#and rosa when she's trying to protect her identity and her line of work

[adenei]

Auror 99 - Chapter 3

A/N: Feels weird knowing I didn’t post anything yesterday (literally, nothing), BUT I’ve been doing a lot of writing. I was finally able to get chapter 3 onto paper! For those of you who dropped me some prompts, I’m not ignoring them, but do know it’s going to be a bit before I get back to those as I really want to see this story unfold first. Thanks for your understanding!

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Chapter 3: Bonding

“So...do you mind if we take a look at the cases that are already outstanding on Gerteso?” Hermione asked Amy after she watched Ron leave with Jake. She was only slightly worried about him pairing up with Jake. He didn’t seem like the most...reliable of detectives on first glance.

“Oh, yes, of course!” Amy said as she pulled out a pile full of case files. She began going through each one, and Hermione was noticing a pattern.

“Gerteso doesn’t seem to hang on to each of these identities for very long. And he only stole a minimal amount from their bank accounts. Almost nothing to make it significant. Don’t typical identity theft cases open up multiple accounts and try to liquidate a person’s funds for their own gain?” Hermione asked Amy.

Amy pulled some of the files back and reviewed them. “Huh. You’re right. I’m not sure how we missed that before.” Amy looked a little more closely. “He even got a hold of their social security numbers, but never attempted anything with it. What do you think it could mean?”

Hermione furrowed her brow even more. “Is there any correlation between the victims?” She and Amy were reviewing the various cases. “The bank. It’s the same across all the cases!”

Amy grabbed some the files and cross referenced. “Ugh, this is the last time I trust Jake with the paperwork. How did he not catch this?! He really is normally better than this. Well, we’ve got a lead now! Charles, look.” Boyle came over when Amy called his name with Harry trailing behind him. 

“Whoa, Amy, Sterling National Bank? Do we know which one?” Boyles asked.

“It’s….the one two blocks from here!” Amy said looking at Boyle.

“Jason and I can go check it out. See if any of the tellers or the guards noticed anything off.”

“Great, Charlotte and I will comb through these to see if there’s any added correlation of when these took place,” Amy said, clearly throwing herself into work mode.

“Excellent! Jason, come with me,” Boyle said, grabbing his jacket. Harry looked at Hermione, making sure she was okay before following Boyle.

Amy and Hermione set to work, writing down the dates and ordering the case files by bank visit instead of the date they were filed with the precinct. “I can’t believe I didn’t think to do this to start with,” Amy said regretfully. “Captain Holt is going to be so upset with me. How could I let myself get so distracted lately?” She shook her head. 

“Um, is everything alright?” Hermione asked.

“What? Oh, yeah, it’s nothing. Just getting over a breakup that’s all.” Amy sighed.

“I’m sorry. Was it a bad one?” 

“No, no! It was actually needed. I just wasn’t into him at all..” Amy trailed off and glanced over at Jake’s empty desk. Hermione looked in the same direction to see what she was looking at. 

Maybe this is the perfect segue to ask about Jake; make sure Ron’s with a decent partner, she thought. “So, tell me about Jake,” Hermione said, trying to change the subject away from her breakup.

“Jake? What do you want to know?” Amy asked a bit skittishly. She contemplated Charlotte for a moment before making the connection. “If you’re worried about Nolan, don’t be. Jake has an unconventional way of doing a lot of things, but he really is a brilliant detective! You can trust him. Are you and Nolan primary partners on the force?”

“You could say that,” Hermione said. “I just wasn’t sure how serious he was. I tend to worry a bit too much about things, I guess.”

“Me too, but I wouldn’t worry about that,” Amy smiled genuinely at her. “Shall we compare dates, see if we find anything?”

“Sure,” Hermione said, thinking how she really liked her new temporary partner. 

*********************

Harry and Charles checked not only the closest Sterling National Bank to the precinct, but also the other two nearby, to no avail.

“I don’t get it!” Charles said with a disappointed look on his face. “Three banks, and nothing out of the ordinary was seen. Either Gerteso has several accomplices, or he’s incredibly good at disguises.”

That got Harry thinking: the likelihood of an invisibility cloak was slim, but disillusionment charms weren’t unheard of. It wouldn’t be the first time he and Ron had dealt with an elusive criminal because of them. But he couldn’t give that away yet to Boyle. “I doubt he’s got several accomplices. From what we’ve seen, he works alone. You might be onto the disguise thing, though,” Harry told him.

“Yeah, but it doesn’t bring us any closer to catching this guy. It’s like one step forward and two steps back the entire case!” Boyle sighed in frustration. He put the keys in the ignition and began heading back to the precinct. “Amy’s not going to be happy about another deadend. Hopefully Jake can get something., or Rosa on surveillance duty”

“Let’s hope,” Harry agreed.

“Tell me about Nolan,” Boyle changed the conversation abruptly.

“What about him?”  Harry asked, watching Boyle’s body language carefully. He seemed protective and...slightly jealous? 

“Well, we protect our own, not that you and Nolan and Charlotte aren’t welcome or anything. Jake’s my best friend. I would never let anything happen to him in the field, so I want to make sure Nolan will have his back like I would.” Boyle was definitely posturing, and that amused Harry, but also concerned him. 

Was he a bad friend for not worrying about Ron in the same way? He shook the thought from his head. No, he just knew his friendship with Ron was stable. Plus, he was a brilliant auror that could hold his own in any situation, so he told Boyle as much.

“Nolan’s a solid guy. You won’t find a better, er, detective. He’s my best mate. Been by my side since we were eleven, so he’s loyal to a fault. No need to worry with him.”

“Good...good.” Boyle said nodding as they pulled up to the precinct. 

Ironically, they pulled in at about the same time Jake and Ron had also returned.

“Jake!” Boyle said, “Any luck? We hit another dead end, but maybe Amy and Charlotte made another break in the case upstairs.”

“We’ve got something, that’s for sure,” Ron muttered as Jake had that giddy look about him.

“Uh, Jake? Buddy? Where’d you guys go, you’ve got that look about you when you...” Charles said and then gave Ron and Harry looks. “Who’d you guys see?”

“Charles, it’s fine! We went to see Doug Judy. Let’s go upstairs and we’ll discuss more,” Jake clarified.

Charles looked affronted. “Jake! I should have known! You’ve never been able to pull away from his charm.” 

**************

“Good, you’re all back,” Captain Holt said. He came out of his office as the elevator dinged, and Jake, Charles, Harry and Ron walked out. “Everyone in the briefing room for an update.”

Once they’d all filed in, Captain Holt started by asking Amy and Hermione to start. “Santiago?”

“Charlotte and I went over the case files of the identity thefts again, and Charlotte found a pattern in the thefts.” Amy looked at Hermione to continue.

“Yes, it appears that even though all aspects of each victim’s identity were stolen, the only thing that was done as a result was stealing a minimal amount out of their bank accounts. No new credit cards, no major purchases, nothing of the sort,” Hermione went on. 

“All of the stolen money has come from accounts at Sterling National Bank. We reordered the case files based on when the money was taken, and Boyle and Cooper went to investigate,” Amy finished.

“Yeah, but unfortunately we didn’t get any new information. None of the tellers or the guards noticed the same person coming in or out to line up with the thefts,” Boyle reported.

“We even checked the other two banks in the area with no luck,” Harry added.

Holt nodded. “Peralta, any news from your informant?”

“Yeah, he said Gertie’s got a few hideouts around Brooklyn, not that he knew where, but he’s definitely working alone. He said his main target is the Woolworth building in Manhattan, but didn’t know when or why.”

Holt nodded his head and pursed his lips. “Diaz? Anything from your angle?”

“Nothing on the surveillance videos today, but if his target’s in Manhattan, I’ll widen the search tomorrow to some of those hole in the wall shops.”

“Well, it’s more than we had this morning. You’re all dismissed for the night. See you in the morning,” Captain Holt said as he walked out.

“Does anyone else feel like we’re no closer than we were when we started?” Diaz asked, as everyone nodded.

As they filed out back to their desks to grab their things, Jake asked Nolan, “So about tonight. Still on for Die Hard?”

Charles heard and immediately chimed in before Ron could answer. “Did I hear Jake suggest a bonding night? I’d watch Die Hard!” he said eagerly.

Rosa sniggered, “Come on, Charles, really? You jealous of Nolan?”

“What? No, of course not, Rosa!” Charles said as Harry tried to stifle his own laugh. “I just thought this would be a fun way to get to know our new partners,” he forged on. “Order some New York pizza, pick up some beer and just hang out.”

Amy piped up, “Actually, Charles has a point. What do you say, Jake?”

“I mean, sure, as long as we get to still watch Die Hard. But my apartment isn’t big enough for all of us…”

“You could come to our place. The, er, NYPD put us up in a two bedroom flat a few blocks from here. We’ve got plenty of space,” Ron offered.

Harry and Hermione looked at him in surprise. Jake, Amy and Charles all nodded in agreement. They all looked at Rosa, who reluctantly agreed.

“How does seven sound?” Ron asked as he scribbled down the address for them.

“I’ll bring the beer,” said Jake. 

“And I’ll get the pizza,” Boyle added.

“Charles, don’t order any of that weird shit you write about on your blog,” Rosa pointed out. “Better yet, I’ll order it, you pick me up at 6:30, and we’ll go together.”

“You don’t trust me?” Boyle asked as Rosa gave him a ‘are you really surprised’ look. “Okay, fair enough.

“I’ll bring some wine and snacks,” Amy said. “See you all tonight!”

Chapter 4 can be found here :)

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Pre-Trial: Introducing Dr. Rosa

I wrote half of this like forever ago and decided to go ahead and finish it, because I love Dr. Rosa and everyone should get to meet her, she’s my favorite random bit character who shows up in everything I do set in a modern universe.

Danny’ s first meeting with Dr. Rosa. 

Timeline: Shortly after returning to the United States, pre-trial.

Tagging @special-spicy-chicken, @spiffythespook, @bleeding-demon-teeth 

Dr. Rosa Martinez has been in the business of treating the survivors of long-term traumatic experiences for twenty-three years. In that time, the methodologies have somewhat changed, as has the understanding of trauma’s physical components interacting with its psychological ones, but she has never wavered in her commitment.

She has worked with the survivors of child abuse, rape, domestic violence, abduction cases involving non-custodial parents, one stranger abduction, a woman who had lost two husbands, firefighters both, within ten years of each other to the wildfires that race through California when the winds are hot and the air stays dry. She’s been working with an increasingly large subset of military veterans returning from war with wounds within them that struggle to heal. She has, as they say, seen (or heard) just about everything. 

Today, though, she is meeting someone whose experience differs from anyone she’s treated before.

Dr. Rosa Martinez, fifty-eight years old, feels something she hasn’t felt since her first year after changing her practice to focus on long-term trauma and PTSD; genuine nerves and concern that she may falter and fall short of a patient’s needs. She pats at her hair, twisted tightly at the nape of her neck to keep it out of the way, only a few of the speckled coarse white-and-black hairs escaping here and there. 

She rearranges the photos on her desk in the corner of her office, over by the window, shifting the framed pictures of her daughters with their own families back and forth, smiles at the only photo with a single person in it - a brown-haired woman smiling under the blaze of sun on their last visit back to see family down in the islands - pressing her finger to her lips and then, lightly, over the woman’s mouth.

Wish me luck, Liz.

She had rearranged the bookshelves this morning, had the cleaners come in twice this week instead of once to ensure everything is well-dusted and spotlessly clean, as she’s been informed the patient is hyper-aware of mess and might become distraught if he is not able to clean it.

She stands by the window, looking out through the blinds at the parking lot, waiting for him to arrive. The patient’s profile questionnaire and basic information rests on her desk, and she’s been reading through it over and over, preparing herself. 

There is a wealth of information hidden between the lines in those questionnaires, when you know what you’re looking for. Rosa Martinez has always had an eye for the unspoken, the unwritten, the details that her patients fear to speak and so tiptoe around instead.

The younger brother is the only emergency contact. The brother’s number is listed on everything, no number for the patient himself. The brother’s name is written in the space for the potential sharing of details if considered medically necessary in the event of an emergency. The brother, the brother, the brother. There’s something to grasp onto there, a detail she shouldn’t let slide. Every inch of the initial paperwork tells her that the brother is trusted implicitly, but no one else is. 

She’s seen him on the news, of course. Everyone in this part of the state has heard about the Daniel Michaelson case, his reappearance after four years of prolonged captivity and essentially total isolation. Everyone has seen his parents on the news expressing gratitude and delight that he has returned home.

But the parents are not on his paperwork, and the brother had been clear, on the phone, that they would not be attending any family sessions, only he and Daniel - and that it would be best not to talk about their parents unless Daniel brought them up himself.

It’s a situation that involves similarities to previous patients of hers, but every similarity was intensified, twisted, rearranged in new ways. The conversations about the parents suggested, to Dr. Rosa, a certain scapegoat/child abuse situation she would consider more in the future.

In the captivity there was abuse and sexual assault, but it was a vicious, ritualized cycle of violence that went far beyond abuse and into pure torture. Torture for torture’s sake, the brother told her, his own jaw shaking with the effort of keeping his voice calm in their initial consultation as to whether or not she would consider taking his brother on. Torture for fun, torture to twist his brother into something else, something less.

Neither of us is going to get through this without help, Ryan Michaelson had told her, all of twenty-four years old but with the gravity of a much older man in his voice and the way he held himself, without some help. I need you to help my brother, please, because-… because I just have no fucking clue what to do. Oh, I’m sorry for my language, it’s just been a bad few days, just… just really since he got home, he’s been-… I don’t-

It’s fine, She had said, handing him a tissue to wipe his eyes while both of them pretended the tears weren’t there. Where is your brother now?

At home with his… with… I don’t know what Nathaniel Vandrum is. But he’s home with him. I’ll bring him for his first appointment, but he’s so fragile… he picked your photo out of the others, so I think he’ll come willingly, but… please. We need help, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to make someone believe they’re human, Dr. Martinez. I don’t know how to help him.

This will probably be a challenge, even for someone with her experience, but she can’t imagine turning it down. 

She twists the wedding band on one finger, letting her fingertip play over the square diamond at the top, trace the line of smaller circular diamonds that ran down each side of the band. Liz knows who the new patient is, of course, but she’ll also know not to ask - they’ve always had a “no work talk” rule, protecting Rosa’s patients even from her own family’s curiosity. 

She knows some of her colleagues speak about their patients in oblique terms with their own families, keeping their identities secret but discussing the trials of their day, but Rosa has never done that. Her patients come to her with terrors they trust with no one else, and she would never betray that, not even with Liz.

Only with other professionals, in very specific circumstances, and with all identifying details carefully stripped does she seek advice or counsel when needed. 

She recognizes the car when it pulls up - she’s seen it on the news, when the cameras catch Ryan Michaelson in his array of perfectly tailored suits in a series of richly deep colors when he gets out each day, waving them off, his jaw set as he gives the occasional statement as they prepare to take Abraham Denner to trial.

Today, Ryan steps out of the car in a purple sweater that probably cost more than Rosa’s health insurance premium and she’d swear even his jeans were tailored. Brown shoes, soft leather, perfectly worn. Ryan’s a handsome one, that’s for sure - all bright smiles and warm brown skin, wild black curls. He is smiling now as he turns and speaks into the car, before closing his own door, brushing some invisible wrinkles out of his sweater, pulling his wallet out of his back pocket.

First, to meet Daniel Michaelson.

She has seen photos of him, of course - but he hasn’t been in any photographs or interviews, so she was not quite prepared for the incredibly tall, thin man who unfolds himself out of the passenger side. He’s wearing an oversized, dark blue heavy sweater, heavier than the weather really calls for, with a high crew neck and cable-knit braids down the front, his sleeves pulled hard to cover the backs of his hands, head dipped down so his wavy red hair falls down over his face, wearing jeans that are clearly too big and, she suspects, only staying up because of a belt. 

Daniel makes it to the curb and then stops, shaking his head, saying something to Ryan and acting like he’ll get right back in the car. Ryan steps closer to him, hands out without quite touching him, gesturing towards the office. Daniel shakes his head again, and she can see they need a minute, and steps back to give it to them.

She watches them for just a second longer, than steps out of her office into the waiting room before they can make their way inside. 

“Krista,” She says in a honeyed voice, slightly high-pitched, with only a hint of the island accent she grew up with. “Send Daniel Michaelson into my office as soon as they come in, don’t make them wait. And be sure to pour Ryan Michaelson a cup of the good coffee we all pretend I don’t know you keep in the breakroom.”

“Of course, Dr. Martinez,” Krista says brightly, looking up from the book she’s studying behind the desk to give her a bright smile. “I serve everyone the same coffee, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Mmmhmmm. Oh, and don’t try to shake Daniel’s hand,” Dr. Martinez adds, and disappears back into her office.

She has everything ready, but rearranges her desk one more time anyway just to be on the safe side. She has a couple of photos, as well - a photo of Daniel Michaelson pre-abduction that his brother provided, a post-abduction photo she is keeping only for reference. I put this up on Facebook like the week before he was gone, Ryan had said, shrugging his shoulders, as he handed her the pre-abduction photo. I printed it out to bring. God, I don’t even know when the last time I actually used Facebook was… 

22 year old Daniel, one week before he vanished, is at what she assumes is the company Christmas party. It has that sort of look, people milling in the background in cocktail dresses and suits. He’s wearing a navy suit as perfectly tailored as Ryan’s always are on TV, his hair clipped shorter than it seems to be now. The shoulders are thinner in the past, she thinks, but his body overall is definitely skinnier now than then. He’s holding a glass of some brown liquor, one arm around 20-year-old Ryan’s shoulder, the two of them smiling for the camera.

Then the next photo, which Ryan tells her the police took and gave him a copy of. Danny is standing in front of a blank wall, looking at nothing, his eyes focused off to the side. He’s wearing nothing but a thin T-shirt, which could not have been easy for him, since they showed up at the police station in Alberta on December 11th. All the brightness and sparkle is gone, replaced by a dull terror and uncertainty that can’t quite break through the placid submission in his face. She taps one finger over his face, the slightly bloody red wounds that cut into him, and then she slides the older picture onto the top as the door to her office opens.

