#like yes china did some conquering but let’s be honest with ourselves

[godtrauma]

how many americans watched avatar the last airbender and saw the fire nation as “ooh scary china/north korea!!” instead of a blatant representation of the british and US american empires, i wonder

[evangelineartemiasamos]

Red Queen Fan Fiction Black Storm Extra: Harvest Moon part II

First part

info dump on original characters you will need this I guess

Seriously, I thought very long about if I should post this. People might feel bad about reading such a story. But I think I should offer this story to those who are interested. Please notice that I don't intend to offer perfect solutions or to shame people. This is the story of one fictional character and her way to cope.

Warning! Mentioning of sexual violence. Warning! Proceed with caution

 Set in December during King's Cage, apart from the flashbacks

Cassandra POV

 My family believes in ghosts. There's our one legendary ancestress, Lisa Corvin, the Siren and the Sacrifice, the bride and the murderer and the murdered one. Our disembodied guardian. Many daughters have been named for her, in more or less creative ways. She's still around us, the more superstitious relatives claim, but all us of revere her, the young girl who killed her husband with only one word. I cherish her too, how could I not, as I am a relentless murderer myself. Lisa Corvin is the goddess of death who has walked this path before me.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 The invasion of the Lakelands went well for three days. It was a small-scale attack, to be honest, and probably the reason of the eventual failure. Our team of twenty soldiers, all Reds except a skinhealer, my brother Roman and me, walked for the first two days, stormed a Red village at night and chased off the local Reds. We couldn't bring ourselves to kill them at that point, which wasn't the smartest idea in hindsight.

Because the Lakelanders fought back. Our position wasn't secure and as we patrolled our "conquered" lands, I, prowling alone, was the first to notice the Silver hunters of the enemy.

Yet there wasn't much for me to notice before they shot me.

There have been four of them, and it were four bullets that crossed my abdomen. I didn't know if each of them had hit me, but as I fell down, I used those bullets to kill them instead.

They were my first victims and still, I laid down to die, bleeding and helpless unless someone came for me. So I helped myself.

That might have been the most important moment of my life, when I faced death and fought her with all I had. I summoned powers I didn't know I possessed, monitoring my fading body functions to stop the bleedings, to remain breathing, to keep my heart beating. Maybe my powers could've awakened later on as well, maybe they could've been triggered by another, less dangerous event. It didn't matter because this wasn't only about the new level of my powers afterwards. It was about fear. Until my brother found me and brought me to the inexperienced skinhealer, I'd learned what it was to die. But I had persisted, my mind had surpassed my body. I'd defeated death and I felt like I was able to defeat everything afterwards.

 As better healers took care of my wounds after out retreat, they noticed the lack of an uterus in my body, rendering me unsuitable for marriage to most nobles. I was too young to be disappointed but I knew what it meant nonetheless. I wondered if that was the moment my mother would finally give up on me, the one mistake she'd ever allowed herself.

But when she came for me, what I saw in her face was a mix of worry and relief. She apologized to me. She rued what she'd done to me, sending be into battle at age 12, and, what shocked me most of all, she felt ashamed for having estranged me from my father. I hadn't known how it felt to be loved until that moment.

I met my father more often, afterwards. Yet when I saw him with his baby daughter Samantha, I wondered if he would've even noticed my demise when he'd just had another daughter, this time with a woman he really loved. I didn't want to lose him again, though, nor my little sister. I wanted to be part of their lives, even as I became a sentinel, and I lost more and more parts of myself in order to turn myself into a soldier.

I learned to employ minute control and the sense of motion of my ability whenever I wanted. Thus I kept a broken jar in my room, a piece of china I held in shape alone with thoughts from the back of my mind. I finally managed to hold up to the other Silvers who were stronger than me by birth. And becoming a stronger fighter was all I had at that time. I grew arrogant and boastful. I told stories about how I'd received the scars I didn't want the healers to erase.

"My ability had vanquished death."

"I saw the goddess of death and I chased her away."

"I looked into the eyes of the goddess of death and she looked back. This gaze endured so long that the abyss of death has carved itself into my soul and that is how I became the deadliest person in Norta."

