#it was either them also not knowing the difference or them telling irena not to drag them into it

[tastycitrus]

mir jumpscare on my dawn warrior

[kosmosian-quills]

Blameless

So this is actually a pre-story event that (as of yet) isn’t featured in my WIP, but I make a reference to it and I just wanted to write this scene and it is one of my favourites.

Reposting and editing slightly from my other writing blog, making it a bit more conscise than it was previously.

POV: Irena

The library always is a peaceful place for me. For the longest time, the deafening silence was a tranquil comfort that never seemed to be a problem. I can find solace in the crisp pages of the books that told their own unique and dynamic tales, both fictional and non fictional. It’s calming, reading the words of people who were alive long before I was born, about what their view of the world was.

It was always intriguing to me - to see the world through another person’s eyes.

It just seems to be a bleaker world now than it was a week ago. Everything is different. Before, things were very bright, colourful, happy. But now, things are so tense and everyone can feel it, it’s constricting. The rumours and the gossip, the entire incident is the worst kept secret, and only 11 people in the world know what really happened on that fateful night a week ago.

And the entire feeling of trust and protection that was once very evident has evaporated into dust, all because of the actions of one man. One man that a lot of people had their trust in.

I was taking a moment alone in quiet recollection in the library when Anastazja, the strong presence that she is, joined me by the window, overlooking the vast ocean below us.

“The atmosphere is so dark around here,” she said thoughtfully, gazing out with me, crossing her arms as she spoke.

“I’m not surprised, honestly. How are you doing?” I asked, careful in how I phrased the question.

“I am fine, I am,” she nodded reassuringly, raising a hand slightly before she continued, “I… Am worried, though,” she said slowly, as though hesitant.

“The General and the guard involved are being punished for their crimes, I’m sure,” I tried to be just as reassuring, but I felt my voice waver. The General used to be such a decent man, and now I didn’t know what to think about him anymore, “the King wouldn’t let them get away with it.”

Anastazja raised a hand completely now, “no, no, not that. I am certain we agree on that. That isn’t what worries me,” she looked away, casting a glance at the door behind us, before facing me again, “it’s Matylda.”

“She told me she was fine, that he didn’t hurt her…” I recalled. I had only spoken to Matylda once since the incident, mainly because of her request for solitude.

“And you’re right. But it’s not a physical pain she is suffering through, and believe me, she’s suffering,” Anja nodded her head as she spoke, “she blames herself. And before you say anything, we all know it was not her fault. No one blames her for what happened. When the General had a knife at the Princess’ throat, he told Matylda that he will slit her throat if she so much as moves. He held her in place by those words, she was terrified. When I fought back and ran away, she still daren’t move. I put the Princess in danger with my actions, but I ran for help. Matylda is hurting, Irena, and I think you’re the only one who can help her. She won’t listen to me, but I think she is going to act irrationally - she thinks the Princess hates her for her lack of action, which is certainly not true. Haven’t you noticed how little she has seen the Princess since the incident?”

“So surely the Princess is the better qualified person to speak with her about this?” I countered.

“By the time the Princess is ready to talk to her, I think it will be too late.”

“And… what, you think she’s going to quit?”

“I do, I don’t want her to, but I do, and I think once she’s set on it, she will quit.”

The idea of Matylda leaving her duty as a Maiden of Honour was heartbreaking to consider. She was good at her role and respected in it as well, why would she want to give it all up? Well, she has just been through a scarring incident that the Princess is unlikely to forget in a rush, and Matylda is so much younger than us. As sobering as it is, Anja is probably right.

It would also mean that I am so close to losing a dear friend over something she had no fault in.

“Please, just go see her. She needs a friend, someone to talk to, and I don’t think she’ll listen to anyone else. You’re both so close to each other, please,” Anja pleaded, taking a hold of my hand and looking into my eyes.

I nodded, “I will, Anja.”

---

"Matylda, are you alright? You’ve been awfully quiet,” I asked, after having knocked on the door to her bedroom, just two doors down from the Princess’. To get to our rooms, you have to go through the Princess’ herself. There is a small corridor to the side of the room, which connects our five generously spacious rooms to Anjelika’s. All of them had a stunning view of the gardens below us, but only the Princess had a balcony. Our windows opened, but it was too cold for that at this time of year.

Matylda didn’t open the door straight away, and she took her time answering me at all.

"I… I’m fine, Irena,“ she said weakly through the door.

“Please, let me in, Laleczka. I just want to see you again,” I asked gently, my head against the door, waiting for a sound to indicate that she was moving either towards or away from me, “please...”

It took a few seconds, but I did hear the click as she finally unlocked her door. She didn’t open the door to let me in, so I did it myself, slowly and as quiet as I could manage.

Matylda’s room was adorned with flowers. She loved to paint, and was quite skilled at it, and most of her paintings were of the flowers in the gardens below us. They were full of life and colour, just like she should be. Her other painting is something of her pride and joy, and only hung it up because I had seen it before she could hide it. She had done a self-portrait, of sorts, of the six of us performing ballet, with her next to the Princess in the centre. She had captured us so perfectly, and I loved the way she painted the dresses like they were flowers, the flowers in the gardens below us. She was decked in a dress that looked like a yellow and orange iris, Anja’s was covered in red and white corn poppies. Karolina was purple with tulips, Zofia was a blue lotus. The Princess was a daisy, and I was a “euphorbia redwing charam”. I had never seen this flower, as it was not a Kosmosian native, but it is a beautiful green flower, she told me. Matylda had chosen them for us, decorated our dresses in a way that envisioned us, she said. She was going to hide this beauty away from us, until I showered it with praise that it rightfully deserves. She had painted the flowers that she thought were us, around the room, every one of them. She hangs it above her bed, a proud reminder of what she can accomplish.

It was sad to think that she would leave us behind, after everything we have done together, as Maidens and as friends. At least, if me and Anastazja are correct in our assumptions.

“You’ve seen me now,” she said from her desk, “I’m fine, honestly.”

"Please don’t lie, Laleczka, something is wrong. Please, tell me what it is,” I asked gently, closing the door behind me. I knew it was a stupid question, but I didn’t think about that as I spoke.

Matylda was watching me. At my words, she turned back to the desk and looked down at whatever she had been doing. A blank sheet of paper, and a pen rested on top of the pristine desk. It was not normally so devoid of anything, there were normally her sketchbook and pencils there, maybe an unfinished picture too, maybe her paints. Seeing just the pen and paper spelled out everything to me, confirmed it, even.

She curled her shoulders forward, and I heard her voice crack, “I… I failed.”

“Failed at what?” I asked, sitting myself down on the spare chair just beside her desk.

She continued to look at the paper, and I could see the tears well up in her vibrant blue eyes, “I failed in my duties. I’ve thought about this. I want to resign from my role as Anjelika’s Maiden of Honour,” she spoke quickly, as though getting them out quicker will somehow make them hurt less, as if treating a wound.

But also like treating a wound, it can hurt much more to remove something quickly instead of carefully.

"Matylda, please think this through,” I pleaded.

She nodded, her untamable blonde hair bounced as she did, closing her eyes, "I have. The Princess hates me, I didn’t do anything. Anja, she fought and kicked and got away… I just let them try to…” she hitched her breathing as she sobbed, letting the tears stain her pale cheeks and fall onto the paper she was trying to write on.

“I promise you, Laleczka, that no one sees it that way except you,” I tried reasoning with her, holding out a gentle hand and resting it on her shoulder, I hope she sees this as a comforting gesture, yet something in me nagged to not touch her, so I released her after only a few seconds.

She shook her head, "I did a dishonourable thing, Irenka…”

I pulled my chair closer to her, “Matylda, you did not. Please listen to me. I am so sorry you all went through that, truly,” I put my hand on her shoulder again, but this time she looked at me, glassy eyes swimming with tears and sadness, “maybe this is too soon to talk to the Princess about, but go talk to Anja. I promise she will tell you exactly what I am telling you now. Me? I would have probably done what you did. You have to remember that Anja has been in a high stress situation like that before, neither you nor I have.”

“But…” she stammered, her face blotchy and red.

I didn’t let her finish, I spoke over her, “What is your duty as a Maiden of Honour, Matylda?”

Matylda thought for a moment, thinking on her answer. She looked down at my feet and spoke to them instead of me, but this was good enough, “… um, to be a companion to her company. To offer her guidance, support and advice. To be loyal and trustworthy…“

"Now where in those duties you just told me, does it mention having to protect her from an active threat?” I asked, she looked me in the eyes again briefly, but quickly darted them over my shoulder, “where does it mention having to sacrifice your safety for her own? That duty belongs to the guards assigned for her protection - not to a Maiden of Honour, not to me and certainly not to you,” I shook her shoulder slightly as I spoke, speaking with enough confidence and conviction to hopefully get my message across, “I promise you, Laleczka, that Anjelika does not hate you for being forced to watch. Anja does not resent you for not acting the way she did. You were in an unpredictable situation because you did not expect the General to do what he did. He is the dishonourable one, Matylda. Not you. Do you understand?”

She nodded slightly, sniffling, “… I understand, Irenka.”

Somehow I suspect that she did not believe her own words, “I want you to repeat after me, alright? I did nothing wrong.”

“But, I did -” she protested, but I knew that she would react this way.

“I did nothing wrong.” I repeated calmly, but slightly louder, looking her straight into the eyes. She looked into mine, I could see something in hers. A glimmer of something, beneath all the sadness. I’m not sure what it was, but there was something there.

“… I did nothing wrong.”

“I am not responsible for the General’s actions, he is responsible for his crime.”

She looked down, breaking our eye contact, before she repeated me again.

“I am not re… Responsible for the General’s actions… He, he is responsible for his crime.”

“The Princess does not hate me for being too scared to help her.”

This is where her silence was truly a shock. Even I did not expect her to believe this. How much had this one thought eaten at her, in the two days since the incident? How lonely must this have been, for her to live thinking that one of her only friends in the world must hate her? How could she have conceived this idea in the first place?

“The Princess does not hate me for being too scared to help her,” I repeated, blinking quickly to supress my own tears.

She gulped, and then repeated my words, "the… The Princess does not hate me for being… Being too scared to help…”

I pulled her close, into my arms. I heard her sob, face buried in my shoulder, clutching at my front, her own shoulders jarring from crying. I heard her weak attempts at words between her hitched sobs, but they were so incoherent that I didn’t attempt to ask her to speak. I squeezed my arms around her, hoping that she understands that I am here, I always have and always will be, “and don’t you forget it,” I said quietly into her ear, through my own tears, “the only person the Princess blames for that night, is the General.”

Matylda pulled away from me after a while, truly opening the floodgates of her emotions to me. She wiped her teary eyes with her fingers before speaking again, “… I understand. Thank you Irena,” she spoke with a small shadow of a smile hanging from her lips. I could sense the gratitude, and I smiled in return.

"I’m only looking out for my friend,” I smiled, wiping my own tear from my cheek, “come on, let’s go get you something to eat. You can see the others, if you want to,” I nodded my head in the direction of the door, my hand held out for her to take. She took one look at her desk again, before standing up and leaving with me.

If all she needed to know was that she still had her friends believe in her, then that is what I will give her every time.

I hope she truly understands that, now, that none of us will turn our backs on our friends in need.

[wandering-----wonderings]

Ok, this scene bothers me slightly, because it's like when the wrote it they didn't really care to double check themselves on it. We never see any pre-Sydney on the show except for when she was a kid and a quick bit of her recruitment during Q&A (1x17); all, to my recollection, silent scenes. In this episode (All The Time In The World; 5X17), they're going back (with non-silent scenes) and showing some of Sydney's life before SD-6.

In this particular scene ... well, let me break it down.

- Put on your dancing shoes. We are going out tonight. - I can't tonight. - "Can't" is not an option. Charlie got us passes for that new club in Silver Lake. - That job fair's tonight. I want to go. - Job fair? Syd! You've four years to figure out what kind of job you want. - My advisor yelled at me 'cause I still haven't picked a major. - Education. Done. Be a teacher like your mom. You always talk about how happy she was. - I thought about that. But I think of teaching as my safety net. - Teaching's no safety net. You know how dangerous it is to be a teacher? Kids bring knives to school these days. - I hate that I could make a decision now that would affect the rest of my life. - Well, I say go with education. Oh, Charlie is bringing a friend tonight - Danny something. We'll pick you up at eight. - I'll see you later. - Sydney Bristow? I was hoping I might have a moment of your time.

First, we have the location. That ''new club in Silver Lake'' is supposed to be ''a new coffee shop that has live jazz in the afternoons'' in ''Westwood''. The time, then, is also off: it should be ''afternoon'' instead of ''tonight''.

Second, Sydney doesn't go to a job fair. Earlier, before this scene in the book (Recruited), she's perusing the paper for a job - doesn't find one. Francie gets her on at the restaurant she works at, Les Amis Cafe. The end of her waitressing days also happened before this scene. The excuse for not going with Francie and Baxter is that she's swamped with homework - which, isn't untrue.

Thirdly, ''I still haven't picked a major'' is wrong, too. In the book, it reads: ''Only one thing was wrong with her mental picture. It wasn't happening for her. Not good for an education major.'' Francie also says to Sydney, ''So you're serious about this master teacher plan, huh?'' So, yeah, I'd say Sydney's planned on the teacher thing for a while.

Fourth, and my main problem with this, is that Charlie and Danny are never mentioned in the books. Francie is dating a guy named Baxter and (earlier in the book) she encourages Sydney to ask out her crush (Dean Carothers) to a party - it doesn't go well. No Charlie, no Danny. Now, this could all be solved by saying that not everyone read the books and the writers wanted to use characters that people would remember from season 1. Ok ... but, we knew about Noah Hicks (Sydney's first real boyfriend) in season 1. So, what, she met Danny and was just friends with him, got recruited, had a relationship with Noah, and then after Noah left she went to Danny? The problem with that is, again, Danny was never mentioned in the books. Too, I'm sure just using the names in the books cost money; which may be why they chose not to use Danny or Charlie - or Will or Marshall for that matter. (They have a Graham Flinkman and it's my personal belief that he is Marshall's older brother; that Graham either retired out - or worse - and then SD-6 recruited his just-as-brilliant younger brother to replace him. That seems like something right up Sloane's alley, anyway.)

My point is, the season 5 scene happened after the books were written and it was an exact scene; the same scene portrayed in two different ways. If they were going to shoot a scene for the show that they'd already written in the books, why weren't they consistent?

Unless they wanted someone to notice. I vaguely remember reading something about The Box part 1&2 (1x12-13 - the one with Quentin Tarantino in it) that they made mistakes in the episode on purpose to see if anyone could find them. As much as I re-watched the series, I could point out a lot of them; now, the only one I remember right off is in one scene, the woman has zip-ties on her belt, the camera focuses on someone else and when it comes back to her she no longer has the zip-ties.

I'm being picky aren't I? Oh, well, I've already started - might as well do the other memories.

Now this 'memory' I don't have a problem with - because it's a deleted scene. First, yes, Sydney did have to take a lot of tests and, yes, she did better than anyone. She was a little out of character, though. What's wrong with it is that Sydney doesn't meet Dixon until Noah Hicks introduces her to him (very briefly) in the third book (Disappeared). So all the tests she took, she took them before she met Dixon. She did bump into him on the way to Sloane's office in the first book (Recruited), which was actually shown in 1x17 (Q&A), but we don't really know it's him because no name was used, just a description. ''...bumping shoulders with a tall, dignified-looking black man.'' Again, it's a deleted scene, so maybe the reason it got cut was that they realized it didn't work with what they already had out there. Which begs the question: why didn't they do that with the Francie and Sydney scene?

Speaking of the 1x17 scene, she did start out at a desk job on the twentieth-floor. A difference is that the book says she had to sign ''about two dozen nondisclosure agreements'' and the episode has that number at ''about five-hundred'' - big difference if you ask me, but she might have had to sign more over time that totaled to ''about five-hundred''. Another thing, is that Wilson (her handler and recruiter into SD-6) didn't take Sydney from the hallway to Sloane's office; she was in Wilson's office and he took her to Sloane's office from there, and that was when the shoulder bump happened with Dixon. The hallway scene is actually more reminiscent of when Wilson took Sydney (to his office) to meet Pilar and Yoav, her weapons and hand-to-hand combat instructors, respectively. Other than that, it was pretty accurate.

This could have happened, plain and simple. There's nothing (to my current knowledge) that says whether or not it did or didn't.

In the book it says Jack was in car with Laura/Irena, and in the scene ... well, it doesn't say he wasn't, he was just telling Sydney her mom died. So, yes, this could have happened and it fits both the book and show, but wasn't this something that they actually varied with on the show? Like, it was a bridge then it was a road, he was in the car then he wasn't. That part I can't remember.

Also could have happened. It doesn't go against the other scene they had of her putting the puzzle together when she was under hypnosis. What's intriguing is how Jack is acting. He's a little colder in the hypnosis scene than he is in this scene, but that actually fits with his relationship with Sydney becoming as strained as it was. In the memory when Sydney first learned of the puzzle, and at her birthday party (which may or may not be an entirely accurate memory), Jack was warm and kind to her, and by the time Sydney has gone through the project and is able to build a gun he's starting to become cold and detached. Project Christmas itself is most likely the reason why. After all, taking your young child to Build-a-Gun workshop and then erasing her memory is bound to have an effect on anyone.

Now, this memory could have happened because there's no mention of her telling him she works in a bank in the books; so she must have told him at some point because he seemed to already know when he (finally) made a book appearance. ''She had barely even heard from her father since she'd started college.'' Although, we don't get to read how there first dinner went (in Father Figure) since it has her meeting him right as the chapter ends. After that he's trying to get her to focus on school - like he did in the episode but he was trying to be more stealthy in the book. Granted, everything that happened between them in the book would have been too long to show, so this memory kinda sums it all up. However, there is the small issue of where the scene happened. In the memory, it shows Sydney coming through the door and saying ''Dad? Are you home?'' The books, on the other hand, say ''His home base was still L.A., but he didn't even keep an apartment anymore, choosing instead to live in hotels on the rare occasion he was actually in town.'' Now, we don't see the outside of where 'home' is, so it could be a hotel. Although, with as much as he travels and how little she sees/hears from him, I doubt she'd have a key to get in - and what kind of spy leaves the door unlocked. Also, it doesn't really look like a hotel from the inside, and I don't recall ever having been in a hotel room that had a hallway in it; not to say that they don't, but if Jack just got a room for himself then I'm imagining him going for something basic. So books say hotel, memory indicates a house.

Could have happened. It didn't happen in the books, but doesn't mean it didn't happen.

Ok, I'm done now. I know I'm being too picky. I just love this series so much. They were the first ''adult books'' that I read and I guess it kinda just stuck with me. Which, technically, they're classified as ''teen fiction'', but there was crushing and kissing and kick butt-age and, of course, spy-drama, so at the time I was reading them they felt very adult.

[whumping-newbie]

Reunion

So! As part of NaNoWriMo, I have been doing some reshuffling of the order in which events occur, particularly in Michał’s story. I will be fixing this order in my masterlist of course, but here is the next bit of Setup (TM) for his story. No whump, just filler. Sorry! But the whump is coming soooooooooooon ish, I promise.

