#and I spoke Arabic and was a translator for an Arab woman

[35253319]

!!!

[mosylufanfic]

Linen and Kisses

For Fluffbruary! The prompts for today were table | blush | laundry. Thanks to @toooldforthisbutstill for sharing the snippet of a marriage contract that inspired this.

Linen and Kisses

The music had switched from Wagner to Nine Inch Nails, so Cassian knew his girlfriend was taking a break for at least a few songs. She couldn't listen to anything with words when she was working, she said because languages got tangled up in her head, so she had massive playlists of classical and instrumental music to blast as she was head-down in some manuscript or other. 

He went out to the kitchen and found her filling the kettle. The ravages of her morning's work spilled out over the table, multiple dictionaries and her battered old computer and printouts with penciled notes and highlighted words. 

"What language today?" he asked.

"Japanese," she said. 

Before meeting her, Cassian had considered himself reasonably multilingual. Spanish, English, and about halfway to fluent in French. It was two-and-a-half times more languages than most people spoke in this country. 

But Jyn was fluent in all those and more. She worked as a freelance translator, and since moving in together, he'd gotten used to having half the bookcase filled with dictionaries and having to guess which language she was using to talk on the phone and why. 

French, Japanese, Arabic, Russian? Some connection of hers on another continent.

Spanish, with a lot of laughing? Probably his sister. 

Danish? Her father, and there would be cursing afterwards.

"Are you done?" he asked. "Or just taking a break?"

"Done for now."

"Good, I was going to start lunch. Any requests?"

"Edible," she said, starting to clear up her mess. "Thanks." She hooked her arm around his waist and leaned up to kiss his cheek. She got taciturn when fighting with a particular translation - well, more taciturn. 

By the time she'd cleaned the table off, he'd gotten some of his homemade tomato soup in the microwave and assembled a couple of cheese sandwiches for grilling. She leaned against the counter as he cooked. 

He rarely liked having someone in his kitchen, but Jyn was the exception. 

"What's wrong?" she asked, breaking a corner off the cheese block and tossing it in her mouth.

"Nothing," he answered, a hair too fast. "Why do you ask?"

She eyed him. "I dunno, you just seem a little tense."

"Because you're eating all the good cheese."

"Oh no," she said, cutting off another corner. "Whatever will happen if we run out of cheese? We might have to go down to the store. How awful."

He waggled his spatula at her. "That's the good stuff. You don't get that at a fucking Walmart."

"Snob," she said, and took another corner. "And anyway, we don't get anything at fucking Walmart because you're banned for talking to the cashiers about unionizing."

"Only because I wouldn't let you vandalize the store manager's car."

"Is slashing tires really vandalism?"

"I think you'll find, yes."

She shrugged. "They never would have caught me."

The microwave beeped, and she pulled out the bowls, just in time for him to plate the sandwiches. With the addition of cutlery and tea in heavy mugs, lunch was served. 

He wasn't fool enough to think she'd been distracted or deceived, and if he had been, the canny look she shot him would have disabused him of that notion. The woman knew him far too well. 

"So," she said. "What've you been up to this morning?" She dipped the corner of her sandwich in the soup. 

It was as good an opening as he could have hoped for.

"Messing around online," he said, digging in his back pocket. "Actually, I found something and did some practice translating, but I'm not too sure if I got it right."

"French? Your French is coming along."

"It's not as good as yours," he said, and she nodded in agreement. "Can you read it over for me? This is the original here. Something from a marriage contract in the middle ages."

 She narrowed her eyes at him. "You trying to get me to work for free?"

"Good point. What's your price?"

She leaned across the table and kissed him firmly on the lips. "There." She took the paper from his hand and unfolded it. "Mmm. Hmm. Awwwww."

"There's a part I didn't quite get," he said. "About the laundry?"

"Linen," she murmured. She'd majored in European history, and it still emerged from time to time. "Underthings. What you wore next to your skin underneath all the - " She flapped a hand. "Velvet and brocade, if you were rich, or wool if you were poor."

"Ye Olde Fruit of the Looms," he said.

"Mmm. But it was still expensive because everything was spun and dyed and woven and sewn by hand. Cheap clothing is a really modern concept." She looked at the contract again. "This is a legally binding promise that she'll have the things she needs, always."

"Practical," he said. 

"And kisses," she added. "It's a really sweet turn of phrase. Linen and kisses." She smiled over it for a moment, then looked up. "What was your translation?"

He dug in his pocket and passed it over. He tried to eat a little soup as she read it through, comparing it with the original, but had to put the spoon back in the bowl and hold his mug tightly.

She read it aloud. “I swear to protect you from poverty, to cover your back with linen and kisses, to watch over your sleep and bring you all the delights of this world as long as I walk it with you.”

Her eyes paused on the last line, spaced a little below the rest of his translation. She lifted her eyes. "This wasn't in the original."

He knew what it said without her having to read it aloud. "No," he said. "But it fits."

She looked at it again.

Jyn, will you marry me?

"I know we've only talked about it a few times," he said. "And I don't have a ring or anything. I thought you'd probably want to pick something out yourself. But I - " He gestured. "I read that. And it felt like a sign."

He didn't normally go in for signs. Neither did she. But reading that had felt like - oh, this. This is what I want. And she's who I want it with. 

She set the translation on the table and he looked at it, wondering if he'd been too hasty. If she was about to let him down gently, or not very gently, or - 

She got up, came around the table, and settled herself in his lap. His arms came around her instinctively, pulling her close.

"Oui," she said, smoothing her thumbs along the edge of his beard. "Need that translated?"

He let out all his breath in a rush and rested his forehead on hers. "Listillo," he muttered, and she laughed until his mouth covered hers. 

The soup and the sandwiches were stone cold by the time they got back to eating them, but he found he didn't mind. She smiled at him over her soup, clearly not minding it either. 

"So you'll cover my back with linen, will you," she said. 

"And kisses," he said, stretching over the table to press one to her lips. "Don't forget the kisses."

FINIS

[pillow4t]

These are just my favorite/main headcannons tbh

• HEAVY on the they/them Moria

• Cassidy is a girls girl™ If he's out on a mission with (insert literally any woman in ow) and some creepy guy is hitting on her/touching her, he'll go over and defend her, pretending to be her boyfriend so they'll back down

•Trans Junkrat!!! Trans Sombra!!!!

•Roadhog had a wife and kids before he joined the AFL idc what anyone says

•Baptist calls lifeweaver "Flè mwen" which means "my flower" in Haitian Creole (I used a translator so let me know if I'm wrong <3)

•Pharah stole one of Cassidy's hats back in his blackwatch days when she was 13, she still has it (and sometimes wears it around the bass)

•Genji has a drink named after him at the bar he used to frequent when he was younger

•Junkrats mom spoke Arabic so that's why he gravitated to Ana when he was first around her, he hasn't told anybody tho

•Mercy loves to harp on Cassidy about his smoking habits like she isn't living off of coffee and cigarettes (and sometimes a bagel bc of pharah😌

•Cassidy got Ana a "I love my lesbian daughter" shirt for Christmas, he bought it as a joke, she wears it regularly.

•Junkrat can swallow something then bring it back up, it's a great party trick, he thinks, but it usually grosses people out. It's come in handy on missions tho

•When Sojourn brings Murphy to the watchpoint, she gets SMOTHERED with pets, kisses and love from everyone. The same thing happens when Brigitte brings Mitzi around.

•Symetera and Lifeweaver have completely opposite tastes in music so they were CONSTANTLY arguing about who gets to put on music when they shared a dorm (sym usually won)

•When Hanzo laughs he snorts

•Lúcio has real bad arthritis and his skates are more braces than anything, he also has knee, hand and back braces at the ready

•Tracer gets Emily a souvenir from every place she gets deployed to

•Zenyattas favorite color is Yellow

•JunkerQueen carries around hamster treats in her pockets when Wreaking Ball is with her "For when the champ gets hungry!" She always says(in reality she just thinks it's cute how hamsters eat)

•Torbjorn sometimes brings his (older) kids around if the original group of Overwatch is there, he trusts the others...just not with his kids and is really reluctant with Brigitte

•Roadhog has been teaching Junkrat how to properly write and read and it's really improved how Junkrat functions when they're not fighting for survival in the outback

•Illari is a jewelry girl, but she cant wear to much because it gets in the way of training/fighting, but her collection of gold accessories is off the charts

•Sombra took the username D.va on social media and finds it SO funny that Dva has to use a different variation of her gamertag

•I feel like Reaper still has the same sense of humor he did in over/blackwatch and will constantly make witty jokes to Widowmaker or Moria who just give him a blank stare, Doomfist usually finds them funny tho

•Kiriko and Genji literally cannot cook to save their lives and usually takes two of them to make a small microwave meal

•B.O.B had his voice box removed when he was working for Ashes parents and even after all the years of her offering him to get his voice back, he chooses to use sign language instead but the offer is always on the table, Ashe says

•Lúcio has a 10k DJ set up in his room, and gets violent if anyone tries to mess with anything, literally almost took Cassidy's other arm off when he moved a bunch of dials, he'll show you around the soundboard if you ask tho!

•Kiriko is Hanzo and Genjis Cousin (Asa is their mom's sister <3)

•Reinhardt snores. LOUDLY. Brigitte had to get him a sleep apnea mask so she was able to sleep in the same vicinity as him

•Reaper is from Michigan🫶🏻

•Soldier76 gets made fun of by D.va for being old, but the second he's like "me and Ana are practically the same age" D.va gets all defensive "you just called a woman old!"

•Mei and Tracer share a room, they both sleep better with company

•(Blackwatch)Moria and Genji had an anime night where they would watch 10-20 episodes of any given series they were on, but

---

RAHHH OKAY I LITERALLY HAVE MORE LINER UP BUT I FEEL LIKE ITS ALREADY A SUPER LONG POST

But yeah :) I'm incapable of liking something a little bit so yeahhhh

[rainycat2]

Though I Could Not Stop For Death / Death Kindly Stopped For Me

Chapter Two: Glimpses and Insights

The good thing about being one of the lead-- and only if he was honest with himself-- researchers on the effects of ectoplasmic energy and radiation on the human realm was that the United States government was willing to bypass certain things in order to keep the Fenton’s continued cooperation and research firmly under their sponsorship. For instance, the favor they’d called in to help set up an identity and fast-track an adoption for the boy they’d found in the alley.

