#brook loses free range privileges

[bruggle]

When I say that Brook and X butt heads when they first meet, I mean it

"Brook, I need to turn in my report to Commander Signas," X explains. "Stay here and do not move, okay? I'll be out in just a second." Brook rolls her eyes as she nods. X, however, doesn't take that as an answer. "I mean it, Brook," he sternly repeats. "Do not leave this hallway." Brook groans, giving him an exasperated look. "Fine," she grumbles. "I won't." X gives her one last meaningful glance before turning to the door and entering the room.

And now.

She waits.

And it's boring.

Brook lets out a huff as she looks off to the side. Seriously, who does X think he is? She's not some kid; she's more than capable of taking care of herself, thank you. With that, she decides that maybe she'll take a small look around. It won't take too long, and she won't wonder off too far. She just... wants to see. The Maverick Hunter Headquarters are... the stuff of legend, after all. Not even the Guild has half the equipment here.

Besides, what could she possibly hurt?

With one final glance back to the door X had went into, Brook decides to chance it and head off on her own. There's... not too many landmarks; reploids don't need to make mental maps nearly as much as humans do, after all. But it's all cool to see nonetheless. She's so engrossed in her exploring that she doesn't hear the footsteps that come up behind her.

"How on Earth did you manage to get in here, kid?" asks a... somewhat familiar voice, as Brook feels the hood of her coat get picked up. She yelps as her feet leave the ground, leaving her facing... Massive? Matisimo? Brook doesn't quite remember his name. Just that it started with an 'M'. The green clad reploid had been there in the Maverick outbreak she'd helped out in, Brook recalls. ...It speaks volumes on how entrenched she'd been in wandering that she didn't notice him. Or a testament to his self control for such a huge reploid to be able to sneak around.

"Well?" The hammer weilding hunter asks. "Seriously, kid. You're not supposed to be here. You could get hurt." Oh. Of course he wouldn't recognize her. She'd been Minnow at the time. Even so, his tone is quite annoying. And Brook can't help but glare at him for it. The green clad reploid merely raises an eyebrow at her. He lets out a sigh as he turns back towards the hallway she had just left. "Alright then," he muses. "Guess we're going to Signus."

Wait.

That's where X is at.

Crap.

Well, there went any chance of not getting in trouble...

As the reploid carrying Brook makes his way back through the corridor, she notices a sight that makes her heart sink.

A very peeved looking X.

Wonderful.

"Oh, didn't realize you were back, X," the green clad reploid says. "I'd stay and chat, but there seems to have been a stowaway." At least his tone is amused.

"Thank you, Massimo," X replies, and there it is. That's his name. "I'm afraid she's not quite a stowaway. She's with me. This is Brook." And oh. That look. X is definitely not happy with her.

"...What?" Massimo asks, completely confused. "You babysitting or something?" X heaves a sigh.

"Something like that," he admits. "It's a long story. But, I will be speaking with her about wandering off when I *specifically told her not to.*" Brook can't help but wince. He's absolutely mad. Massimo shrugs, finally letting Brook down from his hold on her coat. And before she can even take a step, X has her hand in his grip. "In any case, I hope we can catch up later," X continues, not letting her go. "Maybe I'll be able to explain everything. For now, however, I unfortunately have to leave. There are a few things I need to prepare."

Massimo nods, waving to them. X waves in kind as he drags Brook off. Mindful of his pace and grip, of course, but definitely dragging her. It's when they exit the headquarters, and X still has not let go that Brook begins to protest. "X, seriously," she complains. "I'm not a kid! You can let go of my hand now!"

"Oh really?" he snaps. "Because I seem to recall telling you to *stay put.* And yet, you seem to have been unable to do so." Brook snorts, beginning to try and wriggle her hand out of his grasp. It's fruitless, of course; gentle as he is, X is still a reploid with reploid strength. He's not letting go unless he wants to.

And he definitely isn't going to.

But she's going to make her displeasure at the fact known.

[heistmaster69]

pariet lilium

pariet lilium

pariet lilium~by @heistmaster69​

4th Year Draco Malfoy x OC fic. 