Ryan steps in first, giving her a friendly smile that doesn’t quite meet his eyes. She can see Daniel just behind him the taller man has his arms folded, nearly hugging himself, his eyes focused on the floor. “Dr. Martinez, we’re here, they told us to go ahead and come right in.”

“That’s lovely, Mr. Michaelson, thank you, but I’ll have to ask you to sit outside for the duration of the appointment.”

Ryan’s face falters, but only slightly, and Rosa watches with interest and curiosity as he shifts his stance to be even more directly between she and his brother. Only name listed on any of the emergency contacts, only person given permission for sharing of medical information, and he is standing in the hallway of my office trying to protect him from me. “Are you sure? He, um, he struggles being alone-”

“N-No,” Danny says from behind him, so softly Rosa almost can’t hear him. “No, I can do it, Ryan, it’s okay. C-Can, can you let me go in? Can I go in?”

“Hey, if you’re not totally sure, you don’t have to, I can sit right here with you.” Ryan half-turns to face his brother, and they are standing within inches of each other without ever touching. Rosa watches all of it, taking the details in, committing them to memory. 

“I can try to do it. I can be good,” Daniel says softly, and Rosa’s head tilts, unconsciously, as she watches Ryan Michaelson wince at the words. She’ll need to write that down, keep that in her memory, too.

It’s come in deeply handy, over the course of her career, that she has an excellent memory for the details like this.

“Okay. Let me know if you can’t do it, we can try again later, yeah?” Daniel nods, slowly, and Rosa watches Ryan take a deep breath, close his eyes, and then turn back to her. As he does, his shoulders go back, and his voice changes - the softness slides away, replaced by a kind of hard melodic sound, the voice of the company man he is being groomed into and not the caring, worried, frazzled younger brother. “Okay, here’s the thing - don’t touch him, don’t get too into his space, and, um-”

“My name is Red,” Daniel Michaelson says, and he’s still not looking up, he still has his eyes firmly on the floor. “My name is Red and I belong to Abraham Denner.”

“… and he still does that,” Ryan says tiredly, and steps back. “Call him Red, he gets really worked up if you call him anything else.”

“Because it’s not my name anymore,” Danny says, and there’s just the barest hint of annoyance there. Ryan rolls his eyes and Rosa fights back a smile; you can hold someone captive for four years, she thinks, but brothers are brothers, still, in the end.

Rosa doesn’t move from her desk as Daniel Michaelson steps into her office. He’s even taller in person than he seemed in the parking lot, all hunched over like he can make the height or his bright and eye-catching red hair disappear if he just curls over far enough. He glances at her, briefly, and she catches a hint of light blue eyes and the circle of red scarring across his face, the scars that wrap his neck like a collar he can’t take off.

She knows about the collar - Ryan warned her it comes up in conversation. She is prepared for this. She has a career uniquely situated to make her absolutely perfect for this. She has the experience that no one else in Northern California has, the experience and the dedication and the passion for helping people like Daniel Michaelson.

And yet the nerves that flutter within her stomach never quite subside.

When Daniel is all the way in and Ryan has closed the door to return to the waiting room, Rosa waits for a beat of silence, watching Daniel put his hands in his pockets, looking for all the world like a small child awaiting punishment for an infraction rather than a grown man seeking therapy. “Do you prefer to be called Red?” She asks, finally, with no change to the warmth and welcome in her voice.

“My name is Red,” Daniel says, a little more firmly this time. “You, you have to call me that. That’s my name. I get, I get in trouble if I have the wrong thoughts, and that name is a wrong thought. Puppies don’t have wrong thoughts. My name is Red and I belong to Abraham Denner.” The words seem to have a calming effect on him, some of the tension bleeding from his shoulders and the way he is holding himself. “Can I, may I have permission to sit down?” 

“Of course,” She says warmly, and then watches with surprise as Daniel Michaelson sits on the floor in front of the couch, pulling his knees up to his chest. “Ah, Daniel-… my apologies, Red. Would you prefer to sit on the couch for our first session?”

“Not allowed,” Daniel says, and she watches him begin to rub, compulsively, at one of the red scars dug hard into his jaw on the left side, rubbing and rubbing with his thumb, his other arm sliding around his legs. His hands are scarred along the lines of his veins, heavy obvious markings. Ryan had warned her about those, too. 

He is curled into the smallest little ball she can imagine someone so tall turning himself into. 

“I’m not allowed. Only people get the couch, puppies stay on the floor. Not allowed. I, I have to be good, I want to be good. I want… I want to be good,” He repeats to himself, plaintively, and Rosa’s heart breaks, just a little.

Nothing shows on her face, but Rosa takes in the moment and wonders if she is perhaps in far, far over her head with this one.

Then she picks up a pad of paper and a pen and settles herself into a small armchair off to the side, nodding. “Is that one of your rules? Your brother told me that there are… guidelines, that you live by.”

Daniel Michaelson nods, his eyes down on the floor. She can see he’s rubbed the scar at his jaw until it’s open and a little bloody, and she takes the tissue box from the table next to her chair and slides it across the floor until it bumps into his shoes - worn-out Converse sneakers that can’t be comfortable in the rainy chill outside.

Probably they were shoes he wore before, and probably Ryan offered him new ones, and probably he refused.

Daniel looks up at her, confused, and she takes in the blue eyes again, surprisingly vibrant in the pale, freckled face. She doesn’t let her eyes drop to his scars, not at all. She holds his gaze and smiles, slightly. “You are bleeding, Red.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.” He takes a tissue and presses it to his jaw, dropping his eyes back to the floor. Rosa settles back and makes a couple of introductory notes on her notepad, trying to decide where to begin. 

“Th-they want me to testify,” Daniel says, surprising her by being the first to speak. “But I, I don’t want to. He’ll look at me, he’ll look at me. I don’t want to. But they said I, I need to, they want me to. Ryan wants me to. I’m… he’s going to look at me. I don’t want to, but Ryan says, but I need to be good…”

“I understand,” Rosa says softly, nodding. “So is that what you’d like to focus on, as we get started seeing each other, Red? On being able to tape the testimony for the trial?”

There’s a silence, and then Daniel slowly nods. “I want to be able to do it,” He says softly. “For Ryan. Ryan wants me to do it. I want to, I want to do it, but I don’t want to do it. I feel both, at the same time. I want to do it but I shouldn’t, against the rules, against… against the rules. But I want to, Ryan does, Ryan wants me to. I want to but I don’t want to.”

“You’re feeling ambivalent about this - torn in two directions by your competing instincts. That’s perfectly understandable,” Rosa says softly, still writing, a constant stream of her impressions and thoughts and what Daniel is saying. “I think you’ve identified a very strong starting point for us, Red. I’m very happy to meet with you today, and your brother has scheduled you to see me twice a week while we get to know each other and once a week after that. Does that sound acceptable?”

Daniel frowns at her, confused, as though he can’t figure out why she’s asking. Then he slowly nods. “Can you make me able to do it?” He asks, from behind his knees. “Talk to the lawyers about what happened?”

Rosa takes a breath. “I can’t make you do anything. But if you want to, I think that your sessions with me may be able to help you work through what you need to have the skills to make that decision for yourself, and begin building a foundation for future decisions from there. Does that sound like a good plan to you?”

Daniel is silent, tissue still pressed to his face, then he slowly nods. “Oh, okay,” He says softly. “Whatever you want. I can be good.”

Rosa nods, slightly and gives him an encouraging smile. “Wonderful. And if you need to, we can call your brother in at any time. All right, Red. My name is Dr. Rosa Martinez, and I know you’re aware of that, but while you’re in this office, I want you to call me Rosa or Dr. Rosa, is that all right?”

He nods at her again, but a little more of his face comes up from behind his knees. “Y-Yes, I can do that, um, Dr. Rosa.”

“Perfect. That’s perfect, Red. Now let’s begin.”

[wunderlass]

Max Evans, Princess of Power

“You’re the one who never wanted us to ask questions or call attention to ourselves, and we followed it blindly.”

“No one made you follow my rule, Michael. I’m not your dad.”

“You’ve sure as hell been acting like it all our lives.”

During a recent rewatch of the show, I started thinking about the power dynamics of the pod squad, and specifically the way Max is positioned as their de facto leader–largely through statements made by Michael. This led me to question whether Max actually does serve the purpose of leader (or at least, a paternal/big brother figure to the other two), or whether the power dynamics are far more complicated than that.

To that end, I’ve done a close rewatch of all the scenes involving the pod squad interacting with each other or talking about each other to try and answer this question.

(That title is a complete pisstake, by the way).

tldr: Michael doesn’t listen to Max and never has. Max definitely isn’t in charge of the pod squad.

The first time we meet Michael, he’s contrasted with Max: the irresponsible brother against the “self-righteous” one. The criminal vs the cop; the rule breaker vs the rule maker and enforcer. It’s implied that Max is the leader of the pod squad, keeping the errant Michael in line: a big brother reprimanding a misbehaving younger sibling, despite the fact they’re the same age as far as they know.

However, the dialogue in the pilot suggests their agreement to keep their secret was one they reached between them, rather than a rule that Max imposed on the other two. Isobel says:

“I keep this secret because you, me, and Michael swore that we would.”

During the pilot, Michael is the one trying to enforce this rule, tailing Max to stop him talking to Liz. The one who puts their survival above all else. Isobel tells Max that Michael won’t forgive him for telling Liz their secret—and Max states that he isn’t asking permission. This doesn’t suggest that Max has been running a little fiefdom of the three of them.

Within the same episode, Michael tries to steer Isobel to get inside Liz’s mind to send her away. And by “steer”, I mean he explicitly gives Isobel an order:

“Start preparing yourself. Because if Liz Ortecho turns on any of us you will get inside of her head and erase it, make her leave Roswell...leave Max.”

So far, we haven’t been told Max was the one making the rules, and Michael sure as hell isn’t following any. The episodes that follow compound this, showing that Max has no authority over Michael, who never listens to him and consistently pushes back against him. Michael and Isobel break into the Crashdown to threaten Liz, going behind Max’s back. They sneak around in episode three trying to get into Liz’s mind. By the time Max decides this is the best approach in episode four, they’ve already tried it for him (again), and his opinion is a moot point.

It’s in episode five where Michael first claims that Max is their leader: “You made the rules our entire lives—never be extraordinary! Just once we made a gametime decision for your own good!”

That’s pretty consistent within the pod squad—making decisions for each other. Max tries it, Michael tries it, Isobel does it but is usually going along with one of her brothers. The narrative at least tries to frame this is as a bad idea, something which leads to bigger problems for them. But Michael is the one who’s in on both secrets, initiating the lie to Isobel about who killed Rosa. We don’t at this stage know who came up with the idea to send Liz away back in 2008, but I’d put odds on it being Michael, just like it was this time around. Isobel was capable of doing that alone without needing to discuss it with Michael, if she thought it was the best approach, and without telling him so he couldn’t spill the beans to Max. Instead, Michael’s involvement suggests to me that it was his idea that time and this time.

It’s Michael’s claim here in episode five—"our entire lives”—that doesn’t ring quite true. As we find out over the course of the season, the pod squad were separated before they were verbal. It’s possible that they came up with some kind of mental pact to blend in, but given that Max doesn’t remember that period of time, why would Michael? This means any rules could only have been put in place when Michael returned to Roswell as a preteen. And during the tent discussion in episode six, it seems clear that Michael realises he has to cover up his powers for his own protection. This isn’t something he’d need telling by Max. He’s already successfully kept his alien identity under wraps while separated from the other two for years.

One of the things I found most interesting about that first scene in episode six is how, when Max has killed the drifter, both boys turn to Isobel to ask her what they should do. Isobel is too broken at this point to answer, so Michael takes charge, covering up the body to bury it. But this instinct of theirs, to look to Isobel, implies that maybe the first leader of their group was actually her. And when she wasn’t capable of fulfilling that role any more, they each tried to fill the void.

Throughout this episode, there isn’t really any sense of either boy being in charge. They share their problems, to an extent. Michael at this stage is the least sheltered of the pod squad due to his upbringing, and he’s used to not relying on anybody else. He can take charge where he needs to be, because he’s used to surviving on his own. When Max notices the issues with Isobel he suggests going to their parents, and Michael is the one who shoots that down. No rule, certainly not one imposed by Max, is mentioned.

Later this is reversed, with Michael imploring Max to involve his parents at the caves. Neither boy is wrong in the logic they use to discredit the suggestion, and neither boy is taking the lead, instead working together to produce the cover up. Max suggests they must cover the murders up; Michael lies to Isobel. Isobel pushes the cover up further. There is shared responsibility for what happened, rather than one person being to blame for what went wrong, and Isobel says to Michael that they agreed to never talk about that night. Everything they do is mutual, except for the lie Michael tells Isobel. But when the topic comes up in episode eleven, Michael blames Max for the cover up.

Based on what’s shown, it’s probable that Max moved into more of a paternal position after Rosa’s death, because he had to. Isobel wasn’t capable; Michael’s plans fell apart and it seems likely he started acting out in ways that could have led to his discovery, so Max stepped in to try and keep him under control. By this point, their relationship was already fractured, and Michael’s resentment of him began to grow, until his interpretation of their dynamic in the past is coloured by how it is in the present.

Max’s role as leader has been massively exaggerated by Michael's resentment of him. Nobody needed to impose a rule on any of them, because they all knew what was at stake. They’ve grown up in a society which is saturated with ideas of aliens (human and inhuman) as the enemy and examples of what humanity does to people it fears. If Max is the leader in the present (and it certainly doesn’t seem like Michael follows his lead) then he didn’t choose this role but was the last one standing capable of taking it.

One last thing I want to mention is how Max’s mere size could influence people’s perception of him, both other characters and viewers. NDP is a big dude with a deep voice, so Max’s anger when we see flashes of it is palpable. Max could be characterised as an “alpha” (not a real thing) based on physical characteristics alone. But when you look at Max’s behaviour, he really isn’t. He doesn’t want to be in charge of anything or anyone. He didn’t become a cop to gain power, he did it to assuage his guilt. Within their relationship, Liz is the more dynamic character and it seems very plausible that Max would be happy to hand over all the power to her.

Max may grow into a leadership position in the future, depending on the nature of his powers, but he’s certainly never held the reins of the pod squad. Even if they all believe that’s the case, it’s been an illusion. More flashbacks may provide more context and flesh out their historic dynamic further, but it seems clear to me that Michael is used to being beholden to nobody except himself, and it’s been that way their entire lives.

[diveronarpg]

Congratulations, NAY! You’ve been accepted for the role of JULIET. Admin Minnie: My arms are wide open for you to return to us, Nay! I am so unbelievably thrilled to have your Juliana join us again. You capture her completely, without reservation and without a bit of doubt — and for good reason. You understand Juliana in a way that honestly leaves me speechless. And the fact that you wrote a whole new app that incorporated the darkness you’ve discovered in Juliana along the way? The potential, the precipice that she stands on now with so much to lose and even more to gain? Wow. Nay, I’m so glad you’re back. I can’t wait to weep reading your writing yet again. Please read over the checklist and send in your blog within 24 hours.

WELCOME TO THE MOB.

OUT OF CHARACTER

Alias | nay.

Age | twenty-one, but my birthday is next month (january 8th!) so i'm already telling people i'm twenty-two. or eighty? spiritually, i'm eighty & i'm knitting these days, so.

Preferred Pronouns | she/her.

Activity Level | my life is something of a circus, i'll be real with you. i live between two houses, i'm trying to get through my final year of undergrad while trying to earn money writing, fighting mental illness (aren't we all?) and basically having a midlife crisis every other week. but, like. an 8. i love y'all such a lot, you can't keep me away ;)

Timezone | gmt+5.

How did you find the RP? | i… don't even remember at this point. it's just home.

Current/Past RP Accounts | to quote Hamlet, act III, scene iii, line 87? no.

IN CHARACTER

Character | juliet / juliana rosa capulet.

J U L I A N A | the name is chosen before she is even born. picked out of a Bible resting askew atop rounded-belly, like a flower from a garden: Juliana. she is named in devotion to the once-suffering patron saint of sickness, Saint Juliana of Nicomedia (now, Naples). she is only a squirming bundle, already carrying a legend of martyrdom through a namesake.

R O S A | what smelt sweeter than a rose? her mother adored them – and thus, there could never be anything sweeter ever again. so sweet, many hearts yearn to pick them. enchanted by the intoxicating perfume, many lovers cut themselves on these thorns.

C A P U L E T | who truly understood the magnitude of a name? a name of Anglo-Saxon origin; coming from a wooded area beside a chapel, hailing from a family who once-lived in a village named Caplewood. a prophecy, then—taken, and bastardized: paupers evolving into the kings, a chapel beside no more than a house to their sins.

What drew you to this character? | i remember fragments of the last time i answered this question. this time, i made it a point not to read my old application, because if i was going to reapply? i wanted to do it the right way, go through the whole process, start on a fresh page. that said, i do recall my own surprise at a reincarnation of juliet capulet being my character of choice. i remember my own poetic gibberish; this romanticisation of colours & versatility, the whole universe inside juliana that causes her so much pain. somehow, after the span of only months of writing her, i can't answer it the same. somehow, a paltry chunk of time has turned an idea i was enchanted by into a person. somehow… it made the experience of reading her biography again, after all this time, a more impactful one. and perhaps that's the mark of rosey being the wretchedly talented wordsmith we must suffer angst for loving, but i found myself picking up on details i had missed, and lines i had forgotten to be arrested by – and somehow, a character i had, swathed in my own contradictory brand of hubris, thought i knew like the back of my hand? she still inspired me. i still had ideas flooding in my head, and love swelling my heart. i think that's the mark of a well-written character, every bit as much as it is an indicator that the character is one you can write with integrity.

thrive. ghost. onlooker, helplessness, obsession, lamented, saint, blood, symbol, succumbing.

isn't it absolutely prophetic?

what draws me to juliana is her complexity, at the heart of it. i love the boundless possibility of her; this dainty, precious, precocious slip of a girl—not just a girl, but not quite a woman yet—and the enormous weight of a last name, which really has nothing on the burden that is the heart she carts around in her chest. there's something peculiar about her, an eeriness about how truly, genuinely tender she is. and as easy as her tenderness is to mistake for weakness, she isn’t. she is the embodiment of love – and much as it is absolutely the greatest source of pain to her, it is her greatest strength. love is what makes her, and it is what has the power to completely undo her: to a different version of herself, harder or softer, or undone.

i’d see it as a great privilege to get to explore her story.