Upon discovering the boy, they had taken him in, patched him up, and put him up for the night in their guest room, immediately contacting CPS to inform them of what they’d found. The poor boy had a scar in the center of his chest, inches below his heart, with bruised skin surrounding the area. That wasn’t the only scar he carried, but the most immediate one-- it looked like it had only barely healed over, tissue still angry and red. The agency had instructed them to take him to the hospital first thing, where they found out the boy… effectively did not exist.

He wasn’t listed in any databases. No fingerprints, no registration of his birth, no known parents in the system. For all they could tell, he’d never even been in a hospital.

He also made it difficult as all hell to get any information. When he first spoke, he only spoke in Arabic, and the hospital had to bring in a translator. His name was Danyal, he had no last name, and did not know where he was or how he’d gotten there. When the nurse attempted to draw his blood, he’d almost bit her before the translator explained. Even then, it took a demonstration and explanation to prove that it would not be detrimental to him before he allowed it.

Jasmine, though… well. She’d taken one look at the boy in the alley and claimed him as her own. At ten years old, she’d plopped herself down on Danyal’s hospital bed, damn the consequences, and started chattering away, talking about anything and everything-- what she’d learned in school, her friend James who’d dyed his hair recently, the new family who’d moved in a few weeks back. And surprisingly, Danyal listened. Attentively. He’d slowly begun asking halting questions back, his voice hardly above a whisper, but in fluent English.

Jack shook his head, signing his signature on another piece of paperwork before flipping the page. As they had been first contact, and the boy had nowhere else to go after a test discovered the low level of ectoplasmic radiation clinging to him… The Fentons were approved for an emergency fostering situation after passing their inspections. Who else was equipped to keep an eye on his radiation levels? That was part of the whole reason the Fentons had set up shop in Amity Park, Illinois. Their social worker, however, had been very insistent that Danyal not have anything to do with their research other than monitoring his ectoplasmic levels, and the Fentons had readily agreed. They still had to take a course on trauma-informed care for parenting-- Danyal had been through so much, the extent of which they likely would never know. Their caseworker, a kind woman named Katherine, had explained that while Danyal knew English and could speak it fluently, they suspected it to be his second language. It would take time and lots of trust before he would open up and relax around them.

But… in the brief few weeks they’d spent together, Danyal had already captured his way into their hearts. Jazz nicknamed him Danny after they’d spent an afternoon trying to pronounce his name. She’d almost had it, from what Jack gathered, but she was missing the lilt to the end of the name that just. Could not be fixed. Despite hours of trying. So, Danny had eventually given up and given in to the nickname.

Jack rubbed his eyes, set his pen down as he got up from the desk. It was about time when the kids would be going to bed, and so he started the nightly routine that had recently expanded-- visit Jazz’s room first on the second floor, as it was closer to the stairwell, tuck her in and tell her good night as he turned down the lights. She liked to stay up reading with a light under her covers, so in about an hour, Mads would come by and do the same, telling her to go to sleep for real this time.

This time, however… Jazz’s bed was empty. Jack blinked in confusion, then glanced down the hall.

---

“Maddie, oh my God, you need to come look at this,” her husband whispered urgently from the stairs. Maddie looked up, one eyebrow raising as she marked her page with a bookmark and set the textbook aside.

“What is it?”

“Just-- come up here-- quiet, I don’t want to wake them up.”

She blinked, then smiled softly as she crept up the stairs, sneaking down the hallway to the open door of Danny’s room. The overhead light was off, but the lamp was still on, giving them a perfect view.

Danny was curled up in a little ball, snuggled right up into Jazz, her arms around him, one resting on a book on their legs. The light played with the shadows on their faces, the relaxed expressions showing their ages of eight and ten.

Maddie couldn’t help the squeal she muffled with her hand.

In her defense? It was adorable.

Though she did immediately regret it as Danny’s eyes snapped open, bright blue focusing on them both. She froze, lowering her hands from her mouth to show her soft smile, knowing that Jack was almost certainly smiling as well.

And somehow… that seemed to be enough for him. A few owlish blinks before the corner of his lips turned up, just a little, before he snuggled back into Jazz and closed his eyes.

Oh, how Maddie wished she had a camera.

---

Over time, the collection of photos lining the walls of the Fenton house grew. Danny’s first day of school, once his therapist had said he was adjusted enough to go, and that it would be beneficial to his development. The first time they’d gone out together as a family. The first summer fair. Danny and Madeline training together, after they’d realized the other had self-defense training.

Danny was ten, now. Acclimating to his new life had been… weird. It was weird being away from the League, not knowing… everything about how he’d gotten here.

He remembered dying. That was hard to forget, honestly-- letting himself falter, letting Damian survive at his own expense. Mother’s cries as he faded, Damian sobbing and apologizing.

Damian.

His thoughts often wondered to his little brother (by two minutes, Damian liked to protest), worried about how he had grown. If he had grown at all. They weren’t the first Heirs to the Demon Head, after all. Simply the ones who were the most useful. Their father had been a prospective Heir, but turned Grandfather down.

Danyal wondered how he had managed to get away alive after that. Ra’s didn’t take “no” for an answer very well.

A tap on his knee, and Danny looked up at unfamiliar violet eyes, way too close to his space. His shoulders tensed as he leaned back, furrowing his eyebrows. “Can I… help you?”

The girl, probably his age give or take a year, had plopped herself down at the picnic table in the elementary school playground and had taken to watching him. “You’re different,” she proclaimed after a moment’s consideration. “You’re not like Paulina or the others. What’s your name?”

“Danny,” he answered. “Why? And what do you mean, I’m different?”

“I don’t know.” The girl sighed sharply, looking at the other kids playing around. Even from here, on one of his first days, Danny could just tell the cliques being formed. They’d be going into middle school, soon, but, well. People had their groups of friends, and Danyal was content being the observer on the sidelines, gathering information. That was what he was best at, watching and observing, collecting intel for missions.

“Well, that’s not an answer.” He shrugged and looked back at the homework on the table in front of him, idly writing in some of the answers. Multiplying fractions by whole numbers, honestly. Boring.

“It’s the answer I have. Anyway, my name’s Sam,” she continued. “You’re new, aren’t you? The new Fenton kid that got adopted, right? My mom was talking about you, I think, to Paulina’s dad. It’s nice that they adopted you.”

He had to hold back the urge to roll his eyes. “Sam isn’t a proper name.”

“Neither is Danny,” she shot back.

Alright, he had to give her that. A smile tugged at the edge of his mouth as he set his pencil down, shifting to look at her. “Okay, that’s fair. Yes, the Fentons adopted me two years ago. Yes, I’m new, I had a lot to work through before I could attend school. Do you have any other questions?”

Sam blinked, confusion flitting across her face at the businesslike tone he took. “Oh, um… Do you wanna be friends?”

“Friends?”

“Yeah, like. We can have playdates and do homework and stuff. Mom keeps telling me I need to make more friends, and Paulina’s been getting weird lately, so… Friends!”

“...I suppose it wouldn’t hurt. Jasmine is encouraging me to have friends as well.” He held his hand out for her to shake.

---

Danny was growing up pretty well, if Jazz said so herself. Oh sure, their family was absolutely insane even at the best of times. Sure, she was a sophomore in high school now, but… seeing how much work Danny’s social worker and therapists had done, how much they’d accomplished together, it made her want to help kids like they’d helped her brother.

She spotted the moment he realized she was watching him, his shoulders tensing almost imperceptibly until he met her gaze. Play it off, she’s not staring, not at all. Jazz got up, moving over to the kitchen table where Danny had previously been staring at the page in some… form of disgust mixed with annoyance.

“Hello, little brother,” Jazz giggled, wrapping her arm around his shoulders. “Should I offer to help you with your homework, considering you look like you want to set it on fire?”

“Jazz, this paper is literally going to kill me,” he groaned as he rubbed his face, pencil clattering onto the paper. “It’s just-- it’s so boring! I understand why we should learn how to predict events and how to prepare for them, but I learned how to do that before I learned to talk.”

“You should take that test to go into a higher grade,” Jazz encouraged. “I did it! And really, it’s so much more interesting. I get to take astronomy classes, I know you want to work for NASA when we’re grownups.”

“I know, I know,” Danny hummed. “But my therapist says it would be ‘detrimental to my development as a growing teenage boy coming from my background’,” he drawled, his voice completely monotone, drawing a laugh out of his big sister. “They act like I’m a feral kid, honestly.”

“You tried to bite your nurses when we first took you to the hospital. And the nurses when you got your vaccines. And your fifth grade teacher--”

“Okay, okay! Maybe I was a little feral,” Danny gave in.

---

He really hasn’t changed, has he? Jazz thought to herself from her perch on the top of a building, watching her little brother go apeshit on Skulker. Danny was fifteen now, and…

Her little brother was a superhero. Well, Danny liked to deflect, call himself a ‘vigilante at best’, but… well. They knew better, really. He’d done some awesome things, and she meant that in the Biblical sense of “awesome”-- truly awe-inspiring things that, if it were anyone else… well, they’d probably be a little concerned. Danny, though?

Danny was probably one of the genuinely kindest people she ever knew. Apparently, after his big defeat of Pariah Dark, Clockwork had taken him aside and talked about what that really meant, to defeat the High King of Ghosts in one-to-one combat. The Infinite Realms worked on a hierarchy of power, after all.

Which meant that on top of his duties as a vigilante superhero, and having just finished his sophomore year, Danny was also being tagged in for High Prince of Ghosts duties. Which, apparently, included acting as a psychopomp in some situations, albeit with quite a bit more ass-kicking.

As she watched Danny give Skulker one hell of a roundhouse kick, it felt like… her perspective of reality blurred. One minute they were in the sky, the next, Danny was floating in front of her with a paper in hand, Skulker nowhere to be seen. So really, you could hardly hold her responsible for the sharp jump and yelp, reaching out to sock him in the shoulder. “Danny! Don’t do that, I thought you were fighting-!”

Danny let his shoulder go intangible with a laugh, patting her on the shoulder. “It’s okay, Jazz. It… we need to have a talk with the rest of the gang, hold on a sec.” He tapped the communicator in his ear. “Phantom to team, come in team.”

“Here, as always,” Tucker’s voice buzzed, followed quickly by Sam’s agreement.

“Cutting patrol short tonight, guys,” he hummed, wrapping his arm around Jazz’s waist as they took off into the air. “Let’s meet back up at my place and talk-- seems we’ve got a letter from good ol’ Clocky.”

“Oh, Ancients,” Sam sighed. “Can we not get one normal summer?”

“Redundant question, sorry, Danny,” Tucker apologized.

“Don’t worry about it, guys-- let’s just get back and talk.”

