'll take like ten minutes though, the bodega around the corner is closed so I had to go around the block, but I can --"

"Marry me," Tony blurts.

And. That's. Uh. Has Tony mentioned that he's bad at the people thing? Because.

At the Sarge's stunned expression, Tony stammers, "No, wait. Uh. Just. God, ignore me. I'm pretty sure you broke my brain with the whole you-know...and coffee's really good. Thank you. Thanks -"

"James."

Still flustered and trying to painfully collect himself not to totally ruin everything, Tony doesn't catch on, "Wha?"

"James," the Sarge repeats. With a wry smile, he adds, "Figured you should know the name of the guy you're marrying."

And that. That works for Tony.

#winteriron #buckyxtony

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frumfrumfroo · 5 years ago

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I wrote a thing (Leia and Ben reunion angst)

Lamentations

Leia Organa hadn't really planned on getting old.

Not that she’d particularly expected to die young, either. The possibility (even probability) was certainly very real considering her tireless campaign to put herself in the thick of imminent danger, but logical reasoning about the likely outcome was never any match for her ambitions in life. Sheer bravado and the arrogance of youth had always been more than adequate to the task of pushing the reality of death from her mind. Even when fear or doubt got a grip, she had taken for granted that her rude good health and unshakeable self-assurance would continue in perpetuity as long as she managed to survive.

She hadn’t counted on a day dawning when she could no longer take matters into her own hands if need be. When tenacity might not be enough.

Now, hobbling down a corridor with the cane she hated but couldn’t yet do without no matter what her pride said, finding it slightly hard to catch her breath, she felt the years like anchors on every limb. She felt the weight of her choices pressing her shoulders down from their habitual imperious uprightness into an aged stoop.

She was on her way to meet her own son for the first time as a grown man and the harm she had done him, her failures as a mother, trailed her like a colossal shadow. She sensed the cold presence of the past looming over her, its encroaching guilt nipping at her heels, and it made her feel more ancient than the deepest rivers of the Force. As if her bones were formed from brittle primordial rock, apt to shatter with a touch.

If Han were here he’d cut her down to size for thinking she was the one keeping the whole universe together, for trying to bear every burden, fight every good fight. He’d depreciate himself and distract her from her navel gazing, bounce her back into reality and remind her not everything depended on her. But small things did. Smaller things than she ever remembered to notice. He’d kiss her on the forehead and forgive her for her self-importance. Han had kept her human when single-minded, hotheaded determination threatened to turn her into some kind of overbearing political droid.

But he wasn’t here and never would be again.

When the girl, Rey, repeated her story of what had happened on Starkiller Base, this time after her sojourn on Ahch-to, and in much more detail than before… It was the first time Leia wondered if she ought to blame herself a lot more personally than she ever had, if it were her fears and hurts, her emotional retaining wall which created an opportunity for Snoke. Perhaps it wasn’t so inevitable, the enemy wasn’t so crafty, and she had simply abdicated her post as guardian. Every far-flung, bleeding heart responsibility she’d voluntarily taken on in her life- some she’d deliberately snatched out of other, more cautious hands- and she’d shunned the one which had the strongest, most natural claim on her. It was the one job she was worried she couldn’t do.

He’d been so small when she’d pulled his childish, clutching fingers away from the folds of her dress and pressed him firmly towards his uncle. He’d been only just as tall as her chest, gangly and skinny in the aftermath of his first growth spurt. His eyes had looked huge in his slim face, enormous and soulful pools of hazel gold and brown. Pleading. She remembered putting her hands on his shoulders and smoothing back his hair as she looked at him and tried not to notice the sheen of unshed tears, the trembling of his lower lip. She’d decided this was best for him and so she had turned a deaf ear to any potential entreaties, unwilling to be swayed from wisdom by sentiment. It had to be done. For his own good, she had to pretend this didn’t hurt. She couldn’t waver.

All her life she hadn’t had time for her sorrows, all her life she could ill-afford the luxury of indulging her feelings. When was it time? When had she fought for long enough?

When she won. That was always the answer. She’d rest, she’d have a life, when she had made a universe worth living in. When she’d made things right. What could be more important?

“There’s always some new crusade, though, isn’t there, sweetheart?”

Han’s voice, sharp on the endearment which he’d always used equally often in chastisement as in affection, laden with barely concealed hurt. She heard his pain, but she chose not to listen to it.

She’d thought there’d be time to make it up to him. She thought they would wait for her, her family, that her life would wait for her.

Her step faltered when she found herself standing outside the room in the med suite where Ben was recuperating. He was mobile now, his wounds were closed and his ribs were healing. He’d needed a lot of rest, more for mental and spiritual exhaustion than physical damage. He’d become a conduit in the Force the like of which was only heard of in legend and there had been some question if he would survive. She’d kept abreast of his condition since she’d been told of his arrival three days ago; he’d been in her every thought and breath and prayer, but she couldn’t visit. There was too much to do, too many people to oversee and decisions to make. She had plenty of excuses to keep avoiding the reckoning.

Reportedly Rey hadn’t left his bedside once, never further from him than the fresher in the corner of the room. Poe said she was like a wild animal with a cub, hovering protectively over his prone body and questioning anyone who wanted to get near him. She’d maintained a death grip on his hand which only loosened slightly when she fell asleep in her chair at his side. Her own injuries were tended by a droid, under protest and without anaesthetic.

Leia leaned against the corridor wall and tried for what felt like the latest in several trillion attempts to come to terms with what Rey had told her about Luke. About Ben.

And she knew she deserved to blame herself. She knew. If he’d thought he could come home, he would have, and who had made him think he couldn’t? Han had fought for him and she’d have to tell him that no matter how painful it was to admit, she’d have to make sure he understood it wasn’t his father’s idea that Anakin’s blood flowed with latent corruption- not until she’d convinced him it did. Not until her secret festering fears clouded over the dawning love and hope they’d sacrificed so much to have.

The supreme necessity of forgiveness, of giving it and receiving it both, had become the hardest lesson she would ever learn. Her famously indomitable righteous anger had perished with a whimper, suffocated itself in weariness and despair; it was only fear that lived forever. It was fear which chained love, shackled hope, and bound the soul in darkness. And forgiveness drove out fear.

If Ben could forgive her, it seemed a mere pittance to forgive him.

When she rounded the corner the kids were silent but clearly communicating, the power of their connection like a subtle crackle in the Force which raised the hairs on the back of her neck. Rey was sitting on the edge of his cot, their heads very close together and her hands clasping both of his. Leia absorbed Rey’s mood first because it didn’t hurt nearly so much to look at Rey. The smile on her lips and the contentment in her eyes spoke of a peace the girl had never shown before. There was a confidence about her now, a knowingness. Leia had sensed she was searching for something from the moment she’d first seen her, noticed the void she was trying to fill. Leia had an eye for pressure points in people. She’d made use of Rey’s in hope that it would help her reach Luke. There might be an apology owed in that quarter too, but all thoughts of Rey vanished when Ben noticed her presence.

His head turned towards her and his face froze in an expression between horror and anguish, his pleading eyes just as she remembered them. He had a lot of his father in him, so much that it was striking, and a stab of agony lodged itself between her ribs that felt like her heart being pierced. But there was also so much of her in those eyes, in the slope of his jaw and the shape of his chin that she almost felt as if she were looking into a kaleidoscope reflection of her younger self. The certain, unshakable self she still half expected to see in the mirror before she turned on the vanity lights. He was a perfect marriage of her features and Han’s, with his broad cheekbones and regal profile, his full mouth and deep set eyes.

It was probably because he seemed in that moment somehow both a mirror and the spitting image of her husband that it was the shame which hit her first. She couldn’t help but spin around and cover her mouth to try to swallow a cry.

There was a tiny gasping noise from behind her and then Rey’s voice murmuring something. She couldn’t focus on the words, couldn’t understand what was being said, but she knew the sound of pain was from Ben. He thought she couldn’t bear to look at him.

And she couldn’t, but not for the reasons he must be imagining.

She gathered her dignity and forced herself to look again. He was clutching his blankets where they pooled at his waist, his long black hair falling in soft waves which framed the drawn pallor of his face very starkly. He looked ill and frightened. Vulnerable, a child again.

“Ben,” she choked out. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, my darling boy. I’m so sorry.”

She didn’t know how long she’d been weeping into her hands when someone began to gently pry them away from her face, but her cheeks were wet and her eyes stung. She raised her gaze only to be confronted with a wide expanse of chest covered in the soft, oversized hospital smock which was standard issue for checked-in patients. She looked up, and up, and up to meet his eyes and couldn’t remember ever feeling so small in her life.

Leia was a short woman and used to fighting to get the world on her level, but this was her baby. She’d carried him in her belly, held him in her hands, she’d last seen him when she still had to crouch to speak to him eye to eye. His once little fingers now dwarfed her entire arm where he was holding her wrist and he towered over her to such an extent that the top of her head barely reached the middle of his sternum. Her baby was grown up and she hadn’t seen him in person since he was ten. Since their heights had been the inverse of this tableau. He’d become a man and she’d been there for none of it. She’d chosen not to be.

Ben was leaning down, studying her with trepidatious concern, and she couldn’t help but reach up and touch his face. She put his hair behind his ear and cradled his cheek in her palm, feeling the living warmth of his skin and the tickling sensation of a hot tear which rolled down from the corner of his eye and under her thumb.

“Look how beautiful you are,” she said, almost without meaning to.

He ducked towards her hand, hiding behind his hair.

She wrapped her arms around him and he folded into her, dropping nearly to his knees so he could hug her back, so tightly that it almost hurt. He was very strong, the harsh conditioning of a footsoldier obvious in the broad muscles of his back beneath her hands, and it hurt to think how badly he must have needed to be, how much he’d needed to rely on himself and his ability to fight. How he’d never been safe anywhere from the moment he was born.

“I’m sorry,” she said again. He sobbed hard into her shoulder, as if the words had broken a dam inside him. Deep, wracking sobs that shook his whole body and made her hold him as close as she could and whisper to him the way she had when he was a fussing infant, when the nightmares she never dared to tell her brother about had gripped him in their malingering claws. When the fear of darkness which ended up swallowing their little family encroached too close. “Shhsh, shhsh, it’s all right now.”