My powers grew just like these dramatic stories. Or it was the other way round: I had to invent even grander metaphors to keep them up with my increasing skills.  

 I started to be called Queen of Limbs when I was fourteen and I fought with a strongarm on a First Friday. I'm a frequent contestant in those events, until now. That day, I used my quicker pace to escape his attack while shooting throwing stars at him, but it wasn't enough once he had me in his grip. I couldn't fight his strength and I felt my bones breaking, yet I didn't relent. Even with my body incapitated, I still had my mind. As I gasped for pain and breaths, I imagined his limbs twisting and turning until I saw only stars and blackness. Till he gave in, screaming out himself, and had me drop to the ground. While I was a double-edged sword, a weapon by body and brain, he was unable to fight if injured too hard. Despite my own wounds, despite being close to barfing from power overuse, I heaved myself up, forcing my broken legs to work so I could walk out of the arena victorious and with my head held high.

There was a huge difference between my family life and the profession I strived to live up to. I was a girl cleaved in two. I pretended things with my family were the same as ever, I had fun, wore pretty dresses and laughed. I ignored what happened during sentinel trainings, as I ignored that I was no longer innocent but a murderer even if it had been self-defense.

But Firebird and Sorata continued to be the most important persons in my life, friends I could trust with my issues when I dared to speak and relive them again.

 They were the only friends I ever had. We got into trouble and when stuff got bad, I got sent away. Basically.

I put my white dress on that night, dancing in the dark in the pale moonlight, barefoot in our town house garden while Firbird did the same. She looked as stunning as ever. Her beauty wasn't rooted in perfection yet to me, she was the prettiest girl I knew. She was fitting well into the verdant garden like the hummingbird she was with her aquiline nose, dark olive skin, rich make-up and her colourful, flowery dress. This party was a return to the paradise of our childhood, if we only tried hard enough. It was our present to each other, but mostly to Sorata. It was his birthday and we celebrated him, the Red boy, as our equal. To Firebird and me, he had never been anything else: not even then, after we'd spent five years at court, interacting with other Silver children, fighting in their wars and learning our lessons of supremacy. We longed to be disobdient, non-conformity was  written in our souls, yearning to be lived out, a feeling any teenager has to be familiar with, Silver ones as well. And Sorata meant even more to me.

It was an evening of stargazing, as the fragrances of summer, grass, grills and Mother's cigarettes hung in the air. We were drinking cherry schnapps in the velvet night, booze Firebird had snatched for us, even though we could get away with only so much. As the night wore on, I started to lean against Sorata while he played with my hair. Sometimes I moved the tresses around like snakes to tickle and caress him as well, and the play became bolder by the minute. We were an inch from kissing as Firebird raised her voice.

"Aren't you named for the sky, Sorata?"

She gave us only a glance as the contemplated the night sky. Yet Sorata coughed before he answered. "Yes," another cough, " that's right. Sky, or void. Vacuum. It's from an old tongue, from across the seas. Japanese."

I was stunned. "Really? I thought most of those relicts are gone?"

He shrugged. "My parents' ancestors came from there. Of both, I mean. Wonder if they'd noticed, and told each other the same myths." He laughed this off, as he was used to when talking about his family. His father had died long ago and his mother wasn't the most affectionate, even by Silver standards. Something stood between them.

Firebird nodded gravely. "It's good to remember. And it's a beautiful name."

"All of you have 'old' names, don't you Cassie?"

I blinked. "Yes, we do?" I realized I haven't let go if his shirt. I was practically sitting in his lap and I wanted to get closer still. Sorata knew and it made him nervous, blushingly nervous. He stroked my back, and I laid my head on his shoulder. He fit me better than my favourite sweater and Firebird was done with interrupting us. It didn't take us much longer to start kissing. And more. We were young and in love and in the end, we became each other's firsts, with nothing to rue. It was freedom, as much we were allowed to have. If we kept a low profile.

That was where the beginning of the end began, everybody knew that we had too much fun.