---

“I’m sorry, he wants you to do what?!” Sam whisper-yelled, a throw pillow clutched tightly against her chest. “Danny, you’ve got to be joking. You can’t just… you can’t just tell your parents. I mean, what are they going to think?”

Danny rubbed the back of his neck. “Look, he’s the Master of All Time. If he says that this is probably the best time to tell them, because I’m needed for Prince of the Realms stuff this summer, then that’s probably in my best interest to listen to him,” he argued, tucking a knee to his chest. “Just… look, I just need you guys to be there with me when I tell them. It’s not like I can just burst out of the gate with it.”

“And, y’know, Mom and Dad have gotten a lot better, lately,” Jazz mused. “They’re really focusing on the science of what they’re doing instead of just… building weapons for ghost hunting. I think they took my lecture on being researchers to heart.”

Danny raised an eyebrow. “You screamed at them for a solid hour.”

“It was a lecture!”

“Not to be the voice of reason here or anything,” Tucker cut in, “but… I have to agree with Danny, Sam. Clockwork hasn’t guided us wrong yet, and technically, Danny’s his boss now, so I don’t think he wants to see him go power-crazy. Especially not after all that crap last time.”

Danny winced. “Really, just. Salt in that wound, huh?”

“Sorry man. But seriously, we just… sit them down and break out the powerpoint we made. We can all take turns explaining it,” Tucker reasoned. “And besides, where he goes, we go anyway.”

Sam huffed. “Fine. But I’m keeping my armor on standby.”

Danny grinned. “Thanks, guys. Now, we should plan for it this weekend, so we can start planning the summer trip…”

----

All things considered? Telling the Fentons was… a whole lot less screaming and accusations than Danny halfway expected. They took the information calmly, watching the presentation the teenagers gave-- and really, it was a damn good presentation. They’d gotten scans from Frostbite about Danny’s biology, his DNA, and how his long-term exposure to ectoplasmic radiation had protected him from straight up dying in the portal accident. How the Realms had saved him as much as it killed him. How he’d spent so much goddamn time, blood sweat and tears keeping the city, the world safe from their own little brand of cosmic horrors.

How they’d learned that fighting was how ghosts socialized, so they set up ways to keep it from being destructive on Danny’s grades and the town itself.

Their parents were… shocked, to say the least. But at their hearts, they were scientists. Scientists that had been fed lies and bigotry about ghosts in a field where they didn’t have the ability, for so long, to prove that bigotry wrong-- and when they did finally have the ability, their want to be proven wrong had long since disappeared. How their bias had been drilled into them by their professors, by their professors, by everyone in the field.

They needed time to reassess. To work through their biases, to… to try to apologize, in some way.

Danny said they didn’t need to apologize.

They insisted.

---

His mission, of course, was hardly put in clear terms. Danny thought that Clockwork just liked to fuck with him, at this point, as his Guardian. He had the right to, or whatever. Regardless, the young ghost just had to stare as Clockwork explained.

“Let me get this straight. You want me to go to Gotham, a place that is notoriously full of crime, murder, and 100% has a supernatural presence, because the City Ghost has said that she’ll make your afterlife miserable if I don't deal with their furry problem?” he said incredulously.

“I hardly said that, Danyal,” Clockwork hummed. “What I said is that Lady Gotham, one of the older City Ghosts on this side of the world, has requested your assistance with your connections to both the living and Infinite realms in regards to a problem with one of her Protectors.”

“...So, the Bats,” Danny grumbled. “Hooray, that’s definitely what I wanted to do this summer. Go into the city that notably hates metas.”

“I hardly think that they will take umbrage with your presence,” Clockwork chuckled, patting his charge’s shoulder. “After all, your father lives in Gotham, does he not?”

Danny rubbed at his face as they floated to the couches that had appeared, the Long Now sensing the wants and needs of its owner. “I guess. That’s kind of… part of the problem, you know? I don’t want to go and see him, and then have to pretend that we’re… I mean, I know he’s my Father. I do. But.. I have enough problems without having to deal with the whole-ass Justice League on my ass, you know?”

“I believe you have less problems than you believe you do,” Clockwork hummed.

Danny narrowed his eyes. “Are you… going to give me a better answer than that?”

“No.”

“Enigmatic bastard.”

“If either of us is a bastard, young Prince, it would be you.”

“You cheeky-!”

TAGLIST: @mynameisnotlaura @fisticuffsatapplebees @screamingtofillthevoid @lizisipancardo @digitizedworld @dahliasandrosemary

NEXT CHAPTER: ==>

[upsidedownsoup]

I Come From There

I come from there and I have memories

Born as mortals are, I have a mother

And a house with many windows,

I have brothers, friends,

And a prison cell with a cold window.

Mine is the wave, snatched by the sea-gulls,

I have my own view,

And an extra blade of grass.

Mine is the moon at the far edge of the words,

And the bounty of birds,

And the immortal olive tree.

- Mahmoud Darwish

Mahmoud Darwish was a Palestinian poet born on the 13th of March, 1941 in al-Birwa, located in Western Galilee. His family was displaced during the First Arab-Israeli War but they returned to a different part of Western Galilee because his birth village was destroyed by Israeli forces. Darwish grew up to be involved in a number of writing positions namely working as an editor for a couple of literary periodicals. By then he had already been writing professionally, publishing his first collection, Asafir bila ajniha (Wingless Birds), at just 19. Throughout his life, Darwish was an avid voice of Palestine. His works often included themes tied to resistance and the homeland. He was an active participant in political activism having joined the Palestine Liberation Organization or PLO in the early 1970s. He was subsequently banned from entering Israel. Later he served on the PLO Executive Committee. Darwish believed in the possibility of peace between Israel and Palestine and hoped for the future mending of the relationship between Palestinians and Israelis.

Mahmoud Darwish and poets like him remind me of the eternal need for and importance of poetry. Not only for its unique ability to amplify voices but also for its incredibly far reach. Many poems by Mahmoud Darwish have reached the hearts and minds of people all across the world, from a teenager in Sri Lanka to an old woman in Canada. And if we, most of us who have never had to face half the things Palestinians have for the past 75+ years, continue to consume and enjoy his poems without acknowledging the person, the past behind the words, then who are we? Why should we be allowed to benefit from his words if we are not willing to stand up in solidarity and to use our voices where we can? Poets can only do so much, we, the readers, must take what we are given and do what we can in return. Whether that’s through monetary contribution or raising awareness- do something.

I’m reminded of a poem by Olav H. Hauge-

From the War

A bullet skittered to rest on the hall floor.

I weighed it in my hand.

It had gone through glass and

two timbered walls.

I had no doubt it could kill.

From The Dream We Carry: Selected and Last Poems of Olav H. Hauge Translated by Robert Bly and Robert Hedin

During World War II, my ancestral village and Olav H. Hauge’s home of Ulvik, Norway was nearly completely burned to the ground on the 25th of April, 1940. Poetry if often born from violence. We need poets like Mahmoud Darwish and Olav H. Hauge who spoke of the horrors of war and forceful occupation. We need their voices because otherwise too often the everyday pain and minutiae of war get lost to time.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

The latest episode Honestly features something a little different. It’s a replay of an episode of my friend Sam Harris’s podcast, Making Sense. I wanted to put this episode down the Honestly feed—despite the amount of Israel-related content we have already published—because of the moral confusion plaguing this moment. It’s everywhere: from college campuses to Congress. 

Sam, better than almost anyone I know, is able to speak to that confusion, with facts, nuance, and clarity. Read an edited excerpt below, or click to listen to the episode in full. Sam’s words are illuminating and well worth your time. —BW 

Link: Podcast audio (1 hour)

By: Sam Harris

Published: Nov 13, 2023

In the wake of Hamas’s October 7 attack, it’s important to keep in view the bright line that exists between good and a very specific form of evil. It is the evil of bad ideas—ideas so bad that they can make even ordinary human beings impossible to live with. 

There’s a piece of audio from October 7 that many people have commented on. It’s a recording of a cell phone call that a member of Hamas made to his family, while he was in the process of massacring innocent men, women, and children. The man is ecstatic, telling his father and mother, and I think brother, that he has just killed ten Jews with his own hands. He had just murdered a husband and wife and was now calling his family from the dead woman’s phone.

Here’s a partial transcript of what he said:

“Hi, Dad—open my ‎WhatsApp now, and you’ll see all those killed. Look how many I killed with my own hands! Your son killed Jews!”

And his dad says, “May God protect you.”

“Dad, I’m talking to you from a Jewish woman’s phone. I killed her, and I killed her husband. I killed ten with my own hands! Dad, ten with my own hands! Dad, open WhatsApp and see how many I killed, Dad. Open the phone, Dad. I’m calling you on WhatsApp. Open the phone, go. Dad, I killed ten. Ten with my own hands. Their blood is on their hands. [I believe that is a reference to the Quran.] Put Mom on.”

And the father says, “Oh, my son. God bless you!”

“I swear, ten with my own hands. Mother, I killed ten with my own hands!”

And his father says, “May God bring you home safely.”

“Dad, go back to WhatsApp now. Dad, I want to do a live broadcast.”

And the mother now says, “I wish I was with you.”

“Mom, your son is a hero!”

And then, apparently talking to his comrades, he yells, “Kill, kill, kill, kill them.”

And then his brother gets on the line, asking where he is. And he tells his brother the name of the town, and then he says “I killed ten! Ten with my own hands! I’m talking to you from a Jew’s phone!”

And the brother says, “You killed ten?”

“Yes, I killed ten. I swear!”

Then he says, “I am the first to enter on the protection and help of Allah! [Surely that’s another scriptural reference.] Hold your head up, father. Hold your head up! See on WhatsApp those that I killed. Open my WhatsApp.”

And his brother says, “Come back. Come back.”

And he says, “What do you mean, come back? There’s no going back. It is either death or victory! My mother gave birth to me for the religion. What’s with you? How would I return? Open WhatsApp. See the dead. Open it.”

And the mother sounds like she is trying to figure out how to open WhatsApp. . . 

“Open WhatsApp on your phone and see the dead, how I killed them with my own hands.”

And she says, “Well, promise to come back.”

I don’t speak any Arabic, and it seems to me that not every word in the audio that’s being circulated was translated, but I think we get the gist. When I spoke to Graeme Wood about this, he said that to him, the mother and father sounded more shocked and worried than anything else, which would be understandable. But I would submit to you that this piece of audio is more than just the worst WhatsApp commercial ever conceived. It is a window onto a culture. As I told Graeme, this is not the type of call that would have been placed from Vietnam, by an American who just participated in the My Lai massacre. Nor is it the parental reaction one would expect from an American family, had their beloved son just called them from a killing field. I mean, as terrible as Vietnam was, can you imagine a call back to Nebraska, “Mom, I killed ten with my own hands! I killed a woman and her husband, and I’m calling from the dead woman’s phone. Mom, your son is a hero!” Do you see what a total aberration that would have been, even in extremis? 

