#first i have to send them a letter BEGGING to be invited to an interview | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ilguna · 4 years ago

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Lacuna - Epilogue (f.o)

summary: they say the odds tend to favor those who need them. well, they were wrong.

warnings; swearing.

wc; 2.5k

NOTES; I give reader a last name to fit the world.

–

You take a deep breath, readjusting in the heels. Lately, you’ve been wearing them a lot again. They’ve begun to make your feet sore and leave blisters on the back of your heels. If you’re lucky, you won’t start bleeding. No matter the medicine that Elysia provides, they always seem to bleed or form again.

Lucky for you, it’s nearing the end of the tour. This district, and then twelve, and then you’re back home to enjoy your house. They’ll still come around to pester you about how you’re doing. But that will be fine, you’ll answer the questions like you have before. They’ll be bored of you by next year.

There’s no reason for them to ask Finnick questions. He’s with Caesar almost every single night, on his talk show. Then there’s the little news anchors, and all the other tv shows where he has an opportunity to show up. You don’t know if it’s an act anymore, or if it’s who he really is.

He’s all he ever was during the interviews, the mask seems to have stuck. He’s charming, and confident, and so goddamn cocky. He’s got all the girls in your district swooning over him, even if they can’t watch his shows, the news, or Caesar’s fucking talk show. The boy you knew to hate everything about the Capitol is gone.

The question is if this is who he was all along. If he loved the Capitol, and the riches, because it looks like it. You stopped seeing the wave ring he was supposed to be wearing--he promised you before he left that he would wear it every time he knew he’d be publicly appearing. He replaced it with something else, the sign of the Capitol.

They wouldn’t have forced him to replace it, because they’re always broadcasting your love story. There’s continuous love notes from Finnick, either him writing them on the show, or just saying it straight out. Some of the time the cameras will come around and you’ll stand out there in the snow and pretend like you’re in love. You manage to do well each time, they can’t tell if you’re blushing or if it's just the weather.

In reality, your love for him is turning to ice. Freezing in place, and when the summer comes around, it’ll melt for him when--if--he comes back to help you with mentoring. You don’t plan to let it blossom again in the summer, you plan to end it as soon as you’re face to face with Finnick.

Because while he’s in the Capitol, enjoying every moment of being showered with money and love from the Capitol people. While he’s going on talk shows and getting to know the enemy more, the people that had gotten his family killed. While he’s replacing a ring with sentimental value with something new and shiny from the Capitol.

While he’s out there with other girls that aren’t you. And professing his undying love on that same talk show instead of in person. And ignoring all the letters of you send him begging him to come home. And then bailing on you.

You’re doing the tour alone. You’re doing the speeches and taking the plaques and faking smiles and pretending you’re enjoying yourself. You’re facing the families both you and him killed together or seperate. You’re meeting the victors who absolutely despise you and the families that want to kill you.

You’re burning flowers in the train bathroom at night and fighting all instincts to ruin the fucking trophies that belong to him. But since he’s so sickeningly into the Capitol, you keep them and throw them into his empty bed. They clatter and clink when they’re up against each other, but they never dent or break.

You’re having nightmares about dying in the arena. About watching Finnick catch typhoid and it being your mistake. Watching him turn pale and weak from your dumbass mistake. You dying from hanging like Lennox or the girl that you had trapped in that net. What about being strung out like leather to be torn apart by bears or being awake for half a second as someone you thought was an ally drives a knife into the back of your head.

Or an innocent twelve year old boy who just wants to go home to his mom and dad. The girl you beheaded at the beginning. What if that had been Finnick or one of the others when you swung too early? You watch yourself kill these people, and take their places right after.

And this is all happening because Finnick had broken his promise of being on the tour with you. If he were to show up now, you would tell him to go home. Tell him that you never want to see or talk to him again, and you mean it. Because knowing that he broke all those promises that you guys made to each other so blatantly is so damn painful.

Finnick gets to enjoy his Capitol people. The nice clothes from his designers and wake up in a comfy bed every morning, fully rested. Or at least he’s rested enough to be sane for the entire day. You, on the other hand, are nowhere near sane.

Last night you had skipped sleeping, and found different ways to keep yourself awake. The first and the only one being, making a giant list of the things that you wouldn’t have minded trying with Finnick. Touring the Capitol together, going to the beach, getting engaged, married, having kids. Getting matching tattoos or some dumb cosmetic thing that would alter you. Officially welcome him to your family.

The list was long, and you folded it up neatly and handed it to Elysia to pass on to Finnick when she’d see him. That’ll be in a couple of days, but it’ll be sooner than you’re prepared for. You have district eleven, then twelve, and then you’ll take the train home. There, you’ll make a small appearance and give a speech or something. After that you’ll be left in the dark permanently. People will be excited for what’s to come.

One of them being, this will be your first year mentoring, and it looks like you’ll be doing it alone. It was one of the things on the list, mentoring with Finnick and getting those kids skilled enough to win. Make a streak or something, a challenge for the other districts to beat four. The houses would be full, every year families will be fed for a couple of days without worry of going hungry.

It’s not going to happen. You’re going to take over for Mags, accept the fact that you’ll be teaching these kids alone, and you’ll be forced to watch it all happen. It’ll go from Mags watching kids die, to you watching. Because in reality, it was mostly luck in the arena.

You’ve come up with an idea while you’ve been on this tour, thinking about how each person has died, and you decided that you’ll make a class almost. One that kids can tune in and out of any time. Where you teach them to tie knots and throw knives, start fires and prepare food. How to make shelter out of scarce items, how to avoid getting sick and all of that.

A pre-preparation class. You teach these kids, all this information, and then when they’re finally picked you get to expand on it all. You get to show them extra things that you haven't taught before. You show them how to get sponsors, and make friends that you’ll need.

You’re sure that the other districts are going to be very careful when it comes to alliances from now on. There’s going to be a reason why you don’t invite four to the alliance pack, and that’s because you and Finnick were a bunch of backstabbers. Gloss and Cashmere will see this, and they’ll decide that they won’t let it happen again. Hell, you guys might be the target from now on. Take out three to avoid the chances of you guys even making allies in the first place.

On that list you had made for Finnick, with all the things you wanted to do with him, you ended it quite bitterly. Like this is a warning for what’s to come when you do see him next. Even if he doesn’t come back any time soon, you’ll go to him. You’ll show up with Caesar on their own personal talk show and you’ll throw it in his face. Say it’s over and it will never be what it was. That you had done all the work while he had all the fun.

The celebrations, the victory tour, the after-interviews. And now you’ll be mentoring people all while he gets to party in the Capitol. What a joke. Especially to think that only a couple of months ago he was crying on your shoulder about it. You can’t believe that you were sympathetic in the slightest.

At the bottom of the list you wrote ‘but none of this will ever happen, and maybe that’s for the better’. It’ll be a slap to the face, maybe it’ll actually get him to respond to anything you’ve sent him.

Him reading those love poems with Caesar aren’t responses. Because you ask him genuine questions, and you elaborate on what’s going on. You try to plan out things, like him visiting and when it’d work best based on Elysia’s schedule. You tell him when the Victory Tour is and when he should be at the district. Days before so that he’ll be able to properly adjust and you can give him advice on how to take care of it.

The doors suddenly open, and you hear the clapping and the few cheers. On your walk down the stairs to the stage, you can see the faces of the people that belong to district eleven. You can see the hatred in their eyes and they want to come up here and kill you. There’s a wall of peacekeepers that keep them down, though.

You get passed some flowers, you thank the girl that hands them to you. Obviously the other girl has no clue what to do, since Finnick isn’t here to take them. The memo hasn’t passed even though you’ve been on this tour for weeks. Finnick is a no-show, just like he will be in district twelve.

When you step up to the microphone you pull out the cards that you had wrote yourself. They don’t seem so smart now that you’re staring at their families. But you take a deep breath, let it out and begin.

You have no fear of speaking in front of people. They could give you the entire nation in one huge district and you’d still be able to talk fine. But there’s a difference between one large crowd of people you don’t know, versus people that have watched you kill their kids.

At the end is when you begin to stumble a little bit, the speech being too long. You manage to clean it up last minute, and offer the crowd one winning smile. They clap and some cheer but you know that it’s to make it look like they’re cooperating. You wonder if they know that you wouldn’t have killed the boy from eleven if you had the chance. That you had saved Thyme, even if in the end you cheered when she was the one dead.

You’re about to wrap it up, but the sound of footsteps stop you, and when you look over your shoulder, the smile on your face drops. Seeing him here, on this stage is infuriating. Him showing up because of Thyme has already got you seeing red.

He tries to smile at you, and go to offer you a small hug and possibly a kiss with that, but you stop him. You don’t want him. You don’t want him after all that has happened.

Because this is salt on the ice. You’re going to explode if he lays a finger on you. You’re going to explode simply at the sight of him. And at the thought of him coming here to give a speech because of Thyme.

In fact, you lean forward to the mic, “Thank you, District Eleven for your tributes.” and then you hike up your dress as you turn to the staircase.

The people are obviously confused, there are a few people who clap. You watch as the peacekeepers move out of the way for you. The doors open and Elysia is standing inside with her mouth open.

“What was that?” she asks, motioning behind you.

You breeze past her, already tearing off the bracelets, earrings, rings, and everything else. Laurel is standing there with a box for everything, holding it out as she watches you toss the jewelry in, ignoring being careful. Next are the heels, that you trade for flats.

Beth holds out regular clothes for you, and you hear the door to the building open, from the same place you came in. One the door clicks shut, you turn to look over your shoulder, and he stands there with his hands out in a reasoning position. But you’re beyond reasoning right now.

“No, Finnick.” you snarl at him, but the angry tears are forming in your eyes, and your throat is closing up, “You don’t get to show up at District Eleven’s part of the tour, and expect me to kiss you in front of them. Especially when I know that you’re here for her!”

Finnick is silent, and you take in a gasp of air because you’re sobbing already, “You enjoy tonight. Enjoy the festivities because this is what you’re here for. Your stupid fucking flowers and plaques and certificates that I had to collect for you, are on your bed in the train.”

“(Y/n)--”

“I told you when we’d be going on the tour and I’ve had to do it alone for ten different fucking district, Finnick!” you go forward, shoving Finnick and watching him stumble, “I’m facing the families of the tributes you killed!” you shove him again, this time he falls, the peacekeepers move forward, “In fact, I saw all of them for you! You didn’t kill Thyme so she doesn’t fucking count!”

“That’s enough, (Y/n).” Elysia tries, but you’re not done.

“Go home Finnick.”

“I am home--”

“Not with me you’re not.” you snap at him, “Your home is the Capitol, and you know what? You can fuckign stay there for all I care. You can also move back into your own goddamn house, since you’re never home anyway. There’s no point in keeping your stuff in my house if we’re not together anymore.”

The tears gather in Finnick’s eyes, and you’re tired of it. You’re not going to be sucked right back into this, “Please.”

“We’ve over Finnick. Party like you’ll never see the sun tonight, because you’re not going to district twelve with me. You’ll be going back to the Capitol.”

You turn again, leaving for some adjacent room in the building. Waiting for your tears to spill over, but they dry.

You’re over it.

