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blackfreethinkers · 4 years ago

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By Kwame Anthony AppiahOct. 7, 2020

How Black is Kamala Harris? That the question gets posed speaks to the ill-defined contours of an ill-defined concept. Ms. Harris, the daughter of an Indian-born mother and a Jamaican-born father, has been called in the media “half Black,” “biracial,” “mixed race” and ��Blasian.” In online posts, people have ventured that she’s “partly Black” or — for having attended Howard University, a historically Black school — an “honorary full Black.” Others persist in asking whether she’s “Black enough.”

The old British concept of “political Blackness,” the heyday of which stretched from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, would make nonsense of such questions in a very immediate way: Ms. Harris’s mother, by this definition, is just as Black as her father. For proponents of political Blackness, “Black” was an umbrella term that encompassed minorities with family origins in Asia and the Middle East as well as in Africa and its diaspora. That’s not to say it was the sturdiest of umbrellas: It was never uncontested. Yet it may have lessons for us today.

In Britain, anyway, its legacy remains legible. Three years ago, in a public-awareness campaign designed to increase voter turnout among British minorities (“Operation Black Vote”), Riz Ahmed, a British actor and rapper of Pakistani parentage, appeared on a video. “Blacks don’t vote,” he said. “And by Black people, I mean ethnic minorities of all backgrounds.” The year before, the student union at the University of Kent attracted attention when it promoted Black History Month with the faces of six famous figures: Alongside four British people of African descent, it posted two of Pakistani heritage — the pop star Zayn Malik and Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London.

During its roughly two decades of prominence, the political Blackness movement, taking note of how Britishness had routinely been equated with whiteness, was especially devoted to the “Afro-Asian” alliance. (In Britain, the term “Asian” defaults to South Asian.) During the 1980s, the movement’s inclusive usage of “Black” went mainstream in Britain. The Commission for Racial Equality, a public body established in 1976, decided that “Asian” would be a subcategory of “Black”; other such organizations followed suit. The bien-pensant among the children of empire started styling themselves as Black, whether or not they had sub-Saharan ancestors.

Of course, this broadened sense of “Black” wasn’t exactly a novelty. Malcolm X, in a speech from 1964, heralded Black revolutionaries around the world and explained: “When I say Black, I mean nonwhite. Black, brown, red, or yellow.” Anyone who had been colonized or exploited by the Europeans qualified. And Malcolm X, in turn, was drawing on an internationalist tradition captured six decades earlier by W.E.B. Du Bois. “The problem of the 20th century,” he wrote, “is the problem of the color line; the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea.”

In Britain, this capacious usage of “Black” scanted the enormous differences among the nation’s nonwhite minorities. But that was exactly its point, and its power. The great cultural theorist Stuart Hall — you could see this elegant figure on British television in those days, with his close-cropped beard and well-fitted blazers, lecturing for the Open University — was always warning against the way “race” presented itself as a natural fact about human beings. Using “Black” as an umbrella term, he felt, would weaken such illusions: It would helpfully emphasize the “immense diversity and differentiation of the historical and cultural experience of black subjects.”

In an influential 1988 essay on “black cultural politics,” for example, Mr. Hall celebrated a film by John Akomfrah, whose father (like mine) had been a Ghanaian politician. Yet he also cited the writer Hanif Kureishi’s two collaborations with the director Stephen Frears, “My Beautiful Laundrette” and “Sammy and Rosie Get Laid,” as significant contributions to Black cinema. That neither Mr. Kureishi nor Mr. Frears was of African descent didn’t make the work less Black.

Only such an inclusive conception of Blackness, proponents maintained, could effectively counter an exclusive conception of Britishness. Ambalavaner Sivanandan, a political thinker and the longtime director of the London-based Institute of Race Relations, saw strategic benefits in “the forging of black as a common color of colonial and racist exploitation.” As a young man in the late 1950s, Siva, as he was known to his friends, left behind the ethnic strife of Sri Lanka and went to London, only to witness attacks by white youth on West Indians in the Notting Hill neighborhood. “I knew then I was black,” he would write.

Opponents of political Blackness tended to suspect that Asians were being forced into a template set by Afro-Caribbeans. In the early 1990s, the sociologist Tariq Modood cited a survey that suggested only a third of British Asians identified as Black, and argued that Asians suffered more from racial prejudice in British society than people of African descent did. White working-class youth were drawn to Afro-Caribbean culture, he said, while turning against Asians. It galled him, too, to see anti-racist programs focused on Afro-Caribbeans when most non-white British people were Asian.

And there’s no doubt that the social reality on the street didn’t always harmonize with the high-minded aspirations to shared struggle. Claire Alexander, a sociologist at the University of Manchester, has dryly recalled that when she did fieldwork in the late 1980s about how Black British youth created their cultural identities, “one of my main informants, Darnell, commented, laughing, ‘you know, Claire, Blacks and Asians don’t get on.’”

Yet the various criticisms of political Blackness presented quandaries of their own. Sure, the umbrella concept didn’t give voice to all the differences it encompassed, but it wasn’t meant to supplant the many other sources of identity in people’s lives. Besides, a term like “Asian” itself ignored the immense internal diversity of the group it designated. Among British Asians, Sikhs and Hindus didn’t vote the way Muslims did. Islamophobia targeted Asians but was also promulgated by Asians.

Mr. Hall, warning against the fiction that “all black people are the same,” had no illusions that Afro-Caribbeans were a cohesive group, either. When he was growing up in Jamaica, he recalled, nobody was ever called “black,” but colorism — prejudice against those with a dark skin tone — was rampant: His grandmother could distinguish 15 hues of brown. Social groups, he knew, are fractal. By the logic of culture, creed, color or kinship, you could always split them into smaller groups. So why not lump them into larger ones, too?

In Britain today, the arguments for splitting and lumping — for specificity and commonality — remain unresolved. The Black Students’ Campaign, the largest organization of nonwhite students in Britain and Europe, represents students of Asian and Arab heritage as well as those of Caribbean and African descent. A few years ago, chastened by critics of the “Black” umbrella, the organization decided that it needed a new name and asked members for suggestions.

Those Black History Month posts at the University of Kent certainly came under fire for including people of Pakistani heritage. “Ill-thought and misdirected” was an institutional tweet from Black History Month UK. The Kent student union “unreservedly” apologized on its Facebook page. The offending faces were purged.

When Riz Ahmed appeared in the public service announcement for Operation Black Vote, some people were eager to see his face purged, too. The journalist Yomi Adegoke remarked, “When I’m followed around in an Afro-Caribbean hair shop or newsagent, an Asian vendor forgets all about political blackness and becomes far more occupied with blackness-blackness.”

But there have been voices for lumping, too. “As children in the 1980s,” Mr. Ahmed wrote somberly, “when my brother and I were stopped near our home by a skinhead who decided to put a knife to my brother’s throat, we were black.” Emma Dabiri, an author and broadcaster (“Irish-Nigerian” is how she designates herself), recently called for “the identification of affinities and points of shared interest beyond categories that were invented to divide us.” And, as it happens, the Black Students’ Campaign never found a replacement for “Black,” and the group still includes Arabs and Asians.

There’s a reason that “political Blackness” never gained much purchase in the United States. In Britain, what matters most is whether or not you’re white; in America, what matters most is whether or not you’re Black.

Still, in the United States today, similar debates roil over “people of color” and the acronym now in favor, BIPOC (for Black, Indigenous and people of color). Does such nomenclature suggest that all nonwhite people are interchangeable? Indian-Americans have a household income that’s two-thirds higher than the national median; for Black people, it’s a third lower. Should these groups share an umbrella? Does the language of generality blunt the sharp analysis of racial disparities we need?

Damon Young, the author of the memoir “What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker,” calls “people of color” a “valueless catchall that extinguishes identity instead of amplifying it.” Jason Parham, in Wired, has dismissed “people of color” as an “idiomatic casserole of cultures and identities.” If you mean Black people, say Black people, such critics argue. And they have a point.

The hitch is that the term “Black people,” too, is a casserole of cultures and identities. Anti-Black racism can be a useful concept. But it’s equally an umbrella, casting its shade over the fact that in socioeconomic terms, British Caribbean immigrants and their children and grandchildren in the United States have fared better than “native” African-Americans and that those from the French- and Spanish-speaking Caribbean have fared worse. It also obscures the fact that colorism, even within Black America, can entail another set of disparities in treatment.

And while some African-American critics think “people of color” is hopelessly expansive, others think the same of “African-American.” The political movement ADOS, which stands for American Descendants of Slavery, wants to establish what it considers a properly “cohesive” notion of Black identity, fencing out people like Barack Obama and Kamala Harris as “New Black” usurpers of a native lineage of suffering. (For some of those who take Blackness as a badge of dispossession, Ms. Harris’s father’s elite education makes him a suspect member of the Jamaican comprador bourgeoisie.) Every tribe, it’s clear, contains other tribes. It’s umbrellas all the way down.

Reflecting on political Blackness, then, should encourage us to retrain some of our reflexes. The identity group that we invoke should be “right-sized” to our needs and aims. Sometimes we’ll want to contract a category for purposes of analysis; sometimes we’ll have reason to expand a category for purposes of solidarity. Indeed, if the context is white nationalism and the anxieties of membership in an eroding demographic majority, “people of color” may be an invaluable analytic term. The salient distinction there is between white and nonwhite.

What about the ADOS movement? If ADOS activists flounder — they have fixed their gaze on slavery reparations and are intent that the wrong people don’t get in on the action — it will be because their certain-Black-lives-matter-more approach proves politically misjudged. An ambitious goal like reparations may require broad support, and in turn a broad conception of “Black.” Skeptics might think that, as with the prospectors and fortune hunters of “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” ADOS’s determination to keep the rewards for themselves imperils the chances of anyone getting them.

But let’s say you’re concerned about colorism. You might have been among those who were indignant when Zoe Saldana, a light-skinned Black woman, was cast in a biopic about Nina Simone, a dark-skinned Black woman. To talk about such prejudice, you’ll have to insist on one of the ways in which all Black people aren’t alike. You’ll have to split rather than lump.

Getting the identity aperture wrong — drawing a circle that’s too wide or too narrow, given our agenda — can lead to confusion or futility. When we’re told that about a third of Latinos support President Trump, should we wonder whether something has gone terribly wrong with Joe Biden’s ethnic outreach? Or should we wonder whether a demographic category that suggests a similarity of interests between Ted Cruz and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may — for these purposes, anyway — be eliding distinctions that matter more?

For these purposes is always the crucial qualifier. One’s purposes can involve coalition politics, cultural interpretation or socioeconomic precision. The point is that none of these identity terms is stenciled by the brute facts of the social world; rather, they stencil themselves upon the social world. Each is invariably a decision — a decision made jointly with others — that arises from our interests and objectives. You don’t like the available identity options? Start a movement; you may be able to change them.

By the cultural logic, or illogic, of race, Kamala Harris, like Barack Obama, counts both as biracial and as Black. Among major-party vice-presidential candidates, she qualifies as the first Asian-American, the first Indian-American, the first African-American, the first woman of color. Identities, of course, are multiple, interactive and, yes, subject to revision. As the architects of political Blackness rightly insisted, collective identities are always the subject of contestation and negotiation.

Political Blackness may have had its day, but we’re still coming to grips with its central insight: Blackness, like whiteness, has never not been political.

#politics and government

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they-called-us-enemy · 5 years ago

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They Called Us Enemy: Themes

Racism and Injustice/Discrimination

A big overarching theme of They Called Us Enemy is racism and injustice since this memoir is about George Takei’s childhood spent in an internment camp. Here are some examples from within the memoir that show this theme well:

1. Exectutive order 9066.

The internment of citizens of Japanese descent occur due to the enactment of executive order 9066. The order authorizes the military to declare areas “from which any or all persons may be excluded” and to provide living necessities for excluded persons. While not outright declaring to exclude people of Japanese descent, it “quickly became obvious” (23) as shown by a sign reading “to all persons of Japanese ancestry”. This went on to drive Japanese Americans out of their homes in over a hundred districts.

2. Racial Slurs

Throughout the memoir, citizens of Japanese descent are referred to as “Japs” by the people of America. The term is used in a derogatory manner, meant to put down the reputation and individuality of these citizens. These slurs are also used to give the Japanese-American citizens a sense of “otherness”, to make them seem foreign in order to distance/outcast them from society. Even the government uses this slur to refer to the citizens; General John L. Dewitt, commanding general of the western theater of operation says “a Jap is a Jap” (111).

3. Dehumanization

Tying in with the use of racial slurs, the citizens of Japanese descent are often treated with little regard for their humanity. They were treated more like livestock- made to sleep in cramped stables, tagged (as seen on page 36), and forced isolation (e.g. soldiers making them draw the shades while on the train so people wouldn’t have to look at them).

4. Internalized Racism

This treatment of citizens with Japanese descent condition them to internalize a lot of the discrimination they experience to the point where they (especially the younger ones) start to feel shame and reject their own heritage. This is especially obvious on page 82, where George and Henry witness two older boys at their camp “playing war”. One of the boys pretends to be a (presumably white) American soldier, and the other boy is a Japanese soldier. They pretend to attack each other with “guns” (twigs) and the Japanese soldier always loses. We witness a moment where the boy playing the American soldier yells “die you Japanese cowards” at the other boy. Takei creates this moment where readers feel uncomfortable witnessing these young boys begin to hate who they are due to the discrimination they face for being of Japanese descent. Another less intense example of this is George’s interaction with “Santa”. At a community Chistmas gathering, George encounters one of the adults dressed as Santa and deems him to be fake, the “dead giveaway” being that “this ‘Santa’ was Japanese” (107), implying that by default, the image of Santa Claus is that of a white man. Here is a good article by Donna K. Bivens that breaks down the concept of internalized racism and the impact it can have.

5. Rejection From Society

They Called Us Enemy does a good job of showing how the Japanese citizens are rejected from American society during World War II. Men of Japanese descent who try to fight for America in the war are turned away despite their gestures of patriotism, and soldiers of Japanese ancestry were required to surrender their weapons and position. Senator Tom Stewart says, “They cannot be assimilated. There is not a single Japanese in this country who would not stab you in the back” (111). This shows the narrow mindset of the government as well as their own backstabbing nature of turning their backs on innocent citizens. As stated by George Takei about citizens of Japanese descent, “That their government presumed they had any racial loyalty to the emperor was both insulting and infuriating.” (112) At the camps, internees are also provided with a questionnaire asking them to state their loyalty. This questionnaire is unfair to the internees and backs them into a corner. Either they pledge their loyalty to a country that did not hesitate to discriminate against them and prosecute them, or pledge loyalty to Japan and justify their own imprisonment. As stated, “either response would be used to justify our wrongful imprisonment” (115).

Parental Love & Community

Parental love and community is a less prominent, yet present and important theme in They Called Us Enemy. Takei describes the great efforts his parents put into keeping their family together and to provide for George and his siblings, as well as how members of their community banded together to help one another during tough times.

1. Parental Love

Despite the uncertainty of their future and the stress of wrongful prosecution, Takekuma and Fumiko do a wonderful job keeping a level head in their situation for their childrens’ sake. They also make many sacrifices for their kids, Fumiko filling her bag with treats for George and Henry, as well as bringing water canteens for the whole family to ensure they had safe drinking water to consume (as seen on pages 48 and 49). She also packs her sewing machine secretly, in order to make clothes and homely items for the family. The sacrifices made by Takekuma and Fumiko create a nurturing environment for their children despite the awful situation. George acknowledges this on page 49, writing “this made for two starkly different journeys: one, an adventure of discovery... the other, an anxiety-ridden voyage into a fearful unknown”.

2. Importance of Community

In the memoir, George mentions the community at every camp they visit. At Santa Anita Racetrack, a concerned neighbour helps the Takeis when one of the children falls ill. Many members of the community are shown to be helpful as opposed to competitive in this time of crisis for them. They even gather to organize a Christmas gathering to help lift spirits during the holiday season, including a guest appearance from Santa for the children. The important work put in by the community and friendly trust helped keep morale up for internees.

Activism

1. Platform

George Takei is known for using the fame that comes with his career in acting as a platform for activism and equality. In the memoir, George frequently has after-dinner talks with his father growing up, and “it was those after-dinner talks with (his) father that informed so much of (his) worldview” (196). Their conversations would usually cover the topics of their wrongful internment and various politics, which George would get passionate about. George talks about the unique opportunity presented with the role of Hikaru Sulu; to represent his Asian heritage with honour. In a panel, George says, “my unexpected notoriety has allowed me a platform from which to address many social causes that need attention” (198). Here is an interesting article and interview with Takei about his experience with acting and activism.

2. Radicalized Camp Men

While the Takeis are staying at the Tule Lake relocation center, a group of camp men decide to radicalize themselves because they didn’t see the point of being compliant if they were going to be treated like the enemy anyway. In their own way, these men were activists for their own cause.

3. Democracy

In one of George’s after diner talks with his father, he realises that he’s been participating in democracy his whole life. Takekuma tells George an important statement, “it was important to exercise our right to assemble. Send a message that we were united as a group and opposed to their actions” (145). This shows that activism can come in many forms.