This call wasn’t a total aberration. This wasn’t Ted Bundy calling his mom. This was an ordinary member of Hamas, a group that might still win an election today, especially in the West Bank, calling an ordinary Palestinian family, and the mere existence of that call, to say nothing of its contents, reveals something about the wider culture among the Palestinians.

It’s important to point out that not only members of Hamas but ordinary Gazans appear to have taken part in the torture and murder of innocent Israelis and the taking of hostages. How many did this? And how many ordinary Gazans were dancing in the streets and spitting on the captured women and girls who were paraded before them after having been raped and tortured? What percentage of Palestinians in Gaza, or the West Bank, many of whom are said to hate Hamas for their corruption and incompetence and brutality, nevertheless support what they did on October 7 with a clear conscience, based on what they believe about Jews and the ethics of jihad? I don’t know, but I’m sure that the answers to these questions would be quite alarming. We’re talking about a culture that teaches Jew hatred and the love of martyrdom in its elementary schools, many of which are funded by the UN. 

Of course, all of this horror is compounded by the irony that the Jews who were killed on October 7 were, for the most part, committed liberals and peace activists. Hamas killed the sorts of people who volunteer to drive sick Palestinians into Israel for medical treatments. They murdered the most idealistic people in Israel. They raped, tortured, and killed young people at a trance dance music festival devoted to peace, half of whom were probably on MDMA feeling nothing but love for all humanity when the jihadists arrived. In terms of a cultural and moral distance, it’s like the fucking Vikings showed up at Burning Man and butchered everyone in sight. 

Just think about what happened at the Supernova music festival: at least 260 people were murdered in the most sadistically gruesome ways possible. Decapitated, burned alive, blown up with grenades. . . and from the jihadist side, this wasn’t an error. It’s not that if they could have known what was in the hearts of those beautiful young people, they would have thought, “Oh my God, we’re killing the wrong people. These people aren’t our enemies. These people are filled with love and compassion and want nothing more than to live in peace with us.” No, the true horror is that, given what jihadists believe, those were precisely the sorts of people any good Muslim should kill and send to hell where they can be tortured in fire for eternity. From the jihadist point of view, there is no mistake here. And there is no basis for remorse. Please absorb this fact: for the jihadist, all of this sadism—the torture and murder of helpless, terrified people—is an act of worship. This is the sacrament. This isn’t some nauseating departure from the path to God. This isn’t stalled spiritual progress, much less sin. This is what you do for the glory of God. This is what Muhammed himself did. 

There is no substitute for understanding what our enemies actually want and believe. I’m pretty sure that many of you reading this aren’t even comfortable with my use of the term enemy, because you don’t want to believe that you have any. I understand that. But you have to understand that the people who butchered over 1,400 innocent men, women, and children in Israel on October 7 were practicing their religion, sincerely. They were being every bit as spiritual, from their point of view, as the trance dancers at the Supernova festival were being from theirs. They were equally devoted to their highest values. Equally uplifted. Ecstatic. Amazed at their good fortune. They wouldn’t want to trade places with anyone. Let this image land in your brain: they were shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) all day long, as they murdered women and children. And these people are now being celebrated the world over by those who understand exactly what they did. Yes, many of those college kids at Harvard and Stanford and Cornell are just idiots who have a lot to learn about the world. But in the Muslim community, and that includes the crowds in London and Sydney and Brooklyn, Hamas is being celebrated by people who understand exactly what motivates them. 

Again, watch Hotel Mumbai or read a book about the Islamic State so that you can see jihadism in another context—where literally not one of the variables that people imagine to be important here is present. There are no settlers or blockades or daily humiliations at checkpoints or differing interpretations of history—and yet we have same grotesque distortion of the spiritual impulse, the same otherworldliness framed by murder, the same absolute evil that doesn’t require the presence of evil people, just confused ones—just true believers. 

Of course, we can do our best to turn the temperature down now. And we can trust that the news cycle will get captured by another story. We can direct our attention again to Russia, or China, or climate change, or AI alignment, and I will do that on this podcast, but the problem of jihadism and the much wider problem of sympathy for it isn’t going away. And civilized people—non-Muslim and Muslim alike—have to deal with it. As I said in a previous podcast on this topic: we all live in Israel now. It’s just that most of us haven’t realized it yet.

==

many of those college kids at Harvard and Stanford and Cornell are just idiots who have a lot to learn about the world. But in the Muslim community, and that includes the crowds in London and Sydney and Brooklyn, Hamas is being celebrated by people who understand exactly what motivates them. 

This is the nub of the current insanity. This is an extreme Islamification, supremacist movement, and you have stupid idiot kids who have no idea what's going on - many of whom would be murdered in a heartbeat and their bodies dragged behind a motorcycle to the cheers of the faithful - endorsing and enabling it against their own interests because they've succumbed to shallow "social justice" rhetoric, and you have the true believers who do know, and are more than willing to be supported by the useful idiots who will eventually be thrown on the fire.

"Israel is only the first target. The entire planet will be under our law." -- Mahmoud al-Zahar, Hamas Commander

[gwydionmisha]

In Jerusalem

BY MAHMOUD DARWISH

TRANSLATED BY FADY JOUDAH

In Jerusalem, and I mean within the ancient walls,

I walk from one epoch to another without a memory

to guide me. The prophets over there are sharing

the history of the holy ... ascending to heaven

and returning less discouraged and melancholy, because love

and peace are holy and are coming to town.

I was walking down a slope and thinking to myself: How

do the narrators disagree over what light said about a stone?

Is it from a dimly lit stone that wars flare up?

I walk in my sleep. I stare in my sleep. I see

no one behind me. I see no one ahead of me.

All this light is for me. I walk. I become lighter. I fly

then I become another. Transfigured. Words

sprout like grass from Isaiah’s messenger

mouth: “If you don’t believe you won’t be safe.”

I walk as if I were another. And my wound a white

biblical rose. And my hands like two doves

on the cross hovering and carrying the earth.

I don’t walk, I fly, I become another,

transfigured. No place and no time. So who am I?

I am no I in ascension’s presence. But I

think to myself: Alone, the prophet Muhammad

spoke classical Arabic. “And then what?”

Then what? A woman soldier shouted:

Is that you again? Didn’t I kill you?

I said: You killed me ... and I forgot, like you, to die.

[thoughtportal]

Ibrahim Nasrallah (trans. Huda Fakhreddine)

I was silent and nothing came of it. I spoke and nothing came of it. I cursed, I apologized, and nothing came of it. I was busy, I pretended to be busy…and nothing. I sat, I walked, I ran. I shivered and I warmed up. Nothing. I was parched until I cracked. I drank until I drowned, and nothing came of it. I crumbled like a fetus, like the father, the siblings, and the mother. I was then gathered in a shroud made of old curtains, and nothing came of it. I stumbled more than I could stand but then I stood up, and nothing came of it. I prayed until, like a prophet, I became a verse in a holy book, I rowed until I reached hell, I beseeched and begged …and nothing. I raged, I calmed, I remembered what was once distant, and I forgot what was always close. I befriended a monster, and I fought a monster. I died young and sometimes survived. In both times, I grew old from all that I had seen, but nothing came of it. I charged, I withdrew, I fought the wind when it blew, And reconciled with the waves when I rose and raged. Among the horses my heart was a horse, in the night my heart was a night, and nothing came of it. I ate, I hungered, I vomited, and nothing came of it. I embraced my shadow, and I chastised it and then I chastised myself. I greeted a woman lost in the streets. I fought with a man and his smile nearby, and with a bird that sang briefly in the garden, and nothing came of it.

I closed all the windows in my house and opened them. I wrote words on death when it is merciful, death when it is futile, death when it is hell, death when it is the only way…at last, death when it is gentle and light, death when it is heavy and dark, and nothing came of it. I wrote about the river and the sea, about tomorrow and the sun, and nothing came of it. I wrote about oppression and depravity – purity too. I slept without a bite of bread. I dreamt without dreams. I woke up not missing my hands or feet or reflection in the mirror or the thing I call my soul. I died and lived. I lit myself on fire. I put myself out with my own ashes, and nothing came of it.

I am all these elements, O God: fire, earth, wind, and water. Their fifth is a pain that blind songs can’t see, their sixth is this immense loneliness, and their seventh, since my slaughter, is blood. When I burned, I inhabited the letters of my free name like a butterfly: P         A         L         E          S        T        I         N         E When my roof was suddenly blown off into the sky and with it a wall, a window, and the youngest of my children, I gathered myself in the G and the A and the Z and the A. I became GAZA. A thousand warplanes circled and hit me. I collapsed and collapsed again, and then rose in a scream. I called out, but nothing came of it. Nothing came of it. Nothing came of it. I lost faith and believed, lost faith and believed again, and lost faith and believed and… nothing came of it, nothing came of it.

And the filthy world asks me: All this…what of it?

[aglaecan]

@fimbulvtr sent a meme: What was honestly said gives the thin, dark-haired and dark-eyed man a second look at the woman. After a brief pause encompassing careful translation, Bibaut says on her behalf, ❛ I expect your purpose will be about something… extraordinary, perhaps interesting. ❜   /   for Cass, from Cez

The frustration of translation was an old one. Cassander spoke excellent English – of course he did; his native tongue, drawling from his lips with the honeyed refinement of his class. He spoke quite good Arabic, after some time spent in Cairo. A little workmanlike Greek, a scholar’s Latin. Enough French to order himself a fine meal and a finer whore.

But not a word of Romanian.

He had not even planned to come here, of course. Only Michel Bibaut’s messages, reaching Cassander in northern Greece, had drawn him to this benighted place. There was something interesting here, Bibaut had said. Something requiring expertise beyond his own, he had said.

Well, that wasn’t hard. Michel Bibaut was a clever enough man in his own way; but Cassander was cleverer. They both knew it. And so Cassander had come, on a whim as much as anything. Unprepared, without a phrasebook to be had; relying upon Michel’s translations was tedious, but functioned well enough -- for now.

The look that the Belgian gave to the local woman before pausing to translate her words, though – that interested Cassander. As did the woman’s tone. As did the woman herself, if he was frank.

“Dear Christ,” he laughed. “Is she flirting?”