LACUNA IS THE FIRST VERSION OF BELAMOUR

//MASTERLIST//

#ilguna #lacuna #finnick odair #lacuna epilogue

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rattlung · 5 years ago

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sorry this took so long! it kinda got away from me after a bit (it’s like 6k words so i’m rlly hoping this read more works on mobile lmao) and turned into a lot of introspection, as my stuff often does when it comes to mirage for some reason. hope you enjoy :^) and ty for sending smth in

(yeah ik mystik keeping in contact through fuckin fan mail is a bit of a stretch especially since crypto mentions burning letters, implying communication through paper, but it was the only thing i could come up with and i didn’t want this to take longer than necessary. just kinda shrug it off because at this point - eh yknow??? the letter mirage comes across is based off the one crypto sends to mystik in the loading screen with him and gibby

also, i looked up a ton of different sites and even checked the wiki but i’m still nervous about crypto’s name and how to write it properly. if i’m still doing it wrong, please please PLEASE let me know. i will literally rewrite this entire thing lmao)

established relationship kinda idk and also set in a kinda canon divergent au where the games hold seasons that last a few months with set teams

----=----

Despite popular belief, Elliott was a smart guy. He lived and studied under his mother, an amazing engineer in her own right, and even had a huge part in the development of some of the tech he used in the arena. It’s just that, sometimes, even he forgot about his own intelligence. Standing next to his fellow legends, it was like any confidence he had left in one fell swoop. He would stutter under their gazes and second guess himself on anything he said the second he said it. It’s something he’d always berate himself on later when he’s alone in his dorm where no one could see him.

Because he was smart. He’d tell himself that when he looked at his own smiling face, as surrounded as he was by it. Apex merch, some fanart, some cutouts they had stood up in stores he’d been sent. Elliott would stare at it all and remind himself that Mirage in the media was who he was. He’d gotten to legend status on his own, and that wasn’t something to write off. He was as intelligent as the rest of them, he just needed to remember that.

Though, admittedly, it did take Elliott a good minute to realize that the message he’d been sent wasn’t for him.

But, in his defense, this wasn’t an issue that had ever come up before. After their breach that forced them to move planets, the Apex Team had taken extra precautions when it came to legends getting fan mail. Elliott hadn’t blamed them, but he still couldn’t help but raise a brow at the extent they went to. In his opinion, it was just, like, two steps above sending it in on paper the old fashioned way. Honestly, that would go faster, since that didn’t need to be scoured by security software. Sometimes the dates lagged by so much that Elliott would get things months after a someone sent it.

So, yes, it did require a few read through’s for him to parse what was going on in the small paragraph. To be fair, it had his name in it. Don’t act so pretentious, TJ, everyone knows who Mirage is. The rest of the message was written in the same way: to someone who wasn’t actually Elliott and from someone who’s seemingly exchanged letters with this “TJ” before.

Maybe the program was on the fritz, picked out Elliott’s alias and sent it over to his inbox. It was something worth mentioning to the higher ups, because that absolutely had to be a liability in their new safety protocols. But more importantly - and definitely the thing he was going to address first - who was this letter for? Who was TJ?

There were only a few options, as most of the legends had opted to come forth with their real names when signing up for the Games. Elliott knew Bloodhound still operated under a veil of mystery, but he doubted they could be TJ. From what he remembered when he walked passed their dorm - which was usually something he tried to do quickly, since the bird Hound kept in there with them seemed to like Elliott only a little more than it liked Pathfinder - they didn’t even have a computer set up. No contact to the outside world unless it was through interviews.

Wraith just recently came across her name, Elliott remembered. She’d mentioned it in passing before disappearing for a few weeks in an abrupt request for time off. Wraith never really talked to anyone, so it kind of made sense. Everyone needed someone to vent to, even if it was about Elliott. What could TJ stand for? Taylor Jenkins? Tanya Jones?

Tilly Junior.

But then again, it really could have been any of them. Elliott wouldn’t put it passed Caustic to be using a fake name. Any of them could be using a fake name, and he doubted going around and asking would get him anywhere.

Elliott let the holopad slip onto the cushion of the couch he’d been lounging on, his head falling back to thump against the wall. Crypto would be able to help with the new mystery, that was at least something he was sure of. The amount of badgering and begging needed to actually get the hacker to relent and do any helping? Now that was unknown as well.

In the months that the season encompassed, he and Crypto ended up getting closer than probably either of them would have liked - at least in the beginning. Elliott couldn’t imagine what he would have thought then if he was told that most of his nights out of the arena would be spent at the other’s side, in his dorm, Crypto fiddling with some of the tech Elliott had lying around as Elliott himself talked his ear off.

Crypto was a good listener, he found. It was something in the quiet he maintained around him, a whole lot different than, say, Bloodhound’s. Not that Bloodhound was cold and off-putting; it was more so like what Elliott imagined stepping into an ancient library would be like. Something about Bloodhound made anything above a whisper seem too loud, and out of respect for said library, Elliott left them alone.

And then there was that time Crypto had caught Elliott staring at him when he blasted Caustic with a Charge Rifle from about 300 meters away. The only thing he’d done was give Elliott that knowing smirk then followed it up with an honest to god wink. Elliott was gone after that.

Things had changed in a steady progression. Instead of Elliott being the one to find him, Crypto would seek him out rather than hide away in his own dorm. When Elliott would invite him to his dorm, mostly joking, Crypto would surprise him by accepting. There wasn’t any verbal confirmation in the shift, though, and sometimes Elliott would worry about it, wonder if he was reading too much into things. Not that it was a big deal. He never cared much about labels, except when he really, really did.

But then Crypto would sometimes push Elliott against a wall in the downtime during the games while they were looting, or even when they were just hanging out. He’d silence ramblings by covering Elliott’s mouth with his own, and who was Elliott to tell him no?

They were close, now, yes, but for as good as Crypto listened, he didn’t talk much. It was something Elliott attempted to change. He tried to get him to open up in various ways, but the longest he’s ever gotten Crypto to talk was when he asked about the Holo Gear Mirage used on the field. Even then, Elliott did most of the talking. He’d gushed about his mom, how she did a lot of the work and he handled more of the fine tuning, reminisced about their workshop, the long days they used to spent together. Elliott remembered picking up something different from Crypto, then, something almost sad. Like maybe he’d been missing something, too.

Elliott never got to ask about it. Crypto had retreated to his own quarters pretty fast after that. He was too confused to wonder what he’d done wrong, and the worry was put to rest before he ever actually got to worry about it at all when Crpyto sidled up next to him the next day right before the drop. The situation just reaffirmed that there was a lot that Elliott didn’t know, like what kept Crypto so quiet, who he thought about when Elliott talked about working with his mother, what he always seemed to be working on when he was alone.

Or his name, Elliott realized.

After a pause, he scrambled back into a sitting position and grabbed the holopad again. There was public information on every legend that signed up for the Games, but the last he’d checked there had been something wrong with the page dedicated to Crypto. It showed multiple different error codes that were random upon opening the page and sometimes it would even crash a browser entirely. Forums still existed, though, and Elliott would use that to his advantage.

Quietly, in the back of his mind, he felt guilty, felt like he was doing something he shouldn’t.

A lot of the threads were just talking about the recent games and Crypto’s happenings in them. They talked about his marksmanship, which was pretty impressive, Elliott had to say. It wasn’t until a few minutes of scrolling - spent looking through GIFs and videos of highlights, that he won’t admit to - brought him to a specific thread. The person who posted was wondering about the drone Crypto had in his possession, asking about its name, speculating on the model. The top comment on it claimed to have spent time behind the scenes on the Apex Games Production team and declared that the drone Crypto used had a lot of similarities to the ones they use to film the Games.

The next comment didn’t exactly discredit the correlation, but they did say it was likely that the drone’s blueprint was leaked and got sold to another company, not Crypto having the clearance to use Apex equipment.

I doubt they’d let him have one of the official ones, with all the controversy surrounding them, the commenter said.

Elliott bit the inside of his cheek and narrowed his eyes in thought. It was a stretch, but it didn’t stop him from backing out of the forum and searching “apex filming drones”.

The first result wasn’t a link to the Apex Game’s website. It was another website with comment threads, its title “look what i found???”.

So, Elliott did.

i was doing some VERY LEGAL digging around, because i was wondering where the new guy came from and all that, but there’s literally NOTHING that isn’t hidden behind encrypted messes that would take like ten years to get through but when i tried, i got something on some dude named hyeon kim but when i went around looking for more i found this

??????

Below the post was a screenshot of an article from a news site called Outlands’ Journal. Elliott read it over, but the only thing he processed was “Disgraced computer technician, Tae Joon Park” and “Mystik, Joon’s former caretaker”.

And then, a little more down, was the comment, “Isn’t that the dude who’s wanted for murdering his sister or something?”

----=----

Despite popular belief, Elliott was a smart guy. In that moment, though, it really didn’t seem like a good thing.

----=----

The decision was one he made almost subconsciously: Elliott was not going to tell anyone what he’d found.

How would anyone even believe it? Elliott was hardly sure he even believed it. Spoken out loud, it would seem like such a tin-foil-hat conspiracy, and it’s not like he could use the thread he’d found the information in to back the claim up. He’d checked it again when he woke the next day, wanting to make sure he hadn’t had some fever dream, but the entire thread had disappeared. Even the account it was posted from was wiped from the site. On a whim, he checked his history and went to the link directly, but that only got him an error page.

The code was something he remembered from Crypto’s buggy Legend profile.

Elliott had almost been late getting ready for the games, he sat there for so long and stared at it. Luckily, the turbulence that signified they were getting close to the closed off arena literally jolted him as a physical reminder. Elliott shook his head and stood, making his way over to the collapsible, garage-like door in order to pull it down.

Isn’t that the dude who’s wanted for murdering his sister?

He was almost regretful that he wanted to go looking for more information. What if Crypto was somehow able to track the searches that were relevant to the article? That could be how the thread was taken down so fast, how the account disappeared. Was that what he was doing all the time, bent over his computer? Working to hide what he’d done?

Why even join the Apex Games, a program that was widely broadcasted across planets? Wouldn’t he want to keep a low profile? How did he even get the clearance to sign up? The producers had run background check after background check when Elliott had been brought in for an interview. So his public intoxication got put under the microscope, but the murderer they let in for free?

And yet, that didn’t sound right, even when he thought it. Sure, yeah, they all technically participated in a blood sport - but the technically was heavily implied. No one actually ever died; sometimes bones were broken and people had to retire after a serious injury, but that was just about it. Everyone who signed up was capable of killing.

But capability of killing was different than cold blooded murder. At least in Elliott’s opinion.

He was just pulling on the last of his Holo Gear when the door rattled in its frame. “Pull y’self outta bed, we got a game to win!”

“Door is closed for privacy,” Mirage berated.

Lifeline only cackled shortly before replying with, “I ain’t lookin’ at you, am I?”

Mirage pulled the door up so she could see his put-off pouting, which didn’t do much of anything besides getting her to laugh again. He followed her into the loading bay, passing Bloodhound and Wraith. They each gave him a respectful nod, always frighteningly eager to board their dropping platform. Still, Mirage responded with a courteous wink and two solid finger guns.

As the automated commentator announced the approaching drop zone, Mirage was suddenly very aware of the empty space beside him being taken up by another person. At first, neither of them said anything, but that was weird for him, so he had to say something, didn’t he?

“Fashionably late, as always,” he greeted, going for something half-joking, half-flirty. Honestly, he would proudly say he hit the mark, but Crypto didn’t say anything back. “Long night?”

Then, a too long second of silence fell between them as the dropping platforms began to hiss. Freezing air blasted, chilling his face, blowing his hair around, but it wasn’t the reason why his blood went cold in his veins. A voice went off in his head almost like an alarm. He knows, it said. He knows you found out. He knows.

“Always,” Mirage heard, just barely above the wind whipping between them.

And it was stuff like that that made him felt immediately guilty for the fear he held just moments before. There was that haunted, pained tone that took hold of Crypto’s voice that Mirage always seemed to catch when he knew he wasn’t supposed to. Just like how he caught something like longing when Mirage had spoken of his mother. How Crypto’s empathy felt different than others when Mirage mentioned his brothers.

He didn’t talk often, sure, but Crypto couldn’t stop himself from expressing in some ways. Not around Mirage, not anymore.

Obviously, there was the possibility that Crypto had done something - that very specific something - but Mirage just couldn’t see it. He had that gut feeling, and following those types of feelings got him to where he was right then. Standing among Legends.

Legends, and Tae Joon Park.