Healing and Reconciliation

Themes of healing and reconciliation are also touched upon in the memoir. This is most addressed on page 193, which shows the President apologizing on behalf of the country; saying “no payment can make up for those lost years... we admit a wrong: here we reaffirm our commitment as a nation to equal justice under the law” (193). Unfortunately, Takekuma passed before he could hear the government’s apology, but George quotes him as saying, “the wheels of democracy turn slowly” (193).

- Del

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breakmebucky · 5 years ago

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It’s Hard to Say Goodbye

Bucky x Reader

Word Count: 6340

Warnings: Some Swearing, A whole bunch of angst that I don’t apologize for, some suggestive content, violence, ptsd, reader dies (or does she?)

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“If you’re seeing this then that means…well, that means I didn’t make it. I’m dead.” The woman on the screen looked away from the camera and shifted, bringing her arms to wrap around herself tightly as she appeared to fight off tears. She turned her face back to the camera and the raw emotion in her eyes was felt by everyone in the room. “And I’m…fuck.” She sniffled and a hand shot across her face to wipe away the tears that spilt down her cheeks. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

Bucky couldn’t watch anymore. His chest felt unbearably tight and every breath burned his lungs and threatened to send him screaming into madness. Her blood-her life-was on his hands; or, at least, that’s how he felt.

“Buck…” Steve’s voice called weakly after him as Bucky shoved his chair back and fled the conference room.

Bucky couldn’t do it; not again. He couldn’t bring himself to watch the last recording of the girl who’d been there for him since her first day. The girl who had never been afraid of him, even when he nearly killed her in a PTSD moment. The only person, other than Steve, who hadn’t judged him on his past, but only on his character now. He couldn’t watch as the digital copy of her face ran through so many of his favorite expressions that he would never again witness in person. He couldn’t watch her smile, tired and resigned to her fate, as she spoke directly to him. He hadn’t even been able to make it to his part of her farewell video. He knew if he watched it, if her listened to her say things meant only for him, he would lose the weak shred of hope he was clinging to and she would really be gone forever. If he listened to her say goodbye-if he accepted it-then her body really would be buried in the debris. She would really be trapped under hundreds of thousands of pounds of twisted metal and concrete and not unconscious in a hospital somewhere. If he listened to her goodbye, then the effort being exerted at the site really would be a recovery mission and not a rescue mission.

Bucky found himself in the gym again, his lungs screaming every time he drew a breath. He smashed his fist into the punching bag repeatedly, willing his brain to think of something; anything other than the image of her bloody, worn face. Anything other than the anguish glittering behind her eyes as she spoke into a camera…as she died slowly and alone. His thoughts drifted, thankfully, onto the first time he’d met her and away from the thought of the video waiting for him in the other room.

- -

“Everyone, this is Agent L/N. Agent L/N, this is everyone.” Tony introduced a young woman to the team.

Bucky looked up from his crossword book for the sole purpose of matching a face to the name they’d been hearing for months. Apparently, Agent L/N was joining the team. She, like Natasha, had been one of twenty-eight girls in the Red Room. Nat had immediately vouched for her when her name first surfaced in the Intel community, all those months ago. From the information they had uncovered, it appeared that Agent L/N had been working towards the same goals as The Avengers, and had made significant progress, despite having markedly less resources.

“Y/N is fine.” She replied, giving the team a small wave and what was meant as a friendly smile.

Bucky’s eyes scanned the woman standing before the team and he noted the tension held in her muscles and the rigidity in her stance. Though a smile crossed her face, Bucky’s training easily marked it as a false one. She was on guard and looked ready to disappear at any second.

“Hey, L/N.” Bucky spoke up, pulling her gaze to his face. “Relax. No one here is going to kill you.” He shot her an amused smirk before turning back to his crossword puzzle. “Not today, anyway. It’s our day off.” He joked.

There was a moment of silent tension in the air after Bucky spoke and then the silence was broken by a real laugh. Bucky looked away from his puzzles again as Agent L/N took a seat in one of the armchairs in the common area. The tension from before disappeared and she fell naturally into conversation with the others, visibly relaxed and comfortable now that the ice had been broken by Bucky’s dumb joke. She glanced up at him and smiled gently when they made eye contact before turning her attention back to the conversation with Nat and Steve.

Shit. Bucky thought.

That was a smile he could get used to.

- -

Bucky was pulled back into the present with the feeling of his right hand hitting the punching bag and his left missing it, followed by a loud thud as the bag flew into the wall behind it. A noise of annoyance let his mouth as he moved to get a new bag so he could continue working out and hopefully be able to pull his thoughts away from the tragedy waiting to swallow him up. He wasn’t supposed to feel this way. Not about her. He had fought so hard to keep her contained in a platonic role, but it had all been useless in the end. He hadn’t been able to fight it any longer and now she was gone. She was gone and he was in so much pain.

Bucky obliterated a second punching bag and abandoned the gym with an irritated growl. It wasn’t working anymore. The walls felt like they were getting closer and closer and he couldn’t stand it. Grief pricked in the bridge of his nose and he pinched it away in annoyance; refusing to cry yet. As he passed the weight bench, another memory flashed into his mind, mercifully belaying the anguish that was just on the edge of his heart for a moment more.

- -

It was several weeks after her arrival, at three in the morning, when Bucky was first alone with Y/N. He’d been trying to sleep for hours with no success and had decided to go work out to hopefully exhaust himself and send him to dreamland. No sooner had he stepped off the elevator, than he heard soft grunts coming from the gym. Bucky peeked in through the window and saw Y/N halfway up the thick climbing rope. Hand over hand, she pulled herself up the rope, soft grunts falling from her lips as she did so. Bucky quietly entered the gym and moved over to the weight rack.

“Bucky?” Y/N’s questioning voice drifted down from the top of the rope.

“Yep. Don’t mind me.” Bucky answered with a nod as he sat at the weight bench and began to do some bicep curls with one of the heavier weights.

“Trouble sleeping or just not ready to yet?” Y/N asked as she began her descent.

“Both.” Bucky replied, turning his eyes to watch Y/N climb back down the rope. Between the way her body moved and the soft grunts and sounds of strain coming from her, Bucky realized he would have a situation if he didn’t focus on his own workout.

“You know, you don’t talk much.” Y/N pointed out as she crossed the mats and took up residence at the squat rack to Bucky’s right.

“I don’t have a lot to say.” Bucky replied, trying not to pay attention when Y/N began doing weighted squats.

“Sure…you…do.” Y/N countered, speaking between reps. “You’re clearly…someone… who thinks…about a lot. So I’m sure…you have a lot to say.”

Bucky smiled and chanced a look over at Y/N. He immediately regretted his decision as he took in the fine sheen of sweat over her skin and the flush of her face as she dropped into another squat.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Bucky internally cursed himself as he felt the situation between his thighs growing. His traitorous mind peppered in some thoughts of what Y/N might look like sweaty, flushed, and heaving beneath him and Bucky nearly choked on his own spit. He didn’t understand why his mind refused to view Y/N in the same platonic way he viewed the rest of the team, but he did understand that, whatever the reason, she would be the death of him if he got any say in the matter.

- -

Bucky fled the gym with his heart pounding and his lungs aching. It had been so long since he’d felt intense panic, but he knew the warning signs of an attack well. He hurried through the halls of the compound and snatched his favorite jacket from the closet before escaping out into the fading light of the grounds. He slipped the jacket over his arms and zipped it up in an effort to keep the frigid air out. As the jacket zipped closed, a small rush of air escaped it and brought a familiar scent wafting into Bucky’s nostrils. His jacket smelled like her and it made Bucky’s heart ache more. He collapsed by the reflecting pond with tears stinging his eyes and his lungs now screaming for air as another memory washed over him and he gasped for breath.

- -

It had been almost a year since Bucky had first met Y/N and, so far, he’d managed to keep himself in check when they were alone. He’d gotten more comfortable around her, especially in the early hours of the morning when neither of them could sleep and they would either work out together or watch terrible B-Rated horror movies and laugh at the atrocious acting.

“Y/N,” Bucky warned. “Take it off. Now.”

“No way.” She shot back. “Finders keepers, Buckaroo.”

“You can’t keep my jacket.”

“Bet.” She grinned. “I can, and I will, keep your jacket. You have like eight other jackets.”

“That one is my favorite.” Bucky replied, taking a few steps towards Y/N.

“What a coincidence, it’s my favorite too!”

“Y/N, take it off or I swear I’ll do it for you.” He warned again, circling around the couch to try and trap her.

“I mean, you’d have to catch me first though.” She challenged before clambering over the couch and darting from the room.

Bucky grinned and chased after her, following her inebriated giggles through the halls of the complex. He heard a stairwell door burst open and then her footsteps and laughter descended the stairs.

It didn’t take long for Bucky to catch up to Y/N. She had just run into the kitchen when he came in from the other side and snatched her up. His arms wrapped around her waist and he lifted her off her feet before depositing her onto the counter and standing between her legs to prevent her from running off again.

“Got ya!” Bucky grinned, reaching for the zipper of his jacket. “Now give it back.”

“No fair.” Y/N pouted, playfully slapping Bucky’s hands away each time he reached for the zipper. “You cheated.”

“I did not, and you know it.” Bucky replied. “Now, either take off my jacket or I’ll do it for you.”

“But Buckyyyyyyy,” She whined. “I found it fair and square.”

“It was hanging up in the closet.” Bucky countered as he grabbed her hands and trapped them in her lap with his flesh hand. “Finders keepers doesn’t cover closets.” He reached up and slid the zipper down, his metal hand grazing over her chest as he unzipped the jacket.

Bucky super soldier hearing didn’t miss the small whimper that came from Y’N’s throat when he touched her or the sudden uptick in her heartbeat. When he looked back at her face, he had to swallow a whimper of his own as he realized that her bottom lip was caught between her teeth and her pupils were swallowing the color in her irises. He felt her shift against his hold on her hands and he let go of her hands, before bringing both of his to her shoulders and slowly sliding the jacket from them. The jacket crumpled onto the counter as Bucky’s fingers ghosted over Y/N’s bare arms. He swallowed thickly and moved to close the space between them. His eyes traveled between Y/N’s lips and her own e/c gaze and he licked his lips, preparing himself to finally feel her against his mouth after so many months of wanting.

“What are-?” Bucky suddenly turned his attention down to Y/N’s body as his fingers came into contact with a familiar combination of leather and metal. “Y/N, you’re wearing my tactical vest.”

“Finders keepers.” She grinned, suddenly breaking out into giggles. The sexual tension from just a moment before dissolved like wet fairy floss and Bucky sighed before taking a step away and allowing Y/N to get off the counter.

“Again,” He began. “Finders keepers does not apply when you take things from my closet!”

“Well fiiiiine.” Y/N responded before quickly undoing the buckles and sliding the vest off, leaving her in just a bra. “Here.” She held the vest out for Bucky and dropped it into his hands before walking away from the stunned man. “See you in the morning, Mr. No-Fun.”

Bucky groaned, cursing his natural ability to ruin a good moment, and grabbed his stuff before disappearing out of the kitchen. As he reached his room, he resigned himself to another night of cold showers and his own hand.

- -

Bucky didn’t know how long he’d been by the reflecting pond when Steve finally found him. He only knew that his flesh hand was the same temperature as the vibranuim one and he felt equally as cold inside.

“There you are.” Steve said with relief as he sat down next to his oldest friend. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

“I just want to be alone.” Bucky returned. “I can’t watch it, Steve. I’m not ready.”

“Okay.” Steve said simply. “I understand.” He pulled Bucky into a hug and held him while the other man began to finally cry.

- -

It had been a bad night. Nothing specific had triggered it; it had just been a bad night. Bucky had gone to bed early, not feeling sociable, and had fallen into a deep, troubled, sleep. His mind was wrought with nightmares-flashes of his past actions- and he cried out in the darkness of his bedroom. He had no way of knowing that his screams could be heard clearly down the hall; nor that they would summon her to his side, concern etched in every feature.

Bucky had awoken the second her hands touched his shoulders in an attempt to wake him. He shout out of bed, throwing her off of him and into the wall in one smooth motion. Her body left a sizable hole in the drywall before crumpling to the floor. It was like he was in a trance, unable to stop himself from snatching her up by her throat and pinning her to the broken wall.

“B-Bucky.” Y/N choked out. “It’s��not real.”

Hearing his name fall from her lips brought Bucky fully into consciousness and horror filled every line of his face as he became violently aware of the blood running from Y/N’s scalp, down her neck, and her fingers firmly gripping his hand. Her expression was alarmingly neutral and Bucky quickly released her before falling to the floor next to her, his chest heaving as panic set in.

“Y/N, I’m so-” His voice trembled, unable to finish his thought before breaking into body-shaking sobs.

Y/N pulled Bucky into her arms and tucked his head into the unbloodied side of her neck before gently hushing him and holding him tightly.

“I know.” She whispered. “It wasn’t your fault.” She carded her fingers through his hair gently and kept whispering to him gently as he sobbed against her. Eventually she got him calmed down enough to put him back to bed before cleaning herself up in his bathroom and crawling in next to him without a word. She held him and whispered soft songs to him until he fell asleep again, clutching her sleeve like a child clutches its mother.

Bucky tried to apologize the next morning, but Y/N wasn’t have any of it. She wouldn’t let him feel guilty for his reaction because, according to her, it hadn’t been him. No matter how many times Bucky tried to make amends, Y/N gently brushed them off and carried on as though nothing had happened.

“You should be furious with me. You should never want to see me again. You should hate me.” Bucky told her.

“Oh?” Y/N asked. “Well, I’ve never really been a fan of ‘should’, if I’m honest.” She offered a small smile to Bucky, who just stared at her in wonder.

“I almost killed you.”

“Almost only counts in explosives.” She countered. “Besides, it would take a lot more than that to kill me.”

“Why aren’t you angry with me?!”

“Why do you want me to be angry with you?”

Bucky paused. He was angry with himself and he hadn’t stopped to ask himself why Y/N not being just as angry bothered him.

“I-I don’t.” He finally answered. “But I don’t understand why you’re not.”

“It was just a bad night, Bucky. You’re not a bad person.” She explained, giving him a hug.

- -

It took two weeks before Bucky finally left his room and even then, it was only because Tony had threatened to program FRIDAY to set off an alarm every hour on the hour until he got out of bed and at least showered. As a disheveled Bucky entered the common area, he was greeted by the smell of cinnamon coffee and he very nearly broke down right there.

“Hey, Bucky.” Sam greeted him with measured sympathy. He held out a cup of steaming coffee with a sad smile and asked, “Want some coffee? I found it in the back of the cabinet-”

“Behind the graham crackers. I know.” Bucky said, his voice on the edge of cracking. “It’s Y/N’s.” He sat down and accepted the coffee, but didn’t drink it. He stared into the dark liquid as tears came to his eyes again. “It’s her favorite. I had to go all the way to Tribeca for it.”

- -

“JAMES BUCHANAN BARNES!” Y/N’s voice shouted from across the kitchen island. “You absolute CLOWN!”

“What?” Bucky asked, genuinely confused by the sudden explosion from Y/N so early in the morning. “What did I do?”

“You. Drank. My. COFFEE.” She hissed, emphasizing every word. “My special coffee. The coffee I literally cannot find anywhere anymore. The literal LAST of it too.”

“You mean this?” Bucky asked, holding up a mostly empty mug of what had been, admittedly, the best coffee he’d had in a long while. “I found it in the cabinet be-”

“Behind a box of graham crackers. I KNOW!” She interrupted. “I put it there specifically to keep you and Sam from finding it!”

“Y/N…it’s just coffee. Can’t you just get more?” Bucky asked, sipping from his mug.

That was evidently the wrong thing to ask because Y/N’s face suddenly took on a shade of red and she sucked in a breath of air as though she was preparing to scream. Bucky braced himself for the oncoming shouting, but was thrown off course when Y/N suddenly released the breath in a choked sob. Tears hovered on her bottom lashes and she slammed her mug into the sink, breaking the handle on accident.

“Great. First my coffee and now my fucking mug.” She swore, picking the pieces up out of the sink as angry tears ran down her face.

Her hand slipped against the sharp edge and cut her finger, causing Y/N to hiss from the pain and then make an annoyed noise before dumping the broken mug into the trash and bringing her now bleeding finger to her mouth. She looked at the broken mug in the trash and choked up again before turning on her heel before stomping out of the kitchen.

Bucky’s coffee was suddenly bitter on his tongue. He hadn’t meant to upset her so much. He hadn’t known how much the coffee meant to her and now here he was, swirling the last of it around in a mug.

Bucky looked down at the amber liquid and a pang of guilt hit him. He stood up and dumped the rest of the coffee into the sink before rinsing his mug out and setting it to the side. He looked over at the trash, with Y/N’s mug sitting on top, and gently picked the pieces out of the refuse.

“Friday?” He called out.

“Yes, Sargent Barnes?” The AI replied.

