#i drew this sometimes in may now its june | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dwellordream · 3 years

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“Doubtless many reigns have begun amidst an atmosphere of jubilant expectation; but this beginning had an especial lustre. For the new king, accession to the throne brought deliverance from a long, probably oppressive subjection to a stern father and grandmother, and released him into the bright, cloudless warmth of gaiety, freedom and power. He stood now on the brink of manhood, suddenly clad with the full panoply of kingship. He ascended a throne which his father had made remarkably secure, he inherited a fortune which probably no English king had ever been bequeathed, he came to a kingdom which was the best governed and most obedient in Christendom. Shortly before his death, his father had granted a general pardon to his people. The new king confirmed this - in ampler form.

His father left him a body of accomplished ministers, most of whom would continue to serve him. But those two men, Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley, who had served Henry VII's money-gathering and law-enforcement so assiduously, and whose 'unreasonable and extort doing noble men grudged, mean men kicked, poor men lamented, preachers openly at Paul's Cross and other places exclaimed, rebuked and detested' - these would be cast aside. Within a few hours of his accession Henry had been so roused to wrath by tales of their wrong-doing that, even as he came to the Tower amidst the trumpets and rejoicing on that 23 April, the second day of his reign, they were seized and brought thither as prisoners, where they languished until their execution sixteen months later.

'Heaven and earth rejoices; everything is full of milk and honey and nectar. Avarice has fled the country. Our king is not after gold, or gems, or precious metals, but virtue, glory, immortality.' So wrote Lord Mountjoy to Erasmus in a celebrated, and, as it proved, somewhat inaccurate, outburst of enthusiasm. There had come to the throne the very perfection of Christian kingship - gracious, gifted and enlightened - and with his coming, it seemed, bleak days must give way to bounteous prosperity. The new king quickly married; and, after all, he married Catherine. He himself said that he did so in obedience to his father's dying wish, but it may well be that his story of Henry VII's deathbed change of heart was invented shortly afterwards to placate the Habsburgs whose daughter, Eleanor, had just been jilted.

Fuensalida believed that it was the young king himself who brought about the change of plan, and this may be the truth. Five days after Henry VII died, the ambassador was still convinced that Catherine's cause was lost and quoted two members of the Council to the effect that the dying king had assured his son that he was free to marry whomsoever he chose. Then the situation changed radically. Fuensalida was suddenly called before the Council and, to his astonishment, not only assured of the king's fervent goodwill towards the princess, but told by the bishop of Durham, Thomas Ruthal, who had at that moment emerged from a meeting with Henry in a nearby room, that such matters as Catherine's dowry were trifles and that the king looked to him to settle quickly all the details concerning the marriage; whereupon he withdrew in some bewilderment and set about recovering the possessions of the princess which he had already begun to transfer to Bruges.'

Six weeks later, on 11 June, the marriage between Henry and Catherine was solemnized in the Franciscan church at Greenwich. A little while before there had been some talk of a possible scruple about his marrying his dead brother's widow, and many years later Bishop Fox recalled that the archbishop of Canterbury, William Warham, had disapproved of the union, apparently because he doubted the sufficiency or validity of the now six year-old bull of dispensation - though on what ground he did so we are not told. Warham's qualms were to be of consequence nearly two decades hence when the lawfulness of this marriage became a matter of impassioned debate; but for the moment any doubts there may have been were brushed aside as a proud king undid the protest he had made at his father's command three years before and finally (and freely) ratified his union with a princess who, though five years his senior, was probably still beautiful and certainly of a quality of mind and life which few queens have seriously rivalled.

At least outwardly, her husband was, and had been since childhood, immensely striking. Ten years before, Erasmus had strolled over to Eltham in the company of Thomas More to meet the royal children and been much impressed by the grace and poise of the eight year-old Duke Henry. By the time he came to the throne he had burgeoned into a full-blooded seventeen year-old, upon whom Nature had showered apparently every gift. 'His majesty', wrote a dazzled Venetian shortly after the new reign began, 'is the handsomest potentate I ever set eyes on.' He was tall and splendidly built, with glowing auburn hair 'combed short and straight in the French fashion' and a pink round face so delicately cut 'that it would become a pretty woman'.'

He was 'extremely handsome. Nature could not have done more for him,' one said a few years later, in 1519. 'He is much handsomer than any sovereign in Christendom; a great deal handsomer than the king of France, very fair and his whole frame admirably proportioned.' His was a superlative body. He was a capital horseman who could stay in the saddle for hour after hour and tire out eight or ten horses; he exulted in hawking, wrestling and dancing; he excelled at tennis, 'at which game it is the prettiest thing in the world to see him play, his fair skin glowing through a shirt of the finest texture'. He could throw a twelve-foot spear many yards, withstand all-comers in mock combat with heavy, two-handed swords, draw the bow with greater strength than any man in England.

In July 1513, while at Calais on his first campaign, he practised archery with the archers of his guard and 'cleft the mark in the middle and surpassed them all, as he surpasses them in stature and personal graces'. Above all, he delighted in prowess in the ring and at the barrier, the sovereign sport of princes. Through the summer of 1508 the prince of Wales, still only just seventeen, had hurled his keen, tireless body into the fury of the tournament and excelled all his opponents, and his accession to the throne would inaugurate a festival of apparently endless jousting and tilting, at which the king ever carried away the prizes.

When Erasmus first met him on that day in 1499 - standing with his sisters Margaret and Mary and his infant brother Edmund, soon to die - he 'sent me a little note, while we were at dinner, to challenge something from my pen'; whereupon Erasmus, unable to perform extempore, spent three anxious days composing an ode entitled 'A Description of Britain, King Henry VII and the King's Children' and a eulogy of Skelton (who had doubtless been the true author of the boy's message), to which he added some odds and ends scraped together from the bottom of his trunk to form a literary nosegay worthy of the young duke.'

Seven years later Erasmus wrote to Henry and received so accomplished a reply that he was convinced that someone else had had a large hand in its composition. But Lord Mountjoy, his patient patron, showed him a number of letters from the prince to various people in which there were so many signs of corrections and additions that Erasmus was forced to abandon his scepticism. Presumably Skelton and Hone pushed Henry's pen to paper, for in later life Henry was never an industrious letter-writer - except during those months twenty years or so later when romantic passion got the better of sluggishness and drew from him some rather heavy sighings for his absent beloved, Anne Boleyn. But Henry was undoubtedly a precocious, nimble-minded pupil.

He knew Latin and French and some Italian. He is said to have acquired some Spanish, and about 1519 had a sufficient (if passing) interest in Greek to receive instruction in this fashionable language from Richard Croke, a minor English humanist who had hitherto been at Paris, Louvain, Cologne and Leipzig, and was now to teach at Cambridge. His grasp of theology may have been less assured than he supposed, but it was remarkable for a king; he showed himself an apt student of mathematics; and it was his custom to take Thomas More 'into his private room, and there some time in matters of astronomy, geometry, divinity and such other faculties, and some time in his worldly affairs, to sit and confer with him, and other whiles would he in the night have him up into the leads [i.e. the roof] there to consider with him the diversities, courses, motions and operations of the stars and planets'.

Above all he was a gifted, enthusiastic musician. He had music wherever he went, on progress, on campaign. He scoured England for singing boys and men for the chapels royal, and even stole talent from Wolsey's choir, of which he was evidently jealous. Sacred music in the Renaissance style - the work of Benedict de Opitiis and Richard Sampson, later bishop of Chichester - was introduced into the royal chapel in 1516 and sung by a choir judged by an Italian visitor to be 'more divine than human'; and between 1518 and 1528 the king acquired a collection of French and Netherlandish music. Henry had many foreign musicians at court, like the violist Ambrose Lupo, the lutenist Philip van Wilder from the Netherlands, as well as trumpeters, flautists and two Italian organists, de Opitiis and the famous Dionisio Memo, organist of St Mark's, Venice, who was lured to England in 1516 and would sometimes perform for four hours at a stretch before the king and court.

There were twenty-six lutes in Henry's collection of instruments, together with trumpets, viols, rebecs, sackbuts, fifes and drums, harpsichords and organs. The king himself played the lute well; he could manage the organ and was skilled on the virginals (which perhaps John Heywood, his virginalist, taught him). He had a strong, sure voice, could sight-read easily, and delighted to sing with a courtier like Sir Peter Carew 'certain songs they called "freeman's songs", as "By the banks as I lay" and "As I walked the wood so wild" '. His court was a generous patron to composers, headed by the great Dr Fairfax, if not Henry himself - for the king wrote at least two five-part Masses, a motet, a large number of instrumental pieces, part songs and rounds. 'Pastime with good company', 'Helas, madam' and perhaps 'Gentle prince' are his work; so too the motet 'O Lord, the maker of all thing' - no mean achievement for a monarch.

Henry has traditional.ly been seen, alongside James IV of Scotland or the colourful, versatile Emperor Maximilian I, as the archetype of resplendent Renaissance monarchy; and the praise which Erasmus and other humanists heaped upon the zeal for learning and the arts of this king who had been so generously endowed in mind and body seemed to justify this picture of him. But, though Erasmus could speak stern words about monarchy and wealth, he was a shameless flatterer of kings and the wealthy, and we should treat his outpourings with caution. If anything, Henry was the last of the troubadours and the heir of Burgundian chivalry: a youth wholly absorbed in dance and song, courtly love and knight-errantry.

He was to grow into a rumbustious, noisy, unbuttoned, prodigal man - the 'bluff king Hal' of legend - exulting in his magnificent physique, boisterous animal exercise, orgies of gambling and eating, lavish clothes. 'His fingers were one mass of jewelled rings and around his neck he wore a gold collar from which hung a diamond as big as a walnut', wrote the Venetian ambassador, Giustinian, of him. He loved to dress up and his wardrobe, ablaze with jewels of all description and cloth of gold, rich silks, sarcenets, satins and highly-coloured feathers, constantly astounded beholders. He was a man who lived with huge, extroverted ebullience, at least in the earlier part of his life, revelling in spectacular living, throwing away money amidst his courtiers on cards, tennis and dicing, dazzling his kingdom.

Many readers will have their chosen picture of him - Henry, cock-sure and truculent, astride one of Holbein's canvases; Henry, dressed in dazzling richness and with a huge gold whistle, crusted with jewels, hanging from a gold chain, dining with his queen aboard Henry Grace a Dieu on the occasion of its launching; Henry walking up and down More's garden at Chelsea for an hour with his arm round More's neck;' Henry showing the Venetian ambassador his fine calf and demanding to know whether it was not a finer one than the French king boasted; Henry, at Hunsdon, over twenty years later, holding his precious son Edward in his arms and bringing him proudly to a window 'to the sight and great comfort of all the people'.

He was a formidable, captivating man who wore regality with splendid conviction. But easily and unpredictably his great charm could turn into anger and shouting. When (as was alleged) he hit Thomas Cromwell round the head and swore at him, or addressed a lord chancellor (Wriothesley) as 'my pig',' his mood may have been amiable enough, but More knew that the master who put his arm lovingly round his neck would have his head if it 'could win him a castle in France'. He was highly-strung and unstable; hypochondriac and possessed of a strong streak of cruelty. Possibly he had an Oedipus complex: and possibly from this derived a desire for, yet horror of, incest, which may have shaped some of his sexual life.”

- J.J. Scarisbrick, “The New King.” in Henry VIII

#henry viii of england #tudor #history #j.j. scarisbrick #jj just had to throw that freudian psych in there

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the-gay-prometheus · 3 years

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Frankenstein AU Segment - “Willful Disobedience”

Clervalstein yearning goes brrrrrrr

Anyways- uh... so as I said at the beginning of pride month, my goal for June is to write at least one directly Clervalstein related AU segment each week because gay.

This time around, I was inspired to write about the events that led to how Henry would eventually find Victor and the Creature on the mountain, so in terms of timeline, this takes place before all segments I’ve written except for “Home Again” and “Same Scars, Same Stitches.”

A couple of fun little tidbits about the making of this segment (feel free to skip over them and get right to the segment below the cut, this is just me rambling about some inspiration):

1. The whole bit with Victor drawing and the Creature mimicking him by drawing as well was somewhat inspired by the “Forbidden Friendship” scene from How to Train Your Dragon. I listened to that specific track from the movie score a few times while I was in the process of thinking about this idea!

2. Another bit of musical inspiration actually came from the Chronicles of Narnia, specifically the track “Evacuating London” from The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. If you time it just right and you’re somebody who can actively read and listen to music at the same time, it should somewhat line up with the last few paragraphs (excluding Henry’s bit at the end) - starting at where Victor says “I’d give anything-”, then with the little piano part being timed with the paragraph that starts with “It was intricately detailed-”, then the major swell in that half of the song should line up with the paragraph where the Creature begins feeling the need to disobey Victor’s most important rules; then comes the part that begins with a bit of bells and eventually vocalization, and that entire half of the track should align with the Creature carrying out his plan at least most of the way. Of course - all of this depends on your reading speed, but I would definitely recommend listening to the song after reading at least and imagining those parts of the segment along with it if you’re interested in a little peek into my crazy writing process! 😅

Anyways- this is another wholesome segment, so no warnings needed to my knowledge!

