#but by choice and in a way that intrinsically tangles their lives together

[mudstoneabyss]

the thing is "Kevin's a huge freak and Charles still fucks him" is funny. "Kevin's a huge freak and Charles still loves him" makes me SOB

[shini--chan]

Allies with an s/o with separation anxiety?

Before I start, one thing – separation anxiety is a big burden for those who have it. So, if you’re reading this and have it, I recommend you seek out treatment.

Warning: abuse of a mental condition

Yandere Allies – Discidium

America

Alfred gleaned at your medical certificate on his computer screen. From experience he knew that the medical history of a person could be very telling, and a lot could be deduced from it. Allergies could be used as torture; medication could be withheld until a trade was offered. But the really interesting part was the psychological section of such reports. They weren’t always filled out, since people didn’t always have noteworthy defects or maladies in that directed. Therefore, when they were, they were all the more insightful.

Keenly, he scrolled down to the sought after part – and wasn’t reported. There, clearly visible, stood a very particular remark:

…patient shows signs of separation anxiety…

It was rather recent too, he realized when he traced the digital footprint. And idea began to form in his mind. As he steeped his fingers together and rested his head on them, a most devious plan of action came one step closer to being realised.

Since Alfred would really turn up the charm when it would come to wooing you, you would quickly become attached to him, a fatal mistake on your behalf. For even if he wouldn’t find out about your metal state from a series of documents, he’d quickly derive the truth from your actions or make you spill the beans. He would portray himself as considerate, only concerned for your wellbeing – which would be why you’d promptly move together.

As cruel as it would be, it would be a boon for him. America wouldn’t have to be concerned about you running away. Out of that reason he wouldn’t install any elaborate locks or security measures – your chains would be intangible. However, he might use your anxiety against you as a form of punishment. Alfred would tie you up in a dark room and leave the house for some time, or threaten to do so.

Canada

Matthew didn’t have to sharpen his ears or turn around to know he was being followed. Who ever it was, was being very obnoxious and clumsy, the snow crunching with every other step. At least they were putting some effort in matching their steps with his. Yet that wasn’t enough to throw him off – it never was.

Without any forewarning, he whirled around and caught sight of the flaps of your dark coat as you leapt behind the thick truck of a fir tree. Not fast enough – Matthew had always been something of a hunter, reflexes sharp as well as his intuition. You’d never be able to beat him in a game of hide-and-seek, or successfully run away from him, not without a giant handicap.

So, you had gotten out. But why hadn’t you used the chance to at least attempt an escape and had rather chosen to tail him?

“Why are you following me? I told you to stay in the house.”

You emerged from your cover, a sheepish look on your fine face. Tangling your fingers together, you approached him, lips twisted as you pressed out.

“I simply didn’t want to be alone.”

An understatement, as he was later to find out.

Matthew would probably find out relatively fast that you’d have separation anxiety. Not because he would obsessively stalk you (he would rather gradually get to know you), but through the obvious behaviours. Whether or not you’d attempt to hide it, he would eventually catch on. And he would be delighted and worried in equal measures.

Delighted, because then he wouldn’t have to worry about you running away. Canada wouldn’t be an extrovert, having a rather reclusive nature for a New World country and a small circle of friends – so he would spend most of his time with you.

Worried, because somewhere in the back of his mind he would know that his feelings for you wouldn’t be right and that you don’t lock people away. Your behaviour would only endorse his in a twisted way.

China

Yao had never been a long sleeper. Maybe it was the centuries that he had already lived or the result of all his lifestyle choices. Nevertheless, his sleep was always brief, 3 hours usually being enough rest. That why when you started twisting and turning in a dreamy haze.

He was just starting a new chapter in his current novel when you started groaning in your sleep, uncoordinatedly swinging your arms around with increasing panic. Upon realising what was going on, he quietly laid his book away and dimmed his reading lamp a bit. Then he turned around to you and waited for you to awaken from your nightmare.

It took a few minutes, worry building in his chest in a poisonous knot as time trickled by. This was why you were always meant to be with him. You were one of the finer things in life for him – in no way tawdry, rather with a splendour and depth. A sort of medication to distract him from the atrocities of the past, present and future. He was the same to you, he was sure of that.

So when you eventually shot up, perspiration on your forehead and tears in your eyes, he felt a sick joy. One that was only amplified when you gasped: “Please don’t ever leave me!”

Family is important to him; marriage is important to you. So you having a mental condition that would cause you to have anxiety attacks at the notion of him leaving you wouldn’t be all that unappealing to him. It would just strengthen your bond, and cause you to be more drawn to him, ignoring all the red flags. Yao would just have to play all his cards right in the beginning.

However, there would also be the issue with the other people in your life – your family and friends. While he wouldn’t mind you staying in touch with your family (with certain limits) your friends would have to leave your life. Something that would be all the more difficult in your case. Still, he would set to the gruelling task of cutting people out of your life and dealing with the fall-out.

England

“You know you would be all alone if you use that knife”, he casually commented, not even turning around to regard you. To you, it seemed as if he hadn’t even lifted his eyes from the newspaper he was so avidly reading, creating the illusion of having eyes in the back of his head. Actually, he had seen your reflection in the window pane when you had started to approach him, the steel glinting marvellously in the sun-light.

It surprised you that he took such a treat so nonchalantly, him as well to an extent. Arthur guessed he wasn’t as shocked he had expected himself to be, because he had intrinsically suspected that such a scene would play out.

“Are you sure, I’d either end up in police custody or…”, you tried to reason before trailing off. You had realised that something was amiss here, and it unsettled you.

Coolly, he set away “The Times” and turned to you, watching you as your resolve crumbled and fear welled up. “Do you really think that?”, he asked.

You trembled, your convictions crumbling. Through hard lessons you had come to learn that he was far more powerful and cunning than he seemed at first glance. At the moment, you didn’t know if he was just bluffing or telling the truth. Probably a mixture of both, and that was bad enough.

Arthur would mercilessly use it against you. You being scared of being separated from him would mean he wouldn’t have to regulate his sharp tongue or his more volatile tendencies. You being scared of being separated from him could be used as a threat, actually separation as a punishment. It would be something he would constantly hold over your head as a means of making you behave and as an insurance on his behalf.

On the other hand, it would also immensely frustrate him. England would be very attached to you, possessive of you, but he would also want to have some quality time with himself. That wouldn’t really be accomplishable with you clinging to him.

France

“Please, don’t leave”, you murmured.

At first, Francis thought he had somehow misheard you, but then, when he glanced up from where he was tying his shoelaces, he saw that he hadn’t. Your eyes were glassy, the skin around your cheeks and collar bone blotchy with the beginnings of a rash and your breathing was shallow.

It puzzled him and delighted him simultaneously. He didn’t know what had provoked such a reaction – it was late at night and he was leaving. Customary at this stage in the relationship since you didn’t live together … yet. To see you already be so attached to him delighted him in a sick way. It also concerned him since he didn’t like seeing you in anguish.

“What is wrong, ma cheri?”, he inquired carefully, standing up and gently cupping your cheeks. He watched with piqued interest as you leaned into his touch, the hypertension leaving your body for a few seconds.

“I get anxious just at the thought of you leaving. Please, at least stay the night.”

Besides being delight about you being drawn to him, like all the other on this list, he would also be very concerned. You having anxiety attacks just at the notion of you leaving would immensely worry him. He would encourage you to seek out treatment, even treat you himself, just to erase the worst parts of your condition.

Apart from actually caring a lot about you, his motivation would be partially selfish. Aiding you in such a manner would convince him that he would be a good person, and in a series of complicated mental gymnastics he would overexaggerate it, and thus convince himself that his obsession with you and all the actions that would spring thereof would be good and virtuous.

Russia

A knock sounded on his door, causing him to look up from the paperwork he had been pouring over for the past two hours. Internally, he snarled. He had said he was only to be disturbed in an emergency, something he had explicitly told the guards.

Nevertheless, he sighed and called out: “State your name and business.”

The answer came immediately, dull from the monotony of the man’s voice and muffled from the wood of the door: “There is somebody here that wants to see you. Had a nervous breakdown in the entrance hall and claimed it was urgent.”

Ivan rolled his eyes at the explanation. He really wasn’t in the mood for dealing with people that had nervous breakdowns anywhere on that matter, thank you very much. He’d really have to have a word or two with the personal here.

“Send them away.”

Instead of an answer, he heard some commotion and swears from beyond the door. Frowning, he stood up, half wanting to go to the door and give the group in front of it a piece of his mind. Yet before he could take a single step or even decide what he wanted to do; the door was slammed open. You stormed in and took a running jump at him.

Ivan would be a lot like Arthur in this scenario. You having separation anxiety would be one of the few things that would completely convince him that you would never leave him or betray him. So, there would be no therapy for you – indeed, he would even take steps to worsen it.

Yet he would also want to have his privacy. Russia would have been alone for a long time, so demanding he go from solitude to constant company would be too much. You following him wherever he would go, even to work and other shady places, would make him feel guilty and remorseful.

[cultureisdarkbeer]

Falling is Complete!

