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hufflepirate · 6 years ago

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Hospital Alley Nights - Critical Role

Too tired to format this fic I wrote about Beau and Caleb and Nott being too tired for posting on AO3, but not too tired to put 2.5K-ish words under a readmore to save y’all’s dashes. Ayyyy. This is almost certainly getting a new title tomorrow, but... it’s 1 AM so since I wrote the thing I had the plot bunny for, I consider myself absolved from all future responsibility for this fic until after I have slept.

Beau, Caleb, and Nott drop their friends off at a hospital after a risky cross-country race only to find themselves suddenly without direction, energy, or any good way to stay near the hospital other than sleeping in a nearby alley to be closer to their friends.

It was a relief to come to a sudden halt 15 feet outside the hospital doors. Beau knew she should be making better sense of this, making better sense of all of this, but she wasn't, and when Nott stopped in front of her and Caleb stopped behind her, it was all she could do not to just plop down in the middle of the street and sit with her head in her hands until she could work through it all.

The drive here had been a nightmare. They'd pushed their stolen horses faster than they should have, keeping their stolen cart rolling well into the night without stopping until they were afraid the horses might drop dead or they might fall off the cart, themselves, from exhaustion. But with so many people with the Firbolgs and their friends so badly injured, this had been the only way. The nearest town with the nearest hospital and hours and hours to get there and a race against time and now - and now -

Nott was staring down a small alley, just staring, and Beau finally managed to say what she'd wanted to say several minutes ago. "Fuck visiting hours."

"Yes," Caleb said behind her, his eyes looking a little hollow when she glanced back at him, "Fuck visiting hours."

He'd been thinking clearly just minutes ago, when he caught her around the waist and whispered in her ear that they couldn't get in a fight in the hospital if they wanted their friends looked after, and he'd been thinking clearly enough after that to guide her out the front doors, but now something in his gaze was blank and empty, and not in the flickering Frumpkin way she was used to.

Nott turned back to them. "I know they told us where the nearest good inn is," she said thoughtfully. "But nobody said we had to stay in an inn."

Nott was getting at something, but she'd slept in the cart and Beau and Caleb hadn't, not when the cart was so full of their friends and their friends were so badly off and they'd needed both of them together to drive so long. Beau tried to make the connections, but she couldn't.

"What are you thinking?" Caleb asked, apparently not following, either. A bad sign.

"I'm thinking we don't go to an inn. We stay here. We - we sleep here. It wouldn't be the first time we slept outside, in an alley. And then you can send Frumpkin to look after them and if anything goes wrong, we're right here. We can break in. We're ready."

"You want to sleep outside in an alley," Caleb repeated back, his voice light and hazy, unreadable.

"Yes," Nott answered.

"You want to sleep out in the cold and the wet in early winter, where we might be found by crown's guard who chase us off as vagabonds."

"Yes," Nott answered.

"Ok," he said.

"Oh," she said, and both of them turned to her.

Caleb's forehead furrowed. "Oh, Beau. Yes, we should have asked you. You can stay with us, if you like, or go to the inn."

Beau's brain felt like it was wrapped in heavy wool, and she wasn't even sure what she was going to say until the word came tumbling out: "Stay." She felt good about it, anyway, so she repeated herself. "I'll stay."

Caleb nodded, and Nott's face slid into a grin. "Good," she said. "We'll take the cart somewhere, or one of us will, and then we'll find a good place tucked in this alley - maybe there's a side door and we can use a doorway - and we'll be right here as soon as the sun is up and they're taking visitors again."

Beau groaned. The cart. She'd forgotten completely about the cart.

"Can we take the cart anywhere closer than the inn?" Caleb asked.

"How should I know?" Nott asked.

Beau didn't have an answer either, but exhaustion was pulling at her and being so close to their friends only to be separated again weighed even more heavily against her, and she didn't know anything as surely as she knew she did not care what happened to the cart.

"Let's leave it," she said, "It's not really our cart anyway."

She wasn't sure what she meant by that. It wasn't anyone else's cart, because its original owner was dead. They weren't getting their old cart back, not with it left days and days and days behind them, before nearly all of this. But she felt empty, like her well had run dry, and all she had left was the idea of crawling into the alley with her stinky hobo wizard and her tiny goblin girl and falling asleep until they could get in to see their friends.

Caleb was staring at the cart, which was behind them at the entrance to the hospital, but he didn't seem to be able to think it through, either. He was silent, and his arms draped at his sides like he was too tired to lift them.

Nott stepped past her, taking Caleb's hand gently, and he turned to look down at her. "It's alright, Caleb," Nott said gently, "I'll find a stable. You two drove long enough. And I'll come right back."

Caleb nodded, and Nott turned back to Beau. "Did you hear that?" she asked, louder, "I'll be right back."

"Yeah," Beau managed, "I heard."

Nott climbed up onto the cart, a process that always looked challenging, but drove off competently enough. Beau watched her go, standing as still as Caleb, but as Nott and the cart rounded a corner, a yawn reminded her that she couldn't stand here forever. She'd been pinching herself on the cart next to Caleb to stay alert, and now that she was still, she wasn't sure she could stay awake if she didn't move.

Caleb turned at the sound of the yawn and she nodded to him once she'd finished it, turning toward the alley and trusting that he'd follow.

As soon as her face was turned into the wind, she realized her eyes had watered, and she wasn't sure whether it was from the exhaustion or the cold or the yawn or the fact that they'd just stood over their friends' unconscious forms and been told they had to leave. Either way, she didn't like it, and scrubbing her sleeve across her eyes to clear the tears gave Caleb time to raise his arm up and slip it around her waist again.

Usually, she'd be a jerk about that, because it wasn't exactly ideal, but she'd needed the guidance in the hospital when her brain wasn't working so well, and it only took one step toward the alley for her to realize Caleb needed it now. The wizard's weight was heavier against her shoulder now, and she put her own arm around him in return, angling them toward the small alley and hoping he would be able to find them some cover, even without Nott.

She'd slept in plenty of uncomfortable beds, and she'd done plenty of camping, but this was new, and other than the instinctive knowledge that they needed to get out of the wind, she wasn't sure what they were looking for.

Caleb's head moved back and forth, scanning the alley as they entered it. They weren't sure what these buildings were, other than neighbors to the hospital, but the building on the right had several large barrels up against the wall. Beau couldn't tell which of them was steering anymore, but they went toward it together.

The two barrels were full of ice, and Beau copied Caleb as he looked up toward the roof. A gutter ran along the roof, with a small piece of piping jutting out over the barrels. "Rainwater," she said, filling in the gaps.

"Yes," he agreed, "We can't light a fire for warmth, but at least they will shield us."

Beau nodded. "Should we move them?"

Caleb leaned a little harder into her as he stared at the barrels again, like just thinking made it harder to stand. Beau leaned back, using what was left of her brain this late to keep them both upright.

"Only a little bit," he concluded, "A foot or so. The back one. So we can make a little bit more cover, but anyone used to these being here won't notice from the street right away."

She grunted in agreement, taking a few more steps to get behind the two barrels.

She had to take her arm off of Caleb to grab the barrel and found herself leaning into it for stability as soon as the contact with Caleb wasn't as even. A moment later, he gripped at the edge of it, too.

It was solid. Stable. Undoubtedly heavy.

"Maybe it's fine," she said.

Caleb kept leaning. He was silent for a moment. For another moment. For long enough that Beau started to find it hard to stay standing, again.

"Caleb," she said.

"We will wait for Nott. If Nott says it should move, we move it."

Nodding was almost disorienting, but Beau didn't mention the increasingly real possibility that they might both be asleep before Nott made it back.

Caleb used the barrel rim to stabilize himself as he rotated around to get his back to the wall, and Beau followed behind him, more sure with every step that this barrel wasn't going anywhere tonight.

They both sat down carefully, leaning against the wall, and she felt her eyes drifting shut almost immediately.

She was still just barely awake when Nott came back, her limbs pressing heavily into the hard dirt of the ground when she heard a sudden sound beside her. Her monk training was effective even without her brain involved, and as Nott tried to step over her to get to Caleb, Beau opened her eyes just in time to see her own hand punching the tiny goblin square in the gut.

Nott doubled over, gasping.

"Shit," Beau said.

A ball of light shot out of Caleb's hands, familiar but still shockingly bright in the darkness of the alley, and Beau had to blink against the suddenness of it, her eyes watering again.

"Nott, are you ok?" he asked, sounding foggy, but upset.