As always, all likes, reblogs, and comments of any kind are welcomed, encouraged, and appreciated!

~~~

Sunlight warmed the cold stone of the mountain ridge upon which Victor sat. His sleeves were rolled up on his arms, as the heat from the summer sun was felt much more intensely up on the mountain top despite the cool alpine breeze. Heavy clouds capped the peaks beyond though the sky was primarily a clear blue, and mist drifted through the valleys below. Though the view was magnificent, the sketchbook that sat on Victor’s knee contained no trace of the mountains. His eyes darted from the open page to the horizon, but it wasn’t the horizon he was searching for. As he stared over the peaks beyond, it wasn’t the view itself he focussed on, and instead an image that was clear in his mind. With a slight smile at the thought, he turned his gaze back down to the page and continued his sketching. It wasn’t long before the smile faded as the sound of quiet, careful footfalls upon the stone broke the calm silence, and he became aware of a presence directly beside him. He instinctively scooted himself about a half inch away as the other figure slowly sat at his side, his brow furrowed as he tried to concentrate harder on his sketching. “What are you doing?” came the inquisitive voice of his creation, and he felt the looming figure lean over in an attempt to view what he was drawing. With a further frown, Victor covered over his sketch with his other hand and turned away.

“Last I checked, that was none of your business,” he grumbled in reply. The creature tried to get a better look, but Victor’s hand covered over too much of it for him to be able to see. He sat there for a moment longer, his mind wandering and his gaze flitting about from view to view as he tried to decide what it was he should do. Now that the cabin was finally completed, he found himself with a lack of activities to keep him busy, and though his creator was certainly better company now than he had been when he first arrived to the mountain, he still wasn’t much of a conversationalist and was often preoccupied with his own thoughts or projects. Out of ideas, he hummed something softly to himself, some tune he had once heard Victor singing one day many weeks ago. Victor lifted his eyes at the sound and glanced over at him, but the moment the creature returned his gaze, he rolled his eyes and shook his head, turning back to his sketching. Quieting himself at his creator’s reaction, the creature sighed and stood, walking back toward the cabin. Victor almost felt bad - almost - but he kept drawing, now absentmindedly humming the same tune. After a few minutes, he became distracted by the sound of footsteps once again, but this time the creature sat a ways away from him. He went quiet, trying to ignore his creation and keep his focus, but he heard the scratching of another pen on paper, then a pause, then more scratching, and he felt himself being watched. With an exasperated sigh, Victor dropped his pen beside him and looked over to the creature. “What on earth are you doing?” The creature looked up at him, his expression blank.

“Last I checked, that was none of your business,” he answered matter-of-factly. Victor stared at him a moment, then frowned.

“Back talking me? That’s new.” The creature blinked, but didn’t answer, instead turning back down to the piece of paper that lay on his knee and continuing to draw something on it. Now thoroughly curious, Victor stood, walking over to him and standing behind him to look over his shoulder. The creature made no efforts to hide his drawing, and Victor could clearly see the rough beginnings of a person sitting in the exact same pose he had been sitting in. “Are you… drawing me drawing Henry?”

“Ah, so you were drawing someone named Henry.” Victor blushed furiously.

“Oh you sly bastard,” he muttered. The creature glanced up at him. “How clever of you, to get an answer out of me like that.”

“That was not my intention, but I cannot say I am disappointed by the result,” the creature responded simply. Victor sighed, sitting down beside him before flopping dramatically onto his back. Now trying to think based on memory, the creature gazed off into the distance before looking down at his paper and continuing to draw. “May I ask who this Henry person is?” he asked as he drew. “I hear you speak the name often. He must be of great importance to you.” Victor wanted to be angry. He wanted to tell his creation to mind his own business and stop prying into his personal life, and yet… he couldn’t be angry - not while Henry was the topic of the conversation, anyway.

“Henry is… was my…” He paused, carefully thinking about how to choose his words, “closest friend.” There was a length of silence as he felt an ache in his chest from the thought of Henry, and the creature took a moment away from his drawing before returning to it.

“Tell me about him,” he suggested as he sketched. Victor sucked in a deep breath and exhaled slowly, holding his sketch of Henry over his heart as he stared into the sky.

“Where to even begin with him,” Victor uttered quietly.

“Describe him to me.” Victor lifted his sketch up and stared at it, before holding it out to the creature. The creature glanced up, and looked at it with a curious expression. Victor gave him a curt nod, signaling that he was welcome to inspect it closer, so he gently took it from Victor’s hand and inspected it closely.

“He’s tall, but not too tall - just tall enough that I have to look up in order to look into his eyes. And he’s always well dressed - I don’t think there’s ever been a day when he wasn’t looking his best, though I suppose I might be a bit biased on that.” For a moment he wondered just how much further he should go with his description. How could he describe someone like Henry without giving his true feelings away? He hesitated, then sighed with a smile. His creation already knew one of his secrets, and, after all, it wasn’t like he was going anywhere or seeing anyone else, so what harm was there in completely venting his thoughts? “He has the most thoughtful hazel eyes, toffee brown around the edges and streaked with emerald green that deepens toward the pupils, the kind of eyes you could get lost in if you stared for too long.” The creature’s pen went still and he looked up toward the horizon, trying to imagine what Victor was describing. “And his hair is long - not quite so long as yours, but ends just past his shoulders - and lays in tangled waves always kept tied back, though a few strands never fail to set themselves free. When the sun hits it just right, I could swear it was made of fire,” Victor breathed as he pictured it in his mind. “It’s the kind of brilliant auburn that takes your breath away, that seems to gleam with its own radiant light. Sometimes I swear he’s more angel than man, and perhaps if angels do exist, he may well be one of them.” The creature smiled, but the smile soon faded as his mind drifted to Paradise Lost and further to his past. He blinked the thought away, then turned his eyes back down to his art, setting Victor’s drawing of Henry down at his side. “He’s covered with what must be thousands of freckles, mostly concentrated on his cheeks but they expand over his face and at the very least his arms, chest, and back. I would liken them to… dark stars against a bright sky,” Victor explained. He raised an arm up and began tracing lines in the air as he continued. “I used to try to find constellations among them, and sometimes I thought I nearly could. Orion, Andromeda, Lepus, Lynx, Pegasus, Phoenix, Vulpecula,” he muttered each constellation as he imagined himself tracing the lines between freckles on Henry’s skin, his chocolate brown eyes seeming to light up with wonder as he grew to be lost in his own imagination.

“He barely sounds real,” the creature interjected nonchalantly, hardly looking up from his drawing as he began to focus closer on it. Victor grinned and chuckled softly.

“I tell myself that every day,” he murmured with a hint of sarcasm. “Surely no man could ever be so perfect, and yet there he is-” He paused, reaching higher toward the sky and extending his fingers to feel the breeze between them, “as real as you and I.” His hand dropped back down to his chest as he heaved a sigh. “There’s no man on earth as generous or as compassionate as my-” He stopped himself, blushing hard as he realized what it was he was about to say. “As Henry, I mean. Just… just Henry.” The scratching of the creature’s pen stopped again, and Victor glanced over at him to see him staring ahead in clear contemplation of the implications of his words before returning to his art. “You know,” Victor began, returning his eyes to the sky. “I can just about guarantee that if it were Henry who made you instead of me, you would have turned out ok.” The weight of his words hadn’t set in before he said them, but now that they were out, they sat heavy on his chest like lead. It took him a moment, but he sucked in a ragged breath and exhaled unsteadily. “If it were him instead of me, William would still be alive.” At those words, the creature froze, as rather than a weight to him they felt like a dagger slowly piercing between his ribs and etching each letter directly onto his beating heart. “And to think… Even if it wasn’t him who made you, if it were him who found you here, perhaps your night terrors would have all but ceased by now. And maybe, by his grace, you would be at peace.” They sat in contemplative silence, both somehow altogether calmed and unnerved in each other's presence. “I’d give just about anything for him to be here,” Victor mentioned, breaking the silence and lifting himself up onto his hands. “And I know all it would take is one letter. He’d drop everything to come here. But that’s… that’s just it. That’s the problem.” He sighed, fully sitting upright. The creature glanced over at him. “I can’t let him just… ruin the rest of his life for me. I don’t know how I could live with myself knowing that I held him back because of my own mistakes.” His eyes dropped to his other side. “And yet… I barely know how I can live with myself without him here.” It was at that moment that he felt something being laid gently on his lap, and when he looked down, he saw the drawing the creature had been working on.

It was intricately detailed, each line placed carefully onto the page with such precision. Though it was only simple line art, Victor could clearly see the image of himself sketching from earlier on the page, but standing in front of him was another figure - Henry. He was exactly as Victor described him, tall and well dressed, with long hair tied back and a few strands that drifted over his face. Though there was no color, his eyes seemed just as gentle and full of wonder as Victor remembered them to be as he stared off to some distant land. His face was covered in tiny dots, freckles, each so meticulously pricked on that Victor could clearly trace some of the constellations he described between them. Tears welled in his eyes as he placed his fingers gently on the drawn image, running them gently down the drawing’s cheek, wishing instead of cool paper that it was the soft, warm touch of Henry’s face. “Did I do him justice?” the creature inquired quietly, trying to read his teary expression. Victor sniffled and smiled.

“You… you’re quite the artist,” he managed to answer. Gingerly, he folded the paper and slipped it into his pocket, slowly rising to his feet. “I’ll… I’ll be back later. I need to take a walk and… clear my head,” Victor mentioned, wiping the tears away from his eyes. “Will you be ok on your own?” The creature didn’t answer for a moment, his yellow eyes staring into the distance as he thought deeply, but soon he snapped his attention back to the present.

“Yes, of course. Take your time, Victor.” Victor sighed and nodded.

“I’ll try not to be too late to return.” His creation watched as he wandered off and eventually disappeared into the trees, before returning to his thoughts. It was strange - in all the months that he had been there, the creature had never once considered disobeying Victor, especially out of the fear that he might abandon him again. Suddenly, however, he felt the strong need to disobey each and every one of Victor’s most important rules. He hated to see his creator so struck with longing, but even more so, he considered the positive ramifications of what his carefully formulated plan might bring. Sure, Victor might be initially upset, but with how much he desperately wanted this Henry person to be there with him, surely it would be well worth it in the end.

The first part of his plan was simple. He would need to break Victor’s trust, and search through his personal belongings. He made his way back to the cabin and slipped into Victor’s room to find a mess of folded papers lying on the bed stand - each paper being a letter he had received from a Henry Clerval. Though all he was searching for was an address, the creature couldn’t help himself and decided to read through some of the letters. As he did, he became even more certain about his decision. Not only was this man exactly as Victor had described, but the connection between them was clearly something so strong that it should have been unbreakable. To his luck as well, the creature managed to find amongst the scattered papers a letter Victor had intended to send as a reply to Henry but never had the chance to send, dated from a time before his creation.

The second part of his plan would be the most time consuming, but also the most critical, and this unsent letter would prove to be the perfect resource. Retrieving his pen and a small stack of paper Victor had stashed away, he began crafting a letter of his own. With as much precision as he could muster, he forged Victor’s handwriting and did his best to copy his style and choice of language. A few hours were spent on this, most of that time spent on crafting one single sentence until he was sure it was perfect before finally continuing on with the rest of the letter. After he completed it, he spent a few more minutes checking it once, then once more to ensure it was in fact as accurate as he could make it, before then spending a little more time practicing forging Victor’s signature and finally signing the note in his creator’s name.

Finally came the most dangerous part. With only his own memory of his travels from Ingolstadt to guide him, he would need to find and deliver the letter to someone who would be able to ensure that it reached Henry safely. Of all Victor’s rules, perhaps his greatest was that the creature was to never descend the mountain, and above all, was never to enter civilization or interact with any other human beings. Each of these would need to be broken in order for his plan to succeed. For a moment, he hesitated. Would Victor become so cross with him over this that he would abandon him once again? Where would he go if he did? What would he do? Who could he turn to? Still, it cut him sharp to think that he might be squandering this small chance to bring his creator some joy after all his sorrow if he were to abandon his plan now. His mind was made - no matter what the outcome would be, he was going to ensure this letter was delivered, and hope that Henry would arrive some day soon just as Victor said he would.

He would need to be swift in order to ensure that Victor would never know he had even left, so he quickly yet cautiously put each letter back in its rightful scattered place as though they had never been touched, and pulled the hood of his cloak over his head. With a deep, shaky breath, he could feel a new sensation pulsing through him - a rush of adrenaline that raised his heart rate and widened his yellow eyes. Letter clutched tightly in hand, exited the cabin and broke into a sprint. Down the mountain he ran with superhuman speed, leaping over logs and boulders as though they were mere hurdles. Though he should have balked at sheer cliff faces, instead he lept from them and skid down their sides, ignoring the sharp pain of the rock scraping at the soles of his feet and the palm of his empty hand. Letting his intuition guide him, he continued his swift journey to Geneva. Though the place held painful, dreadful memories for him, the surge of adrenaline that coursed through him overrode the thoughts, and he raced toward the location of the address. Slowing to a walk, his chest heaved and ached from exertion, but he slowed his breathing as he came upon a fence that outlined one of many pastures that outskirted a large house on a hill beyond. In one pasture, he could just barely see a figure on horseback, cantering through a field with his wavy, tied hair flickering ember orange in the sunlight behind him.

“Can I help you, sir?” came a sudden voice from beside him. He jumped at the sound, instinctively hiding his face in the hood of his cloak.

“I- ...yes. Yes, I believe you can,” he stammered in reply. The stranger, a servant from the Clerval household, gave him a curious look as he held out the letter. “This is a letter for a man named Henry Clerval. I am of the impression that this is his residence?” The servant smiled as he took the letter.

“Ordinarily I would have sent you in the direction of Ingolstadt in Germany, but as luck would have it, master Henry returned home just yesterday.” He inspected the folded letter curiously. “May I ask your name?” The creature froze, gripping his cloak tighter around himself.

“I am but a simple deliverer of this message, kind sir. My name need not be of any concern. As for the letter, I am under the impression that he will understand who it is from once he has received it.” The servant nodded.

“I understand. Thank you - I will see that it’s delivered to him promptly.” With that, the man turned and started off toward where the man on horseback was riding, glancing back at the creature in confusion for a moment before continuing with a brisk pace to the one he would be delivering the letter to. The creature waited a moment longer to watch for the rider’s reaction, smiled, knowing he had made the right decision, and began his sprint back toward home.

“Master Henry? Sir?” the servant called in the pasture, letter held carefully in his hand. Henry’s hazel eyes lifted as he turned his head and gently pulled back on the reins of his mount. The mare he rode slowed to a trot, then to a walk as Henry carefully turned her in the direction of the servant.

“Yes, Marc? What is it? Is there something wrong?”

“Nothing wrong, sir,” Marc replied. As Henry slowed his steed to a stop at his side, he looked down curiously at the other man, who held the letter out to him. “This arrived for you just now from an unknown deliverer. He said you would know who it was from when you read it.” Now thoroughly intrigued, Henry took the letter and opened it. His eyes widened as he beheld the handwriting, and slowly his other hand lifted to his mouth as his jaw dropped while he read. “Is there something wrong, sir?” Tears welled in Henry’s eyes, dripping down onto his freckled cheeks as he looked up from the letter, his expression of shock turning to a tearfully happy smile.

“No, Marc, everything is much better than I had anticipated.” Marc gave him a confused glance. “Will you help me ready a supply pack and ride with me? I will need to be leaving at once.”

“Of course, sir,” Marc replied with a curt nod. “May I ask where it is we are headed?”

“The base of Mount Montanvert.” Henry turned his mount, his eyes resting on the distant mountains. “Be prepared to bring the horses back here for me once we arrive there. I might not be returning for quite some time.”

#frankenstein au #frankenpride #clervalstein #head empty clervenstein thoughts #clervenstein my beloved #also back at it again with not proof reading before posting lmao so hopefully this is good

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wreckofawriter · 4 years

Text

Magnolia

Royal Au

Pairing: prince!Sirius Black x reader

Word Count: 6k

Warnings: Swearing

Summary: you sneak over a wall and meet a young prince and you keep sneaking over

Song to Set the Vibe: White Ferrari ~ Frank Ocean

A/n me: I hate cliches also me: write 6k word fic cliche. Anyway this was really fun to write, and it took me forever. (Please excuse any mistakes. I edited at 3am)

It started with pink petals, the delicate things falling over the old mossy wall reminding you of a scene from a novel your mother had read to you. You used to stare at the branches which peeked over the wall like the sun over the horizon in the early morning. You fell in love with the scent of the flowers, it was soft and sweet. It wasn’t until you were eight years old when you finally saw the tree in its entirety.

By then you were reading the books which your mother had recited to you. One always tucked into your small bag among a small notebook, quill, and ink which you always feared would overturn. You had a lot of free time at that age, your parents didn’t trust you in the bakery yet and you were old enough to wander on your own.

One day you found yourself staring up at the mossy wall which seemed miles high from where you stood. Your interest in the large tree was peaked, your thirst to perch on its sturdy branches was slowly killing you. You eyed the wall as you did an arithmetic problem, brow furrowed, mind reeling. You let out a small sigh, the wind mimicking you as a small gust blew your untamed hair across your face. You placed your hand onto a small stone jutting out from the barrier; it gave you a good hold. You had to balance on your toes to reach it, your other hand digging into the moss as you hoisted yourself upwards, feet scrambling for a second before your left found a jut. You smiled gazing thousands of feet upwards where you would see the branches glancing down at you.

You continued the pattern; one hand, a hold, one foot a hold. You slipped twice, once letting out a small yelp as your hands dug into the stone holding you in place, feet searching desperately for a hold. They found one and you took a breath, calming your racing heart as the adrenaline which surged through your body retreated.

After what felt like hours your fingers found the smooth top of the wall, you hooked your arm across it pulling yourself over with a groan. You swung your right leg over, your knee banging on the small lip of the top as you did. You winced but the pain was forgotten as you peered out into the vast garden which lay beneath you. You felt your lips part, short breaths getting caught in your throat.

It was magnificent. There must have been thousands of flowers; tulips, roses, daffodils, bluebells, lilies and so much more. Assortments of ferns and rounded bushes dotted the area. You could make out a large castle in the distance, for a second you thought you had imagined it. The grass was so green you thought it to be enchanted.

Your mind wandered back to the magnolia tree. It must have been ancient. Its trunk as wide as a large barrel, its branches reaching for the sky, its flowers spread wide, their intoxicating scent making a smile break onto your lips. You thought of Alice and wondered if this is how she felt when she fell into Wonderland.

You picked out the sturdiest branch which crossed the wall before darting along it and collapsing into a larger and safer one. Your smile widened. You sat yourself at the junction of two thick branches humming quietly as you took out a book and began to read, your leg swinging lazily as petals drifted to the ground around you.

For the next week, you struggled up the wall scraping your knees and bruising your fingertips to climb into the tree. You would stay there for hours. Playing among its branches or scribbling sketches in your journal, you had switched out your quill for a pencil so you didn’t have to worry about the ink anymore.