~so uhh um I was maybe watching a video about dark academia while writing this and may have gotten a BIT carried away~

gif by @fairylightwishes​ all credit to them!

~

Frankie and Cher sat in the back of Potions class while Snape droned on about the effects of crushed versus shaved Bicorn Horn on the end result of a Pepperup potion.

“-now you see that’s exactly what I was talking about. Muggle movie stars are much more attractive than boys at Hogwarts-”

“Leonar-” 

“-Dicaprio, yes.” She whispered.

“Frankie that man is gorgeous-”

‘So fine-”

Cher let out a sigh, while Frankie continued. “All the boys from Dead Poets Society-”

“So it’s decided then-”

“Yes. I’m saving my virginity until I’m of age and Leonardo Dicaprio can come and take it fro-”

“Miss. Reed.” Snape deadpanned. “If you and your friends would be so kind as to stop squealing about muggle boys in my class-I would appreciate it. That will be five points from Slytherin.” 

Cher kicked Frankie under the table. 

“My bad, professor.” She murmured, putting her palm under her chin and turning back to her notes. 

Potions had to be her third favorite class, Frankie didn’t mind it at all, it’s just, she was a little distracted, recently. It seemed like her single-ness was beginning to get to her and she found herself daydreaming during class. She didn’t want to be as obsessed as she was, but Frankie couldn’t really help it. She wanted the movie-scene first kiss and the romance novel passion, as unattainable as it is, she craved it. 

But the thing is-Frankie never let herself daydream about people she knew. In reality, none of the people she’s liked would ever like her back, and it just hurt her because she knew that no one would ever have feelings for Frankie as she did for them. Every time she let her walls down she got hurt. 

A lot of the people Frankie has met have made sure she knows that she will never be as valuable, never as loved, as beautiful, as successful as others because she wasn’t as thin as others. Frankie loved herself. But her ‘friends’, her family? It seemed like they hated her for it...

~ 

Magic had always interested Frankie. Being a witch or wizard usually goes over the heads of purebloods, with the mere prospect of having the gift coming so naturally to all of them. Frankie’s isolated upbringing, rarely seeing her parents and being brought up by a strange yet kind tutor who instructed her in all sorts of topics, ranging from basic arithmetic to discovering Frankie’s magical abilities. Ms. Selwyn, around Frankie’s parents, and Kendra, during her tutoring sessions daily during childhood. 

These memories with Kendra have a warm haze to them, and whenever Frankie reminisced, a smile would find its way onto her face. We would stand together in the garden, during the golden sunsets, and she would say;

“Magic is an incredible gift, it is beautiful and infinitely important. We hold the power of the universe in our hands.” 

Young Frankie would stare wide-eyed, confused, and tug on the side of Kendra’s robe,

“Ms. Kendra, what’s the universe?” Frankie would ask.

“The universe is everything.”

“Everything? How much is that?” 

Kendra would smile so gently and kneel down beside Frankie, grasping her small hands and gesturing towards the sky alive with color.

“More than we could ever know.”

Kendra knew the power purebloods held with the Ministry, after all, the Selwyns and the Reeds were a part of the Sacred Twenty-Eight. The Ministry was still hypnotized by the status and the blood purity that these upper-class families held and overlooked the small laws broken by the elite, so Kendra and Frankie would practice small magic in their free time-in secret. The Reeds would never want their precious-little-delicate-perfect-pureblood baby daughter learning anything but the proper protocol for stuffy dinners with the Prewetts, the Malfoys, the Greengrasses, the Bulstrodes, the Parkinsons, the Notts, the Flints, or any other sort of perfect families that they could put in their larger-than-life estate. 

Nevertheless, Kendra would take Frankie into the garden behind the mansion, near the rippling brook by a big oak tree. They would sit in the shade of the branches and Frankie would learn about everything her family didn’t want her to know. She learned about the inequality between purebloods, half-bloods, and muggleborns and as Kendra told her of the First Wizarding War, Frankie felt her heart shatter into a thousand pieces. How could someone think they were any better than another human being due to their blood? Their lineage? How they treat those supposedly ‘less than’? This realization caused a rift to form between Frankie and her parents-the entirety of what being Sacred 28 pureblooded perfection was. 