Tagging @justplainwhump and @givemethatwhump. This is very much setup for the next part of his story! Sorry about the lack of whump, but still!

POV: Michał

It’s been a while since I’ve been given a temporary leave of absence, and even longer since I’ve been happy to take it. I feel wretched, and I still ache all over from being cooped up in the medwing for as long as I have been.

I think that the last time I came out to explore the city properly – the mainland capital city of the country – was for Oskar’s last birthday. We had come out for a few drinks around the town. Even though I didn’t particularly enjoy drinking continuously over an evening, it was good to spend time away from work with my friend.

The streets are so different now. There’s the skeletal remains of the library further in the depths of the twisting roads, and the cathedral which still stands tall and proud towards the east.

It’s nice to have the fresh air, even though the burning hot sun is brutal at this time of year. The market stalls that normally fill the plaza have closed for a few hours whilst the sun is at its highest, but there are still a lot of people wandering around.

Including soldiers.

There’s so many, but they are highly concentrated towards the entrance to the tidal road that leads back to the citadel. They’re all travelling in pairs, and they certainly aren’t shy at making their presence known, marching around with a stern look on their faces, the look of someone who thinks they’re more important than they are.

There’s a certain tension in the atmosphere among the crowds of citizens here, now. It’s hard to tell, but it’s like everyone is skittish, and more alert than usual. Of course, this could have something to do with the armed soldiers that patrol the streets, but it could also have something to do with my recent excursion that led to a hideout being uncovered.

I find myself walking there. The building that was once an inconspicuous tailors shop has its windows smashed, the products within looted, and the way that almost every passer-by except myself is acting like it doesn’t exist. Like there’s nothing there. It’s like a ghost, it’s there, it has a form, but no one else sees what an eyesore it is to the rest of the area.

I move along quickly, I don’t want to get spotted lingering here, staring at an old building. Can’t have that making its way back to Emil. With that being said, surely he’d understand that I would want to see the place I uncovered, right? He’d understand that, I hope…

Psst.

I stop in my tracks, uncertain as to whether I actually heard that. It sounded like someone whispering, trying to get my attention. I turned around, looking for someone that could have done that. I can’t see anyone, there’s an old lady and old gentleman making their way past me, there’s a man with a little boy heading in the opposite direction, and a man and a woman, staying close together, slipping through these other people on the street.

Suddenly something catches my eye, literally. Light, blinding light distorts my vision for a moment, and I blink it away. It disappears as quickly as it came, and I look up at where the light came from. There’s a figure in the alleyway just ahead. They’re leaning against the wall with their arms crossed, wearing almost inconspicuous summer clothing, and holding something shiny. I can’t make out their face clearly because of the shiny thing, but I can see them nod at me, before disappearing behind the building.

Who was that? I think they want me to follow them, but I stop myself after a moment. Why would I be so stupid as to do that? I got beaten up the last time I was in this area because of who I work for. I managed to get people arrested in this area. Why on earth would I want to follow them at all? I didn’t even get the chance to see them properly, how can I be sure that this won’t end up with me dying in an alleyway?

I clench my fist, take another look around to make sure no one sees, before slipping into the alleyway too, following whoever it was.

I quickly make my way down the alley, keeping my eyes ahead but constantly looking back to make sure that no one is trapping me here. I look around, hoping to see something I can conceivably use as a weapon if I have to. There’s a wooden broom over there. I doubt that would do much good in an emergency, but it’s better than nothing. Oh, further down, there’s a loose, rusty pipe laid on the ground. The person I’m following must have gone down the alleyway further, so I take the chance to pick up the pipe as soundlessly as I can, and keep it held behind my back.

It’s better than being caught totally off guard.

I turn the corner and there is the figure from before now stood before me, arms folded and in the middle of the alleyway, waiting for me. I can see them clearly now, and I recognise them. It’s that lady that got me put into the medwing for two weeks.

“Glad to see you alive,” she said, deadpan.

“Same to you,” I returned, nodding my head in her direction. I still had the pipe in my hand, gripping it tightly. I was ready for her if she suddenly turned violent, and I could hear if someone was going to creep up behind me. “I heard about the hideout.”

“They didn’t get everyone,” she responded with a sigh, breaking our eye contact. “I suppose here is where I thank you. You kept your end of the bargain, and you got him out.”

“Is Alek alive?”

“Alek? Oh, that isn’t his real name, of course,” she shrugged, “but yes, he’s alive. Told us about what you were doing in there. He seems to trust you.”

“And you don’t?”

“What you have done has certainly edged it more in the… direction, of total trust, but your boss still credited you with discovering our base. We still lost good people that night.”

“I know, I’m sorry. That was never my intention.”

“I know. You still got our man out, and I appreciate that.” She unfolded her arms, turning around on the spot, before making her way towards a metal door in the building beside us, “you can drop that pipe, I’ve got someone that wants to see you. I think you’ll know them.”

She knocked sequentially – knock-knock, a pause, knock – before I could hear its heavy metal gears grind out of the locking mechanism, and the door opened. She gestured for me to follow, and I did, leaving the pipe on top of a dustbin that was on my right hand side.

This building appears to be the hideout that just got raided, because this back room is littered with once smartly pressed suit jackets that were now on the floor in tatters.

“Michał.” A short voice called out quietly.

I look over at the source, and am both shocked and immensely relieved. I remember those long black locks of hair, her dark skin and chestnut eyes.

“Zofia,” I recalled, but daren’t step forwards. She didn’t either. She looked pleased to see me, but not overjoyed. I don’t blame her. She likely knows the fate of her friends, and she has probably been told about me and what I am doing.

She, however, is wearing long trousers, most likely to conceal her metal prosthetic leg that she has. In fact, if it wasn’t for the fact that I knew she had it, I wouldn’t have been able to tell.

“It’s nice to see you again,” she tells me politely, “you look… well.”

I can’t help but chuckle at her hesitation. Always the polite one, she was. I have to admire that. I also can’t help but feel immense relief that she’s actually alive and okay.

Since the day that Matylda and Irena were brought back to the castle, I was worried sick about the others since the Princess would not likely leave their side, but the moment Anastazja and Karolina were brought back was when I started to get worried. The chances of the Princess’ discovery was just… unfathomable, and I dreaded the day it would happen.

If it happens.

“Where’s the –?“ I started to ask, but was cut off by Zofia, who was working on re-locking the door behind me. She was also fiddling with some fine pieces of string above the door, so thin I barely saw them.

“I don’t know. I’m sorry, I don’t. We got separated. Kasia and Anja were captured, and she ran off somewhere. I haven’t seen her for… about 8 months, now.”

I could breathe again, now that I know she’s sort of safe. Sort of, because now I’m back to square one. She’s missing, and no one knows where she is. Then again, if she was here I would have to question what her goal was, by sitting in a previously compromised building that housed rebels. The chances of her getting caught increase tenfold here, armed soldiers are everywhere. Plus, surely it’s safer to be anywhere but here?

“Why have you remained here?” I asked the woman who escorted me here, “isn’t this compromised?”

“It’s compromised for such a big group. Right now, there’s just two of us.” She started to lead me up the wooden stairs, taking care not to creak the steps, with Zofia behind me.

“That’s fine, I suppose, but aren’t they going to know this was previously a rebel hideout?”

“They like to think they’re smart. They think we have of course fled this one, and wouldn’t dare return. They’re right, except that they don’t actually check this place out properly. They just think that because it looks deserted, it is.”

“Just yesterday, we actually thought we would get caught, Michał,” Zofia piped in, “they came into the doorway and knocked things around, and we were right here. No one ever came upstairs to check.”

I couldn’t help but be impressed by this.

“Zofia… how did you get here? Working with them?” I asked her as I looked around the room.

An attic room, with a low ceiling and no windows, illuminated by battery powered lamps, by the looks of it. Papers everywhere, maps and documents, a laptop plugged into a plug socket on the wall, and two beds concealing all of it. There’s a small camping stove with two pans and cracked plates next to it, empty tin cans lining the corner of the room. There are some small bells on the ceiling up there, with wires following the walls down and disappearing into the floor. There’s even a gun on one of those beds over there, and I shudder to think that it’s Zofia’s. I doubt it highly, but if it is, I find it difficult to envision. This must be where they’ve made their home.

She carefully closed the door behind us, and took a seat on one of the blankets.

“After we left the capital, we went to Przezlas,” she started, “we hid there for a day, but someone spotted us. We had to run. Anja and Kasia… I saw them get dragged away. I don’t know where the Princess went, because I couldn’t find her. I ended up waiting it out. Starved a little bit. Was taken in by some guy named Markus. Markus… works with Teresa.”

I barely had a second to wonder who Teresa is, until I saw her nod in the direction of the woman. So that’s her name. It does feel better to know her name, rather than as some nameless rebel. Teresa did not look too pleased at Zofia mentioning her name, though her lack of an outburst makes me wonder if it’s even real. She said Alek wasn’t his real name.

“I helped Markus in his safe house for a while. I met Teresa when she brought that very, very wounded man in the other week,” she continued, enunciating each of her words with more strength and conviction, “he told me about you. About how you wanted to get my friends out. I want to help you with that, Michał.”

Relief. Sweet, warming relief rushes through me at how determined she sounded. I was glad for that, really. I was truly glad to hear that she doesn’t think I’m some traitor, after everything I’ve done (or not done) so far.

“Is that why you brought me here?” I asked, trying to cut straight to brass tacks.

“You kept your end of the deal,” Teresa took a seat on the floor, and pulled out a wad of papers from under a blanket. “Now, let us keep ours.”

Our deal. The deal for two freedoms. Freedom for their man, freedom for the Princess’ – and Zofia’s – friends.

I’m hoping this will work. I’m optimistic about it, I can hope that it’s successful, but there’s still something in me, a part of me that warns me to be wary.

I can’t explain it, but there’s a burning sensation in my chest as we talk through the plan.

[tsaomengde]

The Dark - Revised

I posted this story months and months back, and since I’ve had it workshopped and I’ve revised it!  It is now way longer.  Like, Jesus, it’s massive.  But it’s also much better.

Irena Matsuo Mtukudzi is a post-human cyborg who has a very human moment, meets a pretty woman, wrestles with her inner demons, and has to kick a whole bunch of ass.  Contains violence, flirting, transhumanism, space queers, Mars, and banter.

           Irena Matsuo Mtukudzi cannot stand the dark.

           She needs very little sleep, and always leaves the illumination in her apartment on high while she does.  But there are nights, like this one, when the dark presses in, threatening to breach the harshly-lit walls, and she has to stay awake, to go out and confront it.  To walk in it, and to deny it any power over her.

           So she strides, purposeful but directionless, through the streets of Olympic City, moving between pools of cobalt light cast by the floating lamps.  She walks down long, deserted pedways, the kilometer-high superstructures of Downtown looming above her.

           And tonight, as she does this, she sees a woman in an alley.  

           The woman looks terrified; she is backing slowly toward a dead end lined with autodumpsters.  There are three men in dark coats closing in on the woman, their body language heavy with threat.  Irena’s mecheyes automatically highlight the sleek, metallic objects in their hands and flash a warning: military-grade plasma projectors.

           She slams the first man’s head against the plascrete siding of the alley’s wall before they even know she is there.  He goes down and does not move.  The other two turn, eyes wide in hard faces.  One of them brings up his projector, sighting in on her, but she takes the distance between them in a single, impossible leap. She lands on his chest, her long locs whipping forward to shroud her face.  He makes an unnatural crunching sound as he hits the pavement – armor beneath his coat, probably.  Irena punches him in the jaw, bouncing his skull against the ground, and he stops moving.

           The last man fires at the woman just as Irena springs at him and closes her hands around his wrist.  She throws his aim off, but the flashing burst of plasma hits the woman in the shoulder, spinning her around and dumping her in a heap in the loose pile of garbage strewn about the end of the alley.

           Irena wants to take her time beating him unconscious, but the woman needs her help.  So Irena sweeps his legs out from under him and kicks him in the face, hard.

           A moment later, Irena is crouched over the target of the erstwhile assailants.  The woman has short red hair, elfin features, pale white skin that suggests Amero-European heritage from back on Earth.  She wears a professional charcoal skirt suit cut in the latest Olympic fashion, hard geometric lines erasing any hint of human softness.  The illusion is shattered by the smoking wound in her shoulder, only partially cauterized by the heat of the plasma bolt.  Her eyes, startlingly blue, are open, but are unfocused.  Irena recognizes shock when she sees it.

           She looks back out at the street, about to tell her integrated comm to call emergency services, but then she catches sight of something: the closest man’s boots.  Steel-toed, vat-grown black leather – and very familiar, very distinctive blue-and-white-striped laces.

           She growls, moving over to him.  She opens his coat, unzips the ferroweave vest beneath, and rips open his shirt.  There it is: tattooed across his left pectoral muscle, a nineteen-digit identification number in dark blue ink.  If the boots weren’t enough, this confirms it.

           These men are cops.

           Two and a half hours later, Irena stands stiffly at attention in the spacious high-rise office of her employer.  Julian Thorne sits at his oversized mahogany desk, his wrinkled face scrunched up in an expression of irritation.  Irena keeps her gaze fixed slightly above and to the left of his head, which means she is looking out the panoramic window behind him. Olympic City stretches out below them, hundreds of silver spires glittering in the harsh rays of Martian sunlight, which are only slightly diffused by the diamond-lattice environment dome.  Rising above the dome and visible to Irena’s left, Olympus Mons cradles the city in its western slope, a vast expanse of reddish rock that goes higher than the window will allow her to see.

           “Just to be clear, Security Chief Mtukudzi,” Thorne says.  He only uses her title and last name when he is angry; those times tend to be rare, but memorable.  “You saw a woman being cornered by armed men.  I understand the desire to intervene.  But why did you not call the authorities and report the situation, instead of leaping into action and beating the shit out of the aforementioned armed men?”

           Irena takes a careful breath.  Thorne, as befits a man of his station, has a top-of-the-line social aug; if she lies to him, the mechanisms embedded in his head will pick up the slight increase in her heart rate, the minute excitation of body hair caused by rising blood pressure pushing cells toward the surface. Even she can’t control these autonomous reactions.

           But she certainly can massage the truth away from the blunt statement she wants to make, which is, because I wanted to.

           “Because,” Irena says, “if I had waited for the OCPD to arrive, the woman in question would be dead and her assailants might be trying to eliminate me as a witness.  I took decisive action to preserve her life and my own.  Afterward, it became apparent that if I had called them and she ended up in their custody, she might not have survived.”

           “Yes, of course.  Decisive action.  Indeed.” Thorne’s thin, dark lips twist in a grimace.  “Answer a question for me, please.  What, precisely, is the nature of your job at my company?”

           “I am responsible for the protection of all Thorne Co. assets, whether personnel or materiel, and –”

           “More basic.  Boil it down.  What do I pay you to do for me?”

           Irena purses her lips.  She knows the answer he wants, and she doesn’t really want to give it, but the best way through one of his quiet rages is forward, rather than lateral.  “You pay me to minimize risks and losses for your company.”

           “That’s right.  Did the actions you took last night do those things?”

           “Quite the opposite.”

           “So you can understand my frustration.”

           That doesn’t call for a response, so she doesn’t give one.  Thorne eyes her for a few more moments, letting the tense silence drag out.  “Do you think there were any cams?” he finally asks.  “Either in the alley, out in the street, or on the men you attacked?”

           “I swept the area as I was bringing the woman in for medical treatment and detected nothing of the sort.  I suspect the cops were not using any recording equipment, integrated or otherwise, because they knew better than to make any kind of record of a hit.”

           “Did any of them get a good look at you?”

           “One of them may have.  The other two I dispatched quickly enough that I doubt it. But I concussed him severely, it was dark, and my locs hid most of my face.”

           Thorne gives her a hard look.  “They’ll fix the concussion with nanosurgery in a matter of hours, Mtukudzi.  At which point, he will most definitely remember a dark-skinned killer cyborg with green mecheyes and dreadlocks beating the bejesus out of him and his friends. He won’t need to have seen your fucking face.”

           Breaking her at-attention stance, Irena tosses her head to the side, letting her locs settle over one shoulder, and crosses her arms. “For the record, I agree with you. But answer me this: When you go home tonight and tell your husband about what I did, will you say that I did a wrong thing, or a stupid thing?”

           Thorne leans back in his plush chair and rubs the bridge of his nose with a gnarled hand, thinking.  “Low blow,” he finally says.  “Bringing Stjepan into this.”

           Irena shrugs.  “He would agree with me.”

           “You will be the death of me one day, woman.” Thorne places his hands flat on the desk, a kind of weary finality in the gesture.  “Why did you do it, Irena?  I mean, really.  What were you hoping to get out of this situation?”

           Feeling the muscles in her jaw clench as she considers the question, Irena finally asks him, “Do you remember when you first approached me for a position with your company?  You offered me a very large sum of money to make unspecified problems go away for you.”

           “I did,” he acknowledges.

           “My counter-offer was what I do now.  I keep problems from happening, rather than going out and surgically removing them.  I don’t know if there’s a true moral difference – I have still killed a fair number of people for you, in my line of work – but I feel better knowing all of them fired first, when it would not have been like that if I were a ‘troubleshooter.’”

           Thorne nods.  “Go on.”

           “When I saw this woman in that alley,” Irena says, “I saw a problem being removed by troubleshooters.  I realized it could easily have been me advancing on her with a drawn weapon.  It could also have been me in her place, and I know I don’t need to tell you why.  The only difference between those men and me is a job title and a vestigial conscience. And I didn’t like that.”  She takes a deep breath, preparing herself to say something embarrassing.  “I suppose I wanted, for once, to do something unambiguously heroic.”

           Thorne gives a carefully calculated half-shrug which says nothing in particular.  He rises from his seat and makes his way to an apparently blank wall.  He waves his hand in front of it and a seam opens, revealing an elevator.  “Well, what’s done is done and you have managed to weasel your way out of apologizing for it.  If we’re playing at altruism today, shall we go see the damsel in distress?”

           Much to her own surprise, Irena feels heat rising to her cheeks.  Thorne notices, of course – his social aug will be telling him it’s happening, even if he isn’t looking at her.  But he remains tactfully silent, awaiting her cue.

           “After you,” she says.

           The medcenter is blindingly, perfectly white. It is almost surprising to encounter actual human beings in such a sterile space.  The techs direct Irena and Thorne to the bio bed where the woman is currently resting.  Her retinas and prints apparently belong to one Madeleine Duvier.  No priors, no outstanding warrants, at least not in the systems Thorne has had Irena spend the time and money hacking into.

           As they approach, she opens her eyes.  She gives each of them a long look before saying, “I really am feeling better.  If you need me to go, I can.”  Her voice is of middling pitch, her words quiet.  Even lying relatively still, she exudes waves of nervous energy.

           Irena and Thorne exchange a glance.  “You are not going anywhere,” Thorne says.  “You are in need of help, young lady, and we are here to provide it.”

           Madeleine’s delicately sculpted brows wrinkle in an uncomprehending frown.  “Sorry? I’m afraid I don’t speak… whatever language that was.”