His voice cracked when he finally managed to tell her, “It’s me- I'm sorry; it’s me, it’s me, it’s me. How can you stand it, how can you stand it?”

Leia suddenly found herself meeting Rey’s penetrating gaze over his head. If there was judgement there, it was less harsh than it justly could have been.

“I should have protected you. I didn’t protect you.”

“Mother,” he croaked with enormous difficulty, “I killed him.”

Her stomach rolled over and her vision blurred with fresh tears, but she held him with her, gripping the fabric of his shirt with white-knuckle intensity. “He loved you. I love you. I’m so sorry.”

His face collapsed like wet linen and he slid to the floor at her feet, burying his head in her skirts. There was a mantra of apologies and self-recriminations amongst the desperate sobs and she lowered a shaking hand to stroke his hair.

“Ben, don’t. Please. Please don’t. Your father knew, he understood.”

Red eyes peeked up at her, his chin was trembling and those same fingers were clutching her skirts again and she wished she could go back to that day and tell herself her child needed her more than the galactic senate ever would. He needed honesty, his mother and his family, not a comfortable lie, a Jedi master or a carefully constrained destiny. She wished she’d seen him as clearly then as she did now, that she hadn’t been too afraid to look. She wished Han could be here to celebrate beating the odds one last time.

“If he could, he’d tell you this was the fairest trade he ever made.”

#basically a companion piece to my earlier fic #because fuck tros Leia didn't need to die and everyone killing her all the time is bullshit #this really isn't what I wanted? I don't know that the voice is right at all? idk angst because I'm mega depressed #is it cathartic at least?#fanfiction

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ashuribbon · 5 years ago

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I decided to try the “Read More” thing on the ask again, and it appears Tumblr isn’t planning on fixing it anytime soon. What a shame, this ain’t the Tumblr I knew.

Well, anon, I guess we can finally bring more angst into the AU!! I’ve pretty much wanted to talk about how much of a jerkface Dark Enchantress really is to poor Pirate (and some Moonlight mom and Pirate son things).

Unenchanted AU HCs under the cut!! I apologize to those who cannot see it because of the mobile version!

- While we don’t know about Pirate’s other relationships, other than he seems to always be hostile towards anyone unless it’s someone he is in good terms with (ex. Yogurt Cream, Alchemist, and Salt Cookie). In this case, let’s just say his relationship with Dark Enchantress falls into the Tension/Rival category for a plethora of reasons: The moment she resurrected him and made him able to become a ghost, he became an outcast to the other cookies and lost respect from Salt Cookie. It’s said that Enchantress had destroyed their bond by possessing Pirate when Salt tried to comfort him one night. The next morning, Salt was gone, and the crewmates saw Pirate weeping as he held a photo of him and Salt at the docks.

- Despite the very fact Moonlight Cookie and Pirate Cookie being related is kept a secret, the only people who know of the secret are the elemental legendary cookies (meaning Wind Archer, Sea Fairy, etc), Alchemist (I can imagine she found out during their adventure to Yogurca), and somewhat Cream Puff. Dark Enchantress also knows of the secret, unfortunately, and plans on spilling it out to the Cookie Kingdom. If you all want me to go into detail for each of them, don’t be afraid to ask!

- When Pirate Cookie was very little, Moonlight Cookie told him to hide in his room and not come out, as Dark Enchantress was arriving today. During their little tea party, Dark Enchantress asked Moonlight if it’s true she “has a child wandering her castle that has her eyes.” Moonlight Cookie immediately had to lie to her and say she never had a child, only to find out Dark Enchantress heard Wind Archer and Fire Spirit discuss about him. That very moment was one of the reasons why Pirate Cookie was left to become a full pirate in the first place.

- Pirate Cookie, despite all that happened, actually cares a lot for the moon mom. He does yearly visits and stays for about a week to talk with her and make her not worry about him much. Everytime he comes and visits, Cream Puff is left to wonder what secret they both have, so she usually follows the both of them around to eavesdrop what they’re saying. She also questions why Moonlight calls him by [AU SPOILER] instead of just “Pirate.”

Aaand that’s all I got so far!!

#COOKIE RUN #dark enchantress cookie #Pirate Cookie #Unenchanted AU #Shush It Asher #Ash Pone Arts

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unfolded73 · 6 years ago

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Take Me Away with You (1/2) - millian ff

My take on Milah and Killian’s early days. This part ~5k words. Rated Explicit.

This fic includes descriptions of alcohol abuse, depression, and suicidal thoughts. It arose out of a desire to write about Milah's state of mind when she left Rumple and Bae, so she's in a very dark place. I’m also picturing Killian as the young man he would have been at this point and not quite the way Colin looked in flashbacks.