She despised it.

Kendra warned her though, she spoke softly the words that shoved Frankie into a vault, locked her away, and threw away the key.

“I don’t know if this will ever change.”

Little Frankie blinked quickly, her wide eyes sore and puffy from tears. “Why?” She cried. 

“They will never relinquish the privilege that this supremacy gives them.” Kendra let out a deep sigh and placed a tender hand on Frankie’s shoulder. 

“I think you’re wrong, Miss Kendra.”

“I hope I am, Miss Frankie. I think you could make a difference.”

This upbringing of acceptance and wonder from Kendra instilled a unique view of magic in Frankie. She saw it as a privilege and took an interest in a side of magic that tended to be overlooked until necessary. Frankie liked to create spells and potions. Specifically, she had a fixation on wandless magic. It was crazy to her-she could create life from her hands. How so many of her friends and peers overlooked this, she understood but wished more people wouldn’t call people like her Loony Lovegood. 

Anyways.

Frankie hid a tattered mahogany-colored, pleather-bound journal in her pillowcase. This journal rarely let the safety of her room, only transferring annually between her estate and Hogwarts. It was never shown to a soul, and it contained her life’s work in what could barely be considered spell-creation. Notes and random scribbles littered the pages, but if it were ever to be lost, Frankie would lose everything she’s done since she was six years, four months, and thirteen days old and Kendra told her about spell-creation. She thinks she would cry.

~

“Oi Francesca-” A voice called.

“-you’re not allowed to call me that, Blaise.” Frankie chuckled as he jogged up to her, stopping to lean against the wall with a smirk.

“I don’t care, you’re Francesca to me. Anyway, Potions, what happened in poti-” Blaise looked over his shoulder and shouted to Theo. “Oi Theodore, get your arse over here!” Blaise had a thing for using people’s full name-even if it’s not really their name, (ie Daphnessa/Pansleigh.) Frankie rolled her eyes as Theo strolled, shoulders taut, up to Blaise

“Frankie, what happened in Potions? You love potions, you’re always talking about how Potions is a really cool way to learn about how magic affects the world-”

“-Potions is a super cool way to learn about how magic affects the world-” Blaise interjected, wrapping an arm around Theo’s broad shoulders.

 Theo turns to Blaise with a sarcastic stare at him. “Yeah, that.”

I want to have a stupid dumb kiss already. Which is stupid dumb and I don’t even care but I’m horny for love.

“Oh, yeah I-I didn’t sleep well last night.” Frankie choked out.

“It was kind of a relief, your constant enthusiasm about Snape’s class is alarming.” Theo snickered. Blaise snorted as he and Theo sauntered towards the Great Hall. Frankie let out a breath and followed soon after the two boys let for lunch to get to the common room.

~

Frankie’s boots tapped gently against the cold stone floor of the dungeons. Dust hung low in the air, illuminated by the amber glow of hanging torches that littered the walls. The dungeons are always shown as a dingy, disgusting place but Frankie found the common room comforting. She stilled in front of the entrance and spoke softly the password. 

“Labebantur anguis.” 

The wall dragged inwards with a low scraping sound, revealing her home. The estate is not a home, the estate is merely her stage, acting as the perfect daughter for an audience of haughty purebloods. This common room was perfect, smelling like pine and cotton and the perfect temperature. Green rugs and plush couches in front of a fireplace, tables and booths next to an espresso machine and a tea kettle. Arching windows and pillars showcasing the beauty under the Black Lake. This is home.

She stepped past the commons and walked up the winding stairs to the shared dormitories. Cher laid on Frankie’s bed with Daphne with parchment and quills set out on the emerald silk sheets.

“If you two spill ink on my bed one more time I’ll hex you in your sleep.” Frankie shrugged out of her robe and fell back onto Cher’s bed. The two girls giggled and returned to their subsequent conversations.