Enough people noticed. Some Silvers indeed kept Red paramours, but that wasn't what I wanted for Sorata and me, as nobles looked down upon either. Mother reminded me of this as well, frequently. Saying I had too much to lose to begin with. As did Sorata, she claimed, and her black eyes gleamed mean, envisioning what the more sadistic Silvers did to Reds who forgot their places, like by being in love with a Silver. She told me of one example and I gave in.

Sometimes love was not enough and the road got tough.

So it happened that Firebird and I went on a diplomatic mission to the Lakelands. A terrible decision, to be honest.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Seven is the number of men I’d had sex with. One was the boy I love, five were fellow sentinels. It isn’t an extremely large number, but apparently too many for a 20-year-old, or so some people thought, those who called me names for that. I claim not to care about that and on most days, I don’t. Consensual sex is nothing to be ashamed about and my ex-boyfriends don’t shame me either. Only those who like to gossip, who don’t care about what really happened, are base enough to insult me. I think them ridiculous.

I shouldn’t delude myself though. There was nothing romantic about my affairs, and my motivation was petty. After I’d noticed one man’s, Alex, interest in me, I saw a chance. A way to wield control over the real nobles, a game  that reduced sex to a mere power-play: Those boys and men I'd slept with were people I dared to trust, they liked and respected me, even after I’d broken up with them. Others lusted after me, hoping for more, and I prefered to punish them with ignorance if I could not bait them.

I hadn’t expected for this game to work so well, not for such a long time. I almost waited for my ex-boyfriends to hate on me, to beat me up in training, to group up against me, yet my fears remained unfounded. Slowly, I realized that maybe, if they really liked me, they might deserve better. But it was what I needed back then, control over my sexuality and through it. It was better to wake up next to someone I trusted than being alone in a moment of panic when I didn’t remember where I was or what had happened the night before. When all I saw was the imagined red blood on my hand, as if what had been done to me in the Lakelands, what I had done, had occurred just hours ago and not four years prior.

I tell myself that I'm afraid of nothing, but is that really true? Possibly, yet another truth is that while I was in the Lakelands, I was drugged and raped and I have survived. I've continued with my life and still have I to deal with it, the fact that a Red boy, just a few years older than me, had thought me the perfect target to exact his revenge on the Silvers.

He assumed that no Silver girl would dare to demean herself to report such a crime. He was right. As much as I hate him, the real betrayal originated from my own people who let me down, without a way to obtain justice unless I took it into my own hands.

Philip Cross raped a 15-year-old girl to find a conduit for his anger. I was obliged to remind him that this could not ever happen again. So I faced him alone in a boathouse in Detraon, and used my ability to pin him against a wall and inflicting on him all kinds of pain I could imagine.

Revenge was no joy, and justice an illusion. The only enduring reminder I gave to him was the R I engraved on his cheek.

"Remember this, fucker," I hissed between his winces, "remember what this letter stands for. Not Red, not rebel, not runaway. Rapist. That's what you are."

I could have done anything with him and gotten away with it, I knew that much. I didn't want to. I didn't want to sink to his level and even less did I want to admit to him how much he'd hurt me by punishing him even more brutally. Did I find the right measure? I don't have an inkling.

After I'd stained my hands with his blood, I tried to forget him. My whole focus was on keeping myself together. It wasn't easy, while staying in the foreign country with devious nobles around me like in the Whitefire, when I couldn't bring myself to tell Firebird, who was there with me, yet.

But the visit ended soon afterwards anyway. The Scarlet Guard attacked the court and I killed my first Red, to defend Firebird and the royal family she was talking to when the assault happened. I wondered if those terrorists had anything to do with Philip Cross, but I can't know as he didn't take part that day. As all but one of the rebels laid dead on the floor, Princess Iris looked at me acknowledgingly. She had captured one of them alive, a man who would later spill the secrets of his group, thus causing the destruction of a whole village that harboured the insurgents. I heard that much before the Nortan emissaries were asked to leave for home.