Covering Seasons 4-7

 In Milagro, we hear that "Agent Scully is already in love". So the question becomes, When did she fall in love? When was that "one day you look at the person and you see something more than you did the night before. Like a switch has been flicked somewhere". When did that moment occur for Dana Scully? This is that story.

Read it here

*New*

Chapter35

The weekend’s journey had Scully twisting and turning like a Chubby Checker song. It sent her not only back through her life, but down each wrong choice road, like parallel dimensions heard through the chimes of fate. Dreams as soon as a year ago now were irrelevant and obscure. The path she chose led her here on this couch. Turning away all her past lives, opening herself up to the unimaginable, beyond science, beyond religion, to hear the call of a voice, the one she chose to follow, that chose to follow her right back.    

She felt her body become weightless as he lifted her from the couch, with gentle strong arms, he pulled her close to his body, it’s warmth, igniting a glow within her. Her eyes fluttered open as he lowered her onto the bed. “Where are you going?” Scully asked sleepily.

“I’m sleeping on the couch,” he said, tucking the blanket back around her.

“You can stay,” then quickly added, “it’s your bed.”

“It’s okay Scully, get your rest,” he stated firmly, squeezing her hand. She held onto it, refusing to let it go as he started to walk away. 

“Hold me?” she asked meekly.

Her vulnerability made him pause. “Yeah. yeah, I can do that.”

He walked around the bed and got in under the covers. She butted her back up against him as he wrapped his arms tightly around her. 

“You heard, they’re doing a full financial audit of the FBI,” Scully said. “They’ll be looking  to make cuts.”

“If the powers that be have their way, the x-files will be on the chopping block,” Mulder concluded, rocking her gently, nuzzling her hair.

“Then what?” Scully persisted.

“We continue to search for the truth,” he replied.

Scully breathed out a chuckle, then took comfort in his embrace. Too much had been left unspoken. “Why does being closer feel like it’s taking us further apart?”

Mulder drew her in, closing the small gaps between them. “Maybe because we’re trying to hide in glass houses.”

She nodded and felt him squeeze her tighter. It was a comfort. 

He whispered into the shell of her ear, “We’ve had a lot to make peace with Scully.”

Scully spoke in cautious tones. “What if you meet someone, what if you decide later that you want to have kids?”

She felt his body stiffen around her at the question. “You could do the same. There are other ways,” he answered tenderly. “If you want children, what’s stopping you?”

 “The consequences of my choices?”

Mulder sighed. “I’d like to think we’ve made peace with those..” 

“And the X-files?” Scully persisted, rotating in his arms so she could look into his eyes.

“You’re asking me to make a choice?”

“No, I..” she stumbled.

“Scully,” he replied softly, caressing her cheek with his thumb. “I choose you.” 

Her walls melted inside his gaze. “Every choice I’ve ever made, has led me to this moment. You and I. Right here.”

“That leaves another choice to make.”

Scully passed him a wry grin. “I’ve made my choice.” 

Scully closed her eyes knowing the next time they opened they would be staring into the only man she could ever imagine herself with. His lips pressed and slid against hers, warm and wet, with the grace of a trained dancer and the power of his 9 mm pistol. The removal of their clothing was clunky in their haste, forcing her to clutch his shoulder as a counterbalance. Gripping her tight, he steadied her feet. Scully’s cheeks heated when she was able to meet his eyes again. Not because of embarrassment, she would never feel that way in front of Mulder, but because of how real the moment was, the strength at its core -with honesty and purity- they would rebuild. 

His eyes held that same gentle fire and connection they felt the first time they ever laughed in the rain. The soft warm glow of copper’s flame burning hazel through his irises. It’s embers igniting her heart and she knew it was time she spoke the truth aloud.

He was hers, and just as importantly, she was his. The words were on the tip of her tongue, dying to be spoken into existence. She wanted it roared into the night, well perhaps whispered in his ear, or murmured on his skin.

She chose to speak directly into his eyes.  “I’m in love with you, Fox Mulder.” Her words filled with the passionate intensity of countless gamma rays bursting through the universe. And it was all for one man. Inside her arms she felt the current of her words coarse through his body. “Scully,” he released in breathy affection, the words were with the same vulnerability as when he came to her when his father was shot. “I’m yours.” 

The countless hours she had stared at his lips, the way they pursed at her challenges, or curled in disgust at her autopsies, the lower jutting out slightly when he rocked his mandible forward with passion. She knew every line of those lips and every curve the way she knew the shape of her own bathtub and stain in her coffee cup. She sucked the lower one into her mouth just to feel the desire exhaled from his lungs. His tongue reached for hers and she met it with fervor, intertwining with the strength of the divine threads of space and time. 

Mulder covered her body as he rolled on top. She felt safe, much the way she did as he protected her years ago from the bullets in Milford Haven. Feet and wrist bound in the gymnasium showers he had braced to give his life for her at the end of a shotgun. 

He smiled at her like he was reading her thoughts and she kissed him softly, his hand tangling in hers with the same motion as when he hugged her in an empty hospital hallway, giving her promise and support that she would carry on even with her cancer sentence. Mulder had resurrected her with a chip, the one buried at the base of her neck. She wasn’t a slave to it, instead one of the many symbols of his devotion. Those thoughts caused her hand to skim the scar of her consecration inside his shoulder. 

Kissing and mingling with the others’ breath, her legs naturally wrapped around his torso. Skin to skin, mouth to mouth, but they were also connected in an entirely different way. They didn’t need to invade each other’s mind, they melded, their bodies flowing together, skin hot and sensitive to every touch. The passion, the need she felt, went beyond eternity. Their entire life together felt like foreplay- every time they shared a laugh, every time he cradled her in his warm embrace, or interlocked their fingers, or just stood in each other’s presence. 

Grateful he didn’t prolong the sweet torture, he aligned himself and carefully pushed inside, heavy and thick, connecting on a level they had only known with the other. For long minutes, they kissed and reveled in their feelings, in the waves of sensations hitting them as he moved inside her.  It was a soft and reverent kind of sharing. The type of intimacy that at one time would have made her push away to preserve her independence.. Make her skin crawl. But it didn’t with him. Possibly because his response would have been to wait until she was ready. Instead, she relished the contact, something had changed inside of her, somewhat like Mulder’s prediction as they stared at a cocoon in a tree. 

Not a weakness, but a strength, she felt safe when they were like this, like nothing could ever harm them. His darkness blanketing her with comfort. Their love born from shadows.

Scully’s insides hugged him tight and they released a groan of acknowledgement. He was intrinsically home. Their pace was slow, considerate. Mulder paused and kissed her gently, his right index stroking her forehead in reverence, reminiscent of when he spoke his condolences about her father or their first case after her abduction.

Their movements were fluid and quick, languid and vividly profound. Any pieces of walls left inside her, he had shattered, saving her, the same way he battered the window to save her from a psychotic man.

She chose the path with him not from fate or destiny, not out of desperation or visions, but out of friendship, out of respect, out of devotion. Love, unadulterated and complete.  

His head fell to her neck and she felt every inch of him seeping pleasure into her core and out into the galaxy. He filled her as they burst together, points of light streaming, fusing and branding them, reaching out into the heavens, creating a miracle, a mosaic of the love she no longer gave with reservation, the emergence of existence.

Read Here

Artwork By: @ms31x129

Special thanks to the following people:

@today-in-fic @wholeperson @season4mulder @peacenik0 @piper-scully @babygirlmulder1018 @patienceaintmystrongsuit @brownppr @lappina @amyg2430 @whyle23 @borogirl @kyouryokusenshi @rasta77 @schnabbaknabba @skullsmuldon @milkaforyou-blog @manila @aiko222love-blog @destinystarlit @queen-lesley @faithfirst2016 @lildd68 @writerofarticulate @itsrainingsleepingbags @edierone @annafx81 @ofmulder @kblackm @starbuck1013 @nigel5603 @baronessblixen

[greyempress-blog]

night calendar / lelouch x c.c.

Disclaimer: I wanted to start this off with my ultimate ship of the series and ship in general, Lelouch x C.C. and how it’s likely they shared a bed via C.C. hogging it all the way till the end and their progression as accomplices, to something far more intrinsic than can be put into words! I really hope you enjoy it. It’s my first Geass fic and I hope to write many more. Title: ‘Night Calendar’. Characters: Lelouch vi Britannia/Lelouch Lamperouge, C.C./C2. Summary: Lelouch and C.C. sleeping over the course of the series and the quiet moments in between. Pairing: Lelouch x C.C. 

The first nap isn’t really a nap, per say. It’s more a strange girl in his bed; kicking him onto the floor. He’d like to say he won, prideful as he is. But he didn’t. 

He wouldn’t dare share his bed with her it wasn’t appropriate and he hardly needed Nunnally to find out somehow. Particularly by the issue at hand, that annoyance. But he gradually accepts the guest room and locks her door. Triumph in small doses is triumph nonetheless.

( He tries to pretend it doesn’t infuriate him when she easily lock-picks it, with a cheshire grin and her odd sunlit eyes slanting in challenge come morning light.)

Lelouch laments his fate with a woman who could scarcely be called one, after all, that’s how they’ll always be. Nothing about the room or her nor him, if he had a say, would change. His room.