The goblin grinned, another familiar sight that was still somehow creepy in this light. "It's ok," she said, after a deep gasp of breath, "At least we know if the crown's guard finds us, Beau won't let them take us away."

Nott climbed the rest of the way over Beau and settled down straight in Caleb's lap, tucking her head against his shoulder and the side of the barrel next to him.

Beau reached over to wrap a hand around her nearest body part, ending up with Nott's ankle. "I'm sorry," she said.

"It's alright," Nott said again.

Caleb put his hand over hers and nodded, reaching up to vanish the floating light instead of meeting her eyes.

She nodded back in the sudden darkness, and couldn't be sure he'd seen it.

"You just need sleep," Nott said, "Come on. Snuggle up."

Beau shook her head. "I'm ok."

"It's going to be really cold."

"I'll be fine."

She didn't remove her hand from its place between Nott's ankle and Caleb's hand, but she didn't move closer or lean on them, either. It didn't matter. The punch had taken more energy than she had left to her name, and she slipped into sleep anyway.

Another noise woke her, but this time she didn't lash out until after her eyes were open, and then not at all. Frumpkin had something in his mouth and she reached absently for it, realizing only after he dumped a dead mouse into her palm that her hand was numb. She dropped the mouse into her lap in surprise and Frumpkin meowed grumpily.

Her other hand was warm, still cradled in Caleb's and still wrapped around Nott, so she extricated it carefully and used it to pick the mouse up and toss it back out of her lap. Frumpkin pounced on it, and she left him to it, putting her numb hand inside the other one and rubbing it to try to warm it up.

Next to her, the other two stirred faintly and she stilled, trying not to wake them. After a moment, she turned to look and found Nott's yellow eyes staring into hers. "It's alright," she whispered, "Caleb won't mind if you use him as a heater. He's very warm."

For a moment, she considered her options, but flexing the numb hand in the cold made the answer obvious. She scooted closer, and by the time she realized Caleb was partially awake, too, it was too late and he was adjusting his position to get an arm around her.

For such a skinny man, he did put out a surprising amount of heat, and his bony shoulder wasn't quite as uncomfortable as she'd expected. Nott reached out and grabbed her colder hand, whispering a soft "yikes" as she wrapped her other small hand around it, too.

Fine, then. It wasn't the first time they'd cuddled, and it probably wouldn't be the last. Caleb tried, awkwardly and with little success, to drape the edge of his ratty coat around her, then managed to get a little bit of his scarf around her neck, too, and she let him because it was better than having it exposed to the cold night air.

The next time she woke up, it was because Caleb had gasped loudly in her ear. He breathed heavily, and Nott woke up, too, letting go of Beau's hand to cup his face with her hands instead. Caleb closed his eyes, leaning his forehead into Nott's, and Beau closed her eyes again, trying to pretend she was still asleep instead of having to figure out what to do in this moment.

"Frumpkin," he whispered.

"Ok." Nott's voice was soft, almost more breath than whisper, but Beau opened her eyes, anyway. Caleb was gone, the flicker in his eyes indicating that he was with Frumpkin, now, wherever that meant, and Beau yawned, pretending she'd just woken up, before she adjusted her position against Caleb.

"Sorry, Beau," the wizard muttered, and she almost jumped. She knew he could feel them, but since he couldn't see or hear them, it hadn't occurred to her to worry about it.

He wasn't gone for long.

"How are they?" Nott asked.

"They're alright. They're sleeping, but they're not - the breathing was steady, and I think their color might be better. It's hard to tell in the moonlight. But they are in beds, and the nurses are not right there, so probably they are alright."

Nott nodded. "Good." Then she snuggled back into Caleb's chest, and Beau wondered, if she weren't here, if Caleb would have pulled into the cuddle in response.

Giving in to an impulse she would have checked in the daylight, she grabbed his hand. "Thanks for checking," she said.

"Bitte," he whispered, but she was too tired, still, to worry about understanding Zemnian. She took the opportunity to rearrange, getting even closer to Caleb, and then Nott was helping and all three of them were tangled up, but that was alright. It was warmer this way. She drifted back off to sleep with her head on Caleb's shoulder and her legs draped across his, Nott's heels digging just slightly into her side as her feet stretched past Caleb's space and into her own.

It was too cold, and the inn would have been more comfortable, but as Caleb's breath slowed against her, confident that their friends were alright and Frumpkin was close enough to communicate with to check on them, it was still worth being here.

#Critical Role #fanfic #Beau #Caleb #Nott #fluff #but like... slightly angsty fluff?#spoilers #I guess?#set in the FUTURE after everything WORKS OUT FINE from where we are now #I need things to work out fine from where we are now #hurt/comfort #almost certainly

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onewhoturns · 7 years ago

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pt 3 - Protector

Did you miss Part 2? Part 1? Here’s part the third - an interlude, to some extent. Again, credit to @kaldwinqueen for the Outsider. I wrote for Emily and Corvo. This chapter is all adorable dad and angsty whale boi. Posted to AO3, so go leave it some love. Part 3 in The Void Devours. [If you have trouble with formatting, click through to keep reading]

Emily was asleep within five minutes of her head hitting the pillow.

She’d offered the bed to him, after realizing he’d made a good point -- not wanting to just summon servants to her room with a cot only to explain the sudden appearance of a man. She offered to sleep on the divan. But he’d refused, so she slipped under her covers despite the still setting sun, and was out in an instant.

She was still asleep some time later, when an assertive knocking came at her door. “Your Majesty.” It was Corvo, his voice typically gruff but perhaps a bit on edge. A harder knock. “Emily.” She didn’t stir.

Oliver had taken his seat on the couch and for several minutes he sat at the end with his back against the arm and his knees tucked to his chest. His shirt had gotten a bit wrinkled -- which annoyed him to no end, but otherwise he remained pretty presentable. It was when she passed out that he buried his hands in his hair, tugging at it and grumbling to himself unsteadily, trying to remain quiet. Though he was certain that no amount of his angsty bickering would actually wake her.

He left it that way, disheveled and tossed about, figuring he could fix it later before she woke. He knew that wouldn't be for another long while but he was a patient man.

He was a man.

He breathed out. Breathed in, capturing the breath and holding it there, bringing his hand up, now raw with a cut that had stopped bleeding, and he stroked the thin line across his throat before breathing out again.

He had was a man who had survived.

His eyes flickered over to the door at the sound of the knock and for a split second he weighed his options. Leave and disturb her sleep, open the door and disturb her sleep, or, hide. Yes. That seemed to be, in his now very much alive and human mind, the best course of action in the moment. But once he found himself hidden behind the royal purple drapery, silk covering the expanse of his body as he leaned back against the cold window, he realized that this perhaps was in fact not the best course of action.

He realized this of course, when it was too late. So he would ride this out and hope to the very void itself and beyond that Corvo wasn't on high alert like the watch dog he was trained to be.

A louder knock. “Emily, I’m coming in.” And in another minute he was in the door. While not frenzied per se, there was a definite anxiety in his tight lips and sharp eyes, that softened when he spotted his daughter sleeping soundly. He always softened for her. She was his weakness, he was her strength. The most loyal subject she would ever have.

Corvo took soft steps to her bedside, sitting on the edge. He remembered doing this same thing back when she was younger -- especially during the rat plague and right after it, right after Jessamine…

With a gentle hand he smoothed the hair from her face, pausing just a moment to feel her temperature. She hadn’t been well lately. She’d been hiding it - attempting to hide it - but he wasn’t as easily fooled as some others in the tower. He’d planned to give her another couple days to fix it herself before he would send Hypatia straight to her. Still, now she seemed at peace, cocooned in a deep sleep.

He leaned down and placed a bristly kiss on her forehead. All this responsibility, and she was still a kid. But she’d always be a kid to him. His kid.

The last week she’d been restless and seemed steeped in hectic energy, but now she was just a young woman in slumber. “You’re gonna be okay, Em,” he assured her sleeping form, giving her hand a squeeze. He looked down at the gloves that still covered her hands even in sleep - not knowing if she’d ever be called from bed, or walked in on. His eyes were pained again, reminded of the struggle she now faced, all because he hadn’t been there, hadn’t done his job well enough. He’d failed her, when she needed it most. But she’d come out of it as strong as ever -- stronger, even. “You’re a good kid.” He pulled the blankets up a little further around her, and held her hand again. “I’m proud of you, Em. And I’m gonna keep you safe. I promise.” He never got to talk like this to her anymore. Not after 14, where anytime he got emotional she would roll her eyes and make gagging sounds. But she couldn’t tell him off now. And he needed to tell her things like this sometimes.