If you’re reading this on mobile, I apologize for the wacky line spacing. Feel free to go read on ao3 and then come back and reblog here. :)

~~~~~~~~~

“Take me away with you.” All it took were five simple words to change her life forever. Five words she spoke on impulse with no foresight, no planning. Five words that tilted the whole world on its axis, although no one knew that then. Least of all her.

~*~

Sometimes Milah tried to tell herself that she had loved Rumpelstiltskin once: that her love had died on the vine because of the shame he brought down on them and the financial hardship that followed. But in her more honest moments, even before Killian Jones awoke her frozen heart, she knew that wasn’t true. The fact was, she had probably never loved him. Liked him, yes. Thought he’d be a decent father, yes. Thought he’d provide an exit from the home where her father drank too much and hit her, well, that was the crux of the matter, wasn’t it? A woman desperate for escape can’t always be choosy about the mechanism of that escape. Rumpelstiltskin was her escape.

She’d never been someone who could keep her feelings from being written clearly across her face. She could barely keep them from spilling out of her mouth most of the time. Alone in their tiny hut, Rumpelstiltskin out trying to sell his wool or begging for scraps to keep them fed, she would put the baby down for a nap and then collapse on her own bed, her teeth clenched tight as if to try to trap in the words. But it wasn’t invective against her husband that she muttered into her pillow, tears leaking from her eyes.

“I hate myself,” she’d whisper in those moments, wishing she could wail it at the top of her lungs. Imagining finding a high cliff and hurling herself from the edge of it. “I hate myself.”

Then Rumple would come home with a meager few coins or a loaf of stale bread, and the self-loathing monster she carried would wheel around and lash out in his direction, perhaps just for a change of pace. “How can we go on living like this?” she’d ask. “How can you be so useless?”

Milah’s days dragged on as her baby grew into a boy, her box of paints and charcoals shoved in a corner for longer and longer stretches. Most of the time she felt like she was wading through treacle, constantly tired, returning to bed at even the slightest hint of illness. She had traced the wood grain of the wall next to her bed so many times with her fingernail that the softer wood was eroding. It left a slight indentation, giving the natural grain a three-dimensional structure. The artist in her appreciated it, even if it was evidence of her boredom and discontent.

Bae had the limitless energy of the young, and only his childlike innocence and wonder were capable of raising her from her mental stupor during that time. She would walk down to the pond with Baelfire’s small hand clutching her own and sit on the bank, watching as he stood in the shallows and tried to catch darting minnows in his fists. Those were the good days, when warm sunshine burned away the cobwebs from her brain, and she could recognize that she’d done at least one good thing in her life, bringing this child into the world. On days like those, she thought she might even want another baby, if only they could manage to scrape enough money together that another mouth to feed wouldn’t be too burdensome.

That was before Rumple sold away their potential second child, which was the beginning of the end. That was before she met Killian.

Even in the midst of her desperate worry about Baelfire’s illness, she felt a pull toward that charming man in black and red who defended her honor so easily, who gracefully took a seat next to her as he offered her a drink. He smelled of leather and rum, the warm tavern causing sweat to gather in the depression at the base of his throat. She didn’t think she’d seen anyone in her entire life, man or woman, who was as… beautiful as he was, for lack of a better word, and she found it genuinely startling. Perhaps she couldn’t forget her worries (and shouldn’t, not when her son’s life hung in the balance), but she was momentarily distracted from them by this man. This man who kissed the back of her hand for just a moment too long but politely withdrew when she told him she was married. When she closed her eyes that night, it was his blue eyes she saw as she drifted off to sleep.

It was weeks before saw him a second time.

Milah’s ears would perk up whenever there was a whisper in the market about pirates in port, but the men she saw in town were grizzled and dirty, missing teeth and limbs, a far cry from the handsome Captain Jones. Then the day came when she was carrying a load of washing -- menial work for a meager few pennies, but at least it would put some food on the table -- and she spotted him across the street. She dreaded that he would turn and look her way and see her laboring under her heavy burden of laundry: sweaty, disheveled, her hair a mess. Not that he should want to look upon her under the best of circumstances; she was too old and too plain for a man like that. Milah put her head down and walked faster. She resolved to stop looking for him and stop thinking about him.

Her resolve lasted about five hours.

Knowing he was probably still in port, that night she put on her nicest blouse and tamed her hair and walked down to the tavern, if for no other reason than to see his face again. There he was, laughing and drinking with his crew, but he continually scanned the room and he noticed her within a few minutes of her arrival. Clapping a crew member on the back, he approached with a wide smile. Milah’s heart galloped.

“I was hoping I’d see you again,” he said, standing just a bit closer to her than was proper, swaying from side to side on his booted feet.

“I didn’t think you’d remember.”

He seemed genuinely surprised at that, and as the flirtatious smirk fell away she was struck by how young he was. Younger than her, to be sure.

“Of course I remember, how could I not?”

She didn’t know what to say to that. She felt so plain next to him, the embroidery on his vest finer than anything she had ever owned, the dark lines under his eyes dramatic and sexy. Why did he notice her at all?

He swayed closer still. “I’ve thought of you often during my lonely nights at sea.” An eyebrow waggle completed the innuendo, and she found herself laughing. Milah couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed.

“Can I buy you a drink?” he asked.

Milah shrugged. “Sure, why not?”

~*~

They met a few more times in the tavern after that, but there was nothing but a harmless flirtation between them at first. He taught her to cheat at dice and cards and to drink rum, always with a smile on his lips that made her think about what kissing him would feel like. When she was in the tavern with him, she felt like a different person. She felt like someone who was adept at holding the attention of a man. She almost felt happy.

But Killian’s visits to their port were separated by absences of days or weeks, and during those times the monster on her shoulder became bolder. Telling her how worthless she was every time she couldn’t muster the energy to play with Bae. Telling her that her drawings were a waste of time and energy and money, canvases an extravagance that she didn’t deserve. Converting her self-loathing into a fuel to feed the flames of her antipathy toward her husband, and then berating her when their arguments made Bae cry or shout at them to stop.

Liquor made the monster quiet down, she had learned. And it wasn’t like she had to spend any of her own meager coin in the tavern, not when a certain pirate was in port. A few drinks and she could feel the monster coiled around her shoulders drift off to sleep. The release was a kind of euphoria. She would gamble with the boys -- Killian always spotted her a stake and covered her debts if she lost, but let her keep her winnings if she didn’t -- until the table began to swim in her vision and she leaned too heavily against the Killian’s shoulder, unable to hold her head up any longer. Her memories of him seeing her home (not all the way to her door, of course, but close enough that he could ensure she got inside safely) were jagged and fractured with drunkenness, but she knew he never took any liberties, even when she stumbled and let her hand drag across the back of his leather pants.

She would pay for her behavior the next day, often too sick to get out of bed. Rumple would take Bae with him into town, perhaps to give her some peace but more likely so he wouldn’t see his mother retching into a bucket. And of course her monster would awaken, refreshed from its sleep, and tear into her for being a drunk and a layabout. The old images of jumping from a cliff would return, and Milah would lie still in her sweat-soaked bed, too empty to even weep.

~*~

“May I walk you home, Milah?” Killian’s elbow pointed in her direction. The tavern was closing, but somehow she was less inebriated than usual. Killian himself had filled up her senses, distracted her so completely with his charm and his flirting that for once she forgot to drink herself into senselessness.

“You can walk me anywhere else but home.”

He arched an eyebrow at her as if he was trying to parse her meaning.

“Take me to see your ship. I’ve never even seen your ship,” she said, desperate not to return to the dirty hovel where she lived. Not really thinking about the implications of her request.

He did as she asked, but she could sense the tension rolling off of him as they walked through the night to the harbor. The first thing she spotted were the masts with their furled sails against the backdrop of the night sky, a full moon impossibly bright behind them.

As they walked up the gangplank, she could make out brightly colored paint along the gunwale and on the hull, yellow and red and blue. “It’s beautiful,” Milah remarked.

“Aye, that she is.”

“Sorry, ‘she’s’ beautiful.”

He smiled at her, leading her up some stairs to the large wheel which she presumed he used to steer. She could imagine him out on the open ocean, his dark hair tousled by the wind as he gave orders to his crew and bore down on another vessel. She dragged her fingers over the wooden knobs of the wheel, picturing his long fingers gripping them. “Is it difficult, sailing?”

Killian shrugged. “There’s a lot to learn, I suppose. How to deploy each sail to get the most out of the prevailing winds, navigating using the stars, reading the weather… but I grew up on ships.”

He had never spoken to her of his childhood before, and she was suddenly desperate to learn more about his beginnings. “Was your father a… a pirate?”

“My father was too much of a coward to be a pirate,” he muttered, turning and lifting a hatch. “Come below, darling, and let’s have a nightcap.” He descended the steep steps before her, turning and reaching a hand up to assist her. Milah paused. She knew what nightcap was often code for. Milah might be a lot of things -- a drunk and a gambler and a poor excuse for a wife and mother -- but she wasn’t an adulterer. She could go now, and perhaps Killian would be disappointed, but she didn’t think he would hold it against her. He wasn’t that kind of man. She could go home where she belonged, with her husband and her son.

Taking his hand, she allowed Killian to help her down the stairs.

The chamber was dark but he quickly lit a lantern, revealing a fairly spacious room. There were cabinets filled with books and trinkets, a large table, and a bunk in the corner. The white walls reflected the lamp light in shades of yellow, giving the space a homey feel.

“This is nice. Larger than I imagined,” she said as he pulled a decanter of wine from a shelf.

“Well, I am the captain.”

Milah flinched. He was the captain, and a man like him could have his pick of women in every port. Likely did have his pick of women in every port. She flushed with embarrassment at her notion that he wanted to bed her. Perhaps he merely wanted to drink with her, his matronly friend whom he felt sorry for because she was destitute and lonely. Perhaps he was at a loss for what to do with her now that she was in his chamber, and was trying to figure out how to get rid of her without hurting her feelings.

Killian handed her a cup of wine and clinked his own cup against it. She sipped from the cup, feeling awkward, regretting that she’d come here. Regretting that she’d ever met Killian Jones. Killian was the only thing in her life that made her feel anything, but she wasn’t sure if her current discomfort was worth it.

“I’d best be getting home,” she said, and she watched Killian’s face fall.

“To your husband,” he said flatly.

“Yes.”

He walked over to the windows, looking out into the night. “Do you love him?”

“Does it matter?”

Killian turned and met her gaze. “Aye, it matters a great deal to me, love.”

She tried to ignore her pounding heart. “Why?”

Approaching her slowly, his lips quirked up in a half-smile. “Do you not wonder why I can’t seem to stop myself from returning to this port, Milah?”

She didn’t know how to answer, and she swallowed on a suddenly dry mouth.

He put his large hand on her arm. “I can’t stop thinking about you. I can’t stop dreaming about you.” His eyelashes fluttered as he dropped his eyes to the floor. “If there’s no chance for me, then please just put me out of my misery now, love.”