The first time he falls into bed with her he can’t quite recall, but it didn’t have significance. She distanced herself in her sleep, the way a cat curls into a snake, anything but a girl. That’s the gist of it isn’t it?

She isn’t a girl. She’s a Witch. She’s an immortal, cold, blank-faced woman with a few choice words he won’t utter that uses his money and his clothes.

Appears where she isn’t told and challenges everything about his perfectly built ideology that leaves him both seething and seeking to prove her wrong. Lelouch of course, moved as far away from her as he could, but it seemed her more than generous strands of green hair laced with his back, getting caught there.

“That hurts boy, “ She drawled then, and it stings like vinegar on his tongue. “As if a woman being shot could really claim that hurts.”

Silence, and he’s satisfied that their rapport has him winning and he hates to admit it, for once.

Until –

“You have a ways to go before you decide what hurts.” And he’s defeated again.

“Be glad, Lelouch. Our Contract is over.”

He’d been thinking she’s beyond cold but cruel, then. She has a capacity to be anything on a whimsy, as if the word suited her nature but there’s something off about her smile when she left the building the Witch used in cold separation on a single bed in his room.

There’s no remorse spouting anger at her lies on the steps;  at her hesitance to reveal the full scale of the Contract and he thinks those things, coward, heartless woman, heartless thing, Witch, Witch, WITCH – but her smile gives a brief pause. 

There’s a momentary flicker of something and it doesn’t mean anything, obviously, but he hasn’t lost to her. He’s right. He’s right and C – that Witch isn’t even human. There’s nothing consistent to tie them together. There’s no reason for him to need her other than a pawn, an item, nothing more. After all isn’t Mao the perfect example of her character?

(As if you cared when you stained your hands, traitorous, traitorous mind.)

Nothing but a manipulator toying with lives, and something in him whispers that he’s different, he’s different and yet he activates the gift she gave him and is greeted with her slowly retreating back and he curses.

“C.C.”

He doesn’t know why he says her name after that odd intermingling of hands, that strange contract where C.C. didn’t seem heartless but desperate, and he dismisses the thought, dismisses anything about such a woman because it’s fruitless and it’s not as if she’s worried he’ll become like Mao.

They enter the helicopter in relative silence; she twirls a strand of hair that always gets tangled in the bed, and has the other hand loose, empty. Something about it strikes him as lonely but he dismisses it, he always does.

He dismisses that C.C. maybe has had hands empty to hold for a long time, not just of people but of anything, and maybe the person who begged for her former partner’s life did only what she knew how to do in helplessness .

They go to his residence late, his, mind you, the lights flickering bright and Sayoko arching a brow at her bloodied apparel, but ever sworn to silence she says nothing.

There is nothing, and yet something, something in C.C. that’s significantly different; like her hesitantly growing smile that bloomed as humane as anyone else’s when he promised her he’d be different.

Like how in the bed her body subtly curls into itself for protection with her hand around a regenerated arm that had the bullets of ‘love’ imprinted on her skin.

Like how he says to her in silence her name perhaps more seriously than he ever has.

“C.C.”

Silence.

“I meant that.”

Silence reigns.

“Did you?”

Soft breaths, peaceful breaths. She’s asleep, and her mouth is almost benignly curved. A loud, intentional sigh of resignation. ‘Impossible woman’, Lelouch thinks but for once he feels no malice, perhaps he’s fated to be at her whims.

He isn’t awake to hear her, eyes wide open the entire one-sided exchange, murmur softly, voice revealing nothing but a quiet resolution that she forgot she had in the depth of her dead heart.

“I did.”

“Lelouch.”

He’s pathetic isn’t he? Prideful as he is, her oddly soft voice holds nothing but a quiet ‘something’ as Lelouch has come to call C.C.’s mannerisms. The blood won’t come off. His first love’s blood won’t come off and he sees pink and pink and pink and grief in her red-glazed eyes and ‘I’m sorry’ will never be enough. 

Lelouch will never be where Euphie is laughing freely of pain.

He’ll be in hell; he killed her after all.

“The blood won’t go away despite you washing. You know that. It’s mine, as well, for not monitoring your Geass better.”

She continues, but it feels like dull noise. Dull noise as his swollen hands are taken in hers and guided to the bed, dull noise as his head hits the pillow, eyes swollen with tears and stifled sobs as not to awaken his sibling who he can barely face. After all he killed their sister. He’s no right to tears.

“You don’t have to bear it by yourself. Didn’t we make a promise?” Her voice is softer than it ought to be, too close and her hands so white, pristine, unblemished as the snow that lay in metaphors.

When his head finds itself against her chest, her chin tucked over his own, Lelouch scoffs through a muffled noise some incoherent crack in his code of how he behaves with her, with – C.C. - . 

How she touches his hair like a child, how oddly, there’s nothing perverse about this he thinks, just something that seems different in her, or was it him?  He’s too tired. He’s too tired. He’s been tired for a long time and her voice breaks the silence, firm and quiet, strong when nothing is strong:

“I will be the one to stay beside you until the very end.”

“You said that before. You’re so strange. You comforting me, it’s..bizarre it’s..” 

He murmurs, grief-stricken and weary; tears clinging to his lashes and her chest is warm, heartbeat singing a consistent, constant thud (was it always that way?) not like how Euphie’s no longer is.

(This time she doesn’t laugh mockingly at him. There’s something disturbing in the softness of eyes he’s so used to not understanding, and he cannot look for long, no, not too long. )

“Sleep, Lelouch.” She murmurs into his hair, tears soaking into her (his) shirt, and for the first time his mind wearily registers the most bizarre thing in the world: that he was falling asleep in not his bed – but theirs; and he has no idea how to feel about that. “Sleep and let me carry the blood until you awake.”

His hands subconsciously held her arms the entire night, the warm skin of her cheek against his brow. It’s warm, not like Euphie’s blood, but like C.C.

When he returns, bitter, vengeful as ever against his Father, the damned Empire, she’s there in the bed, a bed he’s begrudgingly accepted as hers as well. How unlike him, and her smile is as cat-like as ever. A smile not expecting to slip when the lights turn off and they sleep back to back, his voice soft and quiet, wondering something he didn’t want to dwell on.

“…What happened at the Island?”

There’s an intake of breath, something he hasn’t been used to seeing from her, and the Witch, -C.C.- is silent. 

“C.C., what happened on that island when you faced Orange.” 

Did he detect an uneven breath for a millisecond?

“I died.” 

Silence, and somehow this time it hits him in a way it never had before. Her deaths always startled him but they never seemed permanent. But the way she speaks it wasn’t a quick death, nothing merciful about it, nothing that she wants to tell and Lelouch touches her tense shoulder, unaware he had taken in an inhale of his own breathing.

“…was it painful?”

Bitter, quiet chuckles are his response.

“Rather than ask me how painful it was, I deserve a thank-you and an ample supply of pizza tomorrow to celebrate my plan on your retrieval.” Evasive, he thinks, and when was it he began to understand parts of C.C.? No, not just that, when had he wanted to?

“I’m glad.” He says bluntly – enough for her to cant her head just barely from what he can see of the soft outlining of her lime green hair. 

“Glad? You, the most disrespectful man alive, glad? “ She scoffs into the pillow but there’s questioning in her tone. 

A smirk.

“Aren’t we accomplices? I’d be somewhat at a disadvantage if you weren’t orchestrating for my inevitable return, C.C.” He drawls, and her face turns to him, deadpan, quiet, the horror of her own perhaps first-of-its-kind type of death has left her eyes -- good.

“It was boring without you.” 

With that she flings her arm over his face and goes back to sleep.

When was it that he was terrified of losing this woman? Pompous, arrogant, lofty and distant, cold and warm, soft and hard. Protective as a lion yet eyes holding secrets of eras past? Who carried herself in a way that commanded no quarter, nothing but the highest respect? 

Who could match him wit for wit, ploy for ploy? Who perhaps, in all the world, no one understood him like she did? No one would protect him, no one would see him at his root because no one could get past the first brambling patch of roses.

As she plummets from that golden, unnatural sky, he thinks of her wish, her true wish, and it all makes sense. The somewhat lonely eyes at times, the more soft she became around Nunnally, himself, the human emotions slowly unveiled…the closer she became, the nearer he could touch her, the more he saw that wish. 

It was a simple wish, really, painfully boring to some – but not to C.C. Not to him, who knew her arguably more than anyone left alive and perhaps, ever, if he wanted to be arrogant. Oh, and he was.

He thinks no matter what happens he’d like to fulfill it. That wish of a girl resurfacing, longing to smile. Longing to know the taste of the word that started with ‘L’ . 

Damned if he knew anything of it, damned if he even knew if he loved her, but his chest is sick and his stomach in flops as he steadies her form – thankful not to lose her, after all, she can’t leave him, she’s C.C – outside the thought elevator.

She’s C.C. She’s C.C.

Yet as she wakes, her wide, unnaturally frightened eyes on his face, voice higher in pitch, words a static sound he cannot compute, as his heart has stopped surely, Lelouch loses a person he thinks he’d never lose.