----=----

It’s about a month of doing his best of forgetting what he’d uncovered when he realized a problem he’d overlooked. Elliott had already come to the conclusion that Tae Joon and Mystik were close, close enough to risk each other’s safety by maintaining their pen pal status. They kept in contact that way, so the fluke Elliott had gotten in his inbox was not the first letter that had ever been sent between them.

Which meant that Crypto was going to be expecting a letter from his former caretaker that Elliott didn’t know how to give him without starting a shit show.

Just another thing to add to the reasons he wasn’t getting sleep at night, because “doing his best to forget” was awfully hard. Tae Joon’s silences were just periods of dreadful anticipation to him now. Every time they were together and the tapping on Crypto’s keyboard would pause, Elliott would expect to look up to see Crypto already staring at him, glaring, asking him how long Elliott had known -

But Tae Joon’s eyes would be on the monitor when Elliott would brave looking up, watching text wrap around the screen at all kinds of speeds. Sometimes it would freeze all at once, certain words blinking, and a corner of Tae Joon’s mouth would pull in an annoyed grimace - meaning he’d done something wrong, and the typing would start back up with a new kind of spiteful energy to it. Elliott would go back to what he was doing, wishing he could let out the breath he felt he’d been constantly holding, because sooner or later the typing would stop again.

Elliott was stressed out of his mind and it was starting to affect his performance on the field, but a horrible, evil little part of himself relished in knowing something others didn’t. That stupid, childish thrill of secret keeping. He wanted to hold it close to where no one else could see it, because he really, really wanted to. If not telling anyone meant protecting Tae Joon, then he wouldn’t tell a soul - even if that included Tae Joon himself.

But that was kind of backwards, wasn’t it? He was literally harboring a criminal, wasn’t he? Regardless of what Elliott’s stupid gut told him. Crypto was wanted for murder - but what was he supposed to do? Tell the authorities and get a potentially innocent man potentially killed? Or tell Tae Joon himself and be proven wrong, find out the very dead way that people Elliott found attractive really are out to get him.

Knowing what he did and not doing anything about it was dangerous either way. Hence the trouble sleeping.

People were starting to notice, too. Tae Joon noticed - and it was stuff like that that was going to get Elliot into trouble. He found himself switching the names around in his head. Tae Joon Park and Crypto were now interchangeable; the only way he avoided not messing up out loud and inadvertently revealing himself and what he knew was just by... not talking.

Which was hard to do.

It was easier than trying to condition himself to stop using the name, though. Because Elliott liked knowing it. There was a certain level of intimacy to it; it felt different now whenever Crypto would corner him or when he’d let Elliott turn him away from his computer. It felt like he was holding someone more, in a way. Not a mystery, but a person. He was holding someone. He was holding Tae Joon, kissing Tae Joon in secret, making a mess of Tae Joon’s bed. It was so much, and in those moments the secret was something he almost couldn’t bear. He’d just barely hold himself back from breathing the name, he’d bite his tongue to stop it.

And then the guilt would flood into his head, because he was lying. It felt so wrong to know this when Tae Joon wasn’t the one to tell him. So, Elliott withdrew. He was polite in the games, communicated as much as necessary, still bantered with Lifeline. Slowly he weaned himself off of flirting with their other teammate and reverted back to the beginning of the season. Except, not quite, really. Even in the beginning Elliott couldn’t help himself when it came to Crypto, but back then it was petty arguments that he didn’t know he craved. Now, it wasn’t much of anything besides civility.

The worst part of it might have been that Tae Joon never asked why. He allowed the regression to happen nonchalantly, but that was on purpose. Every so often, Elliott would still get pushed against a wall, when no one else was around. Tae Joon wouldn’t ask why Elliott didn’t talk to him, didn’t visit him, didn’t invite him to his dorm anymore. He would just kiss him, hard, desperate. It was almost like it wasn’t surprising to him. Like maybe Tae Joon had been waiting for it to end the entire time.

Shame would tear Elliott up after he’d pull away without a word. It would tear him up even worse when the next time Elliott saw him, Tae Joon would act as if nothing happened. Business as usual.

----=----

It had to end in some way, so Elliott really shouldn’t have been shocked when it actually happened - or that it was his fault that it went down the way it did.

----=----

He never had liked fighting Wraith. Mirage had been on her squad a few seasons ago and they’d spent a lot of their time in the arena watching the other work. So Mirage knew her tricks, but worst of all, Wraith knew his. Besides his good looks, charm, and being a crack shot with the Wingman, tricks were just about all Mirage had.

She had followed the sounds of his footsteps when he’d cloaked earlier in the gunfight to heal, weaving through the decoys he’d dropped without skipping a beat. It was a mess of bursts from SMGs, Wraith phasing away to duck behind cover. Another few bursts and MIrage would get sprayed down, only to disintegrate into lights and have him reappear around another corner.

Mirage strained to hear over the firing outside for her footsteps, placing her somewhere downstairs. He continued up, for once being grateful for the Skyhook buildings and the buffer they provided with their multiple levels. It gave him time to repair the damage done to his shields as Wraith presumably did the same before she began her chase again. They were bound to run out of supplies and floors at some point, but all Mirage needed to do was buy time for his teammates to secure their kills so they could come and take her off his hands.

It was a good plan up until it stopped working. Thing was, Wraith was fast, and Mirage was learning that if you’re not in her squad as often as you used to be, you forget just how fast she could be.

He heard the cocking of a Peacekeeper after he was a few paces onto the roof, which is also when he remembered seeing a fucking zipline in the building on his way toward the stairs. He hadn’t thought about it, immediately stored it under the dumb idea section; zipping straight up to the top floor just for Wraith to light him up and have him fall straight back down like a ton of bricks? No thank you, he’d take the stairs.

“Fuck,” Mirage said quickly, just as a shotgun blast exploded in front of him. Most of the spread was dodged by running around one of the pallets stacked with construction materials, but it still cracked through what was left of his shields.

He was dead, Mirage was absolutely dead. There was no way his Wingman was going to win against a Peacekeeper, not unless he hit every shot and Wraith missed all of hers - which she didn’t, she never missed.

A kick was placed neatly between his shoulders and Mirage flailed wildly, gripped at the metal framing of an empty wall and used the momentum to swing around -

- directly into another shotgun blast, one of which he took right into the stomach. That sent him sprawling. He landed hard on his back and the air was knocked out of him, leaving him gasping for it as he skidded a few paces forward.

Calmly, Wraith sauntered over to stand above him, reloading the few shots she’d used in her Peacekeeper. Mirage wanted to say something to maybe lessen the blow his pride and his body just took, but the only thing he could get out was a wet cough.

She grinned at him and knelt, shotgun going to one side so she could show Mirage the blade she held before pressing it to his throat. “Don’t worry,” she whispered, leaning in close. “I would have gotten you either way. Zigged or zagged.”

Mirage would’ve rolled his eyes had it not been for the kunai at his jugular, so all he did was swallow and wait for the push. But it never came. In the very next moment, Wraith was sent flying to the ground next to Mirage, her side smoking from a fresh Mastiff shot, the sudden sound of it nearly deafening him.

She pushed up unsteadily in an attempt to get to her feet, but Crypto beat her by grabbing at the scarf at her neck. “It seems like you zigged,” he started, mocking her previous low tone with his own smug lilt. Mirage watched as he raised his hand and his drone seemingly appeared in his grip while he finished with, “When you should have just quit and gone home.”

The drone came down against Wraith’s head hard, and in the time it took Mirage to blink, she was replaced with a golden case.

Crypto turned to face him, then, showing off the small smirk he’d been wearing. “Fashionably late,” he announced with a shrug.

Mirage couldn’t help the relieved grin that spread across his own face. “As always. Love that about you, kid.”

Crypto knelt at his side, taking the place Wraith had left behind, and fished around in the pack around his waist for the syringes he kept there. Once it was plunged into his chest, all of Elliott’s muscles seemed to twitch, but he felt his heart rate lower down to something manageable. He lost a lot of blood, though. He was going to have to huddle in a corner and lick his wounds for at least another five minutes before he’d be anywhere close to mobile.

“Thank you,” Mirage said in between a few deep breaths. “You’re a lifesaver.”

“Match isn’t done yet,” Crypto chided lowly. He stood up straight and held out his hand for Mirage to take.

Which he did, but he only got halfway up before he hit the ground again. The cracking snap of a Kraber shot echoed in the empty air above the buildings and Mirage stared up at the blue sky, wondering why he wasn’t feeling any pain. Then, he heard the sound of himself hitting the floor for a third time and thought, that’s weird, I thought I already did that.

After that, he thought, I lost a lot of blood.

Tae Joon, is the next thing that came to his mind in the form of a horrible realization, one that he ended up voicing out loud in fear, in panic. He sat up from the adrenaline that panic gave him, hysterically hoping that maybe that the other hadn’t heard him, but mostly to satisfy the need of having to see if Tae Joon was okay.

And he wasn’t, not really. He was on his back, too, propped up on one elbow, one hand clutching at his shoulder that was spilling red between his fingers. But worst of all, he was staring at Mirage like the pain was second to the shock.

Mirage didn’t like the look he was getting, and it was especially devastating that it was Tae Joon who was the one giving it to him. Underneath the cloud from the medicine coursing through his system, he knew he had to explain, had to make it so Tae Joon could understand that Mirage knowing his secret wasn’t a big deal, that’d he’d known for a long time and nothing bad had happened.

So, he began with “Tae - “ and then, for some reason, finished with, “Tae - tuh - tuh - uh - totally thought you were going to die from that.”

Finally, he thought, Nice save, and collapsed.

----=----

They didn’t win, but that was the least of their worries. Well, maybe not Lifeline’s, but that was beside the point.

Elliott left the medbay as soon as he could, which still took a good amount of time. The nurse had mentioned something about the side effects of the Revival Syringe along with blood loss and not using anymore meds to stabilize after he was injected. They spent extra time checking his vitals and Elliott didn’t have to be a doctor to tell them that those were going to be skewed.

His heart was still racing when he made his way back into the dorms. It was a little relieving to find that it was empty; after the games, everyone typically accumulated in the mess hall to celebrate the winners. But the at the same time, it was disappointing. He almost wanted to see Tae Joon standing around every corner Elliott rounded waiting to confront him, because getting this over with meant getting back to normal, and Elliott couldn’t wait for that.

So, he risked a glance over at the other’s dorm across the sitting area as if getting a look at it would help him decide on whether or not he should knock, initiate it himself. The door was pulled up, though, left open. Elliott blinked at it once before wandering closer.

The room had always seemed bare, but the emptiness was emphasized now. He noticed that the blanket that was supposed to be folded and draped across the back of the couch to show off the South Korean flag was missing. The box Tae Joon had shoved under there and filled with parts and drives was pulled out, tipped over and empty. Even more, the drone’s docking station was gone.

Elliott rushed over to the desk and tapped the first key he could reach. Only one of the monitors flashed on, glowing blue and asking to proceed with setup.

“Oh, no,” Elliott muttered. He hurried back out to the seating area and looked up to the screens displaying that day’s match stats. Scrolling across the top was the ETA for the ship’s landing. Ten minutes. “Oh no, no, no you fucking don’t,” he continued to say, practically running to the hall for Boarding.

It Tae Joon got into the city before Elliott could catch him on the ship, it was likely that he’d never see the man again. He couldn’t let that happen.

But Boarding was empty, too, bar the few bots that managed the floor. Elliott practically skidded to a stop in front of one of them, startling the unit’s arms up and out.

“Hey, buddy, you wouldn’t have happened to see a guy, this tall - “ He holds up his hand, palm down, level with the top of his own head. “ - might have looked pissed off, which would be my fault, so I’m trying to find him. Have you seen him?”

The bot’s screen on it’s chest flashed red in the negative, then blue in an apologetic sad face.