“I need your help.”

It had taken Bucky and Friday nearly a week to find a shop that had the right coffee and Y/N had been upset with him the entire time, though she refused to admit it. Bucky had lost count of how many samples of cinnamon coffee he’d tasted in his search, but he’d finally found it at a specialty shop all the way in fucking Tribeca. After being stuck in city traffic twice and having to travel a considerable distance on his bike, Bucky had finally made it back to the compound. His ass was numb and his lower back was starting to ache from being in the same position on the bike for so long, but it was going to be worth it. He was positive.

Bucky knocked on Y/N’s door gently, nervous energy running through him as he waited for her to answer.

“Come in.” Came her voice from the other side of the door.

Bucky opened the door and stepped into the room. Y/N was sitting on her bed reading a well-worn copy or The Art of War. She looked up from her book as Bucky walked in and offered him a small smile, though it didn’t quite sit right on her face.

“Hey.” Bucky greeted her, suddenly unsure if his gift would make up for what had happened the week before.

“Hey, clown.” She replied lightly.

“Look I-” They both began in unison.

“Sorry, go ahead.” Y/N offered.

“No, it’s okay. You go first.”

Y/N took a breath and then sat up straighter before looking Bucky squarely in the face.

“I want to apologize for yelling at you last week. I shouldn’t have lost it like that. I had a rough night and I just…I’m sorry. It was just coffee. It wasn’t as big of a thing as I made it.”

“Yes it was.” Bucky responded, crossing the room and sitting down next to Y/N. “That’s why I got you this.” He pulled a box out from behind his back and passed it to her. “I shouldn’t have drank your coffee and I’m sorry I was such a dick about it. I hope this make up for it?”

Y/N took the box from Bucky with a confused half-smile that quickly turned into a wide grin as soon as she opened the box. There, sitting atop a bed of purple tissue paper, was a bag of the infamously hard to find coffee and next to the coffee sat her mug, which Bucky had tried his best to repair, but had somehow missed a small piece of it that he then had to replace with some clay. He’d tried his best to paint over the clay repair, but the color he’d chosen wasn’t as close of a match as he originally thought.

“Oh, Bucky…” Y/N cooed as happy tears sprang to her eyes and fell into the box.

“Please don’t cry. I tried to fix your mug, but I got the wrong color paint. I’m so sorry.”

“No, no, no.” Y/N reassured him with a smile. “I love it. It’s perfect.”

She set the box on her side table and threw her arms around Bucky’s neck to give him a tight hug.

- -

Bucky fell from his memories back into the present as Sam poured more of the sweet cinnamon flavored coffee into the mug he’d given Bucky. The moment the flavor spread over his tongue, tears sprang to his eyes and clung to his lashes. The taste was suddenly too much. The smell was overpowering. All of it was too familiar and too reminiscent of her. Abandoning the mug of coffee, he fled the kitchen with Sam’s apologies following him out into the hall.

The air was suddenly heavy in his lungs and his mind was restless. As if on autopilot, his feet took him down the hall and up three flights of stairs. They carried him a familiar route; one he’d taken many times before when he was in distress. The only difference between those times and this one was that when Bucky reached his destination, there was no relief to be found. No one was waiting for him with open arms and an open heart. Her room was empty and felt foreign now.

Bucky was suddenly filled with rage.

“You weren’t supposed to be in there!” He shouted angrily as his hands grabbed at the nearest objects and flung them across the room.

“I was supposed to go alone!” More of her room shattered as his eyes burned with tears.

“How could you do this to me, Y/N?!?!” Bucky screamed, upending the bed and spreading the rage-fueled chaos further.

“I loved you!” His hand grasped something small from her bedside table and threw it at the wall hard. As it sailed through the air towards its demise, Bucky realized what he’d thrown. He watched as her mug shattered against the mirror and sent broken glass and ceramic all over the floor. The rage left Bucky’s body as quickly as it had arrived and he crumbled to the floor as the grief settled deep into his bones. He didn’t remember making the noise that drew his friend’s attention. That horrible noise of grief that fell somewhere between a sob and a scream. The noise that he’d been the cause of when he was The Winter Soldier, but had never made himself, and never really understood, until now. All Bucky could focus on was the chunk of porcelain in his hands. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the spot of mismatched paint. Even as Natasha fell by his side and pulled him to her tightly, he couldn’t stop staring at the paint. Couldn’t stop running his thumb over what was left of the repair. He vaguely heard Nat shout for Steve, but his brain refused to process anything anymore as he broke down entirely.

“I love her.” He sobbed into Nat’s shoulder as she rubbed his back and held him. “I love her so fucking much and I haven’t fucking told her.” - -

Bucky’s palm was sweaty and his stomach was tied in knots. He tugged at the collar of his white dress shirt and silently cursed himself for not triple checking the size. It felt like it was strangling him and the weight of the tuxedo jacket didn’t help. Tonight was the biggest gala before Christmas and New Year’s, and Bucky actually had a date. Well, it wasn’t officially a date, but he’d convinced Y/N to go as his date to the gala; eventually selling her on the idea by pointing out that they were great friends and wouldn’t have to engage in awkward small talk or expectations with strangers and they could totally cut out early without having to apologize r explain it to anyone. She had pretended to think it over for an agonizing three days before finally agreeing and now the night had come.

Bucky stood outside the door of Y/N’s room and took a deep cleansing breath before fitting his most charming smile to his face and knocking. His jaw dropped when the door opened and Y/N answered wearing a face of makeup, one of his shirts, and nothing else as far as he could tell. A toothbrush hung from her mouth and her eyes widened behind her glasses when she saw him.

“Oh shit.” She murmured past the plastic in her mouth. “Is it time already?”

“Yeah.” Bucky responded as his smile faltered. “We have to leave in thirty minutes.”

“Well, fuck me.” Y/N cursed, removing the toothbrush beforehand. She turned away from the door and disappeared into her bathroom for a moment. “I don’t know what to wear!”

In a heartbeat. Bucky thought as he watched her scramble from the bathroom to her closet and begin looking for something to wear. She reached up to the top rack and his shirt rode higher up on her thighs, revealing the tiniest peek of black lace before the shirt fell back and Y/N moved to her bed with a box carefully balanced in her hands. Bucky thought he had been hot under the collar before, but it was nothing compared to how he felt when Y/N suddenly pulled his stolen shirt over her head and cast it onto the bed, leaving her standing in a matching set of lacy undergarments. The air in the room was suddenly thicker and hotter than Bucky recalled it being before. His collar once again felt too tight and now he was considering that he might have the wrong tux all together because his pants were certainly getting tighter by the second.

“Buck?” Y/N’s voice interrupted his thoughts. He blinked and looked down to see the mostly bare expanse of her back as she buckled the collar that served as a neckline in place. “Can you unclip me?” She asked, pointing to the black strap across her back that Bucky realized was her bra. “I don’t want my bra showing.”

Bucky’s fingers slid gently under the strap and he fumbled with the clasp for a moment before finally getting it unhooked. The entire time, he had to fight to control himself and not immediately attack the exposed flesh with his teeth like he wanted to. As the clasp sprang open, Bucky let his fingers fall, gently running them down Y/N’s back until he got to the low zipper of her backless dress and pulled it closed, hiding the small of her back from his view. The shiver that shook her spine and the goosebumps that appeared in the wake of his trailing fingers did not go unnoticed by him and he wondered if it was just a typical reaction or if Y/N could feel the way he wanted her and maybe shared some of the same feelings.

“T-There.” He declared with a strained voice. “All done.” He watched as Y/N moved away from and slid her arms out of the straps of the bra before fishing it out from under her dress and throwing it into her hamper. She turned around and her bottom lip disappeared between her teeth as she looked up at Bucky.

“How do I look?” She asked, removing her glasses and tossing them onto the bed as well.

“Nervous.” Bucky replied honestly before closing the gap between them. “But honestly, beautiful.” He really couldn’t help himself anymore. Not with how beautiful she looked right then. Not with how intense his feelings were for her. Not with how much he loved her. Bucky’s hand came up to Y/N’s face and he cupped her cheek gently before leaning in and closing his eyes. Moments before their lips met, Y/N’s door was suddenly shaking with the sounds of knocking followed by Thor’s voice urging them to hurry up and get down to the limo so they could be there early. Bucky mumbled an apology and moved away from Y/N and her questioning look.

“We should…we should go.” He said, not making eye contact with her and rushing back out of the room.

They got into the limo with the rest of the team and went off to the gala, where Bucky actually managed to have a good time, despite his awkwardness earlier in the night. He and Y/N fell into their easy routine of playing nice with the big shots and cracking jokes whenever the night started to get too heavy.

He didn’t miss the way she leaned on him a little more than usual or the looks she kept shooting his way during group conversations. Bucky could see the question lingering behind her eyes and he did his best to avoid it until finally, Y/N caught his elbow and pulled him down to whisper in his ear.

“I’m so over this. Wanna get out of here?” She jerked her thumb towards the door and added, “We can go back to my room and get comfortable. I recorded Shark Week so we could binge it together. Unless you’d rather do…something else?”

And there she was again, looking at him with those big beautiful eyes and Bucky felt his clothes become restricting again. She couldn’t possibly mean what he was thinking. He cleared his throat and tucked his face into her neck so he could whisper back in her ear.

“We should totally watch Shark Week. Let’s go.”

Within an hour, they were back at the Complex, in comfortable clothes, and binging Shark Week while the cuddled up to one another on Y/N’s bed. The cuddling wasn’t new, they’d been doing that for months now. Ever since the whole Coffee Incident, actually. Halfway through the third episode, Bucky looked over to where Y/N had curled into him and realized that she’d fallen asleep. He smiled softly and made to move, but her fingers twisted into his shirt and she mumbled a quiet protest before slinging her leg over his and trapping him. He smiled to himself and shut off the TV before shifting to hold her closer. He didn’t remember falling asleep that night, but it had been the best sleep he’d had in a long time. - -

It wasn’t until months later, when the snow began to collect on her headstone, that Bucky was finally able to sit down and watch her say goodbye.

He pulled up the video file as he sat at the kitchen island, holding a mug of cinnamon coffee and wrapped in the blanket that she’d given him last Christmas. He took a steadying breath before pushing the play button.

“If you’re seeing this then that means…well, that means I didn’t make it. I’m dead.” Y/N spoke to the camera as she held herself tightly and tried not to cry. Tried to be strong, even in the end. “And I’m…fuck.” The tears fell and she hurriedly wiped the away with the back of her hand. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

Bucky had seen this part before; had heard the words echo in his dreams for nearly a year. He braced himself for what was to come, hoping he could weather the inevitable storm.

“Bucky, I should have listened to you.” Y/N continued. “You told me it wasn’t safe and you were right. I’m so sorry I didn’t listen.”

She sank to the floor and pulled her feet towards herself before looking back into the camera.

“I don’t think I’m going to make it out of here, so I need to get something off my chest before it’s too late.”

More tears darkened the cracked cement beneath her as she looked away for a moment. When she turned back, a strained smile graced her lips.

“Remember the Fall Gala last year? The one we went to together?” A quiet short laugh escaped her before she continued. “You almost kissed me before we left. I’ll never forget how fast my heart was going. I should’ve –I wanted to kiss you, too. I still do.”

A choked sob shook her bloodied body and nearly broke Bucky as he watched the screen in surprise. She’d wanted to kiss him. She still wanted to, even when saying goodbye.

“I think I’ve been in love with you for a long time now, Bucky.”

The words shocked Bucky to his core. His mouth fell open and he felt the unmistakable prickle of tears start in his nose.

“I didn’t realize it until recently and I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell you.” She choked on another short, miserable, chuckle and added, “Of course, this is the worst way. But I can’t go without saying it.”

Bucky watched as Y/N wiped away the tears and took several deep breaths. He recognized the steps of her keeping a panic attack at bay and his heart broke a little more just knowing that her final moments were spent this way. She turned to face the camera full on and smiled that soft smile she had reserved for Bucky only.

“James Buchanan Barnes. Buckaroo. You absolutely perfect, wonderful, ridiculous clown.” Her grin widened a touch and then, “I love you. I love you so, so much. I –”

There was a flash of golden light off to the side of the frame and Y/N’s face turned towards it with something like hope before the sounds of the structure finally collapsing the dust and debris of the same event filled the frame and the video feed went out.

Steve woke up to Bucky’s screams coming from the kitchen and found his lifelong friend collapsed on the floor in distress. Coffee and shattered porcelain lay at his feet and the still frame of Y/N’s last smile was frozen on the tablet on the island. Steve knew immediately that Bucky had finally watched the video; had finally listened to the girl he’d loved beyond all comprehension declare her love for him and then die.

Steve knelt by Bucky and wrapped his friend in the tightest hug he could manage, tucking the other man’s head into his shoulder and allowing him to shed the tears he’d refused for so long.

“That light…” Bucky croaked out after he had finally shed all the tears he had. “Before the building fell…”

“We saw it.” Steve confirmed. “Tony says it’s some kind of digital artifact.”

“It was Strange, Steve.”

#tw: swearing #tw: death #tw: violence #tw: ptsd #tw angst #breakmebucky

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hencethebravery · 5 years ago

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TITLE: A Super Solid History of the “Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy(s),” c. The Beginning (or There About) to Now-ish

SUMMARY: Human beings are absolute fools when it comes to love. It’s largely the reason why God, in all Her infinite wisdom, so cleverly decided that the beings in Her employ (and thereafter) would have nought to do with such petty, earthly matters. Not they had seen a memo or anything, but it merely seems obvious, does it not? (Ao3)

NOTES: Hello, hello! Here be my very first Good Omens fic. Please note that I have only just started the novel and so this is mostly a product of my having watched the series several times over.

. . .

+ Perhaps one of the cruelest tricks that God has ever played (and the list was indeed long) was in allowing angels to believe they were incapable of love. There is some amount of debate as to whether or not this was entirely by accident. She was a busy woman after all━perhaps that was why it, the question of whether or not angels were truly capable of love, had slipped through one of her metaphysical cracks (of which, admittedly, there were many). Those who managed to refrain from falling had quite an easier time believing this particular theory to be very much the case. A largely unspoken, slightly offended, “She would never,” followed by an affirmation of the belief in the long held assumption that they were above such things anyway, so really, what did it even matter, and can we please return to the task at hand?

Those who did happen to fall on the other hand, went in rather the opposite direction. In a somewhat convoluted fashion (they were technically still angels after all), demons argued that, no, celestial beings had never been capable of love, and, yes, this was done with abundant amounts of purpose. Not to mention the longstanding rumor that perhaps they were always capable, which served the purpose of both dividing and controlling the heavenly population by means of dispensing vague, unverified information. And to the more skeptical among them they might say, “Well, she’s God isn’t she? It’s not as if she lacks the ability.”

In point of fact, they were both wrong.

From the very moment they had begun their stint upon the Earth, Aziraphale had often pondered the nature of love. They had heard the rumors, of course, not that they held much affinity for such behavior. No good has ever come from a rumor, they thought, particularly when their mind was especially prone to recalling those terrible centuries of heavenly warfare. No taste for it━the whispering between nebulas; the speculating of who would be staying and who would be going. Aziraphale had often suspected that it was part of the reason why Crowley had ended up doing… what he did. That perhaps the assumption they would fall did more to provoke the descent than anything else. It was a shame, but it had been so long ago, and there didn’t seem to be much to do about it now, at any rate.

Regardless, the question of love as it pertained to earthly beings, that made rather a bit more sense. Not to the humans themselves of course, but to Aziraphale, and even to Crowley, the emotion was in fact easily explained and somewhat predictable when applied in almost every conceivable situation. Usually.

“There is no possible way that girl is worth so few goats.”

Aziraphale had never felt truly comfortable with early human rituals as they pertained to establishing their various relationships. The use of the dowry, for example, particularly when a father might value a herd of sheep over the life of his child (and at this point in time, rather too young, in their estimation), stirred something… untoward in their gut.

“She’s a bit young, don’t you think?”

Even then, Crowley had possessed the somewhat uncanny ability to speak the words that Aziraphale often thought but feared to say aloud, and while a part of them was grateful to hear them spoken, the other part was curious as to how their supposed enemy could be so well-attuned to their thoughts. Could be the point, I suppose, they thought, looking quickly away before Crowley could notice, to catch us unawares with their deceptive bouts of intimacy.

“Well there, Aziraphale, how ‘bout it? Can I count on you?”

“Oh, um, my apologies,” they stammered, unfamiliar fleshy fingers tangling together, “count on me for what?”

“Your discretion,” Crowley reiterated with an air of unrepentant espionage curling around the crown of their head, “she is worth far more goats than... that.”

Aziraphale envied the demon’s seemingly instinctive use of their own hands; tossed about in the air, waved vaguely in the direction of the unfortunate scene which played out before them. How did one use one’s own hands as a means of further emphasizing their point? Marvelous. They would have to spend more time working on that.

“ Aziraphale ,” Crowley repeated, one eyebrow raised smartly above their golden eye, “I know you can’t be a fan of this either.”