She speaks but whoever it was that was her is already gone.

For a long time she does not sleep in their bed,  until confronting his Mother and Father only then does she return. She slides in the sheets, a leg intermingles with his to earn a squawk from him in jest; and a hand seeks his in the dark as they silently make their decision. God has died, and the world must move forward, and Lelouch has made his promises.

But as her eyes meet his, facing him, not back turned, ( not anymore ) he wonders what he will do about hers.

She isn’t used to being a literal if not faux Empress. To him she was far more one than any royal in his damned family aside from Nunnally and Euphie; and as they slumber in the large, too large bed within a world literally in the palm of his hand, he wonders how to make that promise come true. 

He’s made his peace – or so he wants to think. But his mind drifts to her. Perhaps he does love her. But to love her now would be cruel, so he tucks it away, far away, pathetic, and fingers a lock of her hair.

Her stirring eyes, C.C.’s lovely face, quite human, and almost girlish, on his own. The ultimate ploy of all, the Witch herself. A human being perhaps more human than most monsters wearing human faces, and now their time is at an end; yet here she remained, faithfully, singularly, all alone, beside him. 

All had left but her. Even now she guarded him, bore pains and woes. Even now she admonished him, no crown changed her sharp tongue, and only her soft voice and her fingers tweaking his nose has him out of a bitter reverie. 

Yes, bitter, sweet and bitter.

“Don’t.”

 She says lightly, smiling faintly, something she never did at the beginning, but at the end she offers him an assuring, oddly unselfish smile. She was sacrificing her wish for his own grand plan, wasn’t she? 

Stupid witch! Of all the times to pull this. . . !

In fact many times she’d come across as a contradiction – selfish in one breath, horribly so, but at times also unselfish and even kind. Why did it take the end of one’s life to realize such things?

How long had it taken him to stop ignoring that C.C. was the beautiful snow he claimed?

There’s a firmness to her voice as he drifts in thought again, squeezing his hand so tight it stings.

“Don’t, pity me Lelouch. Not you.”

He feels remorse and grief in his gut for the way she doesn’t even scold him, only smiles this utterly sad smile that makes his tongue ash.

She truly was unselfish at tim---

“…You’re going to fulfill my promise.”

Never mind.

Her voice doesn’t crack, and her head doesn’t leave where it suddenly was beneath his chin, his fingers idly playing with her hair. 

“If wishes truly are Geass, then I’ve been astray for centuries. I think a Witch has the right to bet on that Geass as well. “

He looks at her dryly if only to ignore the stab to his heart. What can he possibly offer the one person who stood by him and supported and knew him through everything? Who could never just be a ‘witch’ ever again? Who even as he was going to die the next morning, has a smile on her face and a place in his mind that Nunnally and Suzaku have already left, his resolution made with all but her? Even now she stubbornly needles her way into his mind when everyone else has left it.

Why, he thinks in bitter frustration, is it C.C. that he cannot let go of in his mind? Coward, he thinks in misery, that he cannot fulfill the wish to a woman he never imagined would give him so much. Who had unfolded before his eyes from a thing, to a witch, to a woman who had the softness of words they had no need to say? Not in their own little private world where no one else was privy?

“…I bet that you’ll fulfill your promise. So isn’t it alright for me to gamble as well? On the wish called ‘Geass’. Or should I wander forever? Or should I – “ 

Lelouch isn’t adept at romance, would laugh at anyone calling him anything flirtatious, but his chin rests on her head and he cuts her off quickly with an oddly dry throat: “Yes, I suppose that’d be alright.”

“So no goodbyes?” Her voice is controlled, no tears, nothing, she wasn’t really like anyone else ��� she was C.C. after all.

Again, a dry, pained swallow – and he wants to believe that he is not lying when he speaks, not to her, anyone but her. The one miracle he so badly wants to make come true. How idealistic, she’d say.

“I don’t have a choice, do I, you witch. So no goodbyes.”

“Lelouch?”

“C.C.?”

“You did well.”

It rings so miserable and yet stinging sweet in his chest he can barely breathe. Maybe all he’d ever wanted, was to stand at her side as an equal, that ever distant woman that time could not control, that the laws of man could not rule. Now he was, and this was the last night in their bed.

And yet she speaks, even now, without resentment?

C.C. rests against his chest free of the ‘suffocating ridiculous royal attire’ and murmurs softly, “You can make miracles happen, only you. So – I’m betting my Geass. On your miracle. Just for me.”

He doesn’t want to sleep. He doesn’t want to sleep. But his eyes are lidding, and C.C. is all that’s left to remain on a dying man’s mind. So he murmurs softly, in their bed, “I suppose I’ll make one for you.”

Of course I would, silly woman. After all this time…

But he falls asleep in a world he’s destroyed, wakes by a chapel to see her stoic face betraying none of her softness the night before, the ‘cold mask’ he thinks in the world hidden and always theirs, and faces his knight’s blade with the world birthing anew to his sister’s screams and riotous cheers.

As his eyes close he imagines green fields, like her hair, yes like her like --

--

C.C. after two years will sleep alone tonight.

If C.C. weeps it’s for no one to know. If C.C. is crushed is for no one to know, if C.C. loved Lelouch Lamperouge or Lelouch vi Britannia is for no one to know but her. 

She visits no corpse, hails no viewing, merely packs her bags and leaves as she requested of him. Hasty goodbyes for a none-too hasty bond.

Perhaps it was too painful, but that too, is for no one to know. Where C.C. goes is for no one to know. But she goes, nonetheless, until the sun passes over the driven cart and moonlight strides over the hay, fingering a single pink crane – betting on the wish that only one man could fulfill, one more time.

As many times as it takes, after all---

---- a promise is a promise, isn’t it?

[goonlalagoon]

Close the door (but don’t forget) || Wayward Children/Narnia

I read Seanan McGuire’s Every Heart a Doorway this morning and immediately had a deep need for Narnia cross-over fic, and figured I’d try writing something of my own before going in search of it!

(Read on Ao3)

When Susan Pevensie was in her teens (for the second time), her parents took her with them on a trip to America.

Her older brother was spending the break with the kindly old professor they had met and befriended as evacuees, where he was being coached through his revision and spending long evenings trading stories of the fantastical worlds they had travelled to as children. Her younger siblings had been condemned to a holiday with their prim and proper aunt and uncle, their horror of a cousin, where they were bored out of their minds until they were swept up in an adventure that took them back home, for a while at least.

Susan went to America, where she could be a polite society lady, because she was pretty and polite and already so grown up for her age, because she wasn't bright enough to merit the time of a professor to help her with her studies.

Once, Susan had been a queen - she had been the diplomat to her brother's general, the High King and High Queen of Narnia reading the same documents and navigating the same political minefields. She had been smart enough, there, but then she'd had tutors who didn't care that she was a girl, who taught her things she wanted to know not things she didn't care about, who taught her things that were about the mantle of responsibility settled over her shoulders.

She did well enough at school, back in England, but she was no academic and she found it hard to care about most of it. Her parents weren't too worried, because she had impeccable manners and the lightest touch with social engagements, a knack for soothing ruffled feathers, a way of speaking and smiling as though every person in the room was the single most important there. She had been taught that all, once upon a time, and she seethed when the boys at her brothers' school muttered about shallow girls. She hadn't seethed when Peter said something similar in one of their frequent arguments, just looked at him long and cold before asking mildly if he had a spare horse for her to ride, if he could take her to an archery range on a whim, or if he had managed to turn the Christmas row brewing at the table awry so that their mother didn't burst into tears over some hateful comment while she hid in the kitchen so as not to make a scene.

It was a while away yet, but her parents weren’t too worried about her future. They planned for her to find a nice husband with a stable income, but Susan wasn't sure she would be able to stand to be a wife not a consort, after a now lost adulthood spent weighing the needs of her country alongside her own.

She stepped out at the informal get togethers and scheduled parties with a perfect smile, nibbled daintily at the buffets and sat so that her skirts didn't wrinkle. She made friendly conversation and tried to ignore the bit of her mind that was noting it all down in Narnian shorthand, ready to pass to her spymaster younger brother to follow up on. She pretended, firmly, that she was just memorising things to write to her siblings about, to giggle over with them when she got home.

They stayed for a while with a friend of her father's, from the war, and she was halfway through another polite, meaningless enquiry when the girl before her in the horrifically clashing skirt and blouse cheerfully interrupted her to demand to know where she’d gone, what her real home was like.

Susan was deciphering this odd statement when their host sighed, and hissed an admonishment. 

"Eleanor!" Looking horribly embarrassed, the woman turned to the bemused Pevensies. "I'm sorry, my daughter has a somewhat...overactive imagination. She's asking about your favourite game of pretend."

Susan was already watching, with a touch of disbelief, for the hidden flinch so caught the secretive smile, and felt her heart quicken. Her parents were already laughing, and talking about the games she and her siblings were forever playing after the war. Her pulse was a roaring in her ears, because she knew the look in Eleanor West's eyes as well as the other girl could see into hers, because her own well meaning mother was saying "...some fantastical thing with talking animals and unicorns, where was it set darling?"