Elliott grunted in disappointment. “Nah, don’t sweat it,” he assured the bot, even thought he was absolutely going to.

He was biting his lip when he exited, nervous. The ship held at least sixty people on it at once. It was a decent size and if someone like Crypto was hiding on it, someone like Elliott wasn’t going to find him.

Elliott swore, once in frustration, twice in shock when he was thrown roughly against the hard, metal wall of an empty hallway. Someone held him there with a fist against his shoulder and the threat of a pistol pressing into his abdomen. He was blinded before he could gather his bearings by a sudden flash of green light, leaving him blinking rapidly to clear his vision.

“Where did you get a gun?” Elliott chose to ask, deliriously, for some reason. “They don’t let weapons on the ship - “

“Who are you?” Tae Joon questioned. The aggression in his voice was something Elliott hadn’t heard since the first few weeks, around the same time Tae Joon was just as likely to twist his arm as he was to snap at him.

“What? Babe, you know who I am - “

“Elliott Witt is too clean, everything on him was too easy to find - they wouldn’t send an Elliott Witt to hunt me down.” His expression was neutral, but there was so much going on in his eyes that Elliot couldn’t look away, even when the gun reminded him of its presence with little jabs. “So who are you?”

And maybe there were a few things Elliott should have been offended by. Like how he wasn’t prestigious enough to warrant a protected record, or Tae Joon’s implication that he wasn’t capable of something he had already done - mostly on accident.

But what he ended up asking was, “You think I made everything up? You think I lied about my entire life for, what? Getting into bed with you?”

Tae Joon didn’t seem taken aback by the hurt that was evident in Elliott’s voice, but it did leave enough room for one second of hesitation. “Then they got to you,” he whispered, somehow sounding equal parts flat and devastated.

Elliott shook his head in confusion. Who was they? “No one fucking got to me, I actually don’t know who or what you’re talking about,” he tried to explain.

“Then how?” Tae Joon asked - angry. Elliott was finally able to identify one of the things burning in Tae Joon’s glare. Anger, and maybe confusion as well. Fear.

How did this happen, they both seemed to be thinking. How did I let it get to this?

“How did you find out?” Tae Joon snapped when Elliott spent too long watching him. “Who told you?”

“Mystik,” Elliott blurted, shocking the other enough to pull back just a little bit. “Kind of,” he went on in a hurry. “She sent you something, and I - I think the new software they implemented for security read my name enough times in it so it got forwarded to me - I don’t know exactly! I didn’t do it on purpose, it must be mald- malfuk - bugging out! So, I went to check, and I’d show you the forum post I found, but it’s gone already, I swear.”

Tae Joon took a step back, then another. “What did you find?”

Elliott let out a breath, wet his lips in a nervous tic. He shrugged. “Just - just an article.”

Disgraced computer technician -

Wanted for murdering his sister -

Tae Joon looked away suddenly and down the hall, like he was planning on running again. His frown was so intense a crease began to form between his brow.

“I didn’t tell anyone,” Elliott said firmly. “I promise. But - what happened?”

“I can’t tell you that,” Tae Joon told him quickly. “If you don’t know, I can’t tell you.”

“Okay,” Elliott replied, despite how much he wanted to push.

Tae Joon seemed to sense that, gave him a troubled look. “I didn’t do it.”

“I know,” Elliott told him. “I believe you.”

It it was so easy to say, but they both knew it was more than the words spoken out loud. The admission meant Tae Joon’s shoulders could drop from their high strung, protected hunch. It meant they could both breathe. It meant Elliott could push off from the wall, get close - slowly - and gently retrieve the gun Tae Joon held to find that the safety was on. Because if he didn’t have to, Tae Joon wasn’t going to hurt him. He‘d never wanted to hurt anyone.

He put his fingers on the cool metal lining Tae Joon’s jaw to get him to look at Elliott.

“I believe you,” Elliott repeated, and Tae Joon kissed him for it. He put an open hand on the back of Elliott’s head and threaded his fingers through the curls that were there, pulling him in roughly. Elliott made a surprised noise but recovered fast enough. He pushed an arm underneath Tae Joon’s open coat to wind it around man’s waist and pressed his front to the other’s, hoping that somehow he’d get Tae Joon to feel the honesty in his words through an embrace. Thinking that he could show off the part of Elliott that was dedicated purely to him by just holding him against his chest.

Anything to get Tae Joon to stop kissing him in that same, desperate way as before, like he was still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Elliott said when they broke apart. He didn’t let the other go, though, and rested his forehead against his. “So you can’t either.”

Tae Joon’s features darken in a very particular way. “Don’t say that.” When Elliott lifted his head a little to show him a confused expression, he goes on to explain. “They take everything.”

Who’s they? I’ll kick they’s ass.

“They can’t take Mirage,” he said, smiling. “According to you, he’s too hard to carry.”

Instead of laughing, or giving that smarmy little smirk, or even rolling his eyes, Tae Joon raised a brow and asked, “What about Elliott?”

“Elliott’s yours,” he told him without thinking. “No one’s taking that.”

Tae Joon Park moved back in to kiss Elliott again.

=====

thanks for the prompt :^)

#apex legends #crypto #mirage #elliott witt #cryptage #cryage #those are the tags i know i'm sorry #kon's a writer #tae joon park

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violet-moth · 5 years ago

Text

An Angel who Fell, but Not Quite Far Enough - Part One

*A gender-neutral, Good Omens reader-insert in which you are an angel with very bad—er, well nonexistent memory who fell, but not quite far enough...

[ Insert Guide: [Y/N]=“Your Name,” [F/N]=“First Name,” [L/N]=“Last Name,” [F/C]=“Favorite Color” ]

Amnesia wasn't all bad—well, it was, but also...it wasn't? For all [Y/N] knew they could have been a serial killer before forgetting it all, which was most certainly bad. However, whatever they had been before, it didn't weigh them down. There was no baggage, no anxiety-inducing past trauma. They lived whatever life they wanted to. For some reason, they'd never really felt the desire to find out who they were, anyway.

[Y/N]’s first memory consisted of waking up in a dark and dirty alleyway. They later discovered it was London and were very quickly transported to a hospital after a few odd conversations with strangers had prompted someone reporting them to authorities.

No doctor could explain it, nor England's best neuroscientist for that matter—[Y/N]’s brain was functioning entirely normally, they just simply couldn't remember who they were. They had basic knowledge about the world, but when it came to personal knowledge concerning their identity? They simply blanked. At first, they were accused of lying, but after numerous interviews, evaluations, counseling, medications, and even a couple of polygraph tests, there was no choice but to believe them.

Their story inspired a news article or two with headlines like "DOCTORS ASTOUNDED BY PECULIAR AMNESIA PATIENT" and, naturally, internet conspiracy theorists proposed the most outlandish ideas—like perhaps they were a time traveler or an alien or an experimental clone released into society by the government. None of them got anywhere near the truth of the matter. All the buzz even lead to them meeting the Prime Minister once. But, eventually, as with all media, the hyper fixation slowly died away and they were old news. And old news gradually became forgotten news.

After being unsuccessful in their search for their origins, the police and medical personnel eventually agreed to help integrate them into society. They got to choose a name for themselves, which they were rather keen on. After searching the internet for hours, they finally settled on [F/N] [L/N]. It just seemed right.

The doctors had projected that they were in their early twenties, so [Y/N] decided to take advantage of the government funding they were offered and enrolled in University. It seemed they had quite the aptitude for just about any topic they set their mind to; it was strange not really knowing anything and yet knowledge coming so naturally to them—as if, perhaps, they were only remembering what they had forgotten but...not really. Their topic of choice, however, centered on Theology.

They lived quite cozily in their private dorm room, which was kept quite tidy to the extent that they really didn't have many belongings.

One of [Y/N]'s favorite pastimes involved wandering around London, discovering practically everything for the first time. Today was quite rainy, more than usual, but it didn't deter them. They walked on, splashing with each step and gripping tight to their [F/C] umbrella, which was embellished with a pattern of little, silver feathers. A rather strong gush of wind threatened to carry their umbrella away and, so, [Y/N] wandered into the nearest and coziest looking building.

They really hadn't paid attention to what the building was past acknowledging the little 'OPEN' sign, but upon entering they were immediately struck with the inviting warmth that hit them—contrasting so harshly with the cold storm outside. It was like slipping into an entirely opposite dimension. Next, they noticed the scent of old parchment and glue, which reminded them of the University Library except for the fact that there was a sweet undertone to it—was that hot chocolate they were detected? [Y/N] couldn't be sure; they couldn't remember ever having it, but they must have before because they recognized the scent.

Whatever it was, [Y/N] immediately felt guilty for entering a bookshop dripping wet and so they did their very best to dry off before daring to take another step inside. They closed their umbrella tightly and left it by the door along with their raincoat to avoid scattering water any worse than they already had. They sighed, content with the respite they'd found from the storm.

Their eyes grazed over the piles and shelves of books—all old and well-cared for, they could tell. It seemed more like someone's personal collection than a shop, really. They dared to wander over to a shelf to examine the book titles, but before they could comprehend the ornate lettering on one particular book's spine, [Y/N] was alerted by the hasty shuffling of feet.

"Aaaahhh! I do apologize, but we are just about to close," they registered the warm, posh voice before they did the man generating it. [Y/N] immediately tore their eyes away from the shelf and toward him.

The moment they saw him, they were struck with a sense of warmth similar to the bookshop itself—almost as if he were the very heart of it. He had the most brilliant glow about him (an aura, they’d learned to call it from their classes); they had always been able to see them as far as they could recall. There was something familiar about the man. It wasn't his face or his voice or anything like that; it was his energy, his being. At any rate, [Y/N] couldn't exactly pinpoint the strange feeling, but it was there nonetheless.

They smiled apologetically, "Ah, I'm sorry...there weren't any hours posted and, well, with the storm and all, the place looked so inviting...-I'll go," but before [Y/N] could make way to leave, another man rounded the corner. His presence, too, was familiar, but in a much less pleasant way. He didn't frighten them, but rather they felt a sense of unease, almost distrust. His aura was strangely concealed and deceptive, but they could see a slight tinge of darkness surrounding his being--however, it was almost as if that darkness was concealing something else, something more. The smile unconsciously faded from their lips. It was like the two were polar opposites and it wasn't simply because of the way they made [Y/N] feel, but in the way, they dressed and acted as well.

"Forgot to flip the sign to closed again, angel?" The man clad in dark clothes leaned nonchalantly against the shelf and crossed his arms, appearing amused.

The bookkeep's attention seemed to have drifted to the window, seeming somewhat guilty. "Well, it certainly is bucketing down out there, isn't it...?"

"...nice weather...for ducksss," the other man commented under his breath with a shrug and [Y/N] was almost sure, but not definitively, that they detected a hiss in the man’s tone.

"Well, I suppose I'm lucky I enjoy the rain then," [Y/N] broke their silence, feeling a bit embarrassed for having bothered the two when the shop was intended to be closed. "I'll be going, then...," they noted as they made way to retrieve their rain jacket just as a burst of lighting illuminated the shop's window. [Y/N] didn't seem at all bothered—the man on their other hand...

Oh, curse him for forgetting that blasted ‘OPEN’ sign. After all the centuries keeping the shop, you'd think he'd remember a thing like that. Aziraphale bit the inside of his lip as he watched the stranger slip on their coat, feeling Crowley's watchful eyes on him. The sudden flash of lightning only solidified his guilt. Often, the people he rushed out of his shop were argumentative and rude, but this stranger had simply accepted it graciously. Ah, what kind of angel would he be if he let them go out in a storm like that? What if they got hurt? Wouldn't that be his fault for sending them away?

"Aahh, I trust you haven't very far to walk...?" The angel finally piped up.