By your tenth day, the flowers had begun to wilt, late May was turning to June and the soft pink was to be replaced by leafy green. You were disappointed that they would be leaving you, they were so incredibly beautiful. As you scampered across your branch into your seat a shimmer of black caught your eye. You craned your neck to see a boy tucked at the bottom of the tree, his knees were drawn to his chest, his head buried within them. His body shook with sobs, hair spilling around him.

You tilted your head to the side in confusion before quietly descending the tree. You had never touched your feet onto the grass of the lawn, you didn’t dare, too afraid it's magic might pierce you. You swallowed your fear and dropped beside the boy, shaking the branches as petals rained around you.

The boy looked up, started by your sudden appearance. You flashed him a grin, three teeth missing from its uniform.

“Hi!” You spoke, your voice cutting through the quiet of the garden.

He stared up at you, deep grey eyes widened, his cheeks blotchy and eyes rimmed in red, “Hello.” he whispered, rubbing his eyes with his fists and wincing.

“I’m y/n. What’s your name?” you asked falling to your knees in front of him, your skirt pooling around you.

“Sirius.” He responded quietly, “Sirius Black.”

The name felt familiar like you had heard it a thousand times before, you brushed away the feeling, “That’s an odd name.”

He shrugged weakly, “Everyone in my family had an odd name.”

“Well, I quite like yours.” You paused frowning, “Why are you crying?”

He bit his lip, eyes darting away from you, he drew back into himself and you felt your disappointment deepen.

“I won’t tell anyone you know.” You huffed sliding off your knees and crossing your legs, “I don’t really have anyone to tell anyway. All the girls I used to play with say I’m strange now.” your bruised fingers danced over a fallen petal, picking in up and spinning it between them.

He glanced back up at you, “You swear you won’t tell?”

You nodded enthusiastically.

He sighed, gaze falling onto the pink and white dusted ground. He held out his hands to you. You peered at them, eyes widening for a moment. Thin scars ran across them, some white with old age, some a soft pink. It was the deep red that caught your attention. They were angry, the skin around them puffy as small rivers of blood dripped down to his wrist.

You took his hands delicately into your own, Sirius looked back up at you tears making his eyes glassy.

“I broke a vase.” He explained tearfully, “My mom hurts us when we break things.” A sob ripped from his throat and you felt your chest contract in sudden pain.

“Now I’m gonna have big ugly scars on my hand.” He wailed more tears spilling off his chin.

“It’s okay.” You beamed at him and he stopped, hiccuping as you drew his attention to the white marks which riddled your own hands. “I burn myself all the time, I have scars all over my knees and legs too.”

Sirius’s eyes danced across your own marks, most were small and wide, a few longer and thin like his own.

“Once they heal you can say you got them fighting a dragon like I do. We can say we slayed it together, then maybe some of those girls would actually believe me.” You felt your heart grow lighter at the idea. “Plus I know how to make them stop hurting.”

“You do?” He gasped.

You nodded, “My momma does it all the time.” With that, you brought his hands up to your lips placing light kisses on each one.

Sirius felt his cheeks heat for unknown reasons, the stinging of the slashes seeming to fade as your lips grazed them.

As you pulled giggled and raspberry pastries from your bag Sirius decided you were an angel that God had dropped from the magnolia tree.

It only took you one night to put two and two together. You asked him if he had ever been turned into a frog the next day and when he looked at you like you were crazy you explained that princes did that sometimes.

Sirius’s eyes widened, “You know I’m a prince?” his voice was shaky like it was about to break.

You nodded, “Why else would you live in a castle, plus I remembered your name, my momma talks about you and your brother sometimes.”

There was a pause, you expected Sirius to say something but when he didn’t you moved on talking about a fish you saw in the stream behind your house.

As you packed up to leave for the day Sirius grabbed your hand stopping you in your tracks. His eyes were wide, his lips drawn into a small pout, “You don’t care that I’m a prince?”

You scrunch your nose, “Why would I care?”

Sirius broke into a smile and shrugged, you liked it better when he smiled.

You tucked your book into your bag and jumped from the lowest hanging branch pulling yourself onto it, a flurry of pink and white fell onto the boy below you, “I’ll see you tomorrow!” You called as you scaled the tree, disappearing behind the wall a few moments later.

Sirius started at where you had been just before you hid from sight, his grin was glowing, “Tomorrow.” He mumbled softly to himself. You were coming back to him.

You were ten now. You could climb the garden walls with your eyes closed, on muscle memory alone. You and Sirius had spent your time under the leaves of the magnolia reading and playing together.

Today marked the two-year anniversary of your friendship not that either of you knew or cared. You crept quietly down the branches until you sat just above the boy. His head was buried in a book, his eyebrows knitted from frustration. You hooked your legs around the branch and swung downwards catching him by surprise.

“Whatcha reading?” You asked the small skirt you were wearing dropping to your chin, your tights on display, something your mother said was quite rude.

Sirius frowned and you brought your hands to the branch swinging your legs out from around it and plopping onto the grass next to him.

“It’s a book on ancient history. My mother wants me to read it.” He mumbled.

You glanced at the first few words on the page and scrunched your nose, “Sounds boring.”

“It is.” He agreed, looking to face you only to find you had turned away, peering into your small satchel. You spun back around with a small torn paperback in hand.

“Read this.” you stated pushing it into his grip, “It’s about a boy who travels the world looking for his little sister. It’s much more fun.”

Sirius gazed at the rumpled cover, the pages were dog-eared, a terrible habit you had gained from your lack of bookmarks.

“There is a witch and a princess and even a dragon!” You gushed, glancing up at him with wide eyes, “You swear you’ll read it?”

Sirius nodded, “Of course.”

You squealed in excitement, “When you finish you have to tell me all about your favorite character. Mine’s Rocky she’s the best and she- nevermind.” You cut yourself off, “I don’t want to spoil it.”

Sirius grinned back at you, his heartbeat speeding as you gleamed in the mid-afternoon light, the shadows of petals falling around you reminding him you were real, not just some daydream he had created in his mind.

Two more years had passed. Not long after giving your book to Sirius, your mother decided you were old enough to work at the family’s bakery. You never liked baking much, it was a bit of a hassle and far too technical, but your parents didn’t seem to care.

You spent most days inside the stuffy back kitchen making batter and doing dishes. You still weren’t allowed to do anything fun like frost cakes or cut cookies. Your life became long and boring, your free time disappeared as the expectations for you rose.

Weekends became a safe haven. Each Saturday you would scale the wall and hurry down a tree to meet Sirius. You didn’t play as many games as you used to. You no longer believed in dragons and mermaids or princes turning into frogs. Instead, you spent your time talking and reading, Sirius had grown taller than you now, his chin almost able to reach the top of your head as you stood side by side. The baby fat from his face had also begun to disappear and you heard girls around town whisper about how handsome the eldest prince had become.

You never really noticed though, he was still your best friend and you didn’t think him growing a few inches would change that.

It was Saturday, your favorite day of the week. You slipped silently down the tree, its flowers still closed, ready to bloom in a few days time. To your surprise, Sirius wasn't seated below the reaching branches but instead in the lawn, his bag and book disregarded in the light shade.

You slipped off your shoes, dropping to the ground and beginning towards the boy. The grass tickled your feet and a small gust of wind blew your smooth hair in front of you. As you tucked it out of the way you noticed the weapon held in your friend’s hand.

You called out to him and he turned giving you a full display of the sword his small hands grasped.

Your eyes widened as you investigated the metal, sunlight made it shimmer, small engravings in a language you didn’t understand became visible down its center. Its handle was made of a deep red leather which matched its sheath.

“It’s so cool right!” Sirius beamed down at you.

You nodded but the fresh bandages on his hands kept you from smiling. He caught you staring, his eyes falling as he turned away from you.

“I’m fine.” He mumbled, you could hear the hurt in his voice realizing quickly you had killed his happiness.

You panicked for a brief moment before plastering on a smile, “Can you do any moves with it yet?” you asked, placing a hand on his shoulder to turn him around.

His enthusiasm jumped back, “Yeah! I got taught this one where you slice it across and then swing it over your head like this.” he mimicked his explained actions and you giggled as he clumsily slowed it down. It was clear it was too heavy for him.

A bit of red dusted his cheeks, “My mother says I’ll grow into it.”

“You will.” You agreed, “I brought some peanut butter cookies if you want.”

He grinned and the two of you began back towards your tree. You sat down with a small huff taking out the wrapped goods and passing them to him.

“I have to start working full time at the bakery soon.” You sighed removing an apple from your satchel

Sirius felt his heart crumble. He wouldn’t be able to see you? What would he do with all his free time? He already only saw you two days a week, three if he was lucky. How was he supposed to deal with never seeing you? It seemed like an impossible task.

“I was thinking we could meet in the evening instead,” you suggested snapping Sirius from his downwards spiral, “My mom usually lets me go around six or seven so do you wanna meet here at seven-thirty? I know it’s kinda late and if you don’t want to then that’s fi-”

“I don’t mind.” Sirius rushed, “Not at all, you can come more days then right?”

You nodded smiling up at him, “Yeah.”

“Good.”

Your shoulders brushed, the wind picking up and causing the budding flowers to ruffle. Sirius leaned closer to you and caught your scent; cinnamon and caramel. Warm and sweet. His heartbeat sped and he felt his ears grow red.

“Y/n.” He spoke suddenly and you turned to face him, the sunlight catching your eyes and making them gleam, “Will you marry me?”

You furrowed your brows.

“I-I mean when we are older obviously,” He explained hurriedly, his face heating up. “I mean you’re my best friend and everything and I just thought it would be nice.”

You giggled a bewitching sound, “You don’t want to marry me Sirius.” you laughed shaking your head.

You were wrong.

The evening sun glinted in your eyes as you sat atop the wall, you could see Sirius in the lawn, his sword swinging around him in a glint of silver. He had gotten quite good with it in the past two years. You watched for a few moments mesmerized by his smooth movements. You shook your head, your neat ponytail swinging behind you.

When your feet touched the ground you hummed dropping your bag and walking towards the boy. You were quiet, making sure to step slowly and carefully You neared him stifling a giggle and suddenly he swung towards you. You ducked, yelping in surprise.

Sirius gasped, “Y/n! Are you okay?” he bent towards you and saw your body shake. For a horrifying moment, he thought he had hurt you.

You stood up laughing, “Sorry” you giggled, “I shouldn’t have snuck up on you while you were doing you swingy things.”

He rolled his eyes relief breaking over him, “They’re called positions not ‘swingy things’”

“Yeah, whatever your highness.” You mocked taking the sword from his hand before he could protest. You were surprised at its weight, finding it hard to imagine that he could swing such a thing at age twelve, “Jesus this thing is heavy.” You mumbled using two hands to bring it over your head in a satisfying swoosh.

“You’re holding it wrong,” Sirius smirked.

You stuck your tongue out at him, scrunching your nose.

He tsked his tongue grinning, “So childish.”

“Yeah because you’re the king of maturity.” you scoffed, “Now are you gonna show me how to hold this thing or just laugh at me?”

“It’s pretty funny to watch.” He admitted shrugging and you pouted, Sirius found himself thinking it was incredibly adorable. “Fine.”

He stepped behind you, his arms circling around your waist and gripping over your own.

“You want your thumb folded over like this,” He mumbled in your ear as he moved your hands accordingly. You fought a blush as his breath fanned over your cheek.

“You have to make sure that you have a strong grip, so don’t overlap your hands.” He instructed. Sirius felt like he was about to combust, his heart was speeding in his chest at an inhuman rate, his cheeks were blazing red as your body pressed into his own. Your sugary scent had taken him over. The urge to spin you around and kiss you had gotten so strong he realized he couldn’t go another second holding onto you.

Sirius stepped away and you released a breath you didn’t realize you were holding.

“And now you can swing.” He spoke breathlessly and you did, slicing the air in two.

“That was fun.” You giggled but Sirius barely heard you.

You were entirely unaware of the effect you had on him. You had no clue that he would spend the next week imagining how you felt in his arms. You were forever innocent of the fact that you would plague his dreams.

You groaned, your feet ached and your hands were sore. You had been up since four, your mother insistent on you prepping pastries and then forced you to spend the day frosting cupcakes with tedious designs. You hated that you were so good at it, you had an amazing gift for frosting art which meant many involuntary hours spent with piping bags in hand.

The wall was easy to climb but your aching feet complained and you considered turning around, you could have used the extra hours of sleep. Sirius flashed through your mind and you began up the wall. When you reached the top you sat there for a moment, the tree looked awfully difficult to climb in your fatigue.

“Sirius.” You called and you watched him spin towards your voice, the full moon reflecting off of his deep black hair.

He walked over and stood below you with his arms crossed, “You’re late.”

You groaned, “I know, I’m sorry, my mom wanted me to finish this ridiculous cake.”

He smiled, “I thought you weren’t coming for a bit.”

“So did I.” You mumbled. “Look I don’t want to climb the tree right now.” You explained, “So I’m gonna jump, catch me okay?”

Sirius’s eyes widened, “What?!”

“Catch me!” you repeated sliding to the edge of the wall, hands pressed into it, ready to push you off.

“Are you crazy?” He shouted and you ignored his words, taking in a breath.

“On three!”

Sirius began to panic, “Y/n I don’t know if I can-”

“One.” You moved to the very edge, your heart thumping.

“This is a stupid idea!”

“Two.” You spoked hands pressed and ready.

“I can’t believe you are doing this,” Sirius mumbled

“Three!” You took in a deep breath and pushed off the wall.

Sirius held out his arms not even sure how to brace himself. You collided with his chest taking you both to the ground with an unsettling thump. Sirius groaned, his back pressed into the damp grass, his hair fanning over his face. He could feel a dull ache in his right elbow and left ankle. Your giggle drew him from his slight pain, he opened his eyes watching as you brushed his hair from his face.

“Thank you, your majesty.” You whispered, smirking down at him from where you were seated on his chest.

“You know I hate it when you call me that.” He murmured and your smile only widened.

“It’s only proper that I pay my respects.” Your voice was mocking yet deathly sweet.

He scoffed, “You just jumped from ten feet because you didn’t feel like climbing. What about you is proper?”

You laughed again rolling off of his chest and onto the grass beside him. You started up at the stars for a moment your heart still beating too quickly as adrenalin left you. You traced the constellations, the comforting sounds of crickets and Sirius’s breaths making your eyelids grow heavy.

“I started reading philosophy recently.” You spoke softly, a warm gust of wind rushed through the late summer air “I hate it.”

Sirius snorted beside you, “I figured you would.”

“I just don’t understand why they make everything so fucking complicated. I mean why does there have to be an answer to everything?” You mumbled you felt Sirius’s hand brush your own for a moment, “I started to wonder why they had all these questions in the first place. Why does there need to be a reason for living? Can’t we just...live?”

His knuckles brushed yours again.

“I started coming up with my own answers. Each time they asked a question I would just say the first thing that came to my mind and stick with it.”

His fingers entangled with yours, his hand fitting snug within your own.

“Some greek asked, ‘Why are we living?’ and all I could think to answer was because we haven’t died yet. It was suddenly all so simple and meaningless.” You turned your head toward Sirius. “I liked it better that way.”

Silence fell, the stars blinked back at you and for the first time in a long time you imagined you were flying among them. Sirius’s hand was warm in your own. The wind had stilled and you drifted to sleep beside the magnolia tree.

You felt angry tears rush down your face as your feet hit uneven cobblestone. It was seven-thirty on the night before your sixteenth birthday. You scampered up the wall, your toes slipping from their holds twice as sobs ripped from your throat. Your knees hit the lip on the wall’s top, something you hadn’t done since eight years before. Tears made your vision fuzzy and your head throb as you clumsily stumbled down the tree, slipping on the last branch and falling into a heap at its trunk.

Sirius rushed towards you, “Y/n, are you okay?” you felt his hands on your hips as he drew you into his hold. You fisted his shirt burying your face into his chest as you continued to sob. The boy who held you was stunned, unsure. He felt his chest seize in sudden pain at the sound of your suffering.

Your cries quieted and were suddenly replaced with a shriek of anger. “That fucker!” you shouted pushing away from the embrace and Sirius knew immediately who had upset you.

It was no secret to him that your father wasn’t the nicest person around. He never hit you or your mother but his anger was out of control.

“I spent hours on it.” you sobbed, “Hours! My fingers were cramped from holding that stupid fucking pipping bag and it looked so good. So perfect, best cake I have frosted yet. And then he gets mad because he forgot to set a timer which is not my problem in the first place and he just destroys it.” your voice was laced in venom, your teeth gritted as rage-filled tears dripped off your chin.

“They are supposed to pick it up two days from now. Which means I’m gonna have to spend my entire day tomorrow making and frosting a new one.” Your voice broke in two and you felt like collapsing again.

You felt Sirius’s hands cup your cheeks, thumbs wiping away angry tears. You looked at him through a glassy haze, your eyes felt hot and sticky, eyelashes thick with saltwater. He wore a soft frown, his eyebrows furrowed a slight pout on his lips.

You stared at him for a moment, sniffling softly as your hands loosened around his shirt. His eyes shimmered in the late sunlight, hair framing his pale face, cheeks blossoming with deep red roses. He was beautiful.

You leaned forward suddenly, your lips colliding with his own.

Sirius’s narrowed eyes grew wide before sinking shut as your hands fisted his shirt again, drawing him closer to you. His own found your hips, tightening as your tongue grazed his bottom lip. He opened his mouth allowing you to deepen the kiss as your hands wandered up around his neck, lightly tugging on his hair. You tasted of bitter tears and the sweetness of sugar. You pulled away slowly, your breath fanning across Sirius’s stunned face.

“Do that again.” He mumbled.

“What?”

“Kiss me.”

You did, your lips meeting slower this time, your felt Sirius sink into you, his lips dancing with your own, the kiss was slower than your first, neater. His lips trailed to the corner of your mouth, laying butterfly kisses on your cheeks before wandering down your jaw to your neck where he nipped lightly at your skin. After a few minutes, he trailed back up to your lips placing a light kiss on them before pulling away.

Your breathing was short, heart hammering heavily in your chest.

“I got you something,” Sirius mumbled a large smile plastering across his lips.

You grinned lazily, “You didn’t have to.”

He shrugged, “Well I did.” With that, he reached into his pocket and removed a small thin box wrapped in soft pink tissue.

You took it carefully into your hands, tearing the paper to reveal a small back box, you glanced up at him and he nodded, eager for you to continue. When you lifted the lid your eyes widened, “Holy shit Sirius.”

On a soft bed of white lay a necklace. The gleam of the heavy diamond was blinding. You lifted it from the case as delicately as you could turning to meet Sirius who was beaming.

“Do you like it?” He asked in anticipation.

“Sirius, this is insane.” You gasped, “This had to have cost a fortune.”

He shrugged, “It wasn’t that much.”

You looked back at the gem mouth dropping, “I, I don’t think I can accept this, I mean.” You released a breath, “This probably costs more than my house.”

“Please take it.” Sirius begged, “I have no use for it if you don’t and you would look so beautiful in it.”

“Sirius this is literally insane.” You mumbled but he ignored you, taking the jewelry from your grip.

“Turn around.” He mumbled and you complied, feeling him drape the cold stone around your neck and clasping it. His lips danced across the back of your neck before he grabbed your shoulders turning you back to face him.

His eyes roamed over your form as you peered up at him through your eyelashes, “God you are so fucking gorgeous.” He murmured and you felt your cheeks go red.

“Shut up,” you muttered, bringing your hands to your face.

“How can I shut up when you are so stunning?” He grinned.

“Really it’s not funny, Sirius.” You glared at him with no real malice behind your eyes.

He hummed bringing your lips to his own once again.

Dating Sirius was amazing. For a while anyway. It was always amazing when you were alone. Just you and him seated under your tree, the sweet smell of flowers and endless baked goods as you talked about philosophy or the stars. It was everyone else who made it so difficult, so complicated.

When you had brought him to your house your mother had fainted as you explained that you had known the future king for almost a decade. And then she fainted again when you revealed you were dating.

Sirius’s family was an entirely different story. When he announced he was dating a girl who was anything but nobility his mother had slashed open his hands again and demanded your name so she could have you put to death for witchcraft. Sirius warned her that if any harm came to you he would kill her and then leave. His threats were not empty.

Sirius brought you to the castle many times over the two years you had been dating, but you were never faced with his mother and you were grateful for that. You met Regulus who was stiff and proper, but nice enough despite the occasional insults he threw at your class. Sirius’s father was wooden and almost seemed numb, you figured he had to be, married to the women that he was. Sirius had burst into laughter when you told him that.