Cher was gorgeous. She radiated kindness and had an aura about her that made her seem impenetrable, yet she was humble. She had a crooked smile that never failed to bring one to Frankie’s face. Her eyes shone with emotion and were a deep brown that glimmered at all times. She was incredibly brilliant and the top of many of her classes. With the exception of Potions, Frankie held that spot proudly. 

Everyone says that perfect Hermione Granger, the “brightest witch of her age”, is the top of every class, but ever since she had to use her time to deal with the two rambunctious children that are her friends, she holds strong at about fourth. Frankie had to admit, she had a burning jealousy of Granger. She managed to befriend Potter in her first year, as well as make friends with many of the teachers, ace her classes, and save the entire school three times by now. Not to mention, she was also very pretty. This envy flared its deep green color whenever Frankie so much as heard the name Granger. 

“Earth to Reed?” Frankie snapped out of her covetous haze and met Daphne’s eyes. “Pansy’s bringing up lunch, get started on your essay, like, now.” 

Frankie tipped her head in agreement and reached into her bag to pick out her Astronomy notes. “Five sheets of parchment? Is Professor Sinistra trying to kill us?” 

“I think I might just use one sheet for every word: Sorry, I, Don’t, Want, To.” Cher counted on her fingers with a snort.

Daphne tugged at her bottom lip with her pinkie. “Maybe Frankie can use one of the spells from her secret journal to erase this essay from Sinistra’s mind.”

“That spell already exists, you toad.” Pansy swung the door open with several food items floating behind her, a slice of pumpkin bread levitating into Frankie’s waiting hands. “It’s called Obliviate, it has murderous side effects, and, next week it’s Reed’s turn to get the food.”

“Thank you Pans,” Cher cheered, mouth full of a danish pastry.

“Plus, the boys were bugging us to sit with them more often.” Pansy sat beside Frankie, parchment in hand. Daphne rolled her eyes.

“It’s one day a week, they’ll get over it eventually.”

“The students at Uagadou are so lucky. They have a good Astronomy program and they live in a cloud.” 

Cher scoffed. “They don’t live in a cloud, Pans, They live in a castle-that’s on a cloud. It’s very particular.”

“I want to live in a castle.”

“You idiot, you do.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Then what did you bloody mean?”

“Nothi-whatever-what are we doing for Hogsmeade tomorrow?”

~

Draco. Bloody. Malfoy. 

He walks around the school all high and mighty, like he owns the place, yet he acts like a right prat to many of its inhabitants. It’s like the boy was born with a stick up his arse. Yet, Frankie knew how he was raised, not that it’s an excuse. He doesn’t want to be the way he is, but he’s not some broken boy for her to fix. 

She’s had many conversations in the common room with Malfoy after nights of nightmares. She’s shared hugs that linger a second too long and strange glances during lectures. His stone grey eyes held an emotion behind them that she couldn’t understand. It made her uncomfortable, the strange buzz on her skin where his hand met. The fluttery feeling in the pit of her stomach when they got too close. She didn’t like it. It made her feel like a creep.

She sees the way he looks at Cher. Frankie doesn’t compare to a golden, legs-for-days goddess with a waist the same circumference as Frankie’s thigh. Besides, a Malfoy should be with someone the same physical caliber as him. Frankie’s mother prayed to the ghost of Merlin that Frankie would blossom into a beautiful flower, but as her mother continuously reminded her, 

“You are a disgrace. Nothing but a weed in a garden of perfection.”

It’s not hard to believe. Many pureblood parents held a disdain for their children in private. Frankie was lucky to have someone like Kendra. Other teenagers didn’t have anyone. Frankie was lucky, not special. A mere weed, removable by a weak pull. A thorn on an otherwise perfect rose, fit to be plucked, ignored by onlookers.

Draco Malfoy was never written in the stars for someone like Frankie. 

Not that she liked him or anything. He was, as stated before, a right prat. A good looking one, but a prat nonetheless. They didn’t talk much, at all, instead seeking solace in the late hours of the night, a deep bond hidden from their friends. How could two people who were supposedly so perfect, be so broken?