"...-well, actually...I'll be heading back to the University. I wandered a bit further than I probably should have. It's my own fault for ignoring the weather forecast," they shrugged, still not a care in the world, as they buttoned up their coat. "I am sorry, again, for disturbing you. It's...-you have a really lovely place here." They compliment with a smile.

Blast. They were a kind heart and he was relenting, "My dear, you cannot possibly walk all that way in this weather. It would be quite certainly treacherous."

Crowley perked up a bit, his attention having drifted elsewhere until this moment. He saw where this was going and he knew he wasn't going to like it.

"Oh...," the stranger took a look out the window as if they had only just realized how bad the storm actually was. "But I did walk all the way here just fine...-I'm sure it will be alright." They sent him a smile, grateful for his concern.

Aziraphale jumped into action, nervous as the stranger began to open the door. "W-well, what if we offered you a ride?"

And there it was; Crowley groaned as Aziraphale turned to him with a pleading look. Those big, blue puppy-dog eyes. How many times had he given in to those? "No, no absolutely not. You heard 'em. Said they got here just fine in the first place."

The stranger paused, contemplating this. They thought about accepting until the other man piped up. “I wouldn’t want to intrude more than I already have...”

He wasn’t going to give in. He wasn’t. Those angelic eyes wouldn’t win this tim—Crowley groaned, “Oh, for somebody’s sake...-Fine. But you owe me for this one, angel.”

Aziraphale grinned, the angel pleased to get his way but playing innocent as though he’d never been begging in the first place. Spoiled angel. “Oh, thank you~”

“W-well, then. I would really appreciate the lift...,” the stranger concluded, “...-if that’s really alright...”

[Next]

#good omens #aziraphale #crowley #anthony j crowley #good omens fanfiction #fanfic #good omens fanfic #good omens imagine #reader insert #this is a totally self-serving fic but im sharing it anyways

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scaredofrobots · 7 years ago

Text

The Oath

I wrote some angst. Lily Potter and Harry ran away to save the world. James hasn’t seen them in 10 years. Multi Chap.

THIS IS FOR @elanev91 who is my hero every day

Part One

Part Two

Every morning is the same.

She wakes up.

She pours her first cup of tea.

She wakes Harry up.

Gets him dressed.

Feeds him.

Drives him to school.

Walks him to class, kisses him on the forehead and reminds him "No funny business."

She puts on a fake face for the other mothers who never seem to leave the classroom and heads to work.

She tries to forget her old life.

It is incredibly hard.

Disappearing had been the easiest thing in the world.

She thinks this often as she types up the classified ads, birth announcements, and engagements for work.

It's a small newspaper- she doesn't even need the money (Sirius made sure of that), but when Harry turned four and started kindergarten, she started to lose her mind.

Typing helps. It is mindless. And there is always some part of her that hopes an ad that comes through will be the one she's been waiting for.

She is pretty much out of hope at this point.

Harry will turn eleven this summer.

She tries very hard to forget that part.

She worries though, daily, that when Harry turns eleven they will be found.

That everything they have worked so hard to protect and conceal will be eliminated by an owl flying through her window delivering a letter.

She doesn't even know if the American Wizarding School uses owls.

Will they send a letter?

Or will Hogwarts?

Something in her heart clenches at the thought of Hogwarts.

Of home.

Of James.

She doesn't even know if he is alive. She doesn't even know if the war is over.

She's just biding her time in this small Carolina town hoping she'll find that stupid ad.

Somehow- it is already lunch time.

Again, Lily waves off the invitations to go out with her coworkers. She kindly waves at the piles of classifieds she has left to type and holds up her brown sack lunch.

Being a loner is something she's developed in her new life. She'd made the mistake once- at a restaurant job in Alabama. She got too close with one of the waitresses and when the year was up it was devastating to leave. So she'd promised herself to never make friends. She added it to the list of rules she and Sirius had set.

It was raining that night. She's just gotten Harry to go to bed. James was off on a mission- he wasn't supposed to leave but Peter had come in such a state of panic- their Gryffindor pride took over any logic and James had left. It had been hours. Suddenly- there was a roar and flash of light outside her window and then a crack and she was facing Sirius in her kitchen.

He was soaking wet and had wild eyes and spoke without greeting her. "Do you still have those emergency bags packed?"

"Yes- of course- but Sirius-" she tried

And he cut her off and started towards where he knew she kept the bags in the hall closet. "Peter's the rat. Regulus told me- this whole fucking thing….we have to get you, James and Harry out. Out of the country. Where is Prongs?"

Lily stopped short, dread creeping up her spine, "He's with Peter….they left hours ago."

"Fuck!" Sirius all but exploded

Lily felt the familiar waves of panic bubbling over. "Nonono, Evans, you've got to pull your shit together. You and Harry- that's the most important. I'll get James. We've got to get a plan."

So they planned as they grabbed a still sleeping Harry and loaded bags into the waiting motorcycle. As they flew, Sirius told Lily what he'd learned from his brother… that Voldemort was coming tonight, that Regulus had discovered a way to kill Voldemort and that when they told Dumbledore he'd just sat there and said "interesting."

When Sirius couldn't reach James on the mirror, he had feared the worst and went straight to fetch Lily.

They'd decided America would make the most sense. That Lily wouldn't stay in one place longer than a year. That she would stay in the south and that she would choose towns with names that would make Sirius laugh.

Why would a single mother of a biracial child hide in the southern part of the United States? No one would look there. She'd be untraceable with her magic and street smarts. When the war was over- Sirius would send word through the newspapers.

The first year she'd received a message- not that the wary was over, but that James was alive. She pulled out the clipping whenever she needed a boost

Found- Obnoxious Stag wandering a petting zoo. In good health. Seems domesticated and not good for hunting. Free to good home

It was the only news she received in almost 10 years.

She had only broken one of their rules.

She'd been in Charleston the longest. Harry had begged and begged and begged to at least stay for three years. He desperately wanted friends. And Lily knew he needed them. A small part of her worried that she would need to put down roots- that the war may be over but that they were on the losing side. She couldn't gather anything from international news- they seemed to be doing their job on hiding the war well.

She picked up another classified from her pile of ads and worked through lunch.

The rest of the day flew by in monotony. She picked up Harry. He talked her into picking up curry and she was relieved to not make the shitty meal she had planned. They ate and Harry told her all about his day.

At bedtime, Lily would tell Harry stories. Stories about Hogwarts and James. She had to set a limit of two stories a night. Harry would clutch the photo album that was their storybook and would delight in the world of magic- a world Lily still prayed he would see.

He was good at keeping secrets for a 10 year old. In Opelika- his teachers had tried to get him therapy for his "delusions," but luckily it was attributed to an overactive imagination. His questions had gotten worse as he grew older though. The stories less entertainment and more of a mystery, "When will dad find us?" "Will I go to wizard school?"

Lily racked her brain every day for new ways to say, "I don't know".

The next week continued the same.

Wake up.

Work.

Story time.

Worry.

Sleep.

Wake up.

Work.

Story time.

Worry.

Sleep.

Wake up.

Work.

Story time.

Worry.

Sleep.

Wake up.

Work.

Story time.

Worry.

Sleep.

Ironically, the day that changes everything forever almost wasn't.

It was a Tuesday which meant it was deadline day. Lily usually had all classifieds finished before the end of the day Monday, but there was some damn national ad being run which meant she had to reformat everything to get it to fucking fit.

Thankfully- it wasn't anything she had to type because she wouldn't have been able to keep herself from adding some strongly worded commentary into the ad.

Lily didn't even read the damn thing until the newspaper went to print on Thursday.

When she did her heart stopped

Squid Trainer needed. English explorers search for experienced Squid Trainer to work at new petting zoo. Interviews will be held on …. interested parties should contact Nigel Babbington, esquire at xxxxxxxxx

They were alive.

And the war was over.

And she didn't have a fucking phone in her house.

Or keys to her job.

She has to wait until the fucking morning.

When sleep evades her she allows herself to do something she never allows herself to do.

She remembers.

She remembers the feel of his lips after Quidditch matches.

She remembers the sensation of his calloused fingers along her thighs.

She remembers laughing until she cannot breathe and how James feels like home.

She remembers everything.

And for the first time in ten years, Lily Evans Potter allows herself to hope.

#robots writes #miller and hardy #this is all elles fault #angst #au #jily fanfiction #cigs for fanfics

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secrettimetravelparadise · 4 years ago

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The Case of Venkata Subramanian

A type of a relationship grew between us that cannot be explained

SD: When did you actually have your first homosexual experience?

VS: When I was in the final year at High School. There was this boy, also a Brahmin, who was a kind of a football hero. He was tall, well-built and had an excellent physique. But he was poor at his studies. As the final exams were approaching, he’d become panicky. He begged of me to help him with his geography lessons. I agreed and invited him to my house in the evening, and he came with his books. In the evenings my sisters used to have their music lessons, so the harmonium was blaring from the hallway. I decided to lock my room from inside. We were doing the lessons and suddenly I felt Seenu’s hand caressing me. I did not protest. Somehow I liked it. Seenu had a powerful personality and a strong will. Everything happened so quickly that when my mother knocked on the door with coffee for both of us, we’d completely composed ourselves and were back at our lessons. Mother, of course, remarked that I was looking a bit tired, but she left us alone and went away. After that first day, we met every day in the evening to do our ‘lessons’. We’d start the evening with the act and later begin our studies. My whole life changed. Besides being a sexual partner, Seenu was a true friend to me. A type of a relationship grew between us that cannot be explained. We came to be dependent on each other.

SD: Did your mother or father suspect anything?

VS: No. They were proud that I spent so much time at my studies, and by the way Seenu didn’t belong to Kumbakonam. He was originally from Pudukkottai. His parents were still in Pudukkottai. They weren’t well off and they had nine other children. So they’d sent him to Kumbakonam to stay with his uncle and aunt, who were childless, and therefore they could spend well on his education.

SD: I see.

V. S. After the final exams he went back to his parents to Pudukkottai. And I was miserable. We both had done well in our exams. I stood first in the school and Seenu got a First Class. His aunt came to my place and thanked me over and over again for the good influence I had over Seenu and gave me the entire credit for his passing in the First Class. She told mother that she would like to send Seenu to the same college as myself. I got admission in one of the best colleges in Madras, and when Seenu’s uncle and aunt arranged to send him to the same college. We stayed in the hostel and shared a room. No one suspected anything….. we were both very happy. But the inevitable day came. We both got our degrees and had to leave college. Seenu went back to Kumbakonam to settle down there with his uncle to look after his land and his business, and he was compelled to get married by his uncle and aunt to a first cousin.

SD: That must have been terrible for you.

VS: Yes, I suffered a lot in the beginning. I simply couldn’t bear the idea of Seenu with another person – that too a woman. The very thought sent shivers through my body. I reached such a level of despondency that I even considered suicide. I tried to see him, but he wouldn’t see me. I wrote to him several letters, but he didn’t reply to even one…in fact in the later stages, he started sending them back to me unopened. He cut himself off from me completely.

Indian marriage is pot-luck

SD: What is your situation at present?

VS: I have a steady friend now, right here in Bangalore. He holds a junior position in a public sector undertaking. Of course he’s much younger than I, but we get along very well. We meet almost every other day, sometimes even every day, mostly at my house because there’s more privacy in my place. He belongs to a joint family – there are twenty other members in his house.

SD: How do you feel about children?

VS: I love children and I think that it would be beautiful to bring them up…pity Mohan can’t conceive!

SD: Pardon me for being so direct, but you’re such a handsome man. Lots of young girls must be losing their hearts to you. How exactly do you tackle them?

VS: That’s always been a problem you know. The girls think that I look like Rock Hudson.

SD: I think so too. You certainly do! In fact I wanted to say so myself but I didn’t want to be so forward. Just like Rock Hudson – same height, same build, and good God, for an Indian you’re so fair! I could have sworn that one of your parents was a foreigner.

VS: Certainly not. Both my parents are South Indian Brahmins, as orthodox as they come.