"Narnia," she murmured, voice perfectly light, inconsequential, "we called it Narnia." Her parents nodded, unconcerned, and they were all chuckling over the vivid imaginations of children and her pulse was screaming in her ears, and then the girl before her was looping and arm through hers and tugging her towards the door, asking permission to be excused so she could show Susan the grounds for a bit and leave the adults to it.

By unspoken agreement, as soon as they were safely out of sight they ran, feet pounding the grass and breath heaving. Susan was wearing a pretty dress, but like all her clothes it was cut to allow free movement, her shoes pretty and polished but flat and buckled, practical. 

(Many people had or would call Susan practical over her lifetime, and they were right - practicality was what she had had, a child stranded in a war, three siblings and a kingdom to protect, fur coats taken from a wardrobe that opened into a frozen world)

They ducked into a shadowed copse of trees, and Susan wasn't surprised to find a well worn patchwork picnic blanket tucked into a hollow. Eleanor unfolded it with a flourish and flopped down.

"Sorry," she said brightly, "but it looked like that was hurting you so I thought we should leave." Susan lowered herself to the blanket as well, trying to find her equilibrium again.

"Where - " her voice was a dry rasp, and she swallowed down the rest of the question, but the other girl beamed. 

"Oh, there's a door to a nonsense land in the grounds. I'd take you through but - I don't think you could." Susan closed her eyes, hope she hadn't meant to let herself feel dying before it had really begun. Of course she couldn't slip through a door again - she'd been told that the way home was closed to her, she knew, so why should any others be open? A hand found hers, squeezing gently. 

"Hey," said Ely, "hey, no, I don't mean - the doors only let certain people through, when it's the right way for them. To go to mine you have to, you have to be full of nonsense too, and I don't think that it's the same for yours? I don’t think that’s you, unless you’re really good at hiding it. But...I could show you my paintings, if you like?"

Susan took a shaky breath. She knew the fragility of that kind of memory, what it took to offer it up in good faith. She smiled. 

"I'd like that. I'm no good with a pencil or brush, but I remember a few Narnian poems and stories."

(Most days, she told herself she didn't - that these snippets were from half-forgotten old books, ones she'd found in the library at school or in the house they'd been sent to in the evacuation, but the look in Ely's eyes was like that in her reflection, in her siblings’ gazes, and that made it okay to offer up the memories in all their soap bubble fragility)

They became friends, to their parents’ collective slight confusion and genuine delight. Susan would write to Ely every other month for the rest of her life, a clockwork correspondence that didn't falter even as Susan started trying to forget. Ely was getting older, was learning that every time she slipped back through her portal it would be harder, clinging to the memories every time all the same.

She wrote Susan the day she returned to her parents house for the last time, tears staining the page and the whole envelope stuffed with remembered paintings and sketches. Susan had stopped writing about Narnia, about adventures and other worlds, months before, but she wrote back with calm assurances and warm, heartfelt sympathy, and nothing about stories and whimsy and how bright Ely's imagination was.

This was what Susan's siblings didn't have the time to learn to understand; forgetting Narnia wasn't the passage of time, some intrinsic drift from the surety they had once shared. It was a choice. It was a decision. It was a banished girl saying: fine, this is the world in which I must stay, so it is where I will live. Peter could still believe he would make it back, Edmund could cling to the promise of one day, they both could live with that hope and not suffocate under it because they were allowed to be leaders and soldiers or scholars or athletes, could shout and expect to be heard here. Lucy could do it because Lucy burned with it, because she walked in whimsy and made it an armour, a challenge, and Susan didn't know how to that for herself.

Susan had a desk job and a knack for writing personalised thank you notes. She had the memory of bowstrings and strands of a lion's mane tangled in her fingers, and she buried it away because she couldn't live on dreams. She had been told to walk away. She had been told that she wasn’t going to be allowed the choice of whether or not to stay.

The last time she spoke to her sister, one evening over the phone, Lucy mentioned something to do with Narnia. She asked if Su had felt the call, the need, the danger to their home - and Susan would never be quite sure if she had lied when she said no. She had felt the call ever since Caspian blew her horn to call them back, because it had never gone away. It had settled in her bones and marrow, a desperate scream for a place she could never reach. She had laughed about the games they had played and recited a bit of remembered poetry, about the sunlight on the waves at Cair Paravell, that had been one of Lucy's favourites.

She would recite it at the funeral, not long after. She would write them all out, every recollected scrap, and sent them to Ely for safekeeping, because she couldn't stand to remember but she couldn't stand to let it all go either.

She moved to America not long after, because England without her siblings felt hollow, and because Ely's parents had passed away too and there was comfort in sympathetic company. Ely had plans for her house and grounds, and Susan helped - well. Ely had dreams, more like, and Susan pinned them down into plans, paperwork, into a framework that could actually work. She taught reading and comprehension, officially, and unofficially mentored on manners and the art of being a hostess. One of their earliest wayward children had fingers that itched for a remembered bowstring, and when Susan picked up a bow for the first time since she'd stepped through a doorway back to a train platform she felt something in her heart break and settle.

They helped lost children, but Susan was watching more for the ones who were looking for a way to re-mould themselves and Ely was looking for the ones with hope, the ones who would die rather than forget. There were frequent conflicts, until Susan marched into their shared office one day after breaking up a particularly vicious fight to lay out a new plan.

They had savings, and more to the point Ely had inherited a second house, far enough away not to overlap but close enough. Susan would move there, and take the ones who needed to forget, to move on, or at least learn to pretend they had. Ely would keep the ones who needed to remember, even if they also had to learn to pretend they hadn't.

(Regularly, Susan would get students who demanded to know how exactly she thought she could help them when she was stuck running a school for the wayward. Sometimes she went cold and regal, othertimes she went soft with smiles, depending what they needed from her. She always told them the truth; because she knew what it was to want to forget but be unable to, and now that she could no longer stand to forget she could at least help others move on)

They wrote each other every other month, like clockwork. They couldn't meet often, with children in their care, but whenever they did they compared the signs of age. Ely was ageing slowly. Susan aged at a normal pace, but elegantly, soft graduations. She was thinking about possible replacements before Ely had even thought about acquiring spectacles.

When Susan eventually passed away, Ely would read Narnian poetry at her funeral, would tell a congregation who had for the most part never known them stories about the other Pevensie children, because this had been what scared Susan most - not that she would forget Narnia, but that she would forget her siblings, that she would remember only the parts of themselves they showed the rest of the world and not the parts that had mattered most.

Some time later, her own nephew would disappear and return in the space of a thunderclap, unchanged except for the ways he knew himself better, now, and would be sent to her by horrified parents with whom Ely would have many long, frustrating rows. Kade was still settling into his skin, stinging and smarting from being thrown out of Prism, from being sent away by his parents who couldn't see him as clearly as a goblin had as it died at the other end of his sword.

He was burying himself in books and stories, the records she’d made of all the world’s she’d heard of, so she gathered up a sheaf of papers covered in an elegant hand, stories of a world through the back of a wardrobe and songs to which Ely didn't know the tune. She knocked on his door and set her offering down next to him, safely away from the steaming cocoa by his other elbow, a fragile gift from one hand to another.

Years later, he would tell her that the Lord of the Dead said that even those who never found a door home found their way once they were nothing but spirit. He didn’t need to ask why her paintings that evening were of golden lions and sunlight on waves at the foot of a castle neither of them had ever seen.

[eleemosynecdoche]

One Thousand One Hundred Twenty-Six Words About Imperialism

. What is the nature of contemporary imperialism? For many leftists, especially ones in the Global North, the answers seem to be that imperialism is when the United States of America invades a country or sends military support to forces within a country. For another group of leftists, it’s when those things are done by any country, but America’s is the worst.

Is this a bad definition? Well, yes.

We can leave aside the arguments that recognition of imperialist behaviors by non-American powers only serves to strengthen American imperialism, because although that’s annoying from a historical and contemporary perspective, and itself morally horrific in many ways, I also am enough of a raging asshole to believe that anyone espousing it will never be convinced by anything to believe differently and so there is no point in talking about it. The real failure of the definition is that it treats imperialism solely as hard power. Thus, the extent to which the massive American cultural machine affects the rest of the world is irrelevant, the outflow of Coca-Cola and Hollywood movies and American fashion and American musical genres- all meaningless, all natural. Or if it is meaningful, it’s something that solely occurs because of implied threats, like an American libertarian’s understanding of society. Take away American guns and bombs and people will stop drinking American sodas as they watch American movies.

This extends to concepts like neoliberalism (sadly used primarily as an empty insult in 2017), where we can understand it naively as the threat and use of American guns forcing countries into IMF SAPs, or we can understand the softer aspects where people come to believe that deregulation is the path to prosperity.

However, this complicates anti-imperialism as a system of belief and practice. If someone is advocating the use of arms, there is a (possibly convoluted) justification for anything you might do to them, as a form of self-defense or defense on behalf of others. If, however, someone is merely buying Pepsi rather than an appropriately indigenous soda, slitting their throat is a cartoonish act of evil. You can denounce American cultural products as inherently ugly and awful, but that only prompts voluntarist, consumerist resistance (and most people doing the denouncing aren’t even doing it in a meaningful fashion, instead opening things up to individually being worthwhile exceptions to a vague general rule).