~

pariet lilium.

chapter two

[arcticdementor]

You might look around sometimes and think to yourself, a new America has dawned, godless, without the old restraints. Yellowstone, the Kevin Costner Western on the Paramount Channel is the best example I can summon to mind just now, and its third season has just started. It’s a 21st-century story of cowboys and Indians—with characters seeking freedom from law. Practically, this means they must constantly defend a way of life independent of the many bureaucracies threatening their livelihood, and they do so with terrible violence.

Taylor Sheridan is the writer-director behind Yellowstone, and the series follows the success of his movies, Sicario, Hell or High Water, and Wind River. These movies earned seven Oscar nominations, one for Sheridan, and about as many nominations in Cannes, including important wins. Sheridan was raised on a ranch, but his family lost it, so he went to college and Hollywood, recalling Sam Peckinpah’s story. After Clint Eastwood, he’s now our premier poet of manliness.

…

Like any man long in power, Dutton has many enemies, and the more they behave dishonorably, the more you see that he’s touched by greatness, since he has no desire to go hurting people and does not share their cruel contempt for justice or life. Many look to prosper in his place, partly by the prosperity he has made. Worse for Dutton, America has changed—from the national press investigating him to the new economy to the way historical grievances grant authority to demand change—everything is threatening his way of life, built around family, land, and centuries past and future. Indeed, loyalty itself is over and new identities are required, which are flexible and practiced in deception. To succeed in Yellowstone’s new America, it doesn’t really matter whether you know any part of the country or have done well by people, but whether you know how to manipulate institutions and please those who manage the most successful interests, which seem hardly any better than legalized conspiracies.

Like Hemingway’s marlin, which achieves its greatest leap in its death throes and expires at the top of the arc, Dutton is most impressive in agony. He seems superhuman compared to the new American elites. His handling of urgent problems makes him resemble the president—he is an executive. Meanwhile, egalitarianism has not created equality in America, but only a new elite, impatient, ignorant of the future, blind to necessity—thus, astonishingly able to manipulate the new systems of power, since these elites feel no concern for consequences. The real world, where people are tied to a place, to other people, to their past, and the good they pursue, is replaced by access to the institutions and finances that make the world work, which manipulate people’s lives indirectly, in unaccountable and unpredictable ways. Everyone’s tied into legal demands and their lives are increasingly regulated, but only people who know how to use the law to get what they want get ahead in this new situation. The first post-American elite is coming for the last cowboys.

…

The American Dream is over in Yellowstone, and billionaire gentrification is coming for the last refuge of manliness in a country that produces compliant subjects rather than free citizens. In this grim world, cowboys are stand-ins for the white working class. They don’t go to college and they work dangerous jobs without much healthcare and for little pay. They are not disrupting the economy. They are America’s past, not future. Their virtues are Stoic and this might simply mean resignation to death.

…

Justice is built on nobility, and in Yellowstone, Sheridan draws our attention to this through the characters’ relationship with their horses. So understanding horses is the core of Stoicism—the horse is the noblest animal and America’s love of horses lasted well into the last era of popular country music and the Western, in the 1970s, because a horse rider presents the image of someone more than merely human. It is a greatness available nearly to anyone, at least anyone willing to face harsh nature. Horses are everywhere in Yellowstone, so one might not read much into it. They symbolize certain virtues, however. The horse is a power that will obey the rider, but not against its own nature. To ride a horse requires endurance in face of pain or weariness, courage to face fear or whatever weakness might come, self-control in face of temptation, and moderation—those habits that make man thoughtlessly sovereign. Without these, you die when it’s suddenly dangerous. One cannot talk oneself into it and there is no technology to accomplish this, either. It’s a way of life, not a job. It takes long practice which allows you to understand yourself and develop self-discipline. As such, horse riding leads to a kind of self-knowledge.

…

The Duttons are not Christians, few of their like seem to be—not even the death of the firstborn leads to a church funeral. They believe in freedom and nature—ruling over the land, over the horses, over people. They despise weakness and treasure loyalty. They trust family, not morality. Compared to ordinary Americans, they’re shockingly aristocratic. They believe in choosing the means to defend family and their land because family itself is unchosen—it’s nature, and therefore reliable. But can they live in America, where most people have no family? They rely on their old-fashioned patriotism to defend the ranching way of life, but the country has changed without them and it seems they can either adapt and sacrifice their family, or stay loyal and lose everything.

