#but i wonder about how people conceive of bad people and bad behaviors and how that makes them treat people in real life

[monstermoviedean]

just a pattern i've noticed with polls. if the question is asking about a trait/behavior that can be construed as negative or carries negative connotations. more likely than not, dean will win that poll. it's not the fault of the poll authors, and people can vote however they want. i'm just saying that i see people jump to associate dean and "bad" things a lot, even if there is no real association.

[sharp-rosee]

child sexual abuse content sharing communities have a high correlation with communities that share animal abuse content, sexual or otherwise. People are delusional to think pedophilia is about attraction. It's about sadism, that's the true commonality among all pedophiles, and this level of sadism is caused by entitlement etc like you said. It's also why some pedophiles think they're not that bad and compare themselves to pedophiles who injure children more, they're claiming virtue because they're less sadistic than they could conceive to be. Sorry if this is weird to share, you get these insights by understanding Internet history and how these communities form, are caught, etc, even though very few people make the connection of what it's about. But next time you're unfortunate and see a pedo being arrested or something notice how their behavior fits this. Meek in front of authorities but often brazen and smug if they think they got away with it for example makes sense if you understand they're sadists, and not that there is some unrelated personality defect in all pedos like being cowardly

THIS 100%

As someone who is also very online, this addition isn't weird at all and honestly I would love for this to be reblogged on my post as this is an excellent addition, and sums up better than what I was trying to say.

Society has always endorsed abusers and abusive like tendencies. It's why the patriarchy has survived for so long and why misogyny has existed in every culture. The creation of porn is a direct result of this, and from porn consumption, it puts society's teachings into motion, which is why these paraphilias are often seen developing through frequent pornography use. And because the nature of fetishes and paraphilias always escalate, as any addiction does, soon the furries become zoophiles, soon the loli-consumers become pedophiles, and as because they all coincide with another like you say, it's why most trans identified men are revealed to be pedophiles/consume pseudopedophilic material, and are also furries. It really is all major taboo fetishes all in one. Most notable TIMs on Tumblr, like patricia-taxxon and assignedmalecomics, have been exposed to have all three fetishes/paraphilias.

It is no coincidence, then, that we see furries and other paraphilia-havers being pushed to be accepted as "Queer", same with kink and even that post going around trying to make kink be "non-sexual" as well, because most trans identifying males are these things too, and they want to be able to normalize further abusive/sadist tendencies they have.

We have real societies in history to look at to see the normalization of pedophilia, like Roman men who raped young boys, the normalization of child rape amongst Christian nations (and even seen today in the Vatican ignoring child abuse/rape scandals). I have to wonder, if men succeed in dominating "Queer" ideology with their kinks and paraphilias, would we also see a resurgence in accepted cases of child abuse?

My apologies anon, I kinda rambled here lmao. I just find this acceptance of male degeneracy so disgusting and yet amazing, how we all as a collective have seemed to accept it as normal. It drives me insane.

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

Stupid vent incoming, feel free to ignore.

I hate that some conservatives think that because gay/lesbian couples can't conceive naturally, our only option is adoption. Why can't we desire biological kids? How many straight couples are willing to adopt a child, especially one of foreign origin, when they can have a child with their genetic material?

Furthermore, we have people like Katy Faust (have you heard of her?) who claim that same-sex parents, instead of opposite-sex parents, set kids up for failure. I read about her story, and it looks like typical divorce kid trauma that turned into a save-the-kids political identity. I could understand drag queens and trans, but advocating to prevent gays from raising kids?

Some of us was truly born this way and want to lead responsible lives with kids despite that. We're not all adults chasing after the juvenile drugs, parties, and meaningless hookups scene that we should have already outgrown. To say that we're screwing up the kids and that the only scenario ideal in a same-sex parent context is nursing an abused adoptee back to a well-adjusted state is kind of rude. Taking care of adopted kids is not terrible, but we're not all willing to do that.

Studies that said that kids with same-sex parents fare as well or better than their heterosexual counterparts are untrue, according to her. I'm sure she'd done many good things with her work, but I disagree with her on this particular take. It makes me wonder if her views would be different had she not been religiously affiliated.

I'm gonna be honest here, I really don't care what conservatives say about gay adoption, or surrogacy. I know a few that think children can't be raised properly in same sex homes and I disagree, but I also think that the reason many kids with gay parents don't have the best upbringing is because their parents aren't ready to raise kids. The gay community encourages selfishness. It encourages behaviors that aren't compatible with raising a child. But not every gay couple will be bad parents.

As for surrogacy, I understand why some people don't like it, especially pro-life people, but I just can't agree. Surrogacy just doesn't bother me.

But this is a bad time to ask me about gay people and children, because I've never been more disgusted with the "community" and the way it goes out of its way to support grooming and other forms of child abuse just because they're being done by someone in the alphabet soup. I'm disgusted with how many "LGBT" people are raising their kids like some kind of social experiment, with gender neutral "theybies" and pushing their kids towards transgenderism. I think the community as a collective entity is toxic and abhorrent, and anyone with morals and common sense would distance themselves from it as fast as possible.

So I do agree that there are a lot of gay people who shouldn't be allowed within 500 feet of kids, let alone raise them. But I don't agree that just being gay should disqualify someone from being a parent.

[heidigentille]

WHAT TARKOVSKY READ, PART 1: FOREIGN LITERATURE

Quotes about favorite and least favorite foreign authors and works by Andrei Tarkovsky from his diaries, interviews and speeches.

📚 I am rereading T. Mann. Genius writer. Death in Venice is amazing. This is with a ridiculous plot. (Martyrology. August 15, 1970).

📚 Read Vonnegut's The Children's Crusade. Yes. He is both a pacifist and a good fellow. Likho writes. But where, where is our Russian senseless and useless great depth?! Sad. (Martyrology. September 1, 1970).

📚 We must finally find out if Camus' "The Plague" was filmed. If not, then it would be worth talking to O. Teinishvili. Let him offer Gambarov two things: "The Plague" and a script about Dostoevsky, which we were going to write with Misharin. Solonitsyn could be a wonderful Dostoevsky. (Martyrology. September 7, 1970).

📚 I read Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle". Dark book. And smartly written. Still, pessimism has too little to do with art. Literature, like art in general, is religious. In its highest manifestation, it gives strength, inspires hope in the face of the modern world - monstrously cruel and, in its senselessness, reached the point of absurdity. Modern real art needs catharsis, with which it would cleanse people before the coming catastrophes, and maybe a catastrophe. (Martyrology. September 9, 1970).

📚 I read Akutagawa's story about water kappas. Pretty bad. Sluggishly. (Martyrology. September 18, 1970).

📚 I'm reading The Bead Game - a brilliant book! ... A super-art built on universalism, on the experience of all knowledge and discoveries. Spiritual symbol of life. Brilliantly conceived novel! Haven't read anything like this in a long time. (Martyrology. September 20, 1970).

📚 I finished reading "The Glass Bead Game". Amazing impression. (Martyrology. September 26, 1970).

📚 I am reading the amazing Thomas Mann - "Joseph and his brothers". Some otherworldly book. Otherworldly kitchen gossip. It becomes clear why the typist, having finished rewriting "Joseph", said: "Now at least I know how it really was." Yes ... and as for the film adaptation, I just don’t know what to say. So far, in my opinion, it is inexpressible. (Martyrology. September 15, 1970).

📚 About "Solaris": "... it attracted me first of all not by the fantastic nature of the events told, not by the amazing unexpectedness of the world composed by the author. What struck me was the author's realism in developing a situation that was fundamentally possible, the accuracy of psychological motivations in the behavior of the characters who fell into this situation ... ”(From an interview with O. Evgenyeva, 1971).

📚 I carry an unbearable burden on my shoulders. Mannovsky's "Doctor Faustus" is the most complex conglomeration of the life lived by the author, his lost hopes lost in his lost homeland, thoughts about suffering, the painful suffering of the artist, about his sinfulness. On the one hand, he (the artist) is an ordinary person, on the other hand, he cannot be ordinary, therefore, he pays for his talent with his soul. (Martyrology. December 5, 1973).

I have read Peer Gynt by Ibsen. Grandiose. (Martyrology. September 18, 1974).

📚 I am reading "Stiller" by M. Frisch. He is smart, he is too smart for a good writer, he is precise, economical, charming - a Japanese garden. He is very sweet and looks like his characters. This is also not a plus. I know him. He fed Larisa and me with dinner near Locarno. He was with a mistress whom everyone in Switzerland condemned for being his mistress. Dinner was delicious, the restaurant was wonderful, the tables were under oaks (or beeches?), and all those invited who condemned her talked to her sweetly and naturally, smiled at her. Good upbringing? Hypocrisy? Bigotry? Snobbery? And I liked him, a kind of puss in boots ... (Martyrology. July 4, 1975).

📚 I re-read the stories and Kafka's Metamorphosis. Somehow it doesn't work for me. (Martyrology. September 17, 1976).

📚 What a surprisingly clear relationship: Hoffmann - Hesse - Bulgakov. And what kind of children they are - pure, believing, suffering, not spoiled by glory, scrupulous, naive and passionate, noble ... "Golden Pot" - "Steppe Wolf" - "Master and Margarita". (Martyrology. April 14, 1976).

📚 I re-read Castaneda: "The Lessons of Don Juan". Wonderful book! And very truthful, because 1) the world is not at all the way it seems to us, and 2) it may well become different under certain conditions. (Martyrology. January 27, 1979).

📚 I read Lorca's amazing essays - amazingly passionate, sublime, deep and truly poetic insights. (Martyrology. June 6, 1980).

📚 "The Book of the World" ("Le livre de la paix") by Bernard Benson is some kind of delusional and stupid book. It is completely incomprehensible why it is: 1) popular and why 2) it needs to be filmed. I don't understand anything. Very strange. M. b., is this a provocation of the ideas of the struggle for peace? It's possible. That is what I talked about with Bibi A[derson] in Stockholm. (Martyrology. June 10, 1981).

📚 Since childhood, I have been very fond of the book "Robinson Crusoe" - I always liked it terribly and excited the enumeration of what was thrown ashore and what was Crusoe's prey. We live materialized, repeating the existence of space and time. That is, we live thanks to the presence of this phenomenon or two phenomena and are very sensitive to them, because they limit our physical limits. (A word about the Apocalypse).

📚 "Hamlet" is the best dramatic and poetic work that only exists in the world. (From a meeting with the audience in London, 1984).

📚 A romantic would try to invent this aura, because he guesses that it should be. But the poet sees it. You can say that there were poets among the Romantics as well. Of course, I do not argue. There was Hoffmann, whom I simply adore. (From a conversation with Jerzy Illg and Leonhard Neuger, March 26, 1985).

📚 I have great respect for Stanislav Lem, I love his works, and when I can, I read them. … He was interested in the collision of man with the cosmos, with the Unknown, but I was interested in an internal, spiritual problem. I picked up this novel only because for the first time I saw a work that I could define as a story of repentance. What is repentance, repentance in the literal, classical sense of the word? When for us our memory of committed misconduct, of sins becomes a reality. For me, Lem's novel was a reason to make such a picture. (From a conversation with Jerzy Illg and Leonhard Neuger, March 26, 1985).

📚 I read Flaubert's "St. Anthony": headily, secondarily (after the primary sources), illustratively and very magnificently. Serezha Parajanov would have made a wonderful adaptation of this. (Martyrology. March 26, 1986).

📘 Separately, it is worth noting that in the 1974 questionnaire, Andrei Tarkovsky answered “Doctor Faustus” in the column about his favorite foreign prose or novel, and Thomas Mann “Tonio Kroeger” in the column about a foreign novel; Maupassant.

[kyluxtrashpit]

Uh, thoughtful response anon here – identifying myself this time as it would seem you’ve been dealing with quite a lot! I’m also surprised at how this appears to have blown up for you, and do hope it eases soon. I truly apologize if this is piling on top of that, I’ll honestly try to be brief…

Seeing your responses to all this, I suppose what’s nice, in its own way, is how the other person you’ve publicly conversed with helps show there’s conceivable evidence for both a genuine misunderstanding along with yours and others concerns for a potential botting. As we’ve both said, there’s likely no way we’ll ever truly know. I can appreciate that person’s desire for faith in the community; wanting to see the good and put trust before suspicion in others isn’t a bad thing to have – innocent before guilty, and all that. However, more than one thing can coincide, context is important to decision making, and when it comes to large groups, the more people there are, the reality is there will simply always be bad apples. Add on the fact most of us likely haven’t even spoken to one another (SW is an enormous umbrella fandom) let alone ever met in real life, one simply cannot assume blindly that no one is capable of going too far merely because they share interests, have perhaps spoken to some who’ve in turn spoken to others, etc., or don’t want to believe someone around them could do so. The fact some people might be pushing suspicions and blame on kylux, etc. is certainly unfair to all of us regardless of whether it’s a misunderstanding or not. But it can still be admitted that it is upsetting if there’s botting, even if simply because it has led to such a reaction disparaging us all. That’s not turning on our own. Everyone makes poor decisions and mistakes, acknowledging that isn’t a lack of faith, or a witch hunt, or even condemnation of the integrity of a whole group. I also don’t think there’s enough to say botting is a baseless concern, which would have made wholeheartedly standing by one’s community a completely justified stance.

I hope that person (who none of the above was meant to target or preach to at all! I was being general!) doesn’t think poorly of you for wanting to point out such possible behavior as wrong just because a potential botter(s) might be a kyluxer, or at least a fan of the character alone. And I likewise wouldn’t want them feeling upset about all this either. But still, no matter what i've said, it’s perfectly alright if they, or anyone, disagrees!

Also, I don’t blame the promotional content either! A catalyst to a situation doesn’t necessarily mean blame; another’s actions in response to something are their own and not the fault of the person who might have inspired their decision. In fact, as a positive catalyst, I’ve seen others doing similar edits and posts for their own preferred character in the poll, which is a wonderful burst of fandom pride that is nice to see and further cements how this should be a fun bit of enjoyment for SW fans.

Now! That aside, my primary point in responding further at all was because in your reply to me, you related something I’d hoped all along to happen when initially sending my first message. That being to lighten your feelings of disappointment. (Speaking on that, don’t feel too down about your initial post on the matter. You’re totally within your right to want to express your feelings, particularly as a kyluxer, about what could be happening. Whether emotionally charged in the moment or not, doing so isn’t something I have judged you for at all, nor do I think what you wrote was bad to begin with, and I’m sure there are others who feel the same.) Anyway, you saying you’ve felt some of your faith restored due to the overall response from others is exactly the sort of thing I’d hoped could happen for you. As much as something might seem bad, good things you’d not have expected to come from such, can. Like new growth after a fire, or understanding and reconciliation after a misunderstanding’s fallout, thus strengthening a once cracking bond. Sometimes you need to face the bad so you can reach the (sturdier) good on the other side.

As a final secondary I wanted to express how lovely and commendable it is of you to sort of take up the mantle of Voice for those concerned but fearful of potential backlash. You certainly don’t deserve any harassment yourself nor had any requirement to do so in the first place, of course, but I’m sure many are very thankful for you being that for those of us in the fandom worried to put our name to our thoughts.

Whichever way the poll concludes, there was some nice even amongst the not so nice in all this. And I do really wish you safe and well in dealing with those accusations, etc. issues; though again, your resilience is inspiring and wonderful to see :)

I decided to let the mess blow over for a couple days cause uh yeah, it kinda went haywire lmao (and some people are still making bitchy little posts about me, but I’m too employed to be anything other than mildly annoyed about it haha). I always appreciate discussion from thoughtful and reasonable people

But yeah honestly I think you’ve hit the nail on the head here. There’s a few possible explanations, all of which have evidence for and against. And we don’t all know each other, even if 99 out of 100 people in the fandom are wonderful, the 1% can still take actions the rest of us would rather they not. The thing that’s been most comforting to me is how the vast majority of people, whether they agreed or disagreed, were very reasonable and open to conversation, and that most of us were able to have comfortable, amicable discussion regardless of whether we agreed. That and the fact that most people had the correct reaction of agreeing that botting would be a shitty thing to do, whether or not it was happening. The stragglers that were either confrontational or who think I’m being “a cop” by saying ‘cheating on a fun fandom poll is not a nice thing to do’ are far, far in the minority (and I think I blocked them all anyway lmfao)

Honestly, the way people brought up promotional content (and also like. Several people seemed to refer to me being a Hux or kylux hater and like. My url lmao? My blog??? I don’t know where that came from) makes me wonder what other nonsense is going on out there that I’ve mercifully not seen. I may have smacked an already angry hornets’ nest without realizing. The edits are great, idk why people thought I was upset about those. It’s strange

Aww, you’re very sweet anon. It did help, really, and you and the other people who’ve been nothing but kind (and shoutout to the creator of the polls and the people in my dms I don’t want to out who were also kind, reasonable people) did help a lot. I don’t regret the post, even if it kinda got weird lmao – I think it was a good thing to address and in the end we have come out better, as you say, for acknowledging the possibility of bad behaviour and affirming our majority agreement that such behaviour is unfitting of our fandom

And thank you! I’ve seen some brutal harassment in multiple fandoms and my position of someone who has a reasonably existent following protects me a bit from that, as smaller blogs tend to be the bigger targets. I also am good at being annoying yet polite lmao and I don’t mind getting into discussions and even arguments, so I’d rather people come after me than someone who could get hurt emotionally from it. I spent my first years on tumblr mired in the hell that was dragon age fandom, so nothing can phase me at this point XD I’m more offended when people will make some sort of clever little insult directly at me, on my own post, and then get shocked when I respond to them and then they instantly block me like. Hi, if you’re gonna start something with me, at least finish it mkay? Lmao

But anyway, again, I appreciate how lovely and reasonable you’ve been through all this. Fortunately, the focus of the poll discussion seems to have shifted to other things now and I think now we can let this whole thing rest peacefully

[kendrixtermina]

Edelgard and “meritocracy” - an essay

In this essay I wish to adress the common argument that “meritocracy bad, therefore edelgard bad” & the logical leaps therein.

Before we begin, I’d like to stress that she doesn’t even use the word “meritocracy” & they’re not even looking at it’s modern definition but reacting to the way it has been used as a fighting word to denigrate the poor specificically in the post reagan modern USA & then assuming Edelgard means the exact same thing by that without bothering to examine what she actually says & in what context.

Modern capitalism & the way it uses rhetoric of merit as an excuse is bad & with its reduction of human value to their moneymaking ability, definitely inherently ableist, I agree totally.

But 3H does NOT take place in the modern world. Progress is always relative to what came before. It*s progress away from entrenched problems.

It’s a total failure to even imagine a world different from the sucky one we live in - that’s exactly what tolkien meant  by that saying that if we’re prisoners we have a duty to escape.

Edelgard doesn’t live in a capitalist society nor is she bringing about capitalism (if anything Claude’s the one talking of free trade & giving the merchants what they want, though he is almost certainly playing them much like the church)

And the main component of capitalism - factory owners, rich elites who owns large swathes of companies or real estate - is nowhere to be found.

In our world that cropped up because industrialization made owning factories, offices, trade etc. more lucrative that just owning the land, so factory owners replaced landed lords, essentially promising the peasants freedom if they helped them overthrow the kings but granting them only in a limited manner - the flawed inequal democracies that resulted were a compromise between peasants and factory owners.

But by and large the nobles are very much in the same niche as the factory owners today - they own the land and get special trade privileges (the means of production), they often abuse the populace with impunity, the peasants are very poor.

Edelgard cracks down on corruption & special trade privileges even during the timeskip.

And like the rich of our world, they have a self-mythology propaganda justification based on merit. Yes, there is the “by the grace of god” argument, too, but crests give you extra fighting power, and if you look at the Ferdinand support for example you do see that Fodlan’s nobles - especially the adrestian ones - see themselves as a honed elite that is trained from birth & therefore better at ruling.

Not quite the same argument a modern billionaire uses - who is very invested in convincing you that they didn’t get their power and wealth by their birth - but a myth nonetheless.

Edelgard’s not bringing “meritocracy” as in brutal competition opposed to caring social safety nets, but as opposed to unearned privilege.

If you wanted to compare that to any kind of sociohistorical context, you might look at Napoleon’s peasant liberation or the implementation of civil service examinations in ancient China.

That wasn’t an all good thing - In the same way that Europe is very impacted by the legacy of rome both good & bad (there are persisting bad attitudes toward war, authority and agriculture for example), east asia still has a lot of education obsession causing pressure & unhealthy work habits to this day.

But if you compared ancient china before the reforms to ancient China after it definitely got better, by ancient china standards.

We couldn’t expect the people back then to come up with all advances up to our exact modern values at once (not can we be sure how much of our values will stand the test of time)

Considering that Fodlan’s ideal of merit is basically what Lorenz, Ingrid and Ferdinand are embodying for their respective countries, and that she stocks her inner circle with very different leaders, it is no stretch to say that she wants to shake up the social ideas of what even counts as merit, to make ppl value other things that crest power or elite upbringing, the same way we might say today that hey, cleaners are valuable actually.

Edelgard is basically doing her world’s equivalent of taxing the billionaires - reducing the power of what the overprivilieged class happens to be, & it’s obvious from her talk of how she despises inequality that she would hardly be for rule of factory owners.

When Edelgard says that she wants to make Fodlan more merit-based, that has to be taken in the context that she lives in a world where your birth determines everything, incompetent nobles can be as lazy as they want, and no one cares how competent you are if you lack a crest, title or both.

If she looked at our world, she would quickly see through the propaganda that it is supposedly “merit based” and object to how wealth and national origin obviously dictate wealth & opportunity while talented people go to waste in sweatshops.

Now of course there have been arguments even against “perfect” meritocracy - one is the devaluation of working class jobs.

To this one could answer that this is more a flaw in how merit is conceived. Historically there have been societies that exahlted blue collar work, artisans or farming.

The second argument, however, is not so easy to get rid of: That is devalues people who can’t just go & produce like machines, especially the unemployed, the sick, the mentally ill, the disabled…

But at this point we’ve got to lean back & get our definitions straight, & make it clear what we even mean by “meritocracy” -

Because if we’re just talking about the basic idea that competency should be rewarded, I don’t think too many people disagree with that. We might see a problem with valueing the competency of a doctor or lawyers dispropottionally over the competency of a cleaner or a bricklayer, but we all, by and large, want the people who prepare our goods and services to be competent. Maybe we wouldn’t exalt it over all over qualities, but most of us admire skill.

Of course the problem with the political rhetoric of “meritocracy” is that it goes beyond just rewarding skill, first with the afore mentioned rewarding of only some skills, but mostly with the reversion or overemphasis of the above: Saying that skill is the only thing that matters (to the exclusion of any inheent human value) & that those who don’t have it are worthless.

First I want to throw out the thought that this is a product of the production/profit orientation of capitalism, but one could of course imagine, as many sci fi authors have done, a non-capitalistic society that is still obsessed with merit at the exclusion of those who are not oriented towards productivity & care more about fun & relationships than producing, or those who can’t produce because they are sick or disabled.

So now we must ask ourselves the question: Which of those views does Edelgard actually hold?

Cause I want you to notice that they’re not the same. “Skill should be rewarded & jobs should be done by competent people”  is not the same position as “Skill is the ONLY thing that matters and if you don’t have it you are worthless”

In one position, skill is a good quality, in the other, it's a prerequisite to worth.

Most of us here probably agree that skill is admirable (we like and reblog pretty fanarts), but not that the unskilled are worthless.

Looking at her superficially I could perhaps see how someone might suspect her of the latter -  She gravitates to & surrounds herself with skilled intelligent people and she’s obscenely superpowered.