Satisfied his daughter was peaceful and comfortable, he turned his attention to the rest of the room. Eyes scanned over every surface as he did the cursory Royal Protector scan, the same he did every time he escorted her to some new location. He didn’t go check her drinks for poison - not right this second, anyway - but he looked over the entrances and exits, checked for weak spots in security. His eyes narrowed, lips thinning into a hard line as he spotted the shape in the curtains. Assassin? If they were, they weren’t particularly good at it.

Quick, silent steps, circling around from the side. He couldn’t quite see the figure, but he was sizing them up already. His arm shot out, wrapping around what should be the neck area, pressing the tip of his crossbow into the side of the - man? Seemed like it was a man, too tall for most women. “Hands where I can see them.” A quick glance to the bed. “And keep quiet.” He wasn’t about to wake Emily if he didn’t need to.

Oliver listened and closely so, eyes closed as he grinned faintly. He'd always been so fixated on the bond they shared, his own father having been... not the greatest, to say the least. And perhaps he'd also been just the slightest bit envious as well. But his parents were long gone, even before he'd been cast into the Void on that awful day in the Month of Darkness. Billie was the closest he had to a mother these days but if he were being honest she was far more a sister than anything, or at least, he felt he could trust her more than he could trust a mother. Then again, he didn't exactly know the standards here.

He had no frame of reference for that kind of-

Oh.

His eyes widened and his whole body tensed, adrenaline rushing again. "I assure you that waking Emily is the exact opposite of what I'm here for," he whispered back, bright wide eyes flickering over as best as they could in an attempt to meet his. "I can explain this, and with a fair amount of eloquence, but I urge you not to stab me and to remain calm and rational."

Corvo’s eyes flashed angrily. “I told you no contact with the rest of the tower.” His voice was only slightly gruffer than normal. Irritated, not infuriated. “How hard is that for you to understand?” He lowered his weapon but still pulled Oliver out from his hiding place, stepping between his daughter and the former god. He looked over him in a quick assessment. Messy hair. Wrinkled clothes.

“What are you doing in my daughter’s bedroom?” And he was talking about his daughter, not just the Empress of the Isles. His voice had gone hard, crossbow raising again but not aiming. Not that he’d need to at such close range. He glared at the man who’d been cowered in the corner of his daughter’s room. He had a lot of explaining to do. As much as Corvo trusted Emily, if he were to double it, that’s how much he didn’t trust Oliver. At least, around his daughter.

"Now I am... fully aware of how this looks." He glanced down at the crossbow and his eyes flickered back up to Corvo, then to Emily. "... And I am also aware of how much explaining this might require." He took a deep breath and anxiously ran a hand through his hair, a habit he was quickly beginning to develop over his past few months of being human. He supposed it was better than nail biting or fidgeting to the point of distraction.

He thought for a moment, trying to gather himself and the words he would use, considering the rhetoric with which to approach the subject and deciding that starting off with 'My dear Corvo' would probably get him an arrow between the eyes... or somewhere else a bit unsavory.

"There are things you take for granted, when you're a human, when you can feel everything so much that it fades from your awareness and easily becomes nothing but noise in the background of everyday life. Sensations were luxury in the Void. To surpass anything but a cold, numb, nothing was bliss, and to be deprived from basic human... basic functions of sentience... existing... for four thousand... for many long years-" He found himself stumbling over his words, stopping a moment to catch himself. Corvo Attano did not know his origins, his story. This would all be foreign to him, it was difficult to explain to someone when it felt so out of context.

He hadn't noticed it before, the fear that had settled within his chest, tightening, tugging, pulling him into himself. He wasn't afraid of Corvo Attano, but the idea that he might never see Emily again, the idea that all of this would sound like rubbish to a man who had little time to entertain him. He wondered for a moment if it were even worth explaining, if words themselves could ever do justice to the way that he felt that night.

"The Void watched. It stared, it commanded and I obeyed. And sometimes I would wonder if it were the hollow breeze of oblivion or the quiet cackling of the presence that kept me bound to an existence without existing. I knew, before Billie ventured to Shindaerey Peak, before Daud told her his plan, that in weeks time I would fade, and I would be liberated in one way or another. But even death itself could never fill the emptiness, the jagged hole that had been left when they... I approached Emily several months ago and we shared a drink and conversed and though I undoubtedly should have asked for your blessing before appearing before her so late at night and - I did not have time nor did I think that- o-or even expect that-..." He took a deep breath and he stared away, guilt clear on his face even if it were masked loosely behind the stoicism that was so characteristic of him.

"When I kissed her I wasn't aware it would have such explosive consequences... Not until it was already set in stone. There is a wound within her that invites the Void, and it is closing, slowly, but the more that she utilizes her abilities, the more it opens and tempts her. It troubles her late into the night, to the point that the simple human function of sleeping has now become something of a rarity. Because of my... unique connection, tether, to the Void, my presence seems to tame it, which allows her to sleep, among other things." He still didn't look up, swallowing harshly, a sweat pricking at his brow.

The younger man’s talk of 'sensations' wasn’t making it any better. Corvo’s eyes narrowed. His suspicions didn’t disappear as Oliver explained - or tried to explain - some aspect of being... Void-bound, for lack of a better term. Corvo very nearly rolled his eyes at the florid language. The kid was almost as bad as Wyman with their poetry. But that reaction quickly stilled.

His eyes stared daggers into the man who tripped over words of late-night rendezvouses and of asking for his blessing.

Even under his anger he had to acknowledge it; this kid was so damn stupid. Corvo had known better that to mention anything to Jessmine’s father the first time they ever- they were ever- …intimate. He hadn’t mentioned it to the man at all, actually: Jessamine had, and that was after the affair was already underway. Hells, the guy could’ve saved them both a lot trouble if he’d just kept his damn mouth shut. But he’d said it now. And Corvo had heard. And he wasn’t happy.

When you kissed her?! He bit his tongue to stop from shouting at the former god, hearing out the rest of his story. Truthfully, he wasn’t sure the rest was any better. Emotions battled within him -- primarily anger, that the punk had been so reckless, so selfish, so irresponsible as a god. It was one thing to go after heretics that writhed in hedonistic worship, but to set his sights on the Empress. On a woman - a girl, only 25 - who only took his Mark out of necessity. Corvo’s jaw was firm as he shook his head with disdain at the black-haired boy who cowered before him. The 'among other things' comment had him wincing and groaning - he didn’t want to know what other things. He really didn’t. And he didn’t want to know how Oliver knew.

And now he was left in the uncomfortable position of figuring out this whole situation. If he took Oliver away, he’d be hurting Emily. Protecting her, in a way, but - on a more immediate level - hurting her. If he let Oliver stay, he risked losing his still young and still perhaps not the most sound-in-judgment daughter to the temptations of the Outsider. At least the younger man’s words seemed sincere. And scared, which was good. He should be scared.

A moment of silence passed as Corvo weighed his options.

Finally, he put away the crossbow, straightening himself.

“Well you can’t leave,” he said flatly - an order. “You stay here now. Any time she needs to sleep, you’re here, you hear me?” He jutted an authoritative finger at the man. “And if she needs - whatever else she needs. You do it.” He had no idea what the situation was, entirely, but whatever it was; Emily’s well-being was top priority. “But by no means will you ever be touching my daughter, understand? You keep your hands off of her; I keep my hands off of you.”

Oh how he wished he could fade into nothing right now. How he so desperately desired the sweet embrace of nonexistence would sweep him off his feet and take him away from this awful, compromising situation. His eyes met Corvo's and something shattered within him, making his knees a little weak.

He hadn't realized it before, but even if he wasn't that scared of Corvo, he certainly was a terrifying man.

He nodded though, expression hardening in his sad attempt to save face. He went cold, stoic, impassive and unreadable. Even though he was beginning to ponder whether or not coming to the tower in the first place had even been the best course of action. No. Of course it was. Emily needed him, so he would be here. Besides... it felt nice to feel needed.

"It was the arrangement made after our conversation in the hidden chambers behind the fireplace near Dr. Hypatia's lab. She'd been on her way there in her silken nightgown with her hair draped down her..." He stopped himself there. Perhaps he should leave some things unspoken. Imagery set aside.

"I was to sleep here, she was to sleep there and converse with you on the matter in the morning," he explained, trying to change the subject.