SD: If only things were different you would’ve fetched the highest dowry in the marriage market I bet!

VS: Well, you’ve won the bet, because I’ve fetched a very good dowry, perhaps one of the highest in my community.

SD: What do you mean?

VS: I’ve been on the marriage market for the last two years and I’m going to be married next month. My parents are very hard bargainers, you know. They’ve struck the best deal, particularly Mother. She’s a great bargainer, starting from brinjals and onions up to a matrimonial dowry. She has wangled out quite a lot – diamond earrings, diamond necklace, a Fiat, silver utensils, lots of cash – and she expects to squeeze more out of them just before the marriage, at the eleventh hour – you know the old trick.

SD: But really, you’re not serious about getting married, are you?

VS: I am. I’m going to be married. The reception is in Lalbagh. I hope you’ll be in town. You must come.

SD: Now look… I just don’t understand….

VS: There’s nothing to understand really. I’m 30 now, and my parents have been after me to get married for the last six years. They started getting horoscopes from girls’ parents almost from the time I left college. And after all I’ve a duty towards my family.

SD: How do you expect to make a success of your marriage?

VS: Look now, you’re talking like a foreigner. What’s success in marriage in India anyway? It’s only a commercial arrangement. No question of any love or companionship. All that’s expected is mere conformity… that there’ll be in my marriage, rest assured.

SD: But still the whole thing sounds so cruel to me – to marry a girl, knowing very well that you can’t make her happy.

VS: Who said I can’t make her happy? I agree I can’t make love to her, but why should she expect romance in an arranged marriage? After all, her father is technically purchasing a bridegroom from the marriage bazar and they’ll get their money’s worth. The entire city is going to admire her father for having been able to find such a fine match for his daughter. Social image. That’s what they want isn’t it? And they’ll get it. After all they’re paying for it. He can very well afford it. He’s a millionaire.

SD: But Mr Venkata Subramaniam, I still wonder what will happen to the girl when she finds out. God! The poor girls is being victimized by everybody, isn’t she?

VS: I don’t agree with you. Indian marriage is pot-luck. She gets what she’s destined to get. And I’m taking the same chances aren’t I? Just imagine, I could’ve been what you would call a normal person and she could’ve very well been a lesbian, In fact she may still be one. I don’t know.

SD: I hope she is… for her own sake.

VS: Well, what does society expect of marriage in this country…. stability. There’ll be plenty and plenty of stability, because whatever may be the case I wouldn’t dream of leaving her. After all, I have to think of my family name. I’ve three younger sisters to be married. And of course my wife would have no way of leaving me, therefore ours will be a very successful marriage.

SD: What do you expect to get out of this, personally?

VS: Nothing, absolutely nothing.

SD: Then why do you want to get involved in this?

VS: To make everyone around me happy. My parents are made happy because they get plenty of money to celebrate the marriages of their daughters. It would have been very difficult for them otherwise, and of course there’ll be more to come in the future. My future father-in-law is happy because he found an excellent son-in-law, so well-placed. And the girl …. I haven’t even seen her. I only know that her horoscope tallies with mine perfectly. She’s going to be happy because she gets a husband, home, and lots of social prestige. So everyone is going to be happy.

SD: As a homosexual do you feel oppressed by society?

VS: No, because no one knows I am a homosexual except my various sexual partners. And now you, of course. But you have promised not to divulge it.

-Interviewed by Shakuntala Devi

*Extracted from the book "The World of Homosexuals" by Shakuntala Devi.*

#lgbtq community #lgbtq #world of Homosexual #interviews

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leandadelisle · 8 years ago

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THE TRUE STORY BEHIND THE LAST TUDOR

Few people remember them today, but nearly 500 years ago Katherine and Mary Grey – sisters of the doomed Lady Jane Grey – posed such a threat to the sovereignty of Elizabeth I that she took drastic measures to ensure they would never reign, as Leanda de Lisle reveals

The discovery of manuscripts lost for 400 years has given me the answer to a small Tudor mystery. What did Elizabeth I do with the body of her forgotten heir, Lady Mary Grey – a princess whose life is buried in obscurity, along with the secrets it carries?

If Mary Grey is recalled today, it is as a historical footnote. She was the dwarf who married a giant, the curious youngest sister of the tragic ‘nine days queen’, Lady Jane Grey. But Mary was a more significant figure than her stature in literature suggests. Under the will of Henry VIII, backed by statute, Mary and her two elder sisters, Katherine and Jane, were the heirs to his daughter Elizabeth. They represent an English dynasty that never was.

The eldest sister, Jane, is the best remembered. She was 16, ‘young and lovely’ when King Henry’s son Edward VI bequeathed her the throne in 1553. The pious Edward preferred Jane, granddaughter of Henry’s sister Mary, to both his half-sisters: the Catholic Mary Tudor and Elizabeth, whose mother Anne Boleyn had been executed on charges of betraying his father with numerous men, including her own brother.

Mary Grey was eight when Jane became ‘Jane the Queen’ with the support of the Protestant elite. Although well-educated, she had not yet started learning Latin and Greek as her sisters had. But she was, like Jane, a clever girl, and might have followed suit if it were not for the catastrophe that befell the family. Just nine days after Jane acceded the throne, Mary Tudor overthrew her in a coup that had popular support. Jane was tried for treason, convicted, and executed in the aftermath of a counter-revolt led by her father the following year. The shocking spectacle in the Tower of the blindfolded teenager feeling for the block and crying out for help on that cold February morning appalled even contemporaries accustomed to the horror of beheadings.

Mary and Katherine were later obliged to wait at court upon the Queen who had ordered the execution of their sister. But Mary Grey guarded the memory of her sister Jane. As an adult she kept with her a copy of John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, which described Jane’s pitiful end and recorded her last letter to Katherine. Jane asked Katherine to ‘despise the flesh’ and prepare for judgment and death. But Katherine was very much a creature of the flesh, as Mary would prove to be too.

Loving and pretty, Katherine longed for the happiness of a love-match marriage – a dream she would pursue to her destruction at Queen Elizabeth’s hand. For just as Mary Grey never forgot Jane, neither did Elizabeth, who became Queen when Mary Tudor died in 1558. Elizabeth feared that the Protestant elite, who had backed Jane as Queen in 1553, might one day overthrow her in favour of one of the remaining Grey girls. The most likely trigger would be if either Katherine or Mary were to produce a male heir, while she did not. Elizabeth was therefore determined that neither sister should marry.

In 1560, however, the 20-year-old Katherine wed, in secret, the handsome ‘Ned’ Seymour, Earl of Hertford. The transcripts of later interviews in the Tower describe their wedding night in intimate detail. Katherine married Ned in his bedroom at a house on the Thames. They toasted their wedding quickly and rushed to bed, making love twice: first on one side of the bed then the other. Katherine was naked save for a fashionable headdress. Then they dashed back to court, anxious not to be missed.

Katherine tried to protect her younger sister Mary by keeping what she had done from her. But over the following months she had sex in nearly all of the Queen’s palaces. When she was eight months pregnant, Elizabeth finally discovered what had been going on. Preventing Katherine from continuing to have sex and producing sons proved impossible even when she was confined in the Tower, where sympathetic warders allowed some ‘corridor creeping’. But Elizabeth had Katherine’s two children bastardised, and from 1563 Katherine was banished to remote country house prisons.

Even though the unmarried Virgin Queen had left the fertile Katherine to rot, Mary Grey envied the happiness her sister had known. In 1565, when she was 19, a widower with several children called Thomas Keyes began courting her. Mary Grey was very far from fitting the traditional idea of a princess. She was so short it has been suggested she may have been a dwarf, and the Spanish ambassador described her cruelly as ‘crook backed and very ugly’. But pretty or not, Mary combined the best characteristics of both her sisters, with Jane’s courage and Katherine’s passion.

Thomas Keyes, who held the post of sergeant porter, in charge of palace security, was a huge man. One courtier later described it as ‘monstrous’ that the ‘least of all the court’ should marry ‘the biggest gentlemen of this court’. But marry they did, by candlelight in Keyes’s quarters at Whitehall Palace, on 16 July that year. Mary’s best friend, her cousin Margaret Arundell, was so frightened that she listened at the door rather than witness the forbidden ceremony.

By marrying outside the nobility Mary was effectively (if not legally) ruling herself out of the succession. She must have hoped, therefore, that Elizabeth would forgive her actions. But when gossip about Mary’s marriage reached Elizabeth’s ears just weeks later, these hopes proved misplaced. Elizabeth ordered Keyes to be incarcerated in Fleet prison, while Mary was sent to a series of country house jails. The first of these was Chequers, now the Prime Minister’s country residence. There she was kept in a 12ft room where her unanswered letters, begging Elizabeth for freedom, hang framed on the walls today.

Katherine, separated from her elder son as well as her husband, began to despair of ever seeing them again. A horrified jailer recorded how she gradually lost the will to live, dying in 1568, aged 28, of what looks very like a broken heart. Mary’s misery at losing a second sister was compounded, meanwhile, by fear for her husband’s health. It was reported that the ‘bulk of his body being such’ Keyes was in agony in his ‘noisome and narrow prison room’. He was released only in 1570, by then gravely weakened. He asked to retire with Mary to Kent, but Elizabeth refused the request and he died the following year without seeing her again.

Mary’s jailer reported that she took the news of his death ‘grievously’. A portrait of her that hangs at Chequers, painted that autumn, has her defiantly showing off her wedding ring. In her hair, meanwhile, she wears carnations for love, fidelity and remembrance. Denied even the consolation of caring for her orphaned stepchildren,

Mary Grey now became an increasingly difficult prisoner. Her jailer wrote frantic letters to the Privy Council, sometimes twice in one day, begging for her removal ‘for the quietness of my poor wife’. In 1573 she was, at last, freed.

Mary was held at Chequers, where her letters, begging Elizabeth for freedom, hang on the walls today

Mary set up her own small household in the shadow of the Tower where Jane had been beheaded. There she employed one of Katherine’s former servants. She had asked Ned to send him to her, ‘for my sister’s sake’. She devoted her time to her stepchildren, growing especially close to one of them, Jane Merrick, who named her daughter after her. Sometimes Mary was invited to court, where the diminutive princess must have resembled a bumble bee in her brilliant yellow kirtle and black gowns.

It was another, better known Mary who now posed the principal danger to Elizabeth – Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots. The Stuart line, descended from King Henry’s elder sister, was excluded from the English succession in his will and by law. But the destruction of the Greys (descended from Henry’s younger sister) had made the foreign Stuart claim a powerful one. The consequences would be fatal: Mary, Queen of Scots was executed in 1587. But Elizabeth helped secure the succession of Mary’s son, King James, in 1603, in preference to Katherine’s heir, and against English statute.

The last of the Grey sisters was, by then, long dead and conveniently forgotten. Mary died, possibly of a form of pneumonia, in 1578, having requested only that the Queen have her buried where she thought ‘most fit’. No one knew where that was until I discovered her funeral details. They lay wrongly catalogued at the College of Arms as those of an insignificant daughter of the Earl of Kent – hidden, perhaps for centuries, in plain view. The manuscripts reveal that the Queen had her buried at Westminster Abbey, as befitted Mary’s royal status.

The funeral took place on 14 May, with Mary’s body brought in procession to the Abbey. There were just four pallbearers for the tiny coffin, and behind it walked the mourners. The names of those who attended the funeral are a roll call of figures from the lives of the sisters. There is a Mistress Tilney – the loyal lady in waiting who had walked with Jane to the scaffold. There is Katherine’s last jailer, with whom she left a ring for Ned inscribed, ‘While I lived, Yours’ and a message for the Queen pleading that she be kind to her children. Finally there is Mary’s friend, Margaret Arundell.

Mary was buried in the tomb of her mother, Frances, Duchess of Suffolk, without her own name inscribed on it. But there she lies today in the Abbey surrounded by the kings from whom she was descended and the queens whose rivals she and her sisters had been.