What is a future plot idea you have in mind for the character? |

TRIGGER WARNING: suicide mention, mental illness mention, postpartum depression mention, drowning mention

LOVER / her heart is her biggest strength, just as it is her biggest weakness. it always has been. just like it was her mother's. it's why her father worries so much about her – and how can she begrudge him for it? she worries about herself, too. jia capulet had had a bleeding heart; where had that landed her? six feet under is where. and thus, they worry, worry for the ways that she is her mother's daughter. but juliana worries about the ways in which she is her father's daughter, too. she loves him so dearly, so reverently, that she has been his dutiful puppet. she has been a figurehead, a symbol, a caricature. she has smiled… she has been smiling for an eternity, for an audience that never stops watching. she worries, still, about how much war steals: time, and lives, and this city that is their home. there is some irony to it, she thinks; the girl they say has everything, so terrified of loss.

› juliana is so thoroughly a person led by her heart. moreover, she is a compulsive overthinker. she nitpicks (internally, constantly), she analyses, she wonders and lays awake at night plagued by questions she cannot answer, and answers she knows not questions to. it isn't a surprise that her own story — i.e. the people she comes from — is something that weighs on her, heavily, and shapes her, influencing her thoughts, perceptions and choices. 

this is a self-driven plot, i know, but i want to headcanon that her mother, jia, suffered from a devastating case of postpartum depression after she prematurely conceived juliana's little sister. italy is actually a frontrunner in hands-on understanding of mental health without the questionable committing to an institution, but with that said, jia capulet wasn't italian. she was chinese, and didn't grow up in a society where she would at all be open to entertaining the idea of mental illness perpetuated by pregnancy. it is incredibly difficult to help someone who does not want to be helped – and all juliana and cosimo could do for her was pray. and when they failed her, and she and the baby girl were found floating in the lake behind capulet manor, all they could do was hide the story from the world, the first secret between father & daughter. it is a personal headcanon of mine that juliana bears an eerie resemblance to her mother, and that doesn't help the difficulty of separating her own identity from the trauma that's tainted her childhood, and the trauma currently tainting her adolescence.

i'm dying to explore how it produces an adulthood for her. as much as i love a good coming of age story, juliana's needs to be something darker. i want to see what she takes from her parents, what she tucks away, what she tosses aside – and who is left, ultimately, after it all.

ALL MY FLOWERS GREW BACK AS THORNS / two years: that's how long it's been since juliana's world was turned upside down. oh, of course she'd heard the rumours. of course she'd heard snippets of conversations, caught the caution in some eyes, malice in others, in too many others. she had never asked questions for the answers she was given, had she? but an evening in her father's study — cosimo's brows furrowed, and vivianne's arched, expectant — and reality was unveiled, all the same. beneath the cover of those luscious roses, nurtured and adored, was reality. go on, they had urged her. la principessa was to get her hands dirty, to seize the opportunity she had never been brave enough to ask for – and now, those hands bled, reality's gritty red, ruddy & relentless, oozing out of thorn-impalement, those puncture wounds. it stings. it stings, it stings, it stings, over & over. how much can she take?

› the biggest overarching plot-point for juliana's i story that i would so like to explore is the changes in her as the war progresses, and how it transforms her. i genuinely believe that she is, at heart, a good person. she is also, however, a good person who has grown up with a very basic, one-dimensional view of morality and goodness and their opposites, in the way that children are. in large part, that's attributed to the extremely sheltered way juliana has been raised, protected so suffocatingly, and that's why i understand that it hits her and begins to shape her immediately, going from the extreme of being in the dark about everything and then essentially becoming the figurehead for a war that has been going on for way, way longer than she has even known about it. there is a difference between idealism and optimism, and the lesson to understand it is a painful one. i would like to put her through that, and peel back the layers of her naiveté to unveil the woman she must grow into.

GLORY & GORE / verona is falling apart. lives are being lost – innocent, guilty… who is man to decide, what is to be done with Dio's creations? juliana was raised to believe in God. she was raised to respect the universe, to do her duty to spread kindness, to work to spread good fortune where it was lacking and to be generous with it. is a gun in her hand one day meant to change who she is at heart? who is this violence for, for whose good? what is to come of it all? is power ever enough? will it ever be? who will be left standing? will anyone? the streets run too red. this is not her verona.

› i would love to see juliana, at a point, actually take over the reins from cosimo. now, the possible events that could lead up to that as endless: a death, a coup, a voluntary succession? i'm here for any of it. but a plot i'm very interested in is seeing juliana, who has spent a majority of time being rigid, and uncomfortable, too caught up in a holier than thou take on mob reality taking on power and defining it for herself now that the war has begun to very personally take from her – first, the near-assassination of her father, then vivianne's blood on her hands, and now, her beloved rafaella. i want to see how she balances her humanity and diplomacy, if it truly isn't possible to both be in power and not be corrupted by it. i want to see who follows her, who would pledge allegiance to her, and what she would do of those who do not. spicy plot, right?

Are you comfortable with killing off your character? | so long as she dies for love.

IN DEPTH

In-Character Para Sample: 

NOTE: i cheated and stole an excerpt of my own thread for juliana. oops?

Excruciating awareness seemed to be her stock in life. One would think—as, frankly, Juliana herself often did, excruciatingly aware of her mind’s rapid, ricocheting song—that it would be she was used to it by now. But she was no such thing, and it was because of this that she found herself ultimately unable to detach herself from what a companion of hers thought of her, unable to keep from recording even the most minute of details, some of them caught out of the corner of sharp, dark eyes. Even though Juliana Capulet knew that she thought she knew better than to care what anyone thought of her, given how routinely she exploited popular perception for the benefit of her own agenda, she had only ever been able to claim the victory of divorcing what people thought of her from what she knew of herself.

Lately, that hadn’t been feeling like much. A victory, still, but only a half-baked one. One that didn’t keep her from feeling an elementary sort of embarrassed shame, like she was a child who’d got caught with her hand in the cookie-jar. Perhaps that was only because what she knew of herself was a chapter already passed by… and the person who sat in front of Katarina DuPont was not the person she knew. This person was not Juliana alone; they did not sit together to share conversation about art and religion, about culture and cuisine, about music or magic. They sat together: the future Capulet mafiosa and a soldier in the army she would inherit. It was simple and as complicated as that.

At least there will still be wine, Juliana thought, halfheartedly.

Intravenous therapy was more than what was necessary to stay the inner-workings of the heiress’ mind, unfortunately. And there wasn’t enough chilled glasses of it poured down her throat to keep Juliana from wondering what it was that Katarina DuPont knew of her. Whether there was a file out there that encompassed all the myriad reasons in which she was the awful, doubtful fit for leading the Capulet mob, and had been from the first moment that she had finally been told about it. Whether that supposed file would be a less pathetic read even with a couple of pages worth of additional material on a traumatically-revised mindset pressed between its lips in offering. Would it make a difference? After nearly three years worth of distastefully looking down upon a history begun by an ancestor called Lucius Capulet; a man who had taken power into his own hands, with a vengeful spirit burning from years worth of mistreatment setting it alight – and then eating through it, like fire through paper, until what he resented in power-wielding elite that brought as much ruination as it did opulence is what his initiative rotted down to. Three years, and all her judgement bowed its self-righteous head down to was, what? Ah, agony that altered her. A night—one night—and she was no longer the same. Did it make her enlightened, then, to be awoken by her own thirst for vengeance, now – by an insatiable urge for Rallis—and those like him—to suffer as they ought to? Or was she just another hypocrite?

Juliana had always rather liked her eyes. They were so dark, so shadowed by raven-haired lashes casting shade over enigmatic irises, it at least kept her from flustering herself over the blonde being able to read the questions she had no answers for burning darkly within them. At least there was that. It kept her from her own worries clouding the clarity with which her honeyed counterpart answered her question. And for that – oh, for that, Juliana was ever-glad. Eternally, and boundlessly. For as right as she was about their relationship being that of a leader and soldier? She was terribly wrong, as well, for the conviction with which Katarina’s words spilt felt like poetry. They touched her soul. They stirred it. Our cause, the dauntingly tall woman called it. It warmed Juliana’s gut more than even her laugh had done. Every second we live and breathe, gives us a chance to do better. “Yes.” The word was a rough whisper, sounding from the embrace of the swelled walls of her throat. “Yes,” but her own conviction cut through it, exhaled a second time.

“Better is all I want. I –” Would it be a mistake to say it out-loud? Perhaps. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. “Well, I want more than this. For this city I love, for this universe that speaks to my soul, for… these hearts that live in my heart. Better – yes, I do agree, Katarina. I believe, as well. I want more than mindless bloodshed. I want more than fear and terror, more than domination for the sake of domination. I do not know just how clearly you can see it,” wryness laced the words as fluidly as her emotions had done, “I am not my father.”

Then that, too, dissolved. It gave way to gold, still hot & bubbling: “I am another entity entirely. Not a mouth-piece, not a symbol. I am a woman, and one of my word at that. I told you I would tell you why I asked – so here is why, signora. I ask because one of those who hold room in my heart, one of the largest… was nearly lost to me. This war takes and takes. From all of us, Capulets and Montagues and those who watch, who savour, and who suffer. I got out of bed today to work towards better.” Her head canted. Lashes lifted, unveiled those same dark eyes. Juliana let them burn.

“Would you like to join me?”

Extras: 

pinterest;

playlist;

headcanons -

due to having spent a large portion of her childhood on her own, juliana very early on developed an appreciation for time to herself. many of her interests, in fact, are shaped by it: her love for learning, for one, no matter the subject matter; her attachment to art, an outlet she keeps a secret, locked away in a room no one but herself is privy access to, and; additionally, the amount she talks to and counsels herself to stay sane.

her aesthetic preferences meander on the side of classic, vintage and minimalistic. it is extremely rare for juliana to opt for overt flashiness. she's pearls over diamonds, matte lip-stain in lieu of gloss, and neutral tones apparel over pops of colour.

she is petrified of rabbits, and their evil red eyes. 

juliana enjoys music, but she prefers it not having words.

she has a codependent relationship with coffee. no one with a body this slight has any business throwing back that many shots of espresso, but here she is anyway.

she has never learnt how to swim.

her nails and lips are always red, no matter the outfit. she enjoys having a signature of her own that has nothing to do with anyone else, as if it is her own private act of rebellion.

[elsaclack]

Omg!!! I'm so glad you're doing the kiss promts!! Can you please do 10!! Or 3!! Or aaah y'know could be both combined!!! Once again I loooove your writing and you're the owner of such a wonderful mind!🌻

3. kissing so desperately that their whole body curves into the other person’s

10. staring at the other’s lips, trying not to kiss them, before giving in

ummmm heyyyyy let’s pretend like this isn’t like 4 months late shall we?

anyways i’ve been struggling to build a premise around these prompts for…oh…4 months now and today i finally landed on one that kind of works. it’s a little weird and AU BUT it’s also, like, gratuitous making out and it’s also borderline plotless so it has that going for it i guess?

basically it’s a superhero au very, VERY loosely based on tua, in that i took superpowers from that universe and applied them to jake and amy (and rosa but only vaguely in passing conversation). so understanding tua is not in any way necessary to understanding this au, i’ve just been obsessed with a superhero au lately and i decided to give it a try with this prompt and it worked out a little better than i was expecting.

SO without further ado…

She’s three paces away from his front door before the panic finally overtakes the calm and she freezes mid-step.

The hallway is quiet, only the faintest sounds of muffled televisions and clinking dishes meeting her through the series of closed doors lining either side, and she’s certain that if she strains hard enough she could probably pick out the sounds of his voice over all others.

(That’s a new ability she’s noticed about herself as of late - she can bend the fabric of space and time, and she can hone in on Jake’s voice even over the cacophony of an explosion. Nevermind the fact that neither seem related on paper, it’s fact.)

(It’s also so much easier to feed the beast of denial prowling like a lion in the back of her mind.)

She lets out a small groan and grips the straps of the tote hanging off of her right shoulder a little harder. The stiff fabric cuts into the places where her fingers curl and she closes her eyes, trying to focus on it over the rising panic in her gut. This is fine. This is normal. She’s been here close to a dozen times before, especially as of late. It’s normal.

Except, of course, for the fact that her mask is buried somewhere in the bowels of her tote and not firmly affixed to her face to cover her eyes, the way it has been every other time she’s been here before. That’s different. That’s new.

But she can still see the way his mouth had flattened in that grim, determined grimace earlier. She can still see the way he’d pointed upwards, his brows raised in an unvoiced question. She can still feel the weight of his gun - the only one not lost in the chaos of the fight - in her hands. She can still see the way he’d motioned for her to do it - to rip the fabric of space apart, to slip through, to teleport herself up high so that she could take the final kill shot on the giant bloated alien monster that had been terrorizing Brooklyn just a matter of hours ago.

And she can still see the way the earth spun in a dizzying, wobbling way, far too blurry and fast for her to get her bearings enough to teleport safely back to the ground. And she can still feel the pure fear of that realization that she was plummeting to her death alongside the alien she’d just successfully killed.

And she can still feel his body slamming into hers mid-air, his arms cinching tight around her, his recently-discovered levitating abilities working overtime to first get him up to her and then to slow their momentum enough that they hit the ground relatively unscathed.

And after the fact - after he saved her life - there was this moment. This breathtaking, heart-stopping, paralyzing moment, when he’d looked at her and she’d looked at him and his hands subconsciously gripping her waist maybe…weren’t so subconscious in the way his thumbs stroked along her ribs and his fingers rippled and tensed. And he’d leaned toward her - that much was undeniable - and she thinks she maybe, probably leaned toward him too.

But the world was still trying to settle after teetering on the brink of collapse and Rosa was howling in victory and Charles’ footsteps were pounding into the ground, growing ever closer, and his grip went from protective and just a little bit possessive to helpful and supportive in the blink of an eye.

She would have been ready to completely forget it ever happened - the way she always did when they went and had one of those moments - if not for him pulling her aside and gently adjusting her mask right as the reporters began to swarm. “I accidentally knocked it out of place earlier,” he’d explained softly as he smoothed down the corners against her temples. “No one saw anything - I didn’t see anything - it was just crooked, and - and I know how much you hate that during interviews.”

His fingertips trailed down her face, then, most assuredly not against her mask any longer, but he didn’t linger for long. Just a feather-light touch of her cheeks, a gentle brush of a thumb against her chin, and then he was stepping back and gesturing for her to lead the way toward the mob.

And that - that has been plaguing her for hours.

Because she didn’t even think to try and stop him when he reached for her mask. Because she let him adjust it - because she probably would have let him take it off of her completely.

Because no one has ever seen her take her mask off. No one knows her secret identity. Jake doesn’t even know her real name - none of them do.

And yet here she stands, maskless, heart in her throat.

Three paces down from where Jake lives.

She’s been here before - crashed on his couch and, once, in his bed after missions, worked out long and winding mysteries in his living room, tried and failed to learn how to cook in his kitchen under Charles’ watchful gaze. She’s been here before, and yet -

With a quiet, somewhat defeated sigh, she pulls her tote open and reaches for her mask. She lifts it to her face slowly, only pressing down lightly - enough that it will stay in place, but without the usual intensity as during a physical fight.

It’s much easier to take the next step forward after that.

She knocks on his door before she can convince herself not to, and from inside she hears the glass clink of a bottle hitting a hard surface, and the muffled beats of socked feet trotting against carpet. She swallows hard as the light behind his peephole flickers - and shifts her weight nervously when she hears his deadbolt slide and click.

He’s not wearing his mask. The door is only partially open and his face is mostly hidden in the shadows of his ill-lit apartment, but she can see the reflection of light glinting against deep brown set against white. It’s the first thing she notices - followed shortly by the evidence of their fight only just developing on his face, like the bruises on his jaw and the scabbed over cut on the bridge of his nose.

(She hasn’t exactly examined herself in the mirror yet, but she’s fairly certain her own face is in similar shape.)

“Hey,” he says - cautious, almost reserved, but not guarded.

Never guarded.

This is the fourth time she’s seen him without his mask on.

“Hi,” she whispers.

He takes a small, tentative step forward - and the light from the hallway illuminates his entire face for the first time. His eyes flicker as he searches her face, curious in a way that somehow quiets the panic she’d felt before. “Everything okay?”

“Um…no.”

Concern fills his gaze at once, and his body visibly tenses - weight shifting to center on his feet, the muscles of his chest and arms tightening.

“Wait, not - I mean, everything, everything is okay,” she gestures into his apartment, toward where she knows the windows are situated on the far wall, and he relaxes again - aside from the little pucker in his brow. “I just meant - I’m not okay.”

His Adam’s apple bobs and he rocks forward a degree. “Did I - did I hurt you? Earlier, when we fell -”

“What? No! No, of course not, you - you saved me, Jake. You absolutely did not hurt me.”

A tiny, minuscule wave of relief seems to wash through him, but it isn’t enough to ease the creases between his brows. “Good,” he says, nodding as he reaches up to rub his fingertips against the back of his neck. “So, then…what’s up?”

“I just…I’m not…I’m not good at this.”

He pushes his door open a little wider and leans against the doorframe, his arms crossed loosely over his chest. “That’s okay,” he says. “I’m patient. Take your time.”