Corvo stiffened as he mentioned the secret room. That was Jess’s place. That was his place now. He winced further as the boy went on. “Just-” Corvo held out a hand, “Just... stop talking.”

A brief pause, and luckily the topic was changed. The arrangements seemed… Glancing to Emily, Corvo nodded in reluctant agreement. So his daughter had made a smart choice after all. He really should trust her more.

He did trust her.

Just maybe not her hormones.

“She made the right choice. And I’ll be discussing it with her in the morning. In the meantime, I’ll be sleeping right here.” He promptly lay down on the ground between the couch and Emily’s bed, sending Oliver another glare. “Goodnight.” And with that he turned away from the man. He may not be falling asleep, but he was done listening to the former god pining over his daughter.

Oliver stared at Corvo, eyes widening faintly. He had definitely said something wrong. Perhaps multiple things but he wished people would tell him instead of expecting him to know, instead of scolding him for unintentional wrongdoings. But he was thankful that Corvo hadn't shot him at least. That was good. That was... progress.

He didn't reply, pulling himself back onto the couch and slinking back against the arm, leaning into the fabric with his knees tucked once more to his chest and his arms wrapped around his legs, almost for dear life. He didn't sleep. He found it difficult to sleep actually, though he hadn't mentioned it to anyone he was sure Billie at least noticed.

The Void didn't have him physically but in spirit, it owned all. Even him. He would visit there sometimes in his dreams, walking the platforms again, wailing leviathans overhead. He would wake up in cold sweats, a numbness taking him just as he woke but fading away once he'd come to.

So he avoided it at all costs. And it wasn't like he'd get a good night's sleep right now even if he tried. Not with Corvo laying there, surely not sleeping either. His stomach grumbled and he realized he hadn't eaten dinner. But he ignored it, the faint aching was nice anyways. It was good to know he was still alive.

Minutes turned into hours but it passed in a blur that he hardly noticed. Notes suddenly began slipping from his closed lips and he hardly realized it himself but he began humming. Perhaps to quell the tense silence that had fallen on the room or maybe out of some odd nostalgia, to feel guilty brought back memories. His mother sick in bed, pale in the face, circles under her eyes as she caressed his cheek with her thumb and her palm. Cold. The Void already had her.

And she would sing to him, there would be a candle flickering somewhere in the room, and he wasn't sure why but her words, her breath that they provoked, it was lined with cold, as if a window had been left open, puffs of mist escaping from her. If this night were good for anything, it was thinking.

A small tear trailed down his cheek and he didn't know why he was sad, but he was.

If Emily had been aware of the hours passing, she may have cheered once she hit hour three. And then it was five, then eight - eight! - blissful hours of sleep. When she finally woke it was a solid ten hours later. Ten hours of perfect, pristine, beautiful, euphoric dreamless sleep. Seeing the light from the mostly-risen sun coming in through her windows and lighting her ceiling, Emily blinked. Morning. She’d slept til morning.

“Finally,” she whispered, eyes closed, overflowing with relief. She felt tears falling from her eyes and wiped them away, feeling silly. This shouldn’t be such a big deal, and yet it was. Emily writhed under her sheets, unable to help the joy that filled her, stretching and popping her joints as she woke up. She rejoiced in the act of waking, reveling in the feeling of her bed, arching her back against the mattress and clutching the sheets, letting out a purr of happiness.

She truly felt the sun. And it was beautiful.

She moaned with one final stretch, toes curling and fingers flexing against her headboard, then finally opened her eyes wide to the sun. She couldn’t help the small smile gracing her lips. It was a glorious day.

She rolled over, grabbing for the whale bone comb as she often did, starting in on the ends of her hair as she sat up, her whole body shuddering delightedly with newfound energy. It was a good day to be--

She stopped as her eyes spotted the Outsider. He didn’t appear to be sleeping.

At first he'd watched her, eyes flickering over her stirring body. But near immediately he turned his gaze away, not only to respect Corvo's wishes but also because he didn't want to tempt himself, didn't want to stare for too long that he might start desperately desiring her, that his hands might ache just to touch her. So he turned his gaze, lids lowered halfway, staring out the window and onto the water.

He told himself he didn't need her. He told himself over and over and over again until he was near mouthing it. He would find someone else, no, better yet, he would grow old and die alone like the vast majority of humans. She was not his belonging, he could not stare at her as such, you must restrict the wandering gaze.

He felt his stomach churning now. So that would make a total of two hungers he was now holding at bay. At least he could hopefully soon satiate one of them. He would get over the other. He would tell himself so much that he would start to believe it.

He hoped.

She felt a plethora of things as he turned away. A bit embarrassed that he’d spotted her rather frivolous response to the morning. Surprise that he was still there -- then again, she reasoned, that was surely why she’d made it to morning at all, but she was still mystified he’d stayed. There was also shame over her behavior the day before, mortification at the failed seduction, guilt at how he’d shut down in those last few moments. Gratefulness that he hadn’t abandoned her.

She felt her hard wall of the day before softening. Of course now she was beginning to understand. Now that she’d already made all of the mistakes. Now she saw how she could have been gentler, kinder, could have given him the touch - the simple affection - he so obviously longed for without viewing it all as some game of power. That wasn’t what it was to him, was it? Just to her. Just to her mind, brought up in halls where power was a monitored commodity, traded and withheld and redeemed by people with pretty clothes and ugly ambitions.

She shook her head, trying to get her thoughts straight, feeling some already slipping from her mind as they might through a sieve. At the very least she should apologize.

Emily leaned forward, crawling to the edge of the bed. “I-”

She cut herself off, at the sight of her father fast asleep on the floor. Her jaw dropped slightly, eyebrows furrowing then immediately raising in shock, a quick bounce of movement that would have surely been comical had she been aware of it. She looked to the Outsider, then gestured silently to her father’s body, cocking her head in question. All night? she mouthed. She’d never heard him come in. As she glanced down again, she felt a blush rising in her cheeks. By the seven bloody strictures - he’d seen the Outsider, then. She winced. That would take some explaining.

He was beginning to hope for a lot of things lately, one of those being that she would be the one to explain everything to him. With her, words came naturally, as if he were in the Void, as if he could pick and choose from every word in the whole language just sitting at his disposal, waiting to be properly utilized in the most advantageous ways possible. But with Corvo he couldn't coordinate, he felt awkward, less of a man when the other towered above, gaze so dark and piercing, face twisted into a glare.

And then there was the other part of him, shut away under lock and key, the one that knew why he was so hardened on the outside, had witnessed every scar he'd gotten, from the competition in Karnaca to the slips along rooftops or the metal searing the skin of his chest throughout his months in Coldridge.

It was difficult to start a relationship with someone whom he knew near every tiny, intimate detail about, when the other knew little to nothing about himself.

It was especially difficult to speak without making comments that would assuredly seem malicious. He didn't want that. He just had no other means of communicating, his few years as a child scraping by in Tyvian alleyways, barely escaping death at every corner had taught him near nothing where emotions came into play and these last few months? These months on a ship with Billie Lurk, a woman who's passion translated into how hard she hit, how well she proved herself? She wasn't much better at it either.

Not since Deirdre. It'd gotten even worse after Daud.

He nodded in response to her question, though passively, with no clear expression on his face. She was now a business partner. Nothing more. He would let her know that, he would be firm and strong enough to keep himself contained. He had stared the Void in the face for four thousand years and it had blinked first.

Emily wanted to be exasperated at her father’s protective nature - and honestly, she was, to some extent - but she found herself with a tiny soft smile as she looked down at Corvo on the floor. He was her strength, she was his weakness.

She glanced to the standing clock. Just past 5:30. A bit early, but it wasn’t as though Corvo would be mad at her for waking him. Whether or not she wanted to wake him was another matter. She had to consider the conversation that would inevitably follow. Her eyes flicked briefly to the Outsider, trying to greet his expressionless demeanor with patience instead of pain. She would find a way to make it right. She would. She didn’t want him hurting.

She hesitated there for a moment, looking at her father, her indecision visible -- a rare occurrence. But here, in her own room, this early in the morning, after the most satisfying night of sleep she’d ever had; her guard was down. Examining Corvo’s sleeping face, she imagined the questions he might ask. She wondered how much the Outsider had told him. If he was smart, not quite everything. Had he explained the corruption of the creeping Void? Even now she sensed its presence, though far away and not so vicious as it had been before. The longer she spent around him, the weaker the pull of the Void was.