She wasn’t sure who initiated the kiss. At first it was just an imperceptible lean toward him, a sway into close orbit, and then suddenly his mouth was on hers. It was a tiny thing, the touch of one human’s flesh to another’s, and it was everything, an explosion of sensation and emotion the likes of which she had never experienced.

“Stay with me tonight,” he whispered against her lips, and she was so fuzzy with desire that she couldn’t quite process what he was saying. Without even realizing how it happened she found herself seated on the edge of his bunk, her skirts bunched up as he stood between her legs, his mouth everywhere on her neck as his hands cupped her breasts.

Even as they undressed frantically between heated kisses, she was certain this couldn’t really be happening. It felt like a daydream. Surely this worldly young man couldn’t want her this way. And if he somehow had convinced himself that he did, the sight of her body with its blemishes and stretch marks would put him off.

Milah kept thinking this even as his naked body covered hers, his desire evident in the thrust of his cock against her. Only when he was inside her did it click in her head with sudden clarity. She was fucking another man.

He was beautiful above her, dark hair on sun-kissed skin, his toned muscles flexing and voice breaking on each push into her. It felt good, a gentle, diffuse pleasure, the not-quite-enough pleasure that sex had always been for her. She clung to his shoulders and watched as Killian lost himself in his body’s demands.

“Gods… Milah,” he gasped.

“Don’t come inside me,” she said. “You can’t--”

“Aye,” he grunted, seeming to understand. She brought one hand up above her head and braced herself on the wall as his hips pistoned into her again and again until the last possible moment when he pulled out quickly. Two pumps of his fist and he groaned, his seed landing harmlessly on her stomach.

The gentle kisses he pressed to her shoulder after he’d cleaned them up and settled at her side should have been comforting, but they just made her feel worse. She didn’t deserve such tenderness, not after breaking her marriage vows so completely.

“I need to go home,” she whispered.

“Not yet,” Killian said, his voice husky, his hand trailing over her skin and making her shiver. “Don’t go just yet.”

The simple affection made tears well behind her eyes, something that in and of itself was remarkable; she’d started to think herself incapable of the genuine emotion that could bring about tears.

Shaking her head, Milah rose from the bed and began to quickly pull her clothes back on. “I’m sorry.”

~*~

By the time Milah returned to town the next day, the masts of the Jolly Roger were gone from the harbor. As she moved through the streets, she felt as if everyone’s eyes were on her, that they all must be whispering that she’d become a pirate’s whore. Never mind that the fact that she drank and gambled with pirates was enough to make people whisper -- now that she was guilty of the crime she had likely been accused of some time ago, now she felt the full weight of their stares. A part of her wanted to turn and scream at anyone within earshot that yes, she’d fucked the pirate captain. And that being his whore was preferable to the life she’d been consigned to.

It was weeks before Killian returned, empty, grey weeks through which she sleep-walked. Milah would lie awake at night, closing her eyes only to find her thoughts plagued with what his mouth had tasted like, what the drag of his skin had felt like against hers. She started to believe that once he’d bedded her, Killian didn’t plan to return. Perhaps he only cared for her as much as a she had been a conquest, a wife and mother seduced away from her home and into his bed. Now he had no further use of her.

She became so convinced of this that when she heard whispers that his ship had returned, Milah didn’t bother to go to the tavern. The next morning, however, his cabin boy approached her on the street as she made her way to the market.

“Captain wants you to come to his cabin, missus.”

Milah’s heartbeat sped up, but at the same time she felt a flare of anger for being summoned as if she had nothing better to do than wait upon Captain Jones.

“I have errands to tend to,” she responded.

“Then come as soon as you are able, if it please you.”

She waited until dusk, late enough that she wouldn’t be seen boarding a pirate ship in broad daylight, but early enough that he wouldn’t be out carousing yet. The pirate standing watch at the gangplank allowed her to board with a nod and a relieved smile. Another escorted her below.

Killian swept her into his arms immediately. “Milah, my love, I missed you.”

She held herself tense, uncertain how to feel. “You did?”

“Aye.” He pulled away a fraction but continued to hold her. “We had to sail many leagues to find a worthy target this time. Finally I was able to run down a royal galleon. It took us days to follow it into the straits so that we could overtake them without being outmaneuvered. I wanted to return right away, but the winds were against us.” Shooting her a sheepish smile, he added, “Still, at least my ship’s coffers are full now. I’ve been returning to this port so often lately, I knew I had to find a rich prize on this outing or risk a mutiny.”

“Why have you? Been returning to this port so often lately?”

He reached up and stroked her cheek. “I think you know the answer to that, love.” Then his eyes widened. “Ah, I just remembered!” He let go of her and turned back to his shelves, unlocking a safe with a key he’d pulled from his pocket. He removed a small bundle with some reverence, unwrapping the cloth to reveal a pair of large, turquoise earrings. He held them out to her. “A gift for you.”

Milah gaped at them. “Those are worth more than everything else I own put together.”

“All the more reason I want you to have them. Wear them, or sell them if the money would do you more good than the jewelry.”

“Killian, I can’t accept a gift like this from you.”

“Of course you can.” He took her hand and turned it palm up, putting the earrings in her hand. “Take them. I want you to.” She met his eyes. “Why?”

“Because I thought you deserved something nice.” He gave her a self-deprecating smile. “Because I saw them and thought of you. Because I’m very fond of you, Milah.”

Closing her fist, she tucked the earrings into the pocket of her skirt. “Thank you.”

He took her in his arms again. “Can you stay a while?” he murmured, leaning in for a kiss.

The sex was much like before, and though she wanted it, wanted him, she found it no more satisfying than the first time. Milah knew there were women who claimed to enjoy sex as much as men, and she’d always thought that Rumple was the reason that she got more enjoyment from her own hand than she ever did from their coupling. Now she had to face the fact that she was the problem, that this was one more way that she was deficient. Either that or her pirate lover was no more adept than her husband.

Killian trailed a hand over her abdomen and Milah twitched, still keyed up and sensitive. He seemed oblivious to the way her body was still aching for release. “Can you stay the night this time?” he asked.

Milah imagined Bae waking up for a cup of water in the wee hours of the morning and finding her gone. She shook her head. “I can’t. My son…”

Giving her a sad smile, Killian murmured, “You’re a good mother.”

Pulling away, Milah shot him a look of disbelief. “Is that a joke? I’m a terrible mother. You can tell on account of the fact that I’m having an affair with a pirate.”

A quick, inappropriate grin flashed across his face before he could suppress it. “So that makes you a bad wife, perhaps, but I can tell you love your son.”

“Love isn’t enough.” She chuckled darkly. “My son would be better off if I were dead and gone, anyway.”

Now it was Killian’s turn to pull away. “Why would you say that?”

“Because, Killian! I’m worthless! I drink too much and I don’t--” She sat up and began to pull her clothes back on with hurried, jerky motions. “I don’t have the energy to do the most basic things for my family. And at least if I were gone, my son wouldn’t have to see Rumple and me fighting all the time. He’d be happier in the long run.”

“I’m sure that’s not true, Milah.”

She sighed heavily. “I assure you, it is.”

~*~

Milah followed Rumple and Bae back home from the tavern like a recalcitrant child. It had been a low blow by her husband, bringing Bae to the tavern to guilt her into coming home. She squeezed her eyes shut as a flood of shame coursed through her, stumbling slightly in the doorway of their pitiful, one-room hut. While Rumple put the boy to bed in his cot behind a simple partition, Milah flopped down on her bed. Misery and drink weighed her down like twin stones tied to her ankles. The room was too hot, the fire stoked too high, and sweat broke out on her face as she lay there, staring at the ceiling.

Milah reached up and touched the turquoise earrings that dangled from her earlobes. Any other husband would have asked her where she got them. Any other husband would have demanded to know what she’d done in exchange for such a gift. Any other husband, faced with evidence of a wife’s infidelity, would have struck her, but Rumple would never do that, even if it was what she deserved. That’s what her father had often told her.

When Rumple emerged from putting Bae to bed he brought up the ogre war again, asking in a soft voice if she truly wished he’d died. She felt a sudden surge of pity and something almost like affection for him. It wasn’t him that should have died, this sad, cowardly man who was so kind and patient with their son. She was the one who didn’t deserve to live in this world. She begged, not for the first time, for them to leave the village and start over. Perhaps the monster who plagued her wouldn’t follow her to a new place. She could remake herself into a better person, she thought desperately. Other people would respect them, and she could become the wife and mother she’d once imagined she could be. More importantly, the temptation of a certain pirate’s bed would be removed from her life.

Rumple refused her, as he had many times before, and said they could be a family here, in their home.

“At least try. If not for me… then for Bae,” he said.

As always, Rumple seemed to find the idea of venturing outside their village so terrifying that he’d rather they spend the rest of their lives as pariahs, as outcasts, barely able to scrape together enough coin to survive. Milah closed her eyes and pretended to sleep.

When Rumple had finally fallen asleep at her side, his soft snores filling her ears, Milah stole out of bed. She crept over to Baelfire’s cot, watching his small chest rise and fall in slumber, his innocent face relaxed. A tear rolled down her cheek.

“I’m sorry, Bae. I’m sorry I couldn’t be the mother you need.”

By the time she got down to the docks, the moon had set but dawn had yet to hint at its arrival, and the water in the harbor looked black as pitch. Milah took another swig from the bottle of cheap corn mash liquor she’d swiped on her way from a man passed out in an alley, continuing to stare down into the depths. She wondered how far it was to the bottom. She wondered if it would be better to step off the dock or to jump. She wondered if she could drink enough to dampen any instinct toward self preservation that might kick in once she was actually drowning.

She wondered if her body would float to the surface after, to be dragged out by the townsfolk and gossiped over.

“Milah?”

Swinging around at the sound of her name, she stumbled, her foot slipping on the wet boards.

“Whoa, love,” Killian said, darting forward and grabbing her arm. He pulled away from the edge of the water. “Take care before you fall in.”

“That was the idea,” she mumbled, jerking out of his grasp.

“What was the idea?”

She opened her mouth, but she couldn’t bring herself to tell him what she’d been contemplating. Instead what she said was, “Take me away with you.”

“What?”

Milah clicked her teeth together, shocked at her own utterance. Any doubts she had about Killian’s feelings for her were subsumed by her desperation in the moment. “I said… I said, take me away with you. On your ship.”

“What about your son? Your husband?”

She laughed bitterly. “Do you really care about my husband?”

“Not particularly, but I thought you did.”

“I told you, they’re better off without me.” She wasn’t sure who she was trying to convince.

“Your son will miss you terribly, love.”

“Killian, if you don’t want me, just--”

“Of course I want you,” he said, frustration evident in the lines of his brow. “I’ve hardly wanted anything else since we first met. But love…” Conflicting emotions performed an impromptu battle across his face. “I lost my mother when I was very young. It was the first loss of many in my life, but in many ways it cuts the deepest. I don’t want to be responsible for another boy being left with a failure for a father, as much as a part of me is desperate to steal you away and have you all to myself.”

“My husband has a lot of flaws, but if there’s one thing I know, it’s that he loves our son. He’ll look after him. They’ll look after each other.” She felt tears well up and fall, and she swiped angrily at her cheeks. “If I stay, I’ll drag Bae down into the depths with me. My son will be forced to watch me wither away and die. How is that better?”