THIS ARTICLE IS DRAWN FROM MORE EXTENSIVE MATERIAL IN LEANDA DE LISLE'S BEST SELLING TRIPLE BIOGRAPHY: THE SISTERS WHO WOULD BE QUEEN; THE TRAGEDY OF MARY, KATHERINE AND LADY JANE GREY

#Philippa Gregory #the last tudor #tudors #lady jane grey

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dumbledearme · 6 years ago

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chapter two

~~ read The Second Soul here ~~

Johanna spent the months following her grandmother’s death cycling through a purgatory of beige waiting rooms and anonymous offices, analyzed and interviewed, talked about just out of earshot, nodding when spoken to, repeating herself, the object of a thousand pitying glances and knitted brows.

She was plagued by wake-up-screaming nightmares so bad that she had to wear a mouth guard to keep from grinding her teeth into nubs as she slept. She couldn’t close her eyes without seeing it, that tentacle-mouth horror in the woods. Johanna was convinced that it would soon come for her. Sometimes that sick panicky feeling would flood over her like it did that night and she’d be sure that it was waiting, lurking nearby.

The solution was to stop leaving the house. She refused even to venture into the driveway to collect the morning paper. She slept in a tangle of blankets on the laundry room floor, the only part of the house with no windows and also a door that locked from the inside.

She couldn’t help blaming herself for what had happened. If only she’d believed her grandmother... But Johanna hadn’t believed her, and neither had anyone else, and now Johanna knew how she must’ve felt because no one believed her, either.

Even Ricky, who’d been there, didn’t believe her. He swore up and down that he hadn’t seen any creature in the woods that night. He’d heard barking, though. They both had. So it wasn’t a huge surprise when the police concluded that a pack of feral dogs had killed Alice Roseberg.

Johanna tried to convince him giving as much detail as she could, but in the end Ricky just shook his head and muttered something about her needing a brain-shrinker.

“You mean head-shrinker, you loser,” Johanna replied, “and thanks a lot. Nice to know I have your support.”

They were in the living room, Ricky chain-smoking cigarettes with a kind of grim determination. He always seemed vaguely uncomfortable at Johanna’s house because of her parents’ wealth, but this time, she could tell, it wasn’t that making him uneasy, but herself.

“Whatever, I’m just being straight with you,” he said. “Keep talking about monsters and they’re gonna put you away. You’re acting crazy, Jo.”

“Don’t call me that.”

He seemed surprised at how pissed off she sounded. He tried to reach for her, but Johanna slapped his hand away.

“I want you out,” she said.

“Jo-”

“GET OUT!” She shoved him so hard he almost hit his head on the wall behind him. This, apparently, was more than he could take. Johanna yelled at him to leave again, but he was already going.

It was months before she’d see him again.

Eventually, Johanna’s parents did take her to a headshrinker, a quiet, kind woman named Dr. Golan. The calm, affectless way she explained things was almost hypnotizing, and within two sessions she’d convinced Johanna that the creature had been nothing more than the product of her overheated imagination; that the trauma of my grandmother’s death had made her see something that wasn’t really there.

There was even a name for it: acute stress reaction.

But just because Johanna no longer believed the monsters were real didn’t mean she was better. She still suffered from nightmares. She was twitchy and paranoid, bad enough at interacting with other people that her parents hired a tutor so that she only had to go to school on days she felt up to it. They also, finally, let her quit her job.

Dr. Golan’s function seemed mainly to consist of writing prescriptions. The pills were making Johanna fat and stupid, and she was still miserable, getting only three or four hours of sleep a night. So she started lying to Dr. Golan and pretending to be fine.

“So what you’re saying,” Dr. Golan set her pen down, “is that you’re no longer obsessing over your grandmother’s last words? The bird and the loop and the grave?”

Johanna shrugged. “Yes. I’m over it.”

Dr. Golan tented her fingers and pressed them to her chin. “You don’t wish to know what they might mean?”

“I know what they mean. Jack and shit.”

“Johanna. You don’t mean that.”

Truth was: the words had been eating away at Johanna almost as much as the nightmares.

“So that’s it?” Dr. Golan insisted. “Alice’s death was meaningless?”

“Unless you’ve got a better idea,” Johanna said. “Some big theory about what it all means that you’ve haven’t told me. Otherwise…”

“What?”

“Otherwise, this is just a waste of time.”

The doctor sighed. “What your grandmother’s last words meant isn’t my conclusion to draw,” she said. “It’s what you think that matters.”

“That is such psychobabble bullshit,” Johanna spat. “It’s not what I think that matters; it’s what’s true! But I guess we’ll never know, so who cares? Just dope me up and collect the bill.”

She wanted Golan to get mad, to argue, but instead she sat poker faced, drumming the arm of her chair with her pen. “It sounds like you’re giving up,” she said after a moment. “I’m disappointed. You don’t strike me as a quitter.”

“Well, you don’t know me very well.”

Johanna couldn’t have been less in the mood for a party, but she knew her parents wouldn’t let her sweet sixteen pass in a blank. Johanna begged them to skip the party this year because, among other reasons, she couldn’t think of a single person she wanted to invite. Her mother, however, insisted that socializing was therapeutic, although Johanna knew she was only doing it because she loved to show off their house.

So Johanna was “surprised” with balloons, and a motley assortment of aunts, uncles, cousins, anyone her mother could cajole into attending, even Ricky, who looking comically out of place in a studded leather jacket. Johanna was about to go talk to him when her Uncle Bobby grabbed her by the elbow and pulled her into a corner.

“So, your dad tells me you’re really turning the corner with, uh…”

“Acute stress reaction,” she supplied.

“What? Yes. That. It’s good. Real good to hear.” He waved his hand as if putting all that unpleasantness behind them. “So your dad and I were thinking. How’d you like to come up to Tampa this summer, see how the family business works? Crack heads with me at HQ for a while?”

Johanna would’ve rather spent the summer in a Siberian labor camp than live with her uncle and his spoiled kids. She hesitated, trying to think of a graceful way out. “I’m not sure my psychiatrist would think it’s such a great idea right now.”

His bushy eyebrows came together. Nodding vaguely, he said, “Oh, well, sure, of course. We’ll just play it by ear then, how’s that sound?” And then he walked off without waiting for an answer.

When it was time for presents, Johanna decided to start with smallest one. Inside was the key to a luxury sedan. Her first car! Everyone oohed and aahed.

The next present was the digital camera she’d begged her parents for all last summer. “I’m outlining a new bird book," her mom said. “I was thinking maybe you could take the pictures.”

“A new book!” her dad exclaimed. “That’s a phenomenal idea, Franny.”

Aunt Susie stepped forward with a present. “This one is from your grandmother.”

The room went dead quiet, people looking at Aunt Susie as if she’d invoked the name of some evil spirit. Johanna’s dad’s jaw tensed.

Johanna grabbed the present and ripped away the wrapping paper to find an old hardback book, dog-eared and missing its dust jacket. It was The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Johanna stared at it as if trying to read through the cover.

Aunt Susie managed a weak smile and said, “I found it in mom’s desk when we were cleaning out the house. She wrote your name in the front. I think she meant for you to have it, Jo.”

Johanna opened the book. The title page bore an inscription in her grandmother’s shaky handwriting.

To Yehanan and the worlds she has yet to discover.

Johanna stepped back, getting ready to leave, afraid to start crying in front of everyone, and something slipped out from between the pages and fell to the floor. She bent to pick it up. It was a letter.

Emerson. The letter.

She felt the blood drain from her face. Her mother leaned toward her to say something, but Johanna bolted to her room.

The letter was handwritten on fine, unlined paper in looping script so ornate it was almost calligraphy, the black ink varying in tone like that of an old fountain pen. It read:

Dearest Alice, I hope this note finds you safe and in the best of health. It’s been such a long time since we last received word from you! But I write not to admonish, only to let you know that we still think of you often and pray for your well-being. Our brave, beautiful Alice!

Little has change on the island. But quiet and orderly is the way we prefer things! I wonder if we would recognize you after so many years, though I’m certain you’d recognize us -- those few who remain, that is. It would mean a great deal to have a recent picture of you, if you’ve one to send.

Gus misses you terribly. Won’t you write to him?

With respect and admiration, Headmistress Alma LeFay Peregrine.

That had to be what Grandma Alice had meant. A letter, tucked inside Emerson’s book. Johanna studied the envelope for a return address but found only a fading postmark that read Cairnholm Is., Cymru, UK.

Cairnholm Is had to be the island Miss Peregrine had mentioned in her letter. Probably the island where Grandma Alice had lived as a child?

Find the bird, she had said. The headmistress’ name was Peregrine. Could the bird be a person? A woman who’d rescued little Alice, the headmistress of the children’s home?

For the first time, Johanna’s grandmother’s last words began to make a strange kind of sense. She wanted Johanna to go to the island and find this woman. But the envelope’s postmark was fifteen years old. Was it possible she was still alive? If not, there might still be people on Cairnholm who could help, people who had known Grandma Alice as a kid. People who knew her secrets.

We, Miss Peregrine had written. Those few who remain.

Turned out that convincing her parents to let her spend part of her summer on a tiny island off the coast of Wales was a fairly easy task. Her mom learned that Cairnholm Island was a super-important bird habitat, and that half the world’s population of some bird she adored lived there.

And if that wasn’t enough, Dr. Golan shocked them all by encouraging Johanna’s parents to let her go.

“It could be important for her,” she told them. “It’s a place that’s been so mythologized by Alice that visiting could only serve to demystify it. Johanna’ll see that it’s just as normal and unmagical as anyplace else, and, by extension, Alice’s fantasies will lose their power.”

After that, things fell into place with astonishing speed. Plane tickets were bought, schedules scheduled, plans laid. And in less than a week, Johanna and her mom were in Europe.

When the captain announced that they were nearly there, Johanna hoped that the grueling thirty-six hours they’d braved to get this far, three airplanes, two layovers, shift-napping in grubby train stations, and now this interminable gut-churning ferry ride, would pay off. Then she saw a towering mountain of rock emerge from the blank canvas before them.

It was the island. Looming and bleak, folded in mist, guarded by a million screeching birds, it looked like some ancient fortress constructed by giants. Mom ran around like a kid on Christmas, her eyes glued to the birds wheeling above them. “Jo, look at that!” she cried, pointing to a cluster of airborne specks. “Manx Shearwaters!”

As they drew nearer the cliffs, Johanna began to notice odd shapes lurking underwater. A passing crewman caught her leaning over the rail to stare at them and said, “Never seen a shipwreck before, eh? This whole area’s a nautical graveyard. ”

They passed a wreck that was so near the surface, the outline of its greening carcass so clear, that it looked like it was about to rise out of the water.

“See that one?” he said, pointing at it. “Sunk by a U-boat, she was.”

“There were U-boats around here?”

“Loads. Whole Irish Sea was rotten with German subs. Wager you’d have half a navy on your hands if you could unsink all the ships they torpedoed.”

The ferry docked and they humped their bags into the little town. Upon closer inspection Johanna decided it was, like a lot of things, not as pretty up close as it seemed from a distance. They dragged their stuff through town looking for something called the Priest Home, where they had booked a room. They came upon a church which had, however, been converted into a dingy little museum, not a B&B.

“I reckon you’re after the Priest Hole,” said the curator. “It’s got the only rooms to let on the island.” He proceeded to give them directions.

“Where can we find the old children’s home?” Johanna asked.

“The old what?” he said, squinting at her.

“It was a home for refugee kids?” she said. “During the war? A big house?”

The man chewed his lip and regarded her doubtfully, as if deciding whether to help or to wash his hands of the whole thing. “I don’t know about any refugees,” he said, “but I think I know the place you mean. It’s way up the other side of the island, past the bog and through the woods. Though I wouldn’t go mucking about up there alone, if I was you. Stray too far from the path and that’s the last anyone’ll hear of you.”