She could have kissed him for that.

She wouldn’t. A kiss given in gratitude wasn’t what he wanted - at least, she didn’t think so. Still, her lips tingled at the prospect. Her body felt free of the tar-like tendrils of the Void for the first time since - well, since he’d kissed her those months ago. She felt light and airy and as though her vision was suddenly clearer than ever before. A part of her even felt confident that if she needed to she could access the abilities of the Void, too, without being destroyed in the process. She didn’t intend to test the theory.

Emily’s gaze drifted back to the Outsider, her warm eyes clear and bright, untouched by the Void, her judgment unhindered. Instead of buzzing in her head, questions floated calmly, waiting for her to pluck them from her thoughts and vivify them with her tongue.

She kept her voice low, just a hair above a whisper, trying not to wake her father. “Thank you. Truly. I can’t possibly express how grateful I am-” She stopped as Corvo twitched, watching him for a moment, verifying he still slept, before her eyes returned to the Outsider. “...How much does he know?” The question was tentative, curious.

He was unaffected by her voice, only letting his eyes linger on hers and nowhere else. No longer would he indulge temptation. He would bury the desire to study her from afar, with her wild hair and half waking expression, clothing disheveled and wrinkled in some places but form fitting... oh so very form fitting.

By the Void.

When he noticed the twitch in Corvo's features he immediately tensed, slowly shaking his head and turning his gaze away at her question. Too much, is what he was compelled to answer with, but he didn't, lips pursed together in a thin line, eyes dimmer than they were the night before. Perhaps it was a lack of passion, or perhaps a lack of sleep. It was probably both actually.

Physically he was exhausted but his mind was whirling. He had things to write, things to do, things to distract himself with. But he was at least grateful that she'd said thank you, it made him feel just the tiniest bit better about the whole situation.

"Everything," he said simply, which was vague in itself. "We kissed without his blessing, and through selfishness I cursed you," he added, his voice quiet, barely above a whisper. He failed to mention the fact that Corvo probably thought they'd done far more than that.

Probably because he didn't realize that was what Corvo thought.

Because no one told him anything.

Emily’s eyes caught the way he looked at her father, the way he turned away. Something had certainly come to pass between the two of them. And with his words she immediately understood what.

Her eyes widened, mortified. “EV-” Her voice came out far too loud, and she quickly glanced down nervously as she lowered her voice. “Everything?” She couldn’t even focus on her feelings about the rest of his words. Was he completely daft? She felt a blush rising up her chest at the prospect of her father knowing about their… brief intimacy. He tended to assume the worst, to blow things a bit out of proportion, at least when it came to his daughter’s love life. She could remember his lecture to Alexi about her responsibility to the Watch, how she couldn’t let her relationship with Emily affect it in any way -- how he’d gone out of his way to make sure she was never posted alone when she took duty in the tower, even after they’d broken off the affair. Wyman had gotten the same treatment, until Emily had stepped in and brokered a peace. And she could only imagine it was worse with the Outsider than with any previous suitors -- Corvo wasn’t exactly inclined to favor the former deity. And with the strictures - the wanton flesh, and all that - the Outsider didn’t exactly have a pristine reputation.

Emily shook her head. She’d need to iron this out, and quickly. She wondered if she could sneak the Outsider into her safe room without waking Corvo. It would probably be better if he wasn’t there.

Thoughts immediately shifting into problem-solving mode, she performed a quick maneuver with the comb she held, reviewing the rest of his words, until it held her hair back decently well, wedged in a complex knot. She was suddenly slightly irritated. “You don’t need to ask for his blessing.” She tried to keep her voice as a whisper. “That’s just… insulting,” she added with a disapproving look. “I make my own decisions, my father doesn’t speak for me. If it were his way, I’d still be a virgin.” The words slipped from her mouth before she could stop them, but then the deed was done. “And I’d never have kissed anyone,” she added, though it was a bit too little too late.

Corvo stirred.

“You should leave,” Emily spoke apologetically, truly feeling bad about cutting him out of the loop, but she knew he’d only serve to distract Corvo, and that would prevent any sort of resolution.

Oliver's thoughts drifted back to the days before the contest in Karnaca, how religious Corvo's mother had been, how so very sweet and loving she was towards him, but how adamant she was about him following those seven guiding strictures, even if she rarely directly enforced them. They were her morals, so he figured in some way, they were also Corvo's.

"It is respect, Emily," he suddenly spoke, standing up. "It is not that he owns you -- despite what you think, not everyone in the Empire is working against you, or actively attempting to sabotage your rights," he scolded, clearly not in a great mood. He stepped past Corvo with near perfect silence, the grace in his step clear even if he were typically on the clumsy side.

"Corvo Attano is a great man who's made sacrifices in his short lifetime that the strongest men in history would shudder at the thought of. To have his blessing would be the greatest of accomplishments. Like it or not you are his daughter and thus he does have some say in your life, and at the very least, a right to his own opinions. Cast aside your petty rebellion for a few moments and you might see things the slightest bit clearer than you had before." He turned the door handle, opening it and glancing back at her. "And perhaps you should show a bit more gratitude to one of the only people in the Empire who genuinely cares about your well-being rather than dismissing him or stepping on him like hardened dirt beneath your polished boots." He shut the door behind him, an unreadable expression on his face. It sounded as though he were warning her, but his tone was chiding, his brows furrowed but not in anger, knitted together in hurt. It did hurt. It felt like regardless of the steps he took, he would always land on eggshells, cracking under his weight, shifting, crumbling. There was no winning with either of them. Tell the truth and they disapproved, lie and they were infuriated, say nothing at all and he was being dismissive. His patience was wearing thin.

Emily’s lips thinned into a taut line as he chided her. She took steady breaths, reminding herself to be patient. He was tired and grumpy. His power came from his words; he would use them to keep himself safe, and to him that meant scolding her. She wasn’t even that mad about his words. He made a decent point, it was just the way he assumed her thought process that was irritating as all hells.

Of course she knew Corvo wasn’t trying to ‘sabotage her rights’ - he loved her. She loved him, of course she did, he was her father and she respected his opinions. But she sometimes had to remind him that she wasn’t a child anymore. If the Outsider thought he might shame her for taking advantage of her father, he obviously hadn’t been paying close attention to their relationship.

Emily respected her father tremendously. He was a great man, and she didn’t need anyone telling her that. She saw it clearly enough. No ‘petty rebellion’ could cloud the pristine (if imperfect) image her father held in her eyes. Everyone who looked on their relationship with scorn, calling him weak-willed or her spoiled, knew nothing. They were the only family they had. No grandparents to help shoulder the burden, no siblings, no aunts, uncles, cousins. Not anymore, anyway. She knew he was strong. Knew he was brave. She loved him more than she could ever love a partner, of that she was sure. She owed him her life a thousand times over. And if the Outsider couldn’t understand that she wouldn’t explain it to him.

She watched the Outsider pout his way out of the room. And he called her childish.

“He’s got a point, you know.” Corvo looked up at her once the door had closed, sitting up, in good humor despite the tense exit of their guest.

She shook her head, wryly. “You know I appreciate you, Father.”

He pulled himself to a standing position, wincing at stiffness left over from sleeping on a crossbow, turning that small bristly smile on his daughter. “Of course I know, Em.” He slung his arm around her shoulders, pulling her against him in a clumsy hug, kissing the top of her head. “But really,” his voice was conspiratorial, “I keep wondering when I’ll get that parade in my honor. Or a statue.” She grinned and pushed him away. “Don’t forget the boat. I need a boat named after me,” he added with a grin, knocking her arm aside and swooping in for a full-on hug, nearly pulling her from the bed.

“Father!” She laughed, knocking him with her shoulder playfully before slipping her arms around him, too. Maybe his little tirade had made her realize one thing: they didn’t hug enough.

With one last quick squeeze she pulled away, adjusting herself until she sat on the edge of the bed, letting out a huff of breath. “Okay. Fun time’s over. We need to talk.”

Corvo nodded, accepting her shift in tone with a determined grimace, the threat of a lecture entering his voice. “Yes we do.”

More of my stuff here.