Some months later, I started to tell one family member after another of my violation. I needed to talk and yet, it wasn't enough. Nothing was. I got my tattoos. I trained harder, fought, and took lovers, but as time healed my heart it hardened it as well. I didn't hesitate to accept when King Maven ordered me to hunt his Silver enemies, to kill or capture them. I was good for the job, well experienced in fighting other Silvers and able to attack from the distance and the shadows, like the assassin some comrades started to call me, the true heir of the Siren. I spiked them with everything in the vicinity, I crushed lungs and made their veins burst for slower and more veiled deaths. I excelled, and yet it didn't make me feel any better.

Once, I even took part in a Newblood eviction. I continued to loath fighting against Reds, thus I was shocked to see how my comrades killed the whole family of the man who was our target without a blink.

To my relief, that remained my last hunt. Soon afterwards, Mare Barrow electrocuted the Witch Queen, and my mother sidled into my room the moment she heard that news. She'd waited for Elara's demise for decades. Gloatingly, she hinted at the prophet she'd met, a strange man who looked forward to cooperate with Maven. A Newblood himself. He told the king where Mare Barrow intended to go and the king set forth, taking me and several others he handpicked to finally capture the Lightning Girl. And so we did.

 I was no longer dating any Silvers at the time, and Lucas Samos had been the last one. It had ended in June. I broke up with him when things became serious - for him at least. He said he loved me, that he wished for us to stay together. That alone made me uncomfortable - I had no romantic feelings for Lucas. Then he said it.

"... and once we've found a solution for your de-, um, problem, we might even get married. One day."

I stared at him.

The silence dragged on.

I could see his resolve faltering and his heart fracturing by the second. He hadn' believed I'd let him down. He wanted to argue. But as his mouth opened again, I stopped him.

"No."

"Excuse me?"

I brushed his cheek for one last time. "I can't marry you. And we would be better off if we stopped this right now."

"Cassie!"

I let go of him. "I'm sorry you thought there was a future for us when there isn't. Farewell, Luke." I turned away from his devastated face. I'd tried to be gentle, but a part of me was too angry. I wasn't defected. I didn't need to be healed, least of all to make a proper bride for a Silver to breed with.

To be honest, I wish I could have children sometimes, I don't resent the idea of having them one day. But I will neither let myself be reduced to my reproductive abilities, nor to my sexuality, I deduced as much and so, I stopped dating. Not only to avoid another heartbreak, but to keep men like Samson Merandus at bay, men who felt "entitled" to me. He is the worst one, he doesn't even notice how much he disgusts me with his lusting after me.

A few months later, Firebird went away to become an officer at the choke. I miss her, like the moon misses the sun. I walk in the dark when she isn't around me to remind me that life is more than fighting and intrigue, even though she isn't a much better person than me, deep down. She only hides her vindictive and calculating parts with easy smiles, make-up and pretty dresses. I don't think she's gone to Corvium without another motive but her military career. She has chosen her path, but where does this leave me? I'm not who I want to be.

 I stand before Mare Barrow. She ignores me, focused on her own thoughts and her small tries to stay strong despite her imprisonment, the torture she's been through, and the SIlent Stone weighing on her limbs. She's a fighter, she won't give up. I respect that. I respect everyone who tries to bend and break the rules which are caging us.

 Commentary:

Again, I want to apologize to everyone who feels offended or hurt by me telling the story of a rape victim. Feel free to critisize or bash me for the things I've done wrong. I want to learn.

I'm not saying Cassandra's way to cope is the right one, or a healthy one, but it is the one she's chosen. Not only her sexuality, but her vengeance too. Maybe her punishment is too lenient. But I imagine her as a woman who has no idea about the "accurate" way to deal with such a crime in a society that I assume to be victim-blaming, thus I have her act on her instincts alone, instincts which are attuned to never show weakness. I write about one fictional person, I'm not saying how rapists should be punished, or how victims have to behave. This story is not intended to be generalizing.

I see that I might have Cassandra over-sexualized, yet this is a personal story about a woman pondering about her sexuality. I tried to put in other themes as well, but I realize that might be too little. I hope one can still read into the rest of her character that I've created.

I'm not 100 % happy with the way I wrote the love story part, I'm not the greatest romantic writer. I've used a lot of Lana Del Rey quotes in that part, to be honest.