He studied her face for a moment and then nodded. “Come on, then. We’ll cast off tomorrow.”

Milah looked down at the black water once more. With a flick of her wrist, she tossed the bottle of cheap liquor into the harbor, watching as it sank out of view.

Part 2

#millian #millian ff #milah #milah ff #tw: suicide #tw: alcholism #my fic

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blessed-but-distressed · 7 years ago

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This is a thing that I wrote a long time ago.

It isn’t fanfiction. It’s just fiction.

I will be posting here until I think of what to do with it.

FERNWEH

When Becca decides to shake off those shackles and get the hell outta Dodge, she doesn’t have many regrets. She won’t miss those late nights folding baby clothes at her local All Baby Needs SuperStore. She won’t miss her distant parents or her uninspiring classes for her useless degree. The only person she will miss is Jack.

Jack is stuck in the post-university, pre-real job wasteland of delayed adolescence. He doesn’t know if he is a socialist, or an anarchist, or just reads too many books. He stacks vegetables, he haunts libraries and he chases girls. But now his best friend is leaving town, and he doesn’t know if he can handle being left behind.

A story about growing up, leaving home, staying behind, sad bastard music and the people who make everything bearable.

Chapter One:

Becca

Truthfully, I can handle all of it. The cloying stench of mouldy socks and clove cigarettes. The scratchy, standard-issue woollen blanket that wasn’t quite enough to wade off the night-time chill. The oddly masculine snoring that would make any trucker proud. The clanking of pipes in the wall beside my bed that had me sat bolt upright on my first night, half convinced the ghost of Jacob Marley was coming for me, dragging the chains he’d forged in life. All of this didn’t bother me. Not really. But the weeping. I couldn’t handle the fucking weeping.

I’d been sharing a room in Berlin’s cheapest youth hostel for a week with Ilonka, from Hungary. Ilonka the weeper. And we aren’t talking about girlish sobs here, with intermittent hiccups. Oh no. Not Ilonka. Beautiful, heartbroken, weeping Ilonka. She didn’t do anything by half measures.

She’d told me her life story on the first night, over a Midori and lemonade in the bar downstairs. I was quickly coming to the realisation that this was how it was done. Nothing in Backpacker World got done without a bit of Dutch courage.

Ilonka’s story was that she’d come to Berlin to intern at one of those ridiculously trendy, ridiculously contemporary art galleries in Kreuzberg. Which made sense. With her extensive collection of very cute multi-coloured berets, long, lean legs encased habitually in skinny jeans, and her Franka Potente in Run Lola Run hair, she certainly looked the part. She made me feel inadequate every time she entered a room, and I was convinced that was at least half of what contemporary art was all about.

Which is why it was so disconcerting when halfway through her third Midori and lemonade, big fat tears began to slip down her perfect, Eastern European face, and into her drink, which she continued to sip through her straw, unperturbed. Then, without much warning, she keeled forward, and a high-pitched noise of distress began to rise from the back of her throat, not unlike that of an ambulance leaving the scene of an accident. The barman, cute and Irish though he may have been, gave us that ‘You’d better clear the fuck out’ look perfected by cute Irish bartenders the world over, and I bundled her upstairs before he summoned over the bouncer, who was significantly more intimidating.

Once I’d gotten her settled on her twin bed, she pulled herself together enough to relate to me the rest of the story. On her third week into her internship, she’d rung up her boyfriend, Kolos, back home in Budapest, and her best friend had answered the phone. Turns out they’d been screwing around behind her back for the last six months, and they had used Ilonka’s absence to move in together. Which you have to give points for, if only for the sheer brazen cowardice of it all. Were they going to keep up the charade until it came time to ask her to be the Maid of Honour at their wedding?

Ilonka was a wreck. She’d keep it together all day, every day at work, but as soon as she got back into the room she would just lie on her bed, crying inconsolably for hours, until she eventually, mercifully, fell asleep. If she wasn’t weeping, she was sitting on the window sill, where she had pried the window open, and was smoking her favourite clove cigarettes in flagrant disregard of our dorm’s no smoking policy, and my (fabricated) assertions that I was an asthmatic. She’d hold her cigarette in one hand and her mobile phone in the other, and yell obscenities in Hungarian to whoever was on the other end, in between puffs. I don’t speak a lick of Hungarian, but you can always tell an obscenity, no matter the language. It’s about the force behind the delivery. The venom behind the words.

The hostel had been chosen for its location, just off the Ku'damm, not for its internal décor or sterling customer service record. Which is just as well, because I’d been in cancer wards with more cheer; the grey-speckled institutional style walls hinting at the building’s previous life as an insane asylum perhaps, or at the very least a reform school. My polite request to move to a different room had been met with a coolly raised eyebrow, and an unconvincing promise that they’d see what they could do.

It wasn’t exactly what I had in mind for my first foray into the world of international travel. But it certainly made for interesting anecdotes for my emails sent back home.

I’d say things were going much better for me outside of the hostel, but that was a matter of some debate.

A few months back, embittered by my slow slide from promising Journalism student to person-who-straightens-cans-of-baby-food-in-a-budget-department-store-for-a-living, I’d stayed up until four in the morning one night, researching methods of escaping the monotonous retail hell that my life had become.

My unlikely salvation was with a company that would pay for me to fly to Germany to work as an Au Pair for a year. They’d even put me up in Berlin for a month, so I could brush up on the language, before they dispatched me to the family they would pair me with. All of those weekend evenings spent wrangling my neighbour’s kids to bed when I was sixteen had suddenly come in handy, and I had signed on the dotted line.

Of course, when I say “brush up on the language”, I mean learn from scratch. Of course. German had never been an elective at high school. I’d learnt Italian, although that data had almost been completely rewritten in my mind, replaced with an intricate knowledge of song lyrics by a particular favourite band of mine, who specialised in what my friend Jack liked to call “Sad Bastard Music.”

The total sum of my German language proficiency before my departure had been restricted to numbers one through ten, hello, good bye, thank you, and handful of random phrases one picks up after a lifetime of watching World War Two dramas, none of which were suitable for polite company. My knowledge of German culture was mostly restricted to a general appreciation for Daniel Brühl’s face, and a vague recollection of having read Faust when I was fourteen.

It was not until I took a seat on the first day of classes, that I realised what a grave mistake I had made. There was no way I would be able to wrangle children, even relatively small, uncomplicated ones, in four weeks time, with absolutely zero grasp on the language. It was impossible. Unfathomable.

Our teacher was a jovial fellow called Hans-Peter. He had the kind of white bushy moustache and knitted jumpers which made him look rather like a benevolent tug-boat captain, and kind eyes that encouraged students to take risks where they might otherwise have kept silent. He was a good teacher. I could tell. But there was no way in hell he was going to make me semi-fluent within a month.

Every classroom in the language school was named after a particular river in Germany. Our classroom, Donau, which I later discovered was the German word for the Danube, was right at the top of three dizzyingly uneven flights of stairs, in a converted attic where every inch of wall space was dedicated to laminated charts depicting a different German verb, and its various forms. It also had a broken radiator, which Hans-Peter would kick good-naturedly every morning when it failed to break the chill, before instructing us to keep our gloves on.

That’s the first useful German phrase I learn.

“Handschuhe auf!“ Gloves on.

The second:

“Jacken auf!“ Jackets on.

I’d always had a natural talent for scholastic endeavours. Which is to say, I’d really crashed and burned at university when I’d gotten through twelve years of schooling without really trying too hard, to find I actually had no idea how to study. But I’d always managed to scrape by on natural ability. I had no natural ability when it came to German. I was a babe in the woods. And I definitely needed to study.

Being in a foreign country where you don’t speak the language is a little like being a newborn lamb. You stumble a lot, and you’re vulnerable as hell, but everyone finds you pretty damn adorable anyway, for the most part. But for someone who has always been really good at things, it is the ultimate exercise in humility. Suddenly, you’re unable to do even the most simplest of things. Order a coffee. Ask for directions. Make an effusive apology to the angry looking guy you bump into on the train.

It had taken me five whole days to work up the necessary courage to approach even a McDonalds counter. I practiced the order in my head, as I waited in line.

“Ein Happy Meal, bitte.” One Happy Meal, please.

I didn’t think even I could fuck that up. I tried to anticipate what questions they would ask me, in which order. Would I like a toy? Would I like ketchup?

When they asked me if I wanted mayo or ketchup on my fries, the unexpected option made me answer in the affirmative, without specifying which I preferred, pissing off the harried-looking girl behind the counter in the process. I could feel my cheeks flush with embarrassment, and I backed away from the counter, waving my hands and butchering an apology in my pidgin German.

I never went back to that McDonalds.

Like a diamond in the rough, I found a T-Mobile payphone on my way back to the hostel and I fed about ten euro in change into the machine until it finally connected me to Jack’s mobile. It rang out, and went to voicemail, and instead of leaving a message, I hung up the receiver, and burst into angry, embarrassed tears. I didn’t get any change back, either.

Wiping my face clean with the sleeve of my coat, I hurried back to the hostel, before I could make an idiot of myself in some new way. Still hungry, I raided the vending machine in the lobby, and sat on my bed eating out-of-date chips until Ilonka had returned. She took one look at my tear-stained face and unsatisfying dinner and bundled me into my coat and took me out to an Irish Pub around the corner for a pint of Guinness and something called a Blarney Burger.

“It will not always be so,” she reminds me sagely, as she steals a chip from my plate. And for a little while there, Ilonka is my hero. When I grow up I want to be just like her. We sing Cranberries songs together, and make the acquaintance of some chipper blokes from County Clare who are, of course, enamoured with Ilonka’s ethereal Eastern European beauty, and keep us plied with enough black stuff that I quite forget about the dizzying regret that has been eating me away inside for days.

But later that night, the weeping starts again, and it chips away, slowly but steadily, at my newfound regard for her. I get up for class early the next morning, head still throbbing from the previous night’s excesses, and leave her a note on her bedside table.

“It will not always be so.”

#fernweh #rachel writes

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tamariceratops · 4 years ago

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Difficult, Morose Darling, 1

Just an hour of writing a fanfic before bedtime.

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A lady with long, thick, purplish black hair frowned at the dirt that landed atop her best friend’s plate of blueberry muffins. The displeasure in her face was so vicious, Syaoran Li, the one at fault, should be running for his life. Instead, he just smirked at them. “Sumimasen,” he worded coolly. “I didn’t see you there.”

Tomoyo Daidouji and the most noble ladies of Tomoeda High were having a picnic in Kenroku garden - the city’s topnotch, most preserved paradise. Why Syaoran Li, the school’s A-list heartthrob, brought his soccer ball to the said sanctuary was beyond them, let alone have it fly all the way to their red and white checkered blanket. She didn’t care about wasted butter, sugar, and flour. Her concern regarded the fact that Sakura Kinomoto, her closest confidant since they were ten years old, worked all morning for those pastries.