“That’s good to know,” her mom said, eyeing Johanna. “Promise me you won’t go by yourself.”

“Yes, fine.”

Mom then thanked the man and they left following his directions. They retraced their steps until they came to a grim-looking statue carved from black stone, a memorial called the Waiting Woman dedicated to islanders lost at sea. The Priest Hole was directly across the street.

They squeezed their bags through the doorway and stood blinking in the sudden gloom of a low-ceilinged pub. Hole was a pretty accurate description of the place: tiny leaded windows admitted just enough light to find the beer tap without tripping over tables and chairs on the way. The bar was half-filled, at whatever hour of the morning it was.

“You must be after the room,” said the man behind the bar, coming out to shake their hands. “I’m Kev and these are the fellas. Say hullo, fellas.”

“Hullo,” they muttered, nodding at their drinks.

Johanna and her mom followed Kev up a narrow staircase to a suite. There were two bedrooms, and a room that tripled as a kitchen, dining room, and living room, meaning that it contained one table, one moth-eaten sofa, and one hotplate. The bathroom worked “most of the time,” according to Kev.

“Oh, and you’ll need these,” he said, fetching a pair of oil lamps from a cabinet. “The generators stop running at ten since petrol’s so bloody expensive to ship out, so either you get to bed early or you learn to love candles and kerosene.” He grinned. “Hope it ain’t too medieval for ya!”

They assured him that it would be just fine, and then he led them downstairs for the finale of the tour. “You’re welcome to take your meals here,” he said, “and I expect you will, on account of there’s nowhere else to eat.” And he leaned back and laughed, long and loud.

Other people laughed too, and someone shouted: “To Cairnholm—may she always be our rock of refuge!”

“To Cairnholm!” the others chorused, and raised their glasses together.

#hollowgasts #the second soul #fanfic #dfcrosas #johanna roseberg #sophie lowe #fem jacob portman #genderbend #peculiar children

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blueprintnewspapers-blog · 7 years ago

Text

I will write Obasanjo another letter in June — Kalu

New Post has been published on http://blueprint.ng/i-will-write-obasanjo-another-letter-in-june-kalu/

I will write Obasanjo another letter in June — Kalu

Former governor of Abia state, Dr Orji Uzo Kalu is used to locking horns with ex President Olusegun Obasanjo. In this interview with IBRAHEEM MUSA, the All Progressives Congress(APC) chieftain was reacting to Obasanjo’s recent statement, where he advised President Muhammadu Buhari to, among other things, shelve his 2019 second term ambition. Dr Kalu took the elder statesman to the cleaners as accused him of corruption and self righteousness.

In your reaction to former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s statement on the state of the nation, where he advised President Muhammadu Buhari not to seek re-election, you said that Obasanjo does not have the moral right to advise the president. Are you saying that all is well with Nigeria under this administration?

Honestly, from the rot that the All Progressives Congress(APC) government met, I will say that President Muhammadu Buhari is doing his best.

I am not saying that he has done is uttermost best but he is doing the best he can to salvage this country, considering what he met. Before he came, Central Bank of Nigeria(CBN) was completely empty; money was carted away from the Central Bank without record. Have you ever heard anything like that before on earth? People looted the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation(NNPC).

People looted all departments of government. So, how can Buhari function? Moreover, Buhari’s sickness was an act of God. He never knew he will be sick. So, we thank God for his life. We thank God that he has gotten better. Former President Obasanjo is used to writing letters. He is the only angel on earth. When he was president, nobody was criticizing him. If you criticize him you become his enemy. This man does not own this country! His brought corrupting into politics.

I was a governor under him. I had written him a letter and he has not replied. As governor, I wrote him and said that the corruption that he was talking about is under his table. He has not replied that letter till today. He knows that the international security agencies know that he has stolen a lot of money and channeled to some banks and industries. It is an open secret. If he doesn’t know, I know. So, all these his self righteousness should stop.

Honestly, former President Obasanjo is supposed to be in jail; he is not supposed to be moving around. Jonathan was supposed to put this man in jail; he was lucky because we had already agreed with Yar’adua that he is supposed to be in jail. He spent $16 billion on electricity. A man who came into office with only N20,000, go to Otta and see how his farm has been upgraded. Go to Abeaokuta and see his mansions. Where did he get the money from? He sponsored his failed third term but he denied doing so. Should Nigerians continue to trust a man like that!?

I am surprised that people still greet Obasanjo and open their houses for him to enter! That is the truth! I am very, very surprised! His letter to Buhari is just sheer arrogance. I still insist that he has no moral right whatsoever to have written that letter.

Your relationship with former President Obasanjo was cordial when both of you were in office. Was it when the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) refused to repay the N700 million loan that you gave to the party that your relationship became sour?

No,no,no. I loaned N500 million to PDP and President Obasanjo said that they should not give me back. Chairman Barnabas Gemade said I should be paid and he quarreled with Gemade, a very honest and gentle man. My quarrel with Obasanjo is not about that loan that he asked the party not to pay me. My quarrel is that he wasn’t doing what the constitution says he should do. After all, he christened me Action Governor of Nigeria in Aba when he came to commission projects.

So, my quarrel with him is his greed and self righteousness. The only righteous person in Nigeria is OBJ. How do you think a man like that can be useful to this country? He misused an opportunity given to him by God.

God gave him the opportunity to be an elected president in 1999 and he used that opportunity to acquire so much wealth for himself and left the country that he was asked to take care off. He sold almost all government properties to himself and his cronies by way of privatisation. And he thinks people don’t know?

President Buhari should investigate the activities of Obasanjo to know where we stand.

In spite of his health challenges, do you still think that President Buhari should seek a second term?

Of course President Buhari must run! There is no health challenge! Are you his doctor!? In June when I said that he will come back healthier, your paper attacked me, all the newspapers attacked me. But he came back healthier. You are not his doctor. And it is in the best interest of every Igbo man, living or dead, for President Buhari to be president for another four years. It will give us opportunity.

How ?

After his second term, it will be the turn of the Igbos to produce the next president.

But when the Igbo delegation went to Aso Rock to endorse him for second term, you were not there. Why were you excluded from the visit?

No, my name was on the list; my brother represented me. I was in Namibia at that time. Mind you, I visited the president for a dinner on Thursday night and flew out to Namibia. On Monday morning, they came back for that courtesy call. My name was there.

I am a great supporter of Buhari right from when he was running in 2003. And we gave him a chieftaincy title at Igbere, his title is Nwanne Jidamba, that means a brother that is elsewhere. When Obasanjo said that he should not come to Abia, I invited him to Abia and I followed him to wherever he went, even though I was a PDP governor. Apart from that, we thought it wise to give him an honorary doctorate degree in our university, Abia State University. They tried to stop it by DSS but I said no, we are independent. So, these are the issues.

I’m not a new comer, I don’t beg any president for anything. I have never asked Obasanjo for a favour, I have never asked Buhari for a favour. I never asked Jonathan for a favour. I never asked Yar’adua, though he was my friend. He gave me the title of Magayakin Katsina, he wasn’t the emir, he was the president. Yar’adua asked Abba Ruma(former Minister of Agriculture) to call me three days to the event. I never begged for the title. It was President Yar’adua that gave it to me. In life and in death, he is my friend.

It is argued in some quarters that by campaigning for Buhari’s second term in office, you are actually campaigning for yourself so that by 2023, he will support you to be president when it is the turn of the Igbos. How true is this argument?

No, no, no that is not the issue. The issue is for us to campaign for Buhari. Anything can come after that. I am qualified to be president, I am not afraid of telling you that. If the time of Igbos comes, I will be in the forefront. I have everything it takes to be president. I can finance it, I can fight for it, I have the six indices of power. So, I don’t see any reason why I cannot contest if the opportunity is given to our area.

But what are doing to expand the acceptability of APC in Igbo land?

We have done a lot; I’m sure you saw our rally in Abia state. That was the first rally that APC had that it’s really called a rally. It was not about any governorship candidate, senatorial candidate, presidential candidate; it was just our rally to show the popularity of our party.

So, we are working very hard in the South east. We have been able to explain to our religious leaders, our community leaders and traditional leaders that APC is not branded as it is said by people. And moreover, the support for Buhari is not only about me. You saw Governor Umahi of Ebonyi state the other day saying that he will go for his second term on the platform of PDP but will vote for president Buhari in APC. You read what the national chairman of APGA said the other day? He said that they may endorse him as their presidential candidate. PPA is not left behind. So, all political parties in Igbo land are endorsing Buhari. Forget those who are making noise; Igbo are very smart people. We know that we are going to follow Buhari and vote for him for another four years.

But it was advertised that Buhari will attend the Abia State Mega rally. He didn’t come and didn’t send a representative. What happened?

No, no, no Buhari never promised anybody that he will come for the rally. What happened was that the state chairman wrote him a letter and he didn’t reply the letter and he didn’t say that he will come and didn’t say that he will not. The timing was so short for him to have come because he was abroad when we planned the rally and by January 9th we had the rally. So, there was no way that they could have given the president 10 days notice, considering his busy schedule. I told them that it wasn’t going to be possible, having been a governor for eight years.

You advised a group of Nnewi businessmen who visited you a few days to the Anambra gubernatorial election that they should vote APC. The election has been lost and won. Why did APC lose Anambra state?

President Buhari is a very honest man. He removed his hands from rigging. I can tell you this authoritatively. He told them that nobody, I was there, should rig the election in favour of APC. There was no how, if the election was not rigged, we could have beaten Obiano who is a very popular governor, who is paying salary to workers in the midst of governors who were not paying salaries.

He was doing roads in the midst of people not doing anything. He is with his people and has curtailed the security problem in Anambra state. Obiano was just like my second term in 2003, when Obasanjo said that I cannot go again. But the people of Abia state prevailed. It’s the same story. Nobody could have stopped Obiano unless that result was written in a house which Buhari was against. It takes only a president like Buhari to do that. If it was PDP, they could have done Carry Go, which they have been doing.

In spite of the fact that the son of Chief Odumegwu Emeka Ojukwu defected to APC, the party didn’t win… (Cuts in)

You can’t say that. APC has made inroads in Anambra state. Chris Ngige will tell you the same thing and everybody will tell you the same thing. This is a party that had less than 5% in 2015 and in 2017, we had 35.5%. So, we have made tremendous inroads and I am very happy with the results. I’m very happy with the efforts I made. I’m very happy with the efforts of many people; although most of our party people sabotaged us and worked for APGA. So, we expected that and we saw it.

What happened to Slok Air, the airline that you started?

What you are trying to do here is to bring back Obasanjo. Obasanjo is a killer of business. He is a killer of democratic process. There is no pint of democracy blood running in his veins. So, this is why I am surprised that somebody like Obasanjo is writing letter to Buhari.

Obasanjo sacked 5,000 workers of Hallmark Bank. We had 14 aircraft on the fleet of Slok Air and president Obasanjo kept these aircraft for 15 months on ground. You should know how much loses we incurred. Then he went to cancel the license of Hallmark that he had no business to touch. He went and took our oil licenses and oil blocks. So, you can see a man that could have been a statesman becoming wicked.

He had the opportunity to turn this country to any of these Asian Tiger countries. But out of wickedness, he didn’t do that. I wrote him a letter and I am going to write another letter to him and copy president Buhari. He has charges to answer because the international intelligence agencies know that he looted Nigeria. And we know the banks where he put these money. And that is the truth; he put the money in two banks.

Can we know these banks? No I won’t mention them now.

Can you give me a snippet of what you will write in the letter to Obasanjo? I cant give you any snippet; I am going to write a letter to Obasanjo and President Buhari. Two letters will be written by June this year and there are going to very hot letters.

#apc #apga #Igbo Presidency #Orji Uzor Kalu #President Buhari

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