It’s an misunderstanding that Dimitri makes in-universe, he accuses her of “only benefitting the strong”

But note that her answer to that is that she wants to empower the weak to no longer be weak & decide their own lives, instead of accepting charity. (Contrast with how Dimitri romanticizes abyss, for example, even as Claude points out that locking the poor underground is hardly help.)

Of course she can say many things, as rulers often give florid speeches.

But let’s have a look at what she actually thinks. How does edelgard actually act towards people who struggle or aren’t productivity oriented?

This is one of her lecture questions from part I:

“When one professor lectures many students, some will inevitably have trouble keeping up, while others will get too far ahead in their studies. I wonder how this problem might be solved…”

Her favorite answer is “lectures should be optional”.

Which part of that sounds like a bell curve type eugenicist “only skill & intelligence counts” kind of person? She wants the struggling students to be taken proper care of, not just the good ones.

Look at the speeches she gives to Petra & Lysithea about not giving up on themselves & wanting them to move forward from an empowered mindset. Look at how she tells Lysithea to take it easy & not overtax her body. (Not "don't whine & keep working")

Look at Bernadetta - very much an ‘unproductive’ individual with great struggles & limitation. Does Edelgard dismiss her as a weakling? Not at all. Not even in the C support. She makes sure to stress her good qualities when introducing  her, makes an effort to be more patient so as not to scare her, & they become good friends.

Look at the Linhardt support - at first she mistakes his behavior for youthful lazyness (He’s 16 after all) & wants to get him to apply himself, but when she realizes that he just has different priorities, she respects that, & works to get him the exact sort of position that he wants. No “suck it up!” or dismissing such a different lifestyle. Nor does she chide him for hating fighting at any point.

Edelgard does everything in her power to accomodate people so they can do their best. She sees the value even in strange unsocial people that society would dismiss. She found a job for someone like Jeritza & helped him, she doesn’t hesitate to make Dorothea a general or Manuela the prime minister no matter what people say or if they don’t act like typical politicians.

Also, when she talks about choosing her sucessor, she wants them to be brilliant/competent yes, but also kind and 'an outsider' (ie, impartial) - hardly a PoV of "if you are skilled you can do whatever you want and if you aren't no other quality matters". She's prizing kindness & objectivity just as highly, something which is absolutely reflected throughout all her actions & behaviors towards others.

She doesn't devalue living quietly & low key without making waves - in fact, that is her dream life, which she deems superior to achievement and ambition, which are to her just tools to archieve good aims.

She couldn’t be further from having a narrow definition of what a “valuable” person is, she is all ABOUT empowering people to take control of their own lives, no pity-driven charity, no paternalism, none of that. This is one of my favorite traits about her, so I can’t help but get mad when people accuse her of being the exact opposite.

But maybe the biggest argument is abyss. This is where the genuine underclass lives, poor, struggling, traumatized, refugees etc.

Edelgard isn’t as vocal during Cindered Shadows as Claude - she can’t blow her cover & just isn’t as expressive personality wise. But she’s the one who makes everybody swear to take care of Abyss no matter who wins.

And her route is the one where, instead of telling you that they lost people, Hapi tells you that they’ve all been pretty much fine over the timeskip.

If you want to help the struggling & the poor and those who don't have "conventional" skills, you should back edelgard.

[sissytobitch10seconds]

First Born

Fandom: Remarried Empress (WEBTOON) Summary: Navier doesn't feel well when the day of Rashta's honorary banquet rolls around. Alas, she is the Empress and Sovieshu is already under the impression that she's trying to ruin the runaway slave's life and reputation, so she has to make an appearance despite this.  Warnings: Pregnancy, birth, graphic birth, unplanned pregnancy Word Count: 12,150 Ship(s): Navier/Sovieshu, Rashta/Sovieshu

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“Your Majesty, forgive me for saying this but you do not look well,” one of her ladies-in-waiting tutted as she combed through the Empress’s golden locks.

Navier sighed, bringing her thumb and forefinger up to the bridge of her nose. The mention of her health brought all of her attention back to the symptoms that she had been experiencing since she woke up. She had had a rush of energy just as daylight began to creep into her room, which had resulted in her getting a lot of the work that needed to be done and had been waiting for some time now. She had slowly slipped back into feeling ill, when she was only about halfway through her work for that morning. She had pushed through it despite the exhaustion that attempted to take hold of her and the cramps that were beginning to plague her. 

She could once again feel the grating pain against the inside of her lower stomach. “Truth be told, I do not feel well,” she replied. She felt uncomfortable, like she had reached her moon cycle once more. 

“Would you like for me to call for the physician?” Countess Eliza asked as she paused her work. 

“I do not think that it calls for that just yet,” she waved her hand to the side to try and dispel the other woman’s worries. “I believe that I am just having my moon cycle, that’s nothing that the physician needs to worry himself with.”

Laura clicked her tongue as she walked to her Empress’ side and began to help the other noble woman get her hair into the right style. “That’s really too bad, Your Majesty. Can you imagine how wonderful it would have been to reveal that you were pregnant right after everyone went to all this fuss for that woman? They’d all be so embarrassed that they paid her any mind when you were really the one that deserved it.”

“Laura,” Eliza chastised again, though Navier couldn’t help but chuckle at the young woman’s unwavering support for her. The elderly noble then turned to her Empress as well, “Your Majesty, please do not encourage this behavior, she’s going to get herself in trouble one of these days!”

Laura made a huffing noise, “Any trouble that I got in for defending Her Majesty would be worth it.”

Navier smiled softly at her two friends. “Please, there is no need to get in any trouble defending me. I’m perfectly capable of doing that myself. I know that at the moment the palace is all abuzz with news about Rashta and her pregnancy. She will be remembered for a while as the one who gave His Majesty his firstborn, but I will still be remembered as the empress that took care of the entire nation and helped us become the Empire that we are today. I will also be known as the one to give him his true heir, once he finally comes around to his senses and realizes that he has been neglecting his husbandly duties,” Navier said as she sat up a bit straighter when she felt the finger pointing into her back. She had a bad habit of slouching when her stomach cramped like this, but it was the only way to try and negate the pain echoing through her abdomen. It was bad enough at this point that her entire hips ached, all the way down into her legs. 

The brush in Laura's hands began to pull a bit harder as the redheaded woman got worked up again. “I can’t believe that people are spreading such horrible rumors about you being infertile when he isn’t even doing what he’s supposed to be doing! How are you even supposed to conceive a child when he won’t-”

Eliza gasped, “Laura! Do not say such crass things. You are a lady of high regard, not a peasant working in a brothel. You are in front of Her Majesty as well, and you are very lucky that Empress Navier is not at all strict with us and has enough kindness in her heart to allow such vulgar language and behavior in her presence!”

“Countess Eliza, I promise that it is alright. Laura just gets worked up. I find it quite endearing. And no one can hear us here, it’s alright if she has the occasional slip of the tongue,” Navier replied. 

The three women went quiet as Eliza and Laura continued their work. They braided long, beautiful strands of golden locks into intricate plates and then wove them together so that they formed a bun at the back of her head. The Empress was left alone for a moment as they left to go and fetch the crown and veil combo that she had chosen to match her outfit for that day. She wanted to remind everyone that she was indeed the Empress of the Eastern Empire, even if she had not been able to conceive a child before a lowly runaway slave turned mistress. Navier had an appearance to keep up, after all.

 The golden-haired woman bit her lip as the pain came to a peak again and then faded back to the annoying level that it seemed to be constantly hovering at. “I am beginning to question whether or not I am well enough to attend the banquet.”

“Maybe this has come at the perfect time then, Your Majesty!” Laura cried, a fiery spark shining in her eyes as she kneeled down beside her empress. “You could use this as a valid excuse for not having to attend that woman’s banquet! No one can fault you for not attending if you don’t feel well, and if she throws a fit about you not going or some of the attention being taken off of her then she looks even worse than she does right now!”

“Laura, if someone were to hear you talking like this then the Emperor would throw you back up into the tower,” Eliza tutted, like a worried mother hen. “And you know that the Empress would never do something that petty. She is above that.”

“I do think that I should at least make an appearance,” Navier said. “If not for her then to save my own face.” 

Eliza walked to the other side, kneeling down by her other side to mimic the way that Laura was sitting. The redhead folded her hands in her lap and stared down at them, ashamed that she had implied something that she hadn’t meant to. The elderly noble woman examined her Empress with the careful eye of a woman who had done this to her own children. “I do think that you should visit the physician before the day is over, Your Majesty. I have been your Lady in Waiting for long enough to know that this is not a normal moon cycle for you.”

“Send one of the maids to tell the physician to meet me here in about an hour. I will make an appearance at the banquet, give Rashta my gift, and spend some time there. Enough time to make it look like I was actually in attendance before I  come back here. I am not feeling well,” she reiterated with a small shake of her head.

“I do think that is a good plan, Your Majesty. I would hate for something to be terribly wrong and to be responsible for any further pain that is bestowed upon you because of this ailment,” Eliza said. She rose from the ground and quickly walked to the halls to send one of the maids to the physician. 

Navier stood and allowed Laura to continue to finish dressing her. The Empress set off when both of her ladies-in-waiting were also finished getting ready. However, the discussion about her illness meant that it had been an hour since the banquet itself had actually started. They had done a bit of this on purpose, because if Navier had been there the entire time then she would look like a fool as it would appear that she didn’t understand how much of an insult this pregnancy was to her as the wife of the Emperor. However, they hadn’t meant to attend this late.

When Navier got to the edge of the doors leading into the hall where the banquet was being held, she paused. A sickness whirled in her stomach and seeped into her veins. She couldn’t help herself. Rashta by all means should have been someone that she pitied and felt sorry for. The woman had made a fool of herself in front of countless nobles, and she had been thrust into a world that she didn’t understand because of the fleeting fascination of a man that had it all. Navier of all people understood what it was like to be under the hateful, watchful eye of the public. 

Despite all of this, despite how sorry she knew that she should feel for Rashta, all she ever felt when she saw that wretched woman was contempt. Rashta had intruded on an already fragile relationship, even if it had only been a marriage of convenience, Sovieshu was still her childhood friend, and then proceeded to bully and manipulate the society around her and several of Navier’s closest friends.

The Empress looked over all of the nobles, dressed in some of their best clothing, mingling around with each other. She could already see a mountain of gifts in the corner that were meant to go to the unborn member of the Imperial family. No doubt Rashta thought that they were for her, after all, the way that she had treated this pregnancy seemed to be to get all of the attention that she possibly could.

Sovieshu told me that Rashta’s baby might become mine, the Empress thought. Did everyone come here thinking the same thing? Do they think that because I might never be able to give birth to a child that they have to suck up to Rashta’s baby? Even if they did not think that way, the firstborn always makes a big impact.

She sighed, stealing her nerves again. She would have to deal with the way not being pregnant before the Emperor’s mistress looked on her reputation another day. For now, she needed to seem like a benevolent and kind Empress, while still being sure that she didn’t seem too kind, and like she could be taken advantage of. 

Navier stood as tall and regal as she could without turning her nose up at the other nobles that were waiting in the hall. She walked with careful, measured steps as the doors to the banquet hall were opened for her. She approached through the crowds of guests that parted for her like blades of grass when you walk through them. Most of the conversations paused as they all focused on the regal, steely, beautiful Empress of the Eastern Empire. 

“Your Majesty!” Rashta shrieked as she lurched herself off of the seat of honor at the front of the room. She was wearing another gaudy, childish dress. She had her silvery curls pulled back so that they fell over her shoulders but didn’t fall in front of her face. There was an ostentatious piece of jewelry keeping them back, jewels set into a hairpiece so that it appeared like there were flowers there. Her dress was purple, multiple different kinds. The bust had a large bow sitting over her breasts and the sleeves were puffy but ended high up on her arms to allow room for matching gloves. 

“Rashta,” Navier replied curtly as she stopped the appropriate distance away from the mistress.

“I’m so happy that you came, I thought you weren’t coming as it’s already been an hour since the banquet started,” she bubbled. Navier glanced past her at her husband, who looked rather unhappy and uncomfortable. For a moment, she wondered if she really looked that ill. She shook the thought away after a moment. Sovieshu hadn’t cared for her until now, there was no reason that he would start now.

She waved her hand behind her, signaling Countess Eliza to come forward. The noble woman did as she was told, handing over the gift that Navier had spent hours and hours agonizing over. Getting something that would look good to the public but wouldn’t look as though she were trying too hard was a difficult balance to achieve. “This gift is from Her Majesty to the baby,” Eliza made sure to punctuate the last two words. This gift was not to Rashta, and the Lady in Waiting wasn’t about to allow the silver-haired woman to tarnish her Empress’ reputation with that lie ever again. 

Rashta took the gift, looking to Sovieshu with an overly excited expression on her face. It was as if she hadn’t been receiving presents and gifts for the baby all day. The Emperor nodded, and she began to tear at the packaging. “Wow!” she beamed as she saw the ornate, decorative sword underneath. “Oh my! I’ve never seen such a beautiful sword before…”

She held the sword up in front of her eyes before she cradled it in her arms and continued in that childish pitch that was beginning to grate on Navier’s nerves. “Thank you, Your Majesty! It’s truly a thing of beauty.”

“I’m glad that you like it,” she replied in a level tone. She wanted to get this done and over with as quickly as possible. The cramps were slowly becoming harder and harder to deal with, especially since she couldn’t show any pain while around so many other nobles and Rashta.

“Thank you so much for coming to my party, I’m really touched. I really want to get along with Your Majesty, you know,” she continued. She acted like she was shy, as if the first thing that she had done upon meeting Navier hadn’t been a breach of court etiquette so great that if she had been a man she would have been sentenced to a great deal of prison. 

Navier raised a brow, unimpressed. The facade that the other woman put on when she was around the other nobles wasn’t enough to fool her. The Empress had been training to be a diplomat, a ruler, and a companion to the most important man in the Eastern Empire her entire life. Someone plastering on a smile and pretending to be shy and innocent wasn’t enough to convince her that was their true demeanor. She turned, prepared to leave and find somewhere to sit down.

Before she got the chance, however, Rashta spoke again, “Your Majesty, may I… make a request?”

“What is it?” she asked, the pain making her more snappish than she should have been for trying to save face.

“I would love it if you could give my child your blessing,” Rashta was nearly sparkling with faked innocence as she said her request.

I see that she dropped the insistence that it’s Sovieshu’s child above her own. I suppose she wants this for personal reasons and not for the way that it looks to others, then, Navier thought to herself. I’m used to these kinds of requests, but…

“I’ll have to refuse that request. Do you think the child will be happy with an empty blessing?” she asked. She made sure to say ‘the child’ instead of Rashta. The foolish woman was trying to make this about herself, as if any of the nobles in attendance cared anything for her. The rumors around the palace may have stopped, but everyone still thought of her as the runaway slave that was slowly beginning to make the happier vanier of the marriage between the Empress and Emperor fade. “But if that’s what you want, I’ll accept your request.”

Rashta’s face became a dark red and her large, dark eyes began to water with the tears that she forced every time that someone said something she didn’t like. Navier resisted the urge to turn and continue walking away. She was in pain and her patience was already wearing thin, especially with the childish manipulations that the mistress was attempting to pull on her. 

Navier stayed for a moment longer, only to give her time to let that sink in. When the other woman didn’t try to say anything to her she turned and began to walk back towards the seating. She may have to leave sooner than she thought, if this pain continued. 

“Empress!” Sovieshu called, the first words that he had spoken to her in days. He rushed to her, grasping at her arm. If it hadn’t been her husband, that move would have been considered to be highly inappropriate and even reputation-ruining. He dropped his voice down to a whisper, the noise joining in with all of the other murmurings from the nobles gathered in the room. “Must you embarrass her like that in front of everyone?”

“I didn’t want to embarrass myself either.” She spoke at her normal, distinguished tone. If he was going to act just as childish as his mistress, then she was going to have to be adult enough for the three of them combined.

“Giving your blessing to expectant mothers is something you’re used to doing as an empress. Is it really that difficult for you to do the same for Rashta?”

Anger boiled in her gut. How dare he ask me that. Was he really so blind to my emotions after a few years of marriage, something that allegedly brought people closer, that he would be this callous to my own feelings? What had happened to the boy that used to spend hours waiting for me to get done with my rigorous tutoring sessions so the two of us could practice dancing together? What had happened to the boy that I would eat sweets with while I read to him underneath the tree that we had planted together? Where had he gone?

She didn’t let her anger show. “A fitting expression to use here would be ‘Silence is golden’.”

“I don’t believe that applies here.”

“I’m sure you don’t think it does, because it’s not something you want to hear,” she shot back. They had arguments like this back when they were teenagers and she was getting more and more pressure from her tutors to focus on her studies instead of bonding with her betrothed. Sovieshu didn’t like hearing things that meant he wouldn’t get what he wanted.

Navier tilted her head slightly away from him, listening to the whispers that had taken over the crowds around them. She then turned back to him, glancing at him out of one captivating green eye, “I suggest you let me go unless you want to have an argument in front of everyone here.”

Sovieshu clicked his tongue, releasing her arm. The look of disdain and disappointment in his eyes made her stomach roll, though that might have been from the pain. She watched as the man that she had loved so dearly as a child walked quickly back up the steps to hold the woman that he had barely known for a year. She then turned, her regal composure unchanged throughout the entire exchange. “If you really want me to give my blessing to your baby that much, then I’ll do it,” she said, her voice ringing out over the gossip still flitting over the hall.

“Thank you!” Rashta beamed, the warning that the Empress apparently gone from her vapid mind in a second.

“Child,” she said. Normally her blessings went to both the mother and the child, wishing the child a happy life and the mother a safe pregnancy and birth. This time she had no blessing, no matter how hollow, for the mother. “May your life be like the sword I have given you. Extravagant and beautiful.”

Sovieshu looked at her, his eyes wide as he understood the double meaning behind the blessing she had just given. They had known each other since they were children, and he had come to know her inside and out just as she had thought she knew him. Rashta, however, was oblivious as ever to the intricacies of life. “Her Majesty blessed our baby!”

Another manipulation tactic, I suppose, Navier thought to herself as she noticed the change in pronouns. Whenever she wanted something from the vast majority of people that wanted closer to the Emperor she would remind them that she was his current favorite mistress, as well as carrying his firstborn child. Whenever she wanted something from Navier, who was closest to the emperor and had nothing to gain from that kind of language, she tried to make it sound like it was a personal favor that she would be indebted to the Empress for.

The regal woman crossed over the floor, her ladies-in-waiting following closely behind her. She sat on some of the seats that were littered around a few of the tea tables for those that didn’t want to or couldn’t stand through the entire banquet. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could last while in this much pain.

---

She stayed for as long as she could, though she saw the worried looks that Eliza and Laura gave her every time they noticed a slight change in her behavior. The Empress spoke to a few of the nobles that approached her to give her polite conversation, though this party was for Rashta and most of the nobles were too scared to approach her after the show that had occurred a few minutes prior. 

“I am going to go back to my room, please send someone to get the physician earlier than expected,” Navier instructed Eliza. The older noble woman nodded and quickly rushed off, so worried for her lady that she bumped into a few of the other nobles in the process of doing so.  “Laura, please escort me back to my rooms,” she then said as she turned to her other companion.

The Empress stood from the table that she had been sitting at, using it to help her get to the standing position in the first place. She glanced back to the top of the steps where Rashta was sitting mostly by herself. Sovieshu caught her eyes for just a moment before he turned his attention back to what must have been the thousandth piece of clothing that Rashta had received for her unborn child. 

She couldn’t help the bit of aching longing that she felt bloom in her heart. She wanted nothing more than to be able to be up there with her husband, the man that she still couldn’t help but love, celebrating her own pregnancy. She could care less about gifts and attention from the other nobles, but she desperately wanted her best friend back. That, and she had always wanted to be a mother. It may have been expected of her to have at least one healthy child to be the heir to the empire, but the idea of being a calming and motherly force in the life of a child that she had helped create. She already enjoyed being a maternal figure in the life of her sponsored mage, Evalie. 

She turned away from them with a sharp turn of her head. She removed her hand from the table that she had been supporting herself on. Navier carefully folded her hands in front of her so that her fingers were pressed together on each hand, though her thumbs overlapped to hold the other hand. She placed them over her wait, subtly pressing into her stomach to alleviate some of the pain.

A bit of pressure and pain was beginning to build up in her back as she began to step forward in preparation to leave the banquet hall. It then quickly wrapped around her stomach and she could feel all over her muscles tightening up. Navier let out a cry of pain, stumbling and falling as the intensity of whatever was happening fully took over her. 

Several of the noblemen around the room rushed to her, and the remaining guests looked to see the Empress. Several of them were moving over each other, though they kept a respectful distance away from her. Something like this, especially after the argument that she had gotten in with the expecting parents and guests of honor for this banquet, was going to be all over the palace for weeks.

The noblemen helped her into a more standing position, both of them clearly worried. “Are you alright, Your Majesty?”

“I am fine,” she tried, attempting to once again stand on her own. 

Laura was by her side in an instant, moving the noble from that side of her body. Navier grasped her friend’s hand tightly in her own as the pain slowly began to fade into the background. Eliza had arrived back by then and was able to take the other side. The two women then promptly escorted her from the halls, ignoring the murmurs that followed.

---

The Emperor bid the noble that he had been making pleasant conversation with for some time a pleasant goodbye as he walked back up the stairs to where his mistress was currently seated. He had seen her talking with one of her friends again, the foreigner friend of Prince Heinry. He couldn’t help the bit of bitter jealousy that bloomed in his gut as he realized that the Duke had become closer and closer to his mistress while he was also losing his wife to the very prince who had sent him. When the king got to the top of the stairs, the Duke gave Rashta a small pat on the shoulder and then descended back down into the party.

Sovieshu quickly moved beside her, and then he noticed the tears that were trickling down her cheeks. “Rashta? What’s wrong?” he bent down so that he could get a little bit of a better look at her face.

She stayed quiet for a moment before the servant that had been managing her leaned over and said, “Duke Ergi.”

The Emperor tutted, “Duke Ergi should choose his words with more care.”

She shook her head, causing silver curls to bounce around her head. “The Duke simply wanted to help me not to look like a fool, Your Majesty.”

He resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Rashta knew nothing of court etiquette, and she had hurt people deeply with her disgraceful behavior. He knew that she was a bit of a blemish on his image with the kinds of things that she had said to people in high places, like his wife and the Duchess Tuania. She knew nothing of court life, and yet she insisted on thrusting herself into it only to be surprised when she was burned and people lashed back out at her the way she did at them. He knew that this was partially his fault, however, and conceded a bit. She was the mother of his first born child, after all. “Do stop crying. The guest of honor shouldn’t be weeping.”

She turned to look at him, her cheeks rosy from the crying fit moments before. “Why didn’t Your Majesty tell me? You knew what the Empress meant by that, didn’t you?”

He didn’t say anything, just straightening back up and looking at the crowd once more. He had known what Navier meant when she gave her hollow blessing. She had warned Rashta that the blessing would be just that, and yet he and his mistress had pushed her into giving it. He knew that he gave Navier a hard time for the way that she treated his new love, but at the end of the day Navier was only trying to save her own reputation, so it would be unblemished like his own. “You really are too soft-hearted, Rashta,” he sighed. Maybe holding his banquet hadn’t been a good idea after all, she was beginning to wear on her nerves.

“I’m afraid,” Rashta whispered as she held up one clenched, gloved hand over her face.

“What do you mean?”

“The Empress insulted me and my child in front of everyone,” she said. “You saw how bold she was, so I’m afraid she might be cruel to the prince or princess later on.”

He turned to her sharply. Anger boiled inside of his gut. She had been warned time and time again to be more careful with what she said, and she had just gone and run her mouth, saying something disgraceful and vain. He and Navier may have been growing further and further apart the longer that they were under the watchful eye of the entire kingdom, and he may have feelings of affection for the woman next to him, but he was not going to tolerate something so disrespectful being said about his wife even if she didn’t mean it. 