You preferred the gardens to the castle, although you didn’t have to sneak into them anymore. Instead, you walked through the gates where you were always met by Sirius.

People stared at you and whispered behind their hands in town. You hated the sudden attention you got, it was suffocating. Everything felt suffocating. The sudden coldness from your family, the hatred from Sirius’s, the stares and the expectations, and the attention. It all felt like it was squeezing the life out of you and you found yourself missing days under the magnolia tree when it was just you and Sirius, not everyone else in the world.

You walked through the gates, your bag slung lazily around your shoulder. You were surprised to find SIirus absent from the entrance, you were turning to leave when a guard stopped you.

“Prince Sirius has requested your presence in the gardens, my lady.” He spoke and you cringed unsure if it was because of Sirius being addressed as ‘Prince’ or yourself as ‘my lady’. Both made your stomach churn.

You nodded numbly making your way towards the old magnolia, its sweet scent had returned, early spring making everything seem fresh. You descended the hill, noticing small lights tucked into the tree you loved so dearly.

As you neared you realized they were candles and you felt your heart stopped. Sirius stepped out from behind the tree in a suit, his hair was brushed back from his face and you almost didn’t recognize him. As he smiled at you you felt tears pool in your eyes. They were bitterly cold. He took your hand in his own.

“I love you y/n,” he whispered and you couldn’t respond, your heart throbbed, “I think I’ve been in love with you since I was eight years old.” you felt your throat go dry. “I want you to be with me for the rest of my life.” He sank to a knee, opening a velvet box with a ring far too big inside, “Y/n y/l/n, will you marry me?”

You felt numb, sobs shaking your body, “No.”

Sirius’s eyes widened, smile dropping, “What?”

You took in a shaky breath trying to control the whimpers that wanted to escape, “No.” you repeated, “I can’t do this anymore.”

Sirius stood, the little velvet box being tucked away, “Y/n, what are you talking about?”

You felt more tears build in your eyes, “I can’t anymore Siri.” you sobbed, “I’m so sorry, I tried I really tried, but I can’t.”

“Wait, y/n,” he tried to reach out and hold you but you pushed him away drawing into yourself. “It’s fine if you want to wait a little longer I don’t mind, you don’t have to get so upset.”

“You aren’t listening to me Sirius.” You cried, “I can’t do this anymore, I can’t do us anymore. It’s just all too much.”

The heartbreak in his eyes made it a thousand times worse, “Us?” his voice was small.

“I’m sorry.” You whimpered, “I just can’t take the stares and the whispers and the hate. I can’t be called my lady and dress up in diamonds.” You sobbed, “I can’t be a queen.”

Sirius’s eyes had grown glossy, “Y/n/n if this is about my family, you don’t have to worry.”

“It’s not just your family, it’s, it’s everyone.” You explained, “My own parents treat me like an outsider and I don’t even know why. People stare at me in the streets and whisper behind my back. I can’t deal with it all Sirius, it’s killing me.” you let out a breath, shaking, “It’s killing me Siri.”

Sirius stood stunned in front of you, tears trailed down his face, he looked hurt, betrayed.

“I love you.” You mumbled moving onto your toes to place a final kiss on his lips, he responded slowly and you slipped away a moment later, “But I can’t be a queen.”

You turned around quickly about to break into a run when you felt a hand grip your wrist.

You swung back around to face him and you felt your heart shatter, his eyes were full of heartbreak, desperation evident on his features, “I’ll leave all this.” He whispered, “I’ll leave it all, it can be just you and me and we can go somewhere far from here where no one will know my name. Please y/n.” He begged, “Please don’t leave me.”

You swallowed a sob, “You and I both know I’m not letting you throw away your life for me.” You reached your hand up to your necklace, unclasping it and letting it slide into your palm. You pressed the gem into Sirius’s hand, “You deserve better.” you whispered before you turned on your heel and began to run.

He truly did deserve better.

Part 2 ~♡~ Part 3

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krisingtons · 3 years

Text

Happy Birthday Toshinori Yagi / All Might!

To celebrate the Symbol of Peace's birthday, here is my take on Toshinori's potential astrology natal chart, complete with explanations and reasoning. Buckle up for the highly specific, mashing up two niche interests post that literally no one asked for.

For BNHA Fans:

I will do my absolute best to explain the chart below step-by-step. If there's anything you want to know more about, feel free to ask or consult an online resource with the terms I used.

All the placements I've chosen are based on what we know in canon. Any new information we receive in canon may change this post.

The only official astrology information we have in canon is Toshinori's Sun sign, which is Gemini based on his June 10th birthday. (I'll get into this.)

After looking at some of the Sun signs Horikoshi gave to different characters, I'm convinced the man knows at least a little bit about astrology because they're very on point for everyone.

For Astrologers:

I only focused on the seven personal planets, even though I believe the generational planets have a big impact on the BNHA universe. It was just more than I could focus on.

I did not bother with the decans other than to vaguely have a sense of it, especially for the angles. I messed a few up slightly.

I also did not bother with retrogrades, even though I suspect Toshinori has one or two (I suspect Mars in particular).

I use Whole Sign Houses. To calculate houses, start with the AC, then move one sign counter-clockwise for each house. (Here, Leo is the 1st, Virgo is the 2nd, etc.)

For the moment of truth...

Toshinori Yagi's Astrology Natal Chart

(Yes, I drew it by hand. I'll zoom in for specific parts)

Sun, Moon, Rising

Since the only piece of information we have to work with from canon is Toshinori's Sun sign, let's start there.

The bigger circle surrounding the smaller circle represents Toshinori's Sun. Born on June 10th, this makes him a Gemini Sun. The Sun represents the ego, how the outer world sees us, and Geminis are very talkative, sociable, playful, and charming, but can be reluctant to engage with deeper feelings and are often restless for activity. As far as an astrological starting point goes, well done, Horikoshi. These themes clearly show up in Toshinori/All Might's external identity, and as I'll share, it plays a big part in his career, too, since I put it in the 11th house of community and serving others. (Note that conjunct MC, astrologers.) Next, let's talk about Toshinori's Moon.

This is the symbol for the moon. I feel pretty strongly that Toshinori has an Aquarius Moon. The moon represents our emotions, our inner life, and sometimes our mother. Aquarius is all about society, community, an unconventional way of doing things, and an idealism for what could be. Aquarius' often feel a push and pull between needing independence and needing to connect with others emotionally and intellectually. Not only does this seem to cover Toshinori's inner life well, but his mother figure served those ideals, too. Let's move on to the Rising Sign, also known as the AC. The Rising Sign indicates what sign was on the horizon at the time someone was born.

I placed his Rising Sign in Leo for two reasons. First, Leo is ruled by the Sun, and since Toshinori clearly embodies many of the traits of his Sun sign, it made sense to double down on that. Second, Leo Rising perfectly places his Sun in the 11th house of friendship, community, hopes and wishes, and social goals.

Mercury and Venus

Moving on to Mercury and Venus, these two planets go well together because they have rules about their distance from the Sun. Mercury can never be more than one sign away from the Sun, while Venus can never be more than two signs away due to their physical proximity to the Sun from our viewpoint on Earth.

First, Mercury.

Mercury is the symbol next to the Sun that (ironically) looks like it has bunny ears. Mercury indicates how we communicate things and how we learn. It is at home in Gemini, and people with a Gemini Mercury are often witty and knowledgeable. With it so close to the Sun and the Midheaven (which we'll get to later), it indicates how much his words were a part of his "brand" in his career, both through catchphrases and through frequent media appearances.

Now, Venus.

This was probably the toughest one to place for me (and for the astrologers paying close attention, I probably placed the degree too far from the Sun, my bad). I decided to put it in Aries in the 9th house for a couple of reasons.

First, Venus rules Toshinori's 10th house of career, and the 9th house represents, among other things, international travel and higher education. All Might's career was largely based on his time studying abroad and branding himself with symbolism from a country other than his own. Venus also represents things we love and our creative energy, and All Might clearly has a love of all things American.

Then, I placed Venus in Aries because Aries is ruled by Mars. It's a sign and planet of action, demonstrating Toshinori's drive in his career. However, Mars is also a planet that is considered violent, symbolizing war and things that literally cut. This pairs well with where I've placed Mars as shown below.

Mars

Alright, Mars is important canon-wise. As I just mentioned from Venus, Mars is a planet that cuts, which indicates war. And I've placed it in Cancer, which is Toshinori's 12th house. The 12th house, among other things, indicates service, sacrifice, mental health, and enemies. Toshinori literally sacrificed himself, his body, his life, by fighting a long-time enemy, an enemy he trained years to fight (hello again, 9th house Venus). Cancer is ruled by the Moon, which pairs well with his sense of service, too, since it's in Aquarius.

Jupiter and Saturn

Here's where we get into the meat of canon.

Jupiter first.

Jupiter is at home in Pisces, a sign that's all about dreams, saving the world, charitable giving, but also elusiveness. Jupiter, meanwhile is one of the best planets in Toshinori's chart, not only because it's in Pisces, but because Jupiter is all about good fortune, blessings, and opportunities. I've put it in the 8th house, which, among other things, signifies things that are inherited. That's right, my take on Toshinori's astrology indicates him getting One for All.

Planets in the 8th house can also indicate how someone handles a crisis, and Jupiter gives Toshinori the strength and positive attitude to handle a crisis well.

Finally, Saturn.

Saturn is like the Dad of the sky, indicating structure, discipline, and order. I've put it in Sagittarius, which is Toshinori's 5th house. Jupiter also rules Sagittarius, doubling down on the power of Jupiter in his chart. More importantly, the 5th house represents children and other ways we leave our legacy in the world. Saturn in the 5th house often indicates people who raise children that are not their own. This can be through adoption, step-parenting, or... mentorships. Hello, Izuku!

People with Saturn in the 5th house also are not inclined to relax, choosing to work more in lieu of leisure time.

What about all those lines?

Alright, I admittedly don't want to get too much into the aspect lines (the red and blue ones) because that goes more in-depth than I wanted, but they are purposeful. If you're interested in aspects, I encourage you to look up Squares, Trines, and Oppositions in particular.

I will mention the Midheaven, though. The Midheaven (MC) is the highest point in the sky, but not an actual physical body.

The MC represents a person's calling or vocation. If the Midheaven is not in the 10th house of career, it imports the themes of the house its placed in into someone's career. I've placed it again in Toshinori's 11th house of community since that's obviously a big part of his career. I also did that because the MC is always countered by the IC, which indicates someone's home and family life. Tumblr won't let me add another image, but if you go back up to Saturn, you can see the IC is also in Toshinori's 5th house, doubling down on the idea that mentor/mentee relationships play a big part in his sense of family.

As one final note, some of you may have noticed that I did place the north and south node in Toshinori's chart in the 5th and 11th house respectively. I won't get into detail here, but I wanted to give you the term in case you wanted to look it up. It's actually pretty significant this year, though, because the nodes indicate which signs eclipses happen in for that year, and it just so happens that there is a Solar Eclipse in Gemini today!

There you have it! I hope you enjoyed my wildly specific birthday post for Toshinori Yagi, better known as All Might. I'm wishing the happiest of birthdays to our favorite sunflower!

#toshinori yagi #yagi toshinori #all might #dadmight #happy birthday all might #natal chart #astrology natal chart #zodiac signs #bnha #mha #astrology #birth chart

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raviliuz · 4 years

Text

"Here comes the sun" Blaise Zabini x Theodore Nott

Muggle, retro au

@lifesucksandiwanttobeamarauder I finally translate that fanfiction, I hope you like it 🥺

The dark-skinned boy has tried to sit still from three hours already. It is incredibly hard for him, because of his amazing hyperactivity. In all honesty, sitting here as a model doesn't count to his dreams or favourites activities but he couldn't deny to Theodore's asks.

Just because of that — his bloody weakness for the older boy — he must stick up there and pose to Theodore's new painting. Blaise perfectly knows that person on that work of art won't be even similar to him. But it will be beautiful, perfect as everything that has been made by gifted hands of Theodore Nott.

There's music, playing quietly at the background, played on a gramophone, restored by Blaise himself. He gifted it to his friend as a birthday present two years ago on an incredibly warm and short night, 22th of June.

He has so many memories with that slight, passionate boy.

"Theo," he says suddenly, breaking the silence. He sounds like a dissatisfied kitten and when he doesn't notice any reaction, he repeats meowing "Theo, I'm bored."

The other boy finally pays his attention to Blaise, not his reflection on painting, which is created on a canvas (too small in Theo's opinion).

"Blaise, you really can't stand it for a while more?" Theodore asks and there is a nuance of desperation and melancholy in his voice, "I want to end it."

And Blaise has already known, he loses again. He won't be able to deny his friend the pleasure that results from looking at the painting — finished, after hours of working.

"I'll stand it, Theo" he sighs and in his mind adds 'always for you'. At this moment all he can do is begging and praying that Theodore is not able to read minds, just like some characters in their favourites comics.

"Nah, Blaise" slight boy says suddenly and leaves his paint palette and set of brushes on the cupboard, promising himself that he will wash it carefully within a few minutes when paints won't be already dry "I know you don't want to."

"It's not like that" Zabini starts to explaining himself chaotically because he doesn't want hurt Theodore's feelings, "I love watching your painting and you while you're painting. And I love that you have a passion and you're so talented. I just... It's May Day and we are sitting in your room..."

"It's alright, Blaise" Theodore interrupts his with the most beautiful, in Zabini's opinion, smile — that carefree, happy and only a little faraway one.

"We should do something and bring Hope with us to take many photos and place them in our albums with dumb yet cute captions" Theo proposes with a light laugh.

The younger, but taller, better built and more mature, of boys, stands up and brushes off invisible pollen from clothes. He reaches his hand to Theodore to help him stand up.

"Wanna go?" he proposes and even if Theo doesn't know where he agrees without a single question.

It doesn't matter where they go, it will be awesome as always if Blaise is with him.

He catches Hope and puts it on his neck. Theo loves his polaroid camera with whole his heart, even if it isn't the newest and all the better photos were made by Blaise.

Blaise is still holding Theodore's hand in his (definitely larger and rougher), like he doesn't care about rubs of paints in many different colours on Theo's hand and now, also on Blaise's one.

He pulls his friends outside and enters the garage like he is in his own house. Theodore knows what he means without words and grabs his bicycle with a big smile on his slim face.

Meanwhile, Blaise grabs his skateboard, which, only in the form of rebellion against sentiment, he did not give a name. But he perfectly knows that by his skateboard, people could see a different side of his personality, which he doesn't show often — bloody sentimentalist who loves very clichéd books or movies and constantly remembering beautiful moments, and it doesn't matter if that happens a year ago or two hours ago.

The skateboard has its best years far behind its. The picture which was printed on the underside of 'his love' (although, of course, incomparable to that of the boy just standing next to him) has almost completely faded and crumbled, peeling paint seems not so good, to put it mildly, but in Blaise's opinion, it adds the special character and charm to his skateboard. Every scratch and every cooked screw tell a story and Blaise thinks it definitely better than new skateboard — probably glamorous but without its own character.

Blaise isn't similar to Theo, not it that topic. He has never had boxes filled with various craps, which refer to many different events and happenings. He doesn't have special notebooks with tickets, a diary or millions of notes with quick sketches, created under the influence of a sudden flow of wen. He doesn't keep every notes and message on scraps of papers, which have been hand down on lessons, in hope that the teacher wouldn't see that. In first, even having a photo album was strange for Blaise. It shows, that he likes looking back at past and that feeling, which sometimes accompanies you right before falling asleep, when you remind yourself one of those pleasant situations from childhood, isn't foreign for him. It was all he was trying to defend himself against, but only for a time.

For a time when on his way stood that quite frail and nerdy boy. Theodore showed him being sentiment isn't something bad just as singing songs out loud in public places. As compensation, Blaise showed him the magic of comics and all these beautiful, charming in their area, which he discovered while taking a walk daily. Blaise pulled Theodore out of his room and dragged him away from the easel to lead him everywhere he can.

"To our place?" Theodore asks and gets on his a little too small, colourful bike. The seat creaks quietly under his mass but none of the boys pays any attention to this.

"Exactly, now ride, my carriage" Blaise screams and catches up on Theo's seat so the movement of the bicycle can drag him.

"Pff, flax" Nott giggles and Blaise find it as the most sonorous, melodic sound in the whole world.

They ride slowly through all that musty hole, also known as Torquay, or — their home. The road even if it's really old and it remembers when they as children drew chalk on a street, is not in a bad condition. A worse fate befell the road signs — some of them are smeared with sprays, and some are knocked off the ground, due to a car accident or a group of probably drunk but still strong young people.

There are many houses near the road. They are quite poor and definitely not as modern as houses in the capital. At some time, before he started taking daily walks, Blaise dreamed about living in London. Or rather, to be able to tell others that he lives in London. It's another thing which distinguishes him from Theodore — the older boy sees beauty everywhere, in everything and in everybody. Blaise envied him with this skill, for him the world has been boring or just ugly and people have been cruel sometimes.

The sun is warming their backs when they slowly ride on a well-known path. They pass Mrs Shermik, so out of courtesy from four meters away from her, they shout to the old woman joyful 'Good morning'. As they turn into a lane, which is fortunately dry as it hasn't rained much lately, Theo starts humming under his breath.

"Hey Jude, don't make it bad" he looks at his friend (nearly losing control of his bike) and Blaise quickly understands what he means.

Blaise joins to his singing and adds next line:

"Take a sad song and make it better".

Someday Blaise would have worried. He was worried about what people would think, he was afraid someone would hear them. But not now. Now he doesn't care when the words flowing from the depths of memory, and when the song ends, he starts another, definitely his favourite — "Blackbird". Neither of the boys has a perfect voice, singing is definitely not their hidden talent, but that doesn't matter. And that is wonderful, isn't it?

Here Blaise can no longer skate further — the ground is too uneven, even ploughed by the tires of wheelbarrows and carts of people from the neighbouring village. The dark-skinned man rejects Theo's offer to simply get his bike's rack and chooses to run next to the boy. The basketball team and two trainings a week are finally coming in handy — thanks to this, his condition is really good and he doesn't gasp like an old man with asthma after twenty meters run. Theodore, noticing how well his best friend is doing, accelerates, forcing Zabini to run, which he accepts with a groan. Nevertheless, he catches up with the older boy and promises himself that as soon as they get there, he will get his revenge.

After five more minutes, they are a destination of their travel. The place they describe as "their", although they are well aware that they are not the only people who come here, is exactly as they remember it — beautiful.

It was Blaise who discovered them during one of his walks over three years ago. He perfectly remembered how it happened.

That day he was trying to find a rather fast but shallow brook, which he remembered from his childhood. Before Draco's move to London, they told Draco's parents that they were going to the field, but in fact, they went to the brook and walked back and forth on a tree that had fallen over the river. He remembered just as well how Draco's mother, on her way to the store, noticed they were not on the field, prompting a search. When their parents found them by the brook — wet but in unusually good moods, they were already too worried to be upset with them.

After searching for more than an hour (during which he definitely fulfilled the daily, maybe even a week, step norm, but he didn't care) he found a place from his memories, although it was difficult to recognize its. The brook had dried up completely, leaving only a faint riverbed and tree roots washed out of the ground, but the place has definitely retained its charm.

Theo drops the bicycle, leaning it hurriedly against one of the roots, and lays down on the grass, staring at the almost cloudless sky, hidden only by tree branches. Blaise, slightly out of breath, rests his hands on his knees and stays like this for a moment. When his breath normalized he comes closer to Theodore. There is a snap and a Polaroid camera gracefully named Hope spits out a photo in which the image hasn't shown up yet. Theo enthusiastically grabs a small piece of paper and starts waving it so fast that it is about to reach orbital velocity. After a while, the picture clears up the silhouette of a younger boy, who was about to lie down next to his friend. Blaise looks at the photo and asks smiling, even though he already knows the answer:

"For your or my album?"

"Of course mine," Theodore replies quickly, grinning happily, "Why do you need your own photos? They will be much more useful to me."

The dark-skinned boy can't help but messes Theodore's hair in one move of his hand. However, Theo is not annoyed by that, he reacts to it like a cat, moving closer and silently demanding further caresses, which the younger one does willingly.

They are sitting like that (or rather, Blaise is sitting and Theo's half lying on him) till the sunset. There is a flower crown on Blaise's head, made by Theo with field flowers collected by him. And of course, Theodore took a photo of Blaise in his work of art.

It's getting dark. Butterflies, which were flying around them flew away and gave way for beautiful moths and fireflies. Theodore stands up energetically and starts jumping on protruding trees' roots, chasing insects to take a photo of them.

"Theo, please be careful," Blaise says attentively but the only response is 'don't worry' screamed by Nott.

Blaise unwillingly starts remembering his childhood. Times, when he wasn't Theodore's friend and all that connected them, was the same neighbourhood, chalk and short-term relationship of their parents. Then they found that as a stupid and loathsome. Nowadays, at their seventeen's, just as weird. But they weren't friends. After all, Blaise was friends with Draco and the teacher in primary had repeated that it's better to have fewer friends but true friends. So Blaise fraternizes with Malfoy till he moved to London.

It's not that now Blaise finds it as a mistake or holds any grudge with Draco. But nowadays he thinks that it is not good to withdraw from others.

When Draco had left and moved to London, Blaise had thought they now he stayed alone but on that moment, Theodore slowly crept into his life. Nott sat next to Blaise on school basketball pitch and started reminding happy moments from times when Draco lived in Torquey.

And later he showed his painting to Blaise and dark-skinned boy couldn't believe someone his age could do something that beautiful. A week later Blaise sat down with him in the canteen and sometime later also on most of the lessons so he could distract him from learning to read their favourites comics.

Now, Blaise would imagine his life without his always laughing and only sometimes a little faraway friend.

His thoughts are interrupted by a quiet scream.

"Ouch!"

Blaise, worried, stands up imminently and run through Theo. He is curled up in a fetal position between roods of the biggest tree. Zabini hugs him tightly and Theodore accepts that willing, cuddling to his chest while holds back tears.

"Ah, Theo" Blaise whispers, still cuddling the boy in his arms, "I asked you to be careful."

"I'm sorry, Blaise" he answers, sniffing.

"Don't apologize to me, silly" Blaise couldn't stop himself from nuzzling his friend's cheek.

"But you are worrying now and you warned me that I might get hurt..."

"Shhhh" Zabini interrupts him and places his fingers on Theo's mouth to shushes him "I always worrying about you, no matter if you get hurt or not" he admits truthfully and after a few seconds of silence adds "Please, stop crying.

He stops hugging Theodore, although he wants to do it forever. Blaise squats in from of him and gently grabs his friend's head. He wipes away tears, flowing slowly on fairy (although all that time, spends under the sunlight) skin.

He wants to not cry because of sadness or pain, wants him not to have reasons for a cry.

He wants him to be always happy, even if that meant that Blaise wouldn't be on his side.

Wants, wants, wants.

But the world isn't always beautiful, even if Theodore thinks so. Sometimes the world is cruel, ugly or just totally boring. The same about people who live in it.

Do it's really important to find your refuge. A place, a person or a hobby, which will be like an escape from all evils in that world.

Blaise thought that his escape is comics. Reading them has dragged him into the world of superheroes where he could use his imagination and think about meaningless things for hours such as what superpower would he choose (flying, of course). Besides that, the world in comics is just easier. It isn't hard to differentiate who is good and who's bad. Good people fight with bad people, that's all. The Justice League cares about Gotham and saves innocent people from Joker, Deadshot or Darkseid. In the real world, it would be an unsolvable matter with billions different threads and complications so even the best detectives wouldn't be able to decide who is guilty.

Comics world is just easier.

Lately, Blaise has got to understand that the whole beauty in that world is locked in its confusions, problems and ambiguities. Because the world is beautiful, even if sometimes it's cruel or ugly.

And the one who made him understand that is his only real refuge — Theodore Nott.

He is the one who makes reading comics even better.

He is the one with who Blaise could do anything and it would be incredibly good.

He is the one with who Blaise wants to talk about 'good old times' and makes new memories to remember.

He is the one with who Blaise wants to stay forever.

Theodore Nott is the one who Blaise bestow that hot and unique feeling which, no matter what since says, comes from the heart.

And that feeling, now makes him do something, he has been dreaming about for that long. Blaise gently and unsurely grabs the head of the person, who since a year isn't only a friend for him. He delicately raises Theo's head a bit upper to look him straight into his eyes. Their lips touch slowly and gently. Both of them don't feel so confident with what's going on but they will worry about that later. Now, Blaise doesn't have the time and desire to thinks about the consequences. Not now, when he feels the structure of soft lips of his love.

When the dark-skinned boy doesn't notice any objections from the older boy, he let himself do a light, carefully move with his lips. He doesn't want to scared Theodore, knowing how delicate and artsy person he is. He would ever forgive himself hurting Theo.

If he only knew how long Theodore was waiting for it and how much he enjoys that kiss, even if Blaise's lips are rough and chapped.

Blaise gently moves away and hangs his head down, looking at too long grass. He's afraid of seeing Theodore's reaction for what he has done because he's afraid of rejection and ending that important relationship.

However, Theo, likes he doesn't see his friend insecure, giggles lightly and grabs the younger boy cheeks, turning his face to him.

"Oh, finally. How long might I wait?" Theo says with a delightful smile.

"Really. You... Me..." Blaise mutters like he doesn't know what he wants to say.

"Yeah, silly" Theo chucked and hits an end of Blaise's nose with his "You're definitely my favourite person in that universe. And every other, alternative universe too."

Blaise, still can't believe what's happening, hugs his boy and kisses him quickly. The kiss is one hundred per cent cute and totally not sultry. Because feelings as sultry and desire don't fit Theodore, even in an alternative universe where Bruce Wayne become the Devastator instead of Batman. It just does not fit.

"Yeah, and you're my fav person."

They sit in silence for a while, but it's nothing wrong. The silent can be calming and comfortable, it can say more than every word in the world.

The air is getting cooler and owls' chirps become more ominous, so finally, Blaise breaks the silence and says:

"Theo" mentioned boy turns to him and glance at Zabini, "Is your knee still hurting?"

"It's not that bad" Theo shrugs but Blaise quickly understands that it's not good either, "But can you ride the bicycle? I'll drive on its carrier."

"But what with my skateboard?" Blaise asks inconvenience.

"I'll carry it, please" Zabini's only answer is a sigh but not the irritated one. He doesn't know what would Theo had to do to irritate him.

"Alright, but please, be careful."

Blaise raises Theo's bicycle from the ground and helps the boy to climb up to the luggage carrier and then he carefully sits on its seat. Theodore holds Blaise's skateboard (which he has named against his will — Faith) with one hand and the other one is embraced around Blaise's stomach so Theo can stably stay on the carrier. Well, maybe not only because of that.

"To me?" Blaise proposes and slowly leaves their place.

Theodore automatically nods but then he understands that Blaise can't see him so he quickly says 'yes' some times.

Boys are leaving, slowly and without unnecessary haste, but that moment is different than every previous one, they have spent here. Now, they're leaving their place not as just friends.

From Theodore Nott's album:

"4th of May, 1984 —

My favourite day to remember"

#harry potter #slytherin quidditch #bxb #slytherin quidditch team #blaise x theo #blaise zabini #theodore nott #zabini x nott #mrs zabini #muggle au #non magic au #retro #retro au #slytherin #slytherins #slytherin quartet #draco malfoy

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asfaltics · 3 years

Text

A brown moth fluttered.

The curtain was down, and the carpenters were rearranging the “No, no, no! I can’t breathe 1 volatile I can’t breathe.” And such a fit of suffocating 2 “I can’t breathe,” she would sometimes say 3 and the minisnever! I can’t breathe it in fast enough, nor hard enough, nor long enough.” 4 and started up up. to return to the tent, only to check him No, I can’t breathe the same air self in the act as often as he started, with ye to-night, but ye’ll go into the he lost consciousness in uneasy dreams 5 meet me at the station. I can’t breathe in this wretched 6 “sickening down there — I can’t breathe! I can’t stand it, Drewe! It’s killing me!” — Tears 7 struggling to altitudes that I can’t breathe in. I could help him when he was in despair, but he is the sort who 8 sometimes I find I can’t breathe in it. Perhaps some folks will say “so much the worse for you” 9 it seems if I can’t breathe in the house. not dared hope 10 “Well, I won’t wear ’em. I can’t breathe” “Sure! Blame ’em!” “I can’t breathe a square breath.” Oh 11 things I regret I can’t breathe. 12 bramble bush. I can’t breathe. I can’t eat. I can’t do anything much. It’s clear to my knees. 13 I can't breathe, I can't talk, 14 lying on its “I can’t stay here I can’t breathe” side, the cork half-loosened. A brown moth fluttered. 15 “I can’t breathe beside you.” 16 the needs of any reasonable young lady. “I can't breathe there, 17 I can’t breathe — I really need the rush of this wintry air to restore me!” 18 I can’t breathe no more in that coop upstairs . tablet ; two he said is what you need.” of flame shoots through a stream of oil 19 no friction. It’s friction—rub- / asthmatically.] “I can’t breathe deep — I can light and of reason. But I’ve a notion 20 out of it. I can’t breathe in the dark. I can’t. I / She withdrew 21 “I can’t breathe or feel in” 22 Up a flight of stairs, and there was the girl, sitting on the edge of an untidy bed. The yellow sweater was on the floor. She had on an underskirt and a pink satin camisole. “I can't breathe !” she gasped. 23 I can’t breathe in the dark! I can’t! I can’t! I can’t live in the dark with my eyes open! 24 One never gets it back! How could one! And I can’t breathe just now, on account of 25 that old stuff, I could shriek. I can’t breathe in the same room with you. The very sound of 26 don’t! I can’t — breathe.... I’m all — and bitter howling. 27

sources (pre-1923; approximately 90 in all, from which these 27 passages, all by women)

1 ex “Her Last Appearance,” in Peters’ Musical Monthly, And United States Musical Review 3:2 (New-York, February 1869), “from Belgravia” : 49-52 (51) “Her Last Appearance” appeared later, “by the author of Lady Audley’s Secret” (M.E. Braddon, 1835-1915 *), in Belgravia Annual (vol. 31; Christmas 1876) : 61-73 2 snippet view ex The Lady’s Friend (1873) : 15 evidently Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849-1924 *) her Vagabondia : A Love Story (New York, 1891) : 286 (Boston, 1884) : 286 (hathitrust) 3 ex “The Story of Valentine; and his Brother.” Part VI. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine vol. 115 (June 1874) : 713-735 (715) authored by Mrs. [Margaret] Oliphant (1828-97 *), see her The Story of Valentine (1875; Stereotype edition, Edinburgh and London, 1876) : 144 4 OCR confusions at Olive A. Wadsworth, “Little Pilkins,” in Sunday Afternoon : A Monthly Magazine for the Household vol. 2 (July-December 1878) : 73-81 (74) OAW “Only A Woman” was a pseudonym of Katharine Floyd Dana (1835-1886), see spoonercentral. Katharine Floyd Dana also authored Our Phil and Other Stories (Boston and New York, 1889) : here, about which, a passage from a bookseller's description — Posthumously published fictional sketches of “negro character,” first published in the Atlantic Monthly under the pseudonym Olive A. Wadsworth. The title story paints a picture of plantation life Dana experienced growing up on her family’s estate in Mastic, Long Island. Although a work of fiction set in Maryland, the character of Phil may of been named for a slave once jointly owned by the Floyds and a neighboring family. source see also the William Buck and Katherine Floyd Dana collection, 1666-1912, 1843-1910, New York State Historical Documents (researchworks). 5 OCR cross-column misread, at M(ary). H(artwell). Catherwood (1847-1902 *), “The Primitive Couple,” in Lippincott’s Magazine of Popular Literature and Science 36 (August 1885) : 138-146 (145) author of historical romances, short stories and poetry, and dubbed the “Parkman of the West,” her papers are at the Newberry Library (Chicago) 6 ex Marie Corelli (Mary Mackay; 1855-1924 *), Thelma, A Norwegian Princess: A Novel, Book II. The Land of Mockery. Chapter 12 (New Edition, London, 1888) : 432 7 preview snippet (only), at Ada Cambridge (1844-1926 *), Fidelis, a Novel ( “Cheap Edition for the Colonies and India,” 1895) : 289 full scan, (New York, 1895) : 261 born and raised in England, spent much of her life in Australia (died in Melbourne); see biography (and 119 of her poems) at the Australia Poetry Library in particular, the striking poems from Unspoken Thoughts (1887) here (Thomas Hardy comes to mind) 8 snippet view (only) at F(rances). F(rederica), Montrésor (1862-1934), At the Cross-Roads (London, 1897) : 297 but same page (and scan of entirety) at hathitrust see her entry At the Circulating Library (Database of Victorian Fiction 1837-1901) an interesting family. Montrésor’s The Alien: A Story of Middle Age (1901) is dedicated to her sister, C(harlotte). A(nnetta). Phelips (1858-1925), who was devoted to work for the blind. See entry in The Beacon, A Monthly magazine devoted to the interests of the blind (May 1925) a great-granddaughter of John Montresor (1737-99), a British military engineer and cartographer, whose colorful (and unconventional) life is sketched at wikipedia. 9 Alice H. Putnam, “An Open Letter,” in Kindergarten Review 9:5 (Springfield, Massachusetts; January 1899) : 325-326 Alice Putnam (1841-1919) opened the first private kindergarten in Chicago; Froebel principles... (wikipedia); see also “In Memory of Alice H. Putnam” in The Kindergarten-primary Magazine 31:7 (March 1919) : 187 (hathitrust) 10 OCR cross-column misread, at Mabel Nelson Thurston (1869?-1965?), “The Palmer Name,” in The Congregationalist and Christian World 86:30 (27 July 1901) : 134-135 author of religiously inflected books (seven titles at LC); first female admitted for entry at George Washington University (in 1888). GWU archives 11 OCR cross-column misread, at Margaret Grant, “The Romance of Kit Dunlop,” Beauty and Health : Woman’s Physical Development 7:6 (March 1904): 494-501 (499 and 500) the episodic story starts at 6:8 (November 1903) : 342 12 ex Marie van Vorst (1867-1936), “Amanda of the Mill,” The Bookman : An illustrated magazine of literature and life 21 (April 1905) : 190-209 (191) “writer, researcher, painter, and volunteer nurse during World War I.” wikipedia 13 ex Maude Morrison Huey, “A Change of Heart,” in The Interior (The sword of the spirit which is the Word of God) 36 (Chicago, April 20, 1905) : 482-484 (483) little information on Huey, who is however mentioned in Paula Bernat Bennett, her Poets in the Public Sphere : The Emancipatory Project of American Women's Poetry, 1800-1900 (2003) : 190 14 ex Leila Burton Wells, “The Lesser Stain,” The Smart Set, A Magazine of Cleverness 19:3 (July 1906) : 145-154 (150) aside — set in the Philippines, where “The natives were silent, stolid, and uncompromising.” little information on Wells, some of whose stories found their way to the movie screen (see IMDB) The Smart Set ran from March 1900-June 1930; interesting story (and decline): wikipedia 15 OCR cross-column misread, at Josephine Daskam Bacon (1876-1961 *), “The Hut in the Wood: A Tale of the Bee Woman and the Artist,” in Collier’s, The National Weekly 41:12 (Saturday, June 13, 1908) : 12-14 16 ex E. H. Young, A Corn of Wheat (1910) : 90 Emily Hilda Daniell (1880-1949), novelist, children’s writer, mountaineer, suffragist... wrote under the pseudonym E. H. Young. (wikipedia) 17 ex Mary Heaton Vorse (1874-1966), “The Engagements of Jane,” in Woman’s Home Companion (May 1912) : 17-18, 92-93 Illustrated by Florence Scovel Shinn (1871-1940, artist and book illustrator who became a New Thought spiritual teacher and metaphysical writer in her middle years. (wikipedia)) Mary Heaton Vorse — journalist, labor activist, social critic, and novelist. “She was outspoken and active in peace and social justice causes, such as women's suffrage, civil rights, pacifism (such as opposition to World War I), socialism, child labor, infant mortality, labor disputes, and affordable housing.” (wikipedia). 18 ex snippet view, at “Voices,” by Runa, translated for the Companion by W. W. K., in Lutheran Companion 20:3 (Rock Island, Illinois; Saturday, January 20, 1912) : 8 full view at hathitrust same passage in separate publication as Voices, By Runa (pseud. of E. M. Beskow), from the Swedish by A. W. Kjellstrand (Rock Island, Illinois, 1912) : 292 E(lsa). M(aartman). Beskow (1874-1953), Swedish author and illustrator of children’s books (Voices seems rather for older children); see wikipedia 19 ex Fannie Hurst (1885-1968 *), “The Good Provider,” in The Saturday Evening Post 187:1 (August 15, 1914) : 12-16, 34-35 20 OCR cross-column misread, at Anne O’Hagan, “Gospels of Hope for Women: A few new creeds, all of them modish—but expensive” in Vanity Fair (February 1915) : 32 Anne O’Hagan Shinn (1869-1933) — feminist, suffragist, journalist, and writer of short stories... “known for her writings detailing the exploitation of young women working as shop clerks in early 20th Century America... O’Hagan participated in several collaborative fiction projects...” (wikipedia) a mention of St. Anselm, whose “sittings” are free, vis-à-vis “Swami Bunkohkahnanda”... “Universal Harmonic Vibrations”... 21 OCR cross-column misread (three columns), at Fannie Hurst (1885-1968 *), “White Goods” (Illustrations by May Wilson Preston) in Metropolitan Magazine 42:3 (July 1915) : 19-22, 53 repeated, different source and without OCR misread, at 24 below 22 ex Mary Patricia Willcocks, The Sleeping Partner (London, 1919) : 47 (snippet only) full at hathitrust see onlinebooks for this and other of her titles. something on Mary Patricia Willcocks (1869-1952) at ivybridge-heritage. in its tone and syntax, her prose brings Iris Murdoch to mind. 23 Katharine Wendell Pedersen, “Clingstones, A week in a California cannery.” in New Outlook vol. 124 (February 4, 1920) : 193-194 no information about the author. the journal began life as The Christian Union (1870-1893) and continued under the new title into 1928; it ceased publication in 1935; it was devoted to social and political issues, and was against Bolshevism (wikipedia) 24 ex Fannie Hurst (1885-1968 *), “White Goods,” in her Humoresque : A Laugh on Life with a Tear Behind it (1919, 1920) : 126-169 (155) 25 ex snippet view, at Letters and poems of Queen Elisabeth (Carmen Sylva), with an introduction and notes by Henry Howard Harper. Volume 2 (of 2; Boston, Printed for members only, The Bibliophile society, 1920) : 51 (hathitrust) Carmen Sylva was “the pen name of Elisabeth, queen consort of Charles I, king of Rumania” (1843-1916 *) 26 OCR cross-column misread, at Ruth Comfort Mitchell, “Corduroy” (Part Three; Illustrated by Frederick Anderson), in Woman’s Home Companion 49:8 (August 1922) : 21-23, 96-97 (hathitrust) Ruth Comfort Mitchell Young (1882-1954), poet, dramatist, etc., and owner of a remarkable house (in a “Chinese” style) in Los Gatos, California (wikipedia) 27 Helen Otis, “The Christmas Waits,” in Woman’s Home Companion 49:12 (Christmas 1922) : 36 probably Helen Otis Lamont (1897-1993), about whom little is found, save this “Alumna Interview: Helen Otis Lamont, Class of 1916” (Packer Collegiate Institute, Brooklyn, 1988) at archive.org (Brooklyn Historical Society)

—

prompted by : recent thoughts about respiration (marshes, etc.); Pfizer round-one recovery focus on the shape of one breath, then another; inhalation, exhalation and the pleasure of breathing; and for whom last breaths are no pleasure (far from it); last breaths (Robert Seelthaler The Field (2021) in the background).

1 of n

all tagged breath all tagged cento

#breath #cento #couplet #couplets #I can't breathe

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minuteminx · 4 years

Text

Revolutionary

Pairing: Preston Garvey/ Female Sole Survivor

Summary: In the aftermath of personal tragedies, Preston and Charlie both seek to make a difference in the Commonwealth and those around them. They could never anticipate the impact that they will have on eachother in the process.

Chapter Five: Coast’s Clear

Chapter Summary: Charlie doesn't know many things for certain since she woke up in the future, but one thing she does know is that she will never watch someone she loves die again. Not if there's something she can do about it.

[First Chapter]

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“For mad I may be, but I will never be convenient.”

― Jennifer Donnelly, Revolution

Quincy Ruins, June 2288

Charlie hadn’t lived in Massachusetts for long when the bombs fell. She and Nate moved up from West Virginia in July of 2077, she’d gotten a position as a postdoctoral fellow in neuropsychology at Medford Memorial Hospital, more than a little excited to make use of her shiny new degree. Shaun was born two months later. After spending most of her life moving from place to place for her education, she was ready to settle down. She never made it that far.

Needless to say, she’d also never made it down to Quincy. Though, at the moment, she desperately wished she had.

Preston had this way of looking at her sometimes when he thought she didn’t notice, a lingering glance over his shoulder, a careful observation of her face as if he expected to find some twinkle of pre-war nostalgia in her eyes when entering a new area, memories from a time when the air didn’t reek of sulfur and rotting flesh, and no one had to worry whether or not they’d be run out of their homes and mowed down by mercenary cults. She could offer him no solace. She could barely even look him in the eyes.

In more comfortable times over the past eight months since they had met, he simply asked her if she was familiar with locations or landmarks. Once, he asked her if she had fought in the Battle of Bunker Hill, and she informed him that she was two hundred and thirty-seven years old, not well over five hundred. His smile had wrinkled up his eyes that day as he laughed away the embarrassment. Today, there were no stories to be told, no jokes or laughter, just Preston, Charlie, Amelia, a handful of other Minutemen and a large pile of ashes that used to have names.