           They exchange another glance.  “I said you aren’t going anywhere because you need help and we can give it to you,” Thorne tells her.  Irena’s social aug flashes a notification in her visual field that he has switched to Martian English from his usual Old Russian.  Irena knows he only speaks that now-dead language because it pleases him, in a perverse, rebellious way.  His ancestors were neo-Soviet royalty, before nationalities and nobles became obsolete, and he likes to be reminded of it.  Too, anyone important enough for him to talk to will almost undoubtedly have a social aug for translation.

           “Was your social augmentation damaged during the attack?” Irena asks.

           “I don’t have a social aug,” Madeleine says. Even if Irena’s social aug were not informing her of Madeleine’s blush, subtly highlighting the changing color of the other woman’s cheeks, it would be extremely evident – Madeleine is both pale and dressed in a white medcenter gown.  “I’m… stock.”

           Thorne does not bother to hide his surprise. “Stock?  I truly did not think anybody in Olympic City was stock anymore, excepting newborns and Puritanicals.”

           “My parents were Puritanicals,” Madeleine confirms, sitting up in bed.  “I’m not, but since they didn’t have my genome sequenced and given the usual once-over for abnormalities, I have a violent hereditary rejection response to most glial bonding agents.  And I can’t afford the gene therapy to fix it.”

           “I see,” Throne says.  “Well.  I’m afraid I have been rude.  My apologies.  I am Mr. Julian Thorne, and at the moment I am your host.  I must confess I have you at a disadvantage, as my people have told me you are Madeleine Duvier.  What do you do for a living, Mx. Duvier?”

           “Ms. is fine,” Madeleine tells him.  “I’m an executive secretary for the Governor’s office, specifically for Vice-Governor Greene.  Or at least I was until yesterday.”

           “I sense a sad story,” Thorne says, sitting down beside the bed.  Irena remains standing.  “If you’d be willing to extend us your trust, I’d like to hear it.”

           Madeleine gives him an appraising look, then turns to Irena.  She has to crane her neck slightly to make eye contact; Irena is more than two meters tall, after all.  “Before all of that, I think I should thank you for what you did, Mx…?”

           Irena inclines her head.  “You’re welcome.  And I am Ms. Irena Mtukudzi.”

           “Thank you, Ms. Mtukudzi.” She returns her attention to Thorne.  “It might not be a surprise to you,” Madeleine says, “but being stock isn’t exactly a blessing in most lines of work.  I get by without augs, though.  Occasionally someone comes in speaking a language I don’t know, like you, and I just pull out my unintegrated comm for translation and say my social aug is on the fritz.

           “So, I was with the Governor’s office for two years, no issues.  Vice-Governor Greene seemed like a decent enough man, at least for a politician. But then it came out in a conversation with a coworker of mine that – well, that I’m stock.  And somehow this information reached his ears. Apparently…”  She trails off for a moment, jaw working.  Then she continues, her voice tight, “Vice-Governor Greene is – no, he has a… fixation.  On stock people.”

           Confused, Irena looks from her to Thorne.  She can see the light come on behind Thorne’s eyes a moment later, which is good, because she has no idea what Madeleine means. “He’s a stock fetishist,” Thorne says.

           “Yes,” Madeleine confirms.  “He started making advances.  Subtle ones at first, but they got increasingly brazen as I continued to find ways to misunderstand or ignore them.  It came to a head the day before yesterday, when he basically demanded I come into his office for a performance review and then tried to make me have sex with him on his desk.  That was when it became clear he was interested because he’d heard I’m stock.” She shudders.  “I told him to go to hell, and that I would be applying for a transfer to another office, and that if he ever spoke to me unprofessionally or touched me again I would go straight to the Olympic Times and tell them everything he’d done.”

           “Did he threaten you in return?” Thorne asks.

           “He started to.  Said I had no proof, that there was no way for me to have records of any of it because I’m stock.  I told him I did indeed have records, of all of it, because I may be stock but I’m not an idiot.  You remember that unintegrated comm I mentioned earlier?”

           “Of course,” Irena says.  “You kept records on that.  Did he offer money to keep you quiet?”

           “Yes, offers I turned down.  I don’t want hush money, I just want to work somewhere I’m not sexually harassed.  And especially where I’m not subjected to poor treatment because of a decision my fucking parents made for me before I was born.”

           Irena feels the familiar twisting sensation in her stomach.  Memories, ones she has tried her best to ignore, stir and thrust themselves to the foreground of her mind.  Cold glass, needles, destiny.  Running away.  Being caught. The dark.

           With an effort, she shoves it away.  She becomes aware that Thorne is looking at her. “I’m sorry,” she says.  “Did you say something?”

           “I did,” Thorne replies, no hint of censure in his tone.  “As did Ms. Duvier.”

           “I just said that I thought that was the end of it,” Madeleine says.  “Until I was walking home yesterday and those three came out of nowhere.  And I was only out at that time of night because the Vice-Governor asked me to work late.  To ‘take care of a few things before my transfer.’”

           Irena grimaces.  “Then he is certainly complicit.”

           Madeleine shakes her head.  “I don’t understand how he could have arranged this, though.  He’s a glorified button-pusher.  The Governor has all the real power.”

           “You underestimate the abilities of hungry men with ambitions and connections, my dear,” Thorne says.  “The Vice Governor could be involved in any number of shady dealings, ones which might include officials in our less-than-sterling police force.  Such officials might be willing to send men to do an unpleasant job as a favor to the Vice-Governor.”

           “You mentioned your unintegrated comm, Ms. Duvier,” Irena adds.  “It was not in your possessions when our techs prepared you for nanosurgery on your wound.  Is it at your home?”

           “No.  It’s in a safety-deposit box at the Olympic First Bank off of Fifteenth and Baird, under the name of a friend of mine who left me their keycode when they moved offworld. I put it there as soon as I got out of the office the day before yesterday.  The box will only take my biometrics.  Nobody but me can open it.”

           “The solution to this difficulty seems obvious, then,” Thorne says.  “Retrieve the unintegrated comm, take it to the Olympic Times, and blow the whistle on the Vice-Governor.  It’s an election year, and even if Governor Shido is involved in these less-than-legal goings-on, he’ll want to act against Greene to preserve his image in the press if the Times comes forward with allegations and proof.  Irena, I want you to accompany Ms. Duvier.”

           That surprises her.  Irena whips her head around to stare at Thorne.  “Twenty minutes ago you were berating me for getting involved,” she says, not caring that the accusation will make him look bad in front of their guest.

           He crosses his arms.  “Yes, I was.  But you are involved now, and I trust you to see this through to the end.  Do you need additional resources from me?”

           “No.  In fact, it is best that I do this myself.  Plausible deniability.”

           Madeleine looks up at Irena.  “I can’t ask you to do this.”

           Irena gives her a thin smile.  “You don’t have to.  I’ll be back.”

           Irena leaves Madeleine to sleep for a few more hours. There are preparations to make before the other woman is ready to retrieve the comm, and there was already no sleep this night for her.

           First she scopes out the Olympic First Bank at Fifteenth and Baird.  There isn’t any OCPD presence she can detect, obvious or otherwise, just the bank’s own private security.  Next, she makes other arrangements – one with a friend of hers, for a little extra protection, and another by herself, to secure an alternate route in case the streets become unsafe.

           When she returns some five hours later, she has Madeleine discharged, and they head out into the streets of Olympic City. Irena wears her usual long duster, combat jumpsuit, and ass-kicking boots.  She could try to be less conspicuous, but even though she has no visible mechanized augmentations apart from her eyes – no metal limbs or brightly gleaming dermal plates, for instance – there is no way to minimize her presence in the street.  Tall, bristling with whipcord muscle, she has learned to lean into the first impression of danger she generates.  She requisitioned a similar outfit for Madeleine, wanting the woman to have a little more protection than a skirt suit in case things go south.

           “We are about forty minutes from the bank,” Irena tells her, casually doing a sweep of the area as they proceed down the pedway. Groundcars rumble past, the sound of their wheels scraping over the pavement louder than their lossless fusion engines.  It is late morning now, and the streets are beginning to become crowded again as people to go early lunches or start their shifts at work.

           “Do you want to hail a skycab?” Madeleine asks.

           “No.  Any vehicle we get into could be a trap.  We stay on foot, and if we’re engaged, we flee on foot.  We only use a vehicle as a last resort.”

           “Okay, got it.”  Madeleine looks nervous, but doesn’t argue.  They walk in silence for a few more minutes before she speaks again. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

           “Yes.  I may not answer, but go ahead.”

           Madeleine gestures expansively at her.  “You’re obviously highly augmented and genengineered. I’ve never seen anyone move like you. Not cops, not private security. Nobody.  I can’t imagine your mods are HERCA-legal.  Are you ex-military?”

           Irena purses her lips and considers her answer. She has already said she may not answer, so she can just tell Madeleine it is none of her business.  But she has learned quite a bit about Madeleine this morning, and part of her feels that there is a scale which needs balancing.  “Do you know what an ascension cult is?”

           “Radical transhumanist types, right?  Living outside the Coalition government? Illegal hive-minds, AI fusion, extreme genengineering, full-body cyborgification, that kind of thing?”

           “Yes. My parents belonged to the Church of St. Joan.  They were an ascension cult based off of Titan.  They rejected mechanical augmentation in favor of pure genetic engineering.  Their vision was of human reproduction unmoored from the vagaries of sexual congress, and children of incredible genetic potential as a result of that reproduction.  I was the First Child of the Church.”

           “You were a tubie?”

           “In a word, yes.  I have six different biological parents and my genes have been edited to the point that I am not strictly homo sapiens.  My estimated natural lifespan is three hundred years.  I am immune to ninety-five percent of known diseases.  I sleep only two hours a night and can turn my senses on and off at will, or choose specific stimuli to edit out of my perception.  I have perfect visual retention, superior strength, stamina, and speed…”  She shrugs.  “I even have a superior sense of smell.  I could go on, but suffice it to say I am the Church’s idea of the ultimate human being.”

           “So why are you here and not being worshipped on Titan?”

           “I disagreed with my parents’ plans for my future. I ran away.  And I would prefer not to discuss the details.”

           “Got it.  So you’re not HERCA-legal.”

           “No, I’m not.  But my family viewed the Human Evolution Restriction and Control Act as the greatest misstep of the last hundred years.  And existing with these modifications isn’t in itself illegal, just conspiring to make them.”

           “They still can’t have made your life easy in the Coalition.  Especially with the OCPD.”

           “No, they haven’t.  I’ve had many unpleasant interactions with the police.”  Irena looks at her companion.  “But then again, I don’t think any of what I’ve experienced quite ranks with an attempted assassination by undercover officers.”

           Madeleine manages to crack a weak smile.  “I guess that was pretty extreme.”

           “What about you?” Irena asks.  “You mentioned your parents were Puritanicals.  Old-world Catholic, Zoroastrian Neo-Buddhist, or secular?”

           “Secular,” Madeleine replies.  “A pair of high-minded academics who taught at Olympic University and thought augmentation was stagnating human interaction.  Nobody can lie to anybody anymore, or at least they aren’t supposed to be able to without being caught, and that just didn’t sit right with Mom and Dad.  Sure, the polite thing to do is to leave your aug’s truthtell off when you’re with your friends and family, but the bottom line, according to them, was that even having the option to know distorts communication.  They always thought that the mutability of truth was essential to the human condition. Or some such nonsense.”

           “You don’t seem to agree with their views.”

           “No, I don’t.  All their views amounted to was that, at the end of the day, I can’t lie to anyone, and everyone can still lie to me if they figure out that I don’t have a social aug.  Being stock is… not great.”

           Irena has no idea how to reply to that, so she lets the conversation lapse.  They wend their way through the labyrinthine streets of Olympic City in tense silence for about twenty minutes.  The sun is dimmed by the massive plumes of helium rising from the mining operations within the depths of Olympus Mons; the gas is runoff from the process of extracting the bountiful harvest of rare metals that first brought people to settle here two hundred and fifty years ago.  They arrive at the halfway checkpoint – a spot Irena picked out during her rounds this morning as she plotted their approach to the bank.  It is a small Sino-Martian restaurant whose owner, Zizhuang, owes her a favor.

           They are ushered into the kitchen and from there into a back room where Zizhuang runs illegal, cash-based card games.  He gives Irena a toothy grin, nods at an inconspicuous-looking spot on the wall, and sees himself out.

           Irena taps the wall seven times in a particular rhythm.  She swings open the hidden door which unlocked at her gesture, reaches into the wall safe – the one she bought for Zizhuang – and withdraws a pair of snub-nosed, chrome-plated hand pistols with matching shoulder holsters.  She doffs her duster, puts the holster on, and then tucks her pistol safely away in it.  Once her coat is back on, the weapon is impossible to see.

           She helps Madeleine get into her own holster, then holds out the other pistol for her to take.  She frowns when the other woman just stares at it.  “Is there a problem?”

           “I have never held a gun before in my life,” Madeleine replies.  “I don’t even know what kind this is.”

           “Gauss pistol,” Irena tells her.  “Very simple.  Point it at someone, turn the safety off, and push the trigger.”

           Madeleine swallows.  “I don’t want to kill anyone.”

           “You won’t.  These are loaded with Cripplers.  Unless you put it in someone’s eye, the worst you’ll do is – well. They’re called Cripplers.”

           “How did you get these?  Guns are illegal in Olympic City.”

           “Yes, and these in particular are extremely illegal.  But Zizhuang is a good friend with black market connections.”

           Gingerly taking the gun, Madeleine looks it over. “How does it work?”

           “A magnetized slug is propelled down a miniaturized rail by a series of solenoid coils,” Irena begins, then realizes the question is not an academic one, but practical.  “Oh.  You hold it like this.”  She adjusts Madeleine’s grip on the gun, ignoring the feeling of smooth skin under her fingers – not a sensation she is used to, and it is not the time to get distracted.  “Good.  Flip this switch, and – you see the depression on the back?  Use your thumb.”

           Madeleine lets out an involuntary shriek as she accidentally gives Zizhuang’s back room a new hole in the drywall.  The pistol makes a slight buzzing noise; the impact of the round against the wall is far louder.

           Irena smiles.  “Only use it if I’m taken out and can’t help you.  You really have never fired a gun before?  Never gone to one of the equatorial colonies and rented one at a shooting range?”

           “Some people have never been offworld,” Madeleine says, her tone a bit frosty.  “Some people have never had sex.  I, until today, have never fired a gun.  Would you give someone a hard time for one of those other things?”

           “No,” Irena says, trying and failing to hide her sudden feeling of awkwardness.  “I wouldn’t.”

           Madeleine looks more closely at her.  “Oh.  Oh.  You said – about your parents.  The whole asexual-reproduction thing.  I’m sorry.”

           Attempting to seem cavalier, Irena waves the observation away.  “You had no idea.  Holster that and let’s get moving.”

           They head out the emergency exit, which should trigger an alarm but naturally fails to.  The silence between them is tense as they reemerge onto the broad pedways of Olympic City’s main thoroughfares, Irena’s chosen route for the protection offered by the crowds.  Finally, Madeleine speaks up.  “Look, I am sorry.  I just was flustered and wasn’t thinking.”

           “It’s fine.”  Irena sweeps her gaze over the crowd, still not seeing any telltale lingering stares or obvious tails.

           “Can I ask you another personal question?”

           Irena sighs.  “If I say no, will you ask anyway?”

           “No, I won’t.  I’d respect your choice.”

           “Well, ask.  Again, I can always choose not to answer.”

           Madeleine hesitates, then opens her mouth to speak.

           In that moment, Irena – glancing over her shoulder at Madeleine – sees the glint of metal in the crowd behind her.  Her mecheyes highlight the object, just as they did last night: a military-grade plasma projector.

           Irena shoves Madeleine out of the way of the first burst, narrowly avoiding it herself.  She whips her gauss pistol out of its holster and returns fire, putting a Crippler in the right arm and leg of the grim-faced man who just tried to shoot her – charge? friend? – in the back.  He screams and crumples to the ground, plasma projector skittering along the ’crete.  Five other dark-clothed, grim-looking men within the crowd begin moving in much faster. Irena swears.  If she hadn’t been flustered by the conversation, maybe she would have noticed them earlier –

           “Run,” she says, and gives Madeleine a sharp push into motion.  Fortunately, Madeleine doesn’t ask questions; she just flees in the direction Irena indicated.  Plasma bolts begin howling after them as the pedestrians, realizing that they are in the middle of a shootout, begin to scatter.

           Irena drops two more of their pursuers with shots to the arms and legs.  A plasma bolt slams into her chest, lifts her off her feet, and sends her flying to land hard on her back two meters away.  Her combat jumpsuit absorbs and diffuses most of the thermal energy of the bolt, but it still feels like someone struck her in the sternum with a heavy ball of white-hot metal.  Irena rolls backward up onto her feet, dodges two more bolts, and shoots the third man in the gut, folding him up and leaving him writhing on the pavement.

           The remaining two exchange a glance, then stop their pursuit, fading back.  Madeleine rounds a sharp corner, gasping, and leans hard on the wall until Irena catches up with her.  “Holy shit!” she says, looking at the still-smoldering scorch mark in the center of Irena’s chest.  “Are you okay?”

           “I’ll live,” Irena says shortly.  “They are probably calling for backup.  We need to get to the bank, now.”

           They run, Irena not bothering to conceal her pistol, Madeleine not bothering to draw hers.  For five tense, silent minutes, they bolt through back alleys and side streets, abandoning the now-dubious protection of the thoroughfares for the relative anonymity of paths less traveled.  In the distance, sirens begin to wail, their volume rapidly increasing as they draw nearer.

           “Will the OCPD help us?” Madeleine gasps between panting breaths.  “Can they all be on Greene’s payroll?”

           “I’m not risking it,” Irena tells her, skidding around one last turn and arriving at their destination.  “Come on.”

           They are in an apparent dead-end alley, much like the one from which Irena rescued Madeleine only hours ago.  This one, however, has an access hatch for sewage maintenance tunnels embedded in the pavement.  It opens at Irena’s command; she spent an hour earlier today hacking it, in case they needed an alternate route to the bank.

           The maintenance tunnels are made from plascrete.  Clean, well-lit, and odorless, unlike the sewage lines for which it provides access, this particular tunnel also happens to run in a nearly straight shot to the public park right behind the Olympic First Bank that is their destination.

           “Are we almost there?” Madeleine asks, gasping.

           “The hatch ahead leads out into a park near the bank,” Irena tells her.  “I’ve already rigged it up.  All we need to do is hit this button, and –”

           She presses the RELEASE button on the wall-mounted keypad below the egress hatch.  Nothing happens.

           For a moment she just stares at it, frowning, until she notices something odd: a fingernail-sized black spot on the wall next to it.  It is a bead transceiver, a device capable of receiving and sending messages.

           A smooth, male voice emanates from it even as she looks at it.  “I don’t really know who you are, or why you’re helping Duvier,” the voice says. “You’re good, but you’re too easy to track.  I watched you prepare this backup route for yourself and knew you’d just need a push to want to take it and get off the street.”