Luckily, those who had heard what she had said had their attention brought away from the guests of honor and back to the Empress. Navier was standing to get ready to leave, but she released a cry of pain and nearly collapsed. Several of the nobles closer to her rushed to her side, as well as the remaining Lady in Waiting, as it seemed that Countess Eliza had left before them.

As soon as he saw his wife fall he knew that something was wrong. Navier had never been a sickly child, and she had gotten sick less and less the older that they were. That was part of the problem when it came to her lack of conception. She was perfectly healthy in all other areas, so there was no reason that she shouldn’t have borne them an heir at this point. He took a step forward, wanting to go to her side and escort her back to her chambers. There may have been a resentment towards her brewing inside of him due to the relationship that he had with another woman and her tarnishing his reputation by the way that she acted around other men, exacerbated by their childless marriage, but she was still his best friend and his wife. 

“Wait,” Rashta called, grabbing the back of his shirt as he attempted to go down the stairs and help the woman that he still loved, even if he had love in his heart for another. “You can’t leave me, this party is for me,” she whined.

“Her Majesty needs me, Rashta,” Sovieshu said, keeping his voice tender and compassionate towards his mistress. He knew that she didn’t respond well when someone spoke sternly to her, always tearing up and sobbing at him whenever he pointed out that she had done something wrong or something that angered him.

“But she has everyone else,” the silver-haired woman whined. “Shouldn’t we at least get to have you?” she asked, placing her hand over her stomach. 

“Navier is my wife,” he glanced back to where the blond was, but she had already been escorted out of the banquet hall by her ladies-in-waiting. His shoulders fell a little in disappointment. He’d have to go and check on her as soon as he was done dealing with the other situation. “Let’s go, Rashta.”

“It’s alright, Your Majesty. I don’t want to run away. I can overcome this,” she said, as if the Empress’ ailment was something that she, a mistress, had to overcome.

He set his jaw, his eyes narrowing. He turned and quickly began to leave. Rashta let out a pathetic little noise and quickly followed after him, just as he knew that she would. He continued through the private halls of the palace until they got back to his chambers. He opened the door and let her enter before him, which she did. She was worrying her lip between her teeth and clenching the sides of her dress in her hands as she flounced past him and into the sitting room. She sat down on one of the couches, looking up at him with dark, watery eyes.

“Please bring us tea,” he instructed one of the maids that was waiting just outside the room. She did as she was told, returning a quick five minutes later. The woman sat the tea down on the table before them, pouring them both a cup before she bowed and made her swift exit. 

“Rashta, your child cannot be a prince or princess,” he said immediately after the door had been securely shut. 

“But it’s Your Majesty’s child. Doesn’t that mean the child becomes a prince or princess by default?” she asked, tilting her head to the side cutely. 

Her ignorance was cute to a fault, where it was beginning to become annoying. She was just so different from everyone else that he had ever met or dealt with. Being with Rashta was like jumping into the lake that he and Navier used to go and play in. He enjoyed the change of pace, the coolness of the water on his skin and the pressure of the lake surrounding him, but he didn’t want to be in it forever. He enjoyed being able to retreat back to the pleasant smelling trees and flowers of the palace gardens and the warmth of the hearth in the living room where he could listen to Navier read from their study books. 

“That applies only to the children of the Empress. Children of mistresses do not get the title of prince or princess,” he explained. He took her hand in his own, to try and soften the blow. 

“Then what about my child?” she asked, as if the rule did not apply to her.

“Your child will be a high-ranking noble and be treated as a member of the imperial family,” he answered, reiterating the information that he had just explained.

“I think it’s odd, Your Majesty. The children born to me and the children born to the Empress are equally of your bloodline. The Empress is an empress consort and not an empress in her own right. So then, why is it that only her children get to be royalty?” she whined, getting more and more distressed the longer that they spoke.

Sovieshu didn’t understand how she had been several months in the palace and yet still didn’t understand that she and the Empress were not one in the same. They did not share the same power, and they never would. “Because that’s the law,” he replied instead.

“The law is clearly not fit for purpose. Your Majesty can change it,” she urged. “I don’t understand why our child has to have its royal title taken away by some child that may or may not come along one day.”

He bit back the urge to say something abrasive. That was another difference between his relationship with her and the relationship with his wife. When he was with Rashta there was very little that he could do other than be gentle and patient, like an ocean working slowly away at a stone. With Navier he could let his true emotions out. Navier was skilled enough to be able to handle his harsher emotions and dole out her own. They could have actual discussions and arguments. He could spend the rest of the day explaining to her that there was no title being taken away from the child as the child wouldn’t have been given a child in the first place, but he knew that would just result in another tantrum.

Again she insinuates that the Empress is infertile, he thought to himself. “You may not understand it, but this has been stipulated by the Great Temple, so not even I can change it on my own,” he explained. He had known why this was a valid law for a very long time. If the Emperor was allowed to appoint any child from any of his mistresses then a problem of true succession would begin, as well as an outrage from the Empress’ family and lead to a possible civil war between the upper polite society. He then continued, choosing his words carefully. He couldn't just flat out tell her why what she had said was wrong, so he had to settle for the next best thing. “So do not talk about your child being a prince or princess in front of other people.”

“Your Majesty…” she whined, more tears collecting in her eyes. “But it’s Your Majesty’s child…”

He placed his hand on her lower back, “I will love and cherish the child and even bestow immense riches and power upon him or her. And everyone will know it is my child even if he or she can’t be called a prince or princess,” he promised her. He would love any child that he was given from any woman that he was currently involved with or might be involved with in the future. “The only thing that child won’t be able to have is a legal title and succession rights. So there is no need for you to be disappointed or feel it will miss out on anything. Do you understand?”

She just turned her head away from him, refusing to speak to him. For a moment, Sovieshu wondered if she was trying to make a grab for the throne. When mistresses were from the noble class, as they typically were, there was sometimes a plea from them to have their children be made official members of the succession to the throne so that their mothers could control them behind the scenes and get power that way.

He shook his head. Rashta knew so little about the throne and royalty and politics that she couldn’t possibly be trying something like that. He hadn’t wanted to have this discussion for a long time, but he supposed that he should try and calm her down since she was having such a fragile pregnancy. Perhaps, it would also be nice to get this bit of information off of his chest. Their barren marriage had been bothering him for years, after all. “If the Empress is infertile and can’t have a baby, then that’s a different story.”

“What do you mean?” The tears were gone and her interest peaked, sowing more seeds of doubt and suspicion inside of the Emperor.

“Then the Empress will adopt your baby and that child will become a prince or princess,” he answered.

Before either of them had the chance to say anything else, a servant barged into the room. “Apologies for the intrusion, Your Majesty, but there is something of great importance that you need to hear.”

Sovieshu would have normally gotten very upset that there hadn’t even been a knock before she had entered, but he knew that this had to have something to do with Navier. “Speak it then.”

“Her Majesty is in labor!”

Sovieshu was up in an instant and rushing out the door. Thoughts flew through his mind, he was so anxious to find out what was really going on with his Empress and why his childhood friend was ill that he didn’t even listen to the cries coming from the woman that he had been speaking with moments before. He strided through the halls with purpose and no one stopped him, though the servants and guards were all whispering to each other in small clumps as they went about their work. 

When he got to the other palace, where his wife resided, he stopped just short of her chambers. He could see the tall, blond figure of her brother pacing back and forth outside of the grand doors that led into her chambers. There was a guard on either side of the grand doors, and no one other than the maids and ladies-in-waiting were walking through them. The only people that seemed to be allowed inside were women, even the physician had been relegated to sitting outside.

The Emperor continued his course down the hallway until he was in front of the two men waiting outside of his wife’s room. “What is going on here?” he looked between the two of them before he finally cast his gaze over to the doctor, “Why are you not in there with Her Majesty? She looked unwell during the banquet and I doubt that she would have had a miraculous recovery.”

“She is suffering from something that is better treated by the court midwife, Your Majesty,” he replied nervously, wringing his hands together. “I can diagnose a pregnancy and treat some of the symptoms, but a midwife is much better suited to handle the birth unless surgical intervention needs to take place,” he explained.

“Pregnancy? Birth? I think you’ve mistaken the Empress for Rashta,” Sovieshu said as he took a menacing step towards the doctor.

“No, Your Majesty,” he shook his head. “I was just as surprised as you are. The Empress is somehow in labor with a child. This isn’t a miscarriage, she’s giving birth to your firstborn child.”

“How is this possible?” he asked, the anger draining out of him and being replaced only by fear. When he was losing Navier through their arguments and his own stupid actions it was easier, but the idea of watching his wife possibly die due to complications in childbirth was terrifying. 

“I’ve only ever seen something like this once before. I was visiting a noble couple before you hired me here, the woman was suffering from pain in her stomach. It turned out that she had been cursed, though the curse was to hide all pregnancy symptoms, inward and outward, until the baby was ready to be born. Normally this curse is used when a family wants to hide a pregnancy, whether that be to parentage or wedlock status,” he explained hurriedly.

The three men outside all fell silent again as a cry of pain echoed from deep inside of the bedchamber. Sovieshu was frozen in place as he took in the information that the physician had just explained to him. His wife was pregnant with his child, and she had been cursed. A spell had been placed on her by someone, maliciously and secretively. Either that or she had been hiding the pregnancy from him because the child was not his. 

He stalked down the hallway, away from where he could hear the cries of his wife apparently laboring behind closed doors. He caught the first servant that he found and ordered him to go and call for the Grand Priest to come to perform a paternity test. If the child was really his then they would need him anyway to bless the first born child and heir of the Eastern Empire. 

He then turned on his heel and walked back towards the Empress’ chambers. Even if the child wasn’t his, he would act like it was until they both got confirmation just to save face. While he trusted all of the servants around the palace, he knew that they wouldn’t be able to resist gossiping about the possible bastard child of the Empress. 

He swallowed the bundle of nerves that had risen in his throat on the way back. If this really is my child, then I’m going to be watching the birth of my first child before I ever thought I would be a father, he wasn’t sure how he felt about that. What if I lose Navier? If the baby doesn’t survive then I can’t imagine that she would be the same woman afterwards, and I’m not sure if I would be able to look at her the same way either. Sovieshu had just gotten to the doors, his hand grasping the handle and prepared to go to his wife’s side, when he felt a hand grasp his shoulder. 

“You listen to me and you listen well,” Kosair snarled. He had his head tilted down so that the blond bangs not contained in the ponytail fell over his eyes. He tilted his head up a bit so that their eyes were locked together. “I don’t give a shit if you’re the emperor right now. If I come in there and she tells me ANYTHING about you disrespecting her or hurting her in some way I will not hesitate to rip you limb from limb.”

---

She could only focus on two things, one during the contractions and one during the rest periods between them. During the contractions all she could focus on was the pain and pressure building inside of her abdomen. It felt like she was being torn apart and compressed together at the same time. During the rest periods between, she was only able to focus on her panic and shock. She was going to become a mother. She had been agonizing about her lack of children for about two months now, ever since Rashta’s pregnancy had been revealed. Before then, she would get momentary, fleeting bouts of sadness that her womb had not yet carried a child for herself and an heir for her husband. Now, she was hours away from meeting a child that she had apparently been harboring inside of her. 

“Navier?” Sovieshu said as he pushed the door open and then walked quickly into the room. The door swung shut loudly behind him, hiding the face of her brother glowering after her husband. 

Luckily, she had just emerged from a contraction so she had a few minutes to speak with him before the pain and pressure began again. “Sovieshu?” she whispered. She had been calling him Your Majesty since he had been crowned the Emperor, except for in choice moments and times of intimacy. She couldn’t bring herself to keep up the act of being the cold and distant empress right now, not when she was in so much pain and so scared. 

“Your Majesty!” a chorus of voices from her ladies-in-waiting and the midwife and her assistants called at him. They hadn’t been expecting him to want to be a part of this. A lot of midwives forbade any men, other than doctors and physicians, from entering the room during a birth, it was generally accepted that husbands didn’t want anything to do with the actual birthing process, even if they expected to be kept in the loop about when the baby would actually arrive.

The blond furrowed her eyes, shifting from where she was sitting on the edge of the bed. She wanted to walk around, but she was weak enough that she couldn’t without assistance, and apparently she was a good deal into her labor so there was a lot that the women around her had to prepare for and they couldn’t help her walk due to having their own missions to complete. “What are you doing here?”

“I heard that you were in labor,” he replied, immediately moving so that he was by her side. 

She shot him a sharp look as she watched him move around the side of the bed. “If you’re here to accuse me of hiding a pregnancy from you then you may leave,” she pointed one elegant finger towards the door. “I’m just as shocked about this as you are.”

“I won’t deny that I am a bit suspicious, but I understand that now is not the time to have that discussion,” he said, glancing back to the midwife, who had paused in her preparations to watch the expectant mother. Both husband and wife were very aware that if Navier showed any kind of uncomfortableness about him being there then he would be removed entirely from the room. “And even if you did hide this pregnancy from me for any reason, I still want to be here to witness the birth of my first child.”

“Are you sure that you want to do that? You know that birth is not generally witnessed by many noblemen,” Navier said as she slowly got to her feet. She let out a groan, pressing a hand to her flat stomach as another one of the building pains echoed through her. 

He reached for her, holding her hand in one of his and her elbow in the other to be able to support her. Navier reached up and grasped at the coat that he was wearing to have an extra bit of support. “I am perfectly aware that birth is not a pretty process, but I want to be here to support you, and the child,” he explained.

She was unable to answer him until the pain had passed. “If you’re sure, but once you’re in here and things are started you may think differently,” she warned. “And you are not going to be allowed to get angry or upset with anyone if they are curt or even rude to you. What matters most right now is the health of our child.”

“Agreed. I understand that here I am just the father, not the Emperor,” he pressed a kiss to the top of his wife’s head. “Now, what can I do to help you?”

“Help me walk around,” she answered immediately after the words had left his mouth. 

He blinked a few times before he looked to the midwife. Sovieshu was out of his element here. He knew nothing about birth or childbearing, but he did genuinely want to help his wife through this process. Since he had been a very young child he knew that he had wanted to at least be permitted to be present for the first few moments of his first born’s life. When the elderly woman gave him a nod, telling him that he could help his wife fulfill her request, he did so. 

He moved so that he was supporting her by allowing her to hold onto the wall while he stood behind her. He held onto her hips, and every time that she got a contraction she fell back into him. She would hold both of his hands in her own and squeeze them so hard that they felt like they were going to break. He hadn’t seen her in this much pain since they were thirteen and she had twisted her ankle. 

It took another ten or so minutes before the midwife and her assistants had gotten everything prepared for the birth, and Navier had to be moved back to the edge of her bed. She was dressed in one of her silky sleeping gowns, but it was large enough that the midwife was able to move between her legs and check her dilation. The blond clung to her husband like he was a lifeline, even when she had to return back to her bed between her bouts of pacing the edge of her bedchamber. The walking seemed to be helping her labor progress further and further on.

---

It had been almost an hour since Sovieshu had rushed away from his mistress and instead joined his wife to witness the birth of what was very likely his first child. He had removed his jacket, lying it over the only chair that wasn’t filled with preparations for the impending new arrival. He had also rolled up the sleeves of his white button-down shirt so that they were up around his elbows. He was by Navier’s side whenever she called for him with a small wave of her hand. He stayed behind her as she walked, allowing her to use him as a crutch and a prop. When she was near the bed, he would hang back until she motioned for him to join her. He would then get behind her on the bed, allowing her to lean back against him whenever she needed to.

The labor had been going on all day, and her water had broken when the midwife arrived. This meant that the baby was ready to come after a mere couple hours after Sovieshu’s arrival. Navier was moved back to her bed for the long haul when the midwife had determined that she was ready to push. She was moved onto the bed with her husband behind her. Sovieshu was sitting back on the bed in such a way that he was on his knees and his thighs and calves were pressed together. Navier was lying back on him with her legs hanging off of the bed. One assistant was at each leg, holding them so that they were bent at the knee and pressed back against her body. Navier had Sovieshu’s hands in hers once more, squeezing them as she got painful contractions almost on top of each other.

With each great push that she did, instructed when to by the practiced midwife, she would lean forward so that she was curled at the spine and her chin would meet her chest. When the contraction passed, she had a bit of a break and would collapse back against her husband’s chest. She would hold her breath with each push, and then gasp for air as if she had been drowning between them. 

Sovieshu was at a loss for words at the beginning, overwhelmed that the women in the room all seemed to know what they were doing but he was so completely out of his element that he felt like an idiot. Eventually he was able to get his bearings about him and began to encourage his wife through her labor and pushes like her ladies-in-waiting were, though he wasn’t quite sure how she felt about them.

This part of the labor seemed to go the slowest out of all of them. At least when they were walking around while waiting for this point there was movement and talking, but this was beginning to stretch on longer than Sovieshu thought anything could. He was so worried for the health of his empress as he began to see her grow more and more tired that he could feel the sickness beginning to grow in his stomach. 

Though, it seemed like she was full of ways to prove him wrong today, because as soon as he began to think of asking what was happening, the midwife caught a blood and fluid covered baby from between the Empress’ legs. 

Things began to happen rather quickly after that, the baby was separated from their mother after the cord was cut. The infant was squalling loudly, making the entire room ring with the sharp cries. One of the midwife’s assistants had left her position holding the empress’ leg and had instead taken the baby from the midwife and gone to bathe them in the warm water they had gathered at the beginning of this whole ordeal. 

Navier was leaning back heavily against her husband, using him to support all of her weight. She opened her tired eyes enough to follow the location of her baby around the room. “Are they alright?” she asked weakly.

“He is, Your Majesty,” the midwife replied as she helped clean the empress up, and disposed of a rather disgusting mass that neither of the two royals really wanted to think about for much longer. “Congratulations to you both, you have a healthy baby boy.” 

“A son,” Sovieshu whispered, his eyes going wide. He couldn’t feel his fingers or toes, but he didn’t really care anymore. His heart swelled with pride and adoration for the small child that was wailing his head off while receiving his first out of many baths in his life. Slowly, he was removed from the bed and Navier was washed as well. Some of the other women in the room stripped down the bed and replaced it with bedding that hadn’t been soiled during the birth. 

He was moving around in a state of shock, getting in the way of several of the women trying to complete the birthing process. Eventually he was able to snap out of it enough that he moved over to one of the walls and just watched everything that was happening. He had his own servants to help him around his room and get him ready for the day, but the speed and skill that Navier’s ladies-in-waiting worked with would always astound him.

The Empress was quickly washed, had her hair braided back so that it would not be in the way but was also not in one of her normal fancy hair-dos, and then dressed in her most comfortable nightgown before being placed back into her large bed. Navier was laying a little closer to the edge than she normally would, so that it would be easier for her to get up when the need arose. 

Their son was then moved over to her arms, placed down with the tender, reverent care of someone that knew they were holding the Crown Prince of the Eastern Empire. Navier took him into her arms with a different kind of respect and reverence. She was holding him as his mother, not as one of his future subjects. 

Sovieshu quickly walked the distance between them until he was kneeling at her bedside, peeking over her arms to the screaming face of the baby. Navier was being spoken to by one of the assistants, who helped her remove part of her nightgown so that her breast was exposed. It was something that he had seen time and time again, but until he noticed that their child was latching on, it seemed like something that he shouldn’t have been privy to. Even after that, it still seemed like something that he shouldn’t be seeing. He stayed by her side despite his awkwardness. “You’re amazing,” he whispered.

“Are you talking to me or our son?” She had started the sentence off with a bit of a sharp, teasing tone, but by the time their child was mentioned her voice had dimmed to the softness that only a mother could hold.

“Both of you. You are amazing for creating a life and blessing me with a healthy newborn boy, and he is amazing simply for existing,” he whispered. 

Navier hummed in agreement, running her thumb over the back of the baby’s head. When he had finished suckling from her, the assistant that was closest to her showed her how to burp the baby. Eventually the child would be mostly taken care of by a wetnurse and a nanny, but Navier wasn’t going to let a stranger completely raise her child. He would stay with her at least for the first six months of his life, and then she would slowly begin to have to let him go. She was going to be his primary caretaker until she could not, and no one was going to stop her. 

“How are you feeling, my dear?” Sovieshu asked, brushing a loose strand of long blond hair away from her face. She was leaning back against the bed with their baby held protectively in her arms. Her nightgown had been placed back where it properly went, though he could see the fist from their child clenching the fabric over her breast. She was more beautiful than he had realized in a very long time.

The other nobles were often astounded by her beauty when she dressed up with lace, gems, and other ornate parts of her outfit, but he thought she was the most beautiful creature when she was acting human as she was now. She was authentic and real when she had all of the gowns and jewelry removed. He had never looked upon anything more graceful and elegant than the small smile that rested upon her lips as she looked down at their child.

“I am tired,” she replied. “But I do not want to sleep yet.”

“Then don’t,” he replied softly. 

She glanced up at him with a sly smile. “It has been a long time since you have called my ‘my dear’, what brought that on?”

“I think I should be permitted a few pet names to dote you with after you just gave me the greatest gift in the world,” he laughed a bit, though he made sure to keep his voice quiet enough that the woman still milling around the room and cleaning up after the birth couldn’t hear them. All thoughts of the baby not being his had gone out of his mind the moment that Navier allowed him to stay in the room and began to rely on him for comfort throughout her labor. 

“I suppose you are,” she teased back. “Thank you for staying with me through all of that, Sovieshu. I was more terrified than on our wedding day when I was told that I was going to be a mother without even being pregnant.”

Her face fell a bit. As soon as it did, he wanted nothing more than to see the warm, happy smile return to it. “I thought for a while that I was barren. I know that we did not visit each other’s rooms often, but I expected to be able to conceive sooner than I did. I was worried when that woma- Rashta became pregnant before I did that I would never be able to be a mother in my own right, and I would only ever be a mother under the law. I wouldn’t be able to do this,” she whispered, looking back down to their son.

“But you did,” he whispered. He placed a comforting hand on her leg. “You are the most talented woman I have ever met. I don’t think there’s a single thing in this world that you cannot do.” 

He sat up a bit straighter and looked down at his lap. “I would also like to apologize for the way that I was treating you. I know that our marriage has been struggling, but that was no excuse to be so cruel to you. I’ve known you for longer than I’ve known almost everyone else in my life, and I’m not sure that either I or the Empire would be able to cope if we lost you.”

“I do not wish to speak about this right now,” she shook her head. It wasn’t often that she was able to dismiss a line of conversation, but she had the most power out of anyone else in the room at the moment. 

They didn’t have to come up with something else to talk about as the Grand Priest walked in with an affectionate smile on his face. “Sorry for my abrupt entrance, but I wanted to be able to get the cursory test done since this pregnancy was not the normal sort,” he chuckled. “Normally I would have been able to judge around the time that the child would have arrived, so I would have been able to keep my schedule light so I could be called here at any time.”

“Well I appreciate your willingness to come even though this is a bit unorthodox,” Navier said. She was trying her best to maintain her normal regalness, but it was clear that she was exhausted.

The Grand Priest moved over the baby, performing the ceremony to confirm the baby’s parentage. This would happen once more in front of a crowd of nobles when they held the Grand Court to introduce him to the public in a couple of months once both the mother and child were prepared for it. “Congratulations to both of you,” he chuckled. “This is indeed your child, Your Majesty. Not that I would expect anything less from Her Majesty.”

“Of course, this is all for the sake of tradition,” Sovieshu nodded, burying his worries about the child not being his as far down as he could. They bade the Grand Priest goodbye as the elderly man left as quickly as he could.