“I don’t like this,” Charlie muttered, more to herself than anything.

She jumped when Preston replied, “Me neither. Not one bit.”

She hadn’t expected him to hear her, or even pay attention. She could barely see his eyes from under the shadow cast by his hat, but she didn’t need to see to know that he wasn’t okay. He wasn’t one to wear the overwhelming grief he experienced on his face, anyway. The last time they’d visited a Minutemen graveyard, as the Lexington Super Duper Mart had turned out to be, he had to excuse himself from a barricaded room filled with deceased members of the militia. She found him in the feral-corpse littered hallway, green around the gills and sweating. He didn’t have a weak stomach, but reminders of his loss seemed to impact him viscerally. She wondered how he managed to keep his composure now, standing in the place where it all started.

She was drawn from her thoughts by a thunderous boom that left her ears ringing. She hated that noise. Looking up towards the direction of the blast she saw a small, mushroom-cloud pouring up from a nearby building. A fucking nuke. Hadn’t people learned a damn thing?

Charlie scanned the area for someone holding a Fat Man. She’d been toe-to-toe with wielders of those atrocities enough times to know that she had to act, and fast. Movement on the roof of the nearby church. Just right if the belfry stood a large figure, someone in power armor, with the exact weapon. Without another thought, she charged in his direction. If she got close enough in range she could keep him from firing again. He wouldn’t get another shot. Not if she had anything to do with it.

She tangled with very few Gunners on her way to the church, thankfully. Most of them were distracted by the small militia that accompanied her. A couple of grunts took shots at her once she made it inside, but they missed and she fired back, hitting each of them once. She didn’t stop to make sure they were incapacitated. There wasn’t time. She needed to get to the roof.

The stairs that led to the belfry were worn and rickety. In less of a panic, she probably would have made her way up them gingerly, avoiding the obvious areas of dry rot. Still, she managed to make it to the top without event. She hoped the luck would stay on her side just a little bit longer. She just needed to take out the Gunner with the Fat Man, or at least distract them long enough to protect the Minutemen. Her Minutemen.

“Hey,” Charlie shouted, pointing both of her pistols at the man loading a mini nuke into his gun, “Asshole!”

“What the--” he looked up from what he was doing just in time for her ballistic round to strike him between the eyes.

“Yes,” she said under her breath. How had she gotten to the point where she felt relief at another person’s death? Is this what the Commonwealth made of all its inhabitants?

She moved in closer to examine the man’s corpse, still standing erect in the power armor shell. A whole lot of good that did him. He was a relatively young man, mid-thirties, and she wondered if he had a family. MacCready had been a Gunner once, he’d told her as they sat drinking whiskey in The Third Rail, bloodstained and bathed in red neon light. It was a gig, a way of making money to support his young son when he had no better options. What if this man had been just like him? Charlie didn’t want to think about it.

Noting a fully loaded, modified laser pistol on the ground near the dead Gunner, she picked it up, discarding both of the 10mms in her hands. They’d just been spares, and she was out of ammo anyway. She also looted a stimpak and a good chunk of caps before standing up and adjusting her belt. A loud crash of metal and puffing of hydraulics rose up from the street beneath her and she rushed to the edge of the roof, crouching to keep out of view.

Preston. A more practical person would have noticed the handlebar mustache wearing the T60 first, the actual source of the commotion, but then again she never claimed to be practical. Why was he alone? Why hadn’t he fallen back to the gates with everyone else, where it was safe? She’d run at a man shooting nukes to protect him and there he was out in the wide open, staring down who could only be the notorious traitor Clint, if the militia hat and sheer aura of son-of-a-bitch were any indication. It was out of character for Preston to be so reckless. Maybe he’d forgotten that was her job.

The two men spoke, but she was too far away to make out any of the conversation. She’d never seen Preston look so visibly angry or shaken. She needed to get to him before something bad happened, but she needed to be careful. Frantically, she dug through her various pockets looking for one item in particular. Hoping, praying she still had it.

She smiled and let out a sigh of relief as she pulled the stealth boy from her satchel. That Railroad operative, Deacon, had given it to her as a welcome gift when she’d agreed to help him out. At the time, she’d shrugged it off as a passive aggressive commentary on her lack of discretion. She’d have to thank him next time they crossed paths.

Charlie rushed back inside the church tower, and down the rickety steps as quickly as she could, flipping open the cap of the stealth boy and pressing the button as she did so. By the time she reached the street, she was completely invisible. Later, when she and Preston were safe and sound back at Sanctuary, she’d ask Sturges how it worked.

As she crept her way up behind Clint, the man reared back and punched Preston so forcefully it sent him flying into an old junked out Corvega parked nearby. She brought her invisible hand to her invisible mouth to keep herself from gasping audibly. As far as she knew, stealth boys weren’t sound proof. She took some deep steadying breaths, ignoring the burn of tears in her eyes. Now wasn’t the time to lose her shit.

Moving into position directly behind Clint, she noticed Preston’s eyes on her. He must have noticed the movement in the air. She lowered the stealth field, watching relief wash over his face as she smiled and drew her finger to her lips. Clint would not take him away from her. She wasn’t in a cryochamber this time, and she would not stand helplessly by and watch someone she loved die. Never again.

“What’s so fucking funny,” she heard him ask Preston who was, despite it all, laughing.

“Nothing man,” Preston answered, slurring his words in a way that made Charlie uneasy, “Nothing at all.”

She took that opportunity to fire, aiming her fancy new pistol at the legs of Clint’s power armor. She had noticed that they were damaged as she moved in, knew it wouldn’t take much to disable them. Sure enough, after a half-dozen or so shots, the T60’s leg’s locked up, forcing the man to jump out. He turned in her direction as soon as he did so.

“You little bitch ,” he snapped, and christ, if Charlie didn’t hate being called a bitch.

He tried to raise his weapon and fire at her, but she’d already pulled the trigger, launching a blast of burning red energy into his chest, and filling her nostrils with the sterile scent of ozone. She holstered her weapon and hovered over him for a minute, shaking her head. “I’m not a bitch.”

Charlie then brought her eyes back up to Preston, where he sat leaned up against the car, worry tightening her chest. It wasn’t a good sign that he hadn’t even tried to stand up yet, so unlike him to not make an attempt to brush off his injuries and press forward. She ran over and knelt down in front of him, cupping his face in her hands and turning it to the left, then the right to check for any signs of external bleeding. When she saw nothing more than a couple of superficial scrapes she brought up her pip boy and flashed a bright beam of light into each of his eyes.

Shit , she thought, but hid her worry behind a laugh as he flinched and squirmed away from the light. Only one of his pupils had responded to the flash, which meant that he had a concussion at the very least. She refused to entertain the other possibilities at the moment. The tears she had held back just minutes earlier returned to her eyes, and she didn’t fight them this time.

“You’re okay,” she told him, kissing his forehead reflexively, “Looks like you might have a concussion, but you’re safe. I’m here.”

He blinked up at her a few times, and she wished she could live up to that version of her that reflected in his eyes. She wished desperately that she could be everything he needed her to be, but with Shaun, and the Institute, and--

“You’re really scary sometimes,” he interrupted her snowballing thoughts, a smirk twitching at the corners of his mouth, “You know that?”

She knew she shouldn’t take any of his concussed statements seriously, but an embarrassed laugh bubbled up from her chest, and she couldn’t hold his gaze. “I’m sorry, I just… I’d just watched Clint knock you into the car, and he was about to kill you, and I just…”

She trailed off, internally chastising herself for failing to conjure up a coherent response. She wasn’t even the one with the head injury. A gentle tap, and tug at her chin guided her eyes back to Preston. He let his hand linger where it was as his smirk turned into a full-on smile.

“No,” he said, laughing softly, and shaking his head, “It’s kinda hot.”

Heat rose to her face and she snorted gracelessly at his compliment. She didn’t know how or what to feel, couldn’t put her finger on why his affection made her so overwhelmingly sad. She shrugged it off and wiped a tear from her face. “Jesus, you hit your head harder than I thought.”

He didn’t respond, and his eyes fluttered closed instead, hand falling limply from her face. Panic surged up into her chest and she leaned forward to catch him from falling over on his side.

“Preston,” she called out frantically, as she repositioned herself so that she could ease his head down onto her lap, removing his hat and setting it on the ground by her hip. “Preston?”

Again, no response. “God damnit,” she snapped, slamming the side of her fist into the metal of the car door behind her, body finally giving into the sobs she’d been fighting, sobs that weren’t solely in response to present events. She doubled over, knuckles turning white around the fabric of his duster she clenched in her fists.

“I’m sorry, Preston,” she whimpered, knowing he couldn’t hear her, knowing it didn’t matter because she would continue to let him down. “I’m so sorry.”

Charlie stiffened at the sound of footsteps, straightening up to see Amelia, her long brown hair flying out of it’s braid, followed by the others who’d accompanied them. She found herself wishing MacCready was there, Codsworth, Sturges, anyone except the contingent of unfamiliar faces peering down at their commanding officer having a temper tantrum. Amelia glanced between Charlie and Preston, pretty blue eyes filled with concern.

“He’s okay,” Charlie explained, scrubbing tears away from her swollen face, “Just unconscious. He hit his head pretty bad.”

“What happened?”

“Clint-- at least I think that guy over there’s Clint-- hit Preston so hard he sent him flying into this,” Charlie pointed to the car behind her and watched as Amelia approached the body of the man Charlie’d just killed.

The woman frowned, shook her head, and kicked the corpse before returning to Charlie’s side. “That’s Clint alright, the bastard.” She offered Charlie a reassuring smile, and then glanced down at Preston, “You got a stimpak on you, General?”

Charlie recalled the one she picked up from the Gunner she’d taken out. She could have slapped herself for not thinking of it sooner. She reached into one of the pouches on her belt and pulled it out, showing it to the other woman.

“Perfect. Let’s give it to Preston, just in case he’s more banged up than he looks.” She took the syringe from Charlie’s shaking hand gently and removed the cap, and jammed it into Preston’s upper arm. He jerked slightly at the pain, but didn’t stir. Amelia continued speaking, “What do you say we have a couple of the boys move him someplace comfy? There are some abandoned apartments up the street.”

“Yes.” Charlie nodded. “What about the--”

“Coast’s clear. Any of the Gunners we didn’t kill ran off.” Amelia smiled. “Quincy’s ours again.”

#fallout 4 #preston garvey #preston garvey x sole survivor #preston garvey x f!sole survivor #revolutionary #update #my writing

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sergeanttpoliteness · 5 years

Note

are requests open 🥺 apparantly in the 20s it was slang to call someone's bf daddy, given that can we get a reader who's from another dimension getting all blushy when noir mentions it given the context of it now?

hello, nonnie! so sorry it took me almost a week to get to this! thank you for the request, love :) you have no idea how much writing that sentence made me squirm from embarrassment

——-

➹jealousy➹(spider-noir x reader)

Peter isn’t one to get jealous, or at least that’s what he tries to tell himself. He doesn’t mind your ex who doesn’t seem to get ‘no’ for an answer. It’s the truth, he swears… right?

word count: 2.5k

a/n: this isn’t sponsored by starburst ™, lmao. anyway, y’all really like spider-noir, huh. i kinda played myself when i included both peter’s in this, ahaa, i tried my best to make it as least confusing as possible. i’m sorry, ily.

warnings: annoying ex, mild jealousy (i mean, it’s the title lol)

——-

You slowly drew the blinds of the window, and in spite of your speculations which you were nearly a hundred percent confident in, your eyes grew bigger as soon as you got a glimpse of the scene unfolding outside of Aunt May’s house. Shortly after, Miles and Peter B. Parker (you had to admit, the amount of Peter’s in your life truly scrambled your brain sometimes) joined you, and the three of you squeezed close together, attempting to look through the small slit without attracting much attention.

You had the urge to take your phone out of your pocket and start recording a video to send all your friends, for this was a spectacle that you weren’t sure you’d ever have the pleasure of witnessing ever again in your lifetime: a drunk man standing in the front yard, passionately belting out the lyrics of a song to the closed door of the house. “Did he, like, get the wrong house?” Miles muttered, his heart thumping fast as the young man noticed all three of you and pointed directly at you.

“Please! Don’t leave me!” He cried out.

You took one last look at him before you retreated from the window, pinching the bridge of your nose. “No. That’s my ex.” You sighed, questioning why you ever were attracted to the boy as his tragic performance continued. Peter B. laughed and you closed your eyes, ashamed.

“That’s your ex?! The ex?” Yes, this was, in fact, not the first time they heard about your ex-boyfriend. The number of stories you had was inevitable since the train wreck of a relationship lasted two years, after all. Whilst he now went on to voice the instruments of the song, worry began to seep within everyone when you all simultaneously came upon the realization that somehow the jerk had discovered where you were staying during the weekend. Although you’d been like a daughter to May since you were a kid, you were aware she would not be content with you once she returned from her trip and heard that you failed in your basic task of taking care of her home and her address now belonged as part of a stalker’s knowledge.

Peter B. glanced at you, frowning. “You want me to go and talk to him?”

You appreciated his offer, and your inner voice urged you to cave into the most effortless way out of the situation; however, your eyes moved to the hallway, and another concern, more potent and persuasive, drowned it out. “Thanks, dude, but don’t worry, I’ve got it,” You smiled at him, albeit you weren’t entirely certain about that statement. “Just… you guys go and distract Peter and make sure he doesn’t find out my ex is here, or else…”

Eight months. From December up till August, you’d known the third Peter Parker in your life for eight months. In the fourth month, April, you recognized your true intentions and feelings. In the fifth month, you finally acted upon them, and made the first move. At last, June, the sixth month, rolled in, and Peter built up the courage to make things official. All those months possessed two constant factors: your ever-growing connection and… your ex.

One of the many characteristics you were thankful for and adored in Peter was his control over his jealousy. No fingerprints of possessiveness nor suffocating authority smeared your relationship, regardless of your distance, Peter’s background, the exasperating cameos of your ex-boyfriend, or that you’d expressed to him you didn’t want anyone other than the “spider-gang” (as Peter B. had named it) to know about you two being together since— well, how in the world were you supposed to explain where he came from?

You felt irrational and absurd once the thought passed through your head, but sometimes you wondered if Peter worried too little. The origin of said thought could be traced back to when you weren’t quite dating yet, and your ex booty-called you in the midst of your first date. Peter’s amused expression at your own embarrassed one puzzled you, yet you chose not to think much about it and instead were glad it didn’t send the evening down the wrong trail. The thought reappeared a second instant one month into your relationship, though, after you showed him a large bouquet of flowers, a poem attached to it that could be offensive to those who practiced the art and with your ex’s handwriting. Again, nothing; later, you two found yourselves mocking the failed poetry and the odd comparison of your adorableness to that of E.T.’s (you really had no explanation for that one).

However, the suspicion that perhaps he was too good at hiding his feelings arose when a week earlier, you got a phone call from your ex begging you to escape with him to Iceland. That was the first time you saw it: the hint of irritation in Peter’s stiff body and tense jaw. Minutes later, you blocked the phone number— an action way too long overdue, before things became strained.

You closed the front door behind you and approached the drunk man, resolute on preventing the two men from meeting each other and getting under each other’s skin as you clenched your fists closed. “I forgot to say out loud, how beautiful you really are to me!” Your ex sang, a smirk breaking out on his face when he saw your clear annoyance. “I can’t be without! You’re my perfect little punching bag—”

“Matt, what the hell are you doing?”

He quirked a brow, giving you a once-over. “Serenading you?” Matt said as if it were obvious. You rolled your eyes and scowled at him, keeping a significant distance between the two of you.

“No, I mean, how did you find me?”

“I followed you.”

Fear and disgust crawled all over your skin. You took a step back, narrowing your eyes. “Listen, I really don’t want to get in trouble, okay? So for the last time, please stop calling me—”

“But this isn’t a phone call.”

“Or following me.” You finished. He stumbled forward, shaking his head vigorously.

“But I love you,” He sniffed, wiping the one mediocre tear making its way down his cheek. You could feel a groan forming in your throat from his idiocy and child-like attitude; you couldn’t believe he was fucking crying.

You crossed your arms across your chest, unimpressed. “Well, I don’t.” His shift from sadness to anger caught you off guard.

“Bullshit, I know you still love me. I know you miss me,” Matt pointed an accusing finger at you, advancing closer. “Stop playing hard to get and let’s just, l-let’s just go back to normal—”

You laughed in disbelief, your mouth ajar. “Playing hard to get? How is this playing hard to get?!”

Meanwhile, Miles and Peter B. stood in front of Peter, blocking him from leaving the hallway as he remained in between the two and the bathroom door. “So, whatcha think?” Miles asked him, ogling the man. Peter bit again the yellow Starburst and chewed for a while, eyes squinted while he analyzed the flavor. He swallowed and looked down at the wrapper in the palm of his hand, nodding.

“I like it. I think it may be my favorite.”

“What? No way, try the pink flavor again,” Miles took out a pink squared candy from the bag and held it up to Peter’s face. “It’s the best.”

Peter B. shook his head in disagreement and stared down at Miles, scrunching his brows together. “What do you mean? Red is the best.” Miles, now distracted, dropped his arm by his side and showed him a face of utter disgust.

“Do your taste buds even work? Everyone I know says pink is best.”

“Do your dimension’s taste buds work? You’re totally wrong, bud.”

Peter pocketed the wrapper, shrugging. “Personally, I enjoyed all of them—”

“Try red.”

“No, pink.”

Peter B. groaned. “Pink is overrated.” Miles looked at him straight in the eye, expressionless.

“Your opinion is irrelevant.”

Peter B. Parker had never felt more hurt by a teenager.

“I’m the oldest one here! I think I know better.”

Peter was growing impatient. He cleared his throat and gently moved Miles aside. “All right, while you fellas discuss… this, I’m gonna go—”

“No!” Miles placed the pink Starburst in Peter’s hand, frantic. “Eat the pink one.”

“Eat them all!” Peter B. chuckled nervously, shrugging with his hands raised, palms facing upwards. Miles nodded as if it were the best idea of the century.

“Yeah, I don’t want them anymore, here—” He slammed the bag of candy onto Peter’s chest. Peter hesitantly took ahold of it, visibly perplexed. He opened his mouth to question their strange behavior and if they thought he had been born yesterday, until a distant singing voice interrupted him.

“And I need you! I’m sorry, Y/N, I’m sorry! I love you, fuck!”

“What’s that?”

‘The neighbors’, ‘The TV’, Peter B. and Miles said at the same time.

This plan was doomed from the beginning.

“Da da da da! Da da da da!”

Peter took off his glasses, guarding them inside his pocket and his brows knitted together before he pushed the two aside and took off, putting on his mask.

“Quiet down!” You hissed at Matt, glancing back at May’s house. His hands landed on your shoulders, but you immediately pushed him off you. “Fuck off, Matt! We’ve been broken up for seven months already! I moved on, and so should you!” He cocked his head to the side, his face twisted in confusion as if you’d just spoken in a foreign language.

“Broken up?” He repeated your words, voice small. “It was just a break.”

It was your turn to be confused. “What? …No. It’s over. It was over a long time ago.”

His face fell as a realization dawned upon him and his gaze burned into yours, emotionless, making you more uncomfortable. “You’re seeing someone else, aren’t you?”

Your heartbeat sped up. “No, I said I moved on, not that I was seeing someone else—”

“You’re cheating on me?”

You took in a deep breath, close to tipping to the edge. “Again, we’re broken up.” You reiterated harshly. “As in we’re not a relationship anymore.” But Matt’s dense self wouldn’t give up just yet.

“It was just a break.”

You’ve had it.

“It’s not a fucking break!” You shouted, making him jump. You heard the front door open and you both whipped around, your heart dropping. As soon as your sight landed on Peter going down the stairs, you gulped. Peter B. and Miles’ plan wasn’t the only one that failed that night.

“What’s going on here?” Peter’s voice was hard, bitter. You speed-walked closer to him before he could reach Matt.

“Peter—” You stopped him in his tracks, your hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry, I’ll get him out of here, okay? I got it.” No, you didn’t, most definitely not. And you could tell he knew.

He looked at Matt, and although his face remained covered, chills ran down the latter’s spine. “Are you Matt?” Peter asked loudly. Matt narrowed his eyes, puffing out his chest.

“Who are you?” He nodded at Peter, trying to sound intimidating, but the other didn’t move a muscle.

“I asked you a question.”