She nods and drops her gaze to her feet. “I owe you,” she murmurs.

“You do not.” he says so sharply she looks up on instinct. “You don’t owe me crap. We both know I would’ve done the same thing for any of the others without hesitation. I didn’t even have to think about it, Dora,” he says the false name he gave her years earlier gently and her stomach bottoms out. “Please don’t think that I’m gonna hold this over you or something, okay? I would never do that.”

“No, I know you wouldn’t, that’s not - what I meant.” The intensity is still burning in his gaze, but curiosity is beginning to blossom there, too - she inhales deeply and sets her shoulders. “You have been nothing but open and vulnerable with me, especially over the last few weeks. And I’m - I want to do that, too. I want to be more open and more vul-…I want to be more vulnerable. Because - because I trust you. I trust you.” As she repeats the phrase, the corner of his mouth quirks up - but still, the concern persists.

“I believe you,” he says with a shrug.

“That’s - I mean, thank you, but - I still want to do this.”

He searches her face a half-moment longer before his gaze drops down to her shaking hands - now slowly moving up toward her face. “Hey,” he pushes off the doorframe, arms coming uncrossed, socked feet moving over the threshold to inch toward her. The door swings shut behind him - he doesn’t seem to hear it. “It’s okay - you don’t have to do that, Dora, really -”

“I know I don’t,” she says through grit teeth as her fingernails gently pry the stiff leather away from her skin. He pauses, hands raised between them, a half-hearted attempt at moving her own hands away from her face. “But I want to. Really, I do. Unless you don’t want me to.”

He stares a moment longer, face twisted in indecision, before his shoulders drop and his hands fall back to his sides. “I want you to,” he whispers, looking stricken by his own confession.

She shoots him a small smile before working the mask away from her face. The adhesive sticks stubbornly to her skin and she quietly hisses when it pulls at the edge of a barely-developed bruise along her cheekbone. He watches, motionless, aside from his hands rhythmically clenching and unclenching at his sides.

Finally, the mask completely separates from her face, but she holds it over her eyes for another moment. “Dora isn’t my real name,” she murmurs.

His eyes widen. “You don’t have to tell me your real name,” he says quickly. “I mean I - I want to know, but more than anything I want you to feel safe and if me not knowing your real name makes you feel safe, then -”

“Jake,” she interrupts, and he falls silent at once. “I do feel safe with you. That’s why I’m doing this.” He opens and closes his mouth, before slowly shaking his head in clear wonder. “I want you to know my real name before you - see me. The real me. Is that okay?”

He nods.

She inhales again - a short puff of air - and lifts her chin a degree. He’s chewing the inside of his cheek in anticipation, and she can’t help but to smile at the endearing sight. “Okay,” she breathes. Jake shifts his weight from one foot to the other as she slowly lowers the mask, and her eyes fall closed as the leather interrupts her view of his breathless, affectionate face. They remain closed even as her hands drop down to her sides; the silence that follows is practically deafening.

She’s looking down at their feet when her eyes flutter open again and despite the nervousness simmering in her belly, she’s genuinely surprised to see he’s moved toward her since she closed her eyes - their toes are mere inches apart. And she knows when she finally lifts her gaze up to his face, he’ll be close enough that she’ll be able to count each individual freckle where they faintly smatter against his nose and cheekbones.

“My name - my real name - is…Amy.”

He’s looking at her like he’s just discovered the secret to life when she meets his eyes; his grin is blinding, his eyes shining. “Amy,” he repeats, so carefully, so reverently, and it sounds even better in his voice than she daydreamed it would. “God, I’ve been - I’ve been imagining this moment for so long - you have the best name, I love your name. And your eyes. God, your eyes are so pretty, I don’t - I don’t even know what to do with myself -”

She laughs, and he laughs, too, but his is filtered through a shaky gasp. “Oh, my god, when you smile it’s like - like your eyes smile, too? How do they - I mean, I’ve never -” he cuts himself off with another choked laugh and she’s still smiling, even as his eyes openly rove over her face. “God, you’re so pretty,” he whispers - to himself, it seems.

She knows her smile has gone shy, that the heat from the tips of her ears is probably pouring through her whole face, but she can’t bring herself to care - his flickering eyes have landed on her lips, his own smile slowly fading, replaced by unmistakable desire.

Nerves pulse through her heart, but she shifts toward him anyways - just like before. He blinks rapidly as she makes her slow approach, lips parting in apparent surprise. The tip of his tongue darts out to wet the corner of his mouth and she feels herself swallow thickly, eyes glued to the spot even after his tongue vanishes.

He ducks his head, the tip of his nose brushing against hers seconds before his lips press tentatively against hers.

Aside from the rapid beating of her heart in her chest and his own noisy breathing, neither one of them move. It’s a little strange, almost…maybe…bad…but then -

Then he moves into her all at once, his arms rising up to haul her closer to him, bringing her up to the balls of her feet. She quickly steadies herself with her arms around his shoulders, and not a moment later her back his arching, bending, curving backwards, as Jake’s tongue sweeps into her mouth. He groans against her when she angles her head, fingertips digging a little harder into the meat of his shoulders before one travels up to lightly cup his cheek. Her tote falls from her shoulder and lands in a clatter at their feet but he doesn’t seem to notice - he groans again, louder than before, when both hands frame his face and her tongue brushes against his as she pushes into his mouth.

His hand sweeps up her spine, the arm still around her waist tightening to better stabilize her, and then his fingers are pushing up through her hair to brace the back of her neck. The crown of her head lightly bumps against something hard and solid, followed quickly by her shoulders; it’s as she feels his body stooping, arms burrowing down around her beneath her armpits, knees bending and thighs tensing, that she realizes she’s just hit the back wall of his apartment building hallway and he has every apparent intention of lifting her up and pinning her there, in plain view of his neighbors.

“Mm,” she hums against him as her feet just barely leave the ground, dropping both hands to land against his shoulders. “Mm, Ja- Jake,” she turns her head away, ripping her lips from his, and he rears back, eyes bright with alarm. “No, no, no, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s - it was good, it was really good -” She has just enough time to register his relief before he’s moving toward her again, quickly working his way down to her jaw, kissing and lightly nibbling, drawing quiet gasps from her every few seconds. “Jake we - we’re in, we’re in the hall.”

“And?” he grunts, lips now moving over her the side of her neck, experimenting with the sensitive skin around her left ear.

“We need to - to go inside,” her voice is thin and airy, borderline pathetic, and when his teeth scrape against a particularly sensitive spot she has to bite down hard on her knuckles to keep from audibly moaning.

“Been wanting to do this for years,” he mumbles between kisses. “If you think I’m gonna stop for one second -”

“Someone might see,” she gasps.

He grins against her, lips curling against her skin, and through their chests pressed together she can feel his heart hammering just as hard as her own. “I didn’t know you were into people watching you do this kinda thing, Amy,” he murmurs, voice low and teasing where it rumbles in her ear.

She swats his shoulder hard enough that the sound reverberates down the hall. “I meant someone might see,” she says, suddenly able to think clearer in the midst of a more familiar dynamic in the midst of this newly intimate setting. She nods her head down; her mask lies to the left of his foot, slipped from her grasp after being swept up in him. The sight of it seems to sober him a little, though not enough for him to move away; he extends his leg and sweeps it back toward them with his foot, his grin bright and eager as he moves it to lie in the narrow space between the heels of her feet and the wall behind her.

“There,” he says, unmistakably triumphant. “Now, where was I?”

She lets out a laugh as he lunges back toward her, hands pressed against his shoulders and head angled up so his lips only make the barest contact with her cheek. “We should go inside,” she insists as he leans away, pouting. “It’ll be more fun…”

His expression seems to light up with interest for a moment, but the pouting returns all too soon, visible even as he drops his forehead down against hers. “But I don’t wanna move.”

“I can’t show you what’s in my tote if we don’t go inside.”

He pulls back, brow furrowed. “Is that like a euphemism or something?”

“Oh, my god, no! I just - I brought, like, food and movies and stuff, in case you wanted to hang out or something -”

“I definitely want to hang out,” he says, “but the food and the movies can wait for later.”

He winks suggestively and she rolls her eyes, but before she can think of a rebuttal he shifts and his thigh presses up between hers and oh, yeah, they need to get inside his apartment now. “Fine,” she rasps - and he grins with unmistakable pride at the audible effect he has on her. “We’ll do it the hard way.”

She hooks her foot through the straps of her tote and shifts back so that the heel of her other foot presses against her mask, and then she’s tipping forward, hands ripping through the spacial fabric around them to teleport them both directly to his bedroom.

“Whoa!” he shouts as he topples backwards, the backs of his knees hitting the mattress and knocking him completely off-balance, sending them both down in a tumbling heap. His arms stay around her this time; she blinks and shakes her head to find his face just inches away, staring up at her in wonder. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that,” he murmurs.

“Actually, it’s sort of like getting over car sickness - after a while, you don’t even really feel it anymore -”

“Not teleporting,” he interrupts. He reaches up slowly and brushes her long hair back behind her ear, before gently ghosting his fingertips along her cheekbone, just under her left eye. “This. You. You’re just - you’re so smart and beautiful and badass -” She scoffs a little at that, and he shifts his head to the side, brows furrowing. “What?”

“I am not a badass, I mean - I’m into crossword puzzles and knitting, you make fun of me for it all the time. If anyone’s a badass, it’s Rosa, with all the knives -”

“You can be into crossword puzzles and knitting and still be a badass.” he interrupts indignantly. “Just ‘cause you don’t dress in all black and threaten everyone around you within an inch of their lives for every little thing doesn’t mean you’re not badass. I mean, who stopped that alien earlier? Who killed it? You, or Rosa?”

“Me,” she admits quietly.

“And who was brave enough to come here and be vulnerable on purpose? You, or Rosa?”

“Me.”

He nods. “Badass.”

“I just -”

He surges upward, interrupting her with a kiss, and her heart feels like it might explode or something for how many beats it seems to be skipping. “You’re a badass, Amy,” he repeats in a whisper when he lets his head slowly drop back to the mattress. “And you’re so, so beautiful.”

It’s one of the last truly coherent things either one of them says that night - aside from each other’s names.

[douxreviews]

Roswell, New Mexico - ‘Pilot' Review

Before we get started, let’s address the elephant in the room.  This is not a reboot of the 1999 WB show Roswell.

It is a show based on the same Roswell High books as the ‘99 show.  So yes, there are similarities.  And if you liked the show, you’ll probably enjoy this one too.  But if you thought a high school drama built around star-crossed lovers trying to hide the existence of aliens from the government and their parents was on the cheesy side, you may still want to give this a shot because while the themes of otherness and acceptance are still there, the characters and plots have all grown up.   And if you never saw the original but science fiction that’s heavy on alien metaphors with a side order of science is your jam,  you’re in for a treat.

I promise I will not spend every episode comparing the two versions.  Art is a product of its place and time.  The expectations viewers have for the shows they watch have changed. Therefore, each iteration must be judged on its own merits. What are they trying to say and how well do they achieve their narrative goals?  For all their similarities, these two shows are saying something very different.

In many respects, the original show’s focus on Liz and Max’s love story sucked up much of the narrative oxygen in the room.  The larger themes of alienation and acceptance,  when they occurred, were almost solely through the metaphor of the aliens on earth.  Here we address similar themes from multiple angles.  By embracing diversity, in terms of ethnicity, gender, sexual identity, immigration status, and, yes, human vs. alien, they hammer home the idea that being “other” doesn’t necessarily make us different.

The feelings of otherness are not limited to our alien friends.  Liz doesn’t fit in not only because of her father’s real, and her suspected, undocumented status but also due to the town’s residual hatred regarding her sister Rosa’s actions.  Alex is a military man from a military family in love with a man who despises authority and refuses to conform.  On paper, Kyle looks perfect.  He’s a good-looking doctor from a respected family but he’s so lonely he’s willing to have a romp with an ex in his car while knowing she’s using him.  Each of them is desperate to find a connection, and that desperation has the potential to lead down some dark paths.

Don’t get me wrong, at its heart this is still the love story of Liz and Max; two outsiders with an undeniable attraction for each other but separated by facts that would give Romeo and Juliet pause.  At least those two were both human.  Yet if not for Max’s love for Liz, we’d have no inciting incident.  Liz would have died in a random shooting and he, Isobel, and Michael would have quietly continued their existence in Roswell with no one the wiser.  Instead, Liz returns after a 10-year absence and Max refuses to lose her again.

His actions are not without repercussions.  Liz is no longer a half-smitten high school student.  She believed she was shot, her uniform had a bullet hole, there is a handprint on her chest, and no visible injury.  No self-respecting scientist would let that mystery go uninvestigated which only leads her to more questions.

Thanks to her aborted fling with Kyle, he knows something is up too.  Unfortunately, for all involved, Kyle goes to a far more dangerous source for answers.  Now the secret Max, Isobel, and Michael have been harboring for over 20 years, that they are the aliens from the 1947 crash, is in danger of coming out.

Add to this the mystery of Liz’s sister’s death.  As far as the residents of Roswell are concerned, Rosa, as her father put it, “took drugs, and she drove, and when she died, she took two innocent girls with her.”  We know that’s not true or at least not the whole truth.  Max, Isobel, and presumably Michael have something to do with Rosa’s death and whatever that truth is would spell an end to Liz and Max’s budding romance.  So, of course, she’s going to find out, right?

Regardless of whether the trio is responsible for Rosa’s death (and does anyone really believe Max and Company deliberately killed her?) their fears of exposure are both real and well-founded.  Sergeant Manes and Kyle’s dad were involved with Project Shepherd.  According to Manes, this project was created to protect humans from any threat that aliens might pose.  However, Manes has already made that determination.  And he isn’t subtle about his position on the monsters that landed in 1947 or the killers he believes they are.

What Have We Learned:  

For starters, we know that Max can heal, Michael can move objects with his mind and Isobel can affect people’s thoughts.  We also learned that Isobel used that ability ten years ago to send Liz away when she started reciprocating Max’s feelings for her.  And apparently, Max isn’t the only one who’s been carrying a torch since high school.  In Michael’s case, there was a lot more to the relationship than simply mooning over Alex from afar.

I happened to love the original show and I’ve always been skeptical of reboots.   So, I approached this with a healthy dose of curiosity and very low expectations.   However, the complexity of the characters, the adult themes, and the not-so-subtle commentary on the differing views on aliens of all stripes left me impressed.  Consider me all in.

4 out of 5 glowing handprints

Parting Thoughts:  

I loved the nods to the original, such as Crashdown’s waitress uniforms.

Project Shepherd is a military exercise, right?  Was Kyle’s dad in the military too?

Liz’s confession to Max regarding her mother and sister’s mental issues sounded like a legitimate plea for information and not just a line to get Max’s DNA.  Please tell me that’s going to get explained at some point.

While we’re on the theme of things they better address, Michael has a chemical similar to meth coming from his trailer.  Huh?

And what’s Maria’s story?  She got the short end of the stick as far as storylines go.  I want to know what’s with the fortune-telling?

Quotes:

Liz: “Every small town has a story, but my hometown has a legend.”

Arturo: “I like it here.  I like making milkshakes for tourists dressed like little green men.”

Max: “I’m not one of the bad guys, Liz.”

Max: “So, where you been?” Liz: “Denver, working on an experimental regenerative medicine study.  We were onto something special, but of course we lost funding because someone needs money for a wall.”

Kyle: “So, we could do the awkward exes small talk thing, but I’m guessing that’s not why you’re here.”

Valentin: “For God’s sake, Evans. Shave.” Max: “I heard you ranting about patriarchal dress codes and grooming standards last week. I’m just aligning myself with your feminist agenda, Sheriff.”

Hank: “Isn’t that the Ortecho girl?  I thought she went back to her own country.” Maria: “Uh-uh, Hank.  You’re not distracting me from my money with your thinly veiled racism.”

Isobel: “The good old days.  Just three happy kids who aren’t in danger of being dragged off to the Pentagon by men in hazmat suits because someone couldn’t keep his superhuman healing hands to himself.”

Isobel: “Fall in love with someone else, Max.  Anyone else.” Max: “It’s been ten years, Iz.  If I could have, I would have.”

Kyle: “This is probably a bad idea.” Liz: “I thought we were ignoring that in favor of the whole sex thing.”

Liz: “This is probably a bad idea.” Kyle: “If only someone said that earlier.”

Kyle: “If you see the handprint go to Manes.”

Liz: "Michael outscored me on every AP exam.  I thought he would get some scholarship, change the world.” Max: “I don’t think Michael likes the world enough to bother changing it.”

Max; “She can never know what happened to Rosa.”

--

Shari loves sci-fi, fantasy, supernatural, and anything with a cape.

[shemakesmusic-uk]

Getting to Know...

Rosa Bordallo.

Rosa Bordallo fka Manett is a singer-songwriter and musician based in Brooklyn. She is a CHamoru from the island of Guam in the Marianas, an archipelago in Micronesia. She came to New York at the age of 19. She was a member of the band cholo.

Last month Bordallo released Reef Walker, a deeply personal indie rock record with poignant lyrics that investigate identity, loss, belonging, society, historical trauma, and hope.

We had a chat with Rosa all about Reef Walker, her background and influences, creative process and more. Read the Q&A below.

Hi Rosa. Please tell us a bit about yourself. What led you to make music and who/what are your biggest influences?

"Hi! Thank you for this opportunity to share my work! I’m a singer/songwriter based in New York City. I am also a Pacific Islander, specifically an indigenous person from Guam who identifies as CHamoru. I was born and raised there, and I started playing guitar and writing songs as a teenager. I came to NYC in the early 2000’s for film school, and I have been living and working here since then. The first year I was here, I joined a post-punk band called cholo that was formed by Felipe Flores. We played in small clubs and venues around town for almost ten years. We also released three full-length albums and one EP. Around 2010 I started making music by myself under the alias Manett, and I also released a few solo EPs under that alias.