Navier chuckled a little as well. She understood that he was a busy man, and if she had the choice she wouldn’t want to be in the room either. She turned towards her husband. “What should we name him?”

“I think that Ivean fits him rather well,” Sovieshu had volunteered.

“The name of our favorite childhood hero?” she laughed. It was a book that they must have read a thousand times over, before they had gotten such a heavy workload that they no longer had time for pleasure reading. 

“Yes,” he admitted sheepishly with a nod.

She laughed again. “I think that it suits him as well. Ivean Vict.”

Things behind them were beginning to get wrapped up just as the doors swung open. Navier glanced up, assuming that either her brother had gotten sick of waiting and wanted to check on her or her mother had come to visit her. 

“Lady Rashta, please, I must insist that you leave!” the youngest out of all the assistants cried as she tried to grasp hold of the woman and remove her from the room. “Her Majesty’s family hasn’t even been permitted to visit her yet!”

“Let go of me!” she whined, slapping her hands away. “You can’t treat me like that, I’m pregnant with the Emperor’s child!”

“It doesn’t matter if you were His Majesty, if we ask you to leave this recently after a mother has given birth then you would have to leave regardless. The only person that would be allowed in Her Majesty’s chambers normally is His Majesty, and you are not him,” Countess Eliza said as she marched over and stood in front of Rashta.

The silver-haired woman let out an upset noise, stamping her foot in anger. “You have to let me pass!”

“Absolutely not,” Laura objected as well. “Her Majesty is not taking visitors.”

Navier turned her head so that she could see the ordeal that was happening on that side of the room. “Laura, Eliza, allow her in,” she called. She didn’t want to have to watch Sovieshu get upset and angry at her ladies-in-waiting for ‘mistreating’ or making his mistress cry. “If she begins to cause a disturbance then the guards can escort her back to her room.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” Eliza said, grasping Laura’s hands so that they could help the midwife and her assistants move the rest of the birthing equipment from the room. It was a matter of seconds before everything was cleared out and the three members of the Imperial family were left alone.

“Rashta, what is this about?” Sovieshu asked as he stood up from where he had been sitting on the edge of the bed and looked at her.

“This wasn’t how this was all supposed to turn out! It’s not fair! I was the one that was supposed to give His Majesty his firstborn child. You came into my banquet and took all the attention away from me by giving me that hollow blessing and then made everyone pay attention to you by pretending to be in pain before you left! That banquet was supposed to be so that everyone would pay attention to me, but you always have to take everything away from me. I was the one that was supposed to give His Majesty his first born child, I’m the one that’s pregnant not you! Why do you hate me so much? Why are you trying to take everything away from me?”

“Excuse me?” Navier asked, raising a graceful brow as she shifted her son away from the livid woman. 

“You heard me! Ever since I came to this palace all of you haughty nobles have been looking down at me like I’m the scum on your shoes just because I was born as a slave. I’ve been trying my whole life to be something better than everyone else wanted me to be and now that I’m finally His Majesty’s favorite you’ve- you’ve been trying to take that away from me,” she stamped her foot. “You already have everything else, you have to let me have the first born child to His Majesty! I’m the one that was supposed to give him a child. Everyone knows that you’re actually infertile, and you were supposed to have to adopt my child, His Majesty said so!”

“RASHTA!” 

Sovieshu had had enough upon hearing that. It was one thing for her to be throwing a fit, it was another for her to slander his and his wife’s name in the same breath. He took a step towards her, his expression dark and dangerous. “How dare you barge in here and then insult the empress in this way?”

“What?” she whispered, covering the bottom of her face with one hand as she took a careful step back.

“You heard me,” he snarled. “You forced your way in here and the empress was gracious enough to allow you to speak with her after giving birth to the Crown Prince of the Eastern Empire, before she even allowed her own family to see him, and yet you speak such slander about her.”

“It-it’s not slander,” she shook her head, causing a couple long silver locks to fall in front of her face. “I was the one that got pregnant before she did, I was the one that was supposed to get credit for being the real mother of your first born child at least… everyone knows that Her Majesty is barren…”

Sovieshu glanced back at Navier, who was slowly rocking their son in her arms as he had woken up at the sound of angry voices. “Does that child look like he came from a barren mother?”

“She must have stolen him away or something,” Rashta tried. “She did this on purpose to hurt me. She insulted me when I was at the banquet to celebrate my pregnancy and then tried to make me look like a fool by claiming to have a child before me.”

“How could she have stolen the child away from someone else when I watched the child be born from her womb?” Sovieshu asked. He calmed his nerves, thinking, If I allow her to keep going then she should reveal her true intentions. If she stops now then maybe her feelings were just hurt by this and she’s scared that she’ll be made fun of by the other nobles. If she keeps going then she may be a threat to my wife and child. As well as the child she harbors.

“But-but, well then it must not be Your Majesty’s!” she objected. She balled her hands in fists down at her sides and stamped her foot in anger.

“The Grand Priest has already been in here, and he confirmed that the baby belongs to both Sovieshu and I. So unless you would like to imply that he somehow lied to us or that she found a way to fake a paternity test, I would stop while you’re ahead,” he said, frowning even deeper.

“It’s not fair,” she whined again, beginning to sniffle as tears collected in her eyes and began to streak down her cheeks. 

Sovieshu placed a hand on her shoulder and then one of her waist. He turned her around and began to escort her from the room. When they got to the outside, he turned to the guards, “Please bring Lady Rashta back to her room. Do not allow anyone to leave or enter other than yourselves.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” the one of the right nodded. Rashta tried to make another fuss, but a menacing growl from Kosair who was leaning against the wall and looking at the doors that led to his sister’s chambers silenced her. 

The Emperor carefully closed the doors to his wife’s bedroom behind him and looked to his brother-in-law. “Navier is doing well, you’re an uncle to a boy named Ivean.”

“Navier is doing well?” Kosair asked after a moment of taking in the information that he was really an uncle. 

“Yes. She is tired but the midwife said that everything went well, and she’s expected to make a full recovery within a couple of days,” he nodded. “I don’t think you’ll need to hold yourself to the promise that you made either. I’ve realized my mistake, and I will no longer be treating Navier in the way that I was in the past. I plan on treating her as my wife and empress.”

“Well then you should go be a supportive husband and father. I want to know as soon as I can when she’s allowed to have visitors. I have a nephew to meet and a sister to check on,” the blond said with a shadow of a smile before he left to go to his own rooms. 

Sovieshu did as he was told, returning back to the two people he currently wanted to be with more than anything. He never wanted his son out of his sight, even if he knew that wasn’t an attainable aspiration. He would have to deal with his feelings for Rashta and the whole situation with her accusations at a later time. For now, he was going to watch over his wife and son as they got some much needed sleep.

[daisysliv]

stay | spencer reid

word count: 1,813

pairing: spencer reid x reader

summary: the two times you asked him to stay and the only time he asked you

warnings: mentions of death, angst, fluff, kind of an open ending i guess???

notes: i wrote this months ago so if it’s bad im sorry! 

library

cm bookshelf

The first time you asked him, you were staring out the window of the jet as it made its way back to Quantico, you let your thoughts run over the case over and over again, torturing you. They always say cases involving kids are the hardest and they aren’t wrong.

You’ve been working with the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit— or the BAU for two years now, and the cases involving kids never got any easier.

You’ve learned to just accept the outcomes and be content with the lives you’ve saved but that didn’t mean it wasn’t hard.

The unsub abducting the children was a twenty-year-old who had been abandoned by everyone he ever loved, by people who were supposed to love him when he was six. He was tossed around in foster homes, no one ever wanted him. When he was eighteen, he searched for his mother. He found her only for her to repeat every word she had said before she left.

She told him everything no kid should hear from their mother. She died a few months ago which is what sent him over the rails. Not to mention that when he saw how happy the six-year-olds that he abducted were, he snapped even more.

His reasoning was if he couldn’t be happy with his family, why should they?

You felt bad for him, he was treated like trash all his life but that didn’t excuse what he did. That didn’t excuse any of his actions and he deserved to be sitting in a cell.

He abducted four kids and killed one. He deserved a six by eight prison cell.

“Y/N,” A soft voice spoke, placing a hand on your shoulder, squeezing it, interrupting your thoughts. Turning your head, you were met with light brown eyes, belonging to one Spencer Reid. “Are you okay?”

You look down with a sigh, staring at the same page you’ve been on for the last hour. “I don’t know.”

You truly had no idea. You couldn’t stop thinking about the case, even though in the end you had saved the kids and arrested the guy but it just wouldn’t leave you.

The team had told you that there were cases that stuck with you even if the outcome was good. In your two years on the team, none of the cases seemed to stay but this one did.

Maybe it had something to do with the fact that your mother left when you were little, leaving you with no one since your father had passed away. You bounced around in foster homes until you were fourteen, it was then you finally met the family who adopted you.

They were the sweetest couple who couldn’t conceive but wanted a child. They didn’t care about age, gender, or ethnicity, all that mattered was the connection. You remember being so happy they chose you but terrified they’d leave you. You remember the moment you realized they wouldn’t but you were still scared.

Even now, you’re still terrified of people leaving but you hide it better than most can. You often wondered if you asked people to stay, would they? You hoped they would.

You hoped he would.

“Hey, Spence?”

“Yeah?”

You took a moment before looking up from the book, turning your head back to the male with the amber eyes next to you. “If I asked you to stay, would you?”

You hoped he would say yes. He was your best friend— sure you loved him as more than that but you would never tell him. He was the only one who you’d let in, the only one who truly understood you and didn’t judge. He let you rant and cry to him when you needed it.

He didn’t even have to ask, he just knew.

Spencer would see the look in your eyes, immediately drop everything and go over to you, and gently guide you into his arms. In his arms is where you cried and ranted about what was wrong.

He just listened, only speaking when you were done. He would whisper sweet nothings into your ear to help and it just made you fall even harder. He would place soft kisses on your head as he held you close.

“Always.” He answered with a smile, locking eyes with you. As he stared at you, you saw a glimmer in his eyes but couldn’t decipher what it was.

You decided to ignore it for now at least.

—————

The second time he was the one to ask you, it was during a case that had lasted nearly two weeks before they finally found the unsubs.

For two weeks you’ve been stuck in Atlanta, Georgia.

Two weeks trying to catch a group of three unsubs, on a killing spree.

It was starting to drive you mad, you missed your bed. You missed the cold D.C air, nipping at your skin. You, along with the rest of the team, wanted nothing more than to go home. You were all willing to call it and just leave, saying you’ll call in for consults but needed to get back.

The team had a full-length discussion about that option in the hotel bar one night, after a particularly hard day. Neither of you chose to acknowledge the conversation the next morning, feeling bad you even thought of it.

“Y/N!” You heard Spencer shout, snapping you out of the thoughts that currently plagued your mind.

It was the fourteenth day of the same case and it was going cold. You didn’t just spend two weeks on this case, working day and night, for it to just go cold. Not only were you and the team physically exhausted but also mentally at this point.

You turned to look at the genius with the honey-like eyes. “Yeah?”

He flashed you the award-winning smile that made you swoon, grabbing your hand, and pulling you with him towards the conference room. “We found them,”

“Oh, thank god!” You breathed. Spencer chuckled at your reaction as the both of you entered the conference room where the rest of the team was gathered, putting on their vests.

You went to grab yours when Hotch spoke. “Y/L/N, you aren’t going.”

You turned to face him. “What?”

“I need you, JJ, and Garcia to stay here to keep us updated on their movement,” Hotch explained, adjusting the gun on his hip.

“Hotch—“

“Y/N, it’s not a request. Spencer, meet us at the car in two minutes.” He cut you off before exiting the room with Alex, Derek, and Rossi following in suit.

Spencer finished strapping on his vest and walked over to you, placing a gentle hand on your arm. “I’m sorry, I know how badly you wanted to be there when we caught them.”

“It’s okay, it’s actually better I’m not out there. If I were, I would probably kill these guys.” You spoke softly. “Just go get them and come back safe, okay?”

“Okay.” He stood there for a moment looking like he had something to say but refrained.

You bite the inside of your cheek before asking, “What is it?”

He met your eyes, his amber eyes shone like honey in the light. “Nothing... it’s just— if I asked you to stay would you?” An unfamiliar glint flashed in his eyes but it went away so quick you assumed you were seeing things.

“Absolutely.” You quietly answered, under your breath so JJ and Garcia wouldn’t hear you.

Spencer smiled softly, the hand on your arm moving up, and cupping your cheek. You leaned into the touch. It was warm and felt like home. “Good because I really need you to stay here. Don’t get too impatient and rush out there, okay?”

You returned the smile, closing your eyes. “Okay.”

“I have to go now but I’ll see you soon,” You only nodded, reluctantly pulling away from his touch, watching him sprint off to the car where the others were waiting.

You turned, finding yourself met with the gazes of Penelope and JJ. “What?”

They just shrugged, turning the attention to the laptop on the table showing the location of the unsubs.

You were ready to catch those bastards.

———————

The third and finally time it was asked, you had asked it as he was possibly about to get himself killed.

He was going to hand himself over to the unsub to save his girlfriend— who you recently found out about only a few hours ago.

“Spencer, she could kill you.” You whimpered. You understood why he felt like he needed to hand himself over but you just couldn’t let him.

“If I don’t, she’ll kill Maeve. I can’t—“

“Spencer, please.”

“I can’t, you of all people should understand. You had put yourself on the line just a few months ago to save someone you cared about.” He tried to reason but you weren’t having it.

A few months ago, your father had been held hostage in a bank with other people and you just wanted him out so you offered up yourself.

Everyone had tried to talk you out of it but you wouldn’t budge. You had taken off your vest, took your gun out of its holster, and walked into the bank without a single word.

You could remember hearing Spencer pleading you not to go, you remembered how loud he shouted when he saw you reach for the handles on the bank doors. You remembered the terror in his eyes when you took a last look at the team before you entered.

You had saved your father though because they were more than happy to trade him for an FBI agent. You didn’t get away so easily.

You were beaten and had got shot in the stomach, you were lucky the team had gotten there in time.

“That was different.” You breathe out.

“How was that different?”

“Because nobody else would care if I died! I’m expendable, Spencer! I’m replaceable! You aren’t!” You shouted, drawing the attention of the team.

“How could you say that? You are not replaceable and no one thinks that. Look, I- I can’t do this right now. I need to get to her.”

“If… If I asked you to stay, would you?”

He looked at you, opened his mouth like he was gonna say something but closed it.

He hesitated.

He never hesitates.

He always answers immediately after you ask.

You released your grip on his wrist, mouth opening agape.

He finally whispers, “not this time.”

You watch as he frantically rips off his vest and takes his gun out of his holster handing it over to Hotch who was staring at him with a stern gaze.

“Spence, please.”

He looks at you with an emotion you can’t read before he disappears through the door.

You could only hope he came back out.

[simonalkenmayer]

Hey Simon, I was just wondering something; I'm a christian, but I don't force my beliefs on others or preach to anyone and I'm always supportive of anyone's names/pronouns and sexuality and everything.. and yet when people find out I'm a christian, regardless of how long we've been friends and how well they know me, they end up insulting me and being rude. I know christians have done alot of bad things, but shouldn't I be judged for who I am and not for what others with my same belief have done? I'm just confused I guess, but all the christians I know are really strict and hardcore so I didn't want to ask them since I know they would most likely try to convince me to /only/ befriend other christians

What’s confusing about this exactly?

The people you know have either been severely hurt/stigmatized/ostracized/otherwise alienated by your religion, myself included. And you wonder why they’d laugh in your face and get testy? That’s not confusing. It’s to be expected. You say you know that Christians have done some bad things...hahaha... what a blithe and naive understatement. Christianity is at the root of every atrocity in the western world since it took over Rome and many outside it. It’s not as simple as witch trials and crusades and the third reich. It’s also been a source of deep systemic oppression for women, people of color, LGBTQIA and the disabled. It’s been used as a cudgel for politics, corruption, genocide, colonialism, and on and on. My friend this planet would be a different place in every respect if not for that monotheistic dogma seeking to put the arrogance of absolute confidence in unattainable knowledge into the hands of a few egotistical children.

You’re surprised when people scoff at the invisible man in the sky who lets his creation be destroyed, who made the devil but cannot stop him? The source of paradoxes so deep and abiding they fracture a mind to hold onto them? My friend, that is not at all surprising. Understand I am not judging the beliefs. I’m simply saying “what would an alien say” and it’s quite obvious that an outsider might scoff at those flaws.

Yes, you should be judged for your actions and your deeds alone. Absolutely. But one of your actions was to choose to ally yourself to a religion. Your friends see that as your choice and are stunned that you would make it. They see the patterns they have likely had beaten into them, playing out again with you and defend themselves by pushing you away.

There is nothing confusing about that. So if you are confused, I hope I’ve made their chagrin clear. It doesn’t excuse their behavior, but perhaps tou might see why.

It’s also true that you may perceive critique of the religion as an insult to your faith. Divide the two. Believe what you like but the religion is a blight. The faith can be positive. Religions have a difficult time with that, because they are organized by people who build in back doors and corruption like termites.

Examine your religion carefully and from many perspectives. Examine your faith rationally and from the outside. Ask people why they hate Christianity and what bad experiences they’ve had. Then you might have a guess. I can give you a list longer than the Bible itself as to how and why I loathe Christianity itself. I can give you a list about as long as the book of Genesis of people I felt actually embodied the faith thay is at the core of the religion.

There is something wrong with a mind that tries to find the source of its resolve, its steadfastness, its discipline, its accountability, its ethics, its compassion outside itself. That should always be internal, built and conceived of by the mind holding it. Otherwise it can be set down whenever it serves the holder. If it is integral, it cannot be discarded. Your identity cannot come from outside. Because if it does, it’s far far too easy to crush you. It’s also far too easy to lure you, control you, break you. Your steering wheel is outside your own body. And anyone who comes along can grab hold and yank it over with just a few convincing discussions. You have a back door built into your intellect, and anyone with the right password can get in.

I find it very helpful to listen to people who flatly disagree with me, even if they’re insulting. It can be difficult to do, especially since I am old and feel I’ve had a tremendous education that informs me, but I still listen. If everyone else says the same thing, it might be time to evaluate. If the people you like are willing to insult you to defend themselves, as a knee jerk reaction...perhaps there is something there. Perhaps you are being a bit selfish, in thay you want to be judged apart from the army you inhabit, when your support fills its ranks. See why people do what they do. See why you’re being insulted and evaluate the feelings of the speaker first, before you say “woe is me! This war on Christianity’” there is no war on Christianity. Christianity is a bully and has been sobbing and whining at backlash whenever it enacts or supports atrocities. Boo boo. You poor things. You’re one of the three largest religions on earth, and tou inhabit the most wealthy and aggressive nations. Oh how sad. That’s the way it looks from outside. That’s what the religion is doing, on every network it finds, in every pulpit and pew, our in the world as it recruits. You I agree thay people shouldn’t insult tou for having a faith, absolutely, but I think you can see how it might feel, to find out a friend calls themselves a part of that machine. To insult tou is not right, but I can absolutely comprehend and feel compassion for those who do.

On the flip side of that...religion is about certitude. Christians know they make a choice to believe. So when someone else makes the same choice, it bolsters their identity. It reaffirms their decision. That’s one way evangelizing has been built into the construct and been selected for over evolution. Those Christians who might try to convince you to “keep to the faith” or keep to only your insular circle of belief...have a vested internal psychological need to see that happen. They want you to agree with them.

I’d encourage you to use that lens when analyzing sermons, rhetoric of evangelizing, the news that couches faith within it, and every other message you’ve seen containing the name of god.

Humanity built all religions. Other animals don’t have religions. They don’t need them. Mankind built them. Why? Because the human brain evolved to find solutions, and when it asked the great question and got no reply but circumstance, it built a reason for those things. It personified the world around it. Rain became the tears of giant beings. Weather patterns turned to mood swings. Terrifying events became anger or war twixt titans. And over time those things evolved in the survival landscape of your skulls. Ideas from differing groups met and competed and hybridized. The “god of the Israelites” somehow became the one true god, when it never was to begin with. It did that by appealing to ego. Or rather...men built ego into the religion, again and again, from the earliest points—excluding women, building structures to control groups of people under the auspices of guidance, building power into it like a government. I was there when Luther and Calvin began their attempts to tear down the Church, and do you know how they did that? By appealing to the ego of the common man, in a slightly new way. Their chief break from the Catholic doctrine? You don’t need an intercession. You can talk to god yourself. To you that might sound freeing, my friend, but really it was a killing stroke—the evolution of the thought that not only did man contain the divine, but he could also talk to it any time.

After that, the Christian religion fractured into a million piecess, the fetid narcissism of small differences. Nitpicking things down to a few words. Dividing because one group believes music is bad or women should wear certain clothes, or demons are real, or whatever. It’s all a supreme and visible act of ego. And each man, when he finds his lodging, does so based on what challenges him the least—not his desires or his skills, men are always willing to expand those, but his beliefs. They rest with the denomination that challenges their already formed ideas as little as possible.

It’s been proven time and again—insular groups tend toward extremism. So what happens when a group of egoists who’ve flitted from denomination to denomination until they find people who agree with them and support them, and practice a faith that fundamentally believes everyone else is going to hell...tries to coexist with the world outside? Everyone else is wrong. They cannot hear otherwise, The group turns in on itself, isolates itself ideologically, Indoctrinateds its tertiary members like children and friends, anesthetizes itself to more and more exclusionism and extreme ideas. Period. That’s how it happens. And only with supreme effort and discipline does it halt, shift, or move differently.

Think of ideas as replicating units. See them as automated cells trying to live in a hostile encironment. They replicate through easy passages and evolve literally like bacteria—through a process of ideological conjugation (in bacteria, cells can swap DNA with one another to gain each others’ immunities and strengths). An idea, let’s say “women should be in the home and be subservient” hits a group...does it survive or not? If the group is mostly women? Less chance. If the group is mostly women who have been single independent mothers? Not likely. The idea would either have to be clipped off the religion for the religion to stick, or it would have to evolve slightly to something like “If the woman has a man, then she should defer to him.” But if that same idea comes into a group that is at least 50% male and contaiins nuclear family groups? It naturally appeals to the male ego. It has a higher acceptance rate. The ones who accept it turn around and persuade others. They adapt the idea in real time as they are trying to convince their friends and famikt the idea is great. And then that fans outward until people who are already societally oppressed—the women themselves—begin to accept it too out of necessity and regulate it amongst themselves. And so on. Every single precept of religion—this is how it happens. And Christianity is a bacterial juggernaut, because of that one notion that the regular man can talk to God. If he has a new idea or rather accepts a new concept and wants to spread it or hold it? He’s entitled to, because it might be divine.

This is how religion happens. I’ve watched it play out for centuries. So do pardon my sardonic temperament and my chagrin that this hasn’t occurred to you yet. Religion is a construct to serve humanity, give it dominion over earth, justify its actions, and ensure it that it has access to all the answers of the universe, some very helpfully written down. How very convenient! Too bad the Bible is also just an evolved thing. Look up how it was constructed and what Catholicism did to it before it ever got translated into English by two self serving kings. And then there’s that one caveat that is so tantalizing...forgiveness. Oh Christians know they’re not supposed to rely on forgiveness to excuse their bad acts, but it certainly is nice to know that even if the person you’ve wronged doesn’t forgive you, as long as you’re sorry, god does. No that’s not how it’s supposed to work...but can you honestly tell me thay that loophole isn’t lurking and in play in every Christian group?

But enough discussion of the religion and its armored plating of ever strengthening adaptation. Let’s talk about faith. Let’s discuss the core beliefs of Christianity, because it seems to me that those are what matter to you.