Matt studied Peter’s dark outfit, wondering if he was so drunk he was imagining the man. “Y-Yeah, that’s me. I’m Matt.”

“All right. Look at me, Matt.” Matt did as he said. “Good. Now, listen very closely.”

“What are you doing?” You whisper-screamed at Peter, giving him a warning with your eyes. “I said I got this.”

Peter stared at you, considering letting you handle it by yourself as you wished. But the flare, the ire at your ex had been fortifying, expanding slowly since the beginning; and now that he was there, just a few feet away— a drunken moron who relentlessly peeved you and riled him up— ultimately, impatience engulfed him and he shook his head. “You clearly don’t.”

Once Peter reached Matt, he towered over him. Matt blinked up at him, feeling smaller than ever. “Y/N’s with me now. If I hear from you one more darn time, then the coppers will be the least of your worries. Trust me. Got it?” Peter said lowly, and Matt solely nodded. “Got it?” He repeated through clenched teeth.

Matt put his hands in the air in defeat, backing away. “Heard you, man. Fuckin’ weirdo.” He muttered before he turned around and sat down on the sidewalk. You grabbed Peter’s hand and dragged him back inside, where Peter B. and Miles sat on the couch and flashed you apologetic smiles after you barged in.

“Sorry. I’ll call a cab for him,” Peter said behind you. You waved your hand at him, shrugging and mumbling ‘it’s okay’.

“Is it over?” Miles asked, trying to look out the window from the sofa. You nodded. “Okay, can we finally go over the plan—”

Peter took off his mask, disheveling his dark hair. “Why did you try to keep this from me?” You turned around and rubbed your face, slightly frustrated.

“Because I didn’t want what just happened to happen.”

“What? Me telling him to scram off since you wouldn’t?”

“Peter, I told you: I don’t want anyone to know about this.” You gestured between you two. You’d had this conversation before, and he understood your reasoning. He truly did. His appearance, it screamed at the top of its lungs the truth that he did not belong there. It simply was obvious, unmistakable. However, now that he’d curbed the restraint he’d created for himself once, his authentic feelings and mouth were loose, completely out of his control.

“He wasn’t going to stop bugging you!” He pointed out the window. “What if he did something worse in the future?”

“But now he’s gonna tell other people that I’m seeing someone!”

“And so what?”

You laughed, your brows furrowed. “They’re gonna want to meet you! What am I gonna do, then? ‘Ah, yes, meet my boyfriend from the 1930s!’”

Again, you noticed that irritation in his features. But all of a sudden, it was clear that it was more than just annoyance.

Jealousy. He was jealous.

“All right, then! I want other people to know who your real daddy is!” He exclaimed, his eyebrows lifted and his hands on his waist.

You heard Peter B. and Miles explode, both shouting ‘whoa!’ while you sputtered and sensed your cheeks blazing.

“Yo, gross! Keep it in the bedroom!”

“We have a minor in here, please!”

Peter’s sight jumped between the three of you, his expression the definition of puzzlement as you covered your face with your hands and Peter B. and Miles continued feeding your embarrassment with their comments. “W-what? What did I say?” He stuttered, looking at you helplessly.

You peeked one eye up at him, laughing. “Pete, baby…”

Needless to say, after you updated Peter on slang, his flushed self couldn’t quite concentrate as Miles went over the plan.

#spider noir x reader #spider man noir x reader #spider noir x you #spider noir imagine #spider noir one shot #spider noir fan fic #fan fiction #spider man #peter parker #spider noir x y/n #fem! reader #male!reader #gender neutral #spider man: into the spider verse #sm: itsv #itsv fan fic #marvel

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allie1804-fan · 3 years

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Trying again to post chapter 1 of a new story and get it to show up under the right tag!

KERENSA

Chapter 1

A Place to Write

Keanu shivered as he looked out over the set on the beach. He’d been in Cornwall for over 2 chilly months already but, thankfully, the shoot was in its last 2 weeks and signs of Spring were showing themselves now March was here. The cast and crew were staying at the hotel in Sennen Cove, a few miles away from their location and he’d noticed on the daily drives down to set that there were now wildflowers in the hedgerows starting to peep out. And there were fewer days when the sea mists would roll in stopping you from seeing much beyond Sennen harbour. With filming nearly over, Keanu’s thoughts had turned to the script he was working on, his first, and he decided to find out about staying on for a while to focus on progressing it.

He thought the wild, remote location would be good inspiration, but he’d want a more private space ideally than the hotel. He knew he was being a little idealistic, thinking of himself as a writer in their garret but still, why not? he argued - a return to LA could wait a while.

One evening in the hotel bar, he asked the barman John if he knew of any local accommodation. John said he thought Kerry’s cottage might be free since it was off-season still.

“You know Kerry, right?”

“Not sure”

“Sure you do. She waits tables in the restaurant a couple of nights a week and the occasional breakfast too. sometimes works behind the bar? Tall, long blonde hair. Pretty

Keanu laughed, blushing slightly.

“Oh her, yes, yes I do. She’s always out and about in the village or on the beach walking her dog”

“That’s the one! She might be in tonight. I can check and get her to come through when service is over if you like”

“Sure thanks, that would be great”

Sipping on his bourbon, looking out at the sea through the hotel window, Keanu thought about Kerry. Whilst he hadn’t registered her name before now, she’d made a positive impression when he’d encountered her waiting tables or as a bartender, being warm but not gushing or overexcited by his or any of the other cast members’ celebrity status.

As John had said, she was quite tall, around 5,8 and had long, blonde hair with the odd wisp of grey. He guessed she was around 40 but couldn’t be sure. She was slim but by no means Hollywood slim and had great breasts. Now that he HAD noticed, those being his favourite part of a woman. And that is also what had first come to mind when John described her. It was those lascivious thoughts that had made the colour rise in his cheeks, disguised slightly by his beard!

“Mr Reeves?”

A voice jolted him out of his reflections. It was Kerry, come through after her shift. He cleared his float shifting in his seat, slightly caught off guard by the sight of her just after he’d been remembering her attributes! He looked up and smiled, standing up and sticking out his hand.

“Call me Keanu, no need for formality. Uh, thanks for seeing me Kerry” She drew up a chair and they sat.

“Can I get you a drink?”

“Sure, perhaps John will do me a hot chocolate?”

Keanu looked over and caught John’s eye and he came and took their order.

“So, John tells me you’re looking for somewhere to stay?”

“Yes, I have some writing I’m working on and I thought this would be a good place to do it. And it’s grown on me, especially now the sun’s out a tad more often” he joked.

Kerry chuckled

“Yeah it can be kind of bleak in winter but the springs here are glorious, before the crowds come. And even then it still has its charms - and the summer is our livelihood these days so I mustn’t complain about the tourists!”

“Right, so you have a cottage?”

“Yes, just a short walk up the hill on Maria’s Lane. I have a house and the cottage is next door. It’s free until June right now. Bookings have been slower this year now people can travel abroad more easily after Covid.

“Can I come take a look?”

“Sure and I have pictures here on my phone” She dug her phone out of her bag and swiped until she found the pics, handing him her phone.

“And obviously come and see in person too if it looks like it would suit”

“It looks great” he offered as he swiped through the pictures. The cottage was rustic but well equipped and seemed to have all he’d need appliance wise and she told him there was good WiFi for connecting with work colleagues.

“Can I come over to view at the weekend? The shoot's nearly over, but that means long, long days this week.”

They agreed on a visit and she sent him a link to the holiday let listing site so he could look at all the particulars in his own time.

Once he’d seen it, he knew it fit the bill and he booked it til the end of April, asking her also to let him know if she got any enquiries for May so he’d have the option to extend rather than lose out on staying on if he wanted to. They also agreed on some extras, namely some occasional grocery shopping, the house cleaning and laundry services.

@ladyreapermc @fortheloveoffanfic @poison-in-my-pen @paperplanesandwallflowers @fics-not-tragedies @ficsnroses @omg-imagine @toomanystoriessolittletime @keanureevesisbae

#keanu reeves fanfic

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oftarotandnoodledragons · 1 year

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Seventy-Four: Five of Pentacles (Reversed)

Real cases of suffering ... tend to go unheard. This is not only because people who are genuinely suffering typically lack the resources with which to publicize their condition, but also because ... many forms of suffering deprive people of the very ability to express, sometimes even think, the fact that they are suffering. -Jamie Mayerfeld, Suffering and Moral Responsibility

He had a fever when he was in Spain, And when the fit was on him, I did mark How he did shake; 'tis true, this god did shake: His coward lips did from their colour fly, And that same eye whose bend doth awe the world Did lose his lustre. -William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

When a rule is enforced, the person who is supposed to have broken it may be seen as a special kind of person, one who cannot be trusted to live by the rules agreed upon by the group. He is regarded as an outsider. But the person who is thus labeled an outsider may have a different view of the matter. He may not accept the rule by which he is being judged and may not regard those who judge him as either competent or legitimately entitled to do so. -Howard S. Becker, Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance

Have I stopped misposting? Okay. Good.

The overarching theme for the home straight of Tarot has been that of challenges. The Two and Five of Cups were the challenge to look at the undercurrent of much of this journey, that of coming to terms with my self-esteem; a process that is continuing. This card, the Five of Pentacles, on the other hand, is a reminder of another challenge for me: the ability to synthesise and find the meaning and application of the cards. Being of the Pentacles, and the last of them, it is apt that it talks to the physicality of the cards in this regard.

So, while I'm still looking to June 13, the blog's tenth anniversary, as a "deadline", I've not felt ready to deal with this card; and now I have a scant two weeks for the remaining four cards, some of which I know will require a lot of work (I feel like that this will play into the Eight of Wands, when it appears...). The challenge since returning to the blog post-migration is that I feel like I've not been able to tap into my intuition, that it's been dulled, and thus I've not been able to address the card and its energies in a way that I feel is fair and deep enough to crystallise my understanding and be a guidepost for future reference; similarly, some of the cards for me are faded memories and have regained unfamiliarity. That's why I lament when I feel like my posts become academic exercises, like a lecturer has asked me to "compare and contrast the approaches Bunning, Thirteen and Esselmont have on this card". But sometimes, that's all I can do, because I don't know the card; yet through that, I find some understanding.

The Five of Pentacles is a card that exemplifies this. In the way that Temperance was the first card I drew when I made my notebook, the Five of Pentacles is the second. Its notes are lacking the depth and maturity of the past ten years of experience, and partly because it was before the blog, I don't have a memorable, relatable moment to attach it to. My notes' depth of interpretation is weak, and the format I've written here seems incongruent with the standard that has since emerged; yet, I remind myself that much of the writing has come from my intuition rather than my intellect, my subconscious speaking to my conscious. The interpretations written in my book are just one foundation to my Tarot understanding: this journal is, as I intended long ago, designed to flesh this out and provide a means for new insights and greater familiarity.

Existential writing aside, let's actually take the time to look at this card. So be it, then. Extending beyond my usual four muses, Smith's imagery in the RWS version is apparently regarded as one of the most famous; I would disagree since it didn't really strike me outside of Tarot, but I would rather call it one of the most iconic, and that goes back to the very root of that word as well: icons. Given that Tarot is full of symbology, this image forms the basis of many, many interpretations of this card. Rather than derive at a meaning from my muses, I'm not going to source my interpretation because it seems so prevalent, and because it's taken from the story the card tells in the RWS imagery: two ailing peasants in the cold, trying to fend for themselves and suffering in the process outside the window of a church that they don't even look to, where there is warmth and sanctuary. That then lends itself to views ranging from lacking emotional security of one's childhood (thanks Ediya) to being too proud to accept help from others and failing as a result. From this central artistic theme is where we can then look at how my muses address it.

Let's start with Thirteen, because they discuss their cards systematically in the context of the whole. The card is a Five, and it is the instability that follows from the stability (or stagnation) of a Four. Just like the Page of Swords, they tend to be humbling challenges that will strengthen those who go through them. So since the Pentacles are that of the material realm, this card feels like it is the brother to the Five of Cups: if that one is the card of loss (and how one deals with it), then this is the card of lack. Lack is what Bunning focuses on with her themes: "hard times", especially financial hardship, "ill health", since Pentacles relates to the body after all, and "rejection", the lack of social acceptance. Esselmont expands on these, but then adds her own take: that of a "lack mindset" or fearing one doesn't have enough, where one focuses on what they don't have rather on what they do. To this all, Thirteen suggests that to deal with these energies, one should reconsider their values and focus on what one has; that the hardship teaches who one's friends truly are, who is honestly generous, and what really matters to someone.

And then we get to the Tarot Nova and Fairchild and Paschkis. Fairchild just gives all of this a glib, seemingly off-handed remark, with the majority of his prescription being that of one's hard's work and devotion to others not paying off and that one should let others know what one expects in return. That seems to go rather at odds to the accepted "canon" here. Indeed, Paschkis throws out the traditional imagery and doesn't allude to it at all: she shows a crocodile with five Pentacles on it as if it were a constellation. Compared to the richness of the RWS image I find it lacking (hah); however, the image of the toothy crocodile coming to consume is one that I can see linked to the more common themes of the card.

In my head I had thought that this card would be linked to The Tower or some other sort of loss and I was fearing it; but, this card has come out Reversed and this is one of those times that I feel like a Reversal is like night and day. Of course, that means I should temper my view to not be in complete opposition, but more in terms of the day following the night. Thirteen, in typical Thirteen style, focuses on the church and the ability of being that sanctuary; except nope, it ain't there, the peasants are on their own, cold and alone. And that's not what I'm finding right now; that's not day after night. So Fairchild and Esselmont are where I go again. Here I find more resonance, and it's woven through a lot of their prescriptions and analyses. The thought of not having enough expands into a "poverty mindset", where one feels unworthy because of their lack of possessions, that they do not deserve expensive things, that their money is spent on the trivial and not on what one desires; the call here is to determine if "I can't afford it" is a truth or a limiting factor, and that one will make it happen if they truly value it. I've been a little more outgoing with my money as of late, especially since I just went to a convention, yet I know I have debts that must be repaid. Speaking of this: Fairchild talks about a new source of income, and Esselmont talks about the end of hard times. I applied for a credit card for the first time ever and after a few weeks of silence, I was approved. Of course, it's not really a source of income, but a means to delay payments; I'm naturally cautious about it but considering that the bank offers cashback, it's a nice thing to have, and will help allow me to get a credit rating and potentially bigger purchases in the future.

But Fairchild leaves one of his esoteric yet resonant prescriptions: to learn the value of self-discipline and teamwork since they will bring rewards, and to express oneself as they choose despite others trying to make one conform. I feel this is related to my work, and it is something that I have been working on as I move through my new managerial position.

So the thing I've learned from this card is that I shouldn't be afraid of Fives; I should treat them like the Page of Swords and think of them as a challenge. Also, with this card, I've completed the Fives and also the Pentacles. The thing about the Pentacles is that it feels like it has a narrative that runs through the entire pips, and that the Five is the turning point of the tale. I would argue that it's my favourite of the four suits given its themes and internal reflections based on this critical mid-point: everything after this point is redemption and success with mature, positive energies in the Upright compared to the immature energies that come before this one.

Four cards remain and I must press on, finally feeling ready to do so. The next challenge lies with the card that I thought would be last, the redeemer, the nice departure for the blog: XXI The World. But it's Reversed. And as it is, of all the cards in the deck, The World is the card that I currently know and relate to the least. Herein lies the challenge.

#five of pentacles

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blackswaneuroparedux · 4 years

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Treat Your S(h)elf: A German Officer in Occupied Paris: The War Journals, 1941-1945 by Ernst Jünger (2019)

Keeping a journal: The short entries are often as dry as instant tea. Writing them down is like pouring hot water over them to release their aroma.

- Ernst Jünger, A German Officer in Occupied Paris: The War Journals, 1941-1945 (2019)

Paris is very much my home these days and so I enjoy reading about the history of this beautiful city. It is difficult to live in Paris today and conjure up much sense of the city in the early 1940s. It is indeed, as it is called throughout the world, the City of Light. But back in 1940 when France fell and Paris occupied until its liberation on 24 August 1944, it was a city in darkness. Like so much else that happened in France during World War II, the Nazi occupation of Paris was something entirely more complex and ambiguous than has generally been understood.

We tend to think of those four years as difficult but minimally destructive by comparison with the hell the Nazis wreaked elsewhere in the country. But as recent historians have shown the Nazi occupation was a terrible time for Paris, not just because the Nazis were there but because Paris itself was complicit in its own humiliation. As the historian Ronald Risbottom has shown in his compelling book, ‘When Paris went Dark’, “Even today, the French endeavour both to remember and to find ways to forget their country’s trials during World War II; their ambivalence stems from the cunning and original arrangement they devised with the Nazis, which was approved by Hitler and assented to by Philipe Petain, the recently appointed head of the Third Republic, that had ended the Battle of France in June of 1940. This treaty - known by all as the Armistice - had entangled France and the French in a web of cooperation, resistance, accommodation, and, later, of defensiveness, forgetfulness, and guilt from which they are still trying to escape.”

It is almost certainly a unique event in human history, one in which a ruthless and unscrupulous invader occupied a city known for its sophistication and liberality, declining to destroy it or even to exact physical damage on more than a minority of its citizens yet leaving it in a state of “embarrassment, self-abasement, guilt and a felt loss of masculine superiority that would mark the years of the Occupation. To this day, more than one visitor or foreigners living in Paris are struck by how sensitive Paris and Parisians remain about the role of the city and its citizens in its most humiliating moment of the twentieth century.

Indeed bringing up the subject with French friends, my French partner’s family, or even relatives (by marriage - such as a French aunt married to my Norwegian uncle or the French partners of my cousins here in France) is like walking on egg shells. It brings up too many distant ghosts for many families. Nearly every household has a story. It can be one of resistance or one of collaboration or (more likely) one of passive indifference and acceptance.

And yet I remain fascinated and intrigued partly because of historical interest and partly out of curiosity about the human condition under stress. In Britain - despite the trauma of daily bombardment from German bombers - the country was never invaded. And so whilst war brings out the best and worst in people, it was altogether a different experience to the one experienced by mainland European countries. I don’t think we British truly have understood of life was really like under occupation and the choices people are willingly or not made just to survive the war.

The history of Paris from 1940 to 1944 gives the lie to the old childhood taunt: Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me. The Germans for the most part spared Parisians sticks and stones (except, of course, Parisians who were Jewish), but the “names” they inflicted in the form of truncated freedoms, greatly reduced food and supplies, an unceasing fear of the unexpected and calamitous, and the simple fact of their inescapable, looming presence did deep damage of a different kind. It traumatised the city and its inhabitants in ways very little understood by others, especially Britain.

The carefully curated image of French resistance against the Nazis has been asked to serve critical functions in that nation’s collective memory. The manufactured myth served to postpone for a quarter of a century deeper analyses of how easily France had been beaten and how feckless had been the nation’s reaction to German authority, especially between 1940 and 1943. And yet the myth of a universal resistance was important to France’s idea of itself as a beacon for human liberty. It was also badly needed as an example of the courage one needed in the face of monstrous political ideologies.