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martireiber67-blog · 7 years ago

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Teaching An Child Related To Fire Fighters

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spooky-froll · 7 years ago

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You’ve heard it all before: there were the various “surges” (though once upon a time sold as paths to victory, not simply to break a “stalemate”); there were the insider, or “green-on-blue,” attacks in which Afghans trained, advised, and often armed by the U.S. turned their weapons on their mentors (two such incidents in the last month resulted in three dead American soldiers and more wounded); there were the Afghan ghost soldiers, ghost police, ghost students, and ghost teachers (all existing only on paper, the money for them ponied up by U.S. taxpayers but always in someone else’s pocket); and there was that never-ending national “reconstruction” program that long ago outspent the famed Marshall Plan, which helped put all of Western Europe back on its feet after World War II. It included projects for roads to nowhere, gas stations built in the middle of nowhere, and those Pentagon-produced, forest-patterned camouflage outfits for the Afghan army in a land only 2.1% forested. (The design was, it turns out, favored by the Afghan defense minister of the moment and his fashion statement cost U.S. taxpayers a mere $28 million more than it would have cost to produce other freely available, more appropriate designs.) And that, of course, is just to begin the distinctly bumpy drive down America’s Afghan highway to nowhere. Don’t even speak to me, for instance, about the $8.5 billion that the U.S. sunk into efforts to suppress the opium crop in a country where the drug trade now flourishes.

And considering those failed surges, those repeated insider attacks, those ghost soldiers and ghost roads and ghost drug programs in the longest conflict in American history, the one that most people in this country have turned into a ghost war (and that neither of the candidates for president in 2016 even bothered to discuss on the campaign trail), what do you suppose Donald Trump’s generals have in mind when it comes to the future?

For that, let me turn you over to a man who, in 2011, in one of those surge moments, fought in Afghanistan: TomDispatch regular Army Major Danny Sjursen, author of Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge. Let him remind you of how that war once looked from the ground up and of what lessons were carefully not drawn from such experiences. Let him consider the eagerness of the generals to whom our new president has ceded decision-making on U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan to... well, let’s not say “surge,” since that word now has such negative connotations, but send thousands more U.S. troops into that country in a... well, what about a “resurge” in already vain hopes of... well... an American resurgence in that country.

Tread Carefully The Folly of the Next Afghan “Surge” By Danny Sjursen

We walked in a single file. Not because it was tactically sound. It wasn’t -- at least according to standard infantry doctrine. Patrolling southern Afghanistan in column formation limited maneuverability, made it difficult to mass fire, and exposed us to enfilading machine-gun bursts. Still, in 2011, in the Pashmul District of Kandahar Province, single file was our best bet.

The reason was simple enough: improvised bombs not just along roads but seemingly everywhere. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands. Who knew?

That’s right, the local “Taliban” -- a term so nebulous it’s basically lost all meaning -- had managed to drastically alter U.S. Army tactics with crude, homemade explosives stored in plastic jugs. And believe me, this was a huge problem. Cheap, ubiquitous, and easy to bury, those anti-personnel Improvised Explosive Devices, or IEDs, soon littered the “roads,” footpaths, and farmland surrounding our isolated outpost. To a greater extent than a number of commanders willingly admitted, the enemy had managed to nullify our many technological advantages for a few pennies on the dollar (or maybe, since we’re talking about the Pentagon, it was pennies on the millions of dollars).

Truth be told, it was never really about our high-tech gear. Instead, American units came to rely on superior training and discipline, as well as initiative and maneuverability, to best their opponents. And yet those deadly IEDs often seemed to even the score, being both difficult to detect and brutally effective. So there we were, after too many bloody lessons, meandering along in carnival-like, Pied Piper-style columns. Bomb-sniffing dogs often led the way, followed by a couple of soldiers carrying mine detectors, followed by a few explosives experts. Only then came the first foot soldiers, rifles at the ready. Anything else was, if not suicide, then at least grotesquely ill-advised.

And mind you, our improvised approach didn’t always work either. To those of us out there, each patrol felt like an ad hoc round of Russian roulette. In that way, those IEDs completely changed how we operated, slowing movement, discouraging extra patrols, and distancing us from what was then considered the ultimate “prize”: the local villagers, or what was left of them anyway. In a counterinsurgency (COIN) campaign, which is what the U.S. military was running in Afghanistan in those years, that was the definition of defeat.

Strategic Problems in Microcosm

My own unit faced a dilemma common to dozens -- maybe hundreds -- of other American units in Afghanistan. Every patrol was slow, cumbersome, and risky. The natural inclination, if you cared about your boys, was to do less. But effective COIN operations require securing territory and gaining the trust of the civilians living there. You simply can’t do that from inside a well-protected American base. One obvious option was to live in the villages -- which we eventually did -- but that required dividing up the company into smaller groups and securing a second, third, maybe fourth location, which quickly became problematic, at least for my 82-man cavalry troop (when at full strength). And, of course, there were no less than five villages in my area of responsibility.

I realize, writing this now, that there’s no way I can make the situation sound quite as dicey as it actually was. How, for instance, were we to “secure and empower” a village population that was, by then, all but nonexistent? Years, even decades, of hard fighting, air strikes, and damaged crops had left many of those villages in that part of Kandahar Province little more than ghost towns, while cities elsewhere in the country teemed with uprooted and dissatisfied peasant refugees from the countryside.

Sometimes, it felt as if we were fighting over nothing more than a few dozen deserted mud huts. And like it or not, such absurdity exemplified America’s war in Afghanistan. It still does. That was the view from the bottom. Matters weren’t -- and aren't -- measurably better at the top. As easily as one reconnaissance troop could be derailed, so the entire enterprise, which rested on similarly shaky foundations, could be unsettled.

At a moment when the generals to whom President Trump recently delegated decision-making powers on U.S. troop strength in that country consider a new Afghan “surge,” it might be worth looking backward and zooming out just a bit. Remember, the very idea of “winning” the Afghan War, which left my unit in that collection of mud huts, rested (and still rests) on a few rather grandiose assumptions.

The first of these surely is that the Afghans actually want (or ever wanted) us there; the second, that the country was and still is vital to our national security; and the third, that 10,000, 50,000, or even 100,000 foreign troops ever were or now could be capable of “pacifying” an insurgency, or rather a growing set of insurgencies, or securing 33 million souls, or facilitating a stable, representative government in a heterogeneous, mountainous, landlocked country with little history of democracy.

The first of these points is at least debatable. As you might imagine, any kind of accurate polling is quite difficult, if not impossible, outside the few major population centers in that isolated country. Though many Afghans, particularly urban ones, may favor a continued U.S. military presence, others clearly wonder what good a new influx of foreigners will do in their endlessly war-torn nation. As one high-ranking Afghan official recently lamented, thinking undoubtedly of the first use in his land of the largest non-nuclear bomb on the planet, “Is the plan just to use our country as a testing ground for bombs?" And keep in mind that the striking rise in territory the Taliban now controls, the most since they were driven from power in 2001, suggests that the U.S. presence is hardly welcomed everywhere.

The second assumption is far more difficult to argue or justify. To say the least, classifying a war in far-away Afghanistan as “vital” relies on a rather pliable definition of the term. If that passes muster -- if bolstering the Afghan military to the tune of (at least) tens of billions of dollars annually and thousands of new boots-on-the-ground in order to deny safe haven to “terrorists” is truly “vital” -- then logically the current U.S. presences in Iraq, Syria, Somalia, and Yemen are critical as well and should be similarly fortified. And what about the growing terror groups in Egypt, Libya, Nigeria, Tunisia, and so on? We’re talking about a truly expensive proposition here -- in blood and treasure. But is it true? Rational analysis suggests it is not. After all, on average about seven Americans were killed by Islamist terrorists on U.S. soil annually from 2005 to 2015. That puts terrorism deaths right up there with shark attacks and lightning strikes. The fear is real, the actual danger... less so.

As for the third point, it’s simply preposterous. One look at U.S. military attempts at “nation-building” or post-conflict stabilization and pacification in Iraq, Libya, or -- dare I say -- Syria should settle the issue. It’s often said that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. Yet here we are, 14 years after the folly of invading Iraq and many of the same voices -- inside and outside the administration -- are clamoring for one more “surge” in Afghanistan (and, of course, will be clamoring for the predictable surges to follow across the Greater Middle East).

The very idea that the U.S. military had the ability to usher in a secure Afghanistan is grounded in a number of preconditions that proved to be little more than fantasies. First, there would have to be a capable, reasonably corruption-free local governing partner and military. That’s a nonstarter. Afghanistan’s corrupt, unpopular national unity government is little better than the regime of Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam in the 1960s and that American war didn’t turn out so well, did it? Then there’s the question of longevity. When it comes to the U.S. military presence there, soon to head into its 16th year, how long is long enough? Several mainstream voices, including former Afghan commander General David Petraeus, are now talking about at least a “generation” more to successfully pacify Afghanistan. Is that really feasible given America’s growing resource constraints and the ever expanding set of dangerous “ungoverned spaces” worldwide?