Be kind. Don’t judge. Be humble. Do what is right. Be honest. Do not envy. Do no harm. Act within the laws of your home but keep always to this path. Give all things their due thought and contemplation. Be generous. These are all ideas that help one to coexist, cause little negative impact, while simultaneously building progress. These are things that aid the bearer. So how did these things get so buried in the carapace of religion? Faith is the delivery mechanism. The religion is the viral load racked onto it. I’m mixing metaphors here, but in virology, the virus needs a receptor site to bind to on the cell. Some things can block this docking, but barring that, the virus tricks the cell, binds at the receptor, delivers the payload. Takes over the cell. Humans want to be good. They want to coexist. They want to learn. They accept the faith, and the religion follows hard behind.

Why can a person not simply choose those things? By themselves? No god. No leaders. Just that choice? It’s what I have done. I needed no religion to do it. It’s just good sense. It’s why densely populated regions tend to vote liberally and rural areas do not. The more people around you, the more your must accept the precepts of coexistence. The more rural tou are, the more insular the groups tend to be. The more reserved their ideas about social welfare programs and so on...so why does religion vilify atheists? Why does it insist thay being an atheist makes a person amoral? It really has to doesn’t it? I mean if it became obvious that atheists really aren’t out there raping and pillaging in the streets, but are instead living by their own ethics and morals which are remarkably similar...well...the religion would collapse.

You do not need a religion to be good, and I know you know this, because it seems to me you are trying to keep to your faith despite what those in the religion might say. You treat people as they wish to be treated...as you would have done unto you. You do that, in spite of all the people who claim the same religion who do the opposite, and those are the people who have taught the world what Christianity is.

You’re confused about why people would insult you, reject you, shun you for carrying into their midst a thing they’ve been taught by experience is toxic and hurtful. You’re surprised by that still? I hope not.

Research your religion and what it has done and continues to do. Not just your wing of it, but the whole grotesque leviathan. Look at it critically as your faith tells you to. Be humble. Be compassionate. Be open. Divide your beliefs and your faith from this thought process. See if what you really believe fits beneath the name of Christianity, or if perhaps it could be that a massive, ancient, voracious entity has consumed good sense and worn it like a skin sack.

Sometimes it takes a monster to know one.

[maulusque]

WHAT IF MAUL KIDNAPPED ANAKIN RIGHT OFF OF TATOOINE

(I started writing this and then it got out of hand and now it’s 3:30 in the morning, rest of it’s under the break so i don’t monopolize your dash)

So for whatever combination of reasons, Maul spits out the kool-aid and gets really disenchanted with Sidious a lot earlier than in canon. He starts wondering things like “why is he not telling me his master plan if i’m so important to it?” and “why do i get nothing more than vague promises of power sometime in the future, when i should be guaranteed a position as his second-in-command, after all I’ve done for this guy?” and “why does he treat me like i’m disposable, and then constantly tell me i’m crucial for his plans?”

and he starts thinking things like “hey wait a minute, none of that childhood torture made me better at anything sith-related, it just gave me crippling trauma that actually impairs my capacity for self-control and incredible violence” and (possibly due to his experiences at Orsis Academy) “oh whack looks like kids learn a lot better and faster when they’re, like, having fun? Whatever ‘fun’ is?”

and anyway by the time he gets to tatooine with orders to “find that stoner jedi and kick his ass”, Maul is pretty annoyed at his master. And when he senses not one, not two, but THREE powerful force-presences on Tatooine, one of which vastly eclipses any other force presence he’s ever felt, and belongs to a nine-year-old slave boy, Maul gets an idea. You know, (he thinks), his master sure would love to get his hands on a force-baby like that. Master Sidious sure would be evilly thrilled to have an extremely powerful nine-year-old delivered directly to his doorstep on coruscant, with the jedi having to do all the heavy lifting of training the kid. Master Sidious would probably want nothing more than to have this kid be taken in by the Jedi, so he can start grooming a new apprentice. 

And Maul, full of spite and an as-yet-undiscovered need to adopt every force-sensitive in sight, decides to deprive Sidious of a potential apprentice. He follows Anakin to Naboo (in this universe, Anakin still wins the podrace, still wins his own freedom), and, after the fighting is over, sees a prime window of opportunity, and kidnaps Anakin right out from under the Jedi’s nose. 

(In this universe, Obi-Wan does not cut Darth Maul in half and dump him down the garbage chute- Maul, unwilling to do his master’s bidding any longer, doesn’t go full out against Qui-Gon, doesn’t kill him, and Obi-Wan doesn’t get that grief-and-rage filled boost that helped him dismember Maul last time. The fight ends, the Jedi are convinced that Maul is dead, and Naboo is freed).

Once Maul has the kid, since he’s a pragmatic guy, he also returns to Tatooine and takes the kid’s mom. Maul doesn’t know how to cook, do laundry, tie shoes, or any of that shit. He doesn’t want to have to PARENT the kid, he just wants to train him. 

Maul has zero money, and also zero subtlety, so he stomps into Watto’s shop, grabs him by the neck, and says “The boy's mother is coming with me. You will disable her slave chip and let her leave unharmed, or I will squeeze your head off.” Watto complies. For Anakin, this is his first real impression of Maul- storming the junk shop and threatening his former master for the freedom of Anakin’s mother.

Maul is determined to do a better job training Anakin than Sidious did training Maul. Because FUCK Sidious. Maul can be a WAY better Sith than Sidious ever allowed him to be. And since Maul is slowly realizing how... unhelpful... the way he was raised was, he’s determined to figure out how to do it better.

So he reads. He reads training manuals, child psychology books, teaching books, studies on motivation and performance, anything he can get his nerdy little hands on. He learns that frightened children don’t perform well. He learns about “trauma”, and how “trauma” makes it hard to control your emotions sometimes. Well, you can’t have THAT in your ultimate sith apprentice. Okay, so no scaring Anakin and no traumatizing him. Maul quickly realizes that literally everything he does frightens Anakin or his mom, and frightening Anakin’s mom also frightens Anakin (cut him some slack, he’s literally never been in a positive relationship, Maul has no model for any behavior other than “evil abuser” and “subservient slave”).

Maul is not an idiot. He knows he’s not doing it right. He’s reluctant to start teaching Anakin ANYTHING until he knows he won’t accidentally damage his precious spite-apprentice. So he mostly ignores the kid while he reads and learns.

He also observes. Specifically, he observes Shmi Skywalker. Somehow, she seems to be able to interact with Anakin without scaring him. She can even tell him what to do without scaring him. She can teach and correct him without scaring him. And she never physically hurts him at all. Maul is kind of blown away- he didn’t even know it was possible to interact with people like that? HOW does she DO it???

So Maul watches and learns. He practices. Shmi helps, guides him, tells him when he messes up and tells him how to do it better. Maul gets a lot better at restraining his murderous urges. Turns out, if you immediately kill everyone who annoys you, it’s hard to ask them for advice after. The other person Maul gets pointers from is C3PO, the protocol droid the kid dragged along. Maul understands 3PO better than he understands Shmi and Anakin. 3PO is a droid. Maul was raised by a droid. Maul knows how to talk with 3PO, whereas talking with Shmi or Anakin feels like wandering around in a fog full of landmines.

So anyway, Maul and 3PO become unlikely friends, and, as Maul, determined to out-parent Sidious in every conceivable way, learns more and more social skills, emotional intelligence, and interpersonal skills, he truly comprehends how fucked up his own childhood was. There’s rage. There’s grief. There’s murderous desire for vengeance. But there’s also Anakin. Who would be scared if Maul smashed the ship or killed random people to vent his anger. Anakin, who needs something called a “positive role model”, who needs to be taught how to use the Force, and who needs the adults around him to have their shit together. There’s also Shmi, who makes him soup and hot chocolate when he’s feeling bad, and tells him off for breaking things, and who helps him get better at being a real person, and who doesn’t seem to want anything from him other than a general expectation of not hurting her or her son. So Maul deals. He grows. He heals, slowly. There’s setbacks, and gains. And somewhere in there, he starts teaching Anakin how to use the Force.

The problem is, Maul learned to access the Force first through fear and anger. Turns out, it’s really hard to teach someone fundamentals of force usage via fear and anger without first having to traumatize them. So right away, Maul hits a barrier. He doesn’t have any clue how to teach Anakin a different way though. He needs help.

But also, FUCK the jedi. NO WAY is Maul asking the Jedi for help, he hates the Jedi. Maul is still a Sith, he’s just a new, better kind of Sith, the kind that trains apprentices who are gonna kick WAY MORE ASS and be HEALTHY WELL-ADJUSTED PEOPLE while doing it (let him dream, ok?). So Maul starts hauling Shmi and Anakin around the galaxy, seeking out any non-Jedi Force-users they can, to learn Force techniques that the Sith didn’t teach Maul.

They spend time with the Guardians on Jedha, with those weird duck-people from that one episode with Jar-Jar’s girlfriend, with some wacky monks on a tiny island in the ass-end of nowhere, and even some time with a long-lost sith cult in a box system in the middle of the Unknown Regions. Maul learns. Anakin learns. Maul uses what he learns from the other force-users, combines it with what he knows, and teaches Anakin even more. The Jedi and the Sith are really the only two groups who really use the force for Big Impressive Things, like telekinesis and lightning and whatnot, so while the other force groups would have a lot to teach them both, they wouldn’t really be able to teach Anakin how to levitate something. And you can’t be the kick-assiest, bestest Sith Apprentice Ever if you can’t levitate shit. So Maul takes takes all these new techniques, like “being calm and chill when you meditate instead of super pissed off” and “using the Force while not being filled with incredible rage” and “mindfulness techniques” and “who knew you could do cool stuff like floating rocks without having to exhaust yourself by hating everything in existence, including yourself” and applies them to the skills and methods he already has. He and Anakin have to do a lot of fumbling and exploring and mistake-making, but they figure it out. And Anakin learns. And he kicks ass.

When Anakin is 11, Maul hauls him off to Ach-To to dig a crystal out of the roots of an ancient tree. He tells Anakin to hold it and meditate, to let his emotions rise around him, to feed them, to pull them through the crystal, let it resonate, let it take on the shape of his strongest feelings. After all, that is how Maul was trained to bleed his crystals. Maul’s pain and fear and anger yielded him red crystals.

Anakin comes out with yellow. Determination, fierce protectiveness, drive, hunger for justice, righteous fury. That is Anakin’s lightsaber.

Anakin grows up, planet-hopping with his Mom and Uncle Maul in a beat-up freighter with under-the-hood enhancements out the ass (Maul ditched the Scimitar right after Tatooine so his master couldn’t instantly track him down, and Maul and Anakin are both huge mechanics nerds and bond over things like “but what if you put ANOTHER PLASMA CORE IN THE ENGINE”, so this ship is, uh, certainly some sort of thing). Anakin grows up learning a hundred different Force traditions- just about every major Force tradition in the Galaxy (except for Jedi), and more than a few obscure ones. He grows up, tinkering with his droid, learning Juyo from Maul and how to sew a button from his mom. He grows up, beholden to two destinies only: “Help me take down Sidious, because he’s an asshole and a shitty Sith Lord” and “do whatever the fuck you want, because you are a Sith and no one gets to tell you what to do” (”except me.” Shmi interrupts. “Sith Lords still have a bedtime.” “Sith Lords still have a bedtime,” Maul amends, having no desire to repeat what happened when he encouraged a ten-year-old Anakin to ignore all the rules on purpose).

And what Anakin wants to do is what he’s always wanted to do- go back to Tatooine and free the slaves. Maul thinks that a big project like that would be an excellent learning opportunity for Anakin. He also wants Anakin to succeed, so he sits him down and talks logistics. How do you free the slaves without hundreds of slave owners detonating their chips when they hear what is happening? How do you keep them free once you do that? How do you get them jobs, clothes, food, houses? What about the ones who want to leave Tatooine? What about the ones who want to stay? And what about the economic upheaval that will happen when you deprive a whole planet of its cheapest source of labor? When Anakin is fourteen, they start planning.

When Anakin is eighteen, they make their move. Anakin, coordinating with Shmi, who returned to Tatooine three years earlier to organize things on the ground (living with a woman named Beru Whitesun, who is a gateway to the Freedom Path network), activates several massive orbital EMP devices, frying every electrical device on the planet, including slave chips. (The EMPs came from a pirate friend of his mom’s, who seems to do whatever she wants as long as she makes him hot chocolate). All over the planet, lights go out, slave chips fry, and radios go silent. And Shmi’s agents get to work. Ordinary citizens all over tatooine grab their rifles and head out. They meet up with others in their settlement, and the teams sweep the area, following a plan devised by Skywalker and Whitesun. They systematically visit every house in every settlement, city, spaceport, and town that is known to house slaves, and tell the slaves to grab their families and most treasured possessions and follow them.

(Tatooine is a sparsely populated planet- you can count the major settlements on two hands. If it weren’t, this would never have worked.)

Not many slaveowners put up much of a resistance- fifty angry masked people pointing guns in your face tend to make you compliant. The only slaveowner who puts up more than a token resistance is Jabba the Hutt. His resistance, however, lasts about thirty seconds, before Anakin cuts off his head.

Maul meets Anakin at Jabba’s palace, where he’s rounding up the last of Jabba’s cronies. 

“No trouble?” Maul asks.

“Nope,” Anakin replies. “You?”

“None.” Maul said. Turns out, it’s like, super easy to take down an entire criminal organization when you can turn up to a meeting of the Hutt family heads, kill them all, and waltz out past all their security forces without breaking a sweat. (Seriously, it’s kind of hilarious how Maul is literally just that good). 

“The slaves here are freed?”

“Yep,” says Anakin. Then frowns. “Hold on...” He senses a presence. Big, hulking, simple, and starving. He can sense that, whatever it is, it hasn’t seen the sunlight or been able to move freely in years. 

So anyway, that’s how Anakin turns up at Mos Espa at first sunrise, riding on the back of Jabba the Hutt’s pet rancor. “Who’s a good girl,” Anakin says, scratching behind her ear nubs. “You are!” And she is a good girl. Padme (”I just think it sounds like a nice name, you know?”) is very good at dispersing angry slaveowners who look like they might start rioting. 

The slaves freed overnight have been gathered together at pre-designated safe zones-mostly warehouses or large buildings that Shmi has been buying up over the years for exactly this purpose.

(The slaves living in remote settlements, at moisture farms and homesteads, didn’t get a visit from the freedom teams. However, Shmi had a plan for them too. She has made overtures to the Tusken tribes. Once she managed to negotiate her way into speaking to one of the leaders without getting killed, she sold them a story, a dream. A revolution. Free the slaves. Transform Tatooine. She doesn’t promise the Tuskens to expel humans from the planet entirely. She promises them equal rights under the law (she also promises the existence of laws in the first place). She promises them the right to raise Banthas, the right to traverse their ancestral lands and the return of sacred sites taken from them, the right to trade, the right to control who passes over their lands. She promises them the right to water and shade. And, she promises them half the seats on the ruling council she plans to set up. And so, on the night the EMPs blow, Tusken raiders visit every homestead on Tatooine (again, there’s only a few hundred, a thousand at most), and kidnap the slaves. Perhaps not the most reassuring experience for enslaved peoples who have been taught their entire lives to fear the Tuskens, and not without reason, but, nevertheless, it is freedom).

As the new day dawns- Tatooine’s first dawn as a free planet- Anakin, Maul, and Shmi know that the easy part is over. Now, they have to house tens of thousands of people currently cooped up in warehouses with nothing but the clothes on their backs. They have to establish and keep iron-tight control over the planet and its settlements, and quash any violent reprisals before they gain momentum. They also have to completely rebuild an economy completely upended by the overnight emancipation. 

However, Shmi’s not the only one who’s been busy for the past few years. While Shmi was on Tatooine, planning a revolution, Anakin and Maul were traversing the galaxy, gathering resources, using the Patented Maul Method (TM)- breaking into the headquarters of powerful organizations and threatening to kill everybody in charge unless they did what they said.

As the second sun rises, ships begin arriving in Tatooine’s orbit. Pop-up housing is dropped onto the outskirts of Tattooine’s settlements, the kind that mining companies use to set up new bases on mineral-rich asteroids. The accommodations are small and sparse, but each family has a kitchen, bathroom, beds, and private space. Huge generators are hooked up to cool the new housing. Anakin knows that the already-existing slave quarters, made of stone with no windows and mostly underground- are already built to keep the occupants cool, but he refuses to make the former slave population live in slave quarters. Some of the freed people are moved into Jabba’s old palace, some into buildings abandoned by rich business owners who fled the planet when they saw what was happening. Food, water, medicine, clothes, books, toys, tools, and shoes are deposited. (the Republic’s equivalent of the FBI had been utterly baffled when Galaxy’s three biggest criminal organizations started moving cargo that looked less like a drug trade and more like a disaster relief mission). 

Anakin walks among the newly freed slaves, reassuring them- yes, you are free. Yes, you will be fed and housed and clothed as long as you need it. Yes, we will try to find your child/husband/wife/mother who was sold years ago. Yes, you can go home, you can do whatever you want.

He also asks for volunteers. And he gets them. Hardly anyone would say no to the chance to work with the Skywalker, who once was a slave like them, but freed himself and returned, who freed the slaves in one night of glory, and appeared at sunrise riding a rancor.

Anakin sends out messengers, all across the planet. “Tatooine is a free world,” they say. “All slaves are hereby freed, by order of the He who Walks in the Sky. Any slaveowners who, by their own free will, turn over their detonators will not be harmed. Any who resist, will be.” Not many resist.

At the end of that first day, as the suns are setting, once the freed peoples of Tatooine are fed, and given water, and sheltered, Maul comes to Anakin.

“I am proud of you.” He says. “You have come into your power, you have mastered yourself, and so have mastered the Force. You have the freedom and the power to do anything you choose. You are no longer my apprentice. Lord Skywalker, you are a true Sith Master.” Anakin pulls him into a hug. He maybe cries a little bit. Maul maybe cries a little bit. Maul maybe also feels mildly annoyed that Anakin is a full head taller than him now.

(Sidious would be truly, utterly offended at Maul’s criteria for Sith-Lord-ness. “THAT’S NOT SITH” he would have said. “THAT’S BARELY EVEN DARK SIDE ADJACENT, YOU ARE DILUTING OUR THOUSAND YEAR HERITAGE-” but Maul wouldn’t care about Sidious’ stupid opinions, anyway).

And Anakin and Shmi get to work. They employ the newly freed people of Tatooine, constructing permanent houses, tearing down slave markets, building critical infrastructure. Anakin pays them more than a living wage, thanks to the extremely deep pockets of Crimson Dawn. He brings in doctors and teachers, and guarantees healthcare and education for all who want it (whenever one of Crimson Dawn’s higher-ups says “wait, why are we dumping massive amounts of money into this one random-ass planet?” Darth Maul just casually sidles up behind them with his lightsaber until they remember that he can literally just show up anywhere, at anytime, and kill them unless they do what he says. If Maul’s busy, he sends 3PO instead- 3PO’s been outfitted with about ten times as much weaponry as is legal, and can be very convincing when he wants to be).

While Anakin works on infrastructure and supporting the freed peoples of Tatooine, and unfucking the economic trainwreck they caused, Shmi and Beru work on the government. They write down a few, very basic rules-Tatooine is to be ruled by a council of people, half of whom will come from the Tusken tribes, all of which shall be selected by fair and free election. All citizens of Tatooine shall have the right to vote in these elections, and the right to vote shall be guaranteed to all- except for those who have ever owned or sold a sentient being. (it was a huge debate in the Lars-Whitesun-Skywalker household, this matter of restricting voting rights. In the end, it was decided that slaveowners, and ONLY slaveowners, were to be the sole exception for universal suffrage). Every citizen of Tatooine is guaranteed access to food, medicine, and water, and has the right to have their grievances addressed by the council.

Shmi works quickly to gather her council- she knows she has to do it fast, to prove to the Tuskens that she is as good as her word. The first elections are chaotic, and perhaps not completely non-violent, but in the end, there is a council of twenty representatives, with Shmi Skywalker representing Mos Espa.

The Council proceeds to have raging- and occasionally violent- debates about the structure of their future government. What rights to guarantee citizens. Should they have a court system? What about a financial system? How are they to guarantee water, food, and medicine to everyone? What even are taxes?

The Rebuilding of Tatooine is long, and hard, and contentious. There are arguments and rage and fighting- the repatriation of traditional Tusken lands is especially fraught. But Shmi promised, and so she makes it happen (Anakin and Padme may have helped too). Maul, for his part, keeps training Anakin, and keeps managing the criminal underworld with a careful balance of death threats and actual death, but mostly stays out of the way of Anakin’s Senior Project. 

Soon, Anakin is able to re-purpose the pop-up housing, since most people have moved into traditional Tatooine-built homes, suited to the environment. The newly restructured economy is tentatively taking its first steps, and Tatooine’s baby government is becoming less and less dependent on intergalactic criminal funding (partially thanks to Anakin confiscating the entirety of Jabba’s personal fortune). He spends a lot of time in Council meetings, trying not to scream at people while also trying to stop Padme from eating them. The Council debates what is next for Tatooine, and eventually, they vote to petition the Republic for membership. Tatooinians, as a people, including the Tuskens, are fiercely independant, but, as Shmi points out, joining the Republic would guarantee them to certain things like humanitarian aid, a voice in decisions affecting interplanetary trade routes and taxation, legal legitimacy and the right to call on the Republic for aid should their sovereignty ever be threatened. Most importantly, slavery is illegal on all Republic planets, which means that if any slave-owning organizations ever pushed in on Tatooine, there would be another (much better funded) organization to call on to help quash it. 

The Republic requires that a petitioning planet’s head of state visit the Senate on Coruscant to ask the Senate for entry into the Republic. The Council, grumbling, re-jiggers their constitution to allow for a “chief councilor”, and promptly elect Anakin to the position (”Fuck me,”) Anakin says. Maul laughs at him, then sobers and tells him to be careful on Coruscant (”My former master lives there.” he says. “Mind your shields, and do not let him know your true nature. You are not yet ready to take him on, and you have your planet and your people to think of.” “Yes, Uncle Maul.” Anakin says. “I will be careful.”).

Anakin shows up in the Galactic Senate, sandy robes, uncombed hair, and half smirk on his face. “I am Anakin Skywalker, free person of Tatooine,” he says. He presents the case for Tatooine’s admittance to the Republic in a booming, confident voice, drawing on his inner strength- his righteous anger and determination to ensure his people’s future- to keep his voice from wavering.

There are grumbles. Muttering. No Senator wants to be the one to blatantly say “no”- it’s a sort of miracle story, Tatooine, the little planet that rose up and threw of the shackles of slavery and now wants to join the Republic- the exact sort of mythos that the Republic itself is built on. It’s bad PR to vote against that little planet. But at the same time, Tatooine is a sandy, useless dustball that’ll need fiscal support from the Senate, with nothing to offer in terms of economic value. Many Senators are debating with themselves, not whether or not to say “no”, but how to vote “no” without losing ten points in approval ratings.

Until the Senator from Naboo, a diminutive woman who somehow reminds Anakin of his rancor, stands up. She gives an impassioned, off-the-cuff speech, reminding the Senate of how her own planet had thrown off the shackles of oppression not ten years ago, how the Republic was founded by planets like Tatooine, and how, most importantly, they had no legal basis to deny them entry, and if the Senate voted no, Naboo’s lawyers would litigate the issue six ways from taungsday- which, due to a clause in the Senate’s constitution that forbade them from passing legislation while the issue of a planet’s admittance to the Republic was on the floor, would effectively paralyze the Senate until the courts made a ruling. And, as Padme made sure to emphasize, if the court’s decision was not favorable, she would appeal. She could feasibly stop the Senate from doing anything for years, if necessary.