There remained the ethical questions that would haunt France for decades: Which actions, exactly, constitute collaboration and which constitute resistance? It is still asking these questions over 70 years later. But behind such question lies a deeper and more haunting question of moral culpability that many are quick to throw responsibility - along with their own shame of inaction - onto others but not look inwards at their own guilt and passivity.

But what about the occupiers? What did they feel? Were the German Wehrmacht during the day simply tourists sitting in cafes, dining on gourmand food, buying silk stockings and the latest fashions for their wives back home and by night drinking and debauching on the cultural and seedy delights of Paris?

Moral culpability is a question that Ernst Jünger, the celebrated German author, never asks himself of his time as a German officer in Paris. But culpability is a question that looms large after reading the war journals of Ernst Jünger from 1941-1945, now published by Columbia University Press as A German Officer in Occupied Paris: The War Journals, 1941-1945. It should have been re-titled as a ‘A German writer pre-occupied by Parisian night life and his navel’.

Ernst Jünger (1895-1998) was what is sometimes called a “controversial” figure. A First World War hero who was wounded seven times, he was undoubtedly uncommonly brave. He also insisted that those who were less brave should play their part, forcing retreating soldiers to join his unit at gunpoint. His 1920 book Storm of Steel (In Stahlgewittern), recounting his war experiences and portraying war in a heroic light, made him famous. In the 1920s he became involved in anti-democratic right-wing groups like the paramilitary Freikorps and wrote for a number of nationalist journals. He remained aloof from the Nazis, however, and, while he boasted that he “hated democracy like the plague”, was more of a nationalist than a racist.

Jünger spent much of the Second as an officer stationed in Paris, where these war journals are an almost daily record of the views and impressions of a well-read literary figure, entomologist, and cultural critic, now available for the first time in English translation in A German Officer in Occupied Paris. Posted in white-collar positions in Paris with the German military during the 1940-1944 occupation.

Nazi Germany produced two wartime diaries of equal literary and historical significance but written from the most different perspectives conceivable: Victor Klemperer and Ernst Jünger. Victor Klemperer wrote furtively, in daily dread of transport to an extermination camp, a fate he was spared by the firebombing of Dresden. Ernst Jünger, by contrast, had what was once called a “good war.” As a bestselling German author, he drew cushy occupation duty in Paris, where he could hobnob with famous artists and writers, prowl antiquarian bookstores, and forage for the rare beetles he collected. Yet Klemperer and Jünger both found themselves anxiously sifting propaganda and hearsay to learn the truth about distant events on which their lives hung.

For English-speaking readers who do not know his work, A German Officer in Occupied Paris shows the many sides of this complex, elusive writer.

In the judicious and helpful foreword by San Francisco-based historian Elliot Neaman, who says. “Like a God in France, Jünger operated on the edge of politics in Paris, rather like a butterfly fluttering among the resistors and collaborators. He didn’t trust the generals, who had taken a personal oath to Hitler, to be able to carry out a coup.”

Jünger had visited the city prior to the war, was fluent in French, and now had the contacts and the time to become even more familiar with the French capital. During his stay in Paris he met painters such as Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso as well as literary figures including Louis-Ferdinand Céline and Jean Cocteau, all of whom figure in his Journals, which reflect a view of Paris that had become a tourism mecca during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

To Jünger, Paris was “a capital, symbol and fortress of an ancient tradition of heightened life and unifying ideas, which nations especially lack nowadays” (30 May 1941). After wandering around the Place du Tertre, near the Sacré Cœur Cathedral in the Montmartre section of Paris, he wrote: “The city has become my second spiritual home and represents more and more strongly the essence of what I love and cherish about ancient culture” (18 September 1942). At the same time, Jünger was aware of the “shafts of glaring looks” with which he was sometimes viewed by locals as he wandered in uniform through the city’s streets and byways (18 August 1942, 89, and 29 September 1943).

A German Officer in Occupied Paris is divided into four parts: the “First Paris Journal,” his writings from 1941 through October 1942; “Notes from the Caucasus,” continuing his account through February 1943; the “Second Paris Journal,” covering the period from his return to Paris through the liberation of France in the late summer of 1944; and finally the “Kirchhorst Diaries,” his account of having been placed in charge of the local militia [Volkssturm] and his reflections on the bombings and imminent defeat of Germany.

The “First Paris Journal” reflects the comings and goings of a German officer and writer happy to rediscover Paris at a time when it seemed clear that Germany had won the war and would dominate France and perhaps Europe indefinitely. Closer physically to the fighting following his transfer to the East in October 1942, Jünger devoted greater attention to the fighting and the raw nature of the German-Soviet struggle in “Notes from the Caucasus.”

By the time he returned to Paris and began his “Second Paris Journal” in February 1943, the Germans had been defeated at Stalingrad and it had become increasingly evident that a titanic struggle loomed and that the Germans might well lose the war.

The final section, the “Kirchhorst Diaries,” is set against the backdrop of the Allied invasion of Germany, accompanied by intense bombing and the destruction of German cities and homes including Jünger’s own, and the seemingly countless numbers of civilian refugees seeking shelter and food. Through it all, Jünger continues his reading, including that of the Bible, his book collecting, and visits to antiquarian booksellers when possible, and his chats with various literary figures in Paris and, at times, in Germany.

Much of the material in the Journals is introspective, with Jünger addressing his innermost thoughts and dreams. Snakes also appear with some frequency in the Journals, for example, in the entry of 13 July 1943, where during a restless night because of air raid sirens in Paris, he recalls having dreamt of dark black snakes devouring more brightly colored ones. In the Journal entry, he linked snakes back to primal forces incarnating life and death, and good and evil. This connection, he noted, was the reason people fear the sight of a snake, “almost stronger than the sight of sexual organs, with which there is also a connection” (13 July 1943). Following a conversation with the “Doctoresse,” the name that Jünger used for Sophie Ravoux, with whom he was intimate and had an affair in Paris, he described his own manner of thinking as “atomistically by osmosis and filtration of the smallest particles of thoughts.” His thought process, he explained, ran not according to principles of cause and effect but rather at the “level” of the vowels of a sentence, on the molecular level; “This explains why I know people who couldn’t help becoming my friends, even through dreams” (22 January 1944). Addressing Eros and sexual organs, Jünger added that he wished to study the connections between language and physique. Colours also had spiritual values, “Just as green and red are part of white, higher entities are polarised in intellectual couples—as is the universe into blue and red”.

Jünger’s position as an army captain gave him a panorama of the war that left no room for heroes. Violence became a grim leveller that made ideologies interchangeable. Germans on the eastern front were reading On the Marble Cliffs as a condemnation of Soviet Russia rather than of Nazi Germany. Hitler had unleashed a dehumanising force on the world, one that made Russians, Germans, the French Resistance and Allied pilots all look the same, locked in an escalating cycle of cruelty. Jünger witnessed Allied planes strafing screaming children in the streets, releasing bombs timed to explode while presents were handed out on Christmas Eve. Accounts drifted in of Parisian friends, who had once tried to transcend national boundaries with him through measured discussion in the salons, being harassed as collaborators. His summary of this second war could have been a reverse of the first: ‘Inactivity brings men together, whereas battle separates them.’

The picture of Jünger’s political views that emerges in his Journals, however, is a highly chivalric and military elitist one in which a small number of bold idealists, for lack of a better term, struggle against demos and technocracy, democracy and technicians, who are destroying the soul of an older European society. Writing while back home in Kirchhorst on 6 November 1944, following the expulsion of the Germans from France and walking around viewing the destruction wrought by the Allied bombs in Germany, he observed: “As I walked, I thought about the cursory style of contemporary thinkers, the way they pronounce judgment on ideas and symbols that people have been working on and creating for millennia. In so doing they are unaware of their own place in the universe, and of that little bit of destructive work allocated to them by the world spirit.”

He went on to criticise “the old liberals, Dadaists, and free-thinkers, as they begin to moralise at the end of a life devoted to the destruction of the old guard and the undermining of order.” Jünger then referred to Dostoevsky’s novel The Demons, in which the sons of Stepan Trofimovich “are encouraged to scorn anything that had formerly been considered fundamental.” Having destroyed their father, these “young conservatives,” now sensing “the new elemental power” of “the demos,” are then dragged to their deaths. In the ensuing chaos, “only the nihilist retains his fearsome power.” Jünger mentions Hindenburg, and the destruction of the conservatives by the Nazis is clearly implied (6 November 1944).

In August 1943, he described his political views as a combination of Guelph (relating to the medieval supporters of the Pope against the Holy Roman Emperor), Prussian, Gross-Deutscher (in support of a Greater Germany including Austria), European, and citizen of the world “all at once.” As he put it, “My political core is like a clock with cog wheels that work against each other.” However, he added: “Yet, when I look at the face of the clock, I could imagine a noon when all these identities coincide” (1 August 1943).

While violence raged all around, Jünger continued his secret diary, for publication after the war. This ended for him when American tanks rumbled through his village in April 1945, Jünger proclaiming that the deeper the fall, the greater the ensuing rise. Jünger survived investigation in the immediate postwar period and went on to become a grand old man of German literature, with a considerable following at home and abroad. A year before his death he was – as the phrase goes – received into the Catholic church. Having lived through a violent century he expired in his bed in his 103rd year.

The war journals is a highly nuanced, albeit self-made, picture of a human being in the middle of World War II, who is a flirtatious fascist, yet who apparently seems to care for other human beings, regardless of their so-called social strata or race. Take for example this entry dated Paris, 28 July 1942, “The unfortunate pharmacist on the corner: his wife has been deported. Such benign individuals would not think of defending themselves, except with reasons. Even when they kill themselves, they are not choosing the lot of the free who have retreated into their last bastions, rather they seek the night as frightened children seek their mothers. It is appalling how blind even young people have become to the sufferings of the vulnerable; they have simply lost any feeling for it. They have become too weak for the chivalrous life. They have even lost the simple decency that prevents us from injuring the weak. The opposite is true: they take pride in it.”

Having said that, I found some of the contents repugnant as Jünger, a devout entomologist, easily writes about finding a new insect while fires are burning all around Paris in 1943. Indeed Jünger paints himself as the detached botanist-scholar, determined to survive and help the world recover in peacetime. For him, the best way to avoid being sucked into the vortex of violence was to disconnect from emotion and group mentalities: to feel nothing and be on no one’s side, only bearing witness. A detached eye in the storm.

His journal is a hedonistic carousel, as he frequented theatres, literary salons and Left bank bookstalls along the Seine, as well as having a meeting of artistic minds with Picasso, Braque and Cocteau. It’s possible to make your way through this collection and have a grand ole time, enjoying the moments when Jünger encounters celebrities like Picasso, or when Monet’s daughter-in-law gives him the key to the gardens at Giverny for his own private tour, or when he describes another gourmet meal with the well-heeled of Parisian society: “The salad was served on silver, the ice cream on a heavy gold service that had belonged to Sarah Bernhardt.” Jünger relishes his name-dropping and his contacts with the upper crust. He sees himself as one of the Übermenschen: “In this country the superior man lives like Odysseus, taunted by worthless usurpers in his own palace.”

The author himself gets lost in the fog of mystic self regard as all artistic writers are prone to do and confesses that in an entry labeled 26 Aug 1942: “At times I have difficulty distinguishing between my conscious and unconscious existence. I mean between that part of my life that has been knit together by dreams and the other.”

To read the diary in chronological order is to realise that Jünger’s submersion in art and literature was his way of preserving his humanity while serving the machinery of a lethally violent state. One way of doing this was through a voracious program of reading, chiefly literature and history, often reading two or three books at once. One is not surprised at the German and French reading but at the abundance of English writers, whom he read in the original—Melville, Joyce, Poe, Conrad, Kipling, Thomas Wolfe, Thornton Wilder, the Brontës, ad infinitum. The range is also remarkable. Jünger pivots from the 1772 fantasy Diable amoureux to a biography of the painter Turner to Crime and Punishment. And throughout the entire diary, one finds him reading the Bible, cover to cover, which he began shortly after his posting to Paris.

Over and over again I had to remind myself this is a diary. Diaries by definition have one eye on self serving posterity.

So it’s not surprising that Jünger would tweak reality to create this image of poetic detachment. With his constant stories of indulgence in Paris, the reader might assume he had no job while he was there. In fact he was censoring letters and newspapers, a cog in the Nazi machine he so despised. He omits anything that would make him appear a villain. An ongoing extramarital affair in Paris is barely hinted at. But neither does he try to look a hero, omitting how he passed on to Jews information of upcoming deportations, buying them time to escape.

Should he have continued to enjoy his life as a flâneur for so long? He had solid proof of what was going on, debriefed as he was on the mass shootings and death camps on the eastern front. Throughout his career he had railed against inertia, lauding men of action who sacrificed themselves for a just cause. And then such a cause presented itself. Jünger’s colleagues in Paris were involved in the Stauffenberg plot of 1944, and asked for his help. He was one of the most influential conservative voices in Germany at the time, one of the few that Hitler’s followers might have taken seriously. Yet he refused to commit himself during the chaos. Instead, Jünger waited for evil to destroy itself: a fireman who fought the blaze by waiting for the building to burn down. As usual, he inhabited a grey area.

Jünger remains a problematic figure of controversy, perhaps even emblematic of the aged old question how does one respond to brutish evil? There are no easy answers. Addressing the French who collaborated with Germany during the war Robert Paxton, a well regarded historian of Vichy France wrote, “Even Frenchmen of the best intentions, faced with the harsh alternative of doing one’s job, whose risks were moral and abstract, or practicing civil disobedience, whose risks were material and immediate, went on doing the job. The same may be said of the German occupiers. Many of them were “good Germans,” men of cultivation, confident that their country’s success outweighed a few moral blemishes, dutifully fulfilling some minor blameless function in a regime whose cumulative effect was brutish.”

Was Jünger one of those they called a ‘good German’? Eating sole and duck at the famous Tour d’Argent restaurant, while gazing down at the hungry civilians in the buildings below was the choice Jünger made. In his 4 Just 1942 diary entry he wrote, “upon the grey sea of roofs at their feet, beneath which the starving eke out their living. In times like this - eating well and much - brings a feeling of power”.

We are always told to speak truth to power. Before we can speak one must think. But thinking truth to power is never enough in itself unless one acts out truth to power. Words without action is nothing. So the question one has to ask even as one reads from the detached safety of distance and time: how would one act in his shoes or indeed a Frenchman’s shoes?

More than anything, the diary raises, for me at least, the question of moral culpability. It’s impossible to tell what Jünger was really thinking, and so perhaps one tantalising aspect of these war journals is psychological more than anything else. All this stuff is swirling around his life but we hear about the harmless social fluff for the most part. For example, he notes “In Charleville, I was a witness at a military tribunal. I used the opportunity to buy books, like novels by Gide and various works by Rimbaud.” I wanted to hear about the tribunal, but alas, it vanished into Jünger’s damn book buying.

And yet if you judge Jünger by his diary entries alone then it would be very easy to find him guilty. But diaries conceal as much as they reveal. For all the criticism that Jünger has served up a self-serving exculpatory diary, the truth is that he leaves his most selfless acts unmentioned. It is known that he gave advance warning to Jews facing deportation: The writer Joseph Breitbach was one, as he subsequently confirmed, and Walter Benjamin was possibly another.

None of this, for obvious reason, could be committed to paper, nor could the names of Adolf Hitler or any of his henchmen. Instead, their appearances are marked by Jünger’s felicitous code names. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi chief propagandist, is “Grandgoschier,” a character from Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel meaning “Big Throat.” SS Chief Heinrich Himmler is “Schinderhannes,” the name of a notorious German highwayman but also a pun on horse knacker. And Hermann Goering is simply “Head Forester,” citing the most fatuous of his many official titles.

Jünger thought a great deal about the mystic and symbolic power of sounds, and he reserved his most apposite pseudonym for Hitler, “Kniébolo,” a name that is at once menacing and absurd. It suggests a kneeling demon (Diabolos), a leitmotif of the diary as Jünger became ever more convinced of Hitler’s essentially Satanic character- in the literal biblical sense.

So grey areas get more grey when we either try to step back and be detached to render a verdict on Jünger or if we step into his shoes to get inside his head. This is the limitation of a secret and coded diary, no matter how scrupulously written and how fascinating they are to read. Diaries are written for oneself or an imagined other; they play on the satisfactions of monologue. Letters are shaped by the contingencies of distance and time between writer and recipient; they become over time scattered in various places and must be "collected" to form a single body of writing.

Diaries are shaped by moments of inspiration but also by habit; they are woven together by a single voice and usually are contained between covers. Diarists play with the tension between concealing and revealing, between "telling all" and speaking obliquely or keeping silent. Like letter writing, diarists inscribe the risks and pleasures of expression and trust. The diary is an uncertain genre uneasily balanced between literary and historic writing. The diary belongs to the woman where history and literature overlap. So it’s easy to conclude that we will always have ambiguity and tension between these two polar opposites.

After 1945, Jünger again withdrew into private life, but continued to publish. Seclusion encouraged attention. His reputation grew. Scholarly editions appeared. In three last decades, doubters aside, he enjoyed growing recognition, travelled the world, deepened his knowledge of nature and voiced concern about human damage to the planet. Jünger poured out books late into his nineties. By then he had swept Germany’s top literary prizes and been visited in his Swabian retreat by the statesmen of Europe, including Helmut Kohl and François Mitterrand.

Jünger’s experience of life did little to dent his loathing of liberalism and democracy. On a country walk along a bomb-pitted road near his home late in 1944, Jünger indulges a moment of conservative relish, telling himself that it is liberals who are to blame for all that has befallen. How wonderful it is, he writes sarcastically, “to watch the drama of the old liberals, Dadaists and freethinkers, as they begin to moralise at the end of a life devoted completely to the destruction of the old guard and the undermining of order”. “Blame the liberals!” was the reactionary’s charge at birth (there is a profound difference between true conservatism and the extreme reactionary). It hobbled the Weimar Republic and bedevils politics today. Politically, he had learnt nothing. Today Western Europe society is eating itself inwards through the corrosive influence of the woke-ness of cultural Marxism and the conservative now finds himself/herself in the sweetly ironic position of defending the tenets of true liberalism.

For English-speaking readers who do not know his work, A German Officer in Occupied Paris shows the many sides of this complex, elusive writer. These diaries are invaluable about the man and his times. Jünger is nowadays probably less read than read about. So these war journals are to be welcomed and to be read with great interest.

For some these journal entries alone will still provide material to debate the moral choices made - and evaded - by Jünger. To critics, Jünger participated too much and judged too little. To defenders, he was indeed on the hard right, but no fascist and, besides, his prose was what mattered, not his politics. Not to pity Jünger’s personal travails would be defective. Not to respond to his prose would be deaf. But all of us can ponder Jean Cocteau’s final verdict, who liked Jünger and considered him a friend but whose aloofness troubled him: “Some people had dirty hands, some had clean hands, but Jünger had no hands.” Jünger may have washed his hands of his time in Paris but the hand of history forever tapping on his shoulder is less forgiving.

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