           Irena feels an unaccustomed quiver of fear crawl through her guts.  “What do you want?”

           “Duvier,” the man on the other end says.  “Send her up, alone and unarmed, and there’s no problem. Fail to do that, and we have a big problem.”

           “Go to hell,” Irena says before Madeleine can say something, noble or otherwise.

           She can almost hear the man’s shrug.  “Suits me just fine.  I don’t get paid unless I bring Duvier in myself, so I’m not telling the OCPD goons where you are.  I’m just going to keep you bottled in there until you’re in a compliant mood.  Just say ‘please, sir’ to turn this back on. I’ll be looking forward to your call.”

           The transceiver switches off.

           And then, so do the lights.  She is back in the dark.

           There is a voice coming from far away.  Irena cannot understand what it is saying.  She is nine years old again, trapped in her room, and her parents have taken away her eyes.

           She flails, blindly, with her hands, trying to find the familiar landmarks – a bedpost, a nightstand, her body-contouring morphchair.  They have taken everything away.  There is nothing but cold walls.  They have taken her animal friends, her puzzles, her flatscreen terminal.  There is nothing.

           No, there is still something.  A small, rectangular object, many fine leaves of paper enclosed in a thick, hard covering.  The paper is covered in bumps and ridges.  Later, when she asks Father Makoto what it is, he tells her it is the Blue Protestant Reformation Bible – the holy book of the Church of St. Joan, a text she has read and been forced to read many times, a text she cannot help but know by heart – in a kind of writing system called Braille.  Father Makoto tells her she will learn to read again, with this book, and she will not be allowed to leave her room or have any of her things returned until she does so.

           And what happens when I do it? she asks. Will I get my eyes back?

           No, Father Makoto says.  Your eyes are gone.  You forfeited the gift of vision when you set your sights on heresy.

           And she wants to cry, but she cannot.  The tears do not come.  Not anymore.

           She is alone in the dark.

           How long she stays gone, Irena has no idea.  The faint voice from before seems to get closer and closer, slowly but steadily. Finally it begins to be accompanied by a physical sensation – a warm hand on her shoulder, gently shaking her. The dim noises of the voice resolve into words she can understand.

           “Irena?”

           Madeleine, it is Madeleine.  They are doing something, somewhere.  Irena has difficulty remembering what and where. She just remembers seeing Madeleine in trouble and wanting to help.  Feeling that she needed to help.

           “Irena, can you hear me?”

           It is so hard to respond, so very hard, but Irena forces herself to.  “Yes,” she says, the word coming out as a slurred croak, barely recognizable.

           “Irena, it’s Madeleine.  Do you know where you are?  Do you know who you are?”

           “Yes.”  The word is stronger this time, though producing it is still a monumental undertaking.

           Madeleine levers her into a sitting position – no easy feat, given that Irena is ninety kilograms of muscle and subdermal augmentations.  “What happened?  The lights went out, you shrieked, and you went fetal.  I’ve been trying to talk to you for what feels like hours.”

           How can she even begin to explain?  How can she make this woman, this stranger, understand?

           “The dark,” Irena finally forces out.

           “What about the dark?  Are you nyctophobic?”

           Irena manages a shake of her head, her locs making soft bumping sounds as they brush against the plascrete wall behind her. Then she remembers that, in the pitch black, Madeleine will not see the movement.  “No,” she says.  “My eyes. They took my eyes!”  She hears her voice rising in panic and can do nothing to arrest it.

           “Your eyes are fine.  I can see them right now, they’re the only light source in here.”

           Forcing herself to focus, to push through the buzzing noises and mounting terror in her head, Irena realizes she has unconsciously closed off her sensorium to input from her mecheyes.  She had done that before, to block the pain and phantom images.

           When she lets that sense click back on, she sees Madeleine’s face, extremely close to her own, illuminated faintly by the light from Irena’s mecheyes.  The soft green glow barely extends beyond that, but instantly Irena can breathe a little easier.  She can see. Her eyes are fine.  She is not alone in the dark again.

           “Hey,” Madeleine says, obviously recognizing the eye contact.  Irena swallows as she becomes aware of other sensations she had been blocking out – the warmth of Madeleine’s breath on her lips, the feel of Madeleine’s hands on her shoulder and knee.  “Glad you’re back.”

          ��“Yes,” Irena says, fighting the instinctive urge to try to draw farther away.  It would be both rude and useless, given that there is a plascrete wall up against her back.

           Besides, she cannot deny the closeness is helping her. “I am.”

           “What happened?” Madeleine asks again.

           “The lights went out and I was not ready for it,” Irena tells her.  “It caused a dissociative episode.  I have post-traumatic stress disorder relating to my childhood, and darkness is a trigger for it.”

           “I see.”  Madeleine’s lips quirk in a sympathetic grimace and she gives Irena’s shoulder a squeeze.  She shifts her weight off her feet – she had been crouching in front of Irena – and collapses into a sitting position next to her.  “How long have we been down here?”

           Irena checks her social aug’s internal clock. “Two and a half hours.  I am so sorry.”

           “I’m the one who’s sorry.  You’re only here because you tried to help me.”  Madeline shakes her head, anger twisting her expression. “We should just say that galling phrase the guy told us to use and I’ll go up.  At least that way you won’t be stuck in here any longer.”

           “No,” Irena tells her.  “I can counter whatever he’s done to the computer system controlling this maintenance tunnel.  I just – I needed to be in my right mind to do it.”  She tries to get to her feet and fails, for the first time in as long as she can remember.  Her muscles betray her and she slumps back down into a half-sitting, half-supine position, her arms and legs a quivering, spasming mess.  She swears in a language she doubts Madeleine knows.  “And I need to be able to give battle when the door opens and our captor puts up a fight.”

           “Are you all right?” Madeleine asks.

           “These dissociative episodes can cause desynchronization with the augmented portion of my nervous system,” Irena tells her.  “My brain patterns go so far off of normal that the system registers it as a seizure and shuts itself off to prevent me from hurting myself or others.  Turning it back on is supposed to be done with the assistance of a trained lab crew, an input terminal, and an AI.”

           Madeleine cringes.  “So… we’re fucked?”

           “No.”  Irena begins to concentrate, directing electrical impulses within her own body, something she hasn’t done consciously in years.  “But I do need a few hours to do it myself.”

           Gawking at her, Madeleine doesn’t bother to conceal her shock.  “You can reconnect your nervous system?  Don’t we have literally millions of neurons?”

           “About a hundred billion, actually, with thousands of connections each,” Irena says dryly.  “It’s not that my nervous system is disconnected, but it’s conditioned to operate with the augmented portion active, and that augmented portion is waiting for the proper electrical signals to reactivate it, connection by connection. There are about nine hundred thousand of those.”

           “And you can fix it in a few hours?”

           “I’ve already reactivated about seven thousand of them since you asked me if we were fucked.  I just need time and concentration.”

           Madeleine nods slowly, a smile spreading across her face. “You think we’re going to be okay?”

           “I think our friend upstairs is going to be in for quite a surprise,” Irena tells her.  “He doesn’t know who he’s dealing with.”

           There is little to do while Irena works.  Until her nerves are completely resynchronized, she doesn’t want to try to move, and Madeleine is silent, letting her concentrate. About two hours in, however, she speaks up, so softly Irena almost thinks she’s talking to herself.

           “I did want to say sorry,” Madeleine says. “About what I said before.”

           Trying to ignore the pins and needles in her arms and legs as the process of manual resynchronization continues, Irena asks, “What would that be?”

           “Comparing never firing a gun to never having had sex. I know the whole concept of virginity is ridiculous and old-fashioned, but it was the first thing that came to my mind.  It clearly made you uncomfortable, and I’m sorry for that.”

           Irena cracks a smile.  “We’re trapped in a maintenance tunnel by a mystery man who is going to be doing his best to kill us in about an hour, and this is what’s on your mind?”

           “Of course it is.  Don’t you obsessively replay every social interaction where you’ve committed a faux pas over and over, torturing yourself with it?  I’ve been sitting here with nothing to do for two hours, and eventually you get bored of worrying about death and start worrying if you’ve offended your friend.”

           Irena feels her smile broaden.  “So we’re friends, then?”

           “I would hope so.  At least.”

           “At least?”

           Madeleine is quiet for a long, telling moment. Then, “You’ve never met the right person?”

           Irena feels her heart rate begin to pick up. “No, I haven’t.  I find men uninteresting, and most women think I’m intimidating.”

           She hears Madeleine give a soft laugh.  “Most women are idiots.”

           Sparing the concentration to turn her head, Irena gazes at her in the glow of her own mecheyes.  The soft green light casts Madeleine’s elfin features into stark relief. Her skin, already pale, seems almost translucent.  Irena can see the beat of the other woman’s pulse beneath the flesh of her throat. “Most women?”

           “Look, I get that this is quite literally the worst possible time to be talking about this kind of thing,” Madeleine tells her. “But knowing you’re probably going to die in an hour or less kind of reshuffles priorities, doesn’t it?”

           “I have to confess I’m used to it,” Irena says, trying to sound nonchalant and knowing she’s failing.  “But I can understand how being in this situation for the first time might be an enlightening experience.”

           “Very.  I’ve never been a damsel in distress before.  Apart from being shot, threatened, and about to die, I have to say it’s got its perks.”  Her eyes flit up and down Irena’s body, a lightning glance that begins and ends at her face, and she gives a surprisingly coquettish smile.  “Beautiful, dangerous rescuers, for one.”

           Irena feels the traitorous blush again, so strong that she is irrationally convinced Madeleine can see it through the near-blackness.  “You have me at a disadvantage,” she says, trying desperately to remember what people in these circumstances are supposed to say.  Witty, charming things, mostly, she thinks.  “I’m not used to being flattered.  I don’t know how to respond to it.”

           In her estimation, she thinks she falls short of that particular benchmark, but Madeleine chuckles, a low, pleasant sound. Irena feels goosebumps rise up and down her arms, goosebumps which have nothing to do with her resynchronizing nerves. “I don’t have a social aug, you know,” Madeleine teases her.  “If that was a lie, it was a pretty good one, because I couldn’t tell you one way or the other.”

           “I don’t like to lie,” Irena replies.  “I was only caught lying twice as a child, but the consequences were memorable.”

           She realizes, as soon as she’s said it, that it was precisely the wrong thing to say.  The mood dims as Madeleine’s smile fades.  “I’m sorry for whatever happened to you.  For what it’s worth, I wish I could have helped.  No idea how, just…”  She shrugs, listlessly.  “I just wish.”

           “Thank you.”

           A long silence passes.  Irena reactivates more of her augmented nervous system. Finally, Madeleine speaks again. “What did happen to you?”

           The shock is severe enough that Irena miscalculates one of the nerve impulses and shocks herself.  Her left pinky finger begins to twitch, the flesh on the back of the digit crawling in an unnatural pattern.  She instantly compensates and gets control back, hiding the brief flash of pain from Madeleine.  “It’s not something I talk about,” she says.  “With anyone.”

           “I’m not just ‘anyone,’ am I?”

           Irena opens her mouth to issue a flat denial, but the words stick in her throat.  True, she has only known Madeleine for less than a day, but she isn’t wrong.  She is no longer just anyone.  No one, not Julian Thorne, not the few coworkers and subordinates she trusts enough to consider friends, no one has seen her brought so low by a simple change in the lights.  And yet, instead of thinking that she’s pathetic, or useless, Madeleine has been – sympathetic.  Understanding.  Irena realizes the exigency of the situation has, against all odds, not diminished Madeleine’s opinion of her.

           “The truth,” she says, slowly and carefully, “is that talking about it may upset me enough that I miss a crucial nerve connection or make a cascading miscalculation.  I need my focus if we’re going to get out of here alive.  So I will make you a promise: after this is over, if we’re still both standing, I will tell you.”

           “Okay,” Madeleine says, equally grave.  “I’ll hold you to that.”

           With renewed focus, Irena finishes reactivating her augmented nervous system in record time.  She climbs to her feet, tests her dexterity with some stretches, some simple katas from a few of the many martial arts she has learned since striking out on her own.  She turns to Madeleine, nods.  But before she can speak, Madeleine makes a shushing gesture, grabs her hand, and drags her over to the opposite side of the tunnel, where they first entered.

           “What?” Irena asks.

           “I have a plan,” Madeleine says.

           Eight minutes later, Irena watches the distaste on Madeleine’s face as she says, “Please, sir,” to the transceiver.

           The smooth, male voice returns.  “Took you long enough.  Starting to get thirsty?  Maybe needing to use the ladies’ room?”

           “I’m coming up,” Madeleine says.  “Open the hatch.”

           “Right,” their captor laughs.  “Unarmed, just you, your friend stays down there and finds her own way out?”

           “That’s the deal.”

           “I warn you that if you try anything stupid you’ll regret it.  There might be a way for you to come out of this alive, but not if you fuck with me.”

           “I hear you,” Madeleine says.  “Open the damn hatch.”  She looks at Irena, nods, and winks.

           The hatch hisses open, and Madeleine slowly climbs out.

           Irena sprints.  She runs faster than she ever has in her life.

           The plan is quite simple, if multi-layered. They spent the time at the other end of the tunnel productively, Irena hacking the hatch there to open on the same signal as the park exit.  It was the only way to avoid the watchdog AI their enemy had set up around the programming of the park hatch, and the only way for Irena to also gain her freedom from the maintenance tunnel.

           She erupts back out into the alley, a single augmented leap taking her three meters straight up out of her dark prison.  The renewed sunlight would dazzle any other person, but her mecheyes adjust automatically, apertures retreating in a fraction of a second.

           Irena tears out of the alley, back along the pedways, heading full-tilt for the direction of the bank.  The fastest she has ever clocked herself was forty-five kilometers an hour.  She hits fifty as she half-runs, half-leaps down the pedway, plascrete cracking with the force of each of her footfalls.  She clears the two hundred and eighty-nine meters of complicated city travel from the alley to the park in less than twenty-one seconds.  Her eyes scan the surroundings as she slows to a manageable speed: evergreens and grasses genengineered to grow in Martial soil, pedestrians picnicking or out for a stroll – there.

           Madeleine is fifteen meters away, being roughly escorted by a heavily-modified, male-presenting cyborg.  All of his limbs are obvious chrome, and his eyes are hidden behind a reflective polymer visor built into the front of his skull.  There is a strange blurriness to his features – some kind of distortion field, perhaps.

           He hears Irena coming, of course.  She can see his lips distort in a swear, the casual, brutal ease of the way he throws Madeleine to the ground as he turns to confront Irena.  But she has fought men like this and won, many times.  The gauss pistol is already in her hand.  She snaps it up and fires –

           He disappears.  One moment he is standing there, and the next he is gone, as though he were jump-cut out of existence.  Irena gapes as her Cripplers sail through the spot he occupied only a second ago, embedding themselves in the trunk of a tree in a spray of pulped wood.

           Something slams into her hand, sending the gauss pistol flying.  Something else crashes into Irena’s chest, right where she was struck by the plasma bolt. She feels a rib give way under the impact.  The force of the strike slams her onto her side, legs spilling up out of the access hatch. She tries to roll with the impact, scrambling back to her feet, and is just in time to see a nigh-invisible blur rush at her.

           The next attack, her opponent still invisible, cracks against the side of her head.  Frantically, she switches her mecheyes from the normal human-visible spectrum to infrared, then ultraviolet, then even x-ray, but their enemy is wearing a wraithshroud, the tech more bleeding-edge than anything Irena has ever seen.  His emissions are almost perfectly masked, all but undetectable in every spectrum. For a hired gun to have access to this kind of technology, Vice-Governor Greene must have some serious connections.

           She takes another punch to the chest and feels the breath explode from her lungs.  As she tries to suck in enough air to keep herself going, to retaliate, the faint blur seems to levitate a meter into the air.  She realizes her opponent is leaping up into a spinning kick when the toe of his boot makes contact with her skull, just behind her left ear.

           Everything goes pitch black.

           It seems that she is there, alone, in the dark, for ages.  But it must have only been a few seconds, because Irena hears Madeleine’s voice again. “Wherever you are, just – shoot me, take me, do whatever you want.  Just leave her.  She’s nobody, I just hired her to get me here.  Just let her go and I’ll cooperate.”

           For a long, terrible instant, Irena is tempted to stay in the dark, to let Madeleine go.  The words hurt, after all.  But then she comes to her senses.  Madeleine is trying to play for time.  The woman who helped her through the dark down in that tunnel would not abandon her now.

           Irena Matsuo Mtukudzi gets to her feet.  She does not open her eyes.  The dark is still all around her, but Madeleine’s voice, her presence, has cut through it.  She has reminded Irena that the dark is weak.  She has conquered it once before.

           And she will do it again.

           “I’m not done yet,” Irena says.  “And –” she takes a gamble, based on this man’s insulting, patronizing egotism – “maybe this time you can try not to hit like a girl.”

           The crunch of boots in grass stops short. There is a distinctive scrape, the sound of someone turning without lifting their feet.  Irena keeps her eyes closed and moves in.

           She phases out the distant wail of sirens, the shocked outcries of pedestrians, the barking of the dogs.  All she hears is the whisper of air being cut by scything limbs, the ragged, human sounds of breathing, the telltale rustling of grass and dirt underfoot.  Angry, pride injured, her opponent overextends, tries for a wild haymaker to her jaw.  She fades to one side, catches his arm between her own.  Through the thin nanofiber of the wraithshroud, which rasps against her skin like cold, liquid silk, she can feel the hard, inhuman lines of one of his full-replacement bionic arm.

           So she plants her feet, locks her arms around his limb, and tears it out of his shoulder socket with one violent, twisting wrench.

           He screams.  She opens her eyes, sees him staggering away from her.  His entire body, from head to feet, is covered in what looks like a thin coat of plastic – the wraithshroud, its camouflage shorted out. That explains the visual distortion she detected earlier.  Where Irena tore his arm from his shoulder, sparks fly, and thick, dark lubricant seeps.  The wraithshroud has been torn in a jagged line.

           Irena readies herself to go another round with the man.  She is bleeding internally, even her hyper-specialized body not immune to the simple realities of ruptured organs from blows with metal fists.  If he gets in another good hit, he may well kill her.

           But Madeleine, who is standing behind him, now totally forgotten by him, has other ideas.  Executing her part of the plan, she pulls out the gauss pistol hidden at the small of her back, takes aim at his back, and pumps twelve Cripplers into his torso.  

           He staggers.  Even that doesn’t put him down completely – Irena estimates there is less than twenty-five percent of his actual, human body left.  But he collapses to one knee, gasping, and cranes his neck around to stare at Madeleine.  “You,” he rasps, “were supposed to be unarmed.”

           “We certainly said we were going to send me up unarmed, didn’t we?” Madeleine asks.  “We said it quite loudly, right next to that transceiver that you’d supposedly turned off.  Didn’t we, Irena?”

           “Yes we did, Madeleine,” Irena replies, enjoying the look of dawning realization on her opponent’s face.  “Someone isn’t as clever as they think they are.”

           He snarls up at her.  “You fucking b-”

           Irena grasps his severed limb firmly by the wrist and hits him over the head with the other end.