“Cassander,” Bibaut said, “she’s married.”

A snort. “As though that’s impediment.” His eyes lingered on the woman, hair like wheat, a peasant’s strong body, but something fierce and daring in her eyes. “Tell her this – that my purpose itself is mundane, but what I find here might be what is extraordinary.”

Michel paused, but then turned to the potter’s wife, and translated.

[queen-of-the-avengers]

Iron Man: Part Nine

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Female!Reader (implicitly)

Word Count: ~2.1k

Warnings: canon violence and angst

Author’s Note: any and all comments are appreciated <3

x

If what happened in Gulmira happened yesterday, then there is news coverage on it somewhere. You flip through the channels to get to the right station.

"The fifteen-mile hike to the outskirts of Gulmira can only be described as a descent into hell into a modern-day Heart of Darkness," the female announcer says. Pictures of the violence and wreckage in Gulmira are shown. "Simple farmers and herders from peaceful villages have been driven from their homes, displaced from their lands by warlords emboldened by a new-found power. Villagers have been forced to take shelter in whatever crude dwellings they can find in the ruins of other villages or here in the remnants of an old Soviet smelting plant. Recent violence has been attributed to a group of foreign fighters referred to by locals as the Ten Rings. As you can see, these men are heavily armed and on a mission. A mission that could prove fatal to anyone who stands in their way."

"Fuck the Ten Rings. They're a disease. They'll hurt anyone they touch," you say. A video is shown of the damage when one of the men is shown without a mask on his face, and you gasp in shock. "That's him. That's the man who wanted you to build the Jericho."

"With no political will or international pressure, there's very little hope for these refugees. Around me, a woman begs for news on her husband who was kidnapped by insurgents, either forced to join their militia or killed. Desperate refugees clutch yellowed photographs, holding them up to anyone who will stop. A child's simple question, 'Where are my mother and father?' There's very little hope for these refugees who can only wonder who, if anyone, will help."

Tony gets up with a look of murder in his eyes, and you quickly follow him to the area where he was testing his suit.

"Tony..."

"I'm going down there. Are you coming or not?"

"Hell yeah, I am." The floor opens up as machine parts work with Tony to put together the newly painted red iron suit. The helmet is put on last, and the two eye holes shine brightly with vengeance. "Let's go get those sons of bitches."

Gulmira is a fifteen-hour flight from Los Angeles which is only an hour from Tony's house in Malibu. You and Tony can make it in about five. There are no other planes in the area where you're flying so you're not worried about running into another aircraft and being shot down by it. Flying this high and at this speed makes the wind feel nice in your hair but this is far from a vacation. You're avenging a friend's death and destroying any chance the Ten Rings have at buying weapons from Tony's company again.

"Are we almost there yet?" you ask Tony through the earpiece you have in.

"Just about."

The entire town of Gulmira is in ruins. Civilians are being killed on the spot, women and children are being separated from the men, and soldiers are ransacking this poor town. The man who spoke Arabic in that cave when Yinsen translated is in charge of these soldiers, and your eyes narrow angrily.

You and Tony touch down on the ground and everything pauses for a few seconds. The refugees are scared and hopeful, and the soldiers are angry at someone from the outside is here to intervene. They raise their guns and you put your back to Tony to use him as a shield. You may have incredible powers but bullets can still kill you and Tony is the perfect shield to protect you against them.

There are soldiers coming from your end with guns in their hands but you're way ahead of them. Flames cover your body from head to toe, startling the refugees even more. You throw fireballs so hot that when they come into contact with the soldiers, they're dead instantly. Those who can withstand the heat scream in terror and run around trying to put out the flames, but they soon succumb to their injuries.

When Tony kills the shooter, he turns to where the hostages are being kept. Five soldiers have five refugees in front of them with their guns pointed at their heads. One of them has her two young children in her arms as she prays for someone to help her. Tony realizes that he can't kill them without hurting the women so he powers down his repulsors. Seeing him do this allows you to extinguish your flames.

Tony's display isn't available to you but you can only imagine Jarvis is targeting the soldiers. Tiny rockets rise from Tony's shoulders, and he fires them at the soldiers so that the only people left standing are the women and children. The man who started this all is somewhere around here, and you walk past the refugees to find him.

You turn a corner and see him desperately trying to get someone on his satellite phone. You clear your throat and smile sweetly at him. Since being rescued, you've taught yourself a little Arabic just in case you were given this opportunity.

"حان دورك في المعاناة."

It's your turn to suffer.

You kick the man in the chest, breaking the wall behind him to pieces. He falls flat on his back in front of Tony who looks down at him. If he's going to truly suffer for his crimes, then only the people of Gulmira can give it to him.

"كله لك. اجعلها مؤلمة."

He's all yours. Make it hurt.

Next on the agenda is to destroy all Stark weapons that the Ten Rings have so that they may never use his name to hurt people. If you had gone about this alone, you'd have trouble hitting each and every weapon by hand because you don't have Jarvis as your eyes and ears. Tony does which is why he is able to make all weapons a target for destruction. Before he has a chance to press the trigger, someone shoots him out of the sky, barely missing you.

"Tony!" He crashes into the ground in a cloud of dust. You fly down to his side and put a hand on his metal shoulder. "Are you okay?"

"Peachy."

He groans in pain and climbs out of the hole with a murderous look in his eyes--well, the Iron Man eyes. A tank is a few hundred yards away from you and Tony, and they fire a rocket to destroy you. You use your aerokinesis to shoot it to the sky and then your pyrokinesis to explode it in a burst of fire. Tony shoots one of his own rockets at the tank and turns seconds before the tank exploded.

The melting point for Titanium is just over three thousand degrees Fahrenheit. The melting point for lead bullets is just above six hundred degrees Fahrenheit, so what you're about to do won't hurt Tony at all. Soldiers aim their guns at you and Tony and begin firing, but you create a wall of fire in front of you to protect you. The temperature of the firewall is seven hundred degrees Fahrenheit which melts the bullets before they can even get to you. The air around you becomes too hot to breathe in, Tony's feeling the heat from inside his suit, and the buildings and minimal plant life around you go up in flames.

"Take care of the weapons."

"Take five seconds and get ready to fly like a bat out of hell."

"Got it!"

Tony flies toward his company's weapons and fires his rockets at everything so that when you two leave, there will be no trace of his weapons here. Five seconds go by and you shoot into the sky knowing this part of town will be blown off the maps. Tony follows you away from the active war zone and toward the direction of home. The Air Force will no doubt be on your ass for what you just did but you did their job in ten minutes, and very easily you might add.

"Sir, Colonel James Rhodes is on the line," Jarvis says when the phone starts ringing.

"Hello?"

"Tony?"

"Who is this?" you ask.

"It's Rhodes. You're on this line too, Y/N?"

"Speak up, please," Tony says.

"What in the hell is that noise?"

"Oh, yeah, I'm driving with the top down."

"I need your help right now."

"It's funny how that works, huh?"

"Speaking of funny, we've got a weapons depot that was just blown up a few clicks from where you two were being held captive."

"Well, that's a hot spot. Sounds like someone stepped in and did your job for you, huh?" you smirk.

"Why do you sound out of breath, Y/N?"

"I don't, we were just jogging in the canyon."

You say the first thing that comes to mind and then you remember what Tony says about driving with the top down.

"I thought you two were driving."

"We were driving to the canyon where we're going to jog."

"You sure you don't have any tech in that area I should know about?"

"Nope!"

"Okay, good because I'm staring at two right now, and it's about to be blown to kingdom come."

Just as he says that two fighter jets appear behind you ready to shoot you down.

"That's our exit," Tony says and hangs up the phone. "Split up!"

Tony goes one way and you turn the other way to keep both fighter jets from attacking the two of you at the same time. If Rhodey can see you and Tony without knowing it's you and Tony, then he's going to have a hell of a time explaining why a woman is flying without special aid. He doesn't know what you can do but it's sure as hell right to tell him now.

If you make it out of here alive.

"Tony, what do we do?" you ask.

"Don't let them hit you!"

The fighter jet on your ass deploys a missile straight at you. Without stopping, you look back and send a fireball straight into the nose so that it explodes without hitting you or causing you harm. The fighter jet swerves so it doesn't get hit by the explosion and catches up to you quickly.

"You want a chase, I'll give you a chase," you smirk.

You pick up speed and jet further from it at speeds much faster than a fighter jet. Tony catches up to speed with you and you look at him with a smile. Both fighter jets catch up to you, and you look behind you as you come up with a game plan.

"Tony, hide under the belly of the jets! They'll think we're gone and they'll leave."

"Smart!"

You and Tony duck out of sight from the jets and fly up to the belly and hang on. The pilots are confused as to where you went but they think they've taken care of the problem.

"Jarvis, call Rhodey."

"What are you doing, Y/N?"

"Don't you think it's time he knows? He's going to kill us if we don't say anything."

"Hello?" Rhodey answers after the third ring.

"Hi, Rhodey. It's us."

"It's who?"

"It is us. What you were asking about is us," Tony sighs.

"No, see, this isn't a game. You do not send civilian equipment into my active war zone. Do you understand that?"

"This is not a piece of equipment. I'm in it. It's a suit. It's me!"

"Rhodey, you're targeting us!" you exclaim.

Both fighter jets pull back to return to home base when they spot you and Tony on either one of the jets. The jet that's on top of Tony shakes violently to knock him off sending him right into the jet's wing. The jet starts to spiral down toward Earth's surface and if you don't do something, the pilot is gonna die. Every pilot has an ejection button that will remove them from the aircraft when in an emergency situation, so the pilot pulls the lever.

However, his parachute doesn't engage.

"I got it!" you explain. You fly down toward the falling pilot who panics and struggles to get his parachute to deploy. He looks up to see you fly toward him, and you give him a friendly smile. You use your air powers to keep him from falling. "Don't worry, you're safe."

"What the hell?" he gasps.

"Is that you, Y/N?" Rhodey gasps.

"Yes, it's me!" The other fighter jet is following Tony and trying to shoot him down, and you need him to help the parachute to open. "Call off your guy so I can save yours! Tony! I need your help!"

Tony flies down to the man who is still stuck in his chair, and he punches the box that contains the parachute. With it out of the box, the man is safe to freely float down to Earth. You let him descend to safety before flying up to help Tony evade the threat of the other one. With your combined powers, you're able to escape before the pilot can shoot you down.

"Y/N, you can fly?"

"Come by to see what Tony's working on, and I'll tell you everything."

"You two owe me a plane, you know that?" Rhodey chuckles.