And there lies two reasons why this is complicated. First of all, it overlaps heavily with right-wing nationalist ideas of purity and securing an expulsion of toxic foreign influences (and even if you think that this is acceptable on the grounds that American culture is genuinely poisonous, consider what that means for minority and sub- cultures within countries that are enforcing monolithic notions of the pure culture). Secondly, it offers up a tangle of what is acceptable and what is not. Are Kurosawa Akira’s films based on Shakespeare intrinsically products of American cultural imperialism? How about the use of American Westerns as inspiration around the globe? Is liberal democracy inherently imperialistic for anyone but white people to practice? Should it be a crime to import a car, or to drive a car made by a foreign-owned company?

I am placing these in order of increasing ridiculousness as seen by likely readers. Most importantly, I am escalating things towards policies of total economic and cultural autarky as the only means to resist imperialism, because autarky, apart from the moral objections we might make as to its costs, has generally been a complete failure every time it’s been tried at doing anything beyond grinding out impoverished subsistence. In a historical analysis, some degree of trade, of interaction, seems to be necessary for prosperity.

It is possible to reject all of this, and to conclude that only hard power is really imperialist. We could conclude that the steady march of American fast-food chains is not imperialist, that the unceasing flow of American movies and television doesn’t have any effects on other countries and their cultural production. Probably most people who would conclude this are people who live in wealthy countries and especially in the USA, where they can pretend it’s true. Certainly, people from the Global South are generally far more perceptive of soft power at work.

But if we don’t reject this, we face a very sobering problem- while soft power is not totally unconscious, a substantial part of it is. That is, how are we to annihilate English as an international lingua franca, even in hypothetical situations of leftist governments in power in all the Anglo nations? I can think of several possibilities, but most of them, again, fall into cartoonish evils no person actually wants or would even think of. But English’s status as a lingua franca certainly puts pressure on languages worldwide, even if it’s not the key factor pushing them towards extinction. And this can extended to a lot of other aspects of soft power- while we could suppress the American movie industry and reduce it to the relative proportion of the economy of, say, the Ghanaian movie industry, or we could strictly limit the exportation of movies from the United States, as Americans, the actual cost of doing so is something most people, even the ones who brag most about hating Americans, would probably shudder at.

That is, American hegemony didn’t just emerge from a bunch of people getting together in a room and saying “let’s be hegemons” (nor, let us be clear, did it emerge completely without consciousness). A substantial proportion of it is due to unconscious factors (such as the cultural ferment produced by resistance to white supremacism/WASP domination, the relative prosperity of the USA among Anglo-European states leading to massive leisure industries, the Second World War, etc. etc.) and dealing with these and their consequences without unleashing apocalyptic violence that would contradict all but the most absurd kinds of leftism is possibly an unanswerable question.

But perhaps we can sidestep it and answer that although the line between imperial and egalitarian cultural interactions is often difficult to find, we can still work against clearly imperial interactions. And indeed, if we adopt a willingness to work with protectionist policies from the Global South here in the Global North and extend it to encouraging capital-intensive cultural production such as moviemaking, we can perhaps cut away a substantial proportion of cultural imperialism. And in turn we can envision the deployment of wealth and power from the rich countries to promote multilingualism and normalizing speaking multiple languages as part of daily life, to counter the assailment of languages around the world.

I mean, or we can indulge in some blood-spattered feast of annihilating violence against American cultural products globally. A bonfire of the General Tso’s Chickens, as it were. Your choice.

[kumulonimbus]

Shoes.

When the Sparrow told him he was leaving, he chose not to believe it. Even when the version of Genji they knew was nothing but the shadow of the jovial and carefree boy he had once been, Reyes still knew better than to trust that frowny face of his, forever hidden behind multiple layers of metal.

But when the hours began to run and turn into days; when those days turned into weeks, the truth rushed its way back at him, charging at him with the violence of everything that’s final: Genji wouldn’t be coming back to Blackwatch – at least, not in the foreseeable future, the only kind of future they knew.

Genji was gone.

The memories found him rather quickly – every sour comment, every long stare, every silence filled with oppression and hatred… They boy had been leaving red signs all over the place for only God knows how long. It wasn’t that hard to understand what was bothering him: now that they had put an end to the Shimada clan, the Sparrow was beginning to feel the evident lack of a clear goal – ever since the incident with his older brother, ever since waking up to find himself in a body he couldn’t recognize anymore, destroying the clan or what was left of it had been his number one priority; his only priority. But now, empty and deprived of a clear destination, the younger Shimada seemed powerless when faced by the tremulous reality of a life that wasn’t his and a weaponized body he still rejected.

As Reyes tapped his fingers on the desk, he recounted every sign on his head – it all seemed way too evident now, yet deep down, he couldn’t quite understand why Genji’s sudden departure was affecting him so badly.

It hadn’t been sudden, he knew. The younger Shimada had been chewing on that decision for quite some time now yet the feeling stayed there, just as if it belonged in him; the surprising reality of knowing his team was now a member short – but Genji wasn’t just a member, it had never been about a member.

He was a soldier, after all. He knew damn well what it felt like to lose a teammate. This feeling, stinging and unprecedented, was something else entirely.

Maybe it was the unstoppable aging, or the fact that he had always been too absorbed in his work to even consider the chance of having a social life. Settling down had never been a real option for him – children were a distant dream that could never come true.

Yet those two wild boys had filled the void inside.

The troubled cowboy and the broken ninja, each in their own way, had become the sons he could never have.

When his eyes widened in surprise he felt ashamed of himself – a man so tough, a leader, tangled in the seemingly affectionate mazes of the heart… he cursed himself under his breath, feeling like a complete idiot: those two ingrates were never going to see him as a father, no matter how hard he tried. The worst part was that he couldn’t even blame them: one of them had been exposing signs of discontent all over the place and he hadn’t been able to do anything – anything at all to help him feel better.

Even if McCree had never been graced by the warm embrace of a loving, nurturing paternal figure, Genji knew what it was like to have a real father.

Leader of a criminal empire or not, truth was that Sojiro was a giant ghost that would forever be hovering over his little boy. They would have never even dared to attack his favorite son if only he had been around to protect him – because that’s exactly what a true father does: he protects, he shelters...

He stood up, resolute, and walked up to the door. He knew he could not fill such big shoes, those of a true father – he had even heard that the job of a father was relentless, and most of the times, paid with bitter currencies such as ingratitude and thoughtlessness. Still he felt compelled to give it a try to at least save himself the pain of a second departure: a second departure that was surely going to shatter the second half of his already damaged heart.

He didn’t have to venture the corridor to find him: the cowboy was walking back to his room, hat on and everything, singing the same old tune he would always sing.

“McCree,” Reyes began, his usually stern tone making it clear for the young cowboy that he wasn’t joking, “Report to my office immediately.”

Jesse stopped and turned around, a concerned look was written all over his otherwise unpreoccupied visage. With a slow cadence to his steps he finally obliged, knowing too well what could come from crossing Reyes.

Both men entered the office in silence, each one taking a seat in a matter of seconds, leaving the old and battered wooden desk as the only frontier separating them.

Visibly aiming for self-preservation, McCree raised both hands in a defensive stance:

“It wasn’t me.” He said.

Reyes tilted his head to the side, confused.

“Whatever you think I did… I can assure you, sir, I didn’t do it.” The young cowboy went on. “I swear whatever happened, it wasn’t me.”

It was hard for the Blackwatch leader to even try to contain his laughter: he knew the cowboy like the back of his own hand and even if he had no idea what had happened, one thing was for sure: McCree was always involved. Reyes fidgeted in his chair, trying to hide his sudden nervousness – it wouldn’t be easy for a man like him to try and open up.

“Do you know why you’re still here, Jesse?”

It was bewildering for the young cowboy to hear his own name exiting his boss’ lips. Usually it was pendejo, or simply McCree. But there were times when it was asshole, freeloader, good for nothing and there had even been one time, when he was called a pile of shit.

“Because I was a criminal, and you made me choose between prison and this.” This wasn’t really that different from prison, he had learnt that the hard way.

“And how long do you think you should stay here?” Reyes asked, a curious eyebrow arching upwards, “According to you – do you think you’ve earned your freedom?”

The question left him breathless.

It wasn’t unusual for the Commander to be so blunt, but soon McCree found himself realizing that the answer he was looking for was not an easy one. He was a reformed criminal now, or so they said. The man sitting right in front of him had sheltered him during the turbulent transition from rascal to… to what exactly?

They weren’t heroes.

Overwatch was made of heroes. Real heroes. Blackwatch was composed by a colorful, diversified collection of murderers – not much had changed then, McCree pondered bitterly. His debt to society had not been paid in the slightest: no matter if he was just following orders and actively contributing to the noble the cause of saving the world, his hands were still soaked in blood.

He looked down briefly, as if ashamed. When his eyes found his old Deadlock Gang tattoo he was left with no other choice but to accept the fact that the mark of his past was a stigma that would accompany him for as long as he lived. It would define him, time and again, every time the question would reach him: do you think you’ve earned your freedom, Jesse?