“Well, no,” they admitted, “but I am merely here to observe, and I did promise myself that last time would be the last time.”

Crowley hummed with a mildly infuriating tone of knowing skepticism (which Aziraphale didn’t much appreciate), “Alright, well, if you’re here to observe and all, I guess there’s nothing you’d be able to do about this.”

Aziraphale was, as it turned out, not quite quick enough in noting that, as a matter of fact, yes, they would be well within their rights to interfere when a demon was involved, but by that point Crowley had vanished from their side, and a slithering serpent had already begun making its way towards the feet of the large old bearded gentleman who had offered far too few goats for so young and bright a person.

. . .

It was right around the time human beings started getting rather more polite with their food that Aziraphale managed to develop a fair higher degree of grace with his own hands. Rather difficult to eat a steaming bowl of noodles without the use of… “chop-sticks.” Gracious, Gabriel would be horrified by the very idea. Not just by the “sullying of the vessel,” but the notion that one might do so with sticks? Unthinkable. Regardless, it all came fairly easy after that (the hands); throwing a pair of dice, holding a quill or a pair of knitting needles. After a time he discovered that he very much enjoyed the tactility━the variety of sensations felt on the surface of the skin he had been ordered to have.

He had also, around this time, begun to go about being referred to as “he.” Moreso to blend in than anything else. It was hard to pin down when exactly, but at some point humanity became far more reliant upon noting the difference. It made a certain kind of sense, he supposed, if they were going to insist upon such hierarchical-like systems to survive.

“They are Her creations after all,” Crowley reasoned, casually (almost certainly, casually) observing Aziraphale’s hands as they cupped his bowl of broth.

Aziraphale made a somewhat half-hearted attempt to cool his soup, lest the demon sitting across from him note his discomfort. In as polite a fashion as possible, so as not to rock any proverbial boats, he made the potentially ill-advised decision to be predictable and “play dumb.”

“And,” with a mild stutter, “and what is it you mean by that?”

“Oh, don’t be dense, Angel, you know exactly what I mean by that.”

He hated when their conversations took these kinds of turns. When their differences became undeniable and he was forced to reconcile with the truth of their circumstances: That all evidence to the contrary, the demon sitting across from him was supposed to be his mortal enemy━and for what? Some… pesky disagreement? An oversimplification to be sure, it must be conceded, but all the same, for… what, exactly? What had it all been for?

Having accepted the frequent refrain of Aziraphale’s silence in moments such as these, Crowley had returned to his own drink; a sharp yet sweet rice wine that Aziraphale had recommended. All the better for his own sanity, for his own return to his hot bowl of flavorful broth (with some kind of... fish base, in which large pieces of seaweed, accompanied by smaller cubes of to-fu floating alongside; absolutely fascinating, by the way), and unsettling, unwelcome questions that did little good for him to ponder over. But ponder he inevitably would, and he felt it prudent to admit that he had himself often wondered what might have happened if he had been more… present during the whole debacle (the war, as it were), or even if he had known Crowley at the time━would the outcome have been the same?

It doesn’t seem a particularly worthy avenue of thought to continue shambling down, especially if one were to consider the fact that it was all decided upon long, long ago; but as he sneaks a glance upwards, to the sight of a demon sat across from him at a table, taking careful sips of a rice wine he has no reason to drink (other than to acquiesce to Aziraphale’s own enthusiastic request) he does have to wonder, How bad can they really be?

It’s on this particular evening that Aziraphale and Crowley happen to “brush hands” for the very first time. Azirphale had, on occasion, been made aware of the concept, but had yet to fully partake in such an episode. Human beings seemed to make quite a to-do of the whole affair. He had borne witness to such things with his own eyes, and was rather struck by the intensity of something that seemed so bafflingly simple. But then again, that seemed to be the nature of love. At least as it pertained to human beings. Angels were immune to such things, clearly.

They had both reached for the bottle at the same time, is all. Nothing to fuss over. It was bound to happen sometime━trapped as they were in these rather cumbersome… things; adjusting to the speed and the space of it all. Moving with both certainty and uncertainty, holding things too tightly or not tightly enough. Silly, unreliable things. You had to wonder what She’d been thinking (not that Aziraphale would ever say so, of course).

The poets will speak of a spark, but Aziraphale didn’t much know about all of that. He could acknowledge a warmth, perhaps even a… tingle? In retrospect he might even recall a raising of the soft hairs along his arms. But really, there’s not much to say about it. Other than the fact that from the perspective of an outsider there was perhaps an unnatural pause. A stiffness that mortal beings struggled to find. Most living, physical beings required breath you see━they are frequently at the whims of their world; it is, quite nearly, impossible not to be in motion for any extended period of time. That was just the way She wanted it. The unrepentant motion. The force. The push forwards. Don’t stop, never stop. Until, you know, She says so.

These two beings, however, they weren’t human beings. They were created by God, of course, but they were relatively new to this “body,” business, and as such they still seemed to be encountering the unfortunate and inconvenient side effects. Touch being just one of many. Angels didn’t really touch in the same way humans did. Their natural forms failed to really give them the ability. They did in fact… collide with each other from time to time, but it was limitless. There was no barrier. If anything, it was a bit unpleasant━the lack of boundaries. Something about “seamless teamwork,” is what Aziraphale could recall from his discussions with Gabriel, or Michael. It was difficult to tell the difference sometimes. Regardless (or perhaps irregardless), human touch would appear to be quite a bit different. Because there was a pretty significant boundary, and for whatever reason that Aziraphale had yet to identify, it felt somehow more intimate than the traditional, angelic “brushing of hands,” as it were.

Crowley, in a rare moment of clumsiness, must have felt similarly because in his shock had pulled his hand back so swiftly that he managed to knock the half-empty bottle to the table with a soft snick, with a gentle, rhythmic dripping of the remaining wine to follow.

“Oh, dear,” Aziraphale muttered, moving quickly to right the bottle and dab at the developing stain. Crowley had stood rather abruptly after that, and not in the smooth, serpent-like manner that Aziraphale had become accustomed to, and with hardly a “so long,” turned and fled the scene. They would never mention that particular moment again, but Aziraphale, to his great, great consternation, did struggle to put it entirely out of his mind.

. . .

Oh, centuries pass. Not entirely unlike an unfathomably long sigh, the world continues as the world often does. As do the angels and the demons playing their parts in some… hip yet indescribably vague off-broadway production (with no discernible plot) written by and for an audience of precisely one. Maybe. Probably. Over the course of The Great Exhale (™), Aziraphale observes. He learns. Which should be obvious, as that was something of the job assigned to him in the first place, but he really takes a genuine interest in the task. So much so that he keenly starts to observe other observers, humans who frequently come to be called “authors.” Authors are truly outstanding observers in their own right; even going so far as to record their observations in impressively long works of art━in letters and in image, the authors and artists in question lend a helpful amount of weightiness to a position he had come to doubt on occasion.

“They see things in ways we can’t, you see,” Aziraphale had tried explaining to Gabriel during one unexpected (and painfully awkward) meeting. As he had come to expect, Gabriel listened with a look of mild confusion (and pity), but it didn’t bother Aziraphale all that much. He had his books. “You can tell the others there’s no reason to worry,” he continued quickly, hoping their conversation had reached its conclusion, “I have all we need right here.”

“No surprises, Aziraphale,” Gabriel warned in goodbye, slipping out the door, “and remember, they can’t see nearly as well as we can.”

“Well, we know that’s not true.”

The surprising (yet unmistakable) tenor of Crowley’s voice echoed from the darkness of Aziraphale’s office, which had been empty the last he checked. The angel in question could do little to prevent the slight hitch in his breathing, concerned with not only the unexpected appearance of a demon, but so quickly after the departure of an angel that would certainly see said demon immediately and irrevocably smited.

“That’s cheeky,” Aziraphale mumbled as Crowley sauntered out of the back room, his hair in its usual impeccable coif.

Shortly after Aziraphale acquired the bookshop, and not without some degree of honest ignorance as to why, Crowley did what he unfortunately happened to do best, and asked Aziraphale precisely what was the point of it all? And as had become usual practice, Aziraphale had a maddeningly difficult time coming up with an answer.

“You know, I’m not quite sure,” he finally admitted, “as soon as I do I shall let you know.”

“With bated breath, Angel,” Crowley had responded in distraction, his own nose lost in one of Aziraphale’s many books that he had seemingly no definitive explanation for.

. . .

The thing about Aziraphale’s exchange with the archangel Gabriel, that is the somewhat truncated version of an answer to Crowley’s “why,” was much longer and perhaps more blasphemous than Gabriel wanted to hear. But it was, possibly, exactly the kind of thing a demon (or rather, this demon) would want to hear.

Though Gabriel’s visit made for something of a stressful few hours, it was a particularly lovely day nonetheless. The leaves had begun changing their colors, but it was still pleasantly warm when standing in the sun, and should he feel just a touch too warm, a perfectly timed (some might say, miraculously timed) gust of wind would breeze on through the open window. Despite the fresh autumnal air, the smell of the books often lingered; the unmistakable scent of old paper and ink blending seamlessly with the decaying leaves which wound through the air and along the pavement.

“Do you happen to recall,” Aziraphale began, pouring Crowley an exquisitely steeped cup of Earl Grey, “when I first acquired this shop?”

In so much as Crowley could be predictable, he did, quite predictably, feign forgetfulness (not that angels or demons could forget very much by the very fact of their design). “Not certain,” he pondered theatrically, his sharp chin resting in the palm of his hand. “About what century was this, d’you think?”

Making the conscientious decision to refuse to participate in Crowley’s strange theatrics, Aziraphale continued, adjusting his vest as if it had suddenly shrunk while he was wearing it (which was certainly possible, he supposed). “Well, you had asked of me an admittedly fair question as to why I had purchased the shop at all, and I had told you I wasn’t quite certain as to why, and━”

“Yes, yes,” he interrupted, taking a sip of his tea, “let’s hear it then.”

“Well,” he began, somewhat taken aback by Crowley’s abrupt demand for an answer he had recently pretended to have forgotten, “I━I do believe it might have something to do with… love. Of all things.”

Crowley’s nose did indeed wrinkle, as if a bad sort of smell had passed beneath it from having even heard the word, but he did have a thoughtful look. If Aziraphale had to describe it, he might find himself comparing it to a rather more subdued version of the look that had passed over Crawley’s face subsequent to the infrequently mentioned Flaming Sword Incident (™). An expression of pleased surprise which, in retrospect, betrayed a yearning optimism that most demons should not, under any circumstances, possess.

See, as it happened, Aziraphale had been doing a lot of thinking as of late. Not a great habit, a stern-looking Gabriel would often scold in his head, It’s all been figured out anyway, no need to go reinventing the wheel. As it happened, Gabriel was quite unimpressed with the invention of the wheel. No great feat, in his estimation. Not that he found humans to be impressive in most cases. Aziraphale couldn’t blame him, he supposed. Gabriel hadn’t been tasked with the job Aziraphale had━maybe if he had been, he would’ve arrived at similar conclusions (likely not so, but it was hard for Aziraphale to deny giving others the benefit of the doubt).

If you were in fact playing one of the two roles assigned to you (that of Angel or Demon), you might be privy to something of a hotly debated topic. Love. What was it? Who was capable of it? Was it a uniquely human trait? Was it freely available to all beings? And of course, as was the question in most things, how in the world was God involved in all this?

“Oh, Angel, not this old… chestnut,” Crowley nearly spat. Despite the darkened frames over his eyes, Aziraphale practically felt his rolling of them.

“Now, hold on,” he continued, hoping to cut Crowley off at some self-righteous pass he knew wasn’t far behind, “just… wait.”

Obviously, it was rather difficult for anyone to speculate with any degree of certainty the true machinations of God’s mind. Whether God had designed everything (angels included) with the capability to feel and/or express love in its entirety or not, Aziraphale had begun to wonder whether or not it very much mattered (the debate, that is). You had to start with the Assumption (™).

“Which is…?”

A self-fulfilling prophecy. An angel such as Aziraphale, assuming that it didn’t much matter (whether or not God had given angels the capacity for love), which was the general opinion of the heavenly chorus━or Crowley and other demons similarly assuming it was all a vile manipulation borne of boredom and the Almighty’s irrepressible urge to have a hand (metaphorically speaking) in just about everything. All this and still the usual refrain from both sides: Humans and love, they know not what they do. As if the heavenly (or not so heavenly) were, at the very least, immune.

“It’s the isolation you see,” Aziraphale managed to somewhat tangientally conclude, “the being… trapped, as it were. In their bodies.”

It was in that moment that Aziraphale worried whether or not he had gotten a tad too close to the Spilled Wine Incident (™) which had occurred several centuries earlier ( long unspoken of). Wondered if perhaps Crowlely had, in his own time, reached a similar conclusion, and was in fact thinking the same exact thing. That of angelic… mingling and the somewhat invasive ability to see into the heart of someone’s soul, versus the perfectly human ability to hardly know a person at all except perhaps through a brief brushing of hands. The arrangement of words on a page. The splashes of color on a canvas. That perhaps God, in all her… strange, bureaucratic dereliction of parental duty had in fact given human beings one single instance of superiority.

“Love.”

In a limit imposed by God, human beings could only love one another given truly uncomfortable degrees of uncertainty, and what angel or demon had ever taken such a risk?

In case you (the reader) were wondering, interrupted God with a very gentle boom (otherwise one’s head was quite likely to explode), it’s them. The two of them. Idiots.

“So, the bookshop,” Crowley spoke, filling the void of Aziraphale’s silence, “you wanted to know more about this… Risky Business?”

There was almost certainly the undercurrent of a joke in there that Aziraphale would require an explanation for at some other juncture, but for now he merely nodded. “I believe so,” smiling into his cup, “for how valuable are our observations if we’ve only ever made them through our own omniscience?”

Long, long story, very much shortened to a far more reasonable and linear degree: Since The Beginning, angels and demons had largely felt confident in their belief that they knew far more than the average human (Agnes Nutter aside, of course); and Aziraphale, in the midst of an occasional crisis as to who knew what and how well, had, with the acquisition of his quaint little bookshop been unconsciously soothed by a truth several centuries in the making. That angels, like humans, did not in fact know everything. That they were not necessarily immune to what it was they had supposed, and that, quite blessedly, there was just… so very much to know. Even after all this time. Pages and pages and pages of things to know.

“It’s a fair point,” Crowley answered with a brief smile of his own, “never much cared for all the…” A signature wave of his free hand, bereft of his teacup, “...business anyway.” Referring of course to the traditional forms of angelic and/or demonic communication, which funnily enough, neither gentleman had experienced for quite some time.

And it was, during this particular turn in the narrative (quite nearing its conclusion, I promise you), that an angel and a demon would brush hands for a historical second time. Historic for the existence of hands, the fact of their briefly touching again, and of course the reality of their circumstances (which Aziraphale had become rather tired of noting). They both reached for the teapot at the same moment you see, which, if one were a betting man (or woman), they might imagine a divine hand or two, or several, or however many hands God might prefer to have, in the mix.

What made this particular time so different from the first was not only the fact of their very recent conversation, but the privilege of having several hundred years to have a good, rational think on the matter. So rational, in fact, that the urge to spring violently apart and knock something over seemed to be entirely absent.

“You know, I’ve often found it rather funny,” Aziraphale began quietly, painfully aware of where their fingers touched, “that despite my theory, you have often been quite good at mirroring my own thoughts.”

“Ironic,” Crowley agreed, “though you are rather easy to read I’m afraid.”

The beautiful thing about a brush is the secondary movements that might come after━particularly when the brush might provoke a pause. Most anything can occur in the midst of a pause. One might move a finger, for example, which in turn might elicit a not unpleasant shiver down one’s spine. There’s also the accompanying sound, which, for all his talk of humans being superior, it was a shame that their hearing was so dreadfully ordinary. It would be rather difficult for a human being to hear breath in the same way Aziraphale or Crowley might, sitting apart as they were. The intake and the exhale, all occurring within a brief, blissful pause which, along with their shared breath and the clinking of china, was accompanied by the continued autumnal breeze, and the scattering of dried foliage.

“I think,” Crowley continued, his hand moving, ever so slowly, to fully grasp Aziraphale’s own, “that we should consider testing your theory again.”

“Q-quite,” Aziraphale managed to answer, wonderfully overwhelmed by all the knowing (and marvelous not-knowing) occurring within the tangle of their hands. “I do enjoy a thorough undertaking of the scientific method.”

. . .

They were both wrong (the gossiping, angelic and demonic masses) because, in an infuriatingly on point God move, they were both partially right, weren’t they? Yes, of course, angels were always capable of love, but God was rather busy wasn’t She? She’s a deity just like any other━lots to do. Being in charge while also doing Her best to refrain from micromanaging, which She’d been told employees didn’t actually like, so can you really blame her for being a bit aloof sometimes? An honest mistake, really. Nothing quite so sinister as the demons might like to believe, nor so benevolent as the angels would like to think. And besides, She’d given them humanity, and She did love a good game of risk.