And what could a new surge actually do? The U.S. presence in Afghanistan is essentially a fragmented series of self-contained bases, each of which needs to be supplied and secured. In a country of its size, with a limited transportation infrastructure, even the 4,000-5,000 extra troops the Pentagon is reportedly considering sending right now won’t go very far.

Now, zoom out again. Apply the same calculus to the U.S. position across the Greater Middle East and you face what we might start calling the Afghan paradox, or my own quandary safeguarding five villages with only 82 men writ large. Do the math. The U.S. military is already struggling to keep up with its commitments. At what point is Washington simply spinning its proverbial wheels? I’ll tell you when -- yesterday.

Now, think about those three questionable Afghan assumptions and one uncomfortable actuality leaps forth. The only guiding force left in the American strategic arsenal is inertia.

What Surge 4.0 Won’t Do -- I Promise...

Remember something: this won’t be America’s first Afghan “surge.” Or its second, or even its third. No, this will be the U.S. military’s fourth crack at it. Who feels lucky? First came President George W. Bush’s "quiet" surge back in 2008. Next, just one month into his first term, newly minted President Barack Obama sent 17,000 more troops to fight his so-called good war (unlike the bad one in Iraq) in southern Afghanistan. After a testy strategic review, he then committed 30,000 additional soldiers to the “real” surge a year later. That’s what brought me (and the rest of B Troop, 4-4 Cavalry) to Pashmul district in 2011. We left -- most of us -- more than five years ago, but of course about 8,800 American military personnel remain today and they are the basis for the surge to come.

To be fair, Surge 4.0 might initially deliver certain modest gains (just as each of the other three did in their day). Realistically, more trainers, air support, and logistics personnel could indeed stabilize some Afghan military units for some limited amount of time. Sixteen years into the conflict, with 10% as many American troops on the ground as at the war’s peak, and after a decade-plus of training, Afghan security forces are still being battered by the insurgents. In the last years, they’ve been experiencing record casualties, along with the usual massive stream of desertions and the legions of “ghost soldiers” who can neither die nor desert because they don’t exist, although their salaries do (in the pockets of their commanders or other lucky Afghans). And that’s earned them a “stalemate,” which has left the Taliban and other insurgent groups in control of a significant part of the country. And if all goes well (which isn’t exactly a surefire thing), that’s likely to be the best that Surge 4.0 can produce: a long, painful tie.

Peel back the onion’s layers just a bit more and the ostensible reasons for America’s Afghan War vanish along with all the explanatory smoke and mirrors. After all, there are two things the upcoming “mini-surge” will emphatically not do:

*It won’t change a failing strategic formula.

Imagine that formula this way: American trainers + Afghan soldiers + loads of cash + (unspecified) time = a stable Afghan government and lessening Taliban influence.

It hasn’t worked yet, of course, but -- so the surge-believers assure us -- that’s because we need more: more troops, more money, more time. Like so many loyal Reaganites, their answers are always supply-side ones and none of them ever seems to wonder whether, almost 16 years later, the formula itself might not be fatally flawed.

According to news reports, no solution being considered by the current administration will even deal with the following interlocking set of problems: Afghanistan is a large, mountainous, landlocked, ethno-religiously heterogeneous, poor country led by a deeply corrupt government with a deeply corrupt military. In a place long known as a “graveyard of empires,” the United States military and the Afghan Security Forces continue to wage what one eminent historian has termed “fortified compound warfare.” Essentially, Washington and its local allies continue to grapple with relatively conventional threats from exceedingly mobile Taliban fighters across a porous border with Pakistan, a country that has offered not-so-furtive support and a safe haven for those adversaries. And the Washington response to this has largely been to lock its soldiers inside those fortified compounds (and focus on protecting them against “insider attacks” by those Afghans it works with and trains). It hasn’t worked. It can’t. It won’t.

Consider an analogous example. In Vietnam, the United States never solved the double conundrum of enemy safe havens and a futile search for legitimacy. The Vietcong guerillas and North Vietnamese Army used nearby Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam to rest, refit, and replenish. U.S. troops meanwhile lacked legitimacy because their corrupt South Vietnamese partners lacked it.

Sound familiar? We face the same two problems in Afghanistan: a Pakistani safe haven and a corrupt, unpopular central government in Kabul. Nothing, and I mean nothing, in any future troop surge will effectively change that.

*It won’t pass the logical fallacy test.

The minute you really think about it, the whole argument for a surge or mini-surge instantly slides down a philosophical slippery slope.

If the war is really about denying terrorists safe havens in ungoverned or poorly governed territory, then why not surge more troops into Yemen, Somalia, Nigeria, Libya, Pakistan (where al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden’s son Hamza bin-Laden are believed to be safely ensconced), Iraq, Syria, Chechnya, Dagestan (where one of the Boston Marathon bombers was radicalized), or for that matter Paris or London. Every one of those places has harbored and/or is harboring terrorists. Maybe instead of surging yet again in Afghanistan or elsewhere, the real answer is to begin to realize that all the U.S. military in its present mode of operation can do to change that reality is make it worse. After all, the last 15 years offer a vision of how it continually surges and in the process only creates yet more ungovernable lands and territories.

So much of the effort, now as in previous years, rests on an evident desire among military and political types in Washington to wage the war they know, the one their army is built for: battles for terrain, fights that can be tracked and measured on maps, the sort of stuff that staff officers (like me) can display on ever more-complicated PowerPoint slides. Military men and traditional policymakers are far less comfortable with ideological warfare, the sort of contest where their instinctual proclivity to “do something” is often counterproductive.

As U.S. Army Field Manual 3-24 -- General David Petraeus’ highly touted counterinsurgency “bible” -- wisely opined: “Sometimes doing nothing is the best reaction.” It’s high time to follow such advice (even if it’s not the advice that Petraeus himself is offering anymore).

As for me, call me a deep-dyed skeptic when it comes to what 4,000 or 5,000 more U.S. troops can do to secure or stabilize a country where most of the village elders I met couldn’t tell you how old they were. A little foreign policy humility goes a long way toward not heading down that slippery slope. Why, then, do Americans continue to deceive themselves? Why do they continue to believe that even 100,000 boys from Indiana and Alabama could alter Afghan society in a way Washington would like? Or any other foreign land for that matter?

I suppose some generals and policymakers are just plain gamblers. But before putting your money on the next Afghan surge, it might be worth flashing back to the limitations, struggles, and sacrifices of just one small unit in one tiny, contested district of southern Afghanistan in 2011...

Lonely Pashmul

So, on we walked -- single file, step by treacherous step -- for nearly a year. Most days things worked out. Until they didn’t. Unfortunately, some soldiers found bombs the hard way: three dead, dozens wounded, one triple amputee. So it went and so we kept on going. Always onward. Ever forward. For America? Afghanistan? Each other? No matter. And so it seems other Americans will keep on going in 2017, 2018, 2019...

Lift foot. Hold breath. Step. Exhale.

Keep walking... to defeat... but together.

#Freeblr #Afghanistan #U.S. Foreign Policy #Middle East

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parvaatidynasty-blog · 7 years ago

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Top 10 Games I played in 2017 [so far]

May was a busy month for me, and I didn’t realize until recently that I neglected this blog and forgot to write something. As a way to make up for it, I wrote 2 blog posts. Both entries this time are a list-like format, but since I’m playing Breath of the Wild right now, I’d really like to write something more detailed about open worlds for July.

The first half of the year is almost over, and boy, has it been great. There have been so many great games released during the first half of this year alone that making a Game of the Year list at the end of 2017 will be remarkably difficult, more so than most other years. At the end of the year, 2 things will be certain: 1) a fair amount of games I enjoyed will be left out of the top 10, and 2) games I played in this year that were released early than 2017 will be left out. As a result, I wanted to create a list of the top 10 games I played this year regardless of their actual release date. This year I played a fair amount of games from previous years, and some of them are so good it’d be a shame to not give them their 60 seconds of fame here. Even though the list is mostly of 2017 games anyway, the order may not necessarily be the same come December.