"Making music was a natural progression for me since listening to music has always been an important coping mechanism. They say imitation is the best form of flattery, so I try to emulate my heroes and hopefully something new and interesting comes out of it. I’ve always been someone who needs to express myself, whether writing in a journal, writing poetry, doodling or dancing. I think making a record, as a creative endeavor, suits me in a lot of ways because I can draw on those other forms of expression. Also I get easily distracted and I’m not terribly disciplined so it’s nice to have a record - an artifact, a piece of evidence - to show that I didn’t just waste all my time surfing the internet!

"In terms of influence, there are too many to list, but I draw a lot from rock & roll and all its derivatives and revivals particularly psych rock, garage, punk, post-punk, new wave, and grunge. I’ve always been drawn to women with loud guitars and loud personalities -- PJ Harvey, Björk / The Sugarcubes, Dog Faced Hermans, Bikini Kill, Slant 6, Cyndi Lauper, The Breeders, Babes in Toyland. I love unapologetically weird women like Lene Lovich, Lydia Lunch, Nina Hagen, and Siouxsie Sioux. I can go on! Other major influences from my youth are the Pixies, David Bowie, Nirvana, and the Velvet Underground. I think what they all have in common is an irreverence, a willingness to break norms and do something unconventional while keeping a certain integrity. None of them were trying terribly hard to be different - they were just drawing inspiration from their personal frustration and observations of the world and creating something special from that.

You recently released your album Reef Walker. What is the record about, what does it mean to you and what do you hope listeners will take away from it?

"Reef Walker is my first full-length album as a solo artist. I picked that title because I see myself as being able to navigate a gulf that is psychological, cultural, and emotional in nature. As an indigenous person who has lived the first half of my life in my native community and in a remote part of the world, and then spent the second half in this metropolis on the other side of the world, I grapple with the guilt that my loyalties are divided and that I am not spending enough time with my family and native community. On the other hand, I wouldn’t be who I am today if I didn’t leave my place of origin and to live in this new and wildly different place. I think there are many people past and present who have my experience of alienation but it’s not represented in our culture - or if it is, it’s an inadequate representation. I often think about the Japanese castaway Otokichi, later known as John Mathew Ottoson, as well as the Inuk man Minik Wallace, when I need to remind myself why I’m doing what I’m doing.

"I also like the imagery that is evoked from that title. I spent a lot of time at the beach and on my dad’s boat as a kid. It’s actually treacherous to walk along the reef during low tide, because the high tide can come in unexpectedly and drown you, or a rip current can pull you out to sea. It’s also not good to touch or step on coral. Not only is it a living organism that should be protected, but some coral can sting you. But snorkeling and swimming along the reef is a transcendent experience. My ancestors were expert fishermen and seafarers. The album title is as much an homage to them and to all the CHamoru people and other Pacific Islanders who have ties to Oceania.

"All I ask of anyone who hears my album is to have an open mind. I think one reason music is powerful and interesting is because it can be appreciated across cultural divides. I try not to concern myself with how my music is received. I just try to make music that I personally enjoy so if someone else enjoys it, it’s a nice surprise. As for your readers, if you anything about my story sparks your curiosity, I would ask you to explore the histories of indigenous people because much of it has been suppressed and erased.

"There is much needed attention being given to climate change but we should remember that indigenous communities have always been putting their bodies on the line to protect the land, water, and other natural resources. In my own homeland of the Marianas, the U.S. military is about to expand their presence to build two live-fire training ranges that would drastically impact our main aquifer and our wildlife as well as desecrate important ancestral lands. In North America, there’s the oil and gas cartel, and there’s the missing and murdered indigenous women crisis (aka MMIW) which disproportionately affects trans and queer native folx. In South America, the Amazon is being burned down to benefit illegal loggers and farmers. It’s easy to get overwhelmed, but if you consider yourself a moral person, it’s your responsibility to educate yourself about these things. If you’re in North America, there’s a great online resource (native-land.ca) where you can learn about the tribes and nations that first settled the land where you currently live. The International Indigenous Youth Council (indigenousyouth.org) is another good online resource because it shares news from indigenous communities around the world."

What was your favourite part recording Reef Walker?

"It was really fun to record in three different spaces that were also living spaces. We started tracking in Duane Lauginiger’s old basement studio, which was right below his garden apartment in Brooklyn. He called that place Time Castle, hence the name of the cassette label that released the album. Then we went to a private house in Piermont, NY, for the second tracking session. And then finally did a day and night of recording in a converted church in Craryville, NY. Each space had its own quirks and novelties but Duane (the producer-engineer) was really nimble about setting up and adapting. I really like working in a place full of paintings and objets d’art and tchotchkes as opposed to a sterile recording studio that looks more like the set of a bad sci-fi movie."

Please talk us through your songwriting/creative process.

"I have a full-time day job so I just try to make regular time for myself to clear my head, and any ideas I get, I will record it on my phone or my computer. Then I spend a lot of time listening and thinking about these initial ideas. I try to give them enough space to breathe and present themselves to me. I don’t like to exhaust myself working on song ideas that are not particularly compelling to me. If I like hearing it over and over in my head, then chances are it will be interesting enough to sustain my attention long enough to develop it into a complete song and recording.

"I almost always come up with the music first before I think of any lyrics. Sometimes I will have an idea for a melody and lyric together, but I don’t get too attached to the first lyrics I come up with. I also take random notes all the time, about anything and everything, so sometimes I have a poem or a musing that I’ve written down which will get repurposed for song lyrics.

"It’s useful for me to have a theme or concept in mind, something that will spark my curiosity and help me be emotionally invested. With Reef Walker I initially had Woman in Suitcase as the working title. That was the force that brought it into being. I meditated on that a lot while writing the songs. I currently have a working title for my second album, so I’ve been meditating on that. I also did this for my first EP, The Sea Urchin, which was my first stab at making songs that were very personal, as opposed to hiding behind a group project which I did with cholo, my previous band. The sea urchin was a powerful image for me at that time, because I felt very vulnerable putting myself out there. Imagining a shy sea creature with crazy-looking spikes, just chilling in the water and paying attention to its surroundings - that kept me motivated to finish the recordings and put it out into the world.

"In general I just try to stay inspired and curious about things. The urge to create comes out of frustration but also out of appreciation for and communion with other people’s creations. And there are so many wonderful creations out there. I see this as a creative practice, rather than a creative process, because for me it’s more about being grounded and responsive to what’s put before me, rather than about checking off items on a to-do list or making sure that a particular set of actions is followed."

Finally, what are your plans for 2020?

"I plan on touring and writing my second album. Stay tuned!"

Reef Walker is out now.

[wonderlandmind4]

Delicate Stages Drabbles 15

Feeling That You Get

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x OFC

Summary: Drabbles following Delicate Stages. Looking into the life of Bucky and Ana.

Warnings: Language. Fluff. Implied smut.

Words: 4.7k

A/N:  Finally! Sorry it took so long for this one, as it tends to set up the next drabbles to follow, which will be the endgame now (See what I did there :D )(Do not read unless you’ve read Delicate Stages first)

Five Months Later:

Bucky is doubled over laughing, has been laughing for the past five minutes and he swears he hasn’t cried from laughing in decades. Honestly, he is not shocked in the slightest with how this scenario turned out. The minute Bucky got a call from a blocked number he knew who it was. He was relieved. It had been six weeks since they got the news before Steve finally contacted him, but Ana, she was nothing but sass.

“Wow, glad to see that dinosaur knows how to use a phone!” She said loud enough for her voice to be heard.

Bucky leveled her with a look, but all she did was shrug.

“Six weeks, and you’ve had this annoyed and worried tick in your jaw, that no matter how hard I rode your face, it just wouldn’t go away.”

Bucky’s eye went wide with shock, followed by a loud cackle and Steve’s stammering response on the line. He caught his wife’s arm before she could walk away, pulled her in for a searing kiss and muttered against her lips:

“Maybe you gotta try one more time, darlin’, just to be sure.”

Steve hung up, only to call back two hours later.

Now, Bucky is getting the entertainment of his life. Both him and Ana were by the lake enjoying a nice lunch, when they were surprised by someone neither of them were expecting to see. That’s when Ana began throwing rocks made of dirt at him.

“Buck! Get your wife!” Steve shouts behind his makeshift shield, which happens to be an empty bucket of feed.

“He can’t help you, Rogers!” Ana yells, pelting clumps of clay at the man.

“Bucky!” 

A bigger dirt clump explodes as it hits his shoulder, Steve’s left side of his face sprinkled with clay. Bucky tries to contain his laughter, tries to take deep breaths so he can speak. However, his wife’s aim has always been spot on and he won’t step in to stop her when she’s in a rage. A very entertaining, protective rage. 

“Bet you’re regretting leaving your shield now, pal” Bucky quips, earning a glare from Steve.

“Say you’re sorry!” Ana demands, throwing the last rock.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Now will you stop? I’m getting dirt in my mouth!”

When Ana finally ceases her attack and Steve’s blue shirt is colored with orange-brown spots, they invite him into their hut. Bucky gave him a lecture that brought on a feeling of déjà vu, as if he was scolding his friend back in a Brooklyn alley once more. Steve had explained his side of what happened with the portal and the team breaking up. It’s not something either of them wanted to hear, but at least everyone who is on the run seems to be safe and well hidden. With the exception of Clint and Scott Lang, who both had families to think about and made a plea bargain instead.

Bucky feels a strange wave of emotions radiating from Ana as he sits next to her. Their arms are touching, skin to skin, and it feels like cold prickles seeping through his pores. He briefly wonders if this is what his wife feels all the time, and how second nature it is to her now. He stretches his pinkie finger over hers, offering her comfort.

“Vision went to meet up with Wanda?” Bucky doubles checks. He’d be concerned for the girl if she was hiding from the government alone. He knows exactly how that feels, and Wanda is still a kid to him; just 21.

“He took off in the middle of the night, so he wouldn’t be followed,” Steve confirms.

“So,” Ana finally speaks up since Steve started talking. “It’s just Rhodes then? Technically Peter, but since he’s underage and not an official Avenger, the Accords don’t apply to him. Nor do they actually know his identity.”

“Correct,” Steve answers solemnly. Bucky sees his eyes squint as he pauses. He meets his gaze fleetingly, both coming to the same conclusion. “Tony isn’t alone, Ana.”

“Doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel like he is,” She mutters bitterly. “Pepper’s been out of town too.”

The sigh Steve exhales sounds heavy with remorse. However, Bucky knows him down to his core, and though his friend might be feeling guilty over the fact that his friendship with Tony is now strained, Steve still believes he did the right thing.

“I sent him a burner phone, in case he ever needs me,” Steve informs Ana. “I’ll always be there,” He pauses once more. “Just not where the government is involved.”

Bucky swipes his pinkie finger over his wife’s several times. He’s watching her carefully as silence stretches between the three of them. Finally, she nods in understanding, Steve sending her an appreciative smile. He kicks his foot out to nudge against her own, until she returns the teasing gesture. Bucky sags with relief. This entire Accords situation has not put Ana in a good mood during those first two months.

Numerous times she had snapped at Bucky or grumbled about how stupid heroes could be. He just took it, allowing her to lash out at him, until Ana caught herself. She told him he shouldn’t allow her to do that, that her anger and disappointment is misdirected, but it’s not an excuse. Bucky had told her he didn’t mind one bit, that he would rather have her lash out then bottle it up. Ana insisted that he stopped her the next time it happened, and when it did, he spoke up. He told her it wasn’t fair, and she agreed.

Since then, Ana hasn’t snapped at him once, and they have talked it through together. He helped her accept that what happened was the others decision, and the fallout was something they would have to handle. Ana wasn’t a part of it, so her strange guilt was moot. She had also accepted the Healers of Wakanda’s advice to begin mediating; Bucky thinks it helps better than anything. He also thinks the make-up sex has plenty to do with that too.

He blinks back to the present, pressing a quick kiss to her temple. She leans into him, and out of the corner of his eye, he sees Steve’s expression soften into a smile.

“Maybe this is good in the long run,” Steve speaks up, his voice airy, light. Bucky narrows his eyes suspiciously. “Maybe it’ll give Tony and Pepper time to start a family.”

Ana perks up next to Bucky. “Maybe! I know Tony wants kids.”

Bucky narrows his eyes at his best friend. He has a feeling he knows where this is going. Steve’s eyes flash, a sign of mischief he has seen since he met the little skinny kid on the playground.

“You know,” He begins, “you seem to be glowing, Ana.”

Bucky shakes his head at the lame attempt, laughing under his breath. When he catches Ana’s gaze, she looks confused. Which last for three seconds before she looks back at Steve, then to him once more. Suddenly he sees it click in her beautiful brown eyes, rolling them towards Steve.

 “Yeah,” She states. “It’s called being happily married…with a healthy dose of mind-blowing orgasms.”

Steve drops his blushing face into his hands. Bucky makes an indigent noise.

“Not what you were expecting? Because I’m not expecting,” Ana laughs brightly. “Although, we do have a lot of se-“

“Alright, Шалунья, enough out of you,” Bucky scolds playfully, wrapping his right arm around her shoulder to cover her mouth with his hand. She promptly licks his skin, as if it would bother him.

“I’m sorry I implied anything,” Steve mumbles behind his hands.

“Actually,” Ana’s word is muffled by his hand. Instead of removing it, she bites the fleshy part of his palm. Bucky inhales sharply, glaring at his wife as he lowers his hand. He swallows thickly. He’ll get her back for that.

“I think it’s to do with my abilities?” She questions at the end as Steve uncovers his face. “It’s been shimmering lately. Could be due these rings Shuri made. They help regulate the energy without the exhausting affects, and it’s always been tied with my emotions. So, the happier or angrier I am, it starts to glow.”

“She has been extremely happy, well and angry,” Bucky supplies. He feels Ana squeeze his hand, offering him an apologetic smile. He shakes his head, since all has been forgiven during those rough weeks.

“That’s interesting,” Steve muses.

Before either of them can say anything else, the little Kimoyo beads Shuri gave Ana as a necklace glows against her chest. Bucky carefully plucks it off the bead, holding it flat in his palm, a small holographic screen popping up. Shuri’s cheerful, youthful face takes up most of the frame, but she frowns when she sees Bucky instead of Ana.

“Nice to see you too, kid,” Bucky greets flatly.

“Stop stealing her beads,” She laughs, twisting as if she can see Ana. “I’m not summoning you on her bead, genius.”

Ana presses her cheek against his, leaning into him. “He’s just jealous he doesn’t get a personal one. Do you need me to come to the Lab?”

Shuri nods excitedly. “There was a breakthrough with the psychiatric healing devices!”

“On my way!” Ana grabs the bead from Bucky’s hand as the screen vanishes. “I’ll be back, you boys have fun! Stay out of trouble and don’t feed Rosa anymore treats, she’s had enough pears today!”

Then she’s taking off, waving her goodbye in the air. Bucky can’t help the fondness washing over him as she disappears over the hill.

“She’s still the same as ever,” Steve voices softly.

“Stubborn and fierce to the core,” He agrees. “I like her.”

“Good thing she’s your wife.”

Bucky wraps his arm around Steve’s shoulder, tighten his grip firmly. “Don’t you ever go that long without checking in again, you hear me Rogers?”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever you say, mom.”

 *

An hour goes by, filled with Bucky putting Steve to work for a bit, then taking him around the village. He has visited before, but he never wondered outside of the palace or lab. He meets the village people and children, some of the other tribes, and takes him to the lake Bucky is fond of.

“This is where you purposed?” Steve questions, gazing out over the lake.

“Yup, and the spot you’re standing on is where I dropped the ring, twice. Because I was so damn nervous,” Bucky laughs at the memory.

“So,” He drawls out, “you haven’t discussed children yet?”

Bucky snorts, running his fingers through his hair. “She mentioned starting a family before we got married, but we haven’t really brought it up since.”

“Any particular reason?”

He doesn’t answer right away. The possibility of having kids with Ana makes Bucky’s heart sore. However, it also leaves a bitter taste of self-loathing in his mouth. Could he even be a good father? Would he be enough? He keeps those doubts and fears to himself for now.

“We’ve just been enjoying our time as husband and wife,” He finally answers. “It’s only been eight months. There’s no rush.”

He sees Steve nod from the corner of his eye. “How are those energy rings holding up for her? Do they make the connect you both have stronger?”

“No, I don’t think. That was all Ana herself when she connected our energies. It’s incredible, Stevie. I can feel her all the time, like her life energy is this infinite sunlight around me. It’s subtle, but powerful.”

A firm hand squeezes his shoulder, and when Bucky meets Steve’s eyes, he sees nothing but happiness there. Along with a teasing eyebrow wiggle, to which Bucky playfully nudges his friend off him.

“The rings are ingenious,” He continues. “Shuri, that girl’s mind is a masterpiece. She keeps improving my arm too, and the rings, and the technology she comes up with is-“ He breaks off shaking his head in wonderment. “This place is amazing.”

“Incredible,” Steve agrees. “It’s beautiful here.”

“Ya know, you can stay here if you need a home.”

“I know that option is always open, Buck. From you and the King, but my place is still out there in the world. There’s a lot of underground issues at hand.”

“Still picking fights with things bigger than you.”

“You know it, pal.”

“Still a scrappy little punk forever.”

Steve laughs brightly, wrapping his arm around Bucky’s neck in a headlock.

*

The trek from the lab to their hut by the lake is just over a mile on foot. Ana sometimes takes the long route to and from, enjoying the serene landscape and warm breeze. Sporadically, she will find a stray goat or pig that has wondered off and coaxes it to follow her back. Other times, she and Bucky take the small journey together, fingers laced.

As Ana makes her way over the final, small hill she spots her husband and Steve, each petting the goats. She hears Bucky introducing the newest additions that race around Steve’s legs, knocking into him here and there. She can’t help but chuckle at the scene when she reaches them, bending to pick up one of the kids that exhausted themselves.

“Having fun?” Ana teases, offering the sleepy goat to Steve. He fumbles briefly, until he gets his large arms securely around the young goat’s body.