#good omens #good omens fic #ineffable husbands #@hencethewriter #y'all it has been #about 5 months #working on this garbage #also i wish tumblr #would fix it's fucking formatting #but we know that'll never happen so

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harry-leroy · 6 years ago

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Multiples of 5 for Edgar! :)

Hi! Thank you so much for this ask - it’s my boy :) Thank you, Claire!

I’m using the Edgar from my project to answer these, if that’s alright with you! (although I could probably back up a lot of these through the original play - not all of them, but a lot of them) - (And I’m still trying to figure him out completely, - and I think these follow - but if there are contradictions, I apologize). Thank you again for your patience!

And- I’ll tag @suits-of-woe (so you can see this one as well!)

5) Cleanliness habits? (personal, workspace, etc.)

He’s an absolute mess, though it’s not something that he’s always aware of. He strikes me as somewhat of a hoarder, because he’s afraid that he’s going to forget something, or lose something that he will need later. In other words, he doesn’t like to let things go, so he lets them pile up and weigh on the space he’s in. The best word would be disorganized, I think. It’s parallel in his own head as well. There’s always background noise. Things are where they shouldn’t be. If everything has a place (or as the old saying goes), Edgar might know that, but he doesn’t always have a place to put things, though to let them go isn’t an option either. When he’s hiding in Edmund’s room, he would probably be surprised that there’s room to walk freely, instead of books and clothes being piled up on the floor.

10) Neuroses? Do they recognize them as such?

Edgar gets a thrill from being in control, and he’s not sure if he likes it, or even if it’s right. When he and Edmund were little, whenever they fought over a toy, it was usually Edmund who’d wrestle it out of his hands. Edgar probably learned to accept that he was the weaker one (physically anyway), but it stopped bothering him - until Edmund said that dad was coming to kill him. Control is his idée fixe in The Edgar Project, because being outside of court, it became something he could explore, and he does it primarily through disguise in King Lear, but in The Edgar Project, he wants to manipulate the memories, make them turn out how he feels that they should have. And it’s done with brute force, something that he’s suppressed essentially his whole life. Though, we find that he can’t win a wrestling match with the gods, or with fate, or with anything that’s already passed. Does he recognize that he’s playing this wrestling match as desperately as he is? No.

15) Biggest and smallest short term goal:

His smallest short term goal is to get these memories out of his head. Or to change them at least, to make them, in any way, less awful than how they really were lived the first time. But like the wheel, everything comes back full circle, and it absolutely crushes him. He also wants us to recognize that he isn’t mad. Half of the time, he is quite aware that he has an audience that he can command, the other half, he thinks of himself as being totally alone and powerless.

His biggest short term goal is to achieve some sort of victory from this, some learning experience. He’s taking the gods by the arm and attempting to throw them over his shoulder, and drag them like he did Edmund. This power is the fiend that bites not only his back, but the backs of all. It’s also a continuous competition, and he has to lose it.

20) Childhood illnesses? Any interesting stories behind them?

So how I’ve got it set up right now because I said that I would take some fictional liberties with Edgar and Edmund’s childhood (and I’m still tweaking this project, so bear with me): Edgar’s mother (who I have not named) died of madness and grief when she found out that Gloucester had been disloyal, but the descent was slow and painful. She loved Edgar though, and protected him fiercely even though she was in no position to take care of him. It probably left Edgar a somewhat sickly (and timid) child, but he is in no way weaker than his brother. He’s had a strength in him all along, he just avoided the violence bit for so long that he wasn’t ready when he needed to be. (That went on a tangent, but that’s where I’m at for now).

25) How do they see themselves 5 years from today?

He doesn’t know, and he doesn’t want to know. Edgar’s very much a “live in the moment” kind of guy, but not in a carpe diem sense, but the present is the only thing he can focus on (or for the Edgar Project, this focus becomes a control of the past), or else it’s too much. All that he can hope for is that things don’t get any worse, but he knows, following that trajectory of King Lear, that they can and they will. He looks at Albany as king and aches for what put him there, and he’s not able to let go of it. Ultimately, to him, as much as he might want to manipulate that too, there’s a slight awareness that he can’t control what will happen next. He can only hope and pray.

30) Reaction to sudden intrapersonal disaster?

If we’re using the death example, it really only makes him hauntingly aware of his own mortality, to the point that he starts to echo Tom again. And that scares him, deeply. At one point, he too will fall and hit those last acts of the mortal play, though he doesn’t want to acknowledge it. He’s afraid of what’s beyond death, or if there’s anything beyond death. The walls of reality could come crashing down at any minute and the thought of non-existence terrifies him. Life might be one heck of a fever dream that comes to no point, and it just cycles on and on and on….

(It is why he cannot bring himself to fall in love, or to want to play anything but the child, or to totally claim the crown - it’d be moving the wheel forward, and Edgar wants to keep it back as long as possible.)

35) What activities do they enjoy, but consider to be a waste of time?

Revelry. It makes him feel idle, dull. He gets no satisfaction from it after the fact, and it’s an indulgence he kicks himself for. Although he’s a “companion of the riotous knights”, he’d much rather be spending time alone in the small, pressured spaces he’s designed for himself. He thinks hiding himself will come to some sort of end where he doesn’t have to face the wheel, but time moves on mercilessly and without answer.

40) Would you say that they have a superiority-complex? Inferiority-complex? Neither?

Like L.E.A.R.’s Edmund, my Edgar has a bit of both in him as well.

This superiority complex comes in that he is young and rather austere (in comparison to Edmund, Goneril, Regan, or any of his knight friends). He’s not in any danger of the consequences of old age… yet. There’s something almost Caesarian about him in his ability to play his youth to his advantage. He’s able in body, and in mind he likes to think of himself as wise. I think he’s seen his brother as somewhat immature, doing things he shouldn’t be, although it makes him totally suited for the world they’re living in.

Yet these things become his downfall. Edgar’s refusal to acknowledge and adapt to the world allows it to pin him into a corner and drive him to his wit’s end. It allows Edmund’s initial victory. He also knows himself to be below these higher powers, whatever they are, but we find him testing the waters a bit in The Edgar Project, because he was able to achieve victory in the original play, so he comes back for Round 2. The control he’s learned to wield in the original play is tested and stripped from him in my play. So how much is he really winning?

45) Superstition or views on the occult?

He thinks astronomy/astrology is silly. But there is some silent presence out there, constantly screaming at him, pushing him around, he just doesn’t know what it is. There is no life after death. For Edgar, this is the promised end. He would rather suffer through Hell fifty times over than become nothing. It’s what he believes to be right as much as it makes him uncomfortable. Edgar’s philosophy probably borders on absurdist, to sum it up a little better - though he’s really struggling on the quest for meaning, so he might even be nihilistic.

50) Is this person afraid of dying? Why or why not?

Terrified. Absolutely terrified, if you weren’t getting that vibe from this whole post. If everyone is to die at some point or another, that becomes the problem. We’re all powerless to stop it. Our existences ultimately become nothing, so what’s the point in claiming that power if you’re going to lose it? It’s why we see his many, many challenges to the inevitable. They’re foolish, but they’re desperate. They’re all competitions that he’s losing. It’s why he retreats to his mind for the entirety of the play, or why he shuts himself up in his room, why he likes his disguises so much. He doesn’t like the idea of Edgar vs. the elements. He has to have the upper hand in some way. He doesn’t want to “let corpulation thrive”, it gives the gods more pawns to play with and eventually throw into oblivion.

#thank you so much for this ask!#i love talking about our gloucester boys #it's our boys #i still need to toy around with edmund's character #so i thank you for getting me jump-started #edgar #the edgar project #king lear #shakespeare #but also not shakespeare #because i'm making edgar my bitch now #hehehehe #princess of france

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hallwaydodge · 5 years ago

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long rambling reflection on my history as a naruto fan and why im deep in kabuto stan mode atm

soo i have been a naruto fan for a uhhh long ass time (17 years now?) and i was deep in fandom for ages before falling off sometime around the start of the war arc...it started with the emotional blow of losing jiraiya (me and a friend read the chapter when it released and just clung to each other sobbing lol, well written, just sad)...the dumbassery of pain resurrecting everyone.....mr sasuke choosing to honor itachi's legacy with destruction....i had not read it in a bit when my friend called me up to ask if i had read the most recent chapter cuz NEJI DIED and i literally lay on a dark basement couch all day sobbing and was deep in grief like couldn't eat or sleep for like the next 2 weeks....i started reading again in bits to see if neji would resurrect (HE DIDNT) and if his legacy would be honored (....) but whatever it was just endless uchiha clusterfucking so i got bored and dropped again, only really returning for Magical Brother Soulmates naruto and sasuke (#NEJI WAS RIGHT) and then the last chapters to see how it ended and gape at the endgame pairings & inojin, the most bizarre looking mf ...

(At least orochimaru ended up okay and pretty, I decided)

anyways, i've consumed a lot of what i missed in my off periods but one thing i never really consumed was the war arc A) cuz im a filthy bitter neji stan until the day i die B) as someone who crusaded hard for tobi NOT to be obito (as i loved them separately but knew if they were combined i would lose all sympathy and affection) (my naruto forum username was literally tobi-chan) and that twist makes my teeth gnash as it's just kinda a bad character story, obito hate club here, and that leading to aforementioned uchiha gangbanging and SPACE ALIEN REINCARNATION PROPHECY MAGIC, something so utterly divorced from what naruto's story used to be... yeah

(have i ever stopped writing my post series neji lives shikaneji epic tho?? no!)

now the other day i saw a mention was like, kabuto is more dragon then snake. i always did wonder about the horns...so i went to go reread the hilarious kabumaru reveal which led to many a joke back in those old forum days -- the chapter was being weirdly hard to find tho and i kept getting distracted by other chapters referenced on his nwiki page and i ended up reading a lot of his backstory (knew in general but) andwar arc stuff, especially him v itachi n sasuke, which i had missed

And i was like? Oh? Heres kishi writing style I've been missing + maturity gained from time? sasuke calling itachi perfect when itachi sympathizes with kabuto because sasuke is too emotionally immature to have that capacity, the submission of identity to authority that drove them to extremes w kabutachi vs sasuke being driven to extremes by well. trauma induced personality but still, his personality, you know, who he simply is ... sasuke then leading into having to resurrect mentor/parental figure orochimaru and ninja presidents to figure out "who am i" which was really "can i choose to help konoha and pals while still being me"

and theres kabuto...forced to Accept Himself by itachi's brainwashing (itachi, who has always had teeth, always been pleasant, always taught) ... kabuto standing there ... orochimaru (who bore witness to all this drama from his cosy place on anko's neck) feeling so much more tired than he has after any other resurrection, giving kabuto those inscrutable looks, removing his presence from kabuto in an absolution, an apology, a return to self that leaves kabuto looking so young and tired and empty), telling sasuke he's fine how he is and also, still young, knowledge inherently ages you in a way trauma, power, and the passage of years can't

(i cant believe orochimaru was trying to stop sasuke for his own purposes. he manipulated sasuke but he never stopped him. ntm following that path allowed orochimaru to get his arms back and just have some fun trolling the mage, so it was a path for from detrimental to him.)

he wants sasuke to keep what childhood, what sentimentality he can -- again, acting the parent

and there's kabuto still. a 'brother son student'* to him, one of his oldest orphans, a follower so loyal and useful orochimaru would never make a vessel out of him even when desperate, and yet kabuto in his search for identity did it anyways -- (remember how he offered himself to oro, back in that whole rotting arms, late sasuke era?) and later orochimaru essentially tells his old teacher (a parental figure to himself) that the reason he's gonna bat for the good guys is because he saw what Trying To Be Like Him led kabuto and the world to, and he wants to, essentially, do better with this child under his charge and instead of imposing his will, see what sasuke can do with All The Knowledge At His Disposal

he told kabuto to form a self around knowledge, but it was knowledge for sake of power ... a descent to madness he himself took from a quiet, helpful child ... as character parallels go, orochimaru has very little in common with sasuke and much more in common with kabuto

"shape them in his own image ..."

now orochimaru was never guardian of the year, what with the fufufu-ing and child experiments, but i disagree with assumptions that the loyalty he inspired was entirely down to Stockholm or fear, because at the end of the day, orochimaru did as many horrific experiments on himself as he did unto others. leadership thru example.

then there's kabuto. kabuto who has hated, tried to kill, resented, feared orochimaru, but also kabuto who also loved and admired orochimaru, saw him as his home, was someone whose company he generally seemed to enjoy, someone he wanted to both be and surpass. someone inspiring

kabuto and orochimaru are alike, so kabuto tried to supplant his identity with the assumption that being alike = having walked the same path = being identical and eventually had to face that he couldn't both love orochimaru and be him, that it was a twisted mirror, that all he has ever been or would ever be was someone who had to make his decisions based not on history or blood or origin or culture, but on what made him happy

so, the orphanage, a home that does not move or die, a brother whom he can love and admire who is so different from him its not a twisted mirror ... a kabuto and orochimaru who do not seem to have interacted in a very long time, but for the whole, they didnt exactly part hatefully or on bad terms, and thus a kabuto who could just as easily make the choice to never see orochimaru again as he could to see orochimaru, if he wants to, if he's sure enough in his own identity to not worry about losing himself again ... he finally has choice, even if he, orochimaru, and sasuke are all restrained by the ethical limits of konoha atm

and uh yeah characters who struggle with their identity & the control others can then exert over them are a favourite of mine?

so what this memoir/meta tl;dr is is just me working out my thoughts this fine friday morning on how yakushi kabuto has, like, objectively, one of the best character arcs in all of naruto -- hell, maybe THE best, and i am sorry to have missed it when it was coming out because just. damn. that's good writing, y'all!

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redditnosleep · 7 years ago

Text

Leprechauns Are NOTHING Like The Way They're Portrayed In America

by Dariuspilgrim

I own a pub in Boston, but St. Patrick's Day is honestly my least favorite day of the year. Sure, it’s great for business; but I just can’t stand all the drunken assholes draped in green, swigging Guinness, filling the jukebox with Dropkick Murphys songs, and loudly proclaiming their Irish ancestry to anyone who will listen. “Plastic Paddies” we call call em’. The kind of people who go to Ireland as tourists and get mad that it isn’t “Irish” enough, as if they expect the entire island to be a theme park of stereotypes.

I just can’t stomach it. So I have a little tradition of my own. On March 17 of every year, I leave my pub in the capable hands of my manager, go to the LEAST Irish bar I can find, and spend the day alone getting drunk and watching NCAA tournament games.

This year I choose a little sushi bar in Chinatown. There’s a few green streamers above the bar and a Celtics poster on the wall, but that’s it. The music is quiet, the TVs even quieter. The staff barely speaks English; it’s perfect.

I settle into a stool, order a bud heavy, and stare at the TV. The bar is pretty much deserted. An asian couple sits a few seats to my left, sipping heineken and scarfing sushi. To my right, minding his own business all the way at the end of the bar, is a guy in a red hoodie with a glass of wine in front of him. It’s an idyllic setting to pass the time on my most hated holiday.

But my peace doesn’t last long. About a half hour in, the door to the bar bursts open and a parade of twenty-something women stream in. They’re all decked out in matching green “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” shirts, covered in green beads and wearing those headbands that look like alien antennas with shamrocks on the end of springs.

“Oh fer fucks sake,” I hear the man in the corner groan.

“Ohmigod...sushi and shots!” one of them yells, and they all start shrieking. The room breaks into chaos as fifteen women simultaneously try to explain how to make an Irish car bomb to a bartender who barely speaks English. Then the selfies start. They strike up a round of “Shipping Off to Boston,” … but the chorus is the only part of the song they know. And they sing it over, and over, and over while each of them takes turns filming for snapchat. They’re completely oblivious to anyone else in the restaurant.

I watch the asian couple to my left pay their bill and flee, and I’m ready to do the same, except I’ve just ordered a new beer and don’t want to waste it. One of the girls slams into the back of my chair as I’m trying to chug it down and I spill all over my shirt. No one apologizes or even acknowledges me. I pick up my beer and retreat to the corner, plopping down next to man in the red hoodie.

“Quite a crowd,” I say to him.

He scoffs: “Bunch of Manufactured Micks. These tarts couldn’t find Ireland on a map if their lives depended on it.” He speaks with a slight brogue.

“Are you Irish then?”

“Aye, I suppose you might say.”

“You don’t have much of an accent.”

He takes a sip of of his wine. “Been here a long time, long enough to lose most of it anyway.”

On the other side of the bar, one of the girls, now quite drunk, yells at the bartender to turn off the music. She plays “Kiss Me, I’m Shitfaced” at full volume from her phone speakers, and they try to sing along. None of them know the words.

“Oh, that shites terrible. No Irishman would listen to that. Plain awful that is.”

“I’m with you. Came here for some peace and quiet, but it seems the green terror follows me everywhere I go.”

“Man after me own heart. Sláinte,” he says, and we clink glasses. “Thing these young wans don’t realize is in Ireland, St. Patrick’s day is a solemn religious holiday, lacking in all this debauchery. Or at least it used to be. I hear they ham it up now to keep the tourists happy. They’ve americanized and Irish holiday in Ireland. Ironic, no?”