The cowboy crossed and uncrossed his legs like a nervous child about to be scolded. Why was Reyes asking him that now? What was he trying to do? Even if the man had found out about the previous night with Angela… no, that couldn’t be it. Reyes was familiar with their games – he knew both Jesse and Genji would always try to flirt with the good doctor, but it was just a game, nothing too serious…

Even the doctor knew it was just an innocent game they would play from time to time – she would hesitate, even, playing her role: some days she would pick the cowboy, some days she would choose the ninja… and even now that Genji was gone, the woman would act as if the youngest Shimada was still around, making it harder for the cowboy every day.

Now that Genji was gone…

It couldn’t be a coincidence, McCree considered.

Reyes was talking about his freedom right after Genji’s departure. No. It simply could not be a coincidence.

“I think I have,” the young cowboy finally said, even if he was being insincere.

Reyes nodded rather pensively, bringing his hands together.

“Very well, then…” He paused, looking for the right words to say. He knew the words wouldn’t come easily; not now that Jesse was beginning to embrace his freedom – still it was hard to let him go. He had already watched Genji disappear from his life, and even when he knew he was not their father, it was intrinsically hard not to try to walk in those shoes: he had been there for them, after all, protecting them from themselves – rescuing them from delinquency and even helping them escape the private hells they were living in.

But it hadn’t been enough.

“You’re free to go, then.” He said simply, confining the heartfelt words he could not say to the most recondite place of his wounded soul.

McCree tipped his hat at him, like every time his Commander would dismiss him after a meeting. Then he stood up, surprise still written all over his face – “You mean, I can go to my room now?”

Reyes breathed out loudly – a sound placed somewhere in between annoyance and exhaustion.

“No, Jesse. You are free to leave.”

There, he had said it. He had finally let go from them both.

But the cowboy simply smiled at him, and shook his head in silence.

“Now that Genji’s gone… it would be unfair for Ana to have to listen to your horrible jokes all by herself. Thanks for the offer, but I could never do that to her – it takes at least two people to put up with someone like you, chief.”

As the cowboy leaned his back on the doorframe, he couldn’t help but notice the shy smile quickly taking over Reyes’ face – he crossed his arms over his chest and tipped his hat once more.

“See you ‘round, boss.”

So, this idea came out of nowhere and refused to let me be until I wrote this one-shot. I read many fics that revolve around Jesse’s departure when the war between Blackwatch and Overwatch became something real, but I thought there must have been another moment when the cowboy chose to stay – they couldn’t just force him to stay with them forever after all.

Ironically enough, in this one-shot Reyes is deeply moved by Genji’s departure – what he doesn’t know is that the ninja, far from losing himself again, is on his way to find peace and acceptance, nothing more, nothing less. But the “son” that chooses to stay by his side, the one who cares enough for him as to deny his own freedom, is the one that’s gonna forsake him in the end, when he’s going to need him the most. Wicked…

[nopomegranets]

hey, um

i wrote this to myself earlier because i was getting very stuck in a doom-and-gloom situation revolving around Bo Burnham's Inside. writing all of this out helped me relax and reminded me of nice things.

the following is for anyone whose been a little bit Too affected by the special existentially. specifically anyone whose fallen down a scary everything-is-horrible way of thinking that's been brought out by a few songs and Bo Beardman.

i wrote this in two parts. in the first part i let myself say whatever awful shit came to my mind, and i let the hurt and bruised part of me yell and rant (because she really needed to)

in the second, i tried addressing those concerns and speaking to myself directly, to help gain some perspective and offer a bit of kindness (internally).

this feels weird to post but this is a fake account so i can do whatever i want. i hope this helps someone else.

The Sad Part:

I cannot stop thinking about the fucking special. I don’t know if I made this like, awful choice by deciding to watch it or what. Because it so perfectly lays out exactly how I feel about the internet, how its really unhealthy for all of us to be surrounded by human suffering constantly, be told what to think and how to act, dress, etc. Like we all KNOW that we’re being told this, but to have him say it, to have him confirm it in this way that doesn’t feel pander-y or false is…

It’s really fucking confronting.

The puppet song, fucking Funny Feeling - these songs tap very deeply into a sad and disturbed part of my mind that truly hates this world with everything I have in me.

I hate the society we’ve created and I fight like hell every day to not hate the people. And I scour the tumblr tags and reddit comments to find someone who doesn’t just feel the same way I do (as it turns out, that’s a lot - or Bo’s songs wouldn’t resonate so deeply with everyone.) but who has advice, who has words for me, hope, something - anything.

And I cannot fucking find it! We’re all just soaking in how bad everything is and its like the goddamn man of the people whose whole platform is self awareness on a dizzying level that makes you feel self conscious to criticize him or criticize his work (I don’t really want to criticize it, I just wish I had the option). He seems like a good person and he doesn’t SEEM like an asshole whose whole purpose is feeling like he’s figured everything out and everyone else just needs to catch up but that’s how I FEEL so can I be mad at him for it??? No!! I don’t know!! He’s unstoppable, like a fucking god, because you find yourself shaking your head at every single positive or negative comment about him, it’s stupid, it’s dumb, but I don’t actually know if HE’S created this, or if his fanbase has. Maybe its some of both. But I think that’s what causes me to fall down this hole because there is no out there is no alternative there is no out there is no alternative there is no out there is no alternative.

I want to love this world but I can’t. Because Bojangles is fucking right he’s right about everything he has taken exactly how I feel and how i view the world and he’s put it into words and he’s shown it to me and he’s shoved it in my face and he says how do you feel about this being your worldview? Do you feel enlightened? Do you feel lucky? Do you wish you could scrub your mind clean and live in a world of lies and deceit? I do not fucking know, Mister Burnham. I do know that I hate it and I want it to stop.

I hate it and I want it to stop. I hate it and I want it to stop. I hate it and I want it to stop.

THE WORLD IS SHIT AND ITS NOT SHIT IN AN EDGY OR COOL WAY ITS SHIT IN THIS WAY THAT GENUINELY MAKES ME FEEL SICK TO MY STOMACH AND I HAVE BEEN HURT SO MANY TIMES AND I KNOW SO MANY PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN HURT SO MANY TIMES AND HOW DO I GET AWAY FROM IT??? HOW DO I ESCAPE??? HOW DO I FEEL OKAY???

I think the key to life is putting your head down and loving those you can.

I fucking hate to say it, it makes me feel powerless and hopeless, but there is no stopping this goddamn machine from chewing us all up and spitting us all out and killing us again and again and again and again. There is no escape!! There’s no bloody escape!!! I am aware of all the evil in the world, all at the same time, and I have no power to stop it. This world is truly hellish. Just how do I fucking deal, though.

Bo Burnham fucking ripped me open man, I can’t close myself back up.

....

The Nice Part:

There are good things in the world.

It’s not all bad. I know it seems hopeless and horrible, but you cannot let yourself fall down this path because it will really hurt you. I know it seems hard, and counterintuitive, and lazy, and useless, and cowardly, but there is literally nothing you can do about it. Think of it as living in an evil empire. It’s confusing, because you’re told by everyone everywhere that this empire is not evil. That people are doing fine, that they’re happier than you, that this world has given them amazing things. But it is evil. Just never forget that one part.

You know what isn’t evil? Nature. Nature is not evil. It isn’t benevolent or cruel, it just is. It has beauty and chaos and so much to offer, but it just keeps going. Birds fly and squirrels run and animals are for the most part incapable of becoming sociopaths. Think about dogs. Dogs love to lick their owners faces, and get pets, and they will help people when they’re sad.

Cats too. Birds, fucking rats even.

Pets, that’s a good thing. That’s something not really tainted.

You hear an ambulance go by right now? Think about emergency services. They exist to preserve the lives of other people (we will be excluding cops from this exercise). People sign up to save others from burning buildings and from disease, and they live their lives helping. Helping, helping, helping. This exists to preserve lives.

Think of how much cheaper it would be to not have hospitals and emergency services. Think of that. But we insist on them, because humankind is about co-operation. And that’s why we’re all so miserable in this world!!

Think about that too. If people really were intrinsically evil, then they would not be appalled by things. They would not be commenting “This is exactly how I feel” on the Funny Feeling YouTube videos. They would not care that it was hellish.

He was feeding the ducks because he was feeding the ducks because he was feeding the ducks.

There are so many good people in the world. Think of that lady who devoted her life to helping AIDS victims. Think of fuckin, Ms. Neilson. Your English teacher who wrote you a note when you were going through tough times and she got you a cookie from the caf and left it on your desk. What did she have to gain from that?

It is bad. I never want you to forget that. It IS bad. It shouldn’t be happening, it is unfair, it is cruel. Everything is tangled together and everything is burning but remember that there are people who are willing to push head on to make someone’s day better or to save a life. Remember that laughter exists, that we smile for evolutionary reasons. The key is people, not systems. People. Individuals. We as a collective are scared, and easily swayed, and make bad decisions. Those in power have no souls or life in them. Anyone who profits from human suffering is unconscionably hated by billions.