Tatooine is admitted to the Republic.

“Two Senators,” Anakin demands. “In order for my people to be fairly represented, my planet requires two Senators.” When complaints are made, Jar-Jar Binks threatens to explain the complicated dynamics of a planet attempting to grapple with a colonial past. He doesn’t have to. Tatooine gets its two Senators.

Anakin meets with Senator Amidala in her office, to thank her.

“Of course,” she said. “I remember a little boy who helped free my planet- how could I not help you when you needed it?”

“Uhh, thanks, yeah, that’s, really nice of you. Like your hair. Which is nice. In an objective sort of way,” Anakin says, because there is no universe in which Anakin is not a complete idiot in front of Padme. “I named my rancor after you,” he blurts.

Before Anakin is scheduled to leave Coruscant, the Jedi send a knight to scope out the new planetary leader. Obi-Wan Kenobi shows up at Anakin’s hotel room, and goes “Oh. It’s.... you.” 

“Obi-Wan!” Anakin grins. He only knew him for about two days when he was nine, but he still greets him like an old friend, like a brother. They fall into easy, teasing conversation. “I thought you were dead, I confess, after you disappeared from Naboo,” Obi-Wan admits. “I am truly sorry that I was unable to fulfill Qui-Gon’s promise to train you as a Jedi Knight.”

“That’s ok,” Anakin waves his hand dismissively. “I got trained as a Sith instead.” Then he freezes. Oops. He was not supposed to say that. Maul would be so disappointed in him.

“Beg pardon?” Obi-Wan says.

“I, uhh, got trained, as a, uh, sift...er? Instead? A sand sifter? I sift sand for a living?”

“You said Sith.”

“No I didn’t, I definitely said sift.”

“No, you said Sith.”

“I definitely did not.”

Anakin changes the subject, and Obi-Wan lets it drop. He’ll tell the Council, of course, but he honestly cannot fathom the concept of this kid being a Sith. He senses nothing Dark about him- well, at least no more dark than is present in any sentient. Besides, it’s not like there are any Sith Lords around anymore, ever since he killed Maul (luckily, Obi-Wan doesn’t see the picture in Anakin’s wallet, a candid shot 3PO took in the cockpit of their family’s ship. Fifteen-year-old Anakin, at the controls, hyperbrake still on with his hands on the hyperdrive lever, Maul, standing behind him, hands gripping Anakin’s seat and face distorted half-way through a panic-induced rant about flight safety, and Shmi, sitting in the co-pilot’s seat, laughter on her face and knitting needles in her hands).

Anakin contacts his mother, tells her the good news. The Council, moving with alacrity, elects Tatooine’s first Senators. And four days later, one year after the Dawn of Freedom, Senator Shmi Skywalker and Senator Ooutrigh (a Tusken warrior) of Tatooine arrive on Coruscant and address the Senate for the first time. 

Of course, while Anakin has been growing up, planning for Tatooine’s future, and annoying the shit out of Maul, Palpatine’s own plans have continued apace. Barely four months after Tatooine is admitted to the Republic, Obi-Wan finds himself in an arena on Geonosis. The battle goes much differently this time, partially due to the fact that Anakin has retrofitted the cargo bay of his family’s ship to house Padme (the rancor, not the Senator), and descends onto the Arena sands just as Yoda and the Clone Troops arrive, and deposits both Padme’s (the rancor, and the Senator) into the melee. 

“Hi, Obi-Wan!” Anakin calls, whipping out his lightsaber to deflect the hail of blaster bolts (Maul would disapprove, but Maul isn’t here, he’s ten clicks away, chasing down the Jedi dropout Sidious replaced him with). 

“Anakin, what the FUCK” Obi-Wan says, staring at Chief Councilor Anakin Skywalker of Tatooine, riding a rancor and swinging an honest-to-Force yellow lightsaber. 

“Master Yoda, what the FUCK” Anakin says, later, after the battle is over, when he finally gets Yoda to answer his questions about the clone troopers. “You found out about an entire-ass army of slave child soldiers commissioned AND PAID FOR by one of your own council members, and your reaction is ‘oh thank goodness, now we have an army?’ What the FUCK is WRONG with you?!” Yoda tries to explain to Councilor Skywalker that the situation was dire, they’d had no choice, but Councilor Skywalker just keeps repeating “AN ARMY OF SLAVE CHILD SOLDIERS” at him. “No choice, we had,” Yoda says yet again.

“BULLSHIT, you had no choice!” Anakin yells. “You could have chosen to not use the entire army of slave child soldiers that you legally own!”

“Let Kenobi and the others die, you would have? Hmm?”

“PROBABLY, YEAH!” Anakin hollers (”Thanks,” mutters Obi-Wan). “Sometimes the choices you have all really suck, but you still have to make them! You can’t just pretend you didn’t have any options, you HAD OPTIONS, and you chose the one that involved using a SLAVE ARMY OF CHILD SOLDIERS.” He gestures behind him to the battlefield, where clone troopers and medics are moving amongst the bodies, white and red stark against the sand, tallying their dead brothers.

Yoda shakes his head. “emotional, you are, young Skywalker.” he said. “Cloud your judgement, your feelings do.” 

“Yeah, I’m fucking emotional!” Anakin practically screams. “I have personal beef with slavery, so excuse me if I feel emotions about it. Your problem is that you’re able to use an ARMY OF SLAVE CHILD SOLDIERS and not feel bad about it! Your lack of emotions is clouding YOUR judgement!” He stomps off. Yoda shakes his head. Skywalker is young, and too close to the issue of slavery to really have perspective on it. He does not understand. It was a great loss to the Jedi Order when the Council rejected him, all those years ago- if he had been trained as a Jedi, he would have learned to put aside his emotions about slavery, and he would have understood why it was necessary now. If Anakin could have heard what Yoda was thinking, he would have turned right back around, picked Yoda up, and punted him like a limmie ball.

Anakin and Maul return to Tatooine. Maul offers to assassinate the entire Jedi Council, but Anakin says no. He’s still fuming about his conversation with Yoda. He knows he gets emotional. He knows that Yoda isn’t entirely wrong- he knows he lets his emotions cloud his judgement sometimes. It’s something he’s worked hard on, over the years, him and Maul. How to take a step back from the emotions howling in your head, and how to view the situation without them getting in the way. And what kinds of situations you should let your emotions guide you. Anakin thinks he’s damn well entitled to strong emotions about slavery. 

Short of declaring war on the entire Jedi Order, Anakin doesn’t know what to do about the Republic’s slave army. The Tatooine Council releases a public condemnation of it, explicitly calling it slavery and calling for the clones to be freed. The Council seriously debates joining the Separatists, until Padme (the Senator, not the Rancor) and Shmi look in-depth at the Separatist Council, which is buried deep in the pockets of corporate interests. Shmi files a lawsuit, under the Republic’s anti-slavery legislation, suing for the freedom of the clones. It’s a battle of miserable inches, and meanwhile, the war rages.

With Dooku gone, Sidious’s only means of controlling the Separatists is through Grievous and Ventress, both of whom are loose cannons whose loyalty (and competence) he seriously doubts. It’s frustrating for him, and not necessarily better for the Jedi and their army (of slave child soldiers). Sidious needs to keep the war in careful balance, neither side gaining too much ground, to draw it out and grind the Jedi down and manipulate their public image until he can heap all the blame on them. Without Dooku to pass down his orders, he has no way of keeping a firm check on the Separatist Council, and the Seps are in serious danger of completely overrunning the Republic. The droid army is fifty times as many as the clones, and the Separatists have the Trade Federation, the Banking Clans, and all of the major military tech corporations on their side. Honestly, it’s a testament to the Jedi and the Clone Army that they haven’t lost the war in the first month.

Speaking of that first month, Anakin doesn’t spend long on uninvolved in the war. Scant weeks after Geonosis, the Separatist Army threatens to roll right over Tatooine on their way to gaining control of the Outer Rim Hyperlanes. Tatooine has no army, doesn’t even have a police force. It has no fleet, no orbital defenses, and the droid army headed their way has ten times more droids than there are guns on the planet. The Council faces a choice. Ask the Republic to send in the GAR to defend them- ask for an army of slaves to be sent to die on Tatooine, to stain the sand with enslaved blood so soon after Tatooine clawed her way to freedom, or do nothing, and almost certainly ensure the annihilation of Tatooine and her people. To die, or to live by the blood of slaves who died for you. It’s not a pretty choice.

In the end, the choice is taken away from them (and perhaps it’s a kindness, that they weren’t forced to choose, perhaps it’s the coward’s way out, but it is what it is). A GAR cruiser shows up in orbit, and the Council is hailed by a man identifying himself as Captain Rex, commanding officer of the 501st legion of the GAR.

“The Republic sent you here?” Anakin asks, incredulously. 

“Well, not exactly.” Captain Rex hedges. “The 501st is due for leave on Kamino, but the hyperdrive was making funny noises, so we decided to stop off in the nearest Republic system to check it out.” Rex shrugs. “If a bunch of tinnies just so happen to show up, it’s not like we’ll just sit back and watch.”

“Why are you doing this?” Anakin asks the clone captain, once they’ve got him on planet and in the council room. He’s got a lump in his throat, and his eyes are stinging. The 501st has no Jedi on board, no natborn officers, and no orders to go to Tatooine. Rex and the 501st showed up here of their own free will. Because they wanted to. To defend Tatooine.

“Geonosis.” Rex says. “On Geonosis, you saved the lives of over two hundred of us. Including me. We couldn’t stand by and let your planet fall to the Separatists, Councilor Skywalker.”

After the battle, during the cleanup, when Tatooinians are passing through the rows of injured, giving out water- giving out life- Rex tells Anakin the other reason.

“We all know about Tatooine, sir.” He says, quietly. “A bunch of slaves who stood up and said “no,” and took their freedom.” He shrugs. “Stories like that, it gives us hope. For the future.” He fixes Anakin with a stare. “If we let that hope die, we die too. Tatooine cannot fall.”

That is the first time Anakin and Rex fight together. Somehow, when the 501st leaves Tatooine, Anakin goes with them- officially, as a consultant/observer, appointed at the request of Senator Skywalker to observe the GAR and monitor the health and wellbeing of the troopers. Unofficially, Anakin and Rex become a lethal team, making the 501st one of the most effective legions in the Galaxy. Anakin isn’t dumb. He knows he’s being a massive hypocrite, running around with an army of slave child soldiers. Rex, however, insists that it’s different.

“First of all, we asked you to come with us.” he says. “Second of all, it’s not like you staying behind would have made any difference in our situation. And besides, scrapping clankers isn’t the only reason I asked you to come with us.” Anakin raises an eyebrow.

And Rex introduces Anakin to his older brother, Cody, commander of the 212th (Anakin is happy to see Obi-Wan again, but appalled to meet Obi-Wan’s fourteen-year-old togruta padawan, because why would you put a CHILD in a warzone, in a COMMAND POSITION). And Cody brings Anakin in on The Plan. The clones will not remain slaves forever, and they will not wait for some elusive promise of gratitude after the war is over. They will take their freedom, and they will defend their own, and they’re asking Anakin, who freed the slaves of Tatooine, to help them do it. 

“So basically, you want me on as a consultant.”

“Basically, yeah.” Cody says. “And also as a guy with a lightsaber who can leap fifty feet into the air and dodge blaster bolts. Those are always handy to have around.”

So Anakin and Rex and Cody, and Cody’s small circle of commanders, lay their plans. And in the meantime, there’s a war to fight. Shmi’s still on Tatooine, but Maul comes with Anakin and the 501st. He and Rex get along like a house on fire, but you wouldn’t know it from watching them- they do nothing but argue and needle each other. Rex sarcastically calls Maul “Commander Maul” because it pisses him off so much, and it catches on with the whole legion. Maul constantly mutters about murdering and/or poisoning Rex.

But after Ventress almost chokes Rex to death, and breaks into his mind to make him do her bidding, Maul doesn’t leave Rex alone for a week, and clutches his hand tightly in the medbay. Rex doesn’t mention it, so neither does Anakin. 

Padme, on the other hand, makes no secret of how much she loves Rex (the Rancor, not the Senator, though she likes him too). Padme seems to have concluded that Rex is some sort of long-lost hatchling, and can be seen chasing Rex down the hangar bay, trying to corral him into the nest she’s constructed in the corner reserved for her. Rex gets used to surprise cuddles from a massive predator.

The Jedi Council are at their wit’s end with Skywalker, but their hands are full and honestly, he’s a benefit to the war effort, so they assign Obi-Wan to “supervise” the legion, and leave them to it. Obi-Wan and Anakin strike up a deep friendship, unfettered by the baggage that comes with being master and padawan. Obi-Wan finds himself having serious questions about the Jedi’s role in the war, since Anakin is not at all shy about challenging him on the whole “slave army of child soldiers” thing. Obi-Wan is also, quite frankly, too busy to effectively teach a padawan, and by this point, he knows that Anakin’s had some sort of Force training. He’s fought beside him enough to be confident in his skills, and often sends Ahsoka on extended missions with the 501st, and explicitly begs Anakin to help him fill in the gaps in her training. Anakin obliges enthusiastically. 

Of course, Maul helps train her too. Obi-Wan shows up on the Resolute one day to pick her up, and asks how her training’s going. 

“Great!” She says. “Skyguy’s weird uncle is teaching me jar’kai-”

“Anakin has an uncle?” Obi-Wan asks, surprised. “Who knows jar’kai?”

And so Obi-Wan and Maul meet once again. And Obi-Wan is just absolutely pole-axed. 

“Darth Maul?” He splutters. “Is your uncle?” 

“Not biologically,” Anakin shrugs. “He practically raised me, along with my mom. He taught me everything I know about lightsabers and the Force.”

“...”

“...you did say Sith, Anakin, you bastard, sand-sifting MY ASS-”

“Oh, it’s you.” Maul says. “I won’t kill you, but only because Anakin likes you.” Obi-Wan throws up his hands.

Somehow, Obi-Wan and Maul come to an understanding. Somehow, Obi-Wan doesn’t turn him over to the council. 

At one point, a giant of a zabrak, easily eight feet tall, with skin a poisonous yellow, shows up, claiming that Maul is his brother, and that he’s here to bring him home to Dathomir. Maul takes one look at Savage and goes “Fuck that”. “I will train you in the ways of the Force,” he says. “I can show you power like you’ve never wielded before.” he says. “You shall be a great and feared Sith Lord,” he says. “Have some hot chocolate, you look cold,” he says. “Put on a sweater.” Savage, slightly bemused, comes to terms with the fact that he’s just been adopted.

It’s Maul who figures it out, of course. How could he not? He was raised by Sidious. He knows how devious he is, how his plans have layers upon layers, backups upon backups, contingencies stacked from here to the Outer Rim. Once Sidious moves, you can be sure that any reasonable outcome will be in his favor, because he has completely engineered the situation before you were even aware it existed.

The Sith caused the war and are playing both sides. The Sith caused the clones to be commissioned (these things are trivially easy to figure out, if you’re paying attention). The Sith want the Jedi dead.

“Contingencies,” Maul mutters. “It’s always a trap, and there’s always contingencies.”

When he finds the chip in Rex’s head, he shakes with rage and refuses to talk to anyone, fearing, for the first time in years, that he will lose control and hurt someone he loves. It is Rex who talks him down, who manages to get close to him, who embraces him and lets him cry on his shoulder, then scream and rage and punch the walls. When Maul is able to explain, Rex has to choke back his own terrified, horrified sobs. He holds them back, and calmly looks at Maul and says “What are you going to do about it?”

The surgery, they discover, is simple enough. An astromech can do it in two minutes (C2PO can do it in seventy seconds, and Artoo can’t stand it). When Anakin is told, he goes quiet for a minute, and when he looks back up, it is not Anakin, Rex’s friend, Maul’s kid, who is sitting at the table in the briefing room. It is He Who Walks in the Sky, Huttslayer, Breaker of Chains, who looks back at them. Anakin Skywalker has always wanted nothing more than to free all the slaves. And Anakin Skywalker’s destiny has always been to do what he wanted.

They tell Cody. They modify their plans. They quietly contact medics throughout the GAR, and Artoo quietly sends the details to every military astromech he trusts. When the army is safe from Sidious’ control, Anakin, Rex, and Maul conspire to lure him off of Coruscant. Maul takes over Mandalore, exiling the duchess and announcing a New Sith Empire. Sidious shows up, declaring that Maul has become a rival, disowning his former apprentice and attacking him, with intent to kill. Savage loses an arm. Maul almost loses his life. But as he lies on the ground at Sidious’s feet, arms trembling with the effort of holding the parry keeping Sidious’ saber from his throat, he hears “We’ve got the face shot! Go, go go!” in his earpiece. Gunfire, real slugthrowers, difficult to block with a saber, erupts around him. C3PO and his arsenal, along with Fives, Jesse, and Echo, the 501st’s best ARC troopers, open fire on Sidious. The Sith is forced to back away, raising a hand to stop the bullets in midair. Maul leaps to his feet, and Anakin joins him, lightsaber drawn. 

The fight is quick, but brutal. Maul’s hands threaten to tremble with terror, facing down the horror of his childhood, the monster whose treatment of him is woven fundamentally into his psyche, whose shadow has haunted Maul all his life, and still invades his dreams. But he reaches out to his family, to Rex, beside him, steady, full of faith in him, to Anakin, a blazing sun of love and anger, a shield of raw power, and to Shmi, all the way in her Senate offices on Coruscant, cool and calm and soothing like a desert spring as ever-present as the stars. His hands do not tremble. He raises his lightsaber against his master, beside the blade of his son. Together, they beat the Sith Lord back. Anakin binds the Sith’s blade, knees him in the ribs, and while Sidious is thus occupied, Maul cuts his head off.

“You were a terrible parent,” he pants, and spits on the corpse. Then, he collapses, and Rex is there to catch him, and Maul clings to him and shakes, and cries. Anakin reaches out to put a hand on his shoulder, and Rex pulls him in with a look, and together, they surround Maul, a bulwark against the rest of the world, a safe circle for him to fall apart for a little bit. At some point, one of them unstraps the small camera that Maul had been wearing on his chest. Ahsoka has, at that point, already sent the footage to every major news office on Coruscant.

That evening, plastered all over the galactic news, is a video of the Chancellor himself, showing up on a neutral world and attacking its sovereign leader, wielding red lightsabers of all things. And it’s obviously the Chancellor; there’s a clear shot of his face when he knocks Mandalore’s ruler to the ground and the camera gets a good view right up into his hood.

It’s a massive scandal. One tabloid shows the footage with a little counter in the corner, counting up every treaty and galactic law that Palpatine violates onscreen. The only thing that saves Palpatine from impeachment and arrest is the fact that he’s already dead. Inquiries are launched, investigators are sanctioned, documents and hard drives and testimony are subpoena’ed. Padme (the Senator, not the Rancor), spearheads the investigative committee, and within a month, they’ve uncovered decades worth of bribes, backroom deals, contracts with droid manufacturers, clear evidence of Palpatine authorizing Republic funds for weaponry that went straight to the Separatists, and even communication records between the Chancellor and the two military leaders of the Separatists. Grievous and Ventress go into hiding (the Tales of Grievous and Ventress, unlikely buddies forced on an intergalactic road trip on the run from the cops, is a story for a different absurdly long post at 3am). The Separatists break down in chaos, and the war grinds to a halt. In the middle of all the political hurricane, Cody enacts his plan, and the entire GAR simultaneously deserts, and fucks directly off to Tatooine. This ignites another scandal, with Senators calling for Tatooine’s expulsion from the Republic. Shmi stands in her Senate Pod, hands tucked into her roughspun sleeves, listening attentively while Senator Burtoni of Kamino accuses her of theft.

“If Tatooine does not return the stolen military assets, the Senate may sanction the use of force!” the Senator from Ryloth threatens.

“Pardon me,” Shmi says, “May I ask what army the Senate is planning sending to invade Tatooine? I was under the impression that the only Republic army was already there.” There’s a bit of an awkward silence.

In the middle of the shitstorm, before Shmi is arrested and Anakin declared an enemy of the state, Shmi’s lawsuit finally receives a ruling. And just like that, the clones are legally free. And the judge orders the Senate to pay reparations. Anakin cackles with glee when he hears. 

Rex and Cody, with the full support of the people of Tatooine, begin the long, hard, work of resettling their brothers and building a life for the vod’e. Shmi files a lawsuit against the Zygerrian Empire. Savage receives a new arm, courtesy of Anakin, who may or may not have added a few extra utilities to it. Ahsoka is knighted, and controversially invites Anakin to be present at the ceremony, along with Obi-Wan. Maul admits, very quietly and where only Rex can hear, that he doesn’t actually want to poison him. “I know,” Rex says, smiling at him. Anakin, meanwhile, finally marries Padme, the love of his life (the Senator, not the Rancor).

And in Mos Eisly, there is a stone slab, pulled from a crumbled wall and stuck upright in the ground in the middle of the square. No one knows who put it there, but someone carved fifty-seven names into the stone. The fifty-seven names of the clone troopers who died defending Tatooine from the Separatist army, at the beginning of the war. The last slaves to spill their blood on the sands of Tatooine.

[bemused-writer]

VNC Chapter 46.5 Analysis

After a long hiatus, VNC makes its return! Mochizuki has decided to take pity on us; this year has been hard. She knows most of us aren't ready for heartbreak just yet, so she gave us a lighthearted chapter with the assurance the next one will crush us. I'm looking forward to it! :D

This is a really good chapter, though, so let's take a look. ^^

Dante says this is news to him, and it is indeed news to all of us! But honestly, this answers a lot of questions I've had. What do these two do with their free time? Apparently, Noé works a lot and he has this work because people trust him instantly. That sounds about right; there's not a single person in this series that dislikes Noé save for Astolfo.

We aren't told what Vanitas does with his free time, but we can guess.

I've often wondered if Vanitas spends as much time analyzing Noé as Noé spends analyzing Vanitas, and I think we can give that a resounding "yes." He'd have to to have this kind of knowledge of his habits and preferences. What this also tells us is that Vanitas cares enough not only to observe this information, but also to retain it and put it to use by going to find Noé when he wanders off. This surprises Dante who thought Vanitas would just leave him alone, which does seem more in character. Once again, Noé is the exception to how Vanitas normally conducts himself: he would have left anyone else to figure Paris out on their own.

So, to put it more bluntly, Vanitas probably spends a good deal of his time analyzing Noé, chasing after him once he's gone on an ill-conceived adventure, hanging out with Dante, and, it almost goes without saying at this point, hanging out with Noé.

I genuinely love this exchange because Dante has reached the obvious conclusion: Vanitas is spending an insane amount of time with Noé and yet Vanitas is trying to claim that "No, I just give him tours sometimes." Logically, he'd only need to give Noé a tour of Paris once, which we saw all the way back in chapter 2. The fact that he now has to explain he "only" gives Noé tours when he asks still means Noé is probably asking to go out a lot and that Vanitas is just going along with it.

So, Noé actually spends his free time doing a lot of stuff: working, chatting with the neighbors (so to speak), and hanging out with Vanitas. Vanitas seems to do less. He sometimes spends time with Dante and then he spends a ton of time with Noé. What's he doing when Noé is at work? XD Maybe reading? Or plotting? We don't really know what his hobbies are.

Regardless, we get an idea of how Vanitas and Noé get along. Furthermore, we even get a good contrast in the very next short story!

In this one, Roland has gone missing and the chasseurs go to Olivier to figure out where he might have gone. This seems like the logical thing to do: they're known to be friends.

But we quickly learn that Roland and Olivier have a very different relationship compared to Noé and Vanitas despite seeming to be similar on a surface level.