           He drops, unconscious, to the grass.

           Eighteen whirlwind hours later, for the second time in as many days, Irena finds herself in Julian Thorne’s office.  Her chest is encased in a pressure bandage to keep her three broken ribs from shifting while they heal, and there is a cortical monitor affixed to her left temple to track the nanosurgical correction of her concussion. But she is on some good painkillers and is flush with a feeling of accomplishment, so in the final analysis she decides things are not too bad.

           She glances to her right, at where Madeleine sits, and thinks that things might, perhaps, even be said to be good.

           “Well,” Thorne says, looking up from the datafeed embedded in the surface of his desk.  “Vice-Governor Greene has been arrested by Coalition authorities.  So have a number of OCPD officers in his unofficial employ, as well as a one-armed, extremely angry cyborg mercenary wanted on six planets for murder, grand larceny, and dozens of other charges.  Apparently the DA has been sitting on a mountain of circumstantial evidence about Greene’s less-than-reputable business dealings and has just been waiting for a charge to pin on him.  Conspiracy to commit murder is certainly a juicy one.  They brought an entire assault ship of Praetorian Guards in from Earth just for him and his co-conspirators.”

           Irena feels her eyes widen slightly in shock. “They don’t do that for just anyone.”

           “No, they do not.  He has been, to put it mildly, a very bad boy.  Governor Shido is cooperating fully with the Praetorians’ investigation.  I expect he’s hoping to dodge any Senate hearings back on Earth by making his innocence clear.”  Thorne turns to Madeleine.  “I expect, Ms. Duvier, that you were targeted for death because you threatened to tell the press ‘everything he’d done.’  You only meant the harassment, but…”  He shrugs eloquently.  “Crime makes men paranoid.”

           “Fuck,” Madeleine murmurs with a small shake of her head.

           Thorne leans back, steepling his fingers.  “This is going to dominate the news cycle.  If it’s all the same to you, Irena, I’d prefer you to decline any interview requests.”

           Irena nods.  “A good chief of security should be invisible.  I never will be, but I can at least keep a low profile.”

           “Thank you.”  Thorne makes a show of checking his ridiculous antique watch.  “Well, I believe I have a meeting with the board. Feel free to sit a spell and talk, if you like.  Just see yourselves out when you’re done.  And Ms. Duvier, I will expect your resume on my desk by noon tomorrow.  If we’re going to find you a job here, I’ll need to know what you can do.”  He grins. “Apart from being very clever and shooting a man in the back.”

           Madeleine blushes fiercely, but nods.  Thorne gives her an exaggerated wink and ambles out of his office.

           “I wanted to thank you,” Irena says, before Madeleine can speak.

           “Oh?”

           “Yes.  You helped me through the dark, and didn’t leave.  I – I do not have the words to express how grateful I am for that.”

           “And I don’t have the words to tell you how grateful I am.  For my life.”  Madeleine tentatively reaches out and takes Irena’s hand in her own.  “Why did you help, anyway?  It wasn’t just because Mr. Thorne told you to.  You made a decision when you saw me in the alley.  What was it?”

           Irena takes a moment to find the proper words. “I think I can explain by keeping my earlier promise to you.”

           “Telling me about your childhood?”

           “Yes.  I told you before about the Church, that I ran away.  That is true.  What I did not tell you is that they caught me, during my first attempt.  And in order to ensure I did not escape a second time, they burned out my eyes.  They blinded me.  I was nine years old.”

           Madeleine swears, softly, and squeezes Irena’s hand. “That’s horrible.  I am so sorry.”            “Thank you.  I did escape, though, on my second attempt.  And yesterday, when I saw you in the alley, I saw myself.  Alone, in the dark, surrounded by people who were going to hurt me.  I suppose I thought that if I could save you…”  Irena shrugs, trailing off.  

           “I think I understand,” Madeleine says.

           Irena looks down at Madeleine’s small, soft hand, almost half the size of her own, and clears her throat.  “So.  Would you like me to arrange a car to take you back to your apartment?”

           “Only,” Madeleine says, “if you’re in the car with me.”

           The traitorous blush starts rising in Irena’s cheeks again.  “I –”

           “You said that most women find you intimidating. I said most women are idiots.  I wasn’t just making small talk.” Madeleine gets to her feet.  “I just survived a crooked politician trying to have me murdered, so I’ll be damned if I let myself get cold feet about this.  I’ve already said I think you’re beautiful, and I have since the second I woke up and saw you standing at the side of my bed.  You’re also my hero, and deserve a little worship.  Come home with me, I’ll make you some herbal tea for your aches, and we’ll see if we can find a movie we both like.  How does that sound?”

           Irena swallows.  It is utterly absurd, but at this moment she is more petrified than she was when staring death in the face.

           She remembers Madeleine’s voice, cutting through the dark.  She remembers her face, illuminated in the light of her eyes.  And, just now – you’re also my hero.

           “That sounds lovely,” Irena says.  Still holdings hands, they leave the office together.

           And later – much later – Irena allows herself to be persuaded to turn out the lights for the first time in twenty years.

[silvertonguedslavicwitch]

Πειρασμός | Peirasmós

Chapter 8 : Sacred Ties

The entire night, Erika spent it trying to think of all possible outcomes that could end up getting out. Her wedding was coming up very soon. Too soon. And there was no way she could evade from this one now. Tonight was going to be a long night. As promised, she sent Eron to go and escort the vikings to their estate in Repton as they docked over near the town of Mercia. She spent all day succumbing to her state in her room when suddenly her door was knocked a few times. Placing her family heirloom necklace down on her bed sheets, she looked up from her seating position towards the door. 

“Come in..”

What she was greeted however, was by a familiar face she long to be reunited. That was one huge hint saying it wasn't any of the Ragnarsson brothers. She admire Bjorn and Ubbe's traits, but now is not the time for her to begin any conversation with them. She didn't feel it and if the princess did not have any mood to use it, it was better to leave her be as her temperament was clear to everyone. It could rival Ivar's. The person that greeted her by the door frame was Irena, her handmaiden. The last time she saw her was when they were separated as they both went on different ships after they raided Algeciras. Erika pushed herself off the bed and went to embrace the redhead.

“I've missed you, Rena. It's hurtful to see you only came when it's about my wedding day.” She pouted and feigned her hurt as she poked the redhead's shoulder a few times. “Bjorn has decided to let me go. I served as a servant at his household for a while but he has decided to ‘give’ me back to you as a ‘wedding gift' from him. Whatever he says, at least I am now back with you, princess.” With that, she led her to the bed as both girls took a seat.

Irena took the hairbrush from the vanity table where she then turned Erika around so she could brush her hair. It was usually a daily routine for her to do this and the princess missed her company dearly. “I can sense the cold feet from you, princess. You don't have to go through this if you don't want to. I can see that you don't want o do this. Not the slightest. And I wish to see my princess happy, if not now, at least in the future.” Hearing that from her made the hazel hued woman purse her lips lightly as she click her tongue a few times, trying her best to see where the picture can go.

“A promise is a promise. And my brother is a man of his word. He'll never go back on his promise. It doesn't help when Alek is my King.. And my brother who I cherish and love dearly, Rena. It's not as easy as you would make it out to be. I can't just simply reject this said proposal and tell them the wedding is not going to happen.” she mumbled as she fiddled with the necklace that hung lowly around her neckline. The preparations were already in work as of yesterday too. Despite not liking the ordeal, the lords still obeyed her and will stand to be the representatives from her homeland alongside her brother who should arrive soon, for her wedding.

“Can you see your future with Hvitserk? Be honest with me.”

“I don't know..”

“Let's hope you will have one. You did not spend your entire life running from here and there, building yourself from within, just to have a disastrous future.” Dusk was nearing and Erika felt like it was closing up to her so quick, like even time was against her. She felt utterly and completely lost.

------------------------------------

The dress was simple but it was definitely by far, quite the extravagant little cloth. The gold that adorned the embroideries were flashing their family's signet and symbol. She wore the headpiece accessory her mother had worn during her wedding. The least she could do is commemorate her memory since this wedding wasn't exactly what either one of them thought it would be. It wasn't how Erika had imagined to go when she was young whenever her brother told her stories.

She wasn't at the Arvaêl altar, saying her vows and prayers. Instead, she was going to stand in front of the one she had in her Repton safehouse. But hopefully, this would be the last of disappointments she will go through. Which is honestly, quite far fetched. Her brother appeared next to her with his arm withdrawn. “You look beautiful, sister. As always.” And even his words of comfort could not ease the uncomfortableness that settles in the pit of her stomach that churns at every mention of her future matrimonial life.

Keeping up the silent treatment, she placed her hand on her brother's grasp as he guided her towards the altar. Everyone was in place, waiting for her. She could see Hvitserk standing by the altar, looking cleaner by a mile. He had a fur coat wrapped around him, which was more than understandable because even the cold was starting to seep in the place. “Who gives the bride?” She didn't even realize the priest in charge had started talking. Surprisingly, the Ragnarssons had agreed to conduct the wedding according to the format rights for the royal family because it meant everything to her and her brother. It was a smart move because no other vikings were present for the ceremony with the exception of the brothers. Ivar however, did not look happy. He grew up hating Christians, after all.

“I do. I am Aleksander Nikolayevich Ivakov, the King of Novgorod and Sicily, and brother to said bride. I give her off to her groom in hopes he will be able to guide her hand as I have done so.” With that, Alek offered her hand towards Hvitserk who accepted.

She met his striking but slightly darker cerulean blue hues with her own darker hazel ones as the turned to face the priest. Erika kneeled down slowly and carefully, so she would not trip on her dress, when Hvitserk too, followed suit. There were two chalices placed in front of them on the table and she closed her eyes, saying her prayers in Latin for good matrimonial hopes to come forth. The Bishop then said a few words to where both also said their vows. She was hesitant but did not showcase it in front of everyone. It came to a time where the two of them had to share the chalices to signify their bond. The raven haired Russian born woman slid her arm that was holding one part of the chalice, intertwining them with his as both took a sip from it.

“And I pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride.”

---------------------------------------

The only thought she had in her head dissolved as fast as it could when his lips made contact on hers. How come it felt so pure? Was that even possible? Perhaps it was only her but throughout the feast, where they held in the Great Hall of the residency, the bride of the night could only ponder at her own thoughts that was still curious to what the future holds for her. Here she was, married to a heathen.

“I'm sorry you couldn't conduct your traditional way of wedding.” She mumbled silently, but still audible for him to hear. “Don't worry about it.. What matters is your comfort. I will do my best to suit your needs, princess.”

Taking a hold of the chalice filled with wine on the table, Erika turned her head slightly to the side of her husband yet her gaze did not avert itself from her peripheral vision. “Don't make promises you can't keep, husband. Those words.. Are false than a vow made in wine.”

Her words seemed to struck a cord in Hvitserk, who claimed he did not have the slightest of care in the world reserved for the Russian princess. While everyone else was filled with excitement, non of those coming from Erika’s side were anywhere near the word elated, and so was the princess herself. She never wished for this marriage and even if she was to be sold off this way, it would have never crossed her mind that her lifetime partner would end up being a viking prince. Could she have opted for someone worse? Not really. Despite being raised the way, Hvitserk proved to be quite the calm and jovial one out of all the brothers and maybe, just maybe, Alek had hoped he would be able to treat his older sister with utmost care and love.

Almost an hour had passed since then, and Alek raised up his cup in toast, his eyes averted up to the pair of newlyweds sitting before him, never missing the sighing dreadful look present on his sister’s face who knew what the plain gesture meant. “The night is still young but the feast has gone for an hour long. To signify and complete the union and bond, the two bride and groom will have to proceed to their wedding night. A consummation calls.” He hated the words he had to utter and Erika poured her cup full with wine before finishing every single one drop of the liquid. The once sweet wine had left a bitter aftertaste for the princess who was then escorted away by her handmaiden to change out of her wedding dress into her nightgown.

Suddenly the dress didn’t feel as heavy as it was before and Erika found herself not wanting to take it off at all. But, a duty is a duty. One of the disadvantages of being a royal member, is that your consummation night is always intercede, all the prying hawk eyes watching your every movement and she didn’t like it at all. Had it been up to her, she would’ve requested a much more privateer turn for it. But alas, it was never up to her. Nothing has ever been in her hands when it comes to making decisions, not if her brother had a say in it. Once the dress came off with the help of Irena, the raven haired woman stared at the mirror reflecting her own stature and saw the dreadful feeling resting in the pits of her stomach as if it was visible to the naked eye. All the jewelries took its turn just as well until she was just left with her nightgown and her hair no longer knotted in braids. The cold chilly winter weather made its way across and blew against her, where for once, she shivered.

The door opened a few minutes later, and Hvitserk was escorted inside. Supposedly, the bishop and her brother with a few high end lords were supposed to witness the night but for the sake of his sister, Erik made sure it was behind the closed doors. She would’ve opted for bedsheet checkup any day if that’s the case. The terror had her trembling and it was visible to Hvitserk who stood by the bed. Irena bade her good fortune and luck to last the night and allowed herself to exit the room with others, leaving the two alone. Erika didn’t hate Hvitserk, she did not even held any resentment towards him other than the part where he grazed her chin with his sharp end of the sword the first time they met at Algeciras. And she sure did not scorn him for accepting this proposal that went along with the alliance. He was a prince and she, a princess. Both had their own respective duties solely for the benefits of their homeland.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to, we don’t have to.” It was a surprising remark coming from the flaxen haired prince. She looked up to him in surprise, shock gracing her pale features. It almost hurt his pride to see that she would think the worse of him on their wedding night.

“It’s not want, Hvitserk. It’s need. It’s my bound duty to carry this one out. It would probably seem foreign to you, but in our customs and tradition, it’s a must to record the consummation night between royals. My brother is kind enough to sit behind closed doors at my behest and consideration, but they will change the bedsheets tomorrow morning and if they do not see any sign of my virtue painted on it, I would be allowed to annul our marriage.” She took a seat on the bed before letting out a heaved sigh. Hvitserk who was confused by the situation took a seat in front of her.

“Isn’t that what you want?”

“As I’ve said before, it’s not want. Annulment will only bring chaos to our alliance and I don’t wish to burden my brother with such trivial matters.” Biting her bottom lip, the princess sighed and pushed the sheets away to tuck herself in. “Let’s just get this over with.”

It would be a dreadful lie for him to admit that did not hurt him the slightest.

---------------------------------------

The next morning, she was woken up by her handmaiden changing the sheets. Hvitserk wasn’t there and Irena told her that he went to take a walk so early in the morning. She tried her very best to remember last night but everything was just so fuzzy and she figured it was all the wine she had consumed. Maybe it was a good thing she couldn’t remember, but a part of her feels guilty for saying such words to him. He might be a viking but it didn’t mean for him to have any less of feelings, despite it being a huge disadvantage for them. Surely, she had to consider his just as well as both of them were thrust into this political advantageous tie. She couldn’t take it back too as they had seemingly consummated their marriage night, and were now husband and wife by law and in the eyes of God.

There was one more thing reminding her that she was no longer the woman she was before; her hairstyle. As a princess, she was used to wearing her hair down and minimal braiding being done, pairing them up with a crown. But after receiving the multitude status of being a married woman, she was advised to wear her hair up most of the time to signify her ‘status’. Sometimes, they would also wear a veil to cover her hair but that wasn’t compulsory neither mandatory for most. It was a habitual trait for mothers, however. Erika did not think that time will come to pass soon for her case.

Yesterday was a celebration for all, but today the battle resumes. They were to march on to Aethelwulf’s army. The dreadful feeling still settled so comfortably in her stomach, so much she could not even shrug it off without drinking. She felt slightly light-headed and would probably faint if she didn’t have her eyes focused on her peripheral sight; the brothers. Erik had left to go back to Novgorod with the rest of the lords, to govern some matters, leaving her alone with only her trusted second-in-command, Eron Sivgny. At least, she had Irena and him. The Ragnarssons’ appeared to be bickering amongst themselves and she wondered why. Normally, she wouldn’t give a care about it but if it concerns their strategic ways, it was fortunate that she had beckoned for her horse to come forth.

“Is it wise to make camp only a few miles near the Saxon army?” She had been quiet all day and she didn’t like the fact that she could understand their language because all she’s been hearing was how it was spiteful for a viking prince to marry a Christian.

“We shall overcome. It’s no use going after them now.” Bjorn’s statement however, had made Erika roll her eyes in annoyance. She never did like it when people treated like she wasn’t there and had no other purpose to serve other than to look pretty and be the token her brother sent.

“I did not mean by that..Nevermind.” There was no use in bickering with the Ironside, he’s as stubborn and tough as his nickname. However, it seems that she wasn’t the only one disagreeing with the oldest Ragnarsson.

“You can make camp, I’m going to take a look at where we’re going to fight.” Clearly, the brothers are not used to having their authorities being questioned, not even by their own family member. She decided to stay by and listen to what Ivar has to suggest and say. She might not like him particularly for his behavior, but he was smart, she could see that on him.

“What are you talking about.”, Ubbe asked, a slight look of disbelief flashing across his face.

“They will expect us to fight in a certain way.” He was not wrong about that. “Why should we do that? Why don’t we plan to fight in a different way, and surprise them?” That piqued her interest as she tilted her head to the side, eyeing the brothers, especially Ivar.

Hvitserk made his way to him as the others slowly trailed behind. “Our warriors won’t know what’s happening. We fight in a shield wall, that’s how we fight.” Sigurd nodded in response to his older brother’s remark and the Russian princess found herself sighing.

“But we have a bigger army now. And they have a bigger army now, Hvitserk. We cannot fight in the same way.”

“It’s too late to change now.”

“Who are you to say that, shut your mouth.” Here comes the classic bickering between Sigurd and Ivar. It was endless and if Erika had a coin for every time they bicker over pointless ends, she would have enough to build a settlement somewhere.

“We are brothers. Together!” That caused Sigurd to smile and unrest for Ivar who tightened his grip on the reins of his chariot. However, Bjorn gave Ivar a moment of doubt when he asked him. “Why do you want to change the tactics?”

“ Do you want to win, brother?” The looks being exchanged between the two oldest and youngest of the lot were quite brotherly, despite all their antics and petty resolvements. “Listen, come with me, Bjorn. Let’s investigate the battlefield. Perhaps, instead of a narrow and small place, we should stretch the battlefield across a large area, many miles. And use the landscape. Ditches, hills, woods.” She hated to say it, but Ivar’s got a point there. He was being spontaneous. Hvitserk and Ubbe glanced over to Bjorn, the two being quite convinced just as well. They weren’t the only ones too.

“He has a point.” The sudden voice coming from her who had been standing behind them on her horse all along, caused the others to look at her. The priceless look of surprise on them, especially Ivar’s, were hilarious.

“What did you say?”

“Did you just agree with Ivar-”

“I must’ve misheard it.”

“Did I hear it wrong, or did you just agree with Ivar.”

Out of every one, only Bjorn had nothing to say about that.