10. Snipperclips: Cut it out, together!

Snipperclips is one of the best games you could include in a potential “Nintendo Switch starter pack.” Although playable by a single player, the game shines in cooperative play, and through this method of play, you can experience the vision of the Switch hardware. The game is a blast regardless of whether you are playing it in TV or tabletop mode. Everything from the quick load time of the game software and OS to the snappy gameflow of Snipperclips perfectly exemplifies the mission statement of the Nintendo Switch hardware. The puzzles are well-crafted with a good amount of variety and rely on both players to work together. As you and your partner discover the solutions to the puzzles, you will undoubtedly find yourselves come across moments of laughter, which makes the game all the more memorable. The additional modes are welcomed, whether they be the competitive sports and battle mode or the 4 player puzzles. Overall, it’s a game with more content than you would expect, making it a fantastic launch game and a perfect introduction to the Switch hardware.

9. ARMS

ARMS is a unique game, and even though the product on release is a little skimpy on the content, I’m really enjoying it. The motion controls are very intuitive, to the point where I haven’t even tried the Pro Controller. And although the mechanics appear simple on paper, there’s a lot of depth, and the skill ceiling is quite high; even the AI can be brutally difficult. I’m still barely above the skill floor, or at least the AI makes it seem that way at times, but I’m looking forward to playing more of ARMS as time goes on and seeing where my abilities peak. The great art direction, character design especially, makes the game very welcoming to all players. It’s really something to see the Mario Kart 8 team branch out of their comfort zone and create their own take on a fighting game.

8. Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia

How I perceive the Fire Emblem series has changed a lot over time. My first experience with the series was playing the Sacred Stones on the Gameboy Advance. I wasn’t particularly good at it, Advance Wars with its disposable units was more my style, but I did make it to the credits at the expense of many casualties during the endgame. I hadn’t played another game in the series since Awakening, and Awakening’s accessibility and the lack of Advance Wars games made me see the series in a new light. I’m proud to declare that I beat Fire Emblem: Fates on Hard, redeeming my poor play in the Sacred Stones, and although I haven’t beaten Echoes yet, I’m really enjoying it. The game is different in just the right amount of ways so that things feel fresh, and the writing is so well-done that I don’t feel like I’m missing the self-insert characters from the original 3DS entries. When it comes to sound, the amount of voicework in the game is nothing short of impressive and the soundtrack is as incredible as one should expect from the Fire Emblem series. Overall, Intelligent Systems did an excellent job taking an entry that not many people responded well to in the past and turning it into an excellent one.

7. Steins;Gate

Are visual novels games? Let’s not go down that rabbit hole. For now, I just want to say that Steins;Gate is great and should be experienced by anyone who likes visual novels or science fiction. I haven’t seen the anime, so beyond the elevator pitch of “kids create a microwave that sends emails to the past,” I had no idea what to expect. But when the game was available for $2.99 on PSN during the Golden Week sale, I bit, and I’m glad I did. Although the True Ending is a little contrived, the journey there is one that shouldn’t be missed. The characters are very well-written and mechanics behind time travel are well-thought out; Naotaka Hayashi did his best to make the underlying pseudoscience as believable as possible. Anyone familiar with anonymous message boards, otaku culture, and chuuni will find the script hilarious. Also, Miyano Mamoru, my personal favorite VA ever since his great job as Takuto Tsunashi in Star Driver, does an amazing job voicing Okabe.

6. NieR: Automata

NieR: Automata is a really unique game when it comes to aesthetic; the art direction and music are a combination that is so unique it’s worth playing for that alone. The story is really interesting as well, and it’s probably of the best game localizations of all time, with its amazing English dub. The actual game design has a more tried-and-true approach, but that’s not solely detractive. The Bayonetta-like combat is solid and responsive, and the genre shifts whether it be 9S’s hacking minigames or twinstick shooter segments are fun ways to shake up the monotony. However, the open world of the game is somewhat empty and boring, even if it is that way for narrative purposes. And although the ending of the game disappointed me (it felt like getting off a rollercoaster right when it reached the summit), it was still one of the best games released in 2017, and a PS4 classic without a doubt. I was completely engaged from beginning to end, and I would love to see Yoko Taro and Platinum Games collaborate on another project in the future.

5. Xenoblade Chronicles X

Xenoblade Chronicles X may be the closest thing we’ll ever get to an open world Gundam game. Although the first third of the game is somewhat dull, and the amount of systems they throw at you can be overwhelming, once you stick with it and get your Skell license the game becomes magnitudes better. The Skell’s vehicle mode and flight mode offer you so much freedom in how to tackle obstacles and where to explore. Upon obtaining the Skell, I couldn’t put the game down, and was addicted to exploring every nook and cranny, ignoring most of the main storyline until I felt my collection of mecha were fully decked-out. Xenoblade Chronicles X isn’t a perfect game by any means, most of the character models are kind of ugly, the story has more low points than high points, and the battle system isn’t exactly my cup of tea, but the exploration component of the game brought me so much satisfaction I was more than willing to look over the flaws.

4. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

This latest entry in the Legend of Zelda franchise is a large departure from the norm. Breath of the Wild is the kind of game that gives back the more you invest into it. If you just go from point A to B completing only the tasks and shrines associated with the main quest, you probably won’t enjoy the game. But if you’re the type of person who is willing to put off the main quest and head in a random direction, unlocking as many shrines and watchtowers along the way as possible, you’ll have a tremendous amount of fun. The game’s world as well as its physics and chemistry engines gives you a variety of ways to accomplish your goals, and the focus on shorter dungeons with well thought-out puzzles makes the game perfect for the Switch. The need to craft elixirs or food for adventuring in areas of extreme cold and heat are the only negatives I’ve encountered thus far. It just seems contradictory to place those kinds of limits on a player in a game about exploring. But Breath of the Wild is still one of Link’s best outings, and I can’t wait to see what the next Zelda game will look like.

3. Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King

Last year I had the chance to play Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past, and really enjoyed it. Ever since I finished VII, I was heavily anticipating VIII, eager to return to the old-school RPG worlds of Dragon Quest, and this game did not disappoint, but instead, exceeded by expectations. Similar to Final Fantasy IV, my favorite in that franchise, the game gives you party members whose roles are initially static, but the ability to denote skill points into several categories allows you to experiment with and specialize them. The story is a well-written mix of vignettes tied to an overall plotline, and the cast of the game, especially your party members, is just incredible. The battle system remains the classic turn-based system you want out of a Dragon Quest game, but benefits from the speed-up feature included in this 3DS port and the addition of the Tension system. Upon beating the final boss, the game isn’t quite over, and the segments that follow make one of the most memorable ending sequences of all time. When you play Dragon Quest VIII it doesn’t feel like just an old game, it feels like an eternal classic.

2. Persona 5

Although Persona 3 is still my favorite game of the post-Persona 2 trilogy, I really enjoyed this entry. The new additions to the battle system work incredibly well alongside its stylish UI, which makes full use of the controller’s buttons to minimize the inputs needed for every action you may want to perform. And the addition of new elements such as Nuclear and Psychic ensure that all of your party members are viable in different areas of the game, something I felt the series struggled with in the past. The cast is appealing, revamped social link system is fantastic, and although the first third of the story is the strongest part, it remains enjoyable for the entire duration of the game. Fusing Personas remains as engaging as ever, although the filtering systems in place aren’t as robust as those in the Shin Megami Tensei 4 duology. The game has one of the strongest and most focused aesthetics I’ve ever seen. Everything from the soundtrack to the UI elements just screams “Phantom Thieves.” Upon beating it, I was already planning my second playthrough, which I’ll be sure to do before summer is over.

1. Monster Strike

Monster Strike has no right being as good as it is. It takes the gameplay of the successful mobile game, removes the microtransactions, and turns it into a full-blown RPG with a challenging post-game, resulting in something that’s really amazing. The process of creating your team of monsters has a tremendous amount of depth. Not only do you need to consider the elemental strengths of weaknesses of your crew versus your enemies, but you need to take into account the passives of each monster, such as erasing mines or immunity to walls that inflict damage, as well the type of combo attacks they expel, such as X-shaped laser beams or explosions. Once the billiards-like battles begin, you need to carefully aim your monsters, adjusting the angle so that you can maximize damage to the enemy by bumping into them and setting off Friend Combos by bumping into your allies. The graphics are impressive for a 3DS title, and the story is predictable, but enjoyable. The end result is a game with the level of decision-making typically reserved for series like Shin Megami Tensei or Bravely Default. It’s an incredibly unique and well-made RPG, and is without a doubt one of my favorite titles on the 3DS.

#video games #mytexts

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