"Technically, he hit me. Now, are you going to come by and see what I'm working on?"

"No, no, no. The less I know, the better. What am I supposed to tell the press?"

"Training exercise. Isn't that the usual bullshit?" you chuckle.

"It's not that simple."

"I think it is. I need a drink," you smirk.

x

Follow my library blog @aqueenslibrary​​​​​​ where I reblog all my stories, so you can put notifications on there without the extra stuff :)

[mieleficient]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Amnesty International Malaysia (@amnesty_my)

In Jerusalem

BY MAHMOUD DARWISH

TRANSLATED BY FADY JOUDAH

In Jerusalem, and I mean within the ancient walls,

I walk from one epoch to another without a memory

to guide me. The prophets over there are sharing

the history of the holy ... ascending to heaven

and returning less discouraged and melancholy, because love

and peace are holy and are coming to town.

I was walking down a slope and thinking to myself: How

do the narrators disagree over what light said about a stone?

Is it from a dimly lit stone that wars flare up?

I walk in my sleep. I stare in my sleep. I see

no one behind me. I see no one ahead of me.

All this light is for me. I walk. I become lighter. I fly

then I become another. Transfigured. Words

sprout like grass from Isaiah’s messenger

mouth: “If you don’t believe you won’t be safe.”

I walk as if I were another. And my wound a white

biblical rose. And my hands like two doves

on the cross hovering and carrying the earth.

I don’t walk, I fly, I become another,

transfigured. No place and no time. So who am I?

I am no I in ascension’s presence. But I

think to myself: Alone, the prophet Muhammad

spoke classical Arabic. “And then what?”

Then what? A woman soldier shouted:

Is that you again? Didn’t I kill you?

I said: You killed me ... and I forgot, like you, to die

[diilchasp]

“Bilingualism strikes me as a kind of synesthesia. Instead of seeing colors associated with letters and words, instead of hearing melodies, what I hear with language is the play and echo of the other language. The option to say it differently, and thus to live it differently. Language is not only a means of communication or description. It’s a framework in which we process existence. Yi writes: “It is hard to feel in an adopted language, yet it is impossible in my native language.” As every bilingual person and translator knows, there are certain words—a feeling, a way of being—that is absent in one language but perfectly brought to life in another. A word that, by existing, gives permission to be. What if you need that which does not exist in your language?”

— Yoojin Grace Wuertz, Mother Tongue

“Language, like the mouths that hold and release it, is wet & living, each word is wrinkled with age, swollen with other words, with blood”

— Margaret Atwood, from “Two-Headed Poems,” Two-Headed Poems (Oxford University Press, 1978)

“language is real. the power of it is that it gets deeper than any human touch. if i were to touch you right now, i would only get to your skin. but when i speak to you, i’m all the way through"-

-ocean vuong

okay so i get the hindi word of the day in my mail from shabdkosh, okay?today's word was "oblivious". the hindi word given was bekhabar, which is something i knew. What i was looking for is the hindvi equivalent, which is what people call "shudh hindi" or sanskrit-infused hindi. So hindvi is the natural evolution in language from sanskrit, whereas urdu is hindvi - sanskrit + (persian and arabic). There obviously was "anyamanask" (transliterated, it mean, "the mind is elsewhere"), but i found another word which is "shunyachitt" (transliterated, it mean "zero awareness/consciousness" or "absentminded") and i haven't stopped thinking about how gorgeous a word it is.

-pulihora on tumblr

“I have flipped through books, reading hundreds of opening and closing lines, across ages, across cultures, across aesthetic schools, and I have discovered that first lines are remarkably similar, even repeated, and that last lines are remarkably similar, even repeated. Of course in all cases they remain remarkably distinct, because the words belong to completely different poems. And I began to realize, reading these first and last lines, that there are not only the first and last lines of the lifelong sentence we each speak but also the first and last lines of the long piece of language delivered to us by others, by those we listen to. And in the best of all possible lives, that beginning and that end are the same: in poem after poem I encountered words that mark the first something made out of language that we hear as children repeated night after night, like a refrain: I love you. I am here with you. Don’t be afraid. Go to sleep now. And I encountered words that mark the last something made out of language that we hope to hear on earth: I love you. You are not alone. Don’t be afraid. Go to sleep now. But it is growing damp and I must go in. Memory’s fog is rising. Among Emily Dickinson’s last words (in a letter). A woman whom everyone thought of as shut-in, homebound, cloistered, spoke as if she had been out, exploring the earth, her whole life, and it was finally time to go in. And it was.”

— Mary Ruefle, “On Beginnings,“ Madness, Rack, and Honey  (via letters-to-nobody)

“Right now I want a word that describes the feeling you get - a cold, sick feeling deep down inside - when you know something is happening that will change you, and you don’t want it to, but you can’t stop it. And you know, for the first time, for the very first time, that there will now be a before and an after, a was and a will be. And that you will never again be quite the person you were.”

— Jennifer Donnelly, A Northern Light

“I need a little language such as lovers use, words of one syllable such as children speak when they come into the room and find their mother sewing and pick up some scrap of bright wool, a feather, or a shred of chintz. I need a howl, a cry.” 

— Virginia Woolf, The Waves

[femsolid]

At the bus stop, an old woman wearing a hijab asked me if I spoke arabic. I said I didn't but she still asked me to translate the letters she had received because she didn't understand french. They were electricity bills. I explained to her what she had to pay, as best I could, and asked what country she came from. She laughed at me and said she was french too. I asked her if she was born in France and she said yes but that her husband just died. This woman had been living in France all her life but could not understand french. She was kept completely in the dark, intentionally, by her husband. A lot of women are not allowed to speak anything other than arabic. They are houseslaves, can't work, can't socialize with people of other cultures, can't own anything. They are alienated from the society they live in and told they don't belong there anyway, which is a great way to maintain control over them. And these husbands are quite happy to leave their wives completely destitute and lost after they die. How is she even supposed to survive if she needs a stranger at the bus stop to explain her electricity bills? She tried to talk to me some more but gave up because I couldn't understand.

[jadedbirch]

Gather round, friends, for a fun pre-Yom Kippur tale of how my wife and I did an incidental mitzvah today.

So, my wife and I are working in Rome for a month, and today we had to go on a whole ass adventure to an old Roman cemetery for a friend of my parents'. You see, this lady's mother is buried there and she was in Rome 2 months ago and found a "nice Arab man" named "Ahmed" to take care of her mother’s grave and then IMMEDIATELY lost his contact info.  The only thing she told me was that he sold flowers by the Jewish section of the cemetery, "close to a bridge", and that he was maybe "around 38 years old" and she would do anything at all if only I could find this mystery man and get his business card for her again.

So away we go to this cemetery - at Campo Verano - and then walked around for a while (because it is rather large) until we found the Jewish section. At this point, I had to go around to every flower booth in my shitty Italian, totally normally and not at all suspect, all "I'm looking for a man.  His name is Ahmed.  No he's not the father of my bambino, do you know him????" And what do you know?  No one knows who the heck I’m talking about.  At this point, we were about to give up, so I decide we might as well just find her mom's grave to take a photo of it and least prove that I was here.  Luckily, she had sent me a photo of the plot, and told me it was behind the Temple, otherwise it would have been like looking for a Jewish grave in a hay stack of thousands of other Jewish graves.  So we found her mom's grave and we cleaned it ourselves, thus doing our nice pre-Yom Kippur mitzvah.  When we walked out of the cemetery gate towards Via Tiburtina, I noticed two other flower stalls, but they both had women sitting in them.  Well, I think to myself, this is a woman, but maybe she knows Ahmed???  Might as well ask.  Here we go in Italian again.  “I’m looking for a man.”  Not at all embarrassing. And the woman says "Amet?  Il ragazzo?" (i.e. The Young Guy) And I'm like, shit I don't know if he’s young!  According to my “data” he’s supposed to be 38, not exactly a “ragazzo.” So now I am using Google translate all "How old is he?" She says he's about 26-27.  So now I’m thinking, maybe Auntie thinks all young people look 38??? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  Turning to my good friend Google translate again, I ask "Does he have a business card??" And at this point the woman is finally like WHYYYYYYY (Is he the father of your bambino????)  I know how sketchy this must all look as I'm trying in my broken ass Italian to explain that my Auntie has a grave here and eventually the woman puts two and two together and is like "Oh!  He cleans the grave for your Auntie!" And breathe out a very relieved “SI!”  And she lost his NUMERO, I add.  So this kind lady went and found someone else who had this kid's number (because at this point, I’m convinced it was the 18 year old kid that I saw hanging about the cemetery earlier) and called him for me so I could speak with him and - thank the gods - he spoke really good English and to my delight said, "Oh I'm so glad you called, I tried to send her a message but it wouldn't go through!"  

Anyways, long story short - I found the mysterious “Arab man” and I got his digits.

[licensedqueerio]

Hi there. Can I request derek morgan x male reader, season 2 episode 10 of criminal minds where the reader is in Guantanamo Bay with spencer and the others because he was born in saudi arabia and he knows arabic and can communicate in a way that is affective, he is there in the interrogation room with Gideon when they are interrogating Jamal and Gideon figures out where the next bomb is going to explode so does the reader and when they found out the bomb has exploded the reader calls derek but derek is not picking up because he is on the phone with penelope and ones the are back at virginia and go back home the reader let's his guard down and derek comforts him. If you don't feel like writing this it's okay. Thank you ❤️

Honestly I'm not superly religious but I tried and I hope I didn't offend anyone, but if I did, I sincerely apologize. And I hope this is what you wanted, it was kind of rushed, I apologize!!

---

Word Count: 2.8k

Pairing: Derek Morgan x Male!Reader

Warnings: N/A

Request Here

---

“Everybody, meet Agent Prentiss?” Hotch asked as he stepped into the room, adjusting the button of his jacket as he walked over to his seat around the circular table.

“The other day. I’ve been filling her in on protocol,” JJ said with a grin, standing behind Emily, giving the woman’s shoulder’s a squeeze before stepping away, heading towards the front of the room and standing in front of the TV.

“Derek, Morgan,” Derek introduced as he stepped forward, reaching across the table to take her hand before sitting.

“Y/N L/N,” you introduced with a simple nod, taking a seat beside Derek.

“Emily,” she warmly introduced with a smile aimed at the two of you.

“You can make nice later. What do we know?” Hotch interrupted, hurrying to begin.

“The DEA raided what they thought was a hardened meth lab right here, in Northern Virginia, but they found this instead,” JJ began, stepping aside so everyone could see the image of the dispersal weapon on screen. “Homeland security’s thinking Al Qaeda,” she added.