Tomoyo had the face of an angel, and the soul of the devil. When she stared into Syaoran’s eyes, along with the rest of her exquisitely-looking allies, they all appeared as if they were waiting for him to apologize. A small smile began to creep into his lips as his own amber orbs landed on the face that was about to cry - Sakura Kinomoto’s emerald eyed gaze wasn’t demanding anything much, really, but it was clear that she was truly upset. Almost, Syaoran was almost sorry.

“Ja,” he uttered after he picked up his ball, “if you aren’t going to say anything, then I’m off.” A huge grin dallied in his mouth before he jogged back to his playmates, leaving five girls angered.

While Sakura picked up the remains of the baked goods, her long auburn hair cloaked the mixture of annoyance and dismay on her face. Tomoyo was silent while Meiling Li apologized on her cousin’s behalf. “I should ask his mother to ship him back to Hong Kong, really.” If there was anything more powerful than Syaoran, it’s the mothership. “And disappoint a thousand girls, how sorrowful,” Chiharu Mihara, a cute girl with brown hair, sarcastically remarked as she focused on the jocks in a far off distance. While seated primly on the blanket, she sipped her tea, and added, “Not only his wealth and status provided him power, it’s also the collective of doltish fangirls kissing the ground he walks on that makes him untouchable.”

Syaoran knew the ladies would be talking about him. He could feel their heavy glares at the back of his head. With all the love and hate he received throughout the years, he was used to it all. As he bounced the ball on top of his right knee, he slightly turned his body to catch the sight of them. Surprisingly, Sakura was laughing with her friends when he expected her to break down and weep. He narrowed his eyes at her and frowned to himself. There was something about her cheerfulness that irked him. Aside from her pretty face, she was rumored to be quite athletic, but other than that, she had nothing else. No high-status, no exceptional grades, no boyfriend, nothing. Why though, did she seem more generally blessed?

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Professor Fujitaka Kinomoto was holding an informal class in one of the tables in a hotel restaurant. College students who love to learn stories about his excavations often join him for dinner. Every time this happened, Touya Kinomoto knew he’d be working late because he was employed part-time in said establishment - a 5-star hotel near the tourist spots of the city. Sometimes, his girlfriend and friends were part of the group.

In another table sat Tomoyo, Sakura, and Meiling. After parting with Chiharu and Naoko, the black haired beauty thought it was fitting that she treat them to dinner - well, to be honest, the favor was only for Sakura’s sake but almost anything about her included Tomoyo so she might as well invite her, too. The gesture stood as an apology on account of his cousin’s ill manners this afternoon. Tomoyo had high standards for everything. They knew she’d prefer the boy to atone for his misbehavior himself, but definitely, no one expected that to happen. On top of that, she’s greatly protective of Sakura, and that fact didn’t help Meiling feel at all comfortable.

After their steak dinner, the two best friends left. Since Meiling had to wait for her boyfriend, she saw it fit to stay behind. “Thanks for dinner. You really didn’t have to, but I appreciate that you did!. I’ll see you tomorrow at school,” Sakura said her sweet gratitude before she ran to her father and brother to bid them adieu. Soon enough, after Meiling found herself waving them goodbye and sitting back in her chair, her mobile phone beeped… only to entail that a message came that her boyfriend would come later than planned.

Two hours passed and the boy was still a no show, abandoning her to no other choice but to watch Professor Fujitaka’s students leave one by one. They all seemed average college students except for a single soul who lingered by the entrance - a lady in deep burgundy hair was approached by Touya just as everyone had left. She had her back on Meiling so she couldn’t exactly recognize her face. Excitedly, she tipped her toes to reach the boy’s height, and shamelessly pressed her lips on his. Astonished, Meiling looked away, embarrassed at the sight of PDA. However, her curiosity forced to steal another glance - and when she peeked, Touya’s dark agate eyes were fixated on Meiling’s garnet orbs.

Bewildered and troubled, she fixed her sight on her mobile phone and pretended to text. She had already sent her boyfriend eleven messages, it felt futile to send another one. She wasn’t certain on how long she had her head bowed but when she raised it again, the restaurant was completely empty except for one tall raven haired male. He was standing next to the table, two of his fingers’ knuckles happened to knock on the surface of the table. “Closing time,” he stated two flavorless words. “But,” her brows jumped, anguish evident in her face. “My boyfriend isn’t here yet!” Touya rolled his eyes before he averted his gaze. “Not my problem,” was all he said before he stepped off and disappeared into the kitchen.

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afishtrap · 8 years ago

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In the mid-seventeenth century, the Qing empire of China reacted to piracy and rebellion by forcibly depopulating the coast and burning its shoreline into wasteland for twenty years. As unique as the scale and brutality of this response may be in maritime history, the Qing state was not inherently isolationist or anti-maritime. Its underlying imperatives were shared by other early modern states: a desire to establish sovereignty, impose subjecthood, and constrain the mobility of peripheral populations. This article places the Qing Coastal Depopulation of 1661-1683 in the context of fifty years of maritime militarization, invasion, and civil war in the coastal province of Fujian. It portrays the Depopulation as not just a military act to combat pirates or the powerful sealord Koxinga (Zheng Chenggong), but also an act of social engineering to subjugate the coastal population by removing it behind an artificial land boundary. At the same time, the article shows that the Qing state’s practice of “outsourcing” coastal control to regional lords helps to account for the policy’s longevity and some of its severest abuses.

Dahpon David Ho. "The Empire’s Scorched Shore: Coastal China, 1633-1683." Journal of Early Modern History, Volume 17, Issue 1, pages 53 – 74.

One of the persistent myths that has been invoked to explain why the Qing state chose scorched earth rather than a more outward-looking naval policy is that its Manchu rulers, as semi-nomadic horsemen from Northeast Asia, were afraid of water. As the story goes, the Manchus were incapable of understanding the ocean frontier and thus resorted to building a maritime "Great Wall" and so "encouraged the conquered Chinese to share in their fear and ignorance of the sea."' It has also been suggested that the Coastal Depopulation was simply a logical extension of native Chinese isolationism: a maritime "closed-door" mentality dating back to Ming times (1368-1644)."* It might seem that the Qing Depopularion was a foregone conclusion by the supposedly hydrophobic Manchu emperors who inherited the Chinese state.

[...]

Fujian was the Portugal of imperial Ghina, her Holland, her headache. Whatever story is told of Fujian, it always seems to have something to do with the sea. Fujian was home to expert shipbuilders and mariners, the ones who built and sailed the largest wooden ships in history: the state-sponsored Treasure Fleets (1405-1433) that went to India and Africa in the glory days of the Ming dynasty.'' Later, Ming officials denounced Fujian as a den of smugglers and pirates that defied the empire's ban on private maritime trade. Fujian was ravaged in the mid-1500s, both by pirate attacks and by Ming troops sent to the rescue.'' The province soon rebounded as a trading hub, and Fujian was enmeshed in the flows of silver, guns, tea, and spices that transformed the early modern world. No family better represented the possibilities of seventeenth-century maritime Fujian than the Zheng clan, led by the sealord Zheng Zhilong (c. 1604-1661).

Zheng Zhilong was a Fujianese smuggler and pirate, a man of the sea who huckstered, bribed, and battled his way to become maritime overlord at the end of the Ming dynasty and one of the realm's richest men. In his lifetime, he was known variously as Nicholas Iquan, Nicolas Gaspard, Tei Shiryû, Ytcuam, or even Chinhillón. Around him lay the dizzying world of maritime East Asia in the 1600s. Portuguese fidalgos, Spanish galleon captains, Jesuit priests, and Dutch rogues, officers, and gentlemen were trying hard to break into this water world dominated by Ghinese and Japanese networks of trade and piracy. The Europeans soon met their match.

[...]

The nascent Qing state faced many opponents, including Ming loyalists and powerful armies of bandits and pirates. Zheng Zhilong at first supported the Ming loyalist movement, but he quickly became disaffected. When in 1646 Qing Prince Bolo offered to spare Fujian from war and appoint him Viceroy of Guangdong and Fujian in exchange for his fealty, Zheng took the dare—but at this juncture his own son Koxinga and other key family members betrayed him and refused to travel to Fuzhou to pledge their allegiance. Prince Bolo suspected the sealord of playing both sides in the war and ordered him taken to Beijing in chains. Zheng would never see his homeland or the sea again.

[...]

The Qing government repeatedly tried to negotiate with Koxinga and his kinsmen from 1647-1654. A non-combative solution was desirable because the Qing armies were tied down fighting Ming loyalists in southwest China, but ultimately no agreement was reached. While the Qing state was willing to concede coastal territories, substantial autonomy, and a monopoly on maritime trade, it balked at Koxinga's demands for three coastal provinces and a suzerain kingdom on the level of tributary states like Annam (Vietnam) or Korea. Meanwhile, Koxinga used the ceasefires of the negotiation period to pillage the coast and extract more supplies." In 1655, after the talks faltered, the Qing resumed its attacks on the sealord.

In 1657, Koxinga sent a flotilla of some 5,000 ships and 60,000 men to probe the northern coastal defenses of Zhejiang and the Yangzi Delta. And then, in the campaigns of 1658-1659, Koxinga's armada burst out of southern Fujian and struck north for Jiangnan, the economic heartland of the Qing empire. However, due to some fatal miscalculations, Koxinga's army was routed at the siege of Nanjing, and the embattled sealord retreated to his base at Amoy in September 1659. It was Koxinga's turn to send an envoy to Beijing to negotiate—but the Qing court was no longer willing to compromise. Defectors and former pirates swelled the Qing forces, and on June 17, 1660, the Qing navy attacked Amoy, hoping to crush Koxinga in one swoop.

[...]

The atrocities had begun as early as 1647, soon after Prince Bolo's capture of Zheng Zhilong left a power vacuum for rebels and pirates. Putian resident Chen Hong left a rare eyewitness account of how his hometown turned into a killing field. As the ships of competing Zheng clansmen recruited and pillaged on the coast, poor tenant farmers, miners, and laborers rose in rebellion, and a throng of Fujianese insurgents besieged the coastal city of Pudan. The Qing garrison of about 3,000 battled the rebels unsuccessfully and then holed up with the populace inside the city walls. People in Pudan began to starve as prices for rice, barley, and wheat skyrocketed thirty times from three copper coins to one hundred coins per measure.

Cannibalism broke out and found its victims in close formation. In December, after a raid outside the city, the Qing authorities rounded up four farmers from Siting and beheaded them in the city. "As soon as the heads rolled to the ground, the flesh of the four victims was carved up by starving bystanders," wrote Chen Hong. "If any bones remained on which there was still a bit of flesh, those who had arrived late would scrape off the scraps. From that point onward, when a person was executed, he/she would be reduced to bones in the blink of an eye. Women, too, partook in the cutting of bodies."

Hysteria gripped the community as the siege continued through the winter. Qing troops ripped down houses nearest the city and stockpiled the wood for bonfires. Pirates and rebels attacked by night and retreated by day. Outside the city was a no-man's land: villagers who wandered in open country were seized by Qing patrols, stripped naked, and had their hands and feet cut off.

[...]

Another local survivor, gentry man Yu Yang of Putian, wrote his own grim accounts of floods followed by droughts and epidemics, and starving people selling their wives and children, robbing graves, and murdering each other. Yu Yang also raised his own local militia. Chen Hong mentioned Yu Yang as but one of a multitude of local rebels: "Outside the city, the village gentry znd juren degree holders raised their own rebel armies—Regardless of rank, they all claimed to be commanders." The rebels battered Putian with field guns and also fought each other for power.