Dante thought Vanitas wouldn't look for Noé because Vanitas tends to be cold towards others and doesn't like attachment. However, not only is he willing to look for Noé, he's worried when he realizes he might have wandered off.

Here we see that both Amelia and Vanitas are used to this behavior from Noé and, while they're exasperated, they're also worried. In other words, Noé has friends that care about him and will worry about him.

Contrast this with Roland and Olivier. Maria and Georges go to him because he's friends with Roland. They assume he will care enough to look for him and that he might even share in their concern about where he's wound up.

Not only is Olivier not worried, he's seriously judging them for bothering him about the whole thing to begin with. Granted, some of that disgust and judgement is probably aimed at Roland as well. He regales us with a story about the last time he tried to find Roland when he was lost (unlike Noé he genuinely has a bad sense of direction) and how poorly it went. Even in the flashback we can see that Olivier did not want to look for Roland; he just wanted to get back to what he was doing as swiftly as possible.

This entire story is basically a foil to the previous one to give us an idea of how these two duos are different. So, let's take a moment to explore those exact differences.

1) Olivier doesn't worry about Roland and he is frustrated by his antics as well as how easily he gets lost. Vanitas does worry about Noé and, while exasperated, seems almost excited to go looking for him. Furthermore, Noé isn't "lost;" he just likes exploring.

2) Both Olivier and Vanitas know their partner exceedingly well. The main difference here is that Olivier has known Roland for years while Vanitas has known Noé for a couple months or so? I'm not sure about the timeline. Olivier has a good idea of the places Roland will go and the things he cares about (finding books for his brothers), but he can't totally predict his movements beyond that. Vanitas has an insane knowledge of what Noé is interested in and has it down to a science. Sure, he needed Dante's help, but that was minimal compared to what he already knew. Also, I think we can safely say that Olivier and Vanitas both keep tabs on their partner, but in very different ways. Olivier is mostly concerned about what trouble Roland is getting up to and how it inconveniences him. Vanitas seems to be going out of his way to understand Noé, much like Noé is with Vanitas.

3) Olivier and Roland have kind of a more normal friendship in the sense they get annoyed with each other and they bicker. They hold grudges (or at least Olivier does) and they don't spend all of their time together, and yet they clearly will work with one another and help each other out as we can see in Gévaudan. There's definitely trust there despite the annoyance.

Vanitas and Noé are unusual in that not only do they spend all their time with each other, they haven't gotten sick of one another yet. And while they argue, every single major argument (and they have been significant) is resolved pretty quickly and forgotten soon after. That is decidedly strange. They trust each other, but that level of trust would indicate they've known each at least as long as Roland and Olivier have, but instead it's been a very short amount of time. No wonder Roland is in awe of them; their friendship level is through the roof even if they haven't realized that yet. 8D

But what this short story also reveals is that Roland does have someone who understands him completely and who even used to admire him completely and that's Astolfo. This relationship still isn't like the one Noé and Vanitas have, however. Apparently, Astolfo used to worship Roland and admire him completely. Somewhat similar to how Noé admired Vanitas's ability to save vampires, but on a much higher level.

Once again, there is a significant difference: when Roland did something Astolfo disapproved of, he grew to hate him. In contrast, when Vanitas killed a vampire instead of "saving" her, Noé eventually realized he'd placed unfair expectations on him. He learned to accept Vanitas for who he is and took him off the pedestal he'd put him on.

Honestly, Roland's relationships are looking a lot more strained than Noé's. Also, I wonder what he did to upset Astolfo so much? It can't be that he decided to see vampires as people; Astolfo grew to hate him before he even met Vanitas and Noé (I think), so it must be something else. My guess is that it would have to do with religion, though. Roland is out there, following his own beliefs regardless of whether they match up with the Church's. I imagine this would upset Astolfo at some point. Maybe it's all of his failed relationships with women? XD I mean, dating that much doesn't really mesh with being a man of god all that well....

Also, I had wondered how Roland treated Astolfo. Since Astolfo hated him so much, I thought that maybe Roland treated him badly. However, it looks like Roland probably treated him well, like a little brother, so all that hatred is definitely stemming from something else entirely. Probably going to have to wait and see on that, but for now we know that Roland has at least two strained relationships and, judging by the background chatter in that earlier panel, a lot of chasseurs just don't like him. This is another difference between him and Noé: Everyone likes Noé. Not as many people like Roland.

But let's move on to the third short story. This one is about Louis and while it takes on a very different tone to the last two stories, it does provide some room for contrast. I think the most important detail to this story is that Louis wanted people to come looking for him. Noé and Roland didn't mean to cause any trouble or to make people worry about them (or get annoyed as the case may be). Louis absolutely was trying to provoke a reaction.

The purposefulness to this is just... unreal. XD He was spending time with Noé--they were each reading a book--and then he decides he's going to go get lost in the woods. In other words, he wanted to make Noé look for him. He prevented Noé from following him from the get go because, again, he wanted to make Noé look.

Now, we get to see what book Louis was reading, which prompted his leaving in the first place. It's about a boy who meets a fairy who then whisks him away into the forest. His family looks for him, but they don't find him. When they don't find him, they give up on him and move on with their lives. While this is sad, the boy then lives with the fairies, making friends there.

There's no way we're not supposed to read into this, so let's see what we can glean. Louis wasn't actually looking for a fairy, that much we can safely say, but he was trying to get Noé to look for him. And it is Noé specifically he wants, judging by this panel:

Dominique is there looking for him as well, but it's Noé's expression he hones in on. He's happy to see that Noé is anxious about him. Now, Louis was under a lot of stress, but this is still a mean thing to do to someone, but I don't think the point here was to prank Noé exactly. He wanted to see if Noé cared enough to look for him, to worry over him.

It's completely different from the previous two stories as I mentioned earlier. Noé and Roland aren't dealing with the possibility of dying or the possibility they'll be forgotten after they're gone. Louis is, and because he's young, rather than just ask Noé if he'll remember him, if he cares about him, he has to test him instead.

But I don't think we should ignore the fairy part of the book he was reading. Even though Louis didn't go out to meet a new friend, he eventually "disappeared." He was cursed and he died, but could he have been taken somewhere else? I've often wondered if curse bearers become a part of Charlatan. If that's the case, then Louis really is still around, but the people he cared about can no longer see him.

It figures even a short story about Louis would still be very sad. (^^)" I honestly hope we do hear more from him, whether in a flashback or in the present. I think there's a lot between him and Noé that still needs to be explored. Our current arc could be a good lead in to that, actually, since we're dealing with the de Sades and Noé's relationship to them and Dominique more specifically.

One last thing I'd like to point out: both Olivier, Vanitas, and Astolfo all demonstrated a certain understanding of the person who was lost. They could put themselves in their shoes and figure out at least some of what they might have gotten up to. However, when Louis is "lost," Dominique and Noé are incapable of guessing what he's really thinking. They have such ironclad belief in him that they believe he predicted the future rather than think he might be pranking them. In other words, they didn't understand Louis at all, and this is still one of Noé's greatest regrets to this day. Perhaps it's one of Dominique's as well.

[digitalworldbound]

koukari 24 or kenkari 30? sorry for the challenge :p but if you're not comfortable with the pairings, go ahead with takari! :3

Pairing: ken x hikari

Summary: “I can’t talk to cute people, okay? I don’t know how to flirt!” (#30 from the prompt list)

Author’s Notes: I was revisiting my old fanfiction from when I was thirteen, and it reignited my love for cheesy AUs. So, I present to you my first ever KenKari content (I apologize if it is bad, but I've tried my best!)

on the corner of thompson rd. and fifth street stood a quaint structure with walls that appeared to sag and well-worn stairs. a seemingly hand-painted sign hung above the door way read : ♡ book 'n' brew ♡

in full honestly, the crooked hearts would of been enough to draw ken in completely had he not been on a search for a new coffee joint. earlier that september morning, a bug placed strategically in his starbucks cup stirred up the motivation to search for a more tasteful choice in brew.

mindless trotting about lead him to the worn, brick steps. many customers were slightly deterred by the haggard appearance of the building, but ken thought otherwise.

it was charming and smelled of home. plus, the little pink hearts were hard to dismiss.

pulling the smooth handle and trapping the chilly air behind him, ken opened the door and stepped in.

the store was quite small, as expected, but seemingly transported him away. warm fairy lights hung on the edges of tall, oak bookcases. the lights made ken’s dark cerulean eyes dance with wonder. while the oak cases were aging, they were sturdy. books lined the shelves in every way imaginable. when the books filled up the shelves vertically, the left-overs were placed haphazardly in the spaces between, whether that be on top of, in front of, or behind other books. the smell of well-loved pages filtered through the air, mixing with the smell of freshly brewed something.

the coffee! ken reminded himself.

humming a mindless tune under his breath, he made is way to the countered that was nestled in between two bookcases. plants, napkins and even more books littered the counter top. the owner, however, was nowhere to be found.

"hello?" ken’s crystalline voice called out.

"how may i help you?"

ken made a noise of surprise, not expecting the light, feminine voice to come from behind him.

a girl emerged from behind one of the bookcases, her hair swept to the side and held in place with a barrette. she looked ethereal in her loose dress, the extra fabric making her look like a bird ready for flight. she coughed quietly, her amber eyes drilling into his own with curiosity.

blush erupted like wildfire across ken’s cheeks. the tips of his ears burned in embarrassment. he was caught staring, but the stranger’s beauty was disarming.

"so?" the owner lightly suggested, a gentle reminder that ken still had yet to respond to her initial question.

"oh, yes! i was wondering if you had any coffee?" he finally spoke up. all too late, he realized his mistake. a flush rose to his neck, and ken had half the mind to run out of the store and never return.

raising an arched eyebrow, the stranger purposely flitted her eyes over to the obviously placed coffee pots, before turning her attention back to ken.

"hm, i would say that i do." she chuckled. her dress gently swayed behind her as she slipped behind the counter. Looking over her shoulder, she smiled in his direction.

"obviously." the boy muttered under his breath, embarrassment consuming him alive.

"pick your poison."

ken pretended to ponder his options. on a normal day - which this wasn't - he could always go for a medium roast coffee with creamer and two sugars, but today felt inexplicably different.

"i think i might go with some oolong tea today, if it isn't any trouble."

"of course not, silly. it's one of my personal favorites." the barista smiled. she turned around, completely engrossing herself in the task at hand while ken decided to explore the shop.

his fingers danced on the spines of novels and novellas, enjoying the way they felt beneath his fingertips. as a child, ken never had the attention span for reading. he was always distracted by the butterflies or colorful markers or dandelions. these things were real, and for him, the words in the books weren't.

consumed by his thoughts and the texture of the spines, ken drowned out the shop owner's declaration of warm drinks.

when the surprisingly small hand cupped the boy's shoulder, he jumped, knocking several books from their perch.

"oh no, i'm so sorry. usually, i'm not this clumsy." he offered, quickly picking up the fallen objects and shoving them haphazardly back onto the shelf. anxiety swirled in stomach; he felt like an absolute fool.

the owner simply smiled and pushed the small mug into ken's cold fingers. how long had it been since he stumbled into the shop? ten minutes? an hour? the thoughts were washed away with the first sip of tea, as the warm, comforting flavor washed away the flush on his cheeks.

"my name's hikari," the mystery barista offered, turning towards the door behind the cluttered counter space, "yell for me if you need anything else." she smiled, then disappeared.

"i'm ken ichijouji!" he called after hikari, but it was too late. her delicate frame had already slipped away, disappearing into further into the shelves.

with a barely distinguishable pout on his pink lips, ken sipped his oolong tea languidly and perched himself in recliner nestled into a dusty corner. the cloth on the seat had once been beautiful, ken was sure. years of patrons had worn away the bright red velvet into a thread-bare pink. it was s comfy, so ken snuggled himself deeper into the chair.

glancing around, he browsed the titles nearest to him.

viva by e.e cummings

pride and prejudice by jane austen

star girl by jerry spinelli

the hobbit by j.r.r. tolkien

hikari apparently had an interest in most things, not unlike ken. they just had interests in different places.

losing interest in the books quickly, ken demolished the luke-warm beverage and placed his dirty mug (that he now realized adorned the same little pink hearts as the sign that hung above the entrance way) next to the coffee pot and hurriedly yelled out his goodbyes.

he closed the old, wooden door, walked down the brick steps, and turned onto thompson rd. his stride was strong and his gaze was fixed onto some imaginative point on the horizon.

ken was on a mission.

-

the rest of his week was rough, even by ken's standards. book 'n' brew had been closed for the past five days, much to his dismay. ken had inherited the ability to burn water and couldn't be trusted to make his own tea. with the name-brand fix no longer being an option, five whole days without caffeine had put ken on edge.

it was a rather dreary sunday. the rain fell in sheets and drenched the ken down too his sock-less toes. inky black hair plastered to his forehead; his eyelashes had already clumped together. his wet sneakers lead him down the familiar cement of thompson rd. and his heart leap into his throat when he saw the lights on in the infamous bookstore.

the warm atmosphere was once again barren of any patrons (besides ken, of course). hikari was much easier to spot, given that she was directly behind the counter. ken’s heart-rate picked up; he was almost giddy.

hikari's hair was swept to the side again, the ends barely dancing across her shoulders. her billowy dress had been replaced by jeans and a t-shirt. an apron hung loosely off her thin frame. she wore the tea stains like accessories. his heart gave another weird flutter.

however, before he could question his reaction, ken became far too preoccupied with the smells of the quaint shop. cinnamon wafted around his ears while cocoa assaulted his nostrils.

the owner physically perked up when the wind chimes above the door sang a song, signaling the first customer of the day.

rain dripped from his clothes as ken walked towards the delicious aromas while mulling over the half-baked plan that he attempted to conceive a week prior.

it wasn't much. he just thought that hikari was impossibly cute and wanted an excuse to strike up a seemingly casual conversation. the only problem that presented itself was the fact that ken absolutely despised reading.

so, during his caffeine withdrawal, ken invested a part of his meager wages into a hoard of "spark notes" books. these were easier to understand and got straight to the point, anyways. every morning of his coffee-less week began with a literary classic. much to his dismay, the plots bored him to tears. lovers would fight and makeup, enemies would always become friends. books were too predictable.

nevertheless, when the shop was finally reopened, ken had the basic knowledge of not one, but five(ish) novels to use as conversation starters. he wanted to be prepared to keep her interest, no matter how small his understanding of the material.

"hello, hikari!" ken chirped, a bright smile spreading across his wind-nipped cheeks.

"good morning, ken ichijouji, how have you been?" though she was talking to him, her eyes never left the countertop she was cleaning. the shadows under her eyes did not go unnoticed, but ken decided against bringing it up.

" i'm great! i've been put off, though, as your shop hasn't been open in nearly a week."

hikari chuckled darkly, her eyes meeting his for the briefest of moments. "don't worry about that. i'm here now. would you like anything to sip on or any novels to escape into today?"

ken was slightly confused by the unusual turn hikari's behavior. her voice was no longer sweet, but laden with exhaustion. however, he let none of this deter him from his mission.

"yes, please. i would like a coffee with creamer and two and a half sugars, please."

the blue-eyed boy watched intently as hikari made his drink. In an effort to bring a smile to her face, ken joked that his preferred his coffee the color of his sun-kissed skin. despite how stupid it sounded, her cheeks warmed as she giggled. looking like an idiot was worth it if it meant that hikari would laugh like that.

"so," ken began as the silence settled in, "have you read any good books lately?" he took a quick sip of his coffee and let the warmth sink to his icy toes. september was almost over, but the chill of october was already creeping around the corner.

the corner of hikari's mouth twitched, and ken’s heart soared when he knew he made the correct choice.

"hm," the young woman started, her body relaxed against the cluttered surface of the counter., "i had you pegged as more of a 'movies-are-better-than-books' type of guy." her elbow grazed a stack of books that were balanced precariously on the edge.

"ah, well, of course not! i have loved reading since primary school." ken stuttered out. his face was a shade of deep red, resembling the worn-out velvet of the chair he was sat in. the lie sat uneasily at the pit of his stomach, but ken pushed it aside.

"well, to answer your question, i just finished the book thief by markus zusak." by now, a smile had warmed up hikari’s amber eyes, brightening the mood. rain still splattered against the shop windows, but the pair paid little mind.

"what was it about?" inquired ken. while he had no interest in reading, he certainly had an interest in whatever hikari was talking about. her slow, languid voice soothed him.

hikari eagerly rambled on and on about the characters and plot, being careful to only tease at the spoilers. ken stared intently into her eyes. he didn't have a clue what she was talking about, but he loved every minute of her voice ringing in his ears.

the coffee sat abandoned in his lap, warm long gone and chilly. the raven-haired boy took a drawn out sip, absentminded. furrowed eyebrows and a quirk of the month made hikari giggle in the midst of her story-telling.

once hikari’s story lulled to an end, ken began to talk about the books he didn't really read. he steered away from specifics and danced around with the big ideas. though her attention was divided behind between making herself a cup of tea and ken’s pride and prejudice synopsis, she seemed at ease.

"you remind me of Lydia Bennet, actually.” hikari’s hair whipped around, her eyes wide with surprise. ken was too preoccupied with the speech he prepared, one that he was sure would enthrall her. “you have that aura about you.”

“i have the aura of girl that would run away with a grown man at the age of fifteen?” the incredulousness in her voice snapped ken from his coffee-induced stupor. He hands shook. oh god, i should have read the book.

“the sparks notes didn’t mention that part.” his mouth reveals him before his brain can put a stop to it. “oh, god, i’ve ruined everything. i can’t talk to cute people, okay? i don’t know how to flirt!” his absolute, all-consuming panic must have been obvious from the way the warmth crept across his face.

her giggle caught him off guard. “how can you laugh at a time like this? i just compared you to a mother’s worse nightmare.” ken was miserable, doing his best to disappear into the cushion of the recliner.

“because it was endearing to watch you pretend to know what you’re talking about.” hikari said simply, her cheeks pink.

ken only hummed in response, not trusting his voice to respond. Instead, he basked in the warm atmosphere and tried to gain the inertia to take himself to work. while they sat in comfortable silence, mulling in the conversation, hikari leaned down and pried the empty ceramic mug from ken’s now-cold fingertips.

the contact sent a shiver down his spine, his heartrate skipping sporadically in his chest. he was on fire.

and ken knew.

he knew by the blush that rose in the girl’s cheeks, and the look of confusion still in her eyes. ken knew that coffee was good, but it had never tasted better than when he was with her. he had never tried so hard to gain the attentions of the girl, never expecting himself to be willing to do research on a subject that didn't interest him just for the sake of conversation.

the realization shook him to his core.

ken knew that he was falling for her.

so he did what he was best at.

he ran.

"oh my, look at the time. i am going to be late for my shift. it's been good. thanks for the coffee." he slammed a wad of money on the counter and rushed to the door, wind chimes tinkling after him.

hikari's goodbyes were caught in her throat.

[whumpinggrounds]

Gotcha Day

my first non-Febuwhump piece of writing! here goes :) this is set before the last day of Febuwhump (You Have To Let Me Go) and i mean i really don’t need to explain much i don’t think bc it’s fairly self-explanatory but i am nervous so. yes

tagging @shapeshiftersandfire and @killtheprotagonist ! lmk if you want to be added/removed from being tagged it is a lot a lot of content so sorry about that

CW: lady whump, pet whump, dehumanization, memory loss, discussion of scars, past burns, implied non con,

Director Hammond’s office is much like the Director herself – alternately welcoming and terrifying, depending on what mood has struck her. Today, the curtains are open, the room is filled with light, and the Director has a bouquet of flowers on her desk in a vase. That’s good, right? All of that is good.

Mara still feels the nerves in her stomach buzzing like a hive.

“I don’t want to drag this out,” the Director begins, and Mara’s heart sinks. It’s some polite dismissal, something like that. There’s a self-satisfied little smile playing around the woman’s lips, and Mara tries to brace herself, folding her hands neatly in her lap and staring down her doom with icy eyes. “We have decided to let you train her. 067493.”

Stunned, Mara stares at the Director. There are no words in her mouth, no words in her head. She wants to speak, knows she should speak, but she can’t. An incredulous smile starts to curl up her face.

“Now, before you get too excited, there are some conditions.” Despite her lecturing tone, there’s a smile on the Director’s face – probably because of Mara’s huge ferocious grin. “She’s not your pet, technically speaking, not until the trial period is over. Obviously, she’s coming with what we call a factory defect, so you got very lucky there, otherwise we’d never let her go. She’s not fully trained, but honestly, Ms. Langford, we’re not going to spend the money and time to finish out the training on a model that we’re essentially giving away.”

“Yes.” Mara’s head is nodding on her neck like a bobblehead. “Yes, okay, that’s fine. That’s okay. That’s so okay.”

Amused by her eagerness, the Director nods. “Good. Now, primarily, Ms. Langford, we want to explore two things with 067493, and we feel that gifting her to an employee, while highly unusual, will give us an opportunity to answer some outstanding questions.”

“Okay.” Mara’s heart is racing. God, she feels like she’s going to pass out any second. “Okay, so, so, um, what are those questions, then? The things…what it is you want to, um, explore?”

The Director smiles at her, fondly, warmly. “First of all…” she pauses for effect, “some of the higher-ups loved this therapeutic aid idea. If it’s workable, there could be a strong market there. Of course, we’ve been trying to work a caregiver angle for a while, but the medical stuff is often just too complex for pets. This emotional approach could give us a very similar sector, but with none of the concern about pets operating medical machinery incorrectly.”

“Y-yes.” Mara’s breathless, dazed, struggling just to keep up. “Yes, definitely-”

“Now, not everyone is convinced, but enough of us think that it’s worth a try. Which brings us to our second objective.”

Here, the Director pauses long enough that Mara can stop focusing on her breathing and look up inquisitively. Finally, tentatively, she prompts her superior. “Ma’am?”

The Director shakes her head as if to clear it. “Yes, well. What we are interested in is…is…” she purses her lips, clearly wondering how to explain. “Pets who may end up living with someone they know or recognize from their former life. As you know, pets are prone to false memories.” Mara nods dutifully, despite knowing full well there’s no such thing. “We want to see if our Boxies can be taught and trained in such a way that they can be…reintroduced to their old life, or one like it, while maintaining good behavior and accurate memory blocks.”

“That sounds…” Mara swallows. “That sounds…difficult.”

“Indeed.” For the first time, the Director looks grim. “Of course, that’s exactly what you’re attempting with 493, and if you could pull it off…we’ve had some interest. People who want to…serve their loved ones in a more straightforward and simplified fashion.” For just a moment, Mara tunes out, thinking with a sort of horrified fascination on the kind of environment that would lead to someone wanting to erase themselves while staying where they were.

Or, even worse, Mara pictures someone coming in asking for a loved one to be erased, returned sweet and pliable and empty. She barely represses a shudder. Ignorant of Mara’s internal monologue, the Director forges on.

“We are proposing that you take 067493 home as your Domestic. You will be responsible for making her into a…a prototype, essentially, for this therapeutic aid program. You will also be expected to report any aberrant behaviors that could conceivably result from…ah, memory confusion.”

“I can do that.” That all sounds absurd, and difficult, and unfair, but Mara doesn’t care right now. All she cares about is getting Jude and taking her home and, and having her. Having her back.

“We’re going to allow you an adjustment period, and then we’re going to ask that you bring 067493 in for regular checkups, where we’ll be looking for signs of this memory confusion, as well as updates on your progress.”

“That…yes, that sounds very doable.”

Once again, the Director smiles fondly across the desk at her, and Mara has a funny, frightening feeling that she’s become Barbara Hammond’s newest little pet project. “I believe that it is, Ms. Langford. Despite the cosmetic defaults, she seems like a sweet thing. I can’t wait to see what you do with her.”