You frowned.

“They've developed devices that span the spectrum of sophistication, some as simple as soda bottles and paint cans,” Reid informed.

You and Emily both spoke the arabic word at the same time.

You turned to her in surprise. Her expression mirrored yours.

“...literally meaning ‘the invention’,” Emily slowly continued on.

You looked away from her. “What's the chemical agent?” You spoke up. “Mustard gas is usually more common. Or even anthrax if they have access to it,” you commented.

Derek turned to you in alarm.

“We don’t know yet. But we would’ve heard about anthrax being stolen, so I think we can cross it off the list,” JJ said before handing you a slip of paper. “The cell members bailed out through a tunnel. But the DEA managed to intercept a message,” she said, gesturing to the paper.

You read over the Arabic script, brow furrowed. Once you read it, you began to translate. “Our friends surprised us and eloped. We can no longer wait for the wedding as planned. We can deliver our gift at the next crescent.”

“The next crescent?” Gideon asked.

“Muslims sometimes use a lunar calendar,” Emily answered. “I’d have to look it up-”

“It’s in two days,” you interrupted.

Gideon turned to you. “So whatever they’re attacking is happening in less than forty-eight hours?” He demanded.

You laid back in your chair. “It appears so,” you said, blowing a breath out.

“Payment for the nextel the message was intercepted from is linked to this man,” JJ clicked the remote, a picture of a man appearing. “Jind Allah.”

You scoffed, shaking your head. It was sickening what some people did in the name of Allah. It wasn’t right. “Soldier of god,” you scowled.

Derek reached for your hand under the table. Giving a small squeeze before letting go again. “It’s pretty poor operational security for a sophisticated plot,” he noted.

JJ nodded in agreement. “He was caught two months ago leaving the US using a forged Pakistani passport. He’s been held as a ghost detainee in Guantanamo Bay ever since,” she explained. “So…technically he doesn’t exist.”

“Jind Allah isn’t a name,” Gideon stated.

“No, it's most likely a name taken on for the Jihad, meaning struggle. Extremists claim it's a holy war,” Emily said, beating you to the punch. Which..kind of annoying, but you dealt with it. You wondered where she’d learned Arabic.

“Yet the words holy and war never appear together in Quran,” Reid mused.

“Every culture has extremists who twist religion to fit their own hatred,” you sighed, drumming your fingers against the table, stamping down your irritation.

“Do we know his real name?” Gideon moved on.

“Nope,” JJ answered. “The CIA hasn’t gotten anything out of him. They need us to break him. All we know is he’s a recruiter,” she said. “He came into this country to assemble the omega cell, a sleeper cell with an unknown mission.”

“We have forty-eight hours to do what the CIA failed to do in two months,” Derek sighed.

“Or else we might be looking at the first attack on US soil since 9/11,” Gideon gravely said, his brow furrowed.

---

“I want you to bring Emily with you to Guantanamo,” You overheard Hotch say to Gideon. You were leaning against your desk with Derek until you had to leave. You quirked a brow at him.

Derek shrugged. “Two’s better than one,” he mused, his hands squeezing your hips. “Right? Maybe with two it’ll be easier to crack him. The CIA’s failed for two months, Y/N.”

You hummed, glancing up as Gideon approached Emily, who had just pulled a go-bag from seemingly thin air.

“Car leaves in four minutes,” Gideon say as he rushed past her. Hotch must have convinced him.

You pressed a kiss to Derek’s kips. “I’ll see you soon,” you said with a smile. “Have fun at the crime scene,” you laughed, stepping away.

Derek rolled his eyes. “Have fun with your interrogation,” he replied, going to find Hotch, before the man left without him.

You turned to Emily, bag over your shoulder. You raised a brow. “Are you fluent in Arabic?” You asked, waiting for her before beginning to walk outside to the car at her side

“I am,” she answered. “I lived in a lot of middle eastern countries growing up,” she nodded. “What about you?”

“Born in Saudi Arabia,” you answered. “It’s nice to have someone else who speaks Arabic on the team,” you said, switching to the language.

Emily shot you a smile. “It’s a beautiful language,” she replied. “So, you and Derek?”

You smiled. “Yep,” you answered, cutting the conversation short and stepping outside. You walked towards the car where Reid and Gideon were waiting. You put your bag in the trunk before getting into the car, Emily following suit. Then you were off to the airport.

---

You weren’t surprised when you saw the treatment of Jind Allah. Sparsely wearing clothes, wrists and ankles chained. He was kept in a small cinder block room with cameras on him all time.

You watched the security feed on the monitor, brow furrowed as you tried to distinguish what he was saying. Then it hit you. “He’s reciting the Quran from memory,” you realized. “He’s a hafiz. It takes discipline and determination, depending on how long it took him,” you mused.

“Some muslim children can do it since age twelve,” Reid informed, before he seemed to remember who he was talking to and smiled sheepishly.

“Two months of interrogation and that’s all we’ve been able to get out of him,” the supervisor scoffed.

“There are cuts and bruises under his left eye,” Reid observed, leaning in close. “What kind of tactics are being used?”

“Well, they’ve had to get rough with him,” the supervisor explained. “My protests about their methods have gone ignored.”

You looked back at the screen. “...let the interrogation continue as planned,” you murmured. “It’ll be better if they don’t know we’re here.”

“It’ll make for a more genuine reaction,” Gideon agreed. “Y/N. You’ll go in with me. I want you to stop the interrogation and demand they stop the harassment,” he said. “Prentiss, I want you doing what we discussed.”

You nodded, watching as the two CIA agents were let into the cell.

“You’re really gonna put a show on for them?” The supervisor questioned.

“Not for him,” Gideon argued. “For Jind Allah. We’ll give him a complete contrast of the treatment he’s expecting from his captors. It’ll get him talking,” he explained. “We have less than thirty-six hours. Read, Y/N?” He asked.

You nodded and stepped back. You were escorted to the cell where the man was being kept. You glanced at Gideon once more, who nodded, handing you an orange prison jump suit.

You took the clothes and opened the door to the cell, watch=hing as the men inside fell silent. You stepped fully inside. “Step away from him.”

“Who the hell are you!?” One of them demanded.

“Special Agent L/N. I’m with the behavioral unit of the FBI. Now step away from him, don’t you think he deserves at least some respect?” You asked.

The man scoffed. “You have to be kidding me. He doesn’t deserve any respect. He’s no better than an animal!”

You raised a brow. “Even animals deserve respect,” you replied. “Now if you don’t mind.”

“Y/N!” Gideon said sharply, startling you. “Apologies, boys,” he said to the agents. “Agent Bingaman has asked you to step outside so we can have a turn at interrogating him,” he said, stepping forward.

You frowned at him, watching the two agents file out of the room, door shutting behind them.

“Y/N, step aside,” Gideon instructed. “I’m conducting this interrogation,” he said.

You figured this was the role he was deciding to play. So, you ignored him and stepped towards Jind Allah. You placed the clothes on his lap. “I’m sorry for the treatment you’ve suffered,” you said, hoping the familiar language would generate some trust. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to speak with you.”

Jind Allah was watching you carefully, his eyes glancing between you and Gideon. His recitation had stopped as well. His gaze lowered to the clothes in his lap, then back at you.

“If I don’t mind?” He repeated.

“Y/N, step away,” Gideon warned.

You paid him no mind, nodding at Jind Allah. “I’d like to get to know you. I’m intrigued by your faith.”

“To what extent?’ He asked before narrowing his eyes. “Are you not religious?”

“I am,” You responded. “But you and I may have different interpretations of the Quran. I’d like to know yours.”

“Is that so?” He scoffed.

You nodded. “I don’t know what you did, or even what you planned to do. All I know is we have different perspectives and I’d like to get to know yours.”

Gideon was looking between the two of you blankly, that being the only snippet of the conversation he understood.

“Until I say something he doesn’t like,” Jind Allah snidely replied, looking pointedly at Gideon. “Or I don’t give you whatever it is you want. And then I’ll be treated like before.”

“I won’t let that happen,” you said plainly. “I just want to talk. Ignore him,” you said, glancing at Gideon. “I can handle this, Gideon. You can step outside while I speak to him.”

“I’m not leaving the two of you alone,” Gideon replied. But the undertones of his words still carried.

You fought not to react to that and simply sighed. You walked to the edge of the room, dragging it over so you could sit in front of Jind Allah, leaving Gideon standing.

And you commenced with the interrogation.

Only after a handful of questions, your watch beeped once and that signalled the end. You stood up.

“Are we done all ready?” Jind Allah startled.

“The sun’s about to set,” you offered in explanation. “Mecca’s that way,” you said, pointing to the west. “I’ll have a prayer rug and water bowl brought in,” you said, walking out of the room in front of Gideon.

---

You felt your heart stop as you watched Jind Allah unball his hands. The tension in his shoulders releasing just enough that you noticed. If you hadn’t been watching him so closely you might have missed it. That’s what ticked you off.

You stepped out of the room the second Gideon did, pulling your own phone out. But Gideon had been faster, urgently barking, “Get everyone out! Now! Now!”

You held your breath as you heard the explosion over the phone before the line went dead. It was silent in the room after that.

“Oh god,” Emily mumbled.

For once you agreed with her. You fumbled with your phone, heart beating out of your chest as you thought of Derek, who’d been inside just seconds ago. You didn’t know if Gideon’s warning had provided them with enough time to get everyone out safely. And knowing Derek he wouldn’t leave until he’d gotten everyone out. That’s what had worried you.

You finally managed to click on Derek’s contact. You put the phone to your ear, breathing quickly. “Please pick up,” you whispered. “Please pick up, Der. Please be okay.” You gripped your phone tightly, your other hand balling into a fist.

Your breath caught when there was no answer and you slowly took the phone away from your ear, staring at it in disbelief.

“Y/N,” Reid said gently. “He’s probably fine.”

“He always answers,” you mumbled. “He always answers his phone, Reid. What do I- what if he-”

“Y/N,” Gideon took over, voice sharp. “I need you to focus. He took the phone from your hand, setting it down. “We still need to go back in there with Jind Allah. I need your head on straight. Understand? Calm down,” he commanded.

You tried to nod, fighting back the tears that were stinging at your eyes at just the though of Derek not being okay. “I’m okay,” you managed to get out. “I can do this.”

“Good,” Gideon said, pushing the door to Jind Allah’s cell open.