“They’re very cute,” He states, cradling the animal. “Bit of a handful.”

“That they are. Hey Bucky,” She turns to address her spouse as he lays down a fresh bill of hay. “Shuri requests your presence. Said she just finished some improvements to the new arm she’s been working on.”

Bucky’s eyes light up, an excited smile on his lips. Walking up to Ana, he gently cups the back of her head, pressing a tender kiss above her eyebrow. In return, she rests her hands on his hips, eyes fluttering at the sensation of adoration washing over her spine.

“Did you peek?” He murmurs against her skin, his left hand drawing circles over the side of her stomach with is thumb.

“No, I know better.”

His huffing laugh warms her skin before he leans back. “Meet you guys back at the apartment?”

Ana nods, placing a quick peck to his mouth. Bucky’s fingers scratch the base of her skull three times, before he steps around her, biding Steve a quick wave as he heads off. Ana catches the Captain’s fond look, clearly having witness their moment. Naturally, she sticks her tongue out at him.

“You haven’t seen our place, have you? In the city.”

Steve carefully lowers the now sleeping goat on a thicker part of the grass. He brushes his hands against his jeans, shaking his head. “Not yet.”

“Come on then!”

 *

They have been walking for a good twenty minutes, taking the scenic route as well, when Ana decides to bring up something that has been on her mind for the past few months. At first, it was just a fleeting thought, a quick feeling, something so minuscule, it didn’t need attention. As the days passed into weeks, and weeks into months, it has now gnawed at the back of her brain. Rather, it’s been pressing against her energy, making little ripples against the positive vibes in the air.

“Steve,” She speaks up casually, “Can I talk to you about something, uh, with me?”

The worried expression flits over his face fleeting. “Anything, Ana, you know that.”

She nods, fiddling with her wedding rings. “I’ve been…having this strange feeling. It never feels urgent, but it’s weird, almost like it’s scratching at something I don’t know is there.”

“With you two?”

“No, no, we’re fine. It feels more like, when you can sense a storm coming, the wind shifts a little, but it isn’t on a grand scale,” She pauses, trying to collect her thoughts. “I’m not explaining it right.”

Ana halts her steps, Steve following suit. “I got upset when I heard about what happened with you guys, so my energy was a little out of control. However, I’ve been doing a lot of mediation, and working with the healers here to connect my energy to an element that’s more grounding.”

“Grounding. As in the earth’s energy?” Steve inquires thoughtfully.

“In a way, the earth is a solid foundation, strong. It embodies energy of life all around in many forms. The healers allow me to visit one of the sacred places with them so I can mediate without interruption. It helps steady it, plus the rings regulate this ability more so. I’ve been doing it for over two months now, and I think maybe that’s why I can feel it?”

“Feel what, exactly?”

Waving her hands around her, she answers, “A strange, vitality, settling over the earth. Is that weird? It’s probably weird, since it’s never happened before. It’s not quite, ominous. The atmosphere here is mainly happy, positive vibes, and Bucky is-“ She breaks off, smiling softly at the mention of her husband. “He’s been great, and he feels great, and I can feel him, you know?”

“Yeah, he mentioned that. Says you feel like sunshine to him,” Steve smirks, but his eyes are soft, clearly happy for them both. “It’s cute. Romantic.”

“Well,” Ana rubs her warming cheek briefly. “It’s true. Anyway, because of all that this new feeling is foreign to me. It makes my empathy feel off at times.”

“Do you feel like it affects you in any way? Physically? Emotionally?”

“No, that’s the thing. If it’s a darker energy or feeling, it normally would affect me. This is just, there. It fades in and out, but it’s there.” She bites her lips nervously, rubbing her fingers over her collarbones. “What do you think?”

Steve doesn’t answer immediately. He’s pensive, blue eye appraising her. Ana fiddles with her rings again, waiting for a response and hoping she doesn’t sound crazy. She had an almost identically feeling way back at the compound when they still lived there. It kept building and building until it exploded into the fallout that ultimately led her and Bucky being separate for nearly a year. Before she can give her herself a panic attack, Steve finally speaks.

“You’ve been getting stronger over time,” He states, voice low as he thinks. “I think the more you were opening yourself up to Bucky at the time, the stronger you became. It wasn’t just him though, your abilities grew, what you did to Woods-“ He stops short, shaking his head. “We never truly trained with you or got see how far your abilities developed. Maybe now, with how your life is, a constant source of happiness, of peace, comfort, it’s a safe place to not hold back. You can use your powers without resistance.”

Taking her own time to process his words, Ana carefully twists the rings on her middle fingers. The thin sheen of the energy shield encases her body like another layer of skin. She holds her hands out in front of her, twisting around to see the shield shimmer. It even looks brighter, or maybe it’s just the sun reflecting off it.

“Do you and Shuri run tests with that?” Steve asks, leaning as close as he can without touching. “Because the last time I saw you use these, it wasn’t this visible. Although, it was through a video screen.”

“We run tests bi-weekly,” She informs him, twisting the rings off. “I don’t think much has changed though.”

“Does it feel like a threat?”

“N-“ She pauses. She doesn’t know why, but the word just died on her tongue. She shakes her head. “No. Not…yet. Do you think it could be? I can feel threats from a distance?”

Steve shrugs as he picks up her hand to examine the ring closer. “We can’t rule out any possibility, right? Wanda grew stronger the more she trained and experimented herself.”

“Yeah, but Steve, if I can actually feel threats at a great distance…that’s insane! I’m not that strong. That’s something else entirely. Right?”

“Anything is possible, Ana. You know that,” He says softly. Then he taps her wedding rings. “Have you talked to Bucky about this?”

Ana frowns. “No. I don’t want him worrying over something that could be, well, could be nothing. It didn’t feel pressing and honestly, I would forget until I felt it again.”

“This isn’t me teasing you again, but are you sure you’re not pregnant? Maybe that could throw it off as well?”

“I am one hundred percent sure, but that would be a good theory. The alchemy is off when I get sick too.”

“Were you sick recently?”

“No, just emotional with…” She trails off, shrugging.

“Yeah,” Steve drops her hand, crossing his arms and dropping his head. “I really am sorry, Ana. Going off the grid like that. It wasn’t fair to both of you. Either was lying to you.”

“Steve,” Ana places her hands on his solid biceps. “I shouldn’t have gotten as angry as I did. As long as you’re all safe.”

“We are. Now we are. There were some serious injuries-“

“Colonel Rhodes,” She nods solemnly.

“How is he?” The concern in Steve’s voice is thick.

“Tony made this walking contraption for him. After some intense therapy, he’s walking fairly well with it. He’s okay. He keeps telling Tony he didn’t blame anyone, but he stands by what he believes.”

“Sounds just like him.”

“Yeah, just like someone else I know,” She smiles pointedly at him.

Silence settles between them, with the colorful arrays of the setting sun on the horizon. Ana gets lost in her thoughts, as she assumes Steve does too, with the looming caress of that strange energy. She will talk it over with Bucky later, but for now, she just pushes it aside once more. She taps her friends’ elbow, jerking her head to the side.

“C’mon, it’s just another ten minutes from here.”

***

Weeks and months pass, and in between it, Ana visits New York and even California a few times. She keeps under the radar, especially when Bucky goes with her to see Pepper and Tony. The issues of the Accords and Avengers aren’t brought up, but she can tell it’s taken a bit of a toll on Tony.

Ana distracts him by showing off her rings, although she keeps the technology behind it a secret. Bucky distracts Tony with his vibranium arm as the genius himself marvels at the teenager’s piece. She takes great enjoyment when she watches Tony try to figure out the inner workings of the arm.

Ana and Bucky go from deeply in love newlyweds, to deeply in love established marriage as the year passes. The strange feeling of that particular energy still whispers up her spine once in a while, and when she did tell Bucky, he convinced her to report it to T’Challa and Shuri if it ever grew stronger. Reassured her that he wouldn’t let anything bad happen to her, even if that means unknown, seemingly harmless negative energy. Both agree to monitor it, just in case, writing down when Ana feels it ad if Bucky can see a change in her.

She continues to work in the lab as Bucky works on the farm and helps the village people with manual labor tasks. Nothing grows or changes with the feeling, and they focus more on each other, their lives together, and the little stray Black-Footed cat that had wondered into their hut one night with an injured leg. The cat stuck around after they nursed back to health, seeming to enjoy chasing the goats around.

“How about Eliza?” Ana offers as the small cat pounces on the large goat.

“For a cat?”

“Hey, Ezra was named after a poet- “

“Ezra is a lazy domestic cat. Not a wild and free creature like this spitfire.”

“Fine. Then I’m naming her Cat like I mentioned the first time. That way, she technically has a name, but she technically doesn’t because is she actually a cat. A cat named Cat because she’s a cat.”

“You mind never ceases to amaze me,” Bucky mumbles, as he pulls her in by her waist.

“You love me for it,” Ana teases, brushing her nose against his.

“Every day for the rest of my life, Annie Doll.”

Then he kisses her with a searing passion, and they leave the cat name Cat to lay with the goats as the disappear inside the hut.

***

They visit again during the holidays, staying in a cabin Tony had bought recently and renovated in upstate New York. The surroundings were beautiful, frozen streams and frosted trees, glittering powered snow as flakes whirl through the freezing air.

It’s the first actual Christmas Ana and Bucky have together, and she knows, she feels, how much Bucky seems to dislike the winter. The cold. He’s had enough of it in his life. She makes it her mission to show him that the bitter cold and wet snow don’t always have to be negative or tied to Hydra memories.

She thinks she makes progress when she nails Bucky in the back with a perfectly made snowball. She hides behind a tree, barely has time to take a breath before her husband finds her, wrapping his arms around her waist and tumbling onto the snowy ground.

They laugh breathlessly, as she takes a handful of snow and smashes it against his head. Bucky retaliates by attacking her lips, the kiss passionate and heated enough to melt the flakes around them. Until he sneakily presses snow against her neck. Ana squeals from the ice, making him roll over. She stands up, then proceeds to ran away from him.

When Bucky catches her once more, his blue eyes reflect the glimmer of the snow crystals against the light. He looks happy, playful, any signs of lingering, horrible memories gone. And when they go inside to warm up and dry off, something shifts between them.

They snuggle up in front of the cozy, cackling fire in the living room, with thick fuzzy blankets and hot chocolate. There’s a tall Christmas tree in the corner, twinkling with different colored lights, the branches making the room smell of balsam. Pepper is in the kitchen, quietly making dinner as Tony pretends to help her. Ana is pressed against Bucky’s side, both watching the snow falling through the large windows. Then he speaks.

“This place is beautiful,” He says softly. “Would be a nice place to bring a family to for the holidays.”

Ana is glad she just finished taking another sip of her hot chocolate. She carefully places the mug down, tilting her head to see his eyes. He’s staring straight at the fireplace. She smiles, then kisses his scruffy jaw.

“A family, huh?” She confirms, her heart fluttering in her chest at the thought.

Bucky’s soft chuckle makes her heart flutter. “Yeah, whenever those two decide to have kids.” There’s a short pause. “Or us.”

“Is that your way of saying something, Winter Flurry?”

She feels his chest rise and fall with a slow breath. “Yes.”

“You want to start a family?” Ana questions seriously, sitting up a little straighter.

He slowly meets her eyes. “Someday. I think,” He exhales shakily, wringing his hands together. “I won’t lie, Annie. I have some self-doubts about it, fears, but,” he pauses to look at her. “We’ll do it together. Obviously.”

Ana laughs. “Obviously,” She takes his hands, lacing their fingers together. “One day. A family. You’ll be an amazing father, just so you know.”

Bucky softly kisses her nose as she scrunches it up.

“I’m good with just you right now though,” She whispers when he pulls back.

“Me too, love.”

She closes the space between them, pressing her lips to her husband’s warm, slightly chapped ones. She feels every ounce of his excitement and fear, but overall, love. They both know they just want to spend time being married, there is no rush for them to have children, and they’re willing to wait for it. For now, they snuggle closer together, listening to the cackling fire, the soft voices in the kitchen and the snowfall outside.

 ********************************************************************

Tags: @thecreatiivecorner @kat-lives @stressedasalways @watchoutforfrostbite @justreadingfics @keldachick

Drabbles: Fourteen   Drabbles: Sixteen

[doctorwhonews]

The Witchfinders

Latest Review: Written by Joy Wilkinson Directed by Sallie Aprahamian Executive Producers: Matt Strevens and Chris Chibnall Producer: Alex Mercer Starring Jodie Whittaker Bradley Walsh, Mandip Gill, Tosin Cole Alan Cumming, Siobhan Finneran, Tilly Steele, Tricia Kelly Stavros Demetraki, Arthur Kay A BBC Studios Production for BBC One First broadcast on BBC One, Sunday 25 November 2018 Running time: 46 minutes 31 seconds (source: BBC iPlayer)   The Witchfinders is Doctor Who's third foray into history this series, and on first acquaintance it's the closest to the model introduced with The Unquiet Dead and seen almost annually thereafter until (arguably) Robot of Sherwood. The Doctor and friends find themselves in a period setting familiar from school or heritage sites, but where the details aren't congruent with the record. There is a famous historical figure involved, presented in a knowingly self-conscious manner. An alien or aliens turn out to be behind events. There is an effects-laden climax which is cathartic for the historical personality concerned. Human history as known to the Doctor and his companions is guaranteed. While following this precedent, The Witchfinders follows hard on the heels of Demons of the Punjab and Rosa; and where the historical adventures of Doctors Nine to Twelve often revelled in subverting history, The Witchfinders carries forward the educative function of its predecessors this series, though in less direct a fashion.  Like Vinay Patel before her, Joy Wilkinson has posted a picture of some of the books she used to research her story on Twitter. There are differences in that where Patel's choices were squarely set in historical scholarship and the literary novel, Wilkinson's have ranging roots, from books she read when growing up - such as Arthur Douglas's accessible, well-researched and unsensationally readable The Fate of the Lancashire Witches (1978) and Robert Neill's novel Mist Over Pendle (1951) - to modern scholarly discussions of what the Lancashire witch trials meant at the time and how they have resonated since, and James VI and I's own Demonologie. Writing at greater distance from her subject than the authors of Rosa and Demons of the Punjab were from theirs, Wilkinson inevitably takes account of the centuries of transmission which have seen the Lancashire witch craze find many meanings for successive ages. While not necessarily less immediate than Doctor Who's depiction of Montgomery, Alabama, 1955, or the partitioned Punjab in 1947, time leads to fragmentation and the ways in which the TARDIS 'team, gang, fam' relate to events and characters are consequently more diffracted. As Wilkinson's sources indicate, the episode is as much a response to fictionalization, mythology and a mood struck by witch trials in the collective imagination as it is to the judicial pursuit of supposed witches in Lancashire in the reign of King James. No specific date is given for the events in The Witchfinders, and there is no mention by the seventeenth-century characters of the historical Pendle witch trials. Only Graham (Bradley Walsh) relates the setting of Bilehurst Cragg to the Pendle Witch Trail which he's walked. Presumably the story is set not long after the trials of 1612; or is it set earlier, and are we being asked to imagine that the persecution initiated by Becka Savage is the erased context for the historical accusations levelled against Alizon Device and her family in Pendle in 1612?   The presence of King James in the story might suggest an earlier date. Following his visit to Norway and Denmark to marry their king's sister Anna in 1590, James VI had become obsessed with witchcraft, finding guilty several accused from North Berwick in East Lothian (presumably inspiring the 'Berwick' referred to in this episode) guilty of using sorcery to try to sink his ship on the way home. The James of The Witchfinders expresses his belief that he is protected by God against extraordinary adversity, and his survival of a satanic plot against his own life, his wife's and the possibility of their having descendants encouraged this well before the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. However, during the 1610s the king became increasingly sceptical about witchcraft and wary of condemning accused witches. It's possible that one might look at a post-1612 setting for The Witchfinders, with the king here being confronted by his own fears and (with his agreement to suppress the memory of Bilehurst Cragg) learning to move past them even if this means a continued degree of personal and political repression. Beyond specifics about dates, The Witchfinders follows the pattern of other post-2005 pseudohistoricals by finding authenticity in impressionistic use of detail. Having witchcraft allegations arising within a family echoed the Lancashire witch trials of 1612, but its relation to female social mobility mirrored the case of Joan Flowers, one of the Belvoir witches of 1619. Where Becka Savage's status had risen by marriage, Joan Flowers's fell on her widowhood; before we learn that Becka has been infected by the Morax, her accusations of witchcraft, frequent duckings and horse-shootings invite the rationalist assumption that she has instigated a reign of terror in order to defend a precarious social position. Meanwhile her grandmother and cousin represented a power which could complement or oppose that of the local lord, that of the 'cunning woman' (sometimes cunning man) who in benign cases practised healing by seeking to bring the sick back into alignment with the four classical elements of earth, fire, water and air. The chanting of these elements as an invocation by Old Mother Twiston (Tricia Kelly giving a rounded performance in a few lines so we can believe in her as someone to mourn when in the earth and possessed by it) before her ducking encourages the viewer to see the Twistons as potential wielders of magic forces, with vague echoes of Shakespearean ambivalent or malign magic, but it's also a transmission of social identity within the village collective, with Willa (a forceful and grounded Tilly Steele) taking over her grandmother's role. In Doctor Who terms one might think of the assumption of Panna's identity by Karuna in part four of Kinda. In The Witchfinders it serves as a reminder that women were accepted as the gatherers, keepers and conveyors of useful knowledge in this period. The discussion the Doctor and Yaz have with Willa at the Twiston family home about her grandmother and magic incline the viewer to see Willa as the nearest the setting has to a rationalist, showing sympathy to the Doctor's unbelief in Satan; she crumbles before James and Becka soon after the Doctor explodes that if she was a man she'd have no problem furthering her investigation. Becka (a believable woman of faith and fear in the hands of Siobhan Finneran) imagines that the Doctor's authority is that of a witchfinder-general and does not scoff at what the psychic paper tells her. The arrival of King James, with his prejudices about male superiority and his belief that God works directly through him, disturbs the equilibrium of this corner of 'Merry England' as much as the witch-duckings displace the time-honoured Sunday ritual of apple-bobbing. Even assuming the early cultivation of different strains of apple which ripen at different times of year, and the maintenance of cold cellars for storage, I'm not sure that there would have been enough apples to bob every Sunday in a year, but the line (even if revisiting the scene 'this' is probably only the Sunday 'party') was a good way of suggesting that this was a time when long-established patterns of life were being disturbed.  There were no witchfinders-general in the time of James VI and I, nor did the king maintain a witchfinding hierarchy. The use of the title appeals to what the viewers might think they know - the spurious office is associated with Matthew Hopkins, who was active in the 1640s, a probable three decades after events here - but it also places The Witchfinders in a tradition of fictional accounts of seventeenth-century witch hunts which would take too long to explore here. However, the identification of the Doctor and her friends as the episode's eponymous witchfinders is a neat confirmation of the Doctor's complicity in events. Where the Doctor interfered in Rosa to correct the distortion of history, to the extent of not intervening in Rosa Parks's defence when ordered to surrender her seat on the bus, here her sense of what is right compels her to attempt to rescue Willa's grandmother, but fails. The Doctor's dilemma is played, shot and edited well, encouraging the sense that the Doctor's preaching of non-interference has been leading to this point. Interference means feigning friendship with a mass murderer. Although brought into the heart of local and then national society by their proximity to both Becka and the king, the Doctor is still acted upon as much as she acts upon other people. More than in any episode so far, the Doctor's freedom of action is constrained by her gender. It's been widely remarked upon that this is the first episode of the series where the Doctor explicitly identifies with womankind, and the first where she notes that she wouldn't have had this trouble when she was a man. James only regards her as a potential equal once she is accused of witchcraft: God's representative facing the Devil's.  On first viewing I found Alan Cumming's portrayal of James VI and I problematic. I was apprehensive following a report of his claim that he'd based his accent on Conservative politicians Malcolm Rifkind and Michael Forsyth - "from Scotland, but trying to pretend they’re from England with this strange hybrid accent" - which imports current debates about the politics of Scottish identity into a Doctor Who story which already promised to have much to carry. Whatever one thinks of James (or for that matter Rifkind and Forsyth) he never pretended to be from England; but what we had was a more generic 'Morningside' accent which worked as a parallel for a Scottish king seeking acceptance by the English elite. Choices in Cumming's establishing scenes made me sympathetic to observers who thought it an overly mannered, even homophobic performance and for a while I was one of those who thought this James would turn out to be an impostor. On the other hand Cumming emphasised the king's love of drama, acknowledged in the script; the characterization was strong, with 'modern' characters in Ryan and the Doctor inspiring some very twenty-first century therapeutic conversations to provide background to what one could already infer from text and performance. James's confrontation with the Doctor shows him to be a worthy adversary, able to turn the Doctor's interrogation against her in defence, but his attack on the Morax queen makes him a less than worthy ally, the divisions in his identity still unreconciled. Slaying a dragon as the sovereign of the Garter and bearer of St George's cross might be fitting, but in doing so James mistakes the nature of his foe, lets prejudice betray his claims to empiricism, and removes both the possibility of the queen's redemption and the recovery of Becka from possession (not entirely closed off by the insistence of the queen that nothing remains of Becka). The Arthurian echoes in the imprisonment of the Morax, a king with a mighty army sleeping under a hill, mocked the historical James's barely fulfilled wish to make Arthurian legend real as king of a unified Britain, just as the Morax queen and her court of corpses mock this James's fragile masculinity by intending to 'fill' him with their king. The latter too draws from M.R. James's treatment of seventeenth-century witch-hunting in The Ash Tree, as a wronged woman blights a landed dynasty of men over generations. The Witchfinders succeeded at creating mood, with its mists, winter berries, cold grey water and wet earth. I might have wished for more oppressive dark to accompany the shuffling of the mud-filled corpses, though perhaps this might have been thought too directly drawing upon latterday zombie television for an early evening audience. I'd thought of this series as made of spaces and silences, but here Segun Akinola's score suggested that there was something in the silence, knocking on wood to seek form, whispering in the wind. There were touches of the uncanny in ordinary design, too - the stylized ducking stool seemed oddly fashioned but hinted at the revelation that this was alien technology. Transformed into the Morax queen, Siobhan Finneran's make-up suggested a woodland creature as much as a mud entity, with a little of Rupert Bear's forest sprite Raggety about her.  The 'flat team structure' of the current Team TARDIS is evolving well, with this episode showing the roles of the different characters to advantage. Ryan's empathic side was brought out by the quietly assured Tosin Cole, Graham was authoritatively avuncular, and Yaz (a determined and energetic Mandip Gill) was professionally investigative but also humane in her treatment of the bereaved Willa. The Doctor has increasing room to display her edge, too, with Jodie Whittaker unquestionably in command of a chastened and reflective King James in the final scene. The regulars are enduring a slow build and makes me wish the series had more time, both with some more minutes to show off the abilities of the regulars and more episodes in which to get to know them.  There's so much more that could be unpicked in this story, so many layers did it invoke. The Witchfinders was an accomplished and very enjoyable episode on the whole - but why, Doctor, that dig about pockets? Seventeenth-century women apparently enjoyed more of them about their clothing than their twenty-first century successors do... http://reviews.doctorwhonews.net/2018/11/the_witchfinders.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tumblr