Eventually a Qing counterassault put the assorted rebels to flight. Starving city dwellers followed the army out on raid and looted their rural counterparts. Villagers from all quarters, defending their homes, stabbed and kicked to death some 400-500 of these city marauders. No longer was it a war of Ming and Qing, but a war of city and countryside. The army proceeded to kill them all: "In Xin'gou, a village of 100 people, all but seven were butchered." But the damage had been done. "That night, weeping could be heard throughout the city."

[...]

Meanwhile, Koxinga's sailors continued to loot, burn, and rape along the coast up through 1660. Koxinga's officers, such as pirate Guo Erlong, murdered and kidnapped thousands of people for taxes and ransom; consequently, private stockades and forts mushroomed along the coast as villagers tried to defend their homes. The war between Koxinga, the Qing, roving pirates, and rebels left coastal residents in social anarchy. They were triple-taxed and slaughtered by all sides for alleged disloyalty. What began as violence at sea cast its shadow on all who dwelled on land: all were suspect, all were targets for extortion. None of the butchers deserves apologies.

The mass killings revealed that the struggle for the coast was no mere battle between two armies—it was a totalizing war with no clear line of sovereignty. As Lynn Struve argues, "no ameliorative social policies could have been instituted by either the Ming or the Ch'ing until one side or the other took and held communities by force, not only from the other, but also from all the forces of armed conflict that abounded." Fifteen years of butchery and rapine in the bogs and bays of Fujian had failed to accomplish this. By 1661, even far southwestern China was largely subdued, and the Ming loyalists were in retreat—yet on the southeast coast, neither the Qing nor Koxinga could secure a line of sovereignty, let alone hold the coastal population as subjects.

The Qing response was to create a brutally simplified frontier that would remove the population from contact with the sealord regime and also attempt to destroy the sources of maritime trade on which pirates and seaborne powers like Koxinga had built a trading empire. As early as October 14, 1660, Fujian Viceroy Li Shuaitai, one of the ablest Qing officers in Fujian, began to experiment with removing coastal towns in Tong'an and Haicheng counties. Even Fujianese natives like Huang Wu, a former officer of Koxinga, recommended the Depopulation on the grounds that the sealord would quickly fall without access to coastal supplies.

#early modern #china #maritime trade #pirates #research

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ecotone99 · 5 years ago

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A short story I wrote about a very vivid nightmare I had several years ago. The Girl, The Woman, and The Creature.

A few years back I wrote a short story based on an especially vivid nightmare I had that I can still visualize to this day. I’m not a particularly great writer but I hope you enjoy the story.

(Also, if you’re an ACTUAL writer reading this that can provide constructive criticism to my story-telling abilities I would very much appreciate it. Posting on mobile but I think I have formatting issues resolved, but if not, my apologies.)

The Girl, The Woman, and The Creature

She had no memory of how she got here. Deep within a labyrinthine dungeon, in a multitude of cold, rocky, undulating passages, intertwining and stretching in every direction, dimly lit with torches but still somehow as dark and sinister as a moonless night, The Girl, barely eight years old, found herself cold and alone, wandering the passages as she quietly sobbed to herself.

In the place of that memory, a flood of savage fear took hold. Thoughts of her family came to her, together in unison with terrible, oppressive thoughts of what may have happened to them.

She thought of her mother; the kind woman who held her as a child, for whose embrace she now longingly wished. She thought of her father; the strong, brave man, who would surely protect her and take her away from this horrid place. She reminisced about the happy times with her family, and prayed there would be more. She was also reminded of the bad times, of the fights and the struggles, and wrestled with the guilt that perhaps this was her punishment for her misbehavior.

She silently prayed that God had not sent her to this place to suffer for her misdeeds, pleading and begging to be removed from this Hell. Had her family suffered the same fate as The Girl? Would she ever see her mother and father again? Would there be any escape from this frigid and dreary dungeon? And most importantly, what kind of suffering lay all around her, in the depths of the caverns surrounding her?

In the darkness she drifted, alone and afraid, with only the imaginations of what horrors may lurk within the blackness and the harsh echo of her sobs to keep her company.

But she was not as alone as she thought she was.

As the sounds of her soft cries and light, padding footsteps reverberated through the passages, The Girl thought she could hear soft breaths in tandem with her weeping. The breaths soon turned to hushed whispers, voices speaking in languages she could not understand.

At every corner she turned, over every small hill she climbed, and at the bottom of every slope, shadows would dance across the walls just out of the corner of her eye; black, shapeless forms, darker even than the gloom of the dungeon, exuding terror from their mere presence. The Girl knew there were many eyes upon her, eyes she could not see, but eyes that would follow her every move.

The more she wandered, the more blatant the presences around her became. What once were soft words drifting upon the dark soon became a rumble of voices, all speaking in a language she couldn’t understand, yet all with unmistakable anger. The rumbling soon became a roar, filling the passages, screaming in the dark like demons reveling in a hunt, screeching and bellowing a furious tirade of hellish noises and condemnations.

The Girl began to run.

Unable to focus, the howling of the shadows filling the void, she forced her hands against her ears in a desperate attempt to fend off the horrible wailing as she sprinted blindly down the passages, frantically trying to keep away from the encroaching shadows as their long, lingering arms reached out from the darkness to drag her to a fate unknown. The more she ran, the more furious the voices became, a hurricane of horrible wails, driving The Girl mad with fear as she dashed blindly throughout this cold, gloomy hell.

Then all at once, it stopped.

With the sudden cessation of the noise, The Girl, taken by surprise, yet with fear still seizing her, stumbled to the ground, wildly searching around her, for some sign of the terror that had pursued her. But only blackness met her gaze now, the sounds of her frantic breaths the only sound she heard.

The Girl shakily rose to her feet, precariously supporting herself against the wall as she panted and sobbed in terror. Wiping the tears from her eyes, she slowly looked up into the passage that yawned before her.

That’s when she saw The Woman.

A towering, horrible being stood above The Girl, frighteningly tall at over twice the girl’s height, with limbs and appendages that were impossibly long and thin, like the twisted branches of an old, rotting tree. The Woman’s body was cloaked entirely in black, covering almost her whole body in a long, flowing dress that trailed behind her.

The only part of her left uncovered was her head. But where a disgusting, monstrous visage should have sat, there, instead, was the head of a stunningly beautiful motherly woman, with gorgeous blond hair that cascaded across her shoulders and down her back. The juxtaposition of her horrible body and her magnificent head both astounded and horrified The Girl, who’s breath was now caught in her chest, her eyes unable to produce tears any longer.

The Girl stood before The Woman, her eyes absorbing the twisted conglomeration of beauty and revulsion that greeted her gaze. Her stomach twisted as bile rose in her throat,

The Girl did not know whether to scream or vomit, though she doubted she could do either. The Woman extended her long, gruesome hand toward The Girl, and slowly beckoned The Girl to follow her. The Girl, both grateful for the presence of The Woman driving away the demonic screams, yet afraid of what would happen if she refused The Woman, nervously nodded her head in acceptance.

Almost in a trance, The Girl followed.

The Woman did not speak a word, only silently led The Girl deeper and deeper into the inky blackness of the Labyrinth, seeming to glide upon the ground with disturbing grace.

The Girl feared The Woman, and wept at the thought of what fate she could be led to. The Girl wondered what would happen if she were to run away from The Woman, to sprint in any direction as fast and far as she could. Despite the temptation, and the revulsion at the sight of The Woman, The Girl somehow knew The Woman had driven off the howling shadows that tormented her, and that without The Woman’s presence, she would once again have to face the roars and screams of the demons in the shadows.

Though The Woman kept her safe, The Girl wondered if it was to save her from them, or if it was merely a predator protecting it’s prey from the parasites who may challenge it.

With no other choice than to hope The Woman would be her salvation, The Girl cautiously followed behind her, deeper into the catacombs.

How long they traversed the passages, The Girl did not know. As the minutes turned into hours, with only the monotony of cold, gray stone, pitch-black shadows and the dim glow of the torches, The Girl forced herself to continue to put one foot in front of the other, taking each step with apprehension and fear, wrestling with the maelstrom of thoughts flooding her mind.

Just as The Girl thought she may go mad, The Woman led her around a corner, and into a cavernous chamber; a wide, circular dome, with no torches and no other visible entrances or exits than the one they had just stepped through.

In the center of the chamber, a broad ring of stone pillars surrounded a bright circle of light that shone down upon the ground from an unknown source. The light was almost blinding after the hours spent traversing the dim and gloomy passages, and the light shrouded the edges of the room in total darkness.

The Girl jumped at the touch of The Woman’s long, spindly fingers upon her shoulders. The Woman began to gently push The Girl forward, urging her to step forward into the glowing white light. It became clear to The Girl that this was the purpose for which The Woman had led her through the endless, rolling corridors.

As The Girl’s eyes adjusted to the light, she struggled to take in her surroundings, hoping against hope that she could see some sign of her salvation from these catacombs, praying her ordeal would soon be over.

She would not have to wait long to find out.

As she stood within the edge of the circle, with The Woman behind her just outside the glow of the light, from the darkness of the opposite side of the circle, The Girl heard a low, terrifying, guttural growl, that filled her very soul with dread.

Petrified with fear, unable to force herself to move, The Girl stood in silent horror as, slowly, The Creature made its presence known.

Creeping into the light came a revolting abomination, loathsome and horrible, unlike anything The Girl could have ever imagined.

A vast, slug-like monster slowly crept its way into the light. The Creature supported itself on dozens of short, viscous tentacles, which inched The Creature forward with a disgusting, vile noise like running mucus.

The Creature’s face was reminiscent of some kind of appalling insect, with segmented eyes like those of a fly, and serrated, drooling pincers that dripped slime upon the ground. Upon The Creature’s back, The Girl could see several oozing, rotting pustule-like lumps, secreting a repugnant mixture of blood, mucus, pus, and other foul-smelling fluids.

As The Creature lumbered into the light, The Girl finally broke down in horror. She fell to the ground, screaming in abject terror, unable to control her limbs as she desperately scratched and kicked at the ground, frantically attempting to get as far away from The Creature as fast she could. As she sobbed bitterly, her eyes nearly blinded by her tears, she could just barely see as The Woman reached down to collect The Girl.

But what The Girl saw was no longer The Woman she had first laid eyes upon.

Transformed into a new, wretched monstrosity, The Woman’s arms had been replaced with tentacles like the repulsive monster that had crawled from the darkness.

Where there once was a beautiful face of a loving maternal figure, there was now an obscene replication of The Creature’s own face, with massive segmented eyes that covered much of her head, and drooling, serrated pincers snapping viciously at The Girl as she struggled in frantic desperation to escape the loathsome figure that now had her in it’s grasp.

Slowly The Woman carried the girl, kicking, screaming, and sobbing hysterically, through the light and towards The Creature, its body throbbing disgustingly, the halls rumbling with the guttural noise of its growling.