I nod.

“Not that I go in fer any of it,” he says. “It’s all a bunch of horse shit. ‘Saint’ Patrick… pah. He wasn’t even Irish! He was a bloody Roman citizen from the province of Britannia!”

“Don’t like the Catholics then?” I ask. “Are you Protestant? Is that why you aren’t wearing green?”

He spits on the floor. “You colorblind, mate? Does my shirt look orange? No. Catholic, Protestant… they’re all a bunch of cunts. I follow the old ways.”

“Sorry, I meant no offence. Let me buy you a drink,” I say. He nods. I wave over the bartender.

“Two more please?’

“...Two?” he says.

“Yeah, two. A bud for me and a wine for my friend here.”

“...OK.”

I turn back to my new friend in the red hood and extend my hand. “The name’s Sean,” I say. He shakes it.

“I’m Ólta.”

“That must be an Irish name?”

He laughs.

“It’s a Gaellic word, aye. Watch this though.” He nods to a young woman down the bar. She hoists a giant mug of Guinness and just as the glass reaches her lips, a leak springs in the side, pouring a fountain of the black stuff straight down her blouse. She screams, slams down the cup, and starts yelling at the bartender. Ólta and I have a good laugh.

“How did you know that was going to happen?”

“Because I caused it,” he snickers. That doesn’t make much sense, since he hasn’t moved from his stool, but I let it go. “So what do you do for a living, Sean?”

“I own a bar… an Irish pub actually. So this right here…” I wave my hand at the chaotic scene around us, “is my life 364 days a year. I’ve made it a personal tradition to escape on St. Paddy's and find a quiet bar to drink and watch the basketball games.”

“No joy this year, eh?”

“It’s pretty tough to get away from it in this city.”

Suddenly there’s a gleam in his eye. “Watch this,” he says. He nods at another drunken young woman. She leans back in her stool and the whole thing comes apart. She tumbles to the ground screaming. Her friends flock around her like geese and help her from the pile of broken stool and spilled Guinness. They start yelling at the bartender again, asking him what the hell kind of place he’s running. Ólta and I are cracking up.

“Well, this is proving far more entertaining than I expected… how about another round?” I ask.

“Aye, I’ll get this one.” He pulls a small red purse from his hoodie pocket. It looks like an old antique of some sort. From it he pulls a large silver coin which he slaps down on the bar. It’s covered in writing I cannot read.

“Uhh.. I don’t think they’ll accept that,” I say.

“No?” He waves his hand over the coin, and now it’s a fifty dollar bill. He slides it over to me.

“You’re just full of tricks, aren’t ya?”

“You have no idea,” he says smiling. “Another round, and how bout some shots of Bushmills. And tell him he can keep the change.”

I order. The bartender seems confused, but his apprehension disappears when I tell him the left over cash is his.

“And here’s the kicker,” says Ólta. His hand is on the bar. He lifts it to reveal the silver coin, still there under his palm. He flips it into the air and catches it in his purse, which he slides back into his hoodie pocket.

“How the hell did you do that?”

“Easy,” he says. “I’m a Clurichaun.”

I laugh, and decide to humor him. The Irish are known for their wit. “What is that, like a Leprechaun?”

“Why, are you after me lucky charms?” he says, chuckling.

“No, I--”

“Just kidding. No, mate. We’re different. Leprechauns are like our… cousins. We don’t mend shoes or grant wishes; instead we drink.” He raises his shot glass and downs it.

“But not Guinness? Or red ale or something?”

“You bloody Americans and your Guinness… No, that’s a myth. Ale is for peasants. You leave a pitcher of ale out for me and you’ll find all sorts of things start going wrong in your pub. We drink wine; have been for thousands of years. Grapes were the one good thing the Vikings brought with them.”

“I see… so, the pots of gold at the end of rainbows?”

“Another myth, obviously. Though Leprechauns do like themselves a hoard of gold. But try and take it from em’ and you’ll be in for a big surprise. They aren’t as cute and cuddly as the cartoons make them out to be.

“Leprechauns, Clurichauns, Far Darrig… we’re all Aos Sí--‘The Good Neighbors,’ the ‘Fair Folk’--like elves or fairies I suppose you call them here. Descended from the mighty Tuatha Dé Danann. Defeated and chased into exile in the mounds by the Milesians, your ancestors, the mortal forefathers of the Irish people. We are a majestic and noble race and… wait, watch this.”

He nods at the bartender, who holds a glass under the guinness tap. When he pulls the handle, the entire tap breaks apart and guinness shoots from it like a geyser, hitting the bartender in the face and sending him careening backward into the back bar. A cascade of bottles fall, shattering everywhere. Cooks and the manager come running out from the back and everyone is screaming at each other in Chinese and trying to stop the flow of guinness as the girls laugh and lean over the bar, refilling their glass from the raging spout.

“Oh yes, so very noble,” I say to my red hood-ied friend.

He shrugs. “Hey, gotta have a little fun once in awhile.”

“So, I see the mischief making part is no myth?”

“No mate, that’s best part.”

“So you’re a fairy?” I say.

“Well, not in the way you Americans use the word, but aye.”

“Aren’t you supposed to live in the Otherworld? Only visible at twilight on halloween or something?”

“Ohh, an educated man I see,” he says. “Mostly right, but I get a pass for St. Paddy’s. Something about reparations for the thousands of years or persecution and genocide perpetrated against my people by the Catholic church. And only those of Irish descent can see me. Which is why the bartender keeps looking at you funny every time you order two drinks.”

I had noticed that. This was starting to get very strange. “OK… if you say so. But, you’re a lot bigger than I expected.”

“Oh, I can shrink if I want to.”

“Shouldn’t you be wearing green and dancing a jig.”

“Few more of these,” he raises his wine glass, “and I’ll start twerking if you want me to. As for the wearing of green: it’s another common misconception. Trooping fairies wear green. Those flamboyant poofs, trouncing around in big processions wearing fancy costumes, ya ken?. Clurichauns are solitary fairies--like Leprechauns, Brownies, and Hobgoblins. Solitary fairies wear red. We’re the ones you don’t want to mess with. You takin’ notes boyo?”

“Riiiight,” I say. I stand up and put on my coat.

“Where ya goin’, mate?”

“It’s been fun, pal. But I really can’t listen to any more of your delusional bullshit. It was entertaining for awhile, but you’re clearly insane. I’m going to go check on my bar, and then I’m going home to sleep off this buzz. You have yourself a great evening.”

“Well, great. Let’s go,” he says and stands up from his stool. He’s got to be four-foot-eleven at the very most.

“Where do you think your going?”

“I’m coming with you of course.”

“Oh no you’re not.”

“I most certainly am. You seem like a good bloke, and you’ve got a pub! Sounds like I’ve found my new home. Make sure you leave a bottle of red wine uncorked for me every night, and no cheap shite! I’m talking top shelf. And I’ll take my dinner at 8PM, sharp like. I prefer beef, but mutton will do in a pinch.”

“Whatever pal,” I say and walk out the door, letting it slam shut behind.

Ólta walks right through the door and matches my pace.

“Listen, you won’t be coming anywhere near my bar.”

“Oh yeah?” he says smiling. “Just try and stop me.”

#creepy #horror story #st patricks day #st paddys day #leprechauns #clurichauns #fairies

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lizzizzie-blog · 7 years ago

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At the Bottom of Everything

Well, Saturday the 10th was my 31st birthday. I am officially in my thirties. Last year, my unexpected existential angst about turning 30 drove me to write the first post for this thing, and like I wrote in the last post before this one, a lot happened in 2017. Too much.

In my first post, I wrote some thoughts about what I might accomplish in year 30. Let’s review:

“Maybe 30 will be the year that I grow up and address my physical health.” Nope.

“Maybe 30 will be the year that I get it together enough to clean my shower with minimally acceptable frequency.” Also no. Oh well.

“Maybe 30 will be the year during which I finally give in and start budgeting like a responsible person should.” This is a yes, but only because things got tighter than ever with purchasing a business, and we haven’t had a choice. It’s still not even budgeting, though. I’m great at expense tracking, but my version of budgeting is just… not buying anything except food.

“Maybe 30 will be the year I stop spilling shit and running into shit all. the. time.” NOPE, definitely not. I am currently rocking eight bruises on one leg, from thigh to foot. Six of them are from one fall (I failed to notice a step), and the other two are from running into the edge of same glass-top desk two days in a row last week.

“Maybe 30 will be the year I will give myself permission to do less.” I actually did pretty well with this one. I’ve gotten better at making decisions based on what I actually need and want, rather than what I feel I should do. I’ve started to say no when I can’t do things. This has been partly out of necessity, but also partly out of my commitment to (try to) love and forgive and not judge myself the way I easily love and forgive and don’t judge others. I’m doing what I need to do, and I’m saying no… I’m doing those things, but it still feels wrong. It still hurts and still makes me feel guilty and like a shitty friend/family member. But… baby steps. I’m working on it.

“Maybe 30 will be the year during which I grow completely out of trying to guess what my mom would think (but not actually asking her because I’m a #grownasswoman who values her own opinions) as a means of decision-making.” I’m getting better at this, too! Not just with my mom (whose opinions are still usually right), but in general. Related to the above, I’m valuing my own opinions and instincts more highly than I ever have, and I’m getting better at not apologizing for having them.

...So, I don’t know. I guess I was hoping for better/more personal improvement, but really I’m just proud I survived this year. It was hard. It was exhausting. It still is. I am so, so tired. There is way too much happening. My husband is working his ass off to make our store work, making difficult decisions and stressing, and I don’t see him very much. My job is still fully overwhelming and way too much for one person, and it’s totally kicking my ass. I’m always behind and the deadlines keep coming and more work keeps getting added and I feel like I’m failing all the time. I don’t have as much time or money or energy for my friends and family as I once did, and I feel like I’m letting everyone down. But I’m surviving, and I’m trying to take it one day at a time. And life keeps happening.

Saturday, March 10th was my 31st birthday. On Sunday the 11th, I got sick. I slept all day Sunday, and took the day off work on Monday. We also experienced a really shitty setback with the store on Monday (which I will leave cryptically vague because that’s not my story to tell). On Tuesday, I flew to Puerto Rico for work. If you’ve ever traveled while sick, you know just how awful it is. It was not a good day. Tuesday afternoon, after my coworker (who had to put up with my pathetic ass all week; she’s the best) and I found our way to our Airbnb (which didn’t have power) is when I missed the step and fell. It hurt. I was so tired, but I couldn’t sleep that night. Wednesday afternoon, I lost my voice. I spent all of Thursday and Friday fully unable to communicate above a whisper, which was incredibly frustrating since I was supposed to be training people and just, you know, functioning as a human person. We were staying in San Juan overnight on Friday to catch early flights on Saturday, and I tried to remain pleasant with my coworkers as we hung out and went out to eat, which was exhausting in itself. But then the week was finally over.

Saturday the 17th, I got on a plane to Atlanta at 6:20am. I dozed on and off throughout most of the flight in my well-earned Comfort Plus seat just behind first class. When I woke up the final time, I checked the flight tracker on the in-flight entertainment screen, and noticed we only had 20 minutes left in flight. That struck me as bizarre, because there hadn’t been any announcements about beginning our initial descent or returning our tray tables to the upright and locked position etc etc. As soon as I had that thought, the pilot came over the speaker and told us we’d be landing shortly, but that they would need us all to remain seated for a while after because they were “dealing with an issue onboard.” Oh shit. Then the flight attendant came over the speaker to repeat the message and clarify that they were “assisting a passenger who wasn’t feeling well” which, in retrospect, is a ridiculous euphemism. Then I noticed the relative commotion in first class, and the beeping of what turned out to be an oxygen machine. I noticed a passenger standing in his seat, looking concernedly at his seatmate and speaking with the flight attendant in the aisle. Then I saw another passenger from first class stand up from where he’d been crouching in the aisle, stethoscope around his neck. His expression was morose. It became clear that this passenger who was “not feeling well” was traveling alone and not doing well.

Next, the flight attendant looked around first class and said, to no one and everyone, “we’re going to need to lay him down in the aisle for landing.” I watched as several first class passengers stood up immediately and gathered around the person’s seat. There was suddenly a “we” as they all helped to lower the person (who I could now see was a man) to the floor. The flight attendant continued to crouch with him in the aisle, presumably holding the oxygen in place. I overheard the woman across from me turn to the person she was with and report to them that he was “an enormous man,” as if that was a relevant piece of information.

We landed and sped to the gate. The paramedics entered the plane and immediately began CPR. I heard the flight attendant tell them that he’d had no pulse for 25-30 minutes and that “the machine wasn’t working.” The pilots and all the flight attendants were gathered watching, some comforting one another. After a few minutes, they lifted the man and took him off the plane. The pilot came over the speaker again and told us they were continuing to do CPR in the jet bridge and asked for our continued patience. We sat for another ten or fifteen minutes. The two men in my row were talking to one another (but not me), criticizing the way the flight attendants had handled the situation, and swapping medical-situations-they’d-witnessed stories. The woman across from me reiterated how large the man was, and asked her travel companion two different times when their connecting flight was and whether they could make it, after he’d assured her the first time that they’d be fine. I was keeping to myself, taking deep breaths, hoping like hell that they’d revive the man, and steeling myself for news to the contrary.

Eventually, the pilot came over the speaker again. He mumbled a bit, and then sighed and said, “I don’t know what to say. I’m really at a loss for words over this tragic situation” (at which point the tears I’d been holding in finally spilled over) and thanked us again for our patience and cooperation. I sniffled and cried my way off the plane, and one person from the row in front of me kindly asked if I was okay. I said “of course I’m fine, it’s not about me, it’s just really sad.” I cried my way through the Atlanta airport to my connecting gate, including hiding in two different restrooms to sob. After I got to my gate and sat down and continued to cry into my hands, a woman offered me tissues. She must have noticed I’d used them, because she also went and got me napkins from the restaurant across from our gate. It was really kind of her. I was surrounded by people. But no one said anything to me.

I cried for a lot of reasons. I felt so awfully for the flight attendants who tried to save him, and for the pilots who likely felt responsible but were powerless to help, and for the random strangers in first class who tried to help and had to see all of that up close, especially for the person in the seat next to him who was so intimately involved the entire time. I felt so badly for the man’s family and friends who’d have to find out that their loved one had died alone… tragically, publicly. I felt angry that while he was dying, strangers discussed his weight and turned it into a pissing contest about other things they’d seen and worried about their connecting flights. I felt confused because, although two people showed me kindness, I was politely ignored by countless others while in obvious emotional distress. I felt upset with myself that I was allowing it to affect me so much, when it didn’t even really happen to me. I felt resentful of my overly empathetic nature. I felt tired. I felt really, really sad. (I still feel all these things.)

Anyway, I managed to make it through my last flight, to baggage claim, and out to my car, and cried again on the drive home, while listening to Bright Eyes. Because obviously. It’s always events like this that shake us up and remind us of how focused we are on the day to day, on getting our jobs done and planning for the future. Right when life is totally overwhelming me, when I’m caught up in resenting how hard it all is, I’m reminded again that the future is not promised. That all the day to day BS is really pretty meaningless in the grand scheme of things.

We must blend into the choir, sing as static with the whole We must memorize nine numbers and deny we have a soul And in this endless race for property and privilege to be won We must run, we must run, we must run

We must hang up in the belfry where the bats and moonlight laugh We must stare into a crystal ball and only see the past Into the caverns of tomorrow with just our flashlights and our love We must plunge, we must plunge, we must plunge

(And then we'll get down there, way down to the bottom of everything And then we'll see it, we'll see it, we'll see it)

Oh my morning's coming back The whole world's waking up All the city buses swimming past I'm happy just because I found out I am really no one

As of today (Monday the 19th), I finally have a little bit of my voice back. I’m not coughing up green stuff as much, and my nose is not quite so raw from blowing it. There is work to be done, meetings to be facilitated, and deadlines to be met, and I don’t have time to take time off, but… it’s too much. I woke up and I couldn’t do it. I’m too exhausted, physically and emotionally. I was in tears before 9am. I had to tell my boss everything and, thankfully, she is wonderful and took pity on me. She offered to help with my work and told me to take the time I need to rest and process. So that means I took this afternoon off. And while I realistically need more than half a day off work, this is what I can get, and I am making the most of it. So… I guess this is processing? It’s definitely resting. I’m on my laptop in my bed, with my sweet kitty curled up next to me. My eyes are finally clear of tears because I’m focused on writing this instead of just thinking all these thoughts to myself.

It was a horrible week. Life is hard. I am tired, and this post was mostly a huge bummer. But… for once, I’m not going to apologize for it. It’s true. And it is what it is.

Take care. I love you.

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geekprincess26 · 7 years ago

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The Snow: Chapter 12

Summary: Sansa Stark thought she was well rid of Jon Snow. Then an untimely blizzard reunited them. Now Sansa wants out, and Jon just wants to explain.