[bellabooks]

The Lesbian, Bi and Queer Year in Television 2017: Love, bravery, and found family

2017, if you ask me, has been an absolute toothbrush of a year: cleaning out the toxic plaque, bloodying the gums a little in the process, and hopefully leaving us with a minty fresh start to 2018. Optimism, in the face of that exhaustion which December almost always dredges up, is a tough sell. Personally, I find it helpful to take a look backward, to find something productive if not inspirational to stand on in the past twelve months — something to arm yourself with, essentially, as the calendar turns over and the seasons begin anew. Though media remains, by most accounts, leaps and bounds behind where we’d all like it to be in terms of representation, there are some occasions in which the stars align between the creator’s vision and the viewer’s hunger, and characters have an impact larger than could be predicted. The 100’s Clexa, for example, along with Wynonna Earp’s WayHaught, and Supergirl’s Sanvers — all characters and couples subject to their own individual issues and idiosyncrasies, and yet have left lasting marks on the current state of queer women television fandoms, inspiring fans to show up in droves at conventions and signings. Sanvers, in particular, seems to have left its mark on 2017 as the ship to discuss, even if (like me) you’re a season behind.   HONORABLE MENTION: ALEX DANVERS OF SUPERGIRL Coming out stories have become a staple for lesbian, bi and queer character introduction, and variation on them is rare — Alex Danvers stands apart, in company with One Day at a Time’s Elena Alvarez in its focus on family. Where Alex Danvers is concerned, we’re given the epitome of the late bloomer that tugs itself away from stereotypes and corrects for them — soft and cautious at first, pulled out of her shell by an unforeseeable, intense connection, exploring a world not just new to her, but finally the right fit after purported years of her character struggling to understand the more intimate relationships in her life (or lack thereof). Alex, and her subsequent relationship with Maggie, has undoubtedly meant so much to so many. Bold, then, that they should separate — but in a world where the buried gay trope is, ironically, alive and well, a parting centered not on fatality but on future plans is unfortunately refreshing. A little haphazard, a little slapped together in its reasoning, but the decision to have Alex hold strong on something evidently so important to her is respectable. In the way that we watch straight main characters on shows run through seasons of love interests and deal with the aftermath, it’s just as refreshing to have an opportunity to see how Alex grows into herself as the series continues.   Looking back on my watchlist from 2017, I can track four distinct characters (and their respective relationships, romantic and otherwise) that struck a real chord with me this year. I’ve tried to focus on characters from brand new shows, with one exception, as the story arc snuck in pretty much under the wire and absolutely blew me away. Tying the year together with a neat knot is impossible, but if I had to pin it down, the discussion of family, when we find our own and when we let them go, seems to sum it up pretty well. -cue Seasons of Love- SPRING: DEVON OF I LOVE DICK I Love Dick is a show that (at least in my corner of the internet) went largely unnoticed. Its story is a mess of threads, a triangle that’s not really a triangle so much as it is a Venn diagram of desire and insecurity, and Devon is little more than a B story to that plot. But her cool, collected search for artistry in a town that traps her as much as it inspires her, creates the foundation for an amazing character. We see it in her backstory, in the show’s fifth episode, “A Short History of Weird Girls”, where the three main female characters tell a brief history of their lives and their artistic journey. Devon walks us through her battle for identity, her unwillingness to conform to gender stereotypes, and the college girlfriend who left her heartbroken when she was unwilling to jump wholeheartedly into a relationship. Devon ends up dropping out of school, moving back to her hometown, and getting a job fixing other people’s problems. It’s when Devon opens up and begins mingling with the artists gathered in Marfa that she begins to let go of her control a little. She may not agree with a person’s methods of self-expression, but defends to the point of arrest their right to do it, as we see when she defends the borderline drifter girl she’s seeing, Toby. Toby, an incredible character in her own right, is an artist who finds artistic, aesthetic beauty in the shapes and colors of hardcore porn. Their scenes together are electric, their relationship intense, full of conflict and the tossing of social and sexual norms — but Devon’s possessive attitudes drive a wedge between them, in a scene that makes the jilted jock stereotype of someone so fervently attempting to reject such banality. There seems to be a link here between Devon’s sexual and gender fluidity and her journey to letting go of her own rigidity. By the end of the season, she’s leading the cowboy and trucker men of Marfa in a dance, allowing them to open themselves up to expression outside of their prescribed slot in the gender binary. Every breath of her screen time is resistance. Artistic expression. Entirely genuine, combatively unique. Even when I Love Dick suffers from its more abstract concepts, Devon takes no shit, stands tall, refuses to suffer for who she is. When her brief fling with Toby all but ends, she continues her work, tireless, seeking unity — if not of her hometown, then of herself.   SUMMER: KAT EDISON OF THE BOLD TYPE Kat Edison takes no prisoners. Her approach to a conversation is a strong fist against a table and an open hand already waving away your ill-formed argument. Armed with a mountain of professional know-how and instinct, her inexperience, it turns out, is more personal, an inability to slow down long enough to re-evaluate aspects of her life, and the people who are important to her. It’s when she’s met with someone so totally opposite, someone who puts the individual under the lens and captures it, that she begins to shift. Kat’s focus is on the social, the community — Adena’s is instead on the expression of the individual. Their initial interactions are rife with misunderstanding and discomfort, but it only pushes Kat further, to explore the draw between them, to a woman as outspoken and independent as herself. A crush becomes more. A friendship becomes a deeper form of sharing, of educating one another, of support. And even when it becomes physical, their relationship comes back to that point — even when separated, even when protesting from opposite corners of the world, there is a through line of supporting each other in their separate paths, returning to each other when they can, but never damning their respective causes. Put simply? Ultimate power couple.   AUTUMN: WENDY CARR OF MINDHUNTER I picked up Mindhunter on almost a whim. Fincher’s style didn’t disappoint, nor did the vast majority of the characters twined in the interrogation, interview, and in-depth analysis of the 1970’s most notorious serial killers. Anna Torv’s Wendy Carr is more than a pleasant surprise — she’s a vision of strength, a sturdy by-the-book intellectual standing tall in the face of a twenty-something sliding down a slippery slope to doucheville and the grouchy borderline Old West sheriff serving as his mentor. When she flies from Quantico to Boston halfway through the season, shoulders heavy with the choice between her old life and a new one, she goes home to consult with her partner. Her partner is an older woman, a fellow professor, a fellow intellectual. I’ve written about their one scene together before, but the long and short of it is this: Mindhunter recognizes Wendy as a character whose personal life does not dominate the process of hunting serial killers, and so her personal life does not dominate the structure of the show. There’s a few scant kisses, the stroke of knuckles, but for a pair of women well in their adult years, the focus isn’t on sex — it’s on stability. And their relationship, while stable, has a toxic edge, one that compels Wendy to leave it behind her and move on, to Quantico, to a new profession. Season Two of Mindhunter may not expand much further on Wendy’s lesbianism — in fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if it remains a sidelined facet of an already busy show — but for now, her strength to pull away from the only family we’ve seen her have in an effort to protect herself from being steamrolled is a mark of her character, one that will apply to everything she does.   WINTER: ROSA DIAZ OF BROOKLYN NINE-NINE This is a month where censorship of both the internet and the CDC has been a hot topic. This is a month where we have been trying to wring the truth out of powerful people, to get clear concise language. This is a month where half the cast of Brooklyn 99 said various forms of the term “bisexual” multiple times. The con has been on for seasons to set up the arc of Rosa’s coming out — multiple episodes where Rosa’s disgust in sharing personal details about herself while dating Marcus, or Pimento, or about her family, even where she lives. Rosa is a private person. Rosa could have a stamp collection, and we’d never know. Why? Because it’s personal. And for Rosa, personal is private, until it isn’t. Usually, the revelation of details about her life is a total accident, and in this case, it’s no different. It’s bullpen quirkmeister and all-around lovable loudmouth Charles Boyle who’s the first one privy to the info, and his reaction? He understands that coming out is on Rosa’s terms, and does his absolute best to keep quiet (which, given what we’ve seen in past seasons, is incredible in itself). Rosa eventually announces it to the squad, even allowing stereotypical questions for a brief period before moving on to more important matters. The focus Brooklyn 99 puts on this plotline, for a comedy cop procedural, is stunning. The story spans two episodes, including one which serves as the fall finale of the show, a lingering final note for their audience to reflect on. The casting of Rosa’s parents, which could easily have been thrown away roles, go to Tony Award-nominated actress Olga Merediz and certified stone-cold badass Danny Trejo. The tension of “Game Night” builds through the mistaken assumption that Jake is Rosa’s boyfriend and comes to a head as Rosa, standing in front of a Pictionary-esque drawing board, has to explain to her parents that she’s bisexual, that it isn’t just a phase while she waits for a husband, that it’s something she’s known for a long time. Something true. It’s a heartbreaking moment when her father states, “There’s no such thing as being bisexual,” and Rosa responds clearly, in that matter-of-fact Rosa Diaz tone we know and love, “I know there is because that’s who I am.” The redemption moment comes a few short scenes later when Rosa’s father turns up at the precinct, promises her that he accepts her for who she is — but the scene turns bittersweet when he asks her to hold off on joining them for game night again. It’s clear that, while he’s willing to work to preserve their relationship, the family dynamic will never be the same — so the squad gets to work, and on Friday night turns up en masse to Rosa’s place for, as Jake puts it, “family game night”. Rosa’s character, ever the private, distant, steel-plated detective, has made leaps and bounds towards becoming more open. In season one, the squad didn’t even know where she lived, and now not only have her address, but are somewhat welcome there. Even then, they don’t push for information, taking what she offers them in stride and making sure she feels welcome. Captain Holt pulls her aside and gives her a heart to heart, thanking her for her bravery, for helping to make the world “a better and more interesting place.”   I hope 2017’s media helped you find your community, or inspire you to create worlds and characters of your own. And offline? A new year is an opportunity to celebrate differences in our community as much as we triumph over unity, to work harder to make the world a better, more interesting place. Here’s to 2018. Let’s use it wisely.   pic 1 arrow.wikia.com pic 2 I Love Dick FB pic 3 Bold Type FB pic 4 Netflix pic 5 Fox Youtube http://dlvr.it/Q6sTv8

[travelersofthedas-blog]

Verses: Oracle

An Assassin’s Creed Universe in which all characters are incarnations of Persephone throughout the ages.

Persephone

Persephone is a young precursor who volunteered to be reborn through the ages to prevent Juno from making the world her plaything. Minerva used a slightly different method to the one Juno did, however, and so Persephone doesn’t remember her previous lives when she is reborn, at least she doesn’t at first. Her timeline is directly linked to that of Desmond Miles’s ancestors (using some clever jiggery pokery of Minerva’s) and also to the pieces of eden - she can see who is using them when, where they are or past and future uses. The reason being that while she is being born over again through the centuries, she also sort of exists outside of time as well - time is fluid, and due to the method by which Persephone started her journey she can sometimes see beyond her own time.

(Additional Note: She may well appear in other times as a result of some Precursor technology)

Kyna

In this particular point in history, the Oracle, given the name of Kyna, was believed to speak for the Gods - her visions were believed to be the will of the gods, given to their people through the sickly, pale girl who by rights shouldn’t have survived her own birth. Considering the land over which her clan resided, this belief was very fortunate - the stone circle was a relic from the Precursor age, and the task of shielding it from those who sought to use it for their own ends fell to the clan that lived by it. Kyna was the only one who could control the circle’s power, but when a rival clan attacked the land and her people she died sealing it shut.

Aida

Aida El-Borak was the daughter of a farmer who supplied the citadel - Aida was often the one who would deliver the food, since her father and brothers were busy tending the fields and her mother looked after local children.

Lisbeth

Elizabeth Beaufort was a lady in the court of Queen Elizabeth I, and worked in secret with the leader of the Assassin Order in England - the Queen’s Spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham. This arrangement was kept secret even from Elizabeth’s family, and as such she was able to discover many secrets about the court, including the identities of many Templar agents in Her Majesty’s palaces. Like her aunt before her (whi had been responsible for unearthing Thomas Seymour’s plot against the queen when she was still only a princess, Elizabeth was a master of what she called ‘the game’, being from a little known family meant that she could move about freely, while being appointed as one of the queen’s ladies in waiting enabled her to keep watch at the Queen’s side.

Unfortunately, her promising career as an assassin in England came to an end when her parents arranged a marriage for her - in 1571, only a week before her impending marriage, Elizabeth disappeared with no trace.Though rumors started spreading that she had eloped with a stable lad, a charred body believed to be hers was discovered a month later, the only thing they could identify it with was a broach she had been given by her betrothed.