---

The only thing that kept you focused on the task at hand was word from Hotch that everyone was okay. But once you knew that Derek was okay, the concern was replaced with growing anger. He hadn’t called you once. He hadn’t texted you or given any other sort of communication. And yes, you understood you were both busy with your jobs, and sometimes communication was difficult, especially when you were in different countries. But still. This was an extreme situation and you had hoped for at least one returned phonecall.

But no. You had gotten radio silence from him.

You gave him the same treatment when you got home.

The anger was quelled a bit by the comfort of being home and the terrorist threat subdued, but it still lingered. It simmered under your skin, heating your blood everytime you thought about your boyfriend. You hated the feeling, but you just couldn't seem to stamp it down like you usually did with your feelings.

So when he walked through that door, with that smile on your face upon seeing you, it flared right back up again. You had to turn away to stop from lashing out. Your defenses were up high tonight.

“Y/N?” Derek asked as you turned your back to him, looking for something to eat in the kitchen. “I missed you.”

You kept your eyes focused on the bowl as you poured corn flakes into it. Not your optimal meal, but you couldn’t summon the energy to find anything else.

You relaxed into him when you suddenly felt his hands on your hips, pulling you flush against him. “I missed you,” he repeated, his breath tickling the back of your neck.

You wanted to indulge in his touch, but you couldn’t, you were supposed to be mad at him. So you pulled yourself out of his grip. “Don’t touch me,” you said. “I don’t want to talk to you,” you stated. You didn’t want to say something you’d regret. But your anger wasn’t going anywhere so you figured it best not to talk to him at all.

“...okay,” Derek said slowly, stepping back. “Hey, what’s going on? What’s wrong?” He asked gently. “Y/N, look at me.”

You glanced at him before turning away once again. “I said I don’t want to talk, Derek,” you snapped.

“We agreed we’d talk our problems out and not let it fester,” came Derek’s calm reply. “Come on, love. Whatever’s wrong I’m sure we can fix it,” he assured, stepping closer to you once again. “Talk to me. Please.”

You could feel the walls that had built over the past few days crumble at the gentle tone he took on. Tears flooded your eyes once more as you were reminded of the terror that overtook you when you heard the building blow up.

You turned around and quickly hugged him tightly, burying your face against his neck. “I hate you,” you choked out around the knot in your throat.

Derek’s arms came around to pull you impossibly closer to him, holding the back of your neck. “I’m here, Y/N,” he whispered.

You melted against him. You had missed him so much. “You scared the shit out of me, Derek,” you whispered. “I called you and you didn’t answer. And I thought you were dead.”

Derek was silent for a few moments before he pulled away. He kept his hand on the back of your neck though, looking into your eyes. “Is that what this is about?” He asked. “Baby, my phone broke right after that call with Garcia. I told Hotch to tell you,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“Garcia?” You asked. You quickly stamped down the jealousy. Now obviously wasn't the time. “Nevermind. It’s not important,” you dismissed. “Next time, if there is a next time, please just call me yourself,” you whispered, dropping your forehead against his, closing your eyes. “Please.”

“Even if I have to use a payphone,” Derek agreed. “I love you. I’m sorry I worried you.”

You nodded. “I love you, Derek,” you whispered.

[starlightervarda]

So, now that I’ve processed THAT POST and the insanity behind it that made me spend the last week having panic attacks, followed by flashing back to all the traumatic shit I dealt with in the last 10 or so years thanks to people with similar mentalities to the puritanical, power-hungry demons on this site. Except that was in real life, and I can’t handle this crap anymore.

This year, I finally reached the breaking point to the extent that my family had to stop pretending I’m not damaged. I still can’t go to therapy, but I am taking anti-anxiety/depressants now. One of the things that elevated my already-high stress level was The Old Guard fandom and the toxic environment that killed the one joy I had last year.

What was that? Seeing a movie with an un-stereotyped, irreligious, artistic queer North African man who looks like a male version of me. Seeing him in a loving relationship with a fellow Mediterranean, like so many of the couples I grew up around, parents of ethnically mixed friends I had. I came into the TOG fandom, excited, immediately making posts of facts, translations, seeking out other MENA/Mediterranean people to connect with, because fuck has it been lonely.

And I did. Very briefly. Before shit went to hell because of Hélène and her circle of tyrannical friends.

I still can’t believe they were allowed to get away with this.

I went out of my way to write ridiculously detailed posts on MENA culture, history, language and religion, answer so many questions, with links and details that could only come from someone who grew up with this stuff and spoke Arabic. And I had people questioning my validity??? Talking shit about me, bullying me, or even trying to discredit me because I *gasp* stated a fact that upset their racist headcanons.

Meanwhile, a very Americanized Rich White French Woman, was allowed to get away with constantly changing her ethnicity, religion, economic status, skin tone, family history, make up insane contradicting stories of suffering, and claiming oppression points from so many unrelated demographics. Not just that, she got to peddle racist bullshit as fact, frame the Amazigh of Morocco as if they’re Native Americans, all the way down to the claims that her grandfather was a ‘shaman’, when that couldn’t be farther from the truth. That, and applying Black American stereotypes, experiences, and issues to MENA people, especially to herself.

And use the ‘I’m insert minority’ excuse to get away with being an unrepentant monster. 

I smelled a rat ages ago, but any time I expressed it to someone they didn’t believe me, and then when I saw what happened to my friend after he DM’d her as a ‘fellow Moroccan’, the horrific shit that was mobilized against him that chased him off the site, I knew I couldn’t handle what would happen to me if I tried to question her bullshit. The stress this fandom gave me was much more than what I had managed to stomach all these years and I had reached a breaking point.

So, I left. I let them have my only representation in exchange for my sanity. I canceled all my remaining Joe-centric/culture posts and fic ideas for TOG and told myself to never let myself forget that I’m not welcome anywhere.

Oh, and these tweets?

They’re about me and nizarnizarblr, who was run off the site. I’m ‘an anti-arab fanatic’ for saying North Africans aren’t Arabs and that our dialects can be barely intelligible to actual Arabs. And he was a ‘rabid nationalist’ for saying the same things as me. We made large educational posts about OUR part of the world, OUR cultures, OUR experiences and that wasn’t approved by the Western Liberals of Tumblr dot com.

She fucking slandered us on a site known for mass-bullying campaigns and suicide-baiting people, called us these inflammatory terms because we actually knew what we were talking about. She used hot-button political terms to stoke mindless hatred against us, the people she was racefaking as.

This RICH WHITE WESTERN WOMAN hated that there were actual North Africans in the space she wanted to rule over, who could ‘threaten’ her position as the authority and token, and that us contradicting her could get her exposed, so she fucking weaponized her following.

DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW DANGEROUS THIS IS? DO I NEED TO EXPLAIN TO YOU HOW RACIST THIS IS? SHE COULD HAVE RUINED OUR LIVES!

The thing that had briefly brought me joy, encouraged me to write two enormous fics after a period of writer’s block, now makes me sick. The one space I should have belonged in could have killed me.

I, someone that actually shares Joe’s background and has been told I look like a female version of him, got suspicion, disrespect, hostility and chased out of the fandom along with fuck knows how many other Brown/Muslim people under the command of the embodiment of privilege and her cronies, that loved getting the platform to abuse others because they used her words as gospel.

Where are they now? The Anglo/North Euro women that appointed themselves the authority on how to write a MENA man, who tried to tell actual MENA/Muslim people in the fandom how he should be portrayed to the extent of organizing smear campaigns against us when we defied their authority? Why are they all suddenly so quiet when you couldn’t pay them to shut them up?

There was no way you could be friends with someone like Hélène, in groupchats with her for months, and praising her to high heaven for giving you ‘sources’ and ‘sensitivity reads’ and not know what kind of person she was. Considering they all were just as vicious and racist, xenophobic and antisemitic, they must have agreed. That’s why they defended her, went around DM’ing people to delete their reblogs of the exposé. It’s not that they didn’t believe the overwhelming amount of evidence, it’s that they were panicking about losing the pedestal she afforded them.

I ASK AGAIN: Why were they so horrible to actual MENA/Mediterranean/Muslim people yet had their head completely up her arse when she claimed to be ALL THREE. What made her so special? Why did she get sanctified while everyone actually part of those demographics was demonized?

They knew. The whole time they knew.  This was all done to give her and her chosen few complete control of a fanbase, where their word was law and any deviation got you witch-hunted out.

Now that their golden goose of consequence-free tyranny had been scratched, they’ve switched to trying to deflect from the point of that post -- that she’s a sickeningly horrible person -- and are making it about the dumbest fandom shit imaginable.

This isn’t about that fucking half-baked movie. This about all the shit she’s done over the years and continued doing within the community that was built around it. Helene and her shithead friends, used her race-faking and lying about every part of her identity and background, and a fictional MENA man as their carte blanche to abuse others, when they HAD NO RIGHT OR SAY IN THE MATTER.

This woman didn’t just spend years lying about being poor to con people out of money, spouting tankie shit, being a genocide denier, a 9/11 truther, cycling through ethnicities, religions, backgrounds, pretending to be like 2 different types of Jewish while being antisemitic, spreading wrong cultural shit she Googled wrong as fact, a racist and a race-faker, who brown-faced and seemed to be bordering on digital blackface as well, I know I’m forgetting a bunch of other shit because HOLY FUCK!

This woman went about everything with a baffling amount of confidence, while I and so many others never disclosed our backgrounds, until this fanbase demanded it, out of the need to feel safe from racial abuse. Yet, she was basically pretending to be me and got popular off it.

She called Marwan Kenzari a slur that makes me sick, that is not a word that comes up randomly, especially the way she used it. It has to be something you say regularly, without hesitation, for it to be the first thing that comes to mind. Also, that image of him? The one that stirred up that hideous response from her? In it he looks like my dad, moustache, brown jacket, cropped hair and all. So, kosomik ya Helene.

The fact that her URL is ‘lgbtmazight’ when she isn’t anything of the sort is sickening. She couldn’t be arsed to check where Marrakech is or what color it was for her racefaking tall tales, or check that there tens of millions of Amazigh people in Morocco alone, or even understand that there are no literal translations, so NO ONE is using tbarkallah as a fucking mic-drop.

Seriously, she put no effort into this and everyone believed her.

And there are people defending her. How evil do you have to be to think there’s nothing wrong with any of this? Stop fucking making it about two fictional characters and think about the REAL PEOPLE THIS HAS AFFECTED!

I hope everyone that tagged her as or used her as a source deletes her posts off their blog, I hope no one recommends her wrong and racist posts as info, I hope anyone who claims she was their ‘sensitivity reader’ removes her name, I hope no one believes any of the shit she said or has their view of MENA people and culture shaped by her.

It’s the least you could do.