…

The opposite of a man in America is a bourgeois bohemian, to recall David Brooks’s signal contribution to our sociology in Bobos in Paradise (2000). Brooks is a sophist for this class, so he will not tell the ugly truth—but Tom Wolfe did in A Man in Full (1998), and even scooped Brooks. It’s not an accident that he saw clearly: Wolfe was the poet of American Stoicism and understood the threats to manliness.

The people who define elite taste in America are themselves opposed to violence, but not because they are Christian or even moral. It’s because their own rule doesn’t require that they ever take any personal risks—poorer people do that, who live in other parts of town or are completely removed from sight by gentrification. Nowadays, the rich take no responsibility for the poorer or those suffering violence, or even ever shake their hands, which is why our cities are such madhouses. There is no noblesse oblige.

Sheridan wants to show the violence in America to rebuke this bloodless view of things. So in the first season we see, through the real estate developer drama, how the new American elite is moving in to remove the last ranchers. This establishes the difference between real men and those who want to rule merely through institutions and finance, as though history had ended and we’re just dividing up luxuries. In the second season, we see rule by violence, in order to understand the difference between men and beasts. Sheridan shows that not all who kill are the same. Only then is it possible to defend the ranchers against the bobos persuasively.

…

The older Americans were not sufficiently attuned to nature, because they believed in God more. But as the churches are emptying, people are looking elsewhere to learn who they are. Some turn to nature, because human beings are not trustworthy. We may say mankind is naturally perverse, always coveting and therefore often violent or treacherous, which is why harshness was required in the past, to establish property and then defend it. This is certainly Dutton’s view, who only goes to church once, to make a priest manipulate a parishioner into obedience. And as a family, the Duttons are only happy when they revert to their old ways, taking care of their herd from an improvised camp so far away from civilization there’s no cell tower in range.

The only way to end the human drama would be to stop being enviable. End greatness and thus end striving. On the other hand, to defend greatness is to defend suffering. This way, we learn that suffering builds character—it brings people together, as do common enemies. This problem, the future of America, is the show’s indirect concern. Is it possible to retain honor in a dishonorable world? It’s not obvious how we can defend freedom without honorable men making sacrifices. Nor how we can raise honorable men if we tolerate bobo elites who despise honor and use every institution of government and market to end it. Dutton raised his kids to correspond to his understanding of rule. The treacherous Jamie is a Harvard-educated lawyer who tasted the bobo life for a while, but in order to redeem himself, he works like hired help in the stables. Beth is a finance genius, which plays to her ruthlessness, but at the price of undermining her ability to love and trust. Kayce is the truest cowboy, but what makes him so loyal also blinds him to the complexities of 21st century America. They each amplify something in Dutton, but in this attempt to pass on the ranch to a new generation, it turns out honor and savvy have been utterly split apart.

This acquisitive capitalism that corrupts honor is the enemy that returns in the third season of Yellowstone. That’s what the name of the show is about—the place of nature in America. Is it a museum, a zoo we visit occasionally, enjoying the beauty after all the danger is under control, and the millionaire class gets extra privileges? Or is there also a human nature that we need to learn to respect by treating physical nature with some respect, lest our elites treat us like pets as well? To defend manliness in America, it may be necessary to defend wild nature. That is a preparation for political freedom. To go too far in the opposite direction is to treat human beings, but especially men, like savages—as our elites do to the urban and rural underclass.

The purpose of the show is to persuade Americans to believe in nobility again. To face cruelty and violence as a preferable alternative to institutionalized despotism. To accept America’s tragic past with gratitude for the freedom we still have, if we are willing to earn it again. We have had so much success, we’ve created a class who profits by this success without any connection to America or regular Americans. We need to educate new elites about what’s worth loving and defending. Sheridan wants to teach by tragedy, so his protagonists are essentially honorable, which is no longer tolerated in our storytelling. Americans have never accepted tragedy before but perhaps now we will, since our freedom is once again in danger.