Stuffed animal hospitals. People who (oftentimes for no profit) will fix up a stuffed animal that was loved by someone else. They will spend their time, money, resources, and energy on doing something that does not have any other purpose than making another person feel better. They will fix up a little toy they have no attachment to themselves, because they want to make someone else feel better.

Dude, that’s amazing. That’s fucking amazing and you know it.

Don’t let the Bezos and the Gates and the pedophilic empire sway you away from the fact that there are good people in the world. Bad and amoral people RUN the world, because we’re a young race and we have some things to work out - but there are still really good people!

The Internet is good only in small doses. Stay away from Twitter and TikTok. Don’t allow yourself to consume so many video essays that you start criticizing anything you see. Just fulfil, enjoy, do what makes you smile or what makes those gears turn. Stop doom scrolling and hate-searching. It will do you no good. It will make you a defeatist. You may not be able to save the world but you can save yourself. And you can make the lives of the people around you (however short they may be) better in the time we have. Bo Burnham says things that you agree with, but he is not God. He speaks to the part of you that is hurt and worried, but do not let that be the only piece spoken to. You are still trying to heal from childhood, love. Let yourself relax. Let yourself feel. It will all be okay in the end.

[steliosagapitos]

    Cathy McClelland 

Australian Painter

    Cathy McClelland is a contemporary realist, wildlife and landscape Australian artist, working in acrylic, oils and mixed media.

A member of the prestigious International Guild of Realism, Australian Guild of Realist Artists, Wildlife Art Society of Australasia and Queensland Wildlife Artist Society Inc. and is a globally collected painter with work in private and corporate collections Australia wide and worldwide.

     Cathy’s goal is to capture that fleeting moment in time that causes us to stop and pause from our busy day to appreciate nature and God’s beauty around us.

The paintings of Cathy McClelland show her love of the landscapes that surround her, she is a fifth generation cattle farmer at Bell where her pretty farm is snuggled into the foothills of the Bunya Mountains National Park and surrounded by beautiful views. It is here with her husband Wayne they raised four wonderful children, multitudes of animals, and have happy contented cattle grazing throughout their pastures. Cathy loves family, animals, photography and travelling.  

Owning a cattle farm in the Western Downs, Queensland and being surrounded with big skies, wide open spaces and beautiful panoramic views, Cathy is passionate about country life and all things rural. Horses, dogs, old sheds, family farms and people are some of the subjects in her western paintings.

Being outdoors is her favourite place, it motivates her and is the source for studio work, the challenge is to capture that magic moment in time that caused her to go 'Wow look at that!' To capture the light that is flitting across the landscape or the birds that are singing around her, whether she's in a tangled rainforest or out in the wide open spaces of the Australian outback, the challenge is to paint what she's seeing and feeling at that present moment. Cathy is generationally tied to the local landscape as her ancestors were loggers and bullock team drovers on the Bunya Mountains cutting down the rain forest for their survival, and now she paints the wildlife and landscapes to help protect and bring awareness to them worldwide. Here you can journey with her as she hikes with her brushes through this beautiful national park discovering never ending vistas, secluded corners, trickling streams and tumbling waterfalls.  

The Tapdancer paintings have proven to be very popular with Cathy's collectors and this idea was birthed after a long morning mustering in the hot summer sun, Cathy and her family were resting in the cool shade of an old tank stand, having lunch and watching a little Blue Wren playing around an old tap, her youngest daughter said, 'look Mummy he's a Tapdancer' and as they say the rest is history!

A new chapter in her life has started as Cathy and Wayne moved to the beautiful garden city of Toowoomba, she is enjoying hiking with her camera and painting en plein-air, discovering historical quaint cottages, tree shrouded streets, hidden rainforest gullies and magnificent panoramic views. These historical buildings invite us to enter into the world of earlier Australians. We stand where others stood. We see their homes, their gardens, their workplaces, some restored to their former glory and some as they stand, being weathered by time, but all inviting us to ponder for a moment about those who have journeyed before us, the lives they lived, the times they had and the work they did.

COMMISSIONS ARE AVAILABLE SUBJECT TO SIZE, COMPLEXITY AND SCHEDULE. If you wish to order an original 'Memory Painting' of your favourite place maybe the family farm that's been in your family for generations, the family home or somewhere that's incredibly special to you, your favourite animal, bird or the unique Australian countryside, please feel free to contact Cathy and you can discuss your ideas for your original commission painting. Cathy Creates Memories in Paint!

Cathy has exhibited in International Exhibitions in New York and London and won many awards, her works hang in private and corporate collections worldwide.

She paint’s with honesty and integrity the subject of choice with a flowing composition that sits easy on the eye. She has a gift of portraying the essence of the place, “You feel like you can walk right into the painting” and she has a natural ability to see beyond the ‘picturesque’ beauty of a scene. She can also feel the spirit of the landscape and paints this feeling – an emotional response to the scene – rather than painting a literal depiction”.

Born in Dalby, Queensland, Australia and being the fifth generation to live and work on the family farm, she has always had a passion for nature. As a child Cathy rode and hiked around her farm and local National Parks, observing and drawing the birds and wildlife in their natural habitat. This passion has turned into her life as she now paints what she has seen and experienced, her paintings are the diary of her life lived through the brush. They show and embrace the awe Cathy feels when out in the landscape; it is the little things that inspire, a sunbeam lit up through the clouds, a scene that is touched with golden light, the unique flora and fauna of Australia. Cathy has had the opportunity to closely study how animals and birds relate to each other and observe the ever changing effects of the beautiful landscapes and this observation shows in her artwork.

As with most Artists, Cathy’s work is ever evolving, developing interesting textures, new colours and experimenting with new techniques. She paints as she feels on the day and is not constricted by a singular style, just enjoying the freedom to experiment and create pictures that are often sentimental, compelling, soul stirring and memories for collectors.

Cathy McClelland is the fifth generation to own the family farm since selection in the 1860s in Bell, Queensland. A beautiful spot in the hills, cloaked with sub-tropical vine scrub, Brigalow and Bottle Trees in an area surrounded with character, history and faded beauty but all of that adds to the charm of this small community in the foothills of the Bunya Mountains, to the north east of Dalby, that is being overseen day and night by the brooding mystery and grandeur of the Bunya Mountains and it is here that her love with painting began.     The Bunya's are in her blood with her ancestors being bullock team drovers and loggers on the Bunya's, Cathy now paints to protect this unique environment. This passion, when combined with a natural talent for art and a flair for color, was apt to become a potent force. Inspired by the native birds and animals that visit her farm to the panoramic views of the local region, she started creating visual stories through her paintings, creative narratives that explore her emotive responses to the landscape and her experiences within it. Cathy loves the wildlife, the chaos of the bush and the vast outback panoramas and her generational connection to the land adds layers of history and culture that are intricately woven together within her art.     Her love of color originally attracted Cathy to training as a beauty therapist; then motherhood took command of her creative energies for many a year raising four children. During those years she tinkered with painting. But now devotes herself full time to what has become a lucrative expression of her deep and abiding knowledge of the local countryside of which she is so intrinsic a part. While working on the farm at Bell or hiking in the National Parks; Cathy is always observing the natural environment, a student of nature. This time spent studying the landscape, birds and wildlife has ensured authentic paintings that are rich in color and reflect her knowledge and innate understanding of her subjects.     This passion has turned into her life as she paints what she has seen and experienced; Cathy's paintings embrace the awe she feels when out in the landscape. It is the little things that inspire her, a sunbeam lit up through the clouds, a scene that is touched with golden light, the unique flora and fauna of Australia. Cathy is always searching for that ‘special moment’ and uses photography as a reference tool to capture that split second movement of a bird or animal flitting through the bush. Cathy is fortunate in her lifetime to witness platypus playing in the cool Bunya Mountains streams and have dingoes, wallaby's, kangaroos, koalas, emus, pelicans, brolga's goanna's, shingle back and blue tongue lizards, sugar gliders and a myriad of birds visit her farm from the tiniest of superb blue wrens to the soaring majestic wedge-tailed eagles. While exploring the Australian countryside, she has loved discovering the amazing Great Barrier Reef ecosystem, the little fairy penguins coming ashore to their nesting burrows at Phillip Island, mutton birds at Muttonbird Island Nature Reserve, fur seals at Port Fairy, the endangered rufous bristle bird and the wandering albatross along the Great Ocean Road scenic drive. Cathy believes the national parks in Australia are essential for our native flora and fauna to survive and continue to thrive in a protected environment for our future generations.     Being inspired by such great artists as J. M. W. Turner & Robert Bateman, Cathy's work is quintessentially about trying to capture the poetic subtleties of the light and the beauty of the moment. Although her paintings vary in style and subject the underlying concept remains the same, she is exploring that particular moment in time through the essence of who she is, negotiating different ways to find the poetry and truth in the subject. This process enables her to connect on a deeper level where she can tease out the individual likeness of what she sees: exploring marks, color and texture to bring the subject to life. Demand for Cathy's paintings continue to grow as she strives to create artworks for the discerning collector, her Tapdancers are proving very popular among her collectors.