“If you are looking for me to say it twice, then you are sorely misled, Ivar.” Narrowing her hazel hues, she clicked her tongue and pursed her lips lightly before continuing. “What I meant to say is, your brother is right. They will expect you to fight in a very similar fashion that you have always used. Shield wall being your defense and charging first hand being your offense. No offense, but there’s no originality or complexity there. Your people have fought with Aethelwulf before. He would expect this to come. The best way to go with this, is to prove him wrong.”

“And what do you have to say for this, dove.” It was both surprising and not, to see Bjorn giving her a space to lay out her words of opinion.

“Aethelwulf. You have to understand him. That’s the only way you’ll win. You have to think like your enemy. If he’s smart, he’ll stay back in Wessex to build up defenses because the walls are almost impenetrable. But seeing as he’s here in Mercia, rounding up the troops and Mercian mercenaries, he’s desperate. Mercian soldiers were slaughtered due to Queen Kwenthrith a while ago, or as I was informed. They’re not strong enough, so it’s all capable men or not. You’ll defeat them with so much ease. It means he’s going on one path. To win. To end this as soon as possible. Which means, if he knows your boats and ships are in the shores of Repton, he’ll march there. That is his Achilles’ heel. That is what you’ll use to your advantage. So Ivar’s plan might not be so bad, after all.”

“What do you say.” Ivar asked Bjorn once again, his eyes were sparkling with hopes that his brother would go ahead with his plan.

“If it works, it is a good plan. If it doesn’t, then it is a bad plan.” Saddling up his horse, he earned a chuckle from his cripple brother. “What are you waiting for.” With that, both brothers galloped away. One with his horse. The other with his chariot. But both had equally the same brilliant minds.

Just as Erika was going to make camp with the others, Hvitserk patted her horse, almost scaring her off. “I’d rather die like a warrior and not from a heart attack so young in my age, husband.”

“What is Achilles’ heel.”

Chuckling to herself, she shook her head before laughing softly at the prince. “I’ll tell you the story. Come.”

---------------------------------------

[ladyofrosefire]

Arianell/Tristan for the meme please! (and Galahad/Mordred if you have the time :) )

OH SWEET GODS ALL OF THEM? 1.) amazing. 2.) Very long post incoming, ya’ll

Mordred/Galahad

1) Who rocks the Ferris Wheel seat and who flips out and begs them to stop? Mordred rocks it because he likes tempting fate. Galahad would appreciate it very much if his boyfriend cut that out immediately.

2) Who is always horny and will have sex at any time, at any place and at any time? Neither of them. Mordred more so, but like… bodies are weird, sex is weird. But they both know that if Galahad’s down, he’s probably not going to say no.

3) Who is more into taking showers/baths together? Who tries to make it relaxing and who tries to make it sexy time?Galahad. Galahad will do either, but “relaxing” and “submerged in water” don’t mix in Mordred’s book. They try. Showers go better.

4) Who likes to walk around the house naked and who tells the other to go put some clothes on?Neither of them are super inclined to do this, but Galahad is more likely to. Mordred worries about what’s going to happen since they have a cat.

5) Who sleeps on the couch when they get into a fight?They have a VERY strictly enforced do-not-go-to-bed-angry rule. So they sit and talk it out and either both pass out on the couch, or both make it to bed.

6) Who takes photos of the other while they sleep?Mordred. His boyfriend looks like something out of a painting and he needs proof it’s real.

7) Who said “I love you” first? and who ends their arguments in a fight with “Because I love you”?Galahad said it first. Mordred ends arguments that way.

8) Who likes to wear the others sweatshirts?Galahad wants to be cozy and his boyfriend has long arms.

9) Who wakes the other up in the middle of the night to tell them a cool dream they had? Who has the most nightmares, and who sings them back to sleep after?Mordred doesn’t wake Galahad up on purpose. But it happens. He’s also the one with the godawful nightmares. And, luckily for him, Galahad’s singing voice is beautiful.

10) Who is more likely to cheat?fuck this question.

11) Who makes fun of the other for having a crush on them, and who has to remind them that they are in a relationship?MORDRED MAKES SO MUCH FUN OF GALAHAD AND GALAHAD IS JUST. HON. ARE YOU HEARING YOURSELF.

12) Who starts a food fight in the kitchen?m O R D R E D

13) Who initiates duets? and who is the better singer?Mordred. Galahad. Mordred’s not bad but Galahad is excellent.

14) Who starts the hand holding? Who grabs the others butt? Who slides their arm around their waist? Who likes to put their fingers in the belt loops?Galahad. Mordred. Mordred. Galahad. (Belt loops are good handholds for holding back angry Orkneys)

15) Who likes writes the others name on their wrist?Mordred. He’s a saaaaaaaaaaaap. 

16) Who is more seductive when they are drunk? and who is louder in bed?Mordred thinks he is but Galahad honestly cannot understand a fucking word he’s saying. Friends, I have tried to decipher drunk Scots. I am very good at languages, and I could not do it.Mordred is louder right until the end. Then he goes almost completely quiet and Galahad can’t shut up.

17) Who is more protective?Mordred, although not by much.

18) Who talks to the other while they are sleeping?Galahad. Very quietly.

19) Who drives and who has the window seat?Galahad drives. Mordred stares out the window and navigates.

20) Who falls asleep in the others lap and who carries them to bed?Mordred has dozed off getting his hair patted. Galahad just. picks him up and carries him off.

21) Who cuts the others hair?Nope! They both have hair that can be a bit difficult to manage, so they go to professionals. 

22) Who is super bad at sexting? and who sends them encouraging messages throughout the day?They’re both awful at sexting for entirely different reasons. Galahad sends both encouraging messages and pictures of cute dogs.

23) Who thinks they are not good enough for the others love? and who’s more afraid of loosing the other? Who thinks they keep messing up, only for the other to tell them they don’t need to worry?Mordred. The boy has issues. Galahad talks him into getting a goddamn therapist. It helps.

24) Who starts random slow dancing with the other in the kitchen? Who holds the other just above the ground and kisses them?Galahad. Mordred. 

25) Who says shitty puns and sex jokes just to see the other giggle and blush?MORDRED. It’s amazing and horrid and Galahad is just. so tired.

26) Who kissed first?Mordred. The second it caught up to him, he ran away. 

27) Who orders take out at two in a morning? and who wakes the other up at three in the morning to go downstairs with them to get a glass of water because it’s too dark?MORDRED. Bit of an insomniac. Galahad asks for company to go get water. 

28) Who writes poems/stories and love songs about the other? Do they sing the songs the write for them?Galahad, and absolutely. He can make Mordred match his hair in about three lines.

29) Who does some crazy stunt to try and impress the other and who ends up driving them to the emergency room after it backfires?MORDRED IS A DUMBASS.

30) Who is embarrassed when they have to wear their glasses and who thinks they look super cute?….I love the idea of Galahad with glasses? He’d just wear them and probably not complain. Mordred wants to know when he developed a librarian fetish.

Arianell/Tristan. MISFITS OTHER THAN IRENA, DO NOT READ THIS.

1) Who rocks the Ferris Wheel seat and who flips out and begs them to stop?Neither? Arianell is not afraid of heights, but she’s also not the type to rock the seat.

2) Who is always horny and will have sex at any time, at any place and at any time?…..Tristan?????????? He doesn’t push. Ever. But his lady is extremely pretty.

3) Who is more into taking showers/baths together? Who tries to make it relaxing and who tries to make it sexy time?They both love it. Othstazen, and he has almost no modesty. She’s more inclined to go for relaxing. He’ll try to combine the two.

4) Who likes to walk around the house naked and who tells the other to go put some clothes on?Tristan, your pants are right there. Pick them up and put them on, there are going to be guests.

5) Who sleeps on the couch when they get into a fight?Tristan offers, Arianell tells him to come back to bed.

6) Who takes photos of the other while they sleep?Arianell. 

7) Who said “I love you” first? and who ends their arguments in a fight with “Because I love you”?Tristan. Arianell. Can you say emotional repression?

8) Who likes to wear the others sweatshirts?Arianell is half a damn foot shorter than him so his shirts/cloaks/coats are large and warm and smell nice. 

9) Who wakes the other up in the middle of the night to tell them a cool dream they had? Who has the most nightmares, and who sings them back to sleep after?Tristan, because Ari, as a full elf, only needs 4 hours a night.Tristan has very bad nightmares after That Thing I Told You About. Arianell sings to help calm him down. 

10) Who is more likely to cheat?Fuck this question. 

11) Who makes fun of the other for having a crush on them, and who has to remind them that they are in a relationship?“We’ve been married for ten years, ei'cridai.” “I know. Still.”

12) Who starts a food fight in the kitchen?Tristan are you four?

13) Who initiates duets? and who is the better singer?Tristan. They’re both really good, but Ari has more training, what with being more than a hundred years old and a noble. 

14) Who starts the hand holding? Who grabs the others butt? Who slides their arm around their waist? Who likes to put their fingers in the belt loops?TRISTAN FOR LITERALLY ALL OF THESE. He’s very tactile whenever he’s allowed to be.

15) Who likes writes the others name on their wrist?Tristan. Sap.

16) Who is more seductive when they are drunk? and who is louder in bed?Tristan only because getting a Sorcerer drunk is a bad call. And again, Tristan.

17) Who is more protective?HAH. HAHAHAHAHA. AAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAARIANELL.They’re both pretty protective but this woman has dragon blood.

18) Who talks to the other while they are sleeping?Arianell. She picked up the habit during the Bad Time I Told You About.

19) Who drives and who has the window seat?Tristan drives, Arianell navigates because Mr. Wisdom Of Ten will get them lost.

20) Who falls asleep in the others lap and who carries them to bed?Tristan has had to carry her to bed many, many times. Ari couldn’t lift him if his life depended on it.

21) Who cuts the others hair?Tristan, but only when there’s no better option. 

22) Who is super bad at sexting? and who sends them encouraging messages throughout the day?Arianell cannot sext. She just can’t. They send each other notes constantly.

23) Who thinks they are not good enough for the others love? and who’s more afraid of losing the other? Who thinks they keep messing up, only for the other to tell them they don’t need to worry?Neither of them really have that particular self-worth issue, although Tristan worries about whether Ari worries about propriety. Arianell is terrified of losing him. The last bit doesn’t apply to either of them. 

24) Who starts random slow dancing with the other in the kitchen? Who holds the other just above the ground and kisses them?They switch off. Both of them like dancing and it’s a good way to be close. Tristan. “I didn’t want to bend.” “I can fly.” “I could put you—” “Don’t you dare.”

25) Who says shitty puns and sex jokes just to see the other giggle and blush?Tristan. Tristan. So much so.

26) Who kissed first?Arianell. He woke up from The Bad Thing and she just forgot all about self-restraint.

27) Who orders take out at two in a morning? and who wakes the other up at three in the morning to go downstairs with them to get a glass of water because it’s too dark?Arianell, since she’s the one who would be awake. Tristan, because he can’t see in the dark and she can.

28) Who writes poems/stories and love songs about the other? Do they sing the songs they write for them?ELVISH LOVE POETRY IS A THING. ARIANELL IS VERY EMBARRASSED WHEN HE FINDS THEM. But yes, he talks her into reading them to him. She’s not a song writer.

29) Who does some crazy stunt to try and impress the other and who ends up driving them to the emergency room after it backfires?Tristan stop it you’re a tank, not immortal, and you’re going to make Ari’s hair turn white.

30) Who is embarrassed when they have to wear their glasses and who thinks they look super cute?Neither of them wear glasses but Tristan would be so miffed if he had to.

[neirawrites]

December writing goals

If I don’t post them and maybe even have some of you shame me into action, I will not get anything done, so here we go:

Phantom Limb, draft five

Jesus Chris, that is a lot of drafts. I may not complete it, but I got a lot of feedback already and I hope my other betas will be done soon too, so I can focus on making it work and hopefully send it out to a publisher before the heath death of the universe. 

Ozren’s PoV chapters may need to go. Which will probably cause me to have to make significant changes to the structure of the novel (the middle and the end), so may gods have mercy on my soul. I am already exhausted from just thinking about it. 

Irena’s spin off

RESEARCH. Do you effing research. It will go in two directions:

Writing a trans character. I have written trans characters before and some of them are even PoV characters (Metzli and Dalian), but this is different because they live in the queer utopia of Jord and are also smaller parts of a bigger story. Irena will be the only PoV in her novel (yes, that is an effing promise!) so I need to be more prepared. I’m starting with the web research (on it as I write this), to review my basics and figure out what I need help with and then hopefully, I’ll grow a pair and ask the local LGBT organization to put me in contact with actual trans people from our area who are willing to talk to me. This isn’t a story about Irena being trans. This is a story about her meeting a cute vila and having adventures around Bosnia(started from my desire to write Lesbian Twilight), but being trans is a part of who she is and pretending it doesn’t affect her life in this hellhole of a country would be ridiculous. No triggering material, not my story to tell, but I want and need to be respectful and educated. If you have any suggested research materials, I would appreciate them very much because I’m terrified I will eff this up. 

Mythology research:

I need to hit the library, but I have a chronic fear of librarians like I’m from Night Vale. But, my alternative is to buy a lot of super expensive textbooks, so me being a cheapskate is what will get me through this. Maybe next Saturday if I’m not busy with something else. Bosnian mythology. Medieval Bosnian church. Those are my starting points. Once I figure out the basic mythology, I can figure out a basic plot. For now, I know I want it to involve hopping around the country. For some reason, I can’t stop thinking about either time travel or some for of reincarnation. We shall see. 

Bully me if I don’t post any updates please. Just drag me for being useless. it would be very much appreciated. 

[adventuresinmorocco]

This past weekend was our last trip together as a group and our first, and only, group trip outside the country. We went to Seville, Spain where UNE also has students studying abroad. It was only a weekend, but it was a very fun time and we had a great experience in Spain.

The weekend started out Friday morning as we headed off to the ferry port in Tangier. After going through passport control and boarding the boat, we left for the 30 minute ride over to Tarifa, Spain. It was so much fun to stand on the top of the ferry and feel the breeze as we watched the land change from Morocco to Spain right before our eyes. Once we landed in Tarifa, we went through Spain’s passport control where I had a bit of a mishap that left me a bit shaky! The man in the booth took my passport and flicked through it before asking me, “Where are your stamps?” I told him they were in the back of the passport book and he flicked to the back. I could see the stamps from the Morocco airport and the ferry port clear as day in front of him but still he asked again, “Where are your Moroccan stamps?” I pointed and tried to explain that they were right there. He then asked me if I lived in Morocco or if I was just staying there. Finally, after I said I was only staying in Morocco not living there permanently, he let me through and I was able to join the rest of the group on the bus.

We then drove about 2 hours towards Seville before stopping for lunch at a little Spanish rest stop. We had an interesting time trying to communicate our orders to the waiters, but we were all finally able to get our lunches and I had bacon for the first time in more than 2 months. The food was delicious and put us all back on track for getting that last hour and a half to Seville. As we drove that last stretch, we drove under torrential rain which most of us enjoyed immensely as it has rained twice since we’ve been in Morocco. 

Finally, we arrived in the beautiful city of Seville and went to settle into our hotel quickly. After dropping our bags off, we were split into 3 smaller groups and sent on a walking tour with guides from the University that the Seville UNE students study with. My group was put with one of the Spanish mentors at the university named Irena. She took us on a tour all over the city, showing us the historical sites, the royal palace, and even a place where part of a Star Wars movie was filmed (very exciting for me)! We then hurried to meet up with the rest of the groups (in the rain) to eat a dinner of salad and seafood paella which was tasty and filling. Most of us then returned to the hotel to either get ready to go out for the night or to go to bed for the night (I bet you can guess which category I fit into)! 

The next morning, we all got up to a delicious breakfast in the hotel of pastries, eggs, meats, and cheeses. It filled us up and got us ready for another walking tour, this time with a British tour guide who took us around the city wearing little bluetooth headphones that were connected to his microphone. It was an interesting experience for a tour because we had all gotten used to our tour guides projecting their voice and gathering close to listen. We were shown some new sights as well as some familiar ones from our tour with Irena the day before. After that, we were set free to explore the city on our own. My friends and I spent the first part of the afternoon shopping before hunting down the Starbucks. I can tell you that I definitely missed my teas from Starbucks after over 2 months so when we found the Starbucks in Seville I immediately went for a chai tea latte and got the biggest size! We ended up eating lunch there as well, getting some light sandwiches and some desserts to share before we headed back to the hotel to meet up with the group. 

After meeting up, we all headed out to a flamenco show! Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to take photos of the dancers during the show so all of it is only in my memory, but it was an incredible show filled with colorful dresses and beautiful traditional flamenco styles. After that we were given more free time, but since Spain doesn’t really start serving dinner until 8:30-9:00 PM (it was 6 at the time), my friends and I returned to the hotel once more to rest for a bit before going out to dinner. In the end, myself and my friends Abby and Delia went out to a tapas restaurant for dinner, ordering several different tapas to share along with some drinks. The tapas all tasted amazing and I can tell you that Hailey and I are both super excited to get more tapas when we stop in Madrid on our way home in December! 

That was the end of our night on Saturday. The next day was fairly uneventful as we had to say goodbye to Spain and return to Tangier. The ferry ride back was full of seasick American students, but we all made it back in the end with only a few mishaps. What’s an adventure without those, right? Now we’re back in Morocco and the only trip I have left is Ireland and the trip home! It’s crazy to think that we’ve only got about 40 days before I leave for home. I know it’s going to be hard to say goodbye to this place. I’ve made so many memories here and learned so much. I have a bunch of friends I’ve made and while some of them will be with me back in the States, a lot of them won’t. They’ll be staying behind and that’s going to be hard. But for now, I’m going to make the most of the rest of my time here and go out with a bang! The adventures don’t stop here! 

[jelenedrake]

Session One: Death’s House

Hey, so like... here are some session notes for my current Curse of Strahd campaign if anyone is interested. I might post up more... maybes.

Our party: 

Yura Varen: Half-Elf Devotion Paladin of Sune Knight of the Order of the Ruby Rose (me!) Empath. Does not like this place. Mar’Rok is her bestie. They have traveled together before this adventure. He taught her how to speak Orcish. She taught him elven.

Mar'Rok: Half-Orc Life Cleric of Illmater Acolyte. Will ease everyone’s burdens at the cost of his own flesh. Covered in the scars he has taken to protect other people. Calls Yura “Little Sister”.

Constantine Cain: Tiefling Revenant Gunslinger. Monster Hunter Total Edgelord.

Zavrum: Half-Orc (takes after the human side more) Former Soldier turned Monster Hunter

Erevan Stonegem: Half-Elf Warlock Guild Craftsmen, hired to work on Cain's guns. Likes it clean, clean, clean. Occasionally, someone... else takes him over.

Titanius Anglesmith: Half-Elf Bard, entertainer, tall with a huge beard. Substance abuse problem... I mean... it’s not a problem until he runs out.