Previous chapters: on my blog starting here | on AO3 here

Later that afternoon, as the sun completed its descent behind the hill next to the flat, Jon emerged from his room to find Sansa retrieving a box of pasta noodles from his pantry. She jumped half out of her skin, and he apologized at once.

“No, it’s fine,” she said when she had caught her breath. “I should be the one apologizing anyway. It’s your kitchen, and I’m messing it up.” She tilted her head toward the stove, and Jon smiled.

“You should be messing it up if you’re hungry,” he said, and gestured to the pasta box. “Did you want me to – ?”

Sansa shook her head. “It’s one of my special dishes, after all,” she said, and Jon smiled again. Sansa had left the lion’s share of the cooking to him when they’d lived together, since her own culinary repertoire consisted of about three or four recipes. One of those was pasta with salt, pepper, and Parmesan cheese, which even Jon had to admit was a better comfort food than most of what Sansa terms his gourmet cooking.

Jon retrieved a pot from one of the lower cabinets and handed it to her. Sansa dropped it into the sink and began running the faucet. Her cheeks had gone pink by the time she turned to face him.

“By the way,” she said, “I talked to Myranda today – my agent – and she mentioned that the girl playing Sophia from Wolves R Us dropped her role.”

“Oh.” It took a few moments for Sansa’s comment to register. Jon had performed the voice of Ghost the direwolf from a new animated feature based on an old fairy tale. It centered around a family with four children who discovered an orphaned litter of mythological creatures called direwolves, which were twice as large as normal wolves and ten times as fierce except with their owners. Each wolf formed a telepathic bond with one of the children, and Jon’s friend Wylla Manderly, the director, had asked him to perform the role of the eldest direwolf, a red-eyed albino named Ghost. The actress set to play Sophia, the second eldest child, had quit the project abruptly the prior week after recording less than half of her part.

“Yeah, she did,” he said, and Sansa nodded slowly. She looked nervous.

“Well, Myranda’s been contacted by Wylla Manderly, and they want me to read the lines for Sophia,” she said. “I’d just be reading with the crew for the audition, and even if I get the part I wouldn’t have to read in the same room as you, even if they do rereads with your part. But I told her I’d let you know anyway.”

Jon stared at her. Sansa had been known to take the roundabout way to a point, but this time he could not see one.

“What do you mean?” he asked finally. “I mean – you don’t need to ask me for anything. Unless Wylla put me in charge of casting without my knowing it.” He raised an eyebrow and leaned back toward the counter. “Which I doubt.”

“Well, no.” Sansa opened the pasta box. “But she didn’t – well, she wanted to make sure we were OK working on the same project, even if we weren’t going to be in the same room. I didn’t tell her I’m here or anything,” she added hastily. “And anyway, you were in on it first, so – ”

Jon shook his head, nonplussed. “That doesn’t mean that they can’t pick whoever else they want,” he replied. “If they like you for it, they should have you. Who cares what I think?”

The words left his mouth more sharply than Jon had intended. Sansa’s flush deepened, and he sighed.

“Look,” he said, “what I mean is if you want to take it, then take it. I don’t mind.” He held out one hand palm-up. “Here.” He nodded toward the pasta box, which Sansa was holding upside-down in midair after having emptied its contents into the pot. She reddened a little more and handed it to him.

“I mean it,” Jon said, willing his voice to soften. Sansa’s answering look was almost shy – that was one he hadn’t seen in over a decade – but she nodded.

“Thanks,” she said softly, and reached toward the stove-side crock of utensils to retrieve a wooden spoon. Jon reached into the cupboard directly above him and handed her a jar of salt, and Sansa thanked him again.

“Have you worked with Wylla before?” he found himself asking. Sansa shook her head.

“No,” she said. “I’ve heard good things, though. She loves ad libs, from what I’ve been told.”

Jon grinned. “You could say that,” he said. Wylla sometimes gave the actors versions of the film’s scenes that were twice as long as the cuts she planned to include and paired them with intentionally vague direction just to get as many possible interpretations and improvisations as she could. Jon, who had known Wylla for some time, had not been entirely surprised, but her methods had mildly annoyed a couple of the other actors at first until they’d gotten used to it. Sansa, however, would have fit right in with those of his colleagues who had used the extended scenes as a chance to improvise silly monologues about life on Mars and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

Jon spent the next few minutes sharing anecdotes of his time on set with Wylla, which induced more giggles from Sansa. Only after she had drained the pasta and cut part of a stick of butter into the pan to melt did she stop short.

“Oh,” she said suddenly. The smile left her face at once. “I forgot to ask you earlier, when we were eating – I can go to the store while I’m in town tomorrow, just to get some food and other things for here. Since, you know, I’ve used them.” She shrugged again. Jon shook his head.

“You don’t need to do that,” he said. “I always get those things delivered, anyway.”

Sansa still looked worried, and another thought occurred to Jon. “Wait, you’re going to be in town anyway? Did the police ask you to come back?”

Sansa shook her head. “No,” she said quietly. Her shoulders slumped. “The officer I talked to yesterday said they didn’t have any more questions. They just had to talk to me again after the accident because it’s standard procedure for anyone who’s witnessed a death.”

Jon gaped at her. “Witnessed – wait, you saw the woman – I thought you said she was dead when you got there?”

“She was.” Sansa’s shoulders slumped farther down. “She had a heart attack behind the wheel. That was what started everything. They think she died of it right away. I only saw her afterward, when I pulled over to see what had happened and found her dead on her seat.” She turned to the sink and picked up the strainer full of freshly drained pasta, but made no move to transfer it to the pot. “They said that her name was Sarah Mordane, and she had five grandchildren.”

She upended the strainer over the pot. Jon drew back to avoid the drops of boiling water that splattered out of it. When Sansa turned around to set down the strainer, the unshed tears in her eyes glittered icy blue in the rays of the stove light.

“Sorry,” they murmured at the same time. Sansa closed her mouth at once and hung her head. Jon ran a hand across his.

“Jesus, Sansa, I didn’t – I’m sorry.” That sounded pathetic. “I’m so sorry.” Still pathetic. Sansa shrugged. She must have agreed with him.

“It wasn’t any of your doing,” she said, and turned back to the pot. “Don’t blame yourself, Jon.”

Jon shook his head, even though he knew she could not see it. “It’s not that,” he replied. “It’s just that nobody should have to – you shouldn’t have to go through it at all in the first place. Let alone twice.”

Sansa shrugged again. “At least I got out alive,” she said, her voice surprisingly steady. “And don’t worry, I’ll be talking to my therapist as soon as I get back home.”

“No, that’s not what I – but if it helps,” Jon began, but found nothing else to say except, “I’m still sorry, Sansa, I’m so, so sorry.” He wanted to reach out and wipe away a few of her tears himself. He wanted to hold her and rub her back and keep telling her how sorry he was. However, the rigid way with which Sansa was holding her shoulders told him she would welcome none of it, and so he stood rooted to the spot.

“Anyway,” Sansa said after a few minutes, “I – I can still call up whatever shop you use to order the food and everything, or go online if that’s what you want.” She retrieved a plate from the drying rack and dished some of the noodles onto it. Her hands shook when she reached for the salt and pepper shakers, though, and she ended up dropping both. Jon grabbed them both off the floor and held out the one with the salt.

“Here, I’ll grind it,” he said. “Just tell me when.”

He repeated the process with the pepper, and then with the Parmesan cheese he always kept in the refrigerator, a habit left over from when Sansa mixed it with her pasta during their marriage. Sansa thanked him quietly.

“So about the food,” she said, “I really should – ”

Jon waved it away. “No,” he replied firmly. “Don’t worry about it, Sansa. I mean that.” He set one hand gently on her shoulder. She jumped back, startled, and Jon held both hands up palm forward.

“Sorry,” he said. Sansa shrugged.

“If you change your mind – ” she began. Jon shook his head.

“I won’t,” he assured her. Sansa nodded and turned to trudge out of the kitchen.

-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-

Jon did not see Sansa again until half-past eight the following morning. She entered the kitchen to find him cleaning up the dishes he’d used making the oatmeal cinnamon muffins that sat cooling on a wire rack on the countertop.

“Morning,” he greeted her, and reached into the cabinet for another coffee mug. “Coffee?”

Sansa nodded. She murmured a quiet thank-you when Jon handed her the full mug, but she looked nervous, and her eyes darted about before settling on him.

“I contacted Pod Payne while you were sick,” she said. “He put me in touch with a lady who did legal consulting on one of my projects from a few years back.” She took a sip of coffee. Jon’s eyebrows rose. Sansa never drank her coffee black. Now she was drinking it black and barely even flinching.

“Her name’s Jeyne Westerling,” Sansa continued, “and she’s a barrister in Leeds. She knows a lot about the Solicitors Regulation Authority.” Seeing Jon’s confused look, she added, “The agency that handles a lot of professional misconduct complaints against lawyers.”

That did not clear up much of Jon’s confusion, but he nodded anyway.

“So I sent her an e-mail yesterday,” Sansa continued, “and she responded today. She told me how to – ” She took another gulp of coffee, set down her mug, and rubbed one hand around the other. Jon’s frown deepened. It deepened again when she did not say anything further.

“She told you how to what?” Jon asked gently. Sansa blinked, shook her head, and looked back up at him.

“To file a misconduct complaint against Jeyne Poole,” she said. The words spilled out so suddenly that it took Jon a few moments to string them together.

“For what?” he asked.

“For threatening you,” Sansa replied at once, as though the answer were the most obvious thing in the world. “You know, when she told you she’d have you arrested after you found me in the park.” She twisted her hands around again. “Even besides that, she was lying because it would have been a false charge and she knew it. So I want her to be professionally disciplined.”

Jon merely stared at her. He supposed she was right, although he’d never have thought of such an action himself; after the divorce had been finalized, he’d been far too eager to forget Sansa’s lawyer had ever existed. But if Sansa was telling him about it now, she probably needed –

“The thing is,” Sansa continued, “Jeyne – I mean, Jeyne Westerling – told me I’d really only have a chance at it if you participated – you know, we’d both have to write statements for the complaint, because I didn’t witness what she said to you. So if it was just me bringing the complaint, they’d probably reject it.”

Exactly.

“So,” Sansa went on, “Jeyne said if you were willing to see her with me, she could talk to us both, although she’d understand if you wanted to talk to her through your own lawyer, since it was a divorce case between the two of us.” She bit her lip. “I told her I’d talk it over with you and get back to her.”

“My own lawyer – what? Why? We wouldn’t be going to court, would we?” He’d never had to go to court, not even for the divorce, and the hell with all of it if he’d start now.

“Well, not really,” Sansa replied, her voice lower. “But we might have to talk to the review panel if there’s a hearing and tell them everything that happened. It wouldn’t be for a while, though; Jeyne said the review process can take six months or more.”

Jon stared at her, incredulous. “And you’d do all that?” he exclaimed. Sansa nodded. Her face was paler than it had been when she’d gotten back to the apartment the prior morning.

“What she did to you – ” She shook her head. “It isn’t right, and I know how rich that sounds coming from me, but I can’t – I’d never have asked her to do it, and I didn’t want her to do it. I don’t want her to get by with it.” She took a deep breath. “You shouldn’t have had to go through that, especially not with everything else going on.”

“You mean everything else that you did ask her to do,” Jon reminded her more sharply than he’d intended. “That makes the whole complaint sound rich, Sansa, not just you.”

Sansa’s shoulders slumped. “I know,” she said, “but Jeyne said if you went along with it, we could still have a good case because the point is that she went to an unethical distance in representing me.” She bit her lip again. “Especially if I can say I didn’t get a divorce because you were hurting me or robbing me or committing a crime.”

“And what? You’ll tell them you got a divorce for infidelity instead? You realize that doesn’t sound a hell of a lot better, right?” Jon’s voice got louder with every word. “So the whole bloody review board will get our dirty laundry, is that it?”

“No!” Sansa leaned forward to brace her hands on the snack bar. “They don’t have to hear that part of it; Jeyne just said it would help if they knew I didn’t divorce you for a criminal reason. And even if you’d – cheating isn’t a crime, anyway.” Her voice began to tremble. “But I can tell them you didn’t cheat, if you want, and that the divorce was entirely my fault. It’s the least I can do, anyway, because it is the truth – ”

“Oh, Christ almighty.” Jon speared his hand through his hair so hard it ripped the rubber band half out. “Ow!” Sansa flinched and backed away from the counter as Jon reached back to massage his head. The stricken look she wore reminded him all too well of the screaming match they’d had the night before he’d gotten sick, when he’d screamed at her and she’d apologized so many times for hurting him. Jon swallowed the retort screaming on the tip of his tongue, clenched his eyes shut, and sighed.

“Is that what this is about?” he said once he thought he’d gotten a bit more control of his voice. “Going out at all bloody hours to avoid bothering me? Going to the store and getting that Alys Karstark to fix Gram’s vase and filing this complaint and all that? You want to stack one thing on top of another till you can make up for things? Stop feeling guilty? Make the last three years never happen? Make the last week never happen? Jesus.” He shook his head. It felt heavy. So did his arm when he reached up to rub his forehead with the heel of one hand. “Did anyone ever tell you things don’t work that bloody way? Ever? Or are you just going to keep sitting there and banging your head against the wall to try and make things better?”

He almost choked over the last word. At this rate, she’d tear them both apart if she thought what they’d undergone over the past week could make anything that had happened since he’d signed up to do that film with Ygritte North better. Sansa flinched again.

“No,” she finally responded. “I’m not stupid enough to think I could ever make up for what I did. I couldn’t make up for a millionth of it if I spent the rest of my life trying.” She took a deep breath and let it out in a shaky huff before she continued. “That doesn’t mean I won’t take the chance to right a little bit of the consequences if I can. You were right. Jeyne never would have done what she did to you if it hadn’t been for me. So if I can right even that little bit, and that’s all I ever get the chance to do, I’ll do it. I’ll do it every time. Anything I can. I don’t care what it is.” One tear rolled down her cheek, then another.

Jon sank his elbows onto the snack bar, buried his forehead into his hands, and blew a long, harsh breath through his clenched teeth. He heard Sansa’s shaky gasps across from him. Part of him wanted to reach out and hold her. Part of him rejoiced that she might just understand some of the three years’ hell she’d put him through. Part of him wondered if she was actually trying to match him hell for hell.

“Fuck’s sake, Sansa,” he ground out. “Do you want to kill yourself at doing this stuff? I bloody get that you feel bad, but bloody hell.” He exhaled again, but that only made his breathing more ragged.

“You could have frozen three yards from the door out there the other night,” he continued, and gestured back toward the kitchen’s glass doors. “You could have broken your back trying to shove me around in my bed with that fucking tarp. And last night, you could have been been mugged – worse – God – you could have been grabbed and – ”

His voice shook harder. When he tried to talk over the shaking, it came out as an ugly rasp. “Did you ever think you were making it worse? Did you ever think what I’d think – the person you’re trying to make this shit up to – if anything ever, ever, happened to you, I couldn’t – I’d go – I’d never be able to handle it – I couldn’t breathe – I’d never get – Jesus Christ, Sansa.” Unable to look at her, he turned and leaned heavily into the counter next to the sink.

“I’m sorry.” Sansa’s voice was shaking worse than his. “You’re right. Nothing I do will make up for any of it. The last few days – I wasn’t trying to make it worse, then, I was only trying to do whatever I could not to make it worse for you. And I know I made it worse, because as much as you hated it when I was gone, I hated when you were sick, and whether or not you believe it, if anything had happened to you, I couldn’t have – I just couldn’t think – and I didn’t mean to make you feel like that, ever.” Her words gave way to sobs, and it was several minutes before Jon could force himself to turn and see her reaching up to swipe the tears off her cheeks with the sleeves of her sweater. A wordless murmur arose from his throat, but Sansa did not notice it.

“And I’m not trying to do anything so I can stop feeling guilty,” she whispered before Jon could say anything else. “I’ll always feel guilty, but that’s not on you. It’s never been on you. It’s on me. And I’m not just guilty, I’m sorry, Jon. I’m – ashamed and horrid and sorry.” Her face crumpled. “Sorry,” she gasped, and clapped her hand over her mouth before she turned and fled the room.

Jon stared after her into the dark, empty hall. He stared into it long after the sounds of running water and Sansa’s shuffling feet had stopped. He wanted to yell at her to stop beating herself over the head. He wanted to yell at her to stop beating him over the head. He wanted to sit down with her and hold her and anchor them both to the floor so their heads would quit spinning and the whiplash would just stop.

When he finally mustered the energy to trudge back to his bedroom, he slapped the left-click key on his computer mouse, turned off his music, collapsed onto his bed, and cried.

#jon x sansa #jonsa fanfiction #jonxsansaff #jonsansaff #multi-chapter fics #my writing #modern au #angst #drama #hurt/comfort #fic: the snow

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ingloriousblasters · 7 years ago

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Second Chances - Chapter Two

Chapter One

Sorry, this took a lot longer than I had anticipated. The weekend kind of got away from me.