The Girl thought for sure she would be devoured by The Creature, its serrated pincers tearing apart her flesh and crushing her bones as her blood leaked onto the floor in union with the flow of oily fluids dripping from The Creature.

Her fate was much worse.

The Woman carried the girl around The Creature, past its mouth, and stood beside the creature, now heaving in anticipation.

The Woman held The Girl above The Creature, her long, tentacle-arms fully extended, containing The Girl’s mad thrashing with ease. The Woman slowly lowered The Girl onto the back of The Creature, seeming to revel in the horror the girl felt.

As soon as The Girl’s feet came into contact with the back of The Creature, pain exploded in her body like a bomb. Looking down in wide-eyed horror, The Girl saw that her feet, clothing and all, were slowly melting into the creature, her flesh and blood sizzling off her bones, her muscles singing and liquefying as the boiling back of The Creature slowly absorbed her limbs.

Now applying a constant force down upon her shoulders, The Woman screeched in delight at the sound of The Girl howling in hysterical pain, as the rest of her body slowly sunk into the body of The Creature like quicksand.

As she sunk further into The Creature, past her waist, The Girl begged and pleaded for death, to lose consciousness and stop feeling the scorching pain, to have any kind of release from this torment.

But her prayers went unanswered, as some unknown force kept her conscious and in acute awareness of the feeling of every ligament, bone, and muscle in her body being melted and absorbed into The Creature.

Further and further she sank, soon up to her chest, as The Woman grabbed hold of her wrists, and forced her arms to become one with The Creature.

The strange, unknown force that kept her alive and kept her conscious continued working its horrible effect on her, as even though her lungs, heart, and every vital organ had been liquefied, somehow The Girl stayed alive and awake, and even as her neck began to be swallowed up into the mass of The Creature, still, she felt and saw everything.

As the skin of her head likewise began to melt and fuse with the creature, The Girl only hoped it would absorb the final piece of her quickly, praying that the absorption of the last piece of her body would release her into the death she longed so horribly for.

Yet one, final horror remained.

The boiling slowed. And slowed further. Soon, it would stop altogether; the half-incinerated, partly liquefied head of the girl remained, sticking out of the back of The Creature, oozing and rotting; her head decaying, patches of skull appearing through the putrefying flesh, but her brain was kept alive, and her consciousness remained.

As The Girl looked wildly around with her remaining, un-melted eye, the only comfort she had now were the sobs she was still mysteriously able to produce.

Why she was unable to experience the release of death, she did not know, nor did she understand how she was able to continue seeing the terrible Creature of which she had now become a part.

The Girl would soon also notice that her cries were not merely echoing around the chamber.

She could hear distinct voices from her own, also shrieking and sobbing in pain and terror.

The Girl’s eye darted wildly around, looking for some clue as to the source of the cries.

The final horror revealed itself when she made eye contact with a young boy. Perhaps the same age as her, perhaps older. She could not tell, as his head had putrefied and rotted beyond recognition, but still she could see the terror and hopelessness in his eye as he, too, had been absorbed into The Creature.

As the voices swelled and filled the hall, the realization finally came to The Girl: the dozens of lumps she had seen on The Creature’s back, which had secreted all manner of foul-smelling bodily fluids, were the decaying, melted, yet somehow still-living heads of children who had met her same fate.

As The Woman stood and watched, The Creature slowly slunk its way back into the darkness beyond the ring of light, into total blackness, its feeding now finished. As it crawled away into the shadows, The Girl realized now the horrible fate that had befallen her, knowing that she would remain as the decaying head of a corpse, never allowed to die, with only the screams of those who shared her fate to keep her company in the darkness, forever.

submitted by /u/DanOwaR1990 [link] [comments] source https://www.reddit.com/r/shortscarystories/comments/dzhgry/a_short_story_i_wrote_about_a_very_vivid/ via Blogger https://ift.tt/34eGENK

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cleopatrarps · 7 years ago

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Case of Missing Civilians in Mexico Shines Light on Military’s Role in Drug War

MEXICO CITY — On a cold night in December 2009, three relatives in the Mexican state of Chihuahua were taken away by a group of armed men in military uniforms and were never seen again.

Now the Costa Rica-based Inter-American Court of Human Rights is examining the disappearances of the three civilians — Nitza Paola Alvarado Espinoza, José Ángel Alvarado Herrera and Rocío Irene Alvarado Reyes — for the first time.

Their story is part of a case that the court — an independent judicial body with legal authority in Mexico — heard over two days, ending Friday. It involves accusations of human rights violations by the Mexican military during government operations that began more than a decade ago to combat drug trafficking and organized crime.

The case sheds light on the broader impact that the militarization of public security has had on large parts of the country since troops were first mobilized for anti-narcotics operations in 2006.

“My family is just one case among the thousands of the disappeared,” Mitzi Alvarado, Nitza’s daughter, said in an interview. “In that way, we are the voice of thousands of Mexicans who suffer from the same situation.”

As relatives await the ruling, the country faces one of the deadliest periods in recent history and a newly empowered military in charge of fighting it. Official statistics show that last year the murder rate was the highest on record, surpassing the bloodshed experienced during the peak of the drug war in 2011.

In December, when Mexico passed a security law cementing the military’s role in fighting the drug war, it outraged the United Nations and local and international human rights groups. They warned that the measure would lead to abuses, leave troops on the streets indefinitely and militarize police activities for the foreseeable future.

The armed forces declined to comment, but the secretary of defense, Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda, has publicly defended the military, saying it is the only institution effectively confronting organized crime. As drug violence rocketed in recent years, he has repeatedly asked the federal government for a legal framework that protects the forces, saying the need for it is greater than ever.

“Today the crimes we are dealing with are of another level and importance, they involve a lot of people, sometimes entire families, and we are acting without a legal frame,” said General Cienfuegos in a public event in March. “Without it our help is impeded.”

Other supporters of the law, including President Enrique Peña Nieto and federal government officials, have argued that the legislation would guide and regulate military operations offering legal certainty to both the armed forces and the population by clarifying the soldier’s tasks, limits and obligations. Such a framework, they said, had long been absent.

According to government estimates, 32,000 people have been reported missing in Mexico since 2006, disappearances that have caused an indelible wound on families across the country. Members of the security forces are suspected in some of the disappearances, but many more are presumed to be the work of drug gangs.

Mexico’s failure to investigate these cases has left families such as the Alvarados desperate for answers but with nowhere to turn.

The court’s ruling in the Alvarado case, expected later this year, could influence another case being considered by Mexico’s Supreme Court. That case is evaluating challenges to a law that critics say strengthens the military’s role in policing the country’s streets.

Under the past two Mexican administrations, the army’s role has been expanded to include operations against drug gangs as well as policing duties. At the same time, formal complaints filed by civilians with different government agencies about allegations of torture, extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances have surged.

And yet as allegations of serious crimes by soldiers and police officers piled up, the military remained largely untouched, protected by governments keen on enforcing the rule of law through the only force seen as able to stand up to the drug gangs.

The three members of the Alvarado family were snatched from Ejido Benito Juárez, a small town south of El Paso. At the time, the drug war was raging in a particularly fierce way in the northern state of Chihuahua. The state now has one of the highest numbers of missing people in Mexico — more than 2,000 cases opened since 2007.

In the eight years of the investigation, the Mexican authorities have not prosecuted a single person in the Alvarados’ case nor offered any information on where they could be.

During a hearing before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on Friday in San José, Costa Rica, members of the Alvarado family testified that they had been told by at least three investigators from different government agencies that their relatives had been held for questioning in nearby military headquarters after soldiers raided Ejido Benito Juárez in search of criminal suspects. One investigator even assured relatives that by the next day, those held would probably be free.

When questioned, all the investigators later denied to the family that they had made such claims, Mexican prosecutors said.

Feeling the doors of justice were being slammed shut by the Mexican authorities, the family had turned to international courts, where they are represented by the Center for Women’s Human Rights, a Mexican advocacy and legal aid organization.

At the two-day hearing that ended Friday, Mexican prosecutors testifying before the court argued that they were dealing with a “very complex case” that probably involved “several actors.” Lines of investigation are continuing to be followed, they said.

Although the prosecutors asserted that they had investigated the role of the military, they said they did not find enough evidence to confirm it was responsible. Instead, noting that it was common for criminals to dress in military uniforms to trick the authorities, they suggested that the Alvarados might have been targeted by drug gangs.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, one of the two legal arms, along with the court, that police human rights in the Americas as part of the Organization of American States, first urged the Mexican authorities in 2010 to find the Alvarados and ensure protection for the rest of the family. Six years later, the commission concluded that the military was responsible for the disappearances, based on evidence, including witnesses’ testimony and reports by Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission and other experts who analyzed the context of violence in the area.

In its report, the commission refers to a context of chaos during military operations around the time the Alvarados where taken. People were snatched from their houses regularly and taken to military headquarters for illegal questioning. The Chihuahua State Human Rights Commission, the report says, had gathered hundreds of allegations of torture, illegal searches, cruel and degrading treatment, threats, intimidation and forced disappearance.

If that is also the ruling of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, it could push Mexico to further investigate the armed forces’ role and prosecute members of the military, pay the family reparations, issue a public apology or take further measures to ensure such disappearances do not happen again.

Mitzi Alvarado and her twin, Nitza, were only 14 years old when their mother was taken away. For the past eight years, they and their younger sister, Daisy, have moved from one city to another. They lived with one set of relatives and then another, fearing that the agents they believed took their mother would come after them.

Heightening their anxiety, soon after the disappearances another relative received phone calls warning the entire family to leave the state of Chihuahua within 24 hours or they would all be killed. Eventually, most did flee.

The three sisters are now studying at El Paso Community College in Texas, where they live after being granted political asylum. Eight other family members are still awaiting word on their applications for political asylum in the United States.

“The state orphaned us and that’s not fair,” said Mitzi Alvarado, weeping.

The post Case of Missing Civilians in Mexico Shines Light on Military’s Role in Drug War appeared first on World The News.

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dani-qrt · 7 years ago