___

When Handler Collins leads Jude out, Mara’s heart about stops in her chest. There she is. There’s Jude. There’s…Jude, and not Jude.

A pair of black shorts, a WRU white t-shirt over skin that’s much paler than last time Mara saw it. Her stocky frame diminished, all her old rugby muscle losing or lost. She looks like...Mara hates the cliche, but she looks like a ghost of her former self, literally. Skinnier, paler, a whole lot more haunted. Her hair, her hands, the freckles and the way she walks just a little pigeon-toed – that’s Jude, that’s Jude all the way. The flat, false calm in her face and the fear in her eyes…that’s someone else. Swallowing, Mara clasps her hands together in front of her, trying to quell the urge to reach for her girl.

“Here she is!” Handler Collins throws his hands out grandly from his place beside the boxgirl. “All yours.”

“Wow,” Mara manages. “Uh…wow.”

Collins shakes his head. “Wow is right. But, hey, wait – you want to check the damage?” He’s still grinning, like it’s no big deal, like it’s all a joke. Mara sucks in a deep breath. The-the Box Babe in front of her is wearing a t-shirt, but Mara can see her cracked reddened palms and wonders what the thin cotton over her chest is hiding.

“I…I guess, yeah. I mean, I’m taking her either way,” she mutters, trying for a joke. Collins is more than happy to laugh at her.

“Shirt off, 493.”

Hesitantly, the trainee obeys, darting a wide-eyed glance at Mara as she does. The cotton goes over her head and oh.

Oh. There, on the right side of the girl’s chest, is the burn, red and angry and raised, covered in blisters. The scarring is worst on her collarbone, but the pink, stretched, destroyed skin crosses her neck below the line of her collar in one direction, creeps toward her armpit in the other. Mara’s horror must show on her face, because the girl flushes, looks down.

“That’s um. That’s pretty bad.”

Handler Collins shakes his head. “You don’t have to tell me. Fucking Underwood. Fuck.” He spits on the ground near the trainee’s bare feet. “She’s finished the antibiotics she’s supposed to be taking. The vet thinks she should be set. Just uh, she’s got this stuff she’s supposed to spread on it.”

“Yeah. Okay.” Mara can’t stop staring at the burn, at the way it glares out, crimson and furious, from Jude’s pale, freckled skin. With effort, she tears her eyes away, to the downturned head of the waiting boxgirl. “Put…uh, put your shirt back on.”

The girl obliges quickly, and, Mara imagines, gratefully. She’s too well-trained to even wince when her movements stretch and ripple her healing skin. Mara’s eyes move hungrily over her face, her skinny body, searching for the parts of Jude she recognizes. The girl keeps her eyes on the ground but her cheeks go pink under the scrutiny.

“Doc, I gotta say.” Collins is shaking his head, and reluctantly, Mara turns her attention to him. “I don’t know how you got this one past the Director. I mean – a Box Babe for free? After what, ten months of working here?”

“Fourteen,” Mara corrects, a little too quietly. She clears her throat and tries again. “Over a year, Handler Collins.”

Rolling his eyes, Collins dismisses her with a flap of his hand. “A couple months, a year, whatever. A matter of months and you’ve got yourself a bonus worth tens of thousands? You must’ve shrunk the Director’s head to get her to agree to this one.”

Mara manages a tight smile for him. “I’m definitely…I definitely feel lucky.”

Leaning in, eyes gleaming conspiratorially, Collins puts his mouth near Mara’s ear. “You have good reason to feel lucky, Doc. Me and the guys – well, you’ve given some good advice, these past few months. It’s helped. And business is up. Company’s talking about padding the paychecks a little, and you’re a part of that, you know?” He gives her a hearty slap on the back and Mara forces a smile. “You’re part of the team! And the pet’s a gift from the company, but we thought, hey, why not a little something from us handlers, for our good doc?”

A shiver runs down Mara’s spine. “What…” she wets her lips, tries to sound amused, curious. “What did you do?”

“We only had a week or so to do it. Director Hammond decided so late, and all. But, but look, we crammed in some Romantic training, just for you.” Collins’ leer is too much. “None of the positions, of course, that shit’s extra, but a few of the lines, a few, ah…habits you might like.”

Mara thinks about him touching Jude and wants to tear the grin right off his face, wants to snarl and scratch and chew him out right there. Instead, she finds the girl’s eyes, searches there for some help, some hope, some recognition. Anything.

Her new Box Babe looks back at her with eyes that are flat and dull and empty.

[avengerscompound]

The Hamptons’ House: 2006 - 1

The Hamptons’ House:  A Iron Man Fanfic

Series Masterlist PREVIOUS //

Buy me a coffee with Ko-fi Word Count: 2315

Pairing:  Tony Stark x F!Reader

Warnings:  Poor body image, Smut (Bisexual orgy, oral sex, vaginal sex, vaginal fingering)

Synopsis: When you return to the house in the Hamptons’ it’s both with a fear or the direction Tony’s life is taking and a concern about him no longer being interested with you.

2006: Part 1

It had been another busy three years for you between leaving Tony’s place in the Hamptons and driving up again in late May of 2006. You were technically still on maternity leave, as a year ago you had given birth to identical twin girls. Antonia and Jaimie were conceived almost a year and a half after you were last in Long Island. They had arrived a little early and for a while, they stayed in the NICU and you and Kurt had spent a lot of sleepless nights worrying about them when you had been sent home without them.

They’d come home in the end, safe and sound and you were still having the odd sleepless night when one woke the other and they both wouldn’t go back to sleep.

Rhodey had been good to his word and visited you in DC. Not just once, but several times over the three years. He’d visited the house and met Brody a couple of times. You’d given him a tour of your museum and gone to see the air and space museum with him and let him explain everything to you in fine detail. He had even brought Tony along to see you in the hospital when the twins were born, marking the second ever time you’d seen Tony outside of the Hamptons and the first time out of Long Island.

Tony’s life seemed to be continuing the same trajectory. His business was booming. His personal life seemed to be circling. The media always likes to talk about his party lifestyle and the women he was seen with (though none ever seemed to make repeat performances) like it was something to be envied and desired. You’d witnessed it in person and at each event Tony was criticized for his bad behavior or not showing up, you knew he’d been drinking too much and trying to numb the pain. There was an incident where he’d driven a Ferrari into someone’s pool and when you’d called him to check on him, he’d assured you he was just fine and it was just a one-off accident that could have happened to anyone.

You were beginning to really worry about him, but that was all outside the house in the Hamptons. Here it was different. Here it didn’t matter what your lives were like outside, you were here for each other.

You parked the car amongst all the others gathered in the drive. Your Ford Focus rental looked out of place in the sea of expensive sports cars. It reminded you of the old escort you’d drive in from the city sitting next to his Lamborghini Countach. You grabbed your bag and headed to the house.

Happy was standing at the door and his eyes lit up when he saw you. “I was starting to think you weren’t coming.”

“My flight kept getting delayed,” you said as he let you pass. “How are you, Happy?”

“Oh, you know? Working security at a drunken orgy,” he joked. “You need to know, Tony has installed a new system. There’s a control panel on the wall, put your hand on it and look up.”

“Okay?” you said, looking at him confused. You weren’t sure how it could possibly have any kind of biometric reading of you when you’d never put it in the system.

“Trust me,” Happy said.

You nodded and made your way into the house, heading straight to the kitchen. The only people there were the caterers. You weaved your way through them and found the blue touchpad by the secret door. You put your hand on it and looked up like you’d been instructed.

“Why hello,” a disembodied male voice said. “I’m Mister Stark’s AI, JARVIS. I was wondering when I’d get to meet you.”

The door slid open and you went through, heading upstairs, slightly in shock at the level of intelligence the AI Tony installed had. You weren’t exactly a tech person, but it seemed well over anything else you’d ever seen. “Jarvis?” you asked. “Like Tony’s old butler?”

“Yes, miss,” JARVIS replied. Shocking you slightly that not only was the AI able to follow you, and not only did it have some kind of facial or biometric recognition, but it also had the level of intelligence to hold a conversation. “Though Mister Stark did create an acronym to make it fit. JARVIS stands for Just A Rather Very Intelligent System.”

You burst out laughing and dropped your bag by the door. “Of course it does.”

You took a look at yourself in the mirror. After having twins, your body hadn’t exactly sprung back and you were still getting comfortable in your skin again. Kurt was very, very good at reassuring you and making you feel good about yourself, but you were a little worried that Tony might not be as into you as he had been in the past. Especially considering the women he was linked with were all at least ten years younger than you currently were.

“Mister Stark is excited to see you,” JARVIS said. “He’s currently on the back patio.”

“Thank you, JARVIS,” you said. “It’s nice meeting you.”

“And you too, miss,” JARVIS replied.

You went back downstairs and made your way into the party. It was already well into the orgy phase. People were in various states of undress and a few groups were already having sex publicly. Everyone looked so young to you these days. That self-doubt about your body and how you felt in it, hit you even harder. You couldn’t see how there was any way you could compete for his attention against all these young and beautiful people. And even if Tony did want you, who else would want to?

You saw Tony as soon as you stepped out onto the patio. He was sitting on some new cane outdoor furniture, with a group of people draped over him and each other. No one was having sex out here and aside from the people in the pool, everyone was fully clothed. There were, however, people making out and you knew it would only take a small catalyst for the debauchery to start.

Tony looked up at you and grinned broadly, holding out his arms. “Cookie!”

You relaxed immediately and as one of the women shifted to make room for you, Tony took your hand and pulled you into his lap. His lips were on yours before you even had a chance to ask him how he was and you returned the kiss deeply and hungrily.

His hand ran up your thigh under the hem of your skirt and his tongue teased into your mouth. His breath was warm and the smoky peat of the whiskey he’d been drinking still clung to his lips. It was a flavor you now almost solely associated with him.

You hummed softly as he pulled back and grinned up at you. “Did you meet, JARVIS?” he asked.

“I did, Tony… how? He’s amazing,” you said.

“Shhh…” Tony said. “We’ll talk about him later. I think there are more pressing matters to attend now.” To punctuate his point he pushed his hips up under you so you could feel his erection.

You giggled. “Do you have any ideas?”

“I have so many ideas,” he said, patting your leg. “Let’s go see what trouble we can get into.”

You got up off his lap and began to walk through the party. There were more people having sex now and a few of the surfaces were covered in drug paraphernalia. Tony entered one of the downstairs bedrooms where two women were kissing and grinding on each other while a small group of people sat on a couch and watched. The women looked up and smiled. “Tony, care to join us?” One said, holding out her hand.

“Go,” you whispered. “I feel like watching.”

“But it’s always you and me,” Tony pouted.

You leaned in and nosed at his cheek. “Please? I’ll be here, I just want to see you at work.”

Tony chuckled and pecked your lips. “Well, when you put it like that…”

He pulled back from you and jumped into the bed, the two women on the bed bounced a little and broke down into giggles before quickly crawling up to Tony and undressing him.

You took a seat on the couch with the other people and got comfortable. You didn’t want to admit that you were a little scared to join in with a large audience. It was strange. It wasn’t like you went to sex parties and sat there judging people for their imperfections, but here you were for the first time, feeling particularly hung up on your own. The feelings weren’t completely alien. There had been times when self-doubt had reared its ugly head, but this was the first time you’d let those feelings stop you.

As the women rid Tony of his clothes you couldn’t help but be struck by how different they were to you. It was night and day. Yet he’d still wanted you to be part of that. It was a good feeling.

The women moved down and began to suck on Tony’s cock in tandem. Tony sat up and looked at you. His brown eyes were blown out in lust and he gripped at the sheets. “Touch yourself for me, Cookie,” he groaned.

You lifted your skirt and slipped your hand into your panties, so he could see your hand moving underneath the thin fabric as you fingered your clit. He hummed and kept his eyes on you as the two women worked his cock, kissing each other over it, and switching from one sucking his length and the other licking over his balls. Tony’s hands gripped the sheets and he began to gently thrust his hips. Each thrust pushed his cock deeper into the mouth of the woman currently sucking his cock and she opened her mouth, inviting him to fuck it. He began to thrust harder, grabbing her hair and holding her in place as he fucked her throat. She groaned into his cock, taking every inch of it.

You moved your fingers quicker, keeping your eyes locked on Tony’s as little sparks of pleasure sizzled through you making your body tingle.

Tony let the woman’s hair go and they both pulled back and began to kiss each other as Tony grabbed a condom from the side table. He rolled it on and the women turned on him pushing him on his back. The guy sitting beside you leaned into you a little. “Can I help you with that?” he whispered.

You looked at him. Like everyone else, he was incredibly attractive. Quite different to Tony though. He was tall and muscular with blond hair and blue eyes. You looked down at his hand which was hovering over your leg waiting for the green light from you. His fingers were long and spidery. The kind of fingers pianists have. You gave him a nod and he wrapped an arm around you, drawing you in close and his hand slipped into your panties.

You turned your attention back to Tony and the women on the bed. Tony was flat on his back as one woman rode his cock and the other his face. They were kissing each other graphically as they rocked their hips on him, their hands running over each other.

A moan escaped your lips as the blond beside you fingered your clit. He was quick and dexterous as he ran them in random patterns over the sensitive bundle of nerves. Part of you wanted to close your eyes and just give yourself to it, but you were transfixed by the sight on the bed. Tony was starting to buck up under the women and his muscles were clenching. The sounds in the room were growing louder as everyone approached their impending climaxes.

The blond’s fingers pushed inside of you, going in deep and seeking out your g-spot. When they touched down on it, you gasped and jerked your hips. He focused on that spot inside you as his thumb circled over your clit.

On the bed, Tony and the two women were getting closer and closer. The women were now rubbing each other’s clits as they rode Tony, and Tony’s hips had begun to stutter. The woman riding his dick came first, jerking back and moaning loudly as it hit her. It seemed to drag Tony along too. He groaned into the other woman’s cunt and jerked up as he released.

The woman riding Tony’s face seemed to be struggling to reach climax, and when Tony was free from the other woman he flipped over and began fingering the first as he sucked on her clit. His fingers pistoned in and out of her cunt and with a loud cry, she came, arching her back as she did.

Tony sat up and looked over at you, a smile on his glistening lips, as he watched you being fingered. He took off the condom and threw it in the trash before crawling on the floor to you naked. He pushed your panties to the side and as the blond worked your g-spot Tony sucked hungrily on your clit.

It wasn’t long until you were moaning and grunting. You writhed between them as your orgasm threatened. When it hit, it crashed down on you, making you cry out and spasm between them.

Tony sat back with a smug look of satisfaction on his face. “Cake?” he said.

You laughed weakly and nodded and he began to get redressed. “Good,” he said. “And when I’ve recuperated, I’m gonna find someone to double-team you with me.”

“Alright, hotshot,” you laughed. You knew it would happen and you were looking forward to it. All concerns about not looking right had been completely washed away in the post-orgasm haze.

// NEXT

[obsessivelollipoplalala]

The S. America story originated from LAJ, who quoted an actor-turned-prostitute in her book. He said that Paul took a number of young men up to Freddie’s hotel where they all got high and had sex with Freddie while Paul watched, and that Freddie seemed to be going through the motions without enjoying it. Because LAJ’s facts are all muddled with myth, it’s impossible to know just how true this is. (1/3)

I think it’s conceivable that Freddie had experiences like this, but the people who were involved are either be dead or impossible to verify. The blacking-out of specifics on the Munich years alarms me, tbh. David Minns did allude to something awful happening on this tour, but we don’t know what that was, exactly. “Some years after his death their manager Jim Beach came to my flat in London and during conversation told me a story about Freddie’s sexual exploits whilst in South America.” (2/3)

“I felt quite sick at being told this particular event and it was something I didn’t really wish to know. My old friend had made a huge mistake in life and being given this information was no time to almost make fun of Freddie’s antics when Freddie obviously later regretted his own behaviour in the past.” (3/3)

——————

Okay, well, there are a few things to think about here. We know LAJ is a huge liar to the point where I think even Brian and Roger were upset with her book (?). She’s an incredibly unreliable source. Secondly, it’s so weird that Miami would tell David whatever story it was. If the purpose was to laugh about Freddie’s sex life after he died, then Miami is a bigger asshole than I thought. It does seem like something crazy happened in South America, but David is vague enough that it could have meant multiple things. His referring to it as Freddie’s “antics” and “own behavior” make me think it wasn’t something against his will, but I could be reading too much into it. All of the band did crazy things, I’m sure, so it’s really hard to tell what happened. Given that LAJ is known for being an unreliable source, I’m still going to take this with a grain of salt. David’s story is too vague to be confirmation.

If it’s true, though...the movie was far kinder to Paul than it should have been. It’s possible that this happened, and possible that it didn’t. I don’t think we’ll ever know, but sometimes you do wonder if Brian’s hatred of Paul and his bad influence is informed by stuff we don’t know but he does, you know what I mean? But this is something that will probably always be a rumor.

[mrs-hatake]

Maybe I request a Kakashi x Reader where the two want a child, but the reader is infertile. Although during a mission they discover a child with no family and decided to adopt them?

A/N: I’m so sorry I was late posting this! I just didn’t know how to write it but it’s here now and I hope you like it!

p.s, not proof read!

The wind harshly caressed your cheeks as You jumped between trees. 

You and Kakashi were returning to Konoha after spending almost a month in Kumogakure hunting down a rouge shiobi who had murdered his friend in a drunken spat and fled Konoha once he had realized his mistake. The Hokage wanted this matter taken care of discreetly and although have two shiobi chasing after one man, the Hokage cautioned the two that the man might be on a brink of a break down.

Unfortunately, you couldn’t retrieve the man as he had taken his own life once you’ve finally tracked him down and appeared in his stingy, one bedroom apartment.

“We should stop.” Kakashi instructed just two branches ahead of you, his back facing yours as his eye scanned the area for a place for you to rest. Konoha was just a half day away but the sun was setting and nighttime was a very dangerous time, an easy time for an enemy attack.

“Alright.” You nodded before jumping down to the ground and arrange yours and Kakashi’s sleeping bags. 

Sleeping on the trees is much safer than sleeping on the ground where anyone could walk by but, after your incident three years ago, the doctor had advised not to sleep on trees anymore.

“I’ll go scout the area for some berries.” Kakashi stated and left without waiting for your reply.

A small frown stretched across your lips at his behavior. Ever since that incident from three years ago, Kakashi had been different. 

You and Kakashi were fighting Sunagakure shinobi after they believed it was a good idea to struck Konohagakure and terrorize its civilians. It all happened so fast; one minute you were finishing off shinobi on your end and then next, you were stabbed just an inch above the waist line before passing out.

When you came to, You were lying in a hospital bed two weeks later with an ashy and distressed looking Kakashi. You felt your heart sink at the sight and instantly knew that something had gone wrong.

“Kakashi?” Your throat was drier than the Sunagakure desert, making it very painful for you to speak. Kakashi hushed You as he got up and poured a glass of warm water and helping you drink it and ease your throat.

“Kakashi?” You asked again. Throat feeling much better after drinking two glasses of water but your heart had a sharpness in it that it felt like someone was constantly stabbing it.

“Y/N,” Kakashi choked up, making your eyes widen at the remorse lacing his voice, “I’m sorry.” A tear slid down his masked cheek before it was followed by another one and a third one and the tears kept coming until Kakashi harshly wiped them away.

“What’s wrong?” Your voice was small. You were scared because in the two years you’ve been married to Kakashi, you’ve never seen him like this.

“The doctors tried their best.” Kakashi’s breathing was shaky, his words coming out quickly and the tears kept flowing, “And, in order to save you, they had to-” Kakashi interrupted himself by shutting his eyes tight but couldn’t continue.

Later, You found out that you won’t be able to conceive. You didn’t believe it at first, certain that there had been a mistake. Though, with Tsunade and all your other medical friends’ examination, there had been no mistake. 

It wasn’t easy after you were discharged two months later. You became depressed; refused to eat, drink, bathe and leave your room. You would’ve probably starved yourself had Kakashi not force fed you and make you drink at least one bottle of water a day.

You’ve always wanted to have a family of your own and it took you more than three years, right when you started Kakashi, to convince him that it’s okay for them to have a family. It’s okay for Kakashi to be father because he was a wonderful man who cared and loved after people dearly. They’d constantly argue about the idea of having children and you had to help him realize that nothing will ever happen to their kids because the two of you were the strongest shinobi in all of Konoha and as long as you had each other, then nothing bad will ever happen.

Oh, but it did.

Not to your unborn children, but to you.

Kakashi took the news just as hard. Burying himself in low ranking missions in Konoha and only returning to your shared home to make sure you ate. He wouldn’t talk to you other than to ask if you drank water or showered that day. He wouldn’t hold you or touch you at night because when he had tried that the first night after you discharged from the hospital, you had shoved and pushed him away, too disgusted with yourself to be touched by another person.

A small sigh escaped your lips at the memory. That was a harsh and unforgiving year for the both of you. It took you months to finally get you out of bed and almost a year after that incident for you to leave the house. Kakashi was tired and you were depressed but you both continued on with your lives.

However, the dynamics between you has shifted. Gone were the endless sounds of laughter and the soft whispers of nothing. Replaced by one worded replies and formalities. It was as if they both of you were back to being strangers when you were assigned as partners during your ANBU days.

Cold. Distant. And closed off.

The sound a tree branch breaking nearby pulled you out of your daze, a move Kakashi intentionally made to announce his presence.

In your trip down memory line, you had brought out the cans of corn for you to eat for dinner. Despite Konoha being close by, cooking food would be dangerous because it would give away your location. A tip from Kakashi’s paranoia.

Turning to face Kakashi and take the berries from him to wash with your bottles of water that you had bought before leaving Kumogakure, you were surprised to see what Kakashi was holding.

In his arms a child, no older than two days, wrapped in a pale blue blanket. 

“W-Where did you find that baby?” You stepped closer, entrance by the sudden appearance.

“I found him under a tree just east of here.” Kakashi replied, his visible eye never looking away from the infant.

“Is he...?”

Kakashi shook his head and instant relief washed over you.

“What are we going to do?” You asked quietly, still keeping your distance from your husband.

“Take him with us.” He replied.

“What if it’s a trap?”

Kakashi’s single eye looked up from the baby and looked straight at you with his eyebrow arched upwards, as if to say ‘are you serious?’

“What?” You snapped before quickly lowering your voice, “It could be!”

Kakashi said nothing and sat down next to the sleeping bags. 

You could do nothing but sigh and sit just a few feet away from your husband and handing him his can of corn and ate in silence.

-

The next day, after returning to Konoha, the two of you and the unknown infant - who had woken up at one point to reveal intense looking green and yellow eyes - went straight to the third Hokage’s office.

“I’m afraid we don’t have any information on the baby.” The old man said as he turned his face away to blow out the smoke he inhaled from his pipe.

“What will become of him?” Kakashi asked, surprising you with the hint of fear in his words.

The Sandaime shrugged and rubbed at his chin thoughtfully.

The tiny infant opened his eyes again and smiled at Kakashi. His small little hands went as high as they can to grab onto the closest thing to him, which was Kakashi’s vest.

The action and sight of the baby warmed your heart and made your throat uncomfortably tight as you fought away the unshed tears.

You’ve always known that Kakashi would be a great father and how excited he had been when the two of you agreed to try and start a family of your own but then the mission happened and the dream vanished.

But seeing how worried and scared Kakashi was being towards an unknown child, a child that you did not give birth to, made you swell with joy.

Quietly, you reached out and gently touched his arm. He tore his visible eye away from the baby and met your teary eyes.

One smile from you and Kakashi knew exactly what to do.

“Sandaime - sama?”

The Hokage stuck his pipe between his chapped and thin lips as he stared at the two, giving them his full attention.

“Y/N and I would like to adopt this baby.”