Anyway, here’s chapter two! Hope you like!

Chapter Two

Nora and Anna sat at the one stoplight that went through the heart of Redwater. The car idling, Nora could feel the descent of eyes from the people around town staring at the unfamiliar vehicle. Please turn green, please turn green. It felt like the more she wished for the light to change, the longer it stayed red.

“Oh Mama! Look at all those dolls!” Anna gasped from the backseat. Nora quickly gazed to her right, noticing the little toyshop that sat next to the old bookstore she had worked at. Nora felt a tinge of sadness in her stomach. It seemed like everywhere she looked while waiting for the light, she could see the ghost of her old life; playing like a faded film strip across her mind. The bookstore, Dede’s located a little further down the street on the left, the old grade school up ahead with the high school right behind it as you headed out of the heart of town. When the light finally turned green, Nora accelerated forward, this was going to be harder than she imagined.

It was only last week when she received the phone call from the doctor in the next town over from Redwater. Her mother had died. According to the doctor from Clear Creek, who was told by the church ladies that witnessed it, her mother was walking out of the grocery store and just dropped. Her heart had given out. Nora was stunned when she heard. She wasn’t sure how she felt. Sad? Angry? It was hard to say. After she had left Redwater and given birth to Anna, she sent her mother a letter and photo of the new baby, but she never received a response. Nora never wanted to cut off all ties; she just had to get out of the small town. She never hid where she had moved to, allowing her information to be listed in the phone book. But she never heard anything in five years. Not from her mother, not from Rodger, no one. Now here she was, reluctantly coming back to Redwater to take care of all the loose ends from her mother’s passing. The timing, she had to admit, was more than convenient as her landlord, Mr. Fitzpatrick, was raising the rent on their apartment again. The Fitzpatrick's were a decent couple. Mrs. Fitzpatrick doted on Anna, and let Nora drop her off in emergencies, but they, like all the other building owners in the city, had to keep up with the demand. Nora had made steady money as a waitress, but soon it wouldn’t be enough. She had to come up with a plan as it wouldn’t be long until Anna started Kindergarten.

As Nora made her way out of the center of Redwater and towards the subdivisions, Anna kept pointing out all the new things she was noticing. Having a sidewalk and couple trees as a backyard, the vast amount of open space was intriguing.

“Where are all the buildings at Mama?” Anna called from the backseat.

“There really aren’t any baby.” Nora turned her head slightly to answer her daughter. “We’re in the country. But that means more space to run around. No stopping at the street and turning around.” Nora hadn’t really explained to Anna why they were here yet. She wanted to keep all that away from her daughter as long as she could. She wanted to protect that childhood innocence as long as possible. Just returning to Redwater for the time being was already starting to worry Nora about what they might encounter.

They were meeting an attorney to see what could be done with her mother’s house. It had not sounded promising when Nora had gotten off the phone with the man the other day. As she turned down the street, she could see a sleek, expensive looking, black car waiting in front of the house. Nora pulled up into the little driveway and sighed. Oh Mama, what happened? The old house looked too far into despair. The red-shingled roof was falling apart and looked liked it had seen better days. The tan siding was caked in earth and ivy growing up the sides, and the front yard overgrown with weeds and who knew what else.

“Eww.” Anna remarked. Nora put the car in park and shut off the engine. She opened the door and smoothed out the champagne colored dress she was wearing, her slip underneath had worked its way up from shifting around in the car. She held the door for Anna, who popped right out of her seat clutching her little, stuffed, brown dog. The attorney made his way out of his car and walked to the other side to grab a black leather briefcase.

“Mrs. Buckley?” he asked as he stuck out his hand.

“Uh, Miss. Miss Buckley.” Nora replied, trying to swallow the nerves that had formed inside her as she took his hand. The attorney gave a slight nod and a look that seemed apologetic. A look Nora was very familiar with.

“Well, it seems your mother didn’t really have much of her affairs in order. She had a considerable amount of debt with the bank and missed many payments.” he said. “I can handle most of this, but will need you to go to the town hall to get copies of her death certificate. I’m afraid there wasn’t a will left behind, so I’m not sure how things will turn out. Like I said, she was in a lot of debt.”

“Oh, okay.” Nora found herself muttering. She had realized she was only half paying attention to what the attorney was saying. Spirals of thoughts were going through her head. She had a feeling things wouldn’t be great, but she never thought her mother wouldn’t leave a will. Nora ultimately knew what that meant, nothing. She would wind up with nothing. Immediately, her mind went into overdrive. How was she supposed to support herself for the time being? She had thought even if her mother had left her just a little bit of money, she would make it last until she found some type of employment. Now? Now she wasn’t so sure.

The attorney muttered something to Nora that sounded like an apology and continued to inform her about what would most likely happen. The bank would take the house as collateral for the debt her mother owed. Nora stared at the thing and thought it was for the best. If the outside was that bad, she could only envision the inside, the smell of alcohol and cigarettes infused into the walls and carpets. No way would she want her daughter to stay in something like that. You’ll figure something. Nora thought. You always do. You have to.

As they got back into the Plymouth, Anna asked Nora who lived in that old, dirty house. It starts. Nora replied that it was her Mama. She told Anna her Mama had fallen sick and passed away and was now in a better place.

“She dead, like Toby the fish?”

“Yeah, sweetheart. She’s dead.”

“I’m sorry, Mama.” Anna replied. To Nora’s surprise, Anna didn’t question her further.

****

Nora drove them back into the heart of Redwater to head towards the town-hall. The faster she jumpstarted on this whole process, the easier it would be to figure out what her next move would be. First thing would be to find a place to stay. The nearest hotel was at least an hours drive back East. It would make things with the attorney more difficult to handle, but she had tackled worse. Nora pulled up to the curb outside the town-hall, the old, concrete building towering over her. Anna bounced right out of the backseat again, a routine she was used to. They made their way through the thick, brown doors and down along the checkered floor to an older woman sitting at a desk.

“Excuse me.” Nora said. “I’m here to request some copies of my mother’s death certificate.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry hun!” the older woman said as she adjusted the big glasses sitting on her nose, the corners attached to a black string that went around her neck.

“It’s okay. I…I wasn’t really around much and our relationship just sort of…” Nora couldn’t finish the sentence. The way the older woman was looking at her caught her off guard. A sad smile on the older woman’s face, her eyes glossed over with what looked liked might be the formation of tears, a warmth to this woman. For once in her life, Nora was conversing with someone who actually took sympathy on her, and it didn’t feel insincere.

“Im sorry, do I know you? Nora asked rather abruptly. “It’s just that I grew up in Redwater, and I don’t believe we ever met.”

“Oh, no! That’s quite alright, hun. I’m probably a complete stranger to you. Name’s Doris. My husband and I moved here about 2 years ago.”

That explains it. Nora thought. Doris wasn’t around when everyone found out she was pregnant.

“Hi! I’m Anna!” The curly haired girl said, while waving her free hand that wasn’t holding the toy dog.

“Well hi there, sweetheart!” Doris responded back with a smile. Nora wondered if Doris had any idea who they were. After all this was Redwater. Even if she was old news, somehow, someway she knew her name would have popped up in some conversation.

“I’m sorry, what did you say your name was again, dear?” Doris asked Nora.

“Oh, I uh didn’t say. It’s Buckley….Nora Buckley. My mother was Catherine.” Nora waited for something to click in Doris’s head, for sure she must have heard about the “Buckley Situation” a few years ago. Doris just nodded her salt and pepper haired head, and told Nora to wait a couple minutes while she located and copied the certificate in the back room. While Doris was gone, Nora told Anna to sit in the chair near Doris’s desk, while she strolled up and down the little hallway. Numerous papers were stuck into a long, rectangular cork board. There were some for events around town, a Fall Festival later in the year, people buying and selling odds and ends, and off in the corner, a sign for job openings. Nora scanned through the couple of pieces of paper in the area; one called for a mechanic, the other a hairdresser. Neither occupations Nora had experience in. As she scanned the wall to see if there was anything else posted, Nora heard Doris quickly clear her throat to let her know she was back. Doris made her way over towards Nora, Anna still playing with her toy dog in the chair by the desk. She handed Nora a manilla envelop with the copies of the death certificate inside and smiled at Nora.

“Ya looking for some work, dear?” Doris asked. Nora nodded and explained that unexpected circumstances had popped up and that she was in need of something fast, but nothing on the board she seemed to be qualified for.

“Hmm.” Doris thought for a moment, crossing her arms and peering at the board. “Ya know, I came across a ‘Help Wanted�� sign about a week or so ago.” She said, looking back to Nora. “I think it was right on the outskirts of town, out near the railroad tracks. An old farmhouse.”

“The Dixon farm?” Nora asked.

“Ah, yes! That’s it. Knew it was someone, just couldn’t think who. That Dixon man never pops into town unless he has to.”

Nora nodded her head. She hadn’t thought about the Dixons in years. She remembered the night she told Rodger she was pregnant and when out to the fields. She had seen smoke coming from out there that night. Rumors about the Dixon clan ran wild in Redwater back in the day. Old Man Dixon and his wife were not a picture perfect couple and they didn’t try hard to hide it. Nora remembered hearing from her parents when she was younger all the things Mr. Dixon supposedly had done to his wife. For hearing so many rumors about a family, it occurred to Nora that she had never actually met any of them. Mrs. Dixon died in the fire when Nora was just a few years old, and Mr. Dixon hardly ever came into town. She knew they had had sons, but they were quite a bit older than Nora and were gone from Redwater as soon as they could. Nora wasn’t sure the Dixon’s place was the best place to go, but she knew she needed something fast. If Old Man Dixon would hire her right away, she could start saving money and settle her and Anna somewhere before school started.

“Thanks.” Nora replied. “I guess there’s no harm in checking it out.”

Doris agreed and gave Nora a reassuring squeeze of her arm. “Be sure to let me know how it goes!” She said.

“Why…why are you being so nice to me?” Nora asked skeptically.

“Everyone has their faults, dear.” Doris said. “How does the saying go? ‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone?’ No one is perfect. And those that think they are, are blinded by their own reflection.”

“Mama, can we eat yet?” Anna asked as she had snuck up on Nora and Doris. Nora gave her daughter a nod and told her to wait just a little longer. She returned her attention back to Doris, whose genuine smile had never faded in their conversation.

“Thank you.” Nora said to her, a smile forming on her own lips as she felt her eyes water. Whether or not the Dixon’s place worked out, she would be forever grateful that Doris was kind enough to offer her help.

“Anytime.” Doris responded.

****

Nora and Anna had stopped for lunch inside Dede’s dinner after leaving Doris at the town-hall. It was a surreal feeling for Nora, being there with Anna. She could sense some of the customers inside eyeing them, clearly recognizing Nora as the death of her mother was still fresh in the town’s mind. As Anna ate her fries and shake, Nora contemplated going to the Dixon farm. Deep down, she knew it was her only option so far, but she was hesitant. She wasn’t sure what she could offer work-wise. It wasn’t that she couldn’t handle it, she just wasn’t sure if Mr. Dixon would take the time to train her. By the time Anna’s bottomless stomach was full, Nora had made up her mind. They would head out towards the old farmhouse. If it didn’t work, then at least they would already be on their way out of town and heading towards some sort of hotel to stay.

The old Plymouth made its way up the long, gravel road to the farmhouse, passing by a hand painted “Help Wanted” sign. Nora could see nothing but a cloud of dust in the rearview mirror. As they got closer, she could make out the main house. The two story had a dull, green roof, and the white siding was faded from the sunlight. The front porch, Nora noticed, wrapped around the entire building and was wide enough to fit four people across. There seemed to be no remnants of the old house that had burned down all those years ago. Nora parked the car in the open field of grass near the house, a faded, red pickup truck a couple feet over.

“Stay here, baby.” Nora told Anna as she made her way out of the car. “I’m just gonna go find the old man that lives here and talk to him real quick.” Anna shook her head as she took in the surroundings. Nora walked up the short flight of stairs to the front door of the house and knocked. No answer.

Knock Knock Knock!!!!

Nora hit the front door harder and still no answer. Surely someone had to be home, she thought, as she peered into the front window next to the door. When no one came, Nora decided to check the back. She made her way around the porch to the back of the house. Behind the house to the right stood the barn, its doors wide open and marks in the dirt that led out into the corn fields. Nora cupped a hand over her brows to peer out into the distant sunlight. She could make out the outline of a tractor coming towards her direction.

“EXCUSE ME!” She yelled repeatedly, while swinging her other arm, until the person on the tractor finally seemed to have heard her. They stopped the engine on the contraption and hopped off. Immediately, Nora’s heart started racing. Oh yeah, real good first impression. Yelling like an idiot while on someone else’s property.

When the man from the fields got closer, Nora felt confusion replace her rapid-beating heart. He wasn’t old, at least not as old as she pictured “Old Man Dixon.” He had short, cropped hair, brown with a hint of grey on the sides, the top just barely long enough to hint at curls. Wearing weathered jeans, he grabbed a rag out of his back pocket to wipe his dirt covered hands. His tanned arms were exposed in the white, wifebeater he was wearing, the fabric clinging to his body from the heat coming from the Georgia sun.

“Can I help ya?” He remarked loudly. “The hell ya doin on my property?”

“Are, are you Old Man….I mean, uh Mr. Dixon?” Nora asked. “I, uh, came to ask about the Help Wanted sign out front.” She finished sheepishly. The man’s deep, blue eyes bore into hers, making her feel exposed.

“Ain’t no Mr. Dixon, that was my Pa. Name’s Merle.” He replied. “And besides, ain’t needing help anymore, been meaning to take it down.” Nora’s heart sank. She watched as he finished wiping off his hands and stuck the rag back in the pocket. She had to think of something, she wasn’t just leaving it at that.

“Please,” she heard herself mutter. “I can help out with whatever you need me to.”

“Look, Miss, ya seem real nice, but I don’t need any help.” Merle replied, his patience waining. For some unknown reason, Nora just wouldn’t let it go. This man wasn’t even going to give her a chance, she was used to people turning her down before, but with all the events from the day weighing her down, she wasn’t going to accept ‘no’ for an answer.

“Please,” she repeated. “Just give me a chance, I don’t like begging, but I haven’t even been here 10 minutes and…”

“Is this some kind of joke?” Merle cut her off. Nora furrowed her brows, a joke? Did he really think someone would drive all the way down here to pretend to need a job?

“I just don’t know what a woman like ya would be comin down here for? Don’t ya have a …”

“MAMA MAMA MAMA!!!” Anna called as she came around the back porch, a jingle of metal following her. Anna made her way up to Nora and Merle, with a German Shepard following right behind her.

“Baby, I thought I told you to stay in the car?”

“I know, but look a dog! He came from the behind the house!” Merle just stood there, biting his lower lip while watching these two strange females, who just showed up on his property, continuing their own conversation. Eventually, he cleared his throat rather loudly to make the woman aware he was still there.

“I’m sorry, this is my daughter, Anna. Anna this is, uh Mr. Dixon.” Nora responded.

“Hi.” Merle grunted out.

“Hi, Mr. Dixon.” Remarked Anna, while gently patting the dog, now sitting next to her. “He don’t look very old Mama.” Nora’s face turned bright red at her daughter’s comments.

“For Godsakes, I told ya there ain’t no Mr. Dixon or “Old Man Dixon” or whatever! My old man’s been buried six feet under for three years!” Merle huffed out, rubbing his hands over his face. As he gained control of his outburst, his eyes roamed over the woman in front of him. She seemed exhausted for how young she looked. Like she had lived a whole life’s worth in a short amount of time. Merle noticed she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, and that her eyes were pleading with him without her actually saying anything. His anger subsiding, his rational side kicked in. Obviously this woman was in need of some sort of help. Knowing he was probably her last option in this awful town, he felt somewhat guilty about brushing the woman off so fast. Your just like them other folks from town, Dixon, he thought. Merle thought it over for a couple more seconds before speaking again.

“You cook?”

“Huh?” Nora asked, confused at the man’s change of mind.

“You cook?” He repeated, emphasizing the last letter. “Days are long out here in the fields, might be nice to come back in to a warm dinner or somethin.” Nora nodded her head, a faint smile on her lips. She wasn’t about to question his change of mind, if he needed a cook she would cook. Better than trying to be a mechanic. The two stared at each other for just a moment longer before Anna interrupted with giggles. The German Sheppard had knocked her over and began licking all over her face.

“Ah, get off puppy!” She squeaked as the dog wouldn’t let up.

“Ay, King, git off.” Merle yelled while blasting off a high pitched whistle. Obediently, the large ball of fur walked away from the girl and towards Merle.

“Uh, I guess I should give ya the tour then, huh.” Merle asked Nora.

“Guess so.” Nora said as she waited for Merle to take the lead. She still wasn’t sure how well this would work out, but for the time being, Merle Dixon would have to do.

#merle dixon #merle dixon fanfiction #merle x oc #michael rooker #walking dead au #second chances #au #first time fic writer #rooker #dixons #bahh i hope im writing merle well enough #its a little daunting writing a character that already exists

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