She was sent to the court of Catherine de Medici a few months after her disappearance, to serve there in secret in the fight against the Templars - Elizabeth de Vallans, as she became known, was never recorded in the history books, but was frequently seen at the side of both Catherine and her successor.

Gisella

In the Rennaisance, the Oracle was, again, a nobody - she was a maid in Mario Auditore’s household who was largely responsible for tidying rooms, cleaning and running baths for the members of the household. Occasionally she would be tasked with bringing food to Ezio if he was too engrossed in studying to join the others and eat. After the sacking of the villa, Gisella Zappala joined Claudia at La Rosa in Fiore and managed the day-to-day running of the brothel.

Caroline

Caroline Jefferson was the daughter of a slave and a land-owner who was given work in her father’s household from the age of eight. Owing to the fact that her mother had died in childbirth, Caroline was cared for by the head of the Master’s household staff and his wife, who taught her to read and write and perform some basic sums so that she would be more use to the household when she was old enough to work. She ran away when she was sixteen and smuggled herself into Nassau on a merchant’s ship. When in Nassau, Caroline found work in a general store and later married the owner’s son, Michael Boswell.

Helena

Helena Boswell was the granddaughter of Caroline - her father, Eric Boswell, married a woman by the name of Emily Hardwicke and had two sons, Michael and Charles, before Helena was born. During the wars of independence, Helena served as a nurse, treating the injured soldiers fighting for the liberation of America, while her brothers fought on the front lines. According to several doctors she showed “A remarkable propensity for this work, and could calm an injured man in moments with a steady hand and a gentle voice,” - She often assisted with amputations and was reputed to sew up a bullet hole faster than the doctors could even thread the needle (this later became something of a family legend - she was helped in no small part by the abilities she retained as Oracle)

When war broke out in France and the people were turning on each other, Helena followed in her mother’s footsteps, using connections built as a nurse in the American wars to get a ship to France, where she used one of the old Chateaus as a hospital for injured soldiers. When she wasn’t training nurses and ensuring the place ran smoothly (and trying to avoid the chopping block for tending to the injured of both camps) she was using the new connections she’d forged to smuggle children and young families of Aristocrats out of France to safety. She was tried for treason at least twice, found innocent of the first count (when she was treating injured royalist soldiers) after arguing that just because they fought on the “wrong” side didn’t mean they should be denied care, and only just avoiding a guilty verdict on the second count (of smuggling Aristocrats out of France) when her Defense consul used a “maternal instinct” argument, suggesting that Helena was trying to protect those children out of a lack of her own.

Amelia

Amelia James was the daughter of a middle-class man and his wife in London, and in her mid-teens became an inmate at Bethlem asylum. Admitted at the age of fifteen, when hallucinations started to plague her mind and the things she saw started to overwhelm her, Amelia started out in the same wing as most of the other female inmates, having been labeled as “non-dangerous” by the attending physician.

For the first few months of her stay at Bethlem Asylum (called ‘bedlam’ by most) she was recorded as being “mostly lucid, and able to hold perfectly reasonable conversations both before and after a hallucinogenic episode. Visits from her family often leave her in good spirits, and we have discovered that painting also appears to quell the frequency of these ‘visions’ that plague her” However, following an incident where she stabbed an Orderly with a shard of glass when he tried to take advantage of her mid-hallucination, she was moved to a private room for her own safety and that of the other patients. When a nurse came to fetch her for treatment the following morning, she had scratched symbols and patterns onto the walls until her fingers bled. The resident doctor, a templar, immediately notified his order on recognising that the symbols were those of the Precursor race, including detailed drawings of pieces of eden. Amelia’s treatment was immediately changed (on the orders of Crawford Starrick) to encourage these visions in the hope that she might reveal the location of the shroud. She was given an attending nurse, a kindly and very capable woman in her forties by the name of Molly Harper who, unbeknownst to them, was an ally of the Assassins. On the discovery of Amelia’s abilities (she was asked to record and document any hallucinations that occurred outside of the treatment room, of which at least a third of the documents seemed to disappear) Molly took it upon herself to inform the Assassins of the situation at Bedlam and request that they rescue the poor girl.

Jamie

Jamie McDairn ran away from home at sixteen and has had a string of dead end jobs, all of which seem to have ended with someone asking too many questions, a brawl and then her disappearing. She’s used many other names to hide her identity since she first started seeing things. She doesn’t know why she gets these visions, but she does know that somebody is after her, and she can’t let them get what they want.

[nchyinotes]

So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson

the spambot left me feeling powerless and sullied. my identity had been redefined all wrong by strangers and i had no recourse. (3)

“a researcher in technology and cyber culture and director of the virtual futures conference”, “creative technologist” (4)

“you’re proposing yourself as the real mccoy, as it were, and you want to maintain that integrity and authenticity.” (5) “we’re not quite persuaded by that. we think there’s already a layer of artifice and it’s your online personality - the brand jon ronson - you’re trying to protect.” … “that’s why i say you’re using it as brand management.” … “and that’s what’s annoying me so much,” i explained. “it’s a misrepresentation of me." (6)

“it’s about the terror isn’t it?” “the terror of what?” “the terror of being found out,” he looked as if he felt he were taking a risk even mentioning to me the existence of the terror. he meant that we all have ticking away within us something we fear will badly harm our reputation if it got out - some “i’m glad i’m not that” at the end of an “i’m glad i’m not me.” i think he was right. maybe our secret is actually nothing horrendous. maybe nobody would even consider it a big deal if it was exposed. but we can’t take that risk. so we keep it bored. maybe it’s a work impropriety. or maybe it’s just a feeling that at any moment we’ll blurt something out during some important meeting that’ll prove to everyone that we aren’t proper professional people, or in fact, functional human beings. i think that even in these days of significant oversharing we kept this particular terror concealed, like people used to with things like masturbating before everyone suddenly got blasé about it online. with masturbation, nobody cares. whereas our reputation - it’s everything. (31)

delaware laws: if jonah had been found guilty of ‘lying or publishing fake news” in the 1800s, he could have been publicly whipped! (53)

i suppose that when shamings are delivered like remotely administered drone strikes nobody needs to think about how ferocious our collective power might be. the snowflake never needs to feel responsible for the avalanche. (56)

“i always felt like a fad. i felt like i was going to be hot for a second and then i would disappear. so i had to act while i could. and there was just some deep seated … some very dangerous and reckless ambition. you combine insecurity and ambition, and you get an inability to say no to things.” (60)

I suddenly remembered how weirdly tarnished i felt when the spambot men created their fake jon ronson, getting my character traits all wrong, turning me into some horrific, garrulous foodie, and strangers believed it was me, and there was nothing i could do. that’s what was happening to justine, although instead of a foodie she was a racist and instead of fifty people it was 1.22 million (75)

So there it was: at aryan nations, you didn’t need to be an actual Jew to be jew ish. and the same was true on twitter with the privileged racist justine sacco, who was neither especially privileged nor a racist. but it didn’t matter. it was enough that it sort of seemed like she was. (77)

her destruction was justified, sam biddle was saying, because justine was a racist, and because attacking her was punching up. they were cutting down a member of the media elite, continuing the civil rights tradition that started with rosa parks, the hitherto silenced underdogs shaming into submission the powerful racist. but i didn’t think any of those things were true. if punching justine sacco was ever punching up - and it didn’t seem so to me given that she was an unknown PR woman with 170 twitter followers - the punching only intensified as she plummeted to the ground. (78)

a life had been ruined. what was it for: just some social media drama? … with social media, we’ve created a stage for constant artificial high drama. (78)

he was just like everyone who participates in mass online destruction. who would want to know? whatever that pleasurable rush that overwhelms us is - group madness or something else - nobody wants to ruin it by facing the fact that it comes with a cost. (79)

in psychology it’s known as cognitive dissonance. it’s the idea that it feels stressful and painful for us to hold two contradictory ideas at the same time (like the idea that we’re kind people and the idea that we’ve just destroyed someone). and so to ease the pain we create illusory ways to justify our contradictory behaviour. (81)

"but aren’t you turning the criminal justice system into entertainment?” i asked (85)

judge ted poe’s critics - like the ACLU - argued to him the dangers of those ostentatious punishments, especially those that were carried out in public. they said it was no coincidence that public shaming had enjoyed such a renaissance in mao’s china an whittler’s germany and the KKK’s america - it destroys souls, brutalising everyone, the onlookers included, dehumanising them as much as the person being shamed. (83)

but mike hubaecek thought his shaming was the best thing that had ever happened to him. this was especially true, he told me, because the onlookers had been so nice. he’d feared abuse and ridicule. but no. … their kindness meant everything, he said. it made it all right. it set him on his path to salvation. (87)

“social media shamings are worse than your shamings,” i said suddenly to ted poe. he looked taken aback. “they are worse,” he replied. “they’re anonymous.” “or even if they’re not anonymous, it’s such a pile on they may as well be,” i said. “they’re brutal,” he said. i suddenly became aware that throughout our conversation i’d been using the word they. and each time that i did, i felt like i was being spineless. the fact was, they weren’t brutal. we were brutal. (88)

for the first time in history we sort of had direct access to ivory-tower oligarchs like (donald trump and rupert murdoch). we became keenly watchful for transgressions. after a while, it wasn’t just transgressions we were keenly watchful for. it was misspeaking. fury at the terribleness of other people had started to consume us a lot. and the rage that swirled around seemed increasingly in disproportion to whatever stupid thing some celebrity had said. (88)

“the justice system in the west has a lot of problems,” poe said, “But at least there are rules. you have basic rights as the accused. you have your day in court. you don’t have any rights when you’re accused on the internet. and the consequences are worse. it’s worldwide forever.” it felt good to see the balance of power shift so that someone like ted poe was afraid of people like us. but he wouldn’t sentence people to hold a placard for something they hadn’t been convicted of. he wouldn’t sentence someone for telling a joke that came out badly. the people we were destroying were no longer just people like jonah: public figures who had committed actual transgressions. they were private individuals who really hand’t done anything much wrong. ordinary humans were being forced to learn damage control, like corporations that had committed PR disasters. it was very stressful. “we are more frightening than you,” i said to poe, feeling quite awed. poe sat back in his chair, satisfied. “you are much more frighting,” he said. (90)

her motives were kinder than that. she was also someone whose shaming frenzy was motivated by the desire to do good. (123)

"dragging down justine sacco felt like dragging down every rich white person who’s ever gotten away with making a racist joke because they could. she thought her black AIDS joke was funny because she doesn’t know what it’s like to be a disadvantaged black person or to be diagnosed with AIDS. … Some sorts of crimes can only be handled by public consensus and shaming. it’s a different kind of court. a different kind of jury.” (128)

eventually, general motors was forced to admit the plot and apologise to nader in a congressional hearing. the incident proved to him, and later to max, that the car industry was not above trying to shame its opponents into silence in its battle against safety do gooders, and that people in high places were prepared to ingeniously deploy shaming as a means of moneymaking and social control. maybe we only notice it happening when its done too audaciously or poorly, as it had been with ralph nader. (143)

if our shame worthiness lies in the space between who we are and how we present ourselves to the world, max was narrowing that gap to nothing. whereas jonah’s gap was as wide as the grand canyon. (144)

brad blanton: many of us “live our lives constantly in fear ob being exposed or being judged as immoral or not good enough.” to eradicate those feelings = radical honesty (158)

shame can factor large in the life of a journalist - the personal avoidance of it and the professional bestowing of it onto others. (168)

almost none of the murderous fantasies were dreams dup in response to actual danger - stalker ex boyfriends, etc. they were all about the horror of humiliation. … shame internalised can lead to agony. (170)

max mosley: as soon as the victim steps out of the pact by refusing to feel ashamed, the whole thing crumbles. —> jon realises this is wrong (176)

but the shifting sands of shame worthiness had shifted away from sex scandals - if you’re a man - to work improprieties and perceived white privilege, and i suddenly understood the real reason mark had survived his shaming. nobody cared. max survived his shaming because he was a man in a consensual sex shaming - which meant there had been no shaming. … of all the public scandals, being a man in a consensual sex scandal is probably the one to hope for. max was a target of no one - not liberals like me, not the online misogynists who tear apart women who step out of line. (186)

i think we all care deeply about things that seem totally inconsequential to other people. we all carry around with us the flotsam and jetsam of perceived humiliations that actually mean nothing. we are a mass of vulnerabilities, and who knows what will trigger them? (189)

how could almost identical shamings annihilate one man and leave another without a scratch? (193)

“the way we construct consciousness is to tell the story of ourselves to ourselves, the story of who we believe we are. i feel that a really public shaming or humiliation is a conflict between the person trying to write his own narrative and society trying to write  a different narrative for the person. one story tries to overwrite the other. and so to survive you have to own your own story. or you write a third story. you react to the narrative that’s been forced upon you. you have to find a way to disrespect the other narrative. if you believe it, it will crush you.” - mike daisey (200)

then she left new york. “in new york your career is your identity. i had that taken away from me” (justine) (201)

i think she still felt ashamed, but maybe not quite so much. instead, she said, she felt humiliated. (after 5 months) (203)

clive’s point was that the criminal justice system is supposed to repair harm, but most prisoners - young, black - have been incarcerated for acts far less emotionally damaging than the injuries we noncriminals perpetrate upon one another all the time - bad husbands, bad wives, ruthless bosses, bullies, bankers. (228)

james gilligan: the world’s best informed chronicler of what a shaming can do to our inner lives, which is why he’s so opposed to its renaissance on social media (245)

“universal among the violent criminals was the fact that they were keeping a secret, a central secret. and that secret was that they felt ashamed - deeply ashamed, chronically ashamed, acutely ashamed." it was shame, every time. "i have yet to see a serious act of violence that was not provoked by the experience of feeling shamed or humiliated, disrespected and ridiculed. as children, these men were shot, axed, scalded, beat, strangled, tortured, drugged, starved, suffocated, set on fire, thrown out of the window, raped, or prostituted by mothers who were their pimps. for others, words alone shamed and rejected, insulted and humiliated, dishonoured and disgraced, tore down their self esteem, and murdered their soul.” for each of them the shaming “occurred on a scale so extreme, so bizarre, and so frequent that one cannot fail to see that the men who occupy the extreme end of the continuum of violent behaviour in adulthood occupied an equally extreme end of the continuum of violent child abuse earlier in life.” so they grew up and -“all violence being a person’s attempt to replace shame with self esteem” - they murdered people. … and when they were jailed, things only got worse - they were further humiliated because officers thought this was how to get them to obey, when it did the exact opposite and stimulated violence instead. (249)

jonah had a house in hollywood hills and a wife who loved him. he had enough self esteem to get him through. but i think that in front of the giant twitter screen he felt for an instant that same deadness that gillian’s prisoners had described. (250)

therapeutic communities in prisons

the word forever had been coming up a lot during my two years among the publicly shamed. jonah and justine and people like them were being told, “no. there is no door. there is no way back in. we don’t offer any forgiveness.” but we know that people are complicated and have a mixture of flaws and talents and sins. so why do we pretend that we don’t? (255)

This has been a book about people who really didn’t do very much wrong. justine and lindsey, certainly, were destroyed for nothing more than telling bad jokes. and while we were busy steadfastly refusing them forgiveness, jim was quietly arranging the salvation of someone who had committed a far more serious offence. it struck me that if reshaping would work for a maelstrom like raquel, if it would restore someone like her to health, then we need to think twice about raining down vengeance and anger as our default position. (260)

the sad thing was that lindsey had incurred the internet’s wrath because she was impudent and playful and foolhardy and outspoken. and now here she was, working with farukh to reduce herself to safe banalities - to cats and ice cream and top 40 chart music. we were creating a world where the smartest way to survive is to be bland. (266) [not sure if this is true, though i do think there may be a chilling effect/more calculated curating is encouraged]

“it’s the algorithm shifting things around and wondering what, from a mathematical standpoint, is the story that needs ob e told about this person.” (268)

“but there is a chilling of behaviour that goes along with virtual lynching. there is a life modification. … they have signs of PTSD. it’s like the stasi. we’re creating a culture where people feel constantly surveilled, where people are afraid to be themselves.” (268)

our own social media surveillance network (269)

of course, no prurient or censorious bureaucrat had intercepted justine sack’s private thoughts. justine had tweeted them herself, labouring under the misapprehension - the same one i laboured under for a while - that twitter was a safe place to tell the truth about yourself to strangers. that truth telling had really proven to be an idealistic experiment gone wrong. (270)

social media gives a voice to voiceless people - its egalitarianism is its greatest quality. (271)

“but its scary. after all that’s happened, what’s funny to me… i don’t want to go anywhere near the line, let alone cross it. so i’m constantly saying, ‘i don’t know farukh, what do you think?’” (272)

michael fertik: “the biggest lie is the internet is about you. we like to think of ourselves as people who have choice and taste and personalised content. but the internet isn’t about us. it’s about the companies that dominate the data flows of the internet.” (276) … google make many when anything happens online, even the bad stuff.

scott kelley, your speed signs, feedback loops, thomas goetz ‘harnessing the power of feedback loops’

adam curtis: echo chambers, “they got trapped in the system of feedback reinforcement. … feedback is an engineering principle, and all engineering is devoted to trying to keep the thing you are building stable.” (281)

“i suddenly feel with social media like i’m tiptoeing around an unpredictable, angry, unbalanced parent who might strike out at any moment … it’s horrible.” … we see ourselves as nonconformist, but i think all of this is creating a more conformist, conservative age. (282)

how twitter mutated from a place of unselfish conscious honesty into something more anxiety inducing

people he spoke to: luke robert mason, michael moynihan/jonah lehrer, justine sacco (twitter aids girl), judge ted poe, gustave lebon (research referenced), dave eshelman/zimbardo, adria richards, max mosley, mercedes haefer, princess donna dolore, brad blanton, andrew ferreira/alexis wright, mike daisley, lindsey stone, michael fertik, clive stafford smith, jim mcgreevey, james gilligan, scott kelley