We all meet in a tavern in Daggerford. Most of the town is here talking up a storm trying to get out of the cold fog. Erevan talks to Cain about his guns, Cain talks to his guns about letting the half elf touch them. Erevan begins to engrave the guns. The strange pairing of the Half-Orc Cleric and Half-Elf Paladin sit off to one table. They clearly know each other. Mar'Rok is broody and Yura is trying to cheer him up. He points out Cain and Erevan to her, distressed about the guns that Cain is wielding and their inherent violence. Zavrum overhears him from the other table and asks what is wrong with a bit of violence. They both reply that for the right reasons: nothing. Mar’Rok and Yura both claim that they fight because sometimes others can’t. Mar’Rok tries to ease their burdens by taking the blows no one else can while Yura says that giving people something to look forward to can make any fight seem easier. Zavrum warms to this idea and his defensiveness drops and he invites them to his own table. They happily join him and continue their discussion.

Titanitus makes friends with Everan and Cain. He is excited about Erevan customizing his dagger. Mar’rok is still worried about Cain’s gun so Yura makes her way over to their table and attempts to make friends with Everan and Cain, but Titanitus is rude to Yura (she feels at least). So her efforts are stifled. Erevan is a bit nervous around Yura, his quiet voice drops to a nervous stutter and he will not meet her eye. Mar’Rok jokes with him that she has that effect on lots of people. 

Just then a strange man dressed in (what we will later learn is Vistani garb) drops a letter on our table. It is a message from the burgermeister Kolyan Indrivich calling for heroes. The messenger urges us to to take the west road in the morning to Barovia. Kolyan’s love, Irena Kolyana, has been afflicted by an evil so deadly that no one can protect her. The man is seemingly unable to answer many of our questions and when we turn to each other to discuss it the man vanishes.

We sleep on it and head out in the morning. The town still covered with the thick fog. The trail leading west isn't too bad. Worn dirt trail. Erevan notices to the right some sort of stake has been planted into the ground. Has a small cross on it. Mostly ornamental with a ring of garlic and the initials V/S on it. Little off the beaten path... but the fog closes in around them. We grow uneasy and leave.

Little while later, Zavrum sees a creature is laying on the trail. Black ooze is around the creature. A giant black wolf, guts and intestines out blood all over the trail. Titanius finds giant paw prints leading away from the trail. Zavrum thinks it might be a huge bear. We decide to continue on and hope that the village may know where the creature’s lair is.

The fog is draining our energy the longer we spend within it. Zavrum and Cain completely pass out, Titanius grows exhausted from the fog. Yura, Mar'Rok, and Everan are okay? Yura tries to wake them but they are unresponsive. Yura and Mar'Rok carry Cain and Zavrum and we continue on. A few hours later, Yura and Titanius collapse. Unable to continue, Everan and Mar'Rok set up camp. The fog continues to creep up on Mar'Rok and Everan until they cannot even see each other across the fire and they too, are taken by the fog.

We wake up to darkened and twisting trees. Completely unfamiliar territory, we now do not know exactly where we are. The road is now graveled instead of well beaten mud and dirt. With no choice, we continue down the path to a village. The buildings are dark and black. No life around except for two children crying in the middle of the road. A boy and girl. They tell us their names are Gustav and Elizabeth. They say there is a "monster in the house”. 

They point to a house with darkened windows and a porticullo, the houses to either side are clearly abandoned. They say the monster is in the basement. Their parents left many days ago. Their baby brother, Walter, is trapped in the house. The mist is encroaching on their position. Everan makes the children toys small toys to calm them. We go in. The children wouldn't follow us, Yura tries to question them about the monster within the house, asking about different qualities and features to which they all proclaim, “Yes! Yes! It has that!” Zavrum points out to Yura that the children are parroting her and out of frustration she attempts to drag them into the atrium. When they cross the threshold they slip out of her grasp and vanish into thin air. The door behind them slams shut and will not open.

Exploring the house: dining room. Everan finds faces and evil looking wolves carved into the wood panelling. Creepy. In the hunter den's we find a heavy crossbow, light crossbow, hand crossbow and 60 bolts. Yura gives them all to Everan. There is a small box with playing cards and wine glasses. Yura takes the playing cards and Everan takes two wine glasses, and with an unusual purple glint in his eye slyly says that "one is for him and one for her... for later". Yura makes a note of his sudden shift in personality but chooses not to comment on it for now. The cloak room has a fancy top hat that Zavrum takes and looks dapper AF in.

Second floor: desk/painting of windmill. Desk has parchment and wax, Everan takes them and a book of poetry. Titanius finds a secret door: more books and a chest with a skeleton with a letter bearing Strahd. Leather armor, deeds for the house and another house and a windmill. Spell scrolls x 3 (Bless, Protection from Poison, and Spiritual Weapon). 3 black leather books (Priests of Osybus necromatic rituals fiend summoning books). He also finds a letter from Strahd to the patriarchs of this family. They had been begging him to assist them. It looks like the family was summoning demons and sacrificing people on a secret altar hoping to gain favor with Strahd... they say they are cursed. He has no pity for them it seems...

[askthenewhopespeak]

//I guess this is set pre couples game? I don’t know

Sora: Graves-san… Can I talk to you?

Karma: Ugh. What do you want?

Sora: To talk, I guess… I adored you- the other you. I guess I just want answers.

Karma: ………….

Sora: Is it okay?

Karma: Sure. I guess.

Sora: Why… Why did you become despair?

Karma: I’m not a despair. Like I told Kyoji, I’m a god compared to them. They want to spread despair for all the wrong reasons. I want to spread it to fix the world.

Sora: You want to hurt my family! *she stops, correcting herself* You did hurt my family.

Karma: For the greater good!!!

Sora: Nothing good can happen from hurting others… How can there be?

Karma: Because if everyone feels like shit, then it’s the norm. When all you ever feel is awful, you grow so used to it that it probably wouldn’t even be considered true sadness or anger or something like that.  And no one would be judged for being different.

Sora: Maybe you should try making everyone feel *better* instead? *her voice is breaking* I trusted you. You told me you wanted to be my friend…

Karma: …………………..I do.

Sora: I thought you wanted everyone to always be misrable. How does that work?

Karma: I wanted you to be my friend and help me…….. I wanted a few people to be my friends and help me.

Sora: I’m just thirteen… But I can try. Would you still let me try?

Karma: I meant help me with spreading despair. No one wants to actually help me the way the pretend they do.

Sora: …I don’t want to hurt pepole. I don’t want to become a monster.

Karma: …………..I-I’m not a monster…..

Sora: If I hurt people, I will be one.

Sora: That’s what I’m the most afraid from.

Karma: And what does that make me then? Someone who hurts, tortures, and kills?

Sora: That depends. What do you think you are?

Karma: A godlike being. ……..and a parasite ……we’re a parasite….

Sora: If you think you are a parasite… Maybe you should reconsider it. *She looked at the older teen* I promise you… I’ll even pinkie swear, that I will be your friend as long as you try to not despair

Karma: I’m not a parasite because of what I do…. I’m a parasite because of my anatomy.  

Sora: How is your anatomy and gender make you a parasite?

Karma: I ABSORBED MY FUCKING TWIN IN THE WOMB! WE ARE CALLED A “PARASITIC TWIN”. I AM A PARASITE!!!

Sora: *takes a step back, scared from the sudden yelling* I don’t think it works like that.

Karma: It does!!!!

Sora: it doesn’t.

Karma: Prove it.

Sora: How am I supposed to do that?

Karma: Exactly.

Sora: *That’s mainly her curiosity* Why parasite and not a symbiont? How do you know you are just Karma and not Karma and the twin at the same time? Karma: ………..

Sora: Think about that.

Karma: Sure. Whatever.

Sora: … What gives you the right to think yourself above people? That you know better?

Karma: Wh-what kind of question is that?

Sora: You think you can take other people’s choice to be happy. What gives you the right to do it?

Karma: Because some people aren’t happy. It’s not fair to them. It’s not fair to me.

Sora: So you think equality is better than freedom? Then choice?… Should I remind you what happened with the communism?

Karma: I uh…… I’ve never been to school before now. I don’t know what you’re referring to. I don’t even know simple multiplication.

Sora: You should talk to your teachers about that. They need to know. And… Would you like me to tell you?

Karma: I don’t need basic education. I’ve managed so far. …..and sure.

Sora: Russia, until few de-twenty years ago, was the Soviet Union. Their system was communism, which basically meant everyone did what the government told them, and everything was equally spreader around the people. Everybody were the same. In theory, anyway.

Sora: Yes you do.

Karma: Well that sounds nice doesn’t it? Equality? And no. I don’t.

Sora: You want to take over the world, right? Who do you think will have to handle all of the math? All of the diplomacy, all of the daily things that need to run… Who do you think will handle them?

Karma: Well… I don’t exactly want to “take over the world”. Just make everyone equal.

Through despair.

Sora: … What kind of future do you see for yourself? Leave your world aside, for a moment. Where do you want to be?

Karma: Fuck if I know. Dead? Maybe?

Sora: So you want to change the world… But think you won’t be around to see it? So why bother?

Karma: N-no I will see it! And then I’ll just…. disappear I guess. Do what I want kinda thing. Maybe not dead dead. But dead to society?

Sora: I don’t understand you. I don’t like it.

Karma: You wouldn’t be the first.

Sora: I want to understand… Need to understand.

Karma: Why?

Sora: Because the other you have been one of my role models!

Karma: Seriously? Future me was your role model? Well good job messing it all up by coming back in time.

Sora: *She starts crying* I know! Why do you keep saying this? I know I screwed up, okay?

Karma: H-hey! *the crouch down and wipe away her tears* There’s no need to cry, alright?

Sora: … I messed up. I messed up everything, even if they say this isn’t my fault.

Karma: ………….. *they hug her*

Sora: *She hugs back* I thought… I thought you wanted me to be miserable.

Karma: …………..I-I do.

Sora: So why…?

Karma: Why did I wipe away your tears and why am I hugging you? I don’t know.

Sora: *In a whisper* I love you. Maybe… Maybe they are still there.

Karma: Hm? What was that you just said? I couldn’t really hear you.

Sora: Nothing. Just… Maybe the other you is still there.

Karma: ………..I’m gonna change the subject. According to the notes that the other dimension me left, your mom and I are dating in that dimension.

Sora: … What?

Sora: This is so wired.

Karma: Right?

Sora: I can’t really imagine mom with anyone but dad.

Sora: but doesn’t that mean other you is at least a little bit happy?

Karma: I can’t imagine anyone with me. Glad we both both find it weird.  ………I guess? I guess maybe.

Sora: I don’t know what they thought. Didn’t even see other dimension you, or talked to other dimension mom. But… I don’t think mom would be in a relationship if one of them is miserable.

Karma: The notes other me left were weird. They seemed to be full of guilt and sadness.

Sora: Maybe something happened. How can I know?

Karma: *they shrug* …………I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I’ve been struggling to come up with ways to continue my plans. Kyoji said if I help get rid of the despairs, he’d do this surgery thingy to make me happy. I don’t believe him though. I’m only helping to get rid of the competition.

Sora: I don’t think that would help. I don’t know, but… I think forcing someone to be happy is wrong for the same reason I think what you do is wrong.

Karma: Tell him that then why don’t you?

Sora: I will. But… I’m talking to you now.

Karma: Wait you’re seriously going to talk to him later about forcing me to be happy?

Sora: Ahm… Yeah? He is my uncle and needs someone to tell you when he is stupid.

Karma: ………he beat me up and brought out my insecurities and made me remember shit about my childhood.

Sora: I get that he is mad. He is also an idiot. A big one.

Karma: He’s an asshole is what he is.

Sora :… He usually isn’t that bad? I think Storm makes him cranky.

Karma: I want him dead.

Sora: I can’t let you kill him.

Karma: ……..

Sora: I am not losing another friend that won’t be born here.

Karma: Whatever.

Sora: Stop talking about killing people.

Karma: But it’s for the greater good! Why doesn’t anyone see that?  

Sora: Because I know there are ways you can be happy without it!

Karma: Yeah. The surgery that Kyoji wants to give me maybe. But that’s not okay apparently.

Sora: I saw you happy without either.

Karma: How do you know I wasn’t hiding stuff from you?

Sora: I don’t. But I want to have faith in you.

Karma: Oh.

Sora: What?

Karma: I just don’t understand why.

Sora: I told you. The other you is-was my role model. They are a badass who is willing to spend time with me. I thought-I thought they hanged the moon.

Karma: ………….

Sora: I’m older now, and I know better. I know none of the adults in my life is perfect… Besides maybe uncle Makoto.

Sora: But I still want to believe in you.

Karma: Do what you want I guess.

Sora: Would you help me prove that my trust in you is just?

Karma: I don’t know. It kinda goes against why I want.

Sora: I just want everyone to be happy. To be able to think I maybe didn’t screw up so bad.

Karma: Stop blaming yourself. Yes you messed up. A lot. So what are you going to do to fix it? Instead of focusing on your mistake, figure out a way to make it better.

Sora: What do you think I’m doing here?

Karma: Fuck if I know.

Sora: I’m trying to help you. I’m trying to offer you friendship, because I think you need it.

Karma: Yeah last person who said they wanted to be my friend and help me ended up telling everyone my plans.

Sora: Do you have any more plans I can tell anyone? Also, Mitsi and I told Kyoko you were a despair first, so…

Sora: Maybe he thought it was for the best.

Karma: I’m not telling any plans to anyone anymore.

Sora: I don’t want you to. I want you to stab things with me in the gym. Is it okay?

Karma: …….you want me to stab things with you?

Sora: I think I’m rusting, and I don’t want to beg dad or Irene. So yeah.

Sora: Would you like to?

Karma: ……sure.

Sora: thank you! Let’s go. *She grabs Karma’s hand.*

Karma: ………..hm…..

Sora: *She starts pulling Karma towards the gym.*

Karma: I-I’m coming. No need to go so fast.

Sora: Sorry! I’m just excited.

Sora: Training with Irena was fun, but I think she went easy on me.

Karma: No one learns if you go easy on them.

Sora: I think she did, anyway. *They enter the gym* let’s do it!

Karma: ………….do you want us to fight or????

Sora: We can, or we can stab targets. Your choice.

Karma: Why do I have to pick?

Sora: Would you prefer me to pick? I don’t really mind. Thought I should give you the option.

Karma: You pick.

Sora: Let’s fight. I have a knife, you can pick a weapon or we could use training weapons.

Sora: We will stop at first blood, or once one of us forfeits. How does that sound?

Karma: You realize that I’m not gonna go easy on you and that your blood will be drawn quickly. …..And that I’ll also pick something flashy and over the top if they have it. Like a scythe.

Sora: Please don’t kill me and stop after you draw first blood. I’d appreciate not bleeding to death.

Karma: So I’m guessing a chainsaw is a no.

Sora: I’d also appreciate having all of my limbs after we’re done. Mind sticking to knives?

Karma: That’s boring, but sure.

Sora: pick your knife and we’ll start.

Karma: *they look through the weapons and eventually pick out a knife* These weapons aren’t the best quality, but they’ll do.

Sora: *She takes position in one corner of the gym, knife inn hand.* ready when you are!

Karma: I’m ready.

*Sora dances from her corner closer to Karma*

Karma: *they stand in one spot, pretty relaxed* Your parents aren’t gonna kill me for drawing blood right?

Sora: Don’t think they would… They shouldn’t even notice, if I bandage it quick enough.

Karma: Alright then. *they continue to stand in one place*

Sora: *Stops a bit before stabbing distance, and storms forward.*

Karma: *they simply step to the side to avoid being hit, and scrape their knife across Sora’s arm, drawing a small bit of blood*  …………..I win.

Sora: You did. *She lifts her sleeve to look at the wound.* oh, good.

Karma: I wasn’t going to cut too deep.

Sora: And it’s nowhere near my scar, so thanks. *She smiles! * can you teach me to do that?

Karma: …..to step away from a target and then hit it???

Sora: I guess I wasn’t being too sophisticated there, haa? *She laughs*

Karma: Glad you recognize that. You were too focused on beating me, that you didn’t even notice how calm I was. It should always be s warning sign to be on guard when your enemy is calm.

Sora: And what to do in that case?

Karma: Be aware of your surroundings first off. Either they’re calm because they somehow have an advantage, or they’re just a cocky asshole. If they have an advantage, try to figure out what that is and get rid of it, or get an even larger advantage.

Sora: Which of these are you? *She steps closer to Karma*

Karma: I think I was the advantage. I have much more experience than you, and I’m bigger.

Sora: I trained with you. You could think… *She tries to put her knife near Kara’s neck.*

Karma: *They hit Sora’s knife with their own and send it flying out of her hands* Did you really think I’d be distracted by answering your questions?

Sora: I just wanted to be good enough… To do something right.

Karma: What do you mean?

Sora: I want to be a good knife fighter. I guess I wanted to try and be able to beat one of my teachers… Even if I had to cheat.

Karma: I don’t consider what you were doing to be cheating. You were attempting to take advantage like I said.  I don’t believe there can be cheating in physical conflicts. Only new strategies.

Sora: Most people don’t see it like that. *She pulls her shoulders* Thanks, Karma.

Karma: For what?

Sora: Training with me? Explaining my mistakes?

Karma: Oh. Your welcome.  

Sora: At least I don’t feel like you go any kind of easy on me.

Karma: You wouldn’t learn if I did. And you’d think you were better than you are, giving you bad judgment on who you think you’re capable of fighting.

Sora: I knew I’d lose. Thought it might take few seconds more, though. Give me a chance to use some energy.

Karma: Wouldn’t that just get your hopes up and make you more disappointed?

Sora: Maybe it did.

Karma: You’ll get there eventually.

Sora: other you is my teacher after all. They go to teach me things.

Sora: thanks.

Karma: I can see that you’ve learned where to put your weight and how to move efficiently without wasting too much energy. You’re also very focused. The problem is, you need to learn to focus on multiple things at once.

Sora: I’m not good at that. A bit too hyper. Either I consternate on one things or I get lost.

Karma: You’ll learn.

Sora: Not if you plan in killing my family…. Do you?

Karma: It depends.

Sora: on what?

Karma: On if it will help my cause.

Sora:…

Karma: What?

Sora: I don’t understand you.

Karma: No one does.

Sora: So you want everyone to be miserable, but hugging random crying girl is fine.

Karma: ……….yes???

Sora: You are wired.

Karma: So I’ve been told.

Sora: I still like you. Please don’t hurt my family. I’ll beg if you want me. Just… Please.

Karma: ………………..I don’t- I can’t- ………dammit.

Sora: *She is on her knees now, head on the floor.* Please. I’ll do anything, I swear…

Karma: …………..they mean that much to you?

Sora: Yes.

Sora: The people in this school-my family-they are everything I have. My parents, my grandma, my uncles and aunts and cousins…

Karma: ………I’ll keep your parents alive. I’m not promising that everyone else you care about will be okay though.

Sora:… Please.

Karma: Exactly which people are you wanting to stay alive?

Sora: *She gives the list. It’s a long list, and covers most people in the school. Kanon is almost mentioned, before Sora catches her mistake and moves to the next name.*

Karma: *they rub their temples* I can’t do that.

Sora: I’ll do anything for them. I’ll do anything you want me to.

Karma: Anything? You’d torture an innocent child?

Sora: Anything. As long it’s not one of them.

Karma: You’d help me spread despair?

Sora: As long as you keep your promise and don’t touch my family, I’ll be your loyal little slave.

Karma: ………….huh.

Sora: What?

Karma: You really do mean anything. I was gonna tell you off for using that term lightly. But you proved me wrong.  You’re also reminding me a small bit of myself.

Sora: What do you mean?

Karma: Willing to do anything to protect someone. So much that you’d betray the people you’re sided with.

Sora: I’m making sure they would be alive… That’s more important.

Sora: What do you want me to do?

Karma: You’re willing to help me cause an apocalypse.

Sora: I know. Can you- Can you please stop saying that?

Karma: You’re being stupid. Never throw everything away for someone else. Ever. Never go against your values and your beliefs for someone else’s benefit.

Sora: You don’t understand how much they mean to me.

Karma: *they loom over Sora* I understand what it’s like to have someone mean the world to you. I know what it’s like to throw everything away for them. It does not end well.

Sora: I don’t care.

Karma: No. I’m not doing that to you.

Sora: mini-me would have her family.

Sora: So… Is that a no?

Karma: Correct. I’m not having you go through that.

Sora: I told you. I’d do anything. Is there something I can do for you?

Karma: No.

Sora: So would you not save them?

Karma: Correct.

Sora: are you sure I can’t convince you otherwise? *She is still bowing on the floor*

Karma: Oh for the love of- stop grovelling at my feet.

Sora: *She stands up* Please… I just want the people I love to be safe.

Karma: I wanted that too, and she ended up trying to kill me.

Sora:… I don’t see my family doing that.

Sora: I mean… I don’t know… But I don’t think it would happen.

Karma: I didn’t think that with the person I loved either.

Sora: They are my family. They never hurt me before.

Karma: Family can hurt you too.

Karma: ………..

Sora: W-what?

Karma: This conversation isn’t going anywhere. I won’t kill your parents. That’s all I can promise.

Sora: That’s… A start, I guess. But… If you do hurt my family… I’ll find a way to hurt you. That’s a promise.

Karma: I don’t doubt it.

Sora: Just thought I should warn you.  *her smile flickers* I don’t- I don’t want to hurt anyone. But I will- for them.

Karma: Mhm. Sure.  

//Sora:  *She turns around, and few drops of blood from her arm hit the floor.*  I still love you.

Karma: ………..why?

Sora: Because I’m apparently an idiot. *She leaves the gym, a trail of blood behind her.*

Karma: ……………….fuck everything.

Sora: *She returns to her room, bandaging her hand and cuddling to herself in her closet.*

[kosmosian-quills]

Angel Prologue - Part 1

I’m feeling brave so decided to post what I have for the prologue for Angel. It is still just the first draft, and I’m worried that it’s very much an infodump, since it is the first part of the actual story that is going to get read. I do have more but I’m reworking one or two things about it and will post it soon, but any feedback you can give me for the first ~2000 words would be very appreciated!

Tag list (please let me know if you would like to be added or removed!) - @cirianne​, @writeblrbraindump​

May 4th, 2026

I’m late. Father will be most displeased.

I’m also a complete mess, and if I arrive to our Independence Day festivities looking the way I am, I would cause a scandal. It’s unbecoming of the Crown Princess to look and act in such a way. I have my father’s, and my reputation to uphold.

I’m still here in my room, with my friends frantically trying to get me more presentable than I am right now. My friends mean well, they’re trying to keep me out of getting in to trouble with my father, and I admire them for caring so deeply about a man who doesn’t care about what I think.

On the day of our Independence Day festivities, no less. What a cruel irony.

“Please, Andzia, I need to fix this.”

Karolina is one of my Maidens of Honour – the five girls who were assigned to be my companions back when I was 17 years old. They are my only friends in the whole world, too.

Karolina is a tall young woman, just younger than me, with fiery red hair that surpasses her shoulders and emerald green eyes. She’s trying to fix my dress, as the shoulder pad keeps coming loose. Her dress is much simpler than mine – a lilac and violet coloured shin length dip-hemmed dress with a sheer layer over the top of the delicate satin, adorned with golden flowers over the skirt. I have to admit, she’s better at dressmaking than I am. We made these dresses ourselves, and it was now coming back to bite me.

All of my friends are wearing a dress of their own making. It’s a tradition we have here. Our Independence Day is represented by our celebration of springtime, the Flower Festival. My country, to anyone who does not live here, is known only by this event. My country is famous for practically nothing but its flowers.

I can tell that my friends over by the door are getting a little restless waiting. They know there will likely be a telling off for me in store later for this. I wish I cared about that as much as they did.

My friends do look stunning in their dresses, over there. It’s when I’m looking at them, here and now, that I am realising just how much my sour mood is likely to put them to shame. I do feel bad about that, but they aren’t the ones who will be punished for my tardiness. It will be me.

“Are we ready, Kasia?” Zofia asks from her place by the door.

Zofia is my eldest Maiden of Honour, she’s even older than me. She’s a wonderful friend, even if she sometimes takes her job more seriously than I do. It took her longer than everyone else to stop calling me “your highness” when we’re in private. She has long, dark hair with chestnut eyes and tanned skin, and her navy dress is not shy about hiding the prosthetic left leg she wears.

“Please stop Kasia, I think I’m fine now,” I tell her, taking one last glance at myself in the mirror. I’m still a mess, but a better concealed mess. At least, I am compared to what I looked like 20 minutes ago.

“Alright, Andzia,” she surrenders, putting down the box of pins onto the dressing table, and we both make our way to the door.

I pass by my other Maidens over there.

Anastazja is sporting a dress that looks like a rose, a ruffled red skirt that goes down to her shins and perfectly accentuates her athletic figure. Her normally wavy blonde hair is tied up in a ribbon, with small red roses dotted in her hair, something that seems to make her blue eyes shine. She’s fiddling with her shoes, she doesn’t normally wear heels. She can’t get away with it today, unfortunately.

Irena is a bespectacled girl with shoulder-length brown hair, dark blue eyes and tanned skin like Zofia’s. She’s wearing a bright green dress that goes further down, all the way to her ankles. She’s not any taller than me, but she isn’t skinnier either. Honestly, I don’t care about that. She gives wonderful hugs like that.

My final Maiden is Matylda, and she is the youngest of my friends. She’s only just turned 19, which is not much different than me being 21, but she was only 15 when she was chosen for this job. She is small, skinny and wearing a warming yellow and gold dress. When she smiles, she really makes the world seem brighter. She has untameable blonde curls and such bright blue eyes.

The door is held open for me by Zofia, who lets me out of the room first, before we all take off down the corridor together. There’s Sergeant Jelen there, too, stood just to the side of my bedroom door. He’s here for one reason, and that is my protection. He’s only been doing this for a year or so, but I still lament the fact that he’s even necessary. I am grateful to have him now, it’s just unfortunate that where I stand with needing such protection is too little, too late.

Sergeant Jelen is a tall, strong man, with straight brown hair and brown eyes, and he is looking as smart as ever in his uniform – the uniform that marks him as a member of the Royal Guard. A deep, rich green coat, black trousers, and the one thing that marks him as not just a simple guard who patrols the corridors. The small pin on his lapel, with burgundy and dark blue stripes beneath a golden rose. It’s my symbol – the symbol of my position. That pin is so precious that very few have been honoured to wear it – it means that he works directly for me, the Crown Princess.

He’s trailing behind us, as he always does, probably more than a little irritated at my tardiness too.

I can hear a bell tolling somewhere in the distance – the clock tower in the courtyard that signals where I am supposed to be. Ding dong, ding dong, they chime, and no matter how quickly I proceed down this hallway, it won’t make me any less late than I am, ding dong, ding dong. Besides, the festivities do not need me to commence them. Father just likes me to be there when they do commence. Or at least, he did previously.

The normally cold stone corridors are vibrant with colours today, with all the flowers growing here bursting with life. The banners and drapes that hang as decorations from the ceiling are all just as uniform as ever – blue and burgundy. The colours of my family, the colours I wear for only the most important public occasions. The sunshine is streaming in through the windows, catching me in the eyes as I pass, but I don’t care enough to shield them from the intense light. The briefest of shadows that blocks my view when I walk past every wall partition is enough.

I have a hold on the skirt of my dress, my hands clenched into fists as I do so. The orange fabric is itchy, I don’t know why I didn’t just fix last year’s dress. I haven’t grown since then, or at least, I don’t think I have. Why didn’t I –

BOOM!

The sudden noise is enough to grind me to a halt, and the floor shakes almost simultaneously. I can hear my friends behind me gasp out loud with me.

There’s a brief moment between that sound and the next one, it’s a strange silence, where no one is quite able to process what is going on, before it kicks in. There’s something else, and it is getting louder and louder.

“What was…?” I can hear Irena ask that, but nothing more.

The Sergeant is in front of me, protectively, and I am waiting for his word. I have no idea what any of that noise is.

“Go back to your room, now,” he commands, leading me back there within moments.

Once we’re back inside, he stands in the doorway. “I’m going to find out what that was. Stay here, lock the door, do not open it for anyone except me, do you understand?”

We nod, and then another noise echoes through the corridors.

A quiet, muffled, rapid clicking.

The Sergeant notices the sound too, looking out at the corridor, before turning to us for one last instruction.

“Stay away from the windows, stay quiet, your Highness. I will be back soon.”

And with that, he was out of the door, I heard the lock slide into place when Kasia did as he instructed of us, before retreating into the centre of the room with us.

“What is going on?” Matylda asked quietly from the back of us.

“I don’t know,” I croaked, my eyes solely focussed on the door. Waiting. Waiting for someone to either approach, or bang on it, or something. “That… that was an explosion, wasn’t it?”

“Will the Sergeant be okay?” Irena wondered aloud, still keeping her voice low.

Anja had not taken much chance, and had rushed to the windows to draw the curtains, enveloping us in relative darkness. The room was still bright because the curtains didn’t do much to block light, but combined with the lights already being off from when we left the first time.

“Do you think we’ll need to get out of here?” someone whispered.

“Maybe, should we get out of these dresses?”

“I can’t imagine it would do any harm –“

It took a few minutes, minutes we spent agonisingly waiting on the floor as those screams and sounds continued to echo to us. Not quite reaching us, but close enough to be terrifying. We were no longer in our fine, floral dresses. No, instead we were in the clothes we wore yesterday, that we had put out for laundry, that had yet to be collected. My clothing still consisted of a skirt and white blouse, which is not very practical considering the circumstances, but anything is better than the delicate fabric and heels I was wearing before.

Pounding footsteps sprinted past us, pairs of them. More than one person, but they didn’t stop, they ran right past us. I could hear us all collectively breathe again when blissful silence.

But it really didn’t last long.

Barely a minute later, and we can hear banging further down the corridor. Doors being kicked open. Out in the main hallway, there are very few doors that are connected to the corridor because the rooms are very large.

It means that they will be at this door within moments.

With no time to run or hide.

Someone was there, outside the door. No one moved, we all stayed right where we were. We daren’t move, we didn’t have anywhere to go if we could.

They had to know we were in here, the amount they were fighting at the door told me that much. I heard them. It’s not the Sergeant, and his words are the only thing in my head right now. Don’t open that door for anyone except him. Stay quiet.

Whoever was out there, we can’t trust them. Gunfire and explosions taught me that much.

The door gave way soon enough. I had no way to stop that, but the men that stormed in were armed with guns, aimed right at us! Two of them!

“Stay where you are! Hands on your heads!”

[wandering-----wonderings]

Ok, this scene bothers me slightly, because it's like when the wrote it they didn't really care to double check themselves on it. We never see any pre-Sydney on the show except for when she was a kid and a quick bit of her recruitment during Q&A (1x17); all, to my recollection, silent scenes. In this episode (All The Time In The World; 5x17), they're going back (with non-silent scenes) and showing some of Sydney's life before SD-6.

In this particular scene ... well, let me break it down.

- Put on your dancing shoes. We are going out tonight. - I can't tonight. - "Can't" is not an option. Charlie got us passes for that new club in Silver Lake. - That job fair's tonight. I want to go. - Job fair? Syd! You've four years to figure out what kind of job you want. - My advisor yelled at me 'cause I still haven't picked a major. - Education. Done. Be a teacher like your mom. You always talk about how happy she was. - I thought about that. But I think of teaching as my safety net. - Teaching's no safety net. You know how dangerous it is to be a teacher? Kids bring knives to school these days. - I hate that I could make a decision now that would affect the rest of my life. - Well, I say go with education. Oh, Charlie is bringing a friend tonight - Danny something. We'll pick you up at eight. - I'll see you later. - Sydney Bristow? I was hoping I might have a moment of your time.

First, we have the location. That ''new club in Silver Lake'' is supposed to be ''a new coffee shop that has live jazz in the afternoons'' in ''Westwood''. The time, then, is also off: it should be ''afternoon'' instead of ''tonight''.

Second, Sydney doesn't go to a job fair. Earlier, before this scene in the book (Recruited), she's perusing the paper for a job - doesn't find one. Francie gets her on at the restaurant she works at, Les Amis Cafe. The end of her waitressing days also happened before this scene. The excuse for not going with Francie and Baxter is that she's swamped with homework - which, isn't untrue.

Thirdly, ''I still haven't picked a major'' is wrong, too. In the book, it reads: ''Only one thing was wrong with her mental picture. It wasn't happening for her. Not good for an education major.'' Francie also says to Sydney, ''So you're serious about this master teacher plan, huh?'' So, yeah, I'd say Sydney's planned on the teacher thing for a while.

Fourth, and my main problem with this, is that Charlie and Danny are never mentioned in the books. Francie is dating a guy named Baxter and (earlier in the book) she encourages Sydney to ask out her crush (Dean Carothers) to a party - it doesn't go well. No Charlie, no Danny. Now, this could all be solved by saying that not everyone read the books and the writers wanted to use characters that people would remember from season 1. Ok ... but, we knew about Noah Hicks (Sydney's first real boyfriend) in season 1. So, what, she met Danny and was just friends with him, got recruited, had a relationship with Noah, and then after Noah left she went to Danny? The problem with that is, again, Danny was never mentioned in the books. Too, I'm sure just using the names in the books cost money; which may be why they chose not to use Danny or Charlie - or Will or Marshall for that matter. (They have a Graham Flinkman and it's my personal belief that he is Marshall's older brother; that Graham either retired out - or worse - and then SD-6 recruited his just-as-brilliant younger brother to replace him. That seems like something right up Sloane's alley, anyway.)

My point is, the season 5 scene happened after the books were written and it was an exact scene; the same scene portrayed in two different ways. If they were going to shoot a scene for the show that they'd already written in the books, why weren't they consistent?

Unless they wanted someone to notice. I vaguely remember reading something about The Box parts 1&2 (1x12-13 - the one with Quentin Tarantino in it) that they made mistakes in the episode on purpose to see if anyone could find them. As much as I re-watched the series, I could point out a lot of them; now, the only one I remember right off is in one scene, the woman has zip-ties on her belt, the camera focuses on someone else and when it comes back to her she no longer has the zip-ties.

I'm being picky aren't I? Oh, well, I've already started - might as well do the other memories.

Now this 'memory' I don't have a problem with - because it's a deleted scene. First, yes, Sydney did have to take a lot of tests and, yes, she did better than anyone. She was a little out of character, though. What's wrong with it is that Sydney doesn't meet Dixon until Noah Hicks introduces her to him (very briefly) in the third book (Disappeared). So all the tests she took, she took them before she met Dixon. She did bump into him on the way to Sloane's office in the first book (Recruited), which was actually shown in 1x17 (Q&A), but we don't really know it's him because no name was used, just a description. ''...bumping shoulders with a tall, dignified-looking black man.'' Again, it's a deleted scene, so maybe the reason it got cut was that they realized it didn't work with what they already had out there. Which begs the question: why didn't they do that with the Francie and Sydney scene?

Speaking of the 1x17 scene, she did start out at a desk job on the twentieth-floor. A difference is that the book says she had to sign ''about two dozen nondisclosure agreements'' and the episode has that number at ''about five-hundred'' - big difference if you ask me, but she might have had to sign more over time that totaled to ''about five-hundred''. Another thing, is that Wilson (her handler and recruiter into SD-6) didn't take Sydney from the hallway to Sloane's office; she was in Wilson's office and he took her to Sloane's office from there, and that was when the shoulder bump happened with Dixon. The hallway scene is actually more reminiscent of when Wilson took Sydney (to his office) to meet Pilar and Yoav, her weapons and hand-to-hand combat instructors, respectively. Other than that, it was pretty accurate.

This could have happened, plain and simple. There's nothing (to my current knowledge) that says whether or not it did or didn't.

In the book it says Jack was in car with Laura/Irena, and in the scene ... well, it doesn't say he wasn't, he was just telling Sydney her mom died. So, yes, this could have happened and it fits both the book and show, but wasn't this something that they actually varied with on the show? Like, it was a bridge then it was a road, he was in the car then he wasn't. That part I can't remember.

Also could have happened. It doesn't go against the other scene they had of her putting the puzzle together when she was under hypnosis. What's intriguing is how Jack is acting. He's a little colder in the hypnosis scene than he is in this scene, but that actually fits with his relationship with Sydney becoming as strained as it was. In the memory when Sydney first learned of the puzzle, and at her birthday party (which may or may not be an entirely accurate memory), Jack was warm and kind to her, and by the time Sydney has gone through the project and is able to build a gun he's starting to become cold and detached. Project Christmas itself is most likely the reason why. After all, taking your young child to Build-a-Gun workshop and then erasing her memory is bound to have an effect on anyone.

Now, this memory could have happened because there's no mention of her telling him she works in a bank in the books; so she must have told him at some point because he seemed to already know when he (finally) made a book appearance. ''She had barely even heard from her father since she'd started college.'' Although, we don't get to read how there first dinner went (in Father Figure) since it has her meeting him right as the chapter ends. After that he's trying to get her to focus on school - like he did in the episode but he was trying to be more stealthy in the book. Granted, everything that happened between them in the book would have been too long to show, so this memory kinda sums it all up. However, there is the small issue of where the scene happened. In the memory, it shows Sydney coming through the door and saying ''Dad? Are you home?'' The books, on the other hand, say ''His home base was still L.A., but he didn't even keep an apartment anymore, choosing instead to live in hotels on the rare occasion he was actually in town.'' Now, we don't see the outside of where 'home' is, so it could be a hotel. Although, with as much as he travels and how little she sees/hears from him, I doubt she'd have a key to get in - and what kind of spy leaves the door unlocked. Also, it doesn't really look like a hotel from the inside, and I don't recall ever having been in a hotel room that had a hallway in it; not to say that they don't, but if Jack just got a room for himself then I'm imagining him going for something basic. So books say hotel, memory indicates a house.

Could have happened. It didn't happen in the books, but doesn't mean it didn't happen.

Ok, I'm done now. I know I'm being too picky. I just love this series so much. They were the first ''adult books'' that I read and I guess it kinda just stuck with me. Which, technically, they're classified as ''teen fiction'', but there was crushing and kissing and kick butt-age and, of course, spy-drama, so at the time I